u/GraniteGeekNH

Sorry if this is obvious, but what's Superman's mortality status? Obviously he ages, since he used to be a baby, so does that mean he has a natural lifespan and will become old, feeble, and then die? If so, that's such an interesting storyline that it must have been explored somewhere.

I have a used copy of "Atlas of World Population History," published by Penguin in 1975, written by an Oxford professor and a historian. It gives historical population figures (estimates mostly of course) for most countries in the world from ancient times to 1975 and then a guess for 2000.

The interesting part is the final section about the world as a whole. It talks about S-curves and declining rates of fertility due to modernity, and then write one paragraph about trends beyond 2000, something it does not do for any countries.

They think humanity will choose "quality over quantity":

"Our guess is that instead of moving further towards a theoretical limit - which is somewhere around 20 billion - the human population, on this Earth at least, will never approach closer to it than the 21st century level of between 8 and 9 billion."

It's rare, I think, to encounter population forecasts made in the midst of concern about overpopulation which under-estimate where we end up, since we're already between 8 and 9 billion and still growing at a fair clip.

The book says nothing that I can find about the possibility of declining global population. The assumption is that we'll level off somewhere and then stay there unless there's some catastrophe.

The short intros to each show on BCS are just brilliant; little pieces of art. So clever, beautiful, insightful. The ants on fallen ice cream. The slide-rule being encased in clear plastic. Too many to list really.

A perfect example of a great line - a throwaway that gave insight into characters without pausing the pace of the scene - came when Kim was describing her talk with Kevin (the banker) to Jimmy. He told her to imitate Kevin and she shifted position.

Jimmy interrupted her: "He's a side-sitter? You didn't tell me he was a side-sitter!"

... and that was that; she went on.

I thought it was brilliant, instantly demonstrating how Jimmy can read people by using a term that I had never heard of. Just great writing.

It's that time of year when my kitchen compost bucket fills up three or four times a week. Corn cobs and husks take up a LOT of volume!

EDIT: Headline should say "bucket".

I read Pale Fire so many decades ago that I had forgotten all about it until I found the paperback hidden in my bookshelves (original cost: 65 cents!). Figured I'd give it a shot.

Holy cow, this is some book. A 999-line poem by a fictitious poet and hundred-plus pages of notes about the poem and the poet by a fictitious neighbor that indirectly also tells a story of a fictitious country with a murder mystery sort of included.

That sounds terrible, but it's brilliant. I am no fan of big epic poems but this one is excellent, very readable, and the self-delusion of the neighbor revealed in the footnotes is hilarious.

The only drawback is that I need two bookmarks: One to mark where I am in the poem and one for the footnotes.

Not like any other novel I can think of.

There's a looming global fertilizer shortage due to the idiotic Iran war. Compost isn't going to replace industrial fertilizer but it might become more valuable for commercial gardens.

Or maybe we need to go back to harvesting guano from bird-covered Pacific islands.

At a friend's house recently I picked up "Two Years Before The Mast" for something to read. It was very enjoyable, interesting, much more readable than most 19th-century books I've encountered.

It's a 1840 memoir of a college kid who signed up as a seaman on a clipper ship to fix his eyesight (which is weird, but ...) Went around Cape Horn twice, once in mid-winter!

Told in a straightforward way, it gives a really good picture of the often unpleasant life aboard ships as well as life in California before the gold rush.

I can definitely recommend it. You might want to skim through the sailing-ship parts which get a bit technical about sails and lines and whatnot!

... a sticker ball. This one is more than four years old.

... make a sticker ball. This one is more than four years old.

The Mall at Fox Run is being torn down and will be replaced by the current popular model for single-site retail: a series of stand-alone stores. I don't get it.

Why is walking between stores out in the open preferable to walking between stores under a roof?

Maybe it's just an image thing. Malls seem old-hat and separate buildings seem downtown-y. Maybe?

I'm old enough to remember when malls were new and "you don't have to walk outdoors" was a selling point! Any insight from redditors more in tune with the current shopping zeitgeist?