Some points I do agree with here, but

why have an X-Prize for thorium reactors when you can just (apparently) build reactors to the CANDU pattern and put thorium in them?

rather than just free education at the university, do what the Swedes do: if you get good grades in high school, the first year at university is paid for. Get good grades in that, and the second year is paid for, and so on.

the "everybody in the army" and "everybody has a gun" parts might make sense in an American cultural context, but I don't get it. As Weber said (and I paraphrase) the whole point of a state is that it has a monopoly on the use of force. No tool that is designed to do significant bodily harm is "just a tool."

-Gareth

One switch in the privacy settings and the "advertisements" are gone.

Gallium (not the element) is making a huge improvement in the display on my oldish main computer. I'm really liking QQ.

-Gareth

I can't say that I like "Zen and the Art" because it's famous. I don't know anyone else who's read it, actually. But...let's start with this: you can't say that the book is a novel, or an autobiography, or a travel book, or a book of philosophy, because it's all of them and none. It has the story arcs of

1. a man with amnesia making contact with his past,
2. a man alienated from his emotions who learns to love again
3. a man trying to make contact with a son who may or may not be losing his sanity
4. a man trying to understand two friends who are travelling with him
5. a man trying to understand discoveries about philosophical problems that had obsessed him before he lost his memories.

Let's put it this way, it is interesting in many of the same ways as "Lord of Light," and is at least as complex.

-Gareth

When I first read "Voyage from Yesteryear," I did enjoy it, but I'm convinced that it is just a high-tech version of Eric Frank Russell's story "And Then There Were None." The relationship is closer than that between the movie "Avatar" and Poul Anderson's "Call Me Joe," and that is a pretty darn close similarity in itself.

H.G. Wells' "Shape of Things to Come" Ursula Le Guin's "The Dispossessed" are two others in the Utopian genre that had a big effect on me.

Including other genres, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and the Heinlein juveniles shaped me.

-Gareth

Correct. There's a difference. If Romney wins, there will almost certainly be a war with Iran. If Obama wins, there may not be. That is literally a life or death difference to many, many people who would live or die according to that choice.

-Gareth

Willis tracks.

I did a recent blog post specifically on how the names of Microsoft OS releases were...lame...or odd...in one respect or another.

For a long time, people could bash Linux, with reason, as an operating system that couldn't even play a DVD out of the box. Pathetic. So what choices did the user have? Either download and install something that would play it illegally, as most did, or pay separately for licensed codecs. Now that Windows users face exactly the same choice, they will feel a certain deflation, a little at a loss, when they argue for the natural superiority of their operating system. It's an uncomfortable feeling, but ultimately healthy.

-Gareth

I just got the $200 model of Playbook for myself. I thought it had better hardware than the $200 Android tablets (camera, hdmi connection), less cost than an iPad and is easier to carry in a pocket for reading and so on. The software selection got a lot better through the Android compatability.

-Gareth

Easy. In the French parliament, the party of the ruling class was on the speaker's right, the party representing the poor on his left. The political positions you would expect from these two constituencies on taxes, foreign wars, universal education, universal health care, the established church, etc are right wing and left wing to this day.

In short, right wingers believe that people exist to serve their country; left wingers believe the country exists to serve its people.

I think Hitler's documented policies on forced sterilization, foreign wars, political pluralism, etc make clear that he belongs on the right.

-Gareth

A follow up with a few favourites that I'd forgotten for a moment.

-Celestial Matters by Richard Garfinkle (alternate history that involves an alternate astronomy and physics, too. Sui generis).
-Wings of Flame by Nancy Springer
-Prisoner of Conscience by Susan R. Matthews (not an easy read for the torture scenes, but a very interesting main character and situation).

Honestly, I don't know how "forgotten" these are, but I liked them.

-Gareth

She, Hi. Rider Haggard
Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirlees
The Wallet of Kai Lung, Ernest Brahma
The Lost Continent, C. Cutliffe Hyne
The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, Patricia McKillip
Micromegas, Voltaire
The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by Stephen Mitchell (very readable, enjoyable)

The Ballantine Adult Fantasy series should introduce you to a lot of good but often obscure work on the fantasy side.

-Gareth

"nobody is going to create a (quality) textbook for free."

http://www.lightandmatter.com/books.html
http://lightandmatter.com/french/
http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/
http://oerconsortium.org/discipline-specific/
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/display/ (an extended, on-line version of the University of Toronto's long-time textbook "Representative Poetry")

Keep in mind that many of the textbooks assigned for English classes are classic books, now public domain.

Look at it this way: a professor is going to put together the equivalent of a textbook in handouts and lecture notes anyway, over the years. They don't necessarily think it will make them money in a crowded market. Many, in those circumstances, wouldn't mind sharing, and would keep it up to date for their own use. If they bring in a few like-minded souls, they could keep it up to date just like an open-source programming project.

Let's hear what Francis, Lord Verulam had to say about trusting only the guy with grandkids. "He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men; which both in affection and means, have married and endowed the public." Anyone agree with him? Here's something: "[8] I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. [9] But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn." (1 Corinthians 7). On the other hand, the idea that we raise our kids as a duty of sorts to society sounds (Godwin forgive me) awfully fascist.

-Gareth

I would have agreed with you. Hey, just look at the seventy years of soviet dictatorship. And Arabs have never had a democratic government, ever. Brutal dictatorship, much as I hated to say it, just seemed to work. Then Prague Spring, Solidarity, the Berlin Wall's destruction, the end of Ceaucescu, the Tunisian Revolution, the Egyptian Revolution, and the panic among the other Arab powers stunned me. Contrary cases, disproving your point. Eventually, popular hatred of a government proved to be bad for the government.

I don't have a reason why dictatorships succeed until, suddenly, they don't. The best clue I found was in a Michael Moorcock novel, _The War in the Air_. A character tells Karl Marx that he's wrong, that oppression is not enough to lead to revolution. It requires a combination of oppression and hope.

-Gareth