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david_b | 10 years ago | on: Interview with Michael Moorcock

Unless the people are humans or elfs (hence orcs) or dwarfs or hobbits - then they aren't influenced or changed at all by the power of the ring. The fact that the characters are somewhat like woodcuts might also be owed to two things:

- Tolkien was a linguist, not necessarily well-versed in the craft of literature. Writing good believable characters is extremely hard; moving stick puppets around (Dan Brown comes to mind) is practicaly the default-state, entry-level of writing.

- the books were his answer to the edda. I can't find a sources on this but I believe part of what he wanted was England to have a set of epic myths commensurable with those in the edda - this motivation certainly influenced the overall style of the stories.

I wouldn't call the analysis necessarily wrong or completely unconvincing (the pdf linked here shows his ideas much better), but I would call tendentious in that it looks like everything that doesn't fit conveniently is left out.

david_b | 10 years ago | on: Interview with Michael Moorcock

> The Moorcocks now divide their time between Paris and Austin, Texas,

It's alway good to know where people talking about fascism actually live - it gives a sense of perspective about their opinions (jodhpurs: nasty and evil / state run by nutcase defending dildo bans and religious commandments in front of state capitol: totally ok).

> “In Tolkien, everyone’s in their place and happy to be there. We go there and back, to where we started. There’s no escape, nothing will ever change and nobody will ever break out of this well-­ordered world.”

Has he even read the books? Nothing changes? I'll give him that the manichean world Tolkien created is certainly somewhat uncomfortable to anyone with a worldview that includes shades of gray (although I don't think that the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit are as black and white as they are made out to be) - but calling someone a crypto-fascist is really harsh.

> Science fiction/fantasy author Michael Moorcock has suggested that the Gor novels should be placed on the top shelves of bookstores, saying, "I’m not for censorship but I am for strategies which marginalize stuff that works to objectify women and suggests women enjoy being beaten."

I want to hear him on Fifty Shades of Grey...

david_b | 10 years ago | on: Google didn’t lead the self-driving vehicle revolution, John Deere did

I'd say Daimler and co. got there first:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_Prometheus_Project

Google has obviously taken taken that a lot further (no driver reacting every 9km)

> "We kind of laugh when we see news stories about self-driving cars, because we've had that for years," Poole said.

Yup, no wonder he is a farmer (to be fair: if you're running a tractor at 2 am you may well imagine there to be heavy traffic on the field...).

david_b | 10 years ago | on: How Soylent Ships a Trillion Calories per Month

> For example, I cannot stomach green beans. Attempting to chew them results in vomiting within my mouth. The smell of them alone is repulsive to me.

Maybe you're just really sensitive to lectins and your body is trying to tell you something...

david_b | 11 years ago | on: How Cash Sent the Portland Home Market Spinning

Corn Laws - what do they have to do with selling real estate internationally?

> Taking away citizens' right to sell to whomever they wish is not a moral solution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_R...

We do regulate to whom we sell specific things (real estate is obviouly not exactly the same) but allowing international kleptocrats to launder / hide their money in western cities is hardly the most moral choice one could propose.

edit: I'm not opposed to such legislation on moral terms but I don't think I can trust the state with enforcing legislation like that - finding a good way of treating real estate investment funds or long chains of shell companies seems extraordinarily difficult (it already is pretty hard to trace who owns what internationally).

david_b | 11 years ago | on: The world is not falling apart: The trend lines

In many countries exerting influence in the democratic process is heavily tied to the monetary resources of the person doing the influencing. Given that mechanism it might be easier to remove the wealth inequality than to dismantle the inequality in the democratic process directly.

david_b | 11 years ago | on: Vermont Quits War on Drugs to Treat Heroin Abuse as Health Issue

Your comment is slightly off-the-mark as his comment wasn't merely about a festival, but also about his opinion on Portugals drug policy. As your comment implies that you aren't familiar with said policy, you may wish to recap Portugals efforts in drug decriminalization:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/evaluating-drug-d...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal

While it is apparently hard to say how effective these efforts were, it is quite easy to see that the neo-prohibitionists worst nightsmares have yet to happene in Portugal.

david_b | 11 years ago | on: Ignoring the amount customers confirm is no security bug according to PayPal

While I can see how this behaviour of PayPal is close to credit cards, I cannot see how they can show an amount that may be incorrect - they could just ask the shop whether the amount is final or not and indicate that in some way.

I wouldn't be astonished to see chargebacks (by buyers who think they were overcharged) resulting from this - that can hardly be in anyones interest.

david_b | 11 years ago | on: Python is now the most popular introductory language at top U.S. universities

OT: Since I don't have permissions for an Ask-type post I'll do this here. The lines in this thread break extremely 'late' (http://imgur.com/IzmwWBo), causing me a lot of painful sideways scrolling - my screen only has a 1024x600 resolution, but all other threads I have open look normal (http://imgur.com/Q45ZDQ6). What causes this and how can I get rid of it (FF30 with NoScript and Disconnect)?

david_b | 12 years ago | on: Antibiotic resistance: The last resort

Yeah, there is something that is regularly overlooked about developing antibiotics: new ones end up on a shelf as the new last resort. If you've got a timeframe (imposed by patent lifetimes) in which you have to recoup your investment, that is a shitty situation for a pharma company to put itself in. "It's for the public good" is not the kind of due dilligence many shareholders like...

david_b | 13 years ago | on: Mouse path smoothing

Yes, the horror of an open ecosystem on iOS would hardly be bearable.

You do know that nobody forces you to use foreign code to earn your money?

Pretty much everybody in a commercial setting knows about licensing restrictions, so these warnings are useless.

david_b | 13 years ago | on: German Fascination With Degrees Claims Latest Victim: Education Minister

-- strict adherence to rules and procedures in aspects of life that most cultures don't care about (clear your sidewalk of snow and ride your bicycle only on the correct side of the sidewalk, for example).

Not very good examples:

--When someone falls in front of your house it is your responsibility (not an 'act of god' as it says in english law) - you can get sued for that.

--As an adult you can't ride on the sidewalks - if you want to, that particular piece of sidewalk has to be marked as a bicycle path (which makes sense considering the high difference in speed between pedestrians and cyclists). In reality nobody cares about bicycle paths so you get an obstacle course of trash cans, cars (and their doors) and pedestrians...

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