I was in Dortmund earlier this year, and there are plenty of better brews than that! I particularly enjoyed the Bergmann beers, especially the dark ones.
]]>Rolf: I am Not a fan of Star Drek.
]]>Shorter version: Josef Goebbels funded, filmed and distributed "Der Jude Suss" as high-budget popular mass entertainment for the Third Reich ... but it was also a propaganda vehicle insofar as his film version embodied certain assumptions about the way the world works, and he hoped that the audience would internalize and carry with them the same viewpoint. If you buy into vampires and the whole holy-water-and-crucifixes thing, you've taken a step down the road to Christian fundamentalist eschatology (by attributing those ritual objects with power); if you like fantasy with kings and princesses and so on, you're buying into the myth of the Just Monarch and the divine right of kings hereditary dictators. Steampunk, similarly, builds on the trappings of an era that comes with certain baggage attached.
In what way does pointing at my perceived failings invalidate my diagnosis of failings elsewhere?
You need to take a hard look at your rhetorical style, son.
]]>What I think we need in SF is believable near-future works of fiction depicting a non-crapsack world that, if we were to end up living in, would provoke sighs of relief rather than an impulse to suicide. It's a tall order but I think it can be done -- and not only that, it needs to be done, lest we lose all hope for the future.
]]>Even so, it took another civil war -- 1688 -- to ensure the message stuck.
And the British monarchy was near as dammit unique in being so hamstrung by its subject peoples -- until 1789 -- and even thereafter the ancien regime hung on throughout most of the Great Powers until 1917-19.
Monarchism: this decade's poster child is Kim Jong-Il, and -- romantic pomp and ceremony aside -- 19th century and earlier monarchs regularly resorted to secret police, informers, harsh interrogation, prison camps and gibbets for dealing with dissidents.
]]>'should'?
Who are you to dictate to writers what they should or shouldn't do? Writers write what they want to write, or at least in this commercial world, the closest to that that they can sell, and there is a centuries long history of writers wanting to say something about the world in what they write. It's up to the readers whether they then want to read it.
Perhaps it's significant that you had to go all the way back to Homer for your example.
]]>You'll be happy to hear that jet aircraft have yet to go nuclear powered to any noticeable extent, though reports this morning suggest that Qantas may be carrying out preliminary experiments with their A380s.
]]>Charlie - @344 (Challenger) is pure unadulterated SPAM
(I hope that spammers aren't going to rush in to take advantage of all the extra eyeballs.)
]]>Epic geography fail.
Bretons are natives of Brittany.
Which is in France.
(I am trying to restrain myself from pointing and mocking the ignorant American ... but failing.)
]]>