Last narrative book I've read was 1984. It was for a philosophy class. Other than that, I've read a lot of Michael Crichton's (RIP) books like Congo, Andromeda Strain, Prey, State of Fear, 2nd Jurassic Park book (forgot what it's called).

Also strongly recommend Tom Clancy's Without Remorse followed by Rainbow Six. Great stuff. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is also great. Might have to pick that one pack up since I don't remember much about it, been 11 years.

>> ^BicycleRepairMan:
Half of what Turek was saying was how specially designed for life the Universe and the Earth are. It's so weird that I haven't heard the anthropic principle even be mentioned yet.
Hitchens , while perhaps not naming it, does use it, he explains how the universe is most dead, empty space and its moving apart at accelerating speeds, and how we well soon crash with Andromeda, "some Design" As he puts it. This easily lay in ruins any suggestion that the universe is "finely tuned". Anyone who suggests this is either ignorant or unable to see things in perspective. The universe, if designed, seems to be designed to be as hostile and unsuitable for life as physically possible. So far, we've only found one tiny suitable speck able to support life, and the only reason we found that one, is that we are standing on it.


The problem is, when Turek mentions arguments like:
Earth needs to be at exactly the right distance from the sun.
Earth needs to complete a spin near 24 hours.
Earth needs to have the right tilt.
Earth needs to be next to a Jupiter-like planet.

He's fully realizing that the vast majority of the rest of the planets in the universe cannot support life. That's his argument. Earth is so much more special than all those other planets! For some reason he actually thinks this is evidence FOR Earth being specially designed for us. It seems like he really needs a basic lesson on what the anthropic principle is.

Half of what Turek was saying was how specially designed for life the Universe and the Earth are. It's so weird that I haven't heard the anthropic principle even be mentioned yet.

Hitchens , while perhaps not naming it, does use it, he explains how the universe is most dead, empty space and its moving apart at accelerating speeds, and how we well soon crash with Andromeda, "some Design" As he puts it. This easily lay in ruins any suggestion that the universe is "finely tuned". Anyone who suggests this is either ignorant or unable to see things in perspective. The universe, if designed, seems to be designed to be as hostile and unsuitable for life as physically possible. So far, we've only found one tiny suitable speck able to support life, and the only reason we found that one, is that we are standing on it.

>> ^Rotty:
I can understand the "wow factor" if your reference is the Amiga - but really, there's nothing earth-shattering here. Nice, but...


It's hard to beat old demos like Second Reality.

To add to that, as the moon slowly moves away from the Earth, it has a very small braking effect on Earth's rotation. What this means is.. eventually this will lead to both the Earth and the Moon becoming tidally locked, or with the SAME side of the Earth AND Moon permanently facing one another.

It may be worth looking up how long this is going to take. I'm too lazy to figure it out right now. We're talking a super long time scale.

It may be such a long time, that either humanity (as we currently know it) will be gone, or maybe our Sun will end it's life by the time that could come about. Something may even disrupt our solar system long before then. Such as our galaxy's destined collision with the Andromeda galaxy.

Andromeda is a great target in any telescope. You can see it naked eye even, and its surprisingly large in the sky (as in 3 times the width of the full moon.) I can see the multiple dust lanes visually in my scope.

I think captain kirk said that same bagivad gita quote on the andromeda tv show.

wat the heck????? South Park is getting a whole lot crazier..something like Gene Roddenberry would of done(NOTE:he is a great uncle i think to me, i kno we're kin) like Star Trek or Andromeda or even Star Wars, freakin weird but funny.