{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/454",
    "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": 454,
    "subject": "dog stars",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-03-29T11:23:01+00:00",
    "last": "1998-03-29T11:23:01+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0008-0680@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Damien Broderick",
        "address": "damien at ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au"
      },
      "date": "1998-03-29T11:23:01+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) dog stars",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "alga said:\n\n< Please, for the heathens among us, review the 14 stations of the cross.>\n\nEB gives `Cross, Stations of the':\n\nthe final events of the Passion of Christ\n\n1.  Jesus is condemned to death\n2.  he is made to bear his cross [I do hope there's not an ursine pun there]\n3. he falls the 1st time\n4.  he meets his mother\n5.  Simon of Cyrene is made to bear the cross\n6.  Veronica wipes his face\n7.  he falls the 2nd time\n8.  the women of Jerusalem weep over him\n9.  he falls the 3rd time\n10.  he is stripped of his garments\n11.  he is nailed to the cross\n12.  he dies on the cross\n13.  he is taken down from the cross\n14.  he is placed in the sepulchre\n\n[15.  40 days later he is taken away in the Great Sleigh]\n\nOne can readily derive perverse correspondences.  In the 6th day, for\nexample, C. meets Cim, who has done murder by striking Fishcatcher across\nthe face with an endieva wand.  \n\nSince posting my first message, I have read the full discussion in the\narchives, and my mind is reeling with the brilliance of the hermeneutic\nwork done so far.  While I had seen the animal allegories at work, the\nbird-like creature killed and eaten at the opening and its sacral double at\nthe close, I lacked the North American details to fill out the schema.\nWonderful to see it done (or at least begun so superbly).  \n\nmantis said:\n\n< Way back when (deep in the archives?), I was arguing that the\nworld of \"Tracking Song\" was Mars-like if not Mars: the lesser\ngravity, the two moons.  I also thought that the sky mirror was\nreally a sky mirror, put there in geostationary orbit by the space\nbeings to reflect more sunlight onto the apparently ice age-locked\nworld in order to warm the surface and melt the ice. [etc]  >\n\nAn orbiting solar mirror was my own first reading, but I'm still not\nconvinced.  If such a device were being used to focus sunlight and thus\nmelt an ice-locked world, wouldn't its virtual image of the sun be\n*brighter*, rather than resembling the sun `but dimmer'?  (The real sun,\nseen earlier, has not melted the snow so drastically.)  C. sees it `near\ndaylight', so is it always there at that latitude but masked by the\nbrighter daylight of the true sun, as the moon can be?  But then the\nadditional insolation would not be marked enough to have a significant effect.\n\nI suspect most of mantis's orbital dynamics objections are on the money,\nbut some of this might lose its force if the beings involved actually *are*\nmuch smaller than we are - are, indeed, almost as small as their ancestral\nstock.  BTW, the quite small asteroid Ida has a moon.  On the other hand, I\nsuppose the proximity of a planetary primary (whether Jovian or not depends\non the size of the satellite, no?) would disrupt any such subordinate\nmoons.  But again, these might be (probably are) orbiting craft of the\nSleighers.\n\nA final crude suggestion: might the cutthroat mark be the faint scar of a\nhead surgically connected to a different body?  More Moreau.  The\nambiguities of C.'s status.  His mediating role.  And so forth.\n\nDamien Broderick"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}