The moment the willing suspension of disbelief died
James Nicoll
soldiering on despite the fact that it's thick enough to make my wrists
hurt and there are one or two unfortunate flubs, like the moonless world
world whose climate is more stable than Earth's due to its lack of a
moon. Right now the models say "no big Moon, annoyingly variable
obliquity" [1] but heck, maybe the models changed or humans got there
in a period when obliquity was nearly zero. I'm not a bad guy, I'll
play along with the joke.
The moment the author lost me was the part where a character
describes a sudden-onset ice age and how he and the other survivors
_barely managed to outrun the resulting glaciers_.
God, just typing that make my brain hurt. It's like a urinary
tract infection in my head. It burns! It burns!
A fast glacier might cover a meter per day. Many people, and in
fact at this point I am tempted to say "everyone save parapalegics and the
comatose", can run somewhat fast than one meter per day. I mean, your
Standard Wheelchair-Bound Granny (metric) can move at about a kilometer
per hour over smooth ground, so in one day, given eights hours of frenzied
wheeling, she should be able to cover about eight thousand times as much
distance as a glacier. An able bodied person might cover about fifty
thousand times as much distance as the glacier over a eight hours (Even
more if they run).
I am not necessarily expecting John Schilling's "vacuum pockets"
to show up but if they do I will not be too surprised.
So, anyone else run into one moment in a recent book that just
totally and utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your disbelief?
James Nicoll
1: Eccentricities of Planets in Binary Systems, by Takeda & Rasio
says that a companion star with an orbit inclined to the plane of
the ecliptic of a planet can cause some crazy behavior in the
planet, like an orbital eccentricity that varies from nil to lots
in only a few million years.
Large planets and brown dwarfs in inclined orbits can have a similar
effect and at large distances too. This may make even binaries more
interesting as potential abodes of life than I'd like, because we
know from trinary systems that companion stars do no have to orbit
in the same plane, so probably companion stars and planets don't
have to, either.
--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
Daniel Silevitch
>
> The moment the author lost me was the part where a character
> describes a sudden-onset ice age and how he and the other survivors
> _barely managed to outrun the resulting glaciers_.
Somebody saw _The Day After Tomorrow_ and decided to write a book to the
same high standards of accuracy?
-dms
Michael S. Schiffer
news:djbg1b$npb$1...@reader2.panix.com:
>...
> The moment the author lost me was the part where a
> character
> describes a sudden-onset ice age and how he and the other
> survivors _barely managed to outrun the resulting glaciers_.
> God, just typing that make my brain hurt. It's like a
> urinary
> tract infection in my head. It burns! It burns!
> A fast glacier might cover a meter per day. Many people,
> and in
> fact at this point I am tempted to say "everyone save
> parapalegics and the comatose", can run somewhat fast than one
> meter per day.
I've known paraplegics who could do better than that, sans
wheelchair. Okay, they used their hands, so it wasn't technically
"running", but it's probably sufficient to avoid the menacing onrush
of a glacier.
Though I'm now imagining a very extreme variant of the horror movie
trope with shambling zombies: quick cuts between crowds running at
top speed and advancing glaciers, where even though the glacier is
apparently motionless it's somehow closer every time we see it...
Mike
--
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS
msch...@condor.depaul.edu
James Nicoll
I'm not completely convinced that TDAT would be particularly
out of place as an SF book. Anyone remember Anthony's RINGS OF ICE?
The melting point of water in FALLEN ANGELS? The acutely painful
explantion for Where the Cold Came From in whatever that new post-
Sudden Onset Ice Age series is [1]?
James Nicoll
1: Jupiter did it. Starts with a quotation from John Gribben, as
I recall. To the best of my memory, just as Jupiter yanked Shoemaker-
Levy 9 (it was 9, right) from its proper orbit, so might Jupiter reach
out and yank Earth into a more eccentric orbit at any moment, unlimited
by issues like distance or even basic plausibility.
Luckily, most of the book is about consequences, no causes.
Wayne Throop
: The moment the author lost me was the part where a character
: describes a sudden-onset ice age and how he and the other survivors
: _barely managed to outrun the resulting glaciers_.
Contextless, I would have assumed that was talking about the survivors
being able to keep their whole support structure (with domesticated
animals and grans and whatnot) in operation as the "sweet spot" zone
where that pseudoecosystem was viable moved. Not walking speed
as such.
Of course, even that is stretching credulity. And context, I suppose,
probably does show literal walking speed interpretation.
: So, anyone else run into one moment in a recent book that just totally
: and utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your disbelief?
Probably doesn't count as "recent", and disbelief was pretty much not
the issue anyways, but I did roll my eyes a bit at the solution at the
end of the Baen re-release of Murray Leinster's "The Duplicators".
That's the most recent "now that's just silly" moment. I think those
have been a bit rare recently, because I've been reading fantasy mostly,
for whatever reason.
"A Logic Named Joe", by the way, was a bit eerily accurate to reread,
except it didn't seem to grok the viral/self-replicative nature
of software. Ah well. Hey, an entry in the "characters guided by
computer" thread! But anyways, just do a little mental s/tank/server/
and a few others, and ... well, like I said, eerie. But I digress.
Xref: The forced march in The Outskirter's Secret.
Xref: Family Guy, which had a quick pseudotrailer for "Speed N"
(for some value of N), where the protagonists are panicking along the
lines of "If that glacier goes less than one inch per year, we're all
dead!!!", complete with Certain Arctic Person Stereotype eyeing them
derisively/boredly.
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Michael Alan Chary
James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
>
> I am not necessarily expecting John Schilling's "vacuum pockets"
>to show up but if they do I will not be too surprised.
>
> So, anyone else run into one moment in a recent book that just
>totally and utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your disbelief?
Well, yes. Sadly, the book was _The Battle for God_ by Karen Armstrong,
and it's at least in theory non-fiction.
--
An experiment in publishing:
http://www.ethshar.com/thesprigganexperiment0.html
The All-New, All-Different Howling Curmudgeons!
http://www.whiterose.org/howlingcurmudgeons
wth...@godzilla.acpub.duke.edu
> So I am reading something, what I won't say just now, and I'm
> soldiering on despite the fact that it's thick enough to make my wrists
> hurt and there are one or two unfortunate flubs, like the moonless world
> world whose climate is more stable than Earth's due to its lack of a
> moon.
Well, no moon means much slower precession of the equinoxes,
and slower quasi-periodic obliquity variations, both of
which are important drivers for the ice age cycle, so
I can see how the author might come to that conclusion.
It's not wholly implausible for a world in or near an ice
age - leaving out the variable obliquity idea below.
A billion years from now, according to one paper, an Earth-Moon
- Jupiter resonance will result in a 50 degree obliquity. But
presumably the earth will be uninhabitable before then.
Right now the models say "no big Moon, annoyingly variable
> obliquity" [1] but heck, maybe the models changed or humans got there
> in a period when obliquity was nearly zero. I'm not a bad guy, I'll
> play along with the joke.
>
> The moment the author lost me was the part where a character
> describes a sudden-onset ice age and how he and the other survivors
> _barely managed to outrun the resulting glaciers_.
"Sudden onset" or "instantaneous glacierization" are terms
the author might have heard, but they refer to areas where
climate change stops winter snow from entirely melting in
the summer, so snow accumulates to form a thick layer
which becomes ice eventually. No runaway glaciers, and
only sudden in the geological sense.
>
> God, just typing that make my brain hurt. It's like a urinary
> tract infection in my head. It burns! It burns!
>
> A fast glacier might cover a meter per day.
The world record is (or at least was) a bit more, 12 kilometers
in three months. But that is a glacial surge, and ice sheets are
not glaciers. And it is still pretty slow.
Ice sheets modeled in my thesis attained an astonishing 10
meters per day, but that was flow within the ice sheet,
not at the edge - and was in a retreat phase, anyway.
Many people, and in
> fact at this point I am tempted to say "everyone save parapalegics and the
> comatose", can run somewhat fast than one meter per day. I mean, your
> Standard Wheelchair-Bound Granny (metric) can move at about a kilometer
> per hour over smooth ground, so in one day, given eights hours of frenzied
> wheeling, she should be able to cover about eight thousand times as much
> distance as a glacier. An able bodied person might cover about fifty
> thousand times as much distance as the glacier over a eight hours (Even
> more if they run).
Apparently Ludkan Baba, the "rolling saint" makes 5 mph in
towns. Even in rougher terrain he should be able to roll
two miles per hour.
--
William Hyde
EOS Department
Duke University
Richard R. Hershberger
James Nicoll wrote:
> So I am reading something, what I won't say just now, and I'm
> soldiering on despite the fact that it's thick enough to make my wrists
> hurt
That was likely your first mistake. In my old age I have become
intolerant of doorstop books. There are a few that merit the long
treatment, but most are self-indulgent or merely sloppy writing. I
have to have some specific reason before I will pick one up nowadays.
...
> So, anyone else run into one moment in a recent book that just
> totally and utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your disbelief?
Not a book, but I could never get past the silly premise of The Matrix.
I have read that it has been retconned, but I really don't care.
DougL
> I'm not completely convinced that TDAT would be particularly
> out of place as an SF book. Anyone remember Anthony's RINGS OF ICE?
> The melting point of water in FALLEN ANGELS? The acutely painful
> explantion for Where the Cold Came From in whatever that new post-
> Sudden Onset Ice Age series is [1]?
> 1: Jupiter did it. Starts with a quotation from John Gribben, as
> I recall. To the best of my memory, just as Jupiter yanked Shoemaker-
> Levy 9 (it was 9, right) from its proper orbit, so might Jupiter reach
> out and yank Earth into a more eccentric orbit at any moment, unlimited
> by issues like distance or even basic plausibility.
Hmm, well, IIRC the current models say that the orbits of all
the planets except Jupiter can be perturbed into either a
collision with Jupiter or a solar escape, with the major source
of pertubation being Jupiter, and with lots of possibilities
inbetween, and exact long term trends unpredictably chaotic.
IIRC running the models such results become possible over time
periods of less than a billion years....
So any day now. Well, maybe not any day, but any aeon now...
It could happen.
Of course chaotic doesn't mean all outcomes are equally likely,
and IIRC the Earth staying more or less in it's current orbit
is the high probability event until things change due to the
departure of the sun from the main-sequence.
DougL
James Nicoll
Richard R. Hershberger <rrh...@acme.com> wrote:
>
>Not a book, but I could never get past the silly premise of The Matrix.
> I have read that it has been retconned, but I really don't care.
>
so ignorent of basic science that he probably thought the Moon
Landing was faked? Neo was cannon fodder and you don't want the
cannon fodder -too- bright.
Damien Sullivan
> The moment the author lost me was the part where a character
>describes a sudden-onset ice age and how he and the other survivors
>_barely managed to outrun the resulting glaciers_.
>
> God, just typing that make my brain hurt. It's like a urinary
>tract infection in my head. It burns! It burns!
>
> A fast glacier might cover a meter per day. Many people, and in
>fact at this point I am tempted to say "everyone save parapalegics and the
>comatose", can run somewhat fast than one meter per day. I mean, your
Quadriplegics. I think parapalegics should be able to crawl faster even than
10 meters a day. Okay, not running, and I don't know how they'd eat.
-xx- Damien X-)
Mike Schilling
"James Nicoll" <jdni...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:djbhje$ii1$1...@reader2.panix.com...
> The acutely painful
> explantion for Where the Cold Came From in whatever that new post-
> Sudden Onset Ice Age series is [1]?
>
> James Nicoll
>
> 1: Jupiter did it.
If he can throw thunderbolts, why not ice cubes?
James Nicoll
Eventually, it turns into a John Callahan cartoon [1].
1: Spider Robinson replaced as author of Callahan's stories by
John Callahan. Discuss.
Dorothy J Heydt
James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>1: Jupiter did it. Starts with a quotation from John Gribben, as
>I recall. To the best of my memory, just as Jupiter yanked Shoemaker-
>Levy 9 (it was 9, right) from its proper orbit, so might Jupiter reach
>out and yank Earth into a more eccentric orbit at any moment, unlimited
>by issues like distance or even basic plausibility.
I'm now remembering Wylie and Balmer's _When/After Worlds
Collide_, wherein a binary planetary pair,
(a) having been torn loose from their own solar system millions
of years ago [no explanation for how that happened nor why they
remained together] and quick-frozen,
(b) swing past Earth twice, the first time causing widespread
catastrophe and presumably altering their own orbital track,
fairly believable;
(c) the second time, the larger of the pair smashes into earth
and destroys it and then the squished combination heads way out
of the solar system never to be seen again;
(d) but the smaller of the pair, an earthlike world with an
oxygen atmosphere, abandoned cities, et al., takes up earth's
orbit around the sun and a shipload of refugees are able to
settle there.
I am not an astrophysicist, nor do I play one on TV, but I have
the feeling there are several things seriously wrong here.
I had had the impression Balmer was an astronomer; a few searches
list him only as a 1930s SF writer. Wylie, of course, was a
famous muckraker and figured the end of the world would be an
opportunity for him to depict a lot of people at their worst.
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
Wayne Throop
: I'm now remembering Wylie and Balmer's _When/After Worlds
: Collide_, wherein a binary planetary pair,
: (a) having been torn loose from their own solar system millions
: of years ago [no explanation for how that happened nor why they
: remained together] and quick-frozen,
: (b) swing past Earth twice, the first time causing widespread
: catastrophe and presumably altering their own orbital track,
: fairly believable;
: (c) the second time, the larger of the pair smashes into earth
: and destroys it and then the squished combination heads way out
: of the solar system never to be seen again;
: (d) but the smaller of the pair, an earthlike world with an
: oxygen atmosphere, abandoned cities, et al., takes up earth's
: orbit around the sun and a shipload of refugees are able to
: settle there.
: I am not an astrophysicist, nor do I play one on TV, but I have
: the feeling there are several things seriously wrong here.
True. Though, to be fair, I got the distinct impression
(though it is never really stated) that all this was engineered,
rather than a coincidence. Perhaps a veriant on the "ancient race
orbiting a dying star" thing. And I don't think they got specific
enough about the details that it was flat-out ridiculous rather
than just fishy smelling. Not so much "earth gets splashed"
being engineered, but "new planet ends up in the goldilocks zone";
though possibly swatting earth out of the way was intended in
service of that goal.
But maybe that's just me.
Sean Eric Fagan
James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
> So, anyone else run into one moment in a recent book that just
>totally and utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your disbelief?
Yes, and I even used almost that exact phrasing about it. Kim Harrison's _The
Good, the Bad, and the Undead_. *Horrible* world-building, which sadly seems
to be very common in that particular subgenre. But the scene in which -- in a
world where a huge chunk of the population died out in the 60s, and all sorts
of magical entities came out of the closet shortly thereafter -- Our Heroine
*drinks Starbucks' Coffee* was too much.
I have not resume reading it after that point.
Konrad Gaertner
>
> I'm now remembering Wylie and Balmer's _When/After Worlds
> Collide_, wherein a binary planetary pair,
>
> (a) having been torn loose from their own solar system millions
> of years ago [no explanation for how that happened nor why they
> remained together] and quick-frozen,
Speaking of WSOD dying horribly, the first time I read this post
I missed the word "planetary".
--
Konrad Gaertner - - - - - - - - - - - - - - email: gae...@aol.com
http://www.livejournal.com/users/kgbooklog/
"I don't mind hidden depths but I insist that there be a surface."
-- James Nicoll
lal_truckee
> ... sudden-onset ice age and how he and the other survivors
Not so much a problem of speed, but of climatology. An ice age, sudden
or slow, doesn't cover ground by some Nivening ice wall advancing on the
land but by snow falling one winter that doesn't melt the following
summer; could be the resulting additional snowfield covers a band near
the existing snowfield or the whole continent. It's entirely possible to
be trapped by a sudden onset ice age, but the image of outrunning
glaciers IS absurd. The whole concept that glaciers came out of the
north spreading over the land is a demonstration of the failure of
American science education.
Gene Ward Smith
James Nicoll wrote:
> So, anyone else run into one moment in a recent book that just
> totally and utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your disbelief?
Not a book, but I was impressed by the way the movie Serentity jumped
right in and did its first completely ridiculous thing within the first
few seconds. It seems humanity wanted to terraform planets and moons of
a solar system, so they all jumped into spaceships and went and found
another one.
Of course this isn't the silliest silly thing in the movie, but it set
the tone for me.
Sean Eric Fagan
James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
> What, the moment where they revealed that the "Messiah" was
>so ignorent of basic science that he probably thought the Moon
>Landing was faked?
Well, in his defense, in his situation, the Moon Landing *was* faked.
Gene Ward Smith
Wayne Throop wrote:
> And I don't think they got specific
> enough about the details that it was flat-out ridiculous rather
> than just fishy smelling.
There's a difference between very, very unlikely and impossible. The
escaped gas giant with the earthlike moon certainly qualifies as
unlikely, but what about it would be impossible? The capture scenario
gets to play with at least four bodies: Earth, Moon, Bronson A and
Bronson B. Ambitious souls are welcome to either prove it couldn't
happen, or show how it could, but there isn't anything *obviously*
impossible that I can see. Of course it might be easier if you were
allowed to toss the Earth out into space rather than crash it into
Bronson A.
Mark Atwood
>
> 1: Spider Robinson replaced as author of Callahan's stories by
> John Callahan. Discuss.
They would be a hell of a lot funnier.
They would be a lot more readable.
They would be a lot less annoyingly smug.
Spider Robinson would have less money and fame, which is a good thing.
John Callahan would have more money and fame, which is a good thing.
--
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://www.livejournal.com/users/fallenpegasus
Bradford Holden
> So, anyone else run into one moment in a recent book that just
> totally and utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your disbelief?
_Ilium_, when quantum entanglement nanomagic meant, well, the author
could do whatever he wanted. It was in the first chapter. After that
I just treated the book as science fantasy and pretended that quantum
and nano were the Greek words for magic and pixie dust.
That was one of those books where the characters I liked the most were
robots.
--
Bradford Holden
"Rugged individualism in America means never joining a car pool"
- Joel Achenbach
Neil Gendzwill
> So, anyone else run into one moment in a recent book that just
> totally and utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your disbelief?
Not exactly recently, but in Cryptonomicon there's a point where our
hero's laptop gets hit by an EMP. Whereupon he merely removes the hard
drive and finds another laptop to read it with. If you buy that an EMP
will destroy the computer's innards, you have to buy that the
electronics of the hard drive are also buggered. Not to mention that
hard drives are magnetic media...
Now this isn't quite so stupid as the sprinting glacier scenario, but it
was in a novel where I was quite fascinated with all the cryptography
stuff. Knowing little about it, it felt realistic enough and I assumed
the Stephenson had done his research. Hitting the laptop scene was like
hitting a brick wall - if he'd gotten that bit of tech wrong, I
certainly couldn't trust him to get the rest of it right. Very jarring.
Neil
Allen Thomson
> I had had the impression Balmer was an astronomer; a few searches
> list him only as a 1930s SF writer.
Different Balmer:
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Balmer.html
Johann wasn't an astronomer, though astropeople go on a lot about
"Balmer lines." (Not the same as ley or chi lines.)
Johnny Tindalos
> That was one of those books where the characters I liked the most were
> robots.
>
Oh, a Culture novel.
(No?)
Bradford Holden
> Johann wasn't an astronomer, though astropeople go on a lot about
> "Balmer lines." (Not the same as ley or chi lines.)
What are these "ley" and "chi" lines you speak of?
John VanSickle
> So, anyone else run into one moment in a recent book that just
> totally and utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your disbelief?
Well, not a book, but on Trek, the suspension of disbelief is usually
shattered between the opening credits and the first commercial.
Regards,
John
Clintok
news:1129926195.9...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Not a book, but I could never get past the silly premise of The Matrix.
> I have read that it has been retconned, but I really don't care.
What, that computers used humans for energy instead of, say, fission
reactors? I'm not sure I care more than you but I am curious if that's the
bit they "fixed."
Wayne Throop
: What are these "ley" and "chi" lines you speak of?
Shouldn't that be "of which you speak"?
"Starfire, where's the sofa?"
"Your earth ways are strange. What is this 'Soh Fah' of which you speak?"
--- Robin & Starfire, Teen Titans, "Can I Keep Him?"
"This is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put."
--- Winston Churchill
John Bauman
"Neil Gendzwill" <ngend...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:11liq4s...@corp.supernews.com...
> James Nicoll wrote:
>
>> So, anyone else run into one moment in a recent book that just
>> totally and utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your
>> disbelief?
>
> Not exactly recently, but in Cryptonomicon there's a point where our
> hero's laptop gets hit by an EMP. Whereupon he merely removes the hard
> drive and finds another laptop to read it with. If you buy that an EMP
> will destroy the computer's innards, you have to buy that the electronics
> of the hard drive are also buggered. Not to mention that hard drives are
> magnetic media...
>
electronics don't (at least a metal lid, if nothing else). The electronics
in them are also probably made with a larger process then the CPU and RAM
(though I'm not certain of that). Of course, what with the magnetic media
and all, there still could easily be a problem. I guess that means that this
is now very unlikely instead of utterly implausible.
Dorothy J Heydt
Bradford Holden <hol...@oddjob.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>"Allen Thomson" <thom...@flash.net> writes:
>
>> Johann wasn't an astronomer, though astropeople go on a lot about
>> "Balmer lines." (Not the same as ley or chi lines.)
>
>What are these "ley" and "chi" lines you speak of?
Ley lines were invented by some guy in the 1930s, Watkins is the
name I think, _The Old Straight Track_ is the title. He claims
(waving photographs around) that some of England's prehistoric
inhabitants went to a lot of trouble to survey and layout
lines-of-sight across hundreds of miles of territory, sighting on
notches in the hills or interesting rock outcrops, laying out
trails, what not. What he claimed they were for, I'm not quite
sure. I don't think they were made out to be astronomical
setting-and-rising sight lines, though they could've been; but
ever since people have been seizing on them with cries of glee
and claiming that they're channels for superduper magical
woo-woo.
Chi lines, someone else will have to tell about.
Dorothy J Heydt
Well, glaciers do creep on occasion, mostly along mountain
valleys; but that's not how they cover the northern halves of
continents. And I don't know how fast they move, but I suspect
it's on the order of how fast hair grows.
Mike Van Pelt
John Bauman <jo...@baumanfamily.com> wrote:
>Well, hard drives have additional metal around them that the rest of the
>electronics don't (at least a metal lid, if nothing else). The electronics
>in them are also probably made with a larger process then the CPU and RAM
>(though I'm not certain of that). Of course, what with the magnetic media
>and all, there still could easily be a problem. I guess that means that this
>is now very unlikely instead of utterly implausible.
It'd be more plausible if the guy also found an identical hard
drive and had to swap the external circuit board on the drive.
I don't think EMP is going to necessarily have such a huge
effect on the magnetic media itself, but all electronics is at
risk. The electronics inside the closed metal disk drive case
would be at somewhat less risk.
--
Tagon: "Where's your sense of adventure?" | Mike Van Pelt
Kevyn: "It died under mysterious circumstances. | mvp at calweb.com
My sense of self-preservation found the body, | KE6BVH
but assures me it has an airtight alibi." (schlockmercenary.com)
Bradford Holden
> : Bradford Holden <hol...@oddjob.uchicago.edu>
> : What are these "ley" and "chi" lines you speak of?
>
> Shouldn't that be "of which you speak"?
>
I don't know, English is not my first language. Rather, I have been
told, it was a lot of "ook", "gaga", and the occasional crying spell.
Wayne Throop
: Chi lines, someone else will have to tell about.
Hrm. I was about to say that "chi" is normally not associated
with "lines" as such, but with "flows" and bodily processes; it's
a chinese "vital fluid" concept, a pseudoscience worked out with
typical mandarin complexity of detail.
However, I google that the term is also used in feng shui,
though the site I found seems to be contaminated with
cross-cultural use of european concepts (ie, mentions
ley lines as well).
And I imagine "lines" along which chi flows in the body
are doubtless mentioned somewhere.
So. Shrug. Bottom ... um, line,
chi is a chinese pseudoscience energy thingie.
Sort of like The Force, only different.
Same like as in prana, or ki (as in kiai).
"I love that gem in your chakra."
"You know about chakras?"
--- Blackfire and Raven
Bradford Holden
> Ley lines were invented by some guy in the 1930s, Watkins is the
> name I think, _The Old Straight Track_ is the title. He claims
> (waving photographs around) that some of England's prehistoric
> inhabitants went to a lot of trouble to survey and layout
> lines-of-sight across hundreds of miles of territory, sighting on
> notches in the hills or interesting rock outcrops, laying out
> trails, what not. What he claimed they were for, I'm not quite
> sure. I don't think they were made out to be astronomical
> setting-and-rising sight lines, though they could've been; but
> ever since people have been seizing on them with cries of glee
> and claiming that they're channels for superduper magical
> woo-woo.
>
> Chi lines, someone else will have to tell about.
Ah, from the context and the phonetic spelling, I can guess.
I thought that "ley" was some screw up for "Lyman", which was not even
wrong.
lclough
You remember in CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, when the
swordsman (or swordswoman) apparently can walk across the air?
They were not walking on air. They were walking on the lines of
chi.
(And that's just about all I know about it...)
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
Richard Todd
> So, anyone else run into one moment in a recent book that just
> totally and utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your disbelief?
Well, I'm reminded of when I came across what I call the Silliest
Medical Item In A Piece of Serious Science Fiction. I was reading a
piece of foreign-language science fiction (Perry Rhodan #2021 "Monos's
Grandchildren" by Arndt Ellmer, IIRC), and there was this scene where
this guy falls seriously ill and is taken to the hospital, where the
doctors discover that various of his organs are failing. The doctors
decide to hook him up to various pieces of equipment, the finest in
49th Century medical technology, to replace the function of the
various organs that are failing. They hook up the artificial heart,
the artificial kidney, the artificial liver, the artificial ... hmm, I
don't recognize the next word ...
<hurried flip, flip, flip thru the German-English dictionary>
spleen.
THEY'RE HOOKING THE GUY UP TO AN ARTIFICIAL SPLEEN!
At that point I had to put the magazine down and wait quite a while for the
giggles to stop.
The awful part is that it was such a trivial detail -- the exact details of
what treatment the guy was given aren't really that important to the story
as a whole. If they'd only run the story once by someone who had enough
knowledge of medicine to know that no, you don't really need a spleen that
much and people have them removed all the time, then the reference to the
artificial spleen could have been cut without a problem.
Mike Schilling
"Wayne Throop" <thr...@sheol.org> wrote in message
news:11299...@sheol.org...
>: djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt)
> : Chi lines, someone else will have to tell about.
>
> Hrm. I was about to say that "chi" is normally not associated
> with "lines" as such, but with "flows" and bodily processes; it's
> a chinese "vital fluid" concept, a pseudoscience worked out with
> typical mandarin complexity of detail.
>
> However, I google that the term is also used in feng shui,
> though the site I found seems to be contaminated with
> cross-cultural use of european concepts (ie, mentions
> ley lines as well).
>
> And I imagine "lines" along which chi flows in the body
> are doubtless mentioned somewhere.
>
> So. Shrug. Bottom ... um, line,
> chi is a chinese pseudoscience energy thingie.
> Sort of like The Force, only different.
> Same like as in prana, or ki (as in kiai).
Put it all together, and it reminds me of plasm in WJWs Metropolitan books.
Mike Schilling
"Richard Todd" <rmt...@ichotolot.servalan.com> wrote in message
news:x7sluuz...@ichotolot.servalan.com...
Was he on the 49th Century equivalent of Fox News? Without a spleen to
vent, Bill O'Reilly would be out of business.
Mike Schilling
"lclough" <clo...@erols.com> wrote in message
news:%Vf6f.174$585.68@trnddc01...
>
>
> You remember in CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, when the swordsman (or
> swordswoman) apparently can walk across the air? They were not walking on
> air. They were walking on the lines of chi.
If they were statisticians instead of swordsman, they could dance on chi
squares.
Wayne Throop
: The awful part is that it was such a trivial detail -- the exact details of
: as a whole. If they'd only run the story once by someone who had enough
: knowledge of medicine to know that no, you don't really need a spleen that
: much and people have them removed all the time, then the reference to the
: artificial spleen could have been cut without a problem.
Well... in justification-no-matter-how-unlikely mode, I note that
the spleen is thought (last I knew) to have some function in the
immune system. And some blood mumble. So replacing its function
might help somebody with a compromised immune system, or some junk.
On the other hand, yes, same sort of sense it would make
to implant an artificial appendix. Or tonsils. Not as bad
as those, but close.
Hm. What was that story where the tonsils turned out to be the
organs of telepathy, and some alien critters were aghast that
we would multilate our children thataway?
"Ooooh, I think you've crushed my little piggy spleen!"
--- The Dark Lord Chuckles, The Silly Piggy
"I'm an evil villain bent on bringing pain and suffering
to an unsuspecting world... if you can't trust me,
who *can* you trust?"
--- ibid
Wayne Throop
:: energy thingie. Sort of like The Force, only different. Same like
:: as in prana, or ki (as in kiai).
: "Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com>
: Put it all together, and it reminds me of plasm in WJWs Metropolitan books.
Hm. You think maybe that's what's really running around in all
those plasma conduits in the Enterprise D? (Or is that D Enterprise?)
Wayne Throop
:: (or swordswoman) apparently can walk across the air? They were not
:: walking on air. They were walking on the lines of chi.
: "Mike Schilling" <mscotts...@hotmail.com>
: If they were statisticians instead of swordsman, they could dance on
: chi squares.
OK, so who calls the steps for chi dances?
And is a wuxia anything like a waltzia?
Allemande left with your left hand,
Follow through with a right-left grand.
Now lead your partner, the dirty ol' thing,
Follow through with an elbow swing.
Grab a fence post, hold it tight,
Womp your partner with all your might.
Hit him in the shin, hit him in the head,
Hit him again, the critter ain't dead.
Wop him low and wop him high,
Stick your finger in his eye.
Pretty little rhythm, pretty little sound,
Bang your heads against the ground.
--- Bugs Bunny
And now you're home.
Bow to your partner,
Bow to the gent across the hall.
And 'dat is all.
--- ibid
John M. Gamble
Mark Atwood <m...@mark.atwood.name> wrote:
>jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:
>>
>> 1: Spider Robinson replaced as author of Callahan's stories by
>> John Callahan. Discuss.
>
>They would be a hell of a lot funnier.
>
>They would be a lot more readable.
>
>They would be a lot less annoyingly smug.
>
>Spider Robinson would have less money and fame, which is a good thing.
>
>John Callahan would have more money and fame, which is a good thing.
>
Characters would stay dead.
(I may be slandering Robinson on this one, did he have bounce-back
characters in the Callahan's Bar stories?)
--
-john
February 28 1997: Last day libraries could order catalogue cards
from the Library of Congress.
art...@yahoo.com
Daniel Silevitch wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Oct 2005 19:37:15 +0000 (UTC), James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
> >
> > The moment the author lost me was the part where a character
> > describes a sudden-onset ice age and how he and the other survivors
> > _barely managed to outrun the resulting glaciers_.
>
> same high standards of accuracy?
>
I was thinking about the movie Ice Age. All those damn avalanches were
hard to outrun....
Keith Morrison
exercise fingers and typed:
> So, anyone else run into one moment in a recent book that just
>totally and utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your disbelief?
_Relic_. Carbon dating volcanic rocks. Gotta love it.
Will Frank
Hash: SHA1
John M. Gamble e-mused:
>>>1: Spider Robinson replaced as author of Callahan's stories by
>>>John Callahan. Discuss.
> Characters would stay dead.
>
> (I may be slandering Robinson on this one, did he have bounce-back
> characters in the Callahan's Bar stories?)
No, generally, once a character dies he stays dead. This doesn't happen
often, though; I can only think of one or two in all the Callahan
stories[1], and the more recent was apparently a direct reaction to
criticism that Spider didn't like killing characters. It was "See! I can
/too/!"
- --
Will "scifantasy" Frank - wmf...@stwing.upenn.edu
"We've got..."
"...business with your husband. What?
"John?"
"Hal Jordan. Another time shift. I'm up to speed, carry on."
"Okay, I'm starting to get a migraine."
- --Green Lantern (John Stewart), Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Static
(Virgil Hawkins), and Batman (Terry McGinnis), /Time, Warped/
[1] Another one or two if we include the two Lady Sally books, though.
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Wayne Throop
: Characters would stay dead.
: (I may be slandering Robinson on this one, did he have bounce-back
: characters in the Callahan's Bar stories?)
I don't recall any, though he did things as bad or worse
after the relocation of the bar. Lost me a LOT of interest
in them stories at that point.
Steve Coltrin
jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:
> The moment the author lost me was the part where a character
> describes a sudden-onset ice age and how he and the other survivors
> _barely managed to outrun the resulting glaciers_.
Well, perhaps the glaciers have Sleestak DNA.
Not to make work for you, but IWBNI you outed these books on publication,
so we can avoid them as well as laugh and point.
--
Steve Coltrin spco...@omcl.org Fox can't take the sky from me
"A group known as the League of Human Dignity helped arrange for Deuel
to be driven to a local livestock scale, where he could be weighed."
- Associated Press
Peter Meilinger
> So, anyone else run into one moment in a recent book that just
>totally and utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your disbelief?
If movies count, I just re-watched Batman Begins today. Loved it
overall, but the Evil Plan (tm) was just wretchedly stupid. Our
Villains put a toxin in Gotham City's water supply, weeks in
advance of activating it. It's perfectly safe to drink, and only
affects people when it's breathed. Our Villains get it into the
air by activating a microwave emitter that instantly boils all
water in a block or two radius. They're standing right next to
the microwave emitter when it's turned on. Two problems here.
1) I'm certainly not a scientist, but I'm having a hard time
believing that they wouldn't be fried by the microwave emitter
like a poodle in a microwave oven.
2) This toxin has been in the water supply for weeks and affects
people when the water is boiled, but no one has been affected yet.
No one in Gotham boils water for tea? Pasta? This was presented
as some fairly nasty poison. Just leaning over the pot to check
on the spaghetti should've been enough for SOME kind of reaction.
Have that happen a couple dozen times a night, all over the city,
and I can't help but think someone might've noticed something was
up.
Still a great movie, though.
Pete
Kurt Busiek
Here's an even more basic problem:
1. They tested the MicroToxinExplodoZapper on the ship. It works.
2. They then unload the MTEZ in The Narrows, and set it off again,
making a whole neighborhood of Gotham go nutzoid.
3. The big plan, then, is to reload the MTEZ into a monorail and drive
it to the Wayne Tower, where they can set it off for real.
So, uh, what's Step 2 for? Other than to alert the hero to their
presence and have a big fight so they can lose? Even if, for some
reason, they need to test the thing again, why not test it at the Wayne
Tower? If it works, bang, you're done. If it doesn't, maybe you can
fix it on site. If you can't, well, too bad -- but there's still no
advantage to finding that out in the Narrows rather than in Wayne Tower.
I think it's an excellent Batman movie, in that it captures the
character well, but not that great a movie, because there are so many
story problems (another: Bruce refuses to kill a man, then blows up a
building with dozens of people in it, including the man he's just
refused to kill).
kdb
--
Read an ASTRO CITY story for FREE, at:
http://www.dccomics.com/features/astro/
Luna
jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
>
> So, anyone else run into one moment in a recent book that just
> totally and utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your disbelief?
>
Not a book, but in the movie Independence Day, it really bothered me
that the humans were able to make a computer virus that infected an
alien computer system, when irl it's somewhat difficult to make a virus
that affects both Windows and Mac, and they're both from the same
species.
Bill Snyder
And if they were novices, they could drink student T.
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank.]
Bill Snyder
There's a collusion^Wcollaboration called _The Tenth Planet_ by
Kristine Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith in which geologists discover that
an ancient Giant Fire left a layer of ash all over the planet, the
remains of essentially all the fauna and flora of the time. It's
entirely inorganic.
Dan Goodman
> Yeah verily, on Fri, 21 Oct 2005 19:37:15 +0000 (UTC), James Nicoll
> did exercise fingers and typed:
>
> > So, anyone else run into one moment in a recent book that just
> > totally and utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your
> > disbelief?
>
> Relic. Carbon dating volcanic rocks. Gotta love it.
Not that recent, and not book-length: Connie Willis, "Just Like the
Ones We Used to Know." An expert on climate/weather says that it never
snows in Hawaii. An expert would know that it snows regularly there.
(At rather high altitudes, of course.)
Much older: Fritz Leiber, "Sanity". The protagonist is supposed to be
the one man in the world who's sane by our standards. When he's told
he doesn't know what's really happening out in the world, he says that
of course he does -- he reads all the reports. Sane people don't
assume that the reports are always accurate.
--
Dan Goodman
Journal http://www.livejournal.com/users/dsgood/
Clutterers Anonymous unofficial community
http://www.livejournal.com/community/clutterers_anon/
Decluttering http://decluttering.blogspot.com
Predictions and Politics http://dsgood.blogspot.com
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
John Arbuthnot (1667-1735), Scottish writer, physician.
Sea Wasp
O'course, we'd been studying that ship for 40+ years TRYING to learn
everything about it.
That isn't really much of a problem with the movie, given the
context. There's certainly enough justification for a good action movie.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/seawasp/
Garrett Wollman
Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
>Not that recent, and not book-length: Connie Willis, "Just Like the
>Ones We Used to Know." An expert on climate/weather says that it never
>snows in Hawaii. An expert would know that it snows regularly there.
>(At rather high altitudes, of course.)
A real expert would have skied there -- in June.
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | As the Constitution endures, persons in every
wol...@csail.mit.edu | generation can invoke its principles in their own
Opinions not those | search for greater freedom.
of MIT or CSAIL. | - A. Kennedy, Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)
Paul Andinach
news:WdKdnZ7Fded...@comcast.com:
> "Richard R. Hershberger" <rrh...@acme.com> wrote in message
> news:1129926195.9...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> > Not a book, but I could never get past the silly premise of The
> > Matrix. I have read that it has been retconned, but I really
> > don't care.
>
> What, that computers used humans for energy instead of, say,
> fission reactors? I'm not sure I care more than you but I am
> curious if that's the bit they "fixed."
In the original script, so the story goes, the computers were using
the humans as components in a massively parallel neural network
computing array, but the Wachowskis later changed it to "using the
humans for energy sources" because they figured it would be easier
for the multiplex audience to understand.
I'm told that the novelisation uses the original explanation, but I
don't know if this counts as a retcon, or is just a sign that the
novelist didn't get the memo.
Paul
--
The Pink Pedanther
Mike Schilling
"Luna" <luna...@NOSPAMmindspring.com> wrote in message
news:lunachick-3D8C9...@news1.east.earthlink.net...
In those days, just communicating between Macs and PCs was difficult enough
(Macs had the worst TCP/IP implementation known to mankind, and many of the
PC stacks weren't much better), so yes, the fact that Jeff Goldblum could
instantly download a virus from Mac to AlienSpaceshopOS was hilarious.
Damien Neil
> The moment the author lost me was the part where a character
> describes a sudden-onset ice age and how he and the other survivors
> _barely managed to outrun the resulting glaciers_.
Well, clearly he wasn't thinking very clearly. All you have to do is
put a lawn chair down on the leading edge of the glacier, sit back, and
let it slide you right on down to the tropics.
- Damien
Paul Andinach
news:2005102121412475249%kurtbusiek@aolcomics:
> 1. They tested the MicroToxinExplodoZapper on the ship. It
> works.
>
> 2. They then unload the MTEZ in The Narrows, and set it off again,
> making a whole neighborhood of Gotham go nutzoid.
>
> 3. The big plan, then, is to reload the MTEZ into a monorail and
> drive it to the Wayne Tower, where they can set it off for real.
>
> So, uh, what's Step 2 for?
To incapacitate all the SWAT teams and other law-enforcement peoples who
were lured to the Narrows in Step 1a, was my understanding.
James Gassaway
news:Xns96F78F03C...@130.133.1.4...
Or had too much self-respect to take the memo seriously.
--
"I reject your reality and substitute my own."
"Now, quack, damn you!"
Multiversal Mercenaries
You name it, we kill it. Any time, any reality.
David Johnston
I seem to recall the reason why that was possible, at least in the
novelisation, was because our computer tech WAS their computer tech.
We'd studied the computer in their crashed scoutship and eventually
marketed copied alien technology pretending it was ours.
James Gassaway
news:djbg1b$npb$1...@reader2.panix.com...
<snip the really really really really really fast glaciers. God, that's
just so silly I can't stop giggling long enough to make a joke about it.>
>
> So, anyone else run into one moment in a recent book that just
> totally and utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your
> disbelief?
>
I can't remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride,
But something touched me deep inside
The day my disbelief died.
So bye-bye, miss american scifi.
Drove my chevy to the levee,
But the levee was dry.
And them good old boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
Singin', "this'll be the day that I cease reading.
"this'll be the day that I heave the book."
<Okay, so it lacks polish. But waddaya expect for fifteen seconds of work.>
Keith Morrison
fingers and typed:
>>> So, anyone else run into one moment in a recent book that just
>>>totally and utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your disbelief?
>>
>>_Relic_. Carbon dating volcanic rocks. Gotta love it.
>
>There's a collusion^Wcollaboration called _The Tenth Planet_ by
>Kristine Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith in which geologists discover that
>an ancient Giant Fire left a layer of ash all over the planet, the
>remains of essentially all the fauna and flora of the time. It's
>entirely inorganic.
WHAM WHAM WHAM WHAM
Must remember to get around to repairing the dent my head just made in the
wall.
I have to mention Cussler's incredible sliding Earth crust in _Atlantis
Found_. Although to be fair he based it real-life theories by assorted
nutcases.
Mike Schilling
"David Johnston" <rgo...@block.net> wrote in message
news:43598c0d...@news.telusplanet.net...
Apparently only for MacOS, Windows being our own incompatible invention.
(Unless Gates in an alien of a different species. Hey, wait a minute...)
Damien Sullivan
>: Richard Todd <rmt...@ichotolot.servalan.com>
>: The awful part is that it was such a trivial detail -- the exact details of
>: what treatment the guy was given aren't really that important to the story
>: as a whole. If they'd only run the story once by someone who had enough
>: knowledge of medicine to know that no, you don't really need a spleen that
>: much and people have them removed all the time, then the reference to the
>: artificial spleen could have been cut without a problem.
>
>Well... in justification-no-matter-how-unlikely mode, I note that
>the spleen is thought (last I knew) to have some function in the
>immune system. And some blood mumble. So replacing its function
>might help somebody with a compromised immune system, or some junk.
Yeah. Absence predisposes one to infection of the blood.
>On the other hand, yes, same sort of sense it would make
>to implant an artificial appendix. Or tonsils. Not as bad
>as those, but close.
Tonsils are functional too, yes? A different way of looking at it is that
49th century medicine is so advanced that artificial spleens aren't a problem
for them, but an easy standard unit.
"Safe at any speed."
-xx- Damien X-)
Damien Sullivan
Isn't Windows/Mac infection easier now with e-mail and Word macros? Clearly
the aliens were using MS Word. The Collective is *everywhere*.
-xx- Damien X-)
Bill Westfield
utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your disbelief?
Someone mentioned the Carole Nelson Douglas "Midnight Louie" mysteries in
the "series that don't suck" thread recently, and it has one of my
'favorite' such events in one of the early books (the one about strippers.)
I mean, we all know that if you're into body paint, you shouldn't cover 100%
of your skin area, right? (I have my doubts as to the accuracy of this, all
things considered, but I'd be willing to suspend my disbelief that far with
no problems.) However, in this book the murderer disposes of one victim by
painting over that last section of skin, at which point the victim proceeds
to suffocate at about the same speed they would in a room with no oxygen.
Ouch. Bad news for scuba divers :-)
Niven's "Destiny's Road" is rather spoiled when you recall that the 'rare
element' involved, concentrated by some rare plants, is in fact one of the
plant nutrients so basic (and necessary) that the percentage appears on the
outside of every bag of fertilizer...
BillW
Lots42
Richard R. Hershberger wrote:
> James Nicoll wrote:
So, anyone else run into one moment in a recent book that just
> > totally and utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your disbelief?
>
> I have read that it has been retconned, but I really don't care.
Personally, I allow sci-fi universes one 'silly' thing. Like the
'Force' with Star Wars and transporters with Star Trek. Even allowing
the human batteries for Matrix, they really screwed the pooch with the
second and third movies.
As a wise man once said, what we learned from the latter movies, is
that the French won't shut up.
Lots42
Mark Atwood wrote:
> jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) writes:
> >
> > 1: Spider Robinson replaced as author of Callahan's stories by
> > John Callahan. Discuss.
>
>
> They would be a lot more readable.
>
> They would be a lot less annoyingly smug.
One of the things I don't like about the Callahan stories is how the
main characters are supposed to be tolerant and accepting and 'hug
everyone' but they all believe in pretty much the same damned thing.
(Basically, getting naked and high)
Lots42
John M. Gamble wrote:
>> Characters would stay dead.
>
> (I may be slandering Robinson on this one, did he have bounce-back
> characters in the Callahan's Bar stories?)
Nope. When someone croaks, they stay croaked.
Lots42
Lots42
Bill Westfield wrote:
> anyone else run into one moment in a recent book that just totally and
> utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your disbelief?
The Neil Stephenson book about the primer for Victoria Age 2.
A good shock to my sense of disbelief was the judge system. They
horribly execute people for serial mugging, yet young boys get free
passes just because they given stolen merchandise to their younger
sisters.
And then, of course, was the under-water orgy town. My god.
Michael Grosberg
Paul Andinach wrote:
> On 22 Oct 2005, "Clintok" <nob...@nothanks.not> wrote in
> news:WdKdnZ7Fded...@comcast.com:
>
>
> the humans as components in a massively parallel neural network
> computing array, but the Wachowskis later changed it to "using the
> humans for energy sources" because they figured it would be easier
> for the multiplex audience to understand.
>
I find it rather hard to believe. With all the unintelligible
gobbledigook that passes for dialog in the Matrix movies, they should
be concerned about THIS?
Beeblebear
> soldiering on despite the fact that it's thick enough to make my wrists
> hurt and there are one or two unfortunate flubs, like the moonless world
> world whose climate is more stable than Earth's due to its lack of a
> moon. Right now the models say "no big Moon, annoyingly variable
> obliquity" [1] but heck, maybe the models changed or humans got there
> in a period when obliquity was nearly zero. I'm not a bad guy, I'll
> play along with the joke.
>
> The moment the author lost me was the part where a character
> describes a sudden-onset ice age and how he and the other survivors
> _barely managed to outrun the resulting glaciers_.
I recognise that book, I'm reading it too.
Though I just put the description of outrunning glaciers down to the speaker
wanting to sound dramatic.
>
--
--
Chris Lyth (clyt...@ifis.org.uk - shoot the president to reply)
We learn from history that we do not learn anything from history.
Mark Blunden
> On 22 Oct 2005, "Clintok" <nob...@nothanks.not> wrote in
> news:WdKdnZ7Fded...@comcast.com:
>
>> "Richard R. Hershberger" <rrh...@acme.com> wrote in message
>> news:1129926195.9...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
>>> Not a book, but I could never get past the silly premise of The
>>> Matrix. I have read that it has been retconned, but I really
>>> don't care.
>>
>> What, that computers used humans for energy instead of, say,
>> fission reactors? I'm not sure I care more than you but I am
>> curious if that's the bit they "fixed."
>
> In the original script, so the story goes, the computers were using
> the humans as components in a massively parallel neural network
> computing array, but the Wachowskis later changed it to "using the
> humans for energy sources" because they figured it would be easier
> for the multiplex audience to understand.
That and the product placement deal with Duracell, presumably.
--
Mark.
Mark Blunden
There were several X-Files episodes that had similar materials-science
screwups, which were always grating. The one that particularly comes to mind
is a silicon-based lifeform that's feeding on humans by infesting their
lungs, and Scully produces (or finds) a chemical formula that explains how
the lifeform converts carbon dioxide into silicon.
--
Mark.
William Marnoch
the presidentfsnet.co.uk> wrote:
>
>"James Nicoll" <jdni...@panix.com> wrote in message
>news:djbg1b$npb$1...@reader2.panix.com...
>> So I am reading something, what I won't say just now, and I'm
>> soldiering on despite the fact that it's thick enough to make my wrists
>> hurt and there are one or two unfortunate flubs, like the moonless world
>> world whose climate is more stable than Earth's due to its lack of a
>> moon. Right now the models say "no big Moon, annoyingly variable
>> obliquity" [1] but heck, maybe the models changed or humans got there
>> in a period when obliquity was nearly zero. I'm not a bad guy, I'll
>> play along with the joke.
>>
>> The moment the author lost me was the part where a character
>> describes a sudden-onset ice age and how he and the other survivors
>> _barely managed to outrun the resulting glaciers_.
>
>I recognise that book, I'm reading it too.
>Though I just put the description of outrunning glaciers down to the speaker
>wanting to sound dramatic.
Yes, I didn't take the glacier statement literally either. The speaker
was the sort of person who might exaggerate their stories a bit,
although the author does have a past record of implausibility in some
of his other novels so it could have been meant literally I suppose.
--
William Marnoch
wil...@voidhawk.com
http://www.voidhawk.com/ Film and Book reviews
Nancy Lebovitz
>>
>> I am not necessarily expecting John Schilling's "vacuum pockets"
>>to show up but if they do I will not be too surprised.
>> So, anyone else run into one moment in a recent book that just
>>totally and utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your disbelief?
>
>and it's at least in theory non-fiction.
Details?
--
Nancy Lebovitz http://www.nancybuttons.com
http://livejournal.com/users/nancylebov
My two favorite colors are "Oooooh" and "SHINY!".
Nancy Lebovitz
James Nicoll
Bill Westfield <bi...@cypher.cisco.com> wrote:
> anyone else run into one moment in a recent book that just totally and
> utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your disbelief?
>
>Someone mentioned the Carole Nelson Douglas "Midnight Louie" mysteries in
>the "series that don't suck" thread recently, and it has one of my
>'favorite' such events in one of the early books (the one about strippers.)
>I mean, we all know that if you're into body paint, you shouldn't cover 100%
>of your skin area, right? (I have my doubts as to the accuracy of this, all
>things considered, but I'd be willing to suspend my disbelief that far with
>no problems.)
MYTHBUSTERS did this at least twice: Once with Jamie, whose
readings went weird and who immediately felt sick and then later,
when they discovered that he's a freak whose heart rate and
temperature are abnormal to begin with, to Adam, and nothing
happened. I think they also painted one of the female assistants,
also with no effect.
--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
Michael Alan Chary
Nancy Lebovitz <nan...@panix.com> wrote:
>In article <djbhvf$861$1...@reader2.panix.com>,
>Michael Alan Chary <mch...@panix.com> wrote:
>>In article <djbg1b$npb$1...@reader2.panix.com>,
>>James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I am not necessarily expecting John Schilling's "vacuum pockets"
>>>to show up but if they do I will not be too surprised.
>>>
>>> So, anyone else run into one moment in a recent book that just
>>>totally and utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your disbelief?
>>
>>Well, yes. Sadly, the book was _The Battle for God_ by Karen Armstrong,
>>and it's at least in theory non-fiction.
>
>Details?
Making a joke. (It's about flavors of fundamentalism in various
religions.)
--
An experiment in publishing:
http://www.ethshar.com/thesprigganexperiment0.html
The All-New, All-Different Howling Curmudgeons!
http://www.whiterose.org/howlingcurmudgeons
Nancy Lebovitz
Peter Meilinger <mell...@bu.edu> wrote:
>James Nicoll <jdni...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>> So, anyone else run into one moment in a recent book that just
>>totally and utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your disbelief?
>
>overall, but the Evil Plan (tm) was just wretchedly stupid. Our
>Villains put a toxin in Gotham City's water supply, weeks in
>advance of activating it. It's perfectly safe to drink, and only
>affects people when it's breathed. Our Villains get it into the
>air by activating a microwave emitter that instantly boils all
>water in a block or two radius. They're standing right next to
>the microwave emitter when it's turned on. Two problems here.
>
>1) I'm certainly not a scientist, but I'm having a hard time
>believing that they wouldn't be fried by the microwave emitter
>like a poodle in a microwave oven.
>
>2) This toxin has been in the water supply for weeks and affects
>people when the water is boiled, but no one has been affected yet.
>No one in Gotham boils water for tea? Pasta? This was presented
>as some fairly nasty poison. Just leaning over the pot to check
>on the spaghetti should've been enough for SOME kind of reaction.
>Have that happen a couple dozen times a night, all over the city,
>and I can't help but think someone might've noticed something was
>up.
>
>Still a great movie, though.
>
One more point: if all the water in the pipes is boiling, the
city has worse problems than a mere toxin.
Paul Andinach
<m.blundenAT...@address.invalid> wrote in
news:3ruo5iF...@individual.net:
> There were several X-Files episodes that had similar
> materials-science screwups, which were always grating. The one
> that particularly comes to mind is a silicon-based lifeform that's
> feeding on humans by infesting their lungs, and Scully produces
> (or finds) a chemical formula that explains how the lifeform
> converts carbon dioxide into silicon.
It's obviously too long since high-school chemistry, because I don't
quite...
...oh. Oh, I see. Ouch.
(Elemental, my dear Scully!)
Daniel Silevitch
It wasn't a sliding crust. Worse: It was a sliding chunk of the Ross Ice
Shelf.
What gets me about that series is all of the major tech advances that
occur, play a teeny-tiny plot role, and then vanish. The aforementioned
sliding chunk of ice was to be set off by nanomachines, NUMA has a
near-human AI in its basement, etc.
-dms
Daniel Silevitch
>
> "Luna" <luna...@NOSPAMmindspring.com> wrote in message
> news:lunachick-3D8C9...@news1.east.earthlink.net...
>>> totally and utterly destroyed any chance you had to suspend your
>>> disbelief?
>>>
>>
>> that the humans were able to make a computer virus that infected an
>> alien computer system, when irl it's somewhat difficult to make a virus
>> that affects both Windows and Mac, and they're both from the same
>> species.
>
> (Macs had the worst TCP/IP implementation known to mankind, and many of the
> PC stacks weren't much better), so yes, the fact that Jeff Goldblum could
> instantly download a virus from Mac to AlienSpaceshopOS was hilarious.
Since no-one's posted it yet, I'll post the fake CERT advisory that went
out after the movie came out.
-dms
From: CERT Bulletin <cert-a...@cert.org>
Date: 26 Jun 1996 15:43:18 GMT
Subject: CERT Advisory CA-96.13 - Alien/OS Vulnerability
Organization: CERT(sm) Coordination Center - +1 412-268-7090
Approved: cert-a...@cert.org
Reply-To: cert-advis...@cert.org
Keywords: security CERT
Originator: cert-a...@cert.org
=============================================================================
CERT(sm) Advisory CA-96.13
July 4, 1996
Topic: ID4 virus, Alien/OS Vulnerability
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The CERT Coordination Center has received reports of weaknesses in
Alien/OS that can allow species with primitive information sciences
technology to initiate denial-of-service attacks against MotherShip(tm)
hosts. One report of exploitation of this bug has been received.
When attempting takeover of planets inhabited by such races, a trojan
horse attack is possible that permits local access to the MotherShip
host, enabling the implantation of executable code with full root access
to mission-critical security features of the operating system.
The vulnerability exists in versions of EvilAliens' Alien/OS 34762.12.1
or later, and all versions of Microsoft's Windows/95. CERT advises
against initiating further planet takeover actions until patches are
available from these vendors. If planet takeover is absolutely
necessary, CERT advises that affected sites apply the workarounds as
specified below.
As we receive additional information relating to this advisory, we will
place it in
ftp://info.cert.org/pub/cert_advisories/CA-96.13.README
We encourage you to check our README files regularly for updates on
advisories that relate to your site.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Description
Alien/OS contains a security vulnerability, which strangely enough can
be exploited by a primitive race running Windows/95. Although Alien/OS
has been extensively field tested over millions of years by EvilAliens,
Inc., the bug was only recently discovered during a routine invasion of
a backwater planet. EvilAliens notes that the operating system had never
before been tested against a race with "such a kick-ass president."
The vulnerability allows the insertion of executable code with root
access to key security features of the operating system. In particular,
such code can disable the NiftyGreenShield (tm) subsystem, allowing
child processes to be terminated by unauthorized users.
Additionally, Alien/OS networking protocols can provide a low-bandwidth
covert timing channel to a determined attacker.
Impact
Non-privileged primitive users can cause the total destruction of your
entire invasion fleet and gain unauthorized access to files.
Solution
EvilAliens has supplied a workaround and a patch, as follows:
Workaround
To prevent unauthorized insertion of executables, install a firewall to
selectively vaporize incoming packets that do not contain valid aliens.
Also, disable the "Java" option in Netscape.
To eliminate the covert timing channel, remove untrusted hosts from
routing tables. As tempting as it is, do not use target species' own
satellites against them.
Patch
As root, install the "evil" package from the distribution tape.
(Optionally) save a copy of the existing /usr/bin/sendmail and modify
its permission to prevent misuse.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The CERT Coordination Center thanks Jeff Goldblum and Fjkxdtssss for
providing information for this advisory.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Andinach
news:Xns96F792EAB...@130.133.1.4:
> On 22 Oct 2005, Kurt Busiek <kurtb...@aol.comics> wrote in
> news:2005102121412475249%kurtbusiek@aolcomics:
>
> > 1. They tested the MicroToxinExplodoZapper on the ship. It
> > works.
> >
> > 2. They then unload the MTEZ in The Narrows, and set it off
> > again, making a whole neighborhood of Gotham go nutzoid.
> >
> > 3. The big plan, then, is to reload the MTEZ into a monorail and
> > drive it to the Wayne Tower, where they can set it off for real.
> >
> > So, uh, what's Step 2 for?
>
> To incapacitate all the SWAT teams and other law-enforcement
> peoples who were lured to the Narrows in Step 1a, was my
> understanding.
It's also worth noting that the plan was not simply to topple Gotham,
but to topple Gotham in such a way that posterity could be persuaded
that Gotham came down by itself.
Riots breaking out simultaneously across the city, or spreading out
from Gotham Tower, would be rather suspicious. A riot breaking out in
Gotham's most notoriously run-down and dangerous neighbourhood, then
spreading to engulf the city, somewhat more plausible.
James Nicoll
Kurt Busiek <kurtb...@aol.comics> wrote:
>On 2005-10-21 21:18:16 -0700, Peter Meilinger <mell...@bu.edu> said:
Death of WSOD
>>
>Here's an even more basic problem:
>
>1. They tested the MicroToxinExplodoZapper on the ship. It works.
>
>2. They then unload the MTEZ in The Narrows, and set it off again,
>making a whole neighborhood of Gotham go nutzoid.
>
>3. The big plan, then, is to reload the MTEZ into a monorail and drive
>it to the Wayne Tower, where they can set it off for real.
>
>So, uh, what's Step 2 for?
Speaking of odd Step 2s, why in the Xmen movie does Magneto
go to the trouble of building a replica of the Statue of Liberty's
torch? It is on the boat as they approach the island, isn't it? And
how did he install it without being seen, exactly?
Sea Wasp
> It wasn't a sliding crust. Worse: It was a sliding chunk of the Ross Ice
> Shelf.
>
> What gets me about that series is all of the major tech advances that
> occur, play a teeny-tiny plot role, and then vanish. The aforementioned
> sliding chunk of ice was to be set off by nanomachines, NUMA has a
> near-human AI in its basement, etc.
And clearly you, like me, have read all of them.
Cussler is damn near the ONLY writer to manage to get away with that
with me. I ***HATE*** people who write supposedly-connected universes
and forget major events and tech advances. I **HATE** writers who will
have a major plot event hinge on some scientific "fact" that is, well,
NOT TRUE.
But I bought EVERY BLOODY ONE of the Dirk Pitt novels in hardcover,
and I enjoyed every bloody one of them, even while cursing Cussler's
annoyingly increasing cameo roles and all the other flaws.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/seawasp/
Daniel Silevitch
I haven't read _all_ of them, but a rather large percentage, yeah. I
think I stopped at the one with the Viking ship and the evil oil tycoon.
-dms
Stewart Robert Hinsley
<pand...@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> writes
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley
Matt Ruff
>
> The Neil Stephenson book about the primer for Victoria Age 2.
>
> A good shock to my sense of disbelief was the judge system. They
> horribly execute people for serial mugging, yet young boys get free
> passes just because they given stolen merchandise to their younger
> sisters.
Bud wasn't executed for mugging; he was executed for being a habitual
criminal who seemed likely to spend the rest of his life preying on
other people.
Harv was spared because he was young and because he'd shown enough
concern for his sister that the judge felt there was still some hope for
him to reform.
-- M. Ruff
Mike Schilling
"Daniel Silevitch" <dms...@uchicago.edu> wrote in message
news:slrndlkgkb....@bardeen.local...
Thanks; I looked for it, but couldn't find it.
Daniel Silevitch
Googling on 'CERT AlienOS' proved to be the key insight. For that
matter, I imagine that 'AlienOS' alone would probably have done the job.
-dms
Kurt Busiek
> On 22 Oct 2005, Kurt Busiek <kurtb...@aol.comics> wrote in
> news:2005102121412475249%kurtbusiek@aolcomics:
>> 1. They tested the MicroToxinExplodoZapper on the ship. It
>> works.
>> 2. They then unload the MTEZ in The Narrows, and set it off again,
>> making a whole neighborhood of Gotham go nutzoid.
>>
>> 3. The big plan, then, is to reload the MTEZ into a monorail and
>> drive it to the Wayne Tower, where they can set it off for real.
>>
>> So, uh, what's Step 2 for?
>
> To incapacitate all the SWAT teams and other law-enforcement peoples
> who were lured to the Narrows in Step 1a, was my understanding.
They'll be incapacitated just fine by Step 3. It won't matter where they are.
kdb
--
Read an ASTRO CITY story for FREE, at:
http://www.dccomics.com/features/astro/
Kurt Busiek
I have no idea -- I only saw the movie once, and don't remember it that well.
But Magneto's been doing strange and illogical things for a long time
-- my favorite is that they revealed that he's a Jewish concentration
camp survivor, which makes the army of goose-stepping, jack-booted
stormtroopers he had in his second appearance a very odd choice on his
part.
Duke of URL
> The moment the author lost me was the part where a character
> describes a sudden-onset ice age and how he and the other survivors
> _barely managed to outrun the resulting glaciers_.
Are you *serious*?
> God, just typing that make my brain hurt. It's like a urinary
> tract infection in my head. It burns! It burns!
Apparently you are! Gawd!
> I am not necessarily expecting John Schilling's "vacuum pockets"
> to show up but if they do I will not be too surprised.
As a service to the rasfw community, you really /should/ post the title of
that horrible book - save someone from wasting money on it.
--
Cliologist, Philanthropologist, Prothonotary Wibbler,
Paleoconservative, Surface Warrior Squid; Error reading FAT record. Try
the Skinny one?