justin.boden

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• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Atrocity Archive(s)
  "1. Off-topic." Eep! Sorry....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Atrocity Archive(s)
  Looks like you've made about half a dozen contributions to Slashdot in the last four years. I'd be interested if you had any thoughts on Slashdot back in the day, whether its changed any, and if it helped you refine...
• Commented on Books I've written
  As far as order? Make a list of novels, striking each off as you discuss it, choosing the order on the fly. The novel you most feel like discussing at this moment is the one I'd most enjoy hearing your...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  If a material world power such as the UK de-armed I think that would have a substantial knock-on effect towards world peace as significant as the establishment of the EU. This is a profound idea, Charlie....
• Commented on Obituaries
  With respect to the penguins, and the humans who might otherwise put sheep there, it's not a mess of the scale of, say, that left behind after any other war that was conducted during the twentieth century ever....
• Commented on Obituaries
  "It's probably dangerous to argue that the early downfall of the Argentine Junta after their loss of the Falklands war, meant that some Argentinians didn't "disappear" who might have." Is this in reference to me? I'm not sure what you're...
• Commented on Obituaries
  That's not how the situation played out at the time. It was a revision of citizenship laws which created an ambiguity, a circumstance which defied the efforts of the foreign office, but at that time there wasn't much significance to...
• Commented on Obituaries
  There was no such failure of imagination. Charlie brings up the offer to sell the Falklands to Argentina (and declines to mention that it was on a basis that they would be leased back to Britain). That was an imaginative...
• Commented on Obituaries
  Looking for a war? The British government was well aware of Argentine frustrations, but it was as surprised by the invasion as the general public and certainly wasn't forming a conspiracy to encourage war. If they were, they probably wouldn't...
• Commented on Obituaries
  All I can say is, "Sham WOW". http://youtu.be/QwRISkyV_B8 (But seriously they're still industrial powerhouses.)...
• Commented on Obituaries
  The Falkland Islanders were had their citizenship effectively revoked (from memory, unless you were first or second generation British you were suddenly denied a British passport, with the obvious implication that Falkland Islanders were no longer welcome home). The selling...
• Commented on A message from our UK sponsors
  I'm very excited to throw my money towards the Merchant Prince reprint - if it's anything like the Palimpsest short, Charlie, then I eagerly await your strongest fiction. Also interested in your opinion of the former PM. My knowledge of...
• Commented on The permanent revolution
  Rock was the soundtrack to white people protests, sure. I don't think Martin Luther King was marching to the Kinks, though. Regardless, there's never going to be a moment where people go, "You know what? I don't want to start...
• Commented on The permanent revolution
  They're more recent but they're not new genres in the same sense that hip hop was. "Rapping to the beat" was such a radical change to how music could be recorded, that even though it was derivative of R&B (as...
• Commented on The permanent revolution
  Creative culture is ossifying? That's a heavy statement. There's hardly a dearth of content for our iPhones, and I'm bemused at why you would call the death of culture just because we don't currently have an emerging musical genre. Hip...
• Commented on The permanent revolution
  I think it's misleading to think of Neanderthals as taking hundreds of thousands of years to change. They developed flint tools in short periods of time, and then largely remained at that tech level until their disappearance. It's nonsensical to...
• Commented on Mitochondrial Singularity
  Firstly, Joan, welcome back! Your thoughts never make for dull reading and I gladly anticipate your contributions here. Regarding this post, does it need to be a zero sum game? Toddlers have iPads these days, sure, or else they quickly...
• Commented on The permanent revolution
  "it seems to me the ancient Egyptians, the Renaissance, the ancient Chinese underwent periods of rapid tech change." You're talking huge timelines here. The Renaissance is the shortest of them, but even that was about 400 years. Technological innovation? Sure....
• Commented on Project Stargate
  I'm fleshing out the skeleton of a Borges-esque essay, Ian, which places Stargate (the film/show) and Twin Peaks in the same reality. I think I can use some of this post to inform my outline. Thanks!...
• Commented on If this had happened 30 years ago today, we would all have died
  Would this explosion have been misinterpreted as a nuclear attack, though? It doesn't look like a missile on its approach and it doesn't cause enough damage to be confused for anything but a conventional explosive. A reaction would have required...
• Commented on Political failure modes and the beige dictatorship
  "In Aus, we have a choice between a quite obviously crazy right wing Christian... and a reasonable well adjusted, annoyingly voiced, relatively normal, not quite so right wing Prime Minister." Forget the NBN & asylum seekers, why are you contrasting...
• Commented on Political failure modes and the beige dictatorship
  "peaceful protesters being pepper-sprayed, tased, or even killed" this always happened. it's just that the protestors have to be white rich kids before the media takes notice....
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  "What about eugenic programmes? Chinese could certainly implement a programme where the bottom third of men, intellectually speaking wouldn't be able to legally procreate." I find it disgusting how readily people like you will presume that the Chinese have zero...
• Commented on Press release
  I haven't yet caught up with the Merchant Prince series, but I'm looking to order the re-release when it's made available and the idea of a Palimpsest expansion is way more than enough to sell me on this upcoming trilogy....
• Commented on Press release
  Degrassi got away with it. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrassi:_The_Next_Generation]...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  The north-south/east-west thing is where Diamond starts to demonstrate his skills for selective research and his aptitude for unrestrained speculation. There are too many examples which defy this model in the historical record for it to be entertained very seriously....
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  "It seems much more likely that something specifically contributing to mathematical aptitude was selected for in some of the populations that moved out of Africa." More likely social influences are at play. Arabic numerals could more accurately be described as...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  erm? I think we get the point but don't agree with the premise that the development of language prevents us from evolving higher intelligence. bensen.daniel @#47 I think outlined why that understanding is limited. you're saying that we're minimally intelligent...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  "Why didn't early homo sapiens develop civilization in 200000 BCE? Because there was no intergenerational building of knowledge. You received a little wisdom and passed it on exactly as you got it. But how much can you really teach by...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  Charlie, I suspect your hyper-intelligent post-humans will have many of the same psychological limitations we do, and in that respect will just arrive at the same imperfect ideas at a faster rate. I think general intelligence is really a second...