Randolph

Randolph

  • Commented on Taxonomy of story, or, why murder?
    Ursula K. LeGuin once ran a writing course – it may have been at Clarion – where she forbade her students conquest. I also dug up this quote from her 1987 essay "Conflict," collected in Dancing at the Edge of...
  • Commented on A Surfeit of Emeralds: Healthcare in the Middle Ages
    "Wonderful little, when all is said,   Wonderful little our fathers knew. Half their remedies cured you dead--   Most of their teaching was quite untrue--"     — Kipling, "Our Fathers of Old"...
  • Commented on A world-building puzzler
    CJ Cherryh did this in 40,000 in Gehenna, where the aliens communicate and record their ideas through building. ("The calibans are … in debate, I guess. Structures rise and fall incomplete.") Even among humans there are people who prefer to...
  • Commented on Magic, ecospeak and genre distinctions
    Surely Tolkien deserves at least a glance here, for Fangorn, Ents and so on....
  • Commented on The present in deep history
    I found out yesterday that the IAEA report on Fukushima Daiichi was released at the beginning of this month. It is a giant (over 1,000 pages) TL;DR and so I have only read the 20-page "executive summary" and one other...
  • Commented on The present in deep history
    One other factor in the year 3000: unless serious climate mitigation efforts are begun soon, a lot of the physical evidence of history will be under water....
  • Commented on The present in deep history
    Ooops! Left out a sentence! If the term spirituality bothers you, say philosophy. But either way, I did not say "religion." The organized forms of religion usually post-date the philosophical inspirations that lead to them by some centuries. From which...
  • Commented on The present in deep history
    If the term spirituality bothers you, say philosophy. Spirituality or philosophy, that is not a quibble. The organized forms of religion usually post-date the philosophical inspirations that lead to them by some centuries. At this time, I believe our religions...
  • Commented on The present in deep history
    Above all, as a time of revolution, I think....
  • Commented on The present in deep history
    The transformation of the nature of cities by electronic communications, and their reduction in size....
  • Commented on The present in deep history
    The industrial revolution The emergence of information technology The beginning and ending of the population bubble The emergence of new spirituality The emergence of a stable, peaceful world order If (5) doesn't occur, there probably won't be any historians...
  • Commented on Bad puppies, no awards
    Linda voted for, quite surprising me....
  • Commented on Bad puppies, no awards
    "A fairly articulate fellow described the difference between 'explained in English' and 'having a formally verifiable algorithm,' and was annoyed that the latter was not around." I didn't understand him fully; algorithms have been described in English for a very...
  • Commented on Bad puppies, no awards
    The data isn't yet available to do more tests. It will probably become available in the coming year—we will know more at that time. The "fairly articulate fellow" was Glenn Glazer, vice-chair of Sasquan. I agree that mathematical verification would...
  • Commented on Bad puppies, no awards
    The first phase of Hugo balloting is currently FPTP; the second has been IRV since the early 1960s. E Pluribus Hugo changes the first phase. I'll bet the people who process the Irish vote have actual, probably paid, staff; the...
  • Commented on Bad puppies, no awards
    My take on the pups is actually rather conservative; I would prefer to wait them out. Problem is, I don't believe that is possible. After a few years of partisan voting in the initial Hugo ballots, the awards would have...
  • Commented on Bad puppies, no awards
    EPH uses single divisible vote (SDV), which is somewhat different from STV, and, while in principle the entire counting could be done manually, the number of iterations and works involved would make this a huge amount of tedious work. John...
  • Commented on Bad puppies, no awards
    Yes, but so did "4 and 6." Next year, the business meeting will have to choose between them, or try them both in different years, or something else. Also, the energy on both sides of the dispute will be less...
  • Commented on Upcoming appearances, Amsterdam, Seattle and Spokane
    Probably going to see you this afternoon. Look for someone with a Norwescon t-shirt and a big hat....
  • Commented on CMAP: "Why can't I find audio editions of your books in the UK?"
    It is landlord-like pricing, rather than marketing. The American business culture based on manufacturing and retailing used to get out there and sell, sell, sell, even into small markets. America has lost that, and I think it's one reason China...
  • Commented on CMAP: "Why can't I find audio editions of your books in the UK?"
    "the owner of the US audio files wants a licensing fee for them so large that it would exceed our anticipated sales." I've never yet seen a monopolist who doesn't overprice. Sometimes they even price so high their product simply...
  • Commented on The Biggest Little SF Publisher you never heard of pulls on the jackboots
    I am starting to wonder if Vox Day and his father have a heritable mental illness, something that manifests in middle age. Because VD didn't used to be quite so awful, and his father did some of the most damnfool...
  • Commented on The Biggest Little SF Publisher you never heard of pulls on the jackboots
    You could vote "No Award" and then put Leckie and The Goblin King?--below them. That way if NA doesn't take the award, you've put in a good word for books you like....
  • Commented on Vacation
    The Morse Museum, not far from Orlando, claims to house "the world’s most comprehensive collection of works by Louis Comfort Tiffany." I missed it when I was there, but it looks worth the trip....
  • Commented on What scared H. P. Lovecraft
    "where is the singularitarian Lovecraft?" Isn't that you?...
  • Commented on The revolution will not be hand-stitched
    If the new technology improves the fit of women's clothes that would be a powerful driver for adoption of the new technology....
  • Commented on The revolution will not be hand-stitched
    Heee. What Heteromeles said. I'm old enough to remember when paper clothing was the wave of the future. Didn't happen; the material just wasn't of good enough quality. It has arrived, though, in safety clothing and certain medical garments. If...
  • Commented on Spook Century
    And here I thought Krosp was fictional....
  • Commented on The next moves in the Spooks v. News cold war
    Thinking it over, some people got it right. The cyberpunks and cyberpunks got pretty close and libertarians like Vernor Vinge. I even remember a 1969 Ted White YA novel that dealt with corporate feudalism and universal telecomm surveillance. What I...
  • Commented on The next moves in the Spooks v. News cold war
    "What I'm mulling over at the moment is how SF and the wider geek world got the internet so wrong: we thought we were throwing open a door, and all the time we were forging new bars for a global...
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