Charles Stross's Blog, page 125
November 12, 2009
Designing society for posterity
(Continuing from the comments/discussion following an earlier post ...)
Generation starships: they're not fast.
If you can crank yourself up to 1% of light-speed, alpha centauri is more than four and a half centuries away at cruising speed. To put it in perspective, that's the same span of time that separates us from the Conquistadores and the Reformation; it's twice the lifespan of the United States of America.
We humans are really bad at designing institutions that outlast the life...
November 10, 2009
Still on the road, sort-of
I'm back home today and tomorrow, but off again on Thursday to Novacon 39 in Nottingham. Oslo was about as cold as Edinburgh, and about as dark; although a good time was had by all, all this rushing around in the dark is leaving me somewhat tired, and even a portable battery-powered daylight lap for dealing with SAD (which has begun hitting me earlier and harder with each passing year since I turned 40) isn't helping much. (No surprise, if you bear in mind that I live 50 miles or so north of ...
November 3, 2009
On the road yet again (and again) ...
This Thursday (the day after tomorrow) I'm off to sunny Oslo, Norway, for The Oslo SF Festival, where I'm one of the guests of honour over the weekend.
I'm back Monday night, but off again on Thursday (that's next Thursday) to Novacon 39 in Nottingham for the following weekend. Back mid-week.
When I'm not bouncing around Europe like a demented flea, I'll be working on the next novel ("Rule 34") and hopefully on the copy edits to "The Fuller Memorandum".
So that's two conventions, a CEM to...
October 31, 2009
Annoyed
Judging from the reader responses to my last essay, if Erwin Schroedinger published his thought experiment on the EPR Paradox today, he'd have had the Cat Protection League breaking down his office door within minutes.
Am I just on the receiving end of a massive selection bias effect, or are people today really that incapable of handling metaphor, let alone the idea of a thought experiment?
October 29, 2009
How habitable is the Earth?
(Pay attention at the back: this is a trick question.)
We H. Sapiens Sapiens appear to be an infestation on this planet. After the slow-burning evolution of hominins in Africa, our ancestral populations erupted out into Eurasia in a geological eye-blink, spread into the Americas by way of the Bering land bridge (sea levels being somewhat lower during the ice ages) and finally reaching even the remotest islands of oceania around twelve thousand years ago. Today we're ubiquitous. Even our...
October 28, 2009
There is a story behind this ...
... But I'm not sure I want to know it. It's probably either ridiculously banal or so screamingly surreal I couldn't put it in a work of fiction and preserve plausibility.
Either way, this is one for the Darwin Awards:
Am J Gastroenterol. 1993 Jan;88(1):122-6.
Fulminant acute colitis following a self-administered hydrofluoric acid enema.
Cappell MS, Simon T.
Department of Medicine, UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson (Rutgers) Medical School, New Brunswick.
A 33-yr-old white male presented with bloody...
October 25, 2009
Blog policy
I'm back from my travels, and it occurs to me that there's something I need to say here.
People regularly send me links to interesting news items via the "Talk to me" link on the front page. That's okay, although if you're going to do it you should be aware that I track the online tech news sources voraciously — if you've seen it, the odds are good that I have too. If it interests me you may prod me into writing something about my thoughts on the matter — but that doesn't happen often.
Slightly...
October 19, 2009
News from the Future Front
I'm going to be on the road again this week (same time, same place, same errand — more or less).
In the meantime, though, here's this month's Halting State moment; the BBC report that the police are on course to adopt smartphones wholesale by 2010.
Bedfordshire's force piloted the scheme. For a cost of £270 per officer per year, they managed to cut the time their constables spend in the station from 46% to 36% of their time on shift. (It's a hugely cost-effective measure, considering that...
October 15, 2009
Attention Conservation Notice
It's morning here. I'm about to get on a train with no wifi and crap phone service and go visit elderly relatives for a couple of days. Your chances of getting me to rise to the bait are thereby diminished.
When I get back I have a bunch more blog postings queued up. They include:
* I hate (c)rap music
* Michael Jackson: dead white guy?
* Capitalism sucks: Communism will save us
and
* Yes, your ass looks fat in that. (And you need to shower more often.)
Live long and prosper.
October 14, 2009
Meta
Apropos my previous blog posting, I am simultaneously amused and perplexed by the number of people who, being afficionados of [X:], read a statement of the form "I do not like [X:]" and parse it as "[X:] is bad".
(Tag with: collective logic FAIL, what are they teaching them these days, death of western civilization, film at 11, etcetera.)
Mind you, it's given me some food for thought. In particular, I'm trying to figure out precisely what it is about the structure of small-screen entertainment...
