Homozygous for woo: a toy model
Doug M.
There are a number of SFnal societies dominated by a genetic elite
with special powers, from the Darkover books to the Draka. Most of
these are societies you and I wouldn't care to live in. Could we
design one that's just a tiny bit... nicer, perhaps?
Let's assume a special power or set of powers, which we'll call
"woo". Maybe woo is telepathy. Maybe it's enhanced strength and
toughness, or greatly enhanced lifespan. Or the ability to fire
lightning bolts from your fingers, or control the four elements, or
talk to dragons. We'll handwave the details, because we only need to
know the following things about woo:
-- woo, by itself, does not make you smarter, wiser, or more
charismatic
-- but woo makes you badass; the more woo you have, the harder it is
to push you around
-- woo is closely (though not perfectly) correlated with social
status. Society is dominated by a hereditary / genetic aristocracy,
and the people at the top are all rich in woo.
Woo is genetically determined by a simple Mendelian determinant. If
you have a single copy of the woo allele, you will have weak to
moderate woo. If you have two copies, you will have strong woo.
Society thus neatly organizes itself into three genetic classes:
purebloods, halfbloods, and everybody else.
Wrinkle: the woo allele is carried only on the X chromosome.
So halfbloods can be either male or female (Xx or Xy), but only women
can be purebloods (XX). The people with truly awesome woo? All
female.
Obviously this society is a matriarchy of some sort. However, there
will be interesting complications around the edges! Males can only be
halfbloods, but halfblood males are in some demand; pureblood females
need them if they're going to have pureblood daughters, while non-woo
females will want them for a chance at fathering halfblood
daughters.
Halfblood females have a particularly tricky situation: if they have
children with a halfblood male, their daughters may be either
pureblood or halfblood, their sons either halfblood or powerless --
flip a coin, twice.
If the society is premodern, mating becomes very fraught.
If someone introduces sex determination technology -- your basic
ultrasound scanner, like -- things get very fraught indeed. Within a
generation, there are probably a lot fewer males around. (The ones
that are left will be kept busy, mind.)
Thoughts?
Doug M.
Stewart Robert Hinsley
<0e2c6526-a91f-468c...@d8g2000yqf.googlegroups.com>, Doug
M. <sigi...@yahoo.com> writes
(lyonisation) complicates the matter. In cells in women one or the other
X chromosome is inactivated (a Barr Body). So a pureblood woman has the
same number of active woo genes per cell as a halfblood male, while a
halfblood woman has (averaged over her body) half as many as a halfblood
male.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barr_body
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyonization
If lyonisation occurs early enough during embryogenesis then there will
be a variation in strength in halfblood women.
So perhaps the matriarchy doesn't happen.
OTOH, naively lyonisation should result in female heterozygotes showing
some form of red-green colour blindness (unless it occurs late enough in
embryogenesis that eyes always contain an appreciable number of each
type of cone) as well as the possible occasional tetrachromats, so
perhaps it's not quite that simple.
BTW, had you just reinvented Darkover? (Female keepers as the group with
the strongest laran.)
>
>Doug M.
>
>
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley
Doug M.
<{$new...@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In message
> <0e2c6526-a91f-468c-bd73-985a78770...@d8g2000yqf.googlegroups.com>, Doug
> M. <sigidu...@yahoo.com> writes
Yes. Yes, it does.
Your suggestion makes sense, but it would give males access to the
highest levels of woo. Which is kind of what I don't want.
The woo gene could escape inactivation. Some X genes do! Of course,
most of those are genes that are also carried on the Y chromosome, but
I'm assuming this whole setup is the result of deliberate genetic
engineering.
(It could also reactivate later in development -- IIUC, that's what
happens to cells in the germ line)
> BTW, had you just reinvented Darkover?
I hope not.
Doug M.
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
news:8a6869c5-844b-4318...@c33g2000yqm.googlegroups.
com:
There are similiarities to the background for Kurtz's Deryni world,
too (though quite a few differences, too, obviously).
--
Terry Austin
"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek
Jesus forgives sinners, not criminals.
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
om:
> Obviously this society is a matriarchy of some sort.
Only if woo is the _only_ determiniant in who is in power, or is so
overwhelmingly important as to overcome all other determinants.
History shows us that this is not the way to bet, at least as far as
make absolute statements. If high degrees of woo do not affect
intelligence levels, or personality, it seems utterly inevitable that
there will be women with the highest levels of woo who are submissive
by nature, serving whomever they bond with, much as the mountain-of-
a-man walking hulks who are mentally slow and emotionally fragile
make excellent enforcers for smaller, smarter, meaner leaders.
Dorothy J Heydt
But only if they're virgins. Insert lots of handwavium and woo-woo
about chakras.
There's a certain amount of wish-fulfillment, MarySueism,
whatever you want to call it, in Darkover. A young woman who
weighs 250 pounds and has never had a boyfriend (whether or not
the two facts are related) can say, "Well, I can wear a red robe
and a veil and be an honored and respected Keeper -- at least, at
Darkovercons. So long as I remain a virgin. Which will not be
difficult."
--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the gmail edress.
Kithrup's all spammy and hotmail's been hacked.
plausible prose man
> There are a number of SFnal societies dominated by a genetic elite
> with special powers, from the Darkover books to the Draka. Most of
> these are societies you and I wouldn't care to live in. Could we
> design one that's just a tiny bit... nicer, perhaps?
Doc Smith and J. K. Rowlings did just that. Admittedly, there's a
fair bit of bigotry and repression in the HP universe, but still...it
sounds like a pretty swell place to live, if you happened to have
magic powers. There's also the Wold Newton universe, although
admittedly relatively few works are set there, at least authorially.
> Let's assume a special power or set of powers, which we'll call
> "woo".
How about "foo"?
> Maybe woo is telepathy. Maybe it's enhanced strength and
> toughness, or greatly enhanced lifespan. Or the ability to fire
> lightning bolts from your fingers, or control the four elements, or
> talk to dragons.
Maybe it's some random ability that differs from person to person.
> We'll handwave the details, because we only need to
> know the following things about woo:
>
> -- woo, by itself, does not make you smarter, wiser, or more
> charismatic
> -- but woo makes you badass; the more woo you have, the harder it is
> to push you around
I would think that would tend to make woo-ers more charismatic. I
have some idea much of charisma as we know it relates to some outward
signalling of your "good genes," so I would think something like heat
vision would work the same way.
> -- woo is closely (though not perfectly) correlated with social
> status.
Yeah, see?
> Society is dominated by a hereditary / genetic aristocracy,
> and the people at the top are all rich in woo.
>
> Woo is genetically determined by a simple Mendelian determinant. If
> you have a single copy of the woo allele, you will have weak to
> moderate woo. If you have two copies, you will have strong woo.
> Society thus neatly organizes itself into three genetic classes:
If Woo's at all complex, it would be more "realistic" for everyone to
have Woo and some people to have either a single or double woo
inhibitor gene.
> purebloods, halfbloods, and everybody else.
>
> Wrinkle: the woo allele is carried only on the X chromosome.
>
> So halfbloods can be either male or female (Xx or Xy), but only women
> can be purebloods (XX).
What about people with three or more X chromosomes, are they woo-woo?
> The people with truly awesome woo? All
> female.
What about males with Kleinfelter's syndrome?
>
> Obviously this society is a matriarchy of some sort. However, there
> will be interesting complications around the edges! Males can only be
> halfbloods, but halfblood males are in some demand; pureblood females
> need them if they're going to have pureblood daughters, while non-woo
> females will want them for a chance at fathering halfblood
> daughters.
And how is this society going to be nicer, then?
> Halfblood females have a particularly tricky situation: if they have
> children with a halfblood male, their daughters may be either
> pureblood or halfblood, their sons either halfblood or powerless --
> flip a coin, twice.
>
> If the society is premodern, mating becomes very fraught.
>
> If someone introduces sex determination technology -- your basic
> ultrasound scanner, like -- things get very fraught indeed. Within a
> generation, there are probably a lot fewer males around. (The ones
> that are left will be kept busy, mind.)
>
> Thoughts?
Readers probably don't find the phlebotinum that makes a fictional
world go 'round as interesting as the people in the stories do.
Par
> -- woo, by itself, does not make you smarter, wiser, or more
> charismatic
> -- but woo makes you badass; the more woo you have, the harder it is
> to push you around
> -- woo is closely (though not perfectly) correlated with social
> status. Society is dominated by a hereditary / genetic aristocracy,
> and the people at the top are all rich in woo.
> Woo is genetically determined by a simple Mendelian determinant. If
> you have a single copy of the woo allele, you will have weak to
> moderate woo. If you have two copies, you will have strong woo.
That is not the simple Mendelian case, but ok, some things work like
that. You are aware of how a gene actually produce a trait?
> Society thus neatly organizes itself into three genetic classes:
> purebloods, halfbloods, and everybody else.
>
> Wrinkle: the woo allele is carried only on the X chromosome.
>
> So halfbloods can be either male or female (Xx or Xy), but only women
> can be purebloods (XX). The people with truly awesome woo? All
> female.
>
> Obviously this society is a matriarchy of some sort. However, there
> will be interesting complications around the edges! Males can only
> be halfbloods, but halfblood males are in some demand; pureblood
> females need them if they're going to have pureblood daughters, while
> non-woo females will want them for a chance at fathering halfblood
> daughters.
>
> Halfblood females have a particularly tricky situation: if they have
> children with a halfblood male, their daughters may be either
> pureblood or halfblood, their sons either halfblood or powerless --
> flip a coin, twice.
What is so tricky? The only question is, does a tradition of exposing
children without woo arise (assuming it can be detected at an early
age)? And how long before anyone actually discovers the Mendelian laws? I
suspect that for many, many centuries woo will be seen as the ("random")
gift of the gods, who tend to smile a bit more on some families than
others (which is perfectly natural, since the ruling class is *known* to
be descended from the gods; how else would they have so many members with
woo?). The reason Mendel made his discoveries is that he did what no one
else had done before; large studies with controlled mating, and
mathematical analysis of the results, which is hard to do with humans
(we are too long-lived, and too skilled at cryptic extra-pair mating).
> If someone introduces sex determination technology -- your basic
> ultrasound scanner, like -- things get very fraught indeed. Within a
> generation, there are probably a lot fewer males around. (The ones
> that are left will be kept busy, mind.)
Not if it woo limited to a certain class. The non-woo population would
be quite happy to go on mating like we do. And will halfblood males have
a tendency to "spread their genes around" in the general population? If
so one would eventually get a higher and higher proportion of woo
carriers in the population.
Is there a "cost" associated with woo? If there is a strong selective
advantage for woo, and no normally occurring situations where it is a
disadvantage one would expect it to become quite common over time (does
any other species posses woo?). You could make it a mutation that
occurred say 100 generations ago in in a small isolated population (where
is is now normal), and that they now have invaded and conquered a more
population/richer land. If so I predict a strong caste system, where
cross-caste matings are strongly discouraged (what happens to
half-castes?).
And if the halfbreed males become scarce they would become more
desirable (if nothing else because having a halfbreed son to give in
marriage to a high status purebreed female is a useful political tool).
/Par
--
Par use...@hunter-gatherer.org
> That's what redundant power supplies are for, after all... i
I thought they were for blowing the fuse on one when you disconnect the other.
-- Dave Brown & Calle Dybedahl
Doug M.
<tausti...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Obviously this society is a matriarchy of some sort.
>
> Only if woo is the _only_ determiniant in who is in power, or is so
> overwhelmingly important as to overcome all other determinants.
I'm just thinking that if one group of people can summon demons, call
down lightning or just kill you by concentrating really hard, and
everyone else can't, that first group is going to end up dominant.
Doug M.
Doug M.
> But only if they're virgins. Insert lots of handwavium and woo-woo
> about chakras.
>
> There's a certain amount of wish-fulfillment, MarySueism,
> whatever you want to call it, in Darkover.
Over the years, I've come to think of Darkover as something that
started with Bradley working out her own personal issues but fairly
quickly took on a dimension of calculated fanservice.
Doug M.
Doug M.
wrote:
> I would think that would tend to make woo-ers more charismatic.
Attractive! which is not the same as charismatic.
(King Louis XIII of France was a rather dull and homely man. Yet he
was surrounded by beautiful women who wanted to sleep with him.)
> What about people with three or more X chromosomes, are they woo-woo?
I suspect they die of woo overdose, if only to keep things simple.
> What about males with Kleinfelter's syndrome?
Lucky them! But Kleinfelter's is quite rare.
> And how is this society going to be nicer, then?
Tongue --> cheek.
Doug M.
Doug M.
> > Halfblood females have a particularly tricky situation: if they have
> > children with a halfblood male, their daughters may be either
> > pureblood or halfblood, their sons either halfblood or powerless --
> > flip a coin, twice.
>
> What is so tricky?
"If I mate with you, we could have a very high-status child, or a
child who is depressingly mundane. Hmm."
> The only question is, does a tradition of exposing
> children without woo arise (assuming it can be detected at an early
> age)?
I don't think it can be detected early. If I were handing out
superpowers, I'd have them appear either in late childhood (when the
kid is old enough to take some discipline, but not yet crazed by
hormones) or early adulthood. A lot of SF and fantasy seems to go
with "powers appear at puberty or soon after", which in addition to
making an annoyingly obvious metaphor also just seems like a really
bad idea. "You don't understand! I hate you all! BOOM!"
> And will halfblood males have
> a tendency to "spread their genes around" in the general population?
As opposed to any other males, you mean? -- Given that halfblood
daughters are desirable, yah, I'd think they'd get more opportunities.
> If so one would eventually get a higher and higher proportion of woo
> carriers in the population.
>
> Is there a "cost" associated with woo? If there is a strong selective
> advantage for woo, and no normally occurring situations where it is a
> disadvantage one would expect it to become quite common over time
Yeah. This is a problem with many "genetic elite" setups. The Draka
solve it by speciating, and the Cetagandans by controlling the flow of
haut-genes through an intermediary caste. (Though that just slows
things down a bit. Over centuries, you'd expect all the ghem to
become rather hautlike. But otherwise, you'd expect over time that
everyone would become Sauron supermen, lensmen, Brights, wizards,
dragnoriders or whatever.
One way to solve this is to give the genetic elite some
counterbalancing problems, so that at the end of the day the woo isn't
really a selective advantage: people with much woo are mentally
unstable, have weaker immune systems, or whatever.
Another way -- less certain, but could work in the short run -- is to
install cultural constraints. Human nature suggests that prohibitions
against woo mating with non-woo are not likely to prevail, but there
are other possibilities. Woo-bearers indulge in very lethal power
politics, for instance, or fight a lot of duels.
Doug M.
Stewart Robert Hinsley
<f5a7fd32-91ec-4785...@i31g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
Doug M. <sigi...@yahoo.com> writes
>> What about people with three or more X chromosomes, are they woo-woo?
>
>I suspect they die of woo overdose, if only to keep things simple.
>
XXx > Xx > Xxx.
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley
noRm d. plumBeR
>
>There are a number of SFnal societies dominated by a genetic elite
>with special powers, from the Darkover books to the Draka. Most of
>these are societies you and I wouldn't care to live in. Could we
>design one that's just a tiny bit... nicer, perhaps?
>
>Let's assume a special power or set of powers, which we'll call
>"woo". Maybe woo is telepathy. Maybe it's enhanced strength and
>toughness, or greatly enhanced lifespan. Or the ability to fire
>lightning bolts from your fingers, or control the four elements, or
>talk to dragons. We'll handwave the details, because we only need to
>know the following things about woo:
>
>-- woo, by itself, does not make you smarter, wiser, or more
>charismatic
>-- but woo makes you badass; the more woo you have, the harder it is
>to push you around
>-- woo is closely (though not perfectly) correlated with social
>status. Society is dominated by a hereditary / genetic aristocracy,
>and the people at the top are all rich in woo.
"woo" is a bad name for this because 'woo' is already a genuine verb
with a specific meaning.
The correlation between woo and social status is almost certain to be
negative during the period when it emerges from the gene pool, because
socially prominent individuals who lack woo will work very hard to
suppress it in order to maintain their own social positions.
Woo only becomes positively correlated with social status after it has
somehow conquered the masses of non-woo individuals that made up the
general pre-woo population.
The whole woo-trope has been done, redone, and overdone many times
whether woo is a form of PSI or a form of magic. Whenever woo is
something that some have and others cannot have the result will be the
same, first attempted suppression, then war, then woo-based
civilization.
To make something new of it, it has to (a) be something anyone can
achieve and (b) go beyond making it "harder" to push you around and
jump straight to making it "completely" impossible to push you around.
I'm of the opinion that such a world/novel could (but to my knowledge
has not) been done.
--
"Vengeance is mine" saith Montezuma
Doug M.
> To make something new of it, it has to (a) be something anyone can
> achieve and (b) go beyond making it "harder" to push you around and
> jump straight to making it "completely" impossible to push you around.
>
> I'm of the opinion that such a world/novel could (but to my knowledge
> has not) been done.
I can think of half a dozen offhand, starting with "Stranger in a
Strange Land".
Doug M.
Doug M.
I should add that I personally loathe the idea of a genetic elite.
The fact that it's such a common trope in F&SF is, frankly,
depressing.
That said, there are changes that haven't yet been rung.
Doug M.
noRm d. plumBeR
noRm d. plumBeR
Close, maybe a cigarillo but not quite a cigar? Maud'dib is another
example though drugs might be cheating.
James Nicoll
Doug M. <sigi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>On Jun 10, 8:45 am, Par <use...@hunter-gatherer.org> wrote:
>
>> > Halfblood females have a particularly tricky situation: if they have
>> > children with a halfblood male, their daughters may be either
>> > pureblood or halfblood, their sons either halfblood or powerless --
>> > flip a coin, twice.
>>
>> What is so tricky?
>
>"If I mate with you, we could have a very high-status child, or a
>child who is depressingly mundane. Hmm."
>
can always be abandoned in orphanages, exposed or made to act as
servants to their superior siblings.
--
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)
Doug M.
> This isn't as risky as it sounds because the disappointing children
> can always be abandoned in orphanages, exposed or made to act as
> servants to their superior siblings.
Certainly! But that becomes more or less viable depending on how old
the kids are when the disappointment becomes obvious.
I'm inclined to go with "a couple of years pre-puberty" -- say age ten
or so. Too old for exposure, but still young enough to quietly send
off to distant relatives or a boarding school, and then forget.
Doug M.
Dorothy J Heydt
As I said, it started with Lovecraft/Chambers fanfic. Note the
use of the names Hastur, Camilla, Cassilda, Hali, etc....
Just how do you mean "fanservice"?
David Cowie
> I don't think it can be detected early. If I were handing out
> superpowers, I'd have them appear either in late childhood (when the kid
> is old enough to take some discipline, but not yet crazed by hormones)
> or early adulthood
If I were handing out superpowers, I'd have them appear in early
adulthood, which is when the long bones stop growing. Look! A real-world
event to base one's handwaving on!
--
David Cowie http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidcowie/
Containment Failure + 57599:29
Doug M.
> If I were handing out superpowers, I'd have them appear in early
> adulthood, which is when the long bones stop growing. Look! A real-world
> event to base one's handwaving on!
Actually, in the last ~20 years we've discovered that childhood is a
perpetual churning maelstrom of physiological, neurological and
hormonal changes. Puberty is just the most externally obvious. So,
you could plausibly have your new powers appear at any age up to 25 or
so.
-- Hm: superpowers that are triggered by menopause. Has that been
done?
Doug M.
Quiet Man
<sigi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
<snip>
>Wrinkle: the woo allele is carried only on the X chromosome.
>
>So halfbloods can be either male or female (Xx or Xy), but only women
>can be purebloods (XX). The people with truly awesome woo? All
>female.
>
>Obviously this society is a matriarchy of some sort. However, there
>will be interesting complications around the edges! Males can only be
>halfbloods, but halfblood males are in some demand; pureblood females
>need them if they're going to have pureblood daughters, while non-woo
>females will want them for a chance at fathering halfblood
>daughters.
>
>Halfblood females have a particularly tricky situation: if they have
>children with a halfblood male, their daughters may be either
>pureblood or halfblood, their sons either halfblood or powerless --
>flip a coin, twice.
>
>If the society is premodern, mating becomes very fraught.
>
>If someone introduces sex determination technology -- your basic
>ultrasound scanner, like -- things get very fraught indeed. Within a
>generation, there are probably a lot fewer males around. (The ones
>that are left will be kept busy, mind.)
<snip>
Begs for cloning technology.
Doug M.
> Just how do you mean "fanservice"?
Stuff deliberately calculated to appeal to a particular type of fan.
Not talking "fanservice" in the "let's throw in some gratuitous
nudity" sense (which seems to have taken the term over completely,
which strikes me as a shame.)
Doug M.
David DeLaney
>The whole woo-trope has been done, redone, and overdone many times
>whether woo is a form of PSI or a form of magic. Whenever woo is
>something that some have and others cannot have the result will be the
>same, first attempted suppression, then war, then woo-based
>civilization.
And I just have to interject somewhere in this thread the following quote:
"...to undo the hoodoo, and, with due to-do, woo the wu too!"
Dave "how many times can you type 'woo' before it becomes meaningless? should
we get a research grant to study this?" DeLaney
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
trag
> I'm just thinking that if one group of people can summon demons, call
> down lightning or just kill you by concentrating really hard, and
> everyone else can't, that first group is going to end up dominant.
Until Forbidden Planet Syndrome finishes them off...
Dorothy J Heydt
Not that I know of, but it might be a good idea. Some, though
not all, women, get really stupid with PMS.
OTOH men don't get menopause, merely a slow lessening of hormone
level, so when a man developed woo would be unpredictable.
James Nicoll
David Cowie <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 02:18:44 -0700, Doug M. wrote:
>
>> I don't think it can be detected early. If I were handing out
>> superpowers, I'd have them appear either in late childhood (when the kid
>> is old enough to take some discipline, but not yet crazed by hormones)
>> or early adulthood
>
>If I were handing out superpowers, I'd have them appear in early
>adulthood, which is when the long bones stop growing. Look! A real-world
>event to base one's handwaving on!
>
given the knowledge of how to do it and about ten thousand hours of intense
effort (just as anyone can be Jackie Chan if they are willing to be brutally
trained from childhood [1]). The techniques were known because someone
posted them online but most people never bothered because developing
the abilities takes too much effort for most people to bother; many
try but give up when they don't see results immediately.
Unfortunately prisoners have time to kill and a small subset are sufficiently
determined to earn parole the Lex Luthor way....
1: Yes, I did completely neglect the soccer-parent potential of this setting.
plausible prose man
> On Jun 10, 7:10 am, plausible prose man <georgefha...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > I would think that would tend to make woo-ers more charismatic.
>
> Attractive! which is not the same as charismatic.
At least one definition of attractive would mostly mean people are
attracted to you.
> (King Louis XIII of France was a rather dull and homely man. Yet he
> was surrounded by beautiful women who wanted to sleep with him.)
I am reliably informed it's good to be the king. As "woo" makes you
part of the genetic nobility, well...
> > What about people with three or more X chromosomes, are they woo-woo?
>
> I suspect they die of woo overdose, if only to keep things simple.
>
> > What about males with Kleinfelter's syndrome?
>
> Lucky them! But Kleinfelter's is quite rare.
How rare would it be with selection pressure, uh...selecting for it,
as in this world?
Robert Carnegie
> In article <87cgpk...@mid.individual.net>,
> David Cowie <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
> >On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 02:18:44 -0700, Doug M. wrote:
> >
> >> I don't think it can be detected early. If I were handing out
> >> superpowers, I'd have them appear either in late childhood (when the kid
> >> is old enough to take some discipline, but not yet crazed by hormones)
> >> or early adulthood
> >
> >If I were handing out superpowers, I'd have them appear in early
> >adulthood, which is when the long bones stop growing. Look! A real-world
> >event to base one's handwaving on!
> >
> In one setting I used, superpowers were something anyone could develop
> given the knowledge of how to do it and about ten thousand hours of intense
> effort (just as anyone can be Jackie Chan if they are willing to be brutally
> trained from childhood [1]). The techniques were known because someone
> posted them online but most people never bothered because developing
> the abilities takes too much effort for most people to bother; many
> try but give up when they don't see results immediately.
>
> Unfortunately prisoners have time to kill and a small subset are sufficiently
> determined to earn parole the Lex Luthor way....
Offer to develop evil villain-type weapons for the U.S. military?
Incidentally I think I recall somebody pushing a theory that any
profssional vocation education takes... could it have been, ten
thousand hours? Lawyer, accountant, forensic pathologist, that sort
of thing.
There is a programme on BBC Radio 4 station on Monday mornings that
talks to people who have written books like that, or are giving
lectures or television programmes or such, which is probably where I
picked it up without, for instance, reading the book. They get four
semi-wingnuts on and each gets I suppose about five minutes to talk to
the host and five minutes to defend their argument to the other
three. Sometimes it is less WWE-for-intellectuals-like, sometimes
more.
Robert Carnegie
> In article <013a9cee-3cd5-4ee4...@k39g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,
> Doug M. <sigi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >On Jun 10, 8:45�am, Par <use...@hunter-gatherer.org> wrote:
> >
> >> > �Halfblood females have a particularly tricky situation: if they have
> >> > �children with a halfblood male, their daughters may be either
> >> > �pureblood or halfblood, their sons either halfblood or powerless --
> >> > �flip a coin, twice.
> >>
> >> What is so tricky?
> >
> >"If I mate with you, we could have a very high-status child, or a
> >child who is depressingly mundane. Hmm."
> >
> This isn't as risky as it sounds because the disappointing children
> can always be abandoned in orphanages, exposed or made to act as
> servants to their superior siblings.
If we have, say, twenty-first level health care for prospective
mothers, or if woo improves your chances there, it may be low risk to
have Squibs. But in a no-medicine-yet society, you're playing
Posterity Russian Roulette.
(I recently reflected: does the bible leave out infant mortality, or
did I mentally censor it when reading, or did God intervene
miraculously to keep the narrative as positive as possible? I don't
remember much of it happening. A son of King David's, and the
Amalekites, and all the kids who were at Jesus's first birthday
party. One or two miraculous healings. Is about it.)
Robert Carnegie
You may be living in the outcome of one, depending on how you think
things went with Cro-Magnon Man and the Neanderthals. (Winner: us.)
Robert Carnegie
> In article <F9LlE3MEi$DMF...@meden.invalid>,
> Stewart Robert Hinsley <{$news$}@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >In message
> ><0e2c6526-a91f-468c...@d8g2000yqf.googlegroups.com>, Doug
> >M. <sigi...@yahoo.com> writes
> >>
> >>There are a number of SFnal societies dominated by a genetic elite
> >>with special powers, from the Darkover books to the Draka. Most of
> >>these are societies you and I wouldn't care to live in. Could we
> >>design one that's just a tiny bit... nicer, perhaps?
> >>
> >>Let's assume a special power or set of powers, which we'll call
> >>"woo". Maybe woo is telepathy. Maybe it's enhanced strength and
> >>toughness, or greatly enhanced lifespan. Or the ability to fire
> >>lightning bolts from your fingers, or control the four elements, or
> >>talk to dragons. We'll handwave the details, because we only need to
> >>know the following things about woo:
> >>
> >>-- woo, by itself, does not make you smarter, wiser, or more
> >>charismatic
> >>-- but woo makes you badass; the more woo you have, the harder it is
> >>to push you around
> >>-- woo is closely (though not perfectly) correlated with social
> >>status. Society is dominated by a hereditary / genetic aristocracy,
> >>and the people at the top are all rich in woo.
> >>
> >>you have a single copy of the woo allele, you will have weak to
> >>moderate woo. If you have two copies, you will have strong woo.
> >>Society thus neatly organizes itself into three genetic classes:
> >>purebloods, halfbloods, and everybody else.
> >>
> >>Wrinkle: the woo allele is carried only on the X chromosome.
> >>
> >>So halfbloods can be either male or female (Xx or Xy), but only women
> >>can be purebloods (XX). The people with truly awesome woo? All
> >>female.
> >>
> >>Obviously this society is a matriarchy of some sort. However, there
> >>will be interesting complications around the edges! Males can only be
> >>halfbloods, but halfblood males are in some demand; pureblood females
> >>need them if they're going to have pureblood daughters, while non-woo
> >>females will want them for a chance at fathering halfblood
> >>daughters.
> >>
> >>children with a halfblood male, their daughters may be either
> >>pureblood or halfblood, their sons either halfblood or powerless --
> >>flip a coin, twice.
> >>
> >>
> >>If someone introduces sex determination technology -- your basic
> >>ultrasound scanner, like -- things get very fraught indeed. Within a
> >>generation, there are probably a lot fewer males around. (The ones
> >>that are left will be kept busy, mind.)
> >>
> >>
> >The first thought that crosses my mind is that X-inactivation
> >(lyonisation) complicates the matter. In cells in women one or the other
> >X chromosome is inactivated (a Barr Body). So a pureblood woman has the
> >same number of active woo genes per cell as a halfblood male, while a
> >halfblood woman has (averaged over her body) half as many as a halfblood
> >male.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barr_body
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyonization
> >
> >If lyonisation occurs early enough during embryogenesis then there will
> >be a variation in strength in halfblood women.
> >
> >So perhaps the matriarchy doesn't happen.
> >
> >OTOH, naively lyonisation should result in female heterozygotes showing
> >some form of red-green colour blindness (unless it occurs late enough in
> >embryogenesis that eyes always contain an appreciable number of each
> >type of cone) as well as the possible occasional tetrachromats, so
> >perhaps it's not quite that simple.
> >
> >BTW, had you just reinvented Darkover? (Female keepers as the group with
> >the strongest laran.)
>
> But only if they're virgins. Insert lots of handwavium and woo-woo
> about chakras.
>
> There's a certain amount of wish-fulfillment, MarySueism,
> weighs 250 pounds and has never had a boyfriend (whether or not
> the two facts are related) can say, "Well, I can wear a red robe
> and a veil and be an honored and respected Keeper -- at least, at
> Darkovercons. So long as I remain a virgin. Which will not be
> difficult."
(Goes to look for visual reference on Darkover telepath tower building
code)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zandru's_Forge>
looks like Gustave Eiffel incorporated the Statue of Liberty torch
design into his other famous work. Both still standing... okay. Also
inevitably has something of Blackpool about it.
Robert Carnegie
> On Jun 9, 3:39 pm, "Doug M." <sigidu...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > There are a number of SFnal societies dominated by a genetic elite
> > with special powers, from the Darkover books to the Draka. Most of
> > these are societies you and I wouldn't care to live in. Could we
> > design one that's just a tiny bit... nicer, perhaps?
>
> fair bit of bigotry and repression in the HP universe, but still...it
> sounds like a pretty swell place to live, if you happened to have
> magic powers.
I think the point is that that isn't the point.
Robert Carnegie
> James Nicoll wrote:
> > In article <013a9cee-3cd5-4ee4...@k39g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,
> > Doug M. <sigi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >On Jun 10, 8:45�am, Par <use...@hunter-gatherer.org> wrote:
> > >
> > >> > �Halfblood females have a particularly tricky situation: if they have
> > >> > �children with a halfblood male, their daughters may be either
> > >> > �pureblood or halfblood, their sons either halfblood or powerless --
> > >> > �flip a coin, twice.
> > >>
> > >> What is so tricky?
> > >
> > >"If I mate with you, we could have a very high-status child, or a
> > >child who is depressingly mundane. Hmm."
> > >
> > This isn't as risky as it sounds because the disappointing children
> > can always be abandoned in orphanages, exposed or made to act as
> > servants to their superior siblings.
>
> If we have, say, twenty-first level health care for prospective
> mothers, or if woo improves your chances there, it may be low risk to
> have Squibs. But in a no-medicine-yet society, you're playing
> Posterity Russian Roulette.
Oh, I was going to say: "So you use Heinlein-level eugenics and have
one as-woo-as-possible child /first/ with a suitable father,
regardless of who your everyday bed partner is."
That partner has at least /some/ chance to mate, which puts him ahead
of most males in some other species. We are only around to accelerate
species evolution anyway. And for some of the time before birth we
were females too.
Dorothy J Heydt
Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>James Nicoll wrote:
>> In article
><013a9cee-3cd5-4ee4...@k39g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,
>> Doug M. <sigi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> >On Jun 10, 8:45�am, Par <use...@hunter-gatherer.org> wrote:
>> >
>> >> > �Halfblood females have a particularly tricky situation: if they have
>> >> > �children with a halfblood male, their daughters may be either
>> >> > �pureblood or halfblood, their sons either halfblood or powerless --
>> >> > �flip a coin, twice.
>> >>
>> >> What is so tricky?
>> >
>> >"If I mate with you, we could have a very high-status child, or a
>> >child who is depressingly mundane. Hmm."
>> >
>> This isn't as risky as it sounds because the disappointing children
>> can always be abandoned in orphanages, exposed or made to act as
>> servants to their superior siblings.
>
>If we have, say, twenty-first level health care for prospective
>mothers, or if woo improves your chances there, it may be low risk to
>have Squibs. But in a no-medicine-yet society, you're playing
>Posterity Russian Roulette.
>
>(I recently reflected: does the bible leave out infant mortality,
I think it mostly just didn't get mentioned ... they way you
don't mention that it rained last winter, unless there's some
reason to mention it. The infant mortality rate was very high
until the early 20th century in the West; still high in the third
world.
or
>did I mentally censor it when reading, or did God intervene
>miraculously to keep the narrative as positive as possible? I don't
>remember much of it happening. A son of King David's, and the
>Amalekites, and all the kids who were at Jesus's first birthday
>party. One or two miraculous healings. Is about it.)
There's the two harlots who had recently had babies, and one of
them had died, and the harlots were fighting over whom the child
belonged to, and they took the case to Solomon.
And I think the first child born to David and Bathsheba died.
Franco
> On Jun 10, 7:10 am, plausible prose man <georgefha...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > I would think that would tend to make woo-ers more charismatic.
>
> Attractive! which is not the same as charismatic.
>
> was surrounded by beautiful women who wanted to sleep with him.)
>
>
> I suspect they die of woo overdose, if only to keep things simple.
>
> > What about males with Kleinfelter's syndrome?
>
> Lucky them! But Kleinfelter's is quite rare.
>
>
> Tongue --> cheek.
>
> Doug M.
You probably mean Louis XIV (son on Louis XIII). Louis XIII was
probably either homosexual, or asexual. It was a long time into his
marriage to Anne of Austria before Louis XIV was born. He was called
the "the gift of God" (Dieudonne) because of the miracle of his birth.
The legend is that Louis XIII and Anne were hunting together when a
thunderstorm overtook them. They sought shelter together in a barn,
and as a result the Dauphin to be was conceived.
Franco
I should have added that Louis XIII was called "the chaste" because of
this reputation for not having a reputation, that is, he didn't have
any mistresses. Louis XIV was a famous womanizer. In his old age he
settled down with Mme de Maintenon, his mistress, in a secret
morganatic marriage.
Dorothy J Heydt
Shades of Dido and Aeneas. But Louis and Anne, being already
married, could've gotten together any time they wanted to. Maybe
it was a really *long* night in a really *dull and boring* barn.
David DeLaney
>In one setting I used, superpowers were something anyone could develop
>given the knowledge of how to do it and about ten thousand hours of intense
>effort (just as anyone can be Jackie Chan if they are willing to be brutally
>trained from childhood [1]). The techniques were known because someone
>posted them online but most people never bothered because developing
>the abilities takes too much effort for most people to bother; many
>try but give up when they don't see results immediately.
This sounds somewhat similar to a current-day version of Rosenberg's _Hour of
the Octopus_ setting, though I confess I don't remember whether, there, you
could practice your way into ANY skill, or whether you were limited to
whichever one(s) you had innate Talent-potential in.
I want more of that series, by the way.
>1: Yes, I did completely neglect the soccer-parent potential of this setting.
Note that one fairly frequent outcome of that would be children who learned to
turn invisible or, chameleon-like, hide indetectibly...
Dave
David DeLaney
>Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
> or did I mentally censor it when reading, or did God intervene
>>miraculously to keep the narrative as positive as possible? I don't
>>remember much of it happening. A son of King David's, and the
>>Amalekites, and all the kids who were at Jesus's first birthday
>>party. One or two miraculous healings. Is about it.)
>
>There's the two harlots who had recently had babies, and one of
>them had died, and the harlots were fighting over whom the child
>belonged to, and they took the case to Solomon.
>
>And I think the first child born to David and Bathsheba died.
And of course Ezekiel caused some, via bear.
Dave "Shadrach, Mesach, Abednego, for a counterexample" DeLaney
David DeLaney
>>You probably mean Louis XIV (son on Louis XIII). Louis XIII was
>>probably either homosexual, or asexual. It was a long time into his
>>marriage to Anne of Austria before Louis XIV was born. He was called
>>the "the gift of God" (Dieudonne) because of the miracle of his birth.
>>
>>The legend is that Louis XIII and Anne were hunting together when a
>>thunderstorm overtook them. They sought shelter together in a barn,
>>and as a result the Dauphin to be was conceived.
>
>Shades of Dido and Aeneas. But Louis and Anne, being already
>married, could've gotten together any time they wanted to. Maybe
>it was a really *long* night in a really *dull and boring* barn.
And (ObSF) Cabell's _The High Place_ gives us a view into some other reasons
why he may have been ... distracted ... from doing anything with Anne.
Dave
Lawrence Watt-Evans
Heydt) wrote:
>In article <2571727c-d1df-422e...@g1g2000pro.googlegroups.com>,
>Franco <ffr...@mailandnews.com> wrote:
>>
>>You probably mean Louis XIV (son on Louis XIII). Louis XIII was
>>probably either homosexual, or asexual. It was a long time into his
>>marriage to Anne of Austria before Louis XIV was born. He was called
>>the "the gift of God" (Dieudonne) because of the miracle of his birth.
>>
>>The legend is that Louis XIII and Anne were hunting together when a
>>thunderstorm overtook them. They sought shelter together in a barn,
>>and as a result the Dauphin to be was conceived.
>
>Shades of Dido and Aeneas. But Louis and Anne, being already
>married, could've gotten together any time they wanted to.
Yeah, but every indication is that Louis wasn't interested and quite
possibly wasn't able. If the hunting-lodge story is true (which it
might be), it might be that being stuck there gave Anne a chance to
nag, coax, or cajole him into it.
There were a lot of rumors about just who really did sire Louis XIV,
because he didn't much resemble his putative father. It MIGHT have
been Louis XIII, but I sure wouldn't want to bet money on it.
Storytellers have played with this for centuries, suggesting it might
have been Cardinal Richelieu, or the Duke of Buckingham, either of
whom would be a better match for the offspring in brains and
temperament.
--
My webpage is at http://www.watt-evans.com
I'm selling my comic collection -- see http://www.watt-evans.com/comics.html
I'm serializing a novel at http://www.watt-evans.com/realmsoflight0.html
Joy Beeson
<sigi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> -- Hm: superpowers that are triggered by menopause. Has that been
> done?
I believe that there are many fantasies in which all witches are old
women, but can't recall any save one -- the Ozark Trilogy, I believe
-- in which a "granny" was ordinarily a widow, but some few girls
swore eternal virginity and got to be grannies by a more-strenuous but
shorter path.
--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net
James Nicoll
David DeLaney <d...@vic.com> wrote:
>James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
>>In one setting I used, superpowers were something anyone could develop
>>given the knowledge of how to do it and about ten thousand hours of intense
>>effort (just as anyone can be Jackie Chan if they are willing to be brutally
>>trained from childhood [1]). The techniques were known because someone
>>posted them online but most people never bothered because developing
>>the abilities takes too much effort for most people to bother; many
>>try but give up when they don't see results immediately.
>
>This sounds somewhat similar to a current-day version of Rosenberg's _Hour of
>the Octopus_ setting, though I confess I don't remember whether, there, you
>could practice your way into ANY skill, or whether you were limited to
>whichever one(s) you had innate Talent-potential in.
>
>I want more of that series, by the way.
I don't think I have seen anything new from him bookwise since, oh, 2006, 2007?
And if he's blogged on LJ since 2009 (with a one year gap since the
inauguration) it's locked.
Hs firearms site is still active.
Robert A. Woodward
<0724e105-db2c-434f...@u7g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
"Doug M." <sigi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Jun 9, 11:56 pm, Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
> <tausti...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Obviously this society is a matriarchy of some sort.
> >
> > Only if woo is the _only_ determiniant in who is in power, or is so
> > overwhelmingly important as to overcome all other determinants.
>
> I'm just thinking that if one group of people can summon demons, call
> down lightning or just kill you by concentrating really hard, and
> everyone else can't, that first group is going to end up dominant.
>
Or they might end up dead (every chapter in Steven Brust's first
novel has a heading, the 17th chapter has: "No matter how subtle
the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously
cramp his style.").
--
Robert Woodward <robe...@drizzle.com>
<http://www.drizzle.com/~robertaw>
James Nicoll
Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>James Nicoll wrote:
>> In article <87cgpk...@mid.individual.net>,
>> David Cowie <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>> >On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 02:18:44 -0700, Doug M. wrote:
>> >
>> >> I don't think it can be detected early. If I were handing out
>> >> superpowers, I'd have them appear either in late childhood (when the kid
>> >> is old enough to take some discipline, but not yet crazed by hormones)
>> >> or early adulthood
>> >
>> >If I were handing out superpowers, I'd have them appear in early
>> >adulthood, which is when the long bones stop growing. Look! A real-world
>> >event to base one's handwaving on!
>> >
>> In one setting I used, superpowers were something anyone could develop
>> given the knowledge of how to do it and about ten thousand hours of intense
>> effort (just as anyone can be Jackie Chan if they are willing to be brutally
>> trained from childhood [1]). The techniques were known because someone
>> posted them online but most people never bothered because developing
>> the abilities takes too much effort for most people to bother; many
>> try but give up when they don't see results immediately.
>>
>> Unfortunately prisoners have time to kill and a small subset are sufficiently
>> determined to earn parole the Lex Luthor way....
>
>Offer to develop evil villain-type weapons for the U.S. military?
Pre-Crisis Luthor could, given a random selection of items and a few minutes
to think about it, get out of pretty much any jail as soon as he wanted to.
For some reason, this was never taken into account by his jailers or
Superman (who had a phantom zone projector [1]).
1: Yeah, yead, crystal kryptonite. What are the odds Luthor knows about
it and can get some?
Robert A. Woodward
<e071a8a9-0d6f-40d6...@x21g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>
> On Jun 10, 6:05 pm, David Cowie <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>
> > If I were handing out superpowers, I'd have them appear in early
> > adulthood, which is when the long bones stop growing. Look! A real-world
> > event to base one's handwaving on!
>
> Actually, in the last ~20 years we've discovered that childhood is a
> perpetual churning maelstrom of physiological, neurological and
> hormonal changes. Puberty is just the most externally obvious. So,
> you could plausibly have your new powers appear at any age up to 25 or
> so.
>
> -- Hm: superpowers that are triggered by menopause. Has that been
> done?
>
Niven's Protectors? Or do you consider that a binary trigger?
noRm d. plumBeR
Obsf: _The_Golden_People_, Fred Saberhagen, 1964.
--
"Vengeance is mine" saith Montezuma
Wayne Throop
::: call down lightning or just kill you by concentrating really hard,
::: and everyone else can't, that first group is going to end up
::: dominant.
:: Until Forbidden Planet Syndrome finishes them off...
His name is Anthony Fremont. He's six years old, with a cute
little-boy face and blue, guileless eyes. But when those eyes look
at you, you'd better start thinking happy thoughts, because the mind
behind them is absolutely in charge.
The other example that came to mind is Butcher's Alera.
But in that case, everybody can command Furies (though some are more
equal than others, and the ones in charge are the most equal of all).
But in any event, neither of these extremes (only one can, and everybody can)
had particularly noticeable problems with FPS. Quite possibly because
of the "concentrating really hard" issue, which may imply conscious
control, no ids need apply.
The sky to the south burned a sullen scarlet. What disaster could
have done that to the skies? Only the release of one of the Great
Furies, surely. But the only place to the south of here where one
of the Great Furies might rise was... "Merciful furies",
she breathed.
--- Placida Aria, in Princeps Fury
(and no, they weren't particularly merciful)
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Jesper Lauridsen
Jesper Lauridsen
> James Nicoll wrote:
>> In article <013a9cee-3cd5-4ee4...@k39g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,
>> Doug M. <sigi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> >On Jun 10, 8:45�am, Par <use...@hunter-gatherer.org> wrote:
>> >
>> >> > �Halfblood females have a particularly tricky situation: if they have
>> >> > �children with a halfblood male, their daughters may be either
>> >> > �pureblood or halfblood, their sons either halfblood or powerless --
>> >> > �flip a coin, twice.
>> >>
>> >> What is so tricky?
>> >
>> >"If I mate with you, we could have a very high-status child, or a
>> >child who is depressingly mundane. Hmm."
>> >
>> This isn't as risky as it sounds because the disappointing children
>> can always be abandoned in orphanages, exposed or made to act as
>> servants to their superior siblings.
>
> If we have, say, twenty-first level health care for prospective
> mothers, or if woo improves your chances there, it may be low risk to
> have Squibs. But in a no-medicine-yet society, you're playing
> Posterity Russian Roulette.
Still don't see the tricky. The alternative is to _not_ have any
children, so there isn't that much to consider.
Michael Stemper
I believe that the folks in Witch World thought that virginity was
required for having witchy powers until about the third book.
Simon Tregarth married a witchy woman.
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
Build a man a fire, and you warm him for a day. Set him on fire,
and you warm him for a lifetime.
Michael Stemper
>I should add that I personally loathe the idea of a genetic elite.
>The fact that it's such a common trope in F&SF is, frankly,
>depressing.
The existence of a genetic elite is a possibility. SF explores potential
outcomes of possibilities. Certainly not all of the genetic elites have
been portrayed in a positive manner.
Take for instance, Kurtz's Deryni, or Rowling's wizards, or
Pournelle's (?) Saurons.
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
This email is to be read by its intended recipient only. Any other party
reading is required by the EULA to send me $500.00.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> In article <o8g316le0dohd860i...@4ax.com>, Joy Beeson <jbe...@invalid.net.invalid> writes:
>> On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 09:29:38 -0700 (PDT), "Doug M." <sigi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>> -- Hm: superpowers that are triggered by menopause. Has that been
>>> done?
>> I believe that there are many fantasies in which all witches are old
>> women, but can't recall any save one -- the Ozark Trilogy, I believe
>> -- in which a "granny" was ordinarily a widow, but some few girls
>> swore eternal virginity and got to be grannies by a more-strenuous but
>> shorter path.
>
> I believe that the folks in Witch World thought that virginity was
> required for having witchy powers until about the third book.
>
> Simon Tregarth married a witchy woman.
>
See how high she flies?
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://seawasp.livejournal.com
Wayne Throop
: See how high she flies?
So... it's OK because she's a leaf on the wind?
"What edoes that mean?" --- Malcolm Reynolds
"It's all right, it's all right, all right.
She moves in mysterious ways."
--- U2
Walter Bushell
<e071a8a9-0d6f-40d6...@x21g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,
"Doug M." <sigi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Actually, in the last ~20 years we've discovered that childhood is a
> perpetual churning maelstrom of physiological, neurological and
> hormonal changes. Puberty is just the most externally obvious. So,
> you could plausibly have your new powers appear at any age up to 25 or
> so.
>
> -- Hm: superpowers that are triggered by menopause. Has that been
> done?
Why not 35?
--
A computer without Microsoft is like a chocolate cake without mustard.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
<sigi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>-- Hm: superpowers that are triggered by menopause. Has that been
>done?
Niven's Protectors.
Dorothy J Heydt
Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
>In article
><e071a8a9-0d6f-40d6...@x21g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,
> "Doug M." <sigi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Actually, in the last ~20 years we've discovered that childhood is a
>> perpetual churning maelstrom of physiological, neurological and
>> hormonal changes. Puberty is just the most externally obvious. So,
>> you could plausibly have your new powers appear at any age up to 25 or
>> so.
>>
>> -- Hm: superpowers that are triggered by menopause. Has that been
>> done?
>
>Why not 35?
Because nothing particularly biologically significant happens
around 35. Puberty, menopause, those change the body chemistry.
If you *want* a biological tie to when you develop woo. If you
want a culture that has discovered woo-flavored royal jelly, and
they've decided it's the best idea to start feeding you it at 35,
then.
If it makes you sterile, that might be a good tactic: give you a
decade or so to have all the children you're going to, then pull
the plug.
Sean Eric Fagan
James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
>Pre-Crisis Luthor could, given a random selection of items and a few minutes
>to think about it, get out of pretty much any jail as soon as he wanted to.
So could MacGyver. Nyah.
>For some reason, this was never taken into account by his jailers or
>Superman
Yet another cause to recommend SOON I WILL BE INVINCIBLE -- Dr Impossible's
imprisonment is described fairly well.
Gene Wirchenko
Heydt) wrote:
>In article <proto-1A1CBF....@news.panix.com>,
>Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
[snip]
>>Why not 35?
>
>Because nothing particularly biologically significant happens
>around 35. Puberty, menopause, those change the body chemistry.
>If you *want* a biological tie to when you develop woo. If you
>want a culture that has discovered woo-flavored royal jelly, and
>they've decided it's the best idea to start feeding you it at 35,
>then.
>
>If it makes you sterile, that might be a good tactic: give you a
>decade or so to have all the children you're going to, then pull
>the plug.
What if the one-woo-gene people are fertile, but any two-woo-gene
female is sterile. Aunties rule?
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
Dorothy J Heydt
Whatever. There's material for a couple (or a couple dozen)
stories in this, but somebody's got to write them.
David DeLaney
> The sky to the south burned a sullen scarlet. What disaster could
> have done that to the skies? Only the release of one of the Great
> Furies, surely. But the only place to the south of here where one
> of the Great Furies might rise was... "Merciful furies",
> she breathed.
> --- Placida Aria, in Princeps Fury
> (and no, they weren't particularly merciful)
still waiting on MMPB-size release of this, by the way.
(Horrifyingly, the company that's putting them out - Baen? - seems to be going
BACKWARDS in the series, and re-releasing the entries that ALREADY EXIST in
that size in the VSTPB size. This does not bode well at all.)
David DeLaney
>> What if the one-woo-gene people are fertile, but any two-woo-gene
>>female is sterile. Aunties rule?
>
>Whatever. There's material for a couple (or a couple dozen)
>stories in this, but somebody's got to write them.
ObSemiRelatedSF: The Cetagandan haut and ghem setup in Bujold's Vorkosigan
series; it's waaay not as simple as "one or two copies of a gene" there, and
there's also ba complicating things. But the haut ladies definitely have some
woo going on.
Dave "in a couple of ways" DeLaney
Kurt Busiek
> On Fri, 11 Jun 2010 09:57:21 GMT, Wayne Throop <thr...@sheol.org> wrote:
>> The sky to the south burned a sullen scarlet. What disaster could
>> have done that to the skies? Only the release of one of the Great
>> Furies, surely. But the only place to the south of here where one
>> of the Great Furies might rise was... "Merciful furies",
>> she breathed.
>> --- Placida Aria, in Princeps Fury
>> (and no, they weren't particularly merciful)
>
> still waiting on MMPB-size release of this, by the way.
>
> (Horrifyingly, the company that's putting them out - Baen? - seems to be going
> BACKWARDS in the series, and re-releasing the entries that ALREADY EXIST in
> that size in the VSTPB size. This does not bode well at all.)
Yeah, that means they're selling.
kdb
--
Visit http://www.busiek.com — for all your Busiek needs!
noRm d. plumBeR
>In article <proto-1A1CBF....@news.panix.com>,
>Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
>>In article
>><e071a8a9-0d6f-40d6...@x21g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,
>> "Doug M." <sigi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Actually, in the last ~20 years we've discovered that childhood is a
>>> perpetual churning maelstrom of physiological, neurological and
>>> hormonal changes. Puberty is just the most externally obvious. So,
>>> you could plausibly have your new powers appear at any age up to 25 or
>>> so.
>>>
>>> -- Hm: superpowers that are triggered by menopause. Has that been
>>> done?
>>
>>Why not 35?
>
>Because nothing particularly biologically significant happens
>around 35. Puberty, menopause, those change the body chemistry.
If woo is some kind of psychic gizmo, it could reasonably take a few
years for metabolic changes to settle down and a few more years to
figure out what's going on now that one lives in woo-land. Like the
way babies have muscles but can't do much with them for a while.
Jo'Asia
>> --- Placida Aria, in Princeps Fury
> still waiting on MMPB-size release of this, by the way.
> (Horrifyingly, the company that's putting them out - Baen? - seems to be going
> BACKWARDS in the series, and re-releasing the entries that ALREADY EXIST in
> that size in the VSTPB size. This does not bode well at all.)
Not Baen, Ace.
Jo'Asia
--
__.-=-. -< Joanna Slupek >----------------------< http://esensja.pl/ >-
--<()> -< joasia @ hell . pl >-------------< http://bujold.sf-f.pl/ >-
.__.'| -< Oh, Ivan. Ignore Ivan, we all do.
{A Civl Campaign, Kareen Koudelka} >-
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> On Fri, 11 Jun 2010 09:57:21 GMT, Wayne Throop <thr...@sheol.org> wrote:
>> The sky to the south burned a sullen scarlet. What disaster could
>> have done that to the skies? Only the release of one of the Great
>> Furies, surely. But the only place to the south of here where one
>> of the Great Furies might rise was... "Merciful furies",
>> she breathed.
>> --- Placida Aria, in Princeps Fury
>> (and no, they weren't particularly merciful)
>
> still waiting on MMPB-size release of this, by the way.
>
> (Horrifyingly, the company that's putting them out - Baen? - seems to be going
> BACKWARDS in the series, and re-releasing the entries that ALREADY EXIST in
> that size in the VSTPB size. This does not bode well at all.)
Perhaps not for those who won't buy the VSTPBs, but it bodes very well
for the author and series in question, because it means it's selling
VERY well to encourage them to do reissues in a new format.
Robert Carnegie
> In article <proto-1A1CBF....@news.panix.com>,
> Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
> >In article
> ><e071a8a9-0d6f-40d6...@x21g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,
> > "Doug M." <sigi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Actually, in the last ~20 years we've discovered that childhood is a
> >> perpetual churning maelstrom of physiological, neurological and
> >> hormonal changes. Puberty is just the most externally obvious. So,
> >> you could plausibly have your new powers appear at any age up to 25 or
> >> so.
> >>
> >> -- Hm: superpowers that are triggered by menopause. Has that been
> >> done?
> >
> >Why not 35?
>
> Because nothing particularly biologically significant happens
> around 35.
But what about the /female/ menopause?
Incidentally, I think I recall that _Spock's World_ was the book that
included descriptions of psi wars and/or psi breeding programmes on
pre-Surak Vulcan, but I could be wrong. (But not an age 35 OR
menopause thing. On Vulcan, menopause only affects the ability to do
that thing with your fingers, he kidded.)
Robert Carnegie
> :: Simon Tregarth married a witchy woman.
>
> : See how high she flies?
>
> So... it's OK because she's a leaf on the wind?
>
> "What edoes that mean?" --- Malcolm Reynolds
>
> "It's all right, it's all right, all right.
> She moves in mysterious ways."
> --- U2
"I Can't Let Haggie Go".
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeybus>
I don't remember a lot of flying in Witch World, wasn't it mostly
telepathic control that they did?
The male protag was a witchy man, at least there, he was from Earth
but he had power, and I suppose either that's why his wife remained
puissant (other married witches suffered a pskychic short-circuit), or
because other cases weren't consensual(!) and/or had expected to lose
their power and therefore did. This may have been gone into more in a
book in the series that I overlooked. I want to be naturalistic, to
suppose that at most it only depends on the two people involved and
not on some goddess or Witch Celibacy Council that enforces a rule
that ifyou've Done It then you can't be a witch any more.
I think the witches also weren't popular rulers, nor popular
withineighbouring nations!
Robert Carnegie
Michael Stemper wrote:
> In article <d39fffa1-b0d7-491d...@y4g2000yqy.googlegroups.com>, "Doug M." <sigi...@yahoo.com> writes:
>
> >I should add that I personally loathe the idea of a genetic elite.
> >The fact that it's such a common trope in F&SF is, frankly,
> >depressing.
>
> The existence of a genetic elite is a possibility. SF explores potential
> outcomes of possibilities. Certainly not all of the genetic elites have
> been portrayed in a positive manner.
>
> Take for instance, Kurtz's Deryni, or Rowling's wizards, or
> Pournelle's (?) Saurons.
I haven't read the last but it is a definite "can't be good". The
others I suppose have some good members of the elite, but overall are
badly flawed.
Robert Carnegie
Well... personal survival. Which doesn't matter so much to evolution
(and we're discussing genetic superbeings, natural or otherwise),
evolution favours fecundity even if it involves self-destruction - but
even then, human offspring also benefit if their parents are alive.
Well, many real species have individuals whose role in the community
doesn't include reproducing, or most usually doesn't. Perhaps "non-
superbeing husband of a superwoman who prefers to get her children
from the supermen that there aren't enough of for everyone to have
their own" is one such.
Howard Brazee
Heydt) wrote:
>Because nothing particularly biologically significant happens
>around 35. Puberty, menopause, those change the body chemistry.
>If you *want* a biological tie to when you develop woo. If you
>want a culture that has discovered woo-flavored royal jelly, and
>they've decided it's the best idea to start feeding you it at 35,
>then.
Although many athletes peak around that age - in physical ability,
although their knowledge can keep them competitive for a while.
--
"In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found,
than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace
to the legislature, and not to the executive department."
- James Madison
Howard Brazee
<sigi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>-- Hm: superpowers that are triggered by menopause. Has that been
>done?
Already menopause produces significant physical advantages.
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
news:0724e105-db2c-434f...@u7g2000yqm.googlegroups.c
om:
> On Jun 9, 11:56 pm, Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
> <tausti...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> > Obviously this society is a matriarchy of some sort.
>>
>> Only if woo is the _only_ determiniant in who is in power, or
>> is so overwhelmingly important as to overcome all other
>> determinants.
>
> I'm just thinking that if one group of people can summon demons,
> call down lightning or just kill you by concentrating really
> hard, and everyone else can't, that first group is going to end
> up dominant.
>
You ignored the explanation of why that's not necessarily so. Unless,
as noted, such things are the _only_ determinant. And you *said* that
the woo didn't affect other personality traits. Like being gullible
or submissive.
One could also speculate as to how technology and magic interact. I
recall reading some urban fantasy book (De Lint?) wherein one of the
helpless, puny humans, an engineer, turned out to be more than a
little dangerous with cold iron circular saw blades and squirt guns
with holy water.
--
Terry Austin
Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole. - David
Bilek
Yeah, I had Terry confused with Hannibal Lecter. - Mike Schilling
Jesus forgives sinners, not criminals.
Dorothy J Heydt
Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>> In article <proto-1A1CBF....@news.panix.com>,
>> Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
>> >In article
>> ><e071a8a9-0d6f-40d6...@x21g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>,
>> > "Doug M." <sigi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Actually, in the last ~20 years we've discovered that childhood is a
>> >> perpetual churning maelstrom of physiological, neurological and
>> >> hormonal changes. Puberty is just the most externally obvious. So,
>> >> you could plausibly have your new powers appear at any age up to 25 or
>> >> so.
>> >>
>> >> -- Hm: superpowers that are triggered by menopause. Has that been
>> >> done?
>> >
>> >Why not 35?
>>
>> Because nothing particularly biologically significant happens
>> around 35.
>
>But what about the /female/ menopause?
What about it? Usually around 50, at least in this country.
(Where, unlike several other places, women and others are
well-fed and their bodies are likely to "think" that they're
still capable of having more children, since they have enough
resources in their bodies to nourish another child in the womb
and nurse it once born.
Brenda Clough
> On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 09:29:38 -0700 (PDT), "Doug M."
> <sigi...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> -- Hm: superpowers that are triggered by menopause. Has that been
>> done?
>
> Already menopause produces significant physical advantages.
>
You know that in feminist circles, hot flashes are referred to as power
surges.
Brenda
Dorothy J Heydt
Heh. Shades of "Liberty cabbage" and "freedom fries."
Gene Wirchenko
"electrical storms" might be more descriptive.
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
Par
> Well, many real species have individuals whose role in the community
> doesn't include reproducing, or most usually doesn't. Perhaps "non-
> superbeing husband of a superwoman who prefers to get her children
> from the supermen that there aren't enough of for everyone to have
> their own" is one such.
There is also the problem that if there are two niches, one of which is
rich in resources and one of which is poorer (but still sufficient) the
more competetively sucessfull species (or group) will tend to pick the
best one, and the second best will pick the poorer one. It is not just
the richness of the resource, but also the cost of gaining access to
it[1]. Strategy optimality is dependent on all factors, not just one.
And no one is suggesting that gulls make a formal cost-benefit analysis
before they decide where they feed, it is just that the ones that pick
"wrong" will have less offspring than the ones that pick right, and that
in the long run this makes all the difference.
In our case it may very well turn out to be the case that the high
status woo carrier females "monopolize" the high status woo-carrier
males, while the other ones find that their best choice is the non-woo
males; their offspring may never become full double-woo girls, but
they'll get some single-woo girls and carrier males, and in total more
children than they would have gotten if they tried to compete for the
"best" males. It all depends on how great an (reproductive) advantage
the different gene-sets give.
/Par
[1] Playing the analogy game; while investment banking is a profitable
career, the cost (stress, burnout, etc) of being competetive there may
very well mean that for most of us it is *better* to chose less
competetive careers.
--
Par use...@hunter-gatherer.org
Graduate life: It's not just a job. It's an indenture.
Par
> >they've decided it's the best idea to start feeding you it at 35,
> >then.
>
> Although many athletes peak around that age - in physical ability,
> although their knowledge can keep them competitive for a while.
It depends on what is "tested" in the sport. Look at the sports where
raw physical strenght/endurance is not the major point (e.g. shooting).
There the athletes peak much later than in more purely "power" sports.
/Par
--
Par use...@hunter-gatherer.org
Mind Like A Steel Trap - Rusty And Illegal In 37 States
noRm d. plumBeR
>Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com>:
>> Well, many real species have individuals whose role in the community
>> doesn't include reproducing, or most usually doesn't. Perhaps "non-
>> superbeing husband of a superwoman who prefers to get her children
>> from the supermen that there aren't enough of for everyone to have
>> their own" is one such.
>
>There is also the problem that if there are two niches, one of which is
>rich in resources and one of which is poorer (but still sufficient) the
>more competetively sucessfull species (or group) will tend to pick the
>best one, and the second best will pick the poorer one. It is not just
>the richness of the resource, but also the cost of gaining access to
>it[1]. Strategy optimality is dependent on all factors, not just one.
>And no one is suggesting that gulls make a formal cost-benefit analysis
>before they decide where they feed, it is just that the ones that pick
>"wrong" will have less offspring than the ones that pick right, and that
>in the long run this makes all the difference.
That sounds like typical evolutionary thinking. Only the most
competitively successful survive, having the most stuff and being the
toughest guy on the block makes the species most likely to survive.
I don't think it works that way. I think that choosing the easiest
feeding area can make it easier to eat and reproduce, but it can also
make it easier to get fat and soft and fail to survive when the
environment changes as it always eventually does.
You can always look at it in retrospect and say that the very fact
that a species survived means it was the fittest for survival. But
that doesn't mean much going forward.
For example consider the sloth. The sloth is basically economy-based,
it's non-competitive, yet it continues to survive. It eats what's at
hand, usually leaves, and has a slow economy-based metabolism. It
isn't a predator and isn't much endangered by predators because it
keeps a low profile and isn't noticed by predators. It just moves
slowly ahead while the rest of the world whizzes past to get the
latest and greatest feeding areas, takes care of its business of
eating what's at hand, and survives.
Maybe woo is an ability to be unnoticed, take advantage of the
opportunities that present themselves, and stay below everyone else's
radar. The woo-capable *could* dominate if they cared to, by doing
things like walking unnoticed into the Emperor's throne room and
knocking him off, but since the woo-capable are unnoticed they don't
need to be concerned with Emperors or governments or food or other
material objects; if they need food they can just walk unnoticed into
a grocery and pick up what they need without anyone being the wiser.
Par
> Par <use...@hunter-gatherer.org> wrote:
> >There is also the problem that if there are two niches, one of which is
> >rich in resources and one of which is poorer (but still sufficient) the
> >more competetively sucessfull species (or group) will tend to pick the
> >best one, and the second best will pick the poorer one. It is not just
> >the richness of the resource, but also the cost of gaining access to
> >it[1]. Strategy optimality is dependent on all factors, not just one.
> >And no one is suggesting that gulls make a formal cost-benefit analysis
> >before they decide where they feed, it is just that the ones that pick
> >"wrong" will have less offspring than the ones that pick right, and that
> >in the long run this makes all the difference.
>
> That sounds like typical evolutionary thinking. Only the most
> competitively successful survive, having the most stuff and being the
> toughest guy on the block makes the species most likely to survive.
Nooo, that is not what I said. Let us for a moment imagine that there is
two feeding niches, rich banks full of mussels and polychaetes, and a
beach with a much poorer supply of food. Now imagine that there is two
species of gulls; the BigTough Gull (BTG) and the Lesser Gull (LG).
Now, any gull that feeds from the banks will get more food for a given
ammount of effort than those feeding from the beach. If the two gulls
both try to feed in the same area the BTG will constantly harass and
disaturb the LG. So the LG goes to the poorer area, where they have to
put more effort into gathering food, but can do so in peace (assuming
that there is a net gain, if the poor area is sufficently poor, or the
LG can *almost* compete on equal terms with the BTG we get a diffent
picture). This is what we see, that or transitional phases where a
stability is asserting itself.
> I don't think it works that way. I think that choosing the easiest
> feeding area can make it easier to eat and reproduce, but it can also
> make it easier to get fat and soft and fail to survive when the
> environment changes as it always eventually does.
Not unless there is no competition. If you have an easy feeding area
there are usually plenty of others who will be willing to muscle in. So
you have to constantly be on your guard to prevent others from taking
over.
> You can always look at it in retrospect and say that the very fact
> that a species survived means it was the fittest for survival. But
> that doesn't mean much going forward.
Well, all we can do is look at "historical" data, and try to discern the
patterns. Then we can apply that pattern to a partially known situation
and predict what would happen, and then go and see of it fits the
pattern. In the case of evolutionary stable strategies (ESS) this has
pretty much been validated by all studies that has been performed. For
that reason ESS is the way to bet for a future situation.
> For example consider the sloth. The sloth is basically economy-based,
> it's non-competitive, yet it continues to survive. It eats what's at
> hand, usually leaves, and has a slow economy-based metabolism. It
> isn't a predator and isn't much endangered by predators because it
> keeps a low profile and isn't noticed by predators. It just moves
> slowly ahead while the rest of the world whizzes past to get the
> latest and greatest feeding areas, takes care of its business of
> eating what's at hand, and survives.
Which illustrates *my* point. By picking a non-desirable niche it is
able to thrive where it would have hard time making it if there was a
lot of others wanting the same resources.
> Maybe woo is an ability to be unnoticed, take advantage of the
> opportunities that present themselves, and stay below everyone else's
> radar. The woo-capable *could* dominate if they cared to, by doing
> things like walking unnoticed into the Emperor's throne room and
> knocking him off, but since the woo-capable are unnoticed they don't
> need to be concerned with Emperors or governments or food or other
> material objects; if they need food they can just walk unnoticed into
> a grocery and pick up what they need without anyone being the wiser.
Ahh, now you have just set up a race. If the woo-capable is able to take
resources away from the non-woo capable, there would be a benefit for
the non-woo to become better at detecting woo-capables or at least to
stop their predation. At the same time the woo-capable would have to
strive towards becoming better att being undetected. Eventually it is
possible that either side becomes so good that the race is permanently
decided, but this is far from certain, and it may take a long time. This
has happened a lot in nature, e.g. when a species becomes poisonous, and
those wanting to eat it becomes more and more able to resist the toxin.
Wash. rinse, repeat. Substitute camoflage, speed, fligh behaviour, etc.
Interesting story potential if you now add a third group/species to the
mix.
/Par
--
Par use...@hunter-gatherer.org
Interestingly, most Unix utilities have a command line option which will
cause the system to rip the user's legs off and beat them to death with the
soggy ends. This is often the default behaviour. -- Bruce Murphy
David DeLaney
>Maybe woo is an ability to be unnoticed, take advantage of the
>opportunities that present themselves, and stay below everyone else's
>radar. The woo-capable *could* dominate if they cared to, by doing
>things like walking unnoticed into the Emperor's throne room and
>knocking him off, but since the woo-capable are unnoticed they don't
>need to be concerned with Emperors or governments or food or other
>material objects; if they need food they can just walk unnoticed into
>a grocery and pick up what they need without anyone being the wiser.
And the more woo you have, the harder it is for you to find a date, so having
partial woo ends up with you more likely to find someone to reproduce with
(or vice versa, actually), but having full woo ends up with you able to have
more kids live to maturity (because they can go eat at the neighbor's house
any time they want, don't get kidnapped, etc.).
Dave
noRm d. plumBeR
>In the case of evolutionary stable strategies (ESS) this has
>pretty much been validated by all studies that has been performed. For
>that reason ESS is the way to bet for a future situation.
Well there you have it and you need think no further.
--
"Snot logical!" --Mr Spork
noRm d. plumBeR
>noRm d. plumBeR <se...@money.com> wrote:
>>Maybe woo is an ability to be unnoticed, take advantage of the
>>opportunities that present themselves, and stay below everyone else's
>>radar. The woo-capable *could* dominate if they cared to, by doing
>>things like walking unnoticed into the Emperor's throne room and
>>knocking him off, but since the woo-capable are unnoticed they don't
>>need to be concerned with Emperors or governments or food or other
>>material objects; if they need food they can just walk unnoticed into
>>a grocery and pick up what they need without anyone being the wiser.
>
>And the more woo you have, the harder it is for you to find a date,
How did you come to that conclusion?
I'd say the more powerful your woo, the harder it would be for an
inappropriate (lesser) date to find you. And I'd also conclude that
any potential dates who did find you would do so by merit of having
more powerful woo capabilities. Beyond that, reproduction among the
woo-capable would tend to occur when the more-capable detect a less
capable but still acceptable potential mate. By extension the
tendency would be for the most-powerful to mate with the
next-most-powerful.
But you seem to have started with the opposite assumption, how'd you
do that?
David DeLaney
>d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
>>noRm d. plumBeR <se...@money.com> wrote:
>>>Maybe woo is an ability to be unnoticed, take advantage of the
>>>opportunities that present themselves, and stay below everyone else's
>>>radar. The woo-capable *could* dominate if they cared to, by doing
>>>things like walking unnoticed into the Emperor's throne room and
>>>knocking him off, but since the woo-capable are unnoticed they don't
>>>need to be concerned with Emperors or governments or food or other
>>>material objects; if they need food they can just walk unnoticed into
>>>a grocery and pick up what they need without anyone being the wiser.
>>
>>And the more woo you have, the harder it is for you to find a date,
>
>How did you come to that conclusion?
The less noticeable you are, the more the girls go off with the jocks or
nerds that they can actually manage to pay attention to. This has been
proven over and over in high schools across our great nation.
>I'd say the more powerful your woo, the harder it would be for an
>inappropriate (lesser) date to find you. And I'd also conclude that
>any potential dates who did find you would do so by merit of having
>more powerful woo capabilities.
Yes ... and there are fewer and fewer such dates-of-power available. Having
a sharply limited selection to start with does not make it EASIER for you to
find a date.
noRm d. plumBeR
>noRm d. plumBeR <se...@money.com> wrote:
>>d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
>>>noRm d. plumBeR <se...@money.com> wrote:
>>>>Maybe woo is an ability to be unnoticed, take advantage of the
>>>>opportunities that present themselves, and stay below everyone else's
>>>>radar. The woo-capable *could* dominate if they cared to, by doing
>>>>things like walking unnoticed into the Emperor's throne room and
>>>>knocking him off, but since the woo-capable are unnoticed they don't
>>>>need to be concerned with Emperors or governments or food or other
>>>>material objects; if they need food they can just walk unnoticed into
>>>>a grocery and pick up what they need without anyone being the wiser.
>>>
>>>And the more woo you have, the harder it is for you to find a date,
>>
>>How did you come to that conclusion?
>
>The less noticeable you are, the more the girls go off with the jocks or
>nerds that they can actually manage to pay attention to. This has been
>proven over and over in high schools across our great nation.
So you don't understand how that works; no blame.
>>I'd say the more powerful your woo, the harder it would be for an
>>inappropriate (lesser) date to find you. And I'd also conclude that
>>any potential dates who did find you would do so by merit of having
>>more powerful woo capabilities.
>
>Yes ... and there are fewer and fewer such dates-of-power available. Having
>a sharply limited selection to start with does not make it EASIER for you to
>find a date.
Given that you don't understand how those things work, I can accept
that you think getting a date is a matter of finding one rather than a
matter of being found by one.
Thanks for explaining your logic.
David DeLaney
>d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
>>noRm d. plumBeR <se...@money.com> wrote:
>>>d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
>>>>noRm d. plumBeR <se...@money.com> wrote:
>>>>>Maybe woo is an ability to be unnoticed, take advantage of the
>>>>>opportunities that present themselves, and stay below everyone else's
>>>>>radar. The woo-capable *could* dominate if they cared to, by doing
>>>>>things like walking unnoticed into the Emperor's throne room and
>>>>>knocking him off, but since the woo-capable are unnoticed they don't
>>>>>need to be concerned with Emperors or governments or food or other
>>>>>material objects; if they need food they can just walk unnoticed into
>>>>>a grocery and pick up what they need without anyone being the wiser.
>>>>
>>>>And the more woo you have, the harder it is for you to find a date,
>>>
>>>How did you come to that conclusion?
>>
>>The less noticeable you are, the more the girls go off with the jocks or
>>nerds that they can actually manage to pay attention to. This has been
>>proven over and over in high schools across our great nation.
>
>So you don't understand how that works; no blame.
...and here you go again, since this directly contradicts your long
paragraph above. So there's no point in replying to you any further HERE
either, since you're not trying to be consistent, just aggressive and
annoying. "be unnoticed" and 'stay below everyone else's radar' does not
equate in any way to "other people will notice you better".
Michael Stemper
>noRm d. plumBeR <se...@money.com> wrote:
>>d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
>>>noRm d. plumBeR <se...@money.com> wrote:
>>>>radar. The woo-capable *could* dominate if they cared to, by doing
>>>>things like walking unnoticed into the Emperor's throne room and
>>>>knocking him off, but since the woo-capable are unnoticed they don't
>>>>need to be concerned with Emperors or governments or food or other
>>>>material objects; if they need food they can just walk unnoticed into
>>>>a grocery and pick up what they need without anyone being the wiser.
>>>
>>>And the more woo you have, the harder it is for you to find a date,
>>
>>How did you come to that conclusion?
>
>The less noticeable you are, the more the girls go off with the jocks or
>nerds that they can actually manage to pay attention to. This has been
>proven over and over in high schools across our great nation.
See the sad story of Matthew Keller in _A Gift From Earth_.
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
The FAQ for rec.arts.sf.written is at:
http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper/sf-written
Please read it before posting.
noRm d. plumBeR
>noRm d. plumBeR <se...@money.com> wrote:
>>d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
>>>noRm d. plumBeR <se...@money.com> wrote:
>>>>d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
>>>>>noRm d. plumBeR <se...@money.com> wrote:
>>>>>>Maybe woo is an ability to be unnoticed, take advantage of the
>>>>>>opportunities that present themselves, and stay below everyone else's
>>>>>>radar. The woo-capable *could* dominate if they cared to, by doing
>>>>>>things like walking unnoticed into the Emperor's throne room and
>>>>>>knocking him off, but since the woo-capable are unnoticed they don't
>>>>>>need to be concerned with Emperors or governments or food or other
>>>>>>material objects; if they need food they can just walk unnoticed into
>>>>>>a grocery and pick up what they need without anyone being the wiser.
>>>>>
>>>>>And the more woo you have, the harder it is for you to find a date,
>>>>
>>>>How did you come to that conclusion?
>>>
>>>The less noticeable you are, the more the girls go off with the jocks or
>>>nerds that they can actually manage to pay attention to. This has been
>>>proven over and over in high schools across our great nation.
>>
>>So you don't understand how that works; no blame.
>
>...and here you go again, since this directly contradicts your long
>paragraph above.
You clearly do not understand how men get dates. If you hadn't
already shown yourself too stupid to read, I might attempt to explain
it. However, you have.
>So there's no point in replying to you any further HERE
>either, since you're not trying to be consistent, just aggressive and
>annoying. "be unnoticed" and 'stay below everyone else's radar' does not
>equate in any way to "other people will notice you better".
Getting dates has nothing to do with wearing a neon sign, stupid.
David Duffy
> There are a number of SFnal societies dominated by a genetic elite
> with special powers, from the Darkover books to the Draka. Most of
> these are societies you and I wouldn't care to live in. Could we
> design one that's just a tiny bit... nicer, perhaps?
www.bmj.com/cgi/reprint/335/7633/1299.pdf
William December Starr
jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) said:
> Pre-Crisis Luthor could, given a random selection of items and a
> few minutes to think about it, get out of pretty much any jail as
> soon as he wanted to. For some reason, this was never taken into
> account by his jailers or Superman (who had a phantom zone
> projector [1]).
One or the other of Elliot S! Maggin's original Superman novels
includes an excerpt from a Jimmy Olsen article about Luthor's
propensity for escape, including mention that once he broke out of
prison, broke back in for something he'd forgotten, and then broke
back out again[1].
*1: Yes, I know: John Dortmunder did it first.
-- wds
William December Starr
d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) said:
> James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>> In one setting I used, superpowers were something anyone could
>> develop given the knowledge of how to do it and about ten
>> thousand hours of intense effort (just as anyone can be Jackie
>> Chan if they are willing to be brutally trained from childhood
>> [1]).
>>...
>> 1: Yes, I did completely neglect the soccer-parent potential of
>> this setting.
>
> Note that one fairly frequent outcome of that would be children
> who learned to turn invisible or, chameleon-like, hide
> indetectibly...
"So what's your superpower?"
"I make peoples' deaths look like accidents. Did I mention that
I'm an orphan?"
-- wds
John M
<snip>
> -- Hm: superpowers that are triggered by menopause. Has that been
> done?
>
> Doug M.
Niven's _Protector_ at least arguably.
-JM
Michael A. Terrell
Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>
> In article ?e071a8a9-0d6f-40d6...@x21g2000yqa.googlegroups.com?,
> Doug M. ?sigi...@yahoo.com? wrote:
> ?On Jun 10, 6:05 pm, David Cowie ?m...@privacy.net? wrote:
> ?
> ?? If I were handing out superpowers, I'd have them appear in early
> ?? adulthood, which is when the long bones stop growing. Look! A real-world
> ?? event to base one's handwaving on!
> ?
> ?Actually, in the last ~20 years we've discovered that childhood is a
> ?perpetual churning maelstrom of physiological, neurological and
> ?hormonal changes. Puberty is just the most externally obvious. So,
> ?you could plausibly have your new powers appear at any age up to 25 or
> ?so.
> ?
> ?-- Hm: superpowers that are triggered by menopause. Has that been
> ?done?
>
> Not that I know of, but it might be a good idea. Some, though
> not all, women, get really stupid with PMS.
>
> OTOH men don't get menopause, merely a slow lessening of hormone
> level, so when a man developed woo would be unpredictable.
Some men do lose one or both testicles from infection, or other
causes. That results in sudden changes in testosterone levels.
--
Politicians should only get paid if the budget is balanced, and there is
enough left over to pay them.
Dorothy J Heydt
IIRC he would have to lose both testicles, because if he loses
only one the other will boost its testosterone output to
compensate.
Michael A. Terrell
A relative lost one, and he has to take testosterone in pill form
every day.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
wrote:
>In article <nb-dnXSsncGn-U7R...@earthlink.com>,
>Michael A. Terrell <mike.t...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>>Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> OTOH men don't get menopause, merely a slow lessening of hormone
>>> level, so when a man developed woo would be unpredictable.
>>
>> Some men do lose one or both testicles from infection, or other
>>causes. That results in sudden changes in testosterone levels.
There are other things that can crash testosterone levels. Pituitary
prolactinoma, for example.
>IIRC he would have to lose both testicles, because if he loses
>only one the other will boost its testosterone output to
>compensate.
I'd heard that, but am assured by someone in a position to know (i.e.,
first-hand experience) that it only PARTLY compensates.
--
My webpage is at http://www.watt-evans.com
I'm serializing novels at http://www.ethshar.com/TheFinalCalling01.html
and http://www.watt-evans.com/realmsoflight1.html