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Comment Methinks the Chicken Little doth cluck too much (Score 1) 277

But since they're already at it, they should escalate the pressure, something along the lines of massive flyer campaign, perhaps even the T-shirts with catchy slogan. And of course, we have progressed since the times of shooting the Red Dwarf, so today the townsfolk could also collectively join some Facebook group that emphatically disagrees with nuclear weapons.

Then they could have public viewing of Threads, it's better than The Day After.

Comment Re:I think the Taliban are anti-girl. (Score 1) 474

I'd venture a guess that there's lots of male-male bonding (if you know what I mean) going on in those caves.

Dunno 'bout that "bonding" (BDSM being too much a thing of a debauched West, or at least much more normal societies in general), but there's lots of male-many_male involuntary fucking every Thursday when rookies arrive to the Afghan Army's barracks, according to soldiers who were stationed at the same bases. Guess the Taliban ain't a bit different - in culture where screwing a girl who's not your wife means death, the comrade in (your) arms might seem like a preferable alternative to a donkey.

Comment How 'bout this quote from Reuters? (Score 0) 568

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/25/voerde-insolvency-idUSL5E8GP8ZR20120525

That's second or third biggest aluminium producer in Germany, if I recall correctly. Remember kids, the more solar electricity Germans send to the grid, the less capacity for normal priced kinds remains ("renewables" can't be switched on and off according to demand, law assures their preferential treatment). Also, if you're from Poland or Czech Republic, kids, you're gonna pay for German ideology too, even if your government's folly wasn't that great (well, it was, German stupidity was just additional cherry on top of this shit cake).

Germany's most certainly not abandoning old gas plants (but maybe some were retired because of old age) as some good American or "Grün" tried to tell above, it's keeping them online and building new ones, same goes for coal plants on even greater scale - 14 new plants with 11 GW of installed capacity, mostly coal ones, some gas. Also it contracted reopening of already closed monsters, like Austrian mazut plant in Graz, that's right kids, mazut. But don't worry, 'tis a clean, healthy mazut, because it's backing up wind and solar, so it's okay.
Remember, it's true if Uncle Norbert says so. Oh, yeah, aunt Angie kicked his sorry ass out of gov't but we still gonna block any lowering of subsidies, as well as building of those 3600 km of high-voltage power lines, necessary for getting our grid out of state of permanent near-failure. Those Poles and Czechs will never get to installing those phase shifters nor will their grids afford to fail under overload from our sources, cause that would be BAD.

And remember: Energy Revolution is in full swing! So careful, it might hit you.

Comment Re:PITA Time? (Score 1) 112

Well, there's always a few nerds in training, who are still in the phase of just liking SF and OS Wars and need some easing into using your brain for creating superior weaponry, I blame it on forgetting John von Neumann's example.

What's worse, where's my Obligatory Xkcd Reference? Shotguns are nice, mind you, but I found them somewhat lacking in comparison with kilowatt laser.

Comment Not just books themselves (Score 1) 1244

Might be nice to find bibliography of some long time published magazine, throw out familiar names and have a brief look at some of those remaining. During nineties, there was a Czech mutation of Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It had decades of delay behind the original and was issued bi-monthly instead of monthly so the editor cherry picked from the past and the present of magazine's portfolio. I discovered quite a bunch of interesting names both old and forgotten or new and yet-to-be-recognized, also forgotten faces of familiar names.
Some examples from the magazine would be James Tiptree, Bruce Holland Rogers, Esther M. Friesner, Joe Haldeman (yeah, I've read Forever War and Hemingway Hoax before, but Ma Qui and Graves were different meat), Ray Vukcevich, Vance Aandahl, Barry N. Malzberg, Lisa Tuttle and loads of others I don't even remember, all those authors of twenty short stories and a novel, that somehow made it into publishing three stories in Magazine of F&SF and getting translated 20-40 years later.

As for actual suggestions of forgotten gems or interesting tidbits, there is House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson, if you don't mind old fashioned heroes scribbling their Oh No's and God Why's into diary while Unspeakable Horrors enter the door, already mentioned and not exactly forgotten James Tiptree, Jr., non-Amber Zelazny*, Yevgeniy Zamyatin (Us, but his "non-SF" stuff is worth reading too), Kallocain by Karin Boye, William Tenn (Liberation of Earth, Venus and the Seven Sexes), Strugacki brother's (I liked Picnic by the road, but there's more to them, especially "Escape Attempt"), Henry Kuttner/C.L.Moore, Sam Lundwall (No Time for Heroes and Bernhard the Conqueror), Shirley Jackson, Robert Aickman (The Waiting Room).

*Might have been caused by crappy translation but I found Amber books mildly amusing but mostly just fluff, his short stories varying from amusing and interesting to masterpieces; whoever here haven't read A Rose for Ecclesiastes yet and is more of a bookworm with penchant for SF&F instead of die-hard SF fan, go read it _right now_, you won't regret it.

Comment Re:Zelazny (Score 1) 1244

Oooh, I second the Tiptree suggestion very much, it's hardly as forgotten as Lord Dunsany or Eddings (frankly, for the latter I just vaguely remember about existence of Ouroboros something, not even the author's name) but it's touch of something very different. By the way, have science already found out what colour were the Neanderthals' eyes?

Comment Re:Ya I think peopel confuse the argument (Score 1) 292

the same physicists you trust to make stuff work can tell you why CO2 causes global warming

Something tells me you don't mean Freeman Dyson.

But if you had other ideas, you'd probably be off doing something with them

Like not screaming that sky is fallin and waiting for sounder proofs and policies? Seems to me he's doing it.

Comment Looking from here, (Score 1) 775

Santorum doesn't have a Google Problem, America has a Santorum Problem - too much of it smeared on it's face.
No, I'm neither "liberal" nor Democrat, but this election's pretendents for GOP's nomination really look like a freak show. Seriously, if this is the best you can offer or (more importantly) agree on, than you shouldn't bitch about Obama or Hillary, you deserve them.

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