Well of Souls Forums

An actual observation deck would be an extension of the hull, possibly outside of the armor, but would still be part of the main hull.

The only critique that I have is that those two big boxes probably don't belong on the battleship's fin. They'll cause torque on the fin (thereby weakening it), will increase infrastructure challenges (you'll have to run more utility stuff to the end of the fin), and aren't likely to be useful (the ...

Not all is woe, I recently got reminded of OTEC . I don't know it's scaling quirks, but the combination of energy production, freshwater production and increased surface fertility (a.k.a. improved aquaculture productivity) is a nice combination. At any rate, the agricultural techniques here in the U...

Probably not, more likely budget sabotage. The space program is supposedly really popular here in America, but you wouldn't guess that by the money that gets spent on it.

Not entirely true, habitable worlds are mostly useful because you don't have to use as much environmental support gear (in some cases aliens might be okay with just allergy-drugs, or something equivalent), which shouldn't be that big of an issue with sufficient telepresence and robotics resources (y...

Yes, but we've been becoming more capitalist (specifically, less regulated). In some ways good, in other ways bad (for the bad: the deregulation of the wheat markets has gone too far, as demonstrated by the fact that speculators can as a group now dominate the markets, leading to artificial scarcity...

So it's still weird? Got it.

Alright, someone remind me: how many years did CERN go over the results before releasing their paper? My thoughts on http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.2685 : Relevant : Does the movement of sender/receiver due to Earth's motion make this point relevant even regardless of any satellite involvement? (a.k.a. d...

And why "commies"? Because obviously everywhere east of the USA is communist ;) . What do you mean 'it loops around'? But what would be "our" version of Outsider? I suggest that Hamilton needs big respectable moustaches. http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ3DHhOdS9j4jdvqKdXnjVhlLWHFi5MLo3QmXE...

Trantor, you forgot to write 'Commies' on Yurop. Also, where's our Go-Away cannons? We might get infected with foreigners otherwise.

Yes, I assume that the Bolo AIs were designed in such a way that only such a direct connection would be enough to provide an 'end-run' processing path around such restrictions. I'd question the precise level of 'in-the-loop', but it's implied that the human personality somewhat merges into the Bolo ...

...You also have the ethical questions of whether you should be putting an intelligent, self aware entity in harm's way unnecessarily. As opposed to an intelligent, self aware human? (This is actually brought up in a few Bolo stories; later on in the timeline having a human commander in the bolo is...

We aren't quicker than 'any machine', we aren't as obsessively devoted to the details of the orders, we aren't as gee-tolerant, and we do a lot of things that are unnecessary for the role (like breath). Humans will be the captains and commanders, we'll be in the capital ships, the 'combat boats', an...

Anything that reminds someone of a Christoper Walken movie is probably a little dubious.

Maybe, but a lot of information in the brain won't be visual, so you won't find a true 'dream recorder'.

Mjolnir wrote:The Industrial Revolution did not happen in Roman times,

Not entirely accurate (Rome did actually have watermills, which they used for a variety of things; slave labor seems to have undercut any chance of a true Roman Industrial Revolution, though), but close enough.

2) We learn a little bit about time. Conventional thinking says that going FTL == going back in time, but these results don't say that, suggesting that perhaps 'negative time' manifests in other ways (Mjolnir, do you know if neutrino conversions are 1-way?). This doesn't say much about how FTL woul...

I can see a couple ways this could go: 1) CERN goofed. Easiest solution. 2) We learn a little bit about time. Conventional thinking says that going FTL == going back in time, but these results don't say that, suggesting that perhaps 'negative time' manifests in other ways (Mjolnir, do you know if ne...