I'm now up to season 2

[conuly]

(Barely) and I'm starting to think that Elisa could stand to take some lessons from Xanatos on how to win friends and influence people. You know why that dude always comes out on top? Because he doesn't make dumb amateur mistakes when talking to folks! Instead of barging in on your brother while he's changing his clothes to harp about what bad news David Xanatos is and how he should definitely live his life according to your dictums, why not wait for him outside, say something like "I still don't trust him, but it's your choice and sometimes I'm wrong" and then go out to dinner or something to celebrate? (The advanced move is to then subtly manipulate Derek into meeting the gargoyles, getting a broader view of things, and so on, but Elisa isn't ready for the advanced move. I mean, starting off with "He's just trying to use you to get to me"? Honestly, don't flatter yourself. Xanatos isn't doing this just to pester you, and it makes you sound utterly irrational. He's got lots of motives, and even if you can't watch along at home you should have guessed that. Bothering you? That's just a nice bonus.)

And when your poor, dumb, deluded brother has been turned into a genetically modified "monster", instead of freaking out at his insistence that Xanatos is trying to help, why not swallow your ire and play nice? At least you could've probably talked Derek out of his conviction that Goliath was to blame for all this - and then you wouldn't be estranged for the next however-many episodes either. This is basic stuff, and if I can see it, Elisa, you should be able to see it too!

Edit: In the "correct scenery" division, we have a view of the Winter Garden from the water. Yup, I can accurately place their location by glancing at the landmark.

Edit again: I've told Eva that the enormous brick phones are supposed to indicate "really rich person over here", to her amusement. Given the radically advanced tech levels elsewhere I wish they'd gone ahead and just made the phones smaller and internet more prominent - but as I pointed out to her at the same time, absolutely nobody predicted how cell phones would proliferate.

************

Why the Big Bad Wolf Wouldn’t be a Good Baseball Player

The Unknowable Enigma of Babies’ Dreams

Group of Belugas May Have Adopted Young Narwhal

Puerto Rico bets on a coffee comeback

When Transit Agencies Spy on Riders

US prisoners’ strike is reminder how commonplace inmate labor is – and that it may run afoul of the law

Wages Are Low and Workers Are Scarce. Wait, What?

I Got Arrested To Prevent an Accident (Those comments....)

Dangerous Streets? Take the Bus

Household disinfectants could be making kids overweight, study says

How Struggling Dayton, Ohio, Reveals the Chasm Among American Cities

China Is Buying African Media’s Silence

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Forced to fight as soldiers and taking casualties, Afghan police demand reforms

U.S. slashes the number of refugees it will allow into the country

The Voters Who Disappeared From the Rolls

The Gay Black American Who Stared Down Nazis in the Name of Love

Saltmarsh Sparrows Fight to Keep Their Heads Above Water (Sad.)

PHOTOS: It's Hard To Grow Up — And Grow Old — In Honduras

When Chad Baker died from a lethal combination of cocaine and heroin, prosecutors charged Tommy Kosto, his friend and fellow drug user, with killing him—a tactic from the Reagan-era war on drugs that is gaining popularity around the country and making today's opioid crisis even worse.

Air pollution particles found in mothers' placentas

‘I can’t breathe’: In sewage worker deaths, a new India confronts an old scourge

Comments

[kengr]

Actually, Heinlein did predict the proliferation of pocket sized phones.

In the beginning of "Between Planets" (1951) Heinlein has has the main character out riding a horse and the horse startles when the rider's phone rings. And the rider snarks at the horse about how it should be used to the phone ringing.

In "Space Cadets" (1948!) he has one of the cadets' phone ring while they are standing in line. And another comments that he avoided that by packing his in his luggage.

[conuly]

All right, Heinlein! I don't often get to praise his foresight, so here we go!

...but I bet he still didn't predict that phones would also be gaming arcades, encyclopedias, libraries, calendars, watches, tv stations, radios, cameras (video AND still), and calculators. Didn't half his characters use slide rules?

[kengr]

Slide rules were the "pocket calculator" of choice up until the mid 70s. And still useful until scientific calculators got cheap (early 80s).

Heck, there are some things where a slide rule *still* beats a calculator (comparison shopping).

He missed the boat on computers (though "Starman Jones" has a pretty good view of computers at the time it was written (back when everything was done in machine language))

But he did describe radar stealthed vehicles (in "Between Planets), a biomedical oxygen sensor (don't know if it was actually in use at the time) in "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel".

And, of course, he invented the water bed. :-)

He also invented several of the "stock" plots for time travel and interstellar travel.

[conuly]

Heck, there are some things where a slide rule *still* beats a calculator (comparison shopping).

Tell me more.

[kengr]

Works best with a circular slide rule, but it can be done with a standard one. It was a neater trick before unit pricing, but it's still handy with it.

Basically set the price on one scale (A), and the amount (weight, volume, whatever) on the adjacent scale (B).

Now look at the next product. Look for its price on the A scale, and see what amount is below it on the B scale.

If it's more than the amount in the package, the first product is the better buy.

If it's *less* than the amount in the package, then this product is now the best buy.

Adjust the B scale so the price of this product is over the amount in the package.

Go on to the next product and repeat.

Basically, you only have to remember what the current "best" is, and just a quick glance tells you if the one you are examining now is a worse buy. You only need to adjust the slide rule when you find a new "best buy".

Once you are shown the trick (easier to show than describe) it's a lot faster than punching things into a calculator.

It's even possible to deal with the all too common problem of item A being price per pound and item B being price per ounce.

Oh yeah, the price per unit info on the shelf stickers is sometimes wrong...

[wpadmirer]

I loved the baseball articles, and the story about the narhwal. The story of the gay African-American and his Danish lover is very, very sad.

[conuly]

Agreed