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• Commented on Crib Sheet: Glasshouse
  It a pretty old part of art. You might find that the old murals in some churches has a purpose of telling bible stories, but a huge amount of "classic" art is packed with symbolism for the cognisant to see...
• Commented on "Fuck every cause that ends in murder and children crying" — Iain Banks, 1954-2013
  2013-06-18 22:00 BBC2 Iain Banks - Raw Spirit: A Review Show Special The acclaimed novelist talks to Kirsty Wark about his career, life and facing up to death. Contains some strong language. Also in HD....
• Commented on Neptune's Brood: an excerpt
  "I'm not feeling so good. My lunch disagreed with me." "Oh dear." "The cow was a vegetarian."...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Glasshouse
  Twelve Step is a reference to a set of rules that originated in Alcoholic Anonymous. It's far more widely used, and some elements vary. Some 12-step programs are aimed at families of various sorts of addict....
• Commented on The Northern Wild: How to Save New York?
  And today they're reporting a 29% drop in the area of wheat being grown in the UK, with little effect on prices. Most of the world has had far better weather. The LIFFE futures for this time next year have...
• Commented on The Northern Wild: How to Save New York?
  The car industry is one of the things which raises questions about the anglo-american style of business management, at the highest levels. Consider the outfit known as Jaguar Land Rover: they were caught up in the great amalgamation of British...
• Commented on Crib sheet: Accelerando
  While the singularity-nature of Gutenberg is arguable, it's more than just a replacement for a large number of monks. The medieval world was developing machines. It was coming up with ways of making goods more efficiently (The Arsenal at Venice)....
• Commented on Interview (and pub crawl) in Tallinn, Sunday
  There's a book which Amazon were selling cheaply on Kindle, about a year ago, about the genetic history of the British Isles (The Origins of the British by Stephen Oppenheimer). Going by the genetic markers, the Celtic/Anglo-Saxon split goes back...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Merchant Princes
  A lot of people fall prey to the idea that the Bill of Rights is somehow more special than it is. I know that it contains a clause concerning changes, but that clashes head-on with the principle of the Supremacy...
• Commented on In the pulp
  Yes, there are humanoid mermaids in the book. Whether they look anything like the cover mermaid is open to argument. It is one of those covers which bears some relation to the book content. And that content is some justification...
• Commented on In the pulp
  They're in the same universe, but that's about as meaningful as Fanny Hill and Les Miserables being in the same universe. The connection is weak enough that there is no need to read both, but I am sure that the...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Merchant Princes
  On one level, that must be a little reassuring. But I really hope they have slots available for the new authors, for the unexpected books which somehow get through all the barriers. Or does a new author have to hope...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Iron Sunrise
  This ties in with the response to Eric Weinstein publicising is Geometric Unity approach to reconciling General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Briefly, he's attacked the problem from the direction of mathematical beauty rather than from trying to explain hard data,...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Iron Sunrise
  There was a story in my local paper, this week, warning of smuggled cigarettes (yellow pack and cyrillic labeL) which were dangerous because they didn't comply with new fire regulations. (TL:DR cigarettes are now supposed to go out if you...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Iron Sunrise
  That is one of those pieces of not untrue silliness. The Viet Cong were not in the business of fighting battles against armies. The USA eventually gave up, and then the North Vietnamese Army won the war. There were a...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: Iron Sunrise
  And then they keep trying to fill in the blanks on Churchill by having him on the run from the law in South Africa, and then comparing his Wanted posters with an IRA terrorist. Wanted poster here I mean, it's...
• Commented on The language of alienation
  The basic idea is not very new. I have seen references to it being around before WW2, and have a vague recollection of some miracle digestive cure purporting to be gut bacteria from Bulgarian peasants. There is that yogurt with...
• Commented on The language of alienation
  Wikipedia puts it back to the original 1978 Galactica, and gives a list of other uses that includes Babylon 5. Though some other sources say that Babylon 5 used "fraggin" In the Battlestar Wiki entry for "frack" the word is...
• Commented on The language of alienation
  There was a bit of dodgy farming going on with Spelt in the late Nineties, involving an EU subsidy. I can't recall the details of how the scheme worked, but it was being pushed as an easy profit for a...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Atrocity Archive(s)
  It could be Home Office. With the reorganisations, it could be anywhere. Why not DEFRA? Cabinet Office? Is Bob Howard senior enough yet to know for sure who the Minister might be? He might think Home Office or MoD at...
• Commented on Crib Sheet: The Atrocity Archive(s)
  There are two TA battalions of the SAS, 21 SAS(R) and 23 SAS(R). As with most TA units, there's a geographic scatter to where the sub-units recruit, and it's 21 SAS in southern England and Wales. If I remember right,...
• Commented on Minor hiccup
  There have been rumours over the years that Huey Long was really killed by a bullet fired by his own bodyguards. The assassin was apparently struck by 62 bullets, Long by 1 bullet. That was 1936. Guns didn't generally fire...
• Commented on Books I've written
  I find that I am a little wary of those who prescribe writing methods. We're all different. But the good things, which are common to this blog and the better sort of writing workshop, are those which come through a...
• Commented on Crib sheet: Singularity Sky
  Napoleonic Naval Fiction: I'd put Aubrey/Maturin ahead of Hornblower, but there's not much in it. Bolitho I would rank third. Dudley Pope was a competent writer but his Ramage was a typical adventure fiction character. There are others, but only...
• Commented on Books I've written
  The dates are wrong. The Haber process is early Twentieth Century. Demonstrated 1909, first industrial-scale use by BASF in 1913, vital for German munitions production 1913-18. So it's a hundred years too late. It also depends on being able to...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  The suggestion I saw is that the time when he was being supported as a front-man gave him an easier start in oratory. I'm not sure where I saw it but there's a suggestion that his talent was polished while...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  When he joined the proto-Nazi party, he was apparently under orders from Army Intelligence. There's some evidence that some of his initial support within the Party was other new members run by the same outfit, while there was a shadowy...
• Commented on A message from our UK sponsors (again)
  What I have seen, Visa and Mastercard in Europe are distinct from the US companies of the same name, which is maybe because of bank regulation systems. Likewise Paypal. And in Europe, there seems to be a bit more security...
• Commented on Grand Guignol Tropes
  Nice idea, but be careful about the technical details. Standard cinema projection of film uses a rotating shutter to show each frame twice. TV uses interlace to get the same effect, two fields to a frame. It's all about reducing...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  Sorry. Typo. Most of the countries created in Eastern Europe had been part of the Austo-Hungarian Empire, and the ethnic minorities on the wrong side of one border or another were certainly an excuse for shenanigans....