daniel.duffy20

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• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  BTW, her is an intersting article on the physics of actual space combat and space navies. Don't know much about the author, but I enjoyed the article: http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2004/04/SpaceNavies2.shtml...
• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  Mr. Stross, Ok, so you don't like stories about "Napoleonic Space Navies". How about stories about the real thing? How do you like the "Horatio Hornblower" or "Master and Commander" series? Everyone remembers the movie staring Russel Crowe, but there...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  The Japanese work force is projected to be reduced by 50% in about 50 years (by 2060). That’s an average annual reduction of almost 1.5% compounded each year for 50 years. In order to just stay even, Japan has to...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  Again, I'm afraid that I must disagree. Utopian dreams of true AI (or any other technological wildcard) notwithstanding, demographic inertia ensures that the world’s population will peak around mid century and then (depending on model assumptions) either decline slowly or...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  "Earth-grazing asteroids." And NASA plans to lasso an asteroid and pull it intolunar orbit. Meanwhile private space firms are working otu the technology and financials for asteroid mining. Yeah, nothing could possibly go wrong with this......
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  "Herro Hans Brix!" Sorry, I couldn't help myself....
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  "But in the 21st century, I can see no convincing case for the UK retaining nuclear weapons." Agreed, but what about a mutli-national European nuclear force under the European Defence Agency, independent of NATO and the US?...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  "But the United States today is visibly recapitulating the usual path of imperial decline, losing relative advantage in a 21st century that is now clearly coming into view: hot, crowded, dense, multipolar, dominated by international capital and labour flows." Have...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  "As strategic weapons, it seems to me that nuclear weapons are obsolescent." Aside from use against aggressive invading space aliens, nukes have only one use - the retaliation against the first use of nukes by an enemy in wartime....
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  "... it was perhaps more stable and less likely to launch a surprise invasion, but deadly crises could still arise through miscalculation." Not just the Cuban Missile cris (which you link to), but Able Archer in 1983. The world owes...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  "But then it turned out to be surprisingly, dismayingly easy for other countries to build such devices." Any truth to the rumors that the Germans tested a nuclear device on the island of Rugen in the Baltic in 1945? The...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  "...the French response was, "we cannot rely on the perfidious Americans to back us up: we need to preserve the capability to act independently at all costs"." And they did. After the loss of Indochina and Algeria, the French shifted...
• Commented on The last refuge of scoundrels
  Expanding on the extensive police presence associated with the funeral to the pervasive, constant polic camera surveillance you subject yourselves to, I have to ask: shouldn't just call yourself Air Strip One?...
• Commented on Obituaries
  So where does 007 get his Astin-Martin? Does Q make them special for him?...
• Commented on Obituaries
  Modernized robotic factories would have resulted in massive unemployment in any case with the introduction of automation. Its a process that contiues to this day, even the cheapest third world labor cannot compete with it. Which is why industry is...
• Commented on Obituaries
  FDR saved out of control capitalism by checking its excesses. For his trouble he was hated and despised by the Right, the very people he saved. Reagan/Thatcher saved the unsustainable welfare state by checking its excesses. For their trouble they...
• Commented on What are words worth?
  Mind you that the regions don't exactly conform to state boundaries. For example, my home state of Ohio is divided in 3: Greater Appalachia includes Cincinnati and the hill country of the southeast. Midlands is a band running roughly from...
• Commented on What are words worth?
  For an insightful look at American regional differences I highly recommend journalist Colin Woodard's "American Nations, A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America": http://liberapedia.wikia.com/wiki/American_Nations 2 of the 11 "nations" (Inuit and Quebec) are primarily in Canada,...
• Commented on Press Release: Stross Uncloaks Secret Media Project
  Perfect idea for a sequel: "Carboniferous Park" DNA taken from the dead wasps is used by a secret lab on a remote island to resurrect creepy crawlers from the age of giant insects. Think of the money from the toy...
• Commented on Press Release: Stross Uncloaks Secret Media Project
  You didn't say how we finally defeat the Wasps! Take away their country club memberships? I'm here all week folks, try the veal. Now, about the sequel.......
• Commented on The permanent revolution
  "Minoan Cretans" - whose civilization never recovered from the volcanic explosion of the island of Santorini. Should the Yellowstone Caldera supervolcano ever do the same to American civilization, we can expect to read a 1,000 years hence stories about the...
• Commented on The permanent revolution
  Concerning oligarchs and the slowing down of progress, there may be some confusion between cause and effect - at least according to Toynbee. Our society seems to be following the steps in the historical cycle defined by Toynbee in his...
• Commented on The permanent revolution
  It does seem like progress is slowing down. There was an interesting article in US News years ago about the PBS/BBC program "The 1900 House". It compared the labor saving and entertainment gadgets in the 1900 house with those found...
• Commented on The permanent revolution
  Dear Mr. Stross, It appears you have been reading Horgans "The End of Science", and while I don't buy off entirely on the his argument, it does make intuitive sense. If the growth of anything (either bacteria in a petri...
• Commented on Me, talking
  1. Thorughly enjoyable and thought provoking. 2. Why don't you give TED talks? 3. You mentioned scientists artificially sequencing the DNA of small pox. That reminds me of one of the scenarios proposed by Bill Joy in his essy years...
• Commented on Thinking the unthinkable
  Now that we have a Jesuit pope, won't certain conservative religious types in the UK (especially Northern Ireland) go bonkers? Aren't Jesuits the tradtional sneaky Papist villains of British Protesant folklore?...
• Commented on Thinking the unthinkable
  That's actually a great idea for a military sci-fi novel: In the future, due to the lack of young males, war is fought mostly with drones and robots, with thousands of mechs controlled by a few dozen actual human "soldiers"...
• Commented on Thinking the unthinkable
  Are the EU's current problems just a bigger version of what Germany went through when West Germany absorbed East Germany, and with it a greate deal of decrepit infrastructure, obsolete industries and unemployable labor? IOW, has the EU's absorbtion of...
• Commented on Thinking the unthinkable
  Anyone who speaks 3 languages is tri-lingual. Anyone who speaks 2 languages is bi-lingual. Anyone who speaks 1 language is an American. ;-)...
• Commented on Thinking the unthinkable
  "The fact that Germany had, and still has, a huge American military presence in residence" As an American tax payer, I have to ask what the heck are we still doing there with a large armored force in central Germany?...