brucecohenpdx

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• Commented on The Northern Wild: How to Save New York?
  Oh, and also in the US, crime rates in general and murder rates in particular have been going down steadily for more than two decades, and are now at long-term lows. That's why the prison-industrial complex has been so eager...
• Commented on The Northern Wild: How to Save New York?
  At least in the US, first ring suburbs have been turning into lower-class ghettos, often racially-divided, over the last 30 years. That's certainly true here in Portland, where most gang activity has moved to Beaverton (west-side suburb) and Gresham (east-side)....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Glasshouse
  Another anecdote about the dangers of being working class. In the 1950s & 60s one of the big US chemical companies encouraged the workers who cleaned out the reaction vessels in which polyvinyl chloride was synthesized to get in there...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Glasshouse
  As an off-white middle class male who grew up in the 1950s in the US, I disagree very strongly with the idea that the period was "not too bad". Everyone in that society had a role given to them, and...
• Commented on Neptune's Brood: an excerpt
  Any society that has a single concept of rights, giving them fully to one class of beings and not at all to all others is massively broken. We need to be able to deal reasonably with children, who must have...
• Commented on Neptune's Brood: an excerpt
  Human civilization is fairly toxic just now: slavery is doing quite well thank you, in some of its most pernicious forms, vicious internecine conflict is common on all continents except Antarctica, and we seem to be heading back into a...
• Commented on Neptune's Brood: an excerpt
  The sky was the color of Microsoft's contribution to the collection of four letter acronyms....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Glasshouse
  A sequel to Glasshouse would be nice, but I've got the original to reread every few years, so I can suffer through the loss. It is my favorite Stross novel after the Laundry books. The first 3 or 4 pages...
• Commented on Neptune's Brood: an excerpt
  The difference is that Charlie's robots only have the memory of their masters; the Toys deal with their master's caprices every day. I've owned dogs rescued from abusive or clueless owners; I shudder to think of the fate of fully-self-conscious...
• Commented on The Northern Wild: How to Save New York?
  The idea of jacking up the entire city of New York appeals to my 1950s "engineering can do anything" upbringing, but I think Charlie and others upthread are right that it's just not feasible. Raising NY just 1 meter would...
• Commented on "Fuck every cause that ends in murder and children crying" — Iain Banks, 1954-2013
  Well said, Charlie. It's all very well to warn us about the bad things ahead, so we can steer around them, but we have to have something good to steer towards. Banks gave us a future to look forward to....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Jennifer Morgue
  Add me to the list of people eager for an explanation of that statement about anti- hypertension medication. I've been on them for more than 15 years, changing dosage and particular meds every few years as the pressure creeps up....
• Commented on In the pulp
  I had most of a long reply typed in on my tablet when I must have touched the wrong thing because the server tossed me out of login & I lost the whole comment. It's late, and I'm tired, so...
• Commented on In the pulp
  Completely OT, but have you read "Pink Noise: A Posthuman Tale" by Leonid Korogodsky? The edition I read is hardbound, beuatifully produced on what looks like 80 lb. hotpress paper with full page illustrations. It's novella length, but the book...
• Commented on In the pulp
  "Neptune's Brood" pre-ordered and in the chute. I ordered Douglas Hofstadter's new book about analogical thinking along with it. The two of you and Stuart Kaufmann are the only authors whose books I routinely buy in hard cover at first...
• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  Anonymous | May 15, 2013 23:53 | Reply : I've been thinking about "Palimpsest" off & on for awhile now, and I've noticed some implications of the way the timegate works. The 14 millisecond minimum window for opening & closing...
• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  Move either Jupiter or Saturn, because you can't have stable orbits with both, then take some of the moons for material and build Orbitals in the L4 & L5 points. The Orbitals could rotate around their points, since those Langrange...
• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  I like "Here, There, and Everywhere" by Chris Roberson. It's somewhat of a homage to "The Man Who Folded Himself" with a much more extroverted protagonist (as in she doesn't spend as much time diddling herself)....
• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  Trojan orbit stability is constrained by the ratios of the masses of the objects. The primary:secondary (Sun:Earth1 in this case) must be greater than 25:1, no problem there. But the secondary:trojan (Earth1:Earth2 or whatever) needs to be quite a bit...
• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  Radar and infrared targeted ground-to-air and air-to-air missles are not effective against WWI airplanes made of wood and paper. Dean Ing wrote a story ("Hawk Among The Sparrows") about a Harrier-class plane & pilot thrown back to WWI who tries,...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  I doubt that any current nuclear power has any desire to actually use a nuclear weapon in anger; the US, UK, China, France, and Russia have no targets worth shooting at given the political fallout that would result. India and...
• Commented on Press Release: Stross Uncloaks Secret Media Project
  What, you're not getting financing from Family drug money?...
• 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 Things publishers can't do (yet)
  The lawyers are dealing with a wave of automation that is causing severe unemployment among recent law school graduates. A paralegal using online sources and specialized search engines can now do more case research work for less pay than several...
• Commented on Things publishers can't do (yet)
  That makes sense. Aside from protecting the patent holder from commercial sale of infringing products, the law also protects against internal use for commercial gain, for example by using a patented device to improve manufacturing productivity....
• Commented on Me, talking
  Good talk, Charlie. Not much new, for those of us who read the blog, but it was nice to see it all put together....
• Commented on The Anthropic Stupidity Hypothesis
  Because that definition Is not very useful. It's like trying to understand flight by defining it as "moving through the air". This gets us no closer to understanding the various (very different) mechanisms that enable flight in different fluids and...
• Commented on I suck at New Year Resolutions
  Glad to hear you're getting some rest, Charlie, your continued health is far more important to us than a few weeks cut off an 18 month schedule. Take your time, be kind to your wrists, and we'll celebrate each book...
• Commented on An interim report from the coal face
  Hahaha! I keep getting emails from friends and ex-colleagues about open jobs in software; seems to be a boom time, especially for web app developers. But I've been retired for 4 years now, and there's no way I'd ever work...