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So, I was browsing wikipedia about Turing Machines, and - no! Wait! Come back! ... Anyways, I was thinking about the way math and science have developed. in most - almost all - cases, the math required for a theory occurs well before the science catches up. Maxwell's equations are based on...

Because we already have a Vicky thread, and a HOI2 thread, and a EU thread. ;) I'm in the midst of my first game (as Denmark). Man, I love the invading pagans rules. :cool: ...The only annoyance is the way that everyone self-vassalizes randomly, so, eg, Russia is now Byzantine and the Poles...

Hindenburg goes senile earlier, refuses to work with the socialists, whatever it is the POD needs. He loses the '32 election: Hitler narrowly beats him in round 1 and is elected in the runoff. What happens next?

WI Northern Ireland got all nine counties of Ulster? (I don't know enough about the period - or Ireland in general - to come up with a plausible POD, but I'm sure it could be managed.) What would this do to Anglo-Irish relations? Would we see the Troubles in the 30s?

Obviously the butterflies of these people's births should be immense but how could this happen? What would the world look like? George Washington (none) 1789-96 Thomas Jefferson (Democratic-Republican) 1796-1800 John Adams (Federalist) 1800-1804 Charles Pinckney (Federalist) 1804-12 DeWitt...

I've never actually read them. So, my obvious question to those of you who have: are they worth reading? I enjoyed Peshawar Lancers a lot, so maybe, but OTOH I found the way the Russians had been promoted from "autocratic threat" to "evil satanist cannibals" a bit annoying, and the fact that...

An interesting fact about Canadian politics (especially in the last thirty years or so is that we tend to swing to the right or left with the States: hence, reagan gets in -> we elect Mulrooney; Clinton gets in -> we turf Campbell; Bush II gets in -> we elect Harper. So, with that in mind, what...

In another thread, someone wondered what would have happened "if Britain and France had beaten the US in the war of 1812." Which led to the obvious conclusion that, barring a massive war somewhere else, they would curbstomp the States. The obvious theatre for the "somewhere else" is of course...

The Title says it all. What's the earliest (once they've gotten going) that the Ottoman Empire can be wiped off the map? Even if you bring the Russians into it, I'd say 1820 is too early. But 1854, maybe? Keep the Allies out however, and *handwave* have the Russians get all the way to Tsargrad?

Finland is an Ally; Nationalist China is Axis. (Both are a bit unlikely, China probably the more so, but far from ASB.) What happens? The military situation isn't changed hugely (especially since the Sino-Japanese War is all but guarenteed to go on) but the diplomatic situation is twisted...

I was thinking about this while reading PlC, and didn't want to clog P's excellent timeline. Anywho, the basic POD in that is "French Army better prepared for WWI". Was there anybody who remotely predicted what WWI would be like? I know for WWII there was Guderian, and DeGalle, and [that...

It's a pretty cool book and I don't think it's ever gotten much discussion on here, which is a pity. Anyone ever done a map? Also: Pope John Calvin. :cool:

I am fairly certain that no one has come up with this idea before, possibly because it is gibberingly insane. In the spring of 1940, Britain had most of its army and most of its air force in France. What if the Germans had tired Sealion before they went after France? Please don't hurt me.

Well, not up to spec with Snow Crash, but then very few books are. ;) All in all, quite good, although being interested in science and philosophy definitely helps. And Stephenson still can't keep to a plot without digressions (but that's why we love him so). And it has a denouement! :eek...

No, probably not the way you were thinking. I was rereading Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson (great book by a great author, neither of which I can recommend highly enough) and I got to thinking: what if Charles II outlived the Duke of York? Say, James dies of syphilis in 1865, and Chuck manages...

Would it be possible, POD post-1661, to have most British history books list Charles II's reign as beginning in 1649?

Something I've noticed - almost all the CP victory threads seem to assume a long WWI, ending with a more successful Michael or something similar. But the Schlieffen plan came close to victory too - closer, frankly, than Ludendorff ever did. Give the right wing all the men frittered away on...

I was wondering: how about doing some kind of TL contest? We could have a POD, give it to a bunch of people, have each of them agree to have, for example, 100 years of timeline in whatever format they choose within a month (or whatever) and at the end they all post their versions of events, and...

As I sit here, switching between reading AH.COM and reading a collection of Isaac Asimov essays, I came across an introduction. Specifically, Asimov's introduction to, of all things, HT's Agent of Byzantium. Asimov does this kind of general survey of AH, and in passing mentions a very weird POD...

By the late 1800s [decade] it was clear that Austria-Hungary was becoming far too large. As all attempts to "punch the lawnmower" came to grief on the insanity of the Jacobites and Whigs, the prime minister threw his hand in and shot the Viceroy in order to call together the Conservative Party...