Graham: I get that these surveys are all about gauging the health of popular reading as an amusement, and thus of the publishing sector. I actually appreciate they do not discriminate as to the quality or subject matter. Some surveys would narrow it to the overlapping categories of literary fiction or Oprahist fiction. But still, I notice they eliminate work and school and don’t otherwise specify type of book. I was an avid reader of fiction and nonfiction most of my life, but when I was in...
Graham: My first reaction was to always enjoy the beauties of nature presented as a bloody struggle to the death. All the best nature shows do this. Chemical and biowarfare practiced without limits. More seriously, I’m impressed with the monarchs’ achievement here but that seems like dead-end evolution to rely on one species for food. Not the first time or the last that will happen, but still noteworthy. In the 1990s, there was a huge scare about monarchs in particular disappearing. It was...
Graham: LC Rees, Yes, it’s hard to remember now given the religious and royalist trappings, but absolutism was the progressivism of its day. Almost if not actually a revolutionary political philosophy. It even had things in common with the drives of modern ideologies: centralize the state both geographically and with regard to the institutions at the top; make the administration more efficient, professional, divorced from politics as represented by the courtiers and the territorial nobility; make...
Sam J.: Gut Bacteria. I’ve posted this here before it may be of some interest. Maybe the gut bacterisa can be changed to influence the well being of the rest of the body. Lactobacillus reuteri and anti-aging http://stan-heretic.blog spot.com/2018/09/lactoba cillus-reuteri-and-anti- aging.html “…The idea of varying gut flora is right up there in modern medical treatment for stomach complaints….” ; https://www.orlandosenti nel.com/space/la-sci-sn- gut-bacteria-aging-20...
Sam J.: The reason people are thinking about Kings is they look around at what’s going on and feel it’s an alternative solution but they really haven’t paid attention to all the options. We don’t need Kings in any way, shape or form. Things will probably get worse before they get better but I don’t believe that nothing can be done. The Left have slowly but surely emplaced themselves in several choke points in various points in the society. From these points they funnel money...
Sam J.: They need a shit load of fiber optic guided missiles. “…the Europeans have already developed the Polyphem fiber optic missile, with an incredible range of 60km by using a turbojet engine…: http://www.g2mil.com/efo gm.htm https://www.army-technol ogy.com/projects/polyphe m/ Combined with a high quality air defense and lots of machine guns there would be no way they could land anywhere. A lot of truck mounted remotely fired 20mm or 30mm exploding round ammo Gatling guns with...
Sam J.: That’s more than I thought would be the case.
Neovictorian: Love the old Mike Leach post! Thanks for pointing it out.
CVLR: BTW, L. C. Rees, thanks for the interesting links. Some people, especially a certain subset of computer nerds, don’t seem to fully appreciate the profound historical novelty of, as you say, that Oriental import,
CVLR: What makes you think that the distinguished vanguard of the five-sided wind tunnel is trying to solve the problems it purports to be trying to solve? They said that Bin Laden bombed the Triplet Towers, and in response they invaded Afghanistan. I don’t know who was behind the peanut farmer, but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t powering himself. Why did Clinton crush Libya? Who was ISIS? What happened in Russia?
CVLR: Ezra, the difference between then and now is that you can buy a quadcopter for a couple hundred bucks, ArduPilot is as good as anything available to corporations and governments, and SpaceX is using consumer electronics equipment in its rockets. That said, Freddo is quite right. The gulf between what’s possible in manned vs. unmanned is vast, and there isn’t necessarily much reason to think that Google will succeed with any less bowing and scraping than Boeing. And after the Boeing catastrophe, the...
Freddo: Interesting platform. Of course comparing what is a mostly-unmanned testbed with a helicopter that has been cleared for public & commercial usage is a bit disingenuous, but let’s blame the journalist for that.
Hans G. Schantz: With a name like that, you can’t help but like the project. I wish them well!
Ezra: This sounds all too good to be true. I can recall that several decades ago no less than forty or so such flying saucer type vehicles had been proposed. Each was touted as a sure thing. The last I recall was flying saucer type, autonomous or man-controlled flight, eight engines and four computers, you did not even need a pilots license to know how to fly. Never heard of it ever again.
Wang Wei Lin: The only way for Taiwan to stay in a long term conflict with Biejing is 4GW asymetric tactics.
Christopher: Aretae: U.S. Navy big ships (carrier groups) useful for their primary U.S. foreign policy behavior: launching air strikes, invasions, interdiction and control of waterways (as well as making America appear powerful). Existential threats of big war repelled by nuclear weapons, or is U.S. unprepared for the next big war? Always fighting the last war, as the saying goes?
Christopher: Appearances, versus the substance of Taiwan’s defence (i.e. U.S.-China geopolitical stability). Mirrors China’s facade that Taiwan is part of the People’s Republic. It may even be detrimental for Taiwan’s relations to develop a credible deterrent to China’s local military superiority.
Kirk: CVLR, it’s even worse than you think. At the end of the day, since we’ve been selecting for the wrong things, mostly sycophancy and groupthink, the idjit flag ranks can’t even come up with the right answers to our problems. Been over this ground before, but the fact that we were “blindsided” by the issues in the rear areas of Iraq and Afghanistan, particularly the IED campaign? Oh, sweet meteor of doom… Those friggin’ idjits were TOLD, by multiple people on...
CVLR: The fruits of the group selection I’m talking about are big brains, fair skin, and technological capability, its mechanism of action being the back-and-forth Red Queen rape and pillage of the neighboring hominid tribe. Look, I’m fully aware that the military has degenerated into a profoundly pathological institution, which is why I turned down a gold-plated opportunity to get on the flag-officer career track. Why? Because I can extrapolate: you spend your youth sucking up, and then you spend your...
