{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/251",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 251,
    "subject": "\"Donner, party of 4?\"",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1997-11-03T18:13:00+00:00",
    "last": "1997-11-03T18:13:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0005-0380@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.com"
      },
      "date": "1997-11-03T18:13:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) \"Donner, party of 4?\"",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Reply:  Item #2052399 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET00#\n\nJohn Bishop,\n\nRe: upper-case Cim blowing among trees, but wait--those other\nupper-cases you mention are group names . . . so are you saying that\nCim is a group name (i.e., tribe) of some aerial or airborne\ncreatures (like the singing moths in the Gardens of the House\nAbsolute)?  (There is also the dread typo possibility--maybe the Cim\nblowing should have been cim blowing.)\n\nThe female name \"Red Kluy\" and the plant \"kluy\" point to a Vironese\nstyle of naming (which is not necessarily the only form available to\nthe tribes).  Cross-tribe naming, while certainly possible, at\nleast in theory leads to odd moments: \"Hi, I'm Pueblo Lacota\" (where\nthese are two tribes widely separated by culture/geography); \"Hello\nthere, I'm Mousey Cat.\"\n\nRe: the geography.  I'm afraid we'll have to nix that polar circle\nnotion (though it is clever!) since the sun would be in the south\ninstead of directly (well . . . more or less) overhead.  (I mean, if\nthe sun is ever =really= directly overhead, then we \"have no\nshadows,\" we are somewhere between the tropics, and it is local\nequinox.)\n\nHey, you could probably estimate how much Cutthroat has traveled by\nestimating planetary diameter (say Mars, just for fun) and then\nfactoring in the amount of travel/time it takes for him to spot the\ngeostationary reflector in the sky: it is, in effect, a fixed object\nhe is heading towards, obscured only by (clouds and) the curvature of\nthe planet.\n\nRe: food base.  Your points are valid, and I think that readers are\nmeant to feel that desperate hunger, that nightmarish drive to\ncannibalism as a last resort (seeing the \"animals\" as human as\nmembers of the Donner party in the Sierras, or airline passangers\nstranded in the Andes). On the other hand, Siberia, nobody's idea of\na picnic, is mainly south of the arctic circle, has lots of permafrost,\nyet still manages to have an eco-system considered robust when\ncompared to the cold deserts of the poles.\n\nThen again again, the story is =dreamy=.  The \"plants\" have a mineral\naspect, at least when they grow in the cave, don't they?  Weird.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}