Hacker News Reader

Comment by mercurial | Hacker News Reader

I must say that I'm almost enjoying more Charlie's blog than Charlie's books :) If you scroll back a bit, there is also a very interesting piece about Scottish independence, with extensive comments: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/06/the-scot...

View on HN

I thought his piece on the role of the UK "independent" deterrent was particularly good:

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/on-the-u...

Having been a child in the 70s and 18 in 1983, the year of Able Archer, I still have the same lurking existential horror (not helped, as Charlie also mentions, by having seen Threads more often than is wise from a peace of mind perspective).

Of course, we can look at North Korea, which has nukes and thumbs it's nose with impunity at the West. And we can look at Ukraine which gave up the nukes it inherited from the USSR in return for a treaty pledging that the West would secure its borders. How's that working out for them?

De Gaulle had it right, which is not something I often say...

He is very insightful. I read ideas of his that I've never seen explored elsewhere. For instance, last year he had one where he speculated on how many human occupational specialties currently exist, I believe he pegged it at 100,000.

That may seem like interesting trivia without contemplation.

And some of all those important specializations have only a few dozens workers on the whole planet...

iirc, he counted the minimum population for a civilization like ours at 100 million. The implications for space explorations are not good.

But not even Stross had any real opinions on how this will change with advanced 3D-printing.

I have that with a lot of authors. John Scalzi and Neil Gaiman are other examples. I like Neil Gaiman's screenwriting work, though.

wow really whether it? if so I will visit this blog

Reply on news.ycombinator.com