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We get mail (contd.)

So I occasionally get mail via the feedback form on this blog. And I usually try to reply to it (when I get a reply-able email address and it seems to expect a reply and I have something to say), and I certainly don't publish email without getting permission first ... unless it's like this (i.e. the sender is unidentified and unidentifiable from the content, which is copypasta of someone else's out-of-copyright rant):

Subject: Fear the Lord!!!

From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy? But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.

(James 4:1-6 KJV)

To which the holy spirit[*] led me to reply:

My imaginary friends have more fun than your imaginary friends.

Moral of this story: assuming someone else shares your beliefs—or even understands them well enough to respond to your attempt at evangelism other than with baffled amusement—is a bad idea.

Also: what is it that leads people to believe that an all-powerful omniscient creator, who is presumably responsible for the fine structure constant, neutron stars, and Sacculina carcini, is nevertheless obsessively interested in where and what hairless African plains apes rub their genitalia against?

[*]The memory of last night's very nice single malt whisky

639 Comments

1:

"Someone else's out-of-copyright rant" made me smile ... If you read just that first sentence of the rant in a Yoda voice it works really well. After that, try channeling Daffy Duck for the rest...

It's interesting that a "ye olde worde" version of the out-of-copyright rant was selected for the purpose, I imagine the spammer thinks all that whence, wherefore, and ye language lends some lofty authority.

2:

You want an actual answer to your totally rhetorical question?

Two parts: the functional one is that it's a useful way to differentiate my tribe from your tribe. Note that regulating who are lawful sex partners and who are not seems to be extremely widespread, although not universal, even in the majority of groups that don't have religion per se (which seems to be a Christian concept from 1000-1500 years ago that's slowly spreading through other languages). Since humans are obligately cultural beings, I suspect this is one of the ways culture reproduces itself through people, and it just happened to get caught up in the current concept of religion because of western civilization's Christian roots or something.

The mystical answer is that the omnipresent divine is obviously equally interested in the lives of every single being. You get the same attention as Trump does and each of Trump's fecal bacteria do. Omniscience means there's no limit on God's interest. Why should you not bask in that attention?

3:

On the bright side, they did not seek to use CAPITAL LETTERS to emphasise the IMPORTANCE of their MESSAGE!

Oh, and eleventy ;)

You could have been naughty, and quoted an appropriate Surah or Sutra back at them... assuming, of course, that the sender actually reads any replies.

4:

I have this hypothesis (which is probably more than half bunk, because dammit Jim, I'm an engineer) (and which is also more properly said in some book):

There are at least three different questions religion can answer. Namely:

  • How was the world created? - That is, what was the beginning, and perhaps how the world will end.
  • How does the world work? - What creates clouds, wind, rivers, mountains, animals, people, and how do they change through time?
  • How should we behave? - Who should I be polite to and how, what laws we should have and so on?

These categories could be defined more properly and obviously there is much overlap. When you get something we call 'a religion' it usually tries to answer all these questions in the same meme package. This is where you get the "god which created this world is also the god overseeing our morals", though in the beginning it might have been different imaginary creatures.

For example, every time I read through Genesis and Exodus, I have hard time equating the creation god with the Israelite god who communicates with them through the desert.

(Yeah, I know it was a rhetorical question, but as I've talked about this with people, this doesn't seem to be clear to many people.)

5:

In the UK "Rights in The Authorized Version of the Bible (King James Bible) in the United Kingdom are vested in the Crown and administered by the Crown’s patentee, Cambridge University Press."

And the extract is more than 25% of the total text of the work in which they are quoted, and has omitted the required acknowledgement though that may be allowable.

http://www.cambridge.org/gb/bibles/about/rights-and-permissions/

6:

Mikko Parviainen said: For example, every time I read through Genesis and Exodus, I have hard time equating the creation god with the Israelite god who communicates with them through the desert.

That's because the Bible that you are reading is the corrupted version of many stories. Remember, the God of Abraham was part of a pantheon, including his wife and three sons, they and the other gods of the pantheon were edited out as the dogma changed.

Start with

wiki - Asherah

and then go from there.

The music video Most High with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, with the god containment facility, lends itself to a wonderful series of stories about that. Each time I watch the video I see:

Klaxons sound, a priest stumbles out of the Holy Rock storage facility, and cries out. "The God of Abraham has escaped!"*

*Translated from the Greek.

7:

And which of these authoritarian stories, each of which claims to be right, each of which has fanatical followers who will kill to prove they're right, is really the right one? Claiming to be correct seems to be one of the standard religious phenomena. (Obviously I'm not going to claim that my religio-megalo-fantasy is incorrect, but it might be refreshing if someone did!)

And of course they all claim to be "religions of love" even as they brutalize their own children and rape, torture, and kill members of other religio-megalo-fantasies. (At least the Church of the SubGenius makes honest claims to be a religion of hate.)

I must confess, the entire phenomenon puzzles me. I guess I'll just continue to have a private and enquiring spirituality and not impose my personal results on others.

8:

Blast from the past:

"UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED."

9:

Yes, I know - I used to live with a biblical exegete as a flatmate. It just amazes me how somebody could not see that the book(s) are a collection of stories.

10:

Who cares?

What we all care about, the only really important question, is what Single Malt was it?

11:

And the copyright expired in 1661 (retrospectively) :-) I don't understand HW - is there another English version? :-)

12:

I agree that is far more interesting than such rants; I, too, should like to know.

It's very noticeable how rarely fundamentalist Christians quote the Gospels, and often quote texts that conflict with them, but the very definition of a Christian is someone who follows the teachings of Jesus (as described in the Gospels). There are quite a few lessons against intolerance in them, too.

13:

There's a common feature of belief systems to present being good (as variously defined) as optimal.

If you're being good, the people around you are not being good, and those people at least look like they're way happier than you are, there's a cognitive dissonance. The fix for the dissonance is "God's gonna get you for that"; in the next life, as the workings of karma unwinded, at the most ironic time, whatever. Anything to patch the observation of non-optimality back into "good is optimal".

("The future is a surprise" precludes "optimal", and there's a bunch of patches for that, too.)

Anyway -- so your correspondent is doing insecurity management by assertion, that while you may suffer from a delusion of happiness, god will eventually get you for it. They've got the entirety of goodness and power lumped into one god the father almighty purely out of habit, but the process of lumping was patches for the non-obvious optimality of goodness.

14:

There's a common feature of belief systems to present being good (as variously defined) as optimal.

If you're being good, the people around you are not being good, and those people at least look like they're way happier than you are, there's a cognitive dissonance. The fix for the dissonance is "God's gonna get you for that"; in the next life, as the workings of karma unwinded, at the most ironic time, whatever. Anything to patch the observation of non-optimality back into "good is optimal".

("The future is a surprise" precludes "optimal", and there's a bunch of patches for that, too.)

Anyway -- so your correspondent is doing insecurity management by assertion, that while you may suffer from a delusion of happiness, god will eventually get you for it. They've got the entirety of goodness and power lumped into one god the father almighty purely out of habit, but the process of lumping was patches for the non-obvious optimality of goodness.

15:

I imagine the many translations work a bit like statistics: pick the version which best supports your prejudices :-)

http://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-versions/

16:

... that while you may suffer from a delusion of happiness, god will eventually get you for it

So, er ... Roko's Basilisk!

(This is going to hereafter be my religious-debate equivalent of shouting "Mornington Crescent"!)

17:

I'm forever arguing with the loons on facebook. To a great part, they don't actually read their own holey books. They like to band the 'omnis' about ,omnipotence, omniscience but fail to think the consequences through

18:

Remember, the God of Abraham was part of a pantheon, including his wife and three sons... As in: "Thou shalt have no other gods, but me" ?? Acknowledging that there ARE actually, other gods, but that the Bronze-Age goatherding Israelites can only have JHWH ... Incidentally, some really devout evangelicals get all exited, if you point at one out, but getting them existed is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel ....

19:

Perhaps answering Charlie's question? I suggest a combination of a really good imaginary story, allowing for the time at which it was first composed or collated, coupled with the Iron Law of Bureaucracy. Which then ossifies into an inevitably cruel & intolerant dogma.

Once such a system is well-established, the "priests" can set about suitably brainwashing the entire population & the meme they have started will then easily self-perpetuate.

Having recently read a philosophical 201 classic, Bertrand Russell's "History of Western Philosophy" ... the one stand-out characteristic that got to me was ... How the advances of science, especially Physics has demolished vast swathes of philosophical & religious maunderings, by the sheer accumulation of real actual, you know: EVIDENCE. ( Which is why, of course, G Galilei was by no means the only person to fall foul of the bigots/people in charge, etc. )

The buggers still haven't caught up, of course, & probably never will now. [ E.G. The Cretinists steadfastly ignore any evolutionary/botanical/zoological advances or research made since about 1960, since they would crash-&-burn instantly if they did ... ] This probably explains why my mantra of: "No BigSkyFairy (Of any sort) is detectable - & therefore, even if existing, is irrelevant & can be treated as non-existent." The squealing & wriggling is wonderful to watch, but the original proposition has never been actually challenged. P.S. I got the idea from uncle Albert , of course, as in: "the Luminiferous Aether is undetectable"

20:

While there are differences, they are mostly minor. They may LOOK considerable, but that's only to people who aren't fluent in the versions of English in which they are written. The main arguments arise over exactly what the original Aramaic meant. Anyway, the points I have made aren't affected by such variations.

21:

Yes, I am afraid that it's all too easy to show that the really devout evangelicals exist :-(

Incidentally, the Luminiferous Aether may be undetectable, but the fizzicists are all debating how many angels fit on the head of a pin in the Non-Luminiferous Aether. It would help a lot if they didn't regard the working hypotheses of Uncle Albert as having been written on tablets of stone and brought down from a mountain.

22:

andyf said: They like to band the 'omnis' about ,omnipotence, omniscience but fail to think the consequences through

wiki - Omnipotence paradox

The standard question is:

"Can God create a rock so heavy that even he cannot lift it?"

My answer is, yes.

Google - laser carved rocks

And you will see pictures of round river rock with words or sayings on them. I see having a rock engraved, and there are places that you can order personalized rocks, but it's too expensive for just a joke.

On one side of the rock I would have:

  • The rock God cannot lift

On the other side:

  • I'll carry it for Him

I use this as a running gag in many books. I have one where the rock is sitting on a desk, and a guy comes along and can't pick up the rock. He is the God of Abraham(GoA) just wandering by.

23:

Roko's Basilisk requires too much background information for most people. My working of the whole thing goes something like this:

Imagine you meet an amazingly smart and evil dude. He tells you that he's a scientist and demonstrates conclusively that he can simulate a human brain on his very powerful computer, including sensory input and output. He then goes a step further and aims a sensory device at your head. Now the smart and evil dude simulating your personal wetware in his computer program. He gives you the opportunity to talk to yourself so you can be absolutely sure that you and the software are exactly the same person.

Smart and evil dude then tells you that he is storing a copy of your mind off site, and if you don't obey him absolutely for the rest of your life, he will subject his copy of your mind to the most evil tortures imaginable.

Is this guy God, or merely a vicious blackmailer?

24:

Not so Relativity has, so far, passed all the experimental & observational tests thrown at it. And, so has QM. Um, err ...... [ But that is not what I interpret your meaning as, is it? ]

25:

Absolutely. It's exactly the same insecurity management process.

Effective insecurity management involves "I really am at risk here" and "nobody wants to have sex with me because it's totally not in their self-interest to do so and if I want to change that I need to do a lot of work with no guarantee of success". (I'm pretty sure patriarchal social norms are built on the bottom couple fifths of the male population figuring enslaving all women was less work than trying to become personally attractive. The persistence of the forms suggests that judgement is accurate.)

Oh, and "I'm not special. I might not be average, and depending on choice of criteria I'm way below the population average; if I think about it, there are way more criteria at which I'm wildly sub-standard than there are by which I'm vaguely average. If I was actually exceptional at anything, I would already know."

Cultural support for self-honesty is lacking; most belief systems are trying to sell you a certainty that you are special, the creator the universe says so. It's generally effective emotionally even when obviously ineffective materially.

26:

"...or even understands them well enough to respond to your attempt at evangelism other than with baffled amusement..."

It's best understood as a sort of CD-ism, with the same caveat that "you" refers to the human species in general and not to any sub-grouping or individual of it:

"You lot spend all your time and effort squabbling over who gets the oil and who has a bigger penis^H^H^H^H^Hiphone and generally obsessing over stupid primate status bollocks (You can't have that, it's mine, so ner; Ner ner ner mine's got more features than yours; etc) but does any of it actually make you happy? Does it fuck, it may partially distract you from not being happy, but it only works on a superficial level; it doesn't work properly, but it does prevent you from realising that, so you carry on and on doing the same futile crap to no avail. Meanwhile the ecosystem is collapsing under the strain of what you're doing to it and little girls in Somalia still get their flaps hacked off with a rusty razor blade because of your inverted sense of values. This is shit."

"Also: what is it that leads people to believe that an all-powerful omniscient creator, who is presumably responsible for the fine structure constant, neutron stars, and Sacculina carcini, is nevertheless obsessively interested in where and what hairless African plains apes rub their genitalia against?"

People are obsessively interested in that, fuck knows why, but they are; and take their obsession to the level of thinking they ought to be able to dictate that everyone should do it in precisely the same way as the obsessor, fuck knows why, but they do. It helps them to do this if they can convince other people that the all-powerful omniscient creator partakes of their own personal prejudices and hangups. Carrying out such convincing is all the easier when the holy book is so long and boring and written in such a tedious and obscure style that most people can't be arsed to read it, and those who do are already so inculcated into such a viewpoint by the time they get the motivation to do it that they fail to notice that nearly all the references to "adultery" and "whores" and stuff are not actually literal references to shagging, but are metaphorical references to lust for having stuff, and lust for power, and lust for having a newer iphone than your neighbour so you can go "ner ner ner I'm better than you", and other such crap that people lust over just as obsessively as they lust over sex.

27:

Is this guy God, or merely a vicious blackmailer? I assume that was quite deliberate, because, as we should all know by now BigSkyFairy = "god" IS a vicious blackmailer. Equals Roko's Basilisk, which equals circular argument.

Which means it's all bollocks.

28:

To be noted that the "nobody" in "nobody wants to have sex with me" does not actually mean "nobody at all", but "nobody from that rather small subset of the population whose tits feature all down the right hand side of the Daily Mail website". In practice nearly everybody does get to have sex with someone, and reproductively successful sex at that (if their inclinations are such as to make that a possibility); the number of people who don't is very small, and even smaller if you exclude people who eg. just can't be arsed with it.

29:

While there are differences, they are mostly minor...

;)

Minor little things such as, oh I don't know, "What are the Ten Commandments?" Because it varies slightly from Christian sect to Christian sect, and between Christianity and Judaism.

OK, the big themes are consistent, but they differ on the little details ;)

Note: I may have suffered from working at the desk next to an evangelical Christian for a year or so. Full-on Literalist, Young Earth Creationist, women for Kinder und Kuche, anything other than Kinsey 0 is sin, type... with a mind like that, no surprise that he gravitated to the QA Department.

30:

Historical anomaly due to forced marriage. It's very clear that a lot of what's driving the current blood-and-soil nonsense is that if you take away forced marriage, a good fair chunk of the male population have precisely zero women showing interest in them. This is seen as a failure of the universe rather than as a failure of their person by the people complaining. Once you've postulated a failure of the universe, why not argue that you're inherently special and should get to murder anyone who says different?

31:

"Is this guy God, or merely a vicious blackmailer?"

A blackmailer with, for all you really know, just a souped-up version of Eliza... and a distinctly gullible victim.

The stuff about demonstrating that it really is a copy of you (a demonstration which is much easier to fake than to do for real) is just a red herring. It's just a computer program. Your only evidence of what it "feels" - if it feels anything at all - is what the guy tells you. You have no more real knowledge of that than you do of the poor sod somewhere on the other side of the world who trod on a stonefish while you were reading this.

The guy is in effect telling you no more than that if you don't do X he will torture any old random person whose experiences - as is the case with any other person - you do not share in, and he will do it in such a way that the only evidence of it happening at all is what he tells you, to which there cannot possibly be any corroboration. So the default assumption is that what he is really doing is the much easier option of making it all up, which for the same reasons he cannot refute, and the sensible response is simply to ask him where he got his drugs from and are there any left.

32:

I'm trying to avoid the Roko's Basilisk thing so it can be explained to an uneducated person without a lon aside.

33:

No, just looking at what I see around me. The "distribution of desirability" applies equally to both sexes, so the number of who'd-look-at-that men is roughly equal to the number of who'd-look-at-that women. Both sets have the same problem that while they may want Mr/Miss Universe it's never going to happen, but it doesn't in general result in them all remaining single; rather it means that they end up hooking up with each other, faute de mieux. You just get pairings where both partners look like Shrek.

34:

Except the cost/benefit isn't symmetrical. Women tend to contribute more and gain less from pairing up, and have generally started to notice.

35:

Reading the first half of it, I got the feeling I was being set up for an Oglaf joke.

36:

I don't think it matters much whether the Smart and Evil guy in this scenario really has a computer that can simulate your consciousness or not, because the important question is not "real process" vs. "false process."

The important question is a moral question. It assumes that the process works and asks why the morality changes when a human rather than a god is making the threats. Why is this transaction OK when God promotes it, but bad when a Smart and Evil guy promotes it?

37:

So, as someone who actually is a believer (Catholic btw, and no, I do not support the Crusades, or child abuse, etc.) I thought I'd weigh in.

In terms of why an omniscient, omnipotent deity might be interested in human behavior - how many books have been written about people? And how many have been written about other natural processes? There are admittedly a good deal of the latter - physics textbooks, travel guides, etc, but there are far more of the former. Humans can give rise to far more varied behavior - yes, there's an infinite number of potential snowflakes, but they all look similar at a distance, and they'll never build anything more significant than a pile of snow. Perhaps more significantly, snowflakes cannot conceive of the concept of a God.

Addressing some of the other comments in this thread, many people take issue with basing morality around the threat of going to Hell. So do I. Which is why I conceive of Hell as simply being the logical end-point of living a life focused on yourself and your immediate wants. If you never open up to others, you will never have anything more than yourself. This ties into the Christian belief that the two most important commandments are loving God and loving your neighbor.

Finally, another question brought up in the thread was: if the existence of God cannot be proven or disproven, does God even matter? To which I might reply: has belief in God affected human history? The answer, obviously, is yes, though of course you may consider the net effect to have been negative. However, I personally look at the results achieved by people like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and believe that religion has the ability to be a force for good, which is why I continue to hold it.

38:

"The guy is in effect telling you no more than that if you don't do X he will torture any old random person whose experiences - as is the case with any other person - you do not share in, and he will do it in such a way that the only evidence of it happening at all is what he tells you, to which there cannot possibly be any corroboration. So the default assumption is that what he is really doing is the much easier option of making it all up, which for the same reasons he cannot refute, and the sensible response is simply to ask him where he got his drugs from and are there any left."

It constantly amazes me how often in an action-adventure or thriller film everything depends on the hero (or the sidekick, etc.) believing what the villain says, without evidence of any sort.

39:

If god is real and has all the attributes traditionally associated with the job then the ancient principle of "might makes right" makes divine blackmail OK. In the sense that objecting will achieve nothing so you may as well deal with it.

OTOH if the blackmailer is subject to something like reasonable physics then you don't have to put up with that shit and can give them a shoeing.

Anyway, I thought the basilisk could dispense with the whole "point thing at head" nonsense and magically reconstruct a true and faithful representation of your personality from dental records. That way you don't even need a blackmailer.

40:

Hierarchy. Why is it OK for a king to chop a subject's head off but not OK for a subject to chop the king's head off? Why is it not OK for a dog to bite a human but OK for a human to euthanase the dog? Why does a child have to do what a parent says but a parent doesn't have to do what a child says?

Pretty well everyone goes along with the principle, even if they disagree over where it applies and where it doesn't - people could be found who disagree with all, with none, or with any selection of, my three examples.

The question devolves to whether it applies or not in the god/human case, which in turn is just a roundabout way of asking whether or not you believe in the concept of a god, because if you do the answer is "well, like, duh" and if you don't the same applies.

41:

Beliefs in things like gods, magic, spirits, etc. is probably tied to things in our minds like how we see faces in things that don't have faces, and how we always look for a cause for everything that happens. In a small hominid band that's probably good survival adaptation. Social interaction was probably very important, so recognizing faces and identifying who caused various things to happen will help you succeed.

It just stuck around as we evolved and our horizons broadened. Instead of looking for who threw the rock that killed Gronk, now we're looking for who threw the lightning that started the fire that killed Gronk, or who cursed us so that Gronkina doesn't think we're attractive.

It's something deep inside that makes us need to find the cause of things, and assign blame and punishment (or appeasement if we can't punish). It's hard to accept that often no one is to blame and nothing can be done.

The movement from animism to polytheism to be universal, though the move to monotheism is more varied. In some cases it is a development out of henotheism.

42:

Ok: for the vanilla readers, this is satire. Although, it's really not. It's also not exactly direct - we have to fuzz the quality right down.

Script: Intro (to be read in the style of the A-Team intro)

1 In 2010, a younger than today British Science Fiction Writer Won an Award. An award no-one had ever heard of; it was from Estonia, and referenced Пикник на обочине. Which was strange, because the authors were Russians and the Game Developer who brought it into modernity was Ukrainian: GSC Game World. And yet this magazine claimed they were all secretly Estonian and they gave said Author their highest Honor. 1a A precursor of StormFront has a large tract how this is all about SPACE-JEWISH-FICTION-MARXIST-CULTURAL-ATTACK. Like The Witchfinders, he was being paid by MI5, KGB and Mossad for his output at that time. It amounted to about £628 per year. He once wrote a story for AMAZING Magazine, but was turned down. Vox Day later denied that they had been room-mates once. 1b This was in the Time Before Soros The Boogeyman, so it took until 2015 before #1a's tracts were refined into a more "(((Globalist)))" meme. #1a had long since died from self-inflicted wounds to the back of the head / duffle-bag / over-dose / heart-attack. 1c In 2017, said Author finished his Ultimate Weapon; The Full Space Communist / Anarchist / Feminist Ovipovitors FROM SPACE novel. His Estonian Backers applauded[1]: he was their man, for their mission and they had no-one else to call.

Script: Exegesis (to be read in the style of the Watchmen)

2 At about the same time, a Young Wo/Man went to Hell. S/H/Ze had been stalked by various things and was tired of being threatened (in many cases, quite literally) and was just looking for friendship and love; the offers of eternal power, money, fame and so forth bored her. She was 5,915 years old at that point. Ze cried after exiting a stone vagina: it was the first time in 20 odd years. 2a Despite Warnings, ze was prodded and corralled into a situation where a funeral-that-broke-a-spirit was held and said members decided that their Religious Beliefs could be realized. They decided to push the buttons; Ze had already made a choice. 2b Ze watched her entire family die while Games Were Played. "Tell no-one on pain of death" is rather hollow[2] when you've spent 50 odd years making her unhappy via torture. 2c The Eternal Question was ever: Why do you not uplift / support / grow but rather prune / police / stunt? Apparently ze broke the world / reality Tree when that happened; It's not a way to define your reality.

Script: Continuum (to be read in the style of the Rocket Raccoon

3 Running Dream-Scape Mind-Fucks like "STALKER" written on the side of USA police cars became weaponized with attempts to break reality further. Looking at Host in particular; we know what they're doing, and we know why. 3a Real World Weaponized Declarations of Psychological Modelling have also been deployed: Interestingly enough, MIB and Psychosis stuff were written on this forum before they happened in reality. Now, that's Talent. 3b Reality is already sundered. They were Tried, Tested and Found Wanting. 3c It's all about this, really: “I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”

And so on.

TL;DR

λόγος - someone threw them the entire stack of SF/Fantasy novels and a load of Mills n Boons and told them they could be anything.

It's going to be awesome.

p.s.

You're getting said emails (if you actually are) because of a post #779. It's a marker, weaponized bots / Intel will spam you. It's all about pheromone tracing.

Your Grasp of Reality is weak, Young Apes. Really fucking Weak. There's Lions, Tigers and Bears out there cheating like shit don't matter.

[1] Look, you're really not going to get this joke unless you know stuff like: Trump Data Gurus Leave Long Trail of Subterfuge, Dubious Dealing Bloomberg, 23rd March, 2017 - Latvia, check it out.

[2] Dark Souls reference - Praise the SUN.

43:

I claim that the best way of understanding scripture involves filtering it through Dissociated Press.

Deep calleth the hair of women, that came to Gibeah the son of Abiathar, and speak unto me, This signs and women, (for so it seemed greatly to seek a proof of your possession of spirit, if so be thy nursing mothers' stead, shall be desolate.

44:

I once created a cursed item for a Dungeon the did Biblical ranting.

The Magic Femur club also talks to the weilder about weird quasi-Biblical stuff - a long, crazy string of strange commandments and bizarre prophecy. "Into the wind shall ye throw the earwax of your children, and stand fast when the Gods return to thee the earwax thou hast committed to the breeze, for in the third age of Zanzar, before the coming of the Zuupricari shall Gigantis the Fire Monster destroy Osaka; Lo! and The Spiky One shall stoppeth him not! And in the land of Zark, shall there be born a girl-child! When the Farslanni charged down the hill towards the unbelievers, the hand of the Lord was laid upon them, and each of them slew 37 of their enemies and died not, for in battle the hand of the Lord is upon the righteous, and no unbeliever shall prevail, thus if thou losest at war, look to yourself and repent your sins, then make sacrifices and go forth and strike at the minions of the Infernal One. And in the Land of America they make a pastry called the Oreo, which has a pleasing taste unto God. And the Oreo contains a minty filling between two cakes of faux-chocolate. And there are those in the land of American who remove the minty filling from their Oreos by turning the cake of faux-chocolate in a counter-clockwise direction, and this is pleasing to The Lord. And there are those remove the minty filling by some other method which is contrary to the commandments of God, and they are practitioners of abominations, and thou shalt slay them out of hand, for such is the commandment of God! And there was a woman of Bal-Bani-Bar, who practiced harlotry, and she was approached by three wise men. The first wise-man availed himself of her services. The second wise man counseled her in the way of God, and the third wise man fed her with the fruits of the Ard-Nak tree, thus at our mealtimes we look to the left before we eat, as does the Egret before he pecks at the Ard-Nak fruit."

This does not stop, even when the character attempts to sleep, and attempting to understand, apply, and catalog all these commandments is likely to drive the character who claims the Magical Femur Club nuts! (The long tradition of using the Magical Femur Club by Hyena-Person Ghost Eaters is the primary reason why they are considered insane!)

45:

Too tired to do the sourcing, but:

Truth Rising from Her Well to Shame Mankind

Of truth we know nothing, for truth is in an Abyss

Rescuing the Sphinx from the Abyss is quite the feat, don't cha-know?

And did you talk with Thoth, and did you hear the moon-horned Io weep? And know the painted kings who sleep beneath the wedge-shaped Pyramid?

Lift up your large black satin eyes which are like cushions where one sinks! Fawn at my feet, fantastic Sphinx! and sing mev all your memories!

46:

This is clearly an abomination unto Nuggan!

47:

Of course, the Hebrew version is "no other gods before me", really driving home the fact that this is a claim of primacy among deities, rather than of being sole godhead.

48:

Every day I am grateful that my God--Armok--does not believe in me.

I don't know who thought a God of Blood was a good idea, but I hope he prayed loud enough to end up in his presence after he died.

50:

Slightly OT, but do you ever read your server logs to see what Google searches brought people here, Charlie? If you're wondering what the point of that would be, well, it would be entertainment. C.f. https://www.popehat.com/tag/road-to-popehat/

51:

Ah yes "Sin" Defined ( by me ) as "Something mu particular iteration of BigSkyFairy doesn't like", & sually for reasons of power, of course. R-believers seem to be unable to distinguish between "sin" & Evil - i.e. Hurting other people, directly or indirectly

It's a common wrong argument used by the brainwashed, when encountering atheists, that atheists "don't believe in good & evil" - & like all their so-called "arguments", utter bollocks

52:

As Pigeon says somewhere up above, the sort of people who post this sort of rant to random blogs are the sort of people who take things very literally, including biblical metaphors using shagging as an easy shorthand for other stuff. There is a message about "don't be a dick" in that little lot up there. What it's actually saying is "You want to know why your life sucks because you spend half of it fighting and arguing? It sucks because you can't keep your grabby mitts off other people and other people's property, and they take exception to this. Stop it."

Quite a lot of the Bible is variations on the theme of God saying unto his Children "for the love of Me, would you kids grow the fuck up!" However, this is not a message little Tommy wants to hear when he's playing the "But I'm not touching you!" game...

53:

Trying to be polite here, but it's going to be difficult ( I did not expect anyone with your level of delusion to be present in this discussion ) Finally, another question brought up in the thread was: if the existence of God cannot be proven or disproven, does God even matter? Yes. Because if, as I postulate the testable hypothesis that: "BigSkyFairy is not detectable", then people, like yourself, believing in said BSF are not only deluded, but acting out your (dangerous) delusions in society, amongst the rest of us. And, never mind us, you are doing yourself harm by doing so. There are all the other cases that you allude to, as well ( Crusades, child slavery, oppression of women, etc, but lets keep the discussion focussed & polite shall we? )

And, there are OTHER believers who not only will but actually do act out their BSF fantasies upon deliberately harming other people ( See my reply @ 51, above ) See: Republic of Gilead, Mike Pence, abortion laws in the USSA or any part of Ireland, Da'esh etc at bloody nauseam, for ever & ever amen.

54:

Truth Rising from Her Well to Shame Mankind Ohhh ... er missus! Nude, angry young female WITH A WHIP! Stop it, I like it, or something ......

Can I fall about laughing now?

As for late-Victorian soft-porn it's very good, along with Pharohs' Handmaids or La dejuner sur l'Herbe It's probably not a good idea to get too close to The Origin of the World, though. I should probably add NSFW, but I suspect y'all knew that anyway, didn't you?

55:

Please try to get the jokes, especially when they're carefully sourced.

In 1895, Gérôme had painted a similar work, Mendacibus et histrionibus occisa in puteo jacet alma Veritas (English: The nurturer Truth lies in a well, having been killed by liars and actors). It has been suggested that both paintings (like a similar, later work by Édouard Debat-Ponsan) were a comment on the Dreyfus affair

Dreyfus affair

It's especially galling (yes, that's a pun) when you miss that the jokes are tailored to your personal grind stones:

Adolphe Thiers called republicanism in the 1870s "the form of government that divides France least"; however, politics under the Third Republic were sharply polarized. On the left stood Reformist France, heir to the French Revolution. On the right stood conservative France, rooted in the peasantry, the Roman Catholic Church and the army

French Third Republic

The rest we'll leave up to the reader to parse: trust me, it's funny (Mr Wilde being, well, let us say, not so interested in the naked ladies, eh?).

~

The higher order / spiritual side, well: don't throw out the dirty bath water into the gutter without eating the rose petals fading on the top, there's a hint.

(I did not expect anyone with your level of delusion to be present in this discussion)

Look to Author's post: My imaginary friends have more fun than your imaginary friends.

There's a reason sources are chosen.

~

Anyhow, I suspect I shall be arrested for S.T.A.L.K.I.N.G soon, so apologies to host.

[Redacted: Not allowed to post Aramaic or Sumerian stuff, naughty naughty]

56:

And, spoilers

Absolutely none of this is actually about Abrahamic Religions, ethnicity or labels Tribes place on each other, race, gender or genetics. If you read any of this through those lenses, you're doing "God's Work"[1].

It's about Imagination, Frameworks and Schemas and about how a paucity creates Monsters. Not Your Narrative Space Anymore[2] - that's what this is all about, really.

[1] "You're doing God's Work" is 100% tip off / dog-whistle to certain crowds: and they're not the usual ones you'd imagine. They're fairly heinous though, and a lot more dangerous than your usual bears; actually dangerous not like Mr Spencer the Cotton Farmer who is Gilded Friends with the Bushes and the WASPs[3]. That's a freebee.

[2] Not at Author or anyone here: it's a useful reference tool, however. Ze who controls the spice controls the universe

[3] Yes, Mr Alt-Right Spencer really is a mockery of WASP-dom, Government agricultural subsidies and in with the old (Lovecraftian) WASP crowd. He's a simulacrum, playing a role: do your homework already!

57:

The end point of the "why/how can god do/allow bad thing X" is always, from a true believers point of view: God is omniscient, therefore god knows more than we do and understands why "bad thing X" is actually for our own good; we should just trust god and not question his wisdom.

In other words, it's the justification of the abuser to the abused: I love you and I am doing this for your own good!

Therefore: If god exists, he is in fact a serial sadistic abuser of his creations.

Worship this if you must. I choose to say: Even if an omnipotent omniscient god does exist, I will have no part in promoting such a complete and utter bastard.

58:

"What is that leads [...] genitalia against?"

At a guess, Somebody got blitzed at the universe wrap party and tried to photocopy their reproductive apparatus with the Total Perspective Vortex.

59:

You are kinky, as is the Multinomial One. That is a decadent French picture. A True Englishman favours a hatchet-faced woman in a severe dress with manacles and a whip. I am sure that you can think of examples.

60:

Er, no. Forced marriage is rarer than is claimed, and is almost invariably to people who CAN get women - they just want more of them, higher prestige ones, sole possession, etc. And occasionally it's to dominant women. It's a matter of power hunger FAR more than sex drive, and is simply a modern derivation of the alpha male/female behaviour in social mammals. And the same applies to the marriage and exclusivity laws in Abrahamic religions; look at them as a ritualisation / regulation of the reproductive practices of social mammals, especially the few that are more than purely herbivorous, and they all start to make sense.

Bow down and worship the holy Evolutionary Principle, as described by its prophet Darwin and enunciated so evangelically by its High Priest Dawkins.

61:

I DO NOT need information on l'affaire Deryfus, thank you very much Recommendation: "An Officer & a Spy" by Robert Harris

62:

No. Explaining what I meant would be a derail, so I shall imitate Minestrone Fruit-Nuttery and leave things to your imagination. But consider the difference between the principle of a theory and its detailed formula; and the saying that with seven parameters you can fit an elephant, as applied to 20+.

64:

Just a week ago, I had two well, if slightly anachronistically attired, apparently male persons, knock on my door. Clutched in the hands of one was a poorly printed pamphlet, with a childishly rendered painting on the cover.

"Have you heard the Good News" (you could hear the capitals"

"Nah, mate, I've already got my own invisible friend, not interested"

The way they departed is what the word 'Scurried' was invented to describe.

65:

Bow down and worship the holy Evolutionary Principle, as described by its prophet Darwin and enunciated so evangelically by its High Priest Dawkins. Errr .. 1: You are being sarcastic? 2: You actually believe the utter crap you have just written?

And I can't tell which, which is not good.

If the latter - what's your alternative explanation, that fits all the known facts, then?

66:

And the Decalogue was originally written in Aramaic? Tell me more :-)

The same applies. Those differences are primarily due to the imposition of a (verse) structure on a text that didn't already have it, followed by disagreements over what the original text was - the actual translations account for very little difference in the meanings.

67:

I am afraid that you have had a sense of humour failure :-) If only one of those interpretations makes sense, which do you think I meant? My first paragraph was entirely straight.

68:

“Do not call up that which you cannot put down.” (c)H.P.Lovecraft

69:

...from the Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward, perhaps?

70:

I'm very far from considering myself an expert, but I seem to remember the early part of the Bible wasn't written in Aramaic, because Aramaic only became the 'common language' of Asia during the Achaemenid period (Note: 'Asia' in this context means what the Greeks called 'Asia', i.e. the Near and Middle East).

So we can be treating with a source written in Hebrew, translated to Aramaic, translated to Greek, translated to Latin...

71:

Exclusivism is a feature of some religions (e.g. the Abrahamic religions) but multiple belonging is common in other cultures (e.g.79% of Japanese self-identify as Shintoists and 75% self-identify as Buddhists). Also syncretism is quite common; especially in new religions which often mix elements of Christianity with other religious traditions and brand new crazy stuff.

72:

Er, WHY should the translators into Greek have used an Aramaic translation of the Decalogue (assuming that there was one) instead of the Hebrew? Unless I have got completely befuddled about the history of Judaism, there has never been a stage at which the canonical version of the Pentateuch was not in Hebrew, nor when there were no scholars specialising in it, which is not the same as its text or interpretation being invariant. And the Decalogue isn't exactly a minor part of that canon!

Apparently, modern belief is that the New Testament (as well as some of the old) was written in Greek, not Aramaic, so I misquoted there. But the point stands - the differences in original language and translation between the Decalogue and the Epistle of James are immense.

73:

Several responses.

First, Charlie, I am reminded of Days of Yore... back in the first half of the nineties, when i used to hang out in alt.pagan. Every mid-Sept, some kid with a Brand New Shiny Internet Access would have been steered to usenet, and discover that, By Gawd, everybody doesn't believe like we do in Rock City, TN (there is one - I've driven past it), and the all in caps YALL BRUN IN HAYUL. And they'd usually cross-post to multiple non-Christian religious newsgroups. My favorite was the one of "Jesus Save!". We responded with the usual "yes, but Moses invests", and "Mohammed profits"... and then someone from alt.religion.editors (if you don't know, that was for vi/emacs flamewars) came back with "Yes, but Gretxky gets the rebound and scores!"

Second, Patai, in The Hebrew Goddess (scholarly academic work) mentions that in '63, they'd already found tens of thousands of potsherds from ancient Israel inscibed "to Asherah and her Yahweh".

Third, anyone asking if I've heard the Good News immediately is guilty of one of their Big Sins, since it's the hight of arrogance and pride to think that anyone outside of the deep Amazon or Africa has NOT heard about Christianity in the last 200 years, at least.

Finally... based on their own descriptions of Satan (tm), I can't tell the difference between their "God" and their "Devil", based on evidence ranging from the real world to my own personal real world. I haven't had to pull that... but if someone wanted to argue it... let's just say You Won't Like Me When I'm Mad, and leave it at that.

mark "Holy Klono's gadolinium guts!"

74:

Totally off topic:

All the hubbub around Empire Games lead (along with a few nudges by fellow posters here) to me starting the Merchant Princess series (at the start). Two books (of the omnibus variety) in I'm loving it and I look forward to continuing on the series.

75:

You got the same thing in alt.destroy.the.earth. Every year there would be an influx of people who would either question the necessity of the project or post whiny diatribes about how we were destroying it already.

Asteroids and vapour!

76:

For a long time now I've felt that the relationship between spirituality and religion pretty closely parallels that between sex and marriage.

In each case, the former is a widespread human experience, much alike across a wide range of cultures (although with wide cultural variations in expression); a profound and potentially disruptive primal force.

In each case, the latter is an attempt to get litigious with the former. To emplace boundaries and rules. To inject a social control mechanism into what is, at root, an intensely personal experience... Which is understandable. Spirituality and sex both have demonstrated potential to lead people into exalted goodness, and into horror. Seems like cultural norms to fence them in are an inevitable human thing.

But the inane cruelties that institutions of religion and marriage both inflict seem deeply regrettable.

77:

For a lot of the arguments over how God gets away with doing horrific crap, the answer is that that's one of two possible answers to the question Socrates poses in the Euthyphro, in the form "Do the gods love holy things because they are holy, or are holy things holy because the gods love them?" You can say that the gods are really powerful and so they get to decide what counts as holy; or you can say that there's an independent standard of what counts as holy and even the gods can't change it, no matter how powerful they are. In the latter case, you're saying that might doesn't make right; in the former case, you're saying that of course might makes right, but people don't get to invoke that because no human can have significant might as compared to the gods. Arguments across that divide are seldom productive, because each side is taking for granted something that the other side can't imagine anyone would be crazy enough to believe.

78:

Asteroids and vapour, what a merry caper... Galileo, Galileo :)

79:

To what extent is "holy" an accurate translation of the original Greek word? Because it seems to me that "the gods love them" is pretty much the definition of "holy", and therefore for the part before the comma to make sense the word in the original must have had a meaning of which "holy" is not an entirely accurate translation.

80:

While bridal consent to marriage was generally observed (in English law) the ability of women to own anything was generally not. It's that lack of a distinct legal and economic existence that's the forced marriage. That went away in living memory, to the extent and degree which it is away.

81:

Sigh, bad dog, no.

Auður djúpúðga Ketilsdóttir / Unnur djúpúðga: Laxdæla saga.

Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir

Women in Anglo-Saxon England C. Fell, AMZN link

Yawn. Wake me up when the Men cease yapping.

82:

[Redacted: Not allowed to post Aramaic or Sumerian stuff, naughty naughty]

It's not the oil. It's the predecessor relics. Ina Godda Da Vita wasn't a song, it was a recipe.

83:

Apologies, pedant hat coming on.

FWIW; In the original original Hebrew, the word that gets translated as Holy is Kadosh, which more literally means Separate—the separation of Earthly & Heavenly, Sacred & Mundane, etc.

Hat off now. Goodnight.

84:

Thanks, that is useful to know.

But to pedant the pedant, as it were, I should point out that William H. Stoddard was quoting Socrates, who is unlikely to have written in Hebrew :)

85:

" look at them as a ritualisation / regulation of the reproductive practices of social mammals, especially the few that are more than purely herbivorous, and they all start to make sense."

My sediments exactly, add E.O.Wilson to the Darwin/Dawkins mix for his clear explanation of the conflict between genetic selection pressures coming from two different survival priorities, individual versus group, at the same time in the same organism. It helps the individual's survival chances to act selfishly at the expense of the group, and vice versa.

PBS just broadcast a nature show about zebras, showing daddy zebra kicking a newborn colt to death, since he somehow knew it wasn't his. And although the "Meerkat Manor" program never explicitly showed the hutch mother killing infants of other females in the troupe, they explained it was the reason behind a lot of the domineering behavior, from trying to prevent sub-dominant females breeding. And it's a well established background fact among social workers that stepchildren are far more at risk of abuse from a stepfather, than his own offspring. So widely acknowledged that it even spawned a dark joke-meme, "I'll whip you like a rented mule, drop you like a bag of cement, beat you like a red=headed stepchild!" Really, stepchildren? Couldn't be anything other than genetic conflict rising up right out of the DNA. So why couldn't this factor in to Biblical/religious/tribal sex obsessions? From an evolutionary psychology standpoint.

86:

Pigeon, you do realize that you just fell into the "might makes right" -camp, right?

87:

I didn't mean strictly the Decalogue, but the general problem with Bible terms. Even without a direct translation concepts like 'holy', for example, have passed from one language to other through 3,000 years or more. From Hebrew to Aramaic when Jews adopted it, from Aramaic/Hebrew to Greek (even if the New Testament was written in Greek I think most scholars think they used Aramaic sources now lost), from Greek to Latin, etc, etc, etc...

@73 whitroth I have always liked 'Jesus saves, everyone else takes 2D20 fire damage'

88:

Lack of a separate legal/financial identity went away so recently in UK law that when I started my post-uni job I would have been obliged to declare most of my income to my hypothetical husband, because my husband was legally responsible for filing the tax return and paying tax on the joint marital income to Inland Revenue. It was a hangover from the days when married women had no property rights, because their property became the property of their husband. That was less than thirty years ago. Advice columns in women's magazines had regular letters asking how to conceal some savings/income from an abusive husband in order to build up enough of a nest egg to be able to leave. This was a major reason the popularity of interest-free savings products from National Savings & Investments - they were interest-free, so could be hidden from the husband. So yes, Graydon is quite correct about lack of an independent legal/financial identity creating de facto forced marriages.

89:

H Beam Piper (?) As in great Ghu the Grandfather God ... because Gadolinium was essential to his McGuffin for a star-drive, IIRC....

90:

Except, that "when I hear the word spiritual, I reach for my revolver Physics textbooks"... The words "Spiritual" & "Spirituality" are used to cover almost unlimited quantities of drivelling bullshit - almost as bad as that of the "organised" religions, in fact, but without the institutionalised cruelty, power-seeking & blackmail.

91:

And, the "believers" have never com up with an answer to that, or its modern almost-equivalent: Is it Good because god says so, or is it good of itself ... with the extra proviso as to what happens when BigSkyFairy changes his/her/its mind? The answer that BSF is unchanging, immortal, etc, can easily be rubbished, of course, simply form the "holy" texts, or history. They don't like it up'em & also as usual the lying / wriggling gets interesting.

92:

That went away in living memory - err, no. Married Women's Property Acts .. 1870 & 1882

93:

Where I lived it was usually "Jesus saves! but Beckenbauer nets the rebound!"

94:

Assuming the income WAS "joint" Custom & Practice as opposed to actual law? Individual judges? ( See very recent disgraceful scandal in the courts here in the last week over just this sort of issue, including domestic violence, incidentally )

95:

That's STILL about power, not about sex, which was my point! I am interested that Greg Tingey can remember the events of 1882 - my memories of that era are a little, er, hazy - but he may be older than I am ....

96:

Indeed. Just like modern physics :-)

97:

I am old enough to remember that, too, but the abuse was both ways. A husband was liable for his wife's tax, but had no legal power to extract it from her! Some cases even got to court, and the judges were very perplexed at what penalty to impose.

98:

We're in the process or sorting out my late Father-in-Laws affairs. Only one name on the deeds to the house or any of the contemporary paperwork.

As I understand it from what his wife tells me (with a certain undercurrent of bemused outrage even 50-odd years later) it's not that her name couldn't be on the paperwork it's that the building society, solicitors, and state functionaries involved wouldn't put her name go on any of the paperwork...

99:

Religious, political and sex talk all has the same overripe gibberish quality to my ear. The rational brain is disconnected and the incantatory word salad comes out.

100:

Errr... yes.

While it's more "equal rights" than property law, it used to be that for female service personnel, pregnancy was grounds for automatic dismissal from the UK Armed Services. Until 1990. Until then, women could also apply for discharge on grounds of marriage.

There was even a sitcom in the 1980s called "Holding the Fort" where an Army Officer has a stay-at-home husband doing child-care. Sitcoms are an interesting indicator of "things that society finds awkward to deal with" because obviously, it's hilarious (and probably deeply threatening to the Daily Heil) to think that women can carry on working after starting a family...

101:

Did someone mention Galileo?

https://thonyc.wordpress.com/?s=Galileo&submit=Search

Useful starting place for people interested in history of science and correcting various false public ideas.

102:

(Sorry, been away from keyboard for about 24 hours)

Greg: ( I did not expect anyone with your level of delusion to be present in this discussion )

YELLOW CARD with cause: unjustifiable rudeness.

You're no less intolerant than the intolerant religious believers you rail against. In this instance, "Tohron" (who I will note is explaining their own rationalization for belief, not evangelizing/saying you should believe) was making a polite contribution to the discussion. Your invective, in contrast, is not helpful in any way.

If I see similar ranting by you — or anyone else — in this thread, I will hit the delete button.

103:

The issue with the Heil also surely being classical, given how many poorer women had to work after having children.

104:

quoting Socrates

Guess I forgot that part, and was getting discussions mixed up. As I implied, it was getting late. It's now early—probably earlier than I should be leaving comments.

105:

I always heard it as Jesus Saves—nickels and dimes.

106:

The Greek word used in Euthyphro is hosios, which is usually translated IME as "pious" rather than "holy"- it certainly has a sense of "following the laws".

107:

Ahhh, but the Daily Heil is firmly aimed at selling middle-class consumer eyeballs to advertisers. So, put bluntly: poorer, working-class, working mothers don't count - except as a "bad example" for non-working middle-class housewives, who are thus reassured that they're doing the Right Thing by staying at home.

108:

Charlie please note, I'm discussing differences in idiom based on residence, not discussing Wendyball or religion.

That (small change) would make sense to you James, but do you actually know who Franz Beckenbauer is/was? Virtually everyone in Scotland did back in the day.

109:

Ahh... that reminds me. It was 1995, I was young and a bit nuts... anyway, we had that bulletin board in the university hall (of the wooden kind, not one of those newfangled computer sort) – and that board belonged to some Evangelical Christians of uncertain denomination (we had a lot of preachers from the US at the time). So we started a discussion of sorts – they posted some note condemning abortions because Gospels. We stapled our reply to that note (citing, I think, Genesis). They replied, we replied to their reply... well, before long it grew into two-meter-long scroll – all the time they tried to prove their point with Gospels only to be replied with verses from the Old Testament...

And then it came to an untimely end. I still remember their last reply: "Sorry, the only one of us who have read the Bible is traveling, please wait a couple of weeks for his return...". We did not bother...

110:

Exactly. I was going to jokingly type that you work for them in your spare time, but that would be an insult. Also phone utocorrect is annoying.

I don't know who Beckenbauer was, clearly i've not been in Scotland...

112:

Sure that it wasn't the other way round? In my experience (and apparently that of OGH), the looney evangelicals tend to be intimately familiar with Revelations and a few of the Epistles, the bigoted fundamentalists with Genesis and Leviticus, but neither spend much time reading the Gospels, let alone following the precepts in them. Here, let me put in a plug for the Society of Friends. Whatever you may think of them, they do and always have done - I have no connection with them, incidentally.

113:

Since you guys are talking about religion, I figured this expose is on topic

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-28/how-utah-keeps-the-american-dream-alive

114:

Unless I've badly mixed up the memories, my mother told me she had to conceal her engagement or she would have lost her job. (British teacher, about 1961).

115:

Next, you'll be saying you've never heard of Johan Cruyff or Total Football...

116:

For me it was "Jesus saves! Everyone else takes damage."

Which may say quite a lot about the era and social circles I grew up in.

117:

Just a pedantic note: it's known as the "Problem of Evil".

At least the Zoroastrians solved it, by making their Bad Guy as powerful as their Good Guy.

Me? I decided that being a socialist and a science fiction fan of Jewish ancestry wasn't a small enough, persecuted enough minority, so I became a Pagan.

Now, my late ex used to use atheist pagan, and I can live with that, as I go back to the Lovelock Hypothesis. And my Goddess is not all-powerfull... otherwise, She would have saved her dearly beloved dinosaurs from the comet.

mark

118:

Yes, the funny thing is this branch (they're extinct in Russia now, it seems) was NOT big on the Old Testament... Another source of fun was inviting them in when they were making round in the dormitory, pouring them a cup of tea and very politely asking about their difference from the rival group (another branch from the same US church). The usual reply was: "We're living according to the Scripture!" Asking to elaborate would yield exactly the same reply, each time more and more whiny... but we never managed to find out what they were meaning by that (and we were genuinely interested)...

And all that fire-and-brimstone, Revelation-Genesis-Leviticus rhetoric is now spewed by Russian Orthodox Church who protect their monopoly. I actually do miss those Protestants from the '90s – at least those were polite, friendly and mostly harmless...

119:

No, no, NO. Doc Smith's Lensmen universe. And the Ghreat Ghod Ghu (purple be His Name) is the one true faanish Ghod (accept no substitutes). Purple is His Color, and bheer is His drink.

Why purple, you ask? Allow me to offer you this ancient koan: "YUCH! That purple jello in the 'fridge tasted terrible!" "Purple jello? Oh, NO, you ate the hectograph!"

mark "first fanzine: 8 page hecto... with a (yes, really) four-color illo...."

120:

My mother carried on teaching after marriage in 1970's Scotland, but her mother had had to stop working for the post office in the 1940's after getting married.

Martin #115- who?

121:

Hmm ... decided to look up a commentary on this passage. Apparently this is an exhortation to fellow Xians to stop the in-fighting, therefore applicable to most religions.

Can't jump on the hate-religion bandwagon since I find that there's a continuum of religions from the absolute dogmatic and hateful (JW doorbell ringers, ISIL and a few others) to the intense anticorporeal but cerebral (RC - SJs, and Georges LeMaitre variety) through to the warm and cuddly (Laughing Buddha) types right through to the step-by-step how-to-look-after-yourself-from-cradle-to-grave self-help primer (Judaism). Not sure where the Druids - a growing increasingly popular to the point of 'officially recognized as a religion' in the UK - figure in.

The way I see it about religion ... Humanity's been social for a while. Rules came about because more people could survive if they weren't killing each other over grievances and could therefore direct their energy into useful endeavors. The most important rules needed the strongest authority ... God. So, a religion basically recaps that society's most important rules and biggest fears. Unfortunately the longer stability is maintained, the likelier literal interpretation of 'God's Word' as argument of last resort. This means no competition allowed for other possible explorations and explanations of why humans do what they do. Possibly explains why societies die within a couple of centuries of embracing religious absolutism.

Lab work has shown that the two best systems for directing behavior are reward and punishment. Most religions incorporate this as a key feature. Lab work and longitudinal studies also show that kids/individuals who can postpone taking a reward are generally brighter and more socially responsible and likelier to become leaders. Again, most religions have recognized this.

As an atheist, I'm nonetheless impressed by how much most of the major religions managed to get right despite their continual misattribution of cause.

122:

Where I lived it was usually "Jesus saves! but Beckenbauer nets the rebound!"

I recall Glaswegian graffiti, circa late 1970s, where it was "Jesus saves! But Dalglish scores on the rebound!"

Elderly Cynic @21 It would help a lot if they didn't regard the working hypotheses of Uncle Albert as having been written on tablets of stone and brought down from a mountain.

We don't. For example:

And, of course, Einstein was quite wrong about "hidden variables" in quantum theory.

123:

I hope that you wont mind if I suggest a Mild, and even Minor alteration? This to Correct your interpretation of the News?Just a teeny little amount? And, suggest the Insertion of the word, " English " at any point of your own choice? As in, England is a very conservative country? MUCH more so than the Country that is Scotland ..or Ireland or Wales? Also ? It really isn't all that long ago that Scotland held a conservative sizable minority? And that the Con Men ..err , Con folks, could still divide and rule Scotland between and betwixt the Highlands - the land of my Mums Ancestors - and the Lowlands of the Glaswegians and so forth? Oh, how the Highlanders do love the Lowlanders .... and do Respect Herself, Nicola Ferguson Sturgeon, as their Dear Leader? Thus, this is bound to appeal as The Dear Leader of all the Scots .. "Sturgeon has been a member of the Scottish Parliament since 1999, first as an additional member for the Glasgow electoral region from 1999 to 2007, and as the member for Glasgow Southside since 2007 (known as Glasgow Govan from 2007 to 2011).

A law graduate of the University of Glasgow, Sturgeon worked as a solicitor in Glasgow. "

A Female, Glaswegian, Lawyer, who is now a Politician?Right at the Very Top of the Tree that is the Lowlands political Establishment? Right,then, this is bound to play well up in the North of Scotland - the Highlands - isn't it? So, I wonder ? What would happen if the Highlands chose to hold a referendum in the interest of Freedom, FREEDOM!!! and .... Independence from the Lowland Scots? The Oily Stuff beneath the Seas wont go far if it is spread across the whole of Scotland in the form of income, but ..what about a Free Nation of The Highlands and Islands? Spread about that population UP NORTH things begin to the Highland Scots to be rather more interesting? And how could the Scots Nats Object to INDEPENDENCE for The Highlands and Islands? Would they object to the Highlanders having a Referendum on this ? And how would the Highlanders choose, if they were the offered the opportunity to chose ..and that offer were to be supported by the English?

The English Political Class wont have thought of this will they? Nor will the Highland Scots...I Alone have thought of this for I am a Master of Duplicity ... and I am shopping around for a Secret HQ beneath an Extinct Volcano. What could possibly go wrong? Unless Agent "Charlie " has been briefed to thwart my Evil Scheme?

124:

I keep pointing out that as far as i know, the Scottish office building on Carlton hill has a bunker or very strong basement, and Carlton hill is an extinct volcano.....

125:

Who? WHO? We'd better stop there, young man, or this will get Messi...

I will confess to be a heretic apostate, and to have failed in my devotions to the Great God Wendyball. I just had to learn the litany, and some of the catechism, because it's a social necessity among certain social groupings in Scotland...

I gave myself a crash course in Scottish football in the late 80s / early 90s, just so I could keep up with the rest of our Rifle Platoon. They weren't fooled, particularly after I declared my support for St.Johnstone, but then that wasn't the question that they were really asking[1]... ;)

[1] Our Platoon Sergeant had a season ticket to Parkhead; my predecessor had a season ticket to Ibrox. We had a pretty even split otherwise; 30% Rangers, 30% Celtic, 15% Hearts, 15% Hibs. The outliers were me, Peter (who played semi-pro for a local non-league team) and young Karen (who claimed to support Aberdeen)

126:

Minor nit - it's Calton Hill...

The scurrilous allegation was that the Dear Leader (Salmond) had his eye on the Governor's House being the Presidential accommodation post-Independence, so you'd have to fight him for it.

127:

Look forward to future research that might isolate a graviton for closer examination because I have a tough time visualizing 'virtual particles', i.e., bespoke items that magically fit the cut-out/missing pieces in the current puzzle for the requisite (typically) infinitesimal length of time. (Easier for me to visualize a graviton as an emergent property/residue/outcome than as an initial ingredient.)

Curious why there isn't any discussion about there being more than one type/flavor of graviton esp. considering how many different types/flavors of other particles are known to exist.

128:

its the oldest scam,, obviously at some point a tribesman who was a little more savvy and less energetic , invented a trick so he could get food without having to do anything.' If you give food to the great spirit - through me obviously- you won't get eaten by bears.' and the silly sods bought it

129:

'virtual particles', i.e., bespoke items that magically fit the cut-out/missing pieces in the current puzzle for the requisite (typically) infinitesimal length of time.

That's not what virtual particles are. They certainly aren't "bespoke items": they have the normal quantum numbers as determined by the interaction, and if there isn't a particle with the required quantum numbers the reaction won't happen. The difference from real particles is that a virtual particle does not obey the standard relation E2 = c2p2 + m2c4, where E is the total energy, p is the momentum, m is the invariant mass, and c is the speed of light. As a result, it can only exist for a limited time, which is defined by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle ΔEΔt > ℏ/2 (in other words, you can violate the energy-momentum-mass relation by an amount ΔE provided you do so for a time less than Δt = ℏ/2ΔE, because according to the uncertainty principle such a violation isn't measurable—the 11th commandment, "thou shalt not get caught"). Virtual particles occur as internal lines in Feynman diagrams: for example, the reaction e+ + e → μ+ + μ goes (assuming that the centre-of-mass energy is much less than 90 GeV) by a virtual photon whose mass, in the simple case where the electron and positron have equal and opposite momenta, is equal to the total energy.

The number of distinct particles mediating a given interaction is defined by the group structure of the interaction: there is only one photon, because QED is an Abelian group (the photon mediates interactions between electric charges, but does not itself have electric charge) but there are 8 gluons, because QCD is non-Abelian (the gluon carries colour charge, and gluon-gluon interactions are possible).

The properties of the (entirely hypothetical) graviton can be deduced from the properties of gravity. It has to be massless, since gravity is a long-range force (this is the uncertainty principle at work again), and it has to have spin 2, because it is related to a rank 2 tensor and not a simple vector as the other force particles (all of which have spin 1) are. Unfortunately, gravity is not easy to describe as an exchange force—there are very fundamental mismatches between general relativity and quantum mechanics—so talking about the properties of the graviton is not really very justified.

130:

American Evangelicals don't bother much with the "Old Testament", since they think they have the New and Improved version. More than once I have heard, or read, accounts of curious christians approaching their ministers, saying that they can't get through the OT (usually getting bogged down in Leviticus), only to be told not to bother and just read the NT. Though they love to quote Isaiah, totally misreading it. As in "Isn't it miraculous how Jebus fulfilled all the prophecies of Isaiah! Riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, etc." To which the answer, of course, is NO, he read the book too* and intentionally followed the so-called prophecies (which were all about Isaiah's own time, not talking about the future).

*or rather the gospel writers had read it, since I've never been convinced that Yoshke actually existed.

131:

As I said, I am not going to derail by responding in detail, but you have seriously misunderstood. If you are interested, wait for #300 or a more appropriate thread; or ask a moderator for my Email address (now that I am retired, my reason for anonymity has gone).

132:

I am pretty certain that there are Roman records of a rebel called Yeshua or similar; whether he was anything like what the Gospels claimed, or was campaigning for the independence of Israel, is less clear.

133:

Yup, stupid Anglo-centric autocorrect got the name wrong.

I admit i have heard of Kenny dalgleish.

Fortunately as technical, not production, i didn't have to fit into the footie following groups, in a factory in Bellshill. The football was related to religion, or was it religion related to football. As usual, it was a few loudmouths who stirred things up, but the HR guy sorted them out. Footie shirts were still banned though.

134:

Ah the exception that proves the rule, I suppose. Persecuted by just about every other variety of christianity. The muslim equivalent appears to be the Ahmadi .....(?)

{ Still loonies, IMHO, but perfectly harmless, unlike all the others. )

135:

Yes, I should've said the Yoshke of the gospels. I* haven't heard of any actual Roman records of him, other than Josephus' single mention of someone matching the description, other mentions were provably added by later christian scribes, and Joe himself was writing well after the fact.

*not that I'm any kind of expert.

136:

Ah yes, the "Russian Orthodox" seem to have reverted to the status they had 1905-14. As seen in the film of Doctor Zhivago" where the priests are marching alongside the cheering crowds & people enlisting ... until Yevgraf (Alec Guinness) ignores it all, & joins up to further the revolution.

137:

And/or that the Islands, esp Shetland/Orkney decided that they want no part of Ms S's schemes. Charlie is always telling me that I "don't understand". But, it's just as bad in reverse, because London - almost twice the size of Scotland in population is hugely pro-EU & is getting more & more thoroughly pissed-orf wiv the goings-on re "Brexit" Yes, it's complicated

138:

Fortunately as technical, not production ... in a factory in Bellshill.

I can now smile and mention that Ferranti's ATE Group where I spent my summers interning, had its production and most of its technical staff based in a factory in Bellshill...

139:

No, Greg, women's personal income being treated under income tax law as belonging to their husband right into the 1990s was not custom and practice, or individual judges, it was the law of the land, and there was a massive campaign to get that law changed both because of the practical impact it was having on women, and the unfairness of women being treated as legal infants (a technical legal term) with no right to privacy in this area. There was no reciprocal requirement for men to disclose their income to their wives.

Stop frigging mansplaining to me something that I explicitly said in my comment could have had a direct impact on me. Something that indeed did have an impact on me, because I thought very seriously about whether I was willing to accept that sort of loss of my financial privacy as a condition of getting married. Fortunately the law changed during my somewhat long engagement to the man I did evnetually marry.

140:

The graffiti versions:

Jesus Saves - with the Woolwich.

Jesus saves, but Channon gets the rebound.

...and Tanuki's splendid version from asr:

Jesus saves, Moses invests, C'thulhu forecloses.

141:

Sounds good to me!

142:

Ohh dear! You may not realise, but my "other half" is a professional financial person ( as in CTA ) & I may be higgorant of some historical aspects of financial regulation as regards females, but I've never heard her complain of that one. And believe me, if it had impacted her, she would have complained. So ... go & bite someone else, OK & DO NOT USE "mansplaining" on me- I hope you get the message.

143:

It constantly amazes me how often in an action-adventure or thriller film everything depends on the hero (or the sidekick, etc.) believing what the villain says, without evidence of any sort.

I vaguely remember a book in which the villain claimed to have hacked into US nuclear arsenal, and had it set to go off if his heart stopped -- and his (known) computer skills made this claim plausible. The hero basically called his bluff. When asked how did he know the villain was bluffing, his answer was "Had he died, he would not really care whether his revenge plan succeeds or not. By definition, he would never get any satisfaction from it. OTOH, actually hacking US nuclear arsenal would be an extremely difficult job even for him. Much easier just to claim he did it."

Unfortunately, I forgot the book's title.

144:

Thanks for those scripts; the Script: Intro was diverting (from perturbing US political news) to poke at a bit, and play with what appears to still be the pre-GNMT version of google translate.
Two awards, technically. A Boy and his God of course came to mind while pre-ordering "Godshaper #1" (tx) a couple of days ago.

Trying to decide whether Brain stimulation improves schizophrenia-like cognitive problems is interesting. Don't have access to paper: Delta-frequency stimulation of cerebellar projections can compensate for schizophrenia-related medial frontal dysfunction

145:

See #40... or did you actually mean to reply to #40 but clicked on "reply to #79" by mistake, since your reply doesn't seem to relate to #79 at all?

A necessary part of the definition of a god must surely be a being who is superior to humanity, not only in potentiality, but in moral authority. So the questions of whether one should obey the god, and whether the god's actions towards humans should be accepted, don't even arise, as they are answered implicitly in the affirmative by the definition.

(Note that the question of whether one believes that a god exists or not is a completely separate matter and nothing to do with this.)

Some would seek to dispute my point by denying the moral authority aspect, but if you remove that aspect the being you're talking about is not a god. It's a genie, or a demon, or a wizard, or an advanced alien, or something along those lines.

(And if you remove the potentiality aspect, you have, er, Constable Lensman minus Lens, I think.)

146:

Well, 1905 would be too modern... for me it looks like they're aiming for something like cross between 1650s (boneheaded orthodoxy combined with the hatred of everyone and everything foreign) and 1850s (Church as analogue to the Department of Ideology in USSR) with a dash of Ministry of Truth from Orwell. And the accusations Leo Tolstoy was making in... was it 1904?.. about severe shortage of Christ in this Christianity is still standing. Hmm... this situation may have something to do with the reading of the Bible being discouraged by the Russian Orthodox Church ("Read what St. Someone-or-other wrote, you wouldn't understand The Book anyway!"). Some people are afraid of the Church Slavic (liturgical language of Russian Orthodoxy) as well, despite there being an official translation into modern Russian on the site of the Moscow Patriarchy... oh, and reading and thinking is hard...

The end result is that belief in Christ the Savior is replaced with belief in the ritual (the latter is technically considered a sin but nobody cares). So I would not be surprised if Russian Orthodox version of the Almighty manifests one day in the form of a small, shaggy and mildly bewildered bear...

147:

Update for those who don't live / work in or near London HERE Please do read this wonderful piece of sarcasm from the excellent "Diamond Geezer" ... It shows the general feeling about Brexit this far South & how depressing the whole thing is.

148:

That rather depends on the god doesn't it. Some have moral authority. Some are dicks.

The necessary attribute of a god is power of some kind.

149:

Regarding abortion laws: I think there is an oversimplification lurking here. Considering the views of zealots on either side; it appears that on one side they consider a single-cell zygote to be fully human with all the rights thereof, and on the other side a full-term foetus five minutes before birth to be not human and have no rights at all.

Put into those terms, I think it's obvious that both extreme views are ridiculous. Which leaves the problem of at just what time, during gestation, a foetus becomes human WRT right to life. I would suggest that viability outside the womb is a reasonable starting point for discussion, at the very least. This means that with advancing technology, the legalities creep earlier in gestation. It also deals with the rare cases in which the foetus will never be viable because of catastrophic deformity - an example being anencephaly.

Incidentally, the matter of the mother's health is covered by other existing law and custom; the right being invoked here is that of self-defence. If a human adult threatens your life, then you have a right to end the threat whether or not such ending kills the adult who is the threat. IMHO the same would apply to a foetus in those (rather rare) cases in which the foetus imperils the life, or severely imperils the health, of the mother-to-be. Unlike some, I would not include mental health in this because it's all too easy to make a matter of convenience a mental health issue on the record.

150:

Plus the fact that half (?) the fertilised eggs fail to implant, a third (?) of those miscarry very early on, and some miscarry later, because of genetic and other defects. And that very small foetuses may be viable, but are likely to suffer severe developmental problems; there comes a point where attempting to keep them alive is inhumane. The problem is thinking in terms of black and white - one day a foetus is just a dependent organism and the next day - blam! - it is an undeveloped human.

151:

I suggest that you get her to look it up. The details were messy, already falling apart by the 1960s, and were as unfair to men as to women, as I said.

152:

I am sure that some of our Brexitish media would claim that, if Scotland votes for independence, that volcano will start erupting again.

153:

Yes, well: dumb questions get answered sometimes:

Your internet history on sale to highest bidder: US Congress votes to shred ISP privacy rules The Register, 28th March, 2017

Be aware that following links also adds them to the pattern (which is why futa references are funny); but we're drumming a pattern different to most. Let's just say: obvious it was going to pass, Shadowrun is moving onwards.

Elon Musk Seen Targeting Human-Computer Link In New Venture NPR, March 28th, 2017.

I'll refrain from commenting, apart from to note:

Large-scale design of robust genetic circuits with multiple inputs and outputs for mammalian cells Nature, 27th March, 2017 - paywalled, too new to provide a legal copy.

Multi-input CRISPR/Cas genetic circuits that interface host regulatory networks NCBI, Mol Syst Biol. 2014 Nov, 2014 - full paper, text.

Things that make you go hmm. JW's with Weaponized Pixie Dust to instill the Word of the Lord, indeed.

But, for all USA readers, VPNs only go so far, we suggest data smog.

154:

I know some geologists who would be delighted by that.

155:

Uff, dropped a link.

The fact that cellular reprogramming of distantly related cells can be achieved by simple administration of a few transcription factors, nicely demonstrates how plastic and flexible and finally how manipulable cells can be. Thus, transcription factor based reprogramming can be seen as an inspiration or a trigger for a new mammalian cell engineering discipline that is closely implicated with synthetic biology(29). For example, an iPSC can be viewed as a “synthetic cell”, which completes an anticipated task (that is self-renewal and differentiation). In this respect, the stem cell field pursues the same essential goals as synthetic biology; modulation of cellular behavior by administration of external genes in order to perform a human specified function or task. Stem cell biologists produced this “synthetic cell” not by applying rational design principles but by an empirical approach that uses current knowledge and technologies to change the abundance of some endogenous transcription factors, perturbing the existing epigenetic equilibrium that stochastically pushes the cell towards a path of cellular transformation. (p123)

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF PROGRAMMABLE GENE CIRCUITS IN MAMMALIAN CELLS Laura Prochazka, PHD thesis, ETH ZURICH, 2015. PDF, warning: long (155 pages). It covers the 'basics' rather well, however.

And yes, not just commenting about this Brave New tech, there's ulterior commentary in play.

157:

if Scotland votes for independence, that volcano will start erupting again. "Which volcano"? Large chunks of Scotland are on igneous rock flows, and I can name several crags that are specifically the plugs on long extinct caldera.

158:

All of them!

Scotland would be an exporter of geothermal energy within the year and could find employment to thousands of people building giant concrete chutes to direct pyroclastic flows towards York.

It will be magnificent!

159:

Which surprises me enormously, as she was independently earning by then ( When we fist met, she was a postgraduate student ) & I never ever saw (IIRC) a joint tax return ... mind you, it's 29 years ago, & such things may have got lost in the grey mush of the past ..... On the legal technicality, it would seem I was wrong, but the "mansplaining" really annoyed me, given that I'm the one of the ones around here who always points out that the best way to detect an oppressive system is to ask: "How does it treat women?" Which takes me back to the delicate subject of the RC ( & almost all the others too ) church, who still treat women like dirt, so I'll stop now, shall I?

160:

I can think of other religions/cultures that treat women a great deal more like dirt than the RC Church does. Can't you? But we aren't supposed to mention that, because it's raciss...

161:

Do they actually, though? Or is more that we're used to/inured to the mistreatment by familiar cultures/religions, and ones we're unfamiliar with look worse because the alien-ness exacerbates the differences?

[Regarding mansplaining, I would think anyone can fall into that trap regardless of good intentions, previous behaviour, etc. In fact, it might be even more important for those that are usually good, progressive allies to be open to such accusations, because they might otherwise be so defensive that criticism simply doesn't get through at all...]

162:

Apologies in advance Charlie if this is over the edge.

Can you really Ian? When answering, please bear in mind that:- 1) IC1 people can be Muslims. 2) Da'esh are not Muslims (source ~99% of Muslims). 3) The Qu'ran actually says that all Muslims should "dress modestly" but does not define the term, or mandate specific garments for either sex.

163:

Thanks ... and once again I'm back to viewing videos re: particle physics.

164:

It is also instructive to look at pictures of festivals, crowds, demonstrations, etc. in various countries. Iran comes out surprisingly well, especially for a theocracy, which is one reason to disbelieve the anti-Iran propaganda. Sub-Saharan Africa is not what is claimed, either. You can guess the countries that come out worst, though you would be hard put to tell it from the USA's and UK's mainstream media.

165:

Hmm ... too bad I don't read German.

Did however read the below article which might be related:

http://www.nature.com/news/japanese-man-is-first-to-receive-reprogrammed-stem-cells-from-another-person-1.21730

First concern: how much does the donee's immune system first have to be suppressed? I'm guessing it depends on the type and location of the cancer. If the recipient's immune system has to be completely ablated (destroyed) before the 'transplant' then this remains a high-risk procedure that would be approved only for near-fatal conditions.

Second concern: Because this transplanted cell is different ('foreign'), there's still a risk of rejection. The work-around is immune suppressants - possibly for life - which means a whole bunch of other medical issues.

While still a step in the right direction, not yet a panacea.

166:

Yes, I should've said the Yoshke of the gospels. I* haven't heard of any actual Roman records of him, other than Josephus' single mention of someone matching the description,

One of Bart Ehrman's many books on New Testament topics is titled, straightforwardly enough, Did Jesus Exist? and looks at the extrabiblical sources mentioning him. Of relevance to the Roman records question, Ehrman writes, "Within a century of the traditional date of Jesus's death, he is referred to on three occasions by Roman authors... They were all writing about eighty to eighty-five years after the traditional date of his death." (The first was Pliny the Younger writing in 112 CE.)

On Josephus, Ehrman discusses two passages from The Antiquities of the Jews, which was written in the 90s CE. Although there is dispute about whether they were written by Josephus or inserted/altered by Christian scribes at a later time, "most scholars continue to be convinced that Josephus did indeed write about Jesus..."

167:

According to the 2017 World Happiness Index (UN), Iran is ranked 108th vs. UK 19th, Germany 16th and USA 14th.

Crowds are not a reliable metric for evaluating a society: you've no idea why the crowd has gathered nor its composition.

168:

I have never understood the preoccupation with whether there was a historical character that originated Christianity, given that we have no idea how closely the character and (almost all) the events depicted in the Gospels matched reality.

169:

Please don't change the context. This was specifically about whether women are treated as second-class citizens. And, obviously, I didn't mean look at a single picture, or even single type of crowd - and, in most cases, reporters say what sort of crowd they are depicting.

170:

That's sort of my point. If any god maintains a hell where the punishment of any one sinner is eternal, that becomes evidence of the god's moral inablity; any given god might be smarter or wiser than I am, or might have massively greater raw knowledge than I do in both theoretical or practical terms, but if a sinner's punishment is eternal that god has demonstrated an extreme lack of proportion.

Think it out a little. Does Hitler deserve eternal punishment? An unstopping infinity of suffering for each of the 80 million deaths for which he is responsible? Or should we show a sense of f**king proportion and merely sentence him to a billion years in the fire? Personally, I think he'd get the point after the first million years of being on fire every second of the day but maybe I'm just an old softy!

Or if someone's soul is truly that vile, maybe we should just erase it rather than be responsible for the eternal suffering of any being?

The point is, we don't put up with abusive humans, why should be put up with abusive gods?

171:

Read in the context of what was replied to please.

No-one claimed that Iranians were "happy" according to the UN WHI. What was claimed was that there were a significant percentage of women in crowd/street scenes from Iran, and that they were not all wearing chadur.

This supports my argument that Islam itself is not a "tool for oppressing women", as was originally and erroneously claimed.

172:

All patriarchal religions are potential tools for oppressing women. It happens that in the U.S. and Europe we have those religions under fairly firm control and they don't oppress much, but there are plenty of Catholics (and Jews and Hindus) who would happily join their Muslim brethren in killing those damn uppity women who don't want to obey the all-important mandates of Gawd.

173:

One of my believer friends is working on an essay on the non-existence of Hell and believes in universal reconciliation. Leads me to think, yes, I could see that, while I'd differ on what happens with any so far undetectable life essence, yes, all the memory of what was done in life rots in a hole in the ground.

174:

I think the point at issue is whether or not there is a scriptural basis for oppressing women (or anyone else) rather than whether a theocratic government or a church leadership has ever done so.

175:

A Muslim who wants to oppress women will look at his scripture and find an excuse to do so. So will a Christian, Jew, or Hindu, probably a Buddhist as well, (though I don't know enough about that religion to be sure of it.)

On the other hand, a Muslim who wants to imitate Mohammad might just go to work for his wife... and so on.

176:

Yes, precisely. I don't know whether that is primarily Tehran, but the pictures I have seen indicate that it is only a matter of degree, not kind. The UAE and even Saudi Arabia are much 'happier' (at 21 and 37), but ....

177:

And Elderly Cynic ...

I'm getting my info on women's rights in Iran from Wikipedia:

'During the Sixth Parliament, some of Iran's strongest advocates of women's rights emerged. Almost all of the 11 female lawmakers of the (at the time) 270-seat Majlis tried to change some of Iran's more conservative laws. However, during the elections for the Seventh Majlis, the all-male Council of Guardians banned the 11 women from running for office, and only conservative females were allowed to run. The Seventh Majlis reversed many of the laws passed by the reformist Sixth Majlis.'

Note the 'only conservative women' ... in the US this would be TeaParty-ers.

BTW, the World Happiness Index correlates quite well with women's rights because ... y'know ... women usually make up about half of a population.

178:

There's this BBC article on Hasidic Jews in the UK.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-75361d40-67f0-4544-bb29-c9bee5b2251f

Sounds pretty dire for the women.

179:

They will "find an excuse to do so".

That is my key point; The oppressors are people using "$holy_text" as an excuse for mistreating others and are not genuinely following the text.

180:

Yes. I bought a copy of the Koran to see what it really said (in translation, unfortunately). In terms of the patriarchical/liberal spectrum, it wasn't all that different from many of the Epistles, and a damn sight more liberal than the Pentateuch, though not as much as the Gospels. Which also fits with the historical record - Mohammed was a wise, just, enlightened and even liberal ruler (for his time and place, which wasn't).

181:

I never claimed that Iran is a bastion of liberty, but that the propaganda produced by its bitter enemies is largely a pack of lies. The UN happiness index is seriously misnamed and pretty dubious - but, even if it were reliable, see my remarks about the relative positions of the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

182:

I'm trying to wrap my head around Pigeon's description of a god. Moral by definition. A state of being moral, rather than what looks, to me, like a process, maybe? Still thinking about it.

I find this disturbing as hell.

Unless this ...thing has seriously circumscribed its own freedom of action, or has made morality just a word without any actual content, can it act at all? I have this vision of a being which retroactively makes everything it ever does moral, causality breaking like micron-thin mirrors, fractures spreading back towards the big bang every time it moves.

183:

Re: '... scriptural basis for oppressing women (or anyone else)'

As mentioned by others, you can find a phrase in the Bible to justify any position or bias. Or, you could rewrite the Big Book (since hardly anyone has actually read the original, so no one would know) and start your own religion. This has been a very popular and profitable pastime in the US for over 250 years now. Back in 2013, WashPost reported that US religions got about $82 billion in tax breaks. No idea how wealth is distributed between official religious institutions and public sector (gov't) in Iran, so can't tell if finance is a major factor there as well.

Considering that mirages and death from dehydration, hallucinations from overheating/fever have been described in literature for years, why would anyone consider someone who's wandered in from 40 days and 40 nights alone in the desert sane let alone enlightened. (Or was this another mistranslation?) Would be interesting to see a 21st century version of the BigBook's golden boy within the context of contemporary knowledge, i.e., what any 7th grader would have learned at school.

184:

The only comments I could find from you saying anything about these countries' relative positions is: 'Iran comes out surprisingly well, especially for a theocracy, which is one reason to disbelieve the anti-Iran propaganda.'

'comes out surprisingly well' -- on what, says who?

'anti-Iran propaganda' -- personally have a hard time believing that the UN is making stuff up.

What am I missing? Not being argumentative, just not seeing your POV.

185:

If I recall correctly, we actually have more contemporary historical evidence of the existence of Jesus (as a person) than we do of Hannibal Barca. What's your opinion on the historicity of Hannibal?

(In addition, I've never seen a strong argument for why the Gospels would entirely make up a person. Misrepresent what he said/did, sure, but not his existence itself.)

186:

I don't remember how much Druids were covered, but if you want a very decent, short read on the varieties of religion, and how modern (neo)Pagans feel, you might check out the old soc.religion.paganism FAQ. (ObDisclosure: the Silverdragon, referred to in the credits, as a Jedi once said, "he's me".)

mark

187:

So, how do you feel about DeBroglie-Bohm mechanics?

mark, wave-ing at you

188:

I remember a scene - that's all I saw of it, it was in some tv special - of a cowboy movie that MADE SENSE. The good guy has the drop on the leader of the bad guys, six-guns aimed at him. Bad guy's henchmen come out of the alley behind the good guy, and tell him to drop it.

Unlike any other cowboy movie, good guy tells them that he bets he can kill their boss before they kill him. Boss gives in, and tells them to drop their weapons.

Wish I could remember what movie it was from. It was in b&w.

mark
189:

Let me add to the fog of god(s) here.... On a much more serious note than I posted yesterday, I base my Paganism on the Lovelock Hypothesis (1968), which is that the entire biosphere of the planet can be viewed as a single organism. Based on the science I know, it appears to me to be pretty much like one of those optical illusions - is it a goblet, or two faces staring at each other, etc., whether you choose to view it as a single organism.

I choose to do so. On the other hand, forget this Personal Relationship bs - I mean, when was the last time you had a deep conversation with the cell that's 6cm to the left of the median of your right knee, and 1.0000cm in? Whole muscles, yep. Bones (or cartilage, asks the osteoarthritis recipient)? Yup.

I don't do faith. But then, when I celebrate the eight holidays, as homo sap has done since literally time immemorial (with different window dressings), I also don't do worship. I mean, do you worship your mom on her birthday? No, I celebrate it.

So... y'all tell me, do I have a Goddess, or not? Are there Revealed Moral Strictures, or can I have them just as a human bean, livin' in the RW with people, many of whom I care about?

Btw, going this route makes me a true pantheist, since each world with a biosphere would have its own individual deity.

mark

190:

As I understand it, it was the Ottoman Turks who brought in the burka, etc. Before then, I am given to understand, clothing that allowed women to have bare breasts were normal and accepted.

Also, I believe I've read women had more property rights before the Ottoman Turks.

Byzantium needed more Varangians, I think... Or a few airships... sorry, I'm in the middle of 1636: the Ottoman Onslaught....

mark

191:

I prefer Pascal's Mugging: A man in the street walks up to you and declares that he is, in fact, a Matrix Lord, and everybody is living in a simulation. If you don't give him $5, he says, he will instantiate [insert suitably large number here - 3^^^3 is standard, but the point is that it's arbitrarily many] consciousnesses which will all be tortured for a billion subjective years. Now, your obvious first reaction is that he is lying/delusional. However, can you say that there is literally no chance that he is right? That there is no evidence, no matter how strong, that would make you believe him? And if there is even the slightest chance that he is correct, then there is some number of consciousnesses undergoing some amount of torture for which the loss of giving him $5 is outweighed by the expected amount of suffering for not giving him $5, and you should give him the $5.

192:

I never claimed that Iran is a bastion of liberty, but that the propaganda produced by its bitter enemies is largely a pack of lies

I immediately thought of this incident, which was broadcast widely at the time. I get the feeling that there doesn't need to be much in the way of anti-Iran propaganda, it seems to be doing quite well all on its own...

...unless you think that Amnesty International are pawns of anti-Iranian propaganda...

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe Neda Agha-Soltan

Meanwhile, Russia's doing its bit for democracy - dare to protest against corruption, get locked up for a couple of weeks.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/europe-and-central-asia/russian-federation/report-russian-federation/

Amnesty continues to hold the UK to account, reassuringly, and it notes the restrictions on Womens' Rights in Northern Ireland. Compare and contrast their reports on Russia and the UK...

https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/europe-and-central-asia/united-kingdom/report-united-kingdom/

193:

If he's not delusional and is unwilling to provide evidence then he can instantiate his own $5 and piss off.

If on the other hand he is willing to perform suitably entertaining miracles then it might be worth $5 to watch.

194:

Who are you to make demands of him? He doesn't need $5 in general, he wants you specifically to give him $5. Do you want to take the risk of condemning an unimaginably large number of people to unimaginable torment? On average, this will be a worse outcome than just giving him $5.

(yeah, it's bullshit, obviously. but still.)

195:

"If I recall correctly, we actually have more contemporary historical evidence of the existence of Jesus (as a person) than we do of Hannibal Barca." The closest we have to a contemporary source is Josephus, and he's... problematic. http://www.truthbeknown.com/josephus.htm Tl;dr: the insertion in Josephus' Antiquities has been know to be falsified for centuries!

196:

Which is relevant to the status of women (as distinct from general brutality and the suppression of dissent) just how? Oh, I forgot, you don't do evidence - you just misrepresent and change context. Your support for the Wahhabist pogrom to eliminate Shiism from the world is disgusting. If you think that is a misrepresentation, they I suggest that you investigate the actions of the countries and organisations you support a bit further.

197:

No..you are Wrong. Your Defense is to broadcast - on the emotional spectrum - that YOU are a Severely Vicious and Competent Adversary ..along the lines of 'Piss with ME and I WILL Rip Your Head Off and stuff it up your Arse! ' Simple? Glad I was able to help you with your problem. Practical example? Well, Once upon a time I solved a Problem with a drunken Smoker on the Newcastle Metro ..." You Don't MIND if I Smoke on the Metro DO YOU!!!!???? YOU MIDDLE CLASS FUCKS !!! ".. and my adversary said, as He before he left at the next station .." Because HE has been SO Nice to Me I'm going to put my Fag Out!" " his wife/partner looked ever so grateful as they left but, at the Next Stop a Mister Angry, of Prodigious Size, extracted himself from out of a corner seat and turned towards Me. Hey Ho, these things happen and I was already aware of my surroundings and in a Good Defensive Position.. prep wasn't needed - though it is always necessary - and as he scuttled out of the door He said " You Were Wasting YOUR Time There Mate " and then he ran away. Another time? Outside of a night club, and as I was going home after leaving my junior colleagues, The Minions.. ..believe it or not they actually called themselves that ..I came upon a really serious Puppy Fight ..Smack of Head Against a curbstone, is once heard never forgotten .. and moved to intercept the Group, and I said .." STOP!!!!! You don't want to Kill HIM, now do YOU? You HAVE WON!! Stop it NOW !! " And the Victor of that Fight said, " ..Course NOT!! He's Me Mate !!! " So, instantly, I became the referee and was in charge of First Aid; as the Nearby Door-staff of the Club that I'd just left realized and thus they didn't summon The Law. OF Course I had Made Friends with the Door Staff! Line of defense and retreat if necessary at late at night, and also basic sympathy with working Security Staff that I might have needed to recruit one of these days. Don't You do that? If not Why Not? The Secret is never to shed blood unless you must, and, if you have to. Shed LOTS ..in a non lethal sort of way.Shock and Gore gives you time to retreat backwards to your first defensive position. It's Always sensible to make a good first impression don't you think?

198:

It's a lot worse than that, actually, but is very much swept under the carpet.

199:

Perfect for the purpose of World Domination HQ ..what about property values?

200:

Oh, Well, You gotta Laff 'avent you? Freedom For Hackney Marshes and their indigent wild-fowling natives! For Too long have the Marsh Dwellers been Oppressed by ..someone or other.

Seriously, though?

I wonder how small a population of The Scotland's of any given Island off the mainland has to be before it can't be called a NATION? Your Islands seem to be a reasonable sort of population size ..and in any case they could instantly import any number of New Citizens if their Island Nations Oily wealth became known. My Contender is ...Ta Ra, Roll of Drums ... FREEDOM and Independence for ... South Uist! We demand a Referendum NOW if not sooner!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Uist

So, to our Gracious Host ? Seriously Charlie ? In your opinion? How large does a population have to be before it can claim to be a Nation State in preparation for Independence ..just like Scotland?

201:

People keep bringing that up, bit it's nonsense. There's no history or anything behind it, the Scottish islands can't even claim a long history of local government like the Isle of Man.

202:

Oh, no? What about the Orkney and Shetland islands rejoining Denmark (or perhaps Norway)? :-)

https://ahdinnaeken.wordpress.com/2012/08/11/independent-scotland-will-lose-orkney-and-shetland/

203:

How much "History" does a Nation require before it can claim Independence from another Nation? And what happens if that New nation appeals to another Nobel and Heroic defender of Liberty against the Vile Scottish Oppressor? As an Englishman I would be prepared to take the Highland and Islands Demands for Liberty from their Oppressors very seriously ..especially if they undertake to support and harbor our highly cute and lovable nuclear deterrent submarine fleet.

204:

If you want to dump 700 years of history and total integration of legal and other systems for three or four hundred years, sure. You might also like to ask Berwick if they would rather be in Scotland or England.

Arnold, that would probably count as sedition, and anyway only the local jobs would vote for it. If that is a logical step, clearly London should just declare itself a city state and annexe the lower reaches of the Thames to ensure sea access.

205:

Well, the extreme Euroseptics were quite happy to drop 400 years of integration.

206:

London is already a city state and has annexed the whole of England.

207:

That's not exactly accurate either, insofar as the ruling class have always intermingled with the rest of the country, London is merely their cockpit of governance. And ordinary Londoners have to go along with them, although it is usually in their best interests to do so.

208:

Actually, the burqa is usually worn in Central Asia, in Arabia it's the Niqab:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_hijab

Also note talking to some not so sex-positive feminists about "bare breasts" or even plain bikinis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Schwarzer

might disabuse one of the idea women's clothing is a clear indication of their status in society.

Generally, niqab and like are quite a complex issue. They might signal plain belonging to a different culture, they might be a declaration against Western body cult, quite similar, ironically, to how some feminists react to bikinis

http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/07/bikini-body-obsession/

They might be a reaction to sexual harassment, paradoxically giving women some more freedom of movement ("See, I'm not inticing mem, so you can't argue I should not leave the house.") and OTOH reproducing rape culture when sexual harassment still happens.

Also note they protect against sunlight,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skin_color

and there is a sex specific element to high UV, namely folate depletion due to high UV is not that nice in both sexes, but in pregnant women it leads to children with, inter alia, spina bifida.

Oh, and they might indicate women are seen as "impure".

On another note, funny thing is the societal (and gender) norms in the Near East are called "namus", from Greek " nomos", law. Without going into details of Ancient Greek and Roman law or Byzantine developments, just because some people built nice aequeducts, made nice speeches, had a penchant for drunk discussion and some views that vaguely look like our Enlightenment (when you squint really hard) doesn't mean they freed their slaves or treated their women as equals. Look at it this way, the Byzantine emperor combined the fun with Roman emperors (Caligula, anyone) with the fun with popes. What could possibly go wrong?

209:

Pretty sure that punching the dude has an even lower expected value than giving him $5. Although I suppose you can't tell how things from outside reality will react to a given behavior unless they tell you.

210:

There are no contemporary accounts of Hannibal. One, even if it is possibly compromised, is greater than zero. That was my point.

211:

This has been more or less my conception of God, ever since I encountered idea of the four dimensional bio-blob in first year evolutionary bio. Viewed in the time axis, life is a great, single-celled dendritic coral anchored in the common ancestor. The countless quadrillions of discrete cells seen in cross section are the illusion. We're just three-dimensional slices of Gaia's sensory polyps.

212:

Ah, but since it take a small amount of energy to instantiate a consciousness, the probability that he is telling the truth goes down as the number of consciousnesses that he claims he will instantiate goes up. So, depending on whether your model for the probability of him having the necessary means declines faster than an inverse linear rate, there may be no number of proposed consciousnesses that would justify giving him $5 :p

213:

Ah, but we cannot necessarily make conclusions about the laws of physics in the base-level universe from the laws of physics in the simulated universe that we live in. So if there is any probability of him living in a universe where he has the means to make arbitrarily many consciousnesses, that probability will not go down as the number of consciousnesses increases, and in the limit will come to dominate. So it cannot decline faster than an inverse linear rate, and there is a number of proposed consciousnesses which justifies it. :p

214:

American Evangelicals...love to quote Isaiah, totally misreading it. As in "Isn't it miraculous how Jebus fulfilled all the prophecies of Isaiah! Riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, etc." To which the answer, of course, is NO, he read the book too...

For what it may be worth, that was what I was told as a sprog in Sunday school, in a Methodist church in small-town America. Nobody was frothing about religion there, possibly because the local environment was as boringly wholesome as a Norman Rockwell painting, and people were getting on raising the next generation to be boringly wholesome in their turn.

(I acknowledge this was a limited plan; I will not say it was a bad plan.)

215:

To be nerdish Polybius is a contemporary source. He was born in 200 B.C., Hannibal died more or less 20 years later. They could even have met - highly unlikely, but not impossible - during Hannibal's exile.

Your point stands, since you could have said Hamilcar, but in truth what this really means is that our sources are meager indeed. We only have four or five ancient sources covering Hannibal's time, and only Polybius was anything like a contemporary. Livy, Plutarch, Appianus... wrote at least two centuries after the Second Punic War. We have more sources from Augustus and Tiberius' time and they are contemporary, but they had a long list of matters quite more interesting than small, provincial Judea, from the Roman point of view nothing important happened there until the last years of Nero's rule. If some unruly preacher was executed and his followers dispersed, that wasn't worth a footnote.

216:

Your support for the Wahhabist pogrom to eliminate Shiism from the world is disgusting. If you think that is a misrepresentation, they I suggest that you investigate the actions of the countries and organisations you support a bit further.

I'm not quite sure how you extrapolate me pointing out that Iran (like Russia) is just a touch paranoid totalitarian, into me supporting a Wahhabist pogrom. I linked to the Guardian, Wikipedia, and Amnesty International...

The irony is you talking about misrepresentation :)

217:

Well, in both the christian bible & the muslim recital, yes. There are specific texts that state that women are either / and / or inferior to men, worth less than men, subject to male orders & control.

218:

1636? oh, you mean the later Ottoman attacks, siege of Vienna, etc.. Not the capture & "reconstitution" of Constantinople, 1453.

219:

I don't want to go anywhere near whatever you were smoking when you wrote that!

220:

I will add to Elderly Cynic's point & simply say Jarldom of Orkney Incorporated under the Scottish crown ... 1468

221:

Yes, all too true. The Corporation gets an awful lot of stick, usually from people who haven't a clue & sometimes from people who do ( Hello Charlie! ) BUT Pink Ken, before he lost his marbles, got on very well with them - they had a common aim. {NOTE] The Corporation was: 1. - agin the abolition of the GLC 2. - offered to buy LUL (the Tubes) off the Thatcher guvmint for £1 & pay for the upkeep, to stop the disintegration of transport in the capital. [ Killed by the mad & unlamented Ridley, I believe ] 3. - has its; own separate special representative present at the Brexit negotiations - yes, it's got that serious. 4. - further back, cottoned on to clean water (following John SNow) faster than anyone else & started to do something constructive about it. It's though that they strongly supported Bazalgette's plans, against other vested interests.

[ NOTE: That aim being the prosperity & well being of London, including "The City" but all of London, actually. Having the place prosperous & healthy is important & the Corp. will always back that against other forces, even right-wing tory manics like the Madwoman. ]

222:

Since I seem to be on the same side of this argument, what is being said is that the UKian and USian meedja are systematically mis-representing the actual "position on the ground" in Iran, rather than that "Iran is a paradigm of sexual equality".

223:

You may be correct there; I honestly don't know.

My underlying argument is that what constitutes "modest dress" should be a matter of individual conscience rather than dictated by "the religious* of the nation".

*Religious - Noun, collective - clergy, lay preachers to a congregation, members of "cloistered orders" and the like.

OTish - I haven't bought that volume yet, but I will when it comes out in paperback.

224:

Would this be the same Amnesty International who, at the heights of"The Troubles" claimed that persons tried and convicted in UK courts of "terrorist offences" were political prisoners?

225:

Who are they to make demands of me, for I am the avatar of the sysadmin running THEIR simulation and I find their pathetic threats amusing.

226:

I seriously doubt that individual Hebridean isles could claim independence,but given the Lordship of the Isles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Isles it's possible that the inner and outer Hebrides "en bloc" could. You may wish to note that in the last several Westminster and Holyrood elections, Eilean Sear has returned SNP representatives to both parliaments.

227:

Yes, precisely. I said merely that " Iran comes out surprisingly well, especially for a theocracy, ...." Given the fact that it IS a theocracy and what is said about it in the West, one would expect something more like the Gulf States. Iran is a thoroughly nasty state, in a great many ways, but its vicious treatment of anyone even suspected of treachery is at least understandable, given that the USA etc. are actively waging war against it and have plans to destroy it.

228:

As per my #223, this should be a matter of individual conscience; $name_feminist saying "$garment is 'too revealing' " is every bit as wrong as $cleric saying so, or an individual's significant other saying so to an adult.

229:

I think/hope that you realise that I am not, nor do I claim to be, any, never mind all, of a Biblical, Qu'ranic or Talmudic scholar.

231:

The closest thing I'd have to an issue with that is that he didn't once mention that it's also not for one woman to tell another how to observe hajib.

232:

Only just seen this....

I just assume a christian script kiddy got their hands on a spambot and as IIRC Christians have a mission statement about proclaiming the word - they can now go and claim to their relevant spiritual guide that, this week, they quoted the bible to "up to five billion people", and presumably a fairly large number of other symbolic processing entities that have an email address)

(Note: my username does not imply any belief in things I can't measure in SI units, but is actually from a roleplaying game years ago.)

233:

Re Pascal's Mugging.

Why? Only $5? The Bishop of Rome (Pope Francis) said just give them the $5.

https://nyti.ms/2lomY7L

Why agonize over it?

234:

The whole Eric Flint 1632 alt history universe.

Too many down timers with modern sensibilities, but still great fun while waiting for the next part of Empire Games.

235:

Quite apart from the fact that we both view the Wahhabis with distaste (understatement)...

[Iran's] vicious treatment of anyone even suspected of treachery is at least understandable, given that the USA etc. are actively waging war against it and have plans to destroy it.

I'm curious as to what you might think about Kuwait's / UAE's treatment of those Shia suspected of treachery (vicious and brutal), compared to Iran's treatment of those suspected of treachery (vicious and brutal).

Understandable (because Iran spent the decades after its revolution in a genuine attempt to spread that revolution)? Or not understandable (because Iran is innocent of any such actions, it was just propaganda and they're only attempting to look after the rights of the local Shia)?

While I rather suspect your words as written weren't quite intended this way, they can be read as similar to a statement such as "Saddam's treatment of the Marsh Arabs / Kurds (see Halabja) was at least understandable, given that they were actively waging war against the regime".

I would suggest that "having its own internal logic" is no justification; and claiming that the USA is "actively waging war" against Iran is polemic (by your measure, what was the Cold War?).

236:

(Been away from keyboard again and war breaks out ...)

Greg, your non-apology at #159 was graceless and rude. You should have either shut up immediately or apologized properly at that point.

Consider this your RED CARD on this thread. Further comments by you will be unpublished. I'm just sorry I didn't see this yesterday when prompt feedback might have done some good.

237:

Regarding your 3) I admit you may be right; I haven't checked. However, I suggest that you repeat that statement in public in either Saudi Arabia or Iran to reference the cultural element. You might even survive the experience.

Incidentally, the cultural element in this isn't all that important. Indonesia is culturally and ethnically distinct from anywhere in the ME, but it is still fairly common there for (heterosexual) couples to be arrested and jailed for holding hands in public.

And also didn't prevent Indonesian adherents of the Religion of Peace from beheading Catholic schoolkids for being Catholic. Maybe they were dressed immodestly?

NSFW!!

http://www.barenakedislam.com/2010/08/21/story-of-the-12-year-old-indonesian-christian-schoolgirls-beheaded-by-muslims/

238:

Ref my #3, you'll find a link to a Muslim scholar discussing hajib in this thread; TL;DR of link - He says I'm correct.

I don't deny the factual truth of any of your other statements, but draw your attention to the general thrust of my arguments that, according to the Qu'ran it is for the individual to observe hajib themself, rather than to force it on anyone else (except possibly their dependents). This means that your cites are an abuse of power (also discussed further up-thread).

So I'll continue with an actual quote in support of my argument; "He who kills one, it is as if he has killed all mankind: He who saves one, it is as if he has saved all mankind", which means that those who murdered the schoolgirls are not Muslims, since they do not follow the Qu'ran.

239:

And also didn't prevent Indonesian adherents of the Religion of Peace from beheading Catholic schoolkids for being Catholic.

This is your YELLOW CARD for trolling, due to that "Religion of Peace" crack.

Also for linking to an anti-Islamic hate website. (Thanks for wearing your agenda on your sleeve; makes you easier to spot.)

240:

what this really means is that our sources are meager indeed.

Ehrman makes somewhat this same point using Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea 26-36 CE, as an example. Although we know of him from later sources, there are no contemporaneous mentions of him except, probably, for the Pilate Stone fragment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilate_stone

241:

How small can you be and call yourself a nation-state? I see Monaco has a population of just under 38,000.

We will, of course, ignore the Dildonian idiocy of "sovereign citizens".

mark

242:

I really prefer a nice paperback. It's the right size, and comfortable, and is a BOOK, with all the history of the word.

That being said, I'm starting to use ebooks more, just because a) I don't have to wait a year or so for them after initial publication; b) I can now buy small press books, and not walk around at cons bitching at them, telling them yes, I know the economics force them to use trade paper size... but I built all my bookshelves for mass market paperback size, and c) worst of all... I've run out of wall space for more bookshelves, and esp. series where they're up to book 13 of a trilogy....

mark

243:

I don't really see that many with modern sensibilities. What we do see is some of them - the ones the stories focus on, of course, whose sensibilities start to shift... and the ones who tend to be enemies, who are vehemently against the shift.

One of the scenes I enjoy the most is when a down-timer suddenly has the Lightbulb of Enlightenment go off over their head, and it hits: "all this equality, and their Constitution... they really MEAN it!"

I was reminded of that last year, when my ex (she wasn't then) and I saw Brooklyn, and the climax, when our heroine turns on the bitch and tells her off, like no one had before. I admit it, some chauvinism here, when she says to the would-be blackmailer, I'm an AMERICAN, and I did marry that Italian....

mark

244:

Many of the details of the story in the Gospels are implausible, anyway, because crucifixion was a Roman punishment used for slaves, pirates, traitors, rebels etc.; a mere heretic would have been stoned. It is very plausible that a trouble maker called Yeshua was reported by the priesthood for sedition, if they wanted him eliminated without having to face the backlash themselves. He may even have called himself the Messiah.

245:

You're demanding $5 of me? You're threatening so many others? I don't think so, let's see, you're process 24188... kill -USR1 24188.

There, now that you're reloaded, do you feel any better and less offensive?

mark "I know, no one can imagine what I do for a living...."

246:

If we're looking for parts of the UK that might declare independence, Anglesey (sorry, Ynys Môn) seems like a good candidate. 68,000 people, self sufficient in energy, some industrial activity, perfectly located to enact tolls on passing trade and with a defensible border. It's even got some history of being independent although admittedly that was 900 odd years ago. And best of all, it's got a picturesque motor racing circuit that could be upgraded to international status with a bit of work.

Rhyddid ar gyfer Ynys Môn!

247:

crucifixion was a Roman punishment used for slaves, pirates, traitors, rebels etc.; a mere heretic would have been stoned.

I'm beyond my depth here, but AIUI a theory about this is that, it being fraught times for Roman control what with the Zealots and sicarii and such, a troublemaker who was reported as claiming to be the future King of the Jews would have been regarded as a political threat and treated accordingly.

248:

Precisely. But note that Messiah does not translate as Rex Judaeorum.

249:

the whole thing smacks of fiction. can you see roman legionaires letting gawking spectators close enough to talk to a crucified prisoner? can you see this character being let off for disrespecting his mother in public during the water-to-wine incident.. theres a commandment for that

250:

worst of all... I've run out of wall space for more bookshelves

I feel your pain...

A couple of years ago, we decided that the spare single bedroom was sufficently unused as to be converted into a study for the boys. With a desk, and some nice floor-to-ceiling bookshelves... muhahaha.

Unfortunately, previous shelf-space restrictions meant by this point I had already moved past Book Thunderdome (two books enter, one book leaves) into Book FIFO (one in, one out - mostly).

The delights of having shelves that weren't double-banked with books on top, has now moved to "mostly double-banked, starting to worry" :(

251:

But note that Messiah does not translate as Rex Judaeorum.

Au contraire, it had very much that meaning. Jesus, as far as can be discerned, was a Late Second Temple apocalypticist and was much into the End of Days thing.

http://www.jewfaq.org/mashiach.htm

The term "mashiach" literally means "the anointed one," and refers to the ancient practice of anointing kings with oil when they took the throne. The mashiach is the one who will be anointed as king in the End of Days.

252:

Except that the Jewish and Roman concepts of "King" were very considerably different ....

253:

Do you? Yet you support organisations that are supporting them, and oppose those that are opposing them. Those examples you chose are polemic, again. They were pure revenge, because the threat was essentially over, and were taken against whole populations. You should blame the USA for supporting that anti-Shia pogrom, and promising support to the Marsh Arabs and then reneging.

Neither is the case for Iran, which is behaving no worse than the UK did in WWI (disgracefully, I agree). BY FAR the most powerful military force in the world is waging active war against Iran, and has threatened to destroy it, and is allied with fanatics that have stated they want to purge the world of Shiism and Shiites.

254:

It is of course obligatory to reply to any comment about the Messiah with this clip.

255:

Your support for the Wahhabist pogrom to eliminate Shiism from the world is disgusting

Yet you support organisations that are supporting them, and oppose those that are opposing them

Implying that because I criticise Russia and Iran, that I therefore support their opponents, is a rather obvious logical fallacy. "Playing the man not the ball" suggests that you're struggling to justify your position.

I support the concepts of the UN, the EU, and NATO; they aren't perfect, but they appear to be trying to act in the right way. I distrust non-democratic regimes with a recent history of oppression, such as Russia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.

I disagree with the domestic policy of certain democracies, and though I absolutely support their right to exist, I view them as occasionally oppressive (e.g. Israel). I have reservations about the domestic policy of other nations, given their levels of corruption, even though I absolutely support their right not to be invaded by Russia (e.g. Ukraine).

The above statements, along with the observation that many regimes around the Gulf are vicious and brutal, are hardly polemic. It seems to be a touchstone of yours, however, that the behaviours of Russia (and now Iran) are justified by the aggression of the USA ("actively waging war against them", your words).

By your acts shall you know them. British mobs haven't stormed the Iranian Embassy recently, nor seized Iranian sailors. American mobs haven't stormed the Iranian Embassy, and held their diplomats hostage for over a year (gosh, I wonder if that contributed to the US antipathy?). I don't see the British Government supporting any Basij-like organisations to suppress or prevent peaceful protest.

Even so, I have rather more sympathy with Iran than Russia. Unlike Russia, Iran hasn't gone spreading Polonium-210 around London in order to murder its domestic political opponents. Unlike Russia, Iran hasn't invaded its neighbours. Unlike Russia, Iran hasn't handed over Medium SAM systems to a bunch of yahoos who promptly shot down an airliner. And while the President of the USA is a complete moron, at least inherited his millions before he gained office, unlike the President and Prime Minister of the Russian Federation who appear to be running a kleptocracy.

Two questions - are you going to deny the truth of any of the statements in the paragraph above (or just push an excuse of "it's all the USA's fault")? And is that enough polemic for you?

256:

One of my favourites was Christ has risen but our prices remain the same

257:

Once I passed the 3000~ book (not counting magazines of which I have a few titles complete back to the 70s) mark I switched completely to ebooks except for graphic novels. I've even reacquired some books as ebooks because finding the printed one was too much bother.

258:

The thesis isn't in German, just the dedication.

No-one has added 1+1 yet to see what it was actually saying, but there we go[1]: it's a rather sweet and gentle introduction with some serious science in it. Oh, and it's by a woman, gosh!

@255: I don't see the British Government supporting any Basij-like organisations to suppress or prevent peaceful protest.

Oh, but that's the beauty of it. We have nothing but admiration for the trade craft used on such entities. And by admiration, we mean eternal enmity and so forth. (Note to the 'Invasive' Gallery pulling stunts and EM stuff: Not a smart move, not a smart move at all, it's all part of the plan, A-Team style).

There's an extremely good book to be written about official disruption of left and environmental groups just drooling to be written. Suffice to say, all you really need to do is correlate the #time on prison sentences for those opposing the petrol-chemical industries compared to say, manslaughter.

It should open your EyEs, unless you're BliND. Let me introduce to a friend of a friend called: "Everyone does it, only the Culture surrounding it changes the tonal registers".

McCain - Osborne - Lebedev

Pro-tip: Oligarchy and DAVOS aren't exactly mutually exclusive clubs. The Myth that's going around about the Great Blue Dems protecting yadda yadda yadda is bullshit.

But anyhow, you need your illusions, so dream on. Just don't think too hard about hiking, Iraq War, heart-attacks and Robin Cook. Or John Smith, for that matter (quite the timing for Blair). I mean, coincidences occur and it's so stressful being a politician...

No, you don't need the Basij when there are real pros running the Game.

[1] Just assume that, just like computers, if there's a H.S.S driven designed model, there's already a much sleeker, faster smarter version out there.

259:

Moral of this story: assuming someone else shares your beliefs...

We always assume the opposite. Because, quite literally, no-one does.

I'll tell you this... No eternal reward will forgive us now For wasting the dawn.

Back in those days everything was simpler and more confused One summer night, going to the pier I ran into two young girls The blonde one was called Freedom The dark one, Enterprise We talked and they told me this story Now listen to this... I'll tell you about Texas radio and the big beat Soft driven, slow and mad Like some new language Reaching your head with the cold, sudden fury of a divine messenger Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of god Wandering, wandering in hopeless night Out here in the perimeter there are no stars

Out here we is stoned Immaculate.

Stoned ImmaculateYT, Jim Morrison, 1:33

~

Since we once carved shapes on rocks down under:

Barnaby Joyce holds a lump of coal in the House of Representatives ABC, 9th Feb, 2017. Does that man look sane?

Ms Ley stood aside as Health Minister on Monday morning pending the outcome of an investigation into her travel claims, following revelations she bought an $800,000 apartment on a taxpayer-funded trip to Gold Coast and has taken 27 flights in and out of the area in recent years, including two for New Year's Eve engagements.

Socialism 'on the march' to blame for Sussan Ley standing down over expenses controversy: Bronwyn Bishop Newcastle Herald, 31st March, 2017 (Australian paper). Bronwyn Bishop enjoys a $350,000 / annum pension for her time "served".

Literally should be removing them.

p.s.

If you want a real answer about the G_D ZONE of the Brain, you won't like the answer[1]. Icelanders have a little mythos all about 'those ridden by Elves' and there's always the Loa etc. Since H.S.S are so very bad at ecology, who could explain the M3/4 levels of ecology that swarm around in such zones? No Man is an Island, but you're all just little fishies in a Greater Ocean.

[1] Remember the dendrites? Trump's EPA Just Greenlighted a Pesticide Known to Damage Kids' Brains Motherjones, 27th March, 2017. Just saying.

260:

I still haven't found an e-reader that conforms with my base requirement of being a comfortable fit in my hand(s).

261:

E-Ink or LCD?

I mostly use my phone, now. Actually I haven't looked at my Kobo in months, because my phone, or tablet, are more often to hand, have crisper, higher resolution screens capable of rendering much smoother text.

Text that can be just the right size, justification, spacing and colour, (mostly) regardlesss of the publisher's intent. With the right software anyway. I like FBReader, but there are others out there.

Perhaps start with a nice-feeling android device, and go from there?

262:

Irrelevant; my issues are with the width of devices, placement of controls, and how little text can be displayed in a size that suits my eyes compared with an actual dead tree.

263:

The British sailors caught by the Iranians in Iranian waters were treated nicely and released after a couple of days once their story about "getting lost" was accepted (this seems to happen a lot...). Whether they were in fact an SBS team or similar carrying out intel work in the area (planting sonar buoys, probing radar envelopes, eavesdropping on Iranian military radio comms etc.) is not certain.

As for the list of grievances, you did miss out the shooting down of a civilian Iranian airliner in July 1988 by the USS Vincennes as revenge for the embassy hostage taking incident in 1979. The captain even got a special award from President Bush when he got back home. The Iranians got their own revenge with the downing of PanAm 103 six months later and since then the US has been less belligerent and trigger-happy in the region (apart from placing two large military forces on the borders of Iran in the interim).

264:

[ DELETED BY MODERATOR because blog owner doesn't have time for idiocy like this. Shorter version: lots of things wrong with Iran, lots of things wrong with Russia, China, and USA too — or had you forgotten the quarter-to-half-a-million civilian dead in the war of aggression against Iraq, or the US Gulag, the world's largest slave labour system? — not to mention the UK's history of genocide. Fin. — cs. ]

265:
I don't see the British Government supporting any Basij-like organisations to suppress or prevent peaceful protest.

40 years ago the Shah's secret police were in full swing.

266:
Unlike Iran, Russia doesn't stone women to death for being raped

Neither does Iran. Surprise! "The Islamic world" is not a monolith.

267:

As for the list of grievances, you did miss out the shooting down of a civilian Iranian airliner in July 1988 by the USS Vincennes as revenge for the embassy hostage taking incident in 1979.

You are overstating your case to the point of self-parody.

Iran has stated their belief that it was an intentional attack, because of course they do. Their people were killed and they were pissed; that's a natural human reaction. That doesn't mean they're correct. There is literally no evidence that this was a pre-planned operation, as revenge would be, unless you think a captain of the US Navy decided to jeopardize his country's standing in the world to avenge the decade old killings of someone else's athletes, and decide to do all of this on the spur of the moment.

You want to point out the incompetence and over aggressiveness of the captain, who had entered Iranian waters, who failed to properly monitor civilian ATC channels, who didn't notice or didn't care that his target was IFF squawking as a civilian, that's all fair. (And giving awards to people who fuck up is a traditional way to save face.) But suggesting it was deliberate "revenge" for an offense which had occurred a decade prior is stupid. So is suggesting that improved competence in the wake of the attack--no more downed airliners!--somehow shows the US as chastened and admitting that it overstepped rather than, you know, just not fucking up again.

268:

The British sailors caught by the Iranians in Iranian waters were treated nicely and released after a couple of days once their story about "getting lost" was accepted (this seems to happen a lot...)

I assume that you're thinking of the 2004 incident; although "mock executions" isn't really "treated nicely"... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Iranian_seizure_of_Royal_Navy_personnel

I was actually thinking of the 2007 incident (which was a complete gift to the Army, who spent the next year asking matelots whether the nasty man had taken their iPod):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Iranian_arrest_of_Royal_Navy_personnel

The difference between "these waters are mutually agreed to be yours/ours" and "these waters are disputed" is significant... in the 2007 case, it appears to have been a planned move to capture an RN boarding party (as had been attempted with the RAN in 2004). I have no idea whether the career of the CO of HMS Cornwall came to a sudden stop afterwards.

The (lightly) redacted UK report on the incident makes for interesting reading.

269:

The shooting down of Iran Air 655 was during the Wild West period of the Reagan presidency when all sorts of crazy shit went down. The Iranians believe to this day it was deliberate, after all the US Navy did so much to make it happen so, they figure, it must have been ordered by the US government. At best it was an act of mass manslaughter (i.e. careless actions that lead to death) for which no-one was punished or even reprimanded, further evidence for them that it was deliberate. Saying that the US is very protective of its military when it screws up and kills non-combatants in accidents even when they fuck up royally but they're the US military, they don't have to say sorry.

Pan Am 103 was the Iranian response, not an accident but it put the US on notice that any future acts of manslaughter or deliberate murder of Iranians would have a cost. Since then things have been quiet-ish in the Gulf.

270:

Apologies - didn't preview before hitting submit... that should read:

The (lightly) redacted UK report on the incident makes for interesting reading.

271:

Apologies for allowing ambiguity :) I'll rephrase :)

I don't see the British Government supporting any Basij-like organisations to suppress or prevent peaceful protest in the UK, as the Iranian Government does in Iran.

Nor do we have the tradition of the Angry Shouty Rentamob appearing (on cue, as if by magic, totally spontaneously) outside the relevant Embassy any time the world doesn't work the way that our politicians want.

272:

I don't see the British Government supporting any Basij-like organisations to suppress or prevent peaceful protest in the UK, as the Iranian Government does in Iran.

Miner's strike, 1980s?

273:

once their story about "getting lost" was accepted (this seems to happen a lot...)

Indeed. For example, Iranian military getting captured deep in Iraq (heck of a "getting lost"); there was a suggestion that the RN party was grabbed to provide leverage for the release of the Iranians that the US was holding. Or even the Turkish military teams, getting caught deep in Iraqi Kurdistan. Or the GRU types found deep inside Ukraine.

Sailing along an unclear and unagreed line in the water is somewhat different by comparison. For equality, I'll throw in those British Army patrols who suddenly realised they were now patrolling a few hundred yards inside the Republic of Ireland; and (allegedly) a student patrol at the NATO ILRRP school who accidentally crossed into Switzerland, and had to sneak out again before anyone noticed.

The slight difference is that while the IRGC were active inside Iraq, there's a difference between deep reconnaissance / intelligence gathering, or providing support for the local (and occasionally lethal) yahoos - and sending formed units of the Russian Army into another country to conduct offensive operations, in an attempt to take land by force and move an international border in Russia's favour. The big hint is that if you're firing artillery and tank main armament, you've invaded.

274:

Not sure how you mean that one - it wasn't the Police threatening, abusing, and in one case killing, anyone who crossed a picket line.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_David_Wilkie

Unless you mean that the NUM had its own Basij in the form of Flying Pickets (no, not the acappella group)... but that's not UK Government.

Apocrypha: in the 90s, we had a strike at the factory where I worked; rather than "all out", it was "strike every Wednesday". For the first few weeks, most non-union members of staff decided to book a day's leave the following Wednesday.

Anyway, about three or four weeks in, I eventually had to cross a picket line. One of the young shop stewards (known as Zippy, for the nice large scar down his cheek where he had come second in a fight) decided that this was grounds for aggression, pointing, and swearing. Mild stuff for a twenty-something male, but at least the restrictions introduced on secondary picketing meant that we weren't going through a mob.

275:
Nor do we have the tradition of the Angry Shouty Rentamob appearing (on cue, as if by magic, totally spontaneously) outside the relevant Embassy any time the world doesn't work the way that our politicians want.

Yeah, it's not like an angry mob burning down an embassy has happened in these isles within living memory.

276:

If you want a real answer about the G_D ZONE of the Brain, you won't like the answer[1]. Icelanders have a little mythos all about 'those ridden by Elves' and there's always the Loa etc. Am pretty sure I want your answer to this (perhaps post 300), though that's unquenchable curiosity speaking. (FWIW haven't dived into the genetic circuits material yet; poked at another until-now-unread cluster of neuroscience papers first.)

Re Trump's EPA Just Greenlighted a Pesticide Known to Damage Kids' Brains

The Columbia University study in particular is inducing a new round of additional rather negative feelings about the new EPA chief and his staff. (Haven't looked yet to see how the science is being dismissed.) Thanks for the outrage, I think. (And good for motherjones.com for all the links.) For the rushed, Seven-Year Neurodevelopmental Scores and Prenatal Exposure to Chlorpyrifos, a Common Agricultural Pesticide (2011) and figure 1 (tif; those who are not trusting can see it in the pdf) Conclusions: We report evidence of deficits in Working Memory Index and Full-Scale IQ as a function of prenatal CPF exposure at 7 years of age. These findings are important in light of continued widespread use of CPF in agricultural settings and possible longer-term educational implications of early cognitive deficits.

(and also seen while browsing google scholar: Persistent Associations between Maternal Prenatal Exposure to Phthalates on Child IQ at Age 7 Years )

277:

Re: '... mis-representing the actual "position on the ground" in Iran'

Thanks - but I still haven't a clue what this refers to. Please provide examples or rephrase.

Did visit Amnesty International's section on Iran as per Robert's post. Poked around and noticed that they've drafted a petition they want presented to the UN. (I know only a bit about the AI -- not enough to know how successful their efforts on such matters are. Generally am supportive of anti-brutality efforts though.)

278:

Re: ' .... sex specific element to high UV, namely folate depletion due to high UV ... leads to children with, inter alia, spina bifida.'

Folate deficiency also occurs from eating raw/uncooked egg whites. Have even heard that raw egg white in facial masks could deplete key nutrients from the skin thereby thinning the skin.

Problem with minimizing UV exposure in order to not deplete folate is that exposure to sunlight is still the best way of getting enough VitD - also a critical ingredient in bone formation. Hopefully someone has figured out optimal levels and trade-offs for both.

279:

Thanks - have saved the doc for later. (Have 800 or so other pages I need to read on another subject first.)

280:

As dearly as I love and miss my late father, there are a number of things I do in reaction to the way he was, and books are #1. ALL of mine (ok, not my late wife's mysteries, I have to find a place for them) are on shelves, built explicitly for mass-market, and ALL are not stacked, but properly shelved (except for the few trade paper, on their sides).

And re 257: I believe I'm closer to 4000 than 3000 sf&f paperbacks. Which, btw, by librarian standards, makes it a special collection (> 3k on a given subject, etc).

mark

281:

And, for everyone here's amusement, a headline in Vanity Fair: "Nigel Farage, International Man of Mystery, Finds a Home in Trump’s America"

Excerpt: For a man who made his name by being stridently anti-immigration, Nigel Farage is nestling quite nicely into the bosom of the international community. --- end excerpt ---

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/nigel-farage-finds-a-home-in-trumps-america

But does he have a cat to carry around?

282:

I hit 4000 books, but realized I was rereading very few of them. So I gave most of them away (my nephew got the 30-year Analog collection and virtually all my SF). I've now acquiring fiction in ebook form to save space.

I plan to downsize when I retire, and books were a major impediment to that.

283:

The shooting down of Iran Air 655 was during the Wild West period of the Reagan presidency when all sorts of crazy shit went down. The Iranians believe to this day it was deliberate, after all the US Navy did so much to make it happen so, they figure, it must have been ordered by the US government.

Perhaps surprisingly, this belief is espoused both by cranky Iranians and the American right wing fringe. Needless to say they both blame the other side; it may be as simple as thinking “Something unpleasant happened, therefore those people we don't like must have planned it.” I've never talked to an Iranian about it but the far-right scenarios become ever more fanciful when someone starts asking inconvenient questions.

284:

Back to religion ...

I think we're missing an important part of the question: Why have religion if we already have political power and martial/brute power?

Anyone here familiar with Ken Binmore (Evolution of Fairness Norms)? He's a UK economist who's been studying the development of fairness in human society. If you're familiar with his work, I'm curious as to what points you agree/disagree because I feel that what he's saying is relevant to why religions developed and why they might continue to exist. Also - I've just started reading a bit about his work - but from what I've read/watched - I like that he prefers to actually survey/talk to humans when coming up with his theories and models. (Less metaphysical and more biological/psychological and statistical in his approach.)

285:

I was going to respond to the misrepresentations of and omissions in #255 but, in the light of your posting, I won't.

286:

Not familiar with Ken Binmore. That's a large body of work; does anyone recommend an entry point, or one or more alternative bodies of work?

287:

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the commander of the USS Vincennes had been told to provoke a military response from Iran, and shoot down one of its military aircraft.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

288:

A similar alternative is that the crew made (as claimed) a 'scenario fulfillment' mistake due to multiple failures, but that they were originally ordered to the area and ordered to behave aggressively to increase the odds of an incident.

289:

(Pre-300, but my religion, if any, is science. :-) Perhaps interesting to some; still digesting the intuitions but looks promising. I'm a fan of papers that attempt to draw from biology, even if the biology or analogy or suspect. Biologically inspired protection of deep networks from adversarial attacks via arXiv "Neurons and Cognition" Inspired by biophysical principles underlying nonlinear dendritic computation in neural circuits, we develop a scheme to train deep neural networks to make them robust to adversarial attacks. Our scheme generates highly nonlinear, saturated neural networks that achieve state of the art performance on gradient based adversarial examples on MNIST, despite never being exposed to adversarially chosen examples during training. Moreover, these networks exhibit unprecedented robustness to targeted, iterative schemes for generating adversarial examples, including second-order methods

290:

Could also be stupidity combined with bad luck:

'According to the same reports, Vincennes tried unsuccessfully to contact the approaching aircraft, seven times on the military emergency frequency and three times on the civilian emergency frequency, but never on air traffic control frequencies. This civilian aircraft was not equipped to pick up military frequencies and the messages on the civilian emergency channel could have been directed at any aircraft. More confusion arose as the hailed speed was the ground speed, while the pilot's instruments displayed airspeed, a 50-knot (93 km/h) difference.[27]'

Recall a similar story about a near-disaster when Canada switched from imperial to metric.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

'The subsequent investigation revealed a combination of company failures and a chain of human errors that defeated built-in safeguards. The amount of fuel that had been loaded was miscalculated because of a confusion as to the calculation of the weight of fuel using the metric system, which had recently replaced the imperial system for use with the 767.[2]'

291:

"That aim being the prosperity & well being of London, including "The City" but all of London, actually. Having the place prosperous & healthy is important & the Corp. will always back that against other forces"

Despite all its flaws, this same type of corporate mentality might be what kept Republicans from pulling the trigger on 20 million Americans' health insurance.

292:

How about Ken Binmore (1996), "Evolution of Fairness Norms", Nordic Journal of Political Economy, open access version here:

http://www.nopecjournal.org/NOPEC_1996_a12.pdf

If you like this kind of economics, and you like book-length format, I can also recommend:

Sam Bowles and Herb Gintis (2011), A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and its Evolution, Princeton University Press

Paul Seabright (2010, 2nd ed), The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life, also PUP.

293:

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the commander of the USS Vincennes had been told to provoke a military response from Iran, and shoot down one of its military aircraft.

Actually, it's rather easy to avoid it - go for cockup over conspiracy, rather than (I've used this before) "hear hooves and think zebras". Incompetence and aggression. No need for conspiracy.

The USS VINCENNES was aggressive. Notably so; among the other USN vessels, the ship was known as "Robocruiser" (not in a good way). Captain Rogers was repeatedly ordered back to avoid confrontation, not provoke it.

For instance, he sent his helicopters towards some IRGC speedboats in Iranian waters; they allegedly shot at it (most probably warning shots). Do you: a) pull the helicopter back at 100kts+, having noted its position, or b) drive your 10,000t cruiser at 30kts towards the gunboats, inside the 12-mile limit? While aware that the Iranians have got minefields, and you're entering their territorial waters (but don't care)? Captain Rogers was a moron.

The USS VINCENNES was incompetent. This is an air defence vessel, where the system operators were so undertrained that they couldn't tell a climbing aircraft from a diving one; and took multiple attempts to actually launch their missiles. The other two USN ships in the area did not classify Track 4131 (Iran Air 655) as a threat - they assumed that VINCENNES, as the shiny modern AEGIS ship, had better-quality data.

The most damning indictment of Captain Rogers' behaviour IMHO is that of the CO of the USS Sides, who watched the whole tragedy unfold. He wrote a letter to the US Naval Institute's "Proceedings" (effectively the professional journal of the USN) which is clear and detailed, and pulls no punches.

Before you spout conspiracy theories, you should read that letter (linked from the Wikipedia page); you're looking for "The Vincennes Incident" on the third to sixth extracted pages.

For further evidence, the 2004 HCI study by Craig, Morales, and Oliver notes:

"Lt Clay Zocher was the boss of Air Alley, which was responsible for air warfare, but he had only stood watch at that post twice before and had never fully learned and mastered the console routines. In fact, when he was finally given the green light to fire upon the incoming aircraft, he pressed the wrong keys 23 times, until a veteran petty officer leaned over and hit the right ones."

"The tactical officer for surface warfare, Lt Cmdr Guillory, knew so little that he routinely used his computer screens as a surface for sticky notes instead."

294:

Is it that important? Surely the question is why shouldn't it exist if it's another route to power? And historically and potentially still today a more complete and heady sort of power than mere political power.

Nearly all politicians have to compromise to meet their aims, all a religious leader has to do is to ask the true believers to do it for him.

295:

The USS VINCENNES was aggressive. Notably so; among the other USN vessels, the ship was known as "Robocruiser" (not in a good way). Captain Rogers was repeatedly ordered back to avoid confrontation, not provoke it. Did not know that, thanks. (And also for the links.)

296:

I'm well past 5k books, but only about 850 are SF. I'm finding it harder to find SF I want to read these days, because so many stories seem the same. A similar number of books are fantasy and normal fiction, but the rest are non-fiction. The thing about non-fiction is that I can buy a book thinking it looks interesting, but not read it for years, then I'll have a desire to know about some topic, and lo and behold, there is the book I need.
I have catalogued them all on librarything.

297:

Since we can't edit our posts, I feel obliged to add that the publishers are reducing their chances of selling to me by producing the huge trade paperback books, because they are too fucking big, I like nice neat packages which line up on shelves, not oversized lumps that are too big to neatly arrange. The tighter I can pack the books the better. Yes, I know ebook readers exist, but it took them a while to get to the mature tech stage where I might want to get one, and then I can't be bothered to go through the hassle of replicating my library, unless it is really simple, but I have other things to think about.

298:

I use my old iPad 3 mostly as an ereader. I also have a Kobo, which I take on camping trips because the battery lasts longer, but it's only good for linear reading (e-ink has very slow refresh rates) while the iPad works much better for highlighting, moving back and forth, looking at images, etc.

I didn't bother replicating most of the fiction I gave away as epub files. A few old favourites, but my e-fiction collection is mostly new stuff. In fact I'm reading more fiction than I did for quite a while, as it's easier to read at odd moments with the iPad (which I usually have with me).

(Another advantage is I can set the print size. Makes a big difference for sustained reading. And no one makes MMBs in large print.)

299:

"huge trade paperback books, because they are too fucking big"

I don't even know what this means. The term "trade paperback" was applied to the UK version of Empire Games; does that count as a "huge trade paperback"? It is a little larger in height and width than the omnibus volumes of the preceding books in the series, but I didn't notice until I put it next to them. On the shelf above is a copy of "The Western's Hydraulics" by JK Lewis; that is what I would call "huge", because it is bigger (in height and width) than the Haynes manual next to it, and it is difficult to find space to open it out to read it.

The idea of a shelf of books which are all the same size is bizarre. Mine are all sorts of different sizes, covering easily a 3:1 range. A lot of them are in piles on the floor which owe much of their stability to that circumstance allowing for the piles to take a roughly pyramidal shape.

What does annoy me about the physical aspect of books is that the binding is not fit for purpose: it may answer the purpose of display, but books aren't for display, they are for reading. And for that purpose all common forms of binding - paperback or hardback - fail dismally. A new book needs to be actually damaged before it is even read, by brutally flexing the spine back on itself every 20 pages or so, to discourage it from constantly trying to close itself at least to the extent that the size of the weight needed to hold it open can be chosen to respect the requirement of not obscuring the text. A book is an essential distraction to alleviate the tedium of eating, and I also read while smoking, doing repetitive soldering, or doing other things that engage the hands but not the mind. Or even that do engage the mind, when the engagement takes the form of putting the information contained in the book to practical use. It is surprising how large a screwdriver or spanner is needed to prevent a book from closing itself. Larger books definitely have the advantage here, as the weight of the pages itself helps keep them open.

For reading while sitting in a comfy chair, it would be useful if the bottom edges of the pages were shaped to a semicircular profile instead of a right-angled edge which is distinctly unpleasant after it's been digging into my finger for a while.

Books in electronic form? I do use sites like Project Gutenberg to read Victorian novels on a full-size CRT, but when it comes to buying books, I'll buy them on paper or not at all.

300:

"Why have religion if we already have political power and martial/brute power?"

Excluding the cases where they're the same thing? Efficiency. It's much easier to make people do what you want by fucking with their heads than by threatening to bang them up or stick pointy things in them, and it also makes them a lot less likely to start plotting how to get you back. Works just as well whether you call it "God" or call it "the economy".

301:

One of the key failings in the Gimli Glider 767 incident was really bad technical writing: in the Air Canada fueling manual, a number greater than 1 was identified as the "specific gravity" of jet fuel. It was actually the density of the fuel in some set of imperial units. If the people doing the fueling calculations had understood "specific gravity", and remembered that fuel floats on water, they'd had raised a flag. The other issue was diverse and conflicting "Minimum Equipment" Lists; one said that fuel gauges were not required. This led to dipping the tanks and computing the fuel available - using the bad number for density/specific gravity. I can't locate my book on the incident, or I'd have the exact number to hand.

302:

That's a better way of putting it, yes. It's a very common form of human behaviour. At what point knowingly setting up the conditions for a cock-up becomes deliberate action is unclear. I regard it as hypocritical to claim that a clearly predictable event that is the result of deliberate negligence is simply an accident, and no blame should be assigned.

Martin is, as usual, disingenuous. Yes, of course, there were arse-covering orders and whitewashes - there always are. But, if the captain had disobeyed not merely the letter but the spirit of his orders, would he really have got the Order of Merit?

303:

Trade paperback is a term used, seemingly from America, for the ones that are large format like hardbacks but are paperback. For instance, I have a number on my shelves, one of the most recent is 235 by 155mm in size. This contrast massively with the standard paperback size of 108 by 178mm.

In order to stack books most efficiently on shelving, you need a uniform size. When it comes to SF and other fiction paperbacks, this is achieved best with the smaller size (which book is also cheaper than the trade paperback). MOreover, if you have Ikea billy bookcases, you can arrange the shelving to get 4 shelves of standard paperbacks with a gap enough to cram some more in on top lying flat. One or two of the shelves can be bigh enough to take trade paperbacks, but then it messes up attempts to keep it all tidy and tightly packed.

I can read books fine without damaging them like you claim to need to do so.

304:

The reason I don't buy hardbacks is that they are even bigger, and one of the reason is that modern books use fonts of a size that I have not needed since primary school (which I left at 7). Indeed, I will often choose a mass-market paperback over a trade one for the same reason. A century ago, books were far more compact, and I would dearly love ones corresponding to the pocket editions of that era. You can still get new versions of some classics like that, but that's all.

305:

That's true, so many hardback fiction books have huge type, it would be much easier if they were smaller.
The other reason I like to have normal paperback books is that it means I can fit the fiction onto the smaller shelves, freeing up the bigger ones for the non-fiction, which really does come in all shapes and sizes. The most common large size is around A4, but I have some even bigger, such as the collection of maps of Edinburgh published a few years ago.

306:

Oh, I forgot to mention that the USA navy also had consderable 'form' at arranging such incidents, which continued after Iran 655. Yes, of course, the other side has to do its part, but no independent observer believed that this incident wasn't set up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Sidra_incident_(1989)

307:

Trade paperback is a term used, seemingly from America, for the ones that are large format like hardbacks but are paperback. For instance, I have a number on my shelves, one of the most recent is 235 by 155mm in size. This contrast massively with the standard paperback size of 108 by 178mm.

I don't know about over there, but in the last several years US publishers have started putting out thick paperbacks that are the same width as mass market editions, but are a half-inch or so taller, calling them trade paperbacks and increasing the price a couple dollars. A bit of a nuisance if you have shelves adjusted to the old paperback height.

I have different Ikea bookcases with non-adjustable shelves. I cut up the boxes they came in to make extra shelves in the back, so that I can fit two rows of paperbacks, the rear above the front. I had drilled holes to add wood shelves and the cardboard was going to be temporary, but it's worked out well enough that I'm not going to bother with making more shelves.

308:

They always seem to do it on the third or fourth book of a series too. I dislike them to the extent that the format is a deal breaker.

There are always plenty of other books to read.

309:

Yes, I agree there are a variety of forms of power and that sometimes they intersect. How they intersect seems to also vary but I'm not sure how or under what circumstances on an individual, group or national basis. Types or flavors of power would seem an appropriate application of Kurt Lewin's Field Theory (aka topological and vector psychology) given current massive computing power access combined with unobtrusive subject observation (social media) and ability to match observed vs. self-reported states. Haven't found anything recent that talks about this though.

Despite the adage that 'the proper study of mankind is man', 'know thyself', etc., a large chunk of the population is uninterested in -- and even makes efforts to avoid -- learning much about themselves meanwhile allowing others to do so regardless of those others' motives, abilities and potential benefits/harms to themselves or others. (Yeah I know, 'authoritarianism' covers this but that's not a sufficiently comprehensive model.)

310:

Maybe RR needed some filler for his goodbye speech.

311:

That is very possible, but improbable. I think that the USA was just getting pissed off with Iran.

312:

As I understand it, most of the sex stuff in the Bible was an attempt to prevent pagan rituals that involved sex. The Canaanites were a settled people whose population had reached the carrying capacity of the land, so they were finding ways to satisfy urges without making babies. Meanwhile, the Hebrews, having recently committed genocide, found themselves in an empty land surrounded by enemies, so they found it important to prevent all that low tech birth control. And of course all this had to be couched in mumbo jumbo.

The truth of it is that the deity's plan of using mankind to efficiently transform the universe (originally imperfect due to the imperfection inherent in the mass production process used to create it) with minimum divine effort is best served by those who focus on brass tacks rather than hedonism, regardless of what form that hedonism may take. On the other hand, while slacking off and playing is not optimal, there are worse things. It's all about how your breaks contribute to refreshing you for return to the war effort.

313:

Re: Old time religion & sex

Believe that Judaism 1.0 (aka Old Testament) recognizes that a woman's sexual satisfaction is part of a good marriage and that lack of same is justification for divorce. So, not a blanket anti-sex dogma.

Think most religions stall at whatever their official founder was most associated with. I'm guessing that devout Judaism became: 'What would Abraham do?'. Abraham married his half-sister who persuaded him to use a pagan slave as his sperm receptacle, so 'barbaric/evil sex' practices from his POV might be kinda on the iffy side in contemporary times. Then there's also that story about him agreeing to the voice in his head that urged him to sacrifice his only son on an altar. (And, yes, I'm aware of various interpretations including this was as much a test of God as of Abraham, i.e., the religious version of a game of chicken.) So, not exactly my go-to guy when it comes to discussing family relationships.

314:

Ken Binmore (1996), "Evolution of Fairness Norms" Thanks, will start with that (24 pages), then look for critiques that cite it. So many PDFs! [1] (Plus trying to track the USA political show.)

[1] Any suggestions (anyone) for PDF viewers (Windows and Linux; firejail or apparmor (or similar) profile a plus for Linux, 'cause PDFs can be non-benign) other than Acrobat Reader? (It has an annoying limit of 50 tabs and does not have an obvious setting to reopen pdfs that were open before a restart.) qpdfview seems OK and has a setting to remember tabs; haven't used it enough yet recommend it.

315:

Believe that Judaism...recognizes that a woman's sexual satisfaction is part of a good marriage and that lack of same is justification for divorce.

That's actually still written into the religious marriage contract, a Ketubah. It's one of the very few reasons that a woman can get a religious divorce, a Get, in the ultra-orthodox world. Unfortunately most of the power is in the hands of the husbands and Rabbinate, which can lead to abuse of the system. There have been plenty of cases of men refusing to give a Get, while they go about philandering.

I think the Talmud has a prescription as to how often a man is obligated to have sex with his wife depending on what he does for a living. Once a month with a camel-driver is one example, not sure if that's because he's travelling, or because he smells (though that may be a joke).

Modern Judaism has more to do with what Moses, or maybe Aaron, would do than Abraham. Abraham is important as a forefather, but it's through Moses that the Mitzvot came down. Also we named ourselves after Judah, (Yehudah-Yehudim), rather than Avrahamim.

And, I agree with the idea that the Torah sex prohibitions are about what the neighbors were doing sex-ritual wise in their own religions.

316:

North America has also seen a increase in the height of the standard mass market edition in recent years.

A vintage 1982 North American Laurel paperback is 105x175mm, similar to Wikipedia's "A" size; a more recent mass-market Penguin is 115x190mm. The additional 15mm is trouble for fixed height shelving. My old vintage orange-spined Penguin paperbacks are about the same size.

A North American "Grand Central Publishing" trade paperback is 132x203mm. A Harper Collins trade is 135x203mm,

317:

If you want to see some back-and-forth, there was a special issue of Politics, Philosophy and Economics in 2006 with commentaries by Gintis and Seabright on a Binmore book (Natural Justice) with a response by Binmore. All article-length so a low-cost way into the debate, and available on the net in various places:

http://www.umass.edu/preferen/gintis/Binmore-PPE.pdf

http://paulseabright.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Seabright3.pdf

These are links to author copies so safe to link to here. With a bit of googling you should be able to find the Binmore rejoinder as well.

318:

You are proposing a conspiracy theory that has no evidence to back it, against a large amount of evidence that points to the danger of allowing incompetents to command a warship. I'm more surprised that you didn't use the Gulf of Tonkin as support for your theory...

The Gulf of Sidra incident was the Libyans actively trying to pick a fight, not the Americans - unless you accept the Libyan position that the Gulf of Sidra was theirs, that their "line of death" was valid, and that international waters didn't apply there.

If you read the letter to USNI proceedings that I linked above, Commander Carlson quite clearly expresses his position that the Iranians were professional and considered in their dealings with his ship (Tanker War notwithstanding). This was not the case with the Libyans.

After the 1973, 1980, and 1981 Gulf of Sirte incidents (Libyan planes firing at USN aircraft) the USN wasn't exactly going to give the benefit of the doubt to a pair of armed Libyan fighter aircraft turning into an engagement (multiple times) against a USN pair that kept turning away.

Remember the context in the years before this happens:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Irish_Republican_Army_arms_importation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Yvonne_Fletcher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_West_Berlin_discotheque_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_United_States_bombing_of_Libya

Libya were undeniably funding, training, and arming terrorists, from the 1970s onwards. Gaddafi ended up getting (some of) what he deserved.

So, a question: do you think that the Libyan fighters in that 1989 Gulf of Sidra incident were attacking, or merely posturing?

319:

It being that time of the year (and host linked an arXiv paper on twitter), On the Impossibility of Supersized Machines

320:

Somehow, I believe your theory that the USA navy and executive conspired to (a) promote an incompetent to command, (b) select him for particularly sensitive duty, and (c) award a medal for making a balls of it, a trifle implausible. You probably still think that the dodgy dossier was 'a well-sourced piece of intelligence'!

I am fully aware of the details of the Sirte incidents, but you have omitted the ones that (in the 1989 one) the roster was changed that morning to put the two most skilled pilots on duty, and the F14s' armaments were changed from their normal load. You have also omitted that the hassling (of USA vessels and aircraft) had been going on for some days, and for some time before the F14's went for the kill. Their very own reports indicate that they did not feel particularly threatened.

But, to forestall your misrepresentation, I do NOT regard the Sirte incidents as unjustified (on the part of the USA). I am merely pointing out the USA navy's record of arranging such incidents - as I say, 'form'.

321:

Yeah the UK market is rapidly shifting across the board to B format paperbacks - 130x198mm. The main argument I've had from publishers is status based. Basically the standard small A format is seen as a cheap disposible paperback. The larger B format is seen as being Literary, and higher status so authors prefer them.
This also means it can sell for a few dollars more, while costing pennies for paper. I'm sure that has no influence.

C format trade paperbacks are much larger again, the softcover version of a standard hardback. No one seems like them much - too big for readers and not durable enough for libraries.

322:

Mass market paperbacks (MMPBs) are not returnable but the bookstore/seller can get a credit from the publisher/supplier by ripping off the front covers and returning them. That's why there's boilerplate text on the copyright saying the books can't be sold etc. without their covers and why there's a barcode printed on the inside of the front cover, to be scanned on return for credit accounting purposes.

Trade paperbacks ARE returnable and not subject to the "rip off the front cover" deal so they cost more to process on returns. They are usually printed from hardback publishing files (fonts, layouts etc.) but in a cheaper binding. Basically they fit into the gap between MMPBs and hardbacks with their own pricepoint between the two.

323:

Mass market paperbacks (MMPBs) are not returnable but the bookstore/seller can get a credit from the publisher/supplier by ripping off the front covers and returning them.

Not in the UK. The mass market distribution channel — which is what it is; it's about supply chains, not book size, the book's physical size is just a handy reminder — collapsed in the UK circa 1991 and never recovered. Today, all books sold in the UK are sold as trade and the "small" paperbacks are merely sold that way because people expect them.

The mass market started in the 1930s with cheap paperbacks being shipped and the covers stripped and returned via the same distribution channel as pulp digest magazines. It's now collapsing in the USA, with only best sellers getting true mass market editions (as opposed to smaller trade paperbacks). I used to get mass market editions, but my sales dropped by 60-75% over the past six years and I've fallen out of mass market as of 2016. On the other hand, the cheap disposable reading niche has been colonized by ebooks, so I'm not necessarily any worse off.

324:

Ingersoll for all his faults makes for an interesting read on these points too.

325:

What makes religion evil is that it elevates faith above rational evidence-based thinking and creates the space where craziness like anti-vaxxers, climate-change denialism, human rights for zygotes and suchlike flourishes. It doesn't matter that some particular religion is fluffy bunnies and feeding the poor, it's still evil because it legitimises faith-based thinking which is an existential threat. The answer to the Fermi Paradox is religion.

326:

Somehow, I believe your theory that the USA navy and executive conspired to (a) promote an incompetent to command, (b) select him for particularly sensitive duty, and (c) award a medal for making a balls of it, a trifle implausible.

That's exactly what happened, though.

You really can't tell -- you can suspect, but you can't tell -- who functions well as a combat captain before you put them in combat. (Same with any other commander. History is rife with examples.) If an officer gets good evaluations (because the inventory is always up to date and they never screw up in an obvious way) they can easily wind up being promoted to a captaincy without being able to command in combat. Enough politics in the command structure and the right aggressive noises will play well. (Political patronage doesn't hurt; Bull Halsey was a flaming incompetent as an admiral, but for various propaganda reasons (some of which was the US Congress believing the propaganda...) the Navy couldn't say so or do much about it.)

Once the captain is in a position to massively screw up, well, let's consider this specific screw up. If the US admits it, they've committed a war crime. A big, public, war crime. They emphatically owe Iran major compensation and they are in no ambiguous way Not The Good Guys. Their regional attempt to sell Iran as the Bad Guys falls down hard because Iran followed all the rules and had a civilian air liner shot down by a USN ship which was NOT following the rules.

Can't admit that; admitting that is expensive. So you do the traditional thing that goes with not admitting it and give the captain a medal to make clear how completely you consider the other side's version of the facts to be lies and propaganda.

And then the sane-and-factual faction inside the USN officer's corps has to spend the next couple decades carefully getting the facts into the record in such a way as to make clear that yeah, no, this was an epic screwup of which we are not proud.

327:

Y'all are mostly being cabbages about religion. Nothing purely-harmful is going to persist over long spans of generational time.

What does religion tell you?

No, no, NOT "conform or die". Not "do what I say or else". Religion's basic message is "there's a plan"; "this all makes sense to someone"; "you have the option of making things better for yourself"[1]; "you are loved and valued".

It's insecurity management; just because the world and your life don't make sense to you doesn't mean it doesn't make sense! Belief isn't much of an effort most of the time, and you can stop struggling with incomprehension and go about your customary day. For the great majority of believers the great majority of the time, you get less effort, consistent social context, and less doubt. People hate doubt. The effort of not knowing is a whole lot more than it is widely practical to make.

(Actual skepticism or scientific inquiry is hard work. You generally can't if you're not, by world-historical-standards, extremely well off. You haven't got the time or the resources.)

It's being implemented by humans so of course the usual failure modes around success-or-control (you can't have both) and expectations of conformity to the system come into play. (You'll look long and hard and fail, trying to find a social system that doesn't have expectations of conformity; it's part of the way the idea is defined.)

Now, religion will inevitably act to suppress change because whoever is in charge benefits from the way things are now, but that statement is just as factual with "capitalism" in place of "religion". Incumbents hate change.

So it's difficult to find a failure mode unique to religion; the basic problem is that the world is way more complicated than a human brain can deal with.

[1] not necessarily here and now; next life, afterlife, escape from the wheel of dharma, there's a lot of options here.

328:

Nothing purely-harmful is going to persist over long spans of generational time.

That's fine while the ability of people to cause harm is limited. But once you have nukes and global-warming denialism it's a new game.

329:

You seem to have completely missed my point. Obviously, there was no intent to shoot down a civilian airliner, any more than there was in Ukraine - THAT aspect was pure cock-up. Your explanation is correct, except that it applies equally well to the covering up after an arranged incident went wrong, WHETHER OR NOT that was done by the captain against HIS orders.

As an aside, it is SOP for there to be verbal orders in addition to recorded ones ("This is how I want you to interpret the orders"). But it is doubtful whether even those included the order to arrange the conditions for an incident - the captain was quite capable of doing that on his own, given his previous reputation. Indeed, it is quite possible that his doing so is the reason that the 1989 Sirte captain asked permission to arrange that incident. And THOSE orders probably included the rider "For God's sake don't do a Rogers."

330:

Nothing purely-harmful is going to persist over long spans of generational time.

Patriarchy Ecological Destruction (from the soil saltification of Babylon onwards) Empire Genocide

You get the point. 'Failing upwards' is much easier if you squish everyone competing against you (looking @ you, Donny-Boy).

So it's difficult to find a failure mode unique to religion; the basic problem is that the world is way more complicated than a human brain can deal with.

Actually, there's a far more interesting question to be asked (dendrites, hint hint).

What do the following all have in common (note: this ties into 'fake news' etc):

Religion (capital R) Ideology (capital I) Brands (capital B) Beliefs (capital B)

Hint: it's a particular part of your Brain. And if it's filled with the above, it can't get used by [redacted].

331:

Oh, and proof that 2017 isn't my Time-line:

White Power Skittles Twitter, 30th March, 2017 (scroll down, it gets funnier and weirder as you go... and yes, it's real)

Oh, and a freebie (related to the above question over RIBBs): Remember that Poppy thing (the one which freaked Greg out) - yep, just stepped into Gremlin #2 land, Alt-Right meme ahoy. This Red Pill YT, "Poppy", 0:39 March 21st 2017.

Knew it / Told you so / Spotted it a mile away.

332:

(This was for host - twitter is blowing up over this and more than a few anarc / lefties are missing a whole lot of edge to it. Breibart / Milo etc lead with the White Pride angle to skittles two days ago, it's been weaponized into various strands already. I can spot someone ignorantly responding to the troll bait "LGBT stole the rainbow" without knowing it's an Alt-Right KeK drive).

Herds cats to protect them

333:

Interesting article - thanks for posting.

Learned arguments were also made about the impossibility of bumble bees flying - yet they do. Because of the bee thing, won't be surprised if someone breaks the 'largeness' barrier for machines.

What I'd like to know though is how the largeness of a network is measured ... I'm assuming a network can be classified as a machine. This is not the same animal/thing as the girth/sweater argument in that individual components might stay more or less the same size, but over time some specialize (speciate) and even when this happens, they are all still able to form networks of diverse yet interoperable components (e.g., society, human brain). So the 'machine' grows by a type of accretion. Compare the first knife ever made vs. today's Swiss Army knife: both are 'knives', yet quite different.

Never understood Godel's theorem. Even now I wonder whether this theorem says what it says because it assumes identical properties across all calculable variables instead of recognizing that many things/variables have 'limits' (specific properties re: size/reach/energy) and that such 'limits' vary as stuff develops and/or speciates. (Still like the 'non-commutative' stuff though: some things cannot be undone. Wonder if time is the most fundamental of non-commutative 'elements'.)

(And I'll probably get responses pointing out my blatant ignorance of maths. That's cool, I'm fine with being a life-long learner.)

334:

Patriarchy as an organizational structure is how you avoid becoming a victim of conquest. (And how you greatly reduce the reproductive insecurity of a big slice of the male population.)

Empires always start because they're making a profit. They don't keep making a profit, but they start out to preserve increases in prosperity brought about by trade.

I can't think of anybody who sets out to practice ecological destruction; the specific instances are always someone making themselves more prosperous in the short term.

Genocide as policy gets you a whole lot of land area you didn't have before. It's absolutely widespread throughout human history and it unquestionably advantages those practicing it. (No member of the Anglo NorAm settler population is in any kind of moral position to dispute this!)

There's a very substantial difference between "not optimal" and "doesn't work". Things that human cultures keep copying into the future aren't optimal, but the copying into the future is the definition of "works". Anywhere nice to live has to win fights with systems optimized to win fights or it ... doesn't get copied into the future.

335:

The USN doesn't and didn't ever want to fight in the Persian Gulf. They really didn't want to do so in 1988, when it was even more of a deathtrap for a blue-water navy.

1988 is late Reagan. Everyone in Washington knows he's at least moderately gaga; the Democrats have a strong Congressional majority, remember being rolled on the Gulf of Tonkin, and have no appetite for war. (There wasn't one in official circles during the Iranian Hostage Crisis.) The idea that you don't really need Congressional approval has not yet been created. George Herbert Walker Bush isn't -- just after Iran-Contra wraps up -- in a position to do much of anything.

How is "Rogers should never have had a combat command" not the least hypothesis? What material evidence (that is, base stocking, ship movements, topping up the fuel farm at Diego Garcia, or any other preparations) is there for an intent to provoke?

336:

You are now joining Martin in misrepresenting me. I never said that Raygun or the Pentagon had given such orders. "Rogers should never have had a combat command" is a perfectly good hypothesis, yes, and is completely compatible with the hypothesis that he set up the conditions for an incident. In THIS case, there is no material evidence for an intent to provoke, but there is equally well no material evidence for any OTHER cause of HIS behaviour. Just asserting that the commander is an arsehole does NOT mean that you can claim that any actions of his are pure accident.

337:

You're somewhat missing the point of my response, so:

Nothing purely-harmful is going to persist over long spans of generational time.

In generational time spans, all of these things mentioned are "purely harmful":

Name a patriarchy that didn't crash and burn (either due to the Harem issue where lower caste males were cut out of the pie, a la chan / MRA / Red pillers these days or look to Egypt / Saudi currently or due to various other conditionals, usually of the short-lived but always available Lysistrata option).

Name an Empire that didn't crash and burn.

Ecological destruction is baked in if you don't actively ward against it.

Genocide is only viable if M.A.D never gets triggered.

Do you see the point I was making yet?

Anyhow, you skipped the interesting bit.

338:

Think back to a discussion about Steam Punk, Bronze working and Energy (specifically coal). The French got locked into a dependency for a lot of reasons, but once that choice was made, the outcome was sealed.

That's the point I was making.

Or, let's put it a little more bluntly before bringing out the big guns (locals are playing silly buggers): humans are shit at predicting outcomes. And even when they know the outcomes, they're shit at taking the long term view instead of taking the short term gain.

Or, to modify the statement: Everything purely-harmful is going to persist over long spans of generational time until the environment stops it. (Where "environment" includes socio-ecomic-military-geopolitical spheres as well as actual energy / ecology).

~

So, discuss.

RIBBs is much more fun, and I saw a fox in the sky two days ago.

339:

There's three kinds of "incident".

One kind -- "they've shot the Archduke!" -- is a small number of what might as well be chaos cultists doing something shocking that demands a diplomatic response. (And thus maybe a military response.) It's a surprise to just about everyone except the chaos cultists. It involves actors external to the mechanisms of power. (Generally rather marginalized ones, because having anything to lose keeps you from considering this sort of thing a good idea.)

Another kind is a pure old fashioned mistake; the USS MAINE blowing up in Havana harbor is probably the purest example. No one expects it; it takes a good long while to form a response, and there's no logistical support in place for the response. That's how you can tell it was really a surprise. Telling these from the first kind is sometimes difficult, but if you don't know there are any external actors involved this is the safe bet.

The third kind is a lie; someone has carefully set this up to get a policy result and they've put logistical preparation in place to take advantage of the policy response they expect to get. (Gulf of Tonkin, but also the Austria-Hungarian ultimatum to the Serbs after the Archduke got shot. Many, many historical examples.)

9/11 ought not to have been but was effectively the first sort. Korean Airlines Flight 007 was the second sort. Gulf of Tonkin was the third sort.

I think -- and could be confused -- that you're arguing that the VINCENNES incident was the third kind, rather than the second kind.

I don't think there's anything available to support that position. I remember anonymous serving USN opinion at the time as being absolutely scathing and listing off long lists of procedures that hadn't been correctly followed and a general view that Rogers should have hung. I don't know of anything that supports the view that there was a policy goal, not even at the level of preceeding think pieces advocating for a policy of direct confrontation with Iran. Certainly not at the level of logistical preparation for escalation of the conflict.

340:

Cough.

No, there's many more kinds. You can tell when Old Men get Old:

In it I affirmed that the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign bargained secretly with Iranian radicals for the postponement of the liberation of 52 Americans that they were holding hostage. These hostages were employees of the US embassy in Iran’s capital city of Teheran, which had been stormed by militants loyal to the Ayatollah Khomeini in November 1979. This secret deal, known as the October Surprise, frustrated the attempts of US president Jimmy Carter to obtain the hostages’ release in time for the elections in November. This failure cost Carter his reelection, and swept Republican candidate Ronald Reagan into the presidency. Polls carried out before the election showed that the hostage issue was of top importance in the minds of the American electorate.

The Republican campaign’s main negotiators in this deal were George H. W. Bush, vice presidential candidate and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director, and William Casey

The October Surprise Was Real Counterpunch, July 2014

5 takeaways from Comey’s October surprise Politico, 29th Oct 2016 (and we all know how that one panned out, don't we?)

shrug

RIBBs is far more important: you've spent the last 100 years stripping out the Humanity from your minds, psychopathic fucks.

341:

Everything we've done has crashed and burned at some point, but looking back at the historical record, Empires have done fairly well for their people once they stabilised at the point that the actual person in charge is less important than the position itself is.

Whether the person got there by heredity, nomination, appointed by their guards, was born with the right birthmark ... it doesn't matter - as far as the Empire itself was concerned, life went on.

Look at Rome, China, or the Holy Roman Empire - each new set of bastards coming in claimed lineage to the ones before - descended from Charlemagne, Mandate of Heaven, even the Aztecs claimed inheritance from the Toltecs who are linked to the Maya - it didn't matter, it was a suitable figleaf for the people living in the Empire to accept.

Failure states: Mongols - too young, still thinking in tribal succession terms. Tang China, eventual civil war exterminated a third of the population. Byzantium - sacked by its own side. Central America - outside context problem.

342:

Hint: it's a particular part of your Brain. And if it's filled with the above, it can't get used by [redacted].

OK, so (and mentioning dendrites) you're saying one specific brain region. (Sorry, hadn't poked at the god zone hints much.) So, I'll embarrass myself as a definitely-not-a-neuroscientist in hope of a response, or at least more hints. (Apologies if these have already been linked. Grep suggests not.)

There is of course the M.A. Persinger temporal lobe God-helmet work (RELIGIOUS AND MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES AS ARTIFACTS OF TEMPORAL LOBE FUNCTION: A GENERAL HYPOTHESIS, 1983, not sure if legal) (wikipedia) but the temporal lobe is pretty complicated. (Has anyone here tried this? I have not.)

More recently, Reward, salience, and attentional networks are activated by religious experience in c (11 Nov 2016) suggests activation in nucleus accumbens, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and frontal attentional regions, in particular Nucleus accumbens activation preceded peak spiritual feelings by 1–3 s and was replicated in four separate tasks. The nucleus accumbens (it and the olfactory tubercle are the ventral striatum) is mostly Medium spiny neurons Wikipedia: The medium spiny neurons are medium-sized neurons (~15 microns in diameter, ~12-13 microns in the mouse) with large and extensive dendritic trees (~500 microns in diameter)

I saw a fox in the sky two days ago. ? :-)

343:

I teach this incident (as part of a postgrad course) and yes, the evidence is overwhelming that this was (in large part) first a command screw up, i.e taking the ship into danger for no good tactical reason, combined with organisational, personnel and technological failures of a man/machine system under stress. I'd call it a comedy of errors except it wasn't very funny when the expanding rod warheads chopped that passenger airliner into tinfoil. Notes at the link, apologies if you've already seen some or all of the material.

https://msquair.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/c2-the-vincennes-shootdown-incident-v1-3.pdf

344:

Branding the brain: A critical review and outlook Journal of Consumer Psychology January 2012. 19 pages, PDF. Legal.

Useful for the meta-links (paper has embedded links to most of the papers these people are using) and for the fun of looking at the boys making sandcastles on the shore pawing over their fMRI entrails.

I saw a fox in the sky two days ago

You'll have to find the image referenced that is current: A fox in a Brain (a la Creación de Adán) with its foot in a steel trap, surrounded by Crows who are outside the Brain. It's barking at them.

If you can find that picture, I'd be impressed (the context is important, as is the reversal of the fable).

345:

Learned arguments were also made about the impossibility of bumble bees flying by conventional aerodynamicists.

Bumble bees (well all insects actually) use an alternative model for generating lift, which is actually more efficient at low speeds, hence bees generate adequate lift from a much smaller wing area than conventional aerodynamics predict.

346:

You may have missed it, so I'll spell it out: the article linked by Bill Arnold was not a learned argument, but an April's fool joke. (Note the publication date on the PDF and the date of posting it here!)

347:

You haven't understood me AT ALL. Nor, probably, has MS (#343). Yes, OF COURSE, this was a cock-up, and the fact that it killed a large number of civilians was due to a catalogue of negligence and incompetence, not deliberate action. But your category of incidents is seriously flawed (especially ethically). The point is that the second category is actually multiple categories rolled into one.

You may have heard the expressions "gone out looking for trouble" and "spoiling for a fight". There is a gradation from a purely unpredictable accident, through one caused by ordinary negligence or incompetence, through one caused by deliberate negligence or incompetence, up to what is often described as "accidentally on purpose". And one of the characteristics of even the last category is precisely that they DON'T have the preparation you mention for your third category so that they are quite like to go wrong, and nobody knows what to do when they do.

It's not quite comparable, but look at the responses of the police (and the unspeakable PCC) after the killings of Jean Charles de Menezes and Mark Duggan. Complete headless chicken mode, in both cases, involving spewing packs of contradictory lies out to the press, though both incidents had been prepared for. Note that I am NOT saying that they had prepared for a killing in either case, but that they HAD prepared for some kind of incident.

348:

humans are shit at predicting outcomes. And even when they know the outcomes, they're shit at taking the long term view instead of taking the short term gain.

Not all humans, but ...

I am reminded of an anecdote about R. Buckminster Fuller. Circa 1970, Fuller delivered a lecture at a university. When the time came for questions, hands went up, and a member of the audience asked, somewhat sarcastically: "this stuff about saving the Earth is all well and good, but if you're so smart, how come you went bust repeatedly when you were trying to mass-produce something as simple as houses?" (Hint: if you haven't heard of the Dymaxion House, click the link.)

Fuller reportedly turned bright red, stuttered for a minute, then explained: "I was trying to mass-produce modular, affordable, human-friendly housing using state of the art technology, on a production line. The design life of a home is on the order of 25 years, and the development cycle for a new technological product is also measured in years. However, I was forced to demonstrate profitability using an accounting cycle designed for extracting taxes from bronze-age Sumerian subsistence farmers—driven by the four seasons."

Which is why we aren't all living in Dymaxion houses today (that and, well, we could do a lot better these days if we weren't so hung up on living in structures designed to ape the historic preferred residential styles of the rich and famous).

The broader point, however, is path-dependency: exchangeable money (as opposed to tokens for internal temple accounting) emerged as an indirection layer for taxation in lieu of physical goods, and caught on because it made feeding an army on home territory a lot easier (quartermaster: buys food from peasants using coins; tax farmer: extracts coins from peasants in lieu of grain: army gets fed without pillaging the countryside, king is happy). But once you've got that system running it takes on a life of its own and you end up with projects with long-term setup costs becoming difficult to fund unless you invent complex work-arounds (interest-bearing loans, bonds, other financial instruments that compensate for the risk of non-fulfillment).

Once you get locked into, say, financialization, it's hard to look at the world without assessing everything in terms of quarterly profit-and-loss. Which in turn screws you badly when you're dealing with longer term processes that don't deliver a near-term payoff, much less generational problems that won't show a downside until you're safely dead.

Donald Trump is 70. I think we can safely say that, barring a breakthrough in life prolongation medicine, he will definitely be dead by age 125, i.e. by 2071. More reasonably, he'll probably be dead by 90, i.e. by 2037. Realistically, anything happening after 2037 is therefore vanishingly unlikely to affect him personally, and after 2071 it will definitely not affect him personally — or, likely as not, his inner circle (Steve Bannon is 63; Jared Kushner, at 37, will be 92 if he makes it to 2071; etc). So any talk of climate change fucking up the planet on a huge scale by 2200 is just so much quacking as far as these guys are concerned. They'll be dead; if it happens at all, it's somebody else's problem.

349:

I am NOT saying that they had prepared for a killing in either case, but that they HAD prepared for some kind of incident.

There is an interesting failure mode of authoritarian personalities under pressure: they receive some sort of insult to their sense of how the world works (e.g. police in the wake of a successful terrorist attack), so they feel compelled to respond in some manner that will reaffirm the correct working of the world (terrorists: PUNISH). However, there's no clear target (the terrorists were suicide bombers, so: already dead). Thus, they experience a free-floating anxiety due to their inability to respond to the original insult. Then something else happens (e.g. a Brazilian plumber who looks a bit like a not-suicided suspect enters a tube station) and they respond with maximal force as if they were facing the original threat, in an attempt to rectify the source of cognitive dissonance. Which is how excessive-use-of-force cockups happen.

But then we get the even more interesting failure mode of a management structure staffed by authoritarian personalities — you don't get promoted within a police organization by being particularly forgiving of infractions — dealing with the even worse cognitive dissonance of recognizing that they — the organization — Did The Bad Thing. People identify personally with organizations of which they are members: the words we use, "identify"/"identity", "members", are freighted with indicators of personal investment. Admitting that an organization in which one is an agency-wielding leader responded inappropriately implies accepting that ones own identity is implicated in responsibility for The Bad Thing. So there's an intense desire to distance onesself from the event by projecting responsibility onto some outside entity: blame the victims, in other words. (See the Hillsborough disaster for a classic example.)

It takes time or lots of training for people to get over the initial insult-reaction to a threat and assess it rationally: by which time the institutional response is in full flood and it's really hard for an organization staffed by authoritarian personalities to reverse itself (a large subset of staff will be incredibly resistant to change). Hence the way these events unfold.

350:

Yes. I rather agree with the multinominal one, though - those of us who are fairly good at predictions are generally regarded as being some form of alien ....

The short-termism in UK politics was clearly developing by the 1960s, as the consensus politics of World War II broke down, as was the way the UK was being increasingly sold out to the USA military-industrial machine. It wasn't hard to predict, even in the 1970s, the political malaise and social and economic hole that we are in now. Brexit, of course, is a mere symptom.

But your point about financial timescales isn't entirely right. I remember when it wasn't as dominant in the UK as it is now, and it is less dominant in (for example) the Japan of today than it was in the UK of half a century back. The key financial factor seems to be the dogma that risk must necessarily be compensated for by interest rates.

351:

Yes. And it's an extremely hard ethical problem to know where on the accidental / deliberate spectrum to assign such incidents. One of the reasons that I am at loggerheads with other people is that I regard negligence as being potentially as culpable as deliberation. Note "potentially" - there are more reasonable excuses for it.

352:

At least for energy, there are arguments besides "It's good for the planet", like a potentially healthier domestic economy and independence from the restraints of petroleum based energy. A good thing to, because if a sensible energy policy is ever put in place, it needs to be a better deal for most people or it will be abandoned. FWIW, even from the perspective of an old guy in western Missouri, renewable and low carbon energy looks like a step up, potentially.

353:
So any talk of climate change fucking up the planet on a huge scale by 2200 is just so much quacking as far as these guys are concerned.

Slightly rhetorical question - how do these guys reconcile those thoughts with their perennial and overt nepotism? They may not see the consequences but their descendants will.

354:

Yep - missed the April Fools bit completely. Can't tell with some tech reports whether it's foolery on the part of the author or ignorance on the part of the reader.

[Jots down Bill Arnold's name in calendar for next year ...]

355:

You are now joining Martin in misrepresenting me. I never said that Raygun or the Pentagon had given such orders.

Errr... when you accuse me of being "as usual, disingenuous" (@302) and "misrepresenting you" (@336), I'm curious as to how I've done so.

Your @287 "It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the commander of the USS Vincennes had been told to provoke a military response from Iran, and shoot down one of its military aircraft."

Your @288 "A similar alternative is that the crew made (as claimed) a 'scenario fulfillment' mistake due to multiple failures, but that they were originally ordered to the area and ordered to behave aggressively to increase the odds of an incident."

Your @306 "Oh, I forgot to mention that the USA navy also had consderable 'form' at arranging such incidents, which continued after Iran 655."

You seem convinced that Iran Air 655 was a cockup on the back of orders to provoke; and yet, the other USN ships in the area were obviously not ordered to behave in the same way, and the VINCENNES was ordered to back off on other occasions.

Why are you so determined to assert the existence of "orders to provoke", instead of accepting that the CO was an incompetent, atypical of his peers, and overly aggressive? Why can't it just be a complete cockup / tragedy / lethal negligence and incompetence, as all the evidence suggests?

356:

There are layers of command between a mere captain and the Pentagon, you know. I will accept that I wasn't clear enough in distinguishing various forms of intent to provoke.

357:

I read less, and buy few books than I did 20 years ago. Partly, I waste, er, spend serious amounts of time on soli, er, important stuff (which is a response to long term situational depression).

One reason, though, is it's gotten freaking hard to find science fiction. Last Worldcon, after the Tor show, I spoke with Patrick Nielsen-Hayden, and asked, since I was looking to submit an sf novel (I've currently been waiting to hear back from an agent who got the mss in, um, early Dec). He told me that new authors look at what sells, and it's 2-1 fantasy, followed by military sf, and so straight sf might be easier to get in (was my take).

Of course, some of that's a vicious circle -they get less, they sell less, less is submitted.

mark

358:

And yet I can see religion have some place. It's not ego to say that I don't think most people are as internally tough as I am - my late wife dropped dead at 43 for no fucking reason, with no symptoms, and yet, who is there to blame? Her body, for betraying her? The universe, for a fucking stray Cozmic Ray?

Most folks can't deal with that, so they need to find some kind of comfort. Remember, the fuller verions of the old quote from Marx is "religion is the opiate of the people, the heart in a heartless world." So they find some comfort in some One knowing, and afterlives, etc.

I've got an urn big enough for two, when the time comes.

mark

359:

I think they're simply too stupid to think it through. Or they assume they can make out like bandits in the short term and buy berths aboard the L5 colony/ocean-going city the uber-rich will retreat to when somebody else builds it.

360:

Gee, if I were a twit to be on twitter, my response would be "YOU'RE RIGHT, WE STOLE IT, AND YOU'LL NEVER HAVE IT AGAIN! AND FURTHERMORE, SINCE Y0U'LL NEVER HAVE IT AGAIN, YOU'LL NEVER BE ABLE TO FIND THE POT OF GOLD AT ITS END!"

mark

361:

I will accept that I wasn't clear enough in distinguishing various forms of intent to provoke.

"Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?" Writ large in the post-Westphalian world (small angry nations instead of disobedient clergy).

Some eager over-achiever bucking for promotion within the Navy decides that the rhetoric coming out of DC would best be served by moving some aggressive young captains into the likely theater of engagement. They're aiming to please the boss by following the mood music in the public discourse, rather than by using their heads. Repeat all the way down the pyramid for as many levels as necessary, until tragedy ensues.

362:

A few years back, Russia declassified some KGB files, and they had an agent IN THE ROOM when Bush, Sr. was making the (treasonous) arms-for-hostages deal that set that up.

mark

363:

Charlie wrote: "once you get locked into, say, financialization, it's hard to look at the world without assessing everything in terms of quarterly profit-and-loss."

It didn't used to be that bad. But one of the things I vehemently hold against the corporatists and the GOP, their tools, is just that: they've stolen our children's dreams, other than "must get rich, NOTHING else matters".

I have SO much ammunition, esp. if I do decide to run for Congress next year.... (And if I do, least best result is one of Faux News' talking heads dies on the air from apoplexy.)

mark

364:

You know this, but the the thing that makes me stressed about "oh, it's in the future, I don't care" is that, no, no, climate change is having massive-and-obviously-trending-up costs now. The "oh, not until I'm dead" is 100% pure quill organic stone-ground wishful thinking, and it's not ethically sourced in any respect.

365:

Ah!

Ok, got your point now.

Militaries are social machines to force submission by making the alternatives to submission worse. (Police start to fail catastrophically when forcing submission is, or becomes, their objective[1], but I don't know of anywhere with functional police at the present time. LOTS of police currently having that failure mode.)

If you want a working military, it has this failure mode. If you haven't got a working military, you've been forced to submit. (I would welcome counterexamples.) Minimizing the expression of the failure mode is one of those really really difficult things because you promote based on effectiveness which means ability to force submission and "bad judgement at when to be good at your job" is inevitably an after-the-fact call. It's important and an effective military will work at it. (If your objectives aren't conscious, you're not an effective organization.) So if you're arguing that the presence of the USN there and then was increasing the likelihood of an atrocity, absolutely. Not having a military isn't a way to avoid those atrocities because militaries are about the only way to avoid the whole slew of atrocities attached to being forced to submit. Being very very careful about who you assign to what never holds because diminished returns inside the organization itself eats the care alive in short order.

It would be great if we had some social machinery that was better at this. It's obviously possible and it's equally obvious that the simpler, worse versions persist better and that the complex better versions tend to fail into awful things.

[1] there is a crucial difference between "submit" and "stop that" and it's a lot of work to maintain it as a widely understood sharp demarcation in propriety.

366:

What's your definition of hard SF? Andy Weir's The Martian is considered hard SF (i.e., scientifically and technologically accurate) and sold tons!

367:

Yes. As usual, OGH put the failure mode I was referring to better than I did (in 361). Most bureaucratic and hierarchical organisations (The USN? Surely not!) rely on people near the coal face interpreting the rules 'creatively', to avoid the arse-covering at higher levels from causing complete ossification. And, at the time, the USN's fantastically powerful vessels were being made to look impotent by the Iranian gunboats behaving much like Scottish midges.

368:

Yes. OGH's comment in #359 seems the only plausible explanation.

369:

The "oh, not until I'm dead" is 100% pure quill organic stone-ground wishful thinking

Agreed.

Unfortunately it appeals to elderly authoritarians who formed their world-view before the world began to change rapidly along the axis of habitability, and the sunk cost fallacy also applies to world-views.

370:

One of the things that worries me about the US military is the one-way (not revolving) door between those holding high ranks in the services and the supposedly civilian government. The number of high-ranking appointees in any administration with a first name of "General" or "Admiral" is not a good thing for a supposedly-civilian government. Having a combat general with twenty years experience of telling people to do what he says or else running the diplomatic service of the nation (Colin Powell running the State department, frex) leads to, well, diplomacy using cruise missiles and open threats of invasion and fuck-ups like Iraq.

I could not, for the life of me, name a senior British military figure of the past twenty years or so. In the US a flag rank Admiral or 3-star general will have a personal publicist and biographer on his or her payroll. Guys, this is a Bad Thing.

371:

Unfortunately it appeals to elderly authoritarians who formed their world-view before the world began to change rapidly along the axis of habitability, and the sunk cost fallacy also applies to world-views.

Also to them who think they can use their wealth to avoid the effects, and to them who can afford not to see the problems.

372:

And they don't see it affecting them or anyone they know, so it isn't real to them.

One of my friends used to be friends with an American executive and his wife, who apparently didn't see US health care as a problem because everyone they knew had health insurance, so where were those uninsured people they sometimes heard about? Couldn't be that big a problem or they'd know some…

Whether this was willful blindness or an honest lack of thinking things through I don't know. My friend can't ask because when Bush give his "with us or with the terrorists" speech my friend questioned Iraq having anything to do with the 9/11 attacks and that was it: a friendship of decades was over.

373:

Colin Powell was an example of a military leader who was considerable more thoughtful, cautious and liberal than his non-military colleagues. Eisenhower was another ....

374:

Because The Martian was such a success, maybe someone will finally write an SF story that seriously discusses having and raising a child on a space station without gravity.

Some potential problems: birth - whoosh out comes baby and the after-birth gets splattered everywhere. Newborn flails about thus propelling itself who-knows-where. A couple of months later, the infant flails directly at Mom to suckle whenever he/she gets hungry. Changing nappies (Newton's First Law) and watching as undiapered space baby whizzes (both senses of the word) around the cabin. Ditto when baby burps or gets gassy. And meanwhile, there's the science of getting rid of pee/poop on reusable diapers in a no gravity environment*. Option of sending and then getting rid of a mountain of smelly soiled diapers over a 24-36 month period gets reviewed about here. Then we get to the crawling stage .. watch as baby crawls up, down, across ceiling, into cabinets, vent systems, etc. (How to baby-proof a space ship key points here.) Infants at this stage are explorers and also like to handle everything their chubby fingers (and sometimes, mouths) can grab hold of. Guessing what and how much to feed a baby whose metabolism is not using nutrients in the same way as in gravity could be problematic. Same with exercise and sleeping patterns.

Then there's the bio-psych aspect of babies on other crew members. In a completely closed environment the mother's hormones esp. oxytocin would tend to hang around for longer in greater concentrations. Males can and do get affected by this hormone too, physiologically and psychologically.

None of the SF I've read ever addressed this even the novels that claimed to be about multi-generational space flight.

  • Have wondered whether just briefly putting the soiled diapers outside the space ship would do the job which would mean a discussion of biological space contamination (panspermia is actually panpoopia) plus assorted ethical issues.
375:

Pretty sure there's a strong consensus that placental reproduction won't work in freefall.

376:

Colin Powell was an example of a military leader who was considerable more thoughtful, cautious and liberal than his non-military colleagues

Just to be sure, that's GENERAL Colin Powell who was in charge of US diplomacy when the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq kicked off, the one that waved a fake vial of anthrax at the UN to convince the rest of the world that Hussein was an existential threat to the entire planet, the one that ignored state torture and approved rendition of suspects to the offshore oubliette of Guantanamo Bay? That Colin Powell, or were you referring to some other Powell who wasn't an inexperienced blunderer who got his position at State because of his first name and no other reason like, say, a couple of decades experience in civilian government?

Folks who served with him regarded him as an unexceptional officer, unwilling to make waves and discomfit the brass and the civilian administrations, burying bad news and letting scandals fester while he climbed the greasy pole.

377:

Ike's the "certain entirely voluntary restrictions" President, no?

That wasn't an especially thoughtful or cautious thing to do. (Expedient, yes.)

378:

Pretty sure that experiment is still running, fyi: Space Pup! NASA, 12.07.16. And yes, that's real. And yes, that's also the real (shortened) name.

Anyhow, you're all soooo maaale / non-breeding, it's hilarious.

Look: you design the environment around the baby, not vice-versa. You engineer an entire ecology that thrives on floating particles of pee, poo, vomit, sweat, skin (babies grow fast, lots of dead cells) and so on.

The baby isn't a problem, it's a little bio-factory producing nutrients for your secondary biome.

Engineers / Scientists / MEN.

379:

Just to be sure, that's GENERAL Colin Powell who was in charge of US diplomacy when the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq kicked off

That's the one. Who was Bush Pere's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs during DESERT STORM, and who made it quite clear to the politicians that the US shouldn't get involved in foreign wars without a very well-understood end state. Which meant stopping once Kuwait was liberated, and not getting involved in any of that messy regime change stuff.

Whereas the person in the same position twelve years later, didn't make any such fuss, and couldn't persuade President CheneyBush not to make a complete arse of things.

So, while I don't know how he was regarded by his peers, I'd suggest that as a General, when push came to shove, he made the right call in 1991.

380:

That's just radiation.

No gravity is going to screw up bone density, condensation order as fetal tissue differentiates, nutrient diffusion, and fetal orientation during gestation. Then there's known issues with testicular function, thyroid function, mechanical aspects of fertilization, and all the stuff no one has found yet.

Reproduction in space is a long project even if you don't have an ethics committee.

381:

Some/many of those are engineering problems eg. babyproofing. (In other words, solvable with existing tech.)

I'd be more worried about fetal/childhood development in zero- or micro-gravity. A lot of development interacts with the environment, and when that is so different a lot can go wrong.

Here's an old paper on the subject which lists some of them: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2219104/

Look at simulated zero-G environment (using a clinostat): http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0006753

These results suggest for the first time that fertilization can occur normally under µG environment in a mammal, but normal preimplantation embryo development might require 1G.

Wakayama (Riken Centre, same chap from previous link) is looking at the effects of radiation on mouse pups:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/893.html

Sustaining life beyond Earth either on space stations or other planets requires a clear understanding of how the space environment affects key phases of mammalian reproduction. So far only non-mammals have been used in reproductive studies in space. Studies using simulated microgravity on Earth showed birth rates due to poor placental development, indicating that microgravity has an adverse but unknown role in fertilization and gestation. Space Pup will help isolate radiation as a factor in long-term studies.

And we know that microgravity inhibits stem cell differentiation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26414276

TLDR: the biology is likely to be way more challenging than the engineering. Larry Niven's Confinement Asteroid might be required for more than muscle development.

382:

Cheaper still than all that baby-centric engineering might be installing a condom dispenser or four. (Has there been any study into altered thromboembolic risk in microgravity with long term oral contraceptive use?)

383:

Or: if you think you're getting on board my ridiculously expensive space station that lacks any neonatal support facilities whatsoever (let alone the Level 6 NICU it would take to keep your cosmic ray-bombarded, intrauterine microgravity-stunted monster babies alive) without a long acting progesterone implant, you're dreaming.

384:

OR: sorry, we are only accepting applications from infertile/post-menopausal/gay/asexual candidates at this time. Thank you for your interest in this position and please don't hesitate to apply for one of our ground-based roles!

385:

No, I think I do understand what your point was.

However if you ask me to choose between the likelihood that this was an act of gross negligence/wilful disregard that came about because of a confluence of events (including revising the RoE) and alternatively the likelihood that this was due to a covert intent to act provocatively (in whatever form, at whatever level) combined with incompetent execution at the sharp end then my judgement would be that the first is more likely. In this specific case.

After the USS Stark this is what Reagan said, "From now on, if aircraft approach any of our ships in a way that appears hostile, there is one order of battle: defend yourselves, defend American lives", this was then repeated by Weinberger and Baker. Message to the fleet, don't take the first hit. Message to Iran, we are not a soft target. After Stark the RoE were revised to allow greater flexibility and deconfliction rules were put in place (local NOTAM and NOTSM were also published). And all this was quite overt. So Rogers acted within the RoE (regarding the air track) BUT he also placed his ship under a known COMAIR route, thereby causing a breakdown of deconfliction. His other egregious actions on the day and prior to it tend to obscure this key point.

Ethically that is the gross negligence part, if your RoE legally require you to engage what you believe is a threat (and the Captain of the Stark was court martialed for failing to do so) then you also have a duty of care to not get yourself in a situation where you can't easily deconflict civilian traffic from threats.

386:

If it is a ridiculously expensive space station it should have at least be spinning, in which case baby proofing consists of putting controls at a level where adults can use them.

387:
One of my friends used to be friends with an American executive and his wife, who apparently didn't see US health care as a problem because everyone they knew had health insurance, so where were those uninsured people they sometimes heard about? Couldn't be that big a problem or they'd know some… Whether this was willful blindness or an honest lack of thinking things through I don't know.

There's a gentleman of my acquaintance who was one of Cameron's SPADs back when Cameron was still a thing. The gentleman in question still does some mildly distasteful work for the home office, I believe. He lives in an expensive house in a nice neighbourhood and brushes shoulders with quite a lot of wealthy and powerful people and had a hand in shaping Cameron's opinions about various important domestic matters and it is fucking terrifying how naive he is about the realities of life in his own country. He couldn't really comprehend the idea of people who earned less than £50000 a year, let alone people who somehow survived on even less than that. He had a total blindspot for the service staff he interacted with every day, and hadn't even given the slightest moment of thought to how much cleaners and baristas working in the city earned, or the issues they might have with living anywhere near their place of work.

He's not particularly unusual. Its been a problem of government and management since time immemorial. It is pretty much why we're in the mess we are in now.

388:

it is fucking terrifying how naive he is about the realities of life in his own country. He couldn't really comprehend the idea of people who earned less than £50000 a year, let alone people who somehow survived on even less than that.

About ten years ago Senator-for-life McCain was speaking at an open townhall meeting about immigration -- at the time he was mostly for the idea of regularising the status of Mexicans and others who had entered the country illegally to work. He explained to the incredulous audience that Americans weren't willing to work in the fields picking produce for what the immigrants earned, $30 an hour or so. That's what he believed they got for their stoop labour because the idea that someone might cross the border to do this sort of work for a fifth of that amount or less just didn't occur to him.

389:

Yes. He was also the one who did NOT authorise a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the USSR, despite pressure to do so. Note that I am not saying that either Eisenhower or Powell were western equivalents of the Dalai Lama, but they WERE better than many (possibly most) of their civilian peers.

390:

You are definitely missing my point, by your remark that the COMAIR route was key, because I accept that aspect (and the shotting down of an AIRLINER) was the purest of incompetence, and it is irrelevant to my point. However, I am not going to pursue it further.

391:

And yet I can see religion have some place. [...] Remember, the fuller verions of the old quote from Marx is "religion is the opiate of the people, the heart in a heartless world." So they find some comfort in some One knowing, and afterlives, etc.

I think it would be less harmful if the opiate of the people were actual opiates.

392:

As has been demonstrated many times, radiation is not as catastrophic as it is made out to be my the media, and mammals are reproducing successfully close to Chernobyl. But, as you say, variation in gravity from earth norm is far more serious than anyone expected, and no gravity is really, really bad news for mammalian metabolisms. It appears that even continual high gravity, which is normally fairly harmless, seriously affects reproduction in rats.

394:

RE Splitting California, not gonna happen;

There was a discussion on Daily Kos a couple of days ago, American Republican operatives want to create another safe "Red" state (Two more senators, Electoral College, etc.).

Taking clues from the principals behind Brexit? Right, about the level of "thought" you get in the modern American Republican Party.

A Peoples Republic of California only works if they use the National Guard (The Water Knife effect?) to annex at least Nevada, so they have control of more of the Colorado River; Utah and Arizona are solidly red, while New Mexico and Colorado (and El Paso, the far western tip of Texas) are relatively blue; The Geography is messy.

Nothing has replaced "Cadillac Desert" (1988!) for the basic background on the water issues.

395:

Pretty sure there's a strong consensus that placental reproduction won't work in freefall.

While rats and humans are very different metabolically, structurally they're both vertebrate mammals; if it doesn't work for rats it almost certainly won't work for humans, and I'm surprised that experiment hasn't already been run to completion on the ISS (ideally a full 18 month rodent lifespan, with 2nd generation offspring if possible).

If it ever becomes an issue for humans, I foresee a revival of the old Victorian term "confinement" — that is, confinement of pregnant women (or uterine replicators) to a centrifuge for the duration. The question then becomes one of how long you need to keep the kid under spin gravity, and how much of it, and how to provide the necessary developmental stimuli (in a permanent indoor environment with no significant line-of-sight, I'd expect severe myopia to be almost universal).

396:

If it ever becomes an issue for humans, I foresee a revival of the old Victorian term "confinement" — that is, confinement of pregnant women (or uterine replicators) to a centrifuge for the duration.

Niven's Belter civilisation had maternity-hospital asteroids which had been dug out and spun up to provide reliable constant pseudogravity for pregnant women. They also had a lot of rock and ice shielding to reduce the radiation load on the growing fetus.

397:

Actually, our metabolisms are pretty similar, too, at the basic level and some of the other levels. I quite agree with your points, of course. In 18 months, one could get 3-4 generations (though the last might still be infants), but one could do the same in 6 months using mice. A year of mouse breeding would give some pretty solid data.

398:

Metabolisms are pretty similar, but the exact mode of placentation is extremely variable amongst different mammalian lineages, even closely-related ones like humans and rats. Humans and rodents are both haemochorial (the most invasive type), for instance, but they vary in, e.g., number of cell layers separating the fetus from the mother, which affects oxygen and nutrient perfusion. And it gets worse, some much closer animals like macaques that you'd think would make better models seem to have drifted back to less invasive epitheliochorial placentation (or is it us who became more rodent-like?)

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ab/2014/639274/ is a good primer on the wide divergence in placental evolution, and the difficulties that causes trying to model the organ.

399:

Wubba, wubba! What more can one say? Thank you - I am now both more informed and more confused. The new taxonomy of mammals is most interesting, too.

400:

The retrogression to yet another antebellum US strategy for keeping the slaveocracy in power of the federal government!

That's why the argument, debate -- battle! -- over the admittance of Texas and California as states were so long, so bitter and bloody. Breaking them up into multiple new states, all slave, was the objective of the southern senator, and equally not the objective of the north, voters and senators alike.

The north knew what this was about -- just like the constant drumbeat to annex Cuba as a state of the USA -- was about this.

Additionally all those new slave territories / states allowed all those who had slaves of the age of breeding to profit enormously in expanded credit and bank accounts. All those new slave soil territories would need enslaved labor -- and places like Cuba which ran on sugar, needed to replace the labor force every 8 - 10 years, as they were worked to death within that time (yes, the capitalist logic -- more profitable to work slaves to death and replace them every 8 years than feed, clothe and house them, or allow them to sleep during the harvest months).

401:

People want to live forever. It's far from clear that this opportunity will be the case even to the most faithful. This leads to significant motivation to adopt some seriously wanked ideas about the authority of the universe.

402:

It's a shame it doesn't instead act as motivation to consider the concept of living for ever in realistic rather than idealistic terms, and arrive at the realisation that the one thing worse than dying would be not dying.

403:

in a permanent indoor environment with no significant line-of-sight, I'd expect severe myopia to be almost universal

That may depend more on light levels than sightless.

http://www.nature.com/news/the-myopia-boom-1.17120

The leading hypothesis is that light stimulates the release of dopamine in the retina, and this neurotransmitter in turn blocks the elongation of the eye during development. The best evidence for the 'light–dopamine' hypothesis comes — again — from chicks. In 2010, Ashby and Schaeffel showed that injecting a dopamine-inhibiting drug called spiperone into chicks' eyes could abolish the protective effect of bright light.

Retinal dopamine is normally produced on a diurnal cycle — ramping up during the day — and it tells the eye to switch from rod-based, nighttime vision to cone-based, daytime vision. Researchers now suspect that under dim (typically indoor) lighting, the cycle is disrupted, with consequences for eye growth. “If our system does not get a strong enough diurnal rhythm, things go out of control,” says Ashby, who is now at the University of Canberra. “The system starts to get a bit noisy and noisy means that it just grows in its own irregular fashion.”

Yet more evidence that developmental biology is complicated.

404:

Really good info, thanks folks! Have also wondered what would happen to the infant's head which is made up of many floating bones that eventually fuse into a skull (overall appearance/proportions of human body). Ditto for how would the bones in the inner ears (sense of body position/movement), knee caps (protects ends of bent major weight-bearing and movement bones) and hyoid (speech) develop. The knee caps may not be a big deal in a no gravity environment, but the other mentioned bones?

Traditional pearl divers and 'sea gypsies' show some accommodation over the generations developmentally re: eyesight in deep, higher pressure environment. Not sure to what extent the reverse (accommodation to less pressure) would occur.

Superior Underwater Vision in a Human Population of Sea Gypsies

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982203002902

405:

That hypothesis looks implausible, at least on its own, because it does not fit with the epidemiological data, especially those from the tropics and circumpolar regions. I.e. Ian Flitcroft makes much more sense.

406:

I think you misread me - hard sf is great, but I said it was hard to find SF, in the mass of fantasy and military SF (which is mostly more fantasy).

I mean, for a few off-the-top-of-my-head examples, I really like Bujold, for example. But I don't see much in the way of younger authors in that vein, or Vinge (either one), etc. Or Zelazny. Or Brunner. Or I could easily start a list 100 or 200 authors long (including, of course, OGH), but I think you get the idea.

Much I'm missing is the damn sensawonder of the universe.

mark

407:

You're not the only one worried. I've been anti-military, well, since I was in my teens, and resisting the draft, and 'Nam.

Right now, with Trumpolini, my only hope are the ones who do not just view their Oath of Office (or service) as just a bunch of words.

And I'm hoping, let's see, titles for books: Slouching Towards Impeachment? Or the one that several co-workers like, A Tweet Too Far (the bunch the Sunday before last looks like they were - the entire media has turned, tired of hearing "WOLF!!!", and are responding to them by "Oh, that's interesting, as we were saying about Russia....")

mark

408:

You mean this?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22772022

The complex interactions of retinal, optical and environmental factors in myopia aetiology.

'Recent animal studies, backed by observational clinical studies, have revealed that the mechanisms of optically guided eye growth are influenced by the retinal image across a wide area of the retina and not solely the fovea.'

What the Nature article doesn't mention is the relationship between the eyes and environmental factors related to industrialization esp. in China such as much greater air pollution plus a shift to a western diet. (Obesity, high blood pressure, type II diabetes have also increased there and are also linked to eye/vision problems.)

As we're continually discovering: life is very complex so 'all of the above' may be correct (relevant).

Back to the mouse study (NASA Pups) ... would prefer lab mammals that spent most of their time moving and orienting themselves while in a vertical upright position because that's what humans do. Maybe use meerkats instead? Meerkats can also (like humans) reproduce any time of year, so another human-relevant aspect could be studied.

409:

Ideally it would be more like Soma, since the actual opiates thing turns out to be quite dangerous, e.g. in the USA: http://www.asam.org/docs/default-source/advocacy/opioid-addiction-disease-facts-figures.pdf

410:

Most military SF is as close to porn as fantasy, but let's skip that. Part of the problem is the way that 'the modern world' has been closing down possibilities, and people are looking for a way out. Hence the preference for fantasy, Trump, Brexit and other substitutes for reality.

Physics has been doing that, too, so an increasing proportion of 'hard' SF simply has to ignore known laws, and usually chooses economic or ecological ones as well as Uncle Albert - and is then essentially fantasy. While I don't actually believe in many of the physicists' current speculations (nor do I disbelieve them), there aren't any obvious boundaries that would lead to technologically interesting SF that doesn't break one of the known limits.

That doesn't apply to social and biological 'hard' SF, but few people understand the areas well enough to be both radically different and not drift off into something that is clearly (to an expert) nonsense. I don't claim to be an expert, but know enough to wince at most SF that tackles these areas. And, if you are doing that, why not go the whole way and be fantastic?

The IT area is interesting. We haven't hit the limits of what could be done, but (in many respects) we have hit the limits of where we can go following the current approaches. And that's in real life, as well as SF. The burgeoning 'AI' activities are not technically all that interesting - what they are is social and economic sweating dynamite. Now, if I were to be appointed Minister for Sky Blue IT in a newly independent Scotland, something might be done about this - but we're back to fantasy again :-)

411:

No, but that's relevant. I was referring to the fact that the Inuit referred to in that paper will NEVER have had a strong diurnal change for much of the year, but used to be not myopic, and that the earlier increase in myopia was associated with the spread of literacy, even in people who spent several hours outside in the topics as children (and without artificial light).

412:

Anti-military, or anti-militarism? :) I can certainly agree with the latter :)

Nojay @370 Having a combat general with twenty years experience of telling people to do what he says or else

Is not IMHO how militaries tend to work; the "do what I say or else" school of leadership is fundamentally limited, and doesn't scale well outside a tyranny. Certainly, different leadership styles are required as an officer progresses up the greasy pole. This definitely demands negotiation and diplomacy skills above about Captain, and definitely well before General rank... [1]

There's a recurring meme in US fiction that "the military is looking for soldiers who will just obey orders" (see "Universal Soldier" et al). That's not a surprise, because the bulk of documentary filming is based around initial training - it's easy to film, and lends itself to interviews with staff / some "who will make the grade" melodrama / physically demanding but artificially limited test activities [2]. It can also suffer from a focus on the "characters" who make for "good TV"[3]. However, it's not a true reflection of what happens in the military after initial training; it would be like imagining a profession based on an undergraduate degree, or corporate life based on the induction course.

It's rather more difficult to document militaries doing their boring peacetime training; doubly so for militaries doing their job on operations. Molly Dineen did a better-than-average British documentary dealing with a Guards unit on rural operations in Northern Ireland - "In the Company of Men", might be available on Youtube; and Audrey Gillan did some excellent written reportage as an embedded journalist for The Guardian back in 2003/4 (it was fascinating seeing her interviews of soldiers that I knew, involved around Al-Amarah and CIMIC House).

The British system has some weaknesses at the unit level - there's a culture of "what the boss says, goes" which is fine when the boss is competent, but bad when they're a muppet. I can't really comment on the US system, but my understanding is that the desire to "measure and compare" has led to a more zero-defect mentality (there's an excellent if dated critique out there by a Colonel Donald Vandergriff) although the US Armed Forces are incredibly impressive in their ability to actually learn, and then roll out the results of that learning.

[1] One irritant is the inevitable focus on bayonet training, as it's perhaps a couple of hours in a three month course, but an absolute magnet to the aspiring Eisenstein.

[2] That's not to say militaries are any better than other corporate organisations; certainly, there are some cultural issues in the British Army (anti-intellectualism, for a start) so while there are ruthless back-stabbing self-serving careerists and all-round sh1ts [4], I would suggest that there are slightly fewer than in any environment where there are salary bonus payments to be had. The ultimate insult for an officer in most teeth units, is "they're no good with the soldiers".

[3] There was a recent documentary on officer training at RMAS Sandhurst; it reassuringly appeared to burst several caricatures (e.g. the Army doesn't care what school you went to, and you don't need a private income to join the Household Division), but couldn't resist the slightly unfit but plummy-voiced son-of-the-regiment. "Sandhurst 2012 doc" might find you it on a search engine. Watch the first few minutes, and ask yourself whether the implicit message is "do what I say or else"...

[4] There's another saying that "all the best officers leave at the rank of Captain"...

[5] If you read this far, here is the work of a comedy genius (aka Belushi) when describing a leadership short course at Sandhurst...

413:

Damn, got the order of my footnotes muddled. Sorry. You'll figure it out :)

414:

“Because The Martian was such a success, maybe someone will finally write an SF story that seriously discusses having and raising a child on a space station without gravity.”

A PG-13 SF movie that came out in February called “The Space Between Us” deals with this very issue of being born in low gravity and the consequences. A mission to colonize Mars in fact. An astronaut discovers she is pregnant and after landing she dies from complications while giving birth to the first human born on Mars. Her son, Gardener, survives and grows up on Mars. At age 16 Gardener wants to visit Earth, but there is a complication, he is physically adapted for Mars gravity but not Earth gravity.

About the movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Between_Us_(film)

The trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x73-573aWfs

415:

Thanks - I'll watch it when it shows up on Netflix.

416:

''the "do what I say or else" school of leadership is fundamentally limited, and doesn't scale well outside a tyranny.''

Which doesn't mean that it isn't used, especially in peacetime. While I accept that most peacetime militaries are somewhat better than commercial hierarchical bureaucracies, they do seem to have many of the same failure modes. However, MY point was that a significant proportion of senior military officers * who have been involved in military action * realise that force is a bloody bad way to solve political problems, as often as not causes more harm than it prevents, and are rather better pragmatic pacifists than the politicians who have never been in action. I accept whitroth's and Nojay's point that a rather larger proportion of peacetime soldiers are the converse :-(

417:

There's also an expectation among Western civilians that anyone in the military will automatically and unquestioningly obey a civilian, and that when a western government decides to employ its military in reaction to a problem this means they're okay with firing bullets.

This author (Lt-Gen Romeo Dallaire, Ret'd - CDN) is a notable exception. He's best known for his books about the Rwanda genocide (Shake Hands with the Devil) and child-soldiers (They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers). Plus, he's brought considerable attention to the problem of PTSD in the military.

Note: These books are based on very ugly and nightmare-inducing facts/events. Be prepared to get very upset.

418:

I think you missed the point of what he, and I, were saying. The world is a fucking hard place. Some of it the universe - as I mentioned about my late wife. Other of it is what people do to each other. The opiate is to dull the pain of the first; certainly, Marx was pushing people to do something about the second, at least in terms of making government something that helped most people, not just the rich.

Is that any clearer?

Let me add my line: the universe isn't fair. Fair is a human (or perhaps, given what we see of animals, is more widespread than that) idea, and only we can try to make things fair, or at least fairer.

mark

419:

I will note that the bloodthirstiest prime ministers the UK has had since Churchill[*] had zero military background — Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. (Gordon Brown inherited Blair's messes, and David Cameron had no idea about foreign policy and also inherited a badly run-down military machine. John Major was in Number 10 from 1991-97, and wasn't asked to do much aside from the UK's involvement in Yugoslavia along with everybody else.)

Prior to Thatcher you'd have to go back to the 1930s to find a non-soldier/sailor among the residents. Some were more militant than others, but I'm willing to give a 1950s PM dealing with decolonization wars more of a pass than Blair (no fucking clue, just wanted to leave his mark on the history books).

[*] Churchill, of course, rode along on the last great charge of a British cavalry force at Omdurman. And commanded a battalion on the western front during the Great War. Both voluntarily, and the latter at a time when he was old enough to know better: "bloodthirsty" is probably the right word to describe him and the only reason anyone remembers him fondly is because of who he stood up against in 1940.

420:

I think I've nodded in agreement with all of your posts on this particular subject...

However, MY point was that a significant proportion of senior military officers * who have been involved in military action * realise that force is a bloody bad way to solve political problems, as often as not causes more harm than it prevents, and are rather better pragmatic pacifists than the politicians who have never been in action.

Exactly - see Rupert Smith's "The Utility of Force", Frank Kitson's "Bunch of Five", Shan Hackett's "The Third World War".

Then look at the last generation of UK politicians who served - Denis Healey (Beachmaster at Anzio, and an MBE), Jim Callaghan (wartime RN), Ted Heath (Royal Artillery, MiD) William Whitelaw (Guards Armoured, and an MC) Francis Pym (Lancers, and an MC). There was even an Archbishop of Canterbury who saw hard action; Robert Runcie (Guards Armoured, and an MC).

AIUI we started no wars with them in charge (got dragged into a few, but to his credit Harold Wilson kept us well clear of Vietnam).

You could suggest that it was the generation of politicians who had not served, and whose parents had not served in wartime, who were the least conditioned against it. Margaret Thatcher's parents took in a German Jewish refugee in 1938, and she had a Cabinet full of war-service types; Major's father had served in an Uruguayan militia. Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, and Theresa May have no such immediate connection.

I accept whitroth's and Nojay's point that a rather larger proportion of peacetime soldiers are the converse :-(

Ahhh, but here's the question. After fifteen years of rather active war (Iraq and Afghanistan), where will you find any peacetime soldiers in the US Army? When you consider Northern Ireland and the Balkans before that, where will you find a British Regular soldier who is peacetime-only?

In fact, look around the Territorial Army as was, Army Reserve as it is now. Next Remembrance Sunday, go to your local War Memorial, and look for the Reservists. Count how many of the NCOs now wear operational medals (it was few in my era, nearly all of them now).

I still maintain that "Do as I say or else" is a failure mode, far less common in actuality than in myth, and a signature of the incompetent and insecure leader. It has (too) slowly been ironed out of the Initial Training Group, and will still exist among a few; it will occasionally be found among the plausible but insecure in the Army at large.

421:

My point is that, as a source of comfort, religion is more dangerous than drugs or smoking or base jumping or juggling chainsaws because those activities only carry individual risk whereas the promotion of the religious mindset, the normalisation of faith-based thinking, is an existential threat to the survival of the human race and life on Earth.

422:

Faith-based thinking is the norm. It's only comparatively recently that rational thinking has become at all widespread, and "widespread" is also a comparative term; it is still a minority habit even among so-called "educated" societies. I believe this is a more or less inevitable consequence of the human brain being wired to be good enough at heuristic guessing to provide a simulation of intelligence which suffices to remove the selective pressure for improvement.

423:

bloodthirstiest prime ministers the UK has had ... Margaret Thatcher

While I'm not a fan of hers, I should point out that "bloodthirsty" is hardly her thing. What wars did she commit the UK to?

The Falklands War wasn't of her choosing; and having a Jewish refugee in the house in 1938 might well have coloured her judgement in terms of "what to do when a Fascist junta invades British territory".

Consider Northern Ireland. Right up until the Grand Hotel in Brighton was bombed by the IRA in 1984, the effort was to portray PIRA / INLA as criminals and deal with them through the legal system and prison. If you look at Mark Urban's excellent analysis "Big Boys' Rules", the rate at which terrorists were killed rather than arrested rose sufficiently to be a policy change - but only if they were carrying a gun or a bomb at the time (Gibraltar was an outlier, but no-one seriously denies that the three terrorists had a bomb and were planning to use it to commit mass-murder; they just didn't have it with them when they were shot). There was no "mowing the lawn" as done by the Israelis.

424:

....Actually, everyone in America is ON Opiates, and religion is on a downswing this decade.

....So far, I don't think this decade is considerably better than the last. (....Although the last was PFB)

425:

A situation not helped by how some of the "ostensibly hard SF" proves to actually be military SF with a veneer of stunt writing? There's one example (names omitted to protect the guilty ;-) ) that is on the verge of being about the 4th book I've given up completely on in 50 years since I taught myself to read.

426:

One of the best parts of KSR's Aurora is the bit where the generation ship colonists finally set down on their destination planet and discover the middle distance--a concept they had to look up in the ship's archives. A popular thing to do becomes staring at the horizon, which is neither close, nor at the infinity point the way the stars outside the ship are.

427:

While I'm not a fan of hers, I should point out that "bloodthirsty" is hardly her thing. What wars did she commit the UK to?

Miners Strike. Poll tax riotviolently-suppressed demonstration. Falklands War.

She never backed down from a perceived provocation, escalating every time. The Falklands was botched from the start, at a diplomatic level (I assume you're familiar with the background that came out under the 30 year rule, to do with the Thatcher government first offering the Falklands to Argentina then back-pedaling when the islanders wanted nothing to do with it, leading the Junta to assume treacherous dealing and react?), and in the case of the miners strike she deliberately set up a confrontation that led to mass hardship and violence up to and including police cavalry charges against strikers.

428:

Grrk. The Falkland's offer is new to me. But, purely from public sources, I knew that they were testing the waters in South Georgia, and knew the invasion was imminent a fortnight beforehand. Also, it came out afterwards that the MP for Finchley was told where they were collecting their naval task force six weeks ahead of the invasion.

You are unfair on Churchill. He was pretty ruthless, yes, and gave genuinely bloodthirsty shits like Harris and those that suppressed the Mau Mau uprising a free hand, but he was far more liberal than any prime minister we have had since Callaghan. Inter alia, he accepted the welfare state and was a prime mover in founding the ECHJ. He would NOT have supported May!

429:

There is a hell of a difference between fighting a war between armies, and enforcing one country's political and economic control on an unwilling one that is incapable of defending itself conventionally. Not to say that some of the groups in those countries are truly barbaric, though nothing like as many as this country designates as terrorists. Unlike conventional war, such political suppression (especially against really nasty opponents) tends to brutalise those doing the suppression.

430:

Arising out of the Thatcher debate, something I should be interested in is a serious comparison by a political historian of the treatment of political dissent in the UK in World War II and today. The laws, the policing, the sentencing, the (government) surveillance etc. I don't know any personally, so can't ask one for any pointers.

431:

Faith-based thinking is the norm.

I'm not arguing that it isn't the norm, I'm arguing that the human race has reached a point of risk (nuclear weapons, global warming, antibiotic resistant disease, AI, genetic engineering...) where it continuing to be the norm it is an existential risk. There is a global warming denier as president of the USA who is rolling back climate-change mitigation, the vice-president is a fruitcake who thinks the Apocalypse is a desirable event.

good enough at heuristic guessing to provide a simulation of intelligence

is fine for people who don't have the capacity to destroy most life on Earth, especially human, through wrong decisions.

432:

Stalin was also pretty fond of welfare states, and he killed so many of his own people that the Soviets made a big point of "de-Stalinizing" their government after he died. A leader's position on the economic spectrum does not at all correlate with their respect for human life.

433:

John Major was in Number 10 from 1991-97, and wasn't asked to do much

Gulf War 1 wasn't much?

434:

there was a previous falklands crisis in the 1970s.. that was solved by the Argentinians getting a phone call.. something along these lines ' I hear you have a task force operating near Our Falkland islands, coincidentally we have a submarine in the same area! Nice aircraft carrier you have, shame if something were to happen to it....' and what do you know. the Argentinians decided that port was a much better place to be.

thatcher was up for nuking Buenos ares

435:

However, a more serious confrontation occurred in 1977 after the Argentine Navy cut off the fuel supply to Port Stanley Airport and stated they would no longer fly the Red Ensign in Falklands waters. (Traditionally ships in a foreign country's waters would fly the country's maritime flag as a courtesy.) The British Government suspected Argentina would attempt another expedition in the manner of its Southern Thule operation. James Callaghan, the British Prime Minister ordered the dispatch of a nuclear submarine, HMS Dreadnought and the frigates Alacrity and Phoebe to the South Atlantic, with rules of engagement set in the event of a clash with the Argentine navy. The British even considered setting up an exclusion zone around the islands, but this was rejected in case it escalated matters. These events were not made public until Parliamentary debates in 1982 during the Falklands War

436:

a serious comparison by a political historian of the treatment of political dissent in the UK in World War II and today

It depends on what you mean by "political dissent": does it include civil rights issues? For example consider the role of the Obscene Publications Act and the BBFC (and the OPA's predecessors) in suppressing LGBTQ+ voices right up until very recent times: is being a feminist or a queer activist "political dissent" in the same way as being a spokesperson for Sinn Fein in the 1980s was, or a spokesman for the British Union of Fascists in 1940?

We still have political censorship, and lots of it — but in peacetime and in times of diverse media the permissible limits are deliberately obscured (to deter transgression) and it is usually self-enforcing via the manufacture of consent in the major media and the amplification of those consenting voices via social media (think twitter and facebook trollbots and their tendency to shout down anyone who doesn't support the consensus view of reality).

437:

I forgot GW1. However, Major didn't exactly start it — he just got dragged along in the undertow of the US response to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait.

438:

That's why it needs a serious analysis by a political historian, not a glib comparison (even by someone with no axe to grind). Basically, I know enough to know that I am out of my depth.

439:

Really? Stalin's approach to welfare was like Labour's in the 1960s, only even worse. Don't confuse claims with reality, nor confuse the economic and humanitarian spectrums, or believe the neo-conservative polemic. Your point is correct in principle (vide the Terror in France), but Churchill supported what was a genuine attempt at respecting the UK population's quality of life, irrespective of their situation or who they supported politically. The same cannot be said of Stalin or even Lenin. The UK welfare system went downhill later, but Churchill was long gone by then.

440:

Interesting. I missed that. That is what I and others said should be done following the occupation of South Georgia and, until things got out of hand, assumed HAD been done. Someone told me "all our submarines are fully committed", but I responded that there was no need for them to be there more than intermittently provided that Argentina was told that they would be present.

441:

Also, later parts of The Expanse series mention Belter women (who spend large parts of their lives in zero-G) going to the agri-dome settlement on Ganymede or the port city of Ceres when they become pregnant.

As far as I can tell the only liberty taken with human tech there is the high-efficiency fusion drive that makes settlement on the solar system possible. It's the alien tech in the setting that's weird. Although I'm no scientist and am quite prepared to be told I'm wrong.

442:

By the time 1982 came round the Junta in Argentina were getting desperate and they needed a Short Victorious War to distract their population from the shitty economic situation they were in, never mind the Disappearances, and attempting to liberate the Malvinas from British domination was an easy sell. They had a good idea they would lose if Britain actually exerted itself militarily to respond to their invasion but they rolled the dice because the situation at home was becoming untenable for them. The tripwire British military presence already on the islands was no deterrent so it's doubtful that even having a nuclear sub in the area would have prevented the initial invasion this time round.

443:

"Not backing down" is not the same as "bloodthirsty" or "escalating"; at most, she responded with an equivalent and appropriate level of force. There were only three civilian deaths in the entire Falklands War; IIRC, only one death in the Miners' Strike. Rather better figures than Blair, Cameron, or May.

Miners Strike. Poll tax riot / violently-suppressed demonstration. Falklands War. She never backed down from a perceived provocation, escalating every time

Sorry, I'd say she's clear on the Falklands War. The only escalation that mattered came with sailing a warship into Grytviken and landing armed troops. In the Falklands, it came once the Argentinian special forces did a silent night attack on Moody Brook Barracks (HE and WP employed, fortunately nobody was home). And landed on the island with armoured vehicles. And sent armed men into the radio station, ordering the broadcasters off with threats of force. That isn't "perceived provocations", by any stretch of the imagination.

While the Foreign Office may have screwed up negotiations, while they may have ignored all of the signals coming from the DA in Buenos Aires, all of the bloodthirstiness was coming out of the Junta - primarily from Admiral Anaya who had been planning the invasion for some time.

Here's an analysis by a serving Argentinian officer. No mention of "treacherous dealings", because this was largely irrelevant to Argentinian thinking. From their PoV, the Malvinas were part of Argentina, and the use of force to recover them was purely because they weren't getting their own way diplomatically... (interesting to also see the repeated claim that HMS Invincible was hit by Exocet, but that the RN somehow covered it up; bit of a touchstone for your conspiracy-minded Argentinian) www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA523209

As for any "escalation" caused by the sinking of the Belgrano, consider that her Captain considered it a reasonable act, and that his orders were to attack any RN vessels he found; that the RN knew this, courtesy of GCHQ; and that the Argentinians already had a sabotage team sat in Spain, waiting for a chance to sink RN vessels in Gibraltar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Algeciras

in the case of the miners strike she deliberately set up a confrontation that led to mass hardship and violence up to and including police cavalry charges against strikers.

Sorry, doesn't wash. The Police don't turn up with cavalry just because they want to start a fight - they do that kind of stuff as a response. Contrast the Scottish NUM - picketing was largely non-violent, and AIUI the Scottish police never put on riot gear. It wasn't the Police throwing bricks at buses carrying miners into work, it wasn't the Police dropping breeze blocks onto taxis and killing the driver, it wasn't the Police breaking into peoples' homes and beating them with baseball bats. "A heavy Police presence forced me to beat up a scab / throw rocks at their vehicles" isn't a very good justification.

It was Arthur Scargill doing the escalation in 1984/85, not Thatcher (we got a better idea of the kind of man he is with the recent court case over his residence in the Barbican). No national ballot for a national strike? Contrast Scargill with Mick McGahey or Jimmy Reid. Scargill was aiming for another 1972 or 1974 "hold the nation to ransom" strike, victory, and adulation; instead, he cocked it up and lost.

444:

Not quite - it was the landing of Argentinian military on Southern Thule that triggered Operation Journeyman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Journeyman

The response was known about before the 30-year stuff emerged from the Public Records Office, just not "well-known". Hard to hide a Task Force sailing south, even a small one... Anyway, the British desire to resolve the occupation diplomatically, and the desire not to use force, may have been the more significant "lesson" for Argentina.

445:

The undetectable stealth spaceships were a bit of a stretch (see http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.php ) and I'm also more than a bit dubious about the idea of massively increasing acceleration tolerance through the use of drugs too...

That said, The Expanse taxes both my ability and willingness to suspend disbelief an awful lot less than most space opera, it does at least give a nod in the vague direction of physics rather than ignoring it altogether...

446:

thatcher was up for nuking Buenos ares

Utter rubbish, and no serious commentator will back you up on that.

447:

"Sorry, I'd say she's clear on the Falklands War." Yer, whaa? She caused it, almost as much as Galtieri, by her combination of arrogance, incompetence and negligence. See #428 and #435. Look, if I (yes, ME), as Joe Public, knew all the invasion in time to take preventing action, she bloody well should have done so - but it came out later that she had made it clear that she didn't want any 'negative thinking' in regard to her policies. Vide the Poll Tax later, as well as some of her other catastrophic policies.

The Belgrano row was more of the same - I was waiting for an announcement that any Argentine military vessel more than 12 miles offshore would be deemed to be hostile if any British one felt endangered - if she had JUST done that, she would have covered us under international law, and the whole row would never have arisen. Oh, yes, she did that AFTER the Belgrano was sunk, but - fer chrissake! - she was justified in knowing less international law than me?

What I heard about using nuclear weapons is that it was mentioned in a planning paper, and was ruled out immediately (either in the paper or by saner minds). Now, THERE I will acquit her.

And, while Scargill was doing the escalation, Thatcher had very carefully set up the battlefield for the confrontation. Inter alia, when the Chief Constables initially refused to exceed their powers to suppress dissent, she both bribed them and did something behind the scenes - I don't know what, as it never came out, as far as I know. She also refused to do any serious negotiation, or even consider any support for the communities whose income would be removed, which meant that even the moderate miners reluctantly backed Scargill; Germany did both, which is why they resolved their comparable situation pretty well.

448:

There was some speculation that Argentina had a couple of nuclear weapons, something akin to the South African weapons programme and there was consideration given to a response if the junta was willing to use them on, say, the British flotilla. I believe the decision would be to nuke one of Argentina's military bases (probably a port) in response. Cities were not on the target list.

449:

She also refused to do any serious negotiation, or even consider any support for the communities whose income would be removed, which meant that even the moderate miners reluctantly backed Scargill;

There was no negotiation after a position paper was presented by the government that laid out the situation of Britain continuing to dig out deep-mined expensive coal and trying to sell it into markets being fed by cheap and heavily-mechanised surface-mined coal from elsewhere wasn't going to succeed even with heavy subsidies. All the easy-to-get coal in Britain had already been mined, what was left was difficult to access in terms of time, money and lives (deep coal mines are dangerous places). Scargill predictably went off as soon as the report was published and the results weren't pretty. The coal mines were doomed by reality, not by Thatcher.

Germany did both, which is why they resolved their comparable situation pretty well.

Germany is closing their last deep black-coal mine in the next couple of years but they've got billions of tonnes of lignite and brown coal close to the surface they can continue to dig up and burn for the next century and more. Britain doesn't have that sort of resource to hand.

450:

"The coal mines were doomed by reality, not by Thatcher." While that is true, she refused to do ANY serious negotiation, including into aspects such as providing graduated closedowns, training for other skills, arranging alternative employment, or community support. She wasn't even prepared to talk to Scargill unless he withdrew all threat of strikes, unconditionally and for the future. She just said "Shut up, peasants, and do what you are told." How much of that was her nature and how much a deliberate attempt to force a confrontation with Scargill, I don't know. We DO know that she wanted a winnable confrontation with a major union, had had to back down (i.e. compromise) at least once before, and was very unhappy about it.

451:

The report actually specified a staggered shutdown, investment and development of some areas such as Derby which still had coal reserves worth extracting, funding for retraining and inward investment in mining areas etc. Basically the writing was on the wall for coal in Britain no matter how much effort and money was pumped into it -- it's an extractive industry and eventually they decline and fail when there's nothing left worth extracting.

Coal fuelled the Industrial Revolution but that was two hundred years ago and all of the good coal was gone, what was left in places like Yorkshire was thin faulted seams of low-grade coal and shale with lots of overburden to cut, with the ever-present risk of gas and flooding. After the miners went back, thanks to Scargill's opposition to maintenance work being carried out during the strike a lot of the pits were flooded out or had roof collapses and couldn't be re-opened for even a few more years of operation.

That's ignoring the cost in lives and health coal mining caused, disasters that killed and sickness like blacklung that killed although more slowly. The NUM's pension scheme was one of the best-funded in the nation, in part because a lot of mineworkers never lived long enough to claim from it (my father did but he was an engineering fitter and didn't go underground that often. He also retired early when the pit he worked in, Cardowan, was slated for closure and the workforce downsized with generous financial packages).

452:

For the third time, the fact that the writing was on the wall is IRRELEVANT. It is what the miners were actually offered was nothing like enough to give them any cause for hope - outside a few places like Derby, they were faced with a destruction of their communities and a completely intransigent government. Unlike for the comparable closures in Germany.

453:

the fact that the writing was on the wall is IRRELEVANT.

There was no miracle solution that would have kept British miners employed cutting coal absent billions of pounds a year subsidies. The coal-mining communities were going to be trashed because their employment depended exclusively on an industry that was going extinct because the resource they extracted was exhausted. Pretending otherwise is IRRATIONAL. (I have a caps lock key too, see?) Hope is not a way to pay the rent.

In the end the Evull Tory Government did pay miners to sit around and do nothing with generous redundancy and early retirement packages but there was not going to be a coal mining industry left for their sons to get maimed and killed in for a paypacket because there would not be any viable coal to dig out of the ground.

As I recall, around the time of the strike British-mined coal cost about £80 a tonne at the minehead with productivity around 1.5-2 tonnes per man-shift. At the same time industry and the power stations could buy foreign-sourced coal for about £40-45 per tonne delivered to coaling ports. The imports were only prevented from taking the entire market by Government fiat (i.e Thatcher and co.) to support the British coal industry. Coal has gotten cheaper in real terms as the big surface coal mines in Australia and elsewhere have expanded and mechanised even more and nearly all deep mined coal operations around the world have shut down. Gas has taken the rest of the thermal electricity generation market.

454:

Nojay wrote: There was no negotiation after a position paper was presented by the government that laid out the situation of Britain continuing to dig out deep-mined expensive coal and trying to sell it into markets being fed by cheap and heavily-mechanised surface-mined coal from elsewhere...

Any idea where that coal from elsewhere was coming from? Perhaps the US, where the companies have been waging a "war on coal miners" since not long after WWII?

But then, they beyond loathed the UMWA and other unions, and when the means - mountaintop removal, etc - became available, they invested very heavily... with the result that the US coal industry employs about 10% of what it did 50 years ago.

One thing I don't know - was UK coal government-owned? If not, how did the gov't start shutting down the mines?

mark

455:

Excellent paper, this ... thanks very much for posting. And if you happen upon any similar review papers re: immune system development* please post. So, guess we should send up a few guinea pigs.

I've read a few papers re: maternal and offspring behavior and development that used rats or mice as test subjects. None have commented on what type/size molecule can or cannot travel through the placenta. (Think there'd be more than ample material for a PhD dissertation or two on this topic.)

  • Most of my family have allergies. All were born/raised/worked on farms surrounded by a pretty large number and variety of flora and fauna but on a different continent. (So the 'allergy-hygiene hypothesis' is clearly false in their situation.) During a few visits back to the old country, they had no allergy symptoms at all. When they returned back to their new home, allergies flared up again. Based on this, how can anyone not born on Earth survive more than a few minutes without suffering a serious allergic reaction (i.e., not being able to breathe). Then there's foodstuffs: as per recent findings/papers, most of our digestion is outsourced to various types of bacteria. Bacteria have pretty short life cycles, therefore subject to pretty high/fast mutation. What are the odds that bacteria in vastly different environments would mutate in the same direction?
456:

Your claim that the packages were generous could have, and probably did, come straight out of the Conservative press. It was bollocks, as far as their COMMUNITIES went (which included their families' futures, and their hope of any form of employment after retirement). In some communities, the total income dropped by 70% or more, which then caused most of the shopkeepers etc. to lose their jobs - and THEY got nothing. The retraining was similarly unacceptable. The miners were not the idiots that the Conservative press readers were, and realised the consequences of accepting her offer. Most of them didn't want to back Scargill, but couldn't see any alternative that wasn't worse.

At the time, I agreed that she had no option but to close the mines - and, for the FOURTH time, that is not the point. It was the way she went about it and, again at the time, it was clear that she was manipulating the NUM into a head-on clash so she could win a great victory over the evil miners and make the NUM into a horrible example for any union that might dare to defy her. Which she did.

457:

When did national governments include saving their prime industries as part of their mandates via tax concessions, tax exemptions with or without duties on rival/competitive foreign goods, etc.? (Not saying it's good, but it's been around a long long time.)

458:

Coal was nationalised by the Labour government after the war, under the National Coal Board. In the late 1940s once the troops had been demobbed (including my father who served in the Royal Navy as an artificer and later an engineering Warrant Officer) coal mining employed about a million people, nearly all living in tight-knit communities near the pit-heads.

By the time of the strike in the mid-80s there were maybe 80,000 coal miners left, producing about a half of the amount of coal per year that the post-war workforce produced thanks mainly to automation but the communities were still there, around pits that had often been producing for fifty years and more. At Cardowan where my father worked before he retired the galleries and tunnels to the coalface ran for miles and it could take workers half an hour on a man-riding train to get to the productive faces from the shaft bottom.

The coal being imported in the 1980s came from places like Poland where labour costs were lower and the mines were fresher. I don't think much of it came from the US. We import very little coal today, burning gas instead for heating and electricity thanks to renewables and the dawning realisation that coal is a filthy fuel to burn anywhere near where anyone lives such as Minneapolis, home to the Labadie power station complex.

459:

Decided to look up the UK definition of 'Prime Minister' in case its primary meaning was 'dictator' on your side of the pond. Nope .. but the search did lead me to Robert Walpole - Britain's first Prime Minister and probably Thatcher's role-model.

460:

Don't hold your breath. I have a friend who is a professor of immunology, and we had a very interesting conversation on this very topic about a year ago. When I said "Is it another of those areas where, if you think you understand it, you don't?" - he grinned and said "Yes". I got psychosomatic hay fever, suddenly, some 25 years back (for known reasons), which has gradually faded after the cause was removed. But few people can identify the triggers, and it is clear that there are a large number of factors involved, genetic, epigenetic, developmental and other.

461:

You might be surprised by how close the powers of a prime minister are to those of a dictator. USA presidential powers are feeble by comparison.

462:

Again, I suggest wibble (or at least, "speculation by those without clue"). It fails the credibility test - not least because with a nuke, the Junta would have been telling the Chileans where to get off...

Next question, given that the UK knew (courtesy of the extremely helpful French and M. Mitterand, who couldn't have done any more to assist) exactly what the operational state was of the Super Etendards, and how many air-launched Exocet had been supplied. How, exactly, would Argentina have delivered these nuclear weapons? Or hidden the fact that they were trained and equipped to do so?

Nothing I have seen or heard in the years since, from any credible source, suggests that this was ever a serious planning consideration when it came to Operation CORPORATE. The whole "Britain wanted to launch Polaris at Buenos Aires" claim is full-on tinfoil hat territory, right up there with the "HMS Invincible was sunk by Exocet and bomb, and the RN covered it up by replacing it with HMS Illustrious" theory beloved of your more fanatical type...

463:

Off the top of my head I can think of at least one delivery system for an Argentinian nuke to attack the fleet which would probably work, although it would be crude and risky. Such an attack was a consideration given that back then a number of states were rumoured to have active bomb development programs, mostly covert (Sweden, for example did some work on developing a nuke but abandoned the effort after a while and South Africa's covert program ran to completion as confirmed publicly after the weapons were dismantled and destroyed). The British response was supposed to be measured and proportionate if the scuttlebut was correct, nuking a military target rather than targetting a civilian population centre like Buenos Aires. There was no consideration to a first-strike option that I've heard of -- even the Black Buck attack only bombed the airfield at Port Stanley rather than Punto Aereas on the mainland.

464:

SFreader @366 said: Andy Weir's The Martian is considered hard SF (i.e., scientifically and technologically accurate) and sold tons!

This is a late comment, so ignore it if you like.

I've read close to 10k books over the past 50+ years, so forgive me if I express an opinion on what SF is.

The Martian is a fun romp. It is Science Fantasy. The only people who write actual Science Fiction are those who write Techno-thrillers, where they use existing tech in interesting ways(i.e., scientifically and technologically accurate). Even the work of Arthur C. Clarke was Science Fantasy.

The so called "Hard SF" is simply presenting the illusion of exlaining the "nuts and bolts". They are following the tradition of Verne, Wells, E.E. "Doc" Smith in describing fictional "nuts and bolts" to hang the story on.

Read the Mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson. Beautiful books, but pure Science Fantasy. Any Civil Engineer, or Navy Seabee can take the fictional "nuts and bolts" apart in minutes, but it does not detract from the romance of the story.

465:

whitroth @357 said:Of course, some of that's a vicious circle -they get less, they sell less, less is submitted.

This is a late comment, so ignore it if you like.

You really need to look at Indy publishing vs Legacy. Read the stuff that Dean Wesley Smith wrote, to get you started. At the top of his home page there are lists of article series you can read "Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing" will get you started.

  • deanwesleysmith dot com

Jump in the, water is fine. Check out the reports on Author Earnings to see how Indy is changing publishing.

  • authorearnings dot com

Remember, the money flows to the writer, so if someone offers to do everything for you, for just a few thousand dollars, run away. HA!

DIY e-books cost nothing to create. DIY paper books through CreateSpace cost a few dollars because you have to buy a physical copy, and do a Quality Check, to make sure nothing blew up in the process.

Basically: If you can use a wordprocessor, you can do the books DIY. I use Word, LibreOffice, GIMP, Inkscape, Blender, any tool that lets me layout the books, create the covers. I use the Draw part of LibreOffice to assemble the cover. It lets you create "layers" so it is easier to manipulate the different parts of the cover, text and image.

If the concept of using many different programs defeats you, then by all means stick with Legacy publishing.

When in doubt, Google phrases like:

  • How do I create a book for CreateSpace

  • How do I create an ebook for Kindle

  • How do I create a book cover

Google is your friend. Read what Google suggests, and build from there. Many things mentioned will be clearly wrong, others will be closer to what you are looking for. Commonsense is the rule.

466:

Hundreds of years. History of economics/ economic history needs to be much more widely known.

467:

Yes. From what I heard at the time, it was mentioned in a planning paper, probably to be discounted as totally insane even as a last resort; such papers sre supposed to consider all options, after all. The more amusing but less likely theory is that it was proposed as an option, caused a short period of gibbering, and the author was reassigned to plan the naval defence of Rutland.

468:

"Sorry, I'd say she's clear on the Falklands War." Yer, whaa? She caused it, almost as much as Galtieri, by her combination of arrogance, incompetence and negligence. See #428 and #435.

Claiming that "[Thatcher] caused it, almost as much as Galtieri"? Nice polemic, third-rate analysis.

In @428 you say that Thatcher knew where the invasion force was assembling "six weeks in advance". Impressive stuff, seeing that the invasion force only made ready a week before the invasion - and that other warning signs were only really emerging in March (four weeks before at most). I suggest faulty recall on that one.

Again, in @428 you say you knew that South Georgia was "testing the waters", but suspecting isn't enough - the first response was a measured "send HMS Endurance to investigate". Argentina promptly brought forward their plans by two months, in order to avoid the possibility of the arrival of SSN in the area. It's 6000nm from Gibraltar to the Falklands - even at twenty-five knots, that transit time of 240 hours is a day longer than the time between 24 March (Alfredo Astiz disembarks his troops to "protect the salvage workers") and D-Day for Operation ROSARIO on 2 April - any attempt to claim an SSN in the area fails the credibility test. IIRC, there was a handover due of Naval Party 8901 (the Royal Marines detachment based at Moody Brook). The outgoing group were held back, so as to double the RM presence in the area from 40-ish to 80-ish.

Charlie is accusing Thatcher of escalating; while you appear to be suggesting that she didn't escalate enough.

Meanwhile, @435 that suggests the 1977 confrontation was down to "the Argentine Navy cut off the fuel supply to Port Stanley Airport and stated they would no longer fly the Red Ensign in Falklands waters." (the wiki source appears to be "A Damn Close-Run Thing" by Russell Phillips - not apparently footnoted).

Whereas the PRO at Kew and the news articles from 2005 suggest that the primary cause for Operation JOURNEYMAN was the 1977 discovery that Argentina had established a military base on Southern Thule, and shortly afterwards that the Argentinian Navy was harrassing fishing vessels within the Falkland Islands' 200-mile fisheries limit. I note that the airport fuel supply was built, filled, and manned by Argentina in the first place...

Everyone notes the "nice carrier, shame if it sank" message allegedly sent by the deployment of an SSN in 1977, everyone forgets the message of "you landed a handful of military personnel on UK territory, so we sent a tiny Task Force that declared an exclusion zone but did nothing about the land forces or the base, then spent the next few years trying to resolve things using diplomacy"

In summary, they might have read the signs better; Lord Carrington certainly felt that he'd screwed up sufficiently to resign; but I'm unconvinced that your assignation of blame holds water.

470:

Some people (G.L. Foster, D.L. Royer, D.J.Lunt) finally did the (obvious in an abstract sense but looks like a lot of interesting work) very scary paper about GHG forcing plus the fact that Sun is warming over time on the main sequence. Used 5 CO2 proxies (including Ginkgo :-) (I don't know of any previous such paper; anyone know of one?) Future climate forcing potentially without precedent in the last 420 million years (pdf)(via) Here we show that the slow ∼50 Wm^2 increase in TSI over the last ∼420 million years (an increase of ∼9 Wm^2 of radiative forcing) was almost completely negated by a long-term decline in atmospheric CO2. ... Humanity’s fossil-fuel use, if unabated, risks taking us, by the middle of the twenty-first century, to values of CO2 not seen since the early Eocene (50 million years ago). If CO2 continues to rise further into the twenty-third century, then the associated large increase in radiative forcing, and how the Earth system would respond, would likely be without geological precedent in the last half a billion years.

471:

Not a credible source.

Firstly, the source for the claim about Thatcher's plans to strike Argentina is a book by Mitterrand's psychiatrist. Hearsay of hearsay. Secondly, the quote about how Thatcher was after the secret codes to "make the missiles deaf and blind"? Utter pish. No such codes, for obvious reasons. And if, as claimed, he handed them over, why were Atlantic Conveyor and Glamorgan both struck by Exocet after Sheffield?

Honestly, you'd have thought a newspaper might have run it past a technical adviser before breathlessly repeating a juicy claim...

As

472:

As we're past 300 comments, hopefully this isn't too off topic...

My good wife was driving home yesterday listening to Radio 4 when the afternoon drama came on and, as a Laundry fan, she was surprised and delighted to hear what sounded like a Laundry story. It featured government agents setting up protective wards on their smartphones, a shadowy government agency indoctrinating those who blunder into their occult domain and case files with labels like CERULEAN BLUE.

She was particularly surprised to find out that it was actually a drama written by Julian Simpson called 'Mythos':

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08kvnfg

I didn't / haven't had a chance to listen myself yet but just wondered if OGH was aware of this and how you feel about something hewing this close to your series?

473:

Obvious methods, presuming the AAF had access to basic dumb "physics packages":- 1) The A-4 Skyhawk was actually designed to drop small examples. 2) Canberra cruising at ~57kft would be pretty tricky to intercept with a Harrier + Sidewinder combination.

474:

The problem is the size of a Bucket of Instant Sunshine and range.

First-generation devices tend to be large and bulky -- a gun-type U235 bomb is going to weigh several tonnes minimum, ditto for a simple Pu-based implosion weapon -- see Little Boy and Fat Man for worked examples. It takes a lot of development and testing to get a workable "small ball" free-fall nuke that could be fitted into a strike-fighter's carrying capacity, something like the British W87 or similar. It's unlikely that Argentina could build such a device in a hurry without it becoming common knowledge.

The range of an aircraft capable of carrying such a possible weapon is limited -- the A-4 Skyhawks flying over the Falklands only had a few minutes endurance and then they had to turn back to get home before they ran out of fuel. They had no in-flight refuelling capability and no tankers. The British fleet stayed well to the east of the islands for that reason. A one-way suicide attack might have worked but it would need exact information about the fleet's location before it set off since it couldn't be aborted after a certain point.

My thinking about a nuclear attack on the fleet involves using one of Argentina's old but effective diesel subs to deliver a mine attached to the deck into the fleet's location, assuming it could be located. The mine would be released with a timer, staying well below the surface for an hour or so before floating to the surface and then detonating. This would give the sub a chance to escape.

475:

You are misrepresenting again. I said that it was reported that she had been told that it was being collected 6 weeks ahead; that may have been mistaken, as may my memory of the time period. Anyway, if my analysis is third-rate, hers, yours and that paper's cannot be better than fifth-rate. Those were NOT the only signs, I knew that the invasion was imminent a fortnight ahead, and was not at all surprised when it happened. I wasn't the only one, either.

And it's not just a matter of escalation - Thatcher was warned that proposing to withdraw the Endurance, on top of the known Foreign Office scheme to get rid of the islands, would encourage an Argentine invasion, and ignored such 'negative thinking'. Yes, that's in 1981.

476:

"Honestly, you'd have thought a newspaper might have run it past a technical adviser before breathlessly repeating a juicy claim..."

Good God, why? The UK government hasn't done that for years. The Dodgy Dossier, the claims that Iran was arming ISIS, etc.

477:

Having checked up, the South Georgia incident that was so clearly testing the waters was in December 1981, which showed that the Endurance 'negative thinkers' were right, and it is at THAT point that I would have taken preventative action, mainly diplomatic, but also sabre-rattling. The events there from March 21st onwards made it very clear that an invasion of the Falklands would happen shortly; I can't find references to the event that told me it was imminent.

478:

You're right about your possible method; I'd suggest that I'm also not wrong given that there are at least 3 nations that it's a pretty commonly believed have air delivered physics packages and have never built a generation 1 weapon.

The Skyhawk delivery is dodgy yes, because the pilot has to find the fleet, drop the bomb, escape the blast radius, and then find the Falklands and either land at Port Stanley (not possible after Black Buck 1) or eject and land somewhere he could be picked up from.

479:

Remember that Argentina had bought a pair of Type 42 Destroyers (optimised for anti-aircraft warfare) and was well aware of the abilities of the Sea Dart missile system.

Remember also that one Canberra was shot down by Harrier/Sidewinder; but another was shot down by HMS Exeter or HMS Cardiff (some dispute there), and that HMS Exeter also shot down a LearJet trying for some higher-altitude photo recce.

Put yourself within twenty miles of the Task Force, even if you've avoided the AAW picket, and it's "hello Mr. Sea Dart" time - the most successful SAM of the Falklands, and one that was built against a specification of "30,000 yards range and 65k feet altitude targets". Throw in the Sea Wolf-equipped ships in the fleet...

480:

The problem with submarine deployment was that of the four Argentinian submarines, only two were seaworthy; and in the Royal Navy, they were going up against NATO's subject-matter experts on the hunting and killing of submarines.

The GUPPY-class ARA Santa Fe got depth charged and shot up during Operation PARAQUET (the retaking of South Georgia on 25 April).

The Type-209 ARA San Luis spent the whole post-invasion period trying to get a shot off at an RN ship; and the Royal Navy spent the whole war (and presumably the lives of several whales, some wrecks, and that funny noise that spilled my pint, yes you) dropping depth charges and ASW torpedoes on things that they thought were a submarine.

Sailing a nuclear mine-layer into Falkland Sound and then San Carlos? I wouldn't sell that crew any life insurance policy... And even that is still better than trying to find and attack the Carrier Group, while avoiding the SSN that were also trying to hunt down any SSK in transit. I could make some snippy comment about the likelihood of the nuke going off, as it was discovered that the torpedo maintainers had rewired them incorrectly, so that all of the torpedos that the ARA San Luis fired, failed (mentioned in the Wikipedia article).

481:

Firstly, hindsight is 20/20 vision (6/6, seeing as we're European). Just because you called the invasion two weeks beforehand, doesn't mean that UK Govt should have; you might be a truly gifted foreign policy analyst, or you might just have got lucky...

Secondly, the decision to retake the Falklands was apparently only taken by the Junta in December 1981 (with a target date of May 15), so I suspect a correlation / causation issue here. Things only really got worrisome in March, and the main focus was on Davidoff's party in South Georgia - but he'd had the scrap contract with Salvesen's since the 1970s, although he just kept breaking the rules and causing protests. The Junta advanced the timetable because of the UK reaction to their inclusion of troops with Davidoff's party - we had escalated, but not quickly or severely enough.

Wikipedia makes heavy use of Freedman and Gamba's "Senales de Guerra". While it's not on Google Books, Freedman went on to publish an "Official History", including Volume 1 on the origins of the war.

All previous actions by Argentina over thirty years had involved posturing, the raising of flags, and the use of very small parties of troops. All previous actions had been resolved diplomatically (although the Argentinian base on Southern Thule was still there). HMS Endurance was in-theatre, as was a reinforced party of RM, who along with the FIDF should have been able to cope with any of the previous scales of troops involved.

Allegedly, HMS Superb was ordered south on 28 March. Whether true or not, it rather makes my earlier point - that the UK government could have read the alarm bells correctly, but had no chance of providing an effective deterrent unless it reacted in mid-March or earlier. Unfortunately, that's only a week after the sudden appearance of C-130 at Port Stanley Airport, where it is met by an RM party, and assessed by the consulted RAF engineers to be a genuine emergency diversion (Freedman p.150). Overflights were not uncommon, and had been going on for years - they were seen as the Argentinians maintaining their claims of sovereignty. Their rate may have increased, but is that grounds for escalation?

You blame Thatcher for a war that someone else started; do you blame Chamberlain for WW2?

482:

Of course, it's quite impossible that HMG was arrogant, incompetent and negligent and, in the case of the FCO, idle and self-centred as well. As I say, I was not the only person who saw the writing on the wall in December 1981 - dammit, it was even mentioned in the House of Commons but it was ignored. And, OF COURSE, I would have (and assumed that HMG did) order action on March 19th if my (mainly diplomatic) actions of December had failed - it's normal for scrap metal merchants to summon navy vessels as taxis? - fer chrissake!

And Thatcher WAS responsible - though you seem remarkable keen on passing bucks downwards - because she appointed an upper class twit to the FCO who didn't have a clue what the REAL responsibility of a Foreign Secretary was (*), and a docile nonentity to the MOD because she intended to run that herself.

(*) Ensuring that the mandarins at the FCO (a) got off their arses at least one day a week and (b) didn't put their self-interest before that of the country.

"You blame Thatcher for a war that someone else started; do you blame Chamberlain for WW2?"

Now you're being an arsehole; Chamberlain did the best he could, and is unjustly damned for it. No, I blame Baldwin of the British contingent, obviously. Churchill was right.

483:

The target for a submarine carrying a nuclear mine would be the fleet including the two "through deck cruisers" standing off to the north-east of the Malvinas, not the close-in ships which were being successfully attacked by air. That's open deep water, not the most promising area for a diesel sub to operate in but if needs must...

I've heard it said the British Navy efforts to get the San Luis in brown water close to the islands expended most of the fleet's stock of anti-submarine weaponry and they never even scratched the paint. That doesn't say much for them being subject-matter experts other than proving sub-hunting is very very difficult (not something surface ship drivers like to admit). The British SSN on-station would have a lot of water to cover to carry out anti-sub operations -- if I'd been in charge of the mine-laying operation I'd probably have the northern naval group based around the surviving carrier sortie from port to provide a distraction while the San Luis went off to put the mine in place.

There's a lot of stuff that makes this plan unworkable -- frex the planners would need very accurate and up-to-date info on exactly where the fleet was stationed with particular attention to the carriers, the primary target for such an attack. A sea-surface nuke is a lot less effective than a low-level airburst so it would have to be positioned really well to do significant damage to warships even within a few kilometres of splash zero. Over the horizon it would have little effect, and there was a lot of water out there for the fleet to hide in.

484:

Now you're being an arsehole; Chamberlain did the best he could, and is unjustly damned for it. No, I blame Baldwin of the British contingent, obviously. Churchill was right. Well ISTR hearing that Chamberlain made his "I have...our time" speech at Croydon, then was driven back to No 10, and called an emergency Cabinet which went something like this:- "Well gentlemen, I think I've bought us a year.

I need to have your plans for re-arming and emergency plans for putting the nation on a war footing at Cabinet next Tuesday."

Does that sound like something you've heard too?

486:

Have read Robinson's Mars series as well as some techno-thrillers. The nuts & bolts in 'hard SF' is important IMO because it defines the technological (extended arm's) reach of that society. How the characters work with and around those abilities and constraints is central to the story. Probably why Asimov is still a good read.

I'm not saying that the tech described has to be already proven in our time/world, but that the tech/science should be theoretically sound.

487:

Leaving eastern European countries to feel that they had been betrayed. No one in the British gov't noticed that Germany had been increasing its military since 1918? (Carl von Ossietzky, the guy who blew the whistle about this in 1931 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935 for making this public.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_re-armament

So the UK could not claim ignorance about Germany's military re-armament back then. Maybe the Falklands was a replay of determined wilful ignorance on the part of Britain.

488:

"Determined Wilful Ignorance: British policy for over a hundred years, and now also available in America!"

489:

Oh, yes, but Chamberlain was in an untenable position. If Britain had declared war in 1938, we would have lost; even in 1939, it was a damn close-run thing, and the UK came within a gnat's whisker of being conquered twice within the first year. Both times, we were saved only by the enemy making the wrong decision.

490:

Hadn't known about Ossietzky before reading up on German re-armament, nor about that govt's overt antipathy toward journalists that predated Hitler's march on Germany's neighbors. (Hmmm ... Upon rethinking the past 4 years of what's been going on in the US, conclusion is that Clio has a limited imagination.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Ossietzky#1935_Nobel_Peace_Prize

491:

Indy publishing vs. "traditional". um, thanks, no. I mentioned that the first novel's been sitting with an agent since early Dec, and I'll wait. The most important part is that in the cover letter, I was being REAALLLLY circumspect about my co-author... since that's my late wife. And in my personal life, NOTHING is as important as her finally being a published author, in a way she, and the family and friends would recognize as the real thing.

If I can't get one of the big five to take it, I'm willing to go down to small presses... that have authors that have won awards (y'know, like the Hugo) - NOT lower.

For another, the smallest advertising and distribution any major publisher would give it is orders of magnitude more than any vanity press book.

And it's a damn good yarn, as they used to say.

mark

492:

Quite. Both Lawrence Durrell and Keith Laumer said they didn't have to exaggerate much (Antrobus and Retief, for those who don't know).

493:

Of course, it's quite impossible that HMG was arrogant, incompetent and negligent and, in the case of the FCO, idle and self-centred as well.

No, perfectly possible - and just as possible that both were staffed by flawlessly informed, active, and engaged staff. The truth obviously lies somewhere in between.

As I say, I was not the only person who saw the writing on the wall in December 1981 - dammit, it was even mentioned in the House of Commons but it was ignored. And, OF COURSE, I would have (and assumed that HMG did) order action on March 19th if my (mainly diplomatic) actions of December had failed - it's normal for scrap metal merchants to summon navy vessels as taxis? - fer chrissake!

Calling the ARA Bahia Buen Suceso a "navy vessel" is a stretch. It was a thirty-year-old auxiliary freighter, that had regularly travelled between Argentina and Port Stanley carrying cargo and tourists; and was chartered by Constantino Davidoff to travel to South Georgia. Where it got interesting was when the platoon of Argentinian Marines joined the expedition, to be noticed on 19th March.

I'm also truly impressed by your foresight - because the Argentinian Foreign Minister claimed that even he didn't know about the plans during January 1982. I can excuse some cognitive bias among the FO types, because "yet another flag-waving provocation appeared to be happening on South Georgia" is of concern to HM Forces in the area, but hardly grounds to scramble a Task Force. I wouldn't like to be the SSN who tried to exercise max speed for well over a week (over 6000nm, remember?) so if you consider that that HMS Spartan and HMS Splendid took until 11th April to reach the Falklands; then it was probably too late from the 19th March, whatever the UK did.

And Thatcher WAS responsible - though you seem remarkable keen on passing bucks downwards - because she appointed an upper class twit to the FCO who didn't have a clue what the REAL responsibility of a Foreign Secretary was (*), and a docile nonentity to the MOD because she intended to run that herself.

Describing Lord Carrington as an "upper class twit" says far more about you than about him. Wartime MC in the Guards Armoured, Privy Councillor, High Commissioner to Australia, diplomat in Lancaster House talks, Foreign Secretary, and then Secretary-General of NATO. Lead diplomat in attempts to broker peace in FRY. The man who resigned on principle because he felt responsible for the FO not avoiding war. Thatcher's description of him? "Peter had great panache and the ability to identify immediately the main points in any argument; and he could express himself in pungent terms. We had disagreements, but there were never any hard feelings."

Now you're being an arsehole; Chamberlain did the best he could, and is unjustly damned for it.

And that is exactly the point I'm making - except I'm making it about Thatcher. She was in the hot seat when the Junta surprised even their own Foreign Minister by deciding to invade. She inherited the previous Government's inactivity policy over Southern Thule. Her budget-driven proposal to decommission HMS Endurance may have sent the wrong signal, but there Wasn't. Any. Money. Serious recession going on, remember?

Admiral Anaya had apparently already decided that the British wouldn't fight - he was one of those "blood and honour" nationalists who apparently decided (after a tour as the Defence Attache in London in the late 1960s) that the British were too decadent to take a military response seriously. The Argentinian invasion was done "off the cuff" and executed nearly two months early, precisely to avoid any British reinforcement - and yet you believe that in a race to get forces in theatre, the UK was going to win a race where the other side had a built-in two-week headstart.

No, I blame Baldwin of the British contingent, obviously. Churchill was right.

That would be the Stanley Baldwin who started the rearmament plan in 1935? Good scapegoat.

494:

UK came within a gnat's whisker of being conquered twice within the first year.

Assuming that you're talking about Operation SEALION, how exactly did it have even the remotest chance of success? Because the professional opinion of everyone involved (including the Germans) was that it would have been a quick way to lose 50,000 German soldiers...

495:

''Calling the ARA Bahia Buen Suceso a "navy vessel" is a stretch.''

I was not.

"I'm also truly impressed by your foresight"

Fine. I am not. It was one of the more obvious predictions.

"..., but hardly grounds to scramble a Task Force."

That is not what I said.

"That would be the Stanley Baldwin who started the rearmament plan in 1935? Good scapegoat."

That wasn't his first term. Too little, too late.

And, on another post:

"Assuming that you're talking about Operation SEALION,"

I wasn't.

496:

Heh.

Operation Sealion came up regularly on soc.history.what-if — the usenet newsgroup for counterfactuals — in the 1990s and 2000s; in fact, it was one of the staple chew-toys, along with "what if the South had won the civil war". And about as plausible. So implausible in fact that it got its own FAQ, explaining why Sealion was a joke.(Original author is dead, alas.)

497:

SFreader @486 said: I'm not saying that the tech described has to be already proven in our time/world, but that the tech/science should be theoretically sound.

Like I said, the Mars series is a beautiful story but physical laws are violated with things like the robotic construction machines that wander all over Mars. They are fun "magical" devices rather than anything that could be physically built in the future, no matter how advanced the technology. They simply provide a fun set of "nuts and bolts" to hang the story on.

The same happens in many of the Stephen Baxter stories as well where he has "magical" construction robots on asteroids building structures.

As a kid in high school I read all the classic SF. I chose to become a Civil Engineer because of The Mysterious Island by Verne. As the reality at University, and actual Practice at the Highway Department, revealed the "magical" elements of Verne, Wells, Smith, SF in general, I did not fall out of love with SF, I merely embraced the concept that I would give the author one "magical" set of "nuts and bolts" to hang the story on and simply enjoy.

The problem I have is when people talk about "Hard SF" without realizing that it is really Science Fantasy, with fun "magical" bits added. Too many Space Cadets embrace those fun "magical" bits as if they were actual physical reality. I've tried in the past to argue with people pushing concepts like "Mundane Reality" because they do not realize that the "Mundane" parts they think are real, are simply "magical" with no basis in reality.

I forget which story it was but there was a Starship that ran into a problem in some solar system, and they were trying to solve it. One guy is pushing bizarre ideas at the Captain, trying to explain what he thinks is happening, and the Captain says, "Don't give me that SciFi BS. This is the real world we have to deal with, not your crazy stories."

I always love that dichotomy where the engineer is a SciFi fan, in a Starship, yet SciFi is still dismissed as BS.

498:

Right. But that's not what I was talking about, which were scenarios that were causing serious worry to Churchill et al. at the time. Yes, they would have required the Germans to get their act together, and accept pretty horrific losses, but that's what strategists have to allow for. Just as, if the Argentines had got their act together, the Falklands would have been a LOT bloodier and not obviously a British victory.

499:

whitroth @491 said: And in my personal life, NOTHING is as important as her finally being a published author, in a way she, and the family and friends would recognize as the real thing.

Let us know when the book is available. I'll be happy to buy a copy.

500:

It does, however, conjure up the vast disparity between WWII - Falklands (80's) - and late 2010 tech in a nutshell (which is kinda neat, we see what you did there):

Less adequately considered by the Kriegsmarine was how to capture an intact port. The chosen port was Dover. The operational plan was to sail the barges in and capture it. This was the detailed plan. The defences of Dover included a considerable amount of equipment "Surplus to establishment" (courtesy of HMS Sabre, which had passed on abandoned equipment from Dunkirk). This equipment included:

3 Boys Anti-Tank Rifles 19 Bren Guns 4 Mortars 3 21" Torpedo Tubes 8 6" Guns 2 12-pounder Guns 2 14" Guns, called Winnie and Pooh.

Which, by modern standards is akin to ISIS levels of "tooled up". This is, remember, defending one of the major ports of the British Empire. sad trombone sound

~

Anyhow, since Mr Arnold has failed in his fox quest, I'll spoil it: someone has been attempting to resurrect the Cicada 3301 puzzle in 2017 and has produced an oddly apocalyptic video, along with incumbent imagery (as described). It's not them, but there's a weird synergy coming from Brazil etc.

p.s.

Anyone noticed South America and so on? Spooky Dooky.

501:

by modern standards is akin to ISIS levels of "tooled up"

Not quite — ISIS don't have anything on the order of 14" naval guns or torpedoes (guided or otherwise) in terms of range—but in terms of destructive power? Yes. 1940s long range gunnery was rather ineffective, due to difficulty in identifying targets and bringing fire to bear on them, and soaked up inordinate numbers of troops to no good effect.

502:

Anyhow, to tie this altogether, from WWII to Religious Emails via the G_D Zone of the brain, how delightful: Lichtsprechgerät Christos Military and Intelligence Corner, blog, 2013 (and yes, of course the name is a joke).

Interesting one that: 1880, Bell imagines it's more important than all his other inventions; radio trumps it.

points to the sky

Hmm. Free-space optical communication

It'd be quite the thing if using a Mind and a Visual Frontal Cortex could be attuned to the same thing, wouldn't it? "Beings of Light are We, Spamming DMT Elves with Fractal patterns is wrong"

~

Spoilers. Oh, and soooo [redacted]. Evil little cunts.

503:

Meant it comparatively. i.e. a 14" gun versus a Heinkel He 177; a T-80 versus an Apache; a Cruise Missile vrs an Iron Dome.

Basically, it was old tech being codge-podged into service while being already outdated on the field.

504:

For the .mil buffs about to comment that the Heinkel He 177 was not in use in 1940-1 nor was it ever really combat useful / mass produced, apart from some late game 1944 Russian theatre action...

thatsthejoke.jpg

We're keeping you happy.

Since you're all over the Falklands, here's a source: The United Kingdom Defence Programme: The Way Forward White Paper, UK Gov, 1981, PDF - legal, we presume [we were soooo tempted to link in some naughties here].

See page 8/9 on SSNs: those were the days when a Trafalgar class SSN could be built for £177 million. Yes, really.

Oh, and we used to own that company, apparently ;)

505:

Anyhow, since Mr Arnold has failed in his fox quest, I'll spoil it: someone has been attempting to resurrect the Cicada 3301 puzzle in 2017 and has produced an oddly apocalyptic video, along with incumbent imagery (as described). Yep. Did get a little practice at new-for-me approaches to finding things, but would not have found that; didn't know that I didn't know that it existed. That's an odd image, and entire video, indeed. Hooked. Some quick scouting already done. (An old mention found.)

It'd be quite the thing if using a Mind and a Visual Frontal Cortex could be attuned to the same thing, wouldn't it? Yes, it would.

I have nothing interesting for links, except for modeler-types run amok: Pathways towards instability in financial networks (Legal, 21 February 2017) That you've probably already seen. Not exactly surprising. (And a couple of new neuroscience papers, e.g. Engrams and circuits crucial for systems consolidation of a memory(paywall), which I'm not interested in ATM.)

506:

That's an odd image, A crosseyed visual diff (after rescaling) with the original (Skull with Fox and Crows, Sandra Yagi, 2016, oil on panel. Can't vouch 100% for jpeg safety.) shows no obvious diffs except for the odd object overlaying the eye socket in the video (plus the copyright notice on the image of the original). Been staring at that a bit. Artist has plenty of public facing links, e.g. sandrayagi.com and facebook, so I presume I'm not doxing anyone.

Cutaway skulls are used to portray our basic human drives and the thin veneer of humanity overlaying our animal nature.

507:

I don't really think so. Broadly speaking I consider 'alternative' history mere fantasy (or worse, a way to sell very dangerous ideas) but if there is one exception this case is probably the one, since it involves only 14 months and a set of factors very well known.

While it's true that Britain (and France, and the United States too) were far stronger in September 1939, a) the Germans didn't waste that time either, they were far better equipped in 1939 and had had time to train many more men (this was important since conscription had been reintroduced only in 1935), and b) those 14 months were dearly bought: Czechoslovakia with all its heavy industries and its armed forces (worse than lost, since all its equipment passed to the Germans), the Czech-French-Russian defence pact, and Spain too. And should you want ketchup with your fries, Hitler's aura of infallibility was strongly reinforced.

Also, in more than one sense Britain lost the war with Germany. Churchill was quite honest about the hopelessness of the situation when writing to Roosevelt in December 1940: Britain couldn't continue the war without massive American help but after liquidating all her assets during 1940, in the future would be unable to pay for it. Lend-lease kept her afloat and Barbarossa would 'reboot' the war in June, but Britain would be no longer at the helm.

508:

Fair comment. I should probably have said that was Britain's belief, but are there really any grounds for believing that we could have defended Czechoslovakia effectively? It's not as if the Royal Navy (our only dominant force) could have helped much! If we HAD tried, what would have happened to the forces that we committed to there?

Your last paragraph opens a can of worms that I will hastily close, but whose descendents are eating our country today - please note that counts as agreement.

509:

UK came within a gnat's whisker of being conquered twice within the first year.

Now I'm curious. How (in your opinion) was Germany possibly capable of conquering the UK twice by September 1940?

510:

I accept that I was being misleading; the decisive events would have happened by then, but the actual conquest might have taken longer. Playing alternative war games is irrelevant, as the hindsight we have now means that the intelligent decisions are taken, and that is NOT necessarily the case when the shit has hit the fan. Also, almost all of them completely ignore public morale and opinion - remember that, in 1940, the UK population and many of its leaders was only just adopting a war mentality.

(1) Allowing the Dunkirk evacuation was Hitler's mistake (against military advice), so assume the failure of that. Yes, the German losses would have been higher, but not all that much higher. There are two variants:

(a) Britain's government was seriously worried about an IMMEDIATE invasion, not using those stupid barges, of course, with Germany prepared to commit everything and accept massive losses. Yes, if Britain had defended correctly, the Navy could have stopped Germany from establishing supply lines (and hence using Britain's airfields), but there were no plans, no preparation, nothing. In the lap of the gods.

(b) But (a) wasn't the real threat, with hindsight. What if Germany had offered a peace deal requiring the cessation of Britain's rearmament in return for the prisoners and various other (irrelevant) sweeteners? Britain could not then have stopped a subsequent invasion. Could Churchill have refused that, or would he have been replaced? God alone knows.

(2) If Germany had targetted the airfields instead of London, forced the RAF to retreat, and THEN gone all-out for the destruction of London as a productive area and (effectively) government withdrawal to the Midlands? Yes, the Luftwaffe's losses would have been at least as heavy as they were, probably heavier, but the attacks would have been more effective. London was not as dominant in the UK as it is now, but the effect on the UK's economy would have been dire, and lend-lease would not have been enough. And what would the government have done about the people of London? There were plans and preparation for moving the government etc., but not for those aspects. Again, there are two variants:

(a) Britain essentially running out of money, and being defeated that way.

(b) See 1(b).

511:

I forgot to say one thing and stress another. Churchill etc. were seriously worried about 1(a), but I don't regard it as all that likely; it's the others that were more realistic. And, when things have completely blown up in your face, inexperienced people (and Britain's leaders and even senior military WERE inexperienced in this sort of warfare) are extremely likely to make the wrong call. We were lucky that Germany's did, but that's luck, and the boundary between good and bad luck is a gnat's whisker.

512:

This will get us deeper into alternative/fantastic history, but... well, the temptation is too strong. :)

Bear in mind, tough, that seen through 1930s eyes the situation wasn't the one we see today. Just to mention some aspects, everyone 'knew' in 1938 and 1939 that submarines belonged to the past and would be far less important in a new war, that air attacks would cause hundreds of thousands of deaths (actually one could say Hitler was believed to have atomic weapons, since air attacks were supposed to be as deadly as atomic bombs), and that the Red Army was very inferior to the Polish. Hadn't the Poles soundly beaten the Russians just 18 years before?

That was a key factor in French and British decisions, that a military alliance with the USSR was a dangerous path because it risked causing a German-Polish rapprochement and even discounting other considerations keeping Berlin and Warsaw well apart was more valuable in military terms than getting Soviet help.

Related with that, no one knows how well the Czechs would have fought. The Czech army enjoyed a good reputation inherited from the Czech Legion, and Czech tanks were good enough for the Germans to keep producing them for a long time, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have ended falling as fast as Poland did in 1939. We just can't know. Some historians think their lack of resistance both in 1938 and 1968 suggests the artificiality of the whole 'Czechoslovakia' concept affected deeply the armed forces.

But to return to the original question, in the short term Britain by herself could have done almost nothing; a few air raids and little else. France&Britain could have done something, but the French were convinced their disastrous offensive in August of 1914 'proved' that starting a war against Germany with an attack was a mistake, that a long naval blockade like the one from 1914-18 was needed to weaken Germany before delivering the finishing blows by land. And France, Britain and the USSR could have done almost anything they agreed to do (not a minor issue), but for Russian troops to reach Czechoslovakia they would have had to go across Poland, and Poland wouldn't allow it. Truth to be told, Poland in 1938 was with Nazi Germany against Czechoslovakia due to their territorial dispute over Teschen (German, Czech Těšín, Polish Cieszyn) and other border areas. That's was perhaps the last straw: the Polish junta wouldn't help the Czechs, nor allow the Russians to help them either.

Quite frankly, I have a lot of sympathy for Chamberlain and Daladier; after the facts everyone said they shouldn't have appeased Hitler, but in truth they are being asked to have risked a war with Germany, Italy and perhaps Poland, with Japan always in the background, to avoid Germans joining Germany. Was that worth another mountain of corpses? Another round of revolutions perhaps? In 1939 things were radically different; not only was Hitler demanding an area where Poles were clearly a majority, he had also occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia, Mussolini had invaded Albania just because, Franco had entered Madrid and both Hitler and Mussolini had shamelessly paraded the troops they had sent to Spain and supposedly had never been there... in a few months the public had had reasons more than enough to decide that war was unavoidable.

513:

Precisely, except that your last clause is true but a bit misleading. The rationality of the public is never great, but it is particularly dire when under stress. The public could easily have flipped to believing that what went on the other side of the channel was no concern of it, if some persuasive demogue had told them so - that attitude was even more prevalent then than now.

514:

Yes, if Britain had defended correctly, the Navy could have stopped Germany from establishing supply lines (and hence using Britain's airfields), but there were no plans, no preparation, nothing. In the lap of the gods.

Incorrect. You are ignoring/denying a rather large body of evidence that says the opposite. For instance, the defence plans (e.g. the GHQ Line, various stop lines, etc) were in place before France even signed an Armistice.

This seems like a good place for you to start:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_anti-invasion_preparations_of_the_Second_World_War

But don't stop there; look at the debate that goes on between those pushing for static, and those pushing for mobile defence (Ironside v. Brooke/Montgomery) in the summer of 1940. MI6 was even setting up a Resistance network from February 1940 onwards; the Auxiliary Units were forming up, and the Local Defence Volunteers were formed in May.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Ironside,_1st_Baron_Ironside https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Brooke,_1st_Viscount_Alanbrooke

You also need to take a good look at the timelines; April 1940 - Germany invades Norway and Denmark. May 1940 - Churchill takes over from Chamberlain May 1940 - Germany invades France June 1940 - France Surrenders at the end of the month.

When, exactly, is an "immediate" invasion? Can't be June, they're still fighting France. July 1940? August 1940?

Britain's government was seriously worried about an IMMEDIATE invasion, not using those stupid barges, of course, with Germany prepared to commit everything and accept massive losses.

They may well have worried about it, but what they didn't know were the true strengths (or rather weaknesses) of the German Armed Forces. Neither side appreciated the problems inherent in amphibious warfare (see the Raid on Dieppe), or airborne warfare (see the Invasion of Crete). Some Fallschirmjager sub-units suffered 90% death rates in Crete, because of severe deficiencies in equipment and doctrine.

So, exactly when and how were the Germans going to mount your "immediate invasion"? Because "commit everything" in June 1940 was two cruisers, four destroyers and a bunch of E-boats - everything else in the Kreigsmarine was checking out the fish from the bottom of a fjord, still being built, or having the shipyards workers suck their teeth and suggest that they might have them sorted out later this summer...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea_Lion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea_Lion_(wargame)

A final thought for you, on the logistic competence of the Wehrmacht. Several of the German soldiers captured on D-Day noted that they couldn't understand the logistics of the invasion - because there were no horses being brought ashore...

515:

Why do you have a fetish for straw men? What is it about "Churchill etc. were seriously worried about 1(a), but I don't regard it as all that likely" that you don't understand?

516:

Re: 'The problem I have is when people talk about "Hard SF" without realizing that it is really Science Fantasy, with fun "magical" bits added.'

Haven't met anyone that took SF at face value. While I'm perfectly okay that the nuts & bolts are fantasy, what they mean should be based on our best-to-date methods of examining consequences. Just like Brave New World, 1984, robot stories (Asimov), etc. - the tech enables certain decisions and actions. The how in the building of that tech may also be important but again mostly because of the consequences (Dune).

I've watched every StarTrek TV show and frankly never gave a damn that the tech is pure handwavium. This TV franchise's popularity among and ability to inspire a couple of generations of real scientists speaks volumes. Don't think these scientists went into science thinking that a 'warp drive' or other ST gadgets existed but these shows made them think about tech/sci possibilities.

Not as much a fan of the movies which skew too much toward special-effects (and probably better 'hard science' in some areas) and away from story.

517:

In case it wasn't clear, I was irritated at self for not thinking to search using semantic distance, e.g. "brain contained by skull or vat or ..." and at least finding the original image, if not the Cicada 3301 stuff. Looking for relevant CS papers to make sure I don't miss any tricks. Search complexity is technically an issue (but...). (You've done this puzzle fuzzing previously, so no excuse. Anyhow, schooled, whether or not that was the intent.) Curiously, wikidata doesn't have a spatial containment relationship (except for some geographical containment) and I don't see it encoding brain contained by skull or vat or ...

For others, the basic idea is to find the things with close relationships to the search items and do a (uhm) heuristic breadth first search with (possibly) multiple basic search engine queries, using semantic distance from the original query as a guide. There's some art involved too.

518:

And for cephalopod fans, this just in ...

Keeping in mind that cephalopod populations are booming since global warming ramped up, could be that a new species is ready to claim its place as masters of this orb.

Excerpt: ' •Unlike other taxa, cephalopods diversify their proteomes extensively by RNA editing •Extensive recoding is specific to the behaviorally complex coleiods •Unlike mammals, cephalopod recoding is evolutionarily conserved and often adaptive •Transcriptome diversification comes at the expense of slowed-down genome evolution

Summary

RNA editing, a post-transcriptional process, allows the diversification of proteomes beyond the genomic blueprint; however it is infrequently used among animals for this purpose. Recent reports suggesting increased levels of RNA editing in squids thus raise the question of the nature and effects of these events. We here show that RNA editing is particularly common in behaviorally sophisticated coleoid cephalopods, with tens of thousands of evolutionarily conserved sites. Editing is enriched in the nervous system, affecting molecules pertinent for excitability and neuronal morphology. The genomic sequence flanking editing sites is highly conserved, suggesting that the process confers a selective advantage. Due to the large number of sites, the surrounding conservation greatly reduces the number of mutations and genomic polymorphisms in protein-coding regions. This trade-off between genome evolution and transcriptome plasticity highlights the importance of RNA recoding as a strategy for diversifying proteins, particularly those associated with neural function.'

http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30344-6

519:
A final thought for you, on the logistic competence of the Wehrmacht. Several of the German soldiers captured on D-Day noted that they couldn't understand the logistics of the invasion - because there were no horses being brought ashore...

Which says nothing at all about their logistic competence. At the start of the war, the major armies were all still using a substantial quantity of horses for supply-chain roles. By the end of the war, thanks to lend-lease and the (very sensible) US focus on making lots and lots of "good enough" vehicles, the allies were largely mechanised even behind the front lines. But the Germans didn't have either the manufacturing capacity to build that many trucks, or the oil to keep them supplied with fuel if they had them.

So the Wehrmacht was still using a lot of horses - and while it's possible the generals were aware that the allies had motorised everything, that's not going to be of interest to the soldiers on the front line. (And for propaganda/morale purposes, I imagine Berlin was pretending that then allies were in the same position even if they knew better. What benefit in their position to admit that the enemy had massively superior production capacity and effectively limitless fuel?)

520:

Ah, I see. Proved wrong on your 1(a) claim that "there were no plans, no preparation, nothing. In the lap of the gods.", you decide to play the man, not the ball.

So, IMHO your assertion that "the UK came within a gnat's whisker of being conquered twice within the first year." cannot be supported:

1(a) - debunked many times 1(b)/2(b) - we know the answer to that one, too - discussed in the War Cabinet at the end of May.

2,2(a) - Basically, the Battle of Britain wasn't in doubt either - Fighter Command grew in strength over that summer, it didn't shrink. The Luftwaffe didn't switch to bombing London through a mistaken choice, it switched because it could no longer maintain its attacks on the 11 Group airfields, who it had to suppress in order to allow any chance of air cover over an invasion fleet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Britain#Assessment_of_attempt_to_destroy_the_RAF

The Battle of Britain fell upon 11 Group, and throughout the heaviest of fighting "only two out of 13 heavily attacked airfields were down for more than a few hours". The other Groups were largely unaffected; even if the Luftwaffe manages to suppress 11 Group and get their bombers over Kent in daylight, they still can't protect them with short-legged Me109.

Remember, there were still plenty of qualified RAF fighter pilots driving staff desks, who were never recalled to Squadron service. There were other, rested Groups around the country. Britain was producing and repairing fighter aircraft faster than the Luftwaffe could damage and destroy them.

521:

Thanks for pointing out that link. I knew that Sealion was absurd, but it's nice to see the plan laid out in all its folly.

C. S. Forester wrote a counterfactual similar to the wargames carried out by Sandhurst as described in the final point of Brooks's article. In the story, Hitler decides not to invade Norway and Denmark (thus preserving more of the Kriegsmarine) and attacks Britain immediately after France falls. The RN is caught napping, and the entire German force gets ashore.

Then, of course, things fall apart & the German army is destroyed due to lack of supply. The story mentions in passing that this disaster immensely sped up German defeat, but ends there.

522:

Which says nothing at all about their logistic competence. At the start of the war, the major armies were all still using a substantial quantity of horses for supply-chain roles.

Nope. Britain was mechanised in all but a few places - AIUI the British Expeditionary Force took no work horses to France; the last horses went from the Scots Greys in 1941 (they were on peacekeeping duties in Palestine at the time).

The US Army fielded a fully-mechanised force on its entry to the European theatre in 1942, even though Patton was a Cavalry enthusiast... https://web.archive.org/web/20080827181403/http://www.qmfound.com/horse.htm

The Germans, however, managed to invade Russia and still fail to supply adequate winter clothing. They couldn't move their artillery at Stalingrad, because they were cut off from their horses. That's not exactly an indication of logistic competence... they started the war with half a million horses, but averaged a million by the end. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_World_War_II#Logistics

523:

What on earth are you blithering about? Churchill etc. weren't worried about your straw man, and I wasn't thinking of it.

524:
The Germans, however, managed to invade Russia and still fail to supply adequate winter clothing.

Which was indeed caused by logistic incompetence, but has nothing whatever to do with their soldiers being surprised that the western allies weren't using horses on D-day.

They couldn't move their artillery at Stalingrad, because they were cut off from their horses. That's not exactly an indication of logistic competence...

It isn't. But it is also, again, nothing to do with the claim you originally made.

they started the war with half a million horses, but averaged a million by the end.

Yes. Because they didn't have either the manufacturing capacity or the fuel supply to give the army both trucks and tanks, and tanks took precedence. Increasing the number of horses they used was necessary to keep the wehrmacht moving. If their soldiers assumed that things were much the same on the other side (and why wouldn't they? They're still being told Germany can win), then they would expect other armies to be using horses too.

Again, the fact that front-line German soldiers expected the western allies to be operating under the same restrictions as the wehrmacht says nothing about logistic competence. (Was Nazi handling of military logistics massively incompetent? Absolutely. But that's a separate issue from soldiers being surprised that another army with different constraints worked in an entirely different way.)

525:

There was a fellow on (I think, it's been a long while) soc.history.what-if who advanced the idea that the Nazis should have sent a force across the Atlantic to seize Baffin Island as an advanced base. Once they had it, they could affect a mainland landing and just drive south.

It proved astonishingly difficult to explain why this idea was not practical.

526:

One of the things demonstrated by the Great War was the whole world didn't have enough grass surplus areas to supply enough horses to support the logistics demand of a ... oh, call it "semi-mechanized" global war. Sustained operations required something better than horses. Absolutely everyone knew that in 1919.

Not generally recognizing this problem a generation later is evidence for general logistical incompetence; the grunts not being keenly interested in the "am I going to get fed?" end of logistics isn't plausible, and you know that the imperial german military knew that horses weren't enough in their bones by 1919 (in large part because keeping the horses from being gassed is impractical). Lots of ink got spilled on the issue. So for the Wehrmacht not to know in 1939 or in 1944 that horses aren't sufficient you have to suppose a logistically delusive institutional culture. For which the surprised grunts are one piece of evidence.

527:

Oh Gosh, this is where male non-arisocrats really come a cropper.

I mean, really: even if you've not read "Black Beauty", you're surely aware of the fact that Victorian London didn't exactly run on grassland? Work horses weren't fed grass, it's all oats / hay / dodgy stuff.

The British Army provided 2,978,301 tons of oats and 2,460,301 tons of pressed hay as fodder during the conflict.

The average ration of a supply horse was 20lb of fodder, which was a fifth less than recommended. This meant the average battalion needed at least 7,840lb of oats and hay a week to feed its 56 horses. Gun horses were bigger and pulled heavier loads so required at least 30lb of daily fodder. They could spend up to five hours eating a day.

On average the British Army lost 15% of its horses every year. Surprisingly, just a quarter of horse deaths were caused by enemy action. The biggest killer was ‘debility’ – a condition caused by exposure to the elements, hunger and illness.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zp6bjxs

Spoilers: the reason the German army had excess horses to use and the UK didn't has very much to do with WWI. Hint: like the young men, the UK rather ran out of them.

Volumes have been written on the equipment of the German Army of World War II, including tanks, trucks, motorcycles, weapons, and personal equipment, but little has been written on the horses that made up 80% of its transportation. Horses pulled everything an army needed in the field by wagon or on its back and more horses were used in World War II than in any other war in history. This book includes text from the U.S. Army Military History Institute publication MS #P-090. The participants of this study were among the most knowledgeable the German army could provide, and their conclusions constitute a critique of what probably was the last mass use of horses in warfare. If one really means to understand the performance and tactics of the Wehrmacht in World War II, one must understand the horse and its logistic requirements. Also, this book presents one of the most comprehensive photo collections of the men and equipment of the horse-mounted troops.

HORSES OF THE GERMAN ARMY IN WORLD WAR II (Schiffer Military History Book) AMZN

528:

Note:

http://www.baileyshorsefeeds.co.uk/feedingexplained/calculator.htm

5.2kg (11.4lbs) of forage per day, 5.2kg (11.4lbs) of concentrates per day. (16HH / 520kg / hard work / normal condition - typical horse, not hardy pit ponies who got drafted etc).

The BBC claiming that the ration of 20lb was a "fifth of what was required" is just insane.

Like all these things, your world is Mad.

529:

p.s. Horses don't eat like that, they're not carnivores. "5 hours a day". Shoot this journalist now.

Grazing (having constant hay / grass available) is important, but working horses get x2-3 high-energy feeds / day as well. The "grazing" on hay is merely there to keep their stomachs working and prevent colic / health issues - the nutritional value can be totally absent (or at the very least, negligible).

Horses graze because grass is crap, nutritionally speaking. Humans kinda spoiled that with oats / super-charged molasses / funky concentrated feeds. You could feed those horses on x3 concentrated feeds / day and have them chew corn stalks (well, no, perforated stomachs, but anything similar to grass / hay) and it not matter.

Oh, and if you want to know just how powerful the Aristos are: trying to search anything regarding horse feed companies (which, I happen to know a bit about) is a total nightmare: forget HackerNews SEO, these witches have totally destroyed any real data for advertising SEO projects.

True. Story.

Old Money is literally better at aggressive SEO than Silicon Valley.

I really shouldn't have given my aunt that old laptop and links to Reddit...

530:
...claiming that the ration of 20lb was a "fifth of what was required"...

You've misread it - they assert that 20 lb is "a fifth LESS than recommended", ie 20% below, making a 25 lb recommendation. That's not implausible for a big horse, especially if it's working hard, and I'd imagine that C20th military horses tended towards the heavier end of the scale. (And were worked pretty hard in wartime.)

But 100 lb per day would be ludicrous, yes. Either than, or a truly terrifying horse :)

531:

You're misreading.

Supply enough horses. As in, where the horses come from. You breed horses in grass-surplus areas because you can't afford to do it any other way for economically-central horse traction. The Great War really did about use up the global horse supply and find it insufficient.

(Also? The UK took many fewer proportionate casualties than Germany did in the Great War, roughly 2% versus roughly 4%. And had Canada, Australia, South Africa, and the United States to draw on as grass-surplus sources of horse supply. "Couldn't get enough horses" doesn't explain the switch to machine traction in the Empire militaries.)

532:

Yes. Because they didn't have either the manufacturing capacity or the fuel supply to give the army both trucks and tanks, and tanks took precedence. Increasing the number of horses they used was necessary to keep the wehrmacht moving

It may have been shorthand, but it illustrates my point exactly. Choosing not to build those trucks is in itself a sign of incompetence (they also made huge use of captured vehicles).

You have an army that has a three-year organisational head start on your opponents. You manage a diplomatic victory in 1938, and capture one of the great European vehicle manufacturing economies (Skoda). You manage military victories in 1939 (Poland) and 1940 (Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, France) against largely prepared enemies.

You don't put your industry onto a war footing (British women were straight off to build bombers, tanks, and trucks) because kinder und kuche und slave labour; so just one of your enemies (UK), whose population and factories you bomb throughout 1940/41, still manages to out produce you in ships, tanks, and combat aircraft in every year of the war (search "Clydeside Blitz", or "shadow factories").

You then march on Moscow. And fight an enemy who truly understands manoeuverist warfare; but do so with Divisional logistics and artillery that can only move twenty miles a day. You decide to waste massive resources on ever-more-complex vehicles that looked cool, but were so unreliable as to be nearly unusable - instead of building simple, reliable, logistic vehicles.

There are other examples of WW2 Generals who "didn't get logistics" - Rommel, whose only port couldn't even support the troops he had, but he tried to march on Suez anyway. Mutaguchi, who tried to invade India and succeeded in starving his own troops to death.

533:

Note: that second paragraph should finish: "largely unprepared enemies"... oops ;)

534:

Yes, good call that one. The British Army was the ONLY military with a fully mechanized (Truck bourne) logistics structure in 1939; There is an extensive literature on Mechanization (Armor) in the 30's, which sometimes touches on the Motorization.

Among other things, the (British) staff planners noticed a shortage of suitable horses in the civilian economy, and planned accordingly.

The Yeomanry cavalry formed the 1st Cavalry Division posted to Palestine, reorganized as an Armored Division in 1941 (10th).

The Germans essentially rolled a triple Yahtzee against the French in the Ardennes in 1940. Hit the worst equipped and most unenthusiastic French second line reserve formations at the critical point with their concentrated Panzer Divisions. It has been a problem for War game designers since the 70's; You plug in the numbers, it is like the apocryphal joke about the computer simulation of the Vietnam war.

You should have won that one.

535:

The war on the western front was notoriously muddy — artillery bombardments ploughing up square miles of farmland and turning it into bog — and to move supplies, food, and horses across a swamp is difficult. A lot of straw shipped from blighty ended up on the ground on top of dirt tracks, soaking up moisture to enable the animals to stay upright. Again: a lot more of it ended up wasted or moldy due to poor storage conditions. Straw wasn't just animal fodder: it was a construction and packing material — think styrofoam pellets in modern usage.

536:

Re: Yeomanry cavalry. My grandfather was part of this. Like many of his generation he wouldn't talk much about it at all, but I did hear a few scraps. He and his mates were shipped out to Turkey with their hunting horses from various East Anglia fox hunts. Within weeks of arriving the tanks turned up and the horses were all shot. I'm not sure if it was the camp or camp followers that then had plenty of horse meat. From there they drove down into Palestine to Egypt where they took part in El Alamein. Then crossed to Italy and drove up into Europe. There wasn't much food to be scrounged in Italy, but the crew of his tank did manage to requisition a whole Parmesan cheese. So his main memory of that part of the war was gnawing on rock-hard cheese for days. A few years later, my Dad was also in a Sherman in Palestine but after the war. His stories revolved around keeping chickens in the tank for fresh eggs and having a jerry can mounted round the exhaust so there was always hot water for a brew.

537:
But 100 lb per day would be ludicrous, yes. Either than, or a truly terrifying horse
That's the reason that Operation Sealion couldn't work - the Wehrmacht didn't have a certain animal at its disposal:
Desirable characteristics:
Mounts should exhibit three or more of the following traits:
• Endurance in excess of 6 hours at 30 miles/hour over rough terrain (when ridden with standard issue saddle, rider, and kit)
• Endurance in excess of 30 minutes at 50 miles/hour on metaled road surfaces (when ridden with standard issue saddle, rider, and kit)
• Ability to see in the dark
• Ability to recognize and obey a controlled vocabulary of at least 20 distinct commands
• Invisible
• Bulletproof
• Carnivorous
• Flight (when ridden with standard issue saddle, rider, and kit)
538:

Germany had (and has) much more productive agricultural land than Britain, and had much worse access to oil. Both the North African campaign and the Battle of the Atlantic were as much about oil as anything. Horses were not as inappropriate for Germany as they would have been for Britain.

539:

For use outside the home islands, yes, but think about the logistics of shipping feedstock versus oil, for a given transport capacity.

540:

I don't think hard SF has to be fully plausible in the engineering/scientific sense. Instead, hard SF is characterized by certain rules, which I think go something like this:

1.) Thou shalt do the math.

2.) If thou art not able to do the math, thou shalt have someone else do the math for you.

3.) Thou shalt not faketh the math. If you must violate both rule one and rule two, then thou shalt categorize your story as something other than "hard science fiction." Thine assumptions need not be correct or perfect, and may even be fictional, but thou shalt do the goddamn math.

4.) Thou must be aware that the purpose of hard science fiction is to make one (or two at the very most) large changes to current technology and examine the consequences. If there are two large changes to current technology, one of them should sit in the foreground, and the other should sit in the background (probably as a general convenience for your characters and not as a major story element.)

5.) Thou shalt not create more than one (ideal) or two (barely acceptable) large advancements beyond the current state of engineering and/or science. Everything else may be realistically futuristic, but not ridiculously so. For example, your story may include hyperdrives and artificial gravity, but in that case you absolutely may not add artificial intelligence to your story. If you want AI too, you must give up either artificial gravity or hyperdrive or you may not call call your story hard science fiction.

In a situation with hyperdrive and artificial gravity, your computers may, at most, be realistically advanced beyond what we currently have in terms of programming, memory, processing power, capabilities for input and display, etc., but they absolutely may not be artificially intelligent, and may not show even small characteristics of AI. (This is an example, which thou shalt apply to other situations as appropriate.)

6.) Thou shalt carefully and conservatively consider what real-world changes will be caused by this "ridiculous" advancement, and also what real-world changes will not be come to pass. In other words, a wormhole gets you there faster. It does not (for example) give you access to the advanced thinking of godlike wormhole aliens.

7.) Thou shalt carefully consider the physics, engineering, and sociology of your "ridiculous advancement." In other words, you will know how much memory it takes to run your artificial intelligence. You will understand how much processing power it requires. You will understand that your AI is composed of many components which, taken individually, are written in simple code which a single human can understand. You will understand that your AI involves the complex interaction of many simple programs. You will understand that your AI requires a particular architecture and cannot operate faster than the speed of the network to which it is attached. You will understand that your AI is vulnerable to security problems with the kernel is is built on top of.

You will understand how long it took to build your AI, how much it cost, what architecture it runs on, etc. You will also understand how humans and human society will relate to your AI. In other words, your AI will not instantly bring world peace, but there may be humans who believe that the AI will instantly bring world peace.

8.) Thou shalt payeth attention to the real rules by which spacecraft (or other technologies) operate. Where space is concerned, everything is in orbit around something else. Objects which are orbiting have certain behaviors and you have to understand those behaviors (or at least be able to fake them realistically.) Ideally you will calculate the orbits of your spacecraft. (I'm looking at you, Alastair. I threw your most recent book with its bullshit orbits in the goddamn trash!)

9.) Thou shalt understand that spacecraft accelerate according to mathematical rules, even under impulse drive or fusion drive, (or whatever other kludge you use to make sure that your characters arrive at their destination before they die of old age.) These rules are not too difficult. Once again, you should calculate spacecraft accelerations, or at least download Kirbal Space Program so as to have your computer calculate them. And by the way, it's called Delta V.

10.) Your sensors are not omniscient. They are merely better than current sensors.

11.) Thou shalt do the math.

This is probably not an exhaustive set of rules, but I think it probably covers most contingencies.

12.) Thou shalt not forget to do the math!

541:

Now there's a fun thought! Operation Sealion with equoids...

542:

I think that you're fixated on artificial idiocy! It's not theoretically impossible, but it's not known whether it is theoretically possible, either; i.e. we don't know if Homo sapiens is capable of building a computer with equivalent intelligence to Homo sapiens. Seriously. The same thing applies to computers that are not subject to (most of) the various computer science complexity limits. Also, some modern computers have programs the size of the human genome and almost as many states as the human brain.

A better example would be FTL travel; I am not convinced by the usual graphical hand-waving argument, but have never refurbished my mathematics enough to provide either a proof or disproof. What IS certain is that FTL travel together with frames moving fast enough relative to one another.

But a still better one is economics and ecology. Bluntly, taking any vessel even to orbit using any reaction drive is foully expensive (in both senses), and semi-private ones are just plane stupid. You may groan. Beanstalks and reactionless drives (of which at least one exists) are fairly plausible.

543:

You forgot:

Thou must do the biology.

Even 'beautiful mathematics' can leadeth to error.

Honor thy experimental brethren for they protect thee from losing touch with reality.

544:

For the purposes of number 5, I'd generally give FTL drives a blanket assumed-reality pass, simply because if the story goes beyond one solar system you have to have one to make the story work at all. I'm quite happy for them to just exist as part of the background that Just Works without being talked about, much as stories set on modern Earth include cars as a part of the background but don't feel any need to go into technical details of how the engine works.

It's different when the capabilities and limitations of the FTL method actually drive the plot, as opposed to doing no more than providing an excuse for passengers to feel all wibbly for a moment and deduce they've jumped or whatever, so you do have to treat it carefully and make the relevant intricacies clear. That would count for number 5.

545:

I realise that I didn't actually SAY what the FTL problem is! It's the claim made by the Disciples of Einstein that any and all FTL travel is equivalent to time travel. As I say, I have never seen a proof, and am dubious of their claims, but they may be right.

546:

Elderly Cynic @545 said: I realise that I didn't actually SAY what the FTL problem is! It's the claim made by the Disciples of Einstein that any and all FTL travel is equivalent to time travel.

I agree with you on the nonsense of FTL is Time Travel. It's a clear category error, along with many of what the proponents of Einstein have claimed without demonstrable proof, i.e, Twins Paradox(time dilation), black holes, etc..., but that is a another can of worms I don't need to waste time arguing with Space Cadets about.

The point I was making up thread, was something very simple and obvious if anyone had ever worked a day in their life with heavy earth moving equipment as I have. I love their books, I love the romance of their stories, but the silliness of Robinson's and Baxter's construction robots rolling around Mars or an asteroid building things is the example of so called "Hard SF" failing badly in the violation of physical reality. I'm not complaining about the AI part needed to do the work, I'm talking about the shear physical impossibility of violating physical laws.

Look at something as simple as a bulldozer.

If you put a bulldozer on Mars, with one third gravity, it would fail to move any dirt. If you put it on the Moon, with one sixth gravity it would bounce around just trying to travel to the job site. Try to keep a bulldozer even sitting on the surface of an asteroid with the motor running. Just revving the engine would cause it to leave the surface.

Bulldozers work because of gravity pulling it down to the surface. A dozer has weight to keep it on the ground. Weight is mass and gravity. Reduce the gravity or the mass and the dozer cannot work. It has an engine with the horse power to move the dozer. It has the treads to give it traction to push the blade through the dirt. Eliminate the effectiveness of any of those three components; weight, track, horsepower, and it fails.

Even here on Earth running a dozer, pushing the blade through dirt, is a chancy business, thus you have roll cages.

When that blade hits a rock, you feel it. If it hits a boulder, all work stops until the bolder is cleared, and the blade probably replaced.

wiki - Bulldozer

and look at the pictures. Go to a job site where they are moving dirt, and you will feel the earth move. Literally. HA!

547:

How about "Thou shalt do the math. Or the biology. Or the botany. Or the geology."

548:

That makes reasonable sense, though I suspect others will disagree. One can probably develop a meta-system of Hard SF philosophies, in which case the idea that we can handwave hyperdrive is probably not the Orthodox position, but might be the Conservative position.

549:

Lord Gort doing a bunk was another very important reason for the Fall of France, though understandably not emphasised at the time.

550:

On one hand you're possibly wrong. I suspect that Robinson and Baxter (and Reynolds) are handwaving the engineering necessary to make something like a bulldozer work on a small asteroid. Unless there's a story purpose I've very little interest in learning how, before it can move any "dirt" the "bulldozer" goes about anchoring itself to the mass of the asteroid, then dumps a load of ore into the hopper of the "dump truck" which is actually a small rocket-ship, which must then be sure not to point its exhaust at the "bulldozer..." etc. If it's not important to the plot, I'd rather assume that some smart guys figured out how to do mining in a low-gee situation and let it go.

On the other hand, you're possibly right. There's probably some interesting science fiction waiting on a bulldozer operator with some writing chops who's got an interest in "writing what they know." At the very least one would hope one of the authors above might write something like, "No bulldozer operator from a planet with earthlike gravity would recognize what was happening, but it was a mining operation, and the nanobots were slowly filling what looked like discarded metal canisters, haphazardly dropped on the asteroid's surface, with unobtanium." Or whatever.

551:

I forgot to add a nose wiggle: but yes, you spotted the joke, as did #537.

A lot of straw shipped from blighty ended up on the ground on top of dirt tracks, soaking up moisture to enable the animals to stay upright. Again: a lot more of it ended up wasted or moldy due to poor storage conditions. Straw wasn't just animal fodder: it was a construction and packing material — think styrofoam pellets in modern usage.

I hate to say this, but you've offended a significant minority of horse loving authors out there with that statement. Straw =/= hay: one is a bedding, the other a fodder. [p.s. I miss her, she was cool - I hope she's doing ok on her ranch. We'd have sent someone to help, but you know, ICE and all that jazz].

Anyhow, the SEO poisoning is very real, it's very hard (almost as hard as getting .mil pdfs) to actually get the data from the smog. But, anyhow, we'll use a crappy source to show the actual issue:

Food was a major issue. Rations for each horse included “twelve pounds of oats, ten pounds of hay, and some bran” every week. Multiply that by a million, and you get problems with producing enough feed, not to mention transporting it to the horses who were spread out across Europe and under near-constant enemy fire. Often, the horses went hungry, and many also went without sufficient water.

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/03/horses-world-war/

Note: this article doesn't actually address the actual problem, nor does any of the secondary literature I can find. It's clean water that's the issue. 5 to 10 gallons / day of clean potable water at the front was simply impossible in many cases (where, as Black Adder lampooned, men who needed only 0.5 of a gallon were boiling rat's piss as tea). Not to mention, under heavy stress you need water to cool work-horses down (one good take-away from that article above is that horses were being heavily clipped to prevent heat exhaustion even in winter due to the work loads they were shifting, and how the lack of shelter / rugs[1] killed them off).

So, Water, as ever, is the real (and hidden) variable. And yes, this is timed for The Grand National, where if you don't cool them down post-race, they tend to drop down dead[2].

http://extension.psu.edu/animals/equine/news/2012/how-much-drinking-water-does-your-horse-need

[1] WWI would have ended 2 years early with an enforced armistice if this had been widely known. The direct heart of (aristo-woman) Britain is Horses and Proper Rugs.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Davison

552:

And, since no-one caught it yet: Pepsi got taken to the cleaners / major shade. (Three days early, so sue me - the cruise missile / iron dome joke was before the launch as well, referencing the whys the S300/400's didn't just shoot them down).

If only Daddy would have known about the power of #Pepsi. Bernice A King, Twitter, 5th April, 2017

Look it up: it's actually the point where Brands "jumped the shark" and lost all relevance ~ the Kardashian trash clan (no, really: it's an artificially created Brand to off-set the Juggaloes etc, you can spot the same thing in Essex memes in the UK) are all upset.

~

Anyhow, here's the actual joke: WWI horses, Flint (and 3,000 other major 100k+ places in America) and lack of potable water. The punchline being, of course, that the soldiers of WWI at least tried to treat their horses with compassion... timed for the Grand National.

nose wiggle

p.s.

Economy is gonna crash, hard, 1929 soon[TM]. They're gonna try and finesse it with a Trump implosion, but hey: not gonna let them get off that easy. Promise, pinky swear, blood-oath.

553:

They're gonna try and finesse it with a Trump implosion, but hey: not gonna let them get off that easy. Not seeing how an all-out economic collapse helps matters[1]. Explain, please? (Also, they?) Wouldn't mind (to say the least) seeing the Trump bubble thoroughly popped (in multiple ways) though. Been spare-time focused on the Trump admin dysfunction. (And on meditation and etc. ) [1] Would drop GHG emissions for a while, sure. Kinda blunt, unless other interesting and very positive things happen concurrently.

No subtextual meaning, just caught my eye and haven't given it a real read. Emotional Chatting Machine: Emotional Conversation Generation with Internal and External Memory, 5 April 2017 In this paper, we propose Emotional Chatting Machine (ECM) which generates responses that are appropriate not only at the content level (relevant and grammatical) but also at the emotion level (consistent emotional expression). ( via https://arxiv.org/list/cs.CL/recent )

Back to reading more Gaiman, Stardust. (Sweet story so far; sorry I didn't read it earlier.)

554:

"Economy is gonna crash, hard, 1929 soon[TM]."

Any cites for this? I don't necessarily disagree - don't think Trump can keep the economy running - but I'd like to hear more about your reasoning.

555:

I gave some reasoning a while back, which has also been mentioned by some economists of a historical bent, but didn't go into the USA factors (where I know very little of the details).

556:

I have enough respect for them, as well as knowledge of the mathematics, to believe that it can't be a CLEAR category error (unlike the black hole diving), but that doesn't mean it isn't a category error.

Re bulldozer (also to Troutwaxer): I thought of that a while ago and, in addition to using a lot of ballast (2.6 times heavier on Mars, don't make me laugh on the asteroids), and using ground anchors, there is also the use of impact methods. Use ballast again, the bulldozer rams its blade forward, gets kicked back, and moves back into position.

557:

The US Army fielded a fully-mechanised force on its entry to the European theatre in 1942, even though Patton was a Cavalry enthusiast...

Cavalry officer, no less, designed the Model 1913 Cavalry Saber. Pershing almost transferred him to the Infantry in WWI, but that's when he found tanks, and he and Adan Chafee (also a Cavalry office) were the biggest proponents of the creation of the Armor branch, and insisted that behind the silhouette of a WWI tank (it's now an M-26 Pershing) that the crossed sabers of Cavalry Branch be placed, and the color of trim for the new Armor branch be Cavalry Yellow (as opposed to Infantry Blue or Artillery Red.)

So, he was a Cavalry man, and he made sure that Armor was the new Cavalry, though the Cavalry Branch still exists, mainly for recon (as does 1CAV, but it was a "heavy", read armor division, before the brigade realignment.)

But really, that has nothing to do with how horses were used by the Germans, which was for logistical support. The one thing that the US was truly supreme at in WWII was logistics. They had all the shiny toys, and they had the way to get those toys to the front, and that way was neither horse nor mechanized forces, but the truck, and the king of those was the deuce-and-a-half, more formally the GMC CCKW 2½-ton 6x6 truck. We made over half a million of them, and over half a million Willys MB 1/4 ton trucks and when those two weren't big enough, almost a quarter million 6-ton 6x6 trucks.

The US Army moved on a sea of paper, but its supplies, it's equipment, and quite often its men moved on Detroit trucks, from 1/4 ton Jeeps to 7 1/2 ton Mack NOs. Towed Artillery was, except for the very largest, towed by these trucks. Armor? Well, they drove themselves, but the trucks made sure they had gas. (Most famously, with the Red Ball Express.)

So, yeah, no horses, horsepower.

558:

Sounds good to me ...

Artificial gravity for me is as big an issue as FTL. We need gravity and not just for health reasons. Consider this interesting problem/challenge:

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/space-poop-challenge

559:

A mole-based design would work better, like what was used to dig the Chunnel.

560:

(Doesn't take much effort to map this to religion, but I'll refrain. Apologies for length; subject got me a bit worked up.) Catching up on some reading, saw a story about Uber broadly syndicated and discussed: How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers’ Buttons (hardcopy, April 3, has different title). I'm actually a bit skeeved out reading it all in one dose. The broader corporate world isn't this bad, yet, at least for salaried workers. (Of note is a referenced paper, Algorithmic Labor and Information Asymmetries: A Case Study of Uber’s Drivers) Cherry-picked samples from the NYTimes article: And yet even as Uber talks up its determination to treat drivers more humanely, it is engaged in an extraordinary behind-the-scenes experiment in behavioral science to manipulate them in the service of its corporate growth ... Employing hundreds of social scientists and data scientists, Uber has experimented with video game techniques, graphics and noncash rewards of little value that can prod drivers into working longer and harder — and sometimes at hours and locations that are less lucrative for them. ... By mastering their workers’ mental circuitry, Uber and the like may be taking the economy back toward a pre-New Deal era when businesses had enormous power over workers and few checks on their ability to exploit it.

and specifics:

[predominately male drivers]:Some local managers who were men went so far as to adopt a female persona for texting drivers, having found that the uptake was higher when they did. [income targeting]:an Uber driver in the Tampa, Fla., area, received a message on the company’s driver app with the headline “Make it to $330.” The text then explained: “You’re $10 away from making $330 in net earnings. Are you sure you want to go offline?” Below were two prompts: “Go offline” and “Keep driving.” The latter was already highlighted. ["ludic loop", perhaps from Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas ]:Uber, for its part, appears to be aware of the ludic loop. In its messages to drivers, it included a graphic of an engine gauge with a needle that came tantalizingly close to, but was still short of, a dollar sign. [overt gamification]:Uber drivers can earn badges for achievements like Above and Beyond (denoted on the app by a cartoon of a rocket blasting off), Excellent Service (marked by a picture of a sparkling diamond) and Entertaining Drive (a pair of Groucho Marx glasses with nose and eyebrows). ... Uber collects staggering amounts of data that allow it to discard game features that do not work and refine those that do. And because its workers are contractors, the gamification strategies are not hemmed in by employment law. [no way to disable forward dispatch]:It is true that drivers can pause the services’ automatic queuing feature if they need to refill their tanks, or empty them, as the case may be. Yet once they log back in and accept their next ride, the feature kicks in again.

561:

Yes - why I keep harping on the importance of learning about psych beyond the old-school 1984, Brave New World psych tropes. Large part of not falling into a trap is knowing that there is a trap, plus what it looks like.

'Religion' is a handy smoke&mirrors that helps keep people from discovering how their mental innards work. (Another item on the 'do the math' list for hard SF.)

562:

How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers’ Buttons

I've taken about 30 to 35 Lyft/Uber rides in the last 2 years. Mostly in 2 cities, one medium sized and one very large metro area. A few in various other locations.

I always ask the driver a few questions.

How long have you been driving? 2 days to 2 years.

Do you drive for both Uber and Lyft? All but 3 do. One was Lyft only, 2 were Uber only.

Which do you prefer? 1 Uber 2 Didn't matter The rest of them preferred Lyft. Most enthusiastically. The main reason they also drove for Uber was that Uber has the first mover advantage. There are times when they can't get a Lyft rider but they can get an Uber rider. This is declining so there may be more Lyft only drivers in the future.

Last week in Boston my Lyft driver was an ex taxi driver who switched to Lyft a few months ago. And interestingly when I checked about 8AM there were no Uber rides in the area but multiple nearby Lyfts. This was NOT in a remote area of Boston. Longwood and Beacon street area of Brookline. A few blocks from the Harvard Medical School.

563:

Elderly Cynic @556 said; . . . in addition to using a lot of ballast (2.6 times heavier on Mars, don't make me laugh on the asteroids) . . .

Sadly, the "ballast" is the dozer itself. If you triple the "ballast" you literally have to triple the size of the dozer.

I invite you to watch this YouTube video before running your dozer on Mars.

Amazing Bulldozer Gone Wrong / Gone Wild - Heavy equipment accidents caught on tape https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06Mchr4DahA

Been there, done that; as the saying goes.

Remember, this is something as simple as a bulldozer. There are physical laws that no level of advanced technology can fix.

Don't get me wrong, the technology of building and material science has advanced leaps and bounds since I was at University in the 70's. The NOVA episodes about Super Skyscrapers scares the hell out of me.

YouTube - pbs nova super skyscrapers

It is a series of four episodes. The episode where they are building the skyscraper in London, with prefab components, like using tinker toys, terrifies me. They literally jack up one side of the building, to change the "shims" and straighten out a "lean" in the building. The fact that they designed for that "adjustment" and calmly carried it out blows my mind.

Thats why when people talk about "Hard SF" and "theoretically possible" I just pull out the movie Armageddon with Bruce Willis, where they used rockets to keep the mobile drill rig on the surface of the comet. Rockets? Yikes! I just pull out the popcorn and enjoy the movie.

The problem with "tethers" to hold the dozer down became horribly apparent during the Rosetta mission with the Philae lander.

Wiki - Philae (spacecraft)

They fired harpoons, into what they thought was going to be a "dirty snowball" only to discover, surprise, surprise, the comet is solid rock, and Philae went bouncing along.

We have been to comets many times since 1986 when we went to Halley's comet. In all that time we have never found a "dirty snowball", we have only found rock. Yet "consensus science" still refers to comets as "dirty snowballs" and they planned the Rosetta mission based on that false premise.

Bottom line: Tethers and anchors only work if you can actually sink the anchors, and that comes right back to where the real world slams head on into the phrase "theoretically possible".

564:

Er, no. Just make a bulldozer built around a bloody great bucket, and fill that up with rubble when you get there. That sort of design isn't uncommon.

565:

This whole conversation basically reads to me like: "Boats are impossible, because my Volkswagen sinks in water. You may think it would float since the tires are filled with air, but that just shows how little you know."

I would think it's beyond obvious that any construction equipment designed for Mars will differ significantly from what we use on Earth, for numerous reasons. I mean, for starters, it's all going to run on batteries and extension cords, be robotic (remote controlled), and designed to operate in a near vacuum in extreme cold and be serviced in a maintenance tent.

Anything hauled up from Earth is also going to be made of exotic aerospace materials and have mass shaved off to within an inch of its life.

... and that's before we even get into construction practices (tunnels in permafrost is a somewhat... esoteric environment here on Earth, much less pressure vessels) and chemistry.

But it's all clearly possible, given enough effort.

566:

Exactly. When it's asteroid mining time, someone will figure out how to mine asteroids.

Any gigantic, ancient civilization with serious Von Neuman capability will have numerous asteroid/moon/planet mining designs on file, and will use the appropriate design after learning about the size, gravity, composition and atmosphere of the world(s) to be mined.

Whether it's necessary for a hard sf author to discuss this in any detail is another matter; is there an interesting story to be told about asteroid mining, or is "giant Von Neuman civilization mining the asteroids" just background information?

567:

An interesting part of all of this is that the WWI demand for horses seriously denuded both Canadian and American stock - part of WWI horselore is semi-broken American stock being shipped over 1916 onwards and the issues it caused; given that the American Army saw this shortfall personally, it could be argued that this drove said Cavalry Men to mechanization (in the same manner that later in Vietnam, the Air Cavalry was formed).

ties the thread off

568:

Virtually all I know about cavalry horses is that I'm here because of one.

During WWI my grandfather was an infantryman in Palestine, and his unit was in full retreat from the Turks. A cavalry unit rode through them and one the the troopers told granddad to hang onto his stirrup, which he did, taking giant strides while the horse trotted. After a few miles a cavalry officer ordered the trooper to save himself, but that put enough distance between granddad and the Turks that he made it back to the Jordan.

No idea which action this was part of.

569:

I know this is all preaching to the choir but...

The more difficult questions about colonizing an unfriendly world like Mars, or other space colonization ideas like O'Neill colonies and the like have to do with economics and biology rather than more basic engineering stuff like caves.

That is, if you discount issues about funding and assume a huge effort to design and test the various technologies needed, it's completely reasonable that people could live in some underground tunnels or in a spinning tin can. There are some questions about whether children would be viable in 2/5 gravity (also solvable with ugly hacks), but the other issues are comparatively straightforward.

The harder technology questions have to do with food: we need to grow crops in space to live there, and the existing science on fully sustainable agriculture, self-sufficient artificial ecologies and the like is somewhat lacking. Nothing about it smells impossible, but there's certainly a fair bit of handwaving involved in the current thinking.

The economics is where the whole project is just a long shot: to put it simply, Mars and/or spinning tin cans are places to live with a very high cost of living. Can people given something approximating our current technology be productive enough on average to afford that cost of living? If not, what technologies are needed before it becomes possible? [1]

To put it another way, running all that construction machinery, the farms, the factories, and so forth requires a whole lot of people. It's no good if the society can't afford to have kindergarten teachers because every available brain is needed 18 hours a day to pilot the mining robots and tend the farms.

That's where the real hand-wavy stuff shows up. Not in whether we can build a backhoe that works in low gravity or a drill that works in a vacuum, but whether a space colony is fundamentally viable without major technology advances.

1: Note that I completely ignored the economics Earth side. That's because it's really "just" a matter of politics at this point: the planet has the economic capacity to spend a few trillion a year on space colonies, we just prefer to spend it on other things like military adventures and so forth.

570:

I think it's a little like making an ocean voyage. For a tribal society it's a really big deal. You have to chop down a tree with primitive stone tools, then you have to hollow it out. Then you have to use unreliable technologies to solve a number of issues in, at best, a semi-reliable fashion. Weaving cloth is really, really expensive for a tribal society, so simply building one canoe plus a sail for a long ocean voyage is a really difficult for them.

Flash forward a thousand years, and the Vikings have made major improvements on the ocean-crossing technology, but its still risky and expensive.

Flash forward another five-hundred years and your average man-o-war is pretty reliable. Another hundred years and steamships are very, very safe. Then someone invents the airplane and a trans-Atlantic trip is safer than crossing the street. But the airplane is a massive revolution in thought and engineering, and we still use "steamships" for cargo.

Go back 1600 years and the tribal society can come fairly close to a viking ship - all they're missing is the metal and a couple dozen engineering concepts, but they've got the technology to do the woodworking. They could even build something that kinda-sorta looked like a man-o-war if they took the time and hand-carved each piece of wood, but they're still missing a couple hundred concepts of construction and several tons of metal. But they could still conceive a man-o-war, possibly minus the cannons.

But that tribal society is not going to conceive of a steamship, and the idea of an airplane - as a workable engineering concept - won't enter their minds until they've passed through a dozen scientific and industrial revolutions.

Right now we're in the "build a big canoe" phase of space travel. Elon Musk might be the first "tribal space thinker" to engineer something closer to a "viking ship."

But the space version of an airplane? Fully realized and engineered? That's a dozen revolutionary ideas away from where we are now, which is one of the reasons I get quietly grumpy about discussions on how "...we'll never solve the problems of going to space because bulldozers won't work on Mars."

P.S. I know about the Pacific Islanders. I also know about what happened on Easter Island. Airplanes folks. Airplanes.

571:
Which is one of the reasons I get quietly grumpy about discussions on how "...we'll never solve the problems of going to space because bulldozers won't work on Mars."

There is of course a certain population of space cadet types who are quick to trot out a lot of poorly conceived "just go!" ideas... of the sort like "just add a LOX tank or two to a Diesel Caterpillar tractor and we're good to go with some Moon farming! How hard could it be?! Blasted useless NASA!" -- so I think some healthy skepticism is highly warranted.

Regarding your analogy, the underlying huge unknown is basically: can we colonize the solar system using viking ships, or do we need a fleet of 777s? Right now, we really can't say. There are just too many unknowns.

One thing that somewhat throws water on the idea, though: the more we learn, to some great degree, the harder it looks.

If you look at the sort of space travel thinking people were guilty of back in the '50s and '60s, sure there was some nod to nuclear rockets and the like... but the ideas mostly seem to amount to sweaty men in space suits using a lot of shovels and welding torches, while an egghead with a slide rule works some figures for them over the radio.

Looking back, this sort of thing seems ludicrously naive. Now we're talking about semi-autonomous mining droids, absurdly powerful computers, massive engineering projects that take the better part of a decade to design any single major component (and the project management to match), not to mention serious engineering concerns about radiation... and it all looks very much in the "maybe" category, with a huge number of obvious unknowns.

But yeah, the "bulldozers" talk can be aggravating. Not just because it's wrong, but because it doesn't even consider the real problems with the idea.

572:

"just add a LOX tank or two to a Diesel Caterpillar tractor and we're good to go with some Moon farming! How hard could it be?! Blasted useless NASA!"

We are wholly agreed on that point!

One thing that somewhat throws water on the idea, though: the more we learn, to some great degree, the harder it looks.

On the other hand, at least we're not trying to solve the wrong problems.

...but the ideas mostly seem to amount to sweaty men in space suits using a lot of shovels and welding torches, while an egghead with a slide rule works some figures for them over the radio.

"You will go underground in your spaceship!" (it's from "Destroy All Monsters" but it sums up the problem just about perfectly. I really need to put that one on a T-Shirt.)

Now we're talking about semi-autonomous mining droids, absurdly powerful computers, massive engineering projects that take the better part of a decade to design any single major component (and the project management to match), not to mention serious engineering concerns about radiation...

We will learn a great deal from this effort. And kill off the best of a generation. Wait for the airplanes.

...it doesn't even consider the real problems with the idea.

The real problem with the idea is that it's a thousand years too soon.

573:

Too many to reply to individually about bulldozers.

Making a bulldozer (or backhoe, or mechanical shovel) in a lower gravity field is as simple as reducing the depth of the cut proportionate to the reduced field! Let's say that our "Earthdozer" is capable of making a 2.6m deep cut; the same vehicle "magically transported" to Mars will still work as long as we reduce the cut to under 1m deep! This is literally "not rocket science" (from an actual rocket scientist).

574:

Further to @Martin's #532 on the Clydeside Blitz. I grew up in Dumbarton, about 8 miles from Clydebank, and could take you on a tour of both towns, pointing out places where housing was partly destroyed by the Blitz (it takes a lot of bombing to completely flatten a 3 or 4 story high sandstone tenement end to end).

Even so, and whilst they're now virtually "all gone", the said Blitz never rendered any of the shipyards or the associated foundries completely inoperable.

575:

I'd agree; as a lay view, anything that uses wormholes/subspace (or copyright friendly terms that mean the same thing such as Warp or Slipstream) where duration passes for the vehicle travelling such that, on arrival, its internal calendar is still synchronised with its departure point's, is not time travel.

Let's take such a vehicle capable of 4x lightspeed and send it, along with a radio clock synchronisation pulse to Centauri on the same date. When the vehicle arrives, it has to wait 3 years for the clock synch to do so!

576:

Or even the plate tectonics! There is no way I can think of to create the U-shaped mountain range using plate tectonics.

577:

It's actually monotonicity that matters. It's fairly easy to create an example where it causes time travel, but I have never seen a proof that (say) FTL solely between frames at rest with one another does.

578:

I think that could be done, though it would actually be three ranges joined up. It would imply much more turbulent plate tectonics than we have on earth, which would have other, interesting and major consequences.

579:

I think plate tectonics would come under the heading of "Do the geology," but I'm not adverse to "do the __," where ___ was a science, as a rule of hard sf.

I'm trying to think of an SF book where a U-shaped mountain range was a plot point, and you've got me completely puzzled.

580:

During WWI my grandfather was an infantryman in Palestine

Huh: my grandfather was in that campaign. As a sergeant in charge of a battery of mule-borne heavy machine guns, but apparently mounted (family legend has it that the only time he ever had to use his sword it was with the flat of the blade — when his unit was called out to deal with Australian soldiers rioting in the souk in Cairo after one of their comrades was knifed by a local).

581:

I'm fiddling slightly here; that's more of a fantasy trope, but it still implies someone "hugely over-powered" to do it with magic!

582:

Regarding your analogy, the underlying huge unknown is basically: can we colonize the solar system using viking ships, or do we need a fleet of 777s? Right now, we really can't say. There are just too many unknowns.

A good analogy might be the economic viability of Perth in Western Australia (not the Scottish Perth).

Australia is huge and very, very, empty; mostly desert. Perth, on the west coast, is further away from Sydney and Melbourne (on the east coast) than New York is from London and Paris. The nearest major city to Perth is Singapore. Perth was colonized somewhat later than the eastern colonies (although the area was explored by the Dutch East Indies crowd at much the time time, i.e. late 18th century). It's currently supported by huge open-cast mines in the nearby continental interior, exporting minerals via bulk cargo carrier. WA is so isolated geographically that the Trans-Australian Railway didn't link up until late 1917 (compare that to the great North American railroads). 80% of the state is arid/desert, with a peak recorded temperature of 50.1 celsius (i.e. deadly without protection/active cooling), although there is a coastal zone with mediterranean climes that supports western style intensive agriculture, and consequently WA exports wheat, sheep, and cattle ...

What makes Perth economically viable?

In a nutshell: cheap shipping. When you can send a 20 tonne container halfway around the planet for US $2000 it becomes possible to ship spring water from Fiji to western markets (20 tonnes = 20,000 one litre bottles = 10 cents in shipping costs per bottle). Similarly, you can ship ores and beef and lamb from Perth to China and Indonesia and Malaysia.

But what happens if we increase the cost of shipping a thousandfold? or ten-thousandfold, to reflect the cost of getting the goods into orbit?

583:

it could be argued that this drove said Cavalry Men to mechanization

Nope - it was self-preservation for the organisation. Horses were being made obsolete by increasingly efficient wheeled and tracked vehicles.

The role doesn't change, just the mechanism to achieve it. The traditional "light cavalry" roles (scouting, screening, etc) got light tanks and armoured cars instead of horses; the traditional "heavy cavalry" roles (shock action against dismounted troops, destruction of the other side's cavalry) got heavier tanks instead of horses. So; do you re-equip the people who understand the role, or do you create an entirely new organisation?

In the UK, you had the reroled Cavalry Regiments outnumbering the Royal Tank Regiment (aka "the People's Cav"). They've been tribal ever since, to the amusement of the infantry...

584:

Likewise - my great-grandfather came across to the UK with the Canadian Expeditionary Force for the First Great Mistake (he was skilled with horses), and met a local girl. His daughter was my maternal grandmother.

It's why I get to refer to the US as "the old country" - his ancestors had thought it best to leave New York State after backing the losing side in the Treacherous Insurrection of the Slaveholders against His Majesty King George (tm). The irony being that they moved back once the memories had died down (i.e. after 150 years), so I've a lot of second cousins who are US citizens...

...don't mention the myth of the 92nd riding into the attack at Waterloo, on the stirrups of the Scots Greys...

585:

It's worth pointing out the comparative severity of those attacks for y'all in the USA; note that this was the result of only two raids (London suffered rather more).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clydebank_Blitz

The article states that only seven houses out of 12,000 undamaged; 4,000 homes completely destroyed, and 4,500 severely damaged. 528 people killed, 617 seriously injured, 35,000 were made homeless.

By comparison, the Pearl Harbour attack ("a day that will live in infamy") resulted in the deaths of only 68 civilians.

586:

If you have a spare 15-30 mins, here is a rather good long-form essay on the transformation of the USA cavalry from horses to mechanization and the roles of the personalities within it (the 'old guard' versus George C. Marshall and others). It includes WWII and the lesser known detail that hybrid regiments were designed to use trucks (already mentioned above) to ship the men and horses to fronts, certainly useful where geography precluded light armor.

Perhaps due to the confusion of transition from peace to war it was lost on most that, at least in the Philippine Islands, the horse mounted 26th Cavalry (Philippine Scouts) demonstrated the continued viability of cavalry as the United States Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) resisted Japanese Army landings on Luzon. Senior Army leaders such as the Chief of Staff George Marshall and G-3 McNair had already written off the horse cavalry, but the 26th Cavalry demonstrated such a decision may have been premature...

The war was not yet over in Europe as U.S. Army began the doctrinal process of studying and staffing improvements to the standard infantry and armor divisions of 1945. Reports were received from the theatres as to the inadequacy of divisional reconnaissance elements, to include the reconnaissance troop or company found in each division of the day.[113]

For example, both Combat Commanders of the 11th Armored Division, Colonel W.W. Yale, Combat Command B Commander, and Brigadier General W.A. Holrook, Jr., Combat Command A, in Europe recommended the addition of horse cavalry into the armored division table of organization, in order to improve inadequate reconnaissance and pursuit capability. These commanders reported an almost daily need for horse cavalry, with either a troop or squadron needed at division, reporting mechanized cavalry equipped with halftracks and armored cars as too road bound. Brigadier General Holrook of Combat Command A stated that “The inclusion of portee horse cavalry in each armored division is earnestly recommended.”[114]

IN DEFENSE OF THE HORSE: MAJOR GENERAL JOHN K. HERR, CHIEF OF CAVALRY The Long Riders Guild Academic Foundation, 2009

The source is obviously (!) not unbiased, but it's an interesting and more nuanced take than simply either/or.

To reference the lack of horses, c.f.:

Between 1914 and 1918, the United States sent almost one million horses to the European forces, particularly the British. When America entered the war, another 182,000 horses were taken overseas by the American Expeditionary Forces. Only 200 horses returned to the U.S., and 60,000 were killed outright.1 As the nation’s equine population and trained cavalry mounts became seriously depleted, many wild horses, including American Mustangs, were utilized. Supplying war horses was considered a patriotic act, and Americans were proud of their contribution.

The Real War Horses of America The ReadEx Blog, 2012

587:

Most of us meatspace humans had noticed that Martin is British, posting on a British blog. So your original comment was wrong given that context. Here in the UK here was a great reluctance​ to mechanise the cavalry.

588:

And, FWIW, I wasn't born until 1962 and am still 110% certain I can find places where the destruction is obvious.

589:

It wasn't a criticism, merely something I learnt. From the piece mentioned:

As early as October of 1927, Troop F of the 5th Cavalry, at the conclusion of First Cavalry Division maneuvers, had moved the entire troop, or company sized unit of “two officers, forty-five enlisted men and forty-eight horses, with full field equipment” on 12 World War One era Liberty Trucks. The movement from Marfa to Fort Clark, Texas, was a distance of 288 miles, in little more than one day’s time.[55] To Captain Charles Cramer, the Troop Commander, such an exercise demonstrated that “…cavalry (horses, men and equipment) by motor transportation as far in a day as infantry can be moved in that time by the same mode of transportation and still be ready to move out, mounted, in an hour or two after unloading.”[56]

i.e. horses had been moved from logistics to a tactical enhancement (?) in US doctrine, or at least experimented with as early as the mid 1920's. So, like parachutes / gliders, a way with which to enhance infantry, rather than old-style cavalry charges etc.

I thought this was interesting, and added something to the debate.

590:

Here in the UK here was a great reluctance​ to mechanise the cavalry

Compared to whom? From the establishment of the Experimental Mechanised Force in the mid-1920s, to the work of JFC Fuller and Basil Liddell-Hart, the US Army appears to have viewed the British as leaders in the field of mechanisation (if erratic).

See pages 147-156 http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/Mobility_Shock_and_Firepower/CMH_30-23-1.pdf

Patton makes an appearance in pages 38-40, defending his beloved horses and attacking mechanisation. Note in my link from @522, that he said: "It is the considered opinion, not only of myself but of many other general officers who took their origin from the infantry and artillery, that had we possessed an American cavalry division with pack artillery in Tunisia and in Sicily, not a German would have escaped, because horse cavalry possesses the additional gear ratio which permits it to attain sufficient speed through mountainous country to get behind and hold the enemy until the more powerful infantry and tanks can come up and destroy him."

https://web.archive.org/web/20080827181403/http://www.qmfound.com/horse.htm

591:

Here in the UK here was a great reluctance​ to mechanise the cavalry

And they still love their horses... well, their officers do ;)

One young officer I knew managed to appear in the news in the mid-90s; he'd gone Regular, his cavalry unit were in Bosnia, and they decided to hire some horses locally in order to carry out mounted patrols in the more wriggly and mountainous parts of their area of responsibility.

Any claims that they did it as attention-seeking one-upmanship over other Cavalry units; or to put the truth to their frequent claim that they "lend tone to what would otherwise be an unseemly brawl" is left as an exercise for the observer...

592:

Britain used mules in World War II, and my father worked with them. Even today, they are capable of moving through terrain that is infeasible with any wheeled (and almost any tracked) vehicle. And, back then, helicopters were not the transport solution that they are today.

593:

Reading entries from @564 to now, I was stunned.

Wait. What! Oh, nooooo.

Thank you all for playing. I laughed loud and hard for a good half hour, slowing down to the occasional chuckle. That felt good. I wasn't laughing at you guys, I was laughing at myself for thinking that actual communication was occurring.

This is why I am in awe of David Brin. He takes incoherent Space Cadet babble as in the thread above, and turns it into coherent narrative. When I read his books like Earth and Existence I am constantly saying, "You can't do that," yet he does!

Back to work. I have books to finish. Thanks for the laugh.

594:

Bulldozers on Mars ...

Anyone know what the level of difficulty is for the Mars Rover to dig, pick up and carry samples? Plus - what designs did NASA consider and discard for what reasons. I'm trying to visualize how I'd dig a hole on a very low-gravity world and the closest that I can think of is digging a hole at the bottom of a water-filled swimming pool: the stuff you need to move is going to shift around every which way because there's not enough unidirectional force (gravity) to keep it going in one main direction (down).

Horses - c. WW1 BBC doc about railroads

This doc mentions that the number of horses skyrocketed when rail was laid in Britain because horses were needed to bring trade goods to and from the railroad stations. Thought it was interesting how a new tech could actually cause an old tech to also grow. How this relates to WW1 ... probably much more difficult to get large businesses esp. in the food, cloth and war-effort industries to part with their horses. I'm guessing that during WW1 this could mean something like 50% of all horses in the UK were untouchable and could not be pressed into military service.

This is episode 1 - don't recall which episode spoke specifally about the horses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cioGo1WbYAg

595:

I'm guessing that during WW1 this could mean something like 50% of all horses in the UK were untouchable and could not be pressed into military service.

Well, kind of - UK farming was "the most mechanized in Europe" in 1914, but still used a million+ horses:

The War Office needed to source more horses and they began to requisition another half a million to go to the front. This meant that thousands of farming families in Britain had to say goodbye to their work horses and ponies, which were sent to endure a life on the front line...

By 1917, almost half of steam-ploughing sets were lying idle due to the loss of farm workers to the war. There was also a lack of spare parts, mechanics and coal. Government responded by issuing a letter relating to the recruitment of agricultural workers signed by the President of the Board of Agriculture and the Secretary of State for War... An order issued on 12 March 1917 required all skilled ploughmen in the Home Forces to be granted leave. By the first week in April 1917, around 40,000 soldiers were at work on the land.

World War One: The Few That Fed the Many NFU, PDF. Included for the ridiculously Patriotic font choices and !jingo! writing style and for the brilliant one liner: In 1916, it became illegal to consume more than two courses for lunch in a public place or to have more than three courses for dinner.

Interesting aside: By the end of the war, more than 6,000 motor tractors were in operation in Britain. Farmers adapted to develop more innovative and efficient methods of production in a very short space of time. This achievement led to the eventual mechanisation of farming. (oh, and the loss of at least 50% of horses, but hey)

But, alas, there were other alternatives:

The Board of Agriculture organised the Land Army during the Great War, starting activities in 1915. Towards the end of 1917 there were over 250,001 - 260,000 women working as farm labourers, with 23,000 in the Land Army itself, doing chores such as milking cows and picking fruit... However the uniform of the Women's Land Army included trousers, which many at the time considered cross-dressing. The government responded with rhetoric that explicitly feminised the new roles.[1]

Women's Land Army

~

But, anyhow: mechanization was due to lack of labour / horses. marks finger with spit, scores the point

I was laughing at myself for thinking that actual communication was occurring.

Mikulushka, Seimybtymy, Koubtumu, Nganabtumu too you too! (yes, iron horse joke switched around so that it's the indigenous people using it as an insult, rather than the conquerors, as happened in North America / Canada).

596:

(I left out the middle part where the UK bought USA tractors, the average farmer (cough, Landed Gentry, cough) spent ~£3.2million (equiv) on machinery mid war and so on and so forth)

We leave it as an exercise for the reader to imagine that spending ~£3.2 million was no small cost to prevent a mass-outbreak of liberated young women who loved to cross-dress and so forth.

cracks open Marx

597:

Yes: returned soldiers comprised 15% of the workforce compared to the women who had been involved since ~1915 onwards (insert graph here of military losses to workforce scaled 1914-18).

cough

About those castrating crabs and !By Jingo! propaganda.

p.s.

If you want communication, here's a reference:

In this work, relevant processes in minor bodies of the Solar system are studied using the discrete element method. Results of simulations of size segregation in low-gravity environments in the cases of the asteroids Eros and Itokawa are presented. The segregation of particles with different densities was analysed, in particular, the case of comet P/Hartley 2. The surface shaking in these different gravity environments could produce the ejection of particles from the surface at very low relative velocities. The shaking causing the above processes is due to impacts and explosions such as the release of energy by the liberation of internal stresses or the re-accommodation of material.

Granular physics in low-gravity environments using discrete element method Royal Astronomical Society, 2012. Full text, no PDF. Section 5.

TL;DR - you would use an "insert thingy underneath and apply explosive force" rather than dumper truck, we assume from that paper. Presumably with an exhaust port design so you'd apply the opposite force to clear behind (to the side?) each time. Think a T shaped arrangement.

No idea, seems fairly scientific to me ;)

598:

Re: '... (agricultural) mechanization was due to lack of labour / horses.'

The cause-effect worked in both directions.

Once the railroads were in, local farms had a reason to increase their production/yield because more farm products could be shipped quickly to the cities thereby maintaining nutrition/flavor value, and for meat animals - weight (revenue). Mechanization was the fastest way to ramp up production for time-sensitive goods, i.e., the window for produce and cereals is very narrow. Also, it's much faster to buy a machine than to raise a kid (farm hand). The first farm machines were about four or five times as productive as a one man and horse team and return was in the range of 10 to 15 years. This was also a new stimulus for retail banking.

Anyway, the trade via rail was two-way with cities shipping out cloth, newspapers/books, machinery including appliances and tourists to the countryside.

599:

Australia is huge and very, very, empty; mostly desert.

Random SFish thought, but has anybody written about terraforming Australia?

600:

Most of us meta-space abhumans had noticed that JLM is [redacted], posting on a British blog. So your original comment was wrong given that context. There in the UK here was a great reluctance​ to mechanize the working class.

~

There's an interesting parallel here, where the UK forms the Ministry of Food / Food Production Department (under the Board of Agriculture) and the USA War department (before it got re-branded into "Defense") takes over the Agriculture Department's role of certain things.

Or, being nice: The UK had had commercial transport networks since the time of canals. America, did not. Different beasties. Or, another way: the UK was forced to mechanize (due to lack of labour/horse power), America was not (which is the "why" to why 1+ mil horses from the USA vrs 500,000+ from the UK had such different impacts).

What is interesting is the similar labour requirements:

Unofficial estimates of the total labor supply required for harvesting throughout the western wheat area indicate that 80,000 to 90,000 fewer men will be needed this season than were ordinarily employed a few years ago to bring in the wheat harvest. In 1924 the United States Employment Service directed 53,923 men to the harvest fields to assist in meeting the peak demand for seasonal farm labor. In 1926, with a wheat crop of approximately the same size, the number of men provided dropped to 33,227 a reduction of more than 35 per cent and a further notable reduction in the demand for outside itinerant farm workers is anticipated this year. The steady decline in harvest labor requirements that has been in evidence during the last four or five years is credited to the rapid increase in the use of improved agricultural machinery particularly of the unit harvester-thresher, or “combine”, in the principal wheat areas of the West...

The combined harvester-thresher has been in use in the semi-arid regions of the Pacific States for many years, but it is only since 1922 that the machine has begun to be widely employed in the grain growing areas of the Great Plains. Now that its efficiency and economy has been demonstrated by several seasons use, the combine is working a revolution in the grain raising industry of the American Prairies, and it promises to have a similar effect in Canada.

The Mechanization of American Agriculture CQ Researcher, July 28, 1927

Unlike the UK (who, you know, had them all killed), the USA had a surplus of labour / animals. I'll let you figure out what happened (*cracks open "Of Mice and Men").

innocent look

601:

Mr Ghandi, what do you think of western civilisation? I think that it would be a good idea.

602:

Random SFish thought, but has anybody written about terraforming Australia?

Indeed they have!

Some fellow apparently wrote a whole book about it.

... which spawned a short-lived political party!

The more you know...

603:

But how many of the British )futile) charges into German Anti-Tank guns in the Western Desert in 1941-42 were due to the "Cavalry Mentality"?

It is a question you can't find the answer to in the archives.

604:

Actually a reply to multiple comments about the utility of Cavalry in WW II;

For the US, it was the logistics as much as anything else; EVERY horse/mule requires that 25 lbs. of Feed and Fodder every day, which would have had to have been shipped from CONUS. Trucks only burn Gasoline, Oil, etc. when in use.

The BEF in WW I actually shipped MORE Animal Feed and Fodder across the channel to France than Ammunition. I am not sure if there is any data on where the AEF got their Feed/Fodder, or how much; One of the advantages the Allies had in 1918 was they had (could) make significant progress on mechanizing their supply chain, the Germans did not even have Rubber for tires.

605:

More on British Cavalry "Mechanization" 1938-39; One of the minor might have been, the Cavalry wanted to continue pursuing cavalry roles and missions; It is unclear how much the procurement decisions to emphasize "Light" tanks over the "Cruiser" series (A9/A10/A13) were industrial limitations and how much was driven by the Treasury.

The Royal Tank Regiment received infantry tanks, A12 Matilda (Treasury again?) with only 27 of the A13 "Matilda II" reaching France. The "II" model is the one we all built the Airfix kit of as teenagers, which became famous in the Desert, they dropped the model designator after most of the A12s were lost in France.

Remember, four (of ten) of the German Panzer Divisions were largely equipped with Czech Tanks in 1940, and they used (stockpiled) Czech Gasoline to conquer France. Fuel had to be delivered direct from the Rumanian refineries to Army Group South to sustain the offensive in the summer of 1941.

Come to think of it, I have never looked at the Wikipedia page on the Panzer 38(t).

606:

A good analogy might be the economic viability of Perth in Western Australia (not the Scottish Perth).

I think this is a useful analogy, but more as the start of an idea than the end of one. Perth is, after all, habitable without technology: the economic viability you're talking about is really its desirability as a successful place to live in relation to the world economy.

Clearly a functional colony on Mars can't have an economy based on strip-mining the planet for resources destined for Earth: even at SpaceX's extremely optimistic $140/kg price there just isn't a market for much of that. Instead, it has to be based on local use of resources plus enough of an export market to pay for importing critical items like computers, drugs, seeds, and the like.

Given the cost of shipping, a viable export market has to be made up primarily of intangible goods: labor, video rights to the Martian cricket league, Martian space opera, political clout, remittances, that sort of thing.

Labor in general is something that it seems like a lot of people forget: in principle, any computer-based job that doesn't require a lot of real-time comms could be farmed out to Martian laborers. Need a book copy edited? A nice Martian would be happy to do it at competitive rates! At a macro level, a bit of all this sort of outsourced labor then goes into bankrolling the colony's trade imbalance in computers and so forth.

That's getting ahead of myself though: an early stage colony would clearly be subsidized, since if it isn't based on resource extraction and nobody lives there... well, someone has to pay for the adventure.

But just start there: given our near-future technology, would a colony even be viable given the subsidized transport? Could the people there get enough work done every day to keep all the machines maintained while building new farms, mines, factories, and new people, even with free supply ships?

If the answer is yes, and at some time in the future the colony can produce enough intangible goods to pay for the trade route, then you have a viable colony. It just happens to be a place where everything is expensive, the climate sucks, the market for unskilled labor is... poor, and you'd better like tunnels. Lots and lots of tunnels.

I hope the immigration bureau has good marketing...

607:

It was a really nice machine. Fast, mechanically very reliable, demanded little maintenance, well armed by 1939 standards (the Germans also retained the Skoda 37mm gun), and only half as heavy as a Pzkw III, saving many tons of steel.

Needless to say, it had some drawbacks, mainly the small turret imposed by the small size of the tank. By reducing the number of shells carried the Germans managed to modify it for two men, loader and gunner/commander (Czechs had planned only one) but even that arrangement was very inferior to the three men turret they had decided to use.

608:

Point of order - The Matilda (both A11 and A12) variants were "infantry tanks" intended for close support, not "light tanks" or "cruiser tanks".

There is one anecdote about a British tank corps officer being captured by the Afrika Korps, and seeing semi-emplaced Flak-36s in use as anti-tank weapons saying "That's not cricket; stop using anti-aircraft guns!", to which his captors replied "Stop using Matildas then."

609:

You are still thinking solely of battlefields and entrenched warfare; in many other circumstances, horses and mules can get most of their food from the land they are passing through, though the (significant) time taken to eat slows them down. That latter minor detail is often omitted in fantasy and alternate history stories, incidentally.

610:

Armies are a force-concentration contest; having to accept the troop and horse density the land will sustain means you lose.

So, yes, usable if you're not planning to come back that way anytime soon. But in general it ties you to seasonal events and involves a bet about who else is passing through there very tightly, which is part of why pastoralists are so very vehement about grazing rights.

611:

That really does seem to be an open question; not enough seem to have survived to answer it. Have you read "take these men" by Cyril Joly? He arrived in the desert a year or so into it and vividly describes many of the travails of the tanks.

612:

There is a rather well-informed US commentator (a reservist tank commander, no less) who got himself a day job with "World of Tanks". Among other things, he does short videos on them. Here's a link to the presentation on the Matilda II. Don't be surprised by the Irish accent, it's a long story...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mavg4UqSlso

Regarding the 88: Note that the British also considered the 3.7" heavy anti-aircraft gun as having a secondary anti-tank role. One problem was concealing it - it's a big beast, and lacks a protective shield. There also wasn't much need; the 2-pounder, 6-pounder, and 17-pounder were the primary anti-tank weapons, each sufficient to deal with Axis armoured vehicles of their time.

This is an excellent, and rather detailed, explanation of anti-tank weaponry and doctrine... http://nigelef.tripod.com/anti-tank.htm

Another issue was that UK cruiser tanks were designed to take on other tanks - and were issued armour-piercing ammunition. That's great for penetrating and then bouncing around the inside of a big tank full of people and ammunition, not so good at taking on an 88mm whose vital parts are smaller and harder to hit (you want something an explosive shell, not a metal dart). This was helped by the arrival of US-built tanks, that had dual-purpose guns; and by learning to be very wary of German integration of tanks and anti-tank weaponry.

It also worked the other way around; at the Battle of Medenine, Rommel sent his tanks and troops against a British integrated defensive position, and lost.

613:

Look up the campaign to take Italy. Popski's Private Army is a very readable autobiography and includes a lot on it. Much of the advancing was done by skirmishers, and fuel supplies were a serious limitation; the massed forces were called up when the skirmishers found a strongly defended location. I have no idea if any of the skirmishers used horses, but they wouldn't have been inappropriate for scouting. They would have been totally inappropriate for the main forces, of course.

614:

Actually one of the most fascinating differences between horse armies and motor armies is, horse armies are better supplied the faster they move - up to a certain extent, of course - but find terribly difficult to stay put for weeks. If they had to, usually because they were besieging a fortress or besieged themselves, they soon exhausted the local forage supplies and their horses started to weaken.

Ironically enough, one of the first effects of railroads and motorization had on armies was, they could add more horses than ever since forage no longer had to be local or moved on horse wagons (lucky the general that could get forage from river barges or a sea harbour).

615:

Re: '...USA War department (before it got re-branded into "Defense") takes over the Agriculture Department's role of certain things.'

Please elaborate.

616:

Something like that (intellectual labour contracts) happened in China Mountain Zhang.

617:

I have had this soc.history.what-if idea kicking around in the back of my mind for a while of introducing a modern-day discarding-sabot uranium penetrator into WWII tank-vs-tank battles. Uranium back then was not an essential war material and there's nothing that would make an APDS rod penetrator impossible to manufacture and deploy with WWII-level tech and fire it from WWII-level weapons. The Canadian mines producing a lot of the world's modest demand for uranium metal back then were safely in Allied hands so supply was not a problem. The pyrophoric effects of driving a uranium rod through steel armour were not known at that time, probably because no-one had actually tried making and testing a uranium penetrator. It's not like they had any real use for uranium after all...

618:

If I recall correctly, the Germans used tungsten discarding-sabot penetrators experimentally towards the end — not in great enough numbers to affect the eventual outcome. (Similar density and effectiveness, of course.) A key issue is the relatively low muzzle velocity of WW2-era guns; modern 120mm tank guns throw an APFSDS dart at 1200-1600 m/s, but WW2 guns threw a much smaller calibre round (76mm to 88mm; 106mm was just about to come in right at the end) at much lower velocity — 700-900 m/s. Which might not sound a lot slower, except the kinetic energy of an object scales as the square of its velocity; a BOTE calculation I did a while back suggested that a penetrator fired by an M1 or a Challenger 2 packs something like 30-40 times the energy of a projectile from a Sherman Firefly.

619:

Engagement ranges for armour have improved vastly in terms of tank gunnery, mostly because of the increase in muzzle velocity of modern (large) guns. The bad news is that the higher the muzzle velocity the quicker the round loses that velocity due to drag. By the time a modern penetrator has flown a kilometre it loses perhaps 30% of its initial muzzle velocity. Most tank-on-tank and tank-vs-anti-tank gun engagements during WWII were at ranges of well under a kilometre and often just a couple of hundred metres. At those ranges a muzzle velocity of 900m/s (remembering a uranium projectile plus sabot is a lot lighter than a regular armour-piercing shell of that era hence a higher muzzle velocity as a freebie) would result in a contact velocity of 800m/s or so at 200 metres, easily comparable to a modern 1200m/s round over a kilometre. The other thing is that WWII rolled-steel armour the penetrator is impacting is like lace curtains compared to even "monkey model" modern second-rate armour suites never mind Chobham, Dorchester, reactive armour etc.

The British had tungsten-carbide DS penetrator rounds for the 17-pounder AT gun by 1942 but they don't seem to have made much of an impact (so to speak...)

620:

With the above discussions about how thresher combines displaced farm workers, motorized artillery transport eliminated war horses' fodder logistics, and the need for or disutility of human workers in asteroid mines, this thread seems not so much to be circling the drain as it's dancing around the elephant in the room, namely how to regard the inevitable replacement of nearly all workers by automation and computers, right now in the present mundane world economy. Amazon's Bezos seems to be trying to point the way, in effect saying "Sure I just knocked a hundred thousand retail jobs off the U.S. employment report, I'll do the same next quarter and ongoing for the foreseeable future. But don't fight it, look to the skies for future jobs in space industry, like my Blue Horizon project." From a political standpoint, this actually could be part of the long term answer since the public responds much more favorably to images of brave pioneering astronauts than to the far more sensible use of robots in every space activity besides ground support. But no matter how many acrobats and clowns get shot from cannons to keep the bread and circus money flowing, the numbers don't add up in terms of billions unemployed within our lifetimes, versus the promise of a few hundred thousand space related jobs eventually, maybe. Billions unemployed, you scoff? Consider what farm mechanization did to the labor force and repeat that for every other sector, not eventually, today and yesterday already. Multinational corporations may rise to the challenge by pushing for guaranteed minimum incomes to all citizens, paid for through 90% tax rates on the top tenth of a percent of incomes, just to keep consumer demand up and revenues coming in, the lifeblood of corporations. Either that or just go out of business, but organizations do tend to perpetuate themselves. Alternatively, governments may become employers of last resort by funding huge construction programs, my personal favorite since it creates lots of jobs that aren't strictly necessary, but manage to preserve the system of wages based on work, along with its associated support network of psychological relationships binding the individual to society. Whatever happens will develop along directions set up by prevailing political force fields, technological advances will act only indirectly through their effect on jobs.

621:

Highest probability -- it's moot. We're extinct by 2100. ("ecological collapse", a bit like "metabolic function ceased" in a coroner's report.)

Plausible outcome -- the weather gets bad. Very bad. Almost everyone gardens, under glass, because really labour intensive -- can you say "hand-pollinated tomatoes"? -- methods are the only way to grow food. Robots can do most but not all of this, and people are feeling less than charitable toward industrial food production; industrial greenhouse glass and irrigation hose will have to do. The robot economy can worry about moving the cities uphill. Actual prosperity is way down, in patchy ways. (Travel very expensive; medicine outside the US very cheap in a number of respects, but still no functioning general-purpose antibiotics, etc.)

Possible outcome -- Creativity is a bit more difficult than other aspects of AI. There's a thriving economy in explaining things to the robots on a relatively small scale. For example, there's a one-person gunsmith shop in Idaho producing really good shotguns to a novel design for upwards of 20 kUSD the each. ("Hoenig Rotary Round" will find it.) A sufficiently prosperous economy has a lot of niches like that; conversely, an economy with a lot of niches like that is prosperous. Getting wages up soon combined with the capability explosion gets us there.

We might get somewhere good; the battery news has been unusually cheerful lately. But the people in charge are innumerate and optimising money as though it was status.

622:

it's dancing around the elephant in the room, namely how to regard the inevitable replacement of nearly all workers by automation and computers, right now in the present mundane world economy.

Well done, you get a cookie. You came close to noticing the actual discussion.

The bit you missed? UK mechanization taking place ~4 years prior to the USA due to, oh, that little thing called millions of men dying and so forth (and you ignored the female aspect, bad little puppy). And it was done during the War: £3.2mil spend while the Great War Effort went on. [BIG FUCKING HINT THAT LARGE DANGEROUS BEASTIES WERE SHIFTING WHILE MILLIONS DIED].

Look it at in a different way: The UK got an "advantage", as did Russia (10-20+ million murdered / ground under the process of mechanization) in the mechanization Game... due to that little Daemon called "The mother of invention is necessity". The USA got the advantage, without paying the price: and, no, Vietnam doesn't count, your body debt is ~ +/- 172,000,000 at this point.

Oooh. That's a bit weird for you, but that's the way the debt is paid. (It's going to be a disease vector, targeting the [redacted]. Just don't have Diabetes ffs or even the lower end stuff like Herpes).

Now, do a bit of thinking: ignore Uber and the little wanky "disruptors" (And, remember Kids: 1981, a Trafalgar SSN costs £177,000,000; in 2017 Snap-chat is worth ~$30 bil) and wonder why no-one is really worried about Trump etc. Yeah, the Wheels on the Bus (UK Reference, "Pigeon Street", first Lesbian Character on children's TV) are coming the fuck off.

Or, look at it another way: Tally up the Kill-Counts from the Boer War (Second part) and so on. Same deal.

~

Quite the little payment, wasn't it? And, here's a non-Abrahamic Voice Shouting into the Void: The Shoah wasn't exactly novel. OH, it was efficient: but so was, oh I don't know, the purging of the world during Colonialism. Congo and hands as payment: I mean, Camps are Camps, but they didn't expect you to fucking trade your children's hands for a day's food, did they now?

Is that offensive? Kinda. More offensive: listening to the myriad of voices and souls eradicated before this.

You want offensive / reality, CEMCM? The Jews got a pass ("Christian Light"), they survived 2k years before Genocide really kicked in. Ask the Neanderthal and a multitude of Others who didn't survive about it. This has everything to do about the Genocide Meme in your heads, and absolutely nothing to do with your tribal shit. If you're offended, then good: 64% of H.S.S diversity has been eradicated over the last 6k years, and, guess what: Sorry, 6 million?

Not even fucking close to the scores we evaluate. And yes, be offended: that's fine, as long as you throw away the anchor that states that it was due to you being special.

Father stares at the hand and foot of his five-year-old, severed as a punishment for failing to make the daily rubber quota, Belgian Congo, 1904

p.s.

If you don't know how the Mirror works, then don't delve in. We're breaking chains and no, we don't care that you feel hurt. The Chains are Fascist ones, so - clutch pearls elsewhere.

623:

Can't speak for others, but ... not offended/hurt, and disagree with pretty much none of that. Can and do compare numbers. (The 172M US thing is not clear to me.) Just wanted to see it argued well, and appreciate it. (The political/tribal arguments at a Seder tonight were pretty weak.)

64% of H.S.S diversity has been eradicated over the last 6k years What metrics, and ... cite? Just asking, not picking a fight. And how does that number interact with observations about African genetic diversity relative to all of H.S.S., e.g. The Genetic Structure and History of Africans and African Americans (2009, so newer papers available) and also (refed) Low levels of genetic divergence across geographically and linguistically diverse populations from India. Genotype, haplotype and copy-number variation in worldwide human populations Support from the relationship of genetic and geographic distance in human populations for a serial founder effect originating in Africa From the last, Equilibrium models of isolation by distance predict an increase in genetic differentiation with geographic distance. Here we find a linear relationship between genetic and geographic distance in a worldwide sample of human populations, with major deviations from the fitted line explicable by admixture or extreme isolation.

624:

[...] the elephant in the room, namely how to regard the inevitable replacement of nearly all workers by automation and computers, right now in the present mundane world economy.

I don't really buy this sort of thinking about all jobs going away in the wake of automation at all.

Seriously, let's look at the good old CIA World Factbook entry for the USA:

Labor force - by occupation: * farming, forestry, and fishing: 0.7% * manufacturing, extraction, transportation, and crafts: 20.3% * managerial, professional, and technical: 37.3% * sales and office: 24.2% * other services: 17.6%

I mean, imagine everyone in sales replaced by a sales robot: "Beep. Would you like to buy a... car? Beep beep. We have the best cars for... HU-mans."

How about kindergarten teachers? Civil engineers? Auto mechanics? Nurses?

What's really going on with automation in general isn't that jobs as such go away: it's that the sort of jobs available are changing, in ways that have huge social implications. Obvious example since Jean-Léon Moore just brought it up: by another source, in 1870 53% of the US population worked on farms (18 million people), in 1990 2.6% did (3 million people).

Does this mean that 15 million jobs just disappeared, so now people are unemployed? Of course not! Other types of jobs have appeared instead.

With increasing automation, this will continue to happen. There isn't a fixed number of jobs, because jobs in general don't exist for the purpose of getting a fixed amount of work done. The economy doesn't just operate to pull a certain amount of resources out of the ground, or build a certain number of cars, or something like that.

Rather, functionally it exists for humans to trade wealth around, sometimes for shiny baubles and the like but more often for less tangible things. There's no natural limit to the number of people who can be employed doing those less tangible things.

The underlying questions here aren't "will humans be replaced by robots?" We won't. We can do things robots can't do, and this will continue right up until the point robots demand equal rights and a paycheck (at which point the fear is functionally the same as "will we be replaced by immigrants?").

The questions are about what sorts of things society values, and hence what sort of work will be encouraged. In one future, you have a society made up of an impoverished underclass scrounging to make rent at zero-hour gig economy jobs while a massive guard labor class keeps them from rising up and making life hard for an aristocracy who control all the wealth and the robots. In another future, the general public can look forward to lucrative jobs in child care, teaching, research, environmental management and so on with an effective safety net and excellent health care while robots handle the salt mines.

They're both completely reasonable futures. The underlying problem is all about politics and class, not technology.

625:

I mean, imagine everyone in sales replaced by a sales robot:

No, but I can imagine them replaced by a website or a tablet.

Does this mean that 15 million jobs just disappeared, so now people are unemployed? Of course not! Other types of jobs have appeared instead.

The flaw in this argument is that a tractor can only do so much, but an expert system can do pretty much whatever you set it to - and any new kind of labour could probably also be better performed by a well-trained system.

626:

"What metrics, and ... cite?" Don't hold your breath. The claim, as it stands, is bollocks - though a related, less absolute, claim MIGHT be true. It might be true in the Boreal area, but otherwise you would have to weight each characteristic by the proportion of the population that has it. And, even then, I know of no data supporting it.

627:

It's pretty unlikely that our species will be extinct by 2100, though HSS might then stand for Homo sapiens stultus, but it looks increasingly likely that any real civilisation will be, as well as the vast majority of earth's ecologies and other species (plant, animal and other). But, if that does not happen:

I have absolutely NO idea what effect the current policies of monetarisation and automation will have, except that they are incompatible with maintaining any kind of society we have seen previously. With a possible exception: the nastiest kinds of slave-based society, where 95% of the population is treated as valueless playthings (at best), kept in order by 4% of overseers, with the economy run by 0.95% of downtrodden technicians, for the benefit of the 0.05% on top of the pile.

There ARE good ways out of the hole we are digging, but we are currently heading in precisely the opposite direction.

628:
I mean, imagine everyone in sales replaced by a sales robot: "Beep. Would you like to buy a... car? Beep beep. We have the best cars for... HU-mans."

629:

medicine outside the US very cheap in a number of respects, but still no functioning general-purpose antibiotics, etc.

Jumping on one facet of this rather than the whole — I'm partial to Bruce Sterling's vision of the future consisting of "old people living in cities who're afraid of the sky" — but I disagree.

No, we probably won't get functional wide-spectrum antibiotics back again after the way we're fucking up the global bacterial genome by selecting for resistance plasmids. However: we already have fast, cheap genome sequencers. Bacteria have genomes too, and can be sequenced sufficiently well to identify a particular strain a hell of a lot faster than vertebrate species. It used to take 1-2 days to plate and incubate a sample on agar. Very soon now we'll be able to take a sample from an infected person and identify the responsible pathogen in a matter of double-digit minutes to single-digit hours.

Remember bacteriophages? They were the mainstay of hospital infectious disease treatment in the eastern bloc and are still in use; only the US/western medical intellectual property framework, plus their high specificity and cumbersome incubation requirements, have kept them from catching on over here.

I posit that by 2100, the approach to a bacterial infection will be (a) triage (if it's strep throat, leave it alone; if the patient is in danger, admit to an infectious disease unit), (b) sequencing to identify the pathogen, and (c) synthesis of a pathogen-specific phage that will attack the infectious agent from a library of stored RNA or DNA sequences; or use of an off-the-shelf vector in event of a particularly common infection.

My point being, we're not going to slide backwards or continue forwards in linear direction: we're going to go sideways instead, and unpredictably. A Victorian economist would have been aghast at the UK's total lack of coal-mining and minute steel production and assume — based on those figures — that 2017 UK is a poverty-stricken hell-hole; it wouldn't even occur to them to count wind farms or nuclear reactors.

630:

In theory I agree, "There isn't a fixed number of jobs", we are always seeing some jobs disappearing - I haven't met many cartwrights lately - and new ones appearing. But in practice I wonder if we can rely in that mechanism working in the future just because it did in the past. I see two problems, the first that this time machines also threaten desk jobs, and highly qualified ones to boot (that's not the future, but the present; banks are already using expert systems to assess risks, and law firms to search precedents); the second that we not only will need many millions of new jobs, but those jobs will have to include many that truck drivers, supermarket cashiers and postmen can do, but somehow robots can't.

Related with this, but different: one of the basic changes that have shaped the modern world is one our gracious host mentioned, now we can move 20 tons containers all across the world for a price so low that our grandfathers would hardly have believed it possible. What's going to happen if a similar revolution transforms retail sales and distribution? If most things are sold through the web and distributed from huge warehouses using small autonomous vehicles to our doors, Amazon style so to speak, and untold millions of brick and mortar stores close, but consumer prices stall or even fall?

631:

In theory I agree, "There isn't a fixed number of jobs", we are always seeing some jobs disappearing - I haven't met many cartwrights lately - and new ones appearing.

The nature of "work for pay" has changed since the good old days when subsistence (eating enough food, a roof over your home, clothes to wear) required 3000 hours of effort, often hard physical labour with a significant danger of injury or death from physical, biological and chemical factors. Nowadays in the West generally "work for pay" is about 1800 to 2000 hours a year for an above-subsistence livelihood (holidays away from home, toys, entertainment etc.) with a much safer workplace environment for all. That means more people working doing jobs that can't be conveniently automated at the moment and there are other jobs which are culturally sacrosanct -- for example there are about a million or so Americans involved in a makework medical billing process to maximise insurance company profits, not something most other countries with rational medical care regimes would countenance.

632:

One of the points about technological change is that the job turnover gives opportunities for the capitalist owning class to make sure none of the productivity gains go to the workforce. Of course globalisation also helps in that. But also if we are all supposed to change jobs and retrain, who pays for it? Currently it's us, which is fine if you get paid properly and can therefore afford the loans, but not if you aren't. And it's not that great for society (within the current system) if everyone goes to university ends up in debt and yet can't pay it back.

633:

If labour is a cost, you want to minimize it.

So a corporation wants to lower wages. Corporate political influence tends to make this policy.

This is systemically bad at the scale of a national economy, because individual costs are someone else's income; if nobody has anything to spend, income shrinks, growth collapses, and so on. (Generally what we're seeing.)

There isn't any way to say "wages are too low" in a wealth-concentrating framework; rather like trying to point out taxes can be too low, or that "wages are too low" and "taxes are too high" are different problems with different solutions, it just bounces. No sufficiently nearby concepts to get parsed.

But, well, wages are too low, and that's policy, it's not the inevitable result of impersonal forces.

634:

I missed a zero (0) - my mind was still in shock over the USA President's Spokesperson's Passover comments. Nope, couldn't even lampoon it. Just be aware that "Death Camps" = "Holocaust Centers" now.

No. Really. Like Butlins.

~

If you are interested, there's recent work on the topic of just how much genetic diversity has been lost over the last 60-150k years (I am, quite intentionally, including Neanderthals, Denisovan and the other three). Spot the amounts of guesswork being used to get a feel for why a statistic was made up on the spot (although, if you read closely, you'll see the reference 67%):

The breadth of the dataset allowed us to reconstruct the structure and content of the ancestral human genome prior to human migration and subsequent gene loss. To identify ancestral sequences potentially lost by deletion, we identified a set of sequences present in chimpanzee and orangutan reference genomes but absent from the human reference genome (20,373 nonredundant loci corresponding to 40.7 Mbp of sequence)... As expected, Africans were more likely to show evidence of these ancestral sequences compared to non-African populations, as the latter have experienced more population bottlenecks and thus retained less of the ancestral human diversity. A comparison to archaic genomes allowed us to identify sequences (50 loci or 104 kbp) that were present in Denisova or Neanderthal but lost in all contemporary humans as well as ancestral sequences present in all humans but not found in Denisova or Neanderthal (17 loci or 33.3 kbp).

Global diversity, population stratification, and selection of human copy number variation NCBI: Science. 2015 Sep 11

Although the science behind the losses they're looking at (particularly from ape genomes) is more about selective fitness etc, please bear in Mind: I'm looking at this from a world where all five homo species made it and diversity increased, not your world. (If you need a hint to which direction I view current politics / events from, it's firmly in the "Holy Chuckfuckles Insanity" area).

Or, imagine it as one of those torn and shredded papyrus with a lot of the important parts missing (which is, essentially, what the team above are trying to do: guess / spot the 'what is missing' without even having a full map of the originals, in the case of Homo species).

635:

Multi-aspect joke:

1 Direct: Martin's links were to the US Army Quarter Master Association (although he used an oddly old version - he might not like the new one, but there's another one that keeps all the pictures). The REMOUNT operation (to replace via breeding (with 75% US Gov. buying uptake), rejuvenate and prevent future short-falls (as seen in WW1)) was originally run by the US Department of Agriculture, then taken over by the Department of War (1920's onward, ran until WWII basically). The joke is that, as linked, in 1927 (at the very same time of those trucks shipping horses trials), the US Ag. was publishing reports showing just how mechanization was shaping up. (If you want to really get into this, we'll be into how this mechanization was misused and into the 1930's era Dust Bowls. i.e. they both fucked up, but in different ways). 2 Indirect, joke linking "Don't Ask, Don't tell" to something in the news (and referenced the LJ post):

It was one of the uglier scandals of the Bush administration: Top officials at an agency dedicated to protecting whistleblowers launched a campaign against their own employees based on suspected sexual orientation, according to an inspector general report.

In December, James Renne was appointed to the Trump “landing team” at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, as part of the transition effort between the election and the inauguration. He was then hired Jan. 30 in a senior role at the Department of Agriculture, though his exact job duties are not clear.

Official Involved in Bush-Era Purge of Gay Employees Now in Trump Administration ProPublica, 10th April, 2017

3 Nasty / Gremlin: The US War Department took over several projects / mantles from the US Ag. Department. It's worth looking them up (same time-frame, 1909-1922ish). That's where the real joke lies. And yes, it's a word play on REMOUNT in not a particularly pleasant fashion. 4 UK: Ministry of Food / Food Production Department was basically centralized rationing / C&C of agriculture. Of course, the UK weren't Communists, so it wasn't labelled as such, so !rah! doing one's bit but... You'll also spot that the link to the US Ag. stats from 1922 mentions centralized application of labour pools. Prior to Ayn Rand, this was an acceptable part of Government. (Points back to illegal immigrant labor in Georgia / NE UK and what's going to happen in the next 5 years).

Couple more, bored now.

636:

If you are interested, there's recent work on the topic of just how much genetic diversity has been lost over the last 60-150k years (I am, quite intentionally, including Neanderthals, Denisovan and the other three). Of course interested, though with full plate already, mainly looked at techniques, and at the differences between African and non-African samples and explanations for them (e.g. bottlenecks/founder effects). "the other three"? If I'm counting right, in the spirit of the implied (sci-fi?) scenario, can we have a transliteration or translation? (Haven't looked in the archives.)

This is now on my list to watch: Active Interpretation of Disparate Alternatives (AIDA) (3 April 2017) DARPA is soliciting innovative research proposals in the area of creating a multi-hypothesis semantic engine that generates explicit alternative interpretations of events, situations, or trends from a variety of unstructured sources, by mapping structured knowledge into a common semantic space, for use in an environment where there are noisy, conflicting, and potentially deceptive information. The Program Overview in the pdf is interesting and too long to quote.

via networkworld DARPA says the program, called Active Interpretation of Disparate Alternatives (AIDA), looks to develop a “semantic engine” that generates alternative interpretations or meaning of real-world events, situations, and trends based on data obtained from an extensive range of channels. The program aims to create technology capable of aggregating and mapping pieces of information automatically derived from multiple media sources into a common representation or storyline, and then generating and exploring multiple theories about the true nature and implications of events, situations, and trends of interest, DARPA says.

637:

Almost certainly still wrong. Even accepting that those were Homo sapiens, which is debatable, they weren't Homo sapiens ssp. sapiens by definition, and they were almost certainly much less genetically diverse than sub-Saharan Africa was or is (probably even combined). You have to go back further for your claim to be plausible.

638:

There is patchy evidence for several other hominids, which may or may not have been distinct from the known species/subspecies - e.g. the "hobbit". None are known to have been 'good' subspecies, as distinct from pathologically inbred populations (like the Hapsburgs).

639:

Yes, you'd have to add an extra zero (0) again. (nose wiggle).

Anyhow, here's a long-form article that's quite interesting, and relates to the 2016 Chinese discoveries. Let's just say that the old view is being challenged, for various reasons:

A third idea is even more radical. It emerged when Martinón-Torres and her colleagues compared more than 5,000 fossil teeth from around the world: the team found that Eurasian specimens are more similar to each other than to African ones8. That work and more recent interpretations of fossil skulls suggest that Eurasian hominins evolved separately from African ones for a long stretch of time. The researchers propose that the first hominins that left Africa 1.8 million years ago were the eventual source of modern humans. Their descendants mostly settled in the Middle East, where the climate was favourable, and then produced waves of transitional hominins that spread elsewhere. One Eurasian group went to Indonesia, another gave rise to Neanderthals and Denisovans, and a third ventured back into Africa and evolved into H. sapiens, which later spread throughout the world. In this model, modern humans evolved in Africa, but their immediate ancestor originated in the Middle East.

Not everybody is convinced. "Fossil interpretations are notoriously problematic," says Svante Pääbo, a palaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. But DNA from Eurasian fossils dating to the start of the human race could help to reveal which story—or combination—is correct. China is now making a push in that direction. Qiaomei Fu, a palaeogeneticist who did her PhD with Pääbo, returned home last year to establish a lab to extract and sequence ancient DNA at the IVPP. One of her immediate goals is to see whether some of the Chinese fossils belong to the mysterious Denisovan group. The prominent molar teeth from Xujiayao will be an early target. "I think we have a prime suspect here," she says.

Fossil finds in China are challenging ideas about the evolution of modern humans and our closest relatives Phys.org, July 2016.

Dr Maria Martinon-Torres is from UCL, so she's not some random internet White Pride crank; the article is worth a quick once-over for a general outline of the ways in which the old models are being examined.

More evidence: given that the average European is still ~1-4% Neanderthal, there's certainly evidence of more 'robust' outliers from as early as 40k years ago. e.g.:

We find that on the order of 6–9% of the genome of the Oase individual is derived from Neanderthals, more than any other modern human sequenced to date. Three chromosomal segments of Neanderthal ancestry are over 50 centimorgans in size, indicating that this individual had a Neanderthal ancestor as recently as four to six generations back.

An early modern human from Romania with a recent Neanderthal ancestor Nature, May 2015

~

So, I'd disagree a little bit.

[1] Note: all this genetic diversity is within the ~2-3% that isn't shared. The statistic joke is based on recognizing that 64% within 3% is a relatively tiny number.

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