I read a uchronia once where Tasmania was French and the rest of Australia British. It got very lazy very quickly, and turned Australia + Tasmania into Canada + Quebec, complete with Quiet Revolution and Vichy France rule. I can’t imagine Australia ending up that much different from Canada, in fact. The Brits would have […]
They are indeed real people, who interview for the privilege, rather than professional actors. The whole point, after all, is that “real people” are cheaper. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are media innocents, of course, and I’m quite happy when I find they are not. There are people who have done repeat appearances in various […]
I mean, what would I do with such a list? Just more regrets about what could have been? Two secret crush stories. Story the first. I had a tutor working for me, that had a crush on me. Male tutor, as it transpires. At the end of semester, he worked up all his courage, and […]
Ah, Desmond. I am a philosophy dolt, and I take no pride in that. But I have dreaded death since I associated Alice Cooper with the Boogeyman when I was 6, and I’ve had different responses to it. Fear, denial, self-aggrandisement. (That was my twenties: “I’ll write the definitive grammar of mediaeval Greek”, “I’ll get […]
Nick Nicholas’ answer to Do Americans agree that the Prime Minister of Australia should have been treated the way he was by President Trump during their first phone call? In retrospect, that was more an answer to this question than that one. TL;DR: Trump did it, because he’s not remotely interested in being a statesman, […]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/no-gday-mate-on-call-with-australian-pm-trump-badgers-and-brags/2017/02/01/88a3bfb0-e8bf-11e6-80c2-30e57e57e05d_story.html?postshare=5521485995853318&tid=ss_tw-bottom&utm_term=.a1028a3b51e3 So, we’re kicking back at the office, 2 PM, and my COO flicks his phone as I’m coding, and says “hey, the Aussie dollar’s up 1 cent!” And I look at him, and I look at my colleague, and she says, “OK, what’s Trump done now?” And I pop onto The Age newspaper, and […]
Something more complicated has happened than that. We have left behind a world where there was a well-regulated Canon of literature, and where the masses paid attention to scholars who would identify that Canon. We live now instead in a world where taste have become democratized, and more subject to market forces than to elite […]
Ah, Mez. I was going to dodge this, but I won’t. What’s the danger I care about most? Not the planet blowing up, and not what happens to America in isolation from the rest of the planet. (I mean, of course I care, but not most. And boy, will there be a bunch of isolation […]
I love questions about Iran, Anon. I actually know very little about Iran, and much of what I do know is through people right here on Quora. But I know enough about the neighborhood, as their neighbours’ neighbour, that I can make intelligent guesses. They may be very far from correct guesses, of course. But […]
You come to me highly recommended, Melinda Gwin, by the Magister, with a very ticklish question. You ask me a question that the Magister has already answered exhaustively, and morally, and Stageritically. What then may I say? Τί σοι προσοίσω, δέσποινα;—What shall I offer thee, lady? (Though you may not be that familiar with Comnenan […]