Alan Bostick

Alan Bostick

  • Commented on Dude, you broke the future!
    "You can't do this because If you do, Child Protective Services will take your children away and remand them to the foster care system." Sound far-fetched? All it takes is a perception that a young person not having a phone...
  • Commented on Excuses
    The only person you might need to apologize for not keeping the blog going is yourself. You owe us nothing. I read you loud and clear about the aging thing and the nasty little voices that are telling you that...
  • Commented on The iron law of development
    The many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is an example of, quite literally, multiplying entities beyond necessity. It is fallout from the single most troublesome aspect of the Copenhagen interpretation of QM, the collapse of the wave function due to...
  • Commented on What are you reading this summer?
    Summer reading so far (some omissions, possibly, as my memory is far from perfect) Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold, because addicts need their fix. My partner expressed wonderment at a book in a military SF...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: The Annihilation Score
    I have to confess a growing disenchantment with the Laundry series, and it has nothing to do with the writing, plotting, or characterization. I keep thinking of an organization of Deeply Scary Sorcerors who are geas-bound to do David Cameron's...
  • Commented on Science-fictional shibboleths
    If, as it seems to be, the evidence is against hidden variables and Copenhagen relies on a magic wand, what's left other than many-worlds? Try taking a good, close look at Quantum Bayesianism, which (short hand-waving oversimplification) treats the quantum...
  • Commented on From the hemline index to the vampire/zombie ratio: SF/F by the numbers
    Ukrainian and Russian, respectively, for "So, these elves are from our part of the world?" Echoing Mister_DK (50): The Asian market crash and Japanese slump had repercussions in the US at least. There was also the early-90s recession in the...
  • Commented on They Took Our Myths
    Lord of the Rings became a major wellspring of the modern notion of fantasy, part of contemporary myth. Here's a point that relates to the OP's argument about the corporate lockdown of myth. LOTR sold enough to be kept in...
  • Commented on On the Great Filter, existential threats, and griefers
    "What's the theoretical range on those things, anyway?" Assume a Dyson swarm with a radius of 10 AU, and that the superlaser component on each little orbiting bit is coherent with all of its neighbors, so that in effect the...
  • Commented on The Ferguson Question
    heckblazer #81 wins the thresd. The hidden agenda of American law enforcement is the suppression of the black population, and its threat models are Toussaint L'Ouverture and Nat Turner....
  • Commented on So ...
    Congratulations! I've long since given up on the Hugos as being so badly broken as to be unfixable. Still, it's good to see many of the Good Guys winning this year. And it's good for sales....
  • Commented on Message for GISHWHES participants
    Once is happenstance; twice is coincidence; dozens of times a day is a denial-of-service attack....
  • Commented on The Rhesus Chart: Chapter One
    "Sir John Dee"? I have always read of him as being Doctor Dee. Yes, he kept the sort of company that often carries with it the occupational hazard of knighthood, but I wasn't aware of it happening to him. His...
  • Commented on World Cup: engage Grinch mode now!
    (it's due to hit a peak of 19 celsius this afternoon and the cruel burning daystar has been sighted near the zenith) 19ºC is a lovely temperature. You're just being contrarian. ("Old man yells at clear blue sky!")...
  • Commented on Vacation
    I'm sure you've thought about this already, but there's lots of beach in Florida, and some of it is even free of wifi signal. It likely says more about me than you that I would highly recommend slathering yourself with...
  • Commented on A footnote about the publishing industry
    This is a nitpick that doesn't alter the basic sense of your post, but I think it is a point that bears making nevertheless: The biggest change of the 50 years prior to 1995 was that a wave of mergers...
  • Commented on What scared H. P. Lovecraft
    People looking for singulatarian Lovecraftian horror need look no further than Roko's Basilisk. Which Charlie should know since he's the person who damned us all to eternal torment by exposing us to the idea....
  • Commented on A likely tale
    I've just gone through my copy of Clarke's Tales from the White Hart, and none of the stories end in anything resembling a dreadful pun....
  • Commented on Making history personal
    USAns are at such a disadvantage here.... I've been in the usual run of places that are not very old by European standards; but I can trump each and every one of you. I have, a number of times, slept...
  • Commented on I have a new book cover
    I'm fascinated by the type design of the title: it looks like a rubber stamp, expecially in its tilt, but the letters themselves resemble the output of a cloth-ribbon typewriter. That's two distinctly different signifiers of archaic bureaucracy merged into...
  • Commented on Why Microsoft Word must Die
    You're forgetting a couple of things. Nobody forced people to switch over to Word. For all that WordPerfect was quite powerful, Word was easier to use in Windows - WordPerfect didn't manage the transition to a graphical user interface successfully....
  • Commented on A deceptively simple question
    Militarily speaking, we see drone tanks, and drone tank battles, with comparatively small loss of life (of at least military personnel). God will no longer fight on the side of the heaviest artillery, but on the side with the deepest...
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