peteratjet

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• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  In Dan Simmons' Hyperion/Endymion sequence, the Vatican has a monopoly on interstellar transport but are understandably coy about the technical details, which turn out to involve reducing the passengers to meat paste through massive G force on arrival, then re-animating...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  Eminent Mad French Engineer PH Rebut, designer of the JET tokamak, presented this paper on a proposed fission fusion system on the occasion of his 2006 Alfven Award. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0741-3335/48/12B/S01/pdf ... or at least the abstract. IOP subscribers can download the...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  it is certainly true that right now, by which I mean this Wednesday, right after Bank Holiday Tuesday (Meta-Civil-Service arrangements) it's all about Deuterium Tritium fusion. Nobody is even trying to make a D He3 reaction go. It's really hard...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  On the subject of Sudden Russian Death Syndrome, one only slightly batshit crazy possibility. The plane went down with one of his body doubles on board. Faking your own death before Putin gets to you would be one way of...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  how you travel faster than light is irrelevant. Here's a diagram http://www.physicsmatt.com/blog/2016/8/25/why-ftl-implies-time-travel...
• Commented on A fistful of tropes
  here's a trope that I was reminded of reading Ian McDonald's latest, Hopeland, which features one of these. The vagabond fleet. Obviously,seen in Battlestar Galactica, original and reboot, but also ... The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica -...
• Commented on Pass or Fail
  like this ? https://youtu.be/P6MOnehCOUw...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  it's a joke, derived from the phrase heard from the deranged reaches of the current and former cabinet, "woke blob", where blob apparently refers to the I'll defined mass of people they find frustrating. Judges, journalists, civil servants, whatever. The...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  remember, it's not just "woke" , it's "woke blob", which is to say, this guy from The Orville ... https://tldrmoviereviewsblog.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/blood-of-patriots-2.jpg...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  .. maybe .. Flooding downstream of the dam and disrupting water supply to agricultural land is bad for both Ukraine and Russian occupied areas, Including Crimea. Arguably, Russian forces had easier access to plant explosives, and immediate tactical advantage by...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  Fred Saberhagen's Empire of the East series had a wizard who was using a bound demon to pursue science experiments, rediscovering the ancient arts of physics and chemistry. On his command the demon magicked up a balloon that obstinately refused...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  on the subject of walking... https://www.stairwellbooks.co.uk/product/black-harry/ I picked up this small press edition at Eastercon. It's based on a documented case in Elizabethan England, when a deputation of tenant farmers walked from Glossopdale to London to register their protest against...
• Commented on Signed copies of "Season of Skulls" available for pre-order!
  started reading... Many many years ago I had the exact same cognitive WTF that Evelyn experiences early on, although at the real location. "this place looks strangely familiar..."...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  historically, the apartheid regime classified mixed race individuals as Coloured. Famously, South African cricketer Basil dD'Oliviera came to England, where we may have been a bit racist in places but not if got in the way of sports, and was...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  seems to have been an omniclusterfuck. Lackey, while praising Samuel Delaney, referred to him as a "colored writer", deeply offending at least one blogger. She was virtually removed from the virtual con. Reactions varied from "I didn't get that memo"...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  I wouldn't read too much into the names. Historically, once the political nation had decided to give up on a military dictatorship, and the Commonwealth navy had hastily swapped Civil War victory names for Royal Charles and so on before...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  It didn't hurt Douglas Haig's campaign to replace Sir John French as commander of the BEF in the Great War that he was married to a lady in waiting to Queen Mary. Royal patronage has declined significantly since then...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  there's a whole ecology of Royal "journalism" within mainstream media. Everything from the BBC down has Royal correspondents, wheeled out when the occasion demands to fill us in. Ok, maybe not the Morning Star. No organs specifically devoted to the...
• Commented on Minor updates
  thirded...
• Commented on Minor updates
  Very few of the target audience ever noticed the explicit Christian theme of the Narnia series on first reading. Too young and partially immunised against religiosity by the attenuated form encountered in primary school assemblies...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Quantum of Nightmares
  I'd say that Naomi Novik has done a bang up job drip feeding her YA readership the existential horror of the adult world in the Scholomance trilogy. It looks like a magic high school series. Ok, it's set in a...
• Commented on An AI app walks into a writers room
  Sean McMullen might beg to differ with his post apocalyptic passenger propelled railways....
• Commented on Make Up a Guy
  The 1848 revolution is the overt point of divergence for The Difference Engine, with which Gibson and Sterling invented Steampunk...
• Commented on I can't even
  He has written a book about gold https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/12/war-gold-500-year-history-study-money-society-kwarteng-review which didn't win any prizes https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/02/liz-truss-and-kwasi-kwartengs-foolish-dash-for-growth-is-a-non-starter...
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  The tiled inner wall of the JET tokamak is mostly beryllium metal, apart from the to tungste divertor tiles in the bottom which have to withstand much higher temperatures. Why? Beryllium has a low atomic number, and therefore loses you...
• Commented on Abolish the monarchy!
  That's not how cosmic radiation works. 90% protons and 9% alpha particles (helium nuclei) and 1% ionised everything else will certainly damage organic material but they won't activate the contents or structure of a spacecraft. You need neutrons for that....
• Commented on Abolish the monarchy!
  I would say, if there is no easily achievable be consensus to fix it, it will continue to wobble on like a supermarket trolley. Unless it ends up in the canal of course. The current festivities illustrate that a large...
• Commented on Roe v Wade v Sanity
  It wouldn't be the first time the Mann Act has been abused. You just need to define abortion as in some sense sexual, and criminal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann_Act...
• Commented on Roe v Wade v Sanity
  It wouldn't be the first time the Mann Act has been abused. You just need to define abortion as in some sense sexual, and criminal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann_Act...
• Commented on Hugos, 2022
  See you in Chicago then, I hope...