Thoughts on Cryptonomicon After Reading the Baroque Cycle
cambias
by Neil Stephenson.
What is Enoch Root's purpose in the modern era? In the Baroque period
he seems to be midwifing the scientific revolution. During World War
II his motives seem to be good solid anti-fascism, but in the 1990s
he's just helping to recover the Japanese gold for charity. His goals
seem to be getting less grand -- does that mean his job is done? Or
is he still trying to find the Solomonic gold?
The lost Solomonic gold is aboard the sunken submarine in Manila
harbor, and gets recovered by Semper Marine. When last seen, it's on
its way to the vault in Kinakuta. Does Enoch Root know this? If so,
does he actually even want the gold? Or is he trying to make sure
nobody finds it?
What's with the Leibnitz Archive? Several characters, including Rudi
von Hacklheber, seem to think the data encoded on the gold cards is
important -- but it's just a bunch of Royal Society attempts at
organizing information, encoded by Daniel Waterhouse et al in London.
No secrets there, as far as I know. Other than its status as a neat
bit of technological history, what's so important?
Did Hacklheber or Bischoff survive the submarine sinking? One or both
of them got out, but may have succumbed to the bends. If they did
survive, one would expect Root to know about it.
The whole 1990s plotline seems curiously dated now. The good guys are
interested in setting up an untraceable offshore banking system,
distributing information about guerrilla warfare, and keeping their
communications secret from governments. In the story it's pointed out
how many of their clients are crooks and thugs, and after 9/11 the
whole project seems dangerously naive. The Crypt, the HEAP, and the
Solitaire cryptosystem would all be incredibly useful to outfits like
Al-Qaeda, or to Al-Qaeda wannabes.
(In particular: crypto _won't_ protect you from tyranny. It will
protect you from law-abiding governments which respect civil
liberties, but the tyrannies will just beat you up or pull out your
fingernails or use electric shocks until you tell them what's in your
super-encoded message. And even if they don't find out what you've
encrypted, they'll just lock you up or kill you anyway, without
evidence.)
Does anyone know if NS is planning a third part set after the 1990s
which would wrap it all up and answer some of the above questions?
Cambias
Bill Snyder
>Thoughts on Rereading Cryptonomicon after reading the Baroque Trilogy,
>by Neil Stephenson.
S
P
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A
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[Points which basically Beat the Hell Out of Me snipped, leaving those
on which I can say something arguably cogent]
>What's with the Leibnitz Archive? Several characters, including Rudi
>von Hacklheber, seem to think the data encoded on the gold cards is
>important -- but it's just a bunch of Royal Society attempts at
>organizing information, encoded by Daniel Waterhouse et al in London.
>No secrets there, as far as I know. Other than its status as a neat
>bit of technological history, what's so important?
Maybe the Leibnitz Archive from _Cryptonomicon_ is not the one we see
in the last Baroque book. Rudy says it's, "_sheets_ of gold foil with
holes in them," and Randy sees "_leaves_ of gold . . . [with] tiny
holes punched into them," (my italics both times) which doesn't sound
to me like the little cards described in _System . . ._..
>
>Did Hacklheber or Bischoff survive the submarine sinking? One or both
>of them got out, but may have succumbed to the bends. If they did
>survive, one would expect Root to know about it.
Rudy committed suicide in order to destroy a written copy of the
Golgotha coordinates. Whether Bischoff was done in by the bends has
been discussed before, inconclusively. I'd like to think Rudy's
promise to him came true; but if he made it, it's hard to understand
why the archive wasn't salvaged earlier.
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank.]
jere7my tho?rpe
cam...@heliograph.com (cambias) wrote:
> Thoughts on Rereading Cryptonomicon after reading the Baroque Trilogy,
> by Neil Stephenson.
SPOILERs ho!
> What is Enoch Root's purpose in the modern era? In the Baroque period
> he seems to be midwifing the scientific revolution. During World War
> II his motives seem to be good solid anti-fascism, but in the 1990s
> he's just helping to recover the Japanese gold for charity. His goals
> seem to be getting less grand -- does that mean his job is done? Or
> is he still trying to find the Solomonic gold?
I believe he is still after the heavy gold, some of which was on the sub
Randy found, the rest of which (I theorize) was in Golgotha. Hence
Enoch's particular interest in Randy's endeavors. (He may also care
about data havens for their own sake, but he definitely cares about the
gold.)
> The lost Solomonic gold is aboard the sunken submarine in Manila
> harbor, and gets recovered by Semper Marine. When last seen, it's on
> its way to the vault in Kinakuta. Does Enoch Root know this? If so,
> does he actually even want the gold? Or is he trying to make sure
> nobody finds it?
We learn in SotW that Enoch wants to sequester the Solomonic gold,
because he feels that pursuit of the Elixir Vitae (i.e., alchemy) would
derail the important and fulfilling pursuits of humanity (i.e., reason).
It is better to know why you know something than to be enlightened, as
King Solomon points out to Daniel.
> What's with the Leibnitz Archive? Several characters, including Rudi
> von Hacklheber, seem to think the data encoded on the gold cards is
> important -- but it's just a bunch of Royal Society attempts at
> organizing information, encoded by Daniel Waterhouse et al in London.
> No secrets there, as far as I know. Other than its status as a neat
> bit of technological history, what's so important?
It is itself the Solomonic gold, which is why Enoch in interested in it
in the 1990s, and why Rudy had Goering gather it up for him from the
many museums of Europe.
Either that, or Daniel's logic engine _really works_, and now that there
are computers to run it they're going to do something cool with the
encoded data.
> Does anyone know if NS is planning a third part set after the 1990s
> which would wrap it all up and answer some of the above questions?
Last time he spoke at Borders in Ann Arbor, _he_ didn't know.
----j7y
--
jere7my tho?rpe "Clever stratagems are quite beyond my
440-775-1522 powers, but if it is rank foolishness
jere...@oberlin.net you require, I have no end of it."
http://www.livejournal.com/~jere7my Jack Shaftoe, _The Confusion_
Jeffrey C. Dege
I'm sorry. Are we to believe that there really is phlogiston or whatever
inside that gold? And it's not heavy just because it's isotopically pure?
--
Believe me, the real romantic person is him who ain't done anything
but imagine. If you have actually participated in disasters, like me,
you get conservative.
-- Thomas Berger, "Little Big Man"
jere7my tho?rpe
jd...@jdege.visi.com (Jeffrey C. Dege) wrote:
> On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 22:29:21 -0500, jere7my tho?rpe <jere...@oberlin.net>
> wrote:
> >
> >SPOILERs ho!
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> >We learn in SotW that Enoch wants to sequester the Solomonic gold,
> >because he feels that pursuit of the Elixir Vitae (i.e., alchemy) would
> >derail the important and fulfilling pursuits of humanity (i.e., reason).
> >It is better to know why you know something than to be enlightened, as
> >King Solomon points out to Daniel.
>
> I'm sorry. Are we to believe that there really is phlogiston or whatever
> inside that gold? And it's not heavy just because it's isotopically pure?
Well, I don't see what other conclusion we can draw from the
resurrection of Isaac Newton at the end of SotW. The alchemists were
right; the Elixir Vitae works, and it works in that particular case
because of the Philosophick Mercury lodged in the interstices of the
Solomonic gold. I don't think Stephenson could've made it any clearer.
Jeffrey C. Dege
>In article <slrncpit9...@jdege.visi.com>,
> jd...@jdege.visi.com (Jeffrey C. Dege) wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 22:29:21 -0500, jere7my tho?rpe <jere...@oberlin.net>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >SPOILERs ho!
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>> >We learn in SotW that Enoch wants to sequester the Solomonic gold,
>> >because he feels that pursuit of the Elixir Vitae (i.e., alchemy) would
>> >derail the important and fulfilling pursuits of humanity (i.e., reason).
>> >It is better to know why you know something than to be enlightened, as
>> >King Solomon points out to Daniel.
>>
>> I'm sorry. Are we to believe that there really is phlogiston or whatever
>> inside that gold? And it's not heavy just because it's isotopically pure?
>
>Well, I don't see what other conclusion we can draw from the
>resurrection of Isaac Newton at the end of SotW. The alchemists were
>right; the Elixir Vitae works, and it works in that particular case
>because of the Philosophick Mercury lodged in the interstices of the
>Solomonic gold. I don't think Stephenson could've made it any clearer.
You think Stephenson is trying to be clear?
After all the discussion of Lockean limits of understanding?
He's never explained who Root is, or whether there's just one of him,
or just a series of people using the same name.
And I don't think he's going to.
--
By no means all socialists were killers or amoral. Many were sincere
humanitarians; mostly these were the adherents of democratic socialism.
But democratic socialism turned out to be a contradiction in terms, for
where socialists proceeded democratically, the found themselves on a
trajectory that took them further and further from socialism. Long before
Lenin, socialist thinkers had anticipated the problem. The imaginary
utopias of Plato, Moore, Campanella and Edward Bellamy, whose 1887 novel,
Looking Backward, was the most popular socialist book in American
history, all relied on coercion, as did the plans of The Conspiracy of
Equals. Only once did democratic socialists manage to create socialism.
That was the kibbutz. And after they had experienced it, they chose
democratically to abolish it.
- Jason Muravchik, "Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism"
Jim Battista
news:jere7my2-FEC86A...@corp.supernews.com:
> In article <slrncpit9...@jdege.visi.com>,
> jd...@jdege.visi.com (Jeffrey C. Dege) wrote:
> Well, I don't see what other conclusion we can draw from the
> resurrection of Isaac Newton at the end of SotW. The alchemists
> were right; the Elixir Vitae works, and it works in that
> particular case because of the Philosophick Mercury lodged in the
> interstices of the Solomonic gold. I don't think Stephenson
> could've made it any clearer.
It could still be gold infested with nanobugs from Some External
Source, or work by Some Other Mechanism than that ascribed to it by
alchemists.
--
Jim Battista
A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.
Ryan Klippenstine
wrote:
>"jere7my tho?rpe" <jere...@oberlin.net> wrote in
>news:jere7my2-FEC86A...@corp.supernews.com:
>
>> In article <slrncpit9...@jdege.visi.com>,
>> jd...@jdege.visi.com (Jeffrey C. Dege) wrote:
>> Well, I don't see what other conclusion we can draw from the
>> resurrection of Isaac Newton at the end of SotW. The alchemists
>> were right; the Elixir Vitae works, and it works in that
>> particular case because of the Philosophick Mercury lodged in the
>> interstices of the Solomonic gold. I don't think Stephenson
>> could've made it any clearer.
>
>It could still be gold infested with nanobugs from Some External
>Source,
You'd want picobugs, I think, to explain the apparent transmutation of
the bastardized coinage at the Trail of the Pyx.
It occurs to me that if there was Solomonic gold buried in Golgotha,
then Randy et al. would have gotten rather more gold out of it than
actually went in.
>or work by Some Other Mechanism than that ascribed to it by
>alchemists.
If it walks like the Philosophick Mercury, and quacks like the
Philosophick Mercury, it's probably not a broad-billed waterfowl.
--
Ryan Klippenstine
Dark Lensman
The System of the world seems to make this painfuly clear with at
least one resurection acredited directly to the gold
Jim Battista
news:2l6jp051uliqm5mqr...@4ax.com:
> On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 05:36:01 -0000, Jim Battista
> <batt...@unt.edu> wrote:
>
>>It could still be gold infested with nanobugs from Some External
>>Source,
>
> You'd want picobugs, I think, to explain the apparent
> transmutation of the bastardized coinage at the Trail of the Pyx.
Nano would do. There was no transmutation. Just a clever man
mixing the right amount of too-heavy gold, gathered earlier, with
too-impure gold to get a weight of gold that's correct.
If it had transmuted, the final bit of gold would have weighed too
much, not just right.
Louann Miller
wrote:
>I'm sorry. Are we to believe that <rot13> gurer ernyyl vf cuybtvfgba be jungrire <rot13>
>inside that gold?
This is the answer to the long running question "Why does Stephenson
keep insisting this series is SF instead of historical fiction?"
Because it's in a slightly alternate universe, where alchemy works.
File under fantasy, to be really technical about it.
Bruce Murphy
One could consider alchemy primitive technology, no? And if one sticks
fimly to the premises and basic rules rather than deifying people
randomly to fill plot oles, surely that's going to align pretty well
with SF? Maybe you can even find some rivets.
B>
cambias
>
> You'd want picobugs, I think, to explain the apparent transmutation of
> the bastardized coinage at the Trail of the Pyx.
>
> It occurs to me that if there was Solomonic gold buried in Golgotha,
> then Randy et al. would have gotten rather more gold out of it than
> actually went in.
>
I don't think the hugger-mugger at the Trial of the Pyx involved
transmutation. The coins were adulterated with lighter metal, so by
putting in some of the extra-heavy gold, the net density was that of
gold. Otherwise when any of the Solomonic gold gets con-fused with
mundane gold, eventually _all_ gold would be Solomonic, which kind of
negates the whole MacGuffin chase after it.
Cambias
Jeffrey C. Dege
>jd...@jdege.visi.com (Jeffrey C. Dege) wrote in message news:<slrncpit9...@jdege.visi.com>...
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>The System of the world seems to make this painfuly clear with at
>least one resurection acredited directly to the gold
Yep.
But there are characters in the book who believe all sorts of wierd
things. That doesn't mean they're correct.
--
"The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be
reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and
controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced,
if the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt. People must again
learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."
- Marcus Tullius Cicero
Jo Walton
> jd...@jdege.visi.com (Jeffrey C. Dege) wrote...
>> On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 22:29:21 -0500, jere7my tho?rpe <jere...@oberlin.net> wrote:
>> >In article <f4be6c44.04111...@posting.google.com>,
>> > cam...@heliograph.com (cambias) wrote:
>> >
>> >> Thoughts on Rereading Cryptonomicon after reading the Baroque Trilogy,
>> >> by Neil Stephenson.
>> >
>> >SPOILERs ho!
>> >
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>> >> What is Enoch Root's purpose in the modern era? In the Baroque period
>> >> he seems to be midwifing the scientific revolution. During World War
>> >> II his motives seem to be good solid anti-fascism, but in the 1990s
>> >> he's just helping to recover the Japanese gold for charity. His goals
>> >> seem to be getting less grand -- does that mean his job is done? Or
>> >> is he still trying to find the Solomonic gold?
Still trying to protect/hide the Solomonic gold?
Whatever he's doing, and whatever he wants to do, or not to do, with that gold,
(and wherever it came from) he's personally wandering around healing random
people with it.
Did he heal Bobby because he remembered Jack? Did he heal Amy because he
remembered Bobby? Is he in fact just healing Shaftoes and Newton?
"Healing" I don't want to even *say* "ressurecting".
>> >I believe he is still after the heavy gold, some of which was on the sub
>> >Randy found, the rest of which (I theorize) was in Golgotha. Hence
>> >Enoch's particular interest in Randy's endeavors. (He may also care
>> >about data havens for their own sake, but he definitely cares about the
>> >gold.)
>> >
>> >> The lost Solomonic gold is aboard the sunken submarine in Manila
>> >> harbor, and gets recovered by Semper Marine. When last seen, it's on
>> >> its way to the vault in Kinakuta. Does Enoch Root know this? If so,
>> >> does he actually even want the gold? Or is he trying to make sure
>> >> nobody finds it?
>> >
>> >We learn in SotW that Enoch wants to sequester the Solomonic gold,
>> >because he feels that pursuit of the Elixir Vitae (i.e., alchemy) would
>> >derail the important and fulfilling pursuits of humanity (i.e., reason).
>> >It is better to know why you know something than to be enlightened, as
>> >King Solomon points out to Daniel.
>>
>> I'm sorry. Are we to believe that there really is phlogiston or whatever
>> inside that gold? And it's not heavy just because it's isotopically pure?
>
> The System of the world seems to make this painfuly clear with at
> least one resurection acredited directly to the gold
That really fooled me.
I was sitting there all sophisticated and superior to the characters and saying
"look, a heavy isotope of gold" right up to the description of Daniel's
ressurection with it, whereupon my jaw dropped several metres.
I don't think it's necessarily phlogiston. My theory is that Root is an alien,
he brought isotopic nano-gold with him, it is in fact his spaceship, and he's
been trying to make the world an appropriate place to "mend" it in some way
ever since, by bringing the tech level up. The Crypt and so on helps him get
the world in the direction he wants in the same way the Enlightenment does. We
don't recognize the direction, but he has a plan.
He's younger in the Baroque Cycle, so he is ageing, just not at normal speed.
He's definitely the same person.
--
Jo I kissed a kif at Kefk blu...@vif.com
WORLD FANTASY AWARD winning novel TOOTH AND CLAW out in mmpb any minute!
Jo Walton
>
>>Thoughts on Rereading Cryptonomicon after reading the Baroque Trilogy,
>>by Neil Stephenson.
>
>
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> in the last Baroque book. Rudy says it's, "_sheets_ of gold foil with
> holes in them," and Randy sees "_leaves_ of gold . . . [with] tiny
> holes punched into them," (my italics both times) which doesn't sound
> to me like the little cards described in _System . . ._..
We don't know what Daniel was encoding onto them, other than that it's a
system, we never see it run -- obviously! -- we don't have any idea what it
was, nor do we know if Leibnitz added to it later.
I *want* to know what that is and what it does.
I want to know *now*!
Jo Walton
>
> You'd want picobugs, I think, to explain the apparent transmutation of
> the bastardized coinage at the Trail of the Pyx.
No, that works just fine with an isotope and some prestidigitation, which we
know was going on.
> If it walks like the Philosophick Mercury, and quacks like the
> Philosophick Mercury, it's probably not a broad-billed waterfowl.
And the Philosophick Mercury walks and quacks like isotopic nano-gold, why then
it might just be that we've built ourselves a platypus.
BPRAL22169
>The System of the world seems to make this painfuly clear with at
>least one resurection acredited directly to the gold
Two, I think: it's implied that the missing ingredient from the recipe used to
resurrect Waterhouse after his gallstone operation was the solomonic gold.
Bill
Ryan Klippenstine
wrote:
>Ryan Klippenstine <ry...@westman.wave.ca> wrote in
>news:2l6jp051uliqm5mqr...@4ax.com:
>
>> On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 05:36:01 -0000, Jim Battista
>> <batt...@unt.edu> wrote:
>>
>>>It could still be gold infested with nanobugs from Some External
>>>Source,
>>
>> You'd want picobugs, I think, to explain the apparent
>> transmutation of the bastardized coinage at the Trail of the Pyx.
>
>Nano would do. There was no transmutation. Just a clever man
>mixing the right amount of too-heavy gold, gathered earlier, with
>too-impure gold to get a weight of gold that's correct.
Except that everyone in the room, including Mr. Threader, is
gobsmacked to see the gold come out to the "correct" amount. Threader
himself apparently expected a certain amount of base metal, and he
suggests the transmutation theory to Daniel as an explanation of the
oddity.
>If it had transmuted, the final bit of gold would have weighed too
>much, not just right.
I would assume that is the result of the Philosophick Mercury having
boiled off, or been somehow expended in the transmutation.
--
Ryan Klippenstine
jere7my tho?rpe
jd...@jdege.visi.com (Jeffrey C. Dege) wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 00:10:16 -0500, jere7my tho?rpe <jere...@oberlin.net>
> wrote:
> >> >
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> >Well, I don't see what other conclusion we can draw from the
> >resurrection of Isaac Newton at the end of SotW. The alchemists were
> >right; the Elixir Vitae works, and it works in that particular case
> >because of the Philosophick Mercury lodged in the interstices of the
> >Solomonic gold. I don't think Stephenson could've made it any clearer.
>
> You think Stephenson is trying to be clear?
>
> After all the discussion of Lockean limits of understanding?
>
> He's never explained who Root is, or whether there's just one of him,
> or just a series of people using the same name.
>
> And I don't think he's going to.
I think he would be surprised to learn that he hasn't explained it. He
hasn't stated it explicitly, but evidence points to Enoch being the
father of Methuselah, who is immortal because he was taken into heaven
to walk with God, then returned to Earth to do good works. Just like
Gandalf.
This fits the available evidence, fits the tone of the book, and fits
with my understanding of Stephenson's intent (to answer all the Big
Questions by the end of the Baroque Cycle).
If there are multple Roots, why the discussions of Egon von Hackelheber
in the appendix of SotW?
jere7my tho?rpe
Jo Walton <blu...@vif.com> wrote:
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> I don't think it's necessarily phlogiston. My theory is that Root is
> an alien, he brought isotopic nano-gold with him, it is in fact his
> spaceship, and he's been trying to make the world an appropriate
> place to "mend" it in some way ever since, by bringing the tech level
> up. The Crypt and so on helps him get the world in the direction he
> wants in the same way the Enlightenment does. We don't recognize the
> direction, but he has a plan.
Apart from there being no textual evidence for nano-gold (I mean, it
could be hyperevolved penguins hiding in the corners and healing people
by telekinesis, too), this goes against Enoch's apparent motivation, as
well as the theme of the book: it is better to know why you know
something than to be enlightened from above, or Alchemy vs. Reason.
Nanotechnology would behave according to scientific principles, and
therefore wouldn't derail inquiry into science, and therefore Enoch
wouldn't need to sequester it. Elixir Vitae is magic, and tempting
enough that people would put a lot of effort into using it, which is a
road Enoch went down without finding any satisfaction at the end.
Occam's razor seems to indicate that Stephenson has created a world in
which alchemy works. This has been done plenty of times before, and yet
I'm seeing a lot of resistance to the idea.
Dark Lensman
Of course I didnt even notice the transmutation I was just thinking
too lite + to heavy = right but its there exactly with the
resuraetctions scene!
Well thats it for the arguments then - It raises the dead and it
transmutes base metal into gold - if that isnt proof alchaemy works
what is!
John Schilling
>Thoughts on Rereading Cryptonomicon after reading the Baroque Trilogy,
>by Neil Stephenson.
>What is Enoch Root's purpose in the modern era? In the Baroque period
>he seems to be midwifing the scientific revolution. During World War
>II his motives seem to be good solid anti-fascism, but in the 1990s
>he's just helping to recover the Japanese gold for charity. His goals
>seem to be getting less grand -- does that mean his job is done? Or
>is he still trying to find the Solomonic gold?
In both the 1940s and the 1990s, he is in coincdentally implausuble
proximity to A: the Solominic gold, B: the Leibniz Archive, and C:
the Waterhouse and Shaftoe families. All of which are historically
connected, of course. We can't deduce his exact motives, but at very
least these are the things he feels it necessary to keep an eye on.
>The lost Solomonic gold is aboard the sunken submarine in Manila
>harbor, and gets recovered by Semper Marine. When last seen, it's on
>its way to the vault in Kinakuta. Does Enoch Root know this? If so,
>does he actually even want the gold? Or is he trying to make sure
>nobody finds it?
In _System of the World_, he claims to want to keep it out of circulation
for the general good of mankind. OTOH, he could be lying, and at very
least his continued use of the cigar-box trick suggests a personal
demand for modest quantities of Solomonic gold.
Also, he may be interested in the Leibniz Archive for its informational
content, independant of the substrate.
>What's with the Leibnitz Archive? Several characters, including Rudi
>von Hacklheber, seem to think the data encoded on the gold cards is
>important -- but it's just a bunch of Royal Society attempts at
>organizing information, encoded by Daniel Waterhouse et al in London.
>No secrets there, as far as I know. Other than its status as a neat
>bit of technological history, what's so important?
The Waterhouse Archive, indeed, would be nothing special. What is
unclear is whether the Leibniz archive is just a new name for the same
old thing (wouldn't be the first time Gottfried was accused of taking
credit for another man's work...), or something new.
When last seen, Leibniz had the Waterhouse Archive, preliminary designs
for a Logic Engine, a lead on the more mundane sort of engine needed to
drive a Logic Engine, a very rich and powerful and dangerous patron who
really wanted a Logic Engine, and an ally who may or may not have been
King Solomon.
Possibly the Liebniz Archive is what happens when you run the Waterhouse
Archive through a proto-computer programmed by one of the Wise aided by
a Wizard. Could be something worth having there.
>Did Hacklheber or Bischoff survive the submarine sinking? One or both
>of them got out, but may have succumbed to the bends. If they did
>survive, one would expect Root to know about it.
There's enough ambiguity to give them a happy ending for those who want
it, but probably they died.
>The whole 1990s plotline seems curiously dated now. The good guys are
>interested in setting up an untraceable offshore banking system,
>distributing information about guerrilla warfare, and keeping their
>communications secret from governments. In the story it's pointed out
>how many of their clients are crooks and thugs, and after 9/11 the
>whole project seems dangerously naive. The Crypt, the HEAP, and the
>Solitaire cryptosystem would all be incredibly useful to outfits like
>Al-Qaeda, or to Al-Qaeda wannabes.
Yeah, but they've already got those things, as do the governments they
battle, so a reasonable person might still believe it is a net gain to
make them legitimately available to everyone caught in the middle as
well.
And, six of one, half dozen of the other - before 9/11, the subplot about
the major powers cutting submarine cables and so forth in order to shut
down a band of crypto-anarchists seemed somewhat naive in the paranoid
conspiracy theorist way. But it mostly worked then, and it mostly works
now. Dated only in that it doesn't discuss 9/11, which would have to
factor into any contemporary discussion of such issues even if it didn't
change the conclusions.
> (In particular: crypto _won't_ protect you from tyranny. It will
>protect you from law-abiding governments which respect civil
>liberties, but the tyrannies will just beat you up or pull out your
>fingernails or use electric shocks until you tell them what's in your
>super-encoded message.
Your bullet-riddled corpse won't be able to do any of those things, it
having been lethally bullet-riddled by the second, third, and fourth
jackbooted thugs through the door after you used your HEAP gun to kill
the first.
>And even if they don't find out what you've encrypted, they'll just
>lock you up or kill you anyway, without evidence.)
Mostly redundant, as see above, and in any event killing one member of
the resistance, only kills one member of the resistance. Reading his
mail, searching his records, and capturing him alive for interrogation,
is a much bigger gain for the tyrants, at much less cost. If made
feasible by the lack of encryption, HEAP guns, etc.
That there is no single Magic Bullet against tyranny, does not argue
against readying the many sorts of mundane (in the case of HEAP guns,
literal) bullets that may collectively get the job done.
_Cryptonomicon_ had a legitimate, if fragmentary and biased, look at
the sort of toolkit one might actually want to distribute as a guard
against tyranny.
>Does anyone know if NS is planning a third part set after the 1990s
>which would wrap it all up and answer some of the above questions?
I very much hope so, but I do not know.
If he's not planning on it, I won't press the issue. It is often
possible to extract a sequel from a reluctant author, but frequently
unsatisfying.
--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
David Bilek
>cam...@heliograph.com (cambias) writes:
>
>
>>Did Hacklheber or Bischoff survive the submarine sinking? One or both
>>of them got out, but may have succumbed to the bends. If they did
>>survive, one would expect Root to know about it.
>
>There's enough ambiguity to give them a happy ending for those who want
>it, but probably they died.
>
I don't remember... how deep was the submarine when Bischoff went out
the airlock? It shouldn't be that hard to find out mortality
statistics for a given depth.
-David
cambias
give Bischoff good odds. Recreational divers seldom go below 20-30
meters because that's considered the safe limit for no-decompression
return to the surface if your regulator stops working or your air
suddenly runs out. Bischoff's going three times as far.
And correcting myself: Rudi dies pretty unambiguously when he burns
up all the papers. So it's Gunther or nobody.
Cambias
David Bilek
I have to re-read _Cryptonomicon_. Thinking about it more, wouldn't
going out the airlock be equivalent to a free-dive? The air in a sub
isn't pressurized. 300 meters is quite possible for a free dive.
Why would he experience nitrogen narcosis at all? Bischoff *isn't
breathing* when he's at pressure, he's holding his breath and
hopefully exhaling.
Is there something else to the setup I don't remember? Why would
Bischoff experience decompression sickness at all? He never breathes
air under pressure.
-David
Bill Snyder
wrote:
But he does. When the hull is breached, he and Rudy wind up in a
bubble of air trapped at the upper end of the sub. So they're
breathing air at around 15 atmospheres. On the plus side, they don't
do so for very long before Rudi suicides and Bischoff exits.
IMO there is a "curious incident of the dog in the night-time"
implication that he made it: Doug and Amy, who are presented as
super-experts on deep diving, see the open hatch and say "Someone got
out"; they conspicuously don't say, "Oh, well, he'd have died of the
bends anyhow."
David Bilek
>On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 20:36:37 GMT, David Bilek <dtb...@comcast.net>
>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>going out the airlock be equivalent to a free-dive? The air in a sub
>>isn't pressurized. 300 meters is quite possible for a free dive.
>>Why would he experience nitrogen narcosis at all? Bischoff *isn't
>>breathing* when he's at pressure, he's holding his breath and
>>hopefully exhaling.
>>
>>Is there something else to the setup I don't remember? Why would
>>Bischoff experience decompression sickness at all? He never breathes
>>air under pressure.
>
>But he does. When the hull is breached, he and Rudy wind up in a
>bubble of air trapped at the upper end of the sub. So they're
>breathing air at around 15 atmospheres. On the plus side, they don't
>do so for very long before Rudi suicides and Bischoff exits.
>
>IMO there is a "curious incident of the dog in the night-time"
>implication that he made it: Doug and Amy, who are presented as
>super-experts on deep diving, see the open hatch and say "Someone got
>out"; they conspicuously don't say, "Oh, well, he'd have died of the
>bends anyhow."
Ah, that would be the explanation, re: air under pressure. As I said,
it's been quite a while since I read _Cryptonomicon_. Yeah, the
length of time he's at 15 atmospheres would make a big difference in
his chances of survival.
I suspect the window for survival isn't very long at all; 15
atmospheres is a lot. Who knows?
-David
John Schilling
Where would all the extra Philosophik Mercury come from? At most, all
gold would *weakly* Solomonic, with infinitesimal traces of PM rather
than the subtantial mass of the stuff embedding the high-grade Solomonic
Gold that is the focus of the Baroque Cycle.
The known equations are:
1. Pure Gold + Philosophik Mercury == Solomonic Gold,
and
2. Base Metal + Philosophik Mercury == Pure Gold.
Assuming basic arithmetic holds, neglecting proportionality constants
and gradiations of Solomonic Gold purity, this also gives us
3. Base Metal + 2 * Philosophik Mercury = Solomonic Gold
4. Solomonic Gold + Base Metal = 2 * Ordinary Gold
5. Impure Gold (==Base Metal+Pure Gold) + PM = 2 * Pure Gold
6. Impure Gold + Solomonic Gold = 3 * Pure Gold
But none of these equations produce new Philosophik Mercury. Indeed,
it is unclear that such an equation exists. Known processes can only
consume or dilute the Philosophik Mercury, which limits the total supply
of high-grade Solomnic Gold to that already known.
The Trial of the Pyx was an example of equation 6, and an indication
of what the proportionality constants really are. No-shit Alchemical
transmutation of the elments occurred, and Philosophik Mercury was
consumed.
John Schilling
Where would all the extra Philosophik Mercury come from? At most, all
John Schilling
>cam...@heliograph.com (cambias) wrote:
>>> >>Did Hacklheber or Bischoff survive the submarine sinking? One or both
>>> >>of them got out, but may have succumbed to the bends. If they did
>>> >>survive, one would expect Root to know about it.
>>> >There's enough ambiguity to give them a happy ending for those who want
>>> >it, but probably they died.
>>> I don't remember... how deep was the submarine when Bischoff went out
>>> the airlock? It shouldn't be that hard to find out mortality
>>> statistics for a given depth.
>>A hundred meters or so -- which is quite deep for diving, and doesn't
>>give Bischoff good odds. Recreational divers seldom go below 20-30
>>meters because that's considered the safe limit for no-decompression
>>return to the surface if your regulator stops working or your air
>>suddenly runs out. Bischoff's going three times as far.
>>And correcting myself: Rudi dies pretty unambiguously when he burns
>>up all the papers. So it's Gunther or nobody.
>I have to re-read _Cryptonomicon_. Thinking about it more, wouldn't
>going out the airlock be equivalent to a free-dive? The air in a sub
>isn't pressurized.
That's because the air in a sub is entirely enclosed in thick steel,
isolating it from the highly pressurized water outside. This has the
unfortunate side effect of entirely enclosing Rudi and Gunther in
thick steel, isolating them from escape to the outside.
Opening any sort of escape path, eliminates the submarine interior's
immunity to outside pressure. And, if you think about it, is thus
rather difficult to do cleanly.
>300 meters is quite possible for a free dive. Why would he experience
>nitrogen narcosis at all? Bischoff *isn't breathing* when he's at
>pressure, he's holding his breath and hopefully exhaling.
Only if he can hold his breath through the entire period that is
involved in opening an escape path from the submarine. Note that
a door, however wide and clear, through which water is rushing in
due to the pressure differential, is not an escape path.
It might be possible to MacGyver an escape route that does not
require ever breathing pressurized air, but it's far from certain.
Best you can expect is to minimize the time spent breathing said
air, and thus the degree of nitrogen saturation that will haunt
you on the way up.
--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
*661-718-0955 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
Jim Millen
wrote:
>Bill Snyder <bsn...@airmail.net> wrote:
>>On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 20:36:37 GMT, David Bilek <dtb...@comcast.net>
>>wrote:
>>>Is there something else to the setup I don't remember? Why would
>>>Bischoff experience decompression sickness at all? He never breathes
>>>air under pressure.
>>
>>But he does. When the hull is breached, he and Rudy wind up in a
>>bubble of air trapped at the upper end of the sub. So they're
>>breathing air at around 15 atmospheres. On the plus side, they don't
>>do so for very long before Rudi suicides and Bischoff exits.
>>
>>IMO there is a "curious incident of the dog in the night-time"
>>implication that he made it: Doug and Amy, who are presented as
>>super-experts on deep diving, see the open hatch and say "Someone got
>>out"; they conspicuously don't say, "Oh, well, he'd have died of the
>>bends anyhow."
>
>Ah, that would be the explanation, re: air under pressure. As I said,
>it's been quite a while since I read _Cryptonomicon_. Yeah, the
>length of time he's at 15 atmospheres would make a big difference in
>his chances of survival.
>
>I suspect the window for survival isn't very long at all; 15
>atmospheres is a lot. Who knows?
I think it would depend on a rather large number of variables. One
important one I could think of is how long Bischoff spent breathing
air at 15x atmospheres - that would make a major difference to the
amount of nitrogen dissolved into his bloodstream. Other factors
would be things like his age and fitness, the precise pressure at that
depth, time taken to free ascend from that depth etc etc. But
Stephenson implies that if Bischoff survives, he won't have done so
scot-free, as he refers to his knees beginning to hurt.
There wouldn't be any problem in getting out of the submarine due to
pressure - assuming a hatch was open of course! - as the water within
the sub and the water outside would have equalised pressure. I seem
to remember that people have escaped sunken cars by having the
self-possession to let the water flood in, take a deep breath of the
last of the air and then, when the car is completely full, the
door/window opens easily. Not something I'd like to try!
People can certainly free ascend from depths down to 150m+ - it's
something that submarine escape procedure engineers are obviously
quite interested in, and have conducted numerous tests. One major
issue is to keep exhaling, as the air in your lungs will be expanding
as you rise. If you don't do this, it can seriously damage your
lungs, as they are very sensitive to overpressure - an uncontrolled
ascent of as little as 5m can cause damage, if you do it wrong. The
sub school at HMS Dolphin in Gosport has a tower which is used to
train submariners to do precisely this - it's difficult as breathing
out goes against reflexes.
Hmmm, guess my dive training, rusty with many years misuse, has left
some vestige of knowledge after all.
Jim Millen
John Schilling
>"jere7my tho?rpe" <jere...@oberlin.net> wrote in
>news:jere7my2-FEC86A...@corp.supernews.com:
>> In article <slrncpit9...@jdege.visi.com>,
>> jd...@jdege.visi.com (Jeffrey C. Dege) wrote:
>> Well, I don't see what other conclusion we can draw from the
>> resurrection of Isaac Newton at the end of SotW. The alchemists
>> were right; the Elixir Vitae works, and it works in that
>> particular case because of the Philosophick Mercury lodged in the
>> interstices of the Solomonic gold. I don't think Stephenson
>> could've made it any clearer.
>It could still be gold infested with nanobugs from Some External
>Source, or work by Some Other Mechanism than that ascribed to it by
>alchemists.
I don't recall the alchemists ascribing a *mechanism* to it. They
ascribed a name, "Philosophic Mercury", which name points to the
stuff that hides in the interstices of gold and does the resurrection
thing and the transmutation thing.
If it turns out to be nanobugs, then fine, the Philosophik Mercury
is nanobugs. Though mere nanotech would have to be infused with
serious magic to pull it off - I think you're really looking for
femtobugs here.
--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
Craig Richardson
wrote:
>There wouldn't be any problem in getting out of the submarine due to
>pressure - assuming a hatch was open of course! - as the water within
>the sub and the water outside would have equalised pressure. I seem
>to remember that people have escaped sunken cars by having the
>self-possession to let the water flood in, take a deep breath of the
>last of the air and then, when the car is completely full, the
>door/window opens easily. Not something I'd like to try!
This reminds me - it's (probably) not SF, but it's been a while since
I've put in my blanket recommendation for "The Stunt Man", featuring
Peter O'Toole at the height of his Peter O'Toole-ness.
The art and science of escaping from a sunken car is a major plot
point. Discussing a book which is considered the "bible" on the
subject (paraphrased):
Railsbeck: Did Burt read it?
O'Toole: Offhand, I'd say no, wouldn't you?
--Craig
--
But what I'm saying about the extreme age of the outdated nonsense in
Strunk & White can perhaps best be put like this ... [it] was so long
ago that _the Red Sox had just won the World Series the year before_
-- Geoffrey K. Pullum in "Language Log", 2004/10/28
Thomas Womack
Jo Walton <blu...@vif.com> wrote:
> I was sitting there all sophisticated and superior to the characters
> and saying "look, a heavy isotope of gold" right up to the
> description of Daniel's resurrection with it, whereupon my jaw
> dropped several metres.
There's also the unfortunate fact that gold has one stable isotope,
and the longest-lived unstable one has a half-life of six months.
Tom
Jeffrey C. Dege
Most of the unstable isotopes are lighter than the stable one, and
therefore isotopically pure gold is slightly heavier than the mix of
isotopes we find in the real world.
--
Wars are seldom caused by spontaneous hatreds between peoples, for peoples
in general are too ignorant of one another to have grievances and too
indifferent to what goes on beyond their borders to plan conquests.
They must be urged to slaughter by politicians who know how to alarm them.
- H. L. Mencken
cambias
> Thoughts on Rereading Cryptonomicon after reading the Baroque Trilogy,
> by Neil Stephenson.
>
> von Hacklheber, seem to think the data encoded on the gold cards is
> important -- but it's just a bunch of Royal Society attempts at
> organizing information, encoded by Daniel Waterhouse et al in London.
> No secrets there, as far as I know. Other than its status as a neat
> bit of technological history, what's so important?
>
Newton and Leibnitz agreed to settle their differences by meeting at
some point in the distant future, which means they both plan to be
hanging around at least through the modern era. This suggests some
increasingly bizarre possibilities for the Leibnitz Archive:
1. It's everything Newton and/or Leibnitz have come up with since
1700.
2. It's their encoded recipe for the Philosopher's Stone.
3. It's _Leibnitz_, somehow uploaded onto a bunch of punch cards --
one form of immortality.
That last is my favorite, just because it's so weird. That does leave
the question of where's Newton hanging. Is he really Alan Turing?
Are N. and L. the Secret Masters of the past few centuries? Where are
they?
Cambias
Robert Hutchinson
> cambias wrote ...
> > Thoughts on Rereading Cryptonomicon after reading the Baroque Trilogy,
> > by Neil Stephenson.
> >
> > What's with the Leibnitz Archive? Several characters, including Rudi
> > von Hacklheber, seem to think the data encoded on the gold cards is
> > important -- but it's just a bunch of Royal Society attempts at
> > organizing information, encoded by Daniel Waterhouse et al in London.
> > No secrets there, as far as I know. Other than its status as a neat
> > bit of technological history, what's so important?
>
> A late-hit thought of my own (SPOILERS for System of the World here):
>
> Newton and Leibnitz agreed to settle their differences by meeting at
> some point in the distant future, which means they both plan to be
> hanging around at least through the modern era.
Yes, but hanging around *where*? I believe that religion came up more
than once during that particular debate ...
--
Robert Hutchinson | "Audiences won't soon forget when the
| thing-we-didn't-know-what-it-was was put into
| the helicopter by the guy we didn't know."
| -- Servo, MST3K, 810, Giant Spider Invasion