Regenesis and such
Finished it. Good. Not sure it was as good -- or inventive -- as Cyteen. Cyteen was this big "whoah" psychology thing, with Emory high-IQ Machiavellian advice and Grant talking about logic vs. flux states. Regenesis was a lot more settling-in, followed by Action! Plot! I was going to make a post about computers -- Cyteen was published in 1988, and there's still a strong mainframe feel, which is sensible for socio-engineering but less so for architectual plans, but there's also signs of personal communicators and maybe even laptop equivalents, and I wasn't reading that closely, so I'll leave it.
Cherryh's still the mistress of non-transparent societies, or at least ones which feel that way. By which I mean not "obscure" or "hard to understand" but "information flow to and among the characters is sub-optimal". Actually this is probably one of the better novels that way regarding the main characters, since people actually talk, and Ari has Base One, but Union itself needs help.
Moving on:
* The myth of the failure of FDR and the New Deal
* GOP governor of Utah reverses self, supports gay civil unions. Unlike 70% of Utahns.
* On RPG.net it was mentioned that mammals have smaller genomes than reptiles and amphibians; it was then said that the explanation for this is our being warm-blooded. We need only one set of enzymes, optimized for our body temperature; they need a wide range of enzymes to match a wide range of temperatures.
* Glaxo to give out cheap medicine. I hear Merck's best success at boosting employee morale was when they provided drugs to the third world at cost.
* Discworld novel motifs
* GOP perks in Albamy, NY
* The Reelfoot Rift, earthquakes in middle America.
* Apparently the flu virus spreads better in dry air, as measured by absolute humidity. And cold air tends to be drier. Voila, winter flu season, and steaming teakettles to stay healthy.
* Racism in Burma, and from the consul
* Austalian wildfires: punishment for abortion
Cherryh's still the mistress of non-transparent societies, or at least ones which feel that way. By which I mean not "obscure" or "hard to understand" but "information flow to and among the characters is sub-optimal". Actually this is probably one of the better novels that way regarding the main characters, since people actually talk, and Ari has Base One, but Union itself needs help.
Moving on:
* The myth of the failure of FDR and the New Deal
* GOP governor of Utah reverses self, supports gay civil unions. Unlike 70% of Utahns.
* On RPG.net it was mentioned that mammals have smaller genomes than reptiles and amphibians; it was then said that the explanation for this is our being warm-blooded. We need only one set of enzymes, optimized for our body temperature; they need a wide range of enzymes to match a wide range of temperatures.
* Glaxo to give out cheap medicine. I hear Merck's best success at boosting employee morale was when they provided drugs to the third world at cost.
* Discworld novel motifs
* GOP perks in Albamy, NY
* The Reelfoot Rift, earthquakes in middle America.
* Apparently the flu virus spreads better in dry air, as measured by absolute humidity. And cold air tends to be drier. Voila, winter flu season, and steaming teakettles to stay healthy.
* Racism in Burma, and from the consul
* Austalian wildfires: punishment for abortion