ChrisS

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• Commented on The Biggest Little SF Publisher you never heard of pulls on the jackboots
  follow up to 515... And as I'm now a USA-ian, I can bring my parents here instantly, as a late 40s needs his folks around :) Actually, it is kind of nice that I can do that, but for the...
• Commented on The Biggest Little SF Publisher you never heard of pulls on the jackboots
  @ 503 - if you're born in the US, then you are considered to be an American - it's in the constitution. Doesn't matter who your parents are, and you have to renounce to get out of it if you...
• Commented on The Biggest Little SF Publisher you never heard of pulls on the jackboots
  @buwaya - simply leaving the US doesn't move a US citizen beyond their reach. US claims tax on all global earnings, so you still have to file everything even if you're not in the US, so being an expat doesn't...
• Commented on The Biggest Little SF Publisher you never heard of pulls on the jackboots
  I keep coming back to two DNA quotes: “In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha...
• Commented on The Biggest Little SF Publisher you never heard of pulls on the jackboots
  @LRon I think people would be more willing to give the stories a go if last years' ballot from the SPs was any good - I did read all of them, and they varied from solidly written pulp (which was...
• Commented on An age-old question
  Hmmmm. Maybe I'm unusual but I feel I get better as I get older (46) as I can pattern match back to prior experience and come up with answers/approaches faster than the young'uns. I do work with numbers though. The...
• Commented on Not a Manifesto
  Also, the US space program itself was 100% a command economy project, not produced by some "invisible hand of the market". I do see what you're getting at Charlie - be interesting to see what your urban fantasy looks like....
• Commented on Hiatus
  Congrats on the pointy thing, very well deserved :) Nice speech, too :)...
• Commented on Competition Time!
  POSTHUMOUS PERSONNEL REVIEW MEETING NOTICE MEETING ROOM BANSHEE -"My kids kept pestering me for a pony" is not an adequate excuse for re-activating EQUESTRIAN RED SIRLOIN -The subsequent incident(s) at the largest Brony gathering in the U.K. will remain sealed,...
• Commented on World Cup: engage Grinch mode now!
  McCain has declared ISIS an "existential" threat to the US. That word, I don't think it means what you think it means... A small bunch of sub-literate luddites taking advantage of a power vacuum is hardly a huge issue to...
• Commented on Some news about the Hugo voters packet
  Very calm response Charlie. I've already read Neptunes Brood and Ancillary Justice, and an extract from Feed (didn't really grab me) so I'm not too impacted by this. Having said that, it does seem to be a monumentally dumb idea...
• Commented on Notes from the coal face
  @guthrie - Certainly the states out this way are big enough to have theoretical competition. The biggest problem is that it is impossible as a consumer to know in advance what the price for any procedure will be - the...
• Commented on Catching a Blighty
  On the demographics of recruiting, I wouldn't trust Heritage Foundation as far as I could throw them. I did find another site which is http://nationalpriorities.org/analysis/2011/military-recruitment-2010/ and indicates that the top 20% and bottom 20% both make up around 16-17% of...
• Commented on On Syria
  zerohedge is full of tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy loons - actually, they use gold for their tinfoil. Does have occasional outbreaks of sanity when covering flashcrash/HFT issues, though. Syria's population is about 4x that of Libya, for starters, and that...
• Commented on Monarchy versus the Panopticon
  Being insanely rich does keep you out of the panopticon's gaze - see Bill Gates' kids. Or rather, don't see his kids for evidence. Though the Royal Sprog will face the full gaze of everyone, so disappearing will be impossible...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  To Moschops - OK,point taken about the ability to project some force - I was thinking about having a meaningful capability to affect the policy of another major country. You may go and intervene in some 3rd world country, but...
• Commented on Changing my mind on nuclear disarmament
  It's not really a weapon system, but a public works program - it pumps cash into the economy, a lot of which goes to marginal constituencies. As for the UK still being a second tier power, able to do meaningful...
• Commented on PSA: Ignore the news
  And, for the love of the FSM, do not read the comments on any US news site. I live in California, and even I am cheering on North Korea at this point...how people can be that willfully stupid and hate...
• Commented on Press Release: Stross Uncloaks Secret Media Project
  Awesome! You need laser beams in there somewhere, too. And Jennifer Lawrence. The quality of your writing shines through this screen treatment, the plot doesn't have enough holes for a Hollywood production. I'm sure the narrative structure will suffer critical...
• Commented on "We're going to need book covers. Lots of book covers!"
  My OCD is twitching on the Laundry covers. How come the titles on three slope upwards, and Jennifer Morgye slopes the other way? Looks very odd to me...