Recent content by Yee-Ming

Heh, should've read Wikipedia before posting: iridium is used in OLEDs, something we on HTF can fully appreciate ;) But seriously, super-hard, corrosion resistant, although brittle and hard to work. I suppose I can see how that could be quite useful.

Call me a dumdum, but is iridium that supremely useful, such as to change the world economy that radically? It's probably relatively expensive today because of its relatively scarcity, but if it becomes plentiful then its cost will fall; in turn, the question then is are there uses for it, that...

My assumption was simply that the USSR would not let a traitorous defector live. Up till then, Sergei had quietly lived as a schoolteacher in Iowa, and probably escaped KGB detection. But once he started 'hanging around' Houston, he was probably spotted, and orders would have come down to...

Absolutely agree. I enjoyed the books, but can see why some/much deviation is required, and some innovations for the TV show have been incredibly interesting, not least the Genetic Dynasty. Goyer had also explained in the pod that while the books simply had a Second Foundation fully formed and...

Zava is almost certainly a caricature of Zlatan Ibrahimovic -- even looks a bit like Zlatan. When he was still a teenager in his native Sweden, he was invited for a trial at a Premier League club -- he (in)famously said "Zlatan doesn't do trials..." Not that that impeded him, he won league...

IIRC, in the original 90210, Gabrielle Carteris was already 30 at the time she portrayed a high schooler... Luke Perry was also in his mid or late 20s.

Haha! Shout-out to South East Asia's "King of Fruit", infamously so noxious even Andrew Zimmer couldn't eat it. Although Anthony Bourdain loved it...

Perhaps one simple reason the Majalans don't consider leaving: it's their home. And as long as there's a way to preserve it, and they can live with the price, they stay put. As an aside, I wonder if the name "Majalis" had anything to do with Majel Barrett Roddenberry...

Netflix, or somebody, please pick this up!

If I'm not mistaken, that's because when the original Trilogy was written, Asimov considered Foundation a standalone series. It was only when he wrote the 4th book 30 years later that he decided to tie everything together; hence the (later written) prequel books incorporate Demerzel, a.k.a...

Jim Lovell, commander of Apollo 13, was also in the movie, playing the captain of the carrier that recovered the Apollo 13 command module when they safely returned; the filmmakers had suggested he play an admiral, but he declined, on the basis that he'd retired as a captain and shouldn't play a...

My SR8002 is my second AVR: I still own my first, which was an SR8200 -- built like a tank and heavy as anything. I loaned it to a friend, who has since given up on HT himself and he's put the AVR in his storage unit for now. Thing is, just as an amp, the SR8200 was simply amazing, so as...

Getting overrun by Anacreon, in short. But over and above that, they've now forged an alliance between Foundation, Anacreon, and Thespis, making the beginnings I suppose of a breakaway 'empire' in the Outer Reaches. (Spoiler: not exactly what happened the book.)

I too first read the Foundation books around college time. But I re-read them all recently, ahead of this TV series. As previously noted, this is very much an "inspired by" take of the Foundation books; indeed so far this season is about halfway (or less) through the first book only, in so...

Hmmmm. The TV show is really diverging from the book now: not just in terms of plot, which has been patent from the outset, but even in theme. The whole premise of psychohistory was that a single individual cannot change the future path humanity is on -- provided he/she is not a...