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The Long View 2006-06-14: Inconstant Constants; Snowball Earth; Ireland & Denmark & Bush

The snowball earth hypothesis is an interesting one. It makes some intuitive sense to me as a meta-stable point in a dynamic system, but the devil is in the details here. Inconstant Constants; Snowball Earth; Ireland & Denmark & Bush The universe rests on shaky foundations, if we may believe

Soulminder Book Review

Soulminder by Timothy Zahn Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy (September 23, 2014) 334 pages ASIN B07B675RVC For Dr. Adrian Sommer, a split second of driving while distracted leads to tragedy—and obsession. His family destroyed, he devotes his entire being to developing Soulminder, a technology that might have saved

Supporting the Long View re-posting project, with some book reviews thrown in for fun

I've been at this for just over 4 years now. Traffic is growing strongly, and I occasionally run into a comment somewhere else along the lines of: "isn't there some guy reposting all of John Reilly's stuff?" I find that gratifying, and

The Long View 2006-06-12: Annoying Meteors; Mad Cows in America; Reprimitivization; Haditha; All the Past Before Us

Prion diseases like BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) aren't as well understood as some other infections, in part because their causes are hard to study. As it turned out, it was CJD (Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease) that killed John J. Reilly. Annoying Meteors; Mad Cows in America; Reprimitivization; Haditha; All

The Long View 2006-06-06: Panspermia; China; 666; Terrorism

Panspermia is the kind of idea that seems to appeal to Aspergery scientists and science fiction writers, and pretty much no one else. Panspermia; China; 666; Terrorism There are no good explanations for the origin of life. There are two bad explanations, however: Intelligent Design and panspermia. If you believe

The Long View 2006-06-02: Parties, Calumny, Spelling

Pierre Trudeau was Prime Minister of Canada when I was very young, and perhaps as a consequence, is the the first Canadian politician I am likely to think of. Currently, his eldest son is also Prime Minister. Parties, Calumny, Spelling "America may be ready for a new political party,

The Long View: A Man in Full

A only slightly sarcastic review of Tom Wolfe's novel about Atlanta real estate, football, and racial politics. A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998 (US) $28.95, 742 Pages ISBN: 0-374-27032-5 Tom Wolfe had been going to lunches with editors for thirty years,