I said nothing about "good" or "bad." The point is that people in different regions of the world have different cultural norms and that sometimes the way that people do things facilitates the spread of a disease. A condom can stop an AIDS case, so a cultural attitude to use condoms can decrease the spread of that…

Knowing that this particular train of logic will probably never leave the gray, I have one other little point to make.

Quick addendum.

Funny that you would pick Japan;-)

Perhaps the most fascinating to me is the origin of life here on Earth. All life we can observe is unavoidably modern life and everything we understand about how it works and how it evolves is based on modern biological mechanisms. We extrapolate from what we know to understand what once lived using fossils and we…

While I agree that epidemics are not "nature's way of curing overpopulation"... I think this statement should be qualified to point out that high population densities that cover large expanses of the planet are intrinsically more likely to experience some measurable effect from every disaster that comes along, simply…

In a seemingly complete non sequitur, I would point out that this is one reason why I dislike superhero fiction: superhero fiction places the fate and health of many in the hands of the extraordinary few. In reality, the many have much greater power than any extraordinary few and most great achievements rest squarely…

I liked a lot of other things I read here, but this particular suggestion bothered me:

After I wrote that comment, I spent some time looking on line for a definitive answer as to how much of that ending RJ wrote, and I don't think that anybody is really saying. Here's one conversation that I found.

It may not be quite as much as I thought, but here's what little I'm finding about it online.

"Then he got his act together in Knife of Dreams. He suddenly refocused things."

Sounds to me like you should have waited to buy it. I'm happy I waited; as soon as I learned that it was full-time on-line, I decided to spend my money elsewhere.

Reasons: Magic fingers, depictions of women

One other application of Krypton is Krypton excimer lasers. These are far UV lasers that are basically driving Moore's law shrinkage of transistors in photolithography at the moment. So, yes, without krypton, no singularity;-)

If you really want me to take anything you say seriously (including your capacity to make a "cogent" discussion), you might start by demonstrating a capacity for it. If you don't want to receive discussion material on making logical arguments, don't try to insult me with a logical fallacy. If you want scientific…

How about actually spending some time reading what you're receiving, you need all of it. You can't discuss something you plainly don't understand.

That's called an argument from authority and it's a common logical fallacy. Here's another reference that maybe you'll actually read:

Now they need the right writer and the right director. The concept is like a glove for Reynolds, but Fox could still totally botch it.

That's assuming that the computer continues to run after the EMP. I'm not convinced you can partition the exposure within the device and still have an operable system. The only way out is to use robots that don't need human guidance to start with, then you might be able to 'harden' them... but I kind of doubt it. EMPs…

*Shaking head in sad disbelief* Sorry, but I know a waste of time when I see it. If you want to keep on the way you are, that's up to you. If you genuinely want to learn something, here's a good place to get started: