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[james_davis_nicoll]

I was going to put a rant here but I think it would be prudent for me to wait a month until the book that triggered it sees print. Even if I friends-lock it, that doesn't mean the publisher might not get wind of my comments and take offense.

So, to fill the time until then:

Is writing Heinlein young adult novel pastiches primarily a male occupation? I can't off-hand think of a female writer who tried her hand at a Heinlein young adult novel, at least not in the centenary wave of Heinlein pastiches.

[This might be a stupid question but if it is mainly a guy subgenre, why would that be?]

In a unrelated comment, metric _or_ American imitation of Imperial, people. Not both or at least not both in the same sentence.

Comments

[j-larson.livejournal.com]

Powers of 10 are too big a change, particularly for short distance measurement; powers of two work much better

I ran into something similar when I needed to design experiments that covered more than an order of magnitude. Powers of ten, while convenient, were too sparse. Powers of two, while appropriate in computing, were too tight. I settled for a 10-based system, splitting each decade with a power of 3, since 3 is approximately the square root of 10.

Powers of ten: 1, 10, 100, 1000
Powers of two: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024
My system: 1, 3, 10, 30, 100, 300, 1000

[hobbified.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know I'm several months late to the party -- anyway, some stuff (like your average oscilloscope) uses something that's very roughly based on the third root of ten -- the 1-2-5 system. So you get gradations of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, etc. and each step is a factor of 2, 2.5, 2, 2, 2.5, 2, etc. Which I guess is uniform enough for everyday use.