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• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  Re: '... becomes difficult to tell who is who... :-(' Agree. For a group that's supposed to be well-educated, in touch with real issues and real people, and forward thinking, they've made some pretty dumb mistakes. Starting with underestimating hate,...
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  Re: 'Kavanaugh in the next cell for perjury' Is this a new/different story or are you referring to the pre-SCOTUS appointment hearings? Based on the below, he comes across as pro-authoritarian. Probably makes it a lot easier to reach a...
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  Re: 'Well BoJo now has another record, ...' Well if he manages to hang on for a couple more years maybe he can get re-elected. I hear that he's fathered scads of kids - some might be approaching voting age....
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  Re: 'very little news coverage ...' (by-elections in Wakefield in West Yorkshire and the Devon seat of Tiverton and Honiton) Yeah - I just checked BBC News. And if the Tories do lose those seats Bojo already has his spin...
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  Re: '... more carnivorous plants,' How about throwing fungus into the mix? Depending on your definition of 'eat' - fungi eat plants and animals. Plus some can communicate via fine filaments (nervous system), grow almost indefinitely and live thousands of...
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  Re: 'Ask again tomorrow night, there are two by-elections taking place...' Will do - thanks!...
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  Re: 'The Tories have much of the list, but in a weakened and anaemic form ...' OOC and because I'm not seeing a lot of headlines about BoJo when I open GoogleNews: what is the current sentiment wrt Tories over...
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  Re: 'The one I'm looking for an agent now is set between 55 and 105 years from now, and covers the creation of the Terran Confederation.' No problem - Since the event I was referring to occurred pre-11,000 years, you...
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  Re: 'Thank you. Coherent matter beams... ' You're welcome! I'm looking forward to reading your next/follow-up book. Curious how you're going to handle and resolve how the alien go-between/underling misinterpreted/misvalued some data that humans consider relevant. I feel that this...
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  Re: '... but does neuron density correlate with what we might call for the sake of brevity "intelligence"?' Corvids can recognize individual human faces and pass along this info to other corvids including their 'children'. I think this signifies considerable...
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  Re: 'Keynes predicted that his grandchildren could see a 15 hour workweek ...' Thanks for the link. Paints a different portrait: Keynes was a lot more forward thinking than I recall hearing/learning. Troutwaxer @ 217: 'Bird brains' Ever since I...
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  Re: 'Keynes' view of progress' Not sure I understand what you mean. In my mind, Keynes and most other economists perceive 'the economy' and develop rules that are suited to inanimate machines and not to human beings: turn it on...
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  Re: 'Babylon 5 went quite a long way in that direction.' I watched this series when it was on syndicated reruns - one episode per day, so almost all of the series within a couple of years. Easier to follow...
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  Re: 'space-based laser' Retro-SF space operas and TV series/shows inspired generations of real scientists even though the 'science' used in some earlier shows was probably kinda iffy even back then. What those shows really communicated was 'wouldn't it be cool...
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  Re: 'Asimov's bugbear, chirality, ...' Excellent article - thanks! I'll have to re-read this though cuz I kept having to look things up. It's been a while since I took chem. :) BTW - that Wikipedia article does make mention...
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  Re: '... reminder ... just because an element is present, doesn't necessarily mean it's usable without a lot of work.' Okay, how about this reminder: Although six elements make up something like 99% of the human body, the current design...
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  Re: '... sitting on the surface of a planet with the atmosphere protecting you from stray debris' Or, you could travel to an asteroid that's got most of the raw materials you need and is travelling in the direction you'll...
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  Re: '"A Stupidity" would be closer to the mark ...' Okay - what needs to change - be added/removed to get from current 'AI' stereotypes to whatever you personally think makes 'intelligence'? Most SF that I've read says that improving...
• Commented on Books I will not write: BIGGLES!!
  Re: 'Note per canon Biggles' sexuality is ambiguous ...' Even though I've never even heard of this character before, i.e., never read any of these books, I'm going to comment. (Ahem.) Okay - it's late, I'm tired, probably some non...
• Commented on Abolish the monarchy!
  Re: 'Instead of having separate carts with one ordinary-sized horse each you can tie a load of them together ...' Forgot to list 'ride-share' as one of the increasingly common options. Also know of one corp (MSFT) that had (maybe...
• Commented on Abolish the monarchy!
  Re: 'There's probably fewer than 100 individuals who can afford a nuke plant, but billions who can afford a solar one.' Agree. A lot of arguments against smaller steps re: energy esp. steps that can be taken by individuals, small...
• Commented on Abolish the monarchy!
  Re: 'The Queen, and Charles as heir, have the right to demand consultation and a power of amendment on any law which would impinge on the Monarchy. This is done in secret, without reference to Parliament, and they use it...
• Commented on The impotence of the long-distance trillionaire
  Sorry - the formatting got buggered up! I wrote most of the post on a notepad and the copy&paste didn't carry over - will try to fix it next time I visit....
• Commented on The impotence of the long-distance trillionaire
  Re: '... only textual records we have for the existence of Jesus are apparently the same records we have for the existence of Pontius Pilate.' Library of Alexandria would have been handy to check for info on this - too...
• Commented on The impotence of the long-distance trillionaire
  RE: '... but if the rich have made it too hard to redistribute their wealth,' First you'd have to be able to track down their wealth, i.e., DT who has been calculated as being worth approx. $300 million vs. his...
• Commented on The impotence of the long-distance trillionaire
  Re: 'A billionaire who owns a billion dollars worth of stocks and has control or at least significant leverage in a company may only have an actual income of several million dollars each year, maybe even less.' Nope - betcha...
• Commented on The impotence of the long-distance trillionaire
  Re: 'The small countries with many billionaires are tax havens.' Then there's the US -- so many billionaires on record with so little in taxes collected. Just saw a tweet from Americans for Tax Fairness which claims to show some...
• Commented on The impotence of the long-distance trillionaire
  Re: 'The first table can be resorted by "billionaires per million people"' A table showing taxes paid by billionaires would be even more useful. FYI - China introduced a tax rate of approx. 45% on top earners a couple of...
• Commented on The impotence of the long-distance trillionaire
  Re" “What is thegrayzone.com?” Did a search on it which pulled up: a) skews conspiracy theory, b) lacking in reliability according to a few fact-checker sites, c) a couple of years ago the Wikipedia community deemed it not qualified as...
• Commented on The impotence of the long-distance trillionaire
  Re: '... you are responsible from the curb to your property line. (Note sure what how it works if there is no curb.)' Even if you did 'own' all the land right down to the street, cities and utilities (and...