hcmeyer

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• Commented on Starship bloopers
  I think after 1950 - "Destination Moon", RAH found himself marooned in a dystopian future that he had not imagined, rather than the Shiny, Happy Technological futures he wrote about. He saw the USA as an Impotent Superpower, lacking the...
• Commented on Countdown to Crazy
  It is less difficult than amending the Constitution. Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1: New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other...
• Commented on Dead plots
  Am I the only person who remembers a 1970's Norman Spinrad novel "Bug Jack Barron". There are important similarities between Qanon's fantasy and the plot of the novel. I am certainly the only person who remembers "The Iron Dream". Nasty...
• Commented on Artificial Intelligence: Threat or Menace?
  Just consider the old fables. About the jenni who grants three wishes, or the fool who thinks he has a foolproof deal with the devil. They never end well. We are dealing with powerful, nonhuman entities that do not have...
• Commented on The obligatory general election discussion post
  Canada is gonna be very crowded, soon....
• Commented on Sucker bet (a thought experiment)
  You will be OK until one Saturday night when Clem and Cletus get cranked up on Meth and Moonshine and decide to clean out your safe and party with the upstairs maids. Or Sheriff RayBan and Deputy Barney decide to...
• Commented on Tentative hypothesis
  I also have 1 (one) windows 10 machine, required to update firmware in other gadgets. It is currently at 99% downloading a feature update, and has been for several days, when I turn it on. Windows software quality control is...
• Commented on Someone please sack the script-writers
  Will S. had it: "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." You, as a writer, are looking for a working plot, me, as a math, is looking for a feasible solution. Neither...
• Commented on Normal service will be resumed eventually
  Without analysing too much, just know that they miss you, but they wish you to live on without them....
• Commented on Three pieces of news about the Laundry Files (UPDATED!)
  I would suggest John Cleese as Angleton. The Laundry Files are satire, originally of Spy Novels. American TV has just started showing "Hold the Sunset", he is quite restrained as Phil. Pandering to Americans, cast Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson...
• Commented on Brexit! Means! Brexit!
  As an American, I (and any Brit who has visited the States) can tell you Americans do not speak or write (those who can read and write, a minority) English, but American. It is spelled and pronounced (except in particularly...
• Commented on Do my Homework
  Not an Orbiting Solar Power Station, but at the top of the Space Elevator Structure. With power cables running down the tower....
• Commented on Dread of Heinleinism
  I want to compare Heinlein to Harlan Ellison, who died recently. I have never read anything by a woman who had anything good to say about Harlan. If half the population (the women) think someone is a creep, then he...
• Commented on Why I barely read SF these days
  You should explain the difference between "Science Fiction" that you write, and "Alternate History" that Harry Turtledove writes. They are both World Building, I can tell the difference, but I cannot quantize it. All I really know is that I...
• Commented on What can possibly go wrong?
  The French have the beginnings of an idea: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/12/11/france-impose-total-ban-mobile-phones-schools/ But I can tell you, from teaching, it will be very hard to enforce....
• Commented on A bright and shiny hell
  I have been reading "The New Analects - Confucius Reconstructed", and see it as a new Humanism, which will replace the "Communist" ideology in China. The 19th century ended with Nietzsche screaming "God is dead", producing Nazism and the genocide...
• Commented on Trapped in the wrong trouser-leg of time
  Three bits of good news: 1) The sun reappeared yesterday afternoon, from the eclipse. The endless darkness has been postponed. 2) The Fort Knox Gold Vault was opened to "public" inspection, and shown not to be empty. http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/article168472652.html 3) Bannon...
• Commented on Book day!
  The exception to tissue replacement is the Nervous System. Nerve cells are "immortal", living, in some cases, as long as the organism. Dogma says mature organisms do not grow new nerve cells, just new connections between existing cells....
• Commented on Book day!
  Read it. My conclusion is Mo is pregnant, she survived because little Bob/Mo is powerful occult entity, even as a zygote. Be absolute Hell when he/she/it is 18 mo old. I have to back up, re-read the Iris text. I...
• Commented on Book day!
  I am waiting for the slugs in Frankfort to get out of bed, and open the bookstore, and call me. I think they have had the book since last week, but will wait until today to release it. I am...
• Commented on 2117 revisited
  Chill out. GOD* is not needed, I do not offend easily, so invective is wasted. Since reading your post, I have reviewed the arguments and counter arguments, and still believe in the correlation. So do many responsible parties, who have...
• Commented on 2117 revisited
  Got Heroin ? Where are they dying from it ? Everywhere, but dying from it in rural areas is new....
• Commented on 2117 revisited
  I think Mr. Wells wrote a story about that one. "Food of the Gods"...
• Commented on 2117 revisited
  The decline in US crime is also caused by legal abortion. Fewer unwanted children means fewer psychopathically neglected children....
• Commented on 2117 revisited
  The semicolon will not disappear, it will be needed to terminate statements in the "C" language. C is the programming equivalent of Latin, and it may become archaic, but it will not be dead....
• Commented on Policy change: future US visits
  Can we come to visit you ? Not to crash on your couch, but to visit Beautiful Scotland, after Independence from the icky British. I have ancestors from there, despite their being transported as criminals and indentured servants to the...
• Commented on The dog ate my homework
  Since Empire games is in Parallel realities, it does not require re-writes for political events ? Good News ? The Wise Man in the Brown Truck brought me a Chromebook for Epiphany. If I want to play developer, I have...
• Commented on "You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!" 2017 continued.
  I'm Praying to the Aliens ! Gary Numan said that, a long time ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JfEWCckF-A This is an SF website, isn't it ?...
• Commented on A reminder
  I just finished reading Umberto's ?last? book, "Numero Zero". It is about a fake newspaper that blunders into a real story. Big, big story. It is full of conspiracy theory, contempt for the journalism and readers, and exposition on making...
• Commented on Sometimes I don't know why I bother!
  I will cite another writer, Cordwainer Smith (Paul Linebarger). Godson of Sun-Yat Sen, expert in psychological warfare, polyglot, scholar of Chinese culture, and SF writer of the 1950's....