tangurena

tangurena

  • Commented on A deceptively simple question
    One scheme that I can see happening, that no one else has touched on, and it does touch upon the "geopolitical" arena would be a variation of the self-driving cars. Instead of comfy seats, they're just plastic buckets that dump...
  • Commented on Time tourism
    Accuracy in historical fiction is hard. Lindsey Davis tries very hard with her Falco series (he's a private investigator in Rome). Not SF at all. LD: I take pains with historical detail because otherwise, what's the point? But people get...
  • Commented on The next moves in the Spooks v. News cold war
    @145 This makes me wonder; should people who want access to cl@$$ified materials be given such access? I'm a programmer. With my skill set, if I could get a top secret security clearance, I would be making about $150k/year. Everything...
  • Commented on Snowden leaks: the real take-home
    I was recently reading "Regional Advantage" by Anna Lee Saxenian and she pointed out some radical differences in corporate cultures between "Route 128" and Silicon Valley. By the 1980s, the Silicon Valley culture was one of changing companies every few...
  • Commented on The ticking clock, stopped
    So, my question: do you take the drug (cost: $1000/year; if that's too much, it'll come down to $300/year after the patent expires in another 12 years)? Of course I'll take it. I'm about your age, and I'm already spending...
  • Commented on How Do We Get There?
    I don't believe that any US code yet incorporates such requirements, though they have been proposed. Some cities do, but they are the "greener" ones such as Boulder, CO. As for zero-energy solar houses, they're really neat, but I'm...
  • Commented on Incidentally ...
    Hmm, is kitty posing like that in front of the mirror to defend the household against serpents from the differently angled dimensions? Or is kitty staring into the mirror saying "you look mahvelous!"...
  • Commented on Seasonal flame bait
    It's impossible to be elected to high office without so much money that anyone in high office is, by definition, part of the 0.1%; even if they're an outsider to start with, they will be co-opted by the system (or...
  • Commented on Cooking in zero gee
    I've never been impressed with the stuff. The ladies at the club meeting made a variety of things including some omelet-like dish, which didn't impress me. They loved it, and if I still lived in that city, I'd make plenty...
  • Commented on Cooking in zero gee
    For an alternative coagulant, use the juice of a fresh lemon or fresh orange (canned juices kill something needed by being pasteurized or reconstituted from concentrate). The yield is lower, but the tofu keeps the flavor from the citrus fruit...
  • Commented on Another trick question ...
    Considering that my worst enemy happens to be whoever is in front of me on the freeway, I suspect that someone's wish (probably going to have to be one of mine) is for a better temper, or there are going...
  • Commented on A cultural thought experiment
    For an interesting non-SF movie on a similar subject, Seconds (with Rock Hudson)....
  • Commented on Post-oil ...
    Silverberg did that one: Roma Eterna. http://www.amazon.com/Roma-Eterna-Robert-Silverberg/dp/0380978598...
  • Commented on Because I am a glutton for punishment ...
    One possibility might be the back story of the Glasshouse universe: the war, where Curious Yellow came from, who created it. I'll be buying whatever you do write, but if it were my preferences, I'd like to see more Laundry...
  • Commented on Sartorial semiotics
    What were they thinking? I don't think they were thinking at all. Much as folks wearing Che Guevara shirts aren't thinking about who Che was. Or folks in the US wearing the Stars and Bars (aka Confederate flag). Is there...
  • Commented on Why I'm not on Google Plus
    I'm not sure I could be on G+ nor any of their services. I've got a university email of the formula: first.last@stateuniversity.edu and google has managed to lock that account. Some online courses require using google documents and nothing I've...
  • Commented on Crime and Punishment
    @178, I've been trying to wrap my head around what a legal system that assumes free will doesn't exist would look like. One could use the Calvinist approach: that people were divided up into the "elect" and the "damned" (in...
  • Commented on "Yes, but what are your <em>credentials</em>, Mr Stross?"
    @195, "just a populizer" Pretty much every field has an "us" vs "them" dynamic. Anyone who makes the field easy to understand by outsiders dilutes the value of the "us" vs "them". @201, I think "Predictably Irrational" is one of...
  • Commented on Thought experiment
    If is is a virus, will it be sexually transmittable? As in, very poor folks in very poor countries will be lining up to "service" incoming tourists to save the $5? (note: for some people in the world, $5 would...
  • Commented on Cookie policy
    A web page with the extension ASHX is a helper page (Microsoft likes to use the word "handler"). It is generally used in ASP.NET pages in 2 situations: 1 - to serve up documents that could be any sort of...
  • Commented on Question ...
    @Charlie, the large CVNs have multiple reactors. The current generation use 2 reactors each putting out 100MW, which is about an order of magnitude smaller than a commercial reactor. In the book The Curve of Binding Energy, the author claims...
  • Commented on Placeholder
    I'm not a doctor, but I have had a persistent cough for several months. Repeated trips to various doctors yielded prescriptions that did nothing for the cough. Finally a trip to an ENT resulted in a diagnosis of GERD. So...
  • Commented on Interdependency
    As others have mentioned, Chlorine Trifluoride was made as a rocket fuel during WW2 as it was the most powerful oxidizer known at that time (and for all I know, it still is, as it beats the pants off of...
  • Commented on Flame bait
    As for Twiglets in the US, I get mine from Amazon. I've tried acquiring them from BritMarts (a generic name for stores catering to British/UK expats), but the comment from the shopkeepers is that twiglets go stale too fast to...
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