Fletcher Christian

Recent Actions

• Commented on The End of the British nuclear deterrent?
  Actually, not true. Or at least, not completely. The fission reaction produces no neutrinos; what does produce neutrinos in a fission reactor is radioactive breakdown (specifically beta decay) in the fission products. Of course, there are a lot of those,...
• Commented on Placeholder? Placeholder!
  An even sillier story, about an 86-year-old retired US Army general (bad enough hassling someone like that in the first place) who was given a hard time about a pointed object he was carrying. What was it? His Medal of...
• Commented on Some notes on the worst-case scenario
  A great example of spurious precision in measurement. I don't really believe that your GPS unit measures down to nanometres. Unless you're some sort of alien, that is. :) As for Fascism and totalarianism; well, which side of the political...
• Commented on A Surfeit of Emeralds: Healthcare in the Middle Ages
  Regarding the speed of change: I'm old enough to have seen quite a bit of it. Just one small example: In the period 1977-79, I had the privilege of some access to Cambridge University's main research computer, a rather high-end...
• Commented on And the Rabid Nazi Raccoons shall inherit the Earth
  Hmmm... Well, one possibility in this sort of absolute emergency would be an all-out, screw the expense and safety standards violations, project to design and build ground-launch Orion. (Some design work already done.) Sure, the launch site would be useless...
• Commented on And the Rabid Nazi Raccoons shall inherit the Earth
  Very funny, but... "radiological disaster bigger than Three Mile Island" Very unimpressive. To quote the official report on the incident: "The average radiation dose to people living within ten miles of the plant was eight millirem, and no more than...
• Commented on Eleven Tweets
  I forgot to mention the hidden assumption in any discussions of the Laffer Curve and associated subjects. That assumption being, of course, that maximising tax revenue is a good idea in the first place. I happen to think that it...
• Commented on Eleven Tweets
  Hear hear! And it happened, too, and it's still happening, among people who can live and work anywhere; pop singers for example, or F1 drivers like Lewis Hamilton. I'm increasingly convinced that many "liberals" either haven't heard of the Laffer...
• Commented on A reminder
  Also more practical for a nurse to ask for someone else's help. And even if a nurse is expected to move patients (and obviously they are) they aren't expected to do it continuously, all day. See below: OTOH, someone who...
• Commented on A reminder
  One possible reason is that nursing is usually carried out inside a building (often a hospital or some such) and that means it's practical to have hoisting equipment available. Which is not the case inside a burning building or out...
• Commented on Duelling - Essentially a Bloody Stupid Idea
  I don't care whether the conspirators are first-generation immigrants ot the family has been in the UK for a millennium. Except, perhaps, that in the latter case all the enablers ought to be imprisoned rather than deported. Existing laws against...
• Commented on Duelling - Essentially a Bloody Stupid Idea
  Oh, please! The problem here is that the word "honour" is being used for two radically different things. The honour of an adult male (it almost always is that) which is at stake in a duel is completely different from...
• Commented on A reminder
  What is the received wisdom about sex inequality in jobs where the differences between men and women (on average, natch!) really matter? The second most obvious difference (first, collectively, being actual sexual characteristics both primary and secondary) would seem to...
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  Sure, violence isn't OK. However, and unfortunately, there are many people in the world who think it's not only OK but laudable - or even required. And responding to such people with reason, sweetness and light seldom works. "You might...
• Commented on A reminder
  Just a small comment about electric cars: We are always going to have a problem with the batteries, because a) batteries deteriorate b) batteries take time to recharge c) batteries, if they have decent energy density, are a potential source...
• Commented on A reminder
  As I understand it, one of the defining factors in fascism is an unholy alliance between major corporations and an authoritarian government. (IMHO the difference between this and far-left socialism, in which the partners are authoritarian government and unions of...
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  Fair enough. Much the same as my attitude to the Grauniad or that paper that laughably calls itself the Independent....
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  Will the Chancellor of Germany do? http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/688368/Merkel-admits-jihadists-migrant-groups Sure, it's the Express - but directly quoting Angela Merkel. Or a representative (anonymous, natch) of ISIS? https://www.buzzfeed.com/mikegiglio/isis-operative-this-is-how-we-send-jihadis-to-europe?utm_term=.ekw2gjw7X#.cxl6gDXwK OK, not sure about the 1% - although another article I read claims 4000 jihadis...
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  That's why I said "writ large". Having millions of people present, who have no intention of or interest in integrating with the rest of society, think that they have a God-given (literally!) right to take whatever the hell they want...
• Commented on Children and War Toys and Violent Video Games and Action Stories
  Yep. Right out of the EU propaganda playbook. And people who say this sort of thing - in the face of clear evidence - are one of the reasons why the UK voted to get the hell out of this...
• Commented on Playtime is over
  Yup. The ice age in particular would certainly change attitudes. Maybe not all that quickly though; see "Fallen Angels". But two of the major Leftist power centres in the USA (NYC and Chicago, and their environs) being under a mile...
• Commented on Playtime is over
  Well... I have the very beginning of a book in progress, in which a) various sorts of parasite on the body politic (HFT traders, tax lawyers, hedge fund execs, investment bankers, megacorp board members...) are well on the way to...
• Commented on Playtime is over
  Some fictional futures we need to avoid in the 21st Century: Hot Earth Dreams Lucifer's Hammer Blood Music (or facsimile thereof with dry nano) 1984 (or, possibly worse, Brave New World) "If This Goes On" (or variants with other religions)...
• Commented on Playtime is over
  Tell me something, please. Why do people who call themselves Liberal (that word has changed in meaning so much that a new, and longer word, libertarian, has had to be coined to denote what it used to mean) promote and...
• Commented on What else can you do with a Big Dumb Booster?
  Venus probes have a fairly poor history, too. At least one of the conditions you mention (atmosphere) doesn't apply there - but there is the small matter of the viciously hostile environment once you do land. I don't know whether...
• Commented on Facts of Life and Death
  You're quite right about that; but even if the bubble of collapse has already started, its distance from us right now might be anything from a few light-hours (meaning none of us are going to wake up tomorrow, or ever...
• Commented on Facts of Life and Death
  Re. the probability of vacuum collapse, two points: Firwst, even if it's possible at all the probability is obviously very low in any given (human-relevant) time period - because it's had c. 13.7 gigayears to happen and it hasn't happened...
• Commented on Facts of Life and Death
  Yup. My bad. I think the point stands, though....
• Commented on Facts of Life and Death
  One more thing in favour of ethanol and/or methanol as fuels is that both of them are water-soluble; using water on a fire involving them would be a damn sight less hazardous than using water on a petrol fire, for...
• Commented on What else can you do with a Big Dumb Booster?
  Granted. However, I just looked up the information; recruitment target for the Army is 12,000 per year. They have been struggling to meet it, but even if they did it isn't going to make much of a dent in the...