FatBigot

FatBigot

  • Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
    Comments are closed on Do my Laundry, but I was re-reading The Jennifer Morgue, and came across this passage (chapter 13, paragraph 2) "..[Mo] went and did some digging. Asked Milton, actually, the one armed, old security sergeant with the...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: Season of Skulls
    If tackling Narnia, are you going to call out the blatant imperialist racism in the series? A far away country populated by beings that, while sentient and articulate are somehow inferior to white English humans. They are unable to organise...
  • Commented on Do my Laundry
    Whatever happened with the entanglement rings? Bob gave one to Mhari and retained the other, but they are never mentioned again....
  • Commented on Pass or Fail
    We have a thread on introverts and a thread on whether open-plan kitchen/living spaces are a good idea. There is an obvious connection here: If you have a separate kitchen, that is the obvious place for us introverts to hang...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: Quantum of Nightmares
    Back to the original topic of this post: Is there a reason Mary cannot use her magic bag to find a way to finance her dad's care home expenses? She is happy to use the fake cash it generates, and...
  • Commented on Necroqueen!
    When I worked in a steel development lab, I recall there were furnaces in the 25 kg to 1000 kg range. When developing a new grade, there are lot of questions to answer: Can you get the chemistry right? Do...
  • Commented on The ends of education
    One major purpose for education AT ALL LEVELS should be Critical Thinking. At present it is only implicit if present at all. But everybody needs the ability to decide: "What does this [person/advert/political statement/media item] really mean?" "What is my...
  • Commented on The ends of education
    A few points: It is really worthwhile following Matt Read's blog over at https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean to understand the pressures that the US Community College system is under. For instance the demand that they offer more vocational courses without any acknowledgment that...
  • Commented on I ain't dead
    SFReader@1484 Steel production is nowhere near the complexity of mobile phones; basically just one main element with plenty of alloying additions. This may go into just one minor component in the phone, e.g. the spring contact on the 3.5 mm...
  • Commented on I ain't dead
    Nojay@1415 Are you suggesting buying semi-finished products (Slabs, Blooms, Billets) and stockpiling them until needed, then re-heating and rolling to final specification when needed? There are 2 major problems with that: 1. The number of different steel chemistries you would...
  • Commented on Happy Halloween!
    JBS @ 126 "What exactly does the "smart" meter do other than the utility not having someone walking meter to meter to read them?" The UK spec for a "smart" electricity meter includes a remote cut-off switch. The entire "Energy...
  • Commented on Happy 21st Century!
    Re Port Talbot Port Talbot is an integrated steelworks using Blast Furnaces to produce the liquid iron, and Basic Oxygen Steelmaking (BOS) to refine the iron to steel. Scrap is used to line the BOS vessel and limit the thermal...
  • Commented on Crib Notes: Empire Games
    I would have thought that an "eat your own dogfood" rule would come under extreme pressure when there is a need to do things quickly. If you need a high speed rail line, you can either develop your own steel...
  • Commented on A bright and shiny hell
    That brings us to the problem of the tyranny of the do-gooder, as expressed by C.S. Lewis: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: The Nightmare Stacks
    What is the nature of the interaction of the Alfar magic and iron? Is it similar to conductors and electromagnetic energy in that it represents a change of impedance that can adsorb or reflect the energy, depending on a number...
  • Commented on 2117 revisited
    Surely a key issue will be the demographics. World population projections for then vary between 8 & 16 billion people (Wikipedia). That will make a huge difference to the kind of planet we live on. Unfortunately there are many strands...
  • Commented on A question about the future of the world wide web
    One problem with micro-payments is the imposition of rich-world norms for how much to pay for something.From our perspective, if you can afford a computer and internet service, then paying an extra 1p a page for content is possible. If...
  • Commented on That "Annihilation Score" spoiler thread you're all asking for
    You ask the question "One thing I still don't get though, is why BLUE HADES and/or DEEP SEVEN haven't wiped out humanity yet, or at least put the shaved apes in their proper place. You'd think they'd be getting awfully...
  • Commented on Ask the Author
    Any chance of what John le Carré did in The Secret Pilgrim? Find a narrative device that allows an assembly of short stories and vignettes that include a number of characters (some new) and based in different parts of the...
  • Commented on Ask the Author
    Shame, I think your near-future work, especially Rule 34, is really, really good....
  • Commented on Let's put the future behind us
    Concerning space colonies: Wouldn't people living there have to accept a degree of control that would be repugnant to us today? Presumably reproduction would have to be carefully controlled, with females required to have a certain number of children, possibly...
  • Commented on The Ferguson Question
    We know that a lot of this equipment is ex-military. However, according to http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/militarized-night-ferguson " In many instances, the receipt of these military-grade weapons is contingent on their use within a calendar year." Is this a contributing factor to the...
  • Commented on Crass commercial interlude
    What I'd really like to see would be a "Capital Laundry Services" lanyard for my corporate ID badge....
  • Commented on A deceptively simple question
    One possibility that self driving cars/trucks produce is the implementation of the Luggage from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. What usages would there be for a vehicle that would slavishly follow it's owner wherever possible? Obviously any real-life implementation would be...
  • Commented on Crib Sheet: The Atrocity Archive(s)
    One question I have is whether there was any influence from Tom Holt's "The Portable Door" (and it's successors) on the Laundry series? They both take "Magic exists" as a starting point and build a world from there. Tom Holt...
  • Commented on Political failure modes and the beige dictatorship
    I think that any serious discussion of this problem has to take account of what happens when democracy really fails. Professor Matthew Flinders (http://www.shef.ac.uk/politics/staff/matthewflinders) was attached to the UK embassy when he saw the riots between Thailand's reds and yellows....
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