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Benjamin Espen

The Long View 2008-02-02: Better the Sultan's Turban than the Pope's Tiara

Much like Ogier the Dane, Last Emperor of the East Constantine XI Palailogos is considered a Man in the Mountain, destined to return in an hour of great need. There is also this fascinating comment by John J. Reilly, which correctly anticipated the turn from factional politics that reflect institutional

Janissaries: Storms of Victory by Jerry Pournelle and Roland Green Book Review

Janissaries: Storms of Victory [Amazon link] by Roland Green and Jerry Pournelle is the third volume in the Janissaries series. At least until this year, it was also the last. I think Jerry and Roland did a pretty good job wrapping things up in the original three, but clearly there

The Long View 2008-01-31: Protean Robotics; Deposit insurance & Health Insurance; The Resurrection of McCain

The Disney adaption of Big Hero 6 [Amazon link] did in fact feature protean microbots, but also did not use that term. There is a bit of meat here on John J. Reilly’s idea for turning American healthcare into a public utility. Not a right, but a public good.

The Long View: Novelty

John J. Reilly had quite an interest in the works of John Crowley. I’ve never read anything by him, but this review of four short stories titled Novelty [Amazon link] almost tempts me. Crowley reminds me a lot of Tim Powers, but with greater literary pretensions, which is why

Linkfest 2020-11-13: Friday the Thirteenth Edition

Naive Modeling In this post from John D Cook on creating models that miss the point references a classic example of an attempt to optimize the wrong thing, the amount of metal used in a can. Letter from a cat food company to a math professor explaining why they don&

The Legacy of the Iron Dragon: An Alternate History Viking Epic comes out tomorrow on Kindle

I reviewed the first book in the Saga of the Iron Dragon series, The Dream of the Iron Dragon, in January of 2018. Book 4 is coming out tomorrow, The Legacy of the Iron Dragon [Amazon link]. If you like hard scifi, alternative history, or Vikings, why don’t you

The Long View 2008-01-30: ESB Anomaly; New Candidates; A.D. 2424; Mole Rats; Convergent Evolution

John J. Reilly had something of a horrified fascination with naked mole rats. He also brings up here his review of Simon Conway Morris’ Life’s Solution, which I still find an interesting idea, but one that is probably dismissed more than it should be just because it is looking