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The Long View

The Long View 2005-02-25: The Devil, Babble, & Chant

John has an interesting aside here about the official languages of the EU. With Brexit, the number will in theory drop by one, but in practice, English is already the language all of the European countries have in common with each other. The Devil, Babble, & Chant As the cost

The Long View: The Lucifer Principle

This is a rare book I read before John recommended it. I think this is a worthy summary. The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History by Howard Bloom The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995 466 pp., $24.00 ISBN 0-87113-532-9 If, like the present reviewer, you are

The Long View 2005-02-21: Simpsons, Steyn, Schell, Holt, Lewis

I had remembered that Saturday Night Live used to make gay jokes for a long time, but I hadn't remembered the Simpsons still felt free to make fun of gay marriage in 2005. Simpsons, Steyn, Schell, Holt, Lewis Long before the stock market tech-bubble burst a few years

The Long View 2005-02-16: Later Spengler Syndrome

Whichever Pentagon flack provided the anonymous quote from this 2005 NY Times article probably had Terminator in mind, but we got Predator drones instead. We also got a large number of robots for ordinance disposal, but that technology had been under development for a while. In a strange twist, the

The Long View 2005-02-14: The Irrelevance of Violence; March 25; The Obsolescence of Violence

The security robot developed by the University of Uppsala mentioned here would probably be a quadcopter drone today. The Irrelevance of Violence; March 25; The Obsolescence of Violence We should be reluctant to see signs of progress in the mounting toll of civilian deaths in Iraq from suicide bombers. Nonetheless,

The Long View 2005-02-10: Better Nukes; Clinical Evil; God's Country; The Dominoes Fall

I remain a cautious advocate of nuclear power. I don't have subject matter knowledge about specific reactor designs, but I think we could do it right, if we wanted to. It would sure fix carbon emissions. We just don't want to. I will note that the

The Long View: Halfway Heaven: Diary of a Harvard Murder

John claims in this book review that suicide is not common in Ethiopia, where Sinedu Tadesse was born. At least according to the World Health Organization, the suicide rate in Ethiopia is about as high as in the US. On the other hand, it has also been twenty years, and