Jay

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• Commented on The language of alienation
  Also interesting are the future sentences people think they understand but don't. You might call a certain character a "retail associate" but gradually reveal that their circumstances have gradually been reduced to serfdom and they can't legally leave the store...
• Commented on Minor hiccup
  However, in this world poetry, and not math, provides direct access to magic. That would make Bob's job so much harder. I imagine Angleton saying "We have class-2 rapper in Wolverhampton developing a rhyme for 'money'. If he picks 'honey'...
• Commented on Minor hiccup
  The Laundry novels owe much more to spy fiction than to Lovecraft. It's sort of Harry Dresden meets James Bond with a computational coat of paint. A different franchise called Delta Green does more or less the same thing, but...
• Commented on Minor hiccup
  I've always been struck by Bob's very Enlightenment-era mindset (he even mentions it himself at one point), when Lovecraft's writings were informed by the collapse of the Enlightenment worldview thanks to Darwin, Hubble, and their ilk. Bob is a rational,...
• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  The title "Palimpsest" is possibly a hint....
• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  Just out of curiosity, what exactly was so unpublishable about the "novel-shaped object"?...
• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  Foglio's "Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire" series is also worth a look....
• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  This reminds me of an old joke. I don't remember the source, but it sounds like Pratchett. The idea was that oysters were the most evil creatures in existence, pure malevolence incarnate. Fortunately, they were also completely ineffective. Machine learning,...
• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  Any computer, no matter how nifty the processor, is limited by its programming and by its available output devices. Its programming limits it to doing what it was ordered to do, and flawed orders generally result in stupid behavior, not...
• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  Hard to say. I failed theological engineering....
• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  Your question seems to be based on a truly remarkable category error. Making a computer really, really good at computing is not the same as making a god. Not that anyone sane would want to make a god, at least...
• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  But CTC's also give us P=NP for all intents and purposes. It seems a profound lack of imagination to use a time machine to make your computer work better. We mostly use computers to make mathematical models of aspects of...
• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  This being 1996 or thereabouts, I needed to figure out a way to dodge the implications of the Singularity for space opera that Vernor Vinge had so irritatingly pointed out to us in "A Fire Upon The Deep". It really...
• Commented on The Curious Experience of Middle Age
  Funnily, I'm (only?) 40 and I've considered myself middle-aged for years. I passed the midpoint of my life expectancy about four years ago. Actually that's an average US male life expectancy; since I'm fat that's probably optimistic. Its funny to...
• Commented on The Curious Experience of Middle Age
  Degrees in the physical sciences, in my experience, are not much better. English is much cheaper to teach than chemistry (my field). Also, investors have gotten used to the types of returns associated with Moore's Law, which are very difficult...
• Commented on The Curious Experience of Middle Age
  When I was a kid, I wanted to see everything and explore everything. Now I've seen enough to have a fairly good idea of what's over the next hill. Strip malls, usually....
• Commented on The Fumes of Mordor & Other World Building Models
  The thing about the Metro that always amazed me was the complete lack of bathroom facilities. The Smithsonian is a must see, and I definitely agree with whoever recommended the Sackler (one of many submuseums)....
• Commented on The Fumes of Mordor & Other World Building Models
  I spent about five years in suburban Virginia near DC. One big thing to realize is that almost everyone white-collar commutes at least 45 minutes each way, and often 90 minutes or more. Traffic is at a near standstill from...
• Commented on Mitochondrial Singularity
  Each solar cell type has its ups and downs. Gallium arsenide is most efficient, but gallium is not so abundant and the process gases are worrisome. Silicon is abundant but energy-intensive to make and the indirect bandgap reduces efficiency (it's...
• Commented on Mitochondrial Singularity
  Carnot's theorem results from the application of the laws of thermodynamics to heat engines. When the laws are applied to other sorts of energy harvesting devices, the results are different in their specifics but broadly similar. I used to work...
• Commented on Mitochondrial Singularity
  Three comments: 1) When you consider the source of our fertilizers, what we eat is substantially natural gas. 2) Please do not think I'm saying we don't have massive political failures. We do. I'm saying that if we magically solved...
• Commented on Mitochondrial Singularity
  there's no physical reason why Americans can't slash our per capita energy consumption in half (if not by 75%) switch largely or entirely to renewables My point is that there is a physical reason why that won't work, or is...
• Commented on Mitochondrial Singularity
  I'm pretty much in the same camp as Greg, here. If you take a look at page 35 of that huge IPCC report (figure TS.1.3), it shows "renewable energy" at 13% of human energy use, with fossil fuels at about...
• Commented on Mitochondrial Singularity
  "Giving a damn" is not essential to life. Trees and bacteria do just fine with no discernible motivations. This isn't to say that trees and bacteria don't respond to their environment, just that their behaviors, such as they are, are...
• Commented on Off the Map: Women in Science and Science Fiction
  I have a physical science PhD and no job, so my advice to women re: science would be to go do something else (this is also my advice for men). We produce about twice as many STEM graduates as we...
• Commented on The map is not the territory.
  It's true that we can never really know what's going on in the universe. It's also true that we can't reserve judgement indefinitely. At some point, we have to use our best available model of the world as the basis...
• Commented on Mitochondrial Singularity
  I'd call that less of a political problem and more of a path dependence problem, but I see what you mean....
• Commented on The map is not the territory.
  I can certainly understand if high end equipment works better than the suppressors that I'm familiar with, which were handcrafted by bored redneck teenagers. Our idea of premium equipment was the stuff we made while we were sober....
• Commented on Mitochondrial Singularity
  I was looking for references that said "Technologically, it's a solvable problem, and in fact it's a largely technologically solved problem" or something similar. I didn't read that whole 1088 page IPCC report, but a quick skim left the impression...
• Commented on The map is not the territory.
  Also, silencers/suppressors lose effectiveness after a few shots, so using them with submachine guns probably isn't a good choice....