Posted from 2 addresses as Jeff Wilson, Jeffery Wilson clueland.com, Jeffery Wilson
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Where on earth did you study Astronomy?! Supernovas actually increase the number of stars in a galaxy when their shockwaves cause nearby nebulas to clump and collapse into new st…
17 Jul 2008, 00:56
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cite please?…
17 Jul 2008, 00:33
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1 supernova per 50 years in the milky way, billions per year in the observable universe. Nova events are more common, but that because of repeat occurances, the objects that prod…
17 Jul 2008, 00:23
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You can google "anonymous Christianity" and read all about it.…
16 Jul 2008, 23:38
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Did you miss the various Crusades? Or hymns like "Onward Christian Soldiers?" Militarism's been given the imprimatur for a long time.…
16 Jul 2008, 23:33
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I've been a lifelong Christian, and this is the first I've heard the Great Chain of Being explicitly said to have a place in Christian doctrine. It certainly is not part of the A…
16 Jul 2008, 23:22
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I wasn't aware Wolfe was getting into political writing! When did he start? Several days of extremely high tides doesn't literally drown a planet, though it does drastically chan…
16 Jul 2008, 23:13
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Not drowned, baptised and born again as Ushas with all our sins washed away.…
16 Jul 2008, 13:38
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Except for stories where they war with humanity, my experience is the opposite; they are almost always used as a superior moral example in contrast to humanity's short-term and s…
16 Jul 2008, 13:33
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I'm thinking it is intended that the Hieros built the Hierogrammates out of hubris in attempt to make a perfect, godlike creature. They are thus living graven images and as false…
14 Jul 2008, 22:38
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After further cogitation, it has occurred to me that the Botanical Gardens are the Yesodi evacution plan for Urth. A fairly feeble one, but I realized they *are* resource limite…
12 Jul 2008, 05:31
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I'm hoping to gather some on my next, "Sister Juturna" read-through, as soon as I can gather new copies of the volumes. Nessus isn't exactly "teeming" as there are five buildings…
11 Jul 2008, 22:03
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Loss is necessary, or at least unavoidable, and presumably loss in the name of God (sacrifice) is better than loss for no reason. I agree that whenever wrong is done there is a p…
11 Jul 2008, 21:24
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By confounding do you perhaps mean "compounding" or "conflating"? That's what "Yesodis" is intended to do, to refer to all of these higher beings as a group, and this is useful b…
11 Jul 2008, 19:49
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http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze2tmhh/gwjbj3.html I beg your pardon, it is James B. Jordan who actually mentions the part about the kittens, but about 8-10 answers down the p…
11 Jul 2008, 19:37
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I don't subscribe to the usual free will/predestiny dichotomy. You can't escape God's plan because He's eternal and outside of time and space, any more than A. Square can escape …
11 Jul 2008, 19:21
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His interviews affirm this; he says we are lucky to live in a Christian society cos the rest of the world (like Turkey) is a depraved hellhole where people kill kittens for fun.…
11 Jul 2008, 18:39
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That was pretty much the discussion in progress just before you arrived. I'm not convinced that God has no part in a plan involving the White Fountain; as the omnipotent, omnisci…
11 Jul 2008, 18:34
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There's Wolfe's answer to the problems of pain and evil right there: God has the infinite and unfailing moral judgment to decide when people should suffer or die, and it's good t…
11 Jul 2008, 18:23
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The Goddess' world in _There Are Doors_ is a pretty tranquil liberal democracy similar to 1950's Britain - She reigns with the lightest of hands and suffers Her people to govern …
11 Jul 2008, 17:23
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Would you agree that it can be good for the Increate to do something that it would be evil to be done by a man?…
11 Jul 2008, 07:10
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in re "moral segregation": Moral relativism vs moral absolutism generally is not argued with respect to nonhuman intelligences. I think it likely that the human condition boils …
11 Jul 2008, 05:38
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Dismiss it?! I've been discussing it with these fellows for years on the list, and years before that on GEnie with mantiss and Hartwell and the gang. Trying to reverse engineer a…
11 Jul 2008, 04:20
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I don't think moral relativism enters into it so much as moral segregation. The same Increate to which humans attribute their moral code against incest they also attribute the cr…
11 Jul 2008, 04:12
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That would be "on individual *human* life." Life in general will benefit enormously from the coming of Ushas, returning to the world-wide range where it had flourished in eons pa…
11 Jul 2008, 01:15
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The difficulty is in agreeing on the units of moral judgment. A Hierogrammate may be a race unto themselves and destroy an intelligent individual whose actions they disklike the …
11 Jul 2008, 01:11
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Okay, they evacuate everyone from Urth, then what? Where do they put the people? How do they get out of being responsible for them until the end of time? If they are responsible …
10 Jul 2008, 17:37
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I'm stuck by the parallel to the original Trek episode, "Empath", where the crusty, mean aliens torture McCoy within a whisker of death to see if the mute healing empath woman ca…
10 Jul 2008, 16:44
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To an alternate universe with where their misguided worshipers suffer the inevitable consequences of idol worship like being forced to choose between celibacy and and early, pain…
10 Jul 2008, 16:23
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uncanny attraction between long-lost siblings is fairly common in literature and not unknown in RL This could be a habit of speaking for an adopted sister. It may also be that J…
10 Jul 2008, 03:20
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Baldanders demonstrates humans can become enormous water-breathers. Juturna was likely turned at a very young age, and being from the land herself is better at manipulating air-b…
09 Jul 2008, 19:15
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It doesn't have to be scientific evidence, just textual evidence. I'm serious in thinking she is a contender for sister, and I am serious that she is a candidate for shapeshiftin…
09 Jul 2008, 19:09
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Dare I ask for something that indicates they are shapeshifters, regardless of the point being made? Y'know, objectively? Jeff…
08 Jul 2008, 21:54
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The short answers/spoilers are: - the world doesn't stay flooded; when the White Fountain passes on into the sun, the tides return to normal. - the destruction is widely spread…
08 Jul 2008, 21:35
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I'm pretty sure Juturna is Severian's sister.…
08 Jul 2008, 17:33
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Can you point out the shape-changing incidents for Inire and the Cumaean?…
08 Jul 2008, 17:00
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He also says there are so many pictures that he's only cleaned them three times each or so during his career; fifteen years worth of paintings can line miles of underground hallw…
08 Jul 2008, 05:56
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There's no "attempt," the transcendence is a natural process. The Overlords intercede only to prevent the human race from destroying itself before the transformation can be compl…
08 Jul 2008, 05:49
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It seems like a stretch for Inire to serve the Autarchs for a thousand years when he only lives for 20 himself, even using time travel to skip over the boring parts but still cre…
08 Jul 2008, 04:25
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Do we know for sure the links are unusual, rather than "just" tunnels?…
08 Jul 2008, 00:10
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Since Tzadkiel is a Hierogrammate rather than a Hierodule, no it doesn't count. What kind of true love is he getting by lying about his species, or by trying to impress pre-pubs…
07 Jul 2008, 03:28
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But don't the various female forms have immediately recognizable faces? How similar is the non-bestial male face to the female face? Inire as a Hierogrammate-let, I can buy. It c…
07 Jul 2008, 03:15
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Okay, so T's race can take different shapes, and split off independent parts, stipulated. But can T's race take on a multitude of different faces? And where is it writ that Inire…
06 Jul 2008, 19:55
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Stop. There is no evidence Tzadkiel can assume _any_ shape. It has several at its disposal, but we do not know if they are finely customizable. Also, we do not know that Hierogra…
06 Jul 2008, 01:35
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That's okay. To be unconvincingly correct is not usefully different than being wrong, and may actually be counterproductive by helping discredit the right answer.…
05 Jul 2008, 22:24
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Okay, you have no explanation to back up your earlier supposition then. Relaxation vs rigor mortis is a question of how long has he been dead. The body relaxes immediately as soo…
05 Jul 2008, 17:22
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One of the ways of telling a person is dead is that opposing muscle groups are relaxed, so it would not be unusual for a person often in the grip of strong emotion to look more y…
05 Jul 2008, 05:06
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Like the mysterious alien artifact used to make mercury thermometers?…
02 Jul 2008, 22:00
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This is exactly how Toricelli made a vacuum in 1643, the tube being equal in length to TE.…
02 Jul 2008, 14:05
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I understand that pistol-size rayguns and interstellar-range spacecraft are also not actually possible. Who does that Wolfe guy think he is fooling?…
02 Jul 2008, 08:59
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