Sean Eric Fagan

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• Commented on Neptune's Brood: an excerpt
  I think it's safe to say Nojay is not a troll. It's fine to lecture, and don't presume malice unless it's demonstrated, please. (I'm not a climatologist, although I do play one for the chinchilla, so I'm largely enjoying the...
• Commented on The Northern Wild: How to Save New York?
  Well, there was the city on Mercury in Saturn's Children. I don't know that you'd want to make that the premise of a novel, but having a character (or group of characters) trapped there by an insane, lonely city is...
• Commented on "Fuck every cause that ends in murder and children crying" — Iain Banks, 1954-2013
  To put it another way: Banks says there are definite bad guys... but that doesn't mean there are definite good guys. Just less-bad guys (hopefully much less bad)....
• Commented on "Fuck every cause that ends in murder and children crying" — Iain Banks, 1954-2013
  I love the Culture books, as a whole. I'm less than thrilled with some individual examples, but... with the Culture, he was doing big, optimistic space opera. I love big, optimistic space opera. I will point out that the first...
• Commented on "Fuck every cause that ends in murder and children crying" — Iain Banks, 1954-2013
  No. There's A Few Notes on the Culture which might explain some of the bits....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Jennifer Morgue
  This may be due to my wimpy liberal compassion I prefer to call it "enlightened self-interest" -- it's why I am so in favour of public education (an educated person may defraud me out of all my money, but...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Jennifer Morgue
  hospitals in many states are required by law to provide care No, they're required to provide emergency care. A lot of those mark-ups like the $5 aspirin are paying for things like the long-term treatment of the homeless, drug-addicted,...
• Commented on Crib sheet: Accelerando
  One of the ideas Vinge had with his Singularity was that, as a point, someone from the far side of the point would not be able to explain the world to the person on the near side. Given that, very...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Iron Sunrise
  To me, as an ignorant American, your statement is needlessly rude and context free....
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Iron Sunrise
  Men are still required to register for the draft....
• Commented on Admin notice: server crash
  Louis C.K....
• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  The Palimpsest universe allows one time-gate, period. There are some interesting conclusions to be made from this. I think Charlie's also made it clear there are not multiple timelines: once something changes, that's it. This avoids paradoxes, as well....
• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  Interesting bit of trivia: my first interaction with OGH was, I believe, to ask about that. I think his response was that he'd forgotten by that time....
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  Yes, that's the same guy. For a genre full of fascinating people, even he tends to stick out a bit....
• Commented on PSA: Ignore the news
  A comment related to guns was removed. Further ones will be as well, 'kay? (Charlie is back, and can take a more active role after recovering from his trip.)...
• Commented on PSA: Ignore the news
  My reaction is that insults are not discourse, and I've a short temper as mentioned above. Two of those comments are gone now....
• Commented on PSA: Ignore the news
  Incidentally? Blaming The Victim stops now. The victim in this case includes the city of Boston and neighbouring areas. I will remove and deal with Charlie yelling at me later, if necessary....
• Commented on PSA: Ignore the news
  Contradicted by http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/20/us/boston-boat-spotter/index.html Which indicates no trail of blood, just a flapping tarp which warranted investigation by the owner. Do you see the title of this post? "PSA: Ignore the news"? Going off a rushed-to-wire report in a different country...
• Commented on The last refuge of scoundrels
  Then I strongly suggest you consider a few points when commenting: Use complete sentences. Avoid ellipses. Words do not need to arbitrarily be in all caps. Avoid excessive quoting (of any sort). Focus on a single point. If it's more...
• Commented on The last refuge of scoundrels
  Stop. There's a preview button. Use it. If your post is too incoherent, it may be removed....
• Commented on Press Release: Stross Uncloaks Secret Media Project
  Bugger...
• Commented on Press Release: Stross Uncloaks Secret Media Project
  Biology is a subset of physics here :). Frankly, if you've got wasps the size of a small plane, why wouldn't you attach frickin' lasers on their frickin' heads? I know I would....
• Commented on Press Release: Stross Uncloaks Secret Media Project
  Pish, there's so many physics violations for giant flying wasps to exist that making water run uphill is nothing. Oooh, you could probably tie it into the Laundry books that way, and give yourself lots of money optioning the rights...
• Commented on Press Release: Stross Uncloaks Secret Media Project
  Am I the only one who conflated Singularity Sky and Iron Sunrise to get Iron Sky?...
• Commented on The permanent revolution
  http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp...
• Commented on The permanent revolution
  A quantum computer was just proposed, a million times faster than what we have today For certain things. For most of the stuff we use computers for -- even for compute-intensive activities -- they're slower, and far more error-prone....
• Commented on Why I don't self-publish
  I think you vastly overestimate what IBM's Watson did....
• Commented on Why I don't self-publish
  I know authors who have done that. The general conclusion is that it's simply not worth it: the publishers can do it more cheaply, more effectively, and they can market. That's not even taking into consideration the fact that they...
• Commented on How I feel this morning
  Whenever one complains about the lack of letters in UNIX commands (such as ls), it is good to remember that they were implemented in a room full of 110 baud teletype machines, and each and every letter typed (or output)...
• Commented on Things publishers can't do (yet)
  if you resell them for more than [insert reasonable amount here], you owe the creators a 10% commission on your proceeds. Did you figure out how to send 10% commission to the creators of the last house or car...