_The Windup Girl_
Michael Stemper
then, I'd never heard of either it or its author, Paolo Bacigalupi.
Neither has the isfdb.
Apparently, it is science fiction, since it's received a Nebula. Was
there a bunch of discussion here that I missed? Would anybody care
to share their thoughts about it?
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
A preposition is something that you should never end a sentence with.
Andrew Plotkin
> My brother-in-law just asked me my thoughts on _The Windup Girl_. Until
> then, I'd never heard of either it or its author, Paolo Bacigalupi.
> Neither has the isfdb.
>
> Apparently, it is science fiction, since it's received a Nebula. Was
> there a bunch of discussion here that I missed?
James Nicoll has muttered direly about the tech/worldbuilding. I don't
remember if he did that here or on his livejournal page.
I haven't read it.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
none Chuk Goodin
Michael Stemper <michael...@gmail.com> wrote:
>My brother-in-law just asked me my thoughts on _The Windup Girl_. Until
>then, I'd never heard of either it or its author, Paolo Bacigalupi.
>Neither has the isfdb.
>
>Apparently, it is science fiction, since it's received a Nebula. Was
>there a bunch of discussion here that I missed? Would anybody care
>to share their thoughts about it?
I thought I remembered some discussion of it.
Personally, I liked but didn't love it. Dark future, with a cyberpunk
feel to it but more bioengineered rather than electronics and VR, mostly
set in some part of Asia. (Maybe China? Not Japan, I don't think.)
The "windup girl" in the title is an android girlfriend, there are a few
viewpoint characters (sometimes including her, IIRC.)
Matt Hughes
> Personally, I liked but didn't love it.
That sums up my reaction. I'm not a fan of dystopias, but I admired
the craftsmanship.
>Dark future, with a cyberpunk
> feel to it but more bioengineered rather than electronics and VR, mostly
> set in some part of Asia. (Maybe China? Not Japan, I don't think.)
Thailand, or what's left of it after the seas rise and flood the
coasts. The Thais seem to be the last remaining independent polity in
a food-short world run by and for the benefit of "calorie companies"
that control the seed supply of genetically engineered crops.
It's a tale of violence, sex and political intrigue. Well crafted,
but bleak.
>
> The "windup girl" in the title is an android girlfriend, there are a few
> viewpoint characters (sometimes including her, IIRC.)
"Android" doesn't quite fit. She's a mixture of human and other DNAs,
tweaked to give her certain characteristics that her Japanese
designers value -- like canine submissiveness and eagerness to
please. An interesting concept, because the resulting mixture creates
some inner conflicts as well as some unintended capabilities on which
the plot turns.
Matt Hughes
http://www.archonate.com
W. Citoan
> My brother-in-law just asked me my thoughts on _The Windup Girl_.
> Until then, I'd never heard of either it or its author, Paolo
> Bacigalupi. Neither has the isfdb.
You must have had a typo in your search as the ISFDB certainly has:
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Paolo_Bacigalupi
- W. Citoan
--
Calvin: "Sometimes when I'm talking, my words can't keep up with my
thoughts. I wonder why we think faster than we speak."
Hobbes: "Probably so we can think twice."
-- Bill Watterson from Calvin & Hobbes
James Nicoll
none) (Chuk Goodin <chuk@opal.> wrote:
>In article <hvgksh$kkd$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
>Michael Stemper <michael...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>My brother-in-law just asked me my thoughts on _The Windup Girl_. Until
>>then, I'd never heard of either it or its author, Paolo Bacigalupi.
>>Neither has the isfdb.
>>
>>Apparently, it is science fiction, since it's received a Nebula. Was
>>there a bunch of discussion here that I missed? Would anybody care
>>to share their thoughts about it?
>
>I thought I remembered some discussion of it.
>
>Personally, I liked but didn't love it. Dark future, with a cyberpunk
>feel to it but more bioengineered rather than electronics and VR, mostly
>set in some part of Asia. (Maybe China? Not Japan, I don't think.)
Thailand.
>The "windup girl" in the title is an android girlfriend, there are a few
>viewpoint characters (sometimes including her, IIRC.)
She's a genetically engineered human, created to serve a Japanese boss.
He abandons her in Thailand to save the cost of shipping her home to
Japan because apparently it's cheaper to grow and train a skilled worker
than it is to ship them somewhere because PEAK OIL!, even though he knows
her existance is illegal in Thailand.
She ends up as a sex slave, routinely raped for the entertainment of the
high and mighty. If you don't want to read about someone having a bottle
jammed into them, you may want to skip this one.
--
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)
James Nicoll
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>Here, Michael Stemper <mste...@walkabout.empros.com> wrote:
>> My brother-in-law just asked me my thoughts on _The Windup Girl_. Until
>> then, I'd never heard of either it or its author, Paolo Bacigalupi.
>> Neither has the isfdb.
>>
>> Apparently, it is science fiction, since it's received a Nebula. Was
>> there a bunch of discussion here that I missed?
>
>James Nicoll has muttered direly about the tech/worldbuilding. I don't
>remember if he did that here or on his livejournal page.
I also hate most of the characters.
The basic setup is Peak Oil has Peaked and now everything is expensive because
Peak Oil and because apparently all of the alternatives to oil vanished, even
the ones we see on stage beign used. At the same time, Climate Change has
Changed, enough that in general people stick to the laws restricting carbon
emissions, and at the same time climate change and Peak Oil has thrown
most countries into a tizzy, from Malaysia wiping out its Chinese for being
all Peak Oily and the US simply collapsing. Also, evil food companies have
apparently deliberately killed off a lot of potential customers spreading
blights aimed at making people buy EvilCorps' sterile crops.
They do have superduper biotech, which is used to address the energy
problem by making really big elephants to use as domestic animals, and
they have implausibly powerful springs that can hold more energy per
kg than H2 + O2 (in fact, building an SSTO rocket with these springs
is trivial although nobody does it because the author is a Mundane
SF guy). Using the biotech to engineer oil-producing plants has not
been explored and neither has using the springs to transport energy
from nuclear power stations (perhaps because those no longer exist).
The book is on one hand the Windup Girl's struggle to survive and on
the other Thailand's struggle to survive the efforts of EvilCorps to
infest the nation and get control of a valuable trove of genetic
information from before the Blightening.
>I haven't read it.
You lucky, lucky bastard.
Dan Goodman
> > I haven't read it.
>
> You lucky, lucky bastard.
Has anyone done excerpts or a review of _The Windup Girl of Oz_?
--
Dan Goodman
"I have always depended on the kindness of stranglers."
Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Expire
Journal dsgood.dreamwidth.org (livejournal.com, insanejournal.com)
Shawn Wilson
> The basic setup is Peak Oil has Peaked and now everything is expensive because
> Peak Oil and because apparently all of the alternatives to oil vanished, even
> the ones we see on stage beign used.
Sigh, bad economics is worse than bad physics.
Useful economics lesson #1) All assets (stocks, bonds, raw materials,
'stuff') will appreciate at the same expected rate. As investors are
looking for high returns, any good that was expected to appreciate
faster would see more people buy it, driving the price up and
appreciation rate down, or the reverse for lower rates. This includes
oil. You can have 'local' and unexpected shocks due to changing
circumstances, but never expected ones.
The same holds for oil. If people with oil think the price will be
more than (say) 6% higher next year than now they will hold on to it
until then, bidding up the current price and bidding down the future
price until it is 6%. Oil never 'runs out'. It doesn't matter that
only a fuinite quantity exists. There will always be some for next
year and the price (barring unexpected shocks) will be little
different than this years.
You might not be an economuist and you might not have a barrel of oil
in your basement, but Texaco and Saudi Arabia are and do.
And, of course, petroleum products can be made from plants at
reasonable cost (not worse than what Europe pays now, with their high
taxes). We don't just because oil is cheaper.
Of course global warming is GOOD for plant growth. The future is
sunny, not dark.
> At the same time, Climate Change has
> Changed, enough that in general people stick to the laws restricting carbon
> emissions, and at the same time climate change and Peak Oil has thrown
> most countries into a tizzy, from Malaysia wiping out its Chinese for being
> all Peak Oily and the US simply collapsing. Also, evil food companies have
> apparently deliberately killed off a lot of potential customers spreading
> blights aimed at making people buy EvilCorps' sterile crops.
A reference to various engineered seeds bio tech companies sell and
don't want customers replicating on their own. Made to sound worse
than it is. Either you hold back some of your revenue from selling
last years crop to buy seeds for next year, or you hold back part of
your crop to use for next years seeds. Farmers aren't stupid.
> They do have superduper biotech, which is used to address the energy
> problem by making really big elephants to use as domestic animals,
Unrealistic, extracting plant energy to make gasoline would be more
efficient.
and
> they have implausibly powerful springs that can hold more energy per
> kg than H2 + O2 (in fact, building an SSTO rocket with these springs
> is trivial although nobody does it because the author is a Mundane
> SF guy).
I remember when this came up. That isn't an energy source, it's a
bomb. The failure mode of one of those springs would be nasty.
> >I haven't read it.
>
> You lucky, lucky bastard.
And the vaule of people reading and reviewing books, so the rest of us
don't have to.
chr...@balder.sabir.com
I take it you didn't enjoy it? :)
IMO, _The Windup Girl_ is undoubtedly one of the major novels of
the year. But it's not an enjoyable book, and it's not something
I would recommend to everybody (and Sea Wasp in particular should
avoid it with a 100 ft pole!)
It's different from other post-collapse novels I've read.
Civilization is clearly in the "has been collapsing for decades
and is still very actively getting worse" category. It's an
intense (and not positive) look at how people both readily adapt
to a changed environment and yet retain all the
short-sightedness and misguided long-term one-sidedness that
got civilization into that declining tail-spin originally.
The characters are quite well-done and their actions are
believable, but they are not likable characters for the most
part. They fit the scenario unfortunately well - I'd like to
think people would behave better in such a world than this, but
this is depressingly likely. The violence done to the title
character (one of the few likable ones) is very disturbing but
not gratuitous by any means. She is serving as an analog of our
modern fragile technical society, and once civilization starts to
go, baser impulses will dominate.
I'm not bothered a lot by the ludicrous elephant-wound springs.
It's just a science mcguffin of the story that doesn't affect
what the author is trying to do. Yes, it would have been better
if the author had done something else, but I'm fine with
compartmentalizing it as a "science mcguffin" just as I'm fine
with compartmentalizing much of _Perdido Street Station_ as a
"fantasy mcguffin".
I bring up _Perdido Street Station_ since in tone they seem
similar to me. I would say if you don't like Mieville's work, you
won't like this novel. A better, but somewhat lesser known,
match for _The Windup Girl_ might be Russell's _The Sparrow_. It
shares a powerful emotional effect because of the characters
while suffering from the same sort of bad science flaws. (I
thought _The Sparrow_ was a very good book, just not a good
science fiction book.)
_The Windup Girl_ deserves its Nebula award, IMO. It certainly
is a much better choice than the winning works by Asaro or Sawyer
for example! Of the four nominees I've read, I would put it
ahead of Mieville's _The City and the City_ and far ahead of
Priest's _Boneshaker_ or Vandermeer's _Finch_, (_Boneshaker_ was
enjoyable, just not Nebula caliber.) So some of you may like it!
Chris
Dan Goodman
> Of course global warming is GOOD for plant growth.
Yes for some plants. No for others.
tpi
<chr...@balder.sabir.com> kirjoitti viestissä
news:slrni1qd0j...@balder.sabir.com...
> I'm not bothered a lot by the ludicrous elephant-wound springs.
> It's just a science mcguffin of the story that doesn't affect
> what the author is trying to do. Yes, it would have been better
> if the author had done something else, but I'm fine with
> compartmentalizing it as a "science mcguffin" just as I'm fine
> with compartmentalizing much of _Perdido Street Station_ as a
> "fantasy mcguffin".
If only that had been the only "ludicrous science mcguffin".
Practically _everything_ involving science at any way is totally ridiculous.
Apparently the author has never been in any class involving anything
scientific.
As such the book is fairly good, but that makes it just worse. If the book
had been horribly bad, stupid science would only be part of general
stupidity, but now the bad parts (and many of them could have been
corrected, if someone with half a brain had read the book before
publication) show up so clearly.
Quadibloc
> Oil never 'runs out'. It doesn't matter that
> only a fuinite quantity exists. There will always be some for next
> year and the price (barring unexpected shocks) will be little
> different than this years.
Yes, but at some point the price rises to a level such that it is
ludicrously uneconomic to use it for energy production, and plastic
becomes more expensive than ivory - or gutta-percha, as the case may
be.
If there is widespread starvation because elevated levels of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere have altered the climate, there may also be
regulatory factors prohibiting the burning of any non-carbon-neutral
fuels.
John Savard
Sean O'Hara
chr...@balder.sabir.com proclaimed...
> >
> I'm not bothered a lot by the ludicrous elephant-wound springs.
> It's just a science mcguffin of the story that doesn't affect
> what the author is trying to do. Yes, it would have been better
> if the author had done something else, but I'm fine with
> compartmentalizing it as a "science mcguffin" just as I'm fine
> with compartmentalizing much of _Perdido Street Station_ as a
> "fantasy mcguffin".
>
Yet I've seen countless reviews gushing about how plausible the
future presented is.
Yes, it's entirely plausible that in a world where food is so scarce
that people literally count every calorie they consume and burn, that
people would expend resources harvesting fodder for elephants,
transport it to a city, feed it to the elephants, who would then wind
these magical and stupendously heavy springs, which would then be
transported elsewhere to factories that would use the springs to
crank their own machinery. Even if we ignore the hand-wavey "there is
no nuclear power, and people surrounded by water never build hydro
plants" crap, why would anyone bother with the springs? You're just
paying the entropy tax twice, and on top of that you have to move the
damned things around. It would be far more efficient for the
factories to just buy the elephants.
Sean O'Hara
proclaimed...
>
> In article <hvgm35$ed6$1...@reader1.panix.com>,
> Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
> >Here, Michael Stemper <mste...@walkabout.empros.com> wrote:
> >> My brother-in-law just asked me my thoughts on _The Windup Girl_. Until
> >> then, I'd never heard of either it or its author, Paolo Bacigalupi.
> >> Neither has the isfdb.
> >>
> >> Apparently, it is science fiction, since it's received a Nebula. Was
> >> there a bunch of discussion here that I missed?
> >
> >James Nicoll has muttered direly about the tech/worldbuilding. I don't
> >remember if he did that here or on his livejournal page.
>
> I also hate most of the characters.
>
<snip>
You like it much more than I did.
Anyone who's thinking about reading this should pick up Make Room!
Make Room! instead. It's just as stupid, but has the merit of being
half as long.
noRm d. plumBeR
It sounds as though the author was extremely successful in moving you
emotionally (but did it through clumsiness and probably not in the
intended direction) <g>.
I'm also getting the impression (maybe inaccurately) that the downside
was too realistic (at least in the way companies/countries seem to
act) and the upside was too unrealistic (springs ffs?)
It sounds kind of like GreenPreach propaganda.
You said, "the author is a Mundane SF guy", but I'm not quite sure
what that is.
--
"Snot logical!" --Mr Spork
noRm d. plumBeR
>On Jun 19, 7:23 am, jdnic...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
>
>> The basic setup is Peak Oil has Peaked and now everything is expensive because
>> Peak Oil and because apparently all of the alternatives to oil vanished, even
>> the ones we see on stage beign used.
>
>
>
>Sigh, bad economics is worse than bad physics.
>
>Useful economics lesson #1) All assets (stocks, bonds, raw materials,
>'stuff') will appreciate at the same expected rate.
So what you're saying is, buggywhip-stock will appreciate at the same
rate as savings bonds? Asbestos will appreciate at the same rate as
oil? "All assets ... will appreciate at the same expected rate"?
If that's what you're saying, and if you are in fact "an economist",
then it becomes more and more clear why the world is performing a
pre-flush swirl.
Sorry man, it's the rules. People who want to think they're clever
make up rules that purport to explain things properly. Then other
people who are evel less clever than the idiots who made up the rules
take them as (haleleujah!) gospel Truth. Then total bozos who want to
be smarter than the idiots who made up the rules use the rules to
derive more rules from them. About this time lawyers step in between
the rules and turn them inside out.
"According to the rules we're forced to hire this asshole, something
is wrong here."
noRm d. plumBeR
I'm wondering (not having read the book) if the "bad science" people
are talking about is in fact "science sarcasm", a way of saying if
science is so smart how come things keep getting worse instead of
better?
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>I'm wondering (not having read the book) if the "bad science" people
>are talking about is in fact "science sarcasm", a way of saying if
>science is so smart how come things keep getting worse instead of
>better?
Of course, things have been getting worse each generation for
thousands of years.
And things have been getting better each century for thousands of
years.
--
"In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found,
than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace
to the legislature, and not to the executive department."
- James Madison
W. Citoan
>
> I'm wondering (not having read the book) if the "bad science" people
> are talking about is in fact "science sarcasm", a way of saying if
> science is so smart how come things keep getting worse instead of
> better?
Have not read the book, but having read short stories set in the same
world, I'd said no. It seems like it's just his MacGuffin. It's not
marketed as hard science so I don't quite get that negative action to
it. Personally, I found the worse problem is that it's just not that
interesting.
- W. Citoan
--
Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the
candle will not be shortened. Happiness is never decreased by being shared.
-- Buddha
James Nicoll
It doesn't seem to be a joke. I expect it's like Adam Roberts and the
goofs in Gradisil, where the author doesn't know enough to know when
they are using a nonsensible idea (In Roberts' defense, he did talk
to another SF author to try to avoid egregious errors but sadly the
author he picked was Stephen Baxter, who apparently didn't mind the
Dick Tracy style magnetic drives and who for the sake of charity I
will assume never saw the bit about how a space station can get air
by hanging a hose into the upper atmosphere).
Quadibloc
What a horribly subversive book! Don't they know our only hope is to
learn to stop worrying, and love Monsanto?"
I don't have anything against a rational criticism of Monsanto's
business practices on political grounds. There is probably reason for
such criticism. But for a dramatic story to stir up irrational
prejudices against them is just unfair.
Also, if the protagonist is being subjected to sexual abuse... in the
one society on Earth that's standing up to the bad guys... then the
book apparently doesn't have clear "good guys" and "bad guys". This
creates moral tension and ambiguity. While serious literature does
have certain advantages over melodrama, serious literature is also
powerful, and should not be attempted by people whose intentions are
not good and constructive.
John Savard
James Nicoll
>
>I'm also getting the impression (maybe inaccurately) that the downside
>was too realistic (at least in the way companies/countries seem to
>act) and the upside was too unrealistic (springs ffs?)
No, the downside was not realistic because the author ignored options
we know we have now and assumed the new technologies he gives his
characters will never be used in perfectly obvious ways to solve their
energy problems.
It's like Robert Charles Wilson's OH NOES WE HAVE NO OIL AND ALSO THE
DOMINIONISTS HAVE TAKEN OVER (Published under the title JULIAN COMSTOCK),
where hydroelectric and nuclear power has vanished because the author
wants things to be like the 19th century. The one upside to the shitty
world-building in JULIAN COMSTOCK is that we know Wilson can't have
lifted his ideas from Theodore Judson's similar but superior
FITZPATRICK'S WAR because Judson handled the issue of why there
was the particular array of technology we see more plausibly than
Wilson did.
>It sounds kind of like GreenPreach propaganda.
>
>You said, "the author is a Mundane SF guy", but I'm not quite sure
>what that is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundane_science_fiction
There's nothing that says you have to write lousy SF if you're
a Mundane but most of the Mundanes are fearfully ignorant people.
Sean O'Hara
proclaimed...
>
> "tpi" <spam...@jippii.fi> wrote:
> > >
> >As such the book is fairly good, but that makes it just worse. If the book
> >had been horribly bad, stupid science would only be part of general
> >stupidity, but now the bad parts (and many of them could have been
> >corrected, if someone with half a brain had read the book before
> >publication) show up so clearly.
>
> I'm wondering (not having read the book) if the "bad science" people
> are talking about is in fact "science sarcasm", a way of saying if
> science is so smart how come things keep getting worse instead of
> better?
No, it's bad science for the sake of bad science, because reality
would've prevented him from telling the story he wanted to tell. I've
seen interviews with Bacigalupi were he says he just wished nuclear,
hydro and solar power into the cornfield.
It's the equivalent of a writer who wants to tell a story of
interstellar conflict, and simply ignores relativity by having
ramscoops that travel at 300c instead of using one of the standard
workarounds for FTL.
Andrew Plotkin
>
> It's the equivalent of a writer who wants to tell a story of
> interstellar conflict, and simply ignores relativity by having
> ramscoops that travel at 300c instead of using one of the standard
> workarounds for FTL.
I just wrote one like that, actually.
But on me, it looks good.
Shawn Wilson
> > Of course global warming is GOOD for plant growth.
>
> Yes for some plants. No for others.
No plants grow on a glacier.
Shawn Wilson
> > Oil never 'runs out'. It doesn't matter that
> > only a fuinite quantity exists. There will always be some for next
> > year and the price (barring unexpected shocks) will be little
> > different than this years.
>
> Yes, but at some point the price rises to a level such that it is
> ludicrously uneconomic to use it for energy production, and plastic
> becomes more expensive than ivory - or gutta-percha, as the case may
> be.
Well, not in the real world with plastic, no. We can make plastic
from plants.
Anyway, by the time that happens it won't matter. Substitutes will
already be in use.
> If there is widespread starvation because elevated levels of carbon
> dioxide in the atmosphere have altered the climate,
High CO2 and warm weather are GOOD for plant growth.
there may also be
> regulatory factors prohibiting the burning of any non-carbon-neutral
> fuels.
Ah, well stupid government policy is stupid government policy...
Shawn Wilson
> >Useful economics lesson #1) All assets (stocks, bonds, raw materials,
> >'stuff') will appreciate at the same expected rate.
>
> So what you're saying is, buggywhip-stock will appreciate at the same
> rate as savings bonds? Asbestos will appreciate at the same rate as
> oil? "All assets ... will appreciate at the same expected rate"?
Yes, they will, until the UNEXPECTED shock of a substitute for the
horse drawn buggy shows up.
> Sorry man, it's the rules. People who want to think they're clever
> make up rules that purport to explain things properly. Then other
> people who are evel less clever than the idiots who made up the rules
> take them as (haleleujah!) gospel Truth. Then total bozos who want to
> be smarter than the idiots who made up the rules use the rules to
> derive more rules from them. About this time lawyers step in between
> the rules and turn them inside out.
And your model of the world is what? People looking to make money
will see one return of 5% and another of 7% (all else being equal) and
choose the 5%? Why?
I'm curious, do you really think you're that smart? That economists
are that stupid?
I think you watch too much television...
John M
> On Jun 19, 7:23 am, jdnic...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
>
> > The basic setup is Peak Oil has Peaked and now everything is expensive because
> > Peak Oil and because apparently all of the alternatives to oil vanished, even
> > the ones we see on stage beign used.
>
> Sigh, bad economics is worse than bad physics.
>
> Useful economics lesson #1) All assets (stocks, bonds, raw materials,
> 'stuff') will appreciate at the same expected rate. As investors are
> looking for high returns, any good that was expected to appreciate
> faster would see more people buy it, driving the price up and
> appreciation rate down, or the reverse for lower rates. This includes
> oil. You can have 'local' and unexpected shocks due to changing
> circumstances, but never expected ones.
>
> The same holds for oil. If people with oil think the price will be
> more than (say) 6% higher next year than now they will hold on to it
> until then, bidding up the current price and bidding down the future
> price until it is 6%. Oil never 'runs out'. It doesn't matter that
> only a fuinite quantity exists. There will always be some for next
> year and the price (barring unexpected shocks) will be little
> different than this years.
>
oil. At some point before that, they deliver so little at such high
cost that it is not worth drilling them. Unless substitutes have been
developed and implementsd that make drilling for oil uneconomic even
sooner.
Once drilling ceases to deliver significant quantities of new oil, it
soon ceases to become economic to use oil derived products for
commbustion on anything like our current scale, and if for soem fool
reason we ignore the economics (and people sometimes DO ignore
economics and act in ways that are economically insane, see J
Diamond's _Collapse_) then oil will literally run out not long after
drilling declines significantly -- Current above-ground reserves are i
think less than 2 years current consumption.
In the more general case appreciation rates are not always driven to
exact matches, there are market frictions and non-market forces, but
there is always significant pressure drivign them together, and in
most cases it works well enough that remaining differences are hardly
more than rounding errors.
> You might not be an economuist and you might not have a barrel of oil
> in your basement, but Texaco and Saudi Arabia are and do.
>
> And, of course, petroleum products can be made from plants at
> reasonable cost (not worse than what Europe pays now, with their high
> taxes). We don't just because oil is cheaper.
True, although there are natural limits on such sources, given an
upper limnit on arable land and on plant->fuel effeciency.
<snip>
> > They do have superduper biotech, which is used to address the energy
> > problem by making really big elephants to use as domestic animals,
>
> Unrealistic, extracting plant energy to make gasoline would be more
> efficient.
>
Absolutely!
> and
>
> > they have implausibly powerful springs that can hold more energy per
> > kg than H2 + O2 (in fact, building an SSTO rocket with these springs
> > is trivial although nobody does it because the author is a Mundane
> > SF guy).
>
> I remember when this came up. That isn't an energy source, it's a
> bomb. The failure mode of one of those springs would be nasty.
>
Indeed. ARRGHHHH!
-JM
noRm d. plumBeR
>On Jun 20, 2:31 am, "noRm d. plumBeR" <s...@money.com> wrote:
>
>> >Useful economics lesson #1) All assets (stocks, bonds, raw materials,
>> >'stuff') will appreciate at the same expected rate.
>>
>> So what you're saying is, buggywhip-stock will appreciate at the same
>> rate as savings bonds? Asbestos will appreciate at the same rate as
>> oil? "All assets ... will appreciate at the same expected rate"?
>
>
>
>Yes, they will, until the UNEXPECTED shock of a substitute for the
>horse drawn buggy shows up.
Maybe, if you're talking about price inflation but are either too dumb
to recognize it by name or trolling fools; otherwise I'd think not --
though I'd expect you could claim "little unexpected shock here,
little unexpected shock there" and not get locked in a padded room for
that (at least, not immediately).
>> Sorry man, it's the rules. People who want to think they're clever
>> make up rules that purport to explain things properly. Then other
>> people who are evel less clever than the idiots who made up the rules
>> take them as (haleleujah!) gospel Truth. Then total bozos who want to
>> be smarter than the idiots who made up the rules use the rules to
>> derive more rules from them. About this time lawyers step in between
>> the rules and turn them inside out.
>
>
>
>And your model of the world is what?
Not a codification.
> People looking to make money
>will see one return of 5% and another of 7% (all else being equal) and
>choose the 5%?
People looking to "make money" (gain money without doing work) will
always bet on whatever they perceive as promising the largest and most
definite return.
>Why?
Because they're too greedy/fearful (ie, too stupid) not to.
>I'm curious, do you really think you're that smart?
IQ tests administered at an early age notwithstanding (and even then I
suspect that I was lied to in order to find out how much a moron can
achieve under the best of circumstances), I'm at best an idiot who
survives only by lacking the intelligence to overcomplicate
everything.
>That economists are that stupid?
Yes, absolutely; vastly more stupid than even that. However they are
working with their hands largely tied, unlike physicists for example
who can perform repeated experiments under "identical" circumstances
and thus actually use scientific method. Economists are largely
restricted to guessing (or religion, depending on viewpoint) so they
can't be held to standards quite as stringent as those using
scientific method to justify their hypotheses. Unfortunately some
people do listen to economists and heed their claims anyway.
>I think you watch too much television...
I haven't owned a television for a decade or so, but over a lifetime
you could be correct on that one, though the question "too much
television for what?" comes to mind.
noRm d. plumBeR
>On Sun, 20 Jun 2010 03:35:51 -0600, "noRm d. plumBeR" <se...@money.com>
>wrote:
>
>>I'm wondering (not having read the book) if the "bad science" people
>>are talking about is in fact "science sarcasm", a way of saying if
>>science is so smart how come things keep getting worse instead of
>>better?
>
>Of course, things have been getting worse each generation for
>thousands of years.
>
>And things have been getting better each century for thousands of
>years.
Yes, it really is quite interesting. Scientific method is the best
thing since sliced bread (hell, it's better than sliced bread by a
lot) because it's made it easier to eliminate the non-repeatable and
end up with something that's actually usable. And scientific method
is the worst thing possible because it allows us to convince ourselves
that eventually we'll be able to understand it all.
noRm d. plumBeR
>noRm d. plumBeR wrote:
>>
>> I'm wondering (not having read the book) if the "bad science" people
>> are talking about is in fact "science sarcasm", a way of saying if
>> science is so smart how come things keep getting worse instead of
>> better?
>
>Have not read the book, but having read short stories set in the same
>world, I'd said no. It seems like it's just his MacGuffin. It's not
>marketed as hard science so I don't quite get that negative action to
>it. Personally, I found the worse problem is that it's just not that
>interesting.
I'd say that "it's just not that interesting" is one helluva problem
for a writer to get past. <g>
noRm d. plumBeR
IF the Earth's magnetic field has strengthened over time as I'm
reading it to say here,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8659019.stm
that *could* be used to justify a claim that the ferrous Earth has
been moved through an electrical field over time and that's causing
the increase in magnetism. In fact I'd find it odd if the Earth was
not moving around within some larger electrical field, and there's no
way we'd reasonably be able to detect that since without a reference
point outside such a field we'd be unable to measure any electrical
potential (between two points). Well, unless we hooked a wire between
the equator and a pole or something equally unfeasible. And it is
somewhat reminiscent of a couple comments I almost recall from some of
Tesla's works. Anyway, after having made a short story long, IF we
were moving within some larger electrical field, magnetic drives might
not be quite as risible as we think based on our assumption that the
Earth is the center of the electrical universe.
>and who for the sake of charity I
>will assume never saw the bit about how a space station can get air
>by hanging a hose into the upper atmosphere).
That's kind of a fun idea, though you'd need to weight the hose
heavily and suck really, really, REALLY hard. <g>
noRm d. plumBeR
Science that works is preferrable, but I can accept bad science for
the sake of a working plot IF the science is not *too* bad and the
resulting story is sufficiently enjoyable. (Though mostly what I'm
reading is that in this case the science is bad beyond badness and the
story isn't much fun anyway, which kind of equates to a wall-pitch.)
noRm d. plumBeR
>Here, Sean O'Hara <sean...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> It's the equivalent of a writer who wants to tell a story of
>> interstellar conflict, and simply ignores relativity by having
>> ramscoops that travel at 300c instead of using one of the standard
>> workarounds for FTL.
>
>I just wrote one like that, actually.
>
>But on me, it looks good.
>
>--Z
Yah, and when I was a teenager my car really did go just a little
faster right after a perfect wax job. <g>