Genetic Selection In Heinlein

From: "Oscagne" <Oscagne@ev1.net>
Subject: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting--"Genetic Selection in Heinlein" -- Dec. 4,6.
Date: Thursday, November 20, 2003 4:14 PM

The next RAH-AIM Readers Group chat will be "Genetic Selection in Heinlein," scheduled for December 4 and 6, 8pm and 4pm U.S. Central Time (respectively). Anyone wishing to join us for the first time can find out how by visiting http://heinleinsociety.org/readersgroup/index.html#Info

Kate Gladstone was kind enough to put together our lead-off this month:
-------------------
R.A.H.'s taboo-busting activities as a writer focused on a variety of areas. Many fans and critics have focused on his "crowding [or more than crowding] the taboos" in the area of sex - recent real-world developments in biological science and engineering may draw our attention to the ways he pushed the conceptual envelope in another and allied area: that of genetics (specifically - his portrayals of gene-selection, of one kind or another, as not only possible and routine but desirable under a wide range of circumstances: and not only - not even mostly - in the totalitarian type of society with which we generally associate such notions as "eugenics.")

In BEYOND THIS HORIZON, for instance, questions of "What shall we select for?" eerily prefigure some of the questions raised by parents and physicians today, at the bare beginning-stages of the "designer baby" era. And some characters in in HORIZON's better-baby-obsessed society - the infertile Martha, for instance, not only prefigure today's concern with infertility, but also may reflect genetics/fertility-related concerns in the author's own life. (Robert and Virginia never had children of their own, although they wanted them ... and although Robert, like Martha in HORIZON, expressed himself passionately and often about the need for people of "good genetic stock" - in whatever way(s) one might define that - to reproduce and pass on their genetic advantages. Did Martha or RAH ever feel any intellectual/moral/emotional conflicts over finding a certain course of action impossible for oneself yet urging it upon others? Or perhaps Robert urged this course upon others - through BEYOND and other works of his - precisely *because* he and Virginia found it impossible for themselves yet regarded it as necessary nevertheless?)

Questions of genetics, eugenics, "improving the breed," and the like (including questions of what makes genetic intervention good/justifiable or the opposite) permeate not only BEYOND but, notoriously, other words of RAH's, particularly GULF, METHUSELAH'S CHILDREN, TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE, and FRIDAY.

In each of those four novels as in BEYOND THIS HORIZON, Heinlein comes out to a fair extent as supporting the use of genetic technologies and/or selective breeding to improve the human gene-pool (or part of the human gene-pool: GULF's _Homo_novus_ organization and METHUSELAH's Howards, by and large, prefer to improve their own smarts or longevity while leaving the rest of us un-improved). Sometimes, though, we nevertheless see some ambiguity, some doubt, some admission that (whatever the palpable merits of "improving the breed") not everyone will feel quite happy with this.

HORIZON, for instance, gives us some sobering glimpses of the "Control Naturals" - people who have not benefited from genetic-selection work because, in some cases at least, the geneticists found no way to pull significant improvements from their parents' genomes ("There wasn't anything to select for in either of us," says Herbert, a Control Natural, in explaining why he and his Control Natural wife decided not to have children.) One wonders: do the very generous monetary stipends that the "Control Naturals" receive (welfare-payments, in effect, for those unable to compete on equal terms with the rest of the citizenry) really make up for a life of (one presumes) finding oneself almost perpetually outdone, out-thought, out-achieved, out-wooed, and - generally - out-everythinged by just about every- and anyone? (Do you remember ever getting picked last for a team at school or play - or barred from the game entirely because you'd only drag your playmates down? Now imagine that happening *every* *day* of your life - not only in sports on the schoolyard, but each and every day and minute and hour of your childhood, teenhood, and adulthood - in just about everything you did or tried to do. Would money - in whatever vast sums apparently provided to the Control Naturals by one of RAH's few successful welfare-state economies - really make up for it?

To me, BEYOND THIS HORIZON carries a strong flavor of the old _New_Yorker_ cartoon in which a psychiatrist tells a patient: "Sorry, I can't help you overcome your inferiority-feelings - because, actually, you _are_ inferior!" One wonders whether the psychotherapists of HORIZON - "semantic correctionists," they call themselves - had any better advice for the Control Naturals among their clients.)

Eugenics elsewhere in RAH works: GULF and METHUSELAH'S CHILDREN each show one segment of the human race separating itself from the rest (on genetic grounds - because of quicker, more capable brains or sturdier, longer-lived bodies), breeding for the traits that distinguish it (_Homo_novus_ encourages its members to have baby after baby - Kettle-Belly Baldwin praises a member who has borne a horde of "wonderful genius-plus kids" - and, similarly, the Howard Families provide financial encouragement for their members to reproduce with each other early and often). In both GULF and CHILDREN (for a time at least), the bearers of genetically enviable traits expect the rest of us, with our comparatively undesirable genes, to feel entirely happy with that arrangement. (In CHILDREN, at least, the Howards learn otherwise - the hard way. I suspect that some similarly bitter learning took place for the _Homo_novus_ group sometime between GULF and FRIDAY, resulting in the "self-styled supermen's" move from Earth to the planet Olympia.)

And - in both GULF and CHILDREN - one wonders what happened to members of the genetically gifted group who could not, for whatever reason, participate in the spread-your-genes/improve-the-breed endeavor.

If Kettle-Belly warmly praises the intellectually superior mother of "genius-plus kids," what words would he have had anent an equally intelligent woman (or man) unable despite all efforts to produce *any* kids? (Since the _Homo_novus_ orgainization gives top priority to increasing the numbers of _Homo_novus_, I wonder whether possibly Baldwin might simply not invite a known-infertile _Homo_novus_ [or _mulier_nova_] to join.)

If the Howards (like every other human group) included a few people who for some reason could not bear or beget children, one wonders whether they did not become bitter over the long years of seeing their fertile brethren (and sistren) regularly "ring the cash register" with birth after birth after birth. (And does the "cash register" ring for inmates of the Howard Sanctuary for Defectives, should they manage to reproduce with one another? I suspect not - did the Howards sterilize Sanctuary inmates, perhaps, or did they find some other way to avoid the possibility that Foundation funds would end up supporting the centuries-long-lived children of long-lived imbeciles?)

Even Heinlein fantasy (such as GLORY ROAD) and juvenile works (such as THE STAR BEAST) touch on gene-selection if only mildly (GLORY ROAD's Star comes from a genetically selected group of candidates for rulership - as does STAR BEAST's Lummox: something of a surprise in juvenile literature, given that (in USA culture, at least) fiction for children seldom if ever mentions genes, genetics, or notions of superior genes. Our culture taboos teaching kids about genetics even more stringently than it has ever tabooed teaching kids about sex: aside from works by RAH, in the general run of fictional (or even non-fictional) writing for children you will find fifty mentions of sex before you find even one mention of genes.)

What do you think about genetic selection and Heinlein's approach to the subject? Many RAH characters notoriously preached and/or practiced "eugenics" in some form (e.g., Lazarus Long in TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE argued for letting genetic "monsters" and "defectives" die at birth), but at least one RAH character (Waldo - the only one whose name has become an English word) certainly qualified as a "defective" because of his congenital medical condition, _myasthenia_gravis_. (Had Lazarus Long, MD, assisted at Waldo's mother's lying-in, we would presumably have gone short one RAH novel - because I can't imagine Lazarus desisting from helping the mother to stop and help spank into life a baby who obviously had something seriously wrong with him. Yet killing Waldo would have killed a potentially very high-achieving person indeed - besides, RAH went on record more than once as stating that the less-than-able-bodied could and should have useful, satisfying, and productive lives - how seriously, then, can we take his exhortations through Lazarus against exerting efforts to save the "unfit"? Did Lazarus (or similarly gung-ho "eugenicist" characters") represent the whole of RAH's views, or only one side of those views?

I await your answers, speculations, and cogitations on the topic.
---------------------------

Suggested reading for this chat: _Beyond This Horizon_, _Methusela's Children_, Time Enough for Love_, _Friday_, and "Gulf". And I'll see you all on Thursday Dec. 4 at 8 p.m.(Central) and Saturday Dec. 6 at 4 p.m. (Central).

--
Oscagne, High Priest of Skeptics and Cynics
wanna read a story?  http://users.ev1.net/~mcgrew/mss
or see my goofy website? 

http://users.ev1.net/~mcgrew/webpage/home.htm

From: "jeanette" <wolfj@webtv.net>
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chatmeeting--"Genetic Selection in Heinl...
Date: Friday, November 21, 2003 2:16 AM

Thank you for interesting comments on several of RAH's books.

I disagree with the suggestion that teaching children about genetics is a strong cultural taboo in the USA. Genetic selection in humans may be a subject that many avoid with children (and adults--it combines sex, religion and politics--the three forbidden topics), but genetics is not.

"Oh, the baby has her father's chin," may be the first introduction. Children's books talk about families and how members resemble each other. THE UGLY DUCKLING carries many messages including genetics. Children are fascinated by twins--identical and fraternal. Harry Potter includes mug-bloods and the red-headed Weesley family.

In my experience, people do not avoid talking with children about genetics.
Jeanette

From: "Kate Gladstone" <kate@global2000.net>
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting--"Genetic Selection in Heinl...
Date: Friday, November 21, 2003 9:33 AM

Thanks, Jeanette, for your comments! Jeanette notes:

> ...  Genetic selection in humans may be
> a subject that many avoid with children (and adults--it combines sex,
> religion and politics--the three forbidden topics), but genetics is not.
> 
> "Oh, the baby has her father's chin," may be the first introduction.
> Children's books talk about families and how members resemble each
> other.  THE UGLY DUCKLING carries many messages including genetics.
> Children are fascinated by twins--identical and fraternal.  Harry Potter
> includes mug-bloods and the red-headed Weesley family.
> 
> In my experience, people do not avoid talking with children about
> genetics.

I should have spoken (or written) more specifically - in my experience, people don't avoid general/overall references to genetic inheritance, but they DO avoid introducing children to the specifics of genes/chromosomes/dominant vs. recessive alleles, etc., sometimes seeing this (e.g.) as "too creepy to discuss with children" for reasons I have never understood.

-- 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
  Kate Gladstone - Handwriting Repair - kate@global2000.net  
        http://www.global2000.net/handwritingrepair
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

From: "David Wright" <dwrighsr@alltel.net>
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting--"Genetic Selection in Heinlein" -- Dec. 4,6.
Date: Friday, November 21, 2003 10:13 AM

"Oscagne" <Oscagne@ev1.net> wrote in message news:bpjav8$1od5jk$1@ID-124148.news.uni-berlin.de...

> The next RAH-AIM Readers Group chat will be "Genetic Selection in Heinlein,"
> scheduled for December 4 and 6, 8pm and 4pm U.S. Central Time
> (respectively).  Anyone wishing to join us for the first time can find out
> how by visiting
> http://heinleinsociety.org/Archives/ReadersGrp/index.html#Info .
>
> Kate Gladstone was kind enough to put together our lead-off this month:


(snip)

> generally associate such notions as "eugenics.")
>
> In BEYOND THIS HORIZON, for instance, questions of "What shall we
> select for?" eerily prefigure some of the questions raised by parents
> and physicians today, at the bare beginning-stages of the "designer
> baby" era. And some characters in in HORIZON's better-baby-obsessed
> society - the infertile Martha, for instance, not only prefigure
> today's concern with infertility, but also may reflect
> genetics/fertility-related concerns in the author's own life. (Robert
> and Virginia never had children of their own, although they wanted them

FYI. Robert was still married to Leslyn when _BTH_ was written. I do not know what their status was wrt to having or trying to have children.

> ... and although Robert, like Martha in HORIZON, expressed himself
> passionately and often about the need for people of "good genetic
> stock" - in whatever way(s) one might define that - to reproduce and
> pass on their genetic advantages. Did Martha or RAH ever feel any
> intellectual/moral/emotional conflicts over finding a certain course of
> action impossible for oneself yet urging it upon others? Or perhaps
> Robert urged this course upon others - through BEYOND and other works
> of his - precisely *because* he and Virginia found it impossible for
> themselves yet regarded it as necessary nevertheless?)
>
> Questions of genetics, eugenics, "improving the breed," and the like
> (including questions of what makes genetic intervention
> good/justifiable or the opposite) permeate not only BEYOND but,
> notoriously, other words of RAH's, particularly GULF, METHUSELAH'S
> CHILDREN, TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE, and FRIDAY.
>         In each of those four novels as in BEYOND THIS HORIZON, Heinlein
> comes out to a fair extent as supporting the use of genetic
> technologies and/or selective breeding to improve the human gene-pool
> (or part of the human gene-pool: GULF's _Homo_novus_ organization and
> METHUSELAH's Howards, by and large, prefer to improve their own smarts
> or longevity while leaving the rest of us un-improved). Sometimes,
> though, we nevertheless see some ambiguity, some doubt, some admission
> that (whatever the palpable merits of "improving the breed") not
> everyone will feel quite happy with this.
>
> HORIZON, for instance, gives us some sobering glimpses of the "Control
> Naturals" - people who have not benefited from genetic-selection work
> because, in some cases at least, the geneticists found no way to pull
> significant improvements from their parents' genomes ("There wasn't
> anything to select for in either of us," says Herbert, a Control
> Natural, in explaining why he and his Control Natural wife decided not
> to have children.) One wonders: do the very generous monetary stipends
> that the "Control Naturals" receive (welfare-payments, in effect, for
> those unable to compete on equal terms with the rest of the citizenry)
> really make up for a life of (one presumes) finding oneself almost
> perpetually outdone, out-thought, out-achieved, out-wooed, and -
> generally - out-everythinged by just about every- and anyone? (Do you
> remember ever getting picked last for a team at school or play - or
> barred from the game entirely because you'd only drag your playmates
> down? Now imagine that happening *every* *day* of your life - not only
> in sports on the schoolyard, but each and every day and minute and hour
> of your childhood, teenhood, and adulthood - in just about everything
> you did or tried to do. Would money - in whatever vast sums apparently
> provided to the Control Naturals by one of RAH's few successful
> welfare-state economies - really make up for it?
>          To me, BEYOND THIS HORIZON carries a strong flavor of the old
> _New_Yorker_ cartoon in which a psychiatrist tells a patient: "Sorry, I
> can't help you overcome your inferiority-feelings - because, actually,
> you  _are_ inferior!" One wonders whether the psychotherapists of
> HORIZON - "semantic correctionists," they call themselves - had any
> better advice for the Control Naturals among their clients.)

I don't recall any 'semantic correctionists' from _BTH_. There was a great deal said about 'Encyclopedic Synthesists', (or some such title) which Felix was frustated at becoming because he didn't have eidetic memory. (I obviously don't have eidetic memory either) :-)

>
> Eugenics elsewhere in RAH works: GULF and METHUSELAH'S CHILDREN each
> show one segment of the human race separating itself from the rest (on
> genetic grounds - because of quicker, more capable brains or sturdier,
> longer-lived bodies), breeding for the traits that distinguish it
> (_Homo_novus_ encourages its members to have baby after baby -
> Kettle-Belly Baldwin praises a member who has borne a horde of
> "wonderful genius-plus kids" - and, similarly, the Howard Families
> provide financial encouragement for their members to reproduce with
> each other early and often). In both GULF and CHILDREN (for a time at
> least), the bearers of genetically enviable traits expect the rest of
> us, with our comparatively undesirable genes, to feel entirely happy
> with that arrangement. (In CHILDREN, at least, the Howards learn
> otherwise - the hard way. I suspect that some similarly bitter learning
> took place for the _Homo_novus_ group sometime between GULF and FRIDAY,
> resulting in the "self-styled supermen's" move from Earth to the planet
> Olympia.)

While what you say here seems to be true wrt the Howards and Homo Novus, I recall the the main thrust of _BTH_ was not the separation of the group, but the attempt to include any and all 'good' characteristics into the entire gene-pool. There was a specific dialogue about this between Felix and Claude.

>
> And - in both GULF and CHILDREN - one wonders what happened to members
> of the genetically gifted group who could not, for whatever reason,
> participate in the spread-your-genes/improve-the-breed endeavor.
>         If Kettle-Belly warmly praises the intellectually superior
> mother of "genius-plus kids," what words would he have had anent an
> equally intelligent woman (or man) unable despite all efforts to
> produce *any* kids? (Since the _Homo_novus_ orgainization gives top
> priority to increasing the numbers of _Homo_novus_, I wonder whether
> possibly Baldwin might simply not invite a known-infertile _Homo_novus_
> [or _mulier_nova_] to join.)
>         If the Howards (like every other human group) included a few
> people who for some reason could not bear or beget children, one
> wonders whether they did not become bitter over the long years of
> seeing their fertile brethren (and sistren) regularly "ring the cash
> register" with birth after birth after birth. (And does the "cash
> register" ring for inmates of the Howard Sanctuary for Defectives,
> should they manage to reproduce with one another? I suspect not - did
> the Howards sterilize Sanctuary inmates, perhaps, or did they find some
> other way to avoid the possibility that Foundation funds would end up
> supporting the centuries-long-lived children of long-lived imbeciles?)
>
> Even Heinlein fantasy (such as GLORY ROAD) and juvenile works (such as
> THE STAR BEAST) touch on gene-selection if only mildly (GLORY ROAD's
> Star comes from a genetically selected group of candidates for
> rulership - as does STAR BEAST's Lummox: something of a surprise in
> juvenile literature, given that (in USA culture, at least) fiction for
> children seldom if ever mentions genes, genetics, or notions of
> superior genes. Our culture taboos teaching kids about genetics even
> more stringently than it has ever tabooed teaching kids about sex:
> aside from works by RAH, in the general run of fictional (or even
> non-fictional) writing for children you will find fifty mentions of sex
> before you find even one mention of genes.)
>
> What do you think about genetic selection and Heinlein's approach to
> the subject? Many RAH characters notoriously preached and/or practiced
> "eugenics" in some form (e.g., Lazarus Long in TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE
> argued for letting genetic "monsters" and "defectives" die at birth),
> but at least one RAH character (Waldo - the only one whose name has
> become an English word) certainly qualified as a "defective" because of
> his congenital medical condition, _myasthenia_gravis_. (Had Lazarus
> Long, MD, assisted at Waldo's mother's lying-in, we would presumably
> have gone short one RAH novel - because I can't imagine Lazarus
> desisting from helping the mother to stop and help spank into life a
> baby who obviously had something seriously wrong with him.

IIRC, the doctor who delivered him had some 'feeling' that Waldo was not quite 'right', but there was nothing of the obvious kind of 'monster' that Lazarus talked about for Joe and Estelle. Waldo's condition was not obvious at birth.

You might recall that Lazarus talked about his 'Doctor Death' period and that he had finally come to the conclusion that natural selection would take care of the culls.

> Yet killing
> Waldo would have killed a potentially very high-achieving person indeed
> - besides, RAH went on record more than once as stating that the
> less-than-able-bodied could and should have useful, satisfying, and
> productive lives - how seriously, then, can we take his exhortations
> through Lazarus against exerting efforts to save the "unfit"? Did
> Lazarus (or similarly gung-ho "eugenicist" characters") represent the
> whole of RAH's views, or only one side of those views?
>
> I await your answers, speculations, and cogitations on the topic

-- David Wright

From: "BPRAL22169" <bpral22169@aol.com>
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting--"Genetic Selection in Heinl...
Date: Friday, November 21, 2003 10:15 AM

Kate Gladstone

>hey DO avoid introducing children to the specifics of 
>genes/chromosomes/dominant vs. recessive alleles, etc., sometimes seeing 
>this (e.g.) as "too creepy to discuss with children" for reasons I have 
>never understood.

Too bad, really, as it's an excellent introduction to matrix algebra as well as statistical mechanics. Could it be that the real reason is the adults don't understand the math?

There is a certain amount of squeamishness around the subject of treating humans as biological engineering subjects. Perhaps the teaching of genetics catches fallout from that.

Bill

From: "Kate Gladstone" <kate@global2000.net>
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting--"Genetic Selection in Heinl...
Date: Friday, November 21, 2003 10:42 AM

Bill Patterson notes that genetics does a great job of introducing ...

> ... matrix algebra as well 
> as statistical mechanics.  Could it be that the real reason is the adults don't
> understand the math?

Quite possibly! (given some of the "I-don't-grok-math-and-I'm-PROUD-of-that!" folks I know)

> 
> There is a certain amount of squeamishness around  the subject of treating
> humans as biological engineering subjects.  Perhaps the teaching of genetics 
> catches fallout from that.

Also quite likely - I've visited at least one public library whose staff REFUSED to buy any genetics books for the children's/teen's department "because chromosomes and DNA are Nazi topics."

-- 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
  Kate Gladstone - Handwriting Repair - kate@global2000.net  
        http://www.global2000.net/handwritingrepair
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

From: "Kate Gladstone" <kate@global2000.net>
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting--"Genetic Selection in Heinlein" -- Dec. 4,6.
Date: Friday, November 21, 2003 10:38 AM

David Wright notes, and I thank him for the information, that ...

> ... Robert was still married to Leslyn when _BTH_ was written. I do not
> know what their status was wrt to having or trying to have children.

If anyone here knows, please speak up (now and/or during the chat)

> 

> 
> I don't recall any 'semantic correctionists' from _BTH_.

My error - HORIZON actually calls such specialists "corrective semanticians" in Chapter Six:

      "It's no use," Smith said. "We don't speak the same lingo."

       "I am afraid that is the trouble, really. I think perhaps you 
       should go to see a corrective semantician."


... and "psychiatric semanticians" in Chapter Fifteen:


        Hamilton knew that the loose stories of bygone days did not 
        constitute evidence of the first order, but some of it, after 
        examination by psychiatric semanticians, could be used as 
        evidence of the second order.

> While what you say here seems to be true wrt the Howards and Homo Novus, I
> recall the the main thrust of _BTH_ was not the separation of the group, but
> the attempt to include any and all 'good' characteristics into the entire
> gene-pool. There was a specific dialogue about this between Felix and
> Claude.
>

Yes, and I agree that I should have emphasized this - however, HORIZON does have the sub-plot of a separatist "master race" group that sees things differently.

And, yes,

> ... Lazarus talked about his 'Doctor Death' period and
> that he had finally come to the conclusion that natural selection would take
> care of the culls.

... though, even so, he doesn't seem to feel very happy about that ... after all, he professes his readiness to abort Llita's pregnancy if it seems likely to produce a "cull"/"monster"/what-have-you.

-- 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
  Kate Gladstone - Handwriting Repair - kate@global2000.net  
        http://www.global2000.net/handwritingrepair
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

From: "David Wright" <dwrighsr@alltel.net>
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting--"Genetic Selection in Heinlein" -- Dec. 4,6.
Date: Friday, November 21, 2003 10:54 AM

"Kate Gladstone" <kate@global2000.net> wrote in message news:kate-DF1025.10385621112003@syrcnyrdrs-03-ge0.nyroc.rr.com...

> David Wright notes, and I thank him for the information, that ...
>

(snip)

>
> ... though, even so, he doesn't seem to feel very happy about that ...
> after all, he professes his readiness to abort Llita's pregnancy if it
> seems likely to produce a "cull"/"monster"/what-have-you.
>

I don't think that he was 'happy' about the possibility, but felt that it might be necessary. He was trying to determine ahead of time as to the possible outcome, (after all, these were brother-sister in some sense of the word) and the possibility of a bad outcome might have been very high. These were ex-slaves whom he was trying to make independant and having a bad outcome, either dead at birth or live but in extemely poor shape would make that process very difficult.

-- 
David Wright

From: "David M. Silver" <ag.plusone@verizon.net>
Subject: Re: RAH-AIM Readers Group chat meeting--"Genetic Selection in Heinlein" -- Dec. 4,6.
Date: Friday, November 21, 2003 8:24 PM

In article <bpm95s$1oe0lu$1@ID-124148.news.uni-berlin.de>, "Oscagne" <Oscagne@ev1.net> wrote:

> I sent the announcement to the Heinlein Society members, to drum up some
> interest.  Here's one reply, from Joe McDermont (forwarded with his
> permission).
> 
> *Begin Forward*
> 
> I read your missive with interest and will try and make the chats.  Here is
> a letter I wrote Leon Kass, head of the President's bioethics commission,
> citing BEYOND THIS HORIZON:
> 
> 
> In "Chairman's Vision", published on the President's Bioethics Council
> website, you say:
> 
> "...the battle against death itself-as if it were just one more
> disease-could undermine the belief that it matters less how long one lives
> than how well."
> 
> 
>     I am vitally, if not immediately, interested in the progress of
> biomedical science. . . . [remainder snipped] . . .

It was about the time of this "bioethics commission" report, or reports of it seeped out, that Ginny Heinlein, in her morning IM chats with me -- I usually wake about 4 AM, and Ginny, on the other side of the continent, was usually sitting at her computer waiting for the "keeper" (24-hour nurse's aide) to bring her breakfast (so we chatted daily for whatever time it was it took for her breakfast to be made ready, and often afterwards), pointed out that she believed it likely that the current President was about to adopt that position.

Living in a retirement community, Ginny often expressed concern about illnesses of her neighbors, her remaining close everyday friends with whom she socialized, those conditions that, at their age, often resulted in their deaths (and sometimes to her anguish, their suicides before the final pain came -- many were, after all, retired officers in a profession of arms). Caleb Lanning wasn't the only one Ginny (and Robert) knew who took that way out.

I won't tell you exactly what she commented to me about that report of the "President's Bioethics Council" -- they were expressions she'd probably want kept private; but they were so highly unflattering and uncomplimentary of a mind that could take seriously or adopt Kass' position, that is shocked me that Ginny, a person of supposedly well-known conservative views, would express them. But it's not inconsistent with the so-styled "libertarian" viewpoint that Mr. McDermott goes on to express in his letter to Kass; neither is it inconsistent with Ginny's equally well-known position favoring that kind of viewpoint.

-- 
David M. Silver www.heinleinsociety.org
"The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!"
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA '29, Lt.(jg), USN, R'td, 1907-88

Here begins the Discussion

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Smn Jester: I'm the Yankee... *G*

DavidWrightSr: Should of figured that. It's very late in the UK

Smn Jester: Yeah, late for me too. Brain kept telling me the groupt ended at 8 pm. Then I saw CENTRAl and really hurried. I usually pass out about 9 pm eastern time...

DavidWrightSr: Well it's a long night. We usually don't get over until after 12:00

Smn Jester: Yeah, bummer... ANd for Saturnday, the wife and I are planning an outing.

DavidWrightSr: Well the archives will probably be ready by Sunday night. I am not as quick as I used to be getting them out.

DavidWrightSr: Got to make a pit stop. Be back shortly

Smn Jester: Tried caffene?

Smn Jester: Hope everything comes out all right...

DavidWrightSr: God! Punsters O:-)

AGplusone has entered the room.

Smn Jester: Silver adn Gold, Silver and Gold... Hiya! Call me Cornelius!

Sarah Hoyt has entered the room.

Smn Jester: *licking pick axe*

AGplusone: Wadda mean I don't usually work?

Sarah Hoyt: It worked

Smn Jester: What worked?

Sarah Hoyt: Your invites don't usually work.

AGplusone: Hi, Simon, Sarah, David lurking?

Smn Jester: He's on a potty break...

AGplusone: We start in 20 minutes?

Smn Jester: Too much coffee..

Smn Jester: It is by caffeine alone that I set my mind in motion...

DavidWrightSr: I'm back. Greetings

DavidWrightSr: Hi Sarah

Smn Jester: The lip attain a stain...

AGplusone: Madly refreshing on Beyond This Horizon .... need to with FUTL coming up.

Smn Jester: The mind attains speed...

Sarah Hoyt: I might be irregularly present, as I'm surrounded by kids. (There are two of them. I'm surrounded.)

AGplusone: Set the cats on them, Sarah.

Sarah Hoyt: Hi everyone.

AGplusone: Cats will win.

Sarah Hoyt: They've trained the cats.

AGplusone: Everytime

Smn Jester: I have one. He has a dog, a TV and a video game. I think I'm safe.

Sarah Hoyt: Cats like the kids better than they like me. Robert is singing Frank Sinatra songs, which I think is against the law for everyone under 50, right?

AGplusone: no ... under 70, unless Italian

Smn Jester: I'm only 34. I'm a law breaker...

Smn Jester: And scottish...

Sarah Hoyt: Um... say no more. If you're also male, I might elope wiht you. (And then what would the kids and the husband say?)

Sarah Hoyt: Not to mention the cats.

Smn Jester: Same thing my wife would say? "Thank goodness!"

Smn Jester: I'll being one cat.

Sarah Hoyt: Well... there is that.

Sarah Hoyt: I threw books at kids. Much better now.

Smn Jester: Know what a scot wears under his kilt? *waggling eyebrows*

Smn Jester: Boots....

Sarah Hoyt: Ahhh. Oh. Um...

Smn Jester: *VEG*

Sarah Hoyt: I thought why there were no infertility problems among the Howard families. Can we discuss this now? Or do I have to wait?

Smn Jester: Goat head.

Smn Jester: Um, 'go ahead'...

Sarah Hoyt: Because you had to "prove" first, before you married. So, infertile Howards, actually wouldn't get married.

Sarah Hoyt: Don't know if that's bad or better.

Sarah Hoyt: And goat head to you too, buddy. How scottish of you, somehow.

AGplusone: Plainly the reason for Maureen's mother's giving her the couch.

Sarah Hoyt: ;-)

Smn Jester: Scotland; where the mena are men and the sheep are nervous...

Sarah Hoyt: Yes.

AGplusone: That was after the clearnances. Before then it was the cattle that were nervous.

Smn Jester: KNow why scottish men wear kilts? Sound of a zipper would warn the sheep...

AGplusone: One reason why the breeds of Scottish cattle look so strange.

Sarah Hoyt: Of coufse, the resentment of a howerd never able to marry because she's sterile would have been great fodder for an angst story, if Heinlein had gone for that stuff.

Smn Jester: Puddin?

AGplusone: clearances .... I know how to spell it.

Sarah Hoyt: David, this is dangerous territory. Our scottish friend reacted very badly when we told him the Scottish scientists cloned a sheep because they were short a date.

AGplusone: Maureen Johnson

AGplusone: Owww

Smn Jester: Bwahaha! Good one...

Smn Jester: I've been to Culloden Moor... Know more about the Clearances than just what is in that Outlander book...

AGplusone: I keep trying to tell everyone that if I go back seven generations, I'm Scots too.

Sarah Hoyt: My spelling will be weird. I'm on a remote link and don't see it until I press enter and refresh.

AGplusone: Never read it.

Sarah Hoyt: David, if we go back seven generations everyone is Scots. My Marques ancestors spent two centuries lost in the wilds of Scottland.

Smn Jester: If you talk to my Dad, if the scots go back seven generations, we're the Lost Tribes.

Smn Jester: My Dad's a quack though...

AGplusone: four generations back: Gibbon<---Gibson or MacGib<---sept of Campbell

Sarah Hoyt: I think they were lost in the fog. Sub-branch of the Bourbons. Apparently allied themselves/intermarried with the Calhouns (sp?) which I understand is not a good thing.

Smn Jester: Campbell? *hackles raised*

AGplusone: McDonald, eh?

Smn Jester: Nope, just not fond of Campbells...

Smn Jester: Well, maybe the chicken soup...

AGplusone: check the edge on your butterknife ...

AGplusone: Ever read George MacDonald Fraser?

Sarah Hoyt: They have butter knifves in Scottland?

Smn Jester: Yeah, they're what everyone else would call daggers...

AGplusone: Comes from stealing all the lowland silver. Wha' we do wi' this thing, Gordie?

Smn Jester: *thinking of Crocodile Dundee* Knife? Tha's no ah knife!

AGplusone: Spread butter on our hagis.

Sarah Hoyt: NO ONE should spread butter on anyone's hagis unless htey're legally married (I'm feeling moralistic today)

Sarah Hoyt: Also, strange. This happens when I've been working all day.

Smn Jester: Work all day ona drink of rum...

AGplusone: Ah, what we do to each other in the privacy of our bedroom is beyond the pervue of the law, Sarah. The inimy finally ruled it so ...

Sarah Hoyt: And rightly too.

AGplusone: We are due to start at the top of the hour, right?

Sarah Hoyt: Sideways to Heinlein, but why do people assume plural marriage is inferior to serial monogamy. Not that I engage in either, but I find it intelectually disonest to claim such a thing.

Smn Jester: Yeah, but what if it's in the garage, or on head stones, or mountain parks? *looking innocent*

Sarah Hoyt: I've never done anything on headstones. And you didn't see me either.

Smn Jester: Plural marriage? Thats a question I've been asking ever since the Mass Supreme Courrt had its say.

AGplusone: What people?

Sarah Hoyt: Idiots who write letters to the paper.

Sarah Hoyt: Mostly Mrs. Grundy, I presume.

Smn Jester: Ahem... *shoving letter to editor under mouse pad*

AGplusone: I'd think in Colorado they're really writing to show their minister how upstanding they are.

Sarah Hoyt: And this is probably true. Although there aren't as many of them as you'd assume.

Sarah Hoyt: Okay -- the meeting is open, I assume.

AGplusone: Yep, altho we'll let Joe or Kate take over when they arrive .... tonight's Heinlein and Genetics ....

Smn Jester: Genetics... Is being redhead recessive?

AGplusone: who wants to start?

Sarah Hoyt: So, how do we deal with the ideas of genetic superiority in Heinlin's work. Do we assume they're not necessarilly superiority? Do we dismiss them as marks of the time.

Smn Jester: Superiority? Like what?

AGplusone: Not as far as I can tell. Know an Irish girl named Benson, married a Mexican named Jimenez. All the kids are redheads, really redheads.

Sarah Hoyt: Well, breathing for redheads, clearly...

Sarah Hoyt: breeding.

Sarah Hoyt: Sometimes I get an accent in typing.

AGplusone: What does Monroe Alpha think?

Smn Jester: I think redheads are great. *married to one*

AGplusone: Er, my mother was dark auburn. Her mother was red. Both could be PITAs when they wanted to be.

Sarah Hoyt: Seriously -- I think that there is an implied superiority in how long the Howards lived. though Heinlein never makes any mention of any other sort of superiority.

Smn Jester: Amongst the Howards, you mean, right?

AGplusone: His point was simply they had time to plan long term I think.

DavidWrightSr: "The foundation should have bred for brains, not long life" or words to that effect.

DavidWrightSr: quoting LL

Sarah Hoyt: And Libby's origin with his parents' rejection of the second american revolution and all, seems to argue some were definitely not "superior"

AGplusone: Obviously the successful ones bred a lot, and the less successful ones were bred to less.

Smn Jester: LL was VERY successful...

AGplusone: So Howard superiority over time was simply Darwinism extended a long time.

Sarah Hoyt: I have to tell you I liked the idea of breeding royal families like horses.

AGplusone: And reinforced by lots of breedings.

Smn Jester: Yeah, the Queen sure looks like a Clydesdale...

Sarah Hoyt: On the Queen, quite agreed.

AGplusone: But Monroe Alpha, and Hamilton Felix might disagree. Monroe has been brainwashed to believe his fate is sealed by his genetics, and Felix thinks he's a failure because what the geneticists were

AGplusone: trying to do didn't come out right.

DavidWrightSr: We might get a surge of new arrivals at 9:00. That's the actual scheduled time, but don't stop on that account. 8-)O:-):-D

Sarah Hoyt: WeDavid Sr. -- um...

Sarah Hoyt: I might have to leave around then, anyway.

Sarah Hoyt: To feed the menfok.

Smn Jester: How do I get the pointy red devil icon? I havn't used to prog in ages...

AGplusone: You might breed hemophilia ... by accident. Like Vicky.

Sarah Hoyt: I don't remember how to do any of the icons.

DavidWrightSr: The Smileys?

Sarah Hoyt: Yes, but Vicky unwittingly brought about the end of monarchy in most countries in the world.

AGplusone: >:-)

Sarah Hoyt: Of course, perhaps also, unwittingley the rise of communism.

Sarah Hoyt: Think about this too much and you'll stay awake at night.

Sarah Hoyt: Point being, genetics count.

BPRAL22169 has entered the room.

AGplusone: Hi, Bill.

BPRAL22169: Howdy

Sarah Hoyt: Not in any stupid way -- I mean, "my genes are superior to your genes" because we're all mongrels... objectively.

Sarah Hoyt: Hi Bill.

AGplusone: Sarah's arguing genetics were the cause of the rise of communism.

BPRAL22169: I keep forgetting that it is this early -- how do people manage who work until 5?

Sarah Hoyt: But as we become more and more able to distinguish the genes each person carries, we need to have a "ethics plan" on how to deal with it.

AGplusone: Actually, I think we arrived early. they went back to 6 PM, our time.

Smn Jester: Do they really? I was told that the offspring of two geniuses would probably have everage IQ kids. Was told there is priciple involved. Forgot the name of it.

BPRAL22169: I think Gregor Mendel did do his primary work in the 1830's, but I don't think it was rediscovered until the 1880's.

Sarah Hoyt: I work at night.

DavidWrightSr: We are not actually scheduled to start until an hour from now.

Sarah Hoyt: Ah, and whoever did that lied to you.

Smn Jester: I work until 3:30 pm...

Sarah Hoyt: At least here at home.

Sarah Hoyt: Both my husband and I high IQs, and Robert is embarrassing us by running out of gifted programs by being pushed upwards.

Sarah Hoyt: When they can't handle his mind.

BPRAL22169: You can always be the exception taht proves the rule, Sarah.

Sarah Hoyt: And Eric has just been tested as "profoundly gifted."

Sarah Hoyt: So, we're bucking the rules.

BPRAL22169: And, then again, wouldn't you expect anyone named after RAH to do so, hmmm?

AGplusone: If you clone a genetic type, say Laz Long, how do you know they'll always be Lazuli and Loreli coming out.

BPRAL22169: My father tested in the 140's

Sarah Hoyt: True, but I grew up in a village. Intelligence doth run in families. As do a lot of other things.

Sarah Hoyt: Okay, Bill, it's probably the name.

Sarah Hoyt: But Eric was the name we came up with in the delivery room because our "little girl" had a penis.

Smn Jester: I'm working up my courage to try for Mensa...

BPRAL22169: I think the "average" kid of two bright parents has to do more with the kids running in terror, for cover.

Smn Jester: Ewww... Penis? Genetic mutation?

Sarah Hoyt: You know, Mensa just hosts meetings where people tell stupid jokes and drink beer.

Sarah Hoyt: No. He's a boy.

Smn Jester: Yeah, sounds great, doesn't it!? *G*

Smn Jester: Boy? Thought you said you had a girl?

Sarah Hoyt: They told us that he was a girl. Up to delivery. Pink everything. The therapy...

Smn Jester: I'm not really an idiot; I just play one on TV.

Smn Jester: *VEG*

Sarah Hoyt: Depends on the chapter. Charlotte, NC had great parties. The local chapter is wall to wall religious people.

Smn Jester: So, you had to put your little girl in therapy?

Sarah Hoyt: Eventually. Oh, Lord, I hope he doesn't decide he's a girl at 30.

Smn Jester: Hey, maybe it's in his genetics...

Smn Jester: If you've read the newsgroups, the whole idea of sexuality being genetic is a fascinating subject to me right now.

Sarah Hoyt: Again -- are we going to have to make moral judgements, sometimes, on who should have what genes?

AGplusone: I'm thinking about the bartender named Hubert in the early part of BTH. He and his wife want it "better" for their children. Both control naturals; but the charts say their kids can never been more than marginally better than they

Smn Jester: Is it moral or practical? The good of the many outweighs the needs of the few.

AGplusone: are. Would you want children then?

Sarah Hoyt: Heinlein -- as I read him , and this is an important caveat -- seemed to say it was okay to select against diseases and for longevity, but not for intelligence, etc.

AGplusone: Why?

DavidWrightSr: How do you figure that?

AGplusone: And where? Expressly does he say that?

Sarah Hoyt: Because the characters that have the most long running eugenics experiment -- the Howards -- do indeed only select for longevity, health and such.

Smn Jester: I've read thigs saying that the genes for intelligence have been found closely tied to the genes for mental disorders.

AGplusone: But that's simply an accident of a character named Howard who left $

Sarah Hoyt: Oh -- also, he says that stupidity is the only capital crime, which seems to imply Darwin will take care of that.

AGplusone: E.g., average intelligence over long life results in the supreme intellects planning well over long life, and actually developing a more intelligent race ... the cullings helping a lot.

Sarah Hoyt: Simon -- or is that , like the saying about genius and madness -- a way of consoling the ones who don't cut it?

AGplusone: Long life results in more running to predicted form.

Sarah Hoyt: David -- perhaps I'm getting old, but I'm starting to value long life over intelligence, too. For one, we all are twerps at 20.

AGplusone: Bars accidents in which the dumb survive by chance.

Smn Jester: Sarah... Good point. This Society of Mediocrity could certainly use that idea.

AGplusone: And allows intelligence to grow to be wisdom.

BPRAL22169: Actually, a very high percentage of the really bright people I've met have been healthy and emotionally stabler than what I take to be the overall average

Sarah Hoyt: Christopher Marlowe coming to mind right there -- as in, he might have been better than Shakespeare, but he died at 29 in a stupid bar accident. Of course, reproduction didn't enter into it at all in that case.

AGplusone: Marlowe was stupid enough to pick fights (in bars) (or with people who would send someone into a bar to kill him).

AGplusone: A flaw of youth.

Smn Jester: Bill... Yeah, but what I was told, by a Shrink, was that if you look, the 'great' minds like poets and writers have a vein of depression and madness.

Sarah Hoyt: Bill -- actually, I think that might be an artifact of modern life, which, by removing the need to survive minute to minute seems to depress people without interior resources to keep them amused.

Smn Jester: Keats was a great poet, and dwelt on death all the time.

BPRAL22169 has left the room.

AGplusone: Hamilton Felix's observation about the number of frowns :: happy faces.

Sarah Hoyt: Simon -- Poets/great minds -- speaking as a recovering poet, what do they have to do with each other.

Smn Jester: Sarah... Creativity then.

AGplusone: Starts the novel off .... "All of them should have been very happy . . . "

BPRAL22169 has entered the room.

Sarah Hoyt: Oh, good, Bill. It wasn't something I said.

BPRAL22169: Thanks for the invite. The AOL service in Santa Cruz bites.

Sarah Hoyt: Um... Poetry is often no more than an overdeveloped verban ability.

Sarah Hoyt: verbal.

Sarah Hoyt: As for Keats, I think that had more to do with the spirit of the age. They had just started living long enough to regard death as sad.

Smn Jester: No wonder I'm no good at it then...

Sarah Hoyt: So, like teenagers who just discovered they're mortal, they obsessed on it.

AGplusone: Which is what Monroe Alpha does.

Sarah Hoyt: Yes.

Smn Jester: Which story was Monroe Alpha from again?

DavidWrightSr: Beyond This Horizon

BPRAL22169: One of the key things about RAH is that he was born into that age still dominated by Romantic attitudes -- and we arent

Smn Jester: I was born well after RAH. I'm fairly Romantic...

Sarah Hoyt: We don't understand romantic in the same vein.

Smn Jester: Oh?

BPRAL22169: Do you wax elegaic about daffodils and clouds in your copious free time?

AGplusone: Monroe Alpha was planned to be bred to bring back the mathematical genius of an ancestor and avoid the craziness, the paronia. Yet M-Alpha was worried about being a paronoid, so much so that he seems developing it.

BPRAL22169: Actually, I think that WAS M-A's manifestation of paranoia.

AGplusone: He feels straitjacketed.

BPRAL22169: the self-proving statement.

AGplusone: yep

Sarah Hoyt: Also, because life was too easy/safe. Although the thing I remember the most from that novel was the dueling.

AGplusone: So he's obsessed with something he cannot control.

Sarah Hoyt: Being able to challenge certain people to duels would greatly improve my mental health.

Smn Jester: I don't have much free time, but lots of mental free time while I work. I about mundane stuff like that quite often.

AGplusone: No one had to work; the Social Credit idea we will find in FUTL.

BPRAL22169: Have to do something with all those wolf genes -- have to do something with Gene Wolfe, too... but that's another story.

AGplusone: Seemed to be a good way to cull out the asocial.

AGplusone: To me . . .

AGplusone: while they were still too young to breed much.

Sarah Hoyt: Yes. I'd probably get killed too, being naturally uncoordinated. Which WOULD definitely improve my mental health. And there , you see, Simon, that's romantic.

AGplusone: Anyone ever take BTH apart and see what tracks from Rostand's Cyrano?

Sarah Hoyt: I don't do literary analysis unless someone is paying.

AGplusone: Thing was: in my mind -- how do you developing a dueling culture when the time is peaceful? Cyrano lived during a period of Sixty Year Wars.

AGplusone: Everyone was a soldier home on leave throwing his weight around.

Smn Jester: Cowboys....

BPRAL22169 has left the room.

Smn Jester: Western culture would not be a dueling culture?

AGplusone: There are no wars in BTH, except the home grown dueling, and the revolutionary plot.

AGplusone: Don't know ...

AGplusone: take away war and what do you get ... rampant capitalism, dueling out of boredom?

Smn Jester: Maybe a colonial culture would develop a dueling culture?

AGplusone: Football ... rollerball, and on?

Sarah Hoyt: An individualist -- true individualism -- could develop into dueling fairly easily.

OscagneTX has entered the room.

OscagneTX: howdy

Sarah Hoyt: Culture.

Sarah Hoyt: Not an individualist. Though this might be a Freudian slip.

OscagneTX: Bacteria.

Sarah Hoyt: Hi.

Smn Jester: Can you buy those at Fredericks of Hollywood?

OscagneTX: Oh, is this not word-association?

Sarah Hoyt: A culture of individualis bacteria.

Sarah Hoyt: Um....

AGplusone: We were wondering about culture ... how would a culture that breeds for the "best life" you can have, develop dueling? Is life so cheaply held by the perfect?

OscagneTX: %^)

Sarah Hoyt: Yes, Simon. They look like fish.

AGplusone: Or were the medicos that good?

OscagneTX: Easy, David. It's artificial survival of the fittest.

BPRAL22169 has entered the room.

OscagneTX: If you have perfect health care you have to have some culling mechanism.

Sarah Hoyt: WSell, historically speaking, life was cheapest when it was short. Hence, Marlowe and the tavern brawl.

AGplusone: I thought so. A way to cull out the stupid, terminally stupid ones that always must fight.

Smn Jester: Artificial? Maybe since they have no predator, they have become their own.

OscagneTX: GMTA

Sarah Hoyt: Yes, and that makes sense from the top. But would it have developed?

AGplusone: Me, I'd put on a brassard, until I decided to murder someone for a serious reason.

OscagneTX has left the room.

Sarah Hoyt: I have this theory that the longer we live, the more protective of life we become.

Sarah Hoyt: So, if they do come up with a near-immortality process, streets will be padded.

OscagneTX has entered the room.

Smn Jester: What if you decided to not follow the rules? Not wear a brassard AND carry a gun?

AGplusone: Prolly true. Pointy headed kids don't believe in death until it comes to visit.

OscagneTX: I think I'm going to have this problem all night. I don't know why. Someone else will have to be responsible for the log.

DavidWrightSr: I've got it Os.

AGplusone: [that was possibility number two, but you'd have to hide it]

OscagneTX: Thanks, DW.

Smn Jester: I've got the conversation from the beginning if you want it...

OscagneTX: outstanding.

AGplusone: Easy thing would be to egg on Hagar the Terrible to take care of your enemies.

AGplusone: After all, they are breeding perfects. Someone would breed a perfect Machivelli.

AGplusone: For his political skills.

OscagneTX has left the room.

AGplusone: Bill, are you back?

OscagneTX has entered the room.

AGplusone: What were the original titles of Beyond This Horizon?

OscagneTX: Wasn't that... Mordan Claude?

AGplusone: possibly ...

OscagneTX: I'm asking now, in case someone knows the magic words or something...

Sarah Hoyt: BRB -- Abel and Cain.

OscagneTX: I keep getting disconnected from the chat room, but not from AIM itself. WTH? Is there a time-out thing?

AGplusone: One original title was the passage at the beginning, "All of them should have been very happy ...."

OscagneTX: Or maybe I need to update?

AGplusone: I don't know Joe.

BPRAL22169 has left the room.

AGplusone: But there were darker titles rejected. Here, we have a well-bred utopia, and everyone's unhappy ... for one reason or another.

OscagneTX has left the room.

Sarah Hoyt: back.

Smn Jester: Front...

OscagneTX has entered the room.

Sarah Hoyt: In a well bred utopia it is my guess everyone would be unhappy. Look at history. Any material improvement in human life, brings about more human-inflicted misery -- suicides, homicies, crime.

BPRAL22169 has entered the room.

Sarah Hoyt: I'm not front today. Someone else is.

BPRAL22169: Let's see if this does any better -- I let the Autofix run and it didn't actually destroy anything this time.

Smn Jester: hehhehe...

OscagneTX: brb, trying to upgrade/update.

OscagneTX has left the room.

AGplusone: Was asking if you remember the original titles of BTH, Bill?

BPRAL22169: I dont recall alternative working titles for BTH. Let me look it up.

Sarah Hoyt: I'm curious too. never heard this.

AGplusone: We in the notes I mailed back to Bill today. Should have copied them all.

AGplusone: were

AGplusone: [he's up to the end of 41 ... ]

OscagneTX has entered the room.

AGplusone: All downhill from here <g>

OscagneTX: upgraded. Maybe I'll stay in, now.

AGplusone: I hope so.

BPRAL22169: OK -- I had read this before and just forgotten. "Problem Child" was one. "False Dawn" another.

BPRAL22169: (though that might have been an alternate title for chapter 1)

BPRAL22169: I think the problem child referred to was Hamilton Felix.

AGplusone: Exactly! "False" dawn. A perfect world that to 98 out of 106 people was unsatisfying.

AGplusone: But Monroe has his problems too.

Sarah Hoyt: Oh. Oh. false Dawn.

AGplusone: so does everyone it seems

Sarah Hoyt: I remember those ...

Sarah Hoyt: Well, yeah.

BPRAL22169: I think the third title proposal was actually a chapter heading, since he actually used "Rich Man, Poor Man..."

Sarah Hoyt: brb -- Return of Abel and Cain.

BPRAL22169: The first page was originally titled "'Utopia' Means 'Nowhere'" and aren't we glad he chose another working title!

AGplusone: So Felix is on one side, and Monroe on the other. Felix is "what me worry" . . . and just lives.

Merfilly27 has entered the room.

OscagneTX: He had trouble with titles, though, didn't he? Didn't they always get changed by the editors?

DavidWrightSr: Anyone in the 518 area code. Kate Gladstone needs help 518/482-6763 ...

OscagneTX: Howdy, Steph.

AGplusone: Well, the real dawn is beyond this horizon.

Merfilly27: hi

AGplusone: Hi, Stephanie.

AGplusone: Some is his point that genetic manipulation a false dawn?

Sarah Hoyt: Okay -- ALMOST all titles get changed by the editor.

Sarah Hoyt: It has nothing to do with their being good or bad.

AGplusone: so is ... not "some"

BPRAL22169: AGplusone: So Felix is on one side, and Monroe on the other. Felix is "what me worry" . . . and just lives.

AGplusone: But there's the ennui they all seem to have.

Sarah Hoyt: It's merely a measure of the editor's enthusiasm. If they really like the book, they cnge the title. It has more to do with "pissing on it" to mark territory.

BPRAL22169: I don't think so -- he's severely damaged.

AGplusone: Who, Felix?

AGplusone: He's disappointed clearly. He can't be what he wants to be, but copes.

OscagneTX: My wife will call. She's a Mac person.

BPRAL22169: Yeah, he pisses away his talent -- he's a classical case of adolescent depression.

LV Poker Player has entered the room.

BPRAL22169: Of course, so is Monroe-Alpha.

Sarah Hoyt: Well, I'd say those titles also give us a pretty good idea of what ws in RAH's mind.

AGplusone: And "Herbert the bartender" is a classic case of mature depression, the control natural who cannot breed with his wife and have any hope of every having offspring who are "genetically" more advanced?

Sarah Hoyt: One of the things I like in BTH is the games/books. Gaming hasn't developed to this point yet/now. Wonder if it will. To where it's a narrative, needing a writer to narrate it. [Whistful Sarah]

AGplusone: Everyone seems to be in angst against their 'great expectations'

LV Poker Player: Kate is having trouble getting into chat and posted the following on afh: HELP! I cannot access the Heinlein Readers Group chatroom!

Sarah Hoyt: I never can get in, unless/until invited.

OscagneTX: My wife is on the phone with Kate right now.

OscagneTX: She's helping.

LV Poker Player: good

AGplusone: Tell her to forget about using iChat and download AIM and use it. iChat doesn't mesh for some reason for her.

Merfilly27: i miscalculated the time

OscagneTX: yup. That's the advice.

Merfilly27: so I'm late

AGplusone: Actually, you're on time, Filly. We just kicked off early.

Merfilly27: ahh

AGplusone: What did you think about 'genetics' and Heinlein?

Merfilly27: I think he correctly foresaw that it would be a prime branch of science

OscagneTX: Kate's going to be downloading AIM, and logging on. Someone who knows her screenname should look for her to invite... she rang off before we could get it.

AGplusone: Sarah: 'dueling' is just another form of games, I think ...

AGplusone: if you don't have to root hog or die to live, you play games . . .

AGplusone: ennui ... funny that in Farnham's Freehold, Joseph makes his killing inventing old games. The slave owners were bored, I'd say.

Smn Jester: Bored slave owners? I thought that is what the slaves were for...

LV Poker Player: Could be, one of the ways they fought boredom was through "curiosities" I think the term was

AGplusone: The, what was he, Sidonean, with the long hairy ears, in the beginning of Citizen of the Galaxy, also easily provoked to duel.

AGplusone: The FFVs in antebellum Virginia also dueled more than a bit.

OscagneTX: I think that was a case similar to a "Boy Named Sue".

AGplusone: and Hamilton is named for someone killed in a duel

OscagneTX: If you have long pointy funny-looking ears, you learn to fight early and dirty.

AGplusone: Think Monroe is named by accident?

Merfilly27: he has no accidental namings in his books

Merfilly27: brb

OscagneTX: Monroe Alpha? Who're Beta, etc.

AGplusone: Monroe a Jeffersonian Democrat, Hamilton a political opponent?

AGplusone: They're pitted as opposites ...

DavidWrightSr: Hello?

OscagneTX: Howdy.

AGplusone: ::::: waving :::::

Merfilly27: Almost back

n1yqh a has entered the room.

OscagneTX: Still helping Kate.

Merfilly27: gotta put dinner out for the man

Sarah Hoyt: Sorry, making dinner and dealing with homicidal juvenile delinquents.

Sarah Hoyt: They wonder why I put the LL saying that begins with "Delusions are functional" outside their rooms.

AGplusone: That's a name I haven't seen in a bit! Hi, 'n1qh a'

AGplusone: can't even type it straight. Lack of practice.

n1yqh a: hi... it's been a while since I've benn to one of these...

Reilloc has entered the room.

Merfilly27: indeed it has

Merfilly27: and I am present now

Merfilly27: chicken fettucine has been served

AGplusone: Welcome .... again.

Smn Jester: ANd I'm outta here... Have fun all..

AGplusone: Take care simon

OscagneTX: 'night

Merfilly27: nite

Smn Jester has left the room.

AGplusone: Okay ... genetics ... is Beyond this Horizon exhausted?

Merfilly27: Genetics, or at least natural selection, play a big part in several books of RAH's

Merfilly27: which would allow one to infer that he felt it was an important science

LV Poker Player: A rather extreme example is Orphans Of the Sky, where any abnormal babies go into the Converter

Merfilly27: yes

Merfilly27: he mentions, in MC and other Howard books, the 'culls'

Sarah Hoyt: Oh. Ew. had forgotten that.

AGplusone: Always wondered why they didn't eat them. Maybe the "engineers" did?

Merfilly27: in TSBTS, they say that some branches were rooted out entirely for not holding to the longlife breeding ability

BPRAL22169: The technology they were using was stock breeding technique. Inbreed to reinforce, cull to clean the genome.

Merfilly27: the conversation about the genius primitves that takes place in 'TEFL?'

DavidWrightSr: The advantage of breeding for long life. You don't have to remove the culls. Old age does it for you

Merfilly27: because they were bred from the high tech scientists of the first colony ship lost in the stars

LanaiHoward has entered the room.

K8Gladst1 has entered the room.

LanaiHoward: ah. much better

n1yqh a: In TSBTS, they were "rooted out" by being excluded from the Howard Families, not by any....more drastic measures...

OscagneTX: TadAA!

OscagneTX: Welcome, Kate.

Merfilly27: welcome HOward

OscagneTX: Welcome, Howard.

Merfilly27: They go in depth on the breeding of slaves in FF

K8Gladst1: Hello - computer-problems forbade me to join in time - what have I missed?

OscagneTX: chit chat mostly, Kate. Preliminary stuff.

K8Gladst1: I now use AIM as my chat-program, so please add me to your buddy-lists therein.

Merfilly27: but later, by TEFL, RAH was actively mentioning gentice manipulation, not just breeding for desired traits

AGplusone: Not much. Want a log?

Merfilly27: is it the yule type?

Merfilly27: :-)

K8Gladst1: Yes, I'd gladly accept a log of What Has Gone Before.

K8Gladst1: Re genetics and such - the new book (FUTL) has some tangential mentions proleptically reminiscent of BEYOND THIS HORIZON.

n1yqh a: Even in TEFL, was it genetic *manipulation* or was it more of "picking pairs of parents carefully" (i.e. Ishtar picks which pair makes kids, not Ishtar picks which genes the kids get), wasn't it?

Merfilly27: 23 parents to Minerva, strictly in genome pairs

Merfilly27: that was the part I was remembering

K8Gladst1: In TEFL, Ishtar assembled Minerva's human body from 23 pairs of chromosomes.

n1yqh a: okay, good point - memory would be a good thing...<grin>

DavidWrightSr: Merfilly27: 23 parents to Minerva, strictly in genome pairs. Like Friday too

LanaiHoward: so it was a selection of chromosomes rather than the finer granularity of genetic manipulation

K8Gladst1: So Ishtar DID pick the genes in that case ... similarly re FRIDAY and its eponym's genes.

Merfilly27: yes

K8Gladst1: Okay, then chromosomic manipulation.

AGplusone: Okay, helpful log sent.

LV Poker Player: Kate, have you gotten any email from me over the last month or so?

K8Gladst1: Where do I see that helpful log, David?

K8Gladst1: In e-mail?

LanaiHoward: And RAH had so much less to work with than we do. All the fuss about the Human Genome Project obscures...

OscagneTX: For minerva, minerva picked the gene pairs, but for everyone else, I got the impression that Ishtar manipulated the available gametes.

LanaiHoward: that, at best, it's a dictionary of nouns and verbs,with no adjectives or adverbs.

n1yqh a: On a side note - interesting that RAH implied ability to manipulate chromosones but not genes within the chromosones (i.e. 23 parents, not several hundred). Perhaps that was far enough ahead for then without dealing with finer stuf

Merfilly27: the thing is, when TEFL was written, we did not have any genes mapped yet, I think

K8Gladst1: Well, David's log has arrived, so please give me a few minutes to read it.

Merfilly27:

Merfilly27: :-)

LanaiHoward: Even now, while we may know the gene sequence for a protein, we don't know how its expression is called. We think that's in what used to be called "junk DNA"

BPRAL22169: He may have been reluctant to talk about sub-chromosomal stuff because there still wasn't any way to get to nanomanipulation at that point. I think Drexler's book wasn't to come out for another ten years.

n1yqh a: to some extent, that's true -- but on the other hand, we know that the promoters are in the same general region of the chromosone, and there's plenty of "junk DNA" that's still "damndifweknow" kind of stuff

Merfilly27: and yet we're already pretending to understand retro RNA virusing .... scary

jilyd has entered the room.

OscagneTX: howdy.

Merfilly27: hi Dee

n1yqh a: "understand" may be a bit strong... <grin>

Merfilly27: yeah

LanaiHoward: Hmmm....probably too far afield, but I tend to think of immunochemical or even viral manipulation at that level rather than nanomachines...

jilyd: Thanks for the invite David, I had lost my shortcut when a HD failed.

LanaiHoward: although if there's a Howard Secret, it very well may be in the p53 telomere genes.

DavidWrightSr: Pozhalsta. De nada

Merfilly27: didya ever send it off?

jilyd: Me. Steph? yes.

BPRAL22169: Well, yeah -- but, pragmatically speaking, what's the difference between a virus (or a prion) and a nanomachine?

K8Gladst1: THANKS to Dave for the log! I feel sad to have missed so much of value!

jilyd: With pecans and grits. :-)

OscagneTX: Tell me, please, that Howard Secret is _not_ men's lingerie... %^)

AGplusone: Hi, Dee ....

jilyd: Hi young Dave.

BPRAL22169: Would that men's lingerie be for . . . howard's end?

K8Gladst1: And I *don't* know that RAH opposed breeding for intelligence, as someone said a number of minutes ago ... didn't he speak rather highly of intelligence, more than once?

LV Poker Player: I assume jilyd is Dee from afh?

jcgsmtop1 has entered the room.

jilyd: Yes, LV, it's me.

jcgsmtop1: Hi, everyone - Joanne from Chicago here

jilyd: Hello, Joan. Welcome.

OscagneTX: howdy, Joanne.

jilyd: Joanne. Sorry, bad fingers.

jcgsmtop1: Bad fingers ... tsk!

RMLWJ1 has entered the room.

Merfilly27: did not mean to imply such if it was me...Lazarus said specifically he wished they had

K8Gladst1: Hello, Joanne! Joanne and all - what RAH genetics references do you like most ... or least?

RMLWJ1: Good evening. I hope all of you had a good Thanksgiving.

LV Poker Player: Lazarus at one point mentions that the Howards perhaps should have bred for intelligence instead of longevity

OscagneTX: while we're introducing... nlyqh... I don't recongize your screen-name.

LanaiHoward: oof re Howard Families secret. As I understand the telomere, it affects the length of the chromosome and be "trimmable" by a nanomachine...a mechanical intervention...

K8Gladst1: Yes - does RAH have any examples of people (outside BEYOND THIS HORIZON and GULF) *in* *fact* breeding for intelligence?

OscagneTX: and RMLWJL?

n1yqh a: Probably because I haven't been reading/posting to AFH for a few years... Mike, from Massachusetts

LanaiHoward: the difference between thrombolysis and (mixing terms a little) atherotomy

RMLWJ1: << Leon Jester. In Roanoke, VA

OscagneTX: howdy, Mike.

BPRAL22169: Howard, I think it works the other way -- every replication it gets trimmed by one telomere, and when the telomeres are gone, the replication stops.

K8Gladst1: Hello, Mike! And hello, Leon!

Merfilly27: I remember the screenname, never knew the name, Mike

OscagneTX: Howdy, Leon.

LanaiHoward: (looks for telomere crazy glue)

RMLWJ1: Thanks for the invite, David.

jilyd: MIke and Leon--Welcome!

BPRAL22169: Maybe the Howards don't lose the last telomere and there's a section of junk code that re-reads it a certain number of times more than usual.

OscagneTX: Just out of curiosity, was anybody here drawn by my global email to the Heinlein Society?

LV Poker Player: Licensing of babies is mentioned in I Will Fear No Evil. Qualifications for a license are vague at best, but intelligence of the parents is probably a factor

K8Gladst1: Re the church in BEYOND THIS HORIZON (that forbids members to engage in the gene-selection program or programs) - does anything think that, probably, over the years that church thereby "bred out" of itself those members who'd ...

OscagneTX: That's probably not the only factor, though, because Eunice's _body_ was licensed for 3 kids.

Merfilly27: ability of said parent to rear a child seem to be a factor too

n1yqh a: If anybody manages to invent a good telomere crazy glue, there's a few cell biologists in the next wing over from my lab who would really like to wine and dine you...<grin>

BPRAL22169: I don't know, Kate -- that society has a lot of uses for Control Naturals.

K8Gladst1: ... have had most to gain from gene-selection (and who knew it) because they'd probably leave the church or at least seriously break its rules?

LanaiHoward: Interesting to think of the perhaps vital role of the Control Natural in preserving herd immunity

K8Gladst1: Yes, the BEYOND THIS HORIZON people had their uses for Control Naturals ... but we do get the distinct impression that the society considers them useful-but-second-class citizens. People who resent this status (and who can ...

n1yqh a: Speaking of violating the Hayflick limit -- presumably they figured that out for the chunk of chicken heart (in MC, Miz....somethingorother... that they took with them)

DavidWrightSr: Hawkins

K8Gladst1: ... genetically better their offspring) probably choose to have better offspring: those (and perhaps ONLY those) who cannot better their offspring ...

OscagneTX: I don't think I got the point of control naturals. They were used for benchmarking?

K8Gladst1: (e.g., Hubert & his wife) would not have that impetus to leave the church or to leave the Control Natural pool.

AGplusone: Think it more likely that they were the lifeboats, which is the same as benchmarking in a way.

BPRAL22169: I think there is some exception at the cellular level -- all the cell strains used for cancer (and other)research are all cloned from a single stock -- some female in new Jersey, IIRC, 35 years ago.

K8Gladst1: "Benchmarking" well describes one big reason that the society subsidized Control Naturals.

LV Poker Player: Kate, have you gotten email from me over the last month or so?

RMLWJ1: I'd say a little bit of both, myself.

LanaiHoward: Osc, imagine a world where malaria has been eliminated. Then assume BTH gets rid of the sickling trait....and malaria recurs.

K8Gladst1: LVPP, I've had some serious e-mail problems which for the past month have prevented me from seeing most of my e-mails.

K8Gladst1: But I can take a few minutes and see if I can force any of them to become viewable ...

jilyd: I have not read BTH in just about forever, it was my "least favorite RAH."

OscagneTX: But, if it was eliminated, it wasn't through vaccines, it was through genetic manipulation.

LanaiHoward: HeLa strain in NJ -- Helene(?) Lacks. But there are other lines.

LV Poker Player: Suspected something like that. Are you getting email now?

BPRAL22169: I think anything that preserves variability is a net adaptive benefit.

OscagneTX: If it's eliminated it's because everybody has the positive sickling trait, or something to that effect.

jilyd has left the room.

jilyd has entered the room.

AGplusone: WB, Miss Dee

LanaiHoward: now, I'll admit the protection of the recessive sickle trait is less important now that we have fairly effective drugs -- but that's one hypothetical for a Control Neutral

jilyd: Thanks.

OscagneTX: Basically, _everyone_ is genetically immune from malaria, so even if it did recurr (in animals or something) nobody would catch it, as long as that manipulation was still being retained in the gene selection.

n1yqh a: So basically if *everybody* picks "trait X" for their offspring, and years later it turns out that "trait not-X" has some essential (or even useful) aspects, the control naturals provide...

jilyd: I think I loost my last sentence--the discussion is reminding me of people who collect seeds of heirloom species.

K8Gladst1: OK, LVPP, I've seen those e-mails now and have replied to the one most needing an answer.

n1yqh a: ... a pool of variability from which to reintroduce the useful "not-x" so as to avoid it being purged from the gene pool entirely?

AGplusone: I'm doubtful whether all this genetic manipulation going on in Heinlein is more than neutral and to create a story situation.

LV Poker Player: Capital!

OscagneTX: hrm. but.... if a culture has the knowledge to alter DNA on an atomic level (which they very well might) and they KNOW what the codings mean...

K8Gladst1: And I agree that we can also see the Control Naturals as an "heirloom species/gene bank" endeavor - just in case, someday, we need the "pool of variability" they represent (e.g., what if we eliminated the gene for skin-moles, but...

OscagneTX: Then they could manufacture the needed trait chemically, no?

K8Gladst1: ... then that gene turned out to have a link with superlative talent in some specialized field?

AGplusone: ISTM that it would be nice to be able to do these things, but, the point is, to create situations. After all, what's the point in clonning Laz and Lau, other than to give a bored old man something to play with?

n1yqh a: I agree with AGplusone -- the genetic manipulation seems to me to be more of a plot device rather than an exploration of the societal implications of manipulation per se...

K8Gladst1: Sure, they could make the needed gene/trait chemically, but the BEYOND THIS HORIZON society (as I recall) has a strong commitment to avoiding alteration of genes: they'll select for good naturally-occurring ones, but no more ...

BPRAL22169: Well, yeah -- Heinlein almost always presents us with genetic manijpulation as a solved problem and looks at specific cases that are interesting

Merfilly27: the twins who weren't?

K8Gladst1: ... e.g., their medical-ethics code prohibits destruction of zygotes (abortion and such), quite unlike the code(s) followed by Friday's creators some decades later.

OscagneTX: ie... if sequence atcgatcgatcggcta.etc. eliminates warts. And we do that. And then find out we need that sequence to make... proper vocal cords (whatever)...

AGplusone: Exactly.

BPRAL22169: Kate, that's experience -- remmeber that society is the result of at least two genetics wars.

K8Gladst1: Good example!

OscagneTX: We can in the lab make a dna strain including atcgatcgatcggcta.etc. and clone it into an egg.

LanaiHoward: sad in a way -- so much used to be useful "as given". I was in an awful focus group last night,and eventually was thrown out because I kept asking how the marketingbabble worked.

K8Gladst1: Yes - the BEYOND folks try hard to keep clear of tampering in certain ways: e.g., I suspect they'd oppose stem-cell research/use ...

K8Gladst1: because of their experience in the gene-wars, with the super-soldier breeders/etc.

K8Gladst1: Thrown out because you ask how stuff worked? Doesn't that leave the marketers with an unrepresentative sample of the population?

BPRAL22169: I wouldn't care to speculate. I first read about genetics in 1960 or so -- none of the stuff routinely used in genetics labs then was even on the horizon.

n1yqh a: stem-cell work doesn't have to involve genetic manipulation, dunno why they'd object to it...

AGplusone: Whereas Friday is exactly that ... super soldier ... but I agree with Bill. I don't think the issue had even arisen.

BPRAL22169: I mean "now"

OscagneTX: Booo! Bill. All "of the stuff routinely used in genetics labs then was" Beyond This Horizon.

OscagneTX: Boooo!

BPRAL22169: I kind of douabt that.

K8Gladst1: Stem-cell work (on embryonic stem-cells) involves destroying embryos, which the BEYONDers wouldn't do. And FRIDAY, while a "super-soldier," does *not* exactly match the BEYONDER super-grunts ...

BPRAL22169: BTH used "handwavium" technology.

AGplusone: But remember, the original title, or at least lead-off to Cp. 1 is "False Dawn"

K8Gladst1: ... for one thing, they didn't need to eat more than twice a week or so.

BPRAL22169: Kate, none of us really "need" to eat more than once a week.

BPRAL22169: Or so.

K8Gladst1: As to gene-tech in BEYOND: remember, 'way back when he wrote, we still hadn't accurately counted our own chromosomes!

AGplusone: Not a panacea, still have to deal with "peoples' characters"

LanaiHoward: Well, yes. But this company is trying very hard to redefine the Internet in terms of their business model -- and is actually progressing

RMLWJ1: not really, blood sugars would hit the sock tops after about 24 hours or so.

LV Poker Player: I think we would lose combat effectiveness after a day or two. Those supersoldiers apparently could keep right on fighting on those occasional meals.

K8Gladst1: Okay ... but can an army, fighting and marching, "fuel" its soldiers with a once-a-week meal? If so, the Army Quartermasters really could save a bundle if they knew about this! ;-)

BPRAL22169: No, you'd simply flip over to your alternate metabolic pathway. We have more than one metabolic pathway.

RMLWJ1: I'd doubt it.

RMLWJ1: ketoacidosis doesn't make for a good fighter.

BPRAL22169: Ketosis is not ketoacidosis.

n1yqh a: Lose peak combat effectiveness, yes, but still could be somewhat effective...

RMLWJ1: could be effective, but marginally so.

LanaiHoward: I'm blanking on the name--will dig it up if need be--but there's a new FDA approved drug for various sleep disorders -- that also is showing evidence of being a sleep substitute, apparently with no abuse potential

K8Gladst1: I've heard from armed-forces veterans that "armchair tacticians" playing war-games sometimes fall into notions (not provable by experience) that a sufficiently brave or determined soldier could fight/march/work effectively for ...

BPRAL22169: ketosis is a normal state of a metabolic pathway that breaks down fats; ketoacidosis is an abnormal state of the carbohydrate metabolic pathway.

LV Poker Player: In combat, "marginally effective" all too often equates to "dead"

K8Gladst1: ... a solid week on, say, just a sandwich per week. Would any vets here care to comment?

Merfilly27: part of meals for soldiers is morale though

OscagneTX: It was special food, though, Kate.

LanaiHoward: Can't remember if it's 1 or 3 MREs, non cold weather, have about 4000 calories

OscagneTX: They died without their own food.

n1yqh a: worth noting that ketoacidosis is a pathologically *high* level of ketones, which means (in effect) too *much* fuel in the blood (in the form of ketones), not likely to be a problem in (semi-)starvation.

RMLWJ1: Put it this way. Eventually, the adrenaline runs out of stuff to burn. Then you're shafted.

Merfilly27: 3

OscagneTX: Probably hopped up with protiens and sugars or something.

K8Gladst1: The description of BEYONDs' super-soldier hordes as surviving on occasional "fuel" rather than food seems to suggest (special rations or no) a severe departure from the human norm.

OscagneTX: <--- handwaving because only 1 semester of Bio so far.

Merfilly27: because one meets the WHO standard fro minimum calories per day

LanaiHoward: Kate, wouldn't it be a security vulnerability if they are not affected by chocolate?

AGplusone: LIke the pegasus from "Jerry Was a Man," another genetic manipulation story, that would have to run on sugar.

OscagneTX: I mean, hell... Niven or someone hypothesizes CHON food. Nothing but the elements. Maybe their rations were on that order.

RMLWJ1: The WHO standards are by and large laughable, and not held in much regard by those of us in the medical professions.

K8Gladst1: Not only did the BEYOND horde-soldiers die without their own type of food, they also died WITH a diet of that special food (if "fed on captured rations," they would still waste away while desperately pleasing for ...

Merfilly27: Oh, I know, just mentioning the guideline used to establish MREs

LanaiHoward: No hemoglobin, then, in Niven's world?

K8Gladst1: something (of unknown-to-us nature) called _vepratoga_. I have no idea (does anyone?) whether asking for _vepratoga_ most nearly resembles ...

LV Poker Player: Kate, if you replied, it has not shown up in my mailbox.

RMLWJ1: You can survive on WHO caloric standards. March, fight effectively, no.

AGplusone: Whereas Jerry was perfectly content to run on sigrets and poker winnings like some lawyers I know.

OscagneTX: Dunno, Howard. It's been several years since I read it. They were making food out of petroleum.

Reilloc: You know lawyers who win at poker?

K8Gladst1: /1/ asking for vitamins/medical tratment/maintenance or /2/ asking for assisted suicide or /3/ asking for extreme unction.

BPRAL22169: to nlqqh a: ketones are byproducts, not fuel.

K8Gladst1: I *married* a lawyer who wins at poker.

Merfilly27: I always lost weigth in the field, despite hoarding MREs and shelf life milk

AGplusone: A few.

Reilloc: Lucky in cards...

BPRAL22169: I'm sorry, but "adrenaline runs out of stuff to burn?" Where did you people learn biochemistry?

RMLWJ1: Not surprising.

AGplusone: They only play with other lawyers, of course.

aggirlj has entered the room.

Merfilly27: Hey Hane

n1yqh a: byproducts normally, but in semi-starvation an excellent way to turn fatty acids into fuel that the brain can use...

Sarah Hoyt: JANE!

jilyd: Hi, Jane.

Merfilly27: Jane

aggirlj: Hi all!

K8Gladst1: My husband grew up with (and believes) the less-common variant of the saying that "Reilloc" quotes: "Lucjy in cards, lucky in love." Don't ask me why.

Merfilly27: geeze can't type

K8Gladst1: Hello, Jane!

Reilloc: He just likes j's

aggirlj: Hi kate

OscagneTX: Howdy, Han-ay. (Jane)

K8Gladst1: No, I cannot type either.

RMLWJ1: In my case, from getting shot at on occasion.

aggirlj: David lurking?

LanaiHoward: cat interrupt...need to run.

LanaiHoward has left the room.

AGplusone: occasionally.

K8Gladst1: No, Andrew has no marked preference for j over any other letter. My own preference therefor, if real, extends only to typos.

BPRAL22169: Sorry I'm so far behind -- my interface isn't scrolling automatically.

Merfilly27: I hate that

Merfilly27: aol does it sometimes

BPRAL22169: Seems to be working now.

K8Gladst1: "Reilloc," surely you have something of substance to add to tonight's discussion?

Reilloc: Yes.

AGplusone: Propose we take a cat watering break for five, Joe?

K8Gladst1: Let's hear it!

jilyd: Question--is anyone else getting some remarks "highlighted"?

georule1861 has entered the room.

aggirlj: Hi Geo.

K8Gladst1: What does "highlighting" look like?

OscagneTX: Bill, it only does that to me if I highlight something in the window (as to c/p), then when I get it back to the bottom it autoscrolls again.

Reilloc: It's the people who have preferences set to smart quotes

K8Gladst1: Hello, "georule"!

georule1861: Yo.

jilyd: Hi, geo. "Perfect" timing.

OscagneTX: Howdy, Geo.

Merfilly27: I've got my biggest responsibility on my lap

aggirlj: brb

jilyd: Put it in a grey block. I called it highlighting for lack of a better term.

BPRAL22169: I did highlight something some time ago, not connected with this occurrence.

K8Gladst1: No, I haven't gotten that - but then, I haven't set "smart quotes."

BPRAL22169: Ha! Geo -- conscience!

LV Poker Player: Kate, if you sent me email, it has not shown up here

OscagneTX: <--- Admirably refrains from vulgarly commenting on Stephanie's valuable lap.

georule1861: Bad memory tickled.

Merfilly27: lol

K8Gladst1: Back to genes and such - does any of RAH's statements (fictional or otherwise) about genes/genetics unnerve or anger you? Conversely, do you agree with any of those statements?

Merfilly27: he fell asleep while up here, and don't have the heart to move him

RMLWJ1: Happens occasionally. Mine tend to do that for some reason.

jilyd: No, LN, that can't be it, because it is inconsistent. Kate is highlighted sometimes, for instance, and sometimes not.

K8Gladst1: LVPP, I sent that e-mail quite recently - probably within the past half-hour or so. Let me know if it continues to fail to appear.

BPRAL22169: I've gottent he highlighting the other sare discussing -- I assumed my installation ran out of separate colors for the people in the room.

jilyd: Not impoiortant, just curious why.

K8Gladst1: Different people should show up in different colors?

georule1861: I've thot RAH ambivalent and mixed messagy on the subject.

jilyd: The names, kate, not the posts.

OscagneTX: yes, kate.

LV Poker Player: I certainly do not agree with all statements made by all characters. Just because a character says something though, does not mean Heinlein thought that way

OscagneTX: the posts do, too, sometimes.

aggirlj: b

K8Gladst1: I often get the same impression (about RAH, well, having more than one view on the matter).

OscagneTX: Depends on the poster's setting.

Merfilly27: Judging by TEFL, he felt research needed to be done...but did not want to truly deal with the possible ramifications, maybe

OscagneTX: F'rinstance RMLWJI has his background grey, so everytime he posts the lines go grey until someone with a non-default white posts.

georule1861: There seems to be the scientists respect for "improving the race" through science --and uh. . .the poker players respect for the importance of luck.

jilyd: For me, the show according to the font the poster chose, but the name color is assigned by my AIM, according tot he order they came on.

Sarah Hoyt: Smart people often have to have more than one view on a matter. To have only one would be too..... wrong.

georule1861: Look at the Howard Foundation and Lazarus Long.

Merfilly27: though he made a point of mentioning the brain deadness of the clones kept on tap

K8Gladst1: Okay - so which fictional statements in RAH works probably do (or probably don't) reflect his views? In non-fiction (EXPANDED UNIVERSE) he refers us to a book on genetics/eugenics called THE NEXT MILLION YEARS, whose approach ...

Merfilly27: later in the Future History stories

K8Gladst1: ... ties in closely with the "Man is a wild animal" view in BEYOND and elsewhere in RAH's fiction.

BPRAL22169: (A very depressing book, btw)

jilyd: Joe, you just answered my original question.

K8Gladst1: I found NEXT MILLION YEARS not so much depressing as sobering.

hunebear1 has entered the room.

OscagneTX: Star Trek Enterprise just did a live-brain-clone-for-parts episode. I kept wanting to let them know they should have deactivated the brain before it gained awareness.

K8Gladst1: Hello, "hunebear"!

georule1861: The greatest accomplishment of the Foundation is a second generation "mutant". Talk about mixed messages!

hunebear1: hi all

OscagneTX: howdy.

Reilloc: I think you're right, Dee. It's the bold fonts that do it most

K8Gladst1: If you could have any genetic trait (currently existing within the human gene-pool), which one would you choose?

Sarah Hoyt: The best laid plans of foundations and men.

Merfilly27: perhaps trying to show that luck is a fundemental factor, but science can try and guide to those favorable things?

hunebear1 has left the room.

OscagneTX: Of course, ST seems to think that memories go with DNA, so there's that.

K8Gladst1: Where does ST suggest that memories go with DNA?

Sarah Hoyt: Gaaaaah ST scince.

Merfilly27: Star Trek?

OscagneTX: Not Starship Troopers. Star Trek.

Reilloc: I want the winning lottery number gene

Merfilly27: as in the recent enterprise ep?

OscagneTX: yes, Steph.

K8Gladst1: Oh - STAR TREK - I thought "ST" referred to STARSHIP TROOPERS.

Merfilly27: I beleive in gentic memory...to a point

Merfilly27: not what they used

jilyd: LN, thereis a Niven story about a character sho is the product of a program of breeding for luck.

Sarah Hoyt: No. Star Trek. Heinlein didn't do that kind of science.

BPRAL22169: RAH's has taken positions on all sides of the genetic memory question.

georule1861: Did RAH ever mix Psi with racial selection? He did a goodly bit of Psi stuff early on.

K8Gladst1: Merfilly, would you regard genetic memory as explaining, say, ideas of reincarnation? I ask because ...

Sarah Hoyt: Not that children were born with a certain memory of the person they were cloned from. Because that's just silly.

BPRAL22169: Geo -- remember the telepaths in Methuselah's Children?

LV Poker Player: The Ringworld Engineers, I think was the one where humanity was being bred for a lucky gene

Sarah Hoyt: K8 -- definitely not.

georule1861: Ah. Bingo. Thanks, Bill.

Sarah Hoyt: Though I'm not Merfilly.

K8Gladst1: ... people claiming to remember past incarnations often-as-not remember lives in which they died childless: which doesn't fit a genetic-memory explanation.

Merfilly27: I don't tend to mix reincarnation with gentic memories

Reilloc: People remember other lives?

BPRAL22169: (I thought about ITGO, too - but that wasn't definable as "racial.")

OscagneTX: Since we're a bit off track, and it's been an official hour and five minutes, how about we take a break?

Sarah Hoyt: Unless there is some sort of predestination involved.

jilyd: Right, LV, or at least one of the earlier Ringweorld books. I think I rememebr they accomplished it by adding a lottery factor to the baby licenses.

K8Gladst1: The telepaths in METHUSELAH'S CHILDREN, as I recall, all had something-or-other wrong with them ... but telepaths in other Heinlein works don't tend to, as I recall.

jilyd: People claim to remember former lives under hypnosis.

georule1861: The MC psi's wasn't the suggestion that the psi was sort of. . uh, anti-darwinian almost? Other serious defects went along with?

Merfilly27: genetic memories tend to be this innate fear of sber toothed tigers, or respect for fire, etc

Merfilly27: survival linked issues

BPRAL22169: Yeah. When it came to things psychic, Heinlein took positions on all sides of all questions.

K8Gladst1: I'd welcome a break, if others agree. Shall we resume in five or ten minutes?

RMLWJ1: works for me.

Merfilly27: reincarnates' memories tend to lie in specific, personal veins

BPRAL22169: Reconvene at 7:15?

Sarah Hoyt: Yes, please.

Merfilly27: yes

Reilloc: reincarnates memories?

jilyd: Sure, Kate.

OscagneTX: It's your show tonight, Kate. Want to call it?

georule1861: 'kay.

aggirlj: me too

AGplusone: Never quite sure whether Lost Legacy wasn't a g3enetics story as well.

Merfilly27: Kate, sorry haven't been free to call you on that subject

K8Gladst1: OK - at 15 minutes after the hour, we'll resume. I won't state here and now my views on reincarnation, other than to say that some reported claims thereof strike me as much less persuasive than others. (Leans back for Reilloc zap)

K8Gladst1: Merfilly, call when you can.

Merfilly27: Three kids and prepping for school while supporting KEv in his promotion...sheesh

Reilloc: How do you feel about astrology?

K8Gladst1: My "AIM" screen just displayed an ad reading (complete with typo) "

K8Gladst1: "Better. Stonger. Faster" (sic) Ain't Quality-Control Grand?

OscagneTX: Wow. Busy. I'll be almost as busy, Steph. Starting middle of Jan. I'll be doing 12 hours at Sam Houston State, and 40 hours at work.

OscagneTX: <-- looks tired.

K8Gladst1: I have no patience with astrology, Reilloc. Thanks for asking.

Reilloc: Patience?

georule1861: I vote "was", David.

Reilloc: If astrologers took their time would you feel better about it?

aggirlj: You can do it Joe. If you're really enjoying it the time will seem okay.

Merfilly27: real busy

K8Gladst1: I disbelieve astrology. I regard it as baloney - no matter how long the astrologers take, I haven't found them trustworthy or accurate.

Reilloc: Then, it's not patience you mean?

Merfilly27: I want to add work in there, but need it to fit the hours after class, and before kids need pick up from Daycare

AGplusone: "was" about what, Geo?

georule1861: Lost Legacy.

K8Gladst1: No - I used a loose expression, common where-and-when I grew up. "Having no patience for something" means "not wanting to waste one's time/energy on it."

AGplusone: Ah ...

Reilloc: How about biorhythms?

K8Gladst1: *Does* anyone here actually believe astrology?

Merfilly27: I think the chinese brand is a little more thought out than the stuff they peddle here

AGplusone: Becky Vessant?

aggirlj: I believe that some of the characteristics are mapable.

K8Gladst1: What I said about astrology applies to biorhythms - I regard the subject as baloney. And Chinese astrology (or Hindu, or whatever) hasn't struck me as any improvement.

K8Gladst1: "Mappable"? You can map anything - but does the map fit the territory?

Reilloc: Then, if you can't touch it, if it amounts to belief only, it's baloney?

georule1861: I believe some people have skills that the tools they use to express those skills aren't all that relevant.

Merfilly27: what about handwriting analysis?

Reilloc: Aha

aggirlj: Hehe

n1yqh a: IIRC, Becky Vessant's version was a means to "focus the mind" or some such, and it wasn't the astrology per se that was particularly productive... Which she acknowledged...

Reilloc: It was giving the mark the blowoff he wanted

Merfilly27: That is me and Tarot...a meditative exercise to help me focus, nothing else

K8Gladst1: I would incline to say so (while recognizing that this will sometimes prove wrong). Handwriting-analysis: well, I've seen the practitioners get things wrong as often as they get anything right, or more often!

aggirlj: Isn't most of this salesmanship on the part of the "reader."

K8Gladst1: Worse yet, the hwanalysis-johnnies don't tend to admit errors. (Once I showed a hwanalysis-practitioner acquaintance of mine the Unabomber's handwriting, without telling the source ...

BPRAL22169: It's an oracle, like any other oracle.

aggirlj: I think there are definately people who are sensitive and see things I would never see.

K8Gladst1: ... she analyzed this as showing a kind, gentle person, open-mindedly flexible and incapable of violence. When I told her who wrote it, she said "Then obviously I have just proven that the Unabomber used a secretary & didn't ...

Merfilly27: I do think that our minds tend to take in so much more detail than we are aware of, and this is the wellspring from which intuition and lucky guesses spring

jilyd: Kate, you are not suggestiong that hw analysis for identification is in that category,are you? Just for 'character analysis"?

K8Gladst1: ... write this or other messages himself). Self-sealing lo

Heinlein Readers Discussion Group Thursday, Dec. 04, 2003 9:00 P.M. EST Genetic Selection in Heinlein

Heinlein Readers Discussion Group
Thursday, Dec. 04, 2003 9:00 P.M. EST
Genetic Selection in Heinlein