So, both sides of a false dichotomy get modded up "insightful" on slashdot these days. Good to know. March of the Morons, anyone?

Yeah, except Rome fell about 400 years later. You could argue that the decline of Rome began with the end of the Republic, but that decline was a drawn out process. It's more of an ideological point. The economically most prosperous years probably were under the Emperors...

The Roman expansion seemed to have stopped whenever they ran into cavalry-heavy enemies. They got to Asia Minor, but not into the steppe beyond. Enemies not fighting ordered battles might have been somewhat detrimental to Legion tactics. Hit and run, deny an orderly battle - asymmetric warfare of the ancient world if you like. Not that they ventured often into those territories, but if I recall correctly, whenever they did, it was without significant success.

Good Lord, you must be some lightyears left of Marx himself then, given the amount of strawmen you burn on a daily basis! Welcome to the party, Comrade! Don't worry, we are used to accomodate weird opinions in the Collective! Enjoy your stay!

Interesting. But more often than not, there are stops on the open track due to red signals. How would you get going from those?

There's the slight difference that Brunner can think and Pournelle and Niven are ideological hacks who can't write a decent story to save their asses.

And what, exactly, distinguishes a lying sack of shit like Monckton or Watts from a holocaust denier? They know they are wrong, they are not that stupid. They lie, lie and lie again, each lie gets debunked multiple times by people actually giving a shit, and 2 weeks later, they spout the same lies in a slightly rephrased manner.

Hey, quick! Take cover! Black helicopters! FEMA and UN troops under the Red Flag of the United Socialist States of America are RIGHT BEHIND YOU! Get out while you can, man!!!

Gotta love the instant foaming-at-the-mouth by wingnuts like rubycodez as soon as Al Gore is mentioned. It's as if he touched them in a bad place once.

If you think this is brilliant, you might want to move over to Watts' forums and join the braindead circlejerk there.

Not in the context of fraud, libel, slander and bribery to others to commit the same. And that is all that is left in the denialist crowd.

The moment you even expect that users should, could, would or even remotely in their most maddened fever dreams WOULD WANT to modify the kernel, you lost it.

And now imagine that happening just 30 years ago. An object entering on a ballistic trajectory and setting off a 500 kt airblast essentially over the main Soviet plutonium facility in Mayak next to Chelyabinsk. I am retroactively shitting myself right now. As a species, we have more luck than common sense...