$ jlc (10,317)

Yes.

Jan

"Solons of Stupid"

The Gulch is a veritable treasure house for good phrases.

Jan

It is more like 'the Swiss cheese of relevant information'.

Jan

Thank you.

Jan

Flokati! I can definitely use another half-dozen flokati.

Jan
(Dog is sleeping on the one in my office right now. He makes a nice picture.)

Interesting. Thank you for some perspectives I have not seen addressed in the news.

Jan

If someone comes to enforce payment, we blow them to little twitching bits.

Jan

Not expecting sharing!!! (Want appreciable life expectancy.)

As long as we agree that it is none of our business, then whether or not that particular threesome ultimately agrees with Pisaturo or not is up to them, not up to me.

Jan

I am all for artificial processes, blarman. I look forward to the day when there are Gestational Incubators so that no one has to carry a fragile fetus around inside of themselves any more.

Jan
(Of course, the people who want to gestate can continue to do so - and it is theoretically possible for a male to carry a fetus too.)

It would not be difficult to combine the chromosomes from two people. Right now, the problem seems to be that in cloning from somatic cells, all of the right developmental steps (especially the lungs, but I suspect the placenta too) do not occur.

Even hetero couple will begin choosing the chromosomes that will go into baby. If Dad has perfect pitch but Mom cannot carry a tune in a bucket, why not make sure that baby can sing? Less trivially: if one member of the family has a hereditary disease, make sure that does not carry over.

Once we get to the point that cloning itself works better, people will be able to combine chromosome sets. And I think that SF goes too far in predicting degradation of a species via absolute cloning. Remember - identical twins are clones. They are definitely different individuals with distinct personalities and not just robotic copies of each other.

Jan

Polygamy has been the baseline relationship for most of human history: Since the beginning of recorded history, with few exceptions, if you were able to acquire more than one wife, you certainly did so. This persisted long past the accepted social role of polygamy, as high ranking officials of Church and State were expected to have a 'stable' of mistresses up through the 18th century. Until Communism took over China, the majority of the population of the world was polygamous: Africa, the ME, India, and China.

Polygamy works, and has done so for thousands of years. Now, do not ask me "How?" I have known a number of polygamous families (Hey, I live in CA), but they remained stable for a decade or less. (Slightly OT: I can only recall one 'open marriage' that has remained stable - and that one has done so for 40 years.) Our American society does not provide good roles for polygamy.

Now, on the side of monogamy: You can generally tell a lot about the sexual arrangement of a species by looking at sexual dimorphism. Amongst the early hominids, the males were twice the size of the females (as is true of gorillas), but as you get closer to the modern human line, dimorphism decreases until we get to the present point. To some extent, we seem to actually be evolving towards monogamy.

Our current human dimorphism is that men are about 10-20% stronger than women of the same weight, and about 30% stronger overall (per Wiki Sexual Dimorphism). But dimorphism is becoming functionally less in modern times. During the Victorian era, it was not 'feminine' to exercise; now it is sexy to be 'buff'. I can tell you, from personal experience, that I am physically stronger than an average male white-collar office worker (even one who is almost 7 feet tall!). Once I beat them arm-wrestling (for example), however, they go out and buy a set of weights; two years later they are Much stronger than I am.

I agree with the comments on this thread that indicate that an individuals personal life is not anyone else's business as long as it is consensual or a goat.

Jan
(But I am sure, a very nice goat...)

We are close - maybe a decade - to being able to clone effectively from somatic cells. In the future, gay couples will almost certainly be able to procreate.

Otherwise I agree with you.

Jan

Bravo. Well stated. Beware of the 'little black box' of legal pigeonholing.

Jan

Oh!! Don't report me!

No, not the way I see it. As a character, Dagny did not know what was in her future. As a writer, Ayn Rand DID know what was in Dagny's future. Ayn could well have designed Dagny to have 'stepped through' a series of lovers, each matching the phase of development Dagny was personally in...she outgrew one lover and grew into the next.

Jan

Dagny may not have known, but Ayn certainly did.

Jan

That is an excellent point, and one that would not have occurred to me. Might have helped my father to think of it that way.

Jan

I like it. People think of 'the big guys in the shiny armor' as being the historical winners, but sometimes (as in the American and French Revolutions and with Gandhi in India) it is the persistent 'little people' who win in the long run. Your comment about gnawing away at the Soviet economy reminded me of Kipling's poem.

Glad you like it.

Jan

When I first read AS, I was in High School - and quite naive. It seemed to me that Dagny used her lovers as stepping stones to reflect the stage of her own character development: Fransisco, Rearden and finally Galt. For each 'step', the prior lover was no longer adequate to be a good match: An equal seeking an equal.

Insofar as Ayn's real life affairs are concerned, I find nothing reprehensible about her having multiple consensual lovers overtly. It is only the need to be sneaky and deceptive and covert that is demeaning. Certainly, our own culture is developing in the direction indicated in Ayn Rand's novels...having a series of lovers was much more scandalous in the 1950's than it is now.

Jan

I find a white bedsheet offensive, since it implies a WHITE perspective on life. I insist that the flag be invisible, so that it does not pigeonhole anyone into a particular frame of reference.

Jan
(Quite well aware that a vexillologist has told her what entity flies an 'invisible' flag.)

My father worked at the Pentagon for about 3 years. He said (many decades later) that his job had been to assign nuclear missile to specific Russian targets: So many missiles at so many megatons for this city or for that base.

When he spoke of it, I could tell that he hated the job. He had a good imagination - not necessarily a benefit for a professional military man.

Jan

One of my favorite poems. (There is a great version sung by Leslie Fish.) You were part of a team "Working our works out of view".


A Pict Song
By Rudyard Kipling

(‘The Winged Hats’ —Puck of Pook’s Hill)

Rome never looks where she treads.
Always her heavy hooves fall
On our stomachs, our hearts or our heads;
And Rome never heeds when we bawl.
Her sentries pass on—that is all,
And we gather behind them in hordes,
And plot to reconquer the Wall,
With only our tongues for our swords.

We are the Little Folk—we!
Too little to love or to hate.
Leave us alone and you’ll see
How we can drag down the State!
We are the worm in the wood!
We are the rot at the root!
We are the taint in the blood!
We are the thorn in the foot!

Mistletoe killing an oak—
Rats gnawing cables in two—
Moths making holes in a cloak—
How they must love what they do!
Yes—and we Little Folk too,
We are busy as they—
Working our works out of view—
Watch, and you’ll see it some day!

No indeed! We are not strong,
But we know Peoples that are.
Yes, and we’ll guide them along
To smash and destroy you in War!
We shall be slaves just the same?
Yes, we have always been slaves,
But you—you will die of the shame,
And then we shall dance on your graves!

We are the Little Folk—we!
Too little to love or to hate.
Leave us alone and you’ll see
How we can drag down the State!
We are the worm in the wood!
We are the rot at the root!
We are the taint in the blood!
We are the thorn in the foot!

Mistletoe killing an oak—
Rats gnawing cables in two—
Moths making holes in a cloak—
How they must love what they do!

Yes—and we Little Folk too,
We are busy as they—
Working our works out of view—
Watch, and you’ll see it some day!

Good work, then, "Worm in the Wood"!

Jan

It is difficult for me to deal with a contra-rational argument that begins, "Starting with the premise that human nature is entirely different than it is, I therefore propose a Law..."

It is also the case that most of the time I would not Want human nature to be as they describe. I do not care if such a change would totally end murder and war and violence. It would also end...me. My choice; my freedom.

Jan

I have read some articles on the ME and Afghanistan that hint that the women may be the key. There is apparently a strong covert movement amongst the women to secretly wear forbidden Western makeup under their burkas. If the Sharia police pull them up for examination they have to scrub it off in a hurry or face some rather extreme punishment.

I know, it seems trivial. But the Berlin Wall was brought down by Walkmans and jeans.

Jan