day jobs
Mary K. Kuhner
I'm an academic research scientist in population genetics: I make
software tools embodying some new statistical techniques for estimating
things about populations, like their current and past sizes, the
historical pattern of migrations, and so forth.
I find it totally impossible to get stories out of this. I'm not working
in the "sexy" genetic engineering parts of the science, and in any case
the technicalities of genetic engineering don't particularly inspire me
with stories.
I think the one thing it does give me is a feeling for what scientists
actually do, as opposed to what Hollywood shows them doing (I'm perpetually
amazed how far off Hollywood is on this point).
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Michelle Garrison
> actually do, as opposed to what Hollywood shows them doing (I'm
perpetually
> amazed how far off Hollywood is on this point).
I know -- my dream job as a kid was to be a scientific consultant to
Hollywood and politician types, as neither of them ever seem to be able to
get their science straight....
:)
Dorothy J Heydt
Mary K. Kuhner <mkku...@eskimo.com> wrote:
>
>I think the one thing it does give me is a feeling for what scientists
>actually do, as opposed to what Hollywood shows them doing (I'm perpetually
>amazed how far off Hollywood is on this point).
For one thing, they're not stunningly good-looking.
Well, I'll take that back, I can think of one molecular biology
post-doc from somewhere in the former Soviet Union who was not
half bad---blond, blue eyes, an acceptable face, sort of a _joli
laid_.
But most of them look like gamers, or SF fans, or any other group
of people that spend most of their time sitting around thinking
about something, rather than tending to their appearance.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
The One True Dude
Mary K. Kuhner <mkku...@eskimo.com> wrote in message
news:89h6n3$l5e$1...@eskinews.eskimo.com...
> (Sorry not to thread this: my ISP is dropping posts again.)
>
> I'm an academic research scientist in population genetics: I make
> software tools embodying some new statistical techniques for estimating
> things about populations, like their current and past sizes, the
> historical pattern of migrations, and so forth.
>
> I find it totally impossible to get stories out of this.
Hmmmm...
"Reuters - Cambridge, MA. A Cambridge University research team announced the
discovery of a section of the human genome that appears to have been
deliberately altered some time in the distant past. The anomaly was
discovered while doing a statistical analysis study of human migration
patterns across a broad range of human genotypes. Thus far, the evidence
suggests that these altered genes are common to 98% of the groups
studied..."
Please forgive any egregious scientific errors- that's off the top of my
head, sans research. Stylistic errors are my own damn fault.
Pete
"Cats were once worshipped as gods in Pharaonic Egypt. They have never
forgotten this."
Richard Kennaway
> I'm an academic research scientist in population genetics: I make
> software tools embodying some new statistical techniques for estimating
> things about populations, like their current and past sizes, the
> historical pattern of migrations, and so forth.
> I find it totally impossible to get stories out of this.
Greg Egan, "Mitochondrial Eve".
-- Richard Kennaway
Lucy Kemnitzer
Heydt) wrote:
>In article <89h6n3$l5e$1...@eskinews.eskimo.com>,
>Mary K. Kuhner <mkku...@eskimo.com> wrote:
>>
>>I think the one thing it does give me is a feeling for what scientists
>>actually do, as opposed to what Hollywood shows them doing (I'm perpetually
>>amazed how far off Hollywood is on this point).
>
>For one thing, they're not stunningly good-looking.
>
>Well, I'll take that back, I can think of one molecular biology
>post-doc from somewhere in the former Soviet Union who was not
>half bad---blond, blue eyes, an acceptable face, sort of a _joli
>laid_.
>
>But most of them look like gamers, or SF fans, or any other group
>of people that spend most of their time sitting around thinking
>about something, rather than tending to their appearance.
The scientists I've known have been cute, generally, partly
_because_ they don't tend to their appearance. They also tend to
have engaged, mobile features.
I knew a chemist who was a true honey, but he died young, of
melanoma, as way too many chemists do.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Mary K. Kuhner
The One True Dude <ppon...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Mary K. Kuhner <mkku...@eskimo.com> wrote in message
>> I find it totally impossible to get stories out of this.
>Hmmmm...
>"Reuters - Cambridge, MA. A Cambridge University research team announced the
>discovery of a section of the human genome that appears to have been
>deliberately altered some time in the distant past. The anomaly was
>discovered while doing a statistical analysis study of human migration
>patterns across a broad range of human genotypes. Thus far, the evidence
>suggests that these altered genes are common to 98% of the groups
>studied..."
Alas, this isn't the kind of situation that turns into stories for me,
though if someone else would like it, they're quite welcome!
We're so used to hypothesizing as-yet-unknown selection to explain
weird things in the human genome that it would be hard for me to imagine
anything that would *have* to indicate deliberate alteration. I could
handwave that, though. More to the point, I just don't seem to be able
to make plots out of this sort of thing. Okay, the discovery is made...
people make various kinds of fuss...theories are put forward...and?
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Neile Graham
> (Sorry not to thread this: my ISP is dropping posts again.)
>
> I'm an academic research scientist in population genetics: I make
> software tools embodying some new statistical techniques for estimating
> things about populations, like their current and past sizes, the
> historical pattern of migrations, and so forth.
>
> I find it totally impossible to get stories out of this. I'm not working
> in the "sexy" genetic engineering parts of the science, and in any case
> the technicalities of genetic engineering don't particularly inspire me
> with stories.
>
> I think the one thing it does give me is a feeling for what scientists
> actually do, as opposed to what Hollywood shows them doing (I'm perpetually
> amazed how far off Hollywood is on this point).
>
> Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
You're at UW, aren't you? There's someone else, here, too. We really
ought to have an rasfc Seattle get together.
--Neile
--
ne...@spamkill.sff.net ..................... br...@spamkill.serv.net
http://www.sff.net/people/neile .. writing/journal/bio/music reviews
...... delete the spamkill from my email address to reach me .......
The One True Dude
Mary K. Kuhner <mkku...@eskimo.com> wrote in message
news:89k31c$sai$1...@eskinews.eskimo.com...
> We're so used to hypothesizing as-yet-unknown selection to explain
> weird things in the human genome that it would be hard for me to imagine
> anything that would *have* to indicate deliberate alteration.
Hmmm...it makes for an interesting exercise. As far as genetics go, I'm a
fairly literate layman at best, but...a section of inactive genes where the
base pairs are arranged in a repeating pattern that is extremely unlikely to
have occured naturally? Something like a mathematical progression a la
Contact?
> I could
> handwave that, though. More to the point, I just don't seem to be able
> to make plots out of this sort of thing. Okay, the discovery is made...
> people make various kinds of fuss...theories are put forward...and?
<snip>
I don't know - there's several ways I could think of to follow it up...
* Whoever did the modifications (aliens? Atlanteans? the complaints division
of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation?) is still among us, secretly running
things. The small fraction who don't have the sequence are free of the bad
guys control and have to save the rest of us. (That one should sell well to
the black helicopter nuts ;p )
* Reverse the percentages from the original case. The small portion of the
population with the modified genes are the aliens/coevolved
sapients/representatives of the master race/remnants of the lost
civilization. They help/enslave/want to destroy us. We must destroy
them/save them to save the human race. They could be evil, the could be
good, maybe they come to us like Satan in the guise of an angel of light, or
maybe they're our terrifying saviors.
Could probably go a dozen other ways, too. Heh...maybe I'll do a little
research and see if I can take this anywhere...
Pete
"I'll tell you what's wrong with him. He's dead, that's what's wrong with
him."
"No, no, he's resting. Remarkable bird, isn't it? Beautiful plumage."
Michelle Garrison
> ought to have an rasfc Seattle get together.
good idea! any excuse for pizza, beer, and a break from my computer.....
--
______________________________________________
Michelle Garrison, M.P.H. -- Research Consultant
Pediatric Evidenced-Based Medicine Project
Child Health Institute, University of Washington
office: (206) 616-1203 fax: (206) 543-5318
campus mailbox 358853
e-mail: garr...@u.washington.edu
http://depts.washington.edu/pedebm/
______________________________________________
Ian A. York
>>
>> I find it totally impossible to get stories out of this.
>
>"Reuters - Cambridge, MA. A Cambridge University research team announced the
>discovery of a section of the human genome that appears to have been
>deliberately altered some time in the distant past. The anomaly was
>discovered while doing a statistical analysis study of human migration
>patterns across a broad range of human genotypes. Thus far, the evidence
>suggests that these altered genes are common to 98% of the groups
>studied..."
I suspect that a major problem with a scientist writing an SF story on her
own work is that, in one's own field, the bullshit detector is very finely
calibrated. It's very hard to start imagining whacky stuff, because you
have this damn buzzer going off in the back of your head all the
time--"No, that's crap, remember J Exp Med July 1999? And that won't work
because it's related to Jack's work, and he showed that apyrase fixes
that. And that's crap, because it would mean ... "
Another thing is that it's hard to extrapolate from what you find exciting
to what a reader would find exciting. Right now I may be all tense and
wrapped up in the concept of regulated phosphorylation of GRP78 as a
mechanism of altering exocytosis, but that's not likely to be something
that grips a general audience. On the other hand, things like gene
therapy and such are hot news to the newspapers, but I'm kind of bored
with all that, having played with it a bunch back in the early 90's, so it
feels like retreading and rehashing old territory.
Once the ideas are made, it's not so hard to weave them in and make them
plausible and interesting, but just the free-associating part, where you
dig up some cool whacky ideas, is especially hard.
Ian
--
Ian York (iay...@panix.com) <http://www.panix.com/~iayork/>
"Blinton did not care for folk lore (very bad men never do), but
he had to act as he was told." --Andrew Lang, Books and Bookmen
Geoff Wedig
> Mary K. Kuhner <mkku...@eskimo.com> wrote in message
> news:89k31c$sai$1...@eskinews.eskimo.com...
>> We're so used to hypothesizing as-yet-unknown selection to explain
>> weird things in the human genome that it would be hard for me to imagine
>> anything that would *have* to indicate deliberate alteration.
> Hmmm...it makes for an interesting exercise. As far as genetics go, I'm a
> fairly literate layman at best, but...a section of inactive genes where the
> base pairs are arranged in a repeating pattern that is extremely unlikely to
> have occured naturally? Something like a mathematical progression a la
> Contact?
That wouldn't be somehtng you'd see in population genetics, though, or at
least, not as I understand what they do. I'm in genetic epidemiology
(though almost by accident) and we do eal with the actual base pairs on
occasion. With all the new genotyping machines, we're finding more and more
genes based on actual DNA sequences rather than phenotypic studies, but even
then it's statistical in nature. Were also dealing with 'genes' like snip
data, which are only used to find something else. And even then, we don't
look too closely. Maybe someday, but right now that level of detail is just
not required and it's *hard*.
Geoff
Brent P. Newhall
[snip]
> I suspect that a major problem with a scientist writing an SF story on her
> own work is that, in one's own field, the bullshit detector is very finely
> calibrated. It's very hard to start imagining whacky stuff, because you
> have this damn buzzer going off in the back of your head all the
> time--"No, that's crap, remember J Exp Med July 1999? And that won't work
> because it's related to Jack's work, and he showed that apyrase fixes
> that. And that's crap, because it would mean ... "
Distance from your subject is a useful thing, indeed.
>
> Another thing is that it's hard to extrapolate from what you find exciting
> to what a reader would find exciting. Right now I may be all tense and
> wrapped up in the concept of regulated phosphorylation of GRP78 as a
> mechanism of altering exocytosis, but that's not likely to be something
> that grips a general audience. On the other hand, things like gene
> therapy and such are hot news to the newspapers, but I'm kind of bored
> with all that, having played with it a bunch back in the early 90's, so it
> feels like retreading and rehashing old territory.
[snip]
I'm having that exact same difficulty in my current SS WIP. The main plot
is about a woman with a wired household -- computer, webpads, etc., all
networked together and able to communicate with each other -- who has her
household hacked into. *I* find his sort of thing extremely interesting,
but I have to find ways of making it interesting for the reader (as a
result, I'm focusing more on her reactions to the hacking than on the
technology itself).
> Once the ideas are made, it's not so hard to weave them in and make them
> plausible and interesting, but just the free-associating part, where you
> dig up some cool whacky ideas, is especially hard.
Unfortunately, so true. I'm stuck trying to come up with a plausible
security system that the protagonist will use to try to fight off the
hacker; today's versions are inordinately complicated and would require a
book-length appendix to explain.
--
Brent P. Newhall
About.com "Focus on BeOS" Guide, beos.about.com
Official comp.sys.be.help FAQ maintainer, www.other-space.com/be/faq.html
Personal homepage: www.other-space.com/brent/
Brent P. Newhall
> In article <89jviv$2i0n$1...@news.inc.net>,
> The One True Dude <ppon...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Mary K. Kuhner <mkku...@eskimo.com> wrote in message
>
> >> I find it totally impossible to get stories out of this.
>
> >Hmmmm...
> >"Reuters - Cambridge, MA. A Cambridge University research team announced the
> >discovery of a section of the human genome that appears to have been
> >deliberately altered some time in the distant past. The anomaly was
> >discovered while doing a statistical analysis study of human migration
> >patterns across a broad range of human genotypes. Thus far, the evidence
> >suggests that these altered genes are common to 98% of the groups
> >studied..."
[snip]
> More to the point, I just don't seem to be able
> to make plots out of this sort of thing. Okay, the discovery is made...
> people make various kinds of fuss...theories are put forward...and?
...the changes turns out to be nasty, causing all sorts of unpleasant
societal responses, which causes the scientist(s) responsible to get in a
depressed funk for seventy or eighty thousand words?
...the discovery causes those responsible to show up?
...those responsible have already shown up, and now their tampering is
made known?
jhmcmullen
scientific soundbites and be off with a story, so I think
a lot about the stories I find that impress me. They tend not
to be simple puzzle stories.
I'm still learning how to make stories out of ideas, but one
of the things that seems important to me is that the idea has
to be mated to a human problem. (Ideally, they reflect each
other: "The Story of Your Life" is just a brilliant example
of that kind of reflection. There's a time-travel story in
one of the "Best of InterZone" collections that's also brilliant
in that kind of mating, and "Adrift in the Dirac Sea" shows
the same brilliance.)
The human problem could be simple: let's say the protagonist
feels a little isolated, a little -- well, non-human. (I've
certainly felt that way.) And let's give her -- suddenly the
protagonist is a her -- a boyfriend who has the same problem.
The boyfriend is attacking it via neanderthal diets and
back-to-manhood retreats, while the protagonist is more
skeptical, possibly more of a humanist. (I choose this
without deep thought, but maybe it's because the tampering
raises questions in my mind about what humanity is -- but
maybe you're thinking about whether evolutionary psychology
is bogus, and that would go in a different direction.)
Maybe members of the groups in the 2% petition to be recognized
as "true" humanity.
So the relationship between the two begins to be strained. Now
let's put one of them -- the boyfriend -- in the 2%. This means
the discovery has an effect on our protagonist: whatever the
boyfriend does is going to affect her. Does he join the "True
Humanity" group? Does she really want him to go? Is this actually
a metaphor for certain Ethnic Cleansing arguments that have
been made over the years -- Well, yes, it sounds like one as
I type it. That might be a direction where I'd go; your mileage
might differ.
On the other hand, the protagonist knows that whatever "humanity"
is, it's currently defined by that 98%, and has been for
thousands of years.
Depending on what the scientists discover about this "tampering"
during the course of the story, you can nudge the protagonist
in different directions. If, for example, the tampering is
clearly implicated in certain kinds of human behaviour, that
says one thing.
Just thinking out loud.
John
* Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!
David Given
"Brent P. Newhall" <gur...@saruman.wizard.net> writes:
[...]
> Unfortunately, so true. I'm stuck trying to come up with a plausible
> security system that the protagonist will use to try to fight off the
> hacker; today's versions are inordinately complicated and would require a
> book-length appendix to explain.
Or very simple. If I was in that position?
Step 1. Locate cable modem.
Step 2. Adjust power switch to read `off'.
The house automation is now secure.
Alternatively, if the house is actively dangerous to be in, fight your way
to the under-stairs cupboard and throw the main breaker.
--
+- David Given ---------------McQ-+
| Work: d...@tao-group.com | Look behind you! A three-headed monkey!
| Play: dgi...@iname.com |
+- http://wired.st-and.ac.uk/~dg -+
T. Kenyon
> >> I find it totally impossible to get stories out of this.
<SNIP.>
I work on Varicella-Zoster Virus (Chicken Pox), an alphaherpes virus. I
do a lot of the nifty stuff with cloning (shuttling genes into and out of
viruses, between related viruses, etc.) and it's nearly impossible for me
to write cloning stories. I think it's because I'm too close. I can
imagine scenarios (Take gE, a glycoprotein of VZV and one one the major
cellular tropism determinants -- you're bored already -- and clone it into
Pseudo-Rabies Virus, another alphaherpesvirus that only infects pigs, and
see if you can get the gE(PRV) to infect human cells, thus showing that gE
is an exclusive mediator of cell tropism. And then the gE(PRV) could
infect humans and it gets loose, and ZZZZzzzzz. I'm asleep and I don't
care.) but they don't lead anywhere. Most of my fiction ideas stem from
physics. I think it's that we're so close that we can't see the picture
for the pixels.
TK Kenyon
"God not only plays dice [with the universe], He also sometimes throws
the dice where they cannot be seen."
--Stephan Hawkings
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
<tke...@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu> wrote:
>On 1 Mar 2000, Mary K. Kuhner wrote:
>> >> I find it totally impossible to get stories out of this.
>I work on Varicella-Zoster Virus (Chicken Pox), an alphaherpes virus.
> I think it's that we're so close that we can't see the picture
>for the pixels.
Ever read Greg Egan's "Moral Virologist"?
vlatko
--
vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr
Brent P. Newhall
> In article <Pine.LNX.4.10.100030...@saruman.wizard.net>,
> "Brent P. Newhall" <gur...@saruman.wizard.net> writes:
> [...]
> > Unfortunately, so true. I'm stuck trying to come up with a plausible
> > security system that the protagonist will use to try to fight off the
> > hacker; today's versions are inordinately complicated and would require a
> > book-length appendix to explain.
>
> Or very simple. If I was in that position?
>
> Step 1. Locate cable modem.
> Step 2. Adjust power switch to read `off'.
>
> The house automation is now secure.
I hadn't immediately thought of that, but in this case it's not quite that
simple anyway -- the protagonist is being actively harrassed by the hacker
in question. If she were to switch her 'net connection off, then he'd
still be there the next time she turns it back on.
She needs to not only get him out of her system, but block him from ever
returning.
The obvious solution would be for her to switch her connection off, set up
blocking mechanisms, then switch it back on. Even that won't quite work;
she needs to find out who he is -- electronically speaking -- so that she
can erect the appropriate blocks, and he's smart enough that he won't
leave obvious evidence. She'll have to do some live tampering.
This may not be an appropriate short story idea. But I figure that I can
at least try.
> Alternatively, if the house is actively dangerous to be in, fight your way
> to the under-stairs cupboard and throw the main breaker.
It won't be actively dangerous; simply non-functional and annoying to live
in. Imagine if a harasser (sp?) had control over your TVs, VCRs,
computers, and a few household appliances, to varying degrees. They
couldn't spontaneously shoot laser beams, but one couldn't exactly just
ignore the intrusion.
It will undoubtedly be a rather loud experience, unfortunately for the
protagonist.
PWrede6492
"Brent P. Newhall" <gur...@saruman.wizard.net> writes:
>It won't be actively dangerous; simply non-functional and annoying to live
>in. Imagine if a harasser (sp?) had control over your TVs, VCRs,
>computers, and a few household appliances, to varying degrees. They
>couldn't spontaneously shoot laser beams, but one couldn't exactly just
>ignore the intrusion.
Um, Brent, why does she have to be connected to the net at all times?
Trading her nice ISDN line in on a dial-up connection would be
annoying, but as long as she did that, the guy could only do things
while she was actively on-line -- meaning, the two minute window
that she takes to download her e-mail and newsgroups (that's what
it takes me), plus any web-surfing time...and if she's surfing, it's
easy enough to log off the minute the guy shows up.
There are far more serious, dangerous ways of harassing somebody
from on-line than taking over their appliances for two minutes a day.
Unless you're positing a future where permanent connection is so
much the norm that dial-up isn't even an option any more?
Patricia C. Wrede
Steve Taylor
> There are far more serious, dangerous ways of harassing somebody
> from on-line than taking over their appliances for two minutes a day.
> Unless you're positing a future where permanent connection is so
> much the norm that dial-up isn't even an option any more?
Off topic I know, but I'd be surprised if we weren't all permanently
connected within a decade or so.
> Patricia C. Wrede
Steve
Lucy Kemnitzer
right, and I can't seem to get the teaching posiition of my dreams
(1/2 time eighth-grade "core"), so I sub, like I've said before,
right?
I am so burned out. I have been assaulted (minor minor assault
and I told the prinicpal not to call the cops: the kid twisted my
arm is all), I have had to deal with pornographic chalkboard
graffiti, missing lesson plans, kids spraying overhead projector
cleaner all over the place, ridiculous lesson plans, hilarious
revolts, trash, trash talk, inappropriate lesson plans, laser
pointers, mirror flashes, stupid lesson plans, getting called at
7:45 for a class that starts at 7:30, idiot discipline plans, and
I get paid, most days, $40, because the city school district has
cleverly hired a whole passel of part-time teachers, and when I do
by a miracle get a whole day of work it's $70. Thank dog I don';t
have to pay the going rate for housing, or I'd be living in my
car.
I like teaching. I like junior high school aged kids. I like
subbing, usually, but this is a drag.
When the task force I'm on is done with its work, my next civic
action will be to take on the school board on the subject of how
they treat their substitute teachers. Sigh.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Kristopher/EOS
I refuse to be premanently connected, or to connect my
bloody fridge to the net!
Kristopher/EOS
C Sherwin
Lucy, have you thought that it might be the kids, also? I remember when
I was in school, I hated days we had subs because so many of the kids in
the class would act up.
I hate to say this, but an assault is an assault. I hope that the kid's
parents were notified, at least! Had he been strong enough or less
conscious of his strength, he _could_ have broken your arm.
I'm sending good thoughts your way so you will get your ideal job!
Best of luck,
Candy
Lucy Kemnitzer
Usually, I walk into the class, read the plans, write "Ms Soandso
sends her regrets. I am Ms Kemnitzer," give a dazzling speech
about how I need exquisite silence during the roll call or I'll
mark somebody absent by mistake, explain the purpose of a
substitute, and they're fine. Or, rather, fine-ish. It doesn't
work if the classroom has been overly assertive-disciplined, or
if, as lately, the class has been left with nothing to look
forward to (work is better than nothing).
I don't, honestly, usually have that much trouble with "acting
up." Once I reassure the kids that I will take care of them, they
relax and we get on with the day.
It's just been a bad run.
>
>I hate to say this, but an assault is an assault. I hope that the kid's
>parents were notified, at least! Had he been strong enough or less
>conscious of his strength, he _could_ have broken your arm.
Oh, this kid was not conscious of his strength. He was aware of
only one thing: he can't do school, and it makes him miserable --
he has multiple issues (I have had him before, when he just broke
down and told me he couldn't read at all. His English is at about
the five year old level, and his Spanish sounds not much better,
he has no idea how a thirteen year old is supposed to behave and
people are dying around him. He needs, thank you, a one-on-one
combination teacher/therapist/foster mom who is thoroughly
bilingual, and a bed he can sleep in all night, and an absence of
violence in his life. I can't give him any more than a firm and
sympathetic guide for the day).
Walking home today I fell in with two girls from the same class,
who were trying to borrow a lighter from me for a science fair
project, but they didn't know the word for it, not in English, not
in Spanish, and not the word for candle either.
They don't have bilingual remedial classes anymore, because some
fool convinced everybody they should pass a state constitutional
ammendment against it.
Oh, and tomorrow they're going to vote to send fourteen year olds
to prison for life. Not juvie: prison.
Lucy Kemnitzer
(this is such a fine bitter example of rant drift that I'm sending
it antway though it is off-topic)
Brenda
Lucy Kemnitzer wrote:
>
>
> I like teaching. I like junior high school aged kids. I like
> subbing, usually, but this is a drag.
>
I doubt this will be helpful, but in my region, they're turning over
rocks and poking sticks down holes for teachers, and throwing money at
them too. Of course you'd have to move to the Washington DC area.
Brenda
--
---------
Brenda W. Clough, author of HOW LIKE A GOD, from Tor Books
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda/
-dsr-
"Brent P. Newhall" <gur...@saruman.wizard.net> writes:
>
>> "Brent P. Newhall" <gur...@saruman.wizard.net> writes:
>> > security system that the protagonist will use to try to fight off the
>> > hacker; today's versions are inordinately complicated and would require a
>> > book-length appendix to explain.
>>
>> Or very simple. If I was in that position?
>>
>> Step 1. Locate cable modem.
>> Step 2. Adjust power switch to read `off'.
>
> simple anyway -- the protagonist is being actively harrassed by the hacker
> in question. If she were to switch her 'net connection off, then he'd
> still be there the next time she turns it back on.
>
> She needs to not only get him out of her system, but block him from ever
> returning.
>
> The obvious solution would be for her to switch her connection off, set up
> blocking mechanisms, then switch it back on. Even that won't quite work;
> she needs to find out who he is -- electronically speaking -- so that she
> can erect the appropriate blocks, and he's smart enough that he won't
> leave obvious evidence. She'll have to do some live tampering.
There are four basic security models:
promiscuous, permissive, protective, paranoid.
She used to have the promiscuous model: no particular security blocking
access to her home gateway. You've examined permissive (everything's
allowed except when explicitly denied) and concluded it doesn't work here.
She needs to move to protective (everything denied unless specifically
allowed) and the story development might make her move to paranoid:
all connections and actions completely filtered on a case-by-case basis.
-dsr-
(I can be mistaken for a security expert in the dark.)
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
>Gareth Wilson <gr...@clear.net.nz> scripsit:
>> Lucy Kemnitzer wrote in message <38c4b0fa...@enews.newsguy.com>...
>> >Oh, and tomorrow they're going to vote to send fourteen year olds
>> >to prison for life. Not juvie: prison.
>>
>> Presumably only those fourteen year olds who've murdered or raped someone.
>
>Rotten assumption; recasting it as 'those who have been convicted of
>murdering or raping someone' isn't as rotten, but I wouldn't be at all
>surprised if it was a 3 strikes law.
>
>> I doubt life imprisonment will do them any good, but I have to
>> wonder what happens to them now.
>
>It almost has to be less awful than the consequences of what can
>confidently be predicted to happen if they get put in a high security
>prison at 14.
>--
Mea culpa for the offtopic. Mea maxima culpa. I will not
offtopic again. I promise.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Russell Wallace
>
> > I think the one thing it does give me is a feeling for what scientists
> > actually do, as opposed to what Hollywood shows them doing (I'm
> perpetually
> > amazed how far off Hollywood is on this point).
Um, is there anything Hollywood *isn't* several light years off on?
> I know -- my dream job as a kid was to be a scientific consultant to
> Hollywood and politician types, as neither of them ever seem to be able to
> get their science straight....
I suspect it would be a frustrating job.
"Okay, this is an interesting script, but there are some realism prob -"
"Oook!"
"Wait, please put down that jawbone -"
"Oook! Oook, oook!!"
Okay, I'm being unkind, there are exceptions. 'Deep Impact' for example
- that one gave me the impression the script writers listened to the
scientific advice, understood most of it, then did what they had to do
to make a good movie, and they were probably right.
--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem."
Russell Wallace
mailto:mano...@iol.ie
Russell Wallace
>
> In article <89jviv$2i0n$1...@news.inc.net>,
> The One True Dude <ppon...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Mary K. Kuhner <mkku...@eskimo.com> wrote in message
>
>
> >"Reuters - Cambridge, MA. A Cambridge University research team announced the
> >discovery of a section of the human genome that appears to have been
> >deliberately altered some time in the distant past. The anomaly was
> >discovered while doing a statistical analysis study of human migration
> >patterns across a broad range of human genotypes. Thus far, the evidence
> >suggests that these altered genes are common to 98% of the groups
> >studied..."
>
> though if someone else would like it, they're quite welcome!
>
> weird things in the human genome that it would be hard for me to imagine
> anything that would *have* to indicate deliberate alteration.
Yeah. Let me see...
How about a group of sequences that:
1) Code for brain proteins.
2) Have no analogs in any other known life form, including chimpanzees.
3) Are common to *all* Homo sapiens.
4) Are pretty much absolutely invariant, thus suggesting on the basis of
normal mutation rates an age of only a few centuries. Further analysis
shows that they fail totally under any typical mutation.
5) Have a peculiar syntactic structure... I'm kind of floundering here,
but my intent is: Computer program code (I'm a programmer by profession,
not a biologist) written by most humans shows clear regularities of
layout that are not essential to its actual functioning, but are
important to its comprehensibility to the people writing and maintaining
it. I'm not quite sure how that could be translated to DNA (mere
repeating blocks won't do it), but one could probably handwave a way?
That wouldn't *prove* deliberate alteration, but it might strongly
indicate it.
> I could
> handwave that, though. More to the point, I just don't seem to be able
> to make plots out of this sort of thing. Okay, the discovery is made...
> people make various kinds of fuss...theories are put forward...and?
And we're on the track of whoever Uplifted H. sapiens.
You'd need other plot elements of course. Let me see...
Some sort of derelict alien transport system is found, coincidentally,
at around the same time. A ship or a gate, buried under sediments dated
to 100-200,000 years. The protagonists put two and two together and
start investigating. Sure enough, they get the transport system working
(I'm inclined towards a gate at this point, cf. 'Ancient Shores') and go
on the track of whoever was behind it.
Meanwhile, whatever bad guys scared away the Uplifters are on the prowl
again. (Shades of 'Gateway'.) Oh, and throw in another couple of human
factions as well. Le voila, a good set of interlocking plots.
Hmm, I might use that some day. More likely in a roleplaying campaign
than a novel; I'm a lot better at coming up with plots than writing them
out fully unaided, my current WIP is my first serious attempt at
stand-alone fiction; so if anyone else wants to use it, by all means go
ahead :)
Mary Kay Kare
> Okay, I'm being unkind, there are exceptions. 'Deep Impact' for example
> - that one gave me the impression the script writers listened to the
> scientific advice, understood most of it, then did what they had to do
> to make a good movie, and they were probably right.
>
I hate to break it to you, but throughout Deep Impact my scientist husband
(physicist/rocket scientist) kept up a running commentary whispered into
my ear about just what was wrong with their science. Afterwards, he did
allow that he could understand the dramatic necessity for their choices
though.
MK
--
Mary Kay Kare
Science Fiction Fandom: where people contradict you just to be polite.
Geoff Wedig
>> Okay, I'm being unkind, there are exceptions. 'Deep Impact' for example
>> - that one gave me the impression the script writers listened to the
>> scientific advice, understood most of it, then did what they had to do
>> to make a good movie, and they were probably right.
>>
> I hate to break it to you, but throughout Deep Impact my scientist husband
> (physicist/rocket scientist) kept up a running commentary whispered into
> my ear about just what was wrong with their science. Afterwards, he did
> allow that he could understand the dramatic necessity for their choices
> though.
I couldn't, since some of the things (such as that ship not being in any
way, shape or form an Orion, or the fact that Orion's use nuclear bombs for
propulsion, not jets as shown, or the fact that said bombs being plentiful,
they shouldn't have had that 'no more bombs' problem) Mind you, the last of
these is plot driven, but the others were just lack of knowlege.
Geoff
Janet Kegg
>
>
>Lucy Kemnitzer wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> I like teaching. I like junior high school aged kids. I like
>> subbing, usually, but this is a drag.
>>
>
> I doubt this will be helpful, but in my region, they're turning over
>rocks and poking sticks down holes for teachers, and throwing money at
>them too. Of course you'd have to move to the Washington DC area.
And to be equally unhelpful, substitute teachers in New York City are
being paid $200 a day. That's what the twentysomthing niece (an
"aspiring actress" as they say) of a friend of mine is getting -- and
she hasn't any teaching credentials.
-- Janet
James Nicoll
Mary Kay Kare <ka...@sirius.com> wrote:
>In article <38C589...@iol.ie>, mano...@iol.ie wrote:
>
>> Okay, I'm being unkind, there are exceptions. 'Deep Impact' for example
>> - that one gave me the impression the script writers listened to the
>> scientific advice, understood most of it, then did what they had to do
>> to make a good movie, and they were probably right.
>>
>I hate to break it to you, but throughout Deep Impact my scientist husband
>(physicist/rocket scientist) kept up a running commentary whispered into
>my ear about just what was wrong with their science. Afterwards, he did
>allow that he could understand the dramatic necessity for their choices
>though.
>
reporter and the Two Cute Kids subplots? A film about the covert
construction of the ship and the mission to the comet would have
been cool all on its own.
--
Imperiums to Order's 16th Anniversary Sale will be March 11, 2000.
Appearances by Julie Czerneda and James Alan Gardner.
Heather Anne Nicoll
> I hate to break it to you, but throughout Deep Impact my scientist husband
> (physicist/rocket scientist) kept up a running commentary whispered into
> my ear about just what was wrong with their science. Afterwards, he did
> allow that he could understand the dramatic necessity for their choices
> though.
I think this is the one of the movies of this type I went to see. Saw
it with an atmospheric/planetary sciences major. I heckled the physics
in space; he heckled the atmospheric science. We had a grand old time.
I think movie theaters should have 'heckling' and 'non-heckling'
sections.
I hit him up for writing research recently, actually; I needed a basic
primer on where I'd need to put continents so I could get the weather
patterns I knew I had, since I felt profoundly uncomfortable just waving
my hands around and saying, 'The weather's the way I want it to be
because I said so' and I was drawing a world map for the planet in
question at the time.
--
Heather Nicoll - Darkhawk - http://aelfhame.dslonramp.net/~darkhawk/
I think it's a shame when I get feeling better when I'm feeling no pain.
- Gordon Lightfoot, "Sundown"
Cathy Purchis-Jefferies
> I hit him up for writing research recently, actually; I needed a basic
> primer on where I'd need to put continents so I could get the weather
> patterns I knew I had, since I felt profoundly uncomfortable just waving
> my hands around and saying, 'The weather's the way I want it to be
> because I said so' and I was drawing a world map for the planet in
> question at the time.
Can I borrow him? I'm having a similar problem, and since I've got these guys in
a sailing ship, the weather's kind of important. (I keep telling myself I don't
really have to work out the plate techtonics in a bloody FANTASY novel, but it
sits in the back of my brain and nags me anyway.)
--
"George" Cathy Purchis cat...@value.net
The Peregrine Hacker Interpretive Web sites
http://pwp.value.net/catpur/hacker.htm
Gareth Wilson
>
>Oh, and tomorrow they're going to vote to send fourteen year olds
>to prison for life. Not juvie: prison.
Presumably only those fourteen year olds who've murdered or raped someone. I
doubt life imprisonment will do them any good, but I have to wonder what
happens to them now.
Gareth Wilson
Christchurch
New Zealand
email gr...@clear.net.nz
Gareth Wilson
Russell Wallace wrote in message <38C589...@iol.ie>...
>
>Okay, I'm being unkind, there are exceptions. 'Deep Impact' for example
>- that one gave me the impression the script writers listened to the
>scientific advice, understood most of it, then did what they had to do
>to make a good movie, and they were probably right.
>
Also "Law and Order". They did an episode featuring a particle physicist and
got every detail of his work right. Except that he wore a lab coat :)
Russell Wallace
> > - that one gave me the impression the script writers listened to the
> > scientific advice, understood most of it, then did what they had to do
> > to make a good movie, and they were probably right.
> >
> (physicist/rocket scientist) kept up a running commentary whispered into
> my ear about just what was wrong with their science. Afterwards, he did
> allow that he could understand the dramatic necessity for their choices
> though.
Er, that's what I was saying :)
There were a zillion things wrong with their science, but I'm granting
them this: I allow that I can understand the dramatic necessity for
their choices.
Heather Anne Nicoll
> Can I borrow him? I'm having a similar problem, and since I've got these
> guys in a sailing ship, the weather's kind of important. (I keep telling
> myself I don't really have to work out the plate techtonics in a bloody
> FANTASY novel, but it sits in the back of my brain and nags me anyway.)
That's exactly why I was working it out myself -- all of a sudden, I had
a ship.
I can try to dredge up my notes and be more detailed, so please bear
with me as this is off top of head entirely. I'm confident the gist is
right, but the details may well be wrong in places, for which I
apologize in advance.
Assuming a planet with the basic size/water surface/distance from
Sol-type star (basically, assuming an Earthlike world with
different-shaped landmasses):
The convection zone goes to about 20 degrees on either side of the
equator (though the zone actually ranges on the line where sunlight is
most direct, I shall term it the equator because that's about the right
approximation).
Heavy rainfall about at the equator - the evaporation rate is high, and
when it hits the condensation point as it goes up, it comes right down
again. At the outer edges of the convection zone, there's very little
rainfall; since all the water fell down in the center, when it gets to
the edge of the convection cell and starts coming down again, it's very
dry.
Beyond the convection zone, there's the usual west->east windflow
pattern, with the progression of weather fronts, &c.
Storm systems are generated in part by water currents as well;
therefore, the Carribean and east coast of North America get as many
hurricanes as they do because the water flow up the coast of Africa hits
the water current coming down off Europe and generates turbulent water
patterns that can eventually grow into baby hurricanes. (This was the
bit that I was actually trying to research, since I needed to arrange my
continents such that the site of one of the cities had fairly frequent
hurricanes.)
The largest disruputive feature in landforms is, of course, the
Himalayas; fronts that hit there fragment and much of the air gets
forced southwards towards Australia (which is why much of the air/water
pollution gathers in the Pacific a bit east of Australia). Overall,
wind speeds tend to be faster in Earth's southern hemisphere because
there's less landmass to slow them down.
(I believe the seasonal monsoon winds owe a great deal to the effects of
the Himalayas, but as I didn't have monsoons to worry about, I didn't
work on that bit.)
Sailing ships would likely also be wanting to be aware of water
currents; I know that those captains in the days around the American
Revolution who knew how to find the stream of warm water that was
flowing up from the Caribbean towards the poles while heading to
England, and avoided it on the way back, tended to make significantly
better time. Such currents would be mostly running towards the poles
(as the corresponding coldwater currents would most likely be deep-sea
ones) and affected most strongly by the shapes of the continents and
Coriolis force.
Hope that helps. (And hope that I didn't mangle it too badly.)
Lucy Kemnitzer
<cat...@value.DELETETHIS.net> wrote:
>Heather Anne Nicoll wrote:
>
>> I hit him up for writing research recently, actually; I needed a basic
>> primer on where I'd need to put continents so I could get the weather
>> patterns I knew I had, since I felt profoundly uncomfortable just waving
>> my hands around and saying, 'The weather's the way I want it to be
>> because I said so' and I was drawing a world map for the planet in
>> question at the time.
>
>Can I borrow him? I'm having a similar problem, and since I've got these guys in
>a sailing ship, the weather's kind of important. (I keep telling myself I don't
>really have to work out the plate techtonics in a bloody FANTASY novel, but it
>sits in the back of my brain and nags me anyway.)
Me too, for finetuning the world in the work just finished -- is
it impossible for me to have a west coast southern hemisphere
where the weather comes from the west and creates a Mediterranean
climate and the rain shadow is to the east of the eastern
mountains? I look at Chile and I despair. Coastal deserts,
indeed! Who would have thought! Then I look at the coast of
Africa and I am confused. Then I look at the West Coast of India
and I get a headache.
Then I say, damn it, I'm not flipping this continent, the weather
is the way I say it is because I say it is so.
Anyway, it's got less true desert than Earth, that has to mean
something, If only that I'm a climate wimp, but we knew that
already.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Alma Hromic
Anne Nicoll) wrote:
>Mary Kay Kare <ka...@sirius.com> wrote:
>> I hate to break it to you, but throughout Deep Impact my scientist husband
>> (physicist/rocket scientist) kept up a running commentary whispered into
>> my ear about just what was wrong with their science. Afterwards, he did
>> allow that he could understand the dramatic necessity for their choices
>> though.
>
>I think this is the one of the movies of this type I went to see. Saw
>it with an atmospheric/planetary sciences major. I heckled the physics
>in space; he heckled the atmospheric science. We had a grand old time.
>
>I think movie theaters should have 'heckling' and 'non-heckling'
>sections.
you'd have hated to be anywhere near me when i went to see
"independence day".
item: these HUUUUUUGE spaceships turn up and park over every major
city on teh planet. the american president looks young enough to have
grown up on classic science fiction and star wars stuff. what does he
do against these HUUUUUUUge spaceships? he sends the airforce at them.
said airforce's missiles bounce straight back. "oooooh," says
slack-jawed president. "they have *shields*..."
no kidding.
item: the token minorities in the stolen spaceship, teh jewish genius
and the hotshot black pilot, deliver the virus to the aliens'
mothership and skedaddle. we won't even GO into the relationships of
software, hardware, and the alien factor. they deliver it - okay -
they deliver a hell of a cold to the mothership, and they skedaddle.
behind them, the mothership blows up in one MOTHER of a sneeze; the
screen shows rather graphically this outgoing shockwave filled with
debris and stuff. our heroes get caught up by this... next scene, the
stolen spaceship is parked a couple of hundred meters from the base
from which it left and our token minorities are emerging, unscathed,
to greet the wimmin whut love them, running to them with arms
outstretched.
i actually sat up in disgust and said loudly, "like HELL they survived
that shockwave."
you should have seen the looks i got from the non-heckling section of
the cinema.
need i go on? <g>
A.
***************
"The difference between journalism and literature
is that journalism is unreadable
and literature is unread."
Oscar Wilde
Sion Arrowsmith
>Then I say, damn it, I'm not flipping this continent, the weather
>is the way I say it is because I say it is so.
The world in my WIP has the advantage that I only care about one
fairly small continent (plus the knowledge that there's another
one out there somewhere) -- I don't need to know, much less the
reader, how it all arranges to produce the climate. OTOH, I had
the nasty realisation yesterday that setting off to cross the
arid tableland at the heart of this continent in autumn was not
a very wise plan. The problem being that when the plot was first
layed down, it was a desert, and only later was the geography
altered to be more plausible.
--
\S -- si...@chiark.greenend.org.uk -- http://www.chaos.org.uk/~sion/
___ | "Frankly I have no feelings towards penguins one way or the other"
\X/ | -- Arthur C. Clarke
her nu becomeþ se bera eadward ofdun hlæddre heafdes bæce bump bump bump
Sylvia Li
>
> Brent P. Newhall wrote:
>
> >> Step 1. Locate cable modem.
> >> Step 2. Adjust power switch to read `off'.
>
> > I hadn't immediately thought of that, but in this case it's not quite
> > that simple anyway -- the protagonist is being actively harrassed by
> > the hacker in question. If she were to switch her 'net connection off,
> > then he'd still be there the next time she turns it back on.
>
> net will permanently dispose of this problem. The net-connected PC can then
> be 'sacrificed' as a firewall.
>
> > The obvious solution would be for her to switch her connection off, set
> > up blocking mechanisms, then switch it back on. Even that won't quite
> > work; she needs to find out who he is -- electronically speaking -- so
> > that she can erect the appropriate blocks, and he's smart enough that
> > he won't leave obvious evidence.
>
> from.
>
Hmmm, but you know, the idea isn't to find a way to make the attack and
therefore the story impossible; the whole point, as I understand it, is
about being electronically attacked and having *trouble* fighting it off.
Depending on when the story is taking place, the sophistication of both the
attacks and what she can do about them will vary, but given that this is an
arms race that's not going to be over any time soon, I think the basic
story situation is going to stay quite plausible. The trick is going to be
balancing the attacks and the defenses in a reasonable way.
When *is* the story taking place? Next year? Five years from now? Ten?
Fifty? Five hundred? Each of these time frames would need a completely
different set of answers.
--
Sylvia Li
| "The empire, long divided, must
To unmunge for reply, eXit: | unite, long united, must
meta...@Xescape.ca | divide. Thus it has ever been."
| -- Three Kingdoms
Lucy Kemnitzer
<si...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>>Then I say, damn it, I'm not flipping this continent, the weather
>>is the way I say it is because I say it is so.
>
>The world in my WIP has the advantage that I only care about one
>fairly small continent (plus the knowledge that there's another
>one out there somewhere) -- I don't need to know, much less the
>reader, how it all arranges to produce the climate. OTOH, I had
>the nasty realisation yesterday that setting off to cross the
>arid tableland at the heart of this continent in autumn was not
>a very wise plan. The problem being that when the plot was first
>layed down, it was a desert, and only later was the geography
>altered to be more plausible.
Of course I'm missing the details that made this a problem, but
looking at the continents of Earth, there are deserts at the heart
of most of them. The exceptions are Africa and South America, who
wear their deserts at the edges.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Karen E. Leonard
Brenda wrote:
>
> Lucy Kemnitzer wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > I like teaching. I like junior high school aged kids. I like
> > subbing, usually, but this is a drag.
> >
>
> I doubt this will be helpful, but in my region, they're turning over
> rocks and poking sticks down holes for teachers, and throwing money at
> them too. Of course you'd have to move to the Washington DC area.
>
> Brenda
>
Here, too. Especially desirable, I guess, are qualified math and
science teachers. We've also discovered that certified German
teachers are in short supply in the Rio Grande Valley.
Advantages: Wonderful people. Nice weather in winters. (?)Current
fad for taking off 3 days for T-day. UIL inter-school contests in
numerous academic areas and music, as well as athletics, allows the
skinny kid to amass neato trophies, too. Very family-oriented area.
Murder is still news here.
I have no idea what the salary structure is, but ATPE or TSTA could
likely tell anyone wondering. Basic setup is a State minimum plus
district supplement. Incoming teachers are likely required to obtain
Texas History & Government courses, but I don't know for sure. Temp
certification is available.
Disadvantages: Summer is hot. Current fad for sneak-extending the
school year; they appear to be aiming for all-year school by the back
door. Last (this) year the school year started--for the KIDS--about
Aug. 9. Some districts are having a lot of trouble bringing their
(formerly-shorted) kids up to reasonable competency as measured by
TAAS scores. According to some teachers, TAAS itself. According to
some coach/teacher types, the no-pass, no play rules. Among murders
making the news lately is the hit on the police chief of Reynosa,
Tamps., Mexico, in one of the finest restaurants of that city, about
10 miles away.
Sorry for wandering so far off-topic.
Karen
White Crow
>>sections.
i certianly agree with that. However, mostly b/c I fall into the
non-heckling camp. I guess I just have a very low threshold that needs to
be crossed for me to accept a HOllywood storyline. (books, that's a
different matter entirely). I guess it's b/c I know there's only 2 hours
to tell a story, that sometimes they need to wonkify things. As long as
they don't make any truly egregious errors (meaning they don't just bend
things a little to the "popular" understanding of things--about things I
know about), that don't look like they were put there for a good reason
and on purpose, I'm ok.
As long as I don't think about it too hard. But then, I rarely see movies
for the purpose of thinking.
If the chars are cool and/or there are lots of big explosions, then I'm
willing to be entertained. So, I enjoyed Independence day, despite it's
errors, mostly b/c lots of stuff blew up. (My enjoyment lasted until I
took my family, up visiting me from Florida, to the White House and had to
painfully listen to my 12 yo brother asking the Secret Service guy what
would happen if the aliens *did* attack. By the look on the guy's face,
my brother was by far not the only one who asked).
Jennifer
--
The White Crow
FUDGE Deryni and more: http://www.io.com/~whytcrow/rpg.html
"I hope I never do anything without due thought, even if the thought sometimes
has to shift its feet pretty briskly to keep up with the deed." -- Cadfael
"You must have been very wicked, for your God has sent me to punish you
for your sins." -- Ghenghis Khan
Lucy Kemnitzer
<kleo...@hiline.net> wrote:
>
>
>Brenda wrote:
>>
>> Lucy Kemnitzer wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >
>> > I like teaching. I like junior high school aged kids. I like
>> > subbing, usually, but this is a drag.
>> >
>>
>> I doubt this will be helpful, but in my region, they're turning over
>> rocks and poking sticks down holes for teachers, and throwing money at
>> them too. Of course you'd have to move to the Washington DC area.
>>
>> Brenda
>>
>Here, too.
-- Janet (Speaking of the Rio Grande Valley)
And Janet Kegg said:
>And to be equally unhelpful, substitute teachers in New York City are
>being paid $200 a day.
Well, I'm going to turn this on-topic again after having vented
off-topic in the first place.
You know Miles Vorkosigan and Barrayar? And how Barrayar is an
awful awful place?
I also live in an awful awful place <insert long lamentation about
how every horrible current political trend seems to have started
in California, but remember that I didn't actually put it here>.
It is physically beautiful, but that's not why I stay here. I
stay here because it's mine, and I belong to it.
And I think I do write, a lot of the time, about the dilemma of
loving your people desperately, deeply, and even romantically,
even so. Oog, I just thought of a horrible overextension of this
thing, which I for one don't want to read, let alone write.
Lucy Kemnitzer
David Given
ang...@ihug.co.nz (Alma Hromic) writes:
[...]
> item: these HUUUUUUGE spaceships turn up and park over every major
> city on teh planet. the american president looks young enough to have
> grown up on classic science fiction and star wars stuff. what does he
> do against these HUUUUUUUge spaceships? he sends the airforce at them.
> said airforce's missiles bounce straight back. "oooooh," says
> slack-jawed president. "they have *shields*..."
I actually quite liked that; no-one needed any explanation as to what they
were, everyone just knew.
[...]
> they deliver a hell of a cold to the mothership, and they skedaddle.
> behind them, the mothership blows up in one MOTHER of a sneeze; the
> screen shows rather graphically this outgoing shockwave filled with
> debris and stuff. our heroes get caught up by this... next scene, the
[...]
> i actually sat up in disgust and said loudly, "like HELL they survived
> that shockwave."
Well, seeing as the mothership was stated to be a third the size of the
moon, all the material reentering Earth's atmosphere would render it
completely uninhabitable. But let's not quibble.
[...]
> need i go on? <g>
The solution: go and watch _Mars Attacks_. Again. It's the ideal antidote.
(BTW, the bit that raised the biggest laugh in _Independence Day_ was the
President's speech. It was so... so... corny. Badly written, too.)
--
+- David Given ---------------McQ-+ "Opportunity is missed by most people
| Work: d...@tao-group.com | because it's dressed in overalls and looks
| Play: dgi...@iname.com | like work." --- Thomas Edison
+- http://wired.st-and.ac.uk/~dg -+
Jo Walton
ang...@ihug.co.nz "Alma Hromic" writes:
> you'd have hated to be anywhere near me when i went to see
> "independence day".
<snip>
> i actually sat up in disgust and said loudly, "like HELL they survived
> that shockwave."
Well, when I saw the exotic dancer girlfriend and her dog trapped in
the tunnel with a wall of fire coming down it and she hid off to the
side, I thought she was dead - I mean it was in character, she wasn't
an educated person, she had no idea what would happen to the oxygen.
But oh dear.
Then I reminded myself it was a film, it worked by movie-logic, and
she'd be fine, which she was.
I liked that film right up to when the spaceship we had back in the
fifties turned out to be Roswell nonsense instead of an Orion.
But suspending disbelief is somehow a different thing in films
- in a written work there's more time and there isn't human body
language convincing you.
> you should have seen the looks i got from the non-heckling section of
> the cinema.
>
> need i go on? <g>
I think they should have heckling screenings and non-heckling screenings.
I would always prefer watching things quietly. Talking about it is for
after.
--
Jo - - I kissed a kif at Kefk - - J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk - Interstichia; Poetry; RASFW FAQ; etc.
my fantasy novel :The King's Peace: coming from Tor in October
sample chapters on http://www.tor.com/sampleKingsPeace.html
Lori Selke
Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>Me too, for finetuning the world in the work just finished -- is
>it impossible for me to have a west coast southern hemisphere
>where the weather comes from the west and creates a Mediterranean
>climate and the rain shadow is to the east of the eastern
>mountains? I look at Chile and I despair. Coastal deserts,
>indeed! Who would have thought! Then I look at the coast of
>Africa and I am confused. Then I look at the West Coast of India
>and I get a headache.
I'm confused, too -- the west coast of Africa has a desert,
too, the Namibian. (The more lush parts of the west African
coast seem to have a cooling "July Wind" coming from somewhere-or-other.
Can you tell I'm a climate wimp too?)
Lori
--
se...@io.com
"If you were happy every day of your life, you wouldn't be human.
You'd be a game-show host." -- Heathers
Lori Selke
>> >Oh, and tomorrow they're going to vote to send fourteen year olds
>> >to prison for life. Not juvie: prison.
>>
>> Presumably only those fourteen year olds who've murdered or raped someone.
>
>murdering or raping someone' isn't as rotten, but I wouldn't be at all
>surprised if it was a 3 strikes law.
Not even. "Increases punishment for gang-related felonies, home-invasion
robbery, carjacking, witness intimidation, and drive-by shooting; and
creates crime of gang-recruitment activities." That was the ballot text.
I can't find my full initiate text at the moment (buried in the recycling
pile).
Lori Selke
Kristopher/EOS <eosl...@net-link.net> wrote:
>Steve Taylor wrote:
>> Off topic I know, but I'd be surprised if we weren't all
>> permanently connected within a decade or so.
>
>I refuse to be premanently connected, or to connect my
>bloody fridge to the net!
Luddite.
Lori
(me, too. Don't want it talking to me, either.)
Lisa A Leutheuser
Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>
>Me too, for finetuning the world in the work just finished -- is
>it impossible for me to have a west coast southern hemisphere
>where the weather comes from the west and creates a Mediterranean
>climate and the rain shadow is to the east of the eastern
>mountains? I look at Chile and I despair. Coastal deserts,
>indeed! Who would have thought! Then I look at the coast of
>Africa and I am confused. Then I look at the West Coast of India
>and I get a headache.
Ocean currents are your friend. India's western cost has a warm
ocean current.
Your cool costal deserts (the Atacama in Chile and the Namib in Nambia)
are dry because of the convection cells, and they are cool because of
cold off-shore ocean currents. The cold current also makes the desert
even drier because less water evaporates from the ocean surface, thus
less water falls on the land. They get a lot of fog, but almost no rain.
On our Earth, the hottest deserts are subtropical. Notice that most of
our deserts lie on or near the Cancer and Capricorn tropics, including
the Atacama and the Namib. (That's the winds and convection cells
working.) Between 35 and 50 degrees latitude you'll find cold-winter
deserts -- hot in summer, bitter cold in winter. In North America there's
the Colorado Plateau and the Great Basin Desert; the Patagonian
Desert is in South America; and a whole bunch of cold-winter deserts
are on the Asian continent. Alot of these deserts are on the eastern
side of a mountain range -- the rain-shadow effect is common for
cold-winter deserts. (So are high elevations.)
You could have a warm coastal area with a desert on the other side of
the mountains like the Oregon/Washington area. (Okay, coastal Oregon
is cooler than the Mediterranean.) With the right ocean current, your
coastal could be quite warm. And I don't see why, with different
continents, this couldn't be in the southern hemisphere. In terms of
land masses, Earth is top heavy.
-- Lisa Leutheuser
eal (at) umich.edu
http://www.umich.edu/~eal
William Davis
>Not even. "Increases punishment for gang-related felonies, home-invasion
>robbery, carjacking, witness intimidation, and drive-by shooting; and
>creates crime of gang-recruitment activities." That was the ballot text.
>I can't find my full initiate text at the moment (buried in the recycling
>pile).
"Gang-related felonies" huh? I remember awhile back reading something
on the FBI website about how the bureau used conspiracy laws to get a
low-level courier sentenced to life in prison for murders committed by
others in his organization. The website made it sound like a good
thing.
Gareth Wilson
Lucy Kemnitzer wrote in message <38c685f2...@enews.newsguy.com>...
>
>You know Miles Vorkosigan and Barrayar? And how Barrayar is an
>awful awful place?
>
Sort of. It's true their political system makes Prussia look like a nest of
flaming liberals. But the actual condition of the population isn't that bad.
There aren't any mobs on the streets.
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
ObNitpick: Umm, let me see ... Australia, okay. But then Eurasia, a
single landmass, also has a desert at the edge -- Arabia, Iraq, Iran,
Oxiana, etc, in spite of having Gobi, Takla Makan et alia more or less
in the heart. Then North America has the desert on its Southwestern
edge, AFAIK. (I'm not looking in an atlas.) So it's four to one.
Unless your definition of desert is different from mine. BTW, I'm not
counting Antarctica at all.
vlatko
--
vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
<gr...@clear.net.nz> wrote:
>Lucy Kemnitzer wrote in message <38c685f2...@enews.newsguy.com>...
>>
>>You know Miles Vorkosigan and Barrayar? And how Barrayar is an
>>awful awful place?
>>
>Sort of. It's true their political system makes Prussia look like a nest of
>flaming liberals. But the actual condition of the population isn't that bad.
>There aren't any mobs on the streets.
ObPolitics: There was a Hungarian joke about their system during the
Soviet rule. It went something like ... the people are quiet 'cause
they (the Russians) screw us good. The moment they stop, the people
are going to *complain*.
I think it's worth knowing if you write anything about political
systems and ruling.
vlatko
--
vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr
Lucy Kemnitzer
Are you thinking California, Mexico are the Southwest edge of
North America? Because the _edges_ are not desert, except for a
bit around Baja. And Eurasia has, as you say, large tracts of
desert in the middle.
The point I was thinking about was not that there are no deserts
on the edges, but that Sion seemed to be saying that there
couldn't be a desert in the heart of the continent, and it seemed
to me that deserts in the middle is the norm, if there is any norm
at all.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Lucy Kemnitzer
So far so good, but I worry that if the continent is in the
southern hemisphere, the wind will mostly be going the wrong way
on the west coast, and result in the Namib and Atacama conditions
you describe instead of California conditions. I could study the
west coast of Australia -- I don't know much about that. Though
I'm not happy with vast stretches of desert on the interior -- I
had imagined some desert, not mostly desert.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Lisa A Leutheuser
You can have deserts at the center of a continent. E.g. the deserts
in Central Asia. Long distances from moisture-bearing winds can be a
major factor for creating an arid area. Just because other kinds of
deserts out-number one type doesn't meant that one type doesn't fit the
definition of a desert. Deserts are defined by the availability of
water, not by their location or temperature. They are places where
the rainfall is low and/or loss of water to atmosphere from evaporation
high.
You have four basic factors that contribute to creating a desert:
- atmospheric high pressure zones -- those Hadley (convection) cells
(this is why most deserts are on the tropics of cancer and capricorn)
- continentality (mentioned above)
- cold ocean currents
- rain shadows
(Why do I know this stuff? Because I have two books about deserts:
glossy coffee-table tomes with beautiful pictures.)
Lisa A Leutheuser
Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>
>So far so good, but I worry that if the continent is in the
>southern hemisphere, the wind will mostly be going the wrong way
>on the west coast, and result in the Namib and Atacama conditions
>you describe instead of California conditions. I could study the
>west coast of Australia -- I don't know much about that. Though
>I'm not happy with vast stretches of desert on the interior -- I
>had imagined some desert, not mostly desert.
Your weather can come from the west. In general, at the equator you'll
find winds going from east to west, but above the Tropic of Cancer and
below the Tropic of Capircorn, you'll find the prevailing atmospheric
winds going west to east.
For ocean currents, in general at the equator you have currents going
east to west. They bounce off of the continents and turn north and
south away from the equator. Below the two tropics, you have the major
cold currents going west to east and then bouncing off land and curving
toward the equator. (It's not that simple in the north, because of all
the land. The currents come down from the Arctic and squeeze by
Greenland and curl around Alaska and then into the oceans.) Below
South America and Africa and Austrailia, the current easily goes west
to east around the globe, with some hitting the continents and curling
north.
The above does not take local geography into account.
For the big picture, I think you could sketch out your continents and
draw in the prevailing winds and currents. Find a simplified picture
of Earth's prevailing winds to use as a model. My information came from
_Deserts: The Encroaching Wilderness_, ed. Tony Allan and Andrew Warren,
Oxford University Press, 1993.
C Sherwin
Lucy Kemnitzer wrote:
>
> On Tue, 07 Mar 2000 06:11:40 GMT, C Sherwin
> <cshe...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
[snip]
> >Lucy, have you thought that it might be the kids, also? I remember when
> >I was in school, I hated days we had subs because so many of the kids in
> >the class would act up.
>
> Usually, I walk into the class, read the plans, write "Ms Soandso
> sends her regrets. I am Ms Kemnitzer," give a dazzling speech
> about how I need exquisite silence during the roll call or I'll
> mark somebody absent by mistake, explain the purpose of a
> substitute, and they're fine. Or, rather, fine-ish. It doesn't
> work if the classroom has been overly assertive-disciplined, or
> if, as lately, the class has been left with nothing to look
> forward to (work is better than nothing).
>
> I don't, honestly, usually have that much trouble with "acting
> up." Once I reassure the kids that I will take care of them, they
> relax and we get on with the day.
>
> It's just been a bad run.
Yes, I understand. BTDT. I think what hit me was that you said you were
'burned-out' and followed that by detailing the assault.
I urge you to do whatever you can to get past the burn-out before it
goes farther and/or deeper.
Several years ago, I was burned-out but thought I could handle it and
continue to work at the same time. I was wrong. I have been deep in the
abyss of despair and am still hanging on the edge at times. There are
times I don't even realize how bad it is until I start to get a little
better. I would not wish that on anyone! Especially not someone as nice
and as helpful as you have been.
> >I hate to say this, but an assault is an assault. I hope that the kid's
> >parents were notified, at least! Had he been strong enough or less
> >conscious of his strength, he _could_ have broken your arm.
>
> Oh, this kid was not conscious of his strength. He was aware of
> only one thing: he can't do school, and it makes him miserable --
> he has multiple issues (I have had him before, when he just broke
> down and told me he couldn't read at all. His English is at about
> the five year old level, and his Spanish sounds not much better,
> he has no idea how a thirteen year old is supposed to behave and
> people are dying around him. He needs, thank you, a one-on-one
> combination teacher/therapist/foster mom who is thoroughly
> bilingual, and a bed he can sleep in all night, and an absence of
> violence in his life. I can't give him any more than a firm and
> sympathetic guide for the day).
My aunt taught KG years ago in Indianapolis. It probably wasn't anything
like current SF, but she had some pretty wild tales to tell of the kids
in her class.
My 50 year old husband doesn't know his own strength, either. You'd
think that by now, he would. I can't imagine what you must go through,
some days.
> Walking home today I fell in with two girls from the same class,
> who were trying to borrow a lighter from me for a science fair
> project, but they didn't know the word for it, not in English, not
> in Spanish, and not the word for candle either.
>
> They don't have bilingual remedial classes anymore, because some
> fool convinced everybody they should pass a state constitutional
> ammendment against it.
Figures, doesn't it?
I wonder if that law is unconstitutional? Last I knew, the US does not
have an official language. Had it been voted on before WW I, it might
have been German!
> Oh, and tomorrow they're going to vote to send fourteen year olds
> to prison for life. Not juvie: prison.
I can see why they might not want to send them to juvie, but I do not
think that they belong in an adult prison.
> (this is such a fine bitter example of rant drift that I'm sending
> it antway though it is off-topic)
I think that sometimes you have to get things out. Besides, it _does_
relate to your day job. You teach kids that age!
Candy
Julian Flood
> For the big picture, I think you could sketch out your continents and
> draw in the prevailing winds and currents. Find a simplified picture
> of Earth's prevailing winds to use as a model.
I'm a bit worried about that 'simplified'. This worldbuilding requires more
study than you imply. Lucy should give up the day job and retrain as a
meteorologist. Then, when fully trained, she should get online to the
Bracknell Cray, create a detailed model of the world and run the simulation
a few times to see where the deserts settle.
Some things have to be done _right_.
Don't forget to vacuum the cat.
(I'd say dammit and put the deserts where they're needed by the
story.)
--
Julian Flood
Life, the Universe and Climbing Plants at www.argonet.co.uk/users/julesf.
Mind the diddley skiffle folk.
Nancy Lebovitz
>> >You know Miles Vorkosigan and Barrayar? And how Barrayar is an
>> >awful awful place?
>>
>> Sort of. It's true their political system makes Prussia look like a nest of
>> flaming liberals. But the actual condition of the population isn't that bad.
>
>margin. Even the impovrished hillfolk are plugged into an
>antimatter/fusion economy and have access to vastly better medical
>care than we've got; not enough, or often enough, but it's there, and
>it's getting to them.
>
>Politically, well, note that some of those impovrished hillfolk went
>and built themselves a hydro dam becuase they needed it. Their
>government -- when it showed up in person -- approved, eh? And said
>government's minions helped out a bit with siting and design
>information for the dam.
>
>That just about everyone who reads those books misses this completely
>is a really good writing trick that I still haven't managed to
>decompile.
I don't know how much of it is a writing trick and how much is that
the books are going against a strongly believed stereotype (that feudal
systems and long-term grinding poverty are intricably linked) without
underlining it.
It may be that most people haven't assimilated the idea that the higher
the tech the faster things can improve if there's a reasonable level
of institutional goodwill--and that Barrayar has access to much higher
tech than we do.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
The calligraphic button website is up!
Alma Hromic
wrote:
>In article <38cd1a40...@203.29.160.5>,
> ang...@ihug.co.nz (Alma Hromic) writes:
>[...]
>> . "oooooh," says slack-jawed president. "they have *shields*..."
>I actually quite liked that; no-one needed any explanation as to what they
>were, everyone just knew.
SURE they knew <g> my point was that they should have if nothing else
PRETENDED that they were expecting it instead of looking so comically
shocked at the idea. <g>
>[...]
>> they deliver a hell of a cold to the mothership, and they skedaddle.
>> behind them, the mothership blows up in one MOTHER of a sneeze; the
>> screen shows rather graphically this outgoing shockwave filled with
>> debris and stuff. our heroes get caught up by this... next scene, the
>[...]
>> i actually sat up in disgust and said loudly, "like HELL they survived
>> that shockwave."
>Well, seeing as the mothership was stated to be a third the size of the
>moon, all the material reentering Earth's atmosphere would render it
>completely uninhabitable. But let's not quibble.
LOL no, indeed.
>[...]
>> need i go on? <g>
>
>The solution: go and watch _Mars Attacks_. Again. It's the ideal antidote.
yeah. it didn't even pretend to take itself seriously which was
refreshing <g>
>(BTW, the bit that raised the biggest laugh in _Independence Day_ was the
>President's speech. It was so... so... corny. Badly written, too.)
aren't presidents' speeches so by definition...? <g>
Jenny J
Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote in message
news:38c6f6e7...@enews.newsguy.com...> >In article <38c5ecd8...@enews.newsguy.com>,
> southern hemisphere, the wind will mostly be going the wrong way
> on the west coast, and result in the Namib and Atacama conditions
> you describe instead of California conditions. I could study the
> west coast of Australia -- I don't know much about that. Though
> I'm not happy with vast stretches of desert on the interior -- I
> had imagined some desert, not mostly desert.
>
west coast of australia is (afaik) hot & dry. unpleasant (unless you live
there, then i guess you like it - i've never been further than Alice
Springs/Uluru - also hot & dry). no mountains tho. in the afternoon/evening
there's a nice breeze called the Fremantle Doctor (was Docker - the wind the
ships came in on). otherwise it's hot. like most of australia, a lot of the
time.
can you tell i don't live there? <g>. i live in sydney, where it's not so
hot or dry, tho the weather these days has gone haywire (boiling hot, humid,
then freezing in comparison, wet...). we have a rainshadow (if i'm getting
the terms right) here cos of the mountains to the west.
Adelaide, i've heard, has a pretty mediterranean climate. but it's south.
i doubt this has helped ;)
Jenny
Sion Arrowsmith
><si...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>> [ ... ] setting off to cross the
>>arid tableland at the heart of this continent in autumn was not
>>a very wise plan. The problem being that when the plot was first
>>layed down, it was a desert, and only later was the geography
>>altered to be more plausible.
>Of course I'm missing the details that made this a problem, but
>looking at the continents of Earth, there are deserts at the heart
>of most of them.
By "desert" I was thinking vast expanses of rolling dunes and a
year-round hot, dry climate. I'm not sure you can have something
like that on as small a scale as I need, and the continent is
certainly too far into temperate climes for it not to have marked
seasons. The seasons being hot and dry, and cold and dry. Very
cold -- which is what makes me doubt the sanity of setting off to
cross it at that time of year. (Although I suppose people follow
the trade routes across it in summer, and that's just as harsh,
and those embarking on the journey are trying to do something to
confuse enemy spies. Sorry, thinking aloud.)
Brooks Moses
> (Sorry not to thread this: my ISP is dropping posts again.)
Well, here, I'll thread mine off yours, and then they're threaded. :)
I don't at all remember if I posted this before or not, so....
I'm a mechanical engineering grad student, working on doing computer
simulations of spray flows. Which, in this case, is largely a cycle
between doing math, feeding the math into computer code, and
interpreting the results as a starting point for more math. The short
term goal is a Ph.D. in two or three years; the long-term goal is that
this will eventually lead to a way of calculating exactly how liquids
break down into drops when you squirt them out of a nozzle ... thus
allowing the design of nozzles for a specific drop size and whatnot to
be more than a "guess and build one and try it" process.
This actually has rather a large impact on my writing, or would if I
actually did much writing rather than just intending to. Mainly it has
an impact in providing the reason to do it -- writing is a way of
getting away from all the mathematical stuff, and exercising parts of my
brain that otherwise get annoyed from lack of use. It probably also
tends to rather affect my world-creation, too -- I tend to "think like
an engineer", which to me means that I like playing with the process of
changing the rules slightly (e.g. allowing small forms of magic) and
seeing how that affects the whole system of the technology that gets
created ... or doing that in reverse; given that I want this type of
technology, what's the best rule change to get specifically that? And
following this trail back and forth -- if they can have this, then what
else does that imply they should have?
So, anyway, that's my "day job". And also my evening job, and night
job, and morning job, and so forth as well, sometimes....
- Brooks
Karen E. Leonard
Sion Arrowsmith wrote:
>
> Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
> ><si...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> >> [ ... ] setting off to cross the
> >>arid tableland at the heart of this continent in autumn was not
> >>a very wise plan. (snip)
Why not?
>
> By "desert" I was thinking vast expanses of rolling dunes and a
> year-round hot, dry climate.
Not unleses it's on the equator and has the prevailing winds to move
the sand around and kill all the hardy vegetation, or the wind has a
source nearby to bring the sand from. (Think about Los Alamos, NM
here. The white dues at White Sands are gypsum that's been carried
from the surrounding mountains.)
(snip) The seasons being hot and dry, and cold and dry. Very
> cold -- which is what makes me doubt the sanity of setting off to
> cross it at that time of year. (snip)
The popular time to visit Death Valley, CA, is in the winter, when
it's cooler. Easter seemed to be about the end of the tourist season
the year we went (at Easter) to see the sights.
The sensible time for your intrepid traders or fleeing refugees to
start out would be very early spring, if they can get where they're
going before they run out of water from the heat-caused perspiration,
or in the fall (autumn) when they're in a decent-weather period and
heading into a cold (non-perpiration) time. Even the good seasons may
be subject to fierce storms, though, which can be very useful to you,
the writer. The logistics of carrying or locating water will be very
important. Also the tendency of springs in arid areas to not be
"sweet"--to have dissolved mineral salts that at best make the water
taste nasty and at worst make it actively poisonous.
Now that I've added a few things to the ammo list, have fun.
;-)
Karen
Lois McMaster Bujold
>
> Sion Arrowsmith wrote:
> >
> > Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
> > ><si...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> > >> [ ... ] setting off to cross the
> > >>arid tableland at the heart of this continent in autumn was not
> > >>a very wise plan. (snip)
> Why not?
> >
> > By "desert" I was thinking vast expanses of rolling dunes and a
> > year-round hot, dry climate.
> > cold -- which is what makes me doubt the sanity of setting off to
> > cross it at that time of year. (snip)
In the memoir I read by Sir Mark Aural Stein about his
turn-of-the-(last)-century ventures in the Gobi, they traveled in winter
and took their water by chucking large blocks of ice into burlap bags
and slinging them aboard their camels.
He mentioned that he would write at night in his tent until the
ink froze in his fountain pen.
Ta, Lois.
PWrede6492
writes:
>It may be that most people haven't assimilated the idea that the higher
>the tech the faster things can improve if there's a reasonable level
>of institutional goodwill--and that Barrayar has access to much higher
>tech than we do.
It's also the fact that Miles has so much charm, charisma, and
forward momentum that most readers accept him as a reliable
narrator, when he manifestly isn't. (Sure, he'd lie to Simon
Illyan...but he would never lie to *us*.) And as far as Miles is
concerned, given his upbringing and attitudes and cultural conditioning
and so on, those hillfolk are living in the most grinding of poverty. The
fact that their "grinding poverty" is many steps above a modern-
American upper-middle-class lifestyle is irrelevant; by comparison
with what's available and what's normal, they're poor. It's the same
way that many well-below-poverty-level Americans would be wildly
wealthy if they moved to a rural third-world village.
Patricia C. Wrede
John Ringo
Important point. Change the axial tilt of the world just a smidgeon and all
this goes out the window. Or adjust the axial wobble so that it is in a
cycle from ice to warm or back again. Or any of a dozen other factors that
make our world so special.
What does that mean? Well, if you don't say something like "Since Ruritanto
had a low axial tilt" you can make the climate any way you please. Also, all
of these conditions change drastically with a little change in temperature.
While, overall, the aridity of the midlatitudes is a constant, higher
temperatures expand, generally, the aridity and lower temp contract it. Fex:
both Australia and the Sahara were paradises in the Ice Age. There was
"less" free water around but more of it was falling on those areas than now.
If it helps, there is a website where you can download a shareware program
that "builds" a world for you. That is, it does the continents and climate
given variables that you input.
http://www.best.com/~jendave/builder/world/index.html
There are some other things it will do but I've found them mostly less than
useful. What it is _okay_ for is building a continent and getting a feel for
how the climates fall out. Then change it as desired for the story.
That is the last point. If the climate doesn't fit the plot, and you have
the plot, do the climate any way you want. If some climatologist has a
problem with it, say "Sorry. Did you like the book?".
Ask them if they know the axial tilt of the world? The distance the party
traveled? The height of any mountain ranges not laid out? Whether there is
an uplift mass the size of the Himalayas to cause monsoons? Or go, "Well,
what _would_ cause those conditions?" If they say it is impossible they have
a closed mind. But, usually, you can make a few suggestions and they'll come
up with a brilliant theory (that will be hotly debated by other
climatologists.) After they explain how smart they are say, "Oh, well then
_that_ is in the world. And I hereby name that (current/mountain range/axial
wobble) after you. I'll include it in the next book."
And whatever you do, don't include a map;-)
John
--
If you enjoy what you do, you'll never work another day in your life.
Confucius
"Jenny J" <eli...@idxnospam.com.au> wrote in message
news:38c7...@news1.idx.com.au...
>
big snip
Berry Kercheval
> It's also the fact that Miles has so much charm, charisma, and
> forward momentum that most readers accept him as a reliable
> narrator, when he manifestly isn't. (Sure, he'd lie to Simon
> Illyan...but he would never lie to *us*.)
Miles has so much charm and so on, he is such a STRONG character that
when I was reading A Civil Campaign, I thought there was a POV error
in some scenes with Miles and Ekaterin, until I realized they were
from *HER* POV. Miles just takes over.
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
<si...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>><si...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>>> [ ... ] setting off to cross the
>>>arid tableland at the heart of this continent in autumn was not
>>>a very wise plan. The problem being that when the plot was first
>>>layed down, it was a desert, and only later was the geography
>>>altered to be more plausible.
>>Of course I'm missing the details that made this a problem, but
>>looking at the continents of Earth, there are deserts at the heart
>>of most of them.
>
>By "desert" I was thinking vast expanses of rolling dunes and a
>year-round hot, dry climate. I'm not sure you can have something
>like that on as small a scale as I need, and the continent is
>certainly too far into temperate climes for it not to have marked
>seasons.
FWIW, there's something called The Sands of Djurdjevac in Croatia.
Djurdjevac being a small town in the north of the country. A sandy
waste in a temperate zone. Small. Although more like Sahel than
Sahara. That means "not completely bare." :-)
vlatko
--
vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr
Cathy Purchis-Jefferies
> By "desert" I was thinking vast expanses of rolling dunes and a
> year-round hot, dry climate. I'm not sure you can have something
> like that on as small a scale as I need, and the continent is
> certainly too far into temperate climes for it not to have marked
> seasons. The seasons being hot and dry, and cold and dry.
http://www.nps.gov/moja/mojadena.htm - Mojave Naitonal Preserve in the
California desert has some info on desert ecology; see especially the part about
the Great Basin. That's defnintely north enough to be in the temperate zone. You
might also find some useful info on the page about world deserts.
If you're set on dunes, there's some dune ecology at
http://www.nps.gov/whsa/home.htm - White Sands National Monument, which Karen
mentioned - but dunes are not a big feature of many NA deserts. Death Valley has
them in one small area, but most of the park (and it's a BIG park - 3.3 Million
acres) is not dunes.
Speaking of Death Valley, for some current desert wether, check out
http://www.nps.gov/deva - Death Valley gets up to 120 degrees F in the summer;
yesterday's high and low at Scotty's Castle, which is a little higher than some
parts of the park (i.e. it's above sea level) were 42 F and 32 F, while Furnace
Creek, which is down in the low part got 66 F and 42 F.
--
"George" Cathy Purchis cat...@value.net
r.a.sf.comp's resident park ranger
Mark A. Brown
*SNIP*
>Also "Law and Order". They did an episode featuring a particle physicist
and
>got every detail of his work right. Except that he wore a lab coat :)
. . . As a fashion statement?
Mark
"Not a particularly ~good~ statement, but a statement nonetheless."
Mark A. Brown
>>>I think movie theaters should have 'heckling' and 'non-heckling'
>>>sections.
*SNIP*
Agreed. MST3K, anyone? :)
>If the chars are cool and/or there are lots of big explosions, then I'm
>willing to be entertained.
Again, same here. I'm good at hand-waving other peoples' errors.
>I
>took my family, up visiting me from Florida, to the White House and had to
>painfully listen to my 12 yo brother asking the Secret Service guy what
>would happen if the aliens *did* attack. By the look on the guy's face,
>my brother was by far not the only one who asked).
Wishful thinking. ;)
Mark
"Staying ~well~ out of politics."
Alma Hromic
<vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr> wrote:
>FWIW, there's something called The Sands of Djurdjevac in Croatia.
>Djurdjevac being a small town in the north of the country. A sandy
>waste in a temperate zone. Small. Although more like Sahel than
>Sahara. That means "not completely bare." :-)
and a similar stretch called Deliblatska Pescara (the latter
pronounced "peschara", with the ch as in church) in the far north of
serbia.
Sylvia Li
Vlatko Juric-Kokic wrote:
>
> On 09 Mar 2000 12:13:03 +0000 (GMT), Sion Arrowsmith
> <si...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>
> >Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
> >><si...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> >>> [ ... ] setting off to cross the
> >>>arid tableland at the heart of this continent in autumn was not
> >>>a very wise plan. The problem being that when the plot was first
> >>>layed down, it was a desert, and only later was the geography
> >>>altered to be more plausible.
> >>Of course I'm missing the details that made this a problem, but
> >>looking at the continents of Earth, there are deserts at the heart
> >>of most of them.
> >
> >By "desert" I was thinking vast expanses of rolling dunes and a
> >year-round hot, dry climate. I'm not sure you can have something
> >like that on as small a scale as I need, and the continent is
> >certainly too far into temperate climes for it not to have marked
> >seasons.
>
> FWIW, there's something called The Sands of Djurdjevac in Croatia.
> Djurdjevac being a small town in the north of the country. A sandy
> waste in a temperate zone. Small. Although more like Sahel than
> Sahara. That means "not completely bare." :-)
>
Hm. Now that you mention it -- there happens to be a small authentic desert
near Carberry, Manitoba: Spirit Sands, part of Spruce Woods Provincial
Park. The area is called "Spirit Sands" because of its significance to the
native peoples of the region. It is surprisingly small, only ten square
miles, but there are sand dunes 50 to 100 ft high. It feels more like
California's Mohave Desert than anything you'd expect to see in the
Canadian province of Manitoba, which is mostly boreal forest or table-flat
prairie -- it comes complete with pincushion and prickly pear cacti, snakes
(non-poisonous, this is Canada, after all), and a lizard, the northern
prairie skink.
Being as it's still Manitoba, it does get *very* cold in winter.
A couple of interesting links:
http://www.cogs.ns.ca/~gisy908/desert1.jpg
http://craton.geol.brocku.ca/faculty/rc/teaching/1F90/deserts/deserts.html
--
Sylvia Li
Sylvia Li
>
> Graydon wrote:
>
> > Rotten assumption; recasting it as 'those who have been convicted of
> > murdering or raping someone' isn't as rotten, but I wouldn't be at all
> > surprised if it was a 3 strikes law.
>
[snip some stuff I don't agree with, but never mind, this is hardly the
place to argue about it.]
>
> Writing content? The culture in my WIP executes people on a basis of
> two-strikes-you're-out, with the burden of proof being placed on the
> defendant during the second trial.
>
What a neat idea, for spinning plots. It must make getting rid of an enemy
who's had one conviction (for anything? Double-parking? Eating an
ice-cream cone on a Sunday?) *so* temptingly easy. Just frame him
ever-so-slightly, and there he is, fighting for his life, and if he can't
*prove* he's innocent the government will kill him for you. Talk about
built-in tension!
--
Sylvia Li
Richard A. Brooks
>
> Steve Taylor wrote:
> >
> > PWrede6492 wrote:
> >
> >> There are far more serious, dangerous ways of harassing
> >> somebody from on-line than taking over their appliances
> >> for two minutes a day. Unless you're positing a future
> >> where permanent connection is so much the norm that
> >> dial-up isn't even an option any more?
> >
> > Off topic I know, but I'd be surprised if we weren't all
> > permanently connected within a decade or so.
Quite frankly, I'd be very surprised if ALL of humanity ever did
anything the same. I believe that "all" and "none" can not apply to
several billion people, possibly not even to several million.
Somebody will always be out of step. Even if it's just me and
Kristopher.
--Rick
>
> I refuse to be premanently connected, or to connect my
> bloody fridge to the net!
>
> Kristopher/EOS
Lisa A Leutheuser
John Ringo <john...@cuthis.mindspring.exthisout.com.invalid> wrote:
>Hi folks:
>
>Important point. Change the axial tilt of the world just a smidgeon and all
>this goes out the window. Or adjust the axial wobble so that it is in a
>cycle from ice to warm or back again. Or any of a dozen other factors that
>make our world so special.
I found it easier to assume my fantasy world is based
on a planet of the same size, tilt, etc. as Earth.
>If it helps, there is a website where you can download a shareware program
>that "builds" a world for you. That is, it does the continents and climate
>given variables that you input.
>
>http://www.best.com/~jendave/builder/world/index.html
Might be cool for creating a world for gaming.
(It has to be easier than hand drawing on hex-paper.)
Matthew F Johnson
Sylvia Li (meta...@Xescape.ca) writes:
> Vlatko Juric-Kokic wrote:
>>
> Hm. Now that you mention it -- there happens to be a small authentic desert
> near Carberry, Manitoba: Spirit Sands, part of Spruce Woods Provincial
> Park. The area is called "Spirit Sands" because of its significance to the
> native peoples of the region. It is surprisingly small, only ten square
> miles, but there are sand dunes 50 to 100 ft high. It feels more like
> California's Mohave Desert than anything you'd expect to see in the
> Canadian province of Manitoba, which is mostly boreal forest or table-flat
> prairie -- it comes complete with pincushion and prickly pear cacti, snakes
> (non-poisonous, this is Canada, after all), and a lizard, the northern
> prairie skink.
What, even the snakes are supposed to be polite hereÉ There are a
few poisonous snakes in Canada, though not many; rattlers in Southern
Ontario (very limited range) and I think a few sightings of water moccasins.
--
Matthew
Zeborah
> Miles has so much charm and so on, he is such a STRONG character that
> when I was reading A Civil Campaign, I thought there was a POV error
> in some scenes with Miles and Ekaterin, until I realized they were
> from *HER* POV. Miles just takes over.
And speaking of those books....
About a week ago I thought that the most frustrating thing possible was
not being able to find one's most desired books in the library. Today I
discovered that it's not. The most frustrating thing possible is
finding all of your most desired books in the library less than 24 hours
before you're going to leave the country for eight months, and you still
haven't packed.
I've finished them both (they were "Mirror Dance" and "Memory"), and I
think I just might have time to finish my packing as well. Sleep can
wait; reading can't - at least not books that I'm almost certain won't
be available where I'm going.
And while I'm here: it may take me anywhere from a few days to a couple
of weeks to organise internet access when I arrive. I'm *fairly* sure
that I'll be able to get Usenet access; in any case I will continue to
receive e-mail at this address.
Zeborah
Lori Selke
William Davis <wis...@weblnk.net> wrote:
>se...@fnord.io.com (Lori Selke) wrote:
>
>>Not even. "Increases punishment for gang-related felonies, home-invasion
>>robbery, carjacking, witness intimidation, and drive-by shooting; and
>>creates crime of gang-recruitment activities." That was the ballot text.
>>I can't find my full initiate text at the moment (buried in the recycling
>>pile).
>
>"Gang-related felonies" huh? I remember awhile back reading something
>on the FBI website about how the bureau used conspiracy laws to get a
>low-level courier sentenced to life in prison for murders committed by
>others in his organization. The website made it sound like a good
>thing.
You hit the nail on the head, there. (I found the full text of
the statute, btw, but it's too long to post.)
Lori
--
se...@io.com
"If you were happy every day of your life, you wouldn't be human.
You'd be a game-show host." -- Heathers
Kathleen Fuller
Organization: CNI/Prairienet
Mark A. Brown <ma...@kos.net> wrote:
: White Crow wrote in message <8a5uui$t4h$1...@hiram.io.com>...
:>>>I think movie theaters should have 'heckling' and 'non-heckling'
:>>>sections.
: *SNIP*
: Agreed. MST3K, anyone? :)
Oh, yes. The Film Society of Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland,
Ohio, USA) puts on a Science Fiction Movie Marathon every January. (This
year was the 25th; I've been attending semi-regularly since 1987.)
The movies are a real mix: old, new, American, foreign, live-action,
animated, famous, obscure, good, lousy. They always show some trailers
and short films, too. They used to show a serial each year (my favorite
was _Radar Men from the Moon_ starring Commando Cody in his Flying Suit.)
This year's schedule: eXistenZ, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, Darkstar,
Escape from New York, Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, A Clockwork
Orange, Fantastic Voyage, Scanners, First Men in the Moon, The Secret
Adventures of Tom Thumb, Things to Come, Alien, Gattaca, Silent Running,
Wing Commander, Trekkies, and The Matrix. Yes, that's one continuous
event, with perhaps ten minutes between movies for people to get a hot
snack or cold drink from the lobby stand or use the bathroom.
Heckling is a time-honored pastime. Some of the comments are, of course,
obscene, profane, and/or scatalogical, but they are usually the minority.
The best line this year was during Silent Running --- "Run, Forest, run!"
What I find fascinating is, when the crowd is really enjoying a movie,
(not just appreciating the entertainment value of junk), heckling is
usually minimal, and people who talk excessively tend to get shushed.
This is really where I developed my heckling preferences. It is, of
course, completely arbitrary, unfair, and unenforceable, to say that
people should only heckle movies I think are bad, or make _really funny_
comments during good ones, but that's my ideal. :)
--Kathleen
Kathleen Fuller "If... you can't be a good example,
co...@prairienet.org then you'll just have to be a horrible
warning." Catherine Aird, _His Burial_
Etaoin Shrdlu
"Sion Arrowsmith" <si...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in message
news:lYD*tv...@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk...
> Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
> ><si...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> >> [ ... ] setting off to cross the
> >>arid tableland at the heart of this continent in autumn was not
> >>a very wise plan. The problem being that when the plot was first
> >>layed down, it was a desert, and only later was the geography
> >>altered to be more plausible.
> >Of course I'm missing the details that made this a problem, but
> >looking at the continents of Earth, there are deserts at the heart
> >of most of them.
>
> By "desert" I was thinking vast expanses of rolling dunes and a
> year-round hot, dry climate. I'm not sure you can have something
> like that on as small a scale as I need, and the continent is
> certainly too far into temperate climes for it not to have marked
> cold -- which is what makes me doubt the sanity of setting off to
> the trade routes across it in summer, and that's just as harsh,
> and those embarking on the journey are trying to do something to
> confuse enemy spies. Sorry, thinking aloud.)
Sounds like Death Valley. It's only cold at night, though.
--Katrina
James Nicoll
Generally, when our rattlers bite people, the human lives and the
snake dies. Pity, because the _snakes_ are endangered.
James Nicoll
--
Imperiums to Order's 16th Anniversary Sale will be March 11, 2000.
Appearances by Julie Czerneda and James Alan Gardner.
Free to a good home: one formerly wild kitten I made the mistake
of feeding. Black DSH. Outgoing.
Nancy Lebovitz
Graydon <anga...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>Nancy Lebovitz <na...@unix3.netaxs.com> scripsit:
>[no one notices Barrayar is _advanced_ compared to here and now]
>> It may be that most people haven't assimilated the idea that the higher
>> the tech the faster things can improve if there's a reasonable level
>> of institutional goodwill--and that Barrayar has access to much higher
>> tech than we do.
>
>Well, that, but also that the constraints on _economic_ behaviour tend
>to be a lot fewer in a feudal culture than a representative democracy;
>it's relatively practical to get the legislature to constrain your
>competitors in a representative democracy, but it's hard to get _all_
>the great nobles to agree on _anything_. They're also a lot less
>concerned with how you got the money to pay taxes than they are that
>you do pay the taxes, which is a great help to people wanting to start
>new kinds of business.
>
>Every feudal culture -- pre-Tokaguwa Japan, much of the North-West of
>Europe ~800 through ~1300, various of the Gothic kingdoms almost-sorta
>-- I can think of innovated like crazy.
This begins to make _The High Crusade_ a *little* more plausible.
Nancy Lebovitz
PWrede6492 <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>In article <8a7hol$j...@netaxs.com>, na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz)
>writes:
>
>>the tech the faster things can improve if there's a reasonable level
>>of institutional goodwill--and that Barrayar has access to much higher
>>tech than we do.
>
>forward momentum that most readers accept him as a reliable
>narrator, when he manifestly isn't. (Sure, he'd lie to Simon
>concerned, given his upbringing and attitudes and cultural conditioning
>and so on, those hillfolk are living in the most grinding of poverty. The
At the beginning of "The Mountains of Mourning", the hillfolk *are*
living in grinding poverty, and that's the most vivid image of their
life we're given.
>fact that their "grinding poverty" is many steps above a modern-
>American upper-middle-class lifestyle is irrelevant; by comparison
>with what's available and what's normal, they're poor. It's the same
>way that many well-below-poverty-level Americans would be wildly
>wealthy if they moved to a rural third-world village.
>
Richard A. Brooks
>
> William Davis wrote:
>
> > "Gang-related felonies" huh? I remember awhile back reading something
> > on the FBI website about how the bureau used conspiracy laws to get a
> > low-level courier sentenced to life in prison for murders committed by
> > others in his organization. The website made it sound like a good
> > thing.
>
>
> One less gangbanger on the streets == one less gangbanger to intimidate
> witnesses.
>
> I don't believe everyone should be entitled to the protection of the law.
If you were the one framed, you might look at things differently.
Robert Pearlman
wrote:
>In article <8a6v2a$mbe$1...@localhost.localdomain>,
>Graydon <anga...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>>Gareth Wilson <gr...@clear.net.nz> scripsit:
>>> Lucy Kemnitzer wrote in message <38c685f2...@enews.newsguy.com>...
>>> >You know Miles Vorkosigan and Barrayar? And how Barrayar is an
>>> >awful awful place?
>>>
>>> Sort of. It's true their political system makes Prussia look like a nest of
>>> flaming liberals. But the actual condition of the population isn't that bad.
>>
>>Better than any polity in Anglo NorAm is managing, by quite some
>>margin. Even the impovrished hillfolk are plugged into an
>>antimatter/fusion economy and have access to vastly better medical
>>care than we've got; not enough, or often enough, but it's there, and
>>it's getting to them.
>>
>>Politically, well, note that some of those impovrished hillfolk went
>>and built themselves a hydro dam becuase they needed it. Their
>>government -- when it showed up in person -- approved, eh? And said
>>government's minions helped out a bit with siting and design
>>information for the dam.
Where did that happen. They were described as figuring it out for
themselves.
>>
>>That just about everyone who reads those books misses this completely
>>is a really good writing trick that I still haven't managed to
>>decompile.
>
>I don't know how much of it is a writing trick and how much is that
>the books are going against a strongly believed stereotype (that feudal
>systems and long-term grinding poverty are intricably linked) without
>underlining it.
>
>It may be that most people haven't assimilated the idea that the higher
>the tech the faster things can improve if there's a reasonable level
>of institutional goodwill--and that Barrayar has access to much higher
>tech than we do.
Let's note as well that Barrayaran commoners speak to the VOR with
nearly perfect familiarity. There's the occasional "M'Lord" when
appropriate, but that's about all. None of that "As His Honor surely
knows, he's standing on his servant's foot" business. See Szabo's
conversations with Dono, or Piotr's with Klyeuvi.(sp?)
(Also, the distribution of m'lords changes in later books, from that
discussed in The Warrior's Apprentice. I'd guess LMB found it too
useful as a class marker to restrict it to those actually in service
to a particular lord. For example, IIRC, even Gregor uses it to his
Counts, from time to time, both singular and plural.)
Mark A. Brown
>Vlatko Juric-Kokic wrote:
>>
>> On 09 Mar 2000 12:13:03 +0000 (GMT), Sion Arrowsmith
>> <si...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>>
>> >><si...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
>> >>> [ ... ] setting off to cross the
>> >>>arid tableland at the heart of this continent in autumn was not
>> >>>a very wise plan. The problem being that when the plot was first
>> >>>layed down, it was a desert, and only later was the geography
>> >>>altered to be more plausible.
>> >>Of course I'm missing the details that made this a problem, but
>> >>looking at the continents of Earth, there are deserts at the heart
>> >>of most of them.
>> >
>> >By "desert" I was thinking vast expanses of rolling dunes and a
>> >year-round hot, dry climate. I'm not sure you can have something
>> >like that on as small a scale as I need, and the continent is
>> >certainly too far into temperate climes for it not to have marked
>> >seasons.
>>
>> Djurdjevac being a small town in the north of the country. A sandy
>> waste in a temperate zone. Small. Although more like Sahel than
>> Sahara. That means "not completely bare." :-)
>>
>near Carberry, Manitoba: Spirit Sands, part of Spruce Woods Provincial
>Park. The area is called "Spirit Sands" because of its significance to the
>native peoples of the region. It is surprisingly small, only ten square
>miles, but there are sand dunes 50 to 100 ft high. It feels more like
>California's Mohave Desert than anything you'd expect to see in the
>Canadian province of Manitoba, which is mostly boreal forest or table-flat
>prairie -- it comes complete with pincushion and prickly pear cacti, snakes
>(non-poisonous, this is Canada, after all), and a lizard, the northern
>prairie skink.
Note: '~A~ lizard.'
There can be only one.
Mark
"sorry, couldn't resist."
Geoff Wedig
> Oh, yes. The Film Society of Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland,
> Ohio, USA) puts on a Science Fiction Movie Marathon every January. (This
> year was the 25th; I've been attending semi-regularly since 1987.)
I've only been going since 91. *sigh*.
> The movies are a real mix: old, new, American, foreign, live-action,
> animated, famous, obscure, good, lousy. They always show some trailers
> and short films, too. They used to show a serial each year (my favorite
> was _Radar Men from the Moon_ starring Commando Cody in his Flying Suit.)
My favorite was the one was the one we renamed "Flying Fedora Men" whose
real title I can no longer recall. It was the one with the "Bryant
Manufacturing Co." ("They manufacture Bryants!" "What the heck's a Bryant?"
"Trade Secret")
> Heckling is a time-honored pastime. Some of the comments are, of course,
> obscene, profane, and/or scatalogical, but they are usually the minority.
> The best line this year was during Silent Running --- "Run, Forest, run!"
There were some good ones elsewhere (I particularly liked "You missed the
stud" during eXisteNs), but that one is a classic, yeah.
> What I find fascinating is, when the crowd is really enjoying a movie,
> (not just appreciating the entertainment value of junk), heckling is
> usually minimal, and people who talk excessively tend to get shushed.
And when they showed Star Trek 5 as a surprise.... ;)
> This is really where I developed my heckling preferences. It is, of
> course, completely arbitrary, unfair, and unenforceable, to say that
> people should only heckle movies I think are bad, or make _really funny_
> comments during good ones, but that's my ideal. :)
Yeah, heckling really does make the marathon. It's good that the "Jump
her/him/it" crowd were beaten down with sticks early this year. Well
behaved crowd.
Geoff
Beth Friedman
>Kathleen Fuller <co...@bluestem.prairienet.org> wrote:
>
>> Oh, yes. The Film Society of Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland,
>> Ohio, USA) puts on a Science Fiction Movie Marathon every January. (This
>> year was the 25th; I've been attending semi-regularly since 1987.)
>
>I've only been going since 91. *sigh*.
I went when I was going to college there: 77-79.
I can still recall the state of exhaustion in which I watched "The
Bed-Sitting Room" and "The Last Days of Man on Earth." I don't think they
would have made any sense even if I'd been truly awake, but the level of
fatigue poisons lent a particular surreal quality to them.
Is it still 24 hours or more?
--
Beth Friedman
b...@wavefront.com
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
Something like that happened to me when I watched _The Company of
Wolves_. I was sitting in the first row, craning my neck up for an
hour and a half. Combined with the "dream logic" some sequences had,
the film had an awful effect on me. Almost made me sick.
vlatko
--
vlatko.ju...@zg.tel.hr
Geoff Wedig
> I went when I was going to college there: 77-79.
> I can still recall the state of exhaustion in which I watched "The
> Bed-Sitting Room" and "The Last Days of Man on Earth." I don't think they
> would have made any sense even if I'd been truly awake, but the level of
> fatigue poisons lent a particular surreal quality to them.
> Is it still 24 hours or more?
Given their propensity for running late, well more. I think Matrix ended
around 5 sunday morning this year (marathon starting at 8 Friday evening),
so yeah. Even if they stayed on track, most years'd be around 28 hours.
Geoff