Jaws

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• Commented on Same bullshit, new tin
  Remember, too, that the tail is not wasted. (T. Rex teeth with no tail might as well be dentures on a nightstand — great display, not much use on a steak.) The enthusiastic cannon fodder conscripted infantry isn't going to...
• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  Some of the "royal" versus "national" stuff gets disturbing at times. Back when I was Over There, we noticed — but nevernevernever discussed with the local citizenry — that there was a Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to...
• Commented on London Bridge
  Far be it for me to suggest that the "ceremony" on 05 September is what did for her. London germs (especially among the coterie, who were almost certainly not masked) Prose fit to choke on. A personality best used as...
• Commented on Behind the Ukraine war
  @143: Just how do you think supplies got to and from the first or last railhead? Not even General Haig put the railheads within artillery range of the artillery. Conversely, getting the wheat from the field to the railhead at...
• Commented on Behind the Ukraine war
  When trying to figure out the "response" to tanks, it helps to remember what tanks themselves were a response to: Ypres, the Somme, Paschendaale... infantry trench warfare on relatively flat, almost-entirely-rural terrain with a particular preexisting mixture of weaponry, training,...
• Commented on Bad news day
  JBS@84: I disagree that any of these citations remain binding (persuasive, perhaps). They all predate the Hague and Geneva Conventions, not to mention the Nuremberg proceedings. The US Supreme Court adopted the much-less-than-clear (but, arguably, much better adapted to post-eighteenth-century...
• Commented on Bad news day
  Total, I was too hasty and should have been more precise. In those instances you cited, the key is that the defense did not contest those definitions under the law of the time. The Tokyo Rose and Ezra Pound cases,...
• Commented on Bad news day
  Mildly perturbed response to JBS: The definition of "treason" in the US Constitution (Art. III § 3) is: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid...
• Commented on Bad news day
  Putin's main complaint appears to be that since 1992, the Duchy of Muscovy's descendants have been improperly reduced to Volk ohne Raum and he is obligated to do something about it. Ah, yes, totalitarian precept #3: Always invoke the glories...
• Commented on Fossil fuels are dead (and here's why)
  174: My "suggestion", as it were, is to stop pretending that fixing one part of a complex system with kewl new toys is an actual solution. It is at best a tradeoff for a different set of problems... and more...
• Commented on Fossil fuels are dead (and here's why)
  Moz @ 114: If we're going to "kill" fossil fuels (which we should; there are much, much better uses for any petroleum than just burning it), we can't ignore the bottom 90% of the population. David @ 116: Fair point...
• Commented on Fossil fuels are dead (and here's why)
  Putting "it" in a shed outside "your house" rather assumes a certain housing density and social structure, doesn't it? <sarcasm> Oh, I know. We'll just clad entire apartment buildings with lithium-ion batteries, with exposed wiring snaking down to charging stations...
• Commented on Fossil fuels are dead (and here's why)
  The "power generation in spaaaaaaaaace!" fun is the easy part. As the current problems in New Orleans demonstrate, the hard part is getting all that power where it needs to go. (There's plenty of power into the distribution centers in...
• Commented on Starship bloopers
  Troutwaxer@95 / Paul@99: Perhaps the Soviet's "didn't have to" let their military services "become" hell-pits. Perhaps... but there were centuries of such a tradition in Russia, and there wasn't exactly a model of humane treatment of the cannon fodder PBI...
• Commented on Starship bloopers
  I'm always cynically amused by those who take past empires built through conquest as a model for the present and/or an iconographic objective. The obvious problem with the Roman Empire is that it was built on conquest, and a particularly...
• Commented on Covid on Mars
  @113: Bonus: Contamination and form of DNA matters for handheld-instrument accuracy. There's a yuuuuuuuuuuuge difference between what a handheld instrument can accurately do with aliquots of pure-to-relatively-pure chemical-grade reagents... and what it can do while it is simultaneously taking samples...
• Commented on Covid on Mars
  Whitroth @61: A college degree is not a guarantee, even if in some senses and in some areas it reduces the incidence of foofery. Apollo One was designed, and its construction was supervised, by people with college degrees. The Dear...
• Commented on Covid on Mars
  The logistics of a preventive program (vaccination or anything else) are always much more of a challenge than the underlying science. OK, fine, Mars develops a faaaaabulously effective system for somehow getting the vaccine for this particular virus into its...
• Commented on "It'll all be over by Christmas"
  I'm afraid the timing of the original post's last line is off. Cthulhu awoke in mid-2016, as reflected by voting in both the UK and US. But it was a long nap and he/it/they needed a couple of years to...
• Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
  (114 continued, had "help" and hit submit too soon) For non-aviators out there, the single most difficult skill is the combination of learning to run a checklist in an emergency, and developing the judgment to know when to skip steps...
• Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
  Side comment on John Glenn: You're also forgetting the most important aspect: John Glenn was relearning an awful lot of skills from his first career as a test pilot and astronaut. He already had relevant muscle memory and subconscious thought...
• Commented on So you think you can be a reality TV producer
  So You Want to Be a Useful Member of Society Six to ten contestants from strict racial demographics based on the potential contestant pool (school-leavers/high school dropouts) compete for admission to a "prestigious" high-demand university/college course, including completion of all...
• Commented on CASE NIGHTMARE BLONDE
  Stockpile? For those on fixed incomes (like over-75s budgeting to pay TV tax), or those living on council estates with no storage for stockpiles (meaning that the tins will make up the new "kitchen island"), or for those precariously homeless...
• Commented on Do my Homework
  I don't see an awful lot of works that integrate the technology with its (for lack of a better work) sociocultural context — it's always simplistic cause-and-effect stuff. X came first/was the overriding objective, resulting in Kewl Thing (or Unkewl...
• Commented on Why I barely read SF these days
  It's neither the worldbuilding inconsistencies (which are, indeed, a serious problem... and not just with archly speculative fiction, they're endemic in politically oriented books and even in many "hard core" mysteries, and the less said about worldbuilding problems in litfic...
• Commented on Unforeseen Consequences and that 1929 vibe
  Of course, no historical precedents exist. The Spanish economy in the seventeenth century didn't collapse with any relationship whatsoever to its continued mercantilism and dependence upon importation of new currency from the New World (and how about those collateral consequences,...
• Commented on A bright and shiny hell
  Robert Prior at 42: The implicit logic of citing to past atrocities in response to an objection to present conduct is that it's impossible to escape the past. By that logic, all Catholics are inherently and irredemably antisemitic (Torquemada, y'know)....
• Commented on A bright and shiny hell
  Our Gracious Host at 13: No argument from me on "fiction driving the military," that's one of the reasons that reference is inside of <sarcasm> tags. Which is not, of course, to say that fiction never does drive military actions...
• Commented on A bright and shiny hell
  "Because violence breeds more violence — who knew? (Not the CIA and USAF with their typical 'oops' response whenever a drone blows up a wedding party they've mistaken for Al Qaida Central.)" <sarcasm> Yeah, because no member of the senior...
• Commented on Houston: what are the long-term consequences?
  One of the follow-on effects of this flood in Houston is going to be more bridges falling down hundreds or thousands of miles away in places like Minneapolis. Thanks to the wild and wacky structure of American infrastructure funding and...