{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3553",
    "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": 3553,
    "subject": "Occam's Razor and Pas's Heads",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "2002-11-09T02:24:31+00:00",
    "last": "2002-11-15T20:03:19+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0211-2065@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Jeff Veyera",
        "address": "teflon93 at cox.net"
      },
      "date": "2002-11-09T02:24:31+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Occam's Razor and Pas's Heads",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "There is a simpler explanation for all of this---Wolfe simply needed a quick\nvisual way to alert longtime readers as to who the builder of the Whorl\nreally was.\n\n-----Original Message-----\nFrom: James Jordan [mailto:jbjordan4 at cox.net]\nSent: Friday, November 08, 2002 7:54 AM\nTo: urth at urth.net\nSubject: (urth) Pas's Two Heads"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "At 11:24 PM 11/7/2002, Roy wrote:\nSo, when Typhon decided to build the _Whorl_ (for whatever reason), he *did\nnot* plan to have himself scanned as a two-headed god. At some point before\nthe launch, events overtook him. He was forced to change his original plans\nand have himself scanned *after* he had been grafted to Piaton. (Why he\ndidn't have himself poured into a custom-made, look-alike chem body, like\nLoris, and Potto, and the others, I don't know.) But, so far as I know,\nTyphon never set foot in the _Whorl_. There was *no reason* for his\nscanned,\ndigitized personality to have been depicted as two-headed. Given Typhon's\nvanity, it doesn't make sense for it to have been done that way.\n\nThe entire pantheon of Pas and his family and friends is all the more a\ntravesty, some sort of sick joke, apparently. Yet the manteions in the\npre-fabricated cities were built before the human cargo was put aboard. The\nSacred Windows, the gods in Mainframe, all of that seems to have been\nplanned from the beginning. Did Typhon's original plan call for him to be\nscanned as his one-headed self (with a new body)? Did he have time to have\nthe Writings composed to reflect his two-headed godhead, create the whole\nmythology that permeates the _Whorl_? Why bother? If he wanted to play god,\nhe didn't need to be two-headed to do it, and from his egocentric\nviewpoint,\nit wouldn't have been desirable."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Maybe. Maybe not. Janus of Rome was two-headed, and thereby ruled the past\nand the future. Typhon may well have wanted a two-headed image for Pas, so\nthat he was visibly greater than other gods. Think also of the\ndouble-headed eagle of Russia, and similar images. We don't know that Pas's\ntwo heads looked like Typhon and Piaton. They may have both looked like\nTyphon. Of course, on the other hand, the reason Pas is not as bad as\nTyphon may be because the second head is Piaton's, and Piaton's nature has\nbecome highly influential in Pas. I don't think we have the information to\ndecide about this.\n\nNutria"
        },
        {
          "kind": "sig",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "-- "
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0211-2110@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Straight",
        "address": "straight at email.unc.edu"
      },
      "date": "2002-11-15T20:03:19+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) Occam's Razor and Pas's Heads",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0211-2065@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "On Fri, 8 Nov 2002, Jeff Veyera wrote:\nThere is a simpler explanation for all of this---Wolfe simply needed a quick\nvisual way to alert longtime readers as to who the builder of the Whorl\nreally was."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Exactly.  If Pas had only one head, we'd have spent the last 7-8 years\narguing about why Pas only had one head.  And Robert Borski would have a\n5000 word essay demonstrating that the \"Typhon\" of the Long Sun was not\nSeverian's Typhon but an alternate version from a past/future where\nSeverian wielded Occam's Razor instead of Terminus Est which he had used\nto forcibly remove Piaton's head yelling, \"There can only be One!\"\n\nAnd then Wolfe, despairing over our density, would have written five\nseperate scenes in Return to the Whorl in which Horn/Silk muses about how\nof course it would have made no sense for Typhon to create Pas in his\ntemporarily two-headed image.\n\n-Rostrum"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}