Fear of a Beige Planet
James Nicoll
that extreme phenotypes become rare, with the vast majority of humanity
a sort of pleasant caramel colour. As it turns out, many visible
characteristics don't work that way and even close relatives can be quite
different in appearance.
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/02/black-and-white-twins.php
As I recall, embeigification is a background feature in Asimov's
Empire novels, or at least in THE CURRENTS OF SPACE, where one character
feels some kinship to a planet of oppressed farmers, because they both
come from far ends of the skin colour bell curve (opposite ends, as
it happens).
James Nicoll
1: And a standard complaint about these futures, seen about once a year
on rasfw, is that authors who are trying to show how much intermingling
is going on will come up with the most unlikely of bi/multicultural names,
like "Alberto Fujimori", "Desmond Tutu" or "David Suzuki".
--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
Mike Dworetsky
news:dtq5v0$k3b$1...@reader2.panix.com...
Canaan Banana. Ellison Onizuka.
Yeah, absolutely unbelievable. NO ONE could possibly imagine those to be
real names. What a dumb author, stretching our credibility. :-)
Stewart Robert Hinsley
<jdni...@panix.com> writes
>
> James Nicoll
>
>1: And a standard complaint about these futures, seen about once a year
>on rasfw, is that authors who are trying to show how much intermingling
>is going on will come up with the most unlikely of bi/multicultural
>names, like "Alberto Fujimori", "Desmond Tutu" or "David Suzuki".
>
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley
lclough
> One of the standard SF futures [1] has intermarriage so common
> that extreme phenotypes become rare, with the vast majority of humanity
> a sort of pleasant caramel colour.
>
I wrote a story about beigeification. It appeared in the
anthology edited by Charles Sheffield. Allied to a yen for
diversity, the beigeness leads to space colonization -- you
know, the "we want your women" motive.
Brenda
--
---------
Brenda W. Clough
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda/
Recent short fiction:
FUTURE WASHINGTON (WSFA Press, October '05)
http://www.futurewashington.com
FIRST HEROES (TOR, May '04)
http://members.aol.com/wenamun/firstheroes.html
Gene Ward Smith
James Nicoll wrote:
> One of the standard SF futures [1] has intermarriage so common
> that extreme phenotypes become rare, with the vast majority of humanity
> a sort of pleasant caramel colour. As it turns out, many visible
> characteristics don't work that way and even close relatives can be quite
> different in appearance.
>
> http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/02/black-and-white-twins.php
I had a friend once, who when the topic of race came up, casually
mentioned that she was black. Since she was blonde and blue-eyed, I
goggled at her; but she dug out a picture of her family and showed it
to me. They were all "high yellow" except for her.
She also told me that when she was growing up, the black community did
not accept her as black, whereas whites always assumed she was white.
Racial classifications are not under your personal control, but are
socially defined. Meanwhile, the Hardy-Weinberg law and the way genes
express themselves shows that beigification is not going to
happen--instead, I think Brazil is the model of the future.
Jordan
> One of the standard SF futures [1] has intermarriage so common
that extreme phenotypes become rare, with the vast majority of humanity
a sort of pleasant caramel colour. As it turns out, many visible
characteristics don't work that way and even close relatives can be
quite
different in appearance. <
What you might get, then, is an extremely varied outward range of
natural outward appearances with natural outward bodily appearance
little clue to origin. What would probably happen (since in a
long-mixed global society subculture becomes more important than
ethnicity) is that members of different subcultures would deliberately
alter their outward apperances to indicate subcultural affiliations,
and to some extent subcultural would replace ethnic rivalries.
This is a logical consequence of the rising ascendancy of memes over
genes, and to some extent we've seen a lot of just this sort of thing
in the last half-century.
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
James Nicoll
Greek? According to
http://cetl2.geog.ucl.ac.uk/uclnames/default.aspx
it's "English", although my branch was from Scotland and I am
pretty sure we've "always" been from Scotland (Clan MacLeod and all
that).
Looking at these two maps
We only seem to have colonized underpopulated regions in the UK.
My middle name is Davis, which I guess means there's a Welsh
branch of the family.
Peter D. Tillman
jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
> And a standard complaint about these futures, seen about once a year
> on rasfw, is that authors who are trying to show how much intermingling
> is going on will come up with the most unlikely of bi/multicultural names,
> like "Alberto Fujimori", "Desmond Tutu" or "David Suzuki".
Or "Carlos Munchmeyer", a master-race blond German-Chilean who was my
roommate at a geological conference in Reno AWB. Or my very pleasant
Japanese-Mexican innkeeper in a little Sonora River-valley town not long
ago, whose name now escapes me. Or Gen. Hugo O'Connor (that's Ooh-go,
SVP), an Irish-Mexican hero of the Revolution...
But, returning to your original complaint:
> One of the standard SF futures [1] has intermarriage so common
> that extreme phenotypes become rare, with the vast majority of humanity
> a sort of pleasant caramel colour. As it turns out, many visible
> characteristics don't work that way and even close relatives can be quite
> different in appearance.
I can't recall hearing of a White-Black union resulting in a darker
child -- hence the whole quadroon-octoroon business. And the elaborate
classification of offspring of Spanish and Indio parents (which,
granted, was more for social-stratification). Nor do children of
Eurasian parents look more oriental than their parents.
[looks at http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/02/black-and-white-twins.php]
OK, it's more complex, and more interesting, than the Common Knowledge
would suggest....
Yeah, and as the blogger points out, we know who MOM was, but DAD is
always inna bitta doubt, eh?
Hmm, fraternal (sororal?) twins, here -- do human women ever conceive
'twins' from two different fathers? Some dim memory that, very rarely,
they do??
Cut kids, fersure. Wow, the darker is gonna be a big girl, too. With
luck, a looker like Mom....
Cheers -- Pete Tillman, 'Anglo' with a soupçon of Cherokee
lucky
"Peter D. Tillman" <Til...@toast.net_DIESPAMMERSDIE> wrote in message
news:Tillman-171CE0...@sn-radius.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net...
> Yeah, and as the blogger points out, we know who MOM was, but DAD is
> always inna bitta doubt, eh?
But with the advent of DNA testing and surrogate mothers, knowing the
genetic daddy is as certain as knowing the genetic mommy.
I also have a vague recollection of a newspaper article citing a case
where a baby derived via surrogacy from an egg of a another woman
nevertheless had some genetic material from the surrogate. Can't recall the
details though.
David Cowie
> One of the standard SF futures [1] has intermarriage so common
> that extreme phenotypes become rare, with the vast majority of humanity
> a sort of pleasant caramel colour.
I'm fairly sure this is in _Gridlinked_ (2001) by Neal Asher.
--
David Cowie
Containment Failure + 20019:55
Peter D. Tillman
"lucky" <luck...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> "Peter D. Tillman" <Til...@toast.net_DIESPAMMERSDIE> wrote in message
> news:Tillman-171CE0...@sn-radius.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net...
>
> > Yeah, and as the blogger points out, we know who MOM was, but DAD is
> > always inna bitta doubt, eh?
>
> But with the advent of DNA testing and surrogate mothers, knowing the
> genetic daddy is as certain as knowing the genetic mommy.
Um. There *is* a very large pool of possible dads, y'know? Though you
can always prove that the 'legal' dad ain't....
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
--
A chicken and an egg are lying in bed. The chicken is
contentedly smoking a cigarette. The egg looks grumpy,
and mutters, "Well, I guess we answered THAT question..."
lucky
"Peter D. Tillman" <Til...@toast.net_DIESPAMMERSDIE> wrote in message
> In article <dtqe7k$hk8$1...@news.datemas.de>,
> "lucky" <luck...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> "Peter D. Tillman" <Til...@toast.net_DIESPAMMERSDIE> wrote in message
>> news:Tillman-171CE0...@sn-radius.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net...
>>
>> > Yeah, and as the blogger points out, we know who MOM was, but DAD is
>> > always inna bitta doubt, eh?
>>
>> But with the advent of DNA testing and surrogate mothers, knowing the
>> genetic daddy is as certain as knowing the genetic mommy.
>
> Um. There *is* a very large pool of possible dads, y'know? Though you
> can always prove that the 'legal' dad ain't....
I was not concerning myself with legal parentage but genetic parentage.
There is also a large pool of possible surrogate mothers. My point is that
while DNA testing has increased the opportunity of determining the father
beyond obvious naked eye traits; surrogacy has decreased the certainty of
determining the genetic mother by the fact of birth.
Dr Hermes
I sent an e-mail to CNN's Soledad O'Brien for her opinion on unlikely
dichotomous names, but she's in New Orleans on assignment. (Hope she
brings back some beads.)
Even if through some magic everyone on Earth was made an identical
pleasant light tan color (and their DNA changed to carry this), wouldn't
variations immediately start popping up? How long would it take before
climates began modifying people physically? A few hundred years, maybe,
and we'd have the usual variety of hues and tints back among us.
Mark Atwood
>
> 1: And a standard complaint about these futures, seen about once a year
> on rasfw, is that authors who are trying to show how much intermingling
> is going on will come up with the most unlikely of bi/multicultural names,
> like "Alberto Fujimori", "Desmond Tutu" or "David Suzuki".
My own name is Greek and OldEngland mixed.
--
Mark Atwood When you do things right, people won't be sure
m...@mark.atwood.name you've done anything at all.
http://mark.atwood.name/ http://fallenpegasus.livejournal.com/
Mark Atwood
> alter their outward apperances to indicate subcultural affiliations,
> and to some extent subcultural would replace ethnic rivalries.
>
> This is a logical consequence of the rising ascendancy of memes over
> genes, and to some extent we've seen a lot of just this sort of thing
> in the last half-century.
I can often pick members of my assorted "tribes" out of crowds, and
often would have no idea how I could tell. It's like a very refined
multispectral "gaydar".
Daniel Silevitch
> "Jordan" <JSBass...@yahoo.com> writes:
>> alter their outward apperances to indicate subcultural affiliations,
>> and to some extent subcultural would replace ethnic rivalries.
>>
>> This is a logical consequence of the rising ascendancy of memes over
>> genes, and to some extent we've seen a lot of just this sort of thing
>> in the last half-century.
>
> I can often pick members of my assorted "tribes" out of crowds, and
> often would have no idea how I could tell. It's like a very refined
> multispectral "gaydar".
Ah, but do you have Doppler gaydar? _That_ would be impressive.
-dms
Dan Tilque
>
> Or "Carlos Munchmeyer", a master-race blond German-Chilean who
> was my roommate at a geological conference in Reno AWB. Or my
> very pleasant Japanese-Mexican innkeeper in a little Sonora
> River-valley town not long ago, whose name now escapes me. Or
> Gen. Hugo O'Connor (that's Ooh-go, SVP), an Irish-Mexican hero
> of the Revolution...
Bernardo O'Higgins, first head of state (Supreme Dictator) of
Chile, general of the revolutionary forces that won independence
from Spain in that region. This is why Chile has the seemingly
anomalously named province of O'Higgins.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_O%27Higgins
> Hmm, fraternal (sororal?) twins, here -- do human women ever
> conceive 'twins' from two different fathers? Some dim memory
> that, very rarely, they do??
Yes, they do. There's even been a few cases of fraternal twins of
different races.
--
Dan Tilque
Mike Schilling
> on rasfw, is that authors who are trying to show how much intermingling
> is going on will come up with the most unlikely of bi/multicultural names,
> like "Alberto Fujimori", "Desmond Tutu" or "David Suzuki".
Alfredo Griffin, Mariano Duncan, Roberto Kelly, ...
Mike Schilling
"Mark Atwood" <m...@mark.atwood.name> wrote in message
news:m2d5hb1...@amsu.fallenpegasus.com...
> jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:
>>
>> 1: And a standard complaint about these futures, seen about once a year
>> on rasfw, is that authors who are trying to show how much intermingling
>> is going on will come up with the most unlikely of bi/multicultural
>> names,
>> like "Alberto Fujimori", "Desmond Tutu" or "David Suzuki".
>
> My own name is Greek and OldEngland mixed.
My name is Hebrew, but it's still an Anglicized version of my
great-grandfather's name (Moshe).
lclough
>
>
> Yes, they do. There's even been a few cases of fraternal twins of
> different races.
>
> --
The mnemnonic limerick for the Mendelian laws of inheritance runs:
There once was a lady named Starkie
Who had an affair with a darkie
The result of her sins
Was quadruplets, not twins,
One black, one white, and two khaki.
Dorothy L. Sayers quotes it.
Craig Richardson
<Til...@toast.net_DIESPAMMERSDIE> wrote:
>In article <dtq5v0$k3b$1...@reader2.panix.com>,
> jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
>
>> And a standard complaint about these futures, seen about once a year
>> on rasfw, is that authors who are trying to show how much intermingling
>> is going on will come up with the most unlikely of bi/multicultural names,
>> like "Alberto Fujimori", "Desmond Tutu" or "David Suzuki".
>
>Or "Carlos Munchmeyer", a master-race blond German-Chilean who was my
>roommate at a geological conference in Reno AWB. Or my very pleasant
>Japanese-Mexican innkeeper in a little Sonora River-valley town not long
>ago, whose name now escapes me. Or Gen. Hugo O'Connor (that's Ooh-go,
>SVP), an Irish-Mexican hero of the Revolution...
Or Bernardo O'Higgins, one of the Libertadores.
--Craig
--
Craig Richardson (crichar...@worldnet.att.net)
"Then I heard the whirring of the motorized snowmen, sound[ing] like the
death rattle of very small robot lizards, and I left the seasonal aisle"
-- James Lileks, "The Bleat", 2005/10/10
Tim McDaniel
Daniel Silevitch <dms...@uchicago.edu> wrote:
>On Sat, 25 Feb 2006 21:39:18 GMT, Mark Atwood <m...@mark.atwood.name>
>wrote:
>> often would have no idea how I could tell. It's like a very
>> refined multispectral "gaydar".
>
>Ah, but do you have Doppler gaydar?
There's easier ways to tell whether he's coming or not.
--
"Me, I love the USA; I never miss an episode." -- Paul "Fruitbat" Sleigh
Tim McDaniel; Reply-To: tm...@panix.com
Nancy Lebovitz
Peter D. Tillman <Til...@toast.net_DIESPAMMERSDIE> wrote:
>
>child -- hence the whole quadroon-octoroon business. And the elaborate
Nor a lighter child? Admittedly, there are social reasons why that's
a less interesting question.
>classification of offspring of Spanish and Indio parents (which,
>granted, was more for social-stratification). Nor do children of
>Eurasian parents look more oriental than their parents.
--
Nancy Lebovitz http://www.nancybuttons.com
http://livejournal.com/users/nancylebov
My two favorite colors are "Oooooh" and "SHINY!".
Craig Richardson
Okay, given the existence of "gaydar", is there an equivalent of
"chaff"? And how would it be used?
r.r...@thevine.net
wrote:
>
>"Peter D. Tillman" <Til...@toast.net_DIESPAMMERSDIE> wrote in message
>news:Tillman-8CB90A...@sn-radius.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net...
>> In article <dtqe7k$hk8$1...@news.datemas.de>,
>> "lucky" <luck...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> "Peter D. Tillman" <Til...@toast.net_DIESPAMMERSDIE> wrote in message
>>> news:Tillman-171CE0...@sn-radius.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net...
>>>
>>> > Yeah, and as the blogger points out, we know who MOM was, but DAD is
>>> > always inna bitta doubt, eh?
>>>
>>> But with the advent of DNA testing and surrogate mothers, knowing the
>>> genetic daddy is as certain as knowing the genetic mommy.
>>
>> Um. There *is* a very large pool of possible dads, y'know? Though you
>> can always prove that the 'legal' dad ain't....
>
> I was not concerning myself with legal parentage but genetic parentage.
>
> There is also a large pool of possible surrogate mothers. My point is that
>while DNA testing has increased the opportunity of determining the father
>beyond obvious naked eye traits; surrogacy has decreased the certainty of
>determining the genetic mother by the fact of birth.
>
You know, SF deals a lot with futures that have uterine replicators.
Are there any where "surrogate mother" is widespread? Either as a
respected profession, or as low-paying profession, sort of an
extension of "nanny"? Note that I am wondering about societies where
a woman bears a child for another woman in particular, not ones where
society has essentially done away with the family and has
children-bearing class of people. _Handmaid's Tale_ comes to mind,
but I am not sure if I would call the Handmaid's strictly surrogates.
Rebecca
Wayne Throop
:: child -- hence the whole quadroon-octoroon business.
: nan...@panix.com (Nancy Lebovitz)
: Nor a lighter child? Admittedly, there are social reasons why that's
: a less interesting question.
Hm? Less interesting? Well, a mixed-melanin parentage might mean
lower economic opportunity for the parents during formative years due
to prejudice, and I suppose that could account for ... oh ... wait,
you meant ... nevermind.
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Wayne Throop
: You know, SF deals a lot with futures that have uterine replicators.
: Are there any where "surrogate mother" is widespread? Either as a
: respected profession, or as low-paying profession, sort of an
: extension of "nanny"? Note that I am wondering about societies where
: a woman bears a child for another woman in particular, not ones where
: society has essentially done away with the family and has
: children-bearing class of people. _Handmaid's Tale_ comes to mind,
: but I am not sure if I would call the Handmaid's strictly surrogates.
In "The Moon is a Harsh Handmaiden", surrogacy is the profession of one of
the major characters. Until she takes up, iirc, cosmetology. Hm. I'm not
sure I recall another example, but my memory is trying to whisper "Varley"
into my ear for some reason, but I'm not sure if that's a false match.
My old man's a cosmetologist,
What do you think about that?
He wears a cosmetologist's collar,
He wears a cosmetologist's hat,
He wears a cosmetologist's raincoat,
He wears a cosmetologist's shoes.
And every Saturday evening,
He reads the cosmetologist's news.
--- Smothers Brothers
Gene Ward Smith
Craig Richardson wrote:
> Okay, given the existence of "gaydar", is there an equivalent of
> "chaff"? And how would it be used?
For men, belching, picking your nose, and watching football. For women,
Manolo Blanicks rather than army boots, and helplessness.
Nancy Lebovitz
Just to be clear, I meant a child who was lighter than the lighter
parent.
IrreleventSF: "The Light Princess" by George MacDonald.
David M. Palmer
<Tillman-171CE0...@sn-radius.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net>, Peter
D. Tillman <Til...@toast.net_DIESPAMMERSDIE> wrote:
> I can't recall hearing of a White-Black union resulting in a darker
> child -- hence the whole quadroon-octoroon business. And the elaborate
> classification of offspring of Spanish and Indio parents (which,
> granted, was more for social-stratification). Nor do children of
> Eurasian parents look more oriental than their parents.
If you are a W-B mix, then for each chromosome pair you have one W and
one B chromosome.
If you mate with another W-B mix, then for a given chromosome pair, the
child has a 25% chance of being WW, a 50% chance of being one of WB or
BW, and a 25% chance of being BB.
I think that skin color is controlled by genes on multiple chromosomes,
so it is more complicated, but the kid can still go darker or lighter
than the parents, depending on the luck of the draw on each chromosome.
--
David M. Palmer dmpa...@email.com (formerly @clark.net, @ematic.com)
Howard Brazee
Nicoll) wrote:
> One of the standard SF futures [1] has intermarriage so common
>that extreme phenotypes become rare, with the vast majority of humanity
>a sort of pleasant caramel colour. As it turns out, many visible
>characteristics don't work that way and even close relatives can be quite
>different in appearance.
I don't think so - what we really have is far future cultures that
look a lot like 1950s white America.
It's the I'm not racist - I like people of all races who act just like
white guys image of the future.
Mark Atwood
>
> Okay, given the existence of "gaydar", is there an equivalent of
> "chaff"? And how would it be used?
It's called "passing" or "hiding in the closet".
Tho "gay mannerisms" are getting fainter and fainter, for what I think
are several reasons. The "very gay acting" mannerisms were tribal
markers, that are becoming less necessary. The more refined markers
(style, taste, fine dressing, physical vanity, etc), are spreading
into the straight world.
lucky
> Craig Richardson <crichar...@worldnet.att.net> writes:
>>
>> Okay, given the existence of "gaydar", is there an equivalent of
>> "chaff"? And how would it be used?
>
> It's called "passing" or "hiding in the closet".
>
> Tho "gay mannerisms" are getting fainter and fainter, for what I think
> are several reasons. The "very gay acting" mannerisms were tribal
> markers, that are becoming less necessary. The more refined markers
> (style, taste, fine dressing, physical vanity, etc), are spreading
> into the straight world.
Blanking on the name but their was a 1990's or so movie about a serial
killer preying on homosexuals. The cop going undercover had to 'pass' as
gay. One of the 'signals' used in clubs was having a handerkercheif in one
back pocket or the other signalling what types of sex acts the person was
into.
There was a time when for a guy having one ear pierced meant gay while
having the other meant straight.
Taki Kogoma
allegedly declared to rec.arts.sf.written...
> Blanking on the name but their was a 1990's or so movie about a serial
>killer preying on homosexuals. The cop going undercover had to 'pass' as
>gay. One of the 'signals' used in clubs was having a handerkercheif in one
>back pocket or the other signalling what types of sex acts the person was
>into.
>
> There was a time when for a guy having one ear pierced meant gay while
>having the other meant straight.
ObSF: Beta Colony Earing Code.
Gym "Orignally thought it would be a pain for the visually impared,
but then concluded that Betan medicine would invalidate such
concerns." Quirk
--
Capt. Gym Z. Quirk (Known to some as Taki Kogoma) quirk @ swcp.com
Just an article detector on the Information Supercollider.
Wayne Throop
:::: child -- hence the whole quadroon-octoroon business.
: Just to be clear, I meant a child who was lighter than the lighter parent.
I expect it can happen either way. The fact that people tsk-tsk about
an ancestor's "blood", "coming out" in a later generation, demonstrates
this, I think. A child "darker" than either parent, in any event.
But if melanin is controlled by several gene locations, and if one
parent has each of those locations max-on, and the other has them all
max-off, then any mix can't have more than the max-on parent, or less
than the max-off parent. Similar is true for most-but-not-all on and
most-but-not-all off; your chances of drawing more than either parent
are small. So the greater the *disparity*, the less chance of a child
landing *outside* that range.
There might be several reasons why darker-than-both of mixed-melanin
parents is perceived as rare. It could be cultural perception, noticing
one case more than the other. It could be melanin production is dominant
for any of several biological/genetic reasons.
If I had to guess, I'd guess defective melanin production genes are
recessive or nearly so, and the mechanisms for melanin production are
redundant, so that once you get N of the melanin-controlling genes
working, adding another working site won't change the phenotype much.
But that's only if I had to guess.
John F. Eldredge
It is fairly common to see families of mixed ancestry where different
children have different skin tones. Having the appearances vary as
much as those of the children in the mixed-race British family
mentioned up-thread is unusual, however.
(http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/02/black-and-white-twins.php). The
facial shape seems more-or-less identical between the two little
girls, but, as the web page author mentions, they both have the
generic "baby face" at this point, and may well differ more as they
get older.
--
John F. Eldredge -- jo...@jfeldredge.com
PGP key available from http://pgp.mit.edu
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better
than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria
prestorjon
Are there any where "surrogate mother" is widespread? Either as a
respected profession, or as low-paying profession, sort of an
extension of "nanny"? Note that I am wondering about societies where
a woman bears a child for another woman in particular, not ones where
society has essentially done away with the family and has
children-bearing class of people. _Handmaid's Tale_ comes to mind,
but I am not sure if I would call the Handmaid's strictly surrogates.
>>
In Stirling's "Stone Dogs" it seems that among a certain class of Draka
woman having a serf surrogate was fairly common.
Peter D. Tillman
r.r...@thevine.net wrote:
> You know, SF deals a lot with futures that have uterine replicators.
> Are there any where "surrogate mother" is widespread? Either as a
> respected profession, or as low-paying profession, sort of an
> extension of "nanny"? Note that I am wondering about societies where
> a woman bears a child for another woman in particular, not ones where
> society has essentially done away with the family and has
> children-bearing class of people. _Handmaid's Tale_ comes to mind,
> but I am not sure if I would call the Handmaid's strictly surrogates.
There's a Brin (ims) story, with low-paid, low-class Brit women serving
as surrogate 'mothers' for nonviable 'fetuses' used for
drug-manufacture. Yeah, it's as distasteful as it sounds, but very
effective as a story. I think this is NatuLife, vt Natubirth
<http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?42199>, reprinted in OTHERNESS.
Happy reading--
Pete Tillman
Craig Richardson
wrote:
>Tho "gay mannerisms" are getting fainter and fainter, for what I think
>are several reasons. The "very gay acting" mannerisms were tribal
>markers, that are becoming less necessary. The more refined markers
>(style, taste, fine dressing, physical vanity, etc), are spreading
>into the straight world.
I understand what you're saying, but I'm kind of amused - did you mean
to imply that literally every male throughout history who has dressed
tastefully and been concerned with style, has been gay?
Admittedly, I'm not that guy, and I don't even know that guy - even
the women I rate value "honest" dirt and sweat at least as much as
stylish accoutrements.
John F. Eldredge
wrote:
This reminds me. I recently learned about an alternate-history movie
currently in theaters (although it won't be here in Nashville for a
couple of weeks yet), called "Confederate States of America". It is
in the form of a mock-documentary, looking back from an alternate 2006
to how the South conquered the North, with the aid of Britain and
France. It appears that there will be a good bit of back-handed
comment on our actual history as well.
There are plans to distribute it outside the US as well.
Part of the scenario is an "Office of Racial Identity", whose job it
is to prove what a given person's ancestry is.
I haven't seen any mention as yet of a book based on the movie, but,
if it does well in the box office, a book spin-off will probably
happen.
Judging from the sites that http://www.csathemovie.com links to, such
as http://www.naacp.org (the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People), http://www.aclu.org (the American Civil Liberties
Union), and http://www.splcenter.org (the Southern Poverty Law
Center), the alternate timeline will probably be a dystopia, not a
utopia.
Damien Sullivan
>On Sun, 26 Feb 2006 02:11:05 GMT, Mark Atwood <m...@mark.atwood.name>
>wrote:
>
>>Tho "gay mannerisms" are getting fainter and fainter, for what I think
>>are several reasons. The "very gay acting" mannerisms were tribal
>>markers, that are becoming less necessary. The more refined markers
>>(style, taste, fine dressing, physical vanity, etc), are spreading
>>into the straight world.
>
>I understand what you're saying, but I'm kind of amused - did you mean
>to imply that literally every male throughout history who has dressed
>tastefully and been concerned with style, has been gay?
No wonder Elizabeth I couldn't find anyone to marry.
(Shh, don't trouble me with facts.)
-xx- Damien X-)
Damien Sullivan
>In article <6gt1025e9olr3pfj0...@4ax.com>,
> r.r...@thevine.net wrote:
>> You know, SF deals a lot with futures that have uterine replicators.
>> Are there any where "surrogate mother" is widespread? Either as a
>There's a Brin (ims) story, with low-paid, low-class Brit women serving
>as surrogate 'mothers' for nonviable 'fetuses' used for
>drug-manufacture. Yeah, it's as distasteful as it sounds, but very
>effective as a story. I think this is NatuLife, vt Natubirth
><http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?42199>, reprinted in OTHERNESS.
"Piecework", from my notes:
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~dasulliv/otherness.html
-xx- Damien X-)
Chuck Stewart
> You know, SF deals a lot with futures that have uterine replicators.
> Are there any where "surrogate mother" is widespread? Either as a
> respected profession, or as low-paying profession, sort of an
> extension of "nanny"?
In addition to the aforementioned 'The
Moon Is A Harsh Mistress' another Heinlein
novel with this concept is 'Stranger In A
Strange Land'. It's mentioned twice in the
"news clips" chapter openings.
> Rebecca
--
Chuck Stewart
"Anime-style catgirls: Threat? Menace? Or just studying algebra?"
John F. Eldredge
There has been at least one book published which theorized that
Elizabeth I was actually a man in drag, substituted as an infant after
Elizabeth died of a severe childhood fever. Given how little privacy
the royals had from their servants and courtiers, keeping this fact
secret would have been all but impossible.
Dorothy J Heydt
John F. Eldredge <jo...@jfeldredge.com> wrote:
>On Sun, 26 Feb 2006 04:35:16 +0000 (UTC), pho...@ofb.net (Damien
>Sullivan) wrote:
>
>>Craig Richardson <crichar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>>On Sun, 26 Feb 2006 02:11:05 GMT, Mark Atwood <m...@mark.atwood.name>
>>>wrote:
>>>
>>>>Tho "gay mannerisms" are getting fainter and fainter, for what I think
>>>>are several reasons. The "very gay acting" mannerisms were tribal
>>>>markers, that are becoming less necessary. The more refined markers
>>>>(style, taste, fine dressing, physical vanity, etc), are spreading
>>>>into the straight world.
>>>
>>>I understand what you're saying, but I'm kind of amused - did you mean
>>>to imply that literally every male throughout history who has dressed
>>>tastefully and been concerned with style, has been gay?
>>
>>No wonder Elizabeth I couldn't find anyone to marry.
>>
>>(Shh, don't trouble me with facts.)
>>
>
>There has been at least one book published which theorized that
>Elizabeth I was actually a man in drag, substituted as an infant after
>Elizabeth died of a severe childhood fever. Given how little privacy
>the royals had from their servants and courtiers, keeping this fact
>secret would have been all but impossible.
And in any case, Henry wanted a son more than anything you could
mention. If he could have contrived to have one, even a
substitute one, even one he could convince everyone else was his
son even thought he knew better, he would've leapt at it.
And as you know, Bob, the reason Elizabeth didn't marry is that
anyone she married (particularly Philip of Spain) would
immediately have considered himself King of England and would
have started running things to suit himself.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
Mike Schilling
"Craig Richardson" <crichar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:ful102ps5a3hbkrno...@4ax.com...
> On Sat, 25 Feb 2006 12:46:18 -0700, "Peter D. Tillman"
> <Til...@toast.net_DIESPAMMERSDIE> wrote:
>
>>In article <dtq5v0$k3b$1...@reader2.panix.com>,
>> jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
>>
>>> And a standard complaint about these futures, seen about once a year
>>> on rasfw, is that authors who are trying to show how much intermingling
>>> is going on will come up with the most unlikely of bi/multicultural
>>> names,
>>> like "Alberto Fujimori", "Desmond Tutu" or "David Suzuki".
>>
>>Or "Carlos Munchmeyer", a master-race blond German-Chilean who was my
>>roommate at a geological conference in Reno AWB. Or my very pleasant
>>Japanese-Mexican innkeeper in a little Sonora River-valley town not long
>>ago, whose name now escapes me. Or Gen. Hugo O'Connor (that's Ooh-go,
>>SVP), an Irish-Mexican hero of the Revolution...
>
> Or Bernardo O'Higgins, one of the Libertadores.
Which brings to mind Eamon De Valera.
Mike Schilling
"Dorothy J Heydt" <djh...@kithrup.com> wrote in message
news:IvA3t...@kithrup.com...
>
> And as you know, Bob, the reason Elizabeth didn't marry is that
> anyone she married (particularly Philip of Spain) would
> immediately have considered himself King of England and would
> have started running things to suit himself.
I've never been able to keep the pseudo-incest rules straight, but, speaking
of Philip, what did the 16th century think about "deceased wife's sister".
(IIRC, Henry VIII needed some special dispensation to marry Catherine of
Aragon because she'd been engaged to his older brother.)
Mike Schilling
"Damien Sullivan" <pho...@ofb.net> wrote in message
news:dtrba3$qgv$2...@naig.caltech.edu...
Yes, and it's an excellent story; it led me to overvalue Brin for many
years. (cf. Spinrad and "Carcinoma Angels", also Farmer and "Riders of the
Purple Sage".)
Mike Schilling
"David M. Palmer" <dmpa...@email.com> wrote in message
news:250220061859047878%dmpa...@email.com...
> In article
> <Tillman-171CE0...@sn-radius.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net>, Peter
> D. Tillman <Til...@toast.net_DIESPAMMERSDIE> wrote:
>
>> I can't recall hearing of a White-Black union resulting in a darker
>> child -- hence the whole quadroon-octoroon business. And the elaborate
>> classification of offspring of Spanish and Indio parents (which,
>> granted, was more for social-stratification). Nor do children of
>> Eurasian parents look more oriental than their parents.
>
> If you are a W-B mix,
Say, half Tasmanian Devil and half wascally wabbit?
Joe Bernstein
Damien Sullivan <pho...@ofb.net> wrote:
> "Peter D. Tillman" <Til...@toast.net_DIESPAMMERSDIE> wrote:
> >There's a Brin (ims) story, with low-paid, low-class Brit women serving
> >as surrogate 'mothers' for nonviable 'fetuses' used for
> >drug-manufacture. Yeah, it's as distasteful as it sounds, but very
> >effective as a story.
> "Piecework", from my notes:
This is also a meme in <The Unconquered Country> by Geoff Ryman,
and is close to something seen in Tiptree's "Morality Meat".
Joe Bernstein
--
Joe Bernstein, writer j...@sfbooks.com
<http://www.panix.com/~josephb/> "She suited my mood, Sarah Mondleigh
did - it was like having a kitten in the room, like a vote for unreason."
<Glass Mountain>, Cynthia Voigt
rja.ca...@excite.com
Craig Richardson wrote:
> On Sat, 25 Feb 2006 21:53:04 GMT, Daniel Silevitch
> <dms...@uchicago.edu> wrote:
>
> >On Sat, 25 Feb 2006 21:39:18 GMT, Mark Atwood <m...@mark.atwood.name> wrote:
>
> >> I can often pick members of my assorted "tribes" out of crowds, and
> >> often would have no idea how I could tell. It's like a very refined
> >> multispectral "gaydar".
> >
> >Ah, but do you have Doppler gaydar? _That_ would be impressive.
>
> Okay, given the existence of "gaydar", is there an equivalent of
> "chaff"? And how would it be used?
Is that why we throw confetti at straight couples?
Leif Magnar Kj|nn|y
Dan Tilque <dti...@nwlink.com> wrote:
>Peter D. Tillman wrote:
>
>>
>> Or "Carlos Munchmeyer", a master-race blond German-Chilean who
>
>Chile, general of the revolutionary forces that won independence
>from Spain in that region. This is why Chile has the seemingly
>anomalously named province of O'Higgins.
And streets etc. with the same name in just about every town.
A few years ago I went on vacation in Chile, spent some time in an area
which had a lot of German immigration (one wave in the late 19th century,
another in the late 1940s). Even had dinner in the restaurant of the
German colonists' club in one town, where we couldn't find anyone who
spoke German at all. The phone book had a lot of names like "Pablo
Kaufmann". So much for the "master race". They *had* preserved German
brewing skills, though, which I suppose was the really important bit.
--
Leif Kjønnøy, cunctator maximus. http://www.pvv.org/~leifmk
Peter Bruells
Tom Hardy
> 1: And a standard complaint about these futures, seen about once a
> year on rasfw, is that authors who are trying to show how much
> intermingling is going on will come up with the most unlikely of
> bi/multicultural names, like "Alberto Fujimori",...
I can add an acquaintance of my father, Hank Hierosuma (not sure of the
spelling), whose first language was Spanish.
Or my mother's maiden name, Adeline Gerszewski. There were a lot of
names like that in the vicinity of Warsaw, North Dakota.
Say "John Szczych". It's only two syllables.
--
Tom Hardy <*> rha...@visi.com <*> http://www.visi.com/~rhardy
Just don't create a file called -rf. --Larry Wall
Elf M. Sternberg
> You know, SF deals a lot with futures that have uterine replicators.
> Are there any where "surrogate mother" is widespread? Either as a
> respected profession, or as low-paying profession, sort of an
> extension of "nanny"?
Herbert did it twice, and long before anyone else: In
Hellstrom's Hive, and in Dune. In both cases, the surrogacy wasn't
voluntary.
Elf
Peter D. Tillman
pho...@ofb.net (Damien Sullivan) wrote:
Thanks.
"Piecework" reminds me of a story in Collins, _Hot Lights, Cold Steel_,
a young surgeon's memoirs. A carpenter had cut off 3 fingers in a saw
accident. A workmate was quick-thinking, and put the severed fingers
(ims) in a Baggie in his lunch-cooler.
Collins' supervisor/teacher worked for hours reattaching the fingers,
very exacting microsurgery. The carpenter, a heavy smoker, was warned
not to smoke during recovery, as nicotine contracts the capillaries, and
the trick in this surgery is maintaining blood-circulation (to avoid
necrosis). A few days later, the carpenter's wife brought him back in
with blue-black fingers. Yup, he couldn't resist the smokes, and lost
all three fingers.
Excellent book, btw: my review is at
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312352697/
Happy reading--
Pete Tillman
Mike Schilling
"Peter D. Tillman" <Til...@toast.net_DIESPAMMERSDIE> wrote in message
news:Tillman-2DD148...@sn-radius.vsrv-sjc.supernews.net...
> "Piecework" reminds me of a story in Collins, _Hot Lights, Cold Steel_,
> a young surgeon's memoirs. A carpenter had cut off 3 fingers in a saw
> accident. A workmate was quick-thinking, and put the severed fingers
> (ims) in a Baggie in his lunch-cooler.
>
> Collins' supervisor/teacher worked for hours reattaching the fingers,
> very exacting microsurgery. The carpenter, a heavy smoker, was warned
> not to smoke during recovery, as nicotine contracts the capillaries, and
> the trick in this surgery is maintaining blood-circulation (to avoid
> necrosis). A few days later, the carpenter's wife brought him back in
> with blue-black fingers.
Which he then used to give the leopard his spots, or am I mixing things up?
Peter D. Tillman
lei...@pvv.ntnu.no (Leif Magnar Kj|nn|y) wrote:
> A few years ago I went on vacation in Chile, spent some time in an area
> which had a lot of German immigration (one wave in the late 19th century,
> another in the late 1940s). Even had dinner in the restaurant of the
> German colonists' club in one town, where we couldn't find anyone who
> spoke German at all. The phone book had a lot of names like "Pablo
> Kaufmann". So much for the "master race". They *had* preserved German
> brewing skills, though, which I suppose was the really important bit.
Yeah, throughout Latin America, there seem to have been enough pioneer
German braumeisters to keep the local beer standards pretty high. It
took the American influence in Mexico to start the parade of tastless
lagers (Corona, Pacifico etc etc) there, sigh. Still lots of good
Mexican beer: Bohemia, XX, Tecate, Superior, Modelo etc. Tho, ims,
Mexico has a duopoly in beer companies, hence prices are high.
Happy quaffing--
Pete Tillman
art...@yahoo.com
> On Sat, 25 Feb 2006 12:46:18 -0700, "Peter D. Tillman"
> <Til...@toast.net_DIESPAMMERSDIE> wrote:
>
> >In article <dtq5v0$k3b$1...@reader2.panix.com>,
> > jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
> >
> >> on rasfw, is that authors who are trying to show how much intermingling
> >> is going on will come up with the most unlikely of bi/multicultural names,
> >
> >Or "Carlos Munchmeyer", a master-race blond German-Chilean who was my
> >roommate at a geological conference in Reno AWB. Or my very pleasant
> >Japanese-Mexican innkeeper in a little Sonora River-valley town not long
> >ago, whose name now escapes me. Or Gen. Hugo O'Connor (that's Ooh-go,
> >SVP), an Irish-Mexican hero of the Revolution...
>
> Or Bernardo O'Higgins, one of the Libertadores.
>From the world of baseball, we have Johann Santana and Ivan Rodriguez
rja.ca...@excite.com
And of course there's _Alien_...
art...@yahoo.com
David Loewe, Jr.
wrote:
Vladimir Guerrero
--
"ue o muite arukou
namida ga kobore naiyouni
omoidasu harunohi
hitoribotchi no yoru"
Rokusuke Ei
Nancy Lebovitz
--
Nancy Lebovitz http://www.nancybuttons.com
http://livejournal.com/users/nancylebov
My two favorite colors are "Oooooh" and "SHINY!".
Mike Schilling
"David Loewe, Jr." <dlo...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:c2u302h257ci1kv6h...@4ax.com...
>>
>>>From the world of baseball, we have Johann Santana and Ivan Rodriguez
>
> Vladimir Guerrero
And his brother Wilton.
David Cowie
> Blanking on the name but their was a 1990's or so movie about a serial
> killer preying on homosexuals. The cop going undercover had to 'pass' as
> gay. One of the 'signals' used in clubs was having a handerkercheif in
> one back pocket or the other signalling what types of sex acts the
> person was into.
That would probably be _Cruising_ with Al Pacino.
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0080569/
--
David Cowie
Containment Failure + 20043:31
Tim McDaniel
Mike Schilling <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>I've never been able to keep the pseudo-incest rules straight, but,
>speaking of Philip, what did the 16th century think about "deceased
>wife's sister".
*twitch*
As I understand it, "marriage to a deceased wife's sister" was a bete
noir, a running sore, in relations between the House of Commons
(wanting to legalize) and the House of Lords (not) in the 1800s.
I think it was tied up with Dissenters versus Church of England
issues.
>(IIRC, Henry VIII needed some special dispensation to marry Catherine
>of Aragon because she'd been engaged to his older brother.)
They'd been married.
The dispensation of Julius II was for Henry to marry his deceased
brother's widow was based on a hope of strengthening peace between
England and Spain, stating that the previous marriage was "perhaps
consummated", and dispensed from the impediment of affinity based on
coitus (and therefore from the impediment of public honesty that
derived from the contract of marriage). (Note: S. Thomas's theories
that affinity is based on marriage (with consummation only ratifying
it) and public honesty on the contract of marriage before its
enactment, were not the majority theories at the time but have
apparently become the modern theories.)
J. J. Scarisbrick, _Henry VIII_ (from Univ. of California Press,
1968), has what I think is a fascinating chapter, "The Canon Law of
the Divorce". (Technically it was an annulment, but whatever.) 35
pages of analysis, including the two arguments that Henry used (that
marriage of a man and a wife of a brother was contrary to God's law;
attacking a specific point of Julian II's dispensation) and an
argument that Henry refused to use but which might have prevailed (a
different attack on the dispensation -- but it would have worked only
if Emperor Charles V's troops hadn't taken and sacked Rome).
--
"Me, I love the USA; I never miss an episode." -- Paul "Fruitbat" Sleigh
Tim McDaniel; Reply-To: tm...@panix.com
David Loewe, Jr.
Of corked bat infamy...
--
"A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a
coffin."
- H. L. Mencken
art...@yahoo.com
Wayne Throop wrote:
> But if melanin is controlled by several gene locations, and if one
> parent has each of those locations max-on, and the other has them all
> max-off, then any mix can't have more than the max-on parent, or less
> than the max-off parent. Similar is true for most-but-not-all on and
> most-but-not-all off; your chances of drawing more than either parent
> are small. So the greater the *disparity*, the less chance of a child
> landing *outside* that range.
>
> There might be several reasons why darker-than-both of mixed-melanin
> parents is perceived as rare. It could be cultural perception, noticing
> one case more than the other. It could be melanin production is dominant
> for any of several biological/genetic reasons.
>
> If I had to guess, I'd guess defective melanin production genes are
> recessive or nearly so, and the mechanisms for melanin production are
> redundant, so that once you get N of the melanin-controlling genes
> working, adding another working site won't change the phenotype much.
> But that's only if I had to guess.
If there are at least 2 genes required for melanin production and each
parent was homozgyous recessive for a different gene, then all of their
offspring would be heterozygous for both mutations and thus be much
darker (since they would have one functional allele) than their
parents. I am not sure this happens, but it certainly is theoretically
possible.
art...@yahoo.com
James Nicoll wrote:
> One of the standard SF futures [1] has intermarriage so common
> that extreme phenotypes become rare, with the vast majority of humanity
> a sort of pleasant caramel colour. As it turns out, many visible
> characteristics don't work that way and even close relatives can be quite
> different in appearance.
>
> http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/02/black-and-white-twins.php
>
> As I recall, embeigification is a background feature in Asimov's
> Empire novels, or at least in THE CURRENTS OF SPACE, where one character
> feels some kinship to a planet of oppressed farmers, because they both
> come from far ends of the skin colour bell curve (opposite ends, as
> it happens).
>
>
> James Nicoll
>
> 1: And a standard complaint about these futures, seen about once a year
> on rasfw, is that authors who are trying to show how much intermingling
> is going on will come up with the most unlikely of bi/multicultural names,
> like "Alberto Fujimori", "Desmond Tutu" or "David Suzuki".
What was the ethnic background of Hiro Protagonist? I thought he was
partly Vietnamese, but that doesn't fit the name.....
Joer...@yahoo.de
IIRC, his father was a black American, his mother came from Japan. But
I dimly remember that she was ethnically Korean.
Jörg
Peter Trei
> One of the standard SF futures [1] has intermarriage so common
> that extreme phenotypes become rare, with the vast majority of humanity
> a sort of pleasant caramel colour. As it turns out, many visible
> characteristics don't work that way and even close relatives can be quite
> different in appearance.
>
> http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/02/black-and-white-twins.php
>
> As I recall, embeigification is a background feature in Asimov's
> Empire novels, or at least in THE CURRENTS OF SPACE, where one character
> feels some kinship to a planet of oppressed farmers, because they both
> come from far ends of the skin colour bell curve (opposite ends, as
> it happens).
>
>
> James Nicoll
>
> 1: And a standard complaint about these futures, seen about once a year
> on rasfw, is that authors who are trying to show how much intermingling
> is going on will come up with the most unlikely of bi/multicultural names,
> like "Alberto Fujimori", "Desmond Tutu" or "David Suzuki".
>
>
One of my kids is named "Alice Suzuko Louise", and is generally called
'Suzy'. The reason? A beloved Godmother (half Japanese) and
a great-grandmother dying in rapid succession.
After we had an Alice, I wanted to name the second girl 'Dorothy' to
continue the quasi-Victorian literaryh child heroine theme, but I
was overruled.
The second got 'Victoria Agnes Anu', and is known as 'Vicky'.
You won't believe how much more than 1 middle name screws up
school software.
Peter Trei
John VanSickle
> But, returning to your original complaint:
>
>>One of the standard SF futures [1] has intermarriage so common
>>that extreme phenotypes become rare, with the vast majority of humanity
>>a sort of pleasant caramel colour. As it turns out, many visible
>>characteristics don't work that way and even close relatives can be quite
>>different in appearance.
>
> I can't recall hearing of a White-Black union resulting in a darker
> child -- hence the whole quadroon-octoroon business. And the elaborate
> classification of offspring of Spanish and Indio parents (which,
> granted, was more for social-stratification). Nor do children of
> Eurasian parents look more oriental than their parents.
>
> OK, it's more complex, and more interesting, than the Common Knowledge
> would suggest....
Here's a complicating factor--this intermingling depends to a great
extent on marital preferences to become completely independent on family
background.
If there remain groups of white who marry only whites, blacks who marry
only blacks, Asians who marry only Asians, Jews who marry only Jews,
etc., then ethnic and racial groups will persist into the indefinite future.
The real SF faux pas here is that of wishing away a feature of a society
without giving a believable rationale. AKA "3001."
Regards,
John
Mike Schilling
"Peter Trei" <treif...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:rKpMf.170$WE....@petpeeve.ziplink.net...
>
> One of my kids is named "Alice Suzuko Louise", and is generally called
> 'Suzy'. The reason? A beloved Godmother (half Japanese) and
> a great-grandmother dying in rapid succession.
>
> After we had an Alice, I wanted to name the second girl 'Dorothy' to
> continue the quasi-Victorian literaryh child heroine theme, but I
> was overruled.
>
> The second got 'Victoria Agnes Anu', and is known as 'Vicky'.
>
> You won't believe how much more than 1 middle name screws up
> school software.
I would. At UC Berkeley (of all places) there were only 15 spaces allowed
for names on reigstration cards, and I had to spend the first day of every
quarter explaining in each class that, no, my first name isn't "Micha".
obSF: Theodore Tyler's "The Man Whose Name Wouldn't Fit"
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>What was the ethnic background of Hiro Protagonist? I thought he was
>partly Vietnamese, but that doesn't fit the name.....
First, the name was picked for another reason. The two main
ethnicities are US (black) American and Japanese.
Howard Brazee
<evil...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>If there remain groups of white who marry only whites, blacks who marry
>only blacks, Asians who marry only Asians, Jews who marry only Jews,
>etc., then ethnic and racial groups will persist into the indefinite future.
There will always be people who marry only their own type. But over
time the definition of their own type will continue to change. There
will be ethnic and possibly racial groups persisting - but they
probably won't be very recognizable by lots of people of those groups
from today.
Mike Schilling
"John VanSickle" <evil...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:7ZpMf.4054$S25....@newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net...
> Here's a complicating factor--this intermingling depends to a great extent
> on marital preferences to become completely independent on family
> background.
>
> If there remain groups of white who marry only whites, blacks who marry
> only blacks, Asians who marry only Asians, Jews who marry only Jews, etc.,
> then ethnic and racial groups will persist into the indefinite future.
Since there are far more mixed marriages of all sort than there were, say,
fifty years ago (when some sorts were actually illegal in much of the U.S),
speculating that such groups will be marginalized is plausible. In fact you
could write an interesting story about what happens to a group of (say)
whites who marry only whites once:
1. Intermarriage,
2. Computerized record-keeping, and
3. Advanced DNA analysis
make "pure white" demonstrably an empty set.
Howard Brazee
<mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>I would. At UC Berkeley (of all places) there were only 15 spaces allowed
>for names on reigstration cards, and I had to spend the first day of every
>quarter explaining in each class that, no, my first name isn't "Micha".
I had military papers that truncated the "III" in my name.
I remember a book from around 1969 or so where someone with a long
hyphenated name goes after revenge against the computers by coming up
with a bug that ate computer tapes.
(It ends up that this really helped the recycling industry).
Dean White
I would, so much in fact that I ended up using only one of my middle names
since the late 60's, there was never a space for two. Also no middle name
is a problem as my nephew found out.
Dorothy J Heydt
Mike Schilling <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>Since there are far more mixed marriages of all sort than there were, say,
>fifty years ago (when some sorts were actually illegal in much of the U.S),
>speculating that such groups will be marginalized is plausible. In fact you
>could write an interesting story about what happens to a group of (say)
>whites who marry only whites once:
>
>1. Intermarriage,
>2. Computerized record-keeping, and
>3. Advanced DNA analysis
>
>make "pure white" demonstrably an empty set.
Might not be that far into the future, too.
I can remember an article by Sprague de Camp in Astounding way
back in the early 1950s saying something on the order of, "It ill
becomes the 'white' man to boast of his racial purity; his
descent is the most scrambled on the planet."
And just recently I saw something in a sidebar about only a few
percent of modern Europeans being of the same genetic stock of
the earliest Europeans (I'm blanking on their name, the ones who
moved in right after the glaciers melted).
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
Howard Brazee
<mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Since there are far more mixed marriages of all sort than there were, say,
>fifty years ago (when some sorts were actually illegal in much of the U.S),
>speculating that such groups will be marginalized is plausible.
When interracial marriages were illegal, were the races "pure" by
anybody's definition?
Gene Ward Smith
Mike Schilling wrote:
> Since there are far more mixed marriages of all sort than there were, say,
> fifty years ago (when some sorts were actually illegal in much of the U.S),
> speculating that such groups will be marginalized is plausible.
When Sinclair Lewis wrote Kingsblood Royal in 1947, he argued in the
preface that race was socially constructed. Clearly he was far ahead of
his time, as "socially constructed" hadn't been invented yet, but it
should be even more true 1000 years from now. It seems to me that in
the beige future, you could only be stigmatized for your
socially-construced racial classification if you insisted on
constructing it yourself.
Marilee J. Layman
<genewa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>James Nicoll wrote:
>
>> One of the standard SF futures [1] has intermarriage so common
>> that extreme phenotypes become rare, with the vast majority of humanity
>> a sort of pleasant caramel colour. As it turns out, many visible
>> characteristics don't work that way and even close relatives can be quite
>> different in appearance.
>>
>> http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/02/black-and-white-twins.php
>
>I had a friend once, who when the topic of race came up, casually
>mentioned that she was black. Since she was blonde and blue-eyed, I
>goggled at her; but she dug out a picture of her family and showed it
>to me. They were all "high yellow" except for her.
>
>She also told me that when she was growing up, the black community did
>not accept her as black, whereas whites always assumed she was white.
>Racial classifications are not under your personal control, but are
>socially defined. Meanwhile, the Hardy-Weinberg law and the way genes
>express themselves shows that beigification is not going to
>happen--instead, I think Brazil is the model of the future.
There's a TV anchor for the local NBC news:
http://www.nbc4.com/meetthenewsteam/1198786/detail.html
who I've watched for decades. Look at the picture, and you can
imagine how surprised I was when they were doing background specials
and she talked about being black.
--
Marilee J. Layman
http://mjlayman.livejournal.com/
Mike Schilling
"Howard Brazee" <how...@brazee.net> wrote in message
news:s3d402p95lpelqs25...@4ax.com...
There'a reason that (in the part you snipped) I used the word
"demonstrably".
Mike Schilling
> On Sun, 26 Feb 2006 22:40:57 GMT, "Mike Schilling"
> <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I would. At UC Berkeley (of all places) there were only 15 spaces allowed
>>for names on reigstration cards, and I had to spend the first day of every
>>quarter explaining in each class that, no, my first name isn't "Micha".
>
> I had military papers that truncated the "III" in my name.
>
> I remember a book from around 1969 or so where someone with a long
> hyphenated name goes after revenge against the computers by coming up
> with a bug that ate computer tapes.
Yes, that's the book I named (in what you snipped).
Bernard Peek
<jdni...@panix.com> writes
> One of the standard SF futures [1] has intermarriage so common
>that extreme phenotypes become rare, with the vast majority of humanity
>a sort of pleasant caramel colour. As it turns out, many visible
>characteristics don't work that way and even close relatives can be quite
>different in appearance.
PMFJI I had a thought, and that's not something to pass without comment.
What we need is a great big melting pot. Big enough to take the world
and all it's got.
Or has someone said that already?
--
Bernard Peek
London, UK. DBA, Manager, Trainer & Author.
rja.ca...@excite.com
Marilee J. Layman wrote:
>
> There's a TV anchor for the local NBC news:
>
> http://www.nbc4.com/meetthenewsteam/1198786/detail.html
>
> who I've watched for decades. Look at the picture, and you can
> imagine how surprised I was when they were doing background specials
> and she talked about being black.
And I was about to tell you to adjust your TV contrast...
I guess the NAACP are letting just anyone in nowadays...
Having said that, it /looks/ kind of like a mask... apparently The
Joker in "Batman" has this deadly gas that contracts the face muscles
as you die...
Mark Atwood
>
> Blanking on the name but their was a 1990's or so movie about a serial
> killer preying on homosexuals. The cop going undercover had to 'pass' as
> gay. One of the 'signals' used in clubs was having a handerkercheif in one
> back pocket or the other signalling what types of sex acts the person was
> into.
Here is the canonical list of hankie codes.
http://www.drizzle.com/~elf/faqs/hankies.html
--
Mark Atwood When you do things right, people won't be sure
m...@mark.atwood.name you've done anything at all.
http://mark.atwood.name/ http://fallenpegasus.livejournal.com/
Mike Schilling
"Mark Atwood" <m...@mark.atwood.name> wrote in message
news:m2lkvxo...@amsu.fallenpegasus.com...
> "lucky" <luck...@hotmail.com> writes:
>>
>> Blanking on the name but their was a 1990's or so movie about a serial
>> killer preying on homosexuals. The cop going undercover had to 'pass' as
>> gay. One of the 'signals' used in clubs was having a handerkercheif in
>> one
>> back pocket or the other signalling what types of sex acts the person was
>> into.
>
> Here is the canonical list of hankie codes.
>
> http://www.drizzle.com/~elf/faqs/hankies.html
Kelly green vs. hunter green vs. lime green vs. mint green? You can see why
straight men don't have a similar code.
il...@rcn.com
> Are there any where "surrogate mother" is widespread? Either as a
> respected profession, or as low-paying profession, sort of an
> extension of "nanny"?
Heinlein's "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress," but I can not think of any
others. Not even other Heinlein stories.
il...@rcn.com
Are there any where "surrogate mother" is widespread? Either as a
respected profession, or as low-paying profession, sort of an
a woman bears a child for another woman in particular, not ones where
society has essentially done away with the family and has
children-bearing class of people.
> In Stirling's "Stone Dogs" it seems that among a certain class of Draka
> woman having a serf surrogate was fairly common.
Yes, and a generation later this practice becomes universal. In effect,
later (i.e. gene-modified) Draka do have a children-bearing class of
people, and even before that happens, the surrogates are neither
respected nor "low-paid". These surrogates are not paid at all -- they
are property. As are Draka's nannies, for that matter.
Dan Goodman
> If there remain groups of white who marry only whites, blacks who
> marry only blacks, Asians who marry only Asians, Jews who marry only
> Jews, etc., then ethnic and racial groups will persist into the
> indefinite future.
According to genealogical records, most Jews of Eastern European
ancestry have only Jewish ancestors. This does not explain why some
look Slavic, some look much more German than Hitler did, and some have
a definite Asian look (as do Eastern Europeans of various other ethnic
groups).
--
Dan Goodman
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
John Arbuthnot (1667-1735), Scottish writer, physician.
Journal http://dsgood.livejournal.com
Clutterers Anonymous unofficial community
http://community.livejournal.com/clutterers_anon/
Decluttering http://decluttering.blogspot.com
Predictions and Politics http://dsgood.blogspot.com
Links http://del.icio.us/dsgood
lucky
<il...@rcn.com> wrote in message
news:1141006674....@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
Not stated as being surrogates but the ship's crew in Zimmer-Bradley's
Endless Universe bought babies from commercial suppliers.
They needed to purchase babies as the radiation of space travel and the
surgical modifications that allowed them to withstand it made them quite
sterile. And indeed the crew members lost a certain percentage of babies
that could not survive the modifications/radiation.
Recall the scene where the sales.. 'person' tries to interest them in a
batch of cloned babies. The crew members shudders at the thought of a clique
of clones - so similar to each other - within the context of the small crew.
Craig Richardson
wrote:
>
>Craig Richardson wrote:
>> On Sat, 25 Feb 2006 12:46:18 -0700, "Peter D. Tillman"
>> <Til...@toast.net_DIESPAMMERSDIE> wrote:
>>
>> >In article <dtq5v0$k3b$1...@reader2.panix.com>,
>> > jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
>> >
>> >> And a standard complaint about these futures, seen about once a year
>> >> on rasfw, is that authors who are trying to show how much intermingling
>> >> is going on will come up with the most unlikely of bi/multicultural names,
>> >> like "Alberto Fujimori", "Desmond Tutu" or "David Suzuki".
>> >
>> >Or "Carlos Munchmeyer", a master-race blond German-Chilean who was my
>> >roommate at a geological conference in Reno AWB. Or my very pleasant
>> >Japanese-Mexican innkeeper in a little Sonora River-valley town not long
>> >ago, whose name now escapes me. Or Gen. Hugo O'Connor (that's Ooh-go,
>> >SVP), an Irish-Mexican hero of the Revolution...
>>
>> Or Bernardo O'Higgins, one of the Libertadores.
>>From the world of baseball comes Ivan Rodriguez and Johann Santana
Oh, there are tons of examples from international sport. Like Pablo
Nagamura of the LA Galaxy, who is Brazilian and doesn't seem to my eye
to have a whole lot of Asian descent. And another Brazilian, Alex, is
going to be raising a clan of Japanese named "Santos", some of whom
will have both native given names and features.
--Craig
--
Craig Richardson (crichar...@worldnet.att.net)
"Then I heard the whirring of the motorized snowmen, sound[ing] like the
death rattle of very small robot lizards, and I left the seasonal aisle"
-- James Lileks, "The Bleat", 2005/10/10
Duke of URL
> <jdni...@panix.com> writes
>>
>> 1: And a standard complaint about these futures, seen about once a
>> year on rasfw, is that authors who are trying to show how much
>> intermingling is going on will come up with the most unlikely of
>> bi/multicultural names, like "Alberto Fujimori", "Desmond Tutu" or
>> "David Suzuki".
ahem ... Moses (Hebrew - okay, Moshe on Jewish documents) Lambert
(Scottish/French - no relation to the Germanic Lamberts)
--
Moses Lambert PO1(SW) USN(ret)
Cliologist, Philanthropologist, Prothonotary Wibbler,
Paleoconservative, Surface Warrior Squid, Itinerant Philosoph; Error
reading FAT record. Try the Skinny one?
Duke of URL
> James Nicoll wrote:
>
>> One of the standard SF futures [1] has intermarriage so common
>> that extreme phenotypes become rare, with the vast majority of
>> humanity a sort of pleasant caramel colour. As it turns out, many
>> visible characteristics don't work that way and even close relatives
>> can be quite different in appearance.
>>
>
> I had a friend once, who when the topic of race came up, casually
> mentioned that she was black. Since she was blonde and blue-eyed, I
> goggled at her; but she dug out a picture of her family and showed it
> to me. They were all "high yellow" except for her.
>
> She also told me that when she was growing up, the black community did
> not accept her as black, whereas whites always assumed she was white.
> Racial classifications are not under your personal control, but are
> socially defined. Meanwhile, the Hardy-Weinberg law and the way genes
> express themselves shows that beigification is not going to
> happen--instead, I think Brazil is the model of the future.
Aw c'mon! You can't just say that and zoom away! Just what is so special
about Brazil?
--
Moses Lambert PO1(SW) USN(ret) Cliologist, Philanthropologist, Prothonotary
Wibbler, Paleoconservative, Surface Warrior Squid, Itinerant Philosoph;
Science
was invented by insomniacs - At 3am - In a bar
Duke of URL
> In article <slrne01kdv....@bardeen.local>,
> Daniel Silevitch <dms...@uchicago.edu> wrote:
>> On Sat, 25 Feb 2006 21:39:18 GMT, Mark Atwood <m...@mark.atwood.name>
>> wrote:
>>> I can often pick members of my assorted "tribes" out of crowds, and
>>> often would have no idea how I could tell. It's like a very
>>> refined multispectral "gaydar".
>>
>> Ah, but do you have Doppler gaydar?
>
> There's easier ways to tell whether he's coming or not.
grroooaannn...
--
Moses Lambert PO1(SW) USN(ret)
Cliologist, Philanthropologist, Prothonotary Wibbler,
Paleoconservative, Surface Warrior Squid, Itinerant Philosoph; Hard
drive scanned - all stolen software deleted - police on their way
Duke of URL
> Craig Richardson wrote:
>> <dms...@uchicago.edu> wrote:
<m...@mark.atwood.name> wrote:
>>
>>>> I can often pick members of my assorted "tribes" out of crowds, and
>>>> often would have no idea how I could tell. It's like a very
>>>> refined multispectral "gaydar".
>>>
>>
>> Okay, given the existence of "gaydar", is there an equivalent of
>> "chaff"? And how would it be used?
>
> Is that why we throw confetti at straight couples?
So what do they throw at gay "handfastings"? Handfuls of condoms?
--
Moses Lambert PO1(SW) USN(ret)
Cliologist, Philanthropologist, Prothonotary Wibbler,
Paleoconservative, Surface Warrior Squid, Itinerant Philosoph; That is
not dead which can eternal lie - And with strange eons even death may
die
Walter Bushell
Peter Trei <treif...@gmail.com> wrote:
> James Nicoll wrote:
> > One of the standard SF futures [1] has intermarriage so common
> > that extreme phenotypes become rare, with the vast majority of humanity
> > a sort of pleasant caramel colour. As it turns out, many visible
> > characteristics don't work that way and even close relatives can be quite
> > different in appearance.
> >
> > http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/02/black-and-white-twins.php
> >
> > As I recall, embeigification is a background feature in Asimov's
> > Empire novels, or at least in THE CURRENTS OF SPACE, where one character
> > feels some kinship to a planet of oppressed farmers, because they both
> > come from far ends of the skin colour bell curve (opposite ends, as
> > it happens).
> >
> >
> > James Nicoll
> >
> > 1: And a standard complaint about these futures, seen about once a year
> > on rasfw, is that authors who are trying to show how much intermingling
> > is going on will come up with the most unlikely of bi/multicultural names,
> > like "Alberto Fujimori", "Desmond Tutu" or "David Suzuki".
> >
> >
>
> One of my kids is named "Alice Suzuko Louise", and is generally called
> 'Suzy'. The reason? A beloved Godmother (half Japanese) and
> a great-grandmother dying in rapid succession.
>
> After we had an Alice, I wanted to name the second girl 'Dorothy' to
> continue the quasi-Victorian literaryh child heroine theme, but I
> was overruled.
>
> The second got 'Victoria Agnes Anu', and is known as 'Vicky'.
>
> You won't believe how much more than 1 middle name screws up
> school software.
>
> Peter Trei
Or non standard names to the military. The man called "R. B. Jones"
wrote R(only) B(only) Jones on his forms and got clept Ronly Bonly Jones.
--
"The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any
charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgement of his
peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totali-
tarian government whether Nazi or Communist." -- W. Churchill, Nov 21, 1943
Walter Bushell
John F. Eldredge <jo...@jfeldredge.com> wrote:
> Part of the scenario is an "Office of Racial Identity", whose job it
> is to prove what a given person's ancestry is.
This happened in the other USA -- Union of South Africa.