Nigel Holmes rocks my world

[richardthinks]

When I run a course on the business of history and the myth of objective reporting I think I'll use a bunch of Nigel Holmes infographics to talk about methods of argumentation. His (slightly slow) piece on the national debt has a delightful Powers of 10 kind of emotive clarity to it.

It also has an honesty about its purpose (while being sneakily

Comments

[jordan179]

Hawking's speculation makes perfect sense to me. A civilization that reached Kardashev Type II status (exploiting all the resources of its whole star system) and went beyond that to the point of using up the resources of its star system would be wealthy to a degree that interstellar travel might well be no more costly to them than outfitting small ships might be to 16th century Europeans (rich people could easily afford it, middle-class people could do it by pooling resources). As to what they would want to take from us, if they were past Type II the answer might be "the matter and energy in our solar system."

The argument about a limit based on lifespans is even sillier. Quite aside from the likelihood that humans will someday become "emmortal" (in Stapleford's turn, meaning "no death by aging"), there is no particular reason why an alien species has to have the same lifespan as ourselves. Furthermore, if they really were nomadic, living out of large starships, they might well define "home" as their particular starship, and

[richardthinks]

Sorry - I moved the content relevant to this comment into its own post, so this appears orphaned. I'll post a link from there back here.

For once you and I seem to be in broad agreement on all important points. You're right about the cultural chauvinism of "Americans." I've replaced it with the equally chauvinistic but more exculpating term "we."