nini

Sto facendo un lavoro sull'avifauna, mi piacerebbe avere titoli di storie sugli uccelli (anche di quelle che si trovano nelle antologie di italiano).

In particolare:

Cerco una short story su una bambina italiana che vede una rondine fare il nido sul balcone, abitua la rondine a posarsi sulla mano, quando questa si prepara a migrare al sud le lega un messaggio alla zampa. La rondine torna in primavera con un messaggio diverso: una risposta scritta da un bambino africano.

I know gender identity and sexual preference are independant.

Semantically, do you say, eg., that a trans male (girl turned man) is gay if he likes men, or straight because he was born female?

Guessing it's probably the first.

E' un libro per ragazzi, su questa giovane che è la legittima erede, ed entra nel palazzo come sguattera per cercare di assassinare l'uomo che sta opprimendo il suo popolo.

Qualcuno conosce il titolo?

Qualcosa mi ha ricordato questo libro di fantascienza/cyberpunk che ho letto tanti anni fa.

Vago il ricordo: parlava di un gruppo di ragazzi in una città distopica che scappavano da non so che governo. Ricordo solo che Bit era una specie di hacker con dei poteri speciali.

Chiaramente dato solo il titolo è difficile trovarlo con Google... mi aiutate?

I'm looking something new to read, and I found that female science fiction writers often focus on biology and societies rather than hard SF.

So, do you know any good "soft" SF series of that kind?

(Please, don't start on laws, parents feeding chicks on the ground, shelters and such. In short, I found the baby late at night on the street, took it in for the night, and freed it in the morning in the safest garden in the neighborhood, at soon as it made contact with the parents.

Just as the sun goes down again, the neigbor calls, cats are chasing the baby, the parents going crazy attempting to defend it. Cats would get it as soon as it was too dark for the parents to fly, so I took it in again. Too late to find the shelter open.)

Long story short, I don't know if the parents managed to get any food into it today, I hope so, but all the same I'm trying. Its refusing tiny bits of mashed cat food and raw meat, just turns it's beak away. It's too old to trust me right away as a source of food.

Any tips on getting it to accept food? Recepies, food temperature, presentation, holding the beak in a particular way?

Previous question was too long...

I've an escaped cockatiel, looked for the owner on the papers, got 10 offers of adoption. If the owner can't be found, should i give the bird to a loving home with humans, or to a guy with an aviary, to live with other 'tiels?

Both options seem equally trustworthy (families who have/had a cockatiel and treated it as a pet, letting it out of the cage, and the guy with the aviaries comes reccommended by an association).

The bird is a bit wild, possibly not hand fed. Can a bird like that (shy not terrified or V. aggressive) be a good pet?

We're looking after a runaway cockatiel, and looking for the owner. If we can't find the owner, we (thanks to the newspapers) have a rather long list of potential adopters.

I'm uncertain between some families, who already have a cockatiel or used to have one, and let them out of the cage to play as a family pet, or a guy who has some aviaries, including one with cockatiels, and comes reccomended by some animal welfare association, so I know he keeps them well. The bird might prefer the company of other cockatiels, but it might turn out even more traumatic...

The bird is a bit hissy, though not terrified of humans, I think it must not be hand fed, or was ignored by the previous owner. it lunges and hisses, doesen't like hands close to it, but it's not nippy. Wild, but not evil, I'd say. So, home, or aviary? Help me figure this out!

A friend found her and gave he a cage and some seed and water. I got her now, a day later, and she's fluffy, not bery hungry and seems to be oscillating just a little, when she breathes. 'Tiel owners: is it normal that she does that?

But a bit of lethargy and anxiousness is to be expected at 7pm after a long car journey, I think it's just that afterall.

I bought her a seed mix, and left in the sunflower seeds as well, figure it's not the time to be picky about healthy foods. I did try to tempt her with apple slices and greens, but she won't even touch them.

I read up quite a bit about parrots, I've been wanting one for a while, so I should be able to keep her alive till we find the owner, but any caretaking tips from cockatiel owners would be welcome.

Hanno fatto un finto profilo su Facebook per prendere in giro uno, e la gente pensa che sia veramente lui, ci sarà un modo per far chiudere la pagina!

Can you think of games where you have to collect items and resources, and craft stuff from them? And where this is a main mechanic, otherwise it's pretty much every game.

I'm thinking games like Sims 2 Castaway, but Minecraft is another good example, and Dwarf Fortress comes close.

Any genre, any year, but only PC and Wii games.

That's me. It's a bit of a curse, to actually enjoy editing, picking over sentences to see why they don't work, measuring the pacing of a story, all that... and not to be able to write yourself.

Is it like that for anyone else here? if not, what makes you come here and review other's writing?

Can you think of some "sci-fi" sort of revelations about our planet, or our galaxy, the origin of life, any of these?

Something that could be in a book (or is already)

Like in Matrix, where it turns out our lives are just a simulation. I can think of a few, but I'm finding it hard to think of one that isn't already cliche'.

We're converting some old tapes into digital video, which file format would it be best to use? Avi, flv, mp4... going for good quality, since they're probably already quite deteriorated.

ps. Nellie The Elephant coming soon, to Youtube ;)

Sick pigeon found on the street. It will be hours until the vet who takes in wild animals is open. I did the rice-sock warming thing, and am trying to get some hydrating solution in it (water, sugar and a little salt), according to instructions found on the internet.

But dripping it on it's beak with a syringe just makes it shake it off and go back to sleep. Should I towel it and try to open it's beak? I think that he'd just breathe all the water in.

Any tips?

In my story the protagonists can travel via portals/wormholes, (a bit like in Stargate, you know).

You can only "lock onto" a destination if there is a gravity field, like a plane or star, you can't warp to empty space.

The point was that this "zone" through which you travel is structured differently than the normal universe, so, say, the closest planet in a certain direction in real space isn't recognizable when you try to warp to it, it's like you're looking into a whole new disposition of planets and stars.

So I need a name for this concept. I think I might be calling it "the Cheese". because you move through it and emerge in the "holes" that are the stars.

I think it's expressive, and funny at the same time. Plus the protagonists aren't military, like "Starfleet" So they can be as silly as they want.

(so it's going to be "we're travelling by Warp" "we're opening a Warp portal" but "The nearest point in the Cheese", "Accessing the Cheese", "Our position in the Cheese"...)*

What do you think of the name?

What would you call it?

My dad is going to a conference in Japan, I have no idea of what to ask him to get me. I'm not into anime and manga. What else is Japan famous for? We're not rich, so nothing incredibly expensive, lol.

(what to get to my otaku friends?)

I am a nerd and fantasy/SF geek, can't read japanese (so I suppose books and videogames are out), all I can think of is anime toys and posters, does anyone have a better idea than a Pikachu plushie? >.>

Do you know any books that have a theme of time and time travel, possibly in a somewhat sci-fi theme (no romantic stuff like "time traveler's wife") it's fine if they are YA books.

I just read "the doomsday book", and I'll soon find the other book by the same author, but between that and Doctor Who, I think I'm hooked to the "genre"

I loved " A Tale of Time City" by Diana Wynne Jones, and "the Time Machine" (everyone knows who by).

Another kind I like is where people make contact across time, like when a girl moves into a home, finds some old letters of a previous owner, or seeing a temporal ghost, and later starts going through doorways and finding herself in the past, but not wholly there... usually with a broken clock involved that beats a 13th hour, or that suddently starts ticking backwards. (These are more like "ghost stories")

If you see an answer that needs just a little tweak, or someone suggested something wrong and maybe dangerous. will you take the time to answer just to help, even if there's a more complete answer you know will be picked?