billb

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• Commented on Fuck the Monarchy
  Then you would be wrong. The work of the likes of James Watt, Richard Trevithick, Carl Benz and Rudolf Diesel and many others made the institution of slavery uneconomic. Many societies before the mid-19th relied on either slavery or...
• Commented on Someone please cancel 2019 already?
  It seems to me that the idea that politicians could possibly have any influence over the earth's chaotic climate system looks like a bourgeois liberal version of the anti-demographic impulses that you have ascribed to conservatives. In a technological world...
• Commented on The Future Is Not American
  The Chinese Empire has lasted for some 5000 years. Surely it can hang on for another 2 or 3 thousand?...
• Commented on The present in deep history
  The rise of nation states and as a consequence a series of military and commercial empires. Followed, as world prosperity equalised, by the universal ejection of such empires and the disintegration of nation states....
• Commented on The present in deep history
  By the 30th century people will come to believe that a significant proportion of the world population were pagans. Because whenever their archaeologists excavate old water courses the find strange basket like structures which were obviously put there to hold...
• Commented on From the hemline index to the vampire/zombie ratio: SF/F by the numbers
  Sure you can distinguish between American and British English on Ngram, just use the pull down 'corpus' menu. As for the 'vampire' peak in about 1995, is this a Buffy effect?...