Recent content by chrispenycate

With cars it's easy - you drag them home and bury them in the garden. This is not considered sicially acceptable with women (for some reason).

Mine's still completely dead - obviously the technical matter dislikes me more :)

I talked to my dragons about the matter (other people get voices, I get dragons) and they reckoned that setting a forest fire is no indication of anger or cruelty. It's the sort of thing a young fledgling can do by accident and get mildly scolded for - dragons are none too ecological. Similarly...

It does help to have a request for a piece of a certain length, a deadline and a suggestion there might be financial remuneration (like now):)

I glory in red squiggles. Some of them are characters names, or geographical features, or religious observances, or even articles of food or clothing archaic enough that my dictionary has never met them. Others are genuine typos, generally of the 'two letters inverted' style but also a tendency...

I don't think the skeleton is essential in a microgravity environment - sure, it's a convenient way of attaching muscles, but an inflatable balloon would give enough rigidity - it's considered a working theory that cartilaginous fish (sharks, rays and things) stiffened up their bones when moving...

In the inner system, wher water might be liquid (Earth orbit and within, roughly) the only matter conveniently available is solar wind - almost entirely ionised hydrogen and helium. Not optimal for building babies (and reproduction is a key factor in life, or evolution) And we can observe that...

As regards 'suction' - anything we consider suction relies on air pressure, and even in the tail of a comet doesn't contain enough matter per cubic metre to generate anything that can merit the term 'pressure'. So, we either go for electrostatic charge, or muscular tentacles winding themselves...

So, 'outside their vehicles'. So they've evolved sapience in a planetary environment, developed space travel - and then adapted, or were adapted for space. Rather than evolving in space for space (in which case they would have have evolved propulsion systems, senses for finding matter in vacuum...

Oops. It put it twice.

In the second of the Drake/Flint Bellisarius series, In the Heart of Darkness, there is a fairly detailed pre-gunpowder naval artillery battle (the next book has cannons). And it just happens to be in the Baen free library In the Heart of Darkness by Eric Flint and David Drake - WebScription...

:D I have another reason for needing polysylabics- rhythm. I have a strong belief in the parallel evolution of language, music and dance, hearing oral tradition memorisable by heartbeat, by body's repeat. Even in prose, the pace is largly governed by the meter - subconsciously we're closer to...

My dragonverse has the dragons actively cooperating with humans because technology has advanced so far dragons are obviously doomed, should they not change (steam trains, crossbows with exploding quarrels, dynamiting their lairs. But they learn to become engine drivers, and aerial combat...

I think any definition of jazz has to include the word 'improvisation', and even then some big-bands play everything, even solos, from scores (college bands, usually. I don't file them under 'jazz' in my head, at all). I've worked with several hundred jazz musicians, many of them great, live...

Depends a lot on which era of jazz. New Orleans, Trad jazz, Dixie, the first impression is the rhythm . Clear and straightforward, with the melodic instruments taking turns with the tune (and even rhythmic instruments having a number of eight bar sections given to them for solos. Be Bop, wrong...