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Comment by defrost | Hacker News Reader

Takes me back.

One of my earliest "big" gigs for good money was a mid 80's use of the newly released AutoLisp(?) to generate non standard (for the day) engineering forms for computational analysis.

The architects made a bit of a wild sketch for a big international mega millions build contract, the engineering crowd made it work - the architects got a fancy award, we got a thank you bread and cheese thing with drinks.

(And paid .. that counts.)

R.I.P. John Walker - https://www.fourmilab.ch/evilempire/

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This is a little bit weird: https://www.fourmilab.ch/evilempire/noEU/

Perhaps, but certainly consistent. John was famously not a fan of large government, be it the USSR, the USofA, or the EU - a believer in small government and prepared to sell merch to just that end.

What's weird about having strong opinions about the European Union?

I guess it's tongue in cheek, and it is funny, but some of what is written is a bit weird.

"anti-democratic ... empire at the expense of the natural rights, individual liberty, local autonomy, and cultural diversity which made Europe the wellspring of Western civilisation."

Firstly, I wouldn't call Mesopotamia and the eastern Med Europe exactly.

Secondly, lot of cultural and scientific advances that did happen in Europe were under (among others) the Roman, Holy Roman, British and Spanish Empires, which are exactly what he is against!

It's also weird that he thinks the EU "began to sprout" in 2003, a decade after Maastrict.

Is Mesopotamia typically considered the “west?”

Latin and Greek are both successors to the Phoenician alphabet. The Phoenicians settled parts of modern day Europe and brought their alphabet and other technologies that they inherited from Mesopotamian civs. The Greeks would have been nowhere without Babylonian maths and astrology.

West and East is very grey though. I've made a distinction that I'm happy with, and pointed out why I'm not happy with John's.

What do you think?

could not tell if this was satire or not. interesting fella

It seems like satire today given what's happened in the last 10 years but given it was published 2003, he was well ahead of the times and possibly writing with tongue in cheek, even if he did believe the thrust of it

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