Some Tropes Are Bad

[David Johnston]

"trope" here is used in the TVTropes sense, rather than the technical
sense. Ideas and gimmicks. There are some of them that I had.
Doubtless there are some that you hate.

The first one I hate is "Mankind is the only warlike (or in C.S. Lewis's
case "sinful")" species in a galaxy full of intelligent intelligent
life. Yeah. Right. That's likely.

[Shawn Wilson]

Eh. Wolves are naturally violent. Bunnies are not. It's *possible*.

Bad? No. Beserker sries by Saberhagen uses that trope in the 'Carmpan watcher' intro. The naturally pacifist Carmpan thanks God that humans are so warlike. The Berserkers would have exterminated his race without effort. Humans were preparing for their own (internal) war when the Beserkers hit...

[Jessica]

In this case I wouldn't say bad so much as overused, trite and most often
poorly executed. A proper storyteller can make the most hackneyed, dead
horse trope seem fresh and new. A poor storyteller can't even do that with
an original idea (If there ever were such a beast).

[David Johnston]

On 8/24/2013 1:05 PM, Shawn Wilson wrote:
> On Saturday, August 24, 2013 11:52:54 AM UTC-7, David Johnston
> wrote:
>
>> "trope" here is used in the TVTropes sense, rather than the
>> technical sense. Ideas and gimmicks. There are some of them that I
>> had. Doubtless there are some that you hate. The first one I hate
>> is "Mankind is the only warlike (or in C.S. Lewis's case "sinful")"
>> species in a galaxy full of intelligent intelligent life. Yeah.
>> Right. That's likely.
>
>
> Eh. Wolves are naturally violent. Bunnies are not. It's
> *possible*.

It's possible for an individual species to be less violent than humans.
It's at all reasonable for the galaxy to be full of social tool using
species and humans to be uniquely gifted with violent/sinful tendencies
among all of them.

[Robert Carnegie]

The Berserker setting doesn't /quite/ meet the specification,
since someone built the Berserkers - and arguably the Berserkers
themselves count, too. But Wikipedia tells me that no one /else/
in the setting is as belligerent as us - but that "the apparent
weaknesses and inconsistencies of living beings are actually the
strengths that bring about the killer machines' eventual defeat."
Intra-species belligerence may be counted as one of the weaknesses.

Otherwise...... well, H. G. Wells also frequently used and declared
the idea that the way that humans /were/ doing business would have
to be changed for the better, in the name of survival.
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/H._G._Wells>

And one answer offered to the Fermi Paradox is that most civilisations
destroy themselves instead of spreading out amongst the stars.

So the trope that interstellar civilisations have to be, or are,
better people than us, is a useful message, whether likely or not,
if you believe that we ourselves need to be better people.

On the other hand, you'd expect the alien better people to come down
and show us the right way. So they have to have a Non-Interference
Directive or soemthing. Anyway, if they've seen _The Day The World
Stood Still_, they know how we treat visitors.

[Dan Goodman]

On Sat, 24 Aug 2013 12:05:55 -0700, Shawn Wilson wrote:

> On Saturday, August 24, 2013 11:52:54 AM UTC-7, David Johnston wrote:
>
>> "trope" here is used in the TVTropes sense, rather than the technical
>> sense. Ideas and gimmicks. There are some of them that I had. Doubtless
>> there are some that you hate. The first one I hate is "Mankind is the
>> only warlike (or in C.S.
>> Lewis's case "sinful")" species in a galaxy full of intelligent
>> intelligent life. Yeah. Right. That's likely.
>
>
> Eh. Wolves are naturally violent. Bunnies are not. It's *possible*.

Rabbits are quite capable of violence, I believe. Most herbivores are.

> Bad? No. Beserker sries by Saberhagen uses that trope in the 'Carmpan
> watcher' intro. The naturally pacifist Carmpan thanks God that humans
> are so warlike. The Berserkers would have exterminated his race without
> effort. Humans were preparing for their own (internal) war when the
> Beserkers hit...

--
Dan Goodman
http://dsgoodman.blogspot.com

[Dan Goodman]

On Sat, 24 Aug 2013 12:52:54 -0600, David Johnston wrote:

I think that's a subset of "humans are unique in having such-and-such
trait."

[JRStern]

Piffle. Not in Niven, or Brin, or Bear. In each case most
civilizations are eaten by others, if they're not careful, strong, or
lucky.

"It's a cookbook".

J.

[Konrad Gaertner]

Modern example of "humans are special":
http://chaogaogong.livejournal.com/88201.html



--
Konrad Gaertner - - - - - - - - - - - - email: kgae...@tx.rr.com
http://kgbooklog.livejournal.com/
"I don't mind hidden depths but I insist that there be a surface."
-- James Nicoll

[Wayne Throop]

: Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com>
: Rabbits are quite capable of violence, I believe. Most herbivores are.

Xref Niven's characters' observations of Puppeteer behaviors
that seem hardwired.

Also xref S.Andrew Swann's moreau setting, wherein most people suppose
rabbit-based moreaus were for quick breeding... but we find there's more
to it, and they are not at all nonviolent... and have lots of fast twitch
muscle fibers iirc. (In any event, we come to find out by practical
demonstration that they aren't the sort of rabbits you want to annoy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moreau_series

And then of course, xref Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_of_Caerbannog
"... thy foe, being naughty in my eyes, shall snuff it."

[Robert Carnegie]

On Saturday, 24 August 2013 21:55:21 UTC+1, JRStern wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Aug 2013 13:00:08 -0700 (PDT), Robert Carnegie
> <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:

> >[Humans are uniquely violent]

> >The Berserker setting doesn't /quite/ meet the specification,
> >since someone built the Berserkers - and arguably the Berserkers
> >themselves count, too. But Wikipedia tells me that no one /else/
> >in the setting is as belligerent as us - but that "the apparent
> >weaknesses and inconsistencies of living beings are actually the
> >strengths that bring about the killer machines' eventual defeat."
> >Intra-species belligerence may be counted as one of the weaknesses.
> >
> >Otherwise...... well, H. G. Wells also frequently used and declared
> >the idea that the way that humans /were/ doing business would have
> >to be changed for the better, in the name of survival.
> ><http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/H._G._Wells>
> >
> >And one answer offered to the Fermi Paradox is that most civilisations
> >destroy themselves instead of spreading out amongst the stars.
>
> Piffle. Not in Niven, or Brin, or Bear. In each case most
> civilizations are eaten by others, if they're not careful, strong, or
> lucky.
>
> "It's a cookbook".

Well, since the Earth is apparently unconquered as of mid-August 2013,
science-fiction writers who predicted that we are assimilated, enslaved,
or consumed by superiorly dangerous aliens were wrong. Or perhaps your
point is that we will do it to them? Because /we're/ the more dangerous
ones? That is the original proposition - that we are the nasty species.

Another angle mentioned in James White's "Sector General" books is
that space exploration may go to interesting or promising star systems,
not to the nearest - or to worlds where we detect spaceship activity
by aliens that we want to meet - in which case, we won't know whether
the other star systems have inhabitants. So maybe those are more
likely to destroy themselves than to be consumed, after all.

For that matter... didn't Larry Niven have humans be space pacifists
until they met the kzinti?

In _Protector_ doesn't he have space people keep telling people from
mainstream "civilisation" about the need to "think it through",
whatever they're doing?

Which is like the Null-A cortico-thalamic pause. Take a breath and
count to ten and don't do something stupid.

That would be a big change for the human race!

[J. Clarke]

In article <_9adnb-_y8qAhoTP...@iphouse.net>,
dsg...@iphouse.com says...

>
> On Sat, 24 Aug 2013 12:05:55 -0700, Shawn Wilson wrote:
>
> > On Saturday, August 24, 2013 11:52:54 AM UTC-7, David Johnston wrote:
> >
> >> "trope" here is used in the TVTropes sense, rather than the technical
> >> sense. Ideas and gimmicks. There are some of them that I had. Doubtless
> >> there are some that you hate. The first one I hate is "Mankind is the
> >> only warlike (or in C.S.
> >> Lewis's case "sinful")" species in a galaxy full of intelligent
> >> intelligent life. Yeah. Right. That's likely.
> >
> >
> > Eh. Wolves are naturally violent. Bunnies are not. It's *possible*.
>
> Rabbits are quite capable of violence, I believe. Most herbivores are.

I used to have a white rabbit that was raised by a cat. He was quite
capable of beating the crap out of any cat he came across.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <kvave4$gr2$1...@dont-email.me>,

Or its counterpart, "Mankind is the only virtuous species in a
galaxy full of warmongers."

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <73ff33f3-dcd8-4307...@googlegroups.com>,

Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>
>On the other hand, you'd expect the alien better people to come down
>and show us the right way. So they have to have a Non-Interference
>Directive or soemthing. Anyway, if they've seen _The Day The World
>Stood Still_, they know how we treat visitors.

Or there was that story that ran in _Analog_ quite a while ago,
where the alien takes the Terran to his own world, which is lousy
with radioactive craters, and says, "You keep saying you do a bad
job. Please teach us how to do a job that is as bad."

--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the gmail edress.
Kithrup's all spammy and hotmail's been hacked.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <eb7i195j4k8rngoah...@4ax.com>,

JRStern <JRS...@foobar.invalid> wrote:
>
>"It's a cookbook".

Well, that was a piece of ingenuity the first time it was used.
It became a trope the next several thousand times it was used.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <_9adnb-_y8qAhoTP...@iphouse.net>,

Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
>
>Rabbits are quite capable of violence, I believe. Most herbivores are.

I have the scars to prove it.

[Tim McDaniel]

In article <_9adnb6_y8oMhoTP...@iphouse.net>,

Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
>I think that's a subset of "humans are unique in having such-and-such
>trait."

And SF never gives us credit for the things that humans ARE unique
for or best at on Earth.
- We have big butts ... which is part of why we're the champion
long-distance runners on Earth.
- We can punch: form a closed fist and strike with a smaller area of
impact (but equivalent force) to a slap. The article that mentioned
that also mentioned that other Earthly primates can't. Of course,
the fact that a grizzly bear can't punch doesn't make its plain old
slaps survivable.
- We can throw more accurately than anything else on Earth: using a
limb to project an object well out of reach. Archerfish can shoot
very accurately but can shoot only water. A frog can catch ... out
to the length of its tongue.

--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com

[Butch Malahide]

On Saturday, August 24, 2013 1:52:54 PM UTC-5, David Johnston wrote:
> "trope" here is used in the TVTropes sense, rather than the technical sense. Ideas and gimmicks. There are some of them that I had. Doubtless there are some that you hate. The first one I hate is "Mankind is the only warlike (or in C.S. Lewis's case "sinful")" species in a galaxy full of intelligent intelligent life. Yeah. Right. That's likely.

So, you would swallow the camel of "multiple independently evolved multicellular lifeforms out there in space", but strain at the gnat of "we are the only warlike/peaceful/whatever ones"? Whatever. What *I* hate is the misuse of the word "tropes" to mean "ideas and gimmicks".

[David Johnston]

On 8/24/2013 5:02 PM, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> In article <_9adnb-_y8qAhoTP...@iphouse.net>,
> Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
>>
>> Rabbits are quite capable of violence, I believe. Most herbivores are.
>
> I have the scars to prove it.
>

That's another trope I hate. "Herbivores are not dangerous" In truth
if we were go to a planet full of alien life or back to the time of the
dinosaurs, the most dangerous life there would likely be large
herbivores because they'll attack when they aren't hungry.

[David Johnston]

That one doesn't bother me because I've never seen it.

[David Johnston]

On 8/24/2013 5:38 PM, Butch Malahide wrote:
> On Saturday, August 24, 2013 1:52:54 PM UTC-5, David Johnston wrote:
>> "trope" here is used in the TVTropes sense, rather than the
>> technical sense. Ideas and gimmicks. There are some of them that I
>> had. Doubtless there are some that you hate. The first one I hate
>> is "Mankind is the only warlike (or in C.S. Lewis's case "sinful")"
>> species in a galaxy full of intelligent intelligent life. Yeah.
>> Right. That's likely.
>
> So, you would swallow the camel of "multiple independently evolved
> multicellular lifeforms out there in space",

Why is that a camel?

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <kvbg74$bdu$1...@dont-email.me>,

Yes: they'll attack to drive you off because you might be hungry.
Or just step on you because they didn't notice you.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <kvbgkh$d19$1...@dont-email.me>,

Um ... the full phrase is "strain at a gnat and swallow a camel."
Not sure if that helps any.

[JRStern]

On Sat, 24 Aug 2013 23:00:46 GMT, djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J
Heydt) wrote:

>In article <eb7i195j4k8rngoah...@4ax.com>,
>JRStern <JRS...@foobar.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>"It's a cookbook".
>
>Well, that was a piece of ingenuity the first time it was used.
>It became a trope the next several thousand times it was used.

Then I hope it has priority over other tropes.

J.

[JRStern]

On Sat, 24 Aug 2013 15:26:49 -0700 (PDT), Robert Carnegie

The point is, if we do it to them, then they needed to be nasty, too.

But more likely you just have to do the math and wait for those early
broadcasts of I Love Lucy to get to the nasties, and for them to
arrive. It should make you nervous, and we may want to prepare for
the worst. They could arrive tomorrow. They could have arrived
yesterday. It may be within their power to have forged a Hawaiian
birth certificate.

>Another angle mentioned in James White's "Sector General" books is
>that space exploration may go to interesting or promising star systems,
>not to the nearest - or to worlds where we detect spaceship activity
>by aliens that we want to meet - in which case, we won't know whether
>the other star systems have inhabitants. So maybe those are more
>likely to destroy themselves than to be consumed, after all.

I don't follow.

>For that matter... didn't Larry Niven have humans be space pacifists
>until they met the kzinti?

Yup. But humans didn't survive the kzinti by pacifist means.

>In _Protector_ doesn't he have space people keep telling people from
>mainstream "civilisation" about the need to "think it through",
>whatever they're doing?

Yes, but again, that ends up in pitched battle.

>Which is like the Null-A cortico-thalamic pause. Take a breath and
>count to ten and don't do something stupid.
>
>That would be a big change for the human race!

You think those stealth bombers are just assembled by some guy
whittling for nine seconds under a baobab tree?

J.

[Tim McDaniel]

In article <kvbg74$bdu$1...@dont-email.me>,

David Johnston <Da...@block.net> wrote:
>That's another trope I hate. "Herbivores are not dangerous"

Quick quiz:
More humans are killed in Africa by ______ than by any other non-human
mammal.

For another, http://www.kenaipeninsula.org/kenai_guide/safety.htm has
"Each year in Alaska, more people are injured by moose than by bears."

http://www.popularmechanics.com/outdoors/survival/tips/cow-attack-survival-guide
has "Between 2003 and 2008, 108 people died from cattle-induced
injuries across the United States, according to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention. That's 27 times the whopping four
people killed in shark attacks in the United States during the same
time period, according to the International Shark Attack File."

--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com

[Tim McDaniel]

In article <Ms28G...@kithrup.com>,

Dorothy J Heydt <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote:
>In article <kvbgkh$d19$1...@dont-email.me>,
>David Johnston <Da...@block.net> wrote:
>>On 8/24/2013 5:38 PM, Butch Malahide wrote:
>>> On Saturday, August 24, 2013 1:52:54 PM UTC-5, David Johnston wrote:
>>>> "trope" here is used in the TVTropes sense, rather than the
>>>> technical sense. Ideas and gimmicks. There are some of them that I
>>>> had. Doubtless there are some that you hate. The first one I hate
>>>> is "Mankind is the only warlike (or in C.S. Lewis's case "sinful")"
>>>> species in a galaxy full of intelligent intelligent life. Yeah.
>>>> Right. That's likely.
>>>
>>> So, you would swallow the camel of "multiple independently evolved
>>> multicellular lifeforms out there in space",
>>
>>Why is that a camel?
>
>Um ... the full phrase is "strain at a gnat and swallow a camel."
>Not sure if that helps any.

I'm afraid not. The question was why *that* statement in particular
should be considered a camel in the sense of the metaphor -- why is
the notion of "multiple independently evolved multicellular lifeforms
out there in space" so ridiculously implausible compared to "we are

the only warlike/peaceful/whatever ones"?

In general, it's mostly been a winning bet that there's nothing
amazingly special about Earth, the Solar System, or the Milky Way, and
human behavior is looking less special all the time. "Common
multicellular life" is on the nothing special side of the bet; "the
only [whatever]" is on the other side of the bet; I know where I'd lay
my money.

--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com

[Robert Carnegie]

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world/> : since /when?/

I don't think I understand this version... well, maybe Star Trek?
(But "the Federation" isn't just Earth. They just didn't have
a budget for aliens on the starship crew, except for Spock.)

[Walter Bushell]

In article <811980f2-200f-4dbe...@googlegroups.com>,
Shawn Wilson <ikono...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Saturday, August 24, 2013 11:52:54 AM UTC-7, David Johnston wrote:
>
> > "trope" here is used in the TVTropes sense, rather than the technical
> > sense.
> > Ideas and gimmicks. There are some of them that I had. Doubtless there are
> > some
> > that you hate. The first one I hate is "Mankind is the only warlike (or in
> > C.S.
> > Lewis's case "sinful")" species in a galaxy full of intelligent intelligent
> > life. Yeah. Right. That's likely.
>
>

> Eh. Wolves are naturally violent. Bunnies are not. It's *possible*.

But unlikely. Herbivores don't tend to develop intelligence. And meat
eating allowed and demanded that genus Homo exchange digestive system
for brains.

>
> Bad? No. Beserker sries by Saberhagen uses that trope in the 'Carmpan
> watcher' intro. The naturally pacifist Carmpan thanks God that humans are so
> warlike. The Berserkers would have exterminated his race without effort.
> Humans were preparing for their own (internal) war when the Beserkers hit...

--
Gambling with Other People's Money is the meth of the fiscal industry.
me -- in the spirit of Karl and Groucho Marx

[Walter Bushell]

In article <678db06a-017f-450a...@googlegroups.com>,

Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:

> For that matter... didn't Larry Niven have humans be space pacifists
> until they met the kzinti?

We lay down violence because we were so good at making war. We beat
the Kizin several times because teamwork beat individual glory hounds
even if more brilliant and some help from the Puppeteers.

[Robert Carnegie]

Well... Earth /may/ be unusually blessed in some ways that suit life.
If, say, one planet in a million is life-bearing, it still isn't
remarkable that the one that we evolved on happens to be one of them.

On the other hand, for about five-sixths of Earth's time, there's been
nothing more sophisticated than slime living here. Not that slime
can't be sophisticated in its own way. I have an idea that multicellular
life may have challenged the slime many times and the slime won.
For that matter, slime cells do cooperate.

There have been arguments about whether Earth has an unusually large
moon, or an unusual iron core and magnetic field, both of which can
produce a protected and stable living environment in some ways,
including having proper day and night instead of one pole and then
the other alternately pointing at the sun or into interstellar space
like Uranus. What's argued about is how much this is unusual.

Having a gas giant in the outer solar system also is argued to
catch comets and such and stop them from hitting us. Whereas,
reent observations of other star systems detect a large proportion
having gas giants close in to the star; the last that I heard,
they were supposed to have formed further out, rolled inwards to
the star, and swallowed anything in their path: so, no Earths there.

But there are theories that your gas giants quite often tangle
their orbits and get stuck in the outer system, which is supposed
to have happened here; and, a good candidate for forming the Moon
/and/ the Earth's large iron core is a collision with a Trojan
companion body of Earth that got too large to stay in its place
following Earth around the star, and instead, came loose, and
came over, and hit us - and /that/ may happen quite often.

And, when we meet aliens, why /shouldn't/ humans be natively
uniquely good at something?

Actually, it occurs to me that the aliens by then have probably
enhanced their own genetics, and are no longer just their natural
evolved species, and are pretty damn good at everything. And
either we /are/ just our natural selves when we meet, or, the species
that meets the aliens will be not quite human any more. Not quite
the same species that's reading the science fiction today.

[David DeLaney]

On 2013-08-24, Shawn Wilson <ikono...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Saturday, August 24, 2013 11:52:54 AM UTC-7, David Johnston wrote:
>> "trope" here is used in the TVTropes sense, rather than the technical sense.
>> Ideas and gimmicks. There are some of them that I had. Doubtless there are
>> some
>> that you hate. The first one I hate is "Mankind is the only warlike (or in
>> C.S.
>> Lewis's case "sinful")" species in a galaxy full of intelligent intelligent
>> life. Yeah. Right. That's likely.
>
> Eh. Wolves are naturally violent. Bunnies are not. It's *possible*.

ObSF: "Bunnies aren't as cute as ev-ry boy sup-pohhh-ses / They got them
floppy ears and twitchy little nohhh-ses / And what's the use of carrots?
What do they need such good eyesight foooooor? / Bunnies, bunnies, it could
be bunnies! ... Or maybe midgets..."

Dave, ObOldWebsite: www.omwh.com
--
\/David DeLaney posting thru EarthLink - "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.

[David DeLaney]

On 2013-08-24, Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
> For that matter... didn't Larry Niven have humans be space pacifists
> until they met the kzinti?

Yep ... and on that _very first meeting_, they realized an underlying principle
of warfare that the kzinti had forgotten about, and used it to defeat the
kzinti, unexpected as that was to either side.

Dave, you can take the boy out of the battlefield, but ...

[Tim McDaniel]

In article <proto-9A2A62....@news.panix.com>,

Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
>Herbivores don't tend to develop intelligence.

"Tend" is a useful weasel word: I could adduce elephants.

--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com

[Robert Bannister]

On 25/08/13 3:05 AM, Shawn Wilson wrote:
> On Saturday, August 24, 2013 11:52:54 AM UTC-7, David Johnston wrote:
>
>> "trope" here is used in the TVTropes sense, rather than the technical sense.
>> Ideas and gimmicks. There are some of them that I had. Doubtless there are some
>> that you hate. The first one I hate is "Mankind is the only warlike (or in C.S.
>> Lewis's case "sinful")" species in a galaxy full of intelligent intelligent
>> life. Yeah. Right. That's likely.
>
>
> Eh. Wolves are naturally violent. Bunnies are not. It's *possible*.

Hmm. I have been bitten by a rabbit. I have never been bitten by a wolf.


--
Robert Bannister

[Robert Bannister]

On 25/08/13 4:00 AM, Robert Carnegie wrote:

> On the other hand, you'd expect the alien better people to come down
> and show us the right way. So they have to have a Non-Interference
> Directive or soemthing. Anyway, if they've seen _The Day The World
> Stood Still_, they know how we treat visitors.

It could be that they've put us in quarantine.

--
Robert Bannister

[Robert Bannister]

On 25/08/13 8:08 AM, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> In article <kvbg74$bdu$1...@dont-email.me>,
> David Johnston <Da...@block.net> wrote:
>> On 8/24/2013 5:02 PM, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
>>> In article <_9adnb-_y8qAhoTP...@iphouse.net>,
>>> Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Rabbits are quite capable of violence, I believe. Most herbivores are.
>>>
>>> I have the scars to prove it.
>>>
>>
>> That's another trope I hate. "Herbivores are not dangerous" In truth
>> if we were go to a planet full of alien life or back to the time of the
>> dinosaurs, the most dangerous life there would likely be large
>> herbivores because they'll attack when they aren't hungry.
>
> Yes: they'll attack to drive you off because you might be hungry.
> Or just step on you because they didn't notice you.
>

I thought it was just a "Keep off my lawn" attitude. Bulls, boars,
stags, elephants rarely step on people, but they often attack. The
female versions are more refined except when they've got babies. Keep
away from all of these dangerous beasts.

--
Robert Bannister

[Brenda Clough]

On 8/24/2013 4:44 PM, Dan Goodman wrote:

> On Sat, 24 Aug 2013 12:05:55 -0700, Shawn Wilson wrote:
>
>> On Saturday, August 24, 2013 11:52:54 AM UTC-7, David Johnston wrote:
>>
>>> "trope" here is used in the TVTropes sense, rather than the technical
>>> sense. Ideas and gimmicks. There are some of them that I had. Doubtless
>>> there are some that you hate. The first one I hate is "Mankind is the
>>> only warlike (or in C.S.
>>> Lewis's case "sinful")" species in a galaxy full of intelligent
>>> intelligent life. Yeah. Right. That's likely.
>>
>>
>> Eh. Wolves are naturally violent. Bunnies are not. It's *possible*.
>

> Rabbits are quite capable of violence, I believe. Most herbivores are.
>

ObF: WATERSHIP DOWN

Brenda



--
My latest novel SPEAK TO OUR DESIRES is available exclusively from Book
View Cafe.
http://www.bookviewcafe.com/index.php/Brenda-Clough/Novels/Speak-to-Our-Desires-Chapter-01

[Don Bruder]

In article <kvbg74$bdu$1...@dont-email.me>,
David Johnston <Da...@block.net> wrote:

> On 8/24/2013 5:02 PM, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> > In article <_9adnb-_y8qAhoTP...@iphouse.net>,
> > Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Rabbits are quite capable of violence, I believe. Most herbivores are.
> >
> > I have the scars to prove it.
> >
>
> That's another trope I hate. "Herbivores are not dangerous"

<heh> SUUUUUUURE they aren't! Last time I looked, horses were still
classified as herbivores.

But try telling that to the guy who's just had a chunk of meat removed
from his arm by a horse who decided to take a bite out of him, for no
apparent reason. Or has a grip that consists of two fingers and a thumb
'cause a horse couldn't tell fingers from carrots. Or had half of his
ribs broken by a horse who decided it didn't want to go for a ride
today. Or had his head turned into something that looks a lot like what
the janitor sweeps/mops up after a Gallagher show by a horse who took
exception to another horse walking by, and the human was just in the
line of fire. Or gotten his nose remodeled by standing in the wrong
place at the moment a horse swung its head around to snap at a fly.
Or... (the list could go on for pages and pages and pages)

So speaks a horseman who's been either an eyewitness or recipient of all
of those. One who knows full well that a horse, despite being an
herbivore, can maim or kill you without any more effort than you or I
would expend on swatting a mosquito. Possibly without even noticing.

--
If the door is baroque don't be Haydn. Come around Bach and jiggle the Handel.

[Tim McDaniel]

In article <b7t85g...@mid.individual.net>,

I've had a wolf's muzzle up against mine.

Wolf Park allows wolf adopters to go in with their wolf or a stunt
wolf under certain conditions (show up on a wolf-meeting day, be
adult, be in good health, take a safety briefing, always stay at the
side of a keeper, take their instructions including "this isn't the
day"). I went in and the keeper called "my" wolf, Altair, over. She
came over, looked up at me, and reared up on her hind legs. As I'd
been trained, I put my forearm horizontally in front of my chin. She
plopped her forepaws there and stared me in the face (and I'm 6'1").
She stared for a moment, then licked my face a few times. What she
thought of the taste of sunblock I don't know. She then plumped back
to the ground and wandered off. The keeper called in a particularly
obliging stunt wolf, Apollo, alias Pillow. There are few sillier
sights than a wolf that's being held sitting vertically on his rump
(sitting like a human but with help), having his tummy rubbed, with a
blissed-out expression on his face, both hind legs doing bunny thumps.

--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com

[J. Clarke]

In article <b7t85g...@mid.individual.net>, rob...@clubtelco.com
says...

Anybody who thinks that rabbits are nonviolent has never seen one rabbit
castrate another rabbit.

[Wayne Throop]

: Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com>
: Herbivores don't tend to develop intelligence.

Nonsense. Herbivores (which are so often prey) "tend to develop"
intelligence in the usual evolutionary sense of "develop", that
is, the less-intelligent part of a prey population tends to be dead.

Yeah, yeah, the old saw is, "how smart do you have to be to sneak
up on a blade of grass". But the relevant question is, how smart do
you have to be to avoid having predators sneak up on you.

I mean, praire dogs develop entire societies and signaling systems
so that they can delegate watching for predators to various
designated lookouts... and those behaviors can be *way* complex,
weighing in "should I bug out and not warn fred, or should I warn
him after all" and so on and so forth.

Or consider the many sorts of birds that have elaborate spoofing
protocols to draw predators away from their offspring. One could
sneer that they're just hardwired routines, but it's almost
never as simple as that.

"Don't tend to develop intelligence" indeed. Humbug. Humbug I say.

[Lawrence Watt-Evans]

On 2013-08-24 15:19:39 -0400, Jessica said:

> On Sat, 24 Aug 2013 12:52:54 -0600, David Johnston wrote:
>
>> "trope" here is used in the TVTropes sense, rather than the technical
>> sense. Ideas and gimmicks. There are some of them that I had.
>> Doubtless there are some that you hate.
>>
>> The first one I hate is "Mankind is the only warlike (or in C.S. Lewis's
>> case "sinful")" species in a galaxy full of intelligent intelligent
>> life. Yeah. Right. That's likely.
>

> In this case I wouldn't say bad so much as overused, trite and most often
> poorly executed. A proper storyteller can make the most hackneyed, dead
> horse trope seem fresh and new. A poor storyteller can't even do that with
> an original idea (If there ever were such a beast).

As Ray Feist and I formulated many years ago:

http://www.watt-evans.com/lawsoffantasy.html#morelaws



--
I'm serializing a new Ethshar novel!
The fourth chapter is online at:
http://www.ethshar.com/ishtascompanion04.html

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sat, 24 Aug 2013 22:59:20 GMT, Dorothy J Heydt
<djh...@kithrup.com> wrote in <news:Ms256...@kithrup.com>
in rec.arts.sf.written:

[...]

> Or there was that story that ran in _Analog_ quite a while
> ago, where the alien takes the Terran to his own world,
> which is lousy with radioactive craters, and says, "You
> keep saying you do a bad job. Please teach us how to do
> a job that is as bad."

One of the more memorable stories, though I’m damned if I
can remember title or author.

Brian

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sun, 25 Aug 2013 03:45:55 +0000 (UTC), Tim McDaniel
<tm...@panix.com> wrote in
<news:kvbulj$r6v$1...@reader1.panix.com> in
rec.arts.sf.written:

> I've had a wolf's muzzle up against mine.

> Wolf Park allows wolf adopters to go in with their wolf or
> a stunt wolf under certain conditions (show up on a
> wolf-meeting day, be adult, be in good health, take a
> safety briefing, always stay at the side of a keeper,
> take their instructions including "this isn't the day").

Neat!

> I went in and the keeper called "my" wolf, Altair, over.
> She came over, looked up at me, and reared up on her hind
> legs. As I'd been trained, I put my forearm horizontally
> in front of my chin. She plopped her forepaws there and
> stared me in the face (and I'm 6'1").

You are? I know that I tend not to register males as tall
unless they’re at least 6' 5" or so, but I’m still mildly
surprised.

> She stared for a moment, then licked my face a few times.
> What she thought of the taste of sunblock I don't know.
> She then plumped back to the ground and wandered off.
> The keeper called in a particularly obliging stunt wolf,
> Apollo, alias Pillow. There are few sillier sights than
> a wolf that's being held sitting vertically on his rump
> (sitting like a human but with help), having his tummy
> rubbed, with a blissed-out expression on his face, both
> hind legs doing bunny thumps.

<splork!!>

(Off-topic non sequitur: do you plan to be in Timonium this
Thanksgiving? I’ve not yet made up my mind: it would be my
third or possibly even fourth trip out there this year, and
without the main attraction.)

Brian

[A.G.McDowell]

On 24/08/2013 19:52, David Johnston wrote:
> "trope" here is used in the TVTropes sense, rather than the technical
> sense. Ideas and gimmicks. There are some of them that I had. Doubtless
> there are some that you hate.
>
> The first one I hate is "Mankind is the only warlike (or in C.S. Lewis's
> case "sinful")" species in a galaxy full of intelligent intelligent
> life. Yeah. Right. That's likely.

I don't think the trope itself is all that bad - thinking about what we
could learn if we had other species and civilisations to compare
ourselves against is a great opportunity for science fiction. What _is_
bad is just shoving this idea in as an isolated fact in the foundation
of a universe and then never investigating it. A good use of the trope
would consider this idea by trying to create a consistent universe in
which it was true. How do these non-aggressive species evolve? What
stops them falling prey to a mutated version of themselves that has more
aggression? How do they negotiate and defuse conflict before it reaches
violent levels? Why are humans different? James White poked around this
a bit for a single species in the backstory of Prilicla and the
Cinrusskins, so it can be done. Looking back at these questions myself,
one possibility might be that technological species with human levels of
aggression and colonization wipe themselves out in internecine war a few
centuries after gaining the ability to throw spaceships - or asteroids -
around at even interplanetary velocities. In this universe, all the
surviving interplanetary civilisations might have been genetically
engineered by themselves to reduce this risk.

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sat, 24 Aug 2013 23:16:07 +0000 (UTC), Tim McDaniel
<tm...@panix.com> wrote in
<news:kvbern$alh$1...@reader1.panix.com> in
rec.arts.sf.written:

> In article <_9adnb6_y8oMhoTP...@iphouse.net>,
> Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:

>> I think that's a subset of "humans are unique in having
>> such-and-such trait."

> And SF never gives us credit for the things that humans
> ARE unique for or best at on Earth.

> - We have big butts ... which is part of why we're the
> champion long-distance runners on Earth.

Paul O. Williams’ Pelbar cycle. I don’t think that he
mentioned big butts specifically, but I’m pretty sure that
long-distance running was an important feature of two of his
post-apocalypse civilizations.

[...]

Brian

[Tim McDaniel]

I'm taking the liberty of CCing rec.arts.sf.fandom, and redirecting
followups to there, as this is fannish, really more personal chatter.

In article <1au34w7qg0g6f.1...@40tude.net>,

Brian M. Scott <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>On Sun, 25 Aug 2013 03:45:55 +0000 (UTC), Tim McDaniel
><tm...@panix.com> wrote in
><news:kvbulj$r6v$1...@reader1.panix.com> in
>rec.arts.sf.written:

>> I went in and the keeper called "my" wolf, Altair, over.
>> She came over, looked up at me, and reared up on her hind
>> legs. As I'd been trained, I put my forearm horizontally
>> in front of my chin. She plopped her forepaws there and
>> stared me in the face (and I'm 6'1").
>
>You are? I know that I tend not to register males as tall

>unless they'e at least 6' 5" or so, but I'm still mildly
>surprised.

Well, my height I rounded up from 6' 3/4", but I round down -- that
is, I tend to slouch.

>(Off-topic non sequitur: do you plan to be in Timonium this
>Thanksgiving? I've not yet made up my mind: it would be my
>third or possibly even fourth trip out there this year, and
>without the main attraction.)

Oddly, this will be the first on-topic post to RASFF since my Worldcon
question.

While I have and will miss Jaelle of Armida -- I so wanted to share
today's video of snails with LEDs on their backs (for scientific
research, but remarkably artistic), and Pedro (today I wanted to tell
him about the Victorian watch shop in N.Z. that boasted of checking
their watches by transits, and I liked his astronomy talks), both
sadly deceased,

Darkover Grand Council (relaxicon, Timonium, Thanksgiving weekend) has
not been about either person for me, but for several other things.

Also, since Jaelle of Armida was the chairalton of Darkover Grand
Council, I wonder whether this year's will be the last, or whether
people will care to continue it. I don't want to go to the last, but
if the last comes I want to go to it, if you know what I mean.

--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com

[David Johnston]

On 8/24/2013 1:19 PM, Jessica wrote:

> On Sat, 24 Aug 2013 12:52:54 -0600, David Johnston wrote:
>
>> "trope" here is used in the TVTropes sense, rather than the technical
>> sense. Ideas and gimmicks. There are some of them that I had.
>> Doubtless there are some that you hate.
>>
>> The first one I hate is "Mankind is the only warlike (or in C.S. Lewis's
>> case "sinful")" species in a galaxy full of intelligent intelligent
>> life. Yeah. Right. That's likely.
>

> In this case I wouldn't say bad so much as overused, trite and most often
> poorly executed.

I hated it the first time I saw it, because it just doesn't make sene.

[David Johnston]

On 8/24/2013 6:09 PM, Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> In article <kvbgkh$d19$1...@dont-email.me>,

> David Johnston <Da...@block.net> wrote:
>> On 8/24/2013 5:38 PM, Butch Malahide wrote:

>>> On Saturday, August 24, 2013 1:52:54 PM UTC-5, David Johnston wrote:
>>>> "trope" here is used in the TVTropes sense, rather than the
>>>> technical sense. Ideas and gimmicks. There are some of them that I
>>>> had. Doubtless there are some that you hate. The first one I hate
>>>> is "Mankind is the only warlike (or in C.S. Lewis's case "sinful")"
>>>> species in a galaxy full of intelligent intelligent life. Yeah.
>>>> Right. That's likely.
>>>

>>> So, you would swallow the camel of "multiple independently evolved
>>> multicellular lifeforms out there in space",
>>
>> Why is that a camel?
>

> Um ... the full phrase is "strain at a gnat and swallow a camel."
> Not sure if that helps any.
>

Not in the least. I don't find multiple independently evolved
multicellular lifeforms out there to be implausible nearly as much as
humanity having a monopoly on aggression in a setting with many
different social tool using species.

[Stephen Harker]

The story is one in which a Federation of species visits the Earth,
takes social science experts back to visit their planets. The story
ends as follows:

"The job of keeping the peace is that which you humans think
you have done poorly," he said in a voice soft as a crumbling
dream. "Teach us how to do a job that is as poor. Please."


The story is "No shoulder to cry on" by Hank Davis, _Analog_, June
1968, page 59.

--
Stephen Harker s.ha...@adfa.edu.au
PEMS http://sjharker.customer.netspace.net.au/
UNSW@ADFA

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sun, 25 Aug 2013 17:50:19 +1000, Stephen Harker
<sjha...@netspace.net.au> wrote in
<news:m31u5i6...@howitt.home> in rec.arts.sf.written:

> "Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> writes:

>> On Sat, 24 Aug 2013 22:59:20 GMT, Dorothy J Heydt
>> <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote in <news:Ms256...@kithrup.com>
>> in rec.arts.sf.written:

>> [...]

>>> Or there was that story that ran in _Analog_ quite a while
>>> ago, where the alien takes the Terran to his own world,
>>> which is lousy with radioactive craters, and says, "You
>>> keep saying you do a bad job. Please teach us how to do
>>> a job that is as bad."

>> One of the more memorable stories, though I’m damned if I
>> can remember title or author.

> The story is one in which a Federation of species visits the Earth,
> takes social science experts back to visit their planets. The story
> ends as follows:

> "The job of keeping the peace is that which you humans think
> you have done poorly," he said in a voice soft as a crumbling
> dream. "Teach us how to do a job that is as poor. Please."

> The story is "No shoulder to cry on" by Hank Davis, _Analog_, June
> 1968, page 59.

That’s the one, all right; even the word ‘crumbling’ rings a
bell, though I couldn’t have called it to mind
independently. Thanks.

Brian

[Lawrence Watt-Evans]

On 2013-08-25 03:50:19 -0400, Stephen Harker said:

> "Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> writes:
>
>> On Sat, 24 Aug 2013 22:59:20 GMT, Dorothy J Heydt
>> <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote in <news:Ms256...@kithrup.com>
>> in rec.arts.sf.written:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>> Or there was that story that ran in _Analog_ quite a while
>>> ago, where the alien takes the Terran to his own world,
>>> which is lousy with radioactive craters, and says, "You
>>> keep saying you do a bad job. Please teach us how to do
>>> a job that is as bad."
>>
>> One of the more memorable stories, though I’m damned if I
>> can remember title or author.
>

> The story is one in which a Federation of species visits the Earth,
> takes social science experts back to visit their planets. The story
> ends as follows:
>
> "The job of keeping the peace is that which you humans think
> you have done poorly," he said in a voice soft as a crumbling
> dream. "Teach us how to do a job that is as poor. Please."
>
> The story is "No shoulder to cry on" by Hank Davis, _Analog_, June
> 1968, page 59.

Hank Davis? Cool! I like Hank. Last I heard he was working for Baen;
I don't think he's written anything new for thirty years or more.

[William Vetter]

On Saturday, August 24, 2013 2:52:54 PM UTC-4, David Johnston wrote:
> "trope" here is used in the TVTropes sense, rather than the technical
>
> sense. Ideas and gimmicks. There are some of them that I had.
>
> Doubtless there are some that you hate.
>
>
>
> The first one I hate is "Mankind is the only warlike (or in C.S. Lewis's
>
> case "sinful")" species in a galaxy full of intelligent intelligent
>
> life. Yeah. Right. That's likely.

People who play a virtual reality game die of a brain
embolism if a game character kills them, or they similarly die if they
don't get to the 10th level of the game.

[Robert Carnegie]

Yeah. Or when someone gets locked in the holodeck, it should be
only as inconvenient as being trapped in an elevator. Not trapped
in an elevator where people try to kill you.

By the way, in real life, if you're trapped in an elevator, it really
is extremely unlikely that it will kill you. But it's not unknown.
In related news, I kind of feel about a freight elevator now
the way I do about the _Star Trek_ cargo transporter, if it
exists in the story this week, which usually doesn't have the
same standard of guarantee that you go in and come out alive.
Cargo doesn't need to come out alive.

Anyway, it isn't never-acceptable but I need to be persuaded to
accept it. Well, if it's what's happening this week in Trek
then I guess I won't switch off the TV, but I may switch off some
of my emotional involvement with the episode. How often does
this /really/ kill someone who isn't a redshirt?

<http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheGamePlaysYou>
might not be the correct page, but it does have Teal'c of
_Stargate SG-1_ getting stuck in a combat simulator that
applies an electric shock if he loses - and it gets harder
each time. And they have to shock-restart his heart.

However, it doesn't seem to include holodecks; I don't see
a link to "stuck in the holodeck" - which is here;
<http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HolodeckMalfunction>

[Robert Carnegie]

On Saturday, 24 August 2013 19:52:54 UTC+1, David Johnston wrote:
> "trope" here is used in the TVTropes sense, rather than the technical
> sense. Ideas and gimmicks. There are some of them that I had.
> Doubtless there are some that you hate.

By the way, was "had" supposed to be "hate", also?

> The first one I hate is "Mankind is the only warlike (or in C.S. Lewis's
> case "sinful")" species in a galaxy full of intelligent intelligent
> life. Yeah. Right. That's likely.

I don't hate <http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TranslatorMicrobes>
(Universal Translator) but I don't believe in it - at least not the ones
that can instantly decode and translate a language that wasn't programmed
in to them. But it does save time.

On the other hand, Jack Campbell's "Lost Fleet" space series, as of
the next to latest volume, _Invincible_, /may/ be over-stretching
a failure to communicate reliably with an alien society. But, they
don't have long to learn, I guess; maybe all those Universal Translator
stories spoiled me. Still, the other side seem to be effortlessly
smart at things that they want to do. On the other hand, they only
communicate when they have something to say, so there is limited
data for the Fleet to use.

The Star Trek translator is sometimes portrayed as needing data
loaded in and analysed by an expert to work properly - maybe
as opposed to a basic mode that you get when you let the machine
work by itself. And in novel _Debtors' Planet_, Data the android
loads the local planet language into his brain instead of using
his Universal Translator - but I forget where he got the data
from; I suppose either from the Ferengi, or /from/ the Universal
Translator. Anyway, it means that he gets to pick up relationships
between words, and alternate meanings. Also, people using the
regular Universal Translator in the story get mangled word order -
in both directions. Maybe they /are/ using Ferengi data; if the
Ferengi did the work, they may have only wanted to use a
pidgin / business language. Indeed, I think the debtors' language
is scrambled when they talk amongst themselves, which reflects
the translation /we're/ getting as readers, whereas Ferengi-to-debtor
speeches are in ordinary English, so presumably the debtors struggle
to understand /those/ speeches. And the Ferengi don't care.

And elsewhere we're told that the concepts that Vulcans live by
are misnamed as "logic" - and "repression" of emotion too -
but I won't try to reproduce the explanation.

[Jacey Bedford]

On 24/08/2013 19:52, David Johnston wrote:
> "trope" here is used in the TVTropes sense, rather than the technical
> sense. Ideas and gimmicks. There are some of them that I had.
> Doubtless there are some that you hate.
>

> The first one I hate is "Mankind is the only warlike (or in C.S. Lewis's
> case "sinful")" species in a galaxy full of intelligent intelligent
> life. Yeah. Right. That's likely.

Or the opposite - that any alien coming to earth is bound to be trying
to eat/conquer/enslave us.

Jacey

--
jaceyb...@nospam.btinternet.com
Remove the obvious to contact me direct.

You know it's well past your bed time when
your nose hits the space bar while your brain
still thought you were checking for typos

[Walter Bushell]

In article <af0a9fb9-5b4b-4bb6...@googlegroups.com>,
Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:

> Well... Earth /may/ be unusually blessed in some ways that suit life.
> If, say, one planet in a million is life-bearing, it still isn't
> remarkable that the one that we evolved on happens to be one of them.

Now wait a minute. Sapient species can only evolve on planets that
bear life, so how could we have evolved on a planet that didn't?

--
Gambling with Other People's Money is the meth of the fiscal industry.
me -- in the spirit of Karl and Groucho Marx

[Walter Bushell]

In article <af0a9fb9-5b4b-4bb6...@googlegroups.com>,
Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:

> On the other hand, for about five-sixths of Earth's time, there's been
> nothing more sophisticated than slime living here. Not that slime
> can't be sophisticated in its own way. I have an idea that multicellular
> life may have challenged the slime many times and the slime won.
> For that matter, slime cells do cooperate.

Hence the song "I fought the slime and the *slime* *won*."

[Walter Bushell]

In article <6YSdnZjSj-GM_oTP...@earthlink.com>,
David DeLaney <davidd...@earthlink.net> wrote:

> On 2013-08-24, Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
> > For that matter... didn't Larry Niven have humans be space pacifists
> > until they met the kzinti?
>
> Yep ... and on that _very first meeting_, they realized an underlying
> principle
> of warfare that the kzinti had forgotten about, and used it to defeat the
> kzinti, unexpected as that was to either side.
>
> Dave, you can take the boy out of the battlefield, but ...

One deviant on the ship realized it in time.

[Walter Bushell]

In article <kvbulj$r6v$1...@reader1.panix.com>,

I'll stick with dogs the are less than 1/4 wolf, please.

[Walter Bushell]

In article <MPG.2c8349e08...@news.newsguy.com>,

Yes, there has to be some form of competition in any species, and that
is one way of removing rivals from the breeding pool. Much bird song
translates as:

"This land is my land.
This land is my land.
It isn't your land.
This land is *my* land.

[Louann Miller]

Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote in news:proto-F7D2CE.09052025082013
@news.panix.com:

> In article <af0a9fb9-5b4b-4bb6...@googlegroups.com>,
> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>
>> Well... Earth /may/ be unusually blessed in some ways that suit life.
>> If, say, one planet in a million is life-bearing, it still isn't
>> remarkable that the one that we evolved on happens to be one of them.
>
> Now wait a minute. Sapient species can only evolve on planets that
> bear life, so how could we have evolved on a planet that didn't?

I think you two are both saying that.

[Walter Bushell]

In article <kvbtcs$nde$2...@dont-email.me>, Don Bruder <D...@sonic.net>
wrote:

Have to admire blacksmiths who drive nails into horse's hoofs. A
miscalculation on an animal that can eviscerate you with a kick, is
something.

[William December Starr]

In article <kvbulj$r6v$1...@reader1.panix.com>,

tm...@panix.com (Tim McDaniel) said:

> The keeper called in a particularly obliging stunt wolf, Apollo,
> alias Pillow. There are few sillier sights than a wolf that's
> being held sitting vertically on his rump (sitting like a human
> but with help), having his tummy rubbed, with a blissed-out
> expression on his face, both hind legs doing bunny thumps.

You know this "The Far Side" cartoon?

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b137/bezo1/DSC00562.jpg
http://tinyurl.com/mncl7ro

Wolves don't know they're cool.

-- wds

[Greg Goss]

Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:

>In article <678db06a-017f-450a...@googlegroups.com>,

> Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>
>> For that matter... didn't Larry Niven have humans be space pacifists
>> until they met the kzinti?
>

>We lay down violence because we were so good at making war. We beat
>the Kizin several times because teamwork beat individual glory hounds
>even if more brilliant and some help from the Puppeteers.

You missed the couple of short stories he wrote to connect his ARM era
into his "Known Space" era. The humans were spacegoing pacifists
until they met the Kzinti. The first ship to meet the Kzinti survived
by improvising a weapon the use of which nearly drove the guy who
thought of it mad. Then the solar system itself was defended by
repurposing energy distribution beams from near-sun solar stations.

Humans survived the first war not by teamwork, but by improvisation.

The same pacifist era is shown when the humans meet the Puppeteers in
the first "of Worlds" novel.
--
We are geeks. Resistance is voltage over current.

[Tim McDaniel]

In article <proto-5E3300....@news.panix.com>,

Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
>I'll stick with dogs the are less than 1/4 wolf, please.

As a pet, certainly. Wolf Park is strongly against the keeping of pet
wolves or wolf-dog hybrids, because many wolf behaviors (that is, that
are not in dogs) are annoying or dangerous, and wolf-dog hybrids can
express them without warning. For example, a child screaming or
crying in front of a wolf can flick the "distressed prey and it's
lunchtime" switch. There's a reason why some wolf traits were bred
out of dogs.

For a quick (albeit expensive) visit, with wolves that were carefully
hand-raised with a variety of humans as pups for a calculated period
of time (just enough to accept humans fully, not too much to prevent
acting as a wolf), it's great.

--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com

[JRStern]

Or maybe it's dangerous to be so peaceful.

Say you can be peaceful if you're also very powerful, but by that same
token one day you have a little accident with that power and you wipe
yourself out. A more warlike culture would have had many levels of
checks and balances, being suspicious on all sides. Or, they may just
die of boredom.

Just sayin'.

You may think of some SF stories that run along these lines.

J.

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <kvda9r$cql$1...@reader1.panix.com>,

On the other hand, a friend of mine had two canids as pets: a
husky, and a full-blooded timber wolf. The wolf was the tamer of
the two. Both, of course, had accepted my friend as their pack
alpha. But he used to put it this way: "Get in between the husky
and his food dish, and he'll bite you. Do the same to the wolf,
and he'll just whine."

Anecdote, of course, is not the singular of data, and I never
attempted to interfere with either animal's meals. I only report
what I was told. I'm a cat person in any case.

--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the gmail edress.
Kithrup's all spammy and hotmail's been hacked.

[Greg Goss]

Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:

>But unlikely. Herbivores don't tend to develop intelligence.

Elephants? Horses are pretty smart, but it's hard to tell if that was
innate or the result of breeding.

[Greg Goss]

Robert Bannister <rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote:

>On 25/08/13 3:05 AM, Shawn Wilson wrote:

>> On Saturday, August 24, 2013 11:52:54 AM UTC-7, David Johnston wrote:
>>
>>> "trope" here is used in the TVTropes sense, rather than the technical sense.
>>> Ideas and gimmicks. There are some of them that I had. Doubtless there are some
>>> that you hate. The first one I hate is "Mankind is the only warlike (or in C.S.
>>> Lewis's case "sinful")" species in a galaxy full of intelligent intelligent
>>> life. Yeah. Right. That's likely.
>>
>>

>> Eh. Wolves are naturally violent. Bunnies are not. It's *possible*.
>
>Hmm. I have been bitten by a rabbit. I have never been bitten by a wolf.

Perhaps a measure of the wolf's intelligence.

[Greg Goss]

tm...@panix.com (Tim McDaniel) wrote:

>And SF never gives us credit for the things that humans ARE unique
>for or best at on Earth.
>- We have big butts ... which is part of why we're the champion
> long-distance runners on Earth.

The achilles tendon should get more credit. The big butt is our
replacement for a heavy tail that sprinting animals use.

[David Johnston]

On 8/25/2013 6:23 AM, Jacey Bedford wrote:
> On 24/08/2013 19:52, David Johnston wrote:
>> "trope" here is used in the TVTropes sense, rather than the technical
>> sense. Ideas and gimmicks. There are some of them that I had.
>> Doubtless there are some that you hate.
>>
>> The first one I hate is "Mankind is the only warlike (or in C.S. Lewis's
>> case "sinful")" species in a galaxy full of intelligent intelligent
>> life. Yeah. Right. That's likely.
>
> Or the opposite - that any alien coming to earth is bound to be trying
> to eat/conquer/enslave us.

What do you hate? Any storyline where aliens are hostile, or just
Doctor Who?

[art...@yahoo.com]

On Saturday, August 24, 2013 11:11:56 PM UTC-4, bre...@sff.net wrote:
> On 8/24/2013 4:44 PM, Dan Goodman wrote:
>
> > On Sat, 24 Aug 2013 12:05:55 -0700, Shawn Wilson wrote:

>
> >
>
> >> On Saturday, August 24, 2013 11:52:54 AM UTC-7, David Johnston wrote:
>
> >>
>
> >>> "trope" here is used in the TVTropes sense, rather than the technical
>
> >>> sense. Ideas and gimmicks. There are some of them that I had. Doubtless
>
> >>> there are some that you hate. The first one I hate is "Mankind is the
>
> >>> only warlike (or in C.S.
>
> >>> Lewis's case "sinful")" species in a galaxy full of intelligent
>
> >>> intelligent life. Yeah. Right. That's likely.
>
> >>
>
> >>
>

> >> Eh. Wolves are naturally violent. Bunnies are not. It's *possible*.
>
> >
>

> > Rabbits are quite capable of violence, I believe. Most herbivores are.
>
> >
>
>
>

> ObF: WATERSHIP DOWN

Or Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Didn't President Carter get attacked by a Rabbit?
I played a game called "Killer Bunnies" once.

[Don Kuenz]

Stephen Harker <sjha...@netspace.net.au> wrote:
> "Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> writes:
>
>> On Sat, 24 Aug 2013 22:59:20 GMT, Dorothy J Heydt
>> <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote in <news:Ms256...@kithrup.com>
>> in rec.arts.sf.written:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>> Or there was that story that ran in _Analog_ quite a while
>>> ago, where the alien takes the Terran to his own world,
>>> which is lousy with radioactive craters, and says, "You
>>> keep saying you do a bad job. Please teach us how to do
>>> a job that is as bad."
>>

>> One of the more memorable stories, though I?m damned if I

>> can remember title or author.
>>
>> Brian
>
> The story is one in which a Federation of species visits the Earth,
> takes social science experts back to visit their planets. The story
> ends as follows:
>
> "The job of keeping the peace is that which you humans think
> you have done poorly," he said in a voice soft as a crumbling
> dream. "Teach us how to do a job that is as poor. Please."
>
>
> The story is "No shoulder to cry on" by Hank Davis, _Analog_, June
> 1968, page 59.

It's in my collection. I just finished reading it for the first time.
The story's pathos comes straight out of the 1960's atomic bomb
zeitgeist. Thank you all for bringing it up.

--
Don Kuenz

[art...@yahoo.com]

On Saturday, August 24, 2013 10:11:53 PM UTC-4, Tim McDaniel wrote:
> In article <proto-9A2A62....@news.panix.com>,

>
> Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
>
> >Herbivores don't tend to develop intelligence.
>
>
>

> "Tend" is a useful weasel word: I could adduce elephants.

The smart rabbits don't get eaten by weasels.

[David V. Loewe, Jr]

On Sun, 25 Aug 2013 01:30:55, "Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu>
wrote:

>On Sun, 25 Aug 2013 03:45:55, Tim McDaniel
><tm...@panix.com> wrote:

>> I went in and the keeper called "my" wolf, Altair, over.
>> She came over, looked up at me, and reared up on her hind
>> legs. As I'd been trained, I put my forearm horizontally
>> in front of my chin. She plopped her forepaws there and
>> stared me in the face (and I'm 6'1").
>

>You are? I know that I tend not to register males as tall
>unless they’re at least 6' 5" or so, but I’m still mildly
>surprised.

Average US adult male height is just under 5' 10".
--
"And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our souls"
- Robert Plant

[J. Clarke]

In article <3b36df83-6afa-4283...@googlegroups.com>,
art...@yahoo.com says...

The Carter situation was an embarassment that he'll never live down. He
was out fishing and here came this poor little bunny rabbit (the spin
calls it a "swamp rabbit" and describes in terms that make it sound like
something out of "Night of the Lepus") that had jumped in the water
trying to get away from hounds. So he, claiming to have no experience
of rabbits (I do wonder who keeps the rabbits out of his peanuts since
he clearly doesn't deal with them personally), hits it with an oar.

Don't get me wrong, I like Jimmy, he's a fine example of the "good old
boy" and for the most part a pretty decent human being, but he did have
his lapses.

[J. Clarke]

In article <354cdb7d-e433-47ae...@googlegroups.com>,
art...@yahoo.com says...

The smart monkeys keep predators as pets.

[Default User]

Greg Goss wrote:

> You missed the couple of short stories he wrote to connect his ARM era
> into his "Known Space" era. The humans were spacegoing pacifists
> until they met the Kzinti. The first ship to meet the Kzinti survived
> by improvising a weapon the use of which nearly drove the guy who
> thought of it mad. Then the solar system itself was defended by
> repurposing energy distribution beams from near-sun solar stations.

Solar-sail launching lasers "AKA giant laser cannon" in the outer Belt,
as I recall.



Brian

[A.G.McDowell]

On 25/08/2013 17:23, JRStern wrote:
> On Sun, 25 Aug 2013 06:40:33 +0100, "A.G.McDowell"
> <andrew-...@o2.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> On 24/08/2013 19:52, David Johnston wrote:
>>> "trope" here is used in the TVTropes sense, rather than the technical
>>> sense. Ideas and gimmicks. There are some of them that I had. Doubtless
>>> there are some that you hate.
>>>
>>> The first one I hate is "Mankind is the only warlike (or in C.S. Lewis's
>>> case "sinful")" species in a galaxy full of intelligent intelligent
>>> life. Yeah. Right. That's likely.
>> I don't think the trope itself is all that bad - thinking about what we
>> could learn if we had other species and civilisations to compare
>> ourselves against is a great opportunity for science fiction. What _is_

(trimmed)

>
> Or maybe it's dangerous to be so peaceful.
>
> Say you can be peaceful if you're also very powerful, but by that same
> token one day you have a little accident with that power and you wipe
> yourself out. A more warlike culture would have had many levels of
> checks and balances, being suspicious on all sides. Or, they may just
> die of boredom.
>
> Just sayin'.
>
> You may think of some SF stories that run along these lines.
>
> J.
>

Checks and balances based on maintaining something close to constant
war? Just been reading an article on something I can see written up at
http://techblog.netflix.com/2011/07/netflix-simian-army.html - here is
an excerpt

we built Chaos Monkey, a tool that randomly disables our production
instances to make sure we can survive this common type of failure
without any customer impact. The name comes from the idea of unleashing
a wild monkey with a weapon in your data center (or cloud region) to
randomly shoot down instances and chew through cables -- all the while
we continue serving our customers without interruption

[ppint. at pplay]

- hi; in article,
<678db06a-017f-450a...@googlegroups.com>,
rja.ca...@excite.com "Robert Carnegie" suggested:
> JRStern wrote:
>> <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>>>And one answer offered to the Fermi Paradox is that most civilisations
>>>destroy themselves instead of spreading out amongst the stars.
>>
>>Piffle. Not in Niven, or Brin, or Bear. In each case most civilizations
>>are eaten by others, if they're not careful, strong, or lucky. "It's a
>>cookbook".

- each of the four exemplar authorities or examples being
adduced being - strictly fictional. not the strongest of
arguments upon which to base a dismissive "piffle"...
>
>Well, since the Earth is apparently unconquered as of mid-August 2013,
>science-fiction writers who predicted that we are assimilated, enslaved,
>or consumed by superiorly dangerous aliens were wrong. Or perhaps your
>point is that we will do it to them? Because /we're/ the more dangerous
>ones? That is the original proposition - that we are the nasty species.

- or that we just haven't met them yet.

>Another angle mentioned in James White's "Sector General" books is
>that space exploration may go to interesting or promising star systems,
>not to the nearest - or to worlds where we detect spaceship activity
>by aliens that we want to meet - in which case, we won't know whether
>the other star systems have inhabitants. So maybe those are more likely
>to destroy themselves than to be consumed, after all.

- or they've viewed & listened to our steadily expanding wave-
front of emf transmissions and beyond, and come to the under-
standable conclusion they want nothing whatsoever to do with
a species that churns out such quantities of sheer garbage.

>For that matter... didn't Larry Niven have humans be space pacifists
>until they met the kzinti?

- no. he had humanity exploring apparently uninhabited space
in spaceships without dedicated heavy weaponry being mounted.
it's an unsubtle distinction.

>In _Protector_ doesn't he have space people keep telling people from
>mainstream "civilisation" about the need to "think it through", whatever
>they're doing? Which is like the Null-A cortico-thalamic pause. Take a
>breath and count to ten and don't do something stupid. That would be a big
>change for the human race!

- yes:

- it'd interpose a multitude of ten-second pauses before
all the idiotic decisions the human race, individually and
perhaps also collectively, has made - and has yet to make.

- love, ppint.
[drop the "v", and change the "f" to a "g", to email or cc.]
--
"testicles are more alien to women, than tentacles"
- ellen datlow, interviewed by craig charles at intersection, 1995

[ppint. at pplay]

- hi; in article, <Ms25B...@kithrup.com>,
djh...@kithrup.com "Dorothy J Heydt" attested:

> Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
>>Rabbits are quite capable of violence, I believe. Most herbivores are.
>

>I have the scars to prove it.

- "bunty the brute bit me!"

- marie-therese pinder, reporting in outrage at the behaviour of
the bean family pet she was bunny-sitting in durham, summer 1984

- love, ppint.
[drop the "v", and change the "f" to a "g", to email or cc.]
--

"The Dinner was loose again."
- _Chanur's Homecoming_, C. J. Cherryh, 1987
Phantasia, Daw & Methuen Books

[ppint. at pplay]

- hi; in article, <kvbern$alh$1...@reader1.panix.com>,
tm...@panix.com "Tim McDaniel" made plaint:
> Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
>>I think that's a subset of "humans are unique in having such-and-such
>>trait."

>
>And SF never gives us credit for the things that humans ARE unique
>for or best at on Earth.
>- We have big butts ... which is part of why we're the champion
> long-distance runners on Earth.

>- We can punch: form a closed fist and strike with a smaller area of
> impact (but equivalent force) to a slap. The article that mentioned
> that also mentioned that other Earthly primates can't. Of course,
> the fact that a grizzly bear can't punch doesn't make its plain old
> slaps survivable.
>- We can throw more accurately than anything else on Earth: using a
> limb to project an object well out of reach. Archerfish can shoot
> very accurately but can shoot only water. A frog can catch ... out
> to the length of its tongue.

- as can a chameleon, to a considerably greater distance,
its tongue being a lot longer in comparison for a given
size of animal; its depth of stereoscopic sight may also
be greater, which would help - when both of its eyes are
aimed in the same direction.

- we can grip down to a finer size, than can any other
land animal of comparable size & intelligence, sfaiaa;

- there are other species that can match our cursive
abilities - most obviously, horses and dogs - many of
which we have tamed for one purpose or another - though
i don't believe we've yet achieved a reliable seeing-eye
kangaroo;

- we communicate ideas and concepts, including dangers
and opportunities, regarding experiences the recipients
of the information have never before experienced, and
not only those which were completely new to us - we're
capable of describing experiences and their dangers not
only that we have never met, but which may not yet exist;

- in many cultures we have extended our species' already
atypically long childhood, as much as doubling it: and
we remain able to learn new information and behaviours
almost all our lives (if not so easily as in childhood);

- the combination of our abilities to learn, communicate,
adapt, innovate, control our environment and educate seem
to be unique - so far - and to differentiate us from some
species that may be approximately as intelligent as us in
succeeding as a lifeform on this planet.

- but bear in mind we've yet to last anywhere near so long
as did the dinosaurs: we've yet to demonstrate whether our
self-aware intelligent sophoncy is in the longer term truly
a successful signature survival characteristic.

- love, ppint.
[drop the "v", and change the "f" to a "g", to email or cc.]
--

"No creature without tentacles had ever developed true intelligence."
- "Hunting Problem" Robert Sheckley

[ppint. at pplay]

- hi; in article, <kvbg74$bdu$1...@dont-email.me>,
Da...@block.net "David Johnston" opined:

>That's another trope I hate. "Herbivores are not dangerous" In truth
>if we were go to a planet full of alien life or back to the time of the
>dinosaurs, the most dangerous life there would likely be large herbivores
>because they'll attack when they aren't hungry.

- counting by the number of humans killed by species, whether
directly or as vector, the hippo is the most dangerous animal
in africa after the mosquito and tse-tse fly.
(i suspect that other humans occasionally rise - or sink - to
achieving kill-rates comparable with that of the hippopotamus.)

- love, ppint.
[drop the "v", and change the "f" to a "g", to email or cc.]
--

[Tim McDaniel]

In article <20130825.193...@i-m-t.demon.co.uk>,

ppint. at pplay <v$af$pp...@i-m-t.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> - counting by the number of humans killed by species, whether
> directly or as vector, the hippo is the most dangerous animal
> in africa after the mosquito and tse-tse fly.

Mosquitos don't kill people. Plasmodium and her friends kill people.

> (i suspect that other humans occasionally rise - or sink - to
> achieving kill-rates comparable with that of the
> hippopotamus.)

"Occasionally"? Are you insane?

http://www.oddee.com/item_98002.aspx has "Hippos kill 2,900 people
annually in Africa" (but the source link, the Straight Dope, gives no
numbers). That doesn't seem implausible to me: might be high, might
not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War
2 August 1998 -- 18 July 2003
350,000+ (violent deaths 1998-2001)
2.7-5.4 million excess deaths (1998-present)[3][4]
"The Human Security Project states that the IRC figure of 2.83 million
excess deaths between May 2001 and April 2007 should be revised to
0.86 million.[29][30]"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23826163
"UK government staff withdraw from DRC city of Goma"
yesterday, due to heavy fighting.

--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com

[Tim McDaniel]

In article <b7uq7i...@mid.individual.net>,

Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote:
>Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>>But unlikely. Herbivores don't tend to develop intelligence.
>
>Elephants? Horses are pretty smart, but it's hard to tell if that was
>innate or the result of breeding.

I followed net.equestrian or rec.equestrian for a while, and going by
that, "horses" and "smart" are not concepts that intersect in general.

Domestication tends to endumben animals.

--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com

[David Loewe, Jr.]

On Sun, 25 Aug 2013 09:11:03, Walter Bushell <pr...@panix.com> wrote:

>I'll stick with dogs the are less than 1/4 wolf, please.

Depends on what the other part is. A buddy of mine used to have a "dog"
that was half English Bulldog and half gray wolf. She looked like a pit
bull and was as sweet as she could be.
--
"The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands,
To fight the horde, singing and crying: Valhalla, I am coming!
On we sweep with threshing oar, Our only goal will be the
western shore."
Jimmy Page & Robert Plant

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sun, 25 Aug 2013 13:09:29 -0500, "David V. Loewe, Jr"
<dave...@charter.net> wrote in
<news:b0ik19hqefcnq7caq...@4ax.com> in
rec.arts.sf.written:

> On Sun, 25 Aug 2013 01:30:55, "Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu>
> wrote:

>>On Sun, 25 Aug 2013 03:45:55, Tim McDaniel
>><tm...@panix.com> wrote:

>>> I went in and the keeper called "my" wolf, Altair, over.
>>> She came over, looked up at me, and reared up on her hind
>>> legs. As I'd been trained, I put my forearm horizontally
>>> in front of my chin. She plopped her forepaws there and
>>> stared me in the face (and I'm 6'1").

>>You are? I know that I tend not to register males as tall
>>unless they’re at least 6' 5" or so, but I’m still mildly
>>surprised.

> Average US adult male height is just under 5' 10".

I know. And Tim is about a standard deviation above that,
which is enough for him to register as ‘a bit tall’ on many
people’s scales. I, on the other hand, am a good two std.
devs. below the mean, so everything from average to
moderately tall registers about the same for me.

Brian

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

On 8/25/13 3:29 PM, ppint. at pplay wrote:

> - but bear in mind we've yet to last anywhere near so long
> as did the dinosaurs:

Pet peeve: So what? The dinosaurs are an entire CLADE of creatures, and
we are a single SPECIES. Compare species with species, not one species
with thousands of others.

Drives me nuts when people try to point out that we're not "so
successful" or whatever and bring in "rats" (64 species), "dinosaurs"
(lots -- who knows how many species), "ants" (12,500 species), and so on.


--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com Blog:
http://seawasp.livejournal.com

[Wayne Throop]

:: - but bear in mind we've yet to last anywhere near so long as did the
:: dinosaurs:

: "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com>

: Pet peeve: So what? The dinosaurs are an entire CLADE of creatures,
: and we are a single SPECIES. Compare species with species, not one
: species with thousands of others.

OK. "We've yet to last anywhere near as long as does the average species."
Is that better?

[Shawn Wilson]

On Sunday, August 25, 2013 12:20:30 PM UTC-7, "ppint. at pplay" wrote:
>> For that matter... didn't Larry Niven have humans be space pacifists >until
>> they met the kzinti

> no. he had humanity exploring apparently uninhabited space in spaceships
> without dedicated heavy weaponry being mounted. it's an unsubtle distinction.

Actually, yes. While humans WERE exploring space in unarmed vessels, the people on board those vessels were also major pacifists. Even bar fights were practically unknown, let alone any kind of violent crime or murder. To learn history (ie about war) you had to be unusually emotionally stable. Most people didn't qualify.

A Kzin ship comes upon these new aliens and their telepath (chemically augmented, considered contemptible but very useful) reports their pacifism. Captain says 'bullshit' and uses a very slow weapon (that heated metal via induction) to see how they would respond.

The humans are basically holding hands and singing kumbayah at meeting new friends. Humans believe that any advanced race *must* have learned to eliminate violent tendencies as a prerequisite to advancement. They interpret the obvious weapons mounts on the Kzinti ships as a large number of very long range communications devices.

So, the attack starts, the captain (who *did* know about war) realizes what's going on and improvises. His ship is utterly unarmed but it does have a photon drive that doubles as an interstellar communications laser*...

He later claims it was an accident, but another crew member notes that the Kzin ship was too far off for an 'accidental' hit to be plausible, but he agrees to keep the secret.

*let me see, visible at multiple light years, with an output capable of accellerating a large ship, what will that do at 100 km?

CF 'The Warriors' by Larry Niven.

[Tim McDaniel]

Someone mentioned not enough credit being given to the Achilles'
tendon. The State article, q.v., has

... the work of Harvard anthropologist Daniel Lieberman and
University of Utah biologist Dennis Bramble. They jointly proposed
in a 2004 paper that we're superlatively endowed by evolution to
go long. Our long-striding legs are packed with springlike
tendons, muscles, and ligaments that enable us to briefly store
elastic energy as we come down on a foot and then recoil to help
propel us forward. Tellingly, the most important of these springs,
our big, strong Achilles tendons, aren't found in early
human precursors such as Australopithecus--it seems that
the high-end tendons evolved along with other adaptations for
distance running in the genus Homo when it appeared on the African
savannah about 2 million years ago.

We've inherited large leg and foot joints from those ancestors,
which spread out high forces that must be absorbed when
running. To help ensure stability on two legs, we have big gluteus
maximus muscles. (Chimps, which are incapable of distance running,
have comparatively tiny butts.) Our clever torsos are designed to
"counter-rotate" versus the hips as we run, also aiding
stability. And we have an unusually large percentage of
fatigue-resistant, slow-twitch muscle fibers, which make for
endurance rather than speed. By contrast, most animals are geared
for sprinting because they're either predators that chase or prey
that run away, and their muscles thus have much higher percentages
of fast-twitch fibers than ours. (Cheetahs' hind-leg muscles are
the fast-twitch-richest of all.)

But what most sets us apart as runners is that we're really
cool--we naked apes are champion sweaters and can dissipate body
heat faster than any other large mammal.

The entire article I find fascinating -- I think it's well worth
reading.

In article <20130825.192...@i-m-t.demon.co.uk>,

ppint. at pplay <v$af$pp...@i-m-t.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> - hi; in article, <kvbern$alh$1...@reader1.panix.com>,
> tm...@panix.com "Tim McDaniel" made plaint:

>>And SF never gives us credit for the things that humans ARE unique
>>for or best at on Earth.

My listing only physical things and omitting anything with
intelligence, culture, language, et cetera, was a bit tongue in cheek
... but there's a long-standing notion that humans aren't good at
anything physically. (I remember a fable from T. H. White's _The Once
and Future King_, about the creation of animals and Man.)

>>- We can throw more accurately than anything else on Earth: using a
>> limb to project an object well out of reach. Archerfish can shoot
>> very accurately but can shoot only water. A frog can catch ... out
>> to the length of its tongue.
>
> - as can a chameleon, to a considerably greater distance,
> its tongue being a lot longer in comparison for a given
> size of animal

I specified "well out of reach" for that sort of reason. Further, a
chameleon cannot deliver a fasttongue from the pitcher's mound to home
plate -- I didn't mention proportionality to body size.

> - there are other species that can match our cursive
> abilities - most obviously, horses and dogs

You mean "cursorial", and you appear to be incorrect.

http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2012/06/long_distance_running_and_evolution_why_humans_can_outrun_horses_but_can_t_jump_higher_than_cats_.html

Dogs can gallop for only about 10 to 15 minutes before reverting
to a trot, and so their distance-running speed tops out at about
3.8 meters per second. Horses' average distance-running speed is
5.8 meters per second--a canter. Wildebeests' is 5.1 meters per
second.

Elite human runners, however, can sustain speeds up to 6.5 meters
per second. Even run-of-the-mill joggers typically do between 3.2
and 4.2 meters per second, which means they can outrun dogs at
distances greater than two kilometers.

Our "sustainable distance" is also hard to beat. African hunting
dogs typically travel an average of 10 kilometers a day. Wolves
and hyenas tend to go about 14 and 19 kilometers, respectively. In
repeated distance runs, horses can cover about 20 kilometers a
day. Vast throngs of human runners, by comparison, routinely run
42.2-kilometer marathons in just a few hours, and each year tens
of thousands of people complete ultra-marathons of 100 kilometers
and longer. (A few animals can match that under special
circumstances. Huskies can trot up to 100 kilometers in Arctic
conditions when forced to by people. But in warmer climes--no
way.)

> - we communicate ideas and concepts, including dangers and
> opportunities, regarding experiences the recipients of the
> information have never before experienced, and not only those
> which were completely new to us - we're capable of describing
> experiences and their dangers not only that we have never met,
> but which may not yet exist;

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/science/26crow.html
Crows can recognize human faces, when the humans wearing those faces
-- or, in this case, masks -- had done something that they didn't
like. And many more do the scolding behavior than saw the original
disturbing behavior. And when the mask is switched to new people, the
crows follow the mask. (The NYT story says it was a caveman mask, but
later researched used masks of real people's faces. I didn't see a
mention about whether they distinguish the mask of Scott from Scott
himself.)

--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com

[lal_truckee]

On 8/24/13 1:55 PM, JRStern wrote:

> "It's a cookbook".

Triggering a long-standing interest:
Off the thread topic, but are there other single stand-alone phrases
from the literature that one can evoke and legitimately expect that most
posters interested in SF will immediately place it in context and meaning?

(I'm not interested in movie relate "ah'll beam baack" to hit them with
"the force" type stuff. Written only.)

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sun, 25 Aug 2013 10:30:22 +0800, Robert Bannister
<rob...@clubtelco.com> wrote in
<news:b7t8hv...@mid.individual.net> in
rec.arts.sf.written:

[...]

> I thought it was just a "Keep off my lawn" attitude.
> Bulls, boars, stags, elephants rarely step on people, but
> they often attack. The female versions are more refined
> except when they've got babies. Keep away from all of
> these dangerous beasts.

You may ride a hoppocampus till it turns into a horse.
You may ride that dripping horse until it chokes.
But one thing you must never do
(For friends would tar and feather you):
Don’t ever tell a pregnant elephant jokes.

You may ride a singing gryphon till it turns into a newt.
You may dive that newt right down into the mud.
But one thing you must never do
(For friends would tar and feather you):
Don’t ever show a pregnant elephant blood.

You may ride a flaming dragon to the seventh moon of Saturn,
Send it winging half a mile beyond the stars.
But one thing you must never do
(For friends would tar and feather you)
Is ask to see a pregnant elephant’s scars.

You may wear an ochre top hat to the Grand Panjandrum’s Ball.
You may wear a purple jockstrap round your throat.
But one thing you must never do
(For friends would tar and feather you):
Don’t ever get a pregnant elephant’s goat.

As a rule there’s nothing calmer than a female pachyderm;
You may tease her -- she wont’ mind it in the least.
But while she bears her child-to-be
She cannot bear your levity!
Oh, a pregnant elephant’s a venomous beast.

Brian

[David Johnston]

Would it be wrong to point out that "It's a cook book" is remembered
because of television?

[Lawrence Watt-Evans]

Within fandom, it would probably be remembered anyway.

As for other stand-alone phrases purely from written SF, "The right to
buy weapons is the right to be free." Van Vogt was good at coming up
with memorable lines -- there's also "This is the race that will rule
the Sevagram!"

Heinlein's "An armed society is a polite society" gets quoted a lot,
but I don't think everyone gets the context or even knows that it's
from _Beyond This Horizon_.





--
I'm serializing a new Ethshar novel!
The fourth chapter is online at:
http://www.ethshar.com/ishtascompanion04.html

[Robert Carnegie]

Tricky. After all, /that/ one was on television (latterly).

Also, it depends on "most posters interested in SF" either having
read the story in question, or having seen it talked about.

Also, there's a book called _Science Fiction Quotations_, and
trying to Google for that subject mainly gets me the book.

Ah, well - some dear to me, some that I know I ought to know:

"Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours
are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool
and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly
and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth
century came the great disillusionment."

/That/ appears in musical-show form, without the last sentence.

"A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow
a human being to come to harm."

"The anthropologist cannot always leave his own shadow out of
the picture he draws."

"Only twenty minutes ago he had decided he would go mad, and now
here he was already chasing a Chesterfield sofa across the fields
of prehistoric earth."

"When a day you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding
like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere."

"Sci-fi can be succinctly defined as speculation, whether
based on established scientific facts or on logical pseudo-facts
consistent with the framework of the fiction in question,
involving smelly green pimply aliens furiously raping or eating,
or both, beautiful naked bare-breasted chicks, covering them in
slime, red, oozing, living slime, dribbling from every horrific
orifice, squeezing out between bulbous pulpy lips onto the sensuous
velvety skin of the writhing sweating slave-girls, their bodies cut
and bruised by knotted whips brandished by giant blond vast-biceped
androids called Simon, and written in the Gothic mode."

Well, you're going to remember that one from now on.

And that reminds me:

"Small rodents scampered about, occupying themselves in the
daily accomplishments of their dismal lives."

[Jerry Brown]

"Oh my God; it's full of stars!"
(which was only in the book, not the closely-related cinema product
whose dialogue had already come to an end by that point).

--
Jerry Brown

A cat may look at a king
(but probably won't bother)

[Kurt Busiek]

"She could have been used again."

"Speak, friend, and enter."

"The Ramans do everything in threes."

kdb
--
Visit http://www.busiek.com -- for all your Busiek needs!