{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3508", "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": 3508, "subject": "Optical connections", "messages": 4, "voices": 3, "first": "2002-10-24T04:20:06+00:00", "last": "2002-10-26T13:31:12+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "j e", "address": "lo_phan17 at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2002-10-24T04:20:06+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Optical connections", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I haven't posted much, but I've been following the Peace discussion. It's \nbeen very interesting and I'm going to have to get my copy of Peace back so \nI can join in. I haven't read it in years, but Robert Borski's alchemical \nreading makes me want to again.\nOne Peace note: in that stream of consciousness part near the beginning \n(about the synthetic deer and the orange tribe) Weer asks \"What is a wabe?\"\nIt appears in Jabberwocky and I found a website which gives Carroll's \ndefinitions as well as Humpty Dumpty's:\n\nWabe (derived from the verb to swab or soak).\nThe side of a hill (from its being soaked by the rain.)\n\nhttp://www.math.luc.edu/~vande/jabglossary.html\n\nWithout the book here that definition doesn't help me at all. Anyone?\n\nNow that I've made a stab at being with the current discussion let me bound \nback to the Wolfe book I can't stop thinking about.\n\nIn the book of the short sun, I've noticed one of those nested significances \nWolfe loves to employ to drive his themes. First, to establish some \nbackground, the technology of the Whorl is clearly photonic rather than \nelectronic. We have several examples, the best of which is Incus' repair of \nHammerstone in the tunnels where flashes of light are described coming out \nof the broken ends of the fibers. Photonics, based on the transmission of \npackets of light is fitting for a society which features many examples of \ntechnology that are just beyond our present level. It's also fitting \nthematically...all three collections feature sun in their titles for a \nreason.\nWhen Horn and his men are on Green, trying to find the last part needed to \nrepair a lander, the monitor tells them it's a wave guide coupler. A wave \nguide is what it sounds like - a way of directing a wave, the coupler would \nthen join together waves of different length or waves from different \nsources. Horn's body was still there when Silkhorn returned to give Sinew \nthe ring that allowed Horn to be seen by the Neighbour who allowed his \nspirit to be saved. This is part of the nested significance, the minor to \nthe major one described in RttW. Near the end of that book, when Silkhorn is \nat the pole to give Pig his eye, M'to talks about repairing his ship, the \nWhorl, by re-connecting the many strands of what sounds like the Whorl's \noptical backbone. When the book ends, Silk has left New Viron as he said: to \ngo \"to the stars\". The implication is that he will lead M'to and the rest of \nthe crew to make the repairs, and I don't think any reader doubts that he \nwill succeed.\nI call Horn's episode the minor one because it involves a smaller ship, and \nfewer people. It's a goal for few, normal men. Also, it seems that his \nfailure is necessary in order to save the spirit of Silk (who was suicidal - \nhe was not fighting with anyone...imho).\nIt is also interesting that what's happening at the pole is the connection \nof Silk's eye to Pig's optic nerve. All of these things are about attempts \nto allow the passage of light.\n\n\nI noticed there's another Joe posting so I'll go back to Owl, which is my \nlast name." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "William Ansley", "address": "wansley at warwick.net" }, "date": "2002-10-24T17:26:34+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Optical connections", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 12:20 AM 10/24/2002 -0400, you wrote:\nOne Peace note: in that stream of consciousness part near the beginning \n(about the synthetic deer and the orange tribe) Weer asks \"What is a wabe?\"\nIt appears in Jabberwocky and I found a website which gives Carroll's \ndefinitions as well as Humpty Dumpty's:\n\nWabe (derived from the verb to swab or soak).\nThe side of a hill (from its being soaked by the rain.)\n\nhttp://www.math.luc.edu/~vande/jabglossary.html\n\nWithout the book here that definition doesn't help me at all. Anyone?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Finally, a question that falls into my area of expertise (such as it is), \nLewis Carroll!\n\nIn the passage from _Peace_ you mention above, Weer is thinking about \nnonexistant races of men. I don't have my book with me and so can't \nremember the details, but from what you say above, it was the \norange-skinned people who worshiped sundials. The passage continues to the \neffect that, after the threat of legal action allows the \"orange tribe\" \ninto the country club, \"they out with strange oaths. What's a wabe?\" (I am \nreconstructing the quote from memory.)\n\nThe definition of wabe that helps here is not the one you quote above, \nwhich is the one Carroll gave for the first[1] version of Jabberwocky, but \nthe one Humpty Dumpty gives in _Looking-Glass_:\n\n----------------------\nThe grass plot round a sundial ... because it goes a long way before it, \nand a long way behind it ... and a long way beyond it on each side.\n-----------------------\n\nThis is word play. The sound of the word \"way\" is combined with the sound \nof the common first letter of \"before,\" \"behind\" and \"beyond\" to produce \nthe word \"wabe.\" (My apologies to everyone who already understood this \nperfectly.)\n\nBecause these people worship sundials, their oaths sometimes refer to \nsundials or the plots of grass surrounding them, the wabes. (Naturally, as \nsundial worshippers, they are familiar with Carroll's works, just as I \nwould expect them to be with Wolfe's.)\n\n[1] The first stanza of Jabberwocky (in slightly different form) was \nwritten by Lewis Carroll when he was still a boy, in a little private \nperiodical he created by hand for the entertainment of his siblings. He \nreferred to it as a \"Stanza of Anglo-Saxon Poetry.\" Most interestingly, \nCarroll provides a gloss of the poem, in which he defines some of his \ninvented words differently than he would later in _Looking-Glass_.\n\nThe link below will take you to a page with a reproduction of the \nhand-lettered poem.\n\n\n\n\nWilliam Ansley" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "David DiGiacomo", "address": "david at slack.com" }, "date": "2002-10-25T00:20:22+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Optical connections", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"j e\" \n\nIn the book of the short sun, I've noticed one of those nested significances \nWolfe loves to employ to drive his themes. First, to establish some \nbackground, the technology of the Whorl is clearly photonic rather than \nelectronic." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The cards sound electronic to me." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "When Horn and his men are on Green, trying to find the last part needed to \nrepair a lander, the monitor tells them it's a wave guide coupler. A wave \nguide is what it sounds like - a way of directing a wave, the coupler would \nthen join together waves of different length or waves from different \nsources." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A waveguide is just a rectangular metal tube, and it is an electronic, not\nphotonic, device. (Although optical fibers also act as waveguides, they\nare not usually called that.)\n\nToo bad Horn did not have access to eBay:\n\nhttp://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1779221783" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "j e", "address": "lo_phan17 at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2002-10-26T13:31:12+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: optical connections", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I recently posed the idea that the Whorl technology was photonic rather than \nelectronic.\nActually I probably sounded very certain of it. All I have to go on is \nrecent reading on the subject. Scientic American ran a set of articles on \nthe subject in the Jan 2001 issue.\n\nDavid replied:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The cards sound electronic to me." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No question about that. What about data transmission in the Whorl...doesn't \nit sound optical? And possession by a god is literally through the eye." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "A waveguide is just a rectangular metal tube, and it is an electronic, not\nphotonic, device. (Although optical fibers also act as waveguides, they\nare not usually called that.)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I understood that waveguides (as the term is commonly used) worked for both \noptical and electronic systems. I'm not sure you're disputing the gist of my \npost, though." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Too bad Horn did not have access to eBay" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But then he'd be fighting his men for access; they'd be trying to hog \nbandwidth looking at porn sites.\n\nOwl" } ] } ] }