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Comment Threads

• Charlie Stross commented on The Northern Wild: How to Save New York?
  On the other hand, an off-peak second class day return from EDI to GLA (any station) costs almost £10 at walk-up prices. Compare to the maximum ~£6 fare for a daily travelcard in London, and it imposes quite a bottleneck: what we have isn't an integrated commuter transport system but a short-range inter-city connection, and the net effect is to isolate the populations of the two cities from routinely crossing over. (Except for commuters with season tickets.)...
• Bellinghman commented on The Northern Wild: How to Save New York?
  Ahem: ~£16 should you wish to include zones 1 to 6. Me, I have an Oystercard which I tend to use only for Cockfosters <-> Oxford Circus off-peak returns: that is £6 and is a reasonable comparison with your EDI <-> GLA link....
• Bellinghman commented on The Northern Wild: How to Save New York?
  I think there's another one developing: Baletchinton. That's the Baldock/Letchworth/Hitchin/Luton/Dunstable mass running along the A505. There's still a decent gap between Luton and Hitchin — all 5 miles of it, with but a small village in it — but current development plans are to infill between them. Apart from that, there's about half a mile between the outskirts of Hitchin and Letchworth. Oh yeah, you could use another 2 miles of infill to link Stevenage into that mass from the south. It ain't a city yet, but I think it's going that way. It's got an international airport already. What...
• Jocelyn Ireson-Paine commented on Crib Sheet: Glasshouse
  1950's US, oppressive? If you were black, sure. White women had no serious problems getting work or being independent. So what they could not choose some careers? Let me guess: you're a white middle-class American male, aren't you? Here's a hint -- if you weren't a white middle class male, 1950s America was just slightly more oppressive than you seem to think. The founder of computer science was so oppressed in 1950s Britain that he killed himself. White, middle-class, male: even that didn't stop the UK being just slightly more oppressive, and I doubt it would have the US....
• zhochaka commented on Crib Sheet: Glasshouse
  It a pretty old part of art. You might find that the old murals in some churches has a purpose of telling bible stories, but a huge amount of "classic" art is packed with symbolism for the cognisant to see and understand. Dan Brown, for all his flaws, has that element right. The thing to remember is that what makes non-representational art different is that there isn't a pretty picture containing the symbols. Here we are in the 21st Century, arguing about the symbolism of the Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck, but it doesn't change what we see, and...