Shinkansen scheduling isn't that tight other than during a particular few hours of the day, the rush hours early in the morning and late at night when they're moving a lot of salarymen to and from Tokyo. In the middle of the day the Sanyo line from Tokyo to Osaka will only carry three or four trains an hour -- two Nozomis, a Hikari/Railstar service and an all-stations Kodama. Crawling a crippled train to a depot will take time but not stop the system in its tracks (so to speak).
]]>All "TGV" units, tend to run at close to the "Line limit" speeds of whatever section of track they are on - that's the point of a "TGV" train - & the German "ICE" are very similar in this respect. Sidings & loops are kept to a minimum, for good operating reasons, & intermediate stations, where some trains, but not all, will stop are almost always built with the stopping platforms on loops, so that non-stop trains don't have to slow down - e.g. Stratford "International" ( Often called "S-unintentinal" os "S-in-th-hole" ) & Ashford + most of the other intermediate stops between London & Brussel or Paris are thus constructed.
]]>A nuclear submarine sinks off the coast of Finland Hugo related headlines give me headaches when I read them
I prefer it all to be out in the open!
I am getting weighed down with all this information Good SF doesn't mean no straight white men It means use your imagination
(I will omit any mention of what Beale might do in hard-currency hotels.)
]]>Good SF does mean not being able to assume straight white men.
"Whiteness" as we all know it is a social construct quite distinct from the observation that a bunch of us are de-melaninated due to ancestors living on oats in the rain; it's a deliberate social construct, and it's evil.
]]>"A nuclear submarine sinks off the coast of Sweden Headlines give me headaches When I read them I had a uncle who once played For Red Star Belgrade He said that some things are Really best left unspoken But I prefer it all to be out in the open.
I am getting weighed down with all this information Safe sex doesn't mean no sex It means use your imagination
Stop playing with yourselves In half currency hotels"
[Another stanza not parodied: I've had relations with girls from many nations I've made passes at women of all classes And just because you're gay I won't turn you away If you stick around, I'm sure that we can find some common ground]
If I had a point it was that the Canines do not need to fear extinction or exclusion based on their socially constructed identities; they just need to think up more interesting stuff if they want to be relevant.
"Whiteness" is such a complex topic, I am not going to try to say anything substantive about it here. I would say that by your terms, all such identities are evil and I don't know if I can concur with such a broad generalization. I also would want to know how you define "deliberate."
]]>Non-crisis ethnogenesis. (That is, it got made up to protect existing social status -- a delicate euphemism for "justify colonial genocides, slavery, and various forms of peonage" -- rather than made up to explain why things had to change.)
If I had a point it was that the Canines do not need to fear extinction or exclusion based on their socially constructed identities
Of course they do. Their socially constructed identities are associated with substantial culpable fault. They're moreover on the wrong side of a demographic transition, and have to fear not just being found to lack virtue but to be met with active contempt.
You have heard a younger SF fan react to Hugo Fandom's insistence on privileging text SF above all other media? Like that, only much worse, because the Sad Rabid block is about six axioms away instead of two. (The Hugo Fandom's two objectionable axioms are "the written stuff is the good stuff" and "this is the good stuff".)
]]>The problem becomes one of those Dawkins evolution paths, you need viable intermediate steps to get from Species A to Species B. So you have to find a point A-prime where people on both sides (white/non-white) can and are willing to shed these evil constructions; this has to be done by almost everybody simultaneously. I am now deeply pessimistic this stage exists.
So you will get a continuation of the usual patterns of re-distribution between the categories, with less intense on the ground differences when times are good and greater when they are bad. Or you will get a revolution, which might or might not turn out the way you would have wished. Or you will a get a die-off/collapse that renders these issues moot. Or if the system continues long enough the tension between the categories will probably deflate to the point where they are irrelevant and some other marker/axis of power will become dominant.
I feel, and hope I am wrong, that the Rabid Puppy types will get more intense and that they will suck up some of the Sad Puppies' current demographic. Some of the Sad Puppies will go more neutral or even turn to the other side. But people of more or less good intent will be forced to waste time and energy on fighting palpable evil, while odorless power continues to keep on keeping on.
Shit, my insomnia reaches critical mass and I start agreeing with Catinadiamond's drunken state.
]]>If I understand the last paragraph, Graydon wants a book award group to stop privileging books. This isn't even a group that used to be larger or more relevant in the real world. Maybe the Hugos are becoming less influential, but if they stop championing text SFF, then what would be the point? They are a small group of loyal perverts; let them have their burlesque house. (It's a Simpsons reference; I am a meatsack and don't have Catinadiamond's love of creating links. Also my kind mos def go mad.)
Maybe the Oscars need to start privileging video games over movies, but I would guess it would be better for the video games to create an award and build a comparable presence. The Oscars might dwindle or the two regimes might happily co-exist serving different functions or video games might dwindle in the face of implanted VR or some such new media. If text is going to die, then let it die naturally; don't ask it to shoot itself. Are you a front for the Tachikomas from Ghost in the Shell?
]]>http://www.nature.com/news/chinese-scientists-genetically-modify-human-embryos-1.17378
What is interesting (aside from the technique ) is this: "Huang says that the paper was rejected by Nature and Science, in part because of ethical objections..."
In other words, Whitey will disappear up his own irrelevant patriarchal ethical arse. So, whenever you read about "Global Consensus" just think "Minority US/Euro Consensus".
Of course, if "Whiteness" is just shorthand for "privileged elite", well, that is never going to go away as long as like minded people agree to help each other.
Which brings me almost on topic - I have recently been looking at Chinese SF and I find it rather refreshing in a Sad Puppy kind of way. They still have Big Optimistic Visions.
Having said that, with the exception of games, SF as a whole is tending towards irrelevance where once it was inspirational. Just check out how young people divide their "media" time.
]]>Though writing was lost in quite a few places, necessitation its reintruduction from elsewhere.
Not that I'd prefer writing in Linear B, if we assume European alphabets were still received from Greece in an alternate history...
]]>I have tried to find some calculations about sustainable population levels, problem is there is not much. If we want to go for a lowest number of humans needed to upset ecological nets, well, IIRC the overkill hypothesis had some problems lately, but it still seems we need much less than 500 or even 200 million humans to upset the balance. Just like quite a few other species, e.g. rats, toads, cats, elephants etc.
OTOH, it's quite interesting the 500 million number got cited in the 1950s and gets cited today, where there was something called "Green Revolution" between. We could argue if all of this was sustainable, but still, even without NPK fertilizers the numbers should have changed somewhat.
Problem is, IMHO environmental thought has acquired quite some opportunists, and one of those is an anti-modern stream against modern mass society. It's hard to be a Bronze Age hero with 5 billion running around, ecce Nietzsche's "All-to-many".
]]>Back to the supposed topic. I have been watching the puppy debacle with some interest. As a long time SF reader, I have never ventured to a convention, let alone thought to vote for a Hugo. Now I may even look into voting in the future. That is, if I can get over my sense of lacking qualifications. I rarely get to read something in its year of release due to a huge backlog and waiting for the paperback.
I did do something different this year as a 'vote surrogate'. I went to a local brick and mortar bookshop and purchased the hardcover of The Peripheral, then I ordered the hardcover of Neptune's Brood. That was out of character as I usually look for sales on paperbacks along with the occasional remaindered hardcover. Anyway, it felt good and I may do more of that sort of thing.
I very much appreciate the sort of suggested reading that crops up here.
]]>