Eyes Above The Waves

The main thing I draw from this posting, as I view it on a 1680-wide browser window, is that the multicolumn css spec needs to add another constraint to specify the minimum column height before flowing into extra columns. Having four columns of two lines each is rather stupid looking.

besides showing that he/she doesn't know anything about a lot things, from anthropology to sociology, the author also fails to present anything knew.
it's a fluff article, chewing gum!
facts: real fundamentalists societies fail!
actual religious societies are hypocritical, they present a very conservative front but underneath there are a lot of things they can't control.
so, they have two choices:
1) apply "zero tolerance" through violence and intimidation and ultimately lose
or
2) tolerate certain things, but keep them out of the general public eye, thus creating a buffer zone that will let out some steam.
the 1st one will always fail
the 2nd, like iran and china, will last a bit longer but sooner or later fail too.
the more pressure you apply the more violent the outcome: french revolution, russian revolution, mussolini's fall, communist romenia, etc...
then there's the cyclical nature of power.
very simplistic: conservative/liberal alternating
and
the perception of what is conservative/liberal and what they mean.
examples: the usa conservative and democrat parties and how they changed in the last 200 years.
nobody will inherit anything
just look at how human behaviour mimics nature's
prosperous times: almost ideal living conditions, life is easy
hard times: extreme climate conditions make living very difficult or impossible, ice ages and so on, other natural catastrophes
everything is cyclical.
there is no goal line...

I skimmed, but I remember Accelerando's answer to the paradox which is rather similar. The gist of it is that matter evolves into computronium, and the distances involved in space travel mean that there is too much lag for having a cohesive civilisation bridging both sides. I'm not sure I agree this is reason enough not to bother. However, Stross (or other authors) did point out that one was exposed to high-level attacks via malicious interstellar packets.

Yeah, it makes no sense that they just "wouldn't bother" because they don't get a cohesive civilization. In some ways that's an advantage because it makes you robust against internal or external threats.