Troutwaxer

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• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  There's still a problem, however. Science is ultimately more powerful than magic, as it would eventually extend itself to understanding magic. However, if magic can interfere with science, but science can't interfere with magic, then it's obvious to the ordinary...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  To be fair to Asimov, what he hated was the old moralist formula of "Scientist builds robot, who then kills scientist (in response to his/her overweening pride.)" Asimov stated very clearly that he couldn't imagine general-purpose robots being sold without...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  ~Sighs~ How hard is this to understand? Suppose you're Gregor Mendel, meticulously documenting what happens when you breed yellow and green peas together? What happens to all your data-collection when the wizard next door decides to turn all the local...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  When considering modern science you're absolutely correct about the lack of repeatability. But even the basic, classical experiments which work every time (on Earth) if done correctly, which have nothing to do with quantum physics or other complex topics can...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  That's a very intelligent idea....
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  I didn't say that. I said that magic means a scientific experiment is not always repeatable....
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  In my own universe I wrote the following, but I didn't really follow it through as a plot point (my knowledge of computing doesn't go that far.) “...magic, which is the essential energy that controls other energies, can only do...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  I don't think magic and science are immiscible. I think that the presence of magic could easily mess with the foundation of science which is the idea that scientific experiments should be repeatable. This doesn't mean that science is impossible...
• Commented on Go away, Muse, you're drunk (again)
  The mechanism by which magical societies never stop being feudal is easy: Magic destroys the ability to create science, because it means that the results of any experiment won't necessarily be the same as when you did it the time...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  "...but the Shinkansen network didn't even start preliminary R&D until the mid-1950s." That's when Godzilla first attacked, so the timing is obvious. They needed rapid-response railways to bring oxygen destroyers to the front lines!...
• Commented on Read an Excerpt from Season of Skulls
  You obviously know more about the subject than I do, but how hard would it have been to hire a copyeditor who knew the subject area? (On the other hand, I didn't notice those problems at all, (though I probably...
• Commented on Read an Excerpt from Season of Skulls
  I'm typically unimpressed with the job Tor's copyeditors do. That all should have been caught....
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  "The Queen of the Lizard People?"...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  You can have my Devo concert shirt* when there's more hole than shirt. (In short, after it devolves.) * Hearing Mongoloid live was brain-shattering....
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  I've used the same construction, but not gotten as far as "Norse Pastries," which is great!...
• Commented on Read an Excerpt from Season of Skulls
  My suspicion, after thinking it over a little, is that OGH didn't use a global search and replace, or maybe (though unlikely) was storing the book as multiple files, or there's some word which includes letters "f-i-o-n-a" so the work...
• Commented on Read an Excerpt from Season of Skulls
  I have a couple books which are close to being ready for publication, but the copyediting process terrifies me!...
• Commented on Shrinking the world
  I wrote a novel about Orcs which piggybacked on some of your research. (At one point you provided a weblink to a book you'd read on transportation back in the day.) I think the transport parts came out very well,...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  The history of Blazing Saddles is that Mel Brooks and Richard Pryor co-wrote the film with the idea that Pryor would play the sheriff. However, the studio was afraid that Pryor wouldn't play well in White America, so Cleavon Little...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  I should note that we need show like "All In The Family" right now - preferably with an even-less-perfect Archie Bunker than the previous one....
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  Blazing Saddles is one of my favorite movies, and I noticed that the version currently available bleeps out the "N Word." What made the movie possible, at any historical time is that Richard Pryor was Mel Brooks's co-writer. I'm not...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  Your position is similar to that of White people (known to be racists due to this particular position) who say, "Black people say 'ni**er' all the time, so it's fine if I say it." ~Sighs~ The rule goes something like...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Escape from Yokai Land
  Absolutely agreed....
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  "Capitalization Punishment?" Don't be silly. Capitalize everything anyone might conceivably worry about and don't worry about it yourself....
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  I push for capitalizing both. As in Black, White, Asian, Buddhist, Gay, Elven, Orcish, etc. When you see them all lined up at once the consistency is obvious....
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  That's exactly what I'm saying. My grandfather was born in 1899 into an what had been an anti-slavery church prior to the civil war. When he wanted to speak politely about a Black person he'd use the word "Ne---"* because...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  Yes. It's an amazing thing to watch. It's one of the reasons I'd like to see etiquette classes revived; we could judge everyone by what year they took the class and whether they're living up to the standards of that...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  "My objection was to the rewriting of classics to render their language (and later, their content) to fit with modern ideas of political correctness, because modern readers shouldn't be expected to understand pre-revisionism English." Agreed completely, with a couple caveats....
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  It would be nice if there was a "guide to appropriate speech about race" someplace....
• Commented on Read an Excerpt from Season of Skulls
  "The year is 2017, and in a few months' time it will be the second anniversary of the arrival of the New Management." I love the callback to Accelerando....