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• Commented on The language of alienation
  Any sentences with the following words .... aha moment; bucket list; cloud computing; earworm; energy drink; f-bomb; man cave; mankini; sexting; bling; bromance; frankenfood; illiterati...
• Commented on Books I've written
  And what themes was life throwing at you whilst you were writing these books? Consider this a gift to future undergrads taking "EngLit 101: Collected Works of Charles Stross - Themes and Memes"...
• Commented on Grand Guignol Tropes
  Kinda/sorta petit guignol/nerd rapture ... == Okay, so Ray Kurzweil finally persuaded the funding-poor NIH to let him run a clinical trial with the objective of uplifting humans. And, again - naturally, the NIH via their stodgy scientific/ethics review panel...
• Commented on PSA: Ignore the news
  Agree. Today's media are increasingly successful at making 'news' more addictive. Instead of providing a concise summary of events, media parse each morsel of new 'news' - without regard to its salience - forcing viewers/readers to return. (Classical random-interval reward...
• Commented on Dragged kicking and screaming into the 19th century
  RDSouth (159): Thanks very much for your enlightening and entertaining how-to-switch-topics-sideways demo. Would actually make for a very interesting SF story premise. Cheers!...
• Commented on Me, talking
  Re: 35 Once most of the world is at parity socio-economically (specifically, near-equal opportunities and resources to attain education/training, a job/livelihood and amass wealth), culture (specifically shared personal values) will become the basis of determining which countries/regions grow and prosper....
• Commented on Mo' holding pattern
  Definitely wouldn't toss out any of this waste because there's not much point landing at your destination if the human cargo is dead from a water/food shortage. Instead, find plants and animals that would thrive in this environment and recycle...
• Commented on Dragged kicking and screaming into the 19th century
  One of the likely male-focused anti-gay/anti-masturbation biblical roots is probably an uncorrected misunderstanding of why it's a no-no for a man to spill his seed, the story of Onan. Basically, Onan agreed to sexual intercourse with his dead brother's wife...
• Commented on Dragged kicking and screaming into the 19th century
  Hi there - Apologies - and if this doesn't get posted, I understand -- since I'm deliberately derailing the RCC-is-mired-in-the-past discussion. Frankly, there's something a lot more interesting happening ...we're one step closer to creating the BORG or as the...
• Commented on Dragged kicking and screaming into the 19th century
  Re: "That's somewhat harsh, since most organisations have some circumscriptions for some rights..." Yes, RCC's stand on human rights is harsh which makes any real-life description of it sound harsh. The 'circumscriptions' part of your reply is apt but we're...
• Commented on Dragged kicking and screaming into the 19th century
  Then again if you read the Wiki article on the history of the RCC in France, specifically during the Third Republic 1870-1940 - it seems that the demise of the RCC is cyclical. Back then the move was away from...
• Commented on Dragged kicking and screaming into the 19th century
  Atheist here (RC flavor) .... disagree on two counts: 1- Had nuns (three different orders) and priests (Jesuits) as teachers/profs. These individuals came from various parts of Europe and North America, and compared to the lay teachers/profs they were proportionally...
• Commented on Dragged kicking and screaming into the 19th century
  Apologies.... seems DB did already write about this ('Karma' 2011)....
• Commented on Dragged kicking and screaming into the 19th century
  Ha! Fits right in with the "Prophecy of the Popes" ... OMG, just realized this could mean another Dan Brown 'novel'! From Wikipedia ... 'Proponents of the prophecies claim that the current pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI, whose abdication is pending,...
• Commented on The jet lag game
  Moving toward the speculative .... I still like Asimov's idea of moving walkways (Caves of Steel) that feature sidewalk strips of varying speeds. This idea can be adapted for sea travel with a series of tubes linking continents by following...
• Commented on The jet lag game
  Out of curiosity ... any good moments to pass along when globe trotting? How often are you recognized when traveling? And, how do you feel when that happens? Have you ever had a 'it's a small world encounter' -- meeting...
• Commented on This explains everything
  Just did a quick search -- unfortunately, aids sufferers in fact become more susceptible to developing diabetes ... (pls see excerpt below - it's fairly old 2000). New York (MedscapeWire) May 23 - AIDS drugs that dramatically prolong the lives...
• Commented on This explains everything
  Re: "... 'non-genre' stuff supposedly being more literary is this: if a work doesn't use the techniques of any genre it is assumed to be innovating new techniques and to therefore be better" There's probably no such thing as a...
• Commented on This explains everything
  Shiites in space? Allah Akbar, eh? -Been done (Dune)...
• Commented on This explains everything
  If you call it socio-/econo-/political satire, you can use as many SF'y tropes as you like....
• Commented on This explains everything
  Re: 'Nightmare territory' Interesting ... some good reasons for the medical (clinical) establishment to not jump on the cloud computing wagon despite some reports/promos urging them to....
• Commented on This explains everything
  Support academic freedom/research to ensure research results get published; also reduces likelihood of big-corp conspiracies. Take this breakthrough for example .. ScienceDaily -- 3-D Printing Breakthrough With Human Embryonic Stem Cells (Feb. 4, 2013) — A team of researchers from...
• Commented on This explains everything
  Headline: "U.S. government slams S&P with $5 billion fraud lawsuit". Can hardly wait for Faux's business analysts' spin, i.e., another liberal gov't conspiracy....
• Commented on This explains everything
  Agree, in 99.99% of instances, "clever" = bs. Thanks for the link; I'm saving this article....
• Commented on Press release
  In December 2007, Pratchett announced that he was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's disease. So, I wonder whether it was he or his family that decided to get into the TV business at this point ......
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  Re - entries 102 - 106.-- thank you, I'll check those out. "But the encoding of those signals is quite different to ours, so we can't determine exactly what they are "saying" to each other, nor can we (yet) send...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  Really like this comment -- "My guess is that language is so powerful an intelligence multiplier, that it will be independently evolved (like vision)." For this (independently evolved language) to be true ... then like vision, different modes/mechanisms/forms must have...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  Intelligence vs. Insight Collective/social intelligence – is increasing in the developed world as per continuing popularity and growth of Facebook, blogs, etc. Language increases access to ‘group/collective intelligence’ but only among those sharing the same language and for problems where...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  A water lens could start a fire ...see greenpowerscience dot com youtube video ... of course carrying the makings of it around, etc. poses another/slightly different set of problems....
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  Post language/culture-dependent intelligence development... For this to occur, our species' population would probably have to become so large that interacting with fellow humans is actually painful so that in order to survive/thrive, we would need/develop some mechanism to unconsciously block...