Roger

Comment Threads

• Martin commented on Radio silence
  Not sure what you're getting at, here - or how it's relevant to either torture or collective punishment of civilian populations... Irish politician criticises Irish political opponent (for not being able to demand that the UK Government hand over any information he wants, on demand). What a surprise. As a next trick, will he criticise his opponent for not being able to demand that the Russian or US Governments hand over any classified information he feels like? I did raise an eyebrow at the article where it said "Sinn Féin TD Gerry Adams has described the refusal of the British...
• Heteromeles commented on Radio silence
  I'm not surprised at the number of combat soldiers needing psychiatric treatment after Northern Ireland. It appears that similar problems happened in Vietnam, in part due to mismanagement. Similar problems are happening now in Iraq and Afghanistan on both sides (although I wonder how ISIS and the Taliban deal with PTSD). In any case, I do wish the skills were more transferable. A friend of mine who was a Navy medical technician got really frustrated after moving on to a civilian hospital, where they told him he couldn't do procedures that he'd been routinely doing in the Gulf--apparently he was...
• Martin commented on Radio silence
  I'm not surprised at the number of combat soldiers needing psychiatric treatment after Northern Ireland. To make it clear - the vast majority of soldiers in Northern Ireland were operating as "policemen in green", patrolling urban and rural areas, and AIUI had quite a low rate of PTSD. The "50% of Special Duties" figure refers to the very small number of soldiers in what has now become the Special Reconnaissance Regiment. They were operating individually and in pairs, in civilian clothes, in very high-threat areas (i.e. get caught, and you're dead - if you're lucky, without torture). Living at that...
• Alatriste commented on Radio silence
  @361 [Regarding the societies that Asimov depicts] It has been too many years since the last time I read the Robot series but if memory serves me well the Spacer society - at least the Aurora one - wasn't so utopic. Actually I wonder if Asimov didn't deliberately use the Old South as a model, because Auroran humans behaved pretty much as a planter class, including forbidden romantic liaisons with robots and the ever-present but unspoken fear of a robotic rebellion... Incidentally Asimov knew perfectly well what racism is. He had suffered it himself. I think it's no coincidence that...
• Pigeon commented on Radio silence
  Not utopic, certainly - they had plenty of flaws, as I said - but it's still quite clear that people in general have a much less crappy time in their everyday lives than people on Earth do. Earth society seems to me very much an example of one that relies for its cohesion on people's proficiency at deluding themselves that the crappiness is desirable. Interesting point about the Aurora/South parallel. That had not occurred to me - British perspective, no doubt. I'm afraid that my perceptions are so warped by having essentially no exposure to portrayals of the South (that...