Definitely a good book, though it starts out rather slowly. It doesn't really pick up until the Pak Protectors are mentioned and Louis Wu realizes that they built the Ringworld and humanity are descendants of normal Pak colonists on Earth millions of years ago whose Protectors died off.
Because it took so long to get to that point and thus to find the Ringworld control centre, the actual fixing of the Ringworld's orbit seems a little too pat and deus ex machina to me.
I give it 3.5 out of 5.
This is a book that I have had on my bookshelf for decades, but I have never gone back and re-read it like I have so many other books in my personal library. So a couple of days decided that now was the time. Unfortunately, it just wasn't as good as I remembered.
Yes, I know that this book and its two sequels were written for as younger age group, but so were the Harry Potter novels, and those are awesome. So Ged meets this one dragon and uses his magic to sail around the islands of Earthsea, but beyond that there isn't much more than narrative. It gets rather boring, actually. Even the encounter with the shadow creature was anti-climactic.
I give it a measly 1 star out of 5.
This past week, on and off, I've noticed somebody hammering at my wi-fi trying to get acess. And it's not like they are trying anything overly intelligent to get in, just request after request after request for a DHCP address. Now I have things limited to a handful of specific MAC addresses so they aren't getting in, so I'm not terribly worried about them stealing my bandwidth. But then I remembered this website: Upside-Down-Ternet
This is only really interesting if you're sufficiently over age 18. Go to Pop Culture Madness: Pop Music and select the year you turned 18. Take the first 50 songs and paste them into a word processor, then mark up each song as follows:
Well, I turned 18 in 1988, so here is my list:
So how cool were you?
I found this on the Web today. A hospital in Japan has put in place a “baby hatch” where mothers can anonymously drop off unwanted babies.
You can bet that conservatives everywhere will be foaming at the mouth over this. That it encourages premarital and casual sex amongst singles. That it promotes lack of responsibility among new parents. Even that it destroys the foundations and sanctity of marriage.
In a perfect world perhaps it would do those things — I don't know. But we don't live in a perfect world. We do have have women who get pregnant and don't want to be but have no access to abortion. Maybe they don't want the baby because there is no economic way they will be able to afford, first, taking the time off work and, second, buying everything that new child will need. Then there are those women who could afford it, they just don't want a child at that point. Babies are innocents — they deserve to have the chance at a real chances in life rather than being poor, or the emotional problems of knowing that your mother never wanted you in the first place. And you know what? We do have a stigma in our society against people who give up their children and that stigma can prevent a woman from doing what is right for her baby. Not just adult women, but teenage mothers, too. Perhaps all hospitals should have baby hatches.
Me, I choose that which benefits the innocents in the picture, even if it promotes that which the conservatives fear it does.
Normally I am all for people getting tattoos if that is what they want. I feel it is wrong to to think that all people who get tattoos are drug users, gang members or whatnot — that is hurtful stereotyping.
However, I also think that Rebecca Holdcroft from the UK is a whiner. She has a lot of tattoos, as you can see from the picture on that page, and her employer would like her to cover them up. She says how she's been ask to wear a cardigan and at a previous job “on a hot day I passed out and cracked my head in a toilet cubicle”. Oh poor baby. There are long sleeved shirts that you can buy which can be worn on a warm day, and Britain doesn't even get that hot in the summer! Now if she lived in the Mediterranean area, I might have some sympathy.
Now I say this as a person who has a tattoo — your employer has the right to require that you dress in a fashion which they feel will be presentable and acceptable to their customers and clients. If you don't want to, then your employer has the right to put you in a a non-public facing position, even if it pays less and is in the back broom closet.
Rebecca — give it up. Stop being a whiner. It's not like this is a real issue like freedom of speech or equal rights regardless of age, sex or race.
And according to this How Canadian are you quiz, from the same website as the What American accent do you have quiz, I am only 99% Canadain! Awwwww... :-( :-)
You rock, you are an almighty Canadian through and through. You have proven your worthiness and have won the elite prize of living in a country as awesome as Canada. Yes I know other countries think they are better, but we let them have that cuz we know better than they do, eh?
How Canadian Are You?
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz
