Andreas Vox

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• Commented on The Northern Wild: How to Save New York?
  Floating building by building and re-anchoring them or floating the whole town? I pretty much doubt that the latter is physically possible, and the former is probably more expensive than rebuilding....
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  I'm pretty sure that if someone popped a brace of Tomahawks at Washington DC or Moscow right now 90% of them would get through. Well, if you view passenger airplanes as over-sized cruise missiles without a warhead, last time someone...
• Commented on Forthcoming UK Audio Books
  Yes, you are missing that the UK publisher wouldn't pay any money for an American accent audio edition. It would get critique from buyers and might hurt his image wrt. to quality....
• Commented on No. Words.
  That said, I'm honored that Mr. Banks thinks the best use of his remaining time is to finish his last book for us. As I understand it the book is already at the publisher. Dunno if Mr. Banks will take...
• Commented on The permanent revolution
  Have you tried carrier wallabies with USB sticks in their pouches?...
• Commented on The permanent revolution
  If the growth of anything (either bacteria in a petri dish or human knowledge) follows an S-curve, the rapid growth in human knowledge we have seen from say Gallileo to Hawkins can be considered the vertical portion of the...
• Commented on The permanent revolution
  There are several technological innovations on the near time horizon which will have major impacts on the way people live and how those at the top of the pecking order can (or can't easily) control the finances of those at...
• Commented on Thinking the unthinkable
  Of course you might end up on the guillotine (or worse) if you suggest to French people that they are part of the Anglosphere......
• Commented on Thinking the unthinkable
  Duisberg has had a recnt influx of, erm, err, "Roma" who are, apparently not welcome ..... Are there any places where Roma are welcome? Discrimination of Roma seems to be a constant that survived the end of WWII as well...
• Commented on Thinking the unthinkable
  I think the question shouldn't be "What are the economic consequences of political decisions regarding leaving/staying in the EU?" but "What are the political consequences of the great economic and fiscal problems the EU faces?" The current situation is: rich...
• Commented on Thinking the unthinkable
  I must have missed that. AFAIK some politicians from the CSU sometimes argue against the EU, but the FDP and most people from the Christdemocrats don't. Or were you thinking about the no-bailout campaigns? Note that of course many people...
• Commented on Thinking the unthinkable
  I think over 95% of the present "out" camp ( including me, a bitterly disillusioned voter who enthusiastically voted "in" in the 1975 referendum ) are basing their stance on that of Norway & Switzerland ..... I don't think you...
• Commented on Thinking the unthinkable
  The difference is that in Germany no major party supports leaving the EU, but in the UK the prime minister is toying with it....
• Commented on Thinking the unthinkable
  Rest assured that what the majority of Germans want (or think they want) is totally unrelated to what German politics might implement. This is just one protest party, similar parties have been participating in elections before without achieving 5% of...
• Commented on Thinking the unthinkable
  @ 45 Correction NOT £3.5 billion p.a. ... 9 billion ..... Either is peanuts when compared to a total budget ~700 billion pound. Being a EU member is a strategic decision, it's silly to leave just cut down the budget...
• Commented on Thinking the unthinkable
  a dislike of a myriad of rules controlling our lives I wonder what those myriad of rules are you are talking about. Are you telling us that EU rules make your everyday life unbearable? Granted, the EU made some silly...
• Commented on Thinking the unthinkable
  What is the UK for, what does it do best, how can it utilise and husband what it does best in a world where cheap labour means manufacturing is never coming back? War? Pop music? And in particular, how do...
• Commented on Thinking the unthinkable
  Why should these countries want to leave the EU? They currently suffer from huge debts and the austerity regimes their creditors forced on them. Leaving the EU (or Euro-zone) would not change that. OTOH the EU provides a little help...
• Commented on Thinking the unthinkable
  "clash of civilizations scenario" won't happen. I think you overestimate the homogeneity of what you call "civilizations" and underestimate the willingness to make deals and work together if economical opportunities call for it....
• Commented on Boskone 50
  *cringe* While it's true that in maths a singularity is a curve that's asymptotically vertical*, exponential curves don't do that. Most curves that appear naturally (exponential, sin, polynomial, S-curve) do not have singularities. Also, since our natural world is bounded...
• Commented on Boskone 50
  For example - different wolf packs have different behaviour for attacking different prey species that's not genetic. It's learned and passed on within the pack. (One of the problem folk have reintroducing wolves into the wild that have been bred...
• Commented on This explains everything
  "Gone Girl" from Gillian Flinn is a great book, "Racketeer" is a nice Grisham, although having a happy ending with a boat in the Carribean gets a little repetitive. Haven't read the other books from that list. It seems that...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  Keas are really stupid. In New Zealand they sabotage the traps that environmentalists set up to catch feral ermines - thus helping a foreign predator that is targeting local birds....
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  Mate facepalms and goes back to her lab to work on unisexual invitro fertilization....
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  Still, I agree that intelligence seems to do best in existential crises, so if you want humans to get more intelligence, it would really help if civilization crashed. I suspect this is because catastrophes have a way of selecting for...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  Hm, Germans consume 100 kg beer, 88 kg meat and 92 kg bread/cereal products per year. I guess you won't get very far if you want to store all that up front....
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taygetus: The Spartans threw criminals and "unfit" (weak, sickly, deformed, or mentally retarded) infants into a chasm of Taygetus known as Ceadas or Caeadas (Greek: Καιάδας). In antiquity, male Spartan newborns were abandoned there if deemed unfit after examination...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  Down-syndrom is trisomy 21, males are virtually infertile and females have only 50% fertility. But more important, trisomies aren't gene defects but errors in the copying process, so culling individuals with trisomy 21 will not change the gene pool. According...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  AFAIK most abortions after genetic testing are for conditions that will not allow the child to live or procreate anyway. Many are trisomies which are not caused by a "wrong gene" but by duplication of a whole chromosome. Of those...
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  Same here. I think human evolution has been stagnating on most levels for the last few thousand years. Reason: living in a social group that supports its weaker members counters the selection part of evolution. And the benefits of social...