ALT.SF4M

  Amusements 4/15/00

   • j********o@***.com
     16/04/2000 00:00:000 UTC

     Finally saw Dark City: not bad at all. Indeed, rather reminiscent
     plot-wise

     of the Matrix. The Mummy was OK but undistinguished - maybe it would
     have been

     better in a movie theater.

     Picked up a collection of Gordon R. Dickson stories, "The Man From
     Earth" at a

     thrift store. Humanistic themes about the uniquenes of the human race
     and the

     indominability of the human spirit (thematically reminiscent of the
     Berserker

     stories) - no doubt distasteful to post-humanist sensibilities. I have
     to make

     an effort to hunt down more of his work - is he still alive/writing? I

     remember thinking highly of his Pilgrim, Staff, and Robe stories
     (wherein

     mankind is enslaved by giant, arrogant fuedal aliens). Reminds me of Joe

     Haldeman, whose written some very good stuff recently in the
     dear-departed SF

     Age (my refund check is in the mail!) I was disappointed, though, in his

     follow up stories to "Terraforming Earth." The first was a poignant tale
     of

     repeated generations of six clones on a moonbase, clones with the
     mission to

     restore, over centuries, an asteroid-smashed Earth. The sequential
     stories get

     weird and tedious, soiling the memory of the premiere.

     Gorno

       • j********o@***.com
         19/04/2000 00:00:000 UTC

         In the gratuitous waste of mental effort category, a few stray
         thoughts on Wuss

         Trek's Ferengi (forgive me if I've posted these before...). No
         society is

         predicated on a code of *bad* behaviour: it's inconceivable that one
         should be

         so. However reprehensible the norms of behavior, they are invariably

         rationalized by desireable outcomes: it's hardly necessary to tell
         anyone to

         never give a sucker an even break - social norms exist to moderate,
         channel,

         or justify individual goals, never merely to ennumerate them.
         Obviously, the

         Rules of Acquisition are just a dumb gag or a bit of anti-capitalism
         (I'll

         leave the anti-Semitic overtones that the Ferengi suggest for
         another day), but

         assuming we were interested in trying to sift some gold from the
         dross, what

         could rationalize such an absurd moral code? The obvious suggestion
         is perhaps

         the Ferengi are like Gypsies or carny folk: a people without a home,

         surrounded by hostile foreigners, developing a predatory lifestyle
         that

         perpetuates the hostility they receive. However, one would expect
         there to be

         a different code of behavior for outlanders than for members of the
         tribe, and

         the Ferengi don't seem to make such a distinction. What if the
         Ferengi are

         natural wusses: placid, communal, generous? What if they ventured
         out into

         space and encountered more typical, aggressive, rapacious species
         and found

         themselves constantly being taken advantage of by the unscrupulous -
         they might

         need to adopt an explicit code of bad behavior to compensate for
         their natural

         weaknesses! Indeed, when it comes down to it, they do seem to be
         pretty

         soft-hearted, for all their nominal ruthlessness.

         A related but contrary inquiry, assuming that they Ferengi are
         *naturally*

         greedy, is what ecological niche would produce such a natural
         inclination?

         (Setting aside my skepticism about this sort of presentient
         biological

         determinism because this is a strong case.) I'm thinking that
         they're nut or

         root eaters. Nuts and roots are the only (Earthly) forms of wild
         food that can

         be stored easily without technology, which would correspond to a
         selfish

         lifestyle. Grazing animals might be greedy, but not acquisitive -
         grass or

         fruit won't keep long enough to be worth hording or stealing.

         Generosity (in humans and others) may ironically arise from a
         predatory diet of

         perishable meat (particularly, of larger animals): if you can't eat
         a whole

         wildebeast, you might as well give it to a passing stranger (I leave
         someone

         else to try to fit chimpanzees into the model). In any case, as nuts
         can be

         stored for long periods, each nut given away is a nut you can't
         yourself eat

         later. This might tend to produce a more materialistic, less
         generous mindset

         in intelligent creatures arising from this mode of life. Admittedly,
         I've

         never seen squirrels fight over nuts, but perhaps the nuts on
         Ferenginar are

         bigger and rarer.

         Gorno