It does help. That's the difference that I thought, but I wasn't sure. Is all the "M" material Culture-related, or does he do other sci-fi milieux as well? {i]Against a Dark Background[/i] sounded intriguing, and it is 17+ years old - it might be interesting to see how the Culture shaped ...

(CNN) -- Six people were killed and 12 others wounded -- including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords -- in a shooting outside a Tucson, Arizona, grocery store where the congresswoman was holding a constituent meeting, police said. The suspect in the shooting was in custody, according to U.S. Capitol Pol...

IE 8. Well there's your problem. I've just tried it with IE8 myself and it looks like what Sonic posted. Trying it with Firefox it looks absolutely fine. Seems like, as always, the problem can be traced to IE. Also, IE8 has apparently decided it doesn't want to close for me. I click on the red X to...

This article might shed some light on it. (CNN) -- The thousands of birds that fell from the sky just before midnight New Year's Eve in Arkansas likely died from massive trauma, according to a preliminary report released Monday. The birds, most of which were dead when they were found, were red-winge...

Congrst!

Mikey wrote:BTW, Jurassic Park isn't a novelization - Crichton wrote it years before the film.

Aye, I know. I used the wrong word.

Transition is....an odd one. Overall I think my impressions were positive (at least, I at no point felt like putting the book down and was curious to see how it would conclude), but it's not one of his best. The conclusion seems a little....rushed. It's all set up prior to it happening so it's not ...

Excellent points all round. I thought I fancied a mind bender (and I'm getting one, his writing seems to have matured a lot in it's complexity -headache time-) by getting the kindle version of Excession . I am enjoying it a lot, but for very different reasons to Consider Phlebus . If you're looking...

Back in the fifties and sixties, people seemed convinced that by now we'd have cities on the moon and Mars, flying cars, robot butlers and we'd all be eating pills for dinner. Obviously, they got quite a lot of that a bit wrong. But I thought that it would be interesting to discuss how things might ...

I was never really a big fan of Mr Bean, but this scene always gets a laugh.

This whole thing is utterly ridiculous. What they're basically saying is that nobody can engage in any social activity that might go beyond "being friends" until they're both of the age of consent (what is that over there anyway? 16? 18?). Yeah, because that's going to lead to a healthy so...

Personally, I really liked it. I found one thing interesting, though. During one particular scene, the Doctor keeps reacting to the fish biting him....despite the fact that there aren't any fish anywhere near him. Did they just run out of money for the CGI fish in that scene, or is this some sort of...

That's actually pretty handy.

Merry Christmas, guys.

Thanks guys.