{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3672",
    "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": 3672,
    "subject": "blargh and rapid evolution",
    "messages": 2,
    "voices": 2,
    "first": "2002-12-13T14:09:35+00:00",
    "last": "2002-12-13T17:53:06+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0212-2414@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "maa32",
        "address": "maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu"
      },
      "date": "2002-12-13T14:09:35+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) blargh and rapid evolution",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I am not convinced that the interview is a valid criticism of Blue = Ushas.  I \ndo, however, want to make the claim that the secret of the inhumi is the \nequivalent of rapid evolution - very, very rapid one generation evolution, \nwhich is why I snagged on the term polyploidy - or, as I like to think of it, \ninstant speciation.  Chromosomes may doubled in one generation in plants when \na mutation like polyploidy occurs, and a new species is produced, sometimes \nwith twice the chromosomal content.  This means that, on a symbolic level, you \nmight represent something like that going on by, say, doubling the limbs \n(without giving your audience a dissertation on chromosomes that the \ninhabitants of the planet probably wouldn't know about).  This is different \nthat natural selection - very very different.  In one generation, \nhybridization creates new species.  NO TIME IS REQUIRED.  So we cannot make \nany claims as to how long it would take the species of the Blue to evolve - it \ncould be three generations - if the same kind of recombination (through \n\"canibal trees\" eating) is going on planetwide.  Here is one bit of evidence \nthat supports the idea that the narrator is traveling astrally through a white \nhole:\nin the crypt with Severian and Cillinia, Hide keeps talking about the eerie \nlight that radiates from the image of Silk in the corner - that light might \nstem from the astral trail that Silk has taken - through the sun and into the \npast - and doesn't the ship in Urth of the New Sun travel freely to the past, \nif it's there to block out the sun with its sails, as is generaly accepted, at \nthe long night of Apu Punchau?  And I thought there was some kind of \ndescription of this travel in which the ship goes through some kind of rift in \nspace, and Severian sees the gravid matter of the universe, or something.  \nWhatever the general consensus is, I've quite convinced myself.  \nMarc Aramini"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0212-2417@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Jerry Friedman",
        "address": "jerry_friedman at yahoo.com"
      },
      "date": "2002-12-13T17:53:06+00:00",
      "subject": "Re: (urth) blargh and rapid evolution",
      "in_reply_to": "<urth-v0212-2414@digest.urth.net>",
      "reply_link": "subject",
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "--- maa32 <maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu> wrote:\nI am not convinced that the interview is a valid criticism of Blue =\nUshas"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "...\n\nI'm not either, but I mentioned it as a strong (in my mind) criticism\nof the possibility that the _Whorl_ got back to Ushas using the white\nhole as a spacetime warp.  Could Typhon have planned that, and why?\n\nFor those who take author comments as valid at all."
        },
        {
          "kind": "sig",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Jerry Friedman"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}