TRX

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• Commented on Minor hiccup
  @60: I don't like conspiracy theories - I rather believe in the stupidity of an organization than in a succesful conspiracy --- In one of his lesser-known works, Gordon R. Dickson had a character say something along the lines of,...
• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  "Singularity Sky" was also the first Charles Stross story I read. Then "Iron Sunrise." I didn't encounter any of the others until a few years later. Bob Howard (the other one), HP Lovecraft, and Stephen King wrote horror stories,...
• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  @76: the F-35. (Which looks very much like a pork barrel boondoggle to me.) --- ...and to everyone else. Several friends and acquaintances have worked on the F-35. Like several other aircraft, it's what you get when "design by committee"...
• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  I was remembering a similar story, except it was a supersonic fighter. After finding out his air-to-air missiles were ineffective against mostly-wooden biplanes, he used the shock wave from supersonic near-misses to knock the biplanes apart in midair....
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  @101: I don't think there was an equivalent to Groves in the German project, --- That was Albert Speer. We'd call both Speer and Groves "general contractors" now. Lavrenti Beria was the boss of the Soviet project. Beria was chief...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  Given that my background and politics are, uh, slightly different from Charlie's, I was surprised that I agree in principle with Charlie's stance. Besides the political suicide issue, nuclear weapons are only useful against concentrated, high-value targets. They're great...
• Commented on Forthcoming UK Audio Books
  @32: Some southern and Texan accents are borderline-incomprehensible to British ears. --- From down here in Dixie, the range of Northeastern Seaboard accents is less comprehensible then most of the UK variants. There's one American audiobook reader who must work...
• Commented on PSA: Ignore the news
  Charlie said: "Such speculation in turn increases anxiety levels and causes depression" I think we're seeing some of the effects of that, right here....
• Commented on Forthcoming UK Audio Books
  By preference I'll take text over audio. However, I'm a mass consumer of audiobooks, averaging six to ten hours per day. It's amazing how much time I spend driving, working on something that doesn't require much attention, etc. One...
• Commented on The Curious Experience of Middle Age
  > mental acuity Primarily, I've noticed a huge slowdown in my reading speed. When I was younger I could just shovel in entertainment and data. Now I'm much more critical of entertainment, and new data has to be balanced against...
• Commented on PSA: Ignore the news
  @107: This is why most "free" news sites today are turning into peddling "Daily Mail"-style shite --- Back in the dark ages, many people felt that customizeable online news was going to be the "killer app" for the internet. Unfortunately,...
• Commented on PSA: Ignore the news
  @88: I've never understood people who say "Oh, I never watch the news, it's too depressing." Might as well put your head in the sand. Sure a lot of the news media is garbage, but if you recognize that you...
• Commented on PSA: Ignore the news
  @75: Actual black powder is much harder to get because of the stricter safety rules on storage and transport. --- Black powder is trivially easy to make; it's practically a rite of passage for children of a certain mentality. Shooting...
• Commented on PSA: Ignore the news
  @41: b) if you're not a farmer and you're buying large amounts of ammonium nitrate, red flags go off -- For a while the only way I could get it was "laboratory grade." Then it started showing up on eBay...
• Commented on PSA: Ignore the news
  @34: >>Whatever happened to that good old >>word "bomb"? >It seems to now refer to "things >dropped from aircraft"... At the beginning of WWII, it was still reasonably common for some militaries to use the term "aerial torpedo." Meaning anything...
• Commented on The Fumes of Mordor & Other World Building Models
  > There's nothing in Hawaii that can > stand-in for the American capital, That's only reasonable. You don't normally link "Hawaii" with "post-apocalyptic urban blight."...
• Commented on What are words worth?
  The "class speech" thing was always weird to me. Growing up as an army brat on various bases, I was probably in my early teens before I learned about regional accents. The fact that some people place such importance...
• Commented on No. Words.
  @25: gene therapy, still too crude to be safe --- When you're looking at a 100% probability of death, even 1-in-1000 or one-in-1000000 looks good......
• Commented on The map is not the territory.
  @28: Or think of a color-blind man. --- I deal with that every day. "Red" and "green" are a major hassle. Yes, we'll color-code "danger", "electically hot", and traffic lights to colors 15% of all males can't see......
• Commented on The map is not the territory.
  > Civilians were allowed to watch this blast from 11 miles away, I would pay at least as much as the gate fee for a major rock concert, to attend such a thing. What finer thing than to watch the...
• Commented on The permanent revolution
  @57: And power drills? --- I don't *want* a power drill. Generally, I want holes. I'll take a bag of assorted sizes, please......
• Commented on Things publishers can't do (yet)
  @160: some authors have been known to accept filthy lucre from beastly corporations to put product placements in their novels --- There's one "thriller" writer who has some product featured in each of his books - a knife, gun, light...
• Commented on The permanent revolution
  @26: The other thing up for debate is =how= to change. There are a lot of conflicting visions and plans for the future in any society, and they cannot all be fulfilled. --- "Developing" and small countries face that all...
• Commented on Things publishers can't do (yet)
  @136: Always set your reader app to turn pages with a single tap, --- The software for my 7" tablet was so bad it was basically useless for epubs or pdfs. But I found I could convert the books to...
• Commented on Things publishers can't do (yet)
  @17: You could also have a continuously updating ebook --- With a fresh ISBN for every update? More than once I've been tripped up when discussing a movie with someone. I'd seen the movie... but they'd only seen a remake...
• Commented on How I feel this morning
  @149: Wordstar was...not so handy. Part of that was that it was written earlier, when people had less experience making things user-friendly --- Word Perfect used function keys, arrow keys, Insert, Tab, and other keys. It was written for the...
• Commented on Thinking the unthinkable
  @220: Would an Anglosphere be more palatable if it included South Africa and India? --- I've known various Pakistanis who would probably be surprised if someone suggested they weren't part of the Anglosphere....
• Commented on Thinking the unthinkable
  @153: What else have you missed? --- There'll be a new monarch Any Time Now. A lot of unhappy people might go for a new "man on horseback" with a plan to fix the UK's problems......
• Commented on Thinking the unthinkable
  @54: But as soon as we descend into idiom or slang, out come all the "WTF?!?" looks, and we're all speaking in what we call English, but listening to everyone else in Bewilderment. --- You don't have to leave national...
• Commented on Me, talking
  > tabloid I find it fascinating that A) Britons continue to buy tabloid papers and B) enough people (claim to) believe them for any politician or government agency to care I mean, we have tabloids in the USA, like the...