More interview lemming

[ewx]

Questions from lnr

1. If you had to cut down your web comic consumption to only one comic a day which would you choose and why? What if you could only read it batched weekly instead, would that make a difference?

Probably Sluggy, to keep up with the story. It'd be a shame to miss out on Diesel Sweeties though. I don't think the reading period would make any difference.

2. Fact or Fiction? You read a lot more history and so on than I do, but if you were asked could you give up novels entirely? What's the best one of each you've read? Recently or more long term or ever, whichever's easiest.

I'd have great trouble giving up either, so I guess it's good that it's a hypothetical situation l-). JJN's Byzantium history stands out as one of the best factual works I've read recently though Hugh Brogan's history of the USA, which I'm currently reading, is also outstanding ... but it's difficult to tell whether the things I've read recently are sticking in my mind just because of their recentness or because they are ahead of the pack.

The same problem is true even more so for fiction. Choke was excellent but is the most recent good (non-graphic) novel I've completed, which can't be a good position for comparison.

3. If you had to decide today whether to have children or not, and that decision would be binding even if it weren't immediate, which way would you decide? What if it did have to be right now or never?

In the first case I'd probably decide "yes", though being forced into a decision might cause me to say "no" as a safer option. For now-or-never, almost certainly never; I'm convinced it's not the right time for me to take on quite such a huge responsibility.

4. If you weren't human what other living thing would you want to be, and why? What about inanimate objects?

Some kind of bird would be tempting, for the ability to fly. One of the corvidae, perhaps. Not sure about inanimate objects, but I'll say "a rock on a beach".

5. Imagine a genie that can't be cheated, and you have just one wish, for anything. Would you wish for something for yourself, or for someone else? World peace or something more concrete? Would you ever wish for something if you weren't sure it was possible?

Would I admit to a selfish wish? God-level powers ought to be used for something generally beneficial in the first instance, I think.

"World peace" sounds like a good thing to wish for but I think it depends on the implementation: if it meant altering people's behaviour such that they never wanted to go to war, wouldn't that have the same problem I mentioned in an answer to one of Marna's questions about memory erasure, that unilaterally editing other people's minds can't possibly be ethical. A more physical implementation (guns always jam if used aggressively, tanks stall, bombers fail to take off, etc) might be more acceptable.

Curing fatal diseases sounds like another good one, AIDS or Malaria might be good candidates, although I think we know enough to make prevention a good attack on both (at least in the longer term), so - taking the long view - perhaps something that we can't even really manage to prevent like cancer would be a better choice.

But (1) perhaps we'll figure out cancer too, eventually (2) even if you cure cancer something else'll get in you in the end. Perhaps diseases aren't the answer to this question either.

What I really want is to see humanity go to the stars, or at least to the nearby planets. To be more specific, I'd like to see the first colony on another world started in my lifetime, and the first interstellar expeditions to get underway in the same sort of timeframe.

I'd rather wish for possible things, though; I think there are enough definitely-possible things that aren't going to happen in the foreseeable future without wasting wishes on the impossible.