Lehola Galaxy Lifespeeding & Resulting Discussion [Split]

[Khemehekis]

Edit: Split from How NOT to Conworld.

Also, what would it mean for other areas of interaction if women (or the equivalent) traveled more than men? Or if adults and young were seen as the same socially?

How young is young?

In the Lehola Galaxy, they have developed a technology called lifespeeding for most sapient species. After a baby is born, it is placed in a "bubble" called a speeder to take the child from birth to young adulthood in a matter of months. While in the speeder, the "speedling" (as the child is called) is constantly fed and generally has its development in height, weight, knowledge, self-control, physical control and coo:rdination, etc. sped up. The speedling's brain is bombarded with knowledge about the world, everyday physics (like "You can't walk through objects"), basic biological knowledge ("Ladies have high voices and guys have deep voices"), core cultural knowledge from her/his country/planet/ethnic group, etc., fluency in the language s/he is raised speaking, and more. The speedling comes out of the speeder at the beginning of young adulthood (about 14 in Earth years).

When children are as a matter of course lifesped, everyone outside of a speeder (except for fetuses and babies who have just been born and are about to go into a speeder, of course) is usually a full-functioning adult, equal to all the other adults socially and legally. (Yes, most of the futuristic societies of Lehola have done away with treating adolescents like chattel.)

[elemtilas]

Spoiler:

Also, what would it mean for other areas of interaction if women (or the equivalent) traveled more than men? Or if adults and young were seen as the same socially?

How young is young?

In the Lehola Galaxy, they have developed a technology called lifespeeding for most sapient species. After a baby is born, it is placed in a "bubble" called a speeder to take the child from birth to young adulthood in a matter of months. While in the speeder, the "speedling" (as the child is called) is constantly fed and generally has its development in height, weight, knowledge, self-control, physical control and coo:rdination, etc. sped up. The speedling's brain is bombarded with knowledge about the world, everyday physics (like "You can't walk through objects"), basic biological knowledge ("Ladies have high voices and guys have deep voices"), core cultural knowledge from her/his country/planet/ethnic group, etc., fluency in the language s/he is raised speaking, and more. The speedling comes out of the speeder at the beginning of young adulthood (about 14 in Earth years).

When children are as a matter of course lifesped, everyone outside of a speeder (except for fetuses and babies who have just been born and are about to go into a speeder, of course) is usually a full-functioning adult, equal to all the other adults socially and legally. (Yes, most of the futuristic societies of Lehola have done away with treating adolescents like chattel.)

Coo, interestante that!

How well does it work? Any intriguing side effects? What about acceptable fail rates?

Not something that would work in The World (or leastways the bits I'm familiar with).

[Khemehekis]

Coo, interestante that!

Thanks!

How well does it work? Any intriguing side effects?

First, something I forgot to mention. The cultural knowledge, vocabulary and grammar for each culture's speeder program is updated every few years to keep up with changes in history, changes in laws, technological innovations, and language change.

I should mention that most societies that are advanced enough to have lifespeeding developed for their species have gotten beyond the stage of following and enforcing arbitrary/antiquated social rules like (to use Western examples) "Take your hat off inside a classroom", "When a lady and gentleman are walking together, the gentleman walks on the outside of the curb", "Certain clothes are appropriate only for men to wear, certain clothes only for women", "Don't go naked in public", "Don't talk about lower bodily functions", "A man can't meet a woman alone on a social outing onless they're husband & wife or boyfriend & girlfriend", etc. However, many traditions, past norms, and past laws are considered core cultural knowledge. A Chinese speedling would be taught about mooncakes, about how the Chinese New Year is celebrated, or that this is the Year of the Pig, while a Nigerian speedling being taught to speak Yoruba would be taught how a traditional Yoruba wedding goes. In an American speeder, "Prior to the civil rights movement of the 1950's and 1960's, most places in the U.S. South required Blacks to drink from 'Colored' fountains that were separate from the fountains White people used" would be a fact Americans would be expected to know.

One effect of this is that a speedee's political leanings come almost exclusively from a combination of genetic predisposition and experiences that happen after speedbirth ("speedbirth" meaning the moment a person comes out of the speeder and becomes a full-fledged member of society). Your parents will not have a deep formative influence on your political ideology. (Also, some kids never learn who their parents were -- not too different from adoptees on Earth.)

In some ways, political views are largely formed through experiences that happen after one's fourteenth birthday on Earth. I recently attended my high school reunion with 80+ other 38- and 39-year-olds. Our lot forged bonds and expressed our political views during our years at Campolindo High in Moraga, California.

A minority of my classmates were authoritarian (socially conservative, fiscally liberal, pro-corporate) because they formed their political/social views around the time they began school. American K-12 school is an authoritarian environment based in the nineteenth century on the Prussian model, to raise good factory workers who keep their heads down and have a common core of world knowledge. These kids were forged through learning to follow the rules, respect authority figures and the system, and have loyalty. As a result of staying for life with the ideology they developed at that crucial point in their development, they were socially conservative (deferential to social conventions, against gay marriage or legalizing pot, etc.), and trusted the government and businesses.

A small minority were libertarian. These were generally people who, in the eighth grade, read Ayn Rand and became enamored of libertarianism, Objectivism, and their ilk.

A minority were true liberals -- socially, fiscally, and corporately liberal, like the Green Party or Socialist Party USA, although those who vote usually vote Democrat. Some of these were immigrants or foreign exchange students from countries much more liberal than the U.S., some were transplants from very liberal places in the U.S. (Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, etc.). a few were simply raised by very liberal and very influential parents, and some just had significant experiences that caused them to be liberal. Of course, older generations often had the "I went to college with liberal professors and students from different backgrounds, and it totally 'opened my eyes' and opened my mind! I became a liberal!" experience, but I didn't meet any students with that experience at my reunion.

A minority were socially conservative AND fiscally conservative AND pro-corporate AND militaristic. Many people turn this way when they're middle-aged and raising children and concerned about "them Syrian refugees trying to hurt my child!" and concerned about "that government taking my hard-earned money!". My classmates aren't there yet, and certainly weren't in high school, but we did have some across-the-board conservatives, even in high school. Most of the teens we referred to as "the conservative kids" were actually authoritarians, who were socially conservative and pro-corporate but trusted the government, but we did have some true-blue true-red Republican conservatives. Many of these were jocks, who professed hard-core right-wing views but didn't seem to treat politics seriously (considering that at parties they'd have premarital sex and use controlled substances that Republican politicians wanted to keep illegal). Others were rednecks (some of whom were actually paleo-conservative). Some of these were raised by very stridently conservative parents or in very right-wing religious backgrounds. A few just happened upon pop culture like the Rush Limbaugh show. There are probably more of these types of teens at high schools in solid-Red parts of the country where almost everyone in the town and adjacent towns is a conservative than there are in Moraga.

But the majority were of a countercultural political persuasion that would probably fall into the anterior bottom left of a Vosem Chart (antithetical to authoritarian). We started thinking independently, and forging our ideology, during high school. We witnessed the authority figures in the adult world around us suspend students for things they didn't do, fail students with whom they had a personal vendetta, enforce stifling social rules (like the hat rule) in the classroom, judgmentally appraise every action as either "appropriate" or "inappropriate", observe rigid rules as to how to carry themselves, accuse students crying in class of being "disruptive", and refuse to sign ISP's for students who had to take trips elsewhere during the school year. We were becoming explorers naturally at this point of our life, starting to really comprehend politics beyond a junior-high level, and expressing ourselves with clothes and music. In short, the system failed us, and we became against The System.

This had some interesting effects. As of 1997, Moraga had 6,217 registered Republicans to 4,286 registered Democrats. Two thirds of us students wanted to be Democrats when our government class did a Congress simulation and required students to choose between Republican and Democrat. In a survey in the student newspaper during my stay at Campolindo, 55% of students said they identified with the Democratic party, a mere 11% said they identified with the Republican party, and the remaining 34% were independent. This is how generational gaps between teens and the parents of teens are formed.

Generally in lifespeeding societies, 14-to-18-year olds (or strictly speaking, people whose speedage (that's pronounced /ˈspidˌeidʒ/, not /ˈspidɨdʒ/) is 1 day to 4.5 years) don't have to attend authoritarian schools, so they wouldn't have that kind of experience, but the point is, none of their ideology would have come from formative parenting during childhood. It comes more from experiences like looking for a job, or dealing with a certain kind of immigrants, or getting fired or arrested, or even finding love.

This brings up another point. What knowledge a speedling gets bombarded with can disputably have subtle effects on her/his adult ideology, and there can even be accusations of bias. To use the White vs. Colored fountains example, if an American speedling learns in the speeder about segregation, it might cause her to oppose bigotry or even influence her to vote Democrat (or at least be unable to stand Trump), because she'd reason that the liberals of the 1950's were right and the conservatives of the 1950's wrong about racism. If we tried lifespeeding in the U.S. today, there would be yuuuge debates over what kind of knowledge would be taught to our children when they are speedlings, and if it fell into the wrong hands we could have a dystopia on our hands once a critical mass are out of the speeder and old enough to vote.

There would even be uncertainty and debates as to in which direction the inclusion of a certain bit of knowledge would influence a speedee's views. Take, for example, a U.S. speeder bombarding a speedling with the knowledge that the death penalty became illegal in the United States in 1972, but the U.S. reintroduced it in 1976. Would that tilt speedees in the direction of opposition to the death penalty, because of the U.S. already having a ban on executions that was taken away when the country started to lean more conservative, or would it tilt speedees in the direction of support for the death penalty, because they'd figure that if they tried banning executions and then brought them back, they must have had a good reason for rejecting the "failed" experiment of banning the death penalty? And should a speedling be taught which countries and U.S. states as of 2019 allow the death penalty and which don't? Should they learn that in Malaysia, you can be executed for drunk driving?

Another interesting effect of lifespeeding is knowledge of pop culture. Although speedlings are taught the melodies and lyrics to many well-known songs, they don't actually have the *real* experience of *really* listening to the songs until after speedbirth. Also . . . in a contemporary American, English-speaking speeder's knowledge-base, speedlings would be taught that Casablanca has the "hill of beans" quote, that in The Graduate they say, "Plastics!", that The Princess Bride has Rodents of Unusual Size, and that the metaphor of the Red Pill and Blue Pill comes from Matrix, but they would not see the movies, nor even know how the movies go, scene-by-scene, until they're speedborn and take time to sit down and watch said movies.

What about acceptable fail rates?

Haven't worked that out yet.

Not something that would work in The World (or leastways the bits I'm familiar with).

I know you're wanting to go into a lengthy exposition on why it wouldn't work in The World, so I say go for it!

[elemtilas]

First, something I forgot to mention. The cultural knowledge, vocabulary and grammar for each culture's speeder program is updated every few years to keep up with changes in history, changes in laws, technological innovations, and language change.

First I'd like to say that your thoughtful reply is quite the education in and of itself! I have enjoyed reading about your experience thoroughly, alien though it is to me!

I should mention that most societies that are advanced enough to have lifespeeding developed for their species have gotten beyond the stage of following and enforcing arbitrary/antiquated social rules like (to use Western examples) "Take your hat off inside a classroom", "When a lady and gentleman are walking together, the gentleman walks on the outside of the curb", "Certain clothes are appropriate only for men to wear, certain clothes only for women", "Don't go naked in public", "Don't talk about lower bodily functions", "A man can't meet a woman alone on a social outing onless they're husband & wife or boyfriend & girlfriend", etc. However, many traditions, past norms, and past laws are considered core cultural knowledge. A Chinese speedling would be taught about mooncakes, about how the Chinese New Year is celebrated, or that this is the Year of the Pig, while a Nigerian speedling being taught to speak Yoruba would be taught how a traditional Yoruba wedding goes. In an American speeder, "Prior to the civil rights movement of the 1950's and 1960's, most places in the U.S. South required Blacks to drink from 'Colored' fountains that were separate from the fountains White people used" would be a fact Americans would be expected to know.

What arbitrary social rules do they instill in place of?

So it sounds like speeducation involves instillation of one (or more) languages, pertinent local facts (how deep and how broad, I wonder?) and whatever passes for the arbitrary social rules of behaviour of the time and place, quite different as those may be from what folks (21st cen. Americans e.g.) are used to.

That's a lot of facts --- how do they impart experience, understanding and wisdom into the mix? Even young children are granted some measure of these; but they don't mature until experience teaches them. Or are those things speedlings aren't expected to be born with, but rather gain after speedbirth?

One effect of this is that a speedee's political leanings come almost exclusively from a combination of genetic predisposition and experiences that happen after speedbirth ("speedbirth" meaning the moment a person comes out of the speeder and becomes a full-fledged member of society). Your parents will not have a deep formative influence on your political ideology. (Also, some kids never learn who their parents were -- not too different from adoptees on Earth.)

Question: how does one determine political leaning from genetics? I should think that would be more a matter of environment and education. It makes considerable sense, though, that one's experience post speedbirth would be what leads to some kind of political leaning or other.

In some ways, political views are largely formed through experiences that happen after one's fourteenth birthday on Earth. I recently attended my high school reunion with 80+ other 38- and 39-year-olds. Our lot forged bonds and expressed our political views during our years at Campolindo High in Moraga, California.

Hm. I have no interest whatever in attending any kind of school reunion.

A minority of my classmates were authoritarian (socially conservative, fiscally liberal, pro-corporate) because they formed their political/social views around the time they began school. American K-12 school is an authoritarian environment based in the nineteenth century on the Prussian model, to raise good factory workers who keep their heads down and have a common core of world knowledge. These kids were forged through learning to follow the rules, respect authority figures and the system, and have loyalty. As a result of staying for life with the ideology they developed at that crucial point in their development, they were socially conservative (deferential to social conventions, against gay marriage or legalizing pot, etc.), and trusted the government and businesses.

Wow. So, we were right! What you relate here serves to validate what we intuited as children. While walking to school, we'd see the big yellow monsters (we called em "Street Sweedies") scoop up all the unfortunates and cart them off to public school. We instinctively ran from the school busses, and though we didn't know why at the time, it makes rather a lot of sense now I read this!

I honestly don't know what to make of your definition of "authoritarian", as there are plenty of folks who are socially conservative but not what I would understand as "authoritarian". Perhaps we have differing concepts of "authoritarian" and "socially conservative" and "liberal" and so forth.

I blink in astonishment! And am truly blessed that my experience in Catholic schools was non-Prussian, non-authoritarian. I don't think I would have made a good Prussian factory worker! We were just taught those foolish things like love in action and respect for life and compassion and gentleness and respect for others. All those outmoded ideas!

Re legalising pot, I'm just going to say that in theory it's wonderful for the "rights crowd", but in practice the legalisation is just stupid. I was so happy when, here in ultra-hyper-super-duper liberal Maryland / DC / NOVA they finally outlawed public smoking. (This was a number of years ago, now.) The air is so fucking clean now, you can actually breathe it! And what do they do, at least in DC they legalised pot. Bad move. The place literally stinks now. I'm all for medicinal THC, but go about it the fucking right way. Make it into a pill or something that doesn't stink up the environment or turn users into zombies. Controlled substances are controlled for good reason.

But back to your description of public schools. Just wow. I've long thought public schools were screwy, but now I can see why!

A small minority were libertarian. These were generally people who, in the eighth grade, read Ayn Rand and became enamored of libertarianism, Objectivism, and their ilk.

A minority were true liberals -- socially, fiscally, and corporately liberal, like the Green Party or Socialist Party USA, although those who vote usually vote Democrat. Some of these were immigrants or foreign exchange students from countries much more liberal than the U.S., some were transplants from very liberal places in the U.S. (Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, etc.). a few were simply raised by very liberal and very influential parents, and some just had significant experiences that caused them to be liberal. Of course, older generations often had the "I went to college with liberal professors and students from different backgrounds, and it totally 'opened my eyes' and opened my mind! I became a liberal!" experience, but I didn't meet any students with that experience at my reunion.

I'm beginning to think that parents should be compelled to disavow all political thought when their first child is born. It's like a brain eating amoeba or something. Politics. Smartest thing Old Scratch ever invented to get people to hate one another! And it's only gotten so much worse.

A minority were socially conservative AND fiscally conservative AND pro-corporate AND militaristic. Many people turn this way when they're middle-aged and raising children and concerned about "them Syrian refugees trying to hurt my child!" and concerned about "that government taking my hard-earned money!". My classmates aren't there yet, and certainly weren't in high school, but we did have some across-the-board conservatives, even in high school. Most of the teens we referred to as "the conservative kids" were actually authoritarians, who were socially conservative and pro-corporate but trusted the government, but we did have some true-blue true-red Republican conservatives. Many of these were jocks, who professed hard-core right-wing views but didn't seem to treat politics seriously (considering that at parties they'd have premarital sex and use controlled substances that Republican politicians wanted to keep illegal). Others were rednecks (some of whom were actually paleo-conservative). Some of these were raised by very stridently conservative parents or in very right-wing religious backgrounds. A few just happened upon pop culture like the Rush Limbaugh show. There are probably more of these types of teens at high schools in solid-Red parts of the country where almost everyone in the town and adjacent towns is a conservative than there are in Moraga.

Gosh. I don't even know what to say. This is such an utterly alien experience!

I don't know if it's a "public school thing" or a generational thing. But all I can say is sòmeone stole your whole childhood from you guys and turned you into little mind numbed political robots (or either persuasion!).

My high school experience probably will seem every bit as culturally alien to you as yours does to me. All things considered, I think the worst travails of HS (apart from dealing with attention issues and general inaptitude as regards maths and science) were the training in morals, ethics and critical thinking. Good stuff, and looking back, I think those could have been focused on even more broadly throughout the curriculum. Other than that, I'd already been working on exploring The World for like five or six years and at that time had not figured out quite how to write a story. (I like to think I've gotten a little better at that!) Our concerns largely revolved around simple things like just béing. Hanging with friends. How to avoid actually having to dance during one of those horrific band fund raisers. For me, where to find a good book on Old English, if not Old Entish.

Politics was of zero interest. Not just to me, but I think generally speaking. It wasn't shoved down our throats; we weren't taught all the fake values of secular society. Of course, there was no social media, no unfiltered data dumps and no ideological saturation either. We did learn how to research and sift the wheat and chaff of ideas, and to be honest, life was "slower" then, just before your generation. In grammar school, we wrote our papers and assignments in long hand (oh, what a happy day when we finally got to use an honest to God pen to write with!); we went to the library to look in actual books to discover actual & juried facts. In HS we graduated to typewriters (and, happy me, had a choice of the electric Smith-Corona (with correction ribbon!) or an L.C. Smith No. 2 (the wonderful clacky-clack as steel smacked paper!). We had the time to digest ideas, to think and consider. Anymore, I can click on the old googlematic and uncover seventeen billion hits for any obscure arcana you care to name. Half those hits are useless shopping links, half are conspiracy theories, hate-mongers or regurgitants of the same and the other half are just plain wrong.

But the majority were of a countercultural political persuasion that would probably fall into the anterior bottom left of a Vosem Chart (antithetical to authoritarian). We started thinking independently, and forging our ideology, during high school. We witnessed the authority figures in the adult world around us suspend students for things they didn't do, fail students with whom they had a personal vendetta, enforce stifling social rules (like the hat rule) in the classroom, judgmentally appraise every action as either "appropriate" or "inappropriate", observe rigid rules as to how to carry themselves, accuse students crying in class of being "disruptive", and refuse to sign ISP's for students who had to take trips elsewhere during the school year. We were becoming explorers naturally at this point of our life, starting to really comprehend politics beyond a junior-high level, and expressing ourselves with clothes and music. In short, the system failed us, and we became against The System.

I can empathise. I was visiting with a friend recently whose young son swore up and down he was victim of exactly such injustice! Kind of had to chuckle at the immature perspective. I at least chuckled because I too thought that way when I was a teen ager. Moi!!?? I couldn't have done anything wrong! While there are, I'm sure, instances of teachers who do not comport themselves well, I'm also under no illusion that students are all lily white.

This same dad is, in fact, a HS teacher (oo, the delicious irony, ferrous and ferric on so many levels!), and we both know very well that, 99 44/100% of the time, students get exactly what they deserve. Sure, you got a detention but you weren't involved in the fight, right? Did you ever think to break the fight up? No, of course not! Was too exciting. Well, there you go. Personal vendettas, no that's wrong on every level. Anyway, most HS students will offer plenty of opportunities to fail themselves without involving personal feelings. That's just stupid teaching. "Stifling social rules"? Puhleese! Your house, your rules. If the teacher says take your hat off, take you damn hat off. If the teacher doesn't care, leave it on. In your own house, when you make The Rules, you can make whatever rules you want! Though frankly, if I were your teacher, I'd enforce every little stifling social rule I could come up with, just because you were being an impertinent ass.

We came along before the nonsense of "appropriate" and "inappropriate" were introduced into the lexicon as the new moral standards. I don't know what an ISP is or why anyone crying in class would be accused of being disruptive. That seems kind of bizarre to me.

Of course, everyone expresses themselves in music and clothing and so forth. I think at that time, a lot of kids were into metal. I've no idea any band names, but I do recall Depeche Mode was popular among my friends, even though they quite antedated us by a number of years! I went in for folk music (nòt 60s phake pholk), medieval and renaissance, hung out with the satanists and played bootleg video games. I'm sure he had not the first clue what Satanism was all about. I did, because I plunked $2.95 down and bought a copy of their Bible. I read it, scratched my head and thought, well this is about the stupidest thing ever and ended up selling it at the local used book shop. And what happy times I found in that shop! The wonder of books: knowledge deep and arcane; tales both ancient and new; every interesting topic you could possibly think of. Except for the horrors of the "romance" section, I could wander the stacks for hours! And still consider it a blessing we have so many and so big used book shops in the area!

This had some interesting effects. As of 1997, Moraga had 6,217 registered Republicans to 4,286 registered Democrats. Two thirds of us students wanted to be Democrats when our government class did a Congress simulation and required students to choose between Republican and Democrat. In a survey in the student newspaper during my stay at Campolindo, 55% of students said they identified with the Democratic party, a mere 11% said they identified with the Republican party, and the remaining 34% were independent. This is how generational gaps between teens and the parents of teens are formed.

I notice they pigeonholed you guys into a choice of only two parties. I'm sure I'd've been booted from that Congress. A rebel with a cause, or none at all!

Generally in lifespeeding societies, 14-to-18-year olds (or strictly speaking, people whose speedage (that's pronounced /ˈspidˌeidʒ/, not /ˈspidɨdʒ/) is 1 day to 4.5 years) don't have to attend authoritarian schools, so they wouldn't have that kind of experience, but the point is, none of their ideology would have come from formative parenting during childhood. It comes more from experiences like looking for a job, or dealing with a certain kind of immigrants, or getting fired or arrested, or even finding love.

It wonders me though: how do they even understand what love is? That's something that comes of a nurturing family environment. And develops from the time in the womb and through infancy. Even the most secular of psychologists recognises that most basic of human needs. How can they even turn out remotely "human" if they never experienced human contact or form critical attachments? It's one thing to cram facts and knowledge into a brain; but I wonder what the true cost in such a society will be! Hopefully these things will be well thought out and churned up into a story! I'd read it for sure, especially if it turns out as horrifically dystopic as I fear it must...

This brings up another point. What knowledge a speedling gets bombarded with can disputably have subtle effects on her/his adult ideology, and there can even be accusations of bias. To use the White vs. Colored fountains example, if an American speedling learns in the speeder about segregation, it might cause her to oppose bigotry or even influence her to vote Democrat (or at least be unable to stand Trump), because she'd reason that the liberals of the 1950's were right and the conservatives of the 1950's wrong about racism. If we tried lifespeeding in the U.S. today, there would be yuuuge debates over what kind of knowledge would be taught to our children when they are speedlings, and if it fell into the wrong hands we could have a dystopia on our hands once a critical mass are out of the speeder and old enough to vote.

Which is rather humorous, given that it was liberal Democrats who staunchly defended segregation, Jim Crow, the KKK and so forth and who vehemently opposed integration and Civil Rights. Your speedling might end up suffering a bit of an existential crisis there.

I do concur: if speeducation were a thing in early 21st century America, if the wrong things get taught to the exclusion of the right things, we would end up even more dystopic than the public schools are making us now! You and I would probably disagree, at least to some extent, what ought to be taught via speeducation. But I think we could probably agree on basics (literacy, numeracy, languages and possibly certain factual aspects of other disciplines -- I'm all for cramming a lot of facts into young skulls full of mush: let em memorise as many basic facts as they can early on). I would be very resistant to teaching history, literature, theology, philosophy or any social / soft science via speeducation. While there are factual aspects of each, they also require far too much interpretation of fact in light of wisdom and reason. Your devices must be truly magical if they can do that! I would be entirely against inflicting this system wholesale onto children. I think it makes for great sci-fi (if entirely dystopic!) but I think such a system would make for absolutely terrible way to form a functional human person in the primary world. The experimentation required to get such a system up and running is simply beyond the pale. Even though we are, at present, moving into terribly dangerous waters (medically ethically speaking), I somehow doubt that even the most left-leaning among us would seriously consider doing this kind of thing to children.

But even as I write this, I am confronted with the simple fact that the American left is quite satisfied with killing children, to the point of celebrating the fact in a most obnoxiously Molochian fashion imaginable. I think I may yet have to abandon hope for the present generation of leftists. They've made it so that I can't even blame their evil on the most utterly radical among them.

There would even be uncertainty and debates as to in which direction the inclusion of a certain bit of knowledge would influence a speedee's views. Take, for example, a U.S. speeder bombarding a speedling with the knowledge that the death penalty became illegal in the United States in 1972, but the U.S. reintroduced it in 1976. Would that tilt speedees in the direction of opposition to the death penalty, because of the U.S. already having a ban on executions that was taken away when the country started to lean more conservative, or would it tilt speedees in the direction of support for the death penalty, because they'd figure that if they tried banning executions and then brought them back, they must have had a good reason for rejecting the "failed" experiment of banning the death penalty? And should a speedling be taught which countries and U.S. states as of 2019 allow the death penalty and which don't? Should they learn that in Malaysia, you can be executed for drunk driving?

This I think is where such a system breaks down. The speedling is really only learning a few pertinent factoids. He has no concept of the history of the death penalty or jurisprudence or the law or morality or ethics let alone how it all fits together. One thing I have noticed is that you never mention moral or ethical or theological formation. I won't draw (probably false) conclusions about your own upbringing and experience in school as it has tilted you one way or another or how it has led you to work out the details of this system! Though I know I'd be fascinated to learn!

I could say that a solid foundation in those three neglected sciences would solve most of the problems you've proposed for newly birthed speedees. The death penalty is a very interesting topic, historically, socially and theologically. Myself, I've never supported the idea of a death penalty. (Yeah, I know, many societies in The World do, and they enjoy a good execution, and I've written about several of the more deliciously gruesome ones.) The arguments for it (punishment, social retribution, deterrence) make no sense. The only justification for it is the satisfaction of primal, instinctual and ultimately inhuman desire for vengeance. Not a good enough reason anymore. The death penalty and infanticide (abortion) are the two most savage and inhuman practices we have going in the US at the present time.

I honestly don't know what a speedee would make of the death penalty. But as you hint at earlier, I think much will depend on who gets to programme the curriculum and what weight that curriculum will give to a topic. I fear that if the wrong side gets to make those choices, your speedees will probably end up totally fucked. (And, for what it's worth, I happen to think both sides are the wrong side.) Their factual education is not being balanced, as far as I can see (or as far as you've revealed) with any kind of moral balance. Nor with any kind of experience or ability to interact with wiser heads (and hearts!) until after their born. I think that learning the facts of history coupled with moral formation coupled with mature consideration applied with reason will lead a normal person to, at the very least, see the problems inherent in the pro-death penalty / pro-abortion arguments. With a little grace & understanding thrown into the mix, she may even come to the conclusion that killing other people is wrong and that killing other people who have committed crime does not make the killing any righter.

Another interesting effect of lifespeeding is knowledge of pop culture. Although speedlings are taught the melodies and lyrics to many well-known songs, they don't actually have the *real* experience of *really* listening to the songs until after speedbirth. Also . . . in a contemporary American, English-speaking speeder's knowledge-base, speedlings would be taught that Casablanca has the "hill of beans" quote, that in The Graduate they say, "Plastics!", that The Princess Bride has Rodents of Unusual Size, and that the metaphor of the Red Pill and Blue Pill comes from Matrix, but they would not see the movies, nor even know how the movies go, scene-by-scene, until they're speedborn and take time to sit down and watch said movies.

On to the lighter side!

Me, I think I'd sue the speeducation company that birthed me if they crammed my head full of the inanities of pop culture. Ugh! Yuck! I'd rather be smeared in pig shit and set down in a bucket full of flies than have to endure those poor speedlings' "education"! But, I think that reaction ought to come as no surprise to you!

Hill of beans quote? Plastics? I don't think I'd be any better a speedling than I would a Prussian factory worker!

It does wonder me though, are there any speedlings that end up like me at all? Or is this a kind of one size fits all society?

Not something that would work in The World (or leastways the bits I'm familiar with).

I know you're wanting to go into a lengthy exposition on why it wouldn't work in The World, so I say go for it!

Actually, I wasn't... But I can say several things about this absolutely fascinating system vis a vis The World. I think that, had you introduced this in the Multiverse Inn, you would find that your Daine interlocutors at least would be wide-eyed, close-winged and shivering with horror. I just don't think they could even conceive of people --- not even Men! --- being produced in this way. You would have just blown their minds. Though, I think, probably not for the better. Their understanding of life and growth and even politics is so radically different from the speedees' world I don't think they could even connect.

But more fundamentally, the technology which I'm sure you have underlying the speedees' development is simply too far beyond anything even remotely conceivable by the best and brightest natural philosophers and artificers. The devices alone would be impossible to construct, even with very deep magic. The World just does not work that way. I don't even think there are near analogues to any of it. Sure, genetics and reproduction can be a bit weird in Yeola, but rapid incubators are just not possible. It is possible, though by no means an easy feat, to transfer or share memories. Some people (twins in particular) do this quite naturally, but I think not in a way that would be useful for general education.

Ah! I think the closest analogue would be a particular Daine "magic" called tale weaving. This is very deep dwimmery and will indeed impart memory into the minds and hearts of those that hear such tales. It is true that a tale weaver may enchant for several hours only, but those who awaken the next morning often recount that they have lived many lifetimes other than their own. It might be like long-term immersion in a 4D VR environment. Whatever the tale weaver enchanted, that becomes true memory for those who experience, though I guess, according to psychology, they would actually be implanted "false memories"! But what do psychologists know!

Daine will only admit those of the Elder Race to participate. They won't allow Men or Dwarrows or anyone else to a telling. They won't even bring their young children. The ensorcelment is just too powerful. I would imagine that a tale weaver còuld use her talents to instill courses in geometry or Cargi History or Fundamentals of Queritian Grammar into her hearers, and thus they could experience, at least in part, a little of what it must be like to be a speedling. But, you know, Daine being what they are, they'd find that particular use for talent an utter waste! Tale weaving ought to be used for noble and beautiful Narrative Purposes, not the dissemination of mere knowledge!

[Khemehekis]

First, something I forgot to mention. The cultural knowledge, vocabulary and grammar for each culture's speeder program is updated every few years to keep up with changes in history, changes in laws, technological innovations, and language change.

First I'd like to say that your thoughtful reply is quite the education in and of itself! I have enjoyed reading about your experience thoroughly, alien though it is to me!

You're welcome! Typing out that post really got me thinking a lot about how all the ramifications of lifespeed technology would work. Applied phlebotinum, or so they say.

I should mention that most societies that are advanced enough to have lifespeeding developed for their species have gotten beyond the stage of following and enforcing arbitrary/antiquated social rules like (to use Western examples) "Take your hat off inside a classroom" . . .

What arbitrary social rules do they instill in place of?

Different cultures have their own rules -- the Kebsabhazians in the country Kebsabhaz on the planet Chedam, for instance, have taboos against a number of swear words, complicated rules about the proper order to introduce people, and many rules of etiquette centering around coats. They have a taboo against touching animals with the right hand or food with the left hand. Kebsabhazian norms also forbid social exchanges with non-pachams (a pacham being a sapient of the species native to Chedam). Kebsabhazians don't normally lifespeed, though. They raise their children in a rough way, you are your parents' property until you're 30 Chedam years old, and if a parent's prepubescent child (under 24 Chedam years) commits a crime, the parent gets punished by the law instead of the child (so if your 9-year-old son murders someone, you could spend 15 years in prison, but your child would get off scot-free; you'd still be free to give him a parent-bestowed punishment, though).

Many of the societies that commonly lifespeed, though, are what in LIE are called "postconventional". Although there are a few common understandings for things wherefor people are required to be on the same page (such as the meanings of words or gestures, or which side of the road to drive on), society has advanced beyond having rules and taboos of this sort, and people are pretty much free to do and say what they want, as long as they're not huting people or jeopardizing the security of a nation/car/train/spacecraft. A human living on Kankonia, on Shaleya, or in Tenta, for instance, wouldn't bat an eyelash if s/he saw someone masturbating with his briefs down atop a flagpole on Main Street, or scratching her hairy armpits in an expensive restaurant, on licking molten chocolate off her baby-daddy's abdomen in front of their non-lifesped preschool-age child. They're also much less concerned about appropriateness of relationships, power imbalances, professionalism, and appropriate distance than 2010's Americans.

So it sounds like speeducation involves instillation of one (or more) languages, pertinent local facts (how deep and how broad, I wonder?) and whatever passes for the arbitrary social rules of behaviour of the time and place, quite different as those may be from what folks (21st cen. Americans e.g.) are used to.

Yes. (And I see you've coined a great word -- "speeducation"!)

That's a lot of facts --- how do they impart experience, understanding and wisdom into the mix? Even young children are granted some measure of these; but they don't mature until experience teaches them. Or are those things speedlings aren't expected to be born with, but rather gain after speedbirth?

As for understanding -- the mind's abulity to comprehend matures as the speedling grows and his/her brain develops, much as a child on modern-day Earth is capable of understanding more and more with each passing year of his/her life. The most elementary material is taught first -- like what the phonemes of the language s/he will speak are, and what the phonemic contrasts and allophones are; they start with things children learn in the first three years of life. Then episodic memory kicks in, and the speedling begins to actually remember the lifespeeding experience. In the last month or so before speedbirth, the speeder finishes with such things as lyceum-level academic knowledge and adult independent living skills, along with knowledge about sex (like the major STD's and how to avoid catching them).

Experience is simulated by an interpath -- a mind-connected sensing by, and reaction to, the speedling's thoughts and curiosity. If the speedling thinks "There are barns, and there are matches -- what would happen if I set a barn afire?", the interpath in the speeder would sense that the speedling was wondering about that question, and would implant the answer, telepathically almost, into the speedling's brain. The young adult speedee then wouldn't have to experiment with setting a barn afire, watching the animals panic and burn, and accrue an arson arrest on his record to learn not to set fire to barns.

As for true . . . wisdom, that can't really be taught via speedbirth. People in the futuristic societies of the Lehola Galaxy tend to believe that in order to be eligible to vote (if the country is a democracy), or hold a job, or have sex, one doesn't need to be a sage, but rather to be able to function independently. Evidently, this is very different from the Daine philosophy on wisdom! Your Daine would be more at home on Shanu, a human-inhabited planet in the solar system Yunimo with 340 countries (no one-world government!) filled with traditionalist societies, none of which want their countries nor planet to join the Interplanetary Council of Lehola.

Question: how does one determine political leaning from genetics? I should think that would be more a matter of environment and education. It makes considerable sense, though, that one's experience post speedbirth would be what leads to some kind of political leaning or other.

Researchers have discovered a correlation between sense of disgust and political leaning. People who have a strong/high sense of disgust are usually socially conservative, while people who have a weak/low sense of disgust are usually socially liberal.

Take the test!

http://chartsme.com/

A minority of my classmates were authoritarian (socially conservative, fiscally liberal, pro-corporate) because they formed their political/social views around the time they began school. American K-12 school is an authoritarian environment based in the nineteenth century on the Prussian model, to raise good factory workers who keep their heads down and have a common core of world knowledge. These kids were forged through learning to follow the rules, respect authority figures and the system, and have loyalty. As a result of staying for life with the ideology they developed at that crucial point in their development, they were socially conservative (deferential to social conventions, against gay marriage or legalizing pot, etc.), and trusted the government and businesses.

Wow. So, we were right! What you relate here serves to validate what we intuited as children. While walking to school, we'd see the big yellow monsters (we called em "Street Sweedies") scoop up all the unfortunates and cart them off to public school. We instinctively ran from the school busses, and though we didn't know why at the time, it makes rather a lot of sense now I read this!

In the Simpsons horror episode Treehouse of Horror IV, Bart introduces a terror-inducing painting of a school bus by saying, "The next exhibit in our ghoulish gallery is entitled -- the 'School Bus'? Oh! Oh! They must mean the 'Ghoul Bus.'"

Lisa replies: "Nope. It says right there, 'School Bus'."

Bart replies, "Well, there's nothing scarier than having to go to school."

And then, of course, teachers pull independent thought alarms in another episode of The Simpsons.

There's even one episode wherein Principal Skinner says his school will raise . . . box factory employees? Something like that.

Satirical though The Simpsons is, its jabs are rooted in historical fact.

The Origins of the American Public Education System: Horace Mann & the Prussian Model of Obedience

Also, check this out:

https://carolblack.org/a-thousand-rivers

I honestly don't know what to make of your definition of "authoritarian", as there are plenty of folks who are socially conservative but not what I would understand as "authoritarian". Perhaps we have differing concepts of "authoritarian" and "socially conservative" and "liberal" and so forth.

Authoritarians are one kind of social conservative. Communitarians, paleo-conservatives, and across-the-board conservatives are other kids of social conservative. Think of the Vosem Chart.

It's also correct to say that authoritarians are a kind of corporate conservative, or a kind of fiscal liberal.

I blink in astonishment! And am truly blessed that my experience in Catholic schools was non-Prussian, non-authoritarian. I don't think I would have made a good Prussian factory worker! We were just taught those foolish things like love in action and respect for life and compassion and gentleness and respect for others. All those outmoded ideas!

Sounds almost like a 1970's-era preschool with folk songs! Howe & Strauss say that grade schools in the Gen-X child era had a thing called "open classrooms". I vaguely remember early eighties children's activities with messages of love -- like my early-childhood art classes at the community center wherein I worked with clay and we kilned it into animal shapes.

Re legalising pot, I'm just going to say that in theory it's wonderful for the "rights crowd", but in practice the legalisation is just stupid. I was so happy when, here in ultra-hyper-super-duper liberal Maryland / DC / NOVA they finally outlawed public smoking. (This was a number of years ago, now.) The air is so fucking clean now, you can actually breathe it! And what do they do, at least in DC they legalised pot. Bad move. The place literally stinks now. I'm all for medicinal THC, but go about it the fucking right way. Make it into a pill or something that doesn't stink up the environment or turn users into zombies. Controlled substances are controlled for good reason.

Marijuana stinks? Being anosmic, I never had an idea.

I'm beginning to think that parents should be compelled to disavow all political thought when their first child is born. It's like a brain eating amoeba or something. Politics. Smartest thing Old Scratch ever invented to get people to hate one another! And it's only gotten so much worse.

Who/what is Old Scratch? A figure from The World? And "brain-eating amoeba" is a funny imagery.

My high school experience probably will seem every bit as culturally alien to you as yours does to me. All things considered, I think the worst travails of HS (apart from dealing with attention issues and general inaptitude as regards maths and science) were the training in morals, ethics and critical thinking. Good stuff, and looking back, I think those could have been focused on even more broadly throughout the curriculum. Other than that, I'd already been working on exploring The World for like five or six years and at that time had not figured out quite how to write a story. (I like to think I've gotten a little better at that!) Our concerns largely revolved around simple things like just béing. Hanging with friends. How to avoid actually having to dance during one of those horrific band fund raisers. For me, where to find a good book on Old English, if not Old Entish.

Politics was of zero interest. Not just to me, but I think generally speaking. It wasn't shoved down our throats; we weren't taught all the fake values of secular society. Of course, there was no social media, no unfiltered data dumps and no ideological saturation either. We did learn how to research and sift the wheat and chaff of ideas, and to be honest, life was "slower" then, just before your generation. In grammar school, we wrote our papers and assignments in long hand (oh, what a happy day when we finally got to use an honest to God pen to write with!); we went to the library to look in actual books to discover actual & juried facts. In HS we graduated to typewriters (and, happy me, had a choice of the electric Smith-Corona (with correction ribbon!) or an L.C. Smith No. 2 (the wonderful clacky-clack as steel smacked paper!). We had the time to digest ideas, to think and consider. Anymore, I can click on the old googlematic and uncover seventeen billion hits for any obscure arcana you care to name. Half those hits are useless shopping links, half are conspiracy theories, hate-mongers or regurgitants of the same and the other half are just plain wrong.

Interesting! So you started out writing with only pencils?

We had a few teachers at Campolindo who really connected with the students. Mr. Ala and Mr. Edun, two math teachers from the Middle East and South Asia, had a number of transcendent jokes they told whose punnery was almost a classic kind of Semitic/Indo-Iranian wisdom.

Then there was Mr. O'Brien (inspiration behind Burdick in my rock musical), who came to the classes he taught with red eyes and played the Grateful Dead, the Doors, Strawberry Alarm Clock, and their ilk in the background as he taught.

But the majority were of a countercultural political persuasion that would probably fall into the anterior bottom left of a Vosem Chart (antithetical to authoritarian). We started thinking independently, and forging our ideology, during high school. We witnessed the authority figures in the adult world around us suspend students for things they didn't do, fail students with whom they had a personal vendetta, enforce stifling social rules (like the hat rule) in the classroom, judgmentally appraise every action as either "appropriate" or "inappropriate", observe rigid rules as to how to carry themselves, accuse students crying in class of being "disruptive", and refuse to sign ISP's for students who had to take trips elsewhere during the school year. We were becoming explorers naturally at this point of our life, starting to really comprehend politics beyond a junior-high level, and expressing ourselves with clothes and music. In short, the system failed us, and we became against The System.

I can empathise. I was visiting with a friend recently whose young son swore up and down he was victim of exactly such injustice! Kind of had to chuckle at the immature perspective. I at least chuckled because I too thought that way when I was a teen ager. Moi!!?? I couldn't have done anything wrong! While there are, I'm sure, instances of teachers who do not comport themselves well, I'm also under no illusion that students are all lily white.

This same dad is, in fact, a HS teacher (oo, the delicious irony, ferrous and ferric on so many levels!), and we both know very well that, 99 44/100% of the time, students get exactly what they deserve. Sure, you got a detention but you weren't involved in the fight, right? Did you ever think to break the fight up? No, of course not! Was too exciting. Well, there you go. Personal vendettas, no that's wrong on every level. Anyway, most HS students will offer plenty of opportunities to fail themselves without involving personal feelings. That's just stupid teaching. "Stifling social rules"? Puhleese! Your house, your rules. If the teacher says take your hat off, take you damn hat off. If the teacher doesn't care, leave it on. In your own house, when you make The Rules, you can make whatever rules you want! Though frankly, if I were your teacher, I'd enforce every little stifling social rule I could come up with, just because you were being an impertinent ass.

I've never bought into the tenet "My house, my rules". Parents often levy it against a teen-age child of theirs whom the same parent(s) would quickly have arrested as a runaway if s/he tried to leave at 15 or 16 without getting properly emancipated first (and they say it's very hard to get emancipated). At the junior high/high school level, you could be arrested for truancy if you stopped going to school at 12 or 15 (even 17 in some states!), and a kappatwelver's choices in public schools are normally limited to his/her school district. Although students get to choose which foreign language or what electives to take, they don't get to choose whether they take algebra with Mr. Gomez or Mrs. Garcia, or whether they take biology with Mr. Roth or Ms. Rubenstein. Then there are the dress codes -- faculty say dress codes or uniforms are "preparing students for the corporate workplace", but adults are free to work as a field linguist or rock star or fast food employee or piercing salon employee or doula or even stripper, and not have to conform to professional attire norms, whereas people whose "job" is being a high school student don't have the same freedom to choose where they're going to attend school.

In my rock musical The Bittersweet Generation, the math teacher, Mrs. Dahlgren, confronts her student Paul Moreno about wearing his hat in class. After Paul refuses to take it off, she sends him to Mr. Pittman's office. There Mr. Pittman, the assistant-principal, lectures Paul on the importance of rules to society and offers to shake his hand, but when Paul refuses to shake, Mr. Pittman responds to his intransigence by calling Principal Forbes in. Paul is shocked when Mr. Pittman fabricates a story that Paul was caught doing graffiti in one of the boys' restrooms. Even though Paul tries repeatedly to explain his innocence, Principal Forbes unquestioningly believes Mr. Pittman's version of the story and suspends Paul. The word gets out, and student discontent continues to increase. Mr. Pittman holds to his story. Tensions escalate as a showdown in class leads to Mr. Pittman announcing that the school will go uniform. And then . . . I won't spoil the ending for all of you.

We came along before the nonsense of "appropriate" and "inappropriate" were introduced into the lexicon as the new moral standards.

Really? It started with the eighties or thereabouts? I remember in elementary school in the eighties/early nineties, the focus was on "socially appropriate behavior". Speaking of the eighties, just look at the 1986 majority opinion in Bethel School District v. Fraser.

I don't know what an ISP is or why anyone crying in class would be accused of being disruptive. That seems kind of bizarre to me.

ISP stands for Independent Study Plan. It's an agreement between student and faculty to study and learn certain things out of an outing when a student has to be away from school for a certain reason (like attending her older sister's wedding in Baltimore), and the student will hopefully get something educational out of the experience.

Of course, everyone expresses themselves in music and clothing and so forth. I think at that time, a lot of kids were into metal. I've no idea any band names, but I do recall Depeche Mode was popular among my friends, even though they quite antedated us by a number of years! I went in for folk music (nòt 60s phake pholk), medieval and renaissance, hung out with the satanists and played bootleg video games. I'm sure he had not the first clue what Satanism was all about. I did, because I plunked $2.95 down and bought a copy of their Bible. I read it, scratched my head and thought, well this is about the stupidest thing ever and ended up selling it at the local used book shop. And what happy times I found in that shop! The wonder of books: knowledge deep and arcane; tales both ancient and new; every interesting topic you could possibly think of. Except for the horrors of the "romance" section, I could wander the stacks for hours! And still consider it a blessing we have so many and so big used book shops in the area!

I'm a Depeche Mode fan myself. I also have Enya from the same decade, the Hair soundtrack, the Beatles, the Association, and oldies anthologies from the Awakening, and lots and lots of CD's from the nineties to the present day. In high school, most of my friends listened to Alice 97.3 music -- Jewel, Third Eye Blind, Cake, the Presidents of the United States (they did "Peacjes"), Smash Mouth, Eve 6, Alanis Morissette, Melissa Etheridge, etc.

This had some interesting effects. As of 1997, Moraga had 6,217 registered Republicans to 4,286 registered Democrats. Two thirds of us students wanted to be Democrats when our government class did a Congress simulation and required students to choose between Republican and Democrat. In a survey in the student newspaper during my stay at Campolindo, 55% of students said they identified with the Democratic party, a mere 11% said they identified with the Republican party, and the remaining 34% were independent. This is how generational gaps between teens and the parents of teens are formed.

I notice they pigeonholed you guys into a choice of only two parties. I'm sure I'd've been booted from that Congress. A rebel with a cause, or none at all!

I know, right? The reasoning was that Third Parties don't win seats in Congress, unless your name is Bernie Sanders.

Generally in lifespeeding societies, 14-to-18-year olds (or strictly speaking, people whose speedage (that's pronounced /ˈspidˌeidʒ/, not /ˈspidɨdʒ/) is 1 day to 4.5 years) don't have to attend authoritarian schools, so they wouldn't have that kind of experience, but the point is, none of their ideology would have come from formative parenting during childhood. It comes more from experiences like looking for a job, or dealing with a certain kind of immigrants, or getting fired or arrested, or even finding love.

It wonders me though: how do they even understand what love is? That's something that comes of a nurturing family environment. And develops from the time in the womb and through infancy. Even the most secular of psychologists recognises that most basic of human needs. How can they even turn out remotely "human" if they never experienced human contact or form critical attachments? It's one thing to cram facts and knowledge into a brain; but I wonder what the true cost in such a society will be! Hopefully these things will be well thought out and churned up into a story! I'd read it for sure, especially if it turns out as horrifically dystopic as I fear it must...

Really? Hmmmm . . . I didn't know that you need human bonds in childhood to form love. Frankly, I don't know what to do about this. Maybe stick multiple speedlings into the same speeder and have the interpath mutually bond their brains and emotions?

Which is rather humorous, given that it was liberal Democrats who staunchly defended segregation, Jim Crow, the KKK and so forth and who vehemently opposed integration and Civil Rights. Your speedling might end up suffering a bit of an existential crisis there.

I found this answer in my Quora digest today:

https://www.quora.com/What-are-liberals ... explaining

Read Aditya Das' answer.

I do concur: if speeducation were a thing in early 21st century America, if the wrong things get taught to the exclusion of the right things, we would end up even more dystopic than the public schools are making us now! You and I would probably disagree, at least to some extent, what ought to be taught via speeducation. . . . I would be entirely against inflicting this system wholesale onto children. I think it makes for great sci-fi (if entirely dystopic!) but I think such a system would make for absolutely terrible way to form a functional human person in the primary world. The experimentation required to get such a system up and running is simply beyond the pale. Even though we are, at present, moving into terribly dangerous waters (medically ethically speaking), I somehow doubt that even the most left-leaning among us would seriously consider doing this kind of thing to children.

. . .

This I think is where such a system breaks down. The speedling is really only learning a few pertinent factoids. He has no concept of the history of the death penalty or jurisprudence or the law or morality or ethics let alone how it all fits together. One thing I have noticed is that you never mention moral or ethical or theological formation. I won't draw (probably false) conclusions about your own upbringing and experience in school as it has tilted you one way or another or how it has led you to work out the details of this system! Though I know I'd be fascinated to learn!

. . .

I honestly don't know what a speedee would make of the death penalty. But as you hint at earlier, I think much will depend on who gets to programme the curriculum and what weight that curriculum will give to a topic. I fear that if the wrong side gets to make those choices, your speedees will probably end up totally fucked. (And, for what it's worth, I happen to think both sides are the wrong side.) Their factual education is not being balanced, as far as I can see (or as far as you've revealed) with any kind of moral balance. Nor with any kind of experience or ability to interact with wiser heads (and hearts!) until after their born. I think that learning the facts of history coupled with moral formation coupled with mature consideration applied with reason will lead a normal person to, at the very least, see the problems inherent in the pro-death penalty / pro-abortion arguments. With a little grace & understanding thrown into the mix, she may even come to the conclusion that killing other people is wrong and that killing other people who have committed crime does not make the killing any righter.

Thinking about dystopian aspects gives me an idea for a new country in the Lehola Galaxy! This one is a country whose leaders reverse-engineered the technology of other species' speeders to create lifespeed technology for the sapient species native to their own planet. They then made lifespeeding mandatory for all newborns from now on, and filled the knowledge-base in their speeders with historical lessons riddled with fake news. Speedees will be speedborn believing it all, and their planet is left with their own Bolsonaro!

And BTW, there is education in logic (understanding and recognizing logical fallacies, ethical philosophy and its history (like how Jeremy Bentham believed "the more the merrier" and what that meant), and what different religious traditions believe(d) about moral questions at different times in history in the speeder. But due to a combination of differences in DNA and post-speedbirth experiences, we don't have 100% of adults in lifespeeding-as-the-norm societies agreeing on every ethical question.

Me, I think I'd sue the speeducation company that birthed me if they crammed my head full of the inanities of pop culture. . . . Hill of beans quote? Plastics? I don't think I'd be any better a speedling than I would a Prussian factory worker!

You struck me as the kind of guy who would love The Princess Bride. I mean, iocaine powder . . . brilliant!

It does wonder me though, are there any speedlings that end up like me at all? Or is this a kind of one size fits all society?

That's a question for me to ponder!

Not something that would work in The World (or leastways the bits I'm familiar with).

I know you're wanting to go into a lengthy exposition on why it wouldn't work in The World, so I say go for it!

Actually, I wasn't... But I can say several things about this absolutely fascinating system vis a vis The World. I think that, had you introduced this in the Multiverse Inn, you would find that your Daine interlocutors at least would be wide-eyed, close-winged and shivering with horror. I just don't think they could even conceive of people --- not even Men! --- being produced in this way. You would have just blown their minds. Though, I think, probably not for the better. Their understanding of life and growth and even politics is so radically different from the speedees' world I don't think they could even connect.[/quote]

As I figured earlier when I was answering your question about wisdom!

Ah! I think the closest analogue would be a particular Daine "magic" called tale weaving. This is very deep dwimmery and will indeed impart memory into the minds and hearts of those that hear such tales. It is true that a tale weaver may enchant for several hours only, but those who awaken the next morning often recount that they have lived many lifetimes other than their own. It might be like long-term immersion in a 4D VR environment. Whatever the tale weaver enchanted, that becomes true memory for those who experience, though I guess, according to psychology, they would actually be implanted "false memories"! But what do psychologists know!

Cool! Kind of like a planarian eating another, mashed-up planarian that learned how to go through a maze, and automatically knowing how to go through that same maze.

Daine will only admit those of the Elder Race to participate. They won't allow Men or Dwarrows or anyone else to a telling. They won't even bring their young children.

There's that Daine value of wisdom again.

The ensorcelment is just too powerful.

Huh, when I went to the National Spelling Bee, a girl spelled "ensorcellment" this way and they told her it was wrong. They said it had two L's.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/ ... 834ab7eab/

[elemtilas]

You're welcome! Typing out that post really got me thinking a lot about how all the ramifications of lifespeed technology would work. Applied phlebotinum, or so they say.

Ah wow! I thought I'd lost you or scared you away! Thanks for taking the time to address my questions.

What arbitrary social rules do they instill in place of?

Different cultures have their own rules -- the Kebsabhazians in the country Kebsabhaz on the planet Chedam, for instance, have taboos against a number of swear words, complicated rules about the proper order to introduce people, and many rules of etiquette centering around coats. They have a taboo against touching animals with the right hand or food with the left hand. Kebsabhazian norms also forbid social exchanges with non-pachams (a pacham being a sapient of the species native to Chedam). Kebsabhazians don't normally lifespeed, though. They raise their children in a rough way, you are your parents' property until you're 30 Chedam years old, and if a parent's prepubescent child (under 24 Chedam years) commits a crime, the parent gets punished by the law instead of the child (so if your 9-year-old son murders someone, you could spend 15 years in prison, but your child would get off scot-free; you'd still be free to give him a parent-bestowed punishment, though).

Interesting. So lifespeeding is not entirely ubiquitous.

So I guess if you invite a Kebsabhazian over for dinner, you don't set the plates to her left and the Dog on her right!

Many of the societies that commonly lifespeed, though, are what in LIE are called "postconventional". Although there are a few common understandings for things wherefor people are required to be on the same page (such as the meanings of words or gestures, or which side of the road to drive on), society has advanced beyond having rules and taboos of this sort, and people are pretty much free to do and say what they want, as long as they're not hurting people or jeopardizing the security of a nation/car/train/spacecraft. A human living on Kankonia, on Shaleya, or in Tenta, for instance, wouldn't bat an eyelash if s/he saw someone masturbating with his briefs down atop a flagpole on Main Street, or scratching her hairy armpits in an expensive restaurant, on licking molten chocolate off her baby-daddy's abdomen in front of their non-lifesped preschool-age child. They're also much less concerned about appropriateness of relationships, power imbalances, professionalism, and appropriate distance than 2010's Americans.

Interesting!

In all honesty, some of those things would not feeze a Daine at all. Life lived within sight of everyone else in the family and community kind of puts the kibosh on thoughts of privacy. Mind you, licking chocolate off someone would be seen as quite odd. I mean, bitter!!

Here I'm not sure what you mean by "appropriateness". There are actions that Daine do that might seem entirely inappropriate to Men. They are much more concerned about imbalance (that is doubleplusungood) professionalism (whatever you do or make, do it with love and do it well) and distance (but not for the same reasons as standoffish Men -- Daine kin and friends prefer being close together and in contact).

So it sounds like speeducation involves instillation of one (or more) languages, pertinent local facts (how deep and how broad, I wonder?) and whatever passes for the arbitrary social rules of behaviour of the time and place, quite different as those may be from what folks (21st cen. Americans e.g.) are used to.

Yes. (And I see you've coined a great word -- "speeducation"!)

I'm getting rather interested in your world(s)! Just thought that sounded appropriate!

That's a lot of facts --- how do they impart experience, understanding and wisdom into the mix? Even young children are granted some measure of these; but they don't mature until experience teaches them. Or are those things speedlings aren't expected to be born with, but rather gain after speedbirth?

As for understanding -- the mind's ability to comprehend matures as the speedling grows and his/her brain develops, much as a child on modern-day Earth is capable of understanding more and more with each passing year of his/her life. The most elementary material is taught first -- like what the phonemes of the language s/he will speak are, and what the phonemic contrasts and allophones are; they start with things children learn in the first three years of life. Then episodic memory kicks in, and the speedling begins to actually remember the lifespeeding experience. In the last month or so before speedbirth, the speeder finishes with such things as lyceum-level academic knowledge and adult independent living skills, along with knowledge about sex (like the major STD's and how to avoid catching them).

So, babble before talk. Within the speedwomb, how do they physically practice talking (and walking and all the gross & fine motor skills)?

I still suspect it must be quite the culture shock to actually get out and truly experience things for the first time! Like Chimps being set free.

Experience is simulated by an interpath -- a mind-connected sensing by, and reaction to, the speedling's thoughts and curiosity. If the speedling thinks "There are barns, and there are matches -- what would happen if I set a barn afire?", the interpath in the speeder would sense that the speedling was wondering about that question, and would implant the answer, telepathically almost, into the speedling's brain. The young adult speedee then wouldn't have to experiment with setting a barn afire, watching the animals panic and burn, and accrue an arson arrest on his record to learn not to set fire to barns.

So, a sort of VR tutor?

How does the Interpath deal with little Jenny Psychopath who either asks lots of questions of that sort (curious girl!) or whose mind and body react with pleasure seeing animals and maybe people suffer and burn?

As for true . . . wisdom, that can't really be taught via speedbirth. People in the futuristic societies of the Lehola Galaxy tend to believe that in order to be eligible to vote (if the country is a democracy), or hold a job, or have sex, one doesn't need to be a sage, but rather to be able to function independently. Evidently, this is very different from the Daine philosophy on wisdom! Your Daine would be more at home on Shanu, a human-inhabited planet in the solar system Yunimo with 340 countries (no one-world government!) filled with traditionalist societies, none of which want their countries nor planet to join the Interplanetary Council of Lehola.

Ah, so there are limitations! I find that rather more appealing now. I've never liked super advanced technological societies that have solved all their problems with perfect machines.

Mm. Maybe that's why magic is so wonky in The World? Keeps the place from being perfect.

Well, I don't think Daine would be at all comfortable on an entirely human-inhabited planet, even if the societies are of a more familiar sort.

Humans are just ... weird. They behave weirdly and don't get so many things. Their experience with all-Mannish countries has always been one of sorrow and pain.

Question: how does one determine political leaning from genetics? I should think that would be more a matter of environment and education. It makes considerable sense, though, that one's experience post speedbirth would be what leads to some kind of political leaning or other.

Researchers have discovered a correlation between sense of disgust and political leaning. People who have a strong/high sense of disgust are usually socially conservative, while people who have a weak/low sense of disgust are usually socially liberal.

Take the test!

http://chartsme.com/

Hmm. I see that Bernie "Uncle Joe" Sanders is so far to the right of me he's not even a blip on the radar.

I'll leave the interpretation of the test to you!

There's even one episode wherein Principal Skinner says his school will raise . . . box factory employees? Something like that.

Satirical though The Simpsons is, its jabs are rooted in historical fact.

[url=ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZp7eVJNJuw&t=7s]The Origins of the American Public Education System: Horace Mann & the Prussian Model of Obedience[/url]

Also, check this out:

https://carolblack.org/a-thousand-rivers

Heh. The Simpsons, if you pay close attention, is actually spot on about so many things.

As for the schoolSystem (TM), it's my opinion that they have become so focused on education that they've forgotten how to teach. Everything is about testing. Results. Brick in the wall. Cog in the machine. Prussian box factory worker factory. They forget that there are actual human beings sitting in those chairs and each one is precious and different. They have different needs and while I don't have a non-Daine solution (!), I think it's pretty clear the System is broken. As evidenced by the Simpsons!

Looking back, I often wonder how our teachers managed without the wisdom of these great educators!

I honestly don't know what to make of your definition of "authoritarian", as there are plenty of folks who are socially conservative but not what I would understand as "authoritarian". Perhaps we have differing concepts of "authoritarian" and "socially conservative" and "liberal" and so forth.

Authoritarians are one kind of social conservative. Communitarians, paleo-conservatives, and across-the-board conservatives are other kinds of social conservative. Think of the Vosem Chart.

I think mostly it's because you seem to skew / mix "authoritarianism" with "conservatism". There is plenty of space for authoritarianism on the Left (and many historical examples).

Vosem chart: that's interesting! I am defs a moral monarchist of the Aquinan school. (As if you couldn't tell from the way many countries in Yeola are governed!)

It's also correct to say that authoritarians are a kind of corporate conservative, or a kind of fiscal liberal.

?

I blink in astonishment! And am truly blessed that my experience in Catholic schools was non-Prussian, non-authoritarian. I don't think I would have made a good Prussian factory worker! We were just taught those foolish things like love in action and respect for life and compassion and gentleness and respect for others. All those outmoded ideas!

Sounds almost like a 1970's-era preschool with folk songs! Howe & Strauss say that grade schools in the Gen-X child era had a thing called "open classrooms". I vaguely remember early eighties children's activities with messages of love -- like my early-childhood art classes at the community center wherein I worked with clay and we kilned it into animal shapes.

Nah. No hippie phake pholk songs per se. Just the outmoded Gospel. Which is kind of odd, really, because while you might expect a Christian school to be "Bible based" (and I think many demonational Christian schools, particularly of the Evangelical sort) and maybe use sectarian text books (shudder), that wasn't the case at all. More about living right and charitably in the world. Holistic you might say. Hard to put it in words. Denominational Christianity is just so different (and frankly odd) in its outlook that their schooling style is almost as alien to me as the public System!

Re legalising pot, I'm just going to say that in theory it's wonderful for the "rights crowd", but in practice the legalisation is just stupid. I was so happy when, here in ultra-hyper-super-duper liberal Maryland / DC / NOVA they finally outlawed public smoking. (This was a number of years ago, now.) The air is so fucking clean now, you can actually breathe it! And what do they do, at least in DC they legalised pot. Bad move. The place literally stinks now. I'm all for medicinal THC, but go about it the fucking right way. Make it into a pill or something that doesn't stink up the environment or turn users into zombies. Controlled substances are controlled for good reason.

Marijuana stinks? Being anosmic, I never had an idea.

Lucky bastard.

Sadly, marijuana is something I can smell. Just believe me. It's horrible. It's an ugly smell. Like plunging your head into sludge and having a look around.

I'm beginning to think that parents should be compelled to disavow all political thought when their first child is born. It's like a brain eating amoeba or something. Politics. Smartest thing Old Scratch ever invented to get people to hate one another! And it's only gotten so much worse.

Who/what is Old Scratch? A figure from The World? And "brain-eating amoeba" is a funny imagery.

Old Scratch? The Devil. The Enemy.

Interesting! So you started out writing with only pencils?

Yep. Couldn't erase either! At first, anyway. We drew circles around mistakes and wrote the correction above.

Kind of fun, because I'd draw outlines to fit the shape of the incorrect letter or punctuation.

Pencil was preferred, I think, because the tablet paper we used was even chintzier than newsprint. Pen would go right through and tear the paper.

We had a few teachers at Campolindo who really connected with the students. Mr. Ala and Mr. Edun, two math teachers from the Middle East and South Asia, had a number of transcendent jokes they told whose punnery was almost a classic kind of Semitic/Indo-Iranian wisdom.

Then there was Mr. O'Brien (inspiration behind Burdick in my rock musical), who came to the classes he taught with red eyes and played the Grateful Dead, the Doors, Strawberry Alarm Clock, and their ilk in the background as he taught.

That's a relief! There are loads of wonderful teachers out there. If only they weren't so burdened by the System.

I've never bought into the tenet "My house, my rules".

Fair enough.

That ìs your house rules, then!

Parents often levy it against a teen-age child of theirs whom the same parent(s) would quickly have arrested as a runaway if s/he tried to leave at 15 or 16 without getting properly emancipated first (and they say it's very hard to get emancipated).

Mostly this is because, in spite of what teenagers often believe about their parents, they do actually love their children intensely and will do anything for them according to their lights and understanding. Rules exist not as an inconvenience for children (though I recall feeling just that way!) but as a means of teaching small animals how to become people.

Emancipation. I don't know how hard or easy it is. In my opinion, if you're 15 and have a situation, housing, education & job that can sustain you in such a fashion that you will not revert to your parents' care and will not be a drain on social services then more power to you! Basically, if you want to play at being grown up (and this includes sex, use of drugs and alcohol), then you accept everything that being a grown up entails. Basically, I don't have a problem with emancipation as a thing. I just don't think most 15 or 16 year olds actually comprehend the moral, social and societal ramifications of their choices.

At the junior high/high school level, you could be arrested for truancy if you stopped going to school at 12 or 15 (even 17 in some states!), and a kappatwelver's choices in public schools are normally limited to his/her school district. Although students get to choose which foreign language or what electives to take, they don't get to choose whether they take algebra with Mr. Gomez or Mrs. Garcia, or whether they take biology with Mr. Roth or Ms. Rubenstein.

Really? I guess if your school is big enough to have multiple teachers for one subject! On the other hand, especially at 15, I just didn't give a fuck. (Happily, I had parents that did!, cos otherwise, I'd be emancipated and on the street.)

Then there are the dress codes -- faculty say dress codes or uniforms are "preparing students for the corporate workplace", but adults are free to work as a field linguist or rock star or fast food employee or piercing salon employee or doula or even stripper, and not have to conform to professional attire norms, whereas people whose "job" is being a high school student don't have the same freedom to choose where they're going to attend school.

Educators. Psshh.

Dress codes do actually serve one good function, and that is to eliminate needless social competition via overly expensive / designer clothing. Used to hear stories on the news about some kid in school that would get jumped and beaten up by other kids in school who were envious of his fancy-dan shoes or a coat.

Well, we had to wear dark green pants and white or yellow polo shirts (primary school). No one's going to jump you for dark green trousers!

The girls' skirts were rather fetching, though! I often wish we boys could have worn those too. Either alone or in addition to the trousers. Happily, the school eventually changed over to a blue & white scheme. We used to buy the clothing through a uniform supplier, but they weren't really "uniforms" per se. They were inexpensive, hard wearing and no concerns over what everyone else is wearing, cos hey! they're all wearing the same thing!

H.S. we had to wear "decent" trousers (no work clothes or dungarees), a button shirt and something approaching a tie. Had nothing to do with preparation for the corporate workplace. It was more about instilling a mindset of elevation above the mundane. This is the place where you go to edify your mind -- array your body accordingly. Of course, the dress code was no stricter than that. Whát you wore as a tie was of no real import. If I forgot mine and couldn't borrow one, I'd sometimes wear a satchel strap. Another option was to go visit the art studio and make a tie out of whatever paints and paper and so forth was available there.

In my rock musical The Bittersweet Generation, the math teacher, Mrs. Dahlgren, confronts her student Paul Moreno about wearing his hat in class. After Paul refuses to take it off, she sends him to Mr. Pittman's office. There Mr. Pittman, the assistant-principal, lectures Paul on the importance of rules to society and offers to shake his hand, but when Paul refuses to shake, Mr. Pittman responds to his intransigence by calling Principal Forbes in. Paul is shocked when Mr. Pittman fabricates a story that Paul was caught doing graffiti in one of the boys' restrooms. Even though Paul tries repeatedly to explain his innocence, Principal Forbes unquestioningly believes Mr. Pittman's version of the story and suspends Paul. The word gets out, and student discontent continues to increase. Mr. Pittman holds to his story. Tensions escalate as a showdown in class leads to Mr. Pittman announcing that the school will go uniform. And then . . . I won't spoil the ending for all of you.

As for adults and their choices, there are plenty of dress codes out there. Contrasting the freedom of work choice and clothing choice with the school dress code is a very teenage way of looking at things.

Doctors, lawyers, corporate folks all have dress codes. Even medical students and residents. Professionals often dress in certain ways usually as a function of their duties (you don't work as a surgical nurse wearing heels a tight skirt and too much perfume!) Many professions and vocations prescribe certain clothing styles. Priests wear Roman collars and black shirts & trousers. Firemen and EMS and policemen all wear uniforms. Soldiers wear uniforms. Chefs often wear uniforms. Generally speaking, janitors and doormen and bus drivers and train drivers wear uniforms.

Dress codes are everywhere my friend. And they generally serve a function. Most of these are visual cues. In your community, you recognise a policeman's uniform and you know instantly this is either someone you can trust implicitly because they are Lawful Good or someone you should bolt from because they're psychos that'll threaten pumping you full of lead because you're out picking up trash from your front yard.

We came along before the nonsense of "appropriate" and "inappropriate" were introduced into the lexicon as the new moral standards.

Really? It started with the eighties or thereabouts? I remember in elementary school in the eighties/early nineties, the focus was on "socially appropriate behavior". Speaking of the eighties, just look at the 1986 majority opinion in Bethel School District v. Fraser.

I don't know when that nonsense started. I think I became aware of it by the 1990s some time.

Re Bethel, I note that in the facts of the case, "In his speech, Fraser used what some observers believed was a graphic sexual metaphor..."

The pertinent quote is "I know a man who is firm – he's firm in his pants, he's firm in his shirt, his character is firm – but most of all, his belief in you the students of Bethel, is firm. Jeff Kuhlman is a man who takes his point and pounds it in. If necessary, he'll take an issue and nail it to the wall. He doesn't attack things in spurts – he drives hard, pushing and pushing until finally – he succeeds. Jeff is a man who will go to the very end – even the climax, for each and every one of you. So please vote for Jeff Kuhlman, as he'll never come between us and the best our school can be."

I do not believe that speech rises to the level of innuendo or entendre of any sort.

What's funny is that this same school probably makes their English Lit classes read Shakespeare. innuendo and hey nonny noe all over the place! and no one bats an eyelash over that.

This is an excellent example of how an anthill is far too easily made into Olympus Mons by overly sensitive, overly judgemental, overly self-righteous people. It reminds me of a local case where someone on the city council used the word niggardly. One or more other people on the board thought they were being called niggers. Well, that got into the news and the whole city was in uproar and calls for resignation were made.

I heard that hullaballoo and thought, people, just crack open your effing dictionaries. Very sad how in modern society so many people have become so fragile.

I don't know what an ISP is or why anyone crying in class would be accused of being disruptive. That seems kind of bizarre to me.

ISP stands for Independent Study Plan. It's an agreement between student and faculty to study and learn certain things out of an outing when a student has to be away from school for a certain reason (like attending her older sister's wedding in Baltimore), and the student will hopefully get something educational out of the experience.

Hm. Sounds needlessly unnecessary to me. Especially in lower grades where a comparable assignment could easily be given. But I suppose one could look at it as practice for later independent study programmes, grant applications processes and the like.

Of course, everyone expresses themselves in music and clothing and so forth. I think at that time, a lot of kids were into metal. I've no idea any band names, but I do recall Depeche Mode was popular among my friends, even though they quite antedated us by a number of years! I went in for folk music (nòt 60s phake pholk), medieval and renaissance, hung out with the satanists and played bootleg video games. I'm sure he had not the first clue what Satanism was all about. I did, because I plunked $2.95 down and bought a copy of their Bible. I read it, scratched my head and thought, well this is about the stupidest thing ever and ended up selling it at the local used book shop. And what happy times I found in that shop! The wonder of books: knowledge deep and arcane; tales both ancient and new; every interesting topic you could possibly think of. Except for the horrors of the "romance" section, I could wander the stacks for hours! And still consider it a blessing we have so many and so big used book shops in the area!

I'm a Depeche Mode fan myself. I also have Enya from the same decade, the Hair soundtrack, the Beatles, the Association, and oldies anthologies from the Awakening, and lots and lots of CD's from the nineties to the present day. In high school, most of my friends listened to Alice 97.3 music -- Jewel, Third Eye Blind, Cake, the Presidents of the United States (they did "Peacjes"), Smash Mouth, Eve 6, Alanis Morissette, Melissa Etheridge, etc.

Never heard of em.

Well, except the Beatles. I listened to the all comedy radio station (that was a real gem!), watched UK reruns of Red Dwarf and Benny Hill and listened to folk music.

I notice they pigeonholed you guys into a choice of only two parties. I'm sure I'd've been booted from that Congress. A rebel with a cause, or none at all!

I know, right? The reasoning was that Third Parties don't win seats in Congress, unless your name is Bernie Sanders.

Sadly, the two parties are so one party anymore that it just doesn't make much difference. If the schoolSystem (TM) is bad, the politicalSystem (TM) is the same only worse. Too much fake compassion, too much partisan bickering, too many politicians, too little actual Constitutional scholarship or understanding, too little civics.

It wonders me though: how do they even understand what love is? That's something that comes of a nurturing family environment. And develops from the time in the womb and through infancy. Even the most secular of psychologists recognises that most basic of human needs. How can they even turn out remotely "human" if they never experienced human contact or form critical attachments? It's one thing to cram facts and knowledge into a brain; but I wonder what the true cost in such a society will be! Hopefully these things will be well thought out and churned up into a story! I'd read it for sure, especially if it turns out as horrifically dystopic as I fear it must...

Really? Hmmmm . . . I didn't know that you need human bonds in childhood to form love. Frankly, I don't know what to do about this. Maybe stick multiple speedlings into the same speeder and have the interpath mutually bond their brains and emotions?

That could be interesting!

Sort of like, quite literally, a "school" of children growing up together. A cohort I think they call it. Could be some interesting fodder for social interactions post speedbirth. For example, how might a speedcohort's relationships develop after birth? Will they continue to rely upon one another and grow the bonds they experienced in the speedwomb? How might they interact with similarly speeducated cohorts (for example, if there are differences between different companies processes) --- would near cohorts be seen as "cousins" or colleagues while cohorts from other firms be seen as "foreign" in some way?

Which is rather humorous, given that it was liberal Democrats who staunchly defended segregation, Jim Crow, the KKK and so forth and who vehemently opposed integration and Civil Rights. Your speedling might end up suffering a bit of an existential crisis there.

I found this answer in my Quora digest today:

https://www.quora.com/What-are-liberals ... explaining[/quote]

No doubt. Don't confuse people with the facts, right?

Spoiler:

I do concur: if speeducation were a thing in early 21st century America, if the wrong things get taught to the exclusion of the right things, we would end up even more dystopic than the public schools are making us now! You and I would probably disagree, at least to some extent, what ought to be taught via speeducation. . . . I would be entirely against inflicting this system wholesale onto children. I think it makes for great sci-fi (if entirely dystopic!) but I think such a system would make for absolutely terrible way to form a functional human person in the primary world. The experimentation required to get such a system up and running is simply beyond the pale. Even though we are, at present, moving into terribly dangerous waters (medically ethically speaking), I somehow doubt that even the most left-leaning among us would seriously consider doing this kind of thing to children.

. . .

This I think is where such a system breaks down. The speedling is really only learning a few pertinent factoids. He has no concept of the history of the death penalty or jurisprudence or the law or morality or ethics let alone how it all fits together. One thing I have noticed is that you never mention moral or ethical or theological formation. I won't draw (probably false) conclusions about your own upbringing and experience in school as it has tilted you one way or another or how it has led you to work out the details of this system! Though I know I'd be fascinated to learn!

. . .

I honestly don't know what a speedee would make of the death penalty. But as you hint at earlier, I think much will depend on who gets to programme the curriculum and what weight that curriculum will give to a topic. I fear that if the wrong side gets to make those choices, your speedees will probably end up totally fucked. (And, for what it's worth, I happen to think both sides are the wrong side.) Their factual education is not being balanced, as far as I can see (or as far as you've revealed) with any kind of moral balance. Nor with any kind of experience or ability to interact with wiser heads (and hearts!) until after their born. I think that learning the facts of history coupled with moral formation coupled with mature consideration applied with reason will lead a normal person to, at the very least, see the problems inherent in the pro-death penalty / pro-abortion arguments. With a little grace & understanding thrown into the mix, she may even come to the conclusion that killing other people is wrong and that killing other people who have committed crime does not make the killing any righter.

Thinking about dystopian aspects gives me an idea for a new country in the Lehola Galaxy! This one is a country whose leaders reverse-engineered the technology of other species' speeders to create lifespeed technology for the sapient species native to their own planet. They then made lifespeeding mandatory for all newborns from now on, and filled the knowledge-base in their speeders with historical lessons riddled with fake news. Speedees will be speedborn believing it all, and their planet is left with their own Bolsonaro!

Ha!

And BTW, there is education in logic (understanding and recognizing logical fallacies, ethical philosophy and its history (like how Jeremy Bentham believed "the more the merrier" and what that meant), and what different religious traditions believe(d) about moral questions at different times in history in the speeder. But due to a combination of differences in DNA and post-speedbirth experiences, we don't have 100% of adults in lifespeeding-as-the-norm societies agreeing on every ethical question.

Interesting. Would it also be fair, then, to say that not all speeders have the same taste in pop culture, food, etc, etc?

Me, I think I'd sue the speeducation company that birthed me if they crammed my head full of the inanities of pop culture. . . . Hill of beans quote? Plastics? I don't think I'd be any better a speedling than I would a Prussian factory worker!

You struck me as the kind of guy who would love The Princess Bride. I mean, iocaine powder . . . brilliant!

Had to look that one up! Too funny!

I'd've chosen the bottle, me. Chateau Schrödinger 1743. A very good year!

It does wonder me though, are there any speedlings that end up like me at all? Or is this a kind of one size fits all society?

That's a question for me to ponder!

Well colour me anticipatory!

But I can say several things about this absolutely fascinating system vis a vis The World. I think that, had you introduced this in the Multiverse Inn, you would find that your Daine interlocutors at least would be wide-eyed, close-winged and shivering with horror. I just don't think they could even conceive of people --- not even Men! --- being produced in this way. You would have just blown their minds. Though, I think, probably not for the better. Their understanding of life and growth and even politics is so radically different from the speedees' world I don't think they could even connect.

As I figured earlier when I was answering your question about wisdom!

(:

Ah! I think the closest analogue would be a particular Daine "magic" called tale weaving. This is very deep dwimmery and will indeed impart memory into the minds and hearts of those that hear such tales. It is true that a tale weaver may enchant for several hours only, but those who awaken the next morning often recount that they have lived many lifetimes other than their own. It might be like long-term immersion in a 4D VR environment. Whatever the tale weaver enchanted, that becomes true memory for those who experience, though I guess, according to psychology, they would actually be implanted "false memories"! But what do psychologists know!

Cool! Kind of like a planarian eating another, mashed-up planarian that learned how to go through a maze, and automatically knowing how to go through that same maze.

In a non-physical way, yes.

There are magics that can transfer, if not memories, other capacities through physical ingestion.

Daine will only admit those of the Elder Race to participate. They won't allow Men or Dwarrows or anyone else to a telling. They won't even bring their young children.

There's that Daine value of wisdom again.

The ensorcelment is just too powerful.

Huh, when I went to the National Spelling Bee, a girl spelled "ensorcellment" this way and they told her it was wrong. They said it had two L's.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/ ... 834ab7eab/
[/quote]

Sometimes the spelling bee folks get it wrong!

Don't take so long replying next time, o long period comet of geopoetic wonder and astonishment!

[Reyzadren]

Researchers have discovered a correlation between sense of disgust and political leaning. People who have a strong/high sense of disgust are usually socially conservative, while people who have a weak/low sense of disgust are usually socially liberal.

Take the test!

http://chartsme.com/

I took it. It says "Your brain is a Democrat. 22-78".

Though, clearly I am not a liberal (upon the typical US sense). Indeed, most liberals would never agree with my viewpoints online. So, I guess this test doesn't work on me. Of course, I'm talking wrt to irl, not the conworld heh.

[Hālian]

Also, what would it mean for other areas of interaction if women (or the equivalent) traveled more than men? Or if adults and young were seen as the same socially?

How young is young?

In the Lehola Galaxy, they have developed a technology called lifespeeding for most sapient species. After a baby is born, it is placed in a "bubble" called a speeder to take the child from birth to young adulthood in a matter of months. While in the speeder, the "speedling" (as the child is called) is constantly fed and generally has its development in height, weight, knowledge, self-control, physical control and coo:rdination, etc. sped up. The speedling's brain is bombarded with knowledge about the world, everyday physics (like "You can't walk through objects"), basic biological knowledge ("Ladies have high voices and guys have deep voices"), core cultural knowledge from her/his country/planet/ethnic group, etc., fluency in the language s/he is raised speaking, and more. The speedling comes out of the speeder at the beginning of young adulthood (about 14 in Earth years).

When children are as a matter of course lifesped, everyone outside of a speeder (except for fetuses and babies who have just been born and are about to go into a speeder, of course) is usually a full-functioning adult, equal to all the other adults socially and legally. (Yes, most of the futuristic societies of Lehola have done away with treating adolescents like chattel.)

Hmm, I wonder if something like this would fit well into the Safir Alliance. o:

[Khemehekis]

You're welcome! Typing out that post really got me thinking a lot about how all the ramifications of lifespeed technology would work. Applied phlebotinum, or so they say.

Ah wow! I thought I'd lost you or scared you away! Thanks for taking the time to address my questions.

You're welcome. And right now, I'm full of Frappuccino and have nothing else to do from nine till midnight, so I'll respond to another Elemtilas post!

Interesting. So lifespeeding is not entirely ubiquitous.

That's correct. Some countries require lifespeeding, some almost always lifespeed, some are about 50/50, in some countries lifespeeding is known but is rare, some countries haven't had lifespeeding introduced to them because they're so traditional, and some sapient species haven't had lifespeeding invented for them yet.

So I guess if you invite a Kebsabhazian over for dinner, you don't set the plates to her left and the Dog on her right!

Correct. 93% of pachams are right-handed, 3% left-handed, and 3% ambidextrous, and 1% cross-handed, and conformist Kebsabhazians are leery of left-handedness -- much like Indian or Roma norms regarding the hands and contamination. Although a norm-observing Kebsabhazian would refuse to go to your house for dinner unless you were a pacham. Dinner with a human? A Grey? A Daine? Out of the question! And a dog as a pet? How mammalian! The kamam, a carnivore with a bead nose and thin ears that walks on two legs, is often kept as a pet in households across Chedam. The tiny and fat fafaq, with its opossum-like face, is also popular as a pet.

In all honesty, some of those things would not feeze a Daine at all. Life lived within sight of everyone else in the family and community kind of puts the kibosh on thoughts of privacy. Mind you, licking chocolate off someone would be seen as quite odd. I mean, bitter!!

Feeze? As in faze? On Kankonia, a mother and her teen-age son might use the same bathroom at the same time, one to defecate, one to shower! And when you say "bitter" . . . do you mean chocolate/cacao tastes bitter to Daine? I know male and female Daine have different perceptions of colors . . . are perceptions of foods also different from humans, or at least between Daine genders?

As for understanding -- the mind's ability to comprehend matures as the speedling grows and his/her brain develops, much as a child on modern-day Earth is capable of understanding more and more with each passing year of his/her life. The most elementary material is taught first -- like what the phonemes of the language s/he will speak are, and what the phonemic contrasts and allophones are; they start with things children learn in the first three years of life. Then episodic memory kicks in, and the speedling begins to actually remember the lifespeeding experience. In the last month or so before speedbirth, the speeder finishes with such things as lyceum-level academic knowledge and adult independent living skills, along with knowledge about sex (like the major STD's and how to avoid catching them).

So, babble before talk. Within the speedwomb, how do they physically practice talking (and walking and all the gross & fine motor skills)?

I still suspect it must be quite the culture shock to actually get out and truly experience things for the first time! Like Chimps being set free.

Yes, babble before talk. They practice talking, but it sounds many times more sped-up than Alvin and the Chipmunks to an observer standing outside the speeder. They walk for exercise, but it looks like asynchronous development (as in many geniuses on Earth), with walking progressing more slowly than talking. Imagine a kindergartner who could speak fluent English at a 6-year-old level and was learning D'Nealian, but still toddled like a toddler! And yes, it is a kind of culture shock.

Experience is simulated by an interpath -- a mind-connected sensing by, and reaction to, the speedling's thoughts and curiosity. If the speedling thinks "There are barns, and there are matches -- what would happen if I set a barn afire?", the interpath in the speeder would sense that the speedling was wondering about that question, and would implant the answer, telepathically almost, into the speedling's brain. The young adult speedee then wouldn't have to experiment with setting a barn afire, watching the animals panic and burn, and accrue an arson arrest on his record to learn not to set fire to barns.

So, a sort of VR tutor?

How does the Interpath deal with little Jenny Psychopath who either asks lots of questions of that sort (curious girl!) or whose mind and body react with pleasure seeing animals and maybe people suffer and burn?

The interpath would teach Jenny Psychopath about various ethical systems and what they say about cruelty to animals and arson, as well as teaching what prisons are like and what it would be like to be in one after committing arson. It could even hologrammesquely simulate a prison for a while if Jenny thought it sounded fun.

Then there are the people who would still commit arson as (young) adults after they were speedborn. These people would get arrested and convicted quickly, probably before the speedage of 1.

Ah, so there are limitations! I find that rather more appealing now. I've never liked super advanced technological societies that have solved all their problems with perfect machines.

Mm. Maybe that's why magic is so wonky in The World? Keeps the place from being perfect.

Heh, heh, like the way cats and spread toast might disintegrate or even regenerate afterwards?

Another problem not solved with lifespeeding is the "Jenny Psychopath" types as you call them, who would likely commit heinous crimes after they were speedborn. No way to stop those without celericide (killing/interfering with a speedling and his/her speeducation while s/he is still in the speeder, which is a crime in almost every non-anarchistic society that knows lifespeeding).

Well, I don't think Daine would be at all comfortable on an entirely human-inhabited planet, even if the societies are of a more familiar sort.

Humans are just ... weird. They behave weirdly and don't get so many things. Their experience with all-Mannish countries has always been one of sorrow and pain.

I understand.

Take the test!

http://chartsme.com/

Hmm. I see that Bernie "Uncle Joe" Sanders is so far to the right of me he's not even a blip on the radar.

I'll leave the interpretation of the test to you!

Uncle Joe, as in Joe Hill? It gave me 20% conservative and 80% liberal. I did find a flaw with the first question though, the one about monkey meat. Liberals/Democrats are more likely than conservatives/Republicans to support animal rights in general, and likely will believe that eating bushmeat (or cetacean blubber!) is morally wrong. Liberals are also more likely to be vegetarians.

Heh. The Simpsons, if you pay close attention, is actually spot on about so many things.

Yes, they even got President Trump rigjt!

As for the schoolSystem (TM), it's my opinion that they have become so focused on education that they've forgotten how to teach. Everything is about testing. Results. Brick in the wall. Cog in the machine. Prussian box factory worker factory. They forget that there are actual human beings sitting in those chairs and each one is precious and different. They have different needs and while I don't have a non-Daine solution (!), I think it's pretty clear the System is broken. As evidenced by the Simpsons!

Looking back, I often wonder how our teachers managed without the wisdom of these great educators!

Howe & Strauss say that K-12 schools are raising Millennials (or that elementary school raised Millennials, past tense, now that all Millennials have graduated elementary school) to be the heroes of a crisis like World War II who will "save us all" (they actually use that phrase) and to be great scientists, and are focusing on great test scores because they knew a Crisis (with a capital C) was coming.

I honestly don't know what to make of your definition of "authoritarian", as there are plenty of folks who are socially conservative but not what I would understand as "authoritarian". Perhaps we have differing concepts of "authoritarian" and "socially conservative" and "liberal" and so forth.

Authoritarians are one kind of social conservative. Communitarians, paleo-conservatives, and across-the-board conservatives are other kinds of social conservative. Think of the Vosem Chart.

I think mostly it's because you seem to skew / mix "authoritarianism" with "conservatism". There is plenty of space for authoritarianism on the Left (and many historical examples).

Vosem chart: that's interesting! I am defs a moral monarchist of the Aquinan school. (As if you couldn't tell from the way many countries in Yeola are governed!)

It's also correct to say that authoritarians are a kind of corporate conservative, or a kind of fiscal liberal.

?

Ah, the Google search for "Vosem Chart" must have led you to some misleading results.

This is the Vosem Chart:

http://atdt.freeshell.org/k5/story_2003 ... _6208.html

Here's a color picture of the correct Vosem Chart, except reversing the original convention of having corporate conservatives in back and corporate liberals in front:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22vose ... KzM:&vet=1

Nah. No hippie phake pholk songs per se. Just the outmoded Gospel. Which is kind of odd, really, because while you might expect a Christian school to be "Bible based" (and I think many demonational Christian schools, particularly of the Evangelical sort) and maybe use sectarian text books (shudder), that wasn't the case at all. More about living right and charitably in the world. Holistic you might say. Hard to put it in words. Denominational Christianity is just so different (and frankly odd) in its outlook that their schooling style is almost as alien to me as the public System!

So no Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, or Kingston Trio. Got it. So it wasn't a Catholic school?

A lot of Catholic high schools don't allow boys to grow facial hair. I wouldn't've liked that.

Marijuana stinks? Being anosmic, I never had an idea.

Lucky bastard.

Sadly, marijuana is something I can smell. Just believe me. It's horrible. It's an ugly smell. Like plunging your head into sludge and having a look around.

I saw a Millennial girl discussing the move to legalize the herb on another forum some years ago, and she said Millennials typically think marijuana smells good, but tobacco smells horrid. She wondered if Millennials would legalize weed and ban tobacco. Now that teen-age vaping is way up, the latter half doesn't seem likely!

Who/what is Old Scratch? A figure from The World? And "brain-eating amoeba" is a funny imagery.

Old Scratch? The Devil. The Enemy.

I got it. Old Nick. Beelzebub. Mephistopheles.

Yep. Couldn't erase either! At first, anyway. We drew circles around mistakes and wrote the correction above.

Kind of fun, because I'd draw outlines to fit the shape of the incorrect letter or punctuation.

Pencil was preferred, I think, because the tablet paper we used was even chintzier than newsprint. Pen would go right through and tear the paper.

Surprising story there! We used scratch paper for practice, and "nice" paper for tests and essays in elementary school. Even in junior high, there was a lot of math done on scratch paper, and teachers were often picky about what you used a pen for versus what you used a pencil for.

That's a relief! There are loads of wonderful teachers out there. If only they weren't so burdened by the System.

Yes. Teaching to the test. Common core curricula. (Wow, that was just one sentence fragment composed entirely of T-words, followed by one composed entirely of C-words!)

Mostly this is because, in spite of what teenagers often believe about their parents, they do actually love their children intensely and will do anything for them according to their lights and understanding. Rules exist not as an inconvenience for children (though I recall feeling just that way!) but as a means of teaching small animals how to become people.

Some parents hate their children because they were accidents, and even tell them so. And then there are the parents who make rules like "You can't date that boy because he's Black".

Then there are parents like those Dylan Owens' friend has:

https://www.quora.com/In-parenting-how- ... too-strict

Dylan Owens
Dylan Owens, I've written, I'm writing, and I'll write.
Answered Dec 6, 2017

My best friend is 15. These are his rules:

His bed time is 8:00. He has to be in bed, lights off, and not moving. He breaks it, no phone for a month.

He usually has go to church three times a week. This is not optional. He has never missed church.

He can’t watch any movies, videos, or TV shows that contain magic. He does, no phone for a month.

He can’t ever argue with his mother on anything. If he does, he gets beat with a belt.

He fights with his brother, he gets beaten with a belt.

He uses Quora, he gets beaten with a belt.

He forgets to put the cap on the toothpaste, no phone for a week.

Emancipation. I don't know how hard or easy it is. In my opinion, if you're 15 and have a situation, housing, education & job that can sustain you in such a fashion that you will not revert to your parents' care and will not be a drain on social services then more power to you! Basically, if you want to play at being grown up (and this includes sex, use of drugs and alcohol), then you accept everything that being a grown up entails. Basically, I don't have a problem with emancipation as a thing. I just don't think most 15 or 16 year olds actually comprehend the moral, social and societal ramifications of their choices.

From what I understand, in most U.S. states that allow emancipation, emancipated minors still can't drink, emancipated minors under 18 still can't vote, emancipated minors under 16 still can't get a license, and if you are emancipated you still have to be above the age of consent to have sex -- either that, or legally married to your sexual partner. Emancipation mostly covers (1) freedom from parental authority, (2) "legal age" things like contracts, wills, suing, and bearing witness at a wedding, (3) medical consent, and (4) unlimited work hours. (I also believe that in California, emancipated under18s can use any name they want without having to go through the legal process for changing their name the way an unemancipated 16-year-old would (as when Destiny Hope Cyrus went through the legal process to become Miley Cyrus at age 15).

Really? I guess if your school is big enough to have multiple teachers for one subject!

My high school had 1,000 or so students, and at least two teachers for German.

Dress codes do actually serve one good function, and that is to eliminate needless social competition via overly expensive / designer clothing. Used to hear stories on the news about some kid in school that would get jumped and beaten up by other kids in school who were envious of his fancy-dan shoes or a coat.

What classically Gen-X childhood/adolescence stories!

Willia Strauss (of Howe & Strauss fame) once wrote at a Q&A session: "I will leave to Neil to answer the questions about Millennial counter-trends, but to characterize the flip-flops in the White House photo as a refutation of positive trends is a little silly. It's quite amusing, actually, to hear older people criticizing Millennials for their flip-flops. Recall how Gen Xers were criticized for wearing expensive sneakers, in some cases for committing crimes to steal those sneakers from one another. I have yet to hear of a case of a Millennial committing a crime to steal flip-flops."

The only crime like that I remember hearing of among Millennials was an incident in which one kid shot another to steal Pokémon-themed clothing. (I also heard of a Millennial kid around the year 2000 who hid in a store during closing hours to steal Pokémon merchandise. See a pattern?)

Doctors, lawyers, corporate folks all have dress codes. Even medical students and residents. Professionals often dress in certain ways usually as a function of their duties (you don't work as a surgical nurse wearing heels a tight skirt and too much perfume!) Many professions and vocations prescribe certain clothing styles. Priests wear Roman collars and black shirts & trousers. Firemen and EMS and policemen all wear uniforms. Soldiers wear uniforms. Chefs often wear uniforms. Generally speaking, janitors and doormen and bus drivers and train drivers wear uniforms.

Dress codes are everywhere my friend. And they generally serve a function. Most of these are visual cues. In your community, you recognise a policeman's uniform and you know instantly this is either someone you can trust implicitly because they are Lawful Good or someone you should bolt from because they're psychos that'll threaten pumping you full of lead because you're out picking up trash from your front yard.

Uniforms will no doubt still be used in the future, in advanced societies across the universe. Consider the winged serpent uniforms from another planet, for instance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuuYvQcPDaQ

There are some uniforms in use even today in the Lehola Galaxy. On Kankonia, for instance, the tintar (equivalent of pope in the Musefi religion) wears a uniform that includes, among other things, a cushion-shaped hat called an ypra (the Y is pronounced /y/ in the ancient language of Phesandran, liturgical language of Musefism -- it's called an upra in Kankonian). Space stations often have uniforms.

I've never watched Star Trek, but from what I've seen of the screenshots, many of the characters have uniforms with a chevron on them.

In the ufopoleis (a ufopolis is a permanent residential community aboard a mobile spacecraft), the crew often wear uniforms, while the rest of the sapient ufopolitans, often of a motley variety of species, wear whatever.

And when I see a police uniform, I feel fear, from my days of youth profiling and mental profiling as a mentally ill teen-ager, from the stories I hear of cops killing dogs left and right, from the many African-American friends I have who are very special to me and whom I worry these cops will slay.

Really? It started with the eighties or thereabouts? I remember in elementary school in the eighties/early nineties, the focus was on "socially appropriate behavior". Speaking of the eighties, just look at the 1986 majority opinion in Bethel School District v. Fraser.

I don't know when that nonsense started. I think I became aware of it by the 1990s some time.

Wow!

Re Bethel, I note that in the facts of the case, "In his speech, Fraser used what some observers believed was a graphic sexual metaphor..."

The pertinent quote is "I know a man who is firm – he's firm in his pants, he's firm in his shirt, his character is firm – but most of all, his belief in you the students of Bethel, is firm. Jeff Kuhlman is a man who takes his point and pounds it in. If necessary, he'll take an issue and nail it to the wall. He doesn't attack things in spurts – he drives hard, pushing and pushing until finally – he succeeds. Jeff is a man who will go to the very end – even the climax, for each and every one of you. So please vote for Jeff Kuhlman, as he'll never come between us and the best our school can be."

I do not believe that speech rises to the level of innuendo or entendre of any sort.

I know, right? I remember the first time I read about this speech, I was thinking, "WHAT, they could suspend a student for saying THAT? Huh? Is 'firm in his pants' a euphemism for an erection? I don't get it."

What's funny is that this same school probably makes their English Lit classes read Shakespeare. innuendo and hey nonny noe all over the place! and no one bats an eyelash over that.

Excellent point! There was a book published a few years ago that exposited to lay readers the naughty parts in Shakespeare. There was a chapter on prostitution references, a chapter on swearing, a chapter on anti-Semitic parts, and so on.

This is an excellent example of how an anthill is far too easily made into Olympus Mons by overly sensitive, overly judgemental, overly self-righteous people. It reminds me of a local case where someone on the city council used the word niggardly. One or more other people on the board thought they were being called niggers. Well, that got into the news and the whole city was in uproar and calls for resignation were made.

I remember two different incidents involving the word "niggardly". I knew what it meant because I had learned it in an SAT-oriented vocabulary improvement book titled Word Smart. (On the back cover were questions like, "Do you know the difference between flaunt and flout?") The section in question was on describing a miser named Randolph, and explained how to go through a thesaurus, and then pick the right adjective: miserly, penny-pinching, close, tight-fisted, niggardly, etc.

I'm a Depeche Mode fan myself. I also have Enya from the same decade, the Hair soundtrack, the Beatles, the Association, and oldies anthologies from the Awakening, and lots and lots of CD's from the nineties to the present day. In high school, most of my friends listened to Alice 97.3 music -- Jewel, Third Eye Blind, Cake, the Presidents of the United States (they did "Peacjes"), Smash Mouth, Eve 6, Alanis Morissette, Melissa Etheridge, etc.

Never heard of em.

Well, except the Beatles. I listened to the all comedy radio station (that was a real gem!), watched UK reruns of Red Dwarf and Benny Hill and listened to folk music.

My brother likes Red Dwarf.

Enya is a new-age artist, who does such songs as "Orinoco Flow" and "Only Time". Her music sounds the way I would imagine a lot of conworlders' conmusic to sound. She even sang a song in the Lord of the Rings movies titled "May It Be".

Sadly, the two parties are so one party anymore that it just doesn't make much difference. If the schoolSystem (TM) is bad, the politicalSystem (TM) is the same only worse. Too much fake compassion, too much partisan bickering, too many politicians, too little actual Constitutional scholarship or understanding, too little civics.

You're right about the "fake compassion". "3,000 people died on 9/11/2001! What a tragedy! Our hearts and prayers go out to the victims and their families! Now, let's all march in lockstep behind Bush, excoriate people who question so much as Junior's position on gay marriage, and fight a war in a country ending with a Q that has absolutely nothing to do with 9/11!"

It wonders me though: how do they even understand what love is? That's something that comes of a nurturing family environment. And develops from the time in the womb and through infancy. Even the most secular of psychologists recognises that most basic of human needs. How can they even turn out remotely "human" if they never experienced human contact or form critical attachments? It's one thing to cram facts and knowledge into a brain; but I wonder what the true cost in such a society will be! Hopefully these things will be well thought out and churned up into a story! I'd read it for sure, especially if it turns out as horrifically dystopic as I fear it must...

Really? Hmmmm . . . I didn't know that you need human bonds in childhood to form love. Frankly, I don't know what to do about this. Maybe stick multiple speedlings into the same speeder and have the interpath mutually bond their brains and emotions?

That could be interesting!

Sort of like, quite literally, a "school" of children growing up together. A cohort I think they call it. Could be some interesting fodder for social interactions post speedbirth. For example, how might a speedcohort's relationships develop after birth? Will they continue to rely upon one another and grow the bonds they experienced in the speedwomb? How might they interact with similarly speeducated cohorts (for example, if there are differences between different companies processes) --- would near cohorts be seen as "cousins" or colleagues while cohorts from other firms be seen as "foreign" in some way?

All good questions. However, this aspect wasn't something I originally thought about -- it was just an off-the-cuff idea to answer your question on bonding. "Speedcohort" would have a useful word to have in LIE.

And BTW, there is education in logic (understanding and recognizing logical fallacies, ethical philosophy and its history (like how Jeremy Bentham believed "the more the merrier" and what that meant), and what different religious traditions believe(d) about moral questions at different times in history in the speeder. But due to a combination of differences in DNA and post-speedbirth experiences, we don't have 100% of adults in lifespeeding-as-the-norm societies agreeing on every ethical question.

Interesting. Would it also be fair, then, to say that not all speeders have the same taste in pop culture, food, etc, etc?

Definitely! My two siblings and I were raised by the same parents, and we all grew up liking very different things. I like all sort of exotic foods, from rambutans to suman antala to relampagos to challah bread to lamb kafkas to cuttlefish balls, but can't stand toast or mashed potatoes (I find them both gross), and the thought of eating baby food as an adult makes me gag! My parents tell me that when I was really little, they ordered an avocado filled with octopus at a restaurant and I wanted to try the octopus. They let me try it. Then I kept saying "Mo'" . . . "mo'" . . . until I had eaten all the octopus out of the avocado. My sister was very finicky at one point in her life, eating pizza, Chinese food, and not much else. My brother at one point would eat only bananas, yogurt, and (gag!) baby food. I remember the notes my mother left for our maid Allison when she was running our house during my parents' 30-year anniversary. It said things like: "Everyone likes Chinese food. James and Liz like Mexican food, but Alex does not. James and Alex Japanese like food and quiche, but Liz does not." So I would imagine two speedees, even in the same speedcohort, could have very different tastes in food. And I imagine many of the metalheads on this board have many family members who aren't into metal.

It does wonder me though, are there any speedlings that end up like me at all? Or is this a kind of one size fits all society?

That's a question for me to ponder!

Well colour me anticipatory!

Given the difference in ethics and psychopathy, tastes in food, tastes in pop culture, etc. I've decided that it's only natural there will be speedees who resemble Elemtilas.

The ensorcelment is just too powerful.

Huh, when I went to the National Spelling Bee, a girl spelled "ensorcellment" this way and they told her it was wrong. They said it had two L's.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/ ... 834ab7eab/

Sometimes the spelling bee folks get it wrong!

You mean like the "hechsher" incident?

Wiktionary says both are correct! Huh!

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ensorcellment#English

[Khemehekis]

Hmm, I wonder if something like this would fit well into the Safir Alliance. o:

Feel free to borrow the idea!

I did a search on the CBB and found you were the creator of Xylphika, which changed its name a few years back, and that you're redeveloping your conworld. I'd like to see how Safir turns out in the end! I will eagerly read about your conworld.

[Hālian]

Hmm, I wonder if something like this would fit well into the Safir Alliance. o:

Feel free to borrow the idea!

I did a search on the CBB and found you were the creator of Xylphika, which changed its name a few years back, and that you're redeveloping your conworld. I'd like to see how Safir turns out in the end! I will eagerly read about your conworld.

That I am, though it's called Classical Āirumāli now.

[Khemehekis]

Hmm, I wonder if something like this would fit well into the Safir Alliance. o:

Feel free to borrow the idea!

I did a search on the CBB and found you were the creator of Xylphika, which changed its name a few years back, and that you're redeveloping your conworld. I'd like to see how Safir turns out in the end! I will eagerly read about your conworld.

That I am, though it's called Classical Āirumāli now.

Hence the "which changed its name".

I just couldn't remember the new name -- I knew it had an -air- in it.

[elemtilas]

Interesting. So lifespeeding is not entirely ubiquitous.

That's correct. Some countries require lifespeeding, some almost always lifespeed, some are about 50/50, in some countries lifespeeding is known but is rare, some countries haven't had lifespeeding introduced to them because they're so traditional, and some sapient species haven't had lifespeeding invented for them yet.

Hm. What happens in a lifespeeding required state if someone doesn't want their progeny lifesped? Are they compelled by state power?

So I guess if you invite a Kebsabhazian over for dinner, you don't set the plates to her left and the Dog on her right!

Correct. 93% of pachams are right-handed, 3% left-handed, and 3% ambidextrous, and 1% cross-handed, and conformist Kebsabhazians are leery of left-handedness -- much like Indian or Roma norms regarding the hands and contamination. Although a norm-observing Kebsabhazian would refuse to go to your house for dinner unless you were a pacham. Dinner with a human? A Grey? A Daine? Out of the question! And a dog as a pet? How mammalian! The kamam, a carnivore with a bead nose and thin ears that walks on two legs, is often kept as a pet in households across Chedam. The tiny and fat fafaq, with its opossum-like face, is also popular as a pet.

Daine, across all subtypes, are left-oriented! They don't mind much who comes over for dinner. Who decides to sèttle down near them may be a different matter!

Also, Dogs are quite more like people than Men realise. Perhaps they never bothered trying to actually talk with them?

In all honesty, some of those things would not feeze a Daine at all. Life lived within sight of everyone else in the family and community kind of puts the kibosh on thoughts of privacy. Mind you, licking chocolate off someone would be seen as quite odd. I mean, bitter!!

Feeze? As in faze? On Kankonia, a mother and her teen-age son might use the same bathroom at the same time, one to defecate, one to shower! And when you say "bitter" . . . do you mean chocolate/cacao tastes bitter to Daine? I know male and female Daine have different perceptions of colors . . . are perceptions of foods also different from humans, or at least between Daine genders?

Right -- I chose the Kentish form.

As for chocolate, well, refined sugar isn't a thing. It's also very rare outside the big port cities of Auntimoany and Mentolatum where it's typically taken bitter with cream.

One could imagine a scene in a Social (a kind of ritzy salon for the uber powerful & wealthy in Auntimoany), a wealthy Parliamentarian might want to try licking her xoqo off her Daine girl host's belly. Daine is nòt amused. Whatever secrets this creepy woman has to divulge better be worth it!

As for flavour profiles by race, I'd say Daine tend to prefer savoury. When they eat sweet, it's usually blended with salt.

So, babble before talk. Within the speedwomb, how do they physically practice talking (and walking and all the gross & fine motor skills)?

I still suspect it must be quite the culture shock to actually get out and truly experience things for the first time! Like Chimps being set free.

Yes, babble before talk. They practice talking, but it sounds many times more sped-up than Alvin and the Chipmunks to an observer standing outside the speeder. They walk for exercise, but it looks like asynchronous development (as in many geniuses on Earth), with walking progressing more slowly than talking. Imagine a kindergartner who could speak fluent English at a 6-year-old level and was learning D'Nealian, but still toddled like a toddler! And yes, it is a kind of culture shock.

If you ever write stories or vibnettes, these are the kinds of things I (at least) would love to hear about! Experience the life of a speedling in her first days & fortnights after birth!

How does the Interpath deal with little Jenny Psychopath who either asks lots of questions of that sort (curious girl!) or whose mind and body react with pleasure seeing animals and maybe people suffer and burn?

The interpath would teach Jenny Psychopath about various ethical systems and what they say about cruelty to animals and arson, as well as teaching what prisons are like and what it would be like to be in one after committing arson. It could even hologrammesquely simulate a prison for a while if Jenny thought it sounded fun.

Then there are the people who would still commit arson as (young) adults after they were speedborn. These people would get arrested and convicted quickly, probably before the speedage of 1.

Tell me about the criminal justice system within the context, especially, of near-total speeding. If literally everyone is implanted with the State System of right and wrong and has already (virtually) experienced the consequences of going against the System, how are those recalcitrants treated after speedbirth?

Is there some kind of reeducation process or is prison very much like an American prison? Or some other kind of prison?

Can the speedborn be put back in the womb to mature a little further?

Mm. Maybe that's why magic is so wonky in The World? Keeps the place from being perfect.

Heh, heh, like the way cats and spread toast might disintegrate or even regenerate afterwards?

Though, to be honest, that's just ordinary physics.

I suppose if that's bad enough, magic on top of that really would be much worse!

Another problem not solved with lifespeeding is the "Jenny Psychopath" types as you call them, who would likely commit heinous crimes after they were speedborn. No way to stop those without celericide (killing/interfering with a speedling and his/her speeducation while s/he is still in the speeder, which is a crime in almost every non-anarchistic society that knows lifespeeding).

Interesting. So abortion is not a thing among (most) lifespeeding cultures.

What about other issues, be they physical, psychological, spiritual or what have you? Does the speeding process edit genes for example in such a way that Syndromes are no longer at issue? (No people speedborn without limbs or with extra genes.)

Hmm. I see that Bernie "Uncle Joe" Sanders is so far to the right of me he's not even a blip on the radar.

I'll leave the interpretation of the test to you!

Uncle Joe, as in Joe Hill? It gave me 20% conservative and 80% liberal. I did find a flaw with the first question though, the one about monkey meat. Liberals/Democrats are more likely than conservatives/Republicans to support animal rights in general, and likely will believe that eating bushmeat (or cetacean blubber!) is morally wrong. Liberals are also more likely to be vegetarians.[/quote]

Uncle Joe Stalin. On account of both of them being idiot Socialists. It, unsurprisingly in retrospect, gave me like 100% liberal. Reyzadren obtained similar results. So far, 2/3 of us say the results are not correct leading me to suspect that there is no actual correlation beyond chance. Like many of these tests, they don't dive very deep and don't allow for exploration of issues beyond a very narrow scope.

I think one of the main problems with the test, apart from the premise itself!, is the way it asks the questions. I mean, I was literally not "disgusted" by any of the things in that list. And most questions had some kind of "out" -- like "under certain circumstances..." I mean, if you keep a person in a cell for a month without food and then offer them a choice of eating Manflesh and then being freed or else going back to the cell to die, I think most people would sample the Manflesh. If it's well seasoned and cooked, I certainly would. But being disgusted is quite different from making a rational & informed moral choice on a matter! If the local fast food restaurant offered a monkey-mc-burger, I wouldn't eat it. But I wouldn't be disgusted by the concept.

Re animal "rights", as conceived by the Left, I think that's a good example of heart being in the right place but mind not being engaged. You already know a little of my mindset, so oughtn't be surprised that para-cannibalism is not something I'd be into. Killing and eating a chimpanzee or a whale or an oliphant or a dog or some other clever-and-very-likely-near-sophont is a matter of morality. Not that a chimpanzee has rights. It's more like the closer a creature is to being a sophont, the greater are our (human) responsibilities towards them as a race, protecting their environment and respecting their individual wellbeing. But do we extend that down to amoebas?

A lot of people don't know, but there is a large body of Catholic teaching on good and ethical management of the world's resources. A lot of the things that the political Left comes up with re animal rights are a perversion of good stewardship of the Earth's resources. For example, I find the factory farming methods of the food industry to be entirely appalling and unethical. I don't agree that cows or chickens have "rights". They are, after all, "dumb beasts". We as rational and moral beings, however, do have greater responsibilities towards the animals and plants we keep as food resources. Do we have to house each cow in an individual 2000 sqft house with Alexa enabled amenities, 80in televisions in every room and a string orchestra to play the gentle strains of Vivaldi? No. We should make ourselves aware of the natural habits of cows (or chickens or whatever) and house and feed them according to their nature. They should be treated well, fed well, allowed to do their thing within the environment while they're alive and they should be respected and thanked for their sacrifice to keep us alive when they are slaughtered.

Howe & Strauss say that K-12 schools are raising Millennials (or that elementary school raised Millennials, past tense, now that all Millennials have graduated elementary school) to be the heroes of a crisis like World War II who will "save us all" (they actually use that phrase) and to be great scientists, and are focusing on great test scores because they knew a Crisis (with a capital C) was coming.

Bizarre. One could say that the System is doing little more than setting children up for disaster and not preparing them at all well for crisis. Capital C or otherwise.

Ah, the Google search for "Vosem Chart" must have led you to some misleading results.

This is the Vosem Chart:

http://atdt.freeshell.org/k5/story_2003 ... _6208.html

Here's a color picture of the correct Vosem Chart, except reversing the original convention of having corporate conservatives in back and corporate liberals in front:

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22vose ... KzM:&vet=1

Okay, I see the issue now. This is a different realisation of the chart, having an actual block for "Authoritarian". I see authoritarianism as a method of exercising power that is not the specific property of any given system of political thought or governance. Hence, there can indeed be authoritarian right / conservative or authoritarian left / liberal systems.

Either way is ungood, and I'm sticking with moral monarchy!

Nah. No hippie phake pholk songs per se. Just the outmoded Gospel. Which is kind of odd, really, because while you might expect a Christian school to be "Bible based" (and I think many demonational Christian schools, particularly of the Evangelical sort) and maybe use sectarian text books (shudder), that wasn't the case at all. More about living right and charitably in the world. Holistic you might say. Hard to put it in words. Denominational Christianity is just so different (and frankly odd) in its outlook that their schooling style is almost as alien to me as the public System!

So no Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, or Kingston Trio. Got it. So it wasn't a Catholic school?

A lot of Catholic high schools don't allow boys to grow facial hair. I wouldn't've liked that.

Yes, it was Catholic. I was (and obviously failing) trying to distinguish Catholic schools from what I've read about typical denominational Christian schools.

I don't recall any rules about facial hair.

I saw a Millennial girl discussing the move to legalize the herb on another forum some years ago, and she said Millennials typically think marijuana smells good, but tobacco smells horrid. She wondered if Millennials would legalize weed and ban tobacco. Now that teen-age vaping is way up, the latter half doesn't seem likely!

Well, there's tobacco and then there's cigarettes. Worlds apart. Millennial Girl, depending on where she lives, may never have actually experienced the yuck of ubiquitous cigarette smoke. If you never have, be thankful! Although you can't smell it, you're still breathing all the yuck right in.

People used to light up literally everywhere. If you watch old movies, they light up in trains and planes and cars and nightclubs and restaurants. Nasssty. I think church is probably the only place people could actually experience clean air in public!

But this is because cigarettes are made from the cheapest grade tobacco and have all kinds of additives. Cigarettes are, literally, nothing more than foul smelling nicotine sticks. Vaping is no better, because the victim is still a nicotine junkie.

Pipe smoking on the other hand is an entirely different culture. The tobacco is high quality, properly matured and is not intended to be inhaled. You don't get the nicotine or low quality additives you do in cigarettes. It's basically aromatherapy. Definitely not an ugly smell!

That's a relief! There are loads of wonderful teachers out there. If only they weren't so burdened by the System.

Yes. Teaching to the test. Common core curricula. (Wow, that was just one sentence fragment composed entirely of T-words, followed by one composed entirely of C-words!)

Clever! You should create an EduSystem PSA campaign!

Mostly this is because, in spite of what teenagers often believe about their parents, they do actually love their children intensely and will do anything for them according to their lights and understanding. Rules exist not as an inconvenience for children (though I recall feeling just that way!) but as a means of teaching small animals how to become people.

Some parents hate their children because they were accidents, and even tell them so. And then there are the parents who make rules like "You can't date that boy because he's Black".

A few do indeed hate their children. That is shameful and sad. Some people who are really don't deserve to be parents; and their children certainly deserve better!

Dylan Owens
Dylan Owens, I've written, I'm writing, and I'll write.
Answered Dec 6, 2017

My best friend is 15. These are his rules:

His bed time is 8:00. He has to be in bed, lights off, and not moving. He breaks it, no phone for a month.

He usually has go to church three times a week. This is not optional. He has never missed church.

He can’t watch any movies, videos, or TV shows that contain magic. He does, no phone for a month.

He can’t ever argue with his mother on anything. If he does, he gets beat with a belt.

He fights with his brother, he gets beaten with a belt.

He uses Quora, he gets beaten with a belt.

He forgets to put the cap on the toothpaste, no phone for a week.

There's always two sides to the story. I'd be interested to hear the whys and wherefores. To be honest, these rules sóund petty and draconian, and I know my 15-year-old-inner-self would rise up in self-righteous indignation over the terribly injustices suffered here! But there's got to be múch more to this story than we're hearing here.

To be frank, none of the rules are terribly onerous, though I'd really rather explore the family dynamics -- the young man's state of mind & maturity with respect to his behaviour; the style of parenting used since the boy was very little; the relationships between Mom and Dad and between each of them and the son. It's just not realistic to plop this list down and expect one to determine a reasoned conclusion from so little evidence.

I suspect, but can not be certain, that this situation arises from the friend's immaturity and rebellious attitude more than anything specifically wrong with the parents or the son. They certainly don't seem to hate him! Far from it! These rules seem to be the kind of things a loving parent has to evolve as a result of the child simply not getting it.

Children are children! They are not rational and not mature. This fellow leaves the cap off the toothpaste. Parents want the cap on the toothpaste. Is the rule petty? To an irrational and immature 15 year old, of course it is! It's a sodding gulag! It's a veritable Auschwitz around here! That's because the child can not yet see the bigger picture. Toothpaste is a resource that costs money. It's not cheap. If you leave the cap off, it leaves a little mess on the sink that someone (Mom!) has to clean up; the toothpaste can dry and clog the opening. The behaviour is wasteful. An unsuspecting user might press a little harder and squeeze toothpaste all over the place. Basically, the rule here is Love. Mom loves you, so she buys you toothpaste (that way, you have nice clean teeth and hopefully no cavities!). She wishes to instill in you good stewardship of resources, so she teaches you to put the cap on the toothpaste when you're done! She has taught you this since you were like 2 years old, but now you're a 15 year old asshole so you don't really care like you used to. You leave the cap off and it makes a mess. Your sister goes in after you (or I guess if you're a Kankonian (or Daine!) family, at the same time!) and makes a mess of the toothpaste bottle because she expects the cap to be on. Now there's toothpaste all over the place, sister is hollering because of the mess, Mom is frazzled because the boy is an asshole and just doesn't get it. Dad's upset because Mom is upset because daughter is upset because son is an ass.

Hence the petty rules. You want to be an ass? Go do it on your own time when you have your own house. Here, you put the cap on the toothpaste. Not because parents like making up silly rules and arbitrary punishments (and don't even let's get started on corporal punishment!); but because, according to their best light and understanding, they wish to instill the virtue of love into their children. Are they perfect? No. Are they the best parents ever? Maybe not. Are they doing their best? Seems like it!

As for consequences, well, dear Dylan's friend naturally thinks the consequences are a veritable Hague-worthy crime against humanity! That's because he's an immature 15 year old who just doesn't get it! I see it like this: However it got put in place, there is a family rule about toothpaste caps. You put the cap on when you're done. Simple, really. If you don't, there's a consequence. I don't know what the consequences were when he was 5, but now he's fifteen. He knows better and is turning himself into even more of an ass than he was before. For as long as he wants to behave poorly, he can suffer the consequence of that behaviour. The instant he decides within his own maturing mind that hey! life without a phone sucks --- and you know what? putting the cap on the toothpaste really isn't that hard, and it seems to make Mom and sister happy, too... is the instant the restrictions come off.

He should count himself lucky, really. If he were my kid, he wouldn't even have a cell phone in the first place! Website monitoring and keystroke logging? Damn skippy his online activities will be monitored! And not because I'm really interested in reading his CBB interactions; but because I love him more than anything else on this planet and want to keep him safe from predators. And I don't mean nasty pedophiles only -- I mean school bullies, I mean unsavoury political nonsense, I mean unsavoury ideologies, fake news, etc.

These are things that children don't really have a grip on -- heck, most adults don't even know when they've been duped! But enough of that! Just basic parenting is what I see in that list.

Emancipation. I don't know how hard or easy it is. In my opinion, if you're 15 and have a situation, housing, education & job that can sustain you in such a fashion that you will not revert to your parents' care and will not be a drain on social services then more power to you! Basically, if you want to play at being grown up (and this includes sex, use of drugs and alcohol), then you accept everything that being a grown up entails. Basically, I don't have a problem with emancipation as a thing. I just don't think most 15 or 16 year olds actually comprehend the moral, social and societal ramifications of their choices.

From what I understand, in most U.S. states that allow emancipation, emancipated minors still can't drink, emancipated minors under 18 still can't vote, emancipated minors under 16 still can't get a license, and if you are emancipated you still have to be above the age of consent to have sex -- either that, or legally married to your sexual partner. Emancipation mostly covers (1) freedom from parental authority, (2) "legal age" things like contracts, wills, suing, and bearing witness at a wedding, (3) medical consent, and (4) unlimited work hours. (I also believe that in California, emancipated under18s can use any name they want without having to go through the legal process for changing their name the way an unemancipated 16-year-old would (as when Destiny Hope Cyrus went through the legal process to become Miley Cyrus at age 15).

Interesting.

Really? I guess if your school is big enough to have multiple teachers for one subject!

My high school had 1,000 or so students, and at least two teachers for German.

I think mine had rather fewer students. I'm sure there were multiple teachers in any department, but for example, one would teach German I and another would teach German II and so forth.

Only, they didn't offer German! We could choose between Latin, French and Spanish.

Uni was of course quite the different matter.

Dress codes do actually serve one good function, and that is to eliminate needless social competition via overly expensive / designer clothing. Used to hear stories on the news about some kid in school that would get jumped and beaten up by other kids in school who were envious of his fancy-dan shoes or a coat.

What classically Gen-X childhood/adolescence stories!

Well, not my stories! Those are just instances I've read or heard about from that time period.

Willia Strauss (of Howe & Strauss fame) once wrote at a Q&A session: "I will leave to Neil to answer the questions about Millennial counter-trends, but to characterize the flip-flops in the White House photo as a refutation of positive trends is a little silly. It's quite amusing, actually, to hear older people criticizing Millennials for their flip-flops. Recall how Gen Xers were criticized for wearing expensive sneakers, in some cases for committing crimes to steal those sneakers from one another. I have yet to hear of a case of a Millennial committing a crime to steal flip-flops."

The only crime like that I remember hearing of among Millennials was an incident in which one kid shot another to steal Pokémon-themed clothing. (I also heard of a Millennial kid around the year 2000 who hid in a store during closing hours to steal Pokémon merchandise. See a pattern?)

Yep. Same story, different actors. History rhymes.

Uniforms will no doubt still be used in the future, in advanced societies across the universe. Consider the winged serpent uniforms from another planet, for instance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuuYvQcPDaQ

There are some uniforms in use even today in the Lehola Galaxy. On Kankonia, for instance, the tintar (equivalent of pope in the Musefi religion) wears a uniform that includes, among other things, a cushion-shaped hat called an ypra (the Y is pronounced /y/ in the ancient language of Phesandran, liturgical language of Musefism -- it's called an upra in Kankonian). Space stations often have uniforms.

I've never watched Star Trek, but from what I've seen of the screenshots, many of the characters have uniforms with a chevron on them.

In the ufopoleis (a ufopolis is a permanent residential community aboard a mobile spacecraft), the crew often wear uniforms, while the rest of the sapient ufopolitans, often of a motley variety of species, wear whatever.

And when I see a police uniform, I feel fear, from my days of youth profiling and mental profiling as a mentally ill teen-ager, from the stories I hear of cops killing dogs left and right, from the many African-American friends I have who are very special to me and whom I worry these cops will slay.

Sad but true. There was a time when those things just didn't happen. You could actually trust the policeman...

Re uniforms, Daine are, perhaps unsurprisingly, ununiform. Hats are a thing, though, even among Daine. The greatqueen of Westmarche, for example, wears a hat. Kind of like a crown. Mind you, it's made from her own feathers, as well as those of the other regional queens. Kind of symbolic that way.

The emperor of Auntimoany wears a hat, too. It's very tall. Though, since the coup, they have an empress. She only technically wears the Hat, on accound of her hair being always done up nice. Some say that since she took over, the Hat has actually grown in stature.

I know, right? I remember the first time I read about this speech, I was thinking, "WHAT, they could suspend a student for saying THAT? Huh? Is 'firm in his pants' a euphemism for an erection? I don't get it."

Oh, I totally get it! I am 100% sure it's a "colourful metaphor", and I'm sure many of the students appreciated it as such.

It still doesn't rise to the level of being anything other than a very minor disciplinary action, if it even goes that far! The speaker, in my opinion, walked the line skilfully and kept himself well zipped up!

Enya is a new-age artist, who does such songs as "Orinoco Flow" and "Only Time". Her music sounds the way I would imagine a lot of conworlders' conmusic to sound. She even sang a song in the Lord of the Rings movies titled "May It Be".

Eithne. Name sounds familiar. Irish singer, so yeah the LotR song sounds totally Irish. And thus probably not in keeping with the Germanic roots of the story... But anyway!

You can hear echoes of the old singing.

Sadly, the two parties are so one party anymore that it just doesn't make much difference. If the schoolSystem (TM) is bad, the politicalSystem (TM) is the same only worse. Too much fake compassion, too much partisan bickering, too many politicians, too little actual Constitutional scholarship or understanding, too little civics.

You're right about the "fake compassion". "3,000 people died on 9/11/2001! What a tragedy! Our hearts and prayers go out to the victims and their families! Now, let's all march in lockstep behind Bush, excoriate people who question so much as Junior's position on gay marriage, and fight a war in a country ending with a Q that has absolutely nothing to do with 9/11!"

Doesn't even sound fakely compassionate!

Sort of like, quite literally, a "school" of children growing up together. A cohort I think they call it. Could be some interesting fodder for social interactions post speedbirth. For example, how might a speedcohort's relationships develop after birth? Will they continue to rely upon one another and grow the bonds they experienced in the speedwomb? How might they interact with similarly speeducated cohorts (for example, if there are differences between different companies processes) --- would near cohorts be seen as "cousins" or colleagues while cohorts from other firms be seen as "foreign" in some way?

All good questions. However, this aspect wasn't something I originally thought about -- it was just an off-the-cuff idea to answer your question on bonding. "Speedcohort" would have a useful word to have in LIE.

Food for thought! I'll be interested to read what comes next!

Given the difference in ethics and psychopathy, tastes in food, tastes in pop culture, etc. I've decided that it's only natural there will be speedees who resemble Elemtilas.

Huh, when I went to the National Spelling Bee, a girl spelled "ensorcellment" this way and they told her it was wrong. They said it had two L's.

Scripps use M-W Unabridged. Webster's Unabridged lists both spellings. OED lists only the double ell spelling.

[Khemehekis]

That's correct. Some countries require lifespeeding, some almost always lifespeed, some are about 50/50, in some countries lifespeeding is known but is rare, some countries haven't had lifespeeding introduced to them because they're so traditional, and some sapient species haven't had lifespeeding invented for them yet.

Hm. What happens in a lifespeeding required state if someone doesn't want their progeny lifesped? Are they compelled by state power?

Yes. Their newborn child is wrested from their arms and placed into a speeder in these states. (This would include the fake-news-indoctrinating state I mused about creating.)

So I guess if you invite a Kebsabhazian over for dinner, you don't set the plates to her left and the Dog on her right!

Daine, across all subtypes, are left-oriented! They don't mind much who comes over for dinner. Who decides to sèttle down near them may be a different matter!

A predominantly left-handed people? Sounds like the Domeheads of Bodus!

Also, Dogs are quite more like people than Men realise. Perhaps they never bothered trying to actually talk with them?

So you've created Canine conlangs for the World? Or at least dabbled in them?

In all honesty, some of those things would not feeze a Daine at all. Life lived within sight of everyone else in the family and community kind of puts the kibosh on thoughts of privacy. Mind you, licking chocolate off someone would be seen as quite odd. I mean, bitter!!

Feeze? As in faze? On Kankonia, a mother and her teen-age son might use the same bathroom at the same time, one to defecate, one to shower! And when you say "bitter" . . . do you mean chocolate/cacao tastes bitter to Daine? I know male and female Daine have different perceptions of colors . . . are perceptions of foods also different from humans, or at least between Daine genders?

Right -- I chose the Kentish form.

So Kentish speakers say "feeze" for "faze"? Learned something new . . .

As for chocolate, well, refined sugar isn't a thing. It's also very rare outside the big port cities of Auntimoany and Mentolatum where it's typically taken bitter with cream.

One could imagine a scene in a Social (a kind of ritzy salon for the uber powerful & wealthy in Auntimoany), a wealthy Parliamentarian might want to try licking her xoqo off her Daine girl host's belly. Daine is nòt amused. Whatever secrets this creepy woman has to divulge better be worth it!

As for flavour profiles by race, I'd say Daine tend to prefer savoury. When they eat sweet, it's usually blended with salt.

Interesting stuff! Daine seem to be very different from human 5-year-olds. (Although I read an article about a year ago anent if parents raise their children from infancy to be familiar with a wide variety of foods and tastes, their children will willingly eat them -- the problem is that most American parents subconsciously raise their kids to like sweet and salty foods, and avoid feeding them "adult" foods, so it's Dino Bites instead of shrimp cocktail.)

Yes, babble before talk. They practice talking, but it sounds many times more sped-up than Alvin and the Chipmunks to an observer standing outside the speeder. They walk for exercise, but it looks like asynchronous development (as in many geniuses on Earth), with walking progressing more slowly than talking. Imagine a kindergartner who could speak fluent English at a 6-year-old level and was learning D'Nealian, but still toddled like a toddler! And yes, it is a kind of culture shock.

If you ever write stories or vibnettes, these are the kinds of things I (at least) would love to hear about! Experience the life of a speedling in her first days & fortnights after birth!

All right! Since lifespeeding is one of the most pervasive non-Earth-like things across the Lehola Galaxy, a story or two or three thereon would likely be written.

How does the Interpath deal with little Jenny Psychopath who either asks lots of questions of that sort (curious girl!) or whose mind and body react with pleasure seeing animals and maybe people suffer and burn?

The interpath would teach Jenny Psychopath about various ethical systems and what they say about cruelty to animals and arson, as well as teaching what prisons are like and what it would be like to be in one after committing arson. It could even hologrammesquely simulate a prison for a while if Jenny thought it sounded fun.

Then there are the people who would still commit arson as (young) adults after they were speedborn. These people would get arrested and convicted quickly, probably before the speedage of 1.

Tell me about the criminal justice system within the context, especially, of near-total speeding. If literally everyone is implanted with the State System of right and wrong and has already (virtually) experienced the consequences of going against the System, how are those recalcitrants treated after speedbirth?

Is there some kind of reeducation process or is prison very much like an American prison? Or some other kind of prison?

Can the speedborn be put back in the womb to mature a little further?

The consocieties that I've created so far are not like the movie Minority Report; they don't prosecute someone until either (a) s/he has actually committed, or is in the process of committing a crime, (b) s/he has threatened to commit a crime, or (c) the authorities have come upon evidence that s/he is meditating to commit a crime (like film developers finding negatives of huge stashes of weapons in the person's bedroom). Someone who has revealed herself as a recalcitrant during her time in the speeder would not be punished nor given extra surveillance until (a), (b), or (c) happens. Then she would be sent to prison.

Prisons work differently in different countries. Some focus on rehabolitation, some on "an eye for an eye", except without TV. I imagine that in my fake-news-lifespeeding state, prison would be in the latter category, except the state would have no Eighth Amendment.

I haven't considered that last question!

Another problem not solved with lifespeeding is the "Jenny Psychopath" types as you call them, who would likely commit heinous crimes after they were speedborn. No way to stop those without celericide (killing/interfering with a speedling and his/her speeducation while s/he is still in the speeder, which is a crime in almost every non-anarchistic society that knows lifespeeding).

Interesting. So abortion is not a thing among (most) lifespeeding cultures.

That's correct. You don't hear about abortion in many places in Lehola nowadays, since the Dzasta bowl has become so widespread. The Dzasta bowl, named after the Javarti surname of its inventor, can take a fetus (or even an embryo or zygote) removed from its mother and raise it as if it were still in the womb. The Dzasta bowl nourishes the fetus, holds the fetus, and expands in size if necessarily until the moment of bowlbirth. Then, it is considered born -- a newborn/baby/child instead of a fetus. (Once the baby is born, it may be placed into a speeder, for the next stages of development.) Abortion, or at least the abortion of any unborn child who has a differentiated brain (as opposed to a zygote), is illegal in most places that have integrated the Dzasta bowl into their society, and politicians don't argue about abortion the way they do in contemporary America.

What about other issues, be they physical, psychological, spiritual or what have you? Does the speeding process edit genes for example in such a way that Syndromes are no longer at issue? (No people speedborn without limbs or with extra genes.)

Those are usually changed during fetushood, rather than during speedlinghood, if they are changed at all. People can also be regened as adults. GST (genetic selection technology) also allows prospective parents to assure that their kids will be born without Down syndrome or whatnot. (Obviously, though, non-human sapients are going to have their own chromosomal disorders instead of Down syndrome.)

Uncle Joe Stalin. On account of both of them being idiot Socialists.

I love Bernie Sanders! He wants to fix the prison-industrial complex, voted against the invasion of Iraq (unlike Hillary Clinton), doesn't take campaign money from Big Business, stood up for Edward Snowden as "defending American freedom", supported gay marriage before it was mainstream, voted against the Patriot Act, and opposed the Keystone XL Pipeline. You can't say the same thing for Hillary, nor for the Republican 2016 candidates.

I think one of the main problems with the test, apart from the premise itself!, is the way it asks the questions. I mean, I was literally not "disgusted" by any of the things in that list. And most questions had some kind of "out" -- like "under certain circumstances..." I mean, if you keep a person in a cell for a month without food and then offer them a choice of eating Manflesh and then being freed or else going back to the cell to die, I think most people would sample the Manflesh. If it's well seasoned and cooked, I certainly would. But being disgusted is quite different from making a rational & informed moral choice on a matter! If the local fast food restaurant offered a monkey-mc-burger, I wouldn't eat it. But I wouldn't be disgusted by the concept.

That's a good point too. A Monkey McBurger wouldn't sell as well as, say, a Ribwich!

Re animal "rights", as conceived by the Left, I think that's a good example of heart being in the right place but mind not being engaged. You already know a little of my mindset, so oughtn't be surprised that para-cannibalism is not something I'd be into. Killing and eating a chimpanzee or a whale or an oliphant or a dog or some other clever-and-very-likely-near-sophont is a matter of morality. Not that a chimpanzee has rights. It's more like the closer a creature is to being a sophont, the greater are our (human) responsibilities towards them as a race, protecting their environment and respecting their individual wellbeing. But do we extend that down to amoebas?

I enjoy eating vertebrates, and, as you already know, octopus. I also enjoy bivalves, escargot, crustaceans, and trepang. (Jellyfish isn't as delicious.) I wouldn't extend it to any individual of an excerebrose species, however, such as a coelenterate or sponge. Limiting my scope to the phyla and classes found on Earth, I'd say individuals of the phylum Chordata, plus the cephalopods, as well as any individual that's anyone's pet, should have basic "animal rights" like freedom from cruelty. By extending it to pets, I mean that if a cop comes into someone's room and shoots her pet hermit crabs, he should get in legal trouble, just as if he shot someone's dog. I often kill spiders in the house (but wouldn't kill someone's pet pinktoe or Chilean rose tarantula). I also believe in should be illegal to kill members of an endangered species. With candidate intelligences (non-human primates, cetaceans, elephants, parrots, corvids), I'd boost those rights to not being killed/eaten, much the way you would. I'd sure hate to give up eating octopus, calamari, and cuttlefish, though. I wouldn't touch one of the near-sapient cephalopods on Syprian, however, let alone a sapient from Syprian!

A lot of people don't know, but there is a large body of Catholic teaching on good and ethical management of the world's resources. A lot of the things that the political Left comes up with re animal rights are a perversion of good stewardship of the Earth's resources. For example, I find the factory farming methods of the food industry to be entirely appalling and unethical. I don't agree that cows or chickens have "rights". They are, after all, "dumb beasts". We as rational and moral beings, however, do have greater responsibilities towards the animals and plants we keep as food resources. Do we have to house each cow in an individual 2000 sqft house with Alexa enabled amenities, 80in televisions in every room and a string orchestra to play the gentle strains of Vivaldi? No. We should make ourselves aware of the natural habits of cows (or chickens or whatever) and house and feed them according to their nature. They should be treated well, fed well, allowed to do their thing within the environment while they're alive and they should be respected and thanked for their sacrifice to keep us alive when they are slaughtered.

Agreed.

Howe & Strauss say that K-12 schools are raising Millennials (or that elementary school raised Millennials, past tense, now that all Millennials have graduated elementary school) to be the heroes of a crisis like World War II who will "save us all" (they actually use that phrase) and to be great scientists, and are focusing on great test scores because they knew a Crisis (with a capital C) was coming.

Bizarre. One could say that the System is doing little more than setting children up for disaster and not preparing them at all well for crisis. Capital C or otherwise.

Very bizarre, although you have to actually read one of Howe & Strauss' works to get the hang of how these two authors think.

Here is a good introduction to the Howe & Strauss take on Millennials:

https://www.vox.com/2014/7/26/5936723/m ... illennials

Nah. No hippie phake pholk songs per se. Just the outmoded Gospel. Which is kind of odd, really, because while you might expect a Christian school to be "Bible based" (and I think many demonational Christian schools, particularly of the Evangelical sort) and maybe use sectarian text books (shudder), that wasn't the case at all. More about living right and charitably in the world. Holistic you might say. Hard to put it in words. Denominational Christianity is just so different (and frankly odd) in its outlook that their schooling style is almost as alien to me as the public System!

So no Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, or Kingston Trio. Got it. So it wasn't a Catholic school?

A lot of Catholic high schools don't allow boys to grow facial hair. I wouldn't've liked that.

Yes, it was Catholic. I was (and obviously failing) trying to distinguish Catholic schools from what I've read about typical denominational Christian schools.

I don't recall any rules about facial hair.

Ah, I see. Catholic instead of a Protestant denomination (or Mormon, for that matter). Given your Filipino roots, I had expected you to be Catholic. (I have Jewish roots ethnically, but wasn't raised in the Jewish religious tradition -- no bar mitzvah -- and my brother is an atheist.)

Pipe smoking on the other hand is an entirely different culture. The tobacco is high quality, properly matured and is not intended to be inhaled. You don't get the nicotine or low quality additives you do in cigarettes. It's basically aromatherapy. Definitely not an ugly smell!

Oh, cool!

Mostly this is because, in spite of what teenagers often believe about their parents, they do actually love their children intensely and will do anything for them according to their lights and understanding. Rules exist not as an inconvenience for children (though I recall feeling just that way!) but as a means of teaching small animals how to become people.

Some parents hate their children because they were accidents, and even tell them so. And then there are the parents who make rules like "You can't date that boy because he's Black".

A few do indeed hate their children. That is shameful and sad. Some people who are really don't deserve to be parents; and their children certainly deserve better!

Yes, parents like these would be executed in Inner Bruise!

Dylan Owens
Dylan Owens, I've written, I'm writing, and I'll write.
Answered Dec 6, 2017

My best friend is 15. These are his rules:

His bed time is 8:00. He has to be in bed, lights off, and not moving. He breaks it, no phone for a month.

He usually has go to church three times a week. This is not optional. He has never missed church.

He can’t watch any movies, videos, or TV shows that contain magic. He does, no phone for a month.

He can’t ever argue with his mother on anything. If he does, he gets beat with a belt.

He fights with his brother, he gets beaten with a belt.

He uses Quora, he gets beaten with a belt.

He forgets to put the cap on the toothpaste, no phone for a week.

There's always two sides to the story. I'd be interested to hear the whys and wherefores. To be honest, these rules sóund petty and draconian, and I know my 15-year-old-inner-self would rise up in self-righteous indignation over the terribly injustices suffered here! But there's got to be múch more to this story than we're hearing here.

To be frank, none of the rules are terribly onerous, though I'd really rather explore the family dynamics -- the young man's state of mind & maturity with respect to his behaviour; the style of parenting used since the boy was very little; the relationships between Mom and Dad and between each of them and the son. It's just not realistic to plop this list down and expect one to determine a reasoned conclusion from so little evidence.

I suspect, but can not be certain, that this situation arises from the friend's immaturity and rebellious attitude more than anything specifically wrong with the parents or the son. They certainly don't seem to hate him! Far from it! These rules seem to be the kind of things a loving parent has to evolve as a result of the child simply not getting it.

I note that one of the rules is going to church three times a week. Even most Bible-believing Christians only go to church on Sunday. To me, it seems less like parents going to lengths to guide an immature child than like fundamentalist Christians with some right-wing fundamentalist beliefs that guide their view of the world and parenting. (Note also the rule about entertainment with magic.)

Children are children! They are not rational and not mature. This fellow leaves the cap off the toothpaste. Parents want the cap on the toothpaste. Is the rule petty? To an irrational and immature 15 year old, of course it is! It's a sodding gulag! It's a veritable Auschwitz around here! That's because the child can not yet see the bigger picture. Toothpaste is a resource that costs money. It's not cheap. If you leave the cap off, it leaves a little mess on the sink that someone (Mom!) has to clean up; the toothpaste can dry and clog the opening. The behaviour is wasteful. An unsuspecting user might press a little harder and squeeze toothpaste all over the place. Basically, the rule here is Love. Mom loves you, so she buys you toothpaste (that way, you have nice clean teeth and hopefully no cavities!). She wishes to instill in you good stewardship of resources, so she teaches you to put the cap on the toothpaste when you're done! She has taught you this since you were like 2 years old, but now you're a 15 year old asshole so you don't really care like you used to. You leave the cap off and it makes a mess. Your sister goes in after you (or I guess if you're a Kankonian (or Daine!) family, at the same time!) and makes a mess of the toothpaste bottle because she expects the cap to be on. Now there's toothpaste all over the place, sister is hollering because of the mess, Mom is frazzled because the boy is an asshole and just doesn't get it. Dad's upset because Mom is upset because daughter is upset because son is an ass.

Hence the petty rules. You want to be an ass? Go do it on your own time when you have your own house. Here, you put the cap on the toothpaste. Not because parents like making up silly rules and arbitrary punishments (and don't even let's get started on corporal punishment!); but because, according to their best light and understanding, they wish to instill the virtue of love into their children. Are they perfect? No. Are they the best parents ever? Maybe not. Are they doing their best? Seems like it!

As for consequences, well, dear Dylan's friend naturally thinks the consequences are a veritable Hague-worthy crime against humanity! That's because he's an immature 15 year old who just doesn't get it! I see it like this: However it got put in place, there is a family rule about toothpaste caps. You put the cap on when you're done. Simple, really. If you don't, there's a consequence. I don't know what the consequences were when he was 5, but now he's fifteen. He knows better and is turning himself into even more of an ass than he was before. For as long as he wants to behave poorly, he can suffer the consequence of that behaviour. The instant he decides within his own maturing mind that hey! life without a phone sucks --- and you know what? putting the cap on the toothpaste really isn't that hard, and it seems to make Mom and sister happy, too... is the instant the restrictions come off.

The thing is, the rule against not putting the cap back on the toothpaste tube is far from the most unreasonable thing on that list. What about the rule whereby he has to be in bed -- and may not even move around -- at 8:00? 8:00! That's the kind of bedtime you give an 8-year-old, not a 15-year-old. Are his parents not aware that as a teen-ager, his body's circadian rhythms are slanting towards a natural tendency to sleep later into the morning? (And it's wretched that high schools reflect the body schedules of middle-aged teachers rather than teen-agers in this Prussian-based system -- yes, teens need to get up in time for school, but must public schools really be so maladaptive?)

And the rule against magic in entertainment? Do these parents even know that LotR is an allegory for Christianity? Or Harry Potter, for that matter? If they learned such facts, would they still make that rule? The parents may be so knee-deep in their runamuck fundamentalism that it doesn't matter much if they think they love their son. Leelah Alcorn's parents said they loved her, too. There's a saying: The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

He should count himself lucky, really. If he were my kid, he wouldn't even have a cell phone in the first place! Website monitoring and keystroke logging? Damn skippy his online activities will be monitored! And not because I'm really interested in reading his CBB interactions; but because I love him more than anything else on this planet and want to keep him safe from predators. And I don't mean nasty pedophiles only -- I mean school bullies, I mean unsavoury political nonsense, I mean unsavoury ideologies, fake news, etc.

I'm a thirtysomething and still have never had a cellphone.

As for keystroke loggers, I don't support them at this point. Keeping your son safe from predators like school bullies, or from fake news, is a legitimate reason for using them. But in the wrong hands, they can lead to micro-dictatorships across America. Parents who discover via their kids' online correspondence that their White daughter is dating a Black boy, or their Asian son is dating a Black girl, and descend on them like one of the Furies. Parents who discover an online confession that their teen-age kid is gay, and send him to Conversion therapy. Fundamentalist parents who discover their daughter questioning the existence of God, and retaliate by destroying her guitar. There are a lot of these parents out there. In order for parental keystroke logging to be acceptable, America's laws would have to change considerably to protect the rights of minors against parental overreaches and parental tyranny.

I think mine had rather fewer students. I'm sure there were multiple teachers in any department, but for example, one would teach German I and another would teach German II and so forth.

Only, they didn't offer German! We could choose between Latin, French and Spanish.

Uni was of course quite the different matter.

Oh. Campolindo offered German, French, and Spanish. My junior college added in Italian, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, ASL, Tagalog, and Farsi. (Lots of Persian-Americans in the East Bay.)

Willia Strauss (of Howe & Strauss fame) once wrote at a Q&A session: "I will leave to Neil to answer the questions about Millennial counter-trends, but to characterize the flip-flops in the White House photo as a refutation of positive trends is a little silly. It's quite amusing, actually, to hear older people criticizing Millennials for their flip-flops. Recall how Gen Xers were criticized for wearing expensive sneakers, in some cases for committing crimes to steal those sneakers from one another. I have yet to hear of a case of a Millennial committing a crime to steal flip-flops."

The only crime like that I remember hearing of among Millennials was an incident in which one kid shot another to steal Pokémon-themed clothing. (I also heard of a Millennial kid around the year 2000 who hid in a store during closing hours to steal Pokémon merchandise. See a pattern?)

Yep. Same story, different actors. History rhymes.

I've only heard one such story about a Millennial committing a crime against another kid for clothes, however, and it was out of a geeky obsession with Pokémon. The incidents with Gen-X kids were much more numerous, and they centered around social status.

Also, crime among teens and college students skyrocketed among Boomers and Jonesers, started falling during the eighties with the first Xers, rose again in the early nineties with later Xers, and then fell for the next two decades with Millennials. Crime among children under 10 was highest among Millennials in the early nineties, then went way down. That's why there were many more such stories involving Gen-X kids than involving Millennial kids (or than there are involving Fifth World grade-schoolers).

Sad but true. There was a time when those things just didn't happen. You could actually trust the policeman...

When I was 5 or 6, back in the eighties, my sister and I stayed at another family's house for a few days, and the family put on a kids' record. The first line in one of the songs was, "I'm a policeman, dressed in blue". The song went on to discuss how the policeman would do things like help you cross the street. How times have changed!

Re uniforms, Daine are, perhaps unsurprisingly, ununiform. Hats are a thing, though, even among Daine. The greatqueen of Westmarche, for example, wears a hat. Kind of like a crown. Mind you, it's made from her own feathers, as well as those of the other regional queens. Kind of symbolic that way.

The emperor of Auntimoany wears a hat, too. It's very tall. Though, since the coup, they have an empress. She only technically wears the Hat, on accound of her hair being always done up nice. Some say that since she took over, the Hat has actually grown in stature.

Your matriarchal Daine must be excellent stewards of the environment!

I know, right? I remember the first time I read about this speech, I was thinking, "WHAT, they could suspend a student for saying THAT? Huh? Is 'firm in his pants' a euphemism for an erection? I don't get it."

Oh, I totally get it! I am 100% sure it's a "colourful metaphor", and I'm sure many of the students appreciated it as such.

It still doesn't rise to the level of being anything other than a very minor disciplinary action, if it even goes that far! The speaker, in my opinion, walked the line skilfully and kept himself well zipped up!

Unlike Clinton! The sexual innuendo is more mild and subtle than that in many radio-friendly pop songs. That, combined with the reasoning based in social conformism ("socially appropriate behavior") and "ZOMG sex is naughty!!!!!", rather than anything in the Constitution, of the Supreme Court's opinion, makes me unable to support the legal reasoning in Bethel.

Sort of like, quite literally, a "school" of children growing up together. A cohort I think they call it. Could be some interesting fodder for social interactions post speedbirth. For example, how might a speedcohort's relationships develop after birth? Will they continue to rely upon one another and grow the bonds they experienced in the speedwomb? How might they interact with similarly speeducated cohorts (for example, if there are differences between different companies processes) --- would near cohorts be seen as "cousins" or colleagues while cohorts from other firms be seen as "foreign" in some way?

All good questions. However, this aspect wasn't something I originally thought about -- it was just an off-the-cuff idea to answer your question on bonding. "Speedcohort" would have a useful word to have in LIE.

Food for thought! I'll be interested to read what comes next!

I've termed this a "speedbatch" in LIE -- a calque of the Kankonian sheizrermas. Sheiz means "fast", and sheizov is "speed". Rermas is translated in my Kankonian dictionary as "batch (of graduates, etc.)" or "crop (the current ~ of twentysomethings)".

I could work the idea of speedees having closer bonds with people who went through the same firm's speeder with the same knowledge-base than with other speedees into my conworld somehow, I think.

Speedees could call girls from the same speedbatch "sister from the womb" (in Kankonian, zwaniz ab fubos, or zaf). And they could call boys from the same speedbatch "brother from the womb" (in Kankonian, zhered ab fubos, or zhaf).

Huh, when I went to the National Spelling Bee, a girl spelled "ensorcellment" this way and they told her it was wrong. They said it had two L's.

Scripps use M-W Unabridged. Webster's Unabridged lists both spellings. OED lists only the double ell spelling.

Hmmmmm . . . https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ensorcell says the verb/root word may have one or two L's, but only lists the two-L'd spelling as correct once you add the suffix -ment.

[elemtilas]

Hm. What happens in a lifespeeding required state if someone doesn't want their progeny lifesped? Are they compelled by state power?

Yes. Their newborn child is wrested from their arms and placed into a speeder in these states. (This would include the fake-news-indoctrinating state I mused about creating.)

Wow. That's pretty brutal!

Brutal, but sensible --- they are, after all, breaking the law. Law breakers must be punished, right? Even in The World, a law breaking mother must yield up her children once sentenced. Unless the sentence is some sort of debtors' workhouse or exile. Capital punishment or labour punishments, obviously you can't take the kiddoes with you in either circumstance.

Baby seizure among Daine, that's quite rare indeed! That would be a crime in and of itself and likely to cause as much social upheaval as the crime that necessitated it.

I've known for a long while that "amazon" cultures of Daine exist (communities comprising only girls), but I recently dreamed about a (very unusual) queendom of these "amazon" Daine who approached the time of their fertility rites rather more vigorously and folkloristically than most such cultures. Obviously, even ordinary all girl Daine societies need boys to make babies. Usually this is accomplished in a very satisfactory and enjoyable manner; but this particular society prefers a more brutal approach in sacrificing their victims during the festivities. Long story short, a couple survivors of the ordeal (out of perhaps a hundred victims) tracked them down and their own Queen brought a very definitive war against the agressors.

Those that survived the war were kept until they showed signs of pregnancy. After the time of giving birth, the babies were taken and most of the "amazons" were in turn ritually slain themselves.

Daine, across all subtypes, are left-oriented! They don't mind much who comes over for dinner. Who decides to sèttle down near them may be a different matter!

A predominantly left-handed people? Sounds like the Domeheads of Bodus!

In more ways than one, it turns out!

"Paranormal" abilities of various kinds (strong empathic and weak telepathic capacities); aura visualisation; Daine are spiritually advanced (of course!) but can of course choose good or evil. Family arrangements & child rearing bear some similarities (FM & ffM & FFM are the most common; FFMM & FFfM are less common); children are raised by parents and their siblings; (Daine would totally respect the concept of linam-okos property) but view ownership of houses (and land in general) similarly; there are no police (though there are border guards!); they would also totally respect the concept of the Four Divine Relationships; meditation & spiritual exercise are key components of Daine life from a young age; Daine can, with practice, stretch the truth convincingly, but natively are horrible liars; Daine prefer being in physical contact with their loved ones or friends; various kinds of physical touch (from hugging to other things that would probably require a spoiler box) are regularly engaged in between strangers and friends alike; they revere their artists (generally this means instrumentalists, singers, storytellers and enchanters --- visual & dramatic arts are exceedingly rare to non-existent) and respect the wise and loredeep; the three genders are considered equal in dignity, but it is obvious that there are oceans of difference between one & the other two and these differences are universally understood in terms of complimentarity rather than disparity or superiority/inferiority; Daine are compassionate towards those who show congenital "disability" and respectful of their compensating gifts.

Lots of differences, of course, and many of the similarities are more parallelities that exact behaviour convergence.

You'll have to explain undicity better... That might actually be similar to ordinary dwimmery.

And wow! I love your Bodusians already!

Also, Dogs are quite more like people than Men realise. Perhaps they never bothered trying to actually talk with them?

So you've created Canine conlangs for the World? Or at least dabbled in them?

Many kinds of dog-like animals (actual dogs, wargs, foxlings, etc) have the capacity to learn & understand, at least at a rudimentary level, Daine (and presumably Mannish) speech. Much like how in Earth we can train a dog to "fetch" or "heel". Daine have simply learned that Dogs are actually paying attention when we talk around them. Like children. And as with talking to their little babies and toddlers, they also talk to their Dogs. I think there must be something about Dogs' brains that "grow" with companionship stimulation.

It's kind of amazing to see how advanced Dog cultures interact with Daine. Dogs are just chilling, maybe wrestling with the kiddoes; but if talk turns to matters of national importance --- like hunting or conflicts along the border or the possibility of a good run or some sport --- then they're all pricked ears and eyes fixed lovingly & proudly on their alphas!

Dogs are the kind of animal a Daine can actually send out into the wild with fairly complex instructions that the Pack will accomplish without direct alpha intervention. The dogs of Men are clever, for sure, and are capable hunting & herding & guard hounds, but they do not experience the same kind of shared culture that Dogs have with their Daine.

Right -- I chose the Kentish form.

So Kentish speakers say "feeze" for "faze"? Learned something new . . .

As did I!

As for chocolate, well, refined sugar isn't a thing. It's also very rare outside the big port cities of Auntimoany and Mentolatum where it's typically taken bitter with cream.

One could imagine a scene in a Social (a kind of ritzy salon for the uber powerful & wealthy in Auntimoany), a wealthy Parliamentarian might want to try licking her xoqo off her Daine girl host's belly. Daine is nòt amused. Whatever secrets this creepy woman has to divulge better be worth it!

As for flavour profiles by race, I'd say Daine tend to prefer savoury. When they eat sweet, it's usually blended with salt.

Interesting stuff! Daine seem to be very different from human 5-year-olds. (Although I read an article about a year ago anent if parents raise their children from infancy to be familiar with a wide variety of foods and tastes, their children will willingly eat them -- the problem is that most American parents subconsciously raise their kids to like sweet and salty foods, and avoid feeding them "adult" foods, so it's Dino Bites instead of shrimp cocktail.)

Yep. Funny you should mention: I've an acquaintance who specifically raised his baby completely sugar free. Kids can't stand icecream or candy.

I was a reasonably sugar-free toddler. I've never really cared much for sweet. Unless it's chocolate.

All right! Since lifespeeding is one of the most pervasive non-Earth-like things across the Lehola Galaxy, a story or two or three thereon would likely be written.

Tell me about the criminal justice system within the context, especially, of near-total speeding. If literally everyone is implanted with the State System of right and wrong and has already (virtually) experienced the consequences of going against the System, how are those recalcitrants treated after speedbirth?

Is there some kind of reeducation process or is prison very much like an American prison? Or some other kind of prison?

Can the speedborn be put back in the womb to mature a little further?

The consocieties that I've created so far are not like the movie Minority Report; they don't prosecute someone until either (a) s/he has actually committed, or is in the process of committing a crime, (b) s/he has threatened to commit a crime, or (c) the authorities have come upon evidence that s/he is meditating to commit a crime (like film developers finding negatives of huge stashes of weapons in the person's bedroom). Someone who has revealed herself as a recalcitrant during her time in the speeder would not be punished nor given extra surveillance until (a), (b), or (c) happens. Then she would be sent to prison.

Prisons work differently in different countries. Some focus on rehabolitation, some on "an eye for an eye", except without TV. I imagine that in my fake-news-lifespeeding state, prison would be in the latter category, except the state would have no Eighth Amendment.

I haven't considered that last question!

Oh interesting! Never heard of "Minority Report". Theoretically, there are some thaumologies that could potentially mimic precognition, but it would really be impossible to know if the precognitive intuition (about, say, the Empress contemplating a war) is actually reflective of thìs Empress's scheming or an Empress from somewhere Else.

Even under Auntimoanian law, they can't prosecute someone until they've committed a crime. Kind of an odd circumstance, really, as a well practiced psychopath could, conceivably, maintain a torture victim in a state of continual torture for years or decades. So long as no other criminal offense becomes a fait acomplis it is not possible to search the premises, act on warrants or bills, detain, arrest, seize, charge, try or convict the perpetrator.

Mind you, the practicalities outweigh. Sooner or later even the best psychopath is going to do something else that will either cause a cessation in the crime being committed or else give someone else an opportunity to terminate the conditions of the crime, thus allowing for arrest etc.

Prosecuting based on threats is actually possible, though punishments are typically not too severe. Except for some obvious examples. Prosecution for scheming is possible if there are extenuating circumstances. Keeping an armory in your house is not an issue. Keeping armory in your house and threatening to kill the monarch will likely get you a swift invitation to meet Auntimoany's answer to Jack Ketch.

Whereas threatening to kill the monarch, in and of itself, is just an ill advised example of free speech and will likely earn you no more than a minor torture. Unless the monarch is total git, in which case, you'd probably get off.

Interesting. So abortion is not a thing among (most) lifespeeding cultures.

That's correct. You don't hear about abortion in many places in Lehola nowadays, since the Dzasta bowl has become so widespread. The Dzasta bowl, named after the Javarti surname of its inventor, can take a fetus (or even an embryo or zygote) removed from its mother and raise it as if it were still in the womb. The Dzasta bowl nourishes the fetus, holds the fetus, and expands in size if necessarily until the moment of bowlbirth. Then, it is considered born -- a newborn/baby/child instead of a fetus. (Once the baby is born, it may be placed into a speeder, for the next stages of development.) Abortion, or at least the abortion of any unborn child who has a differentiated brain (as opposed to a zygote), is illegal in most places that have integrated the Dzasta bowl into their society, and politicians don't argue about abortion the way they do in contemporary America.

Interesting about the Bowl of Dzasta! "Bowlbirth" -- nice! Another magic that Daine (and Men!) would gaze at in wonder!

Politicians (Daine don't have them, but anyway!) don't argue about it either. Among Men and many of the lesser / younger races, it (pre as well as post natal infanticide) is a reality of life. Especially among the poor, the ill educated, the socially or culturally backward. Men are prone to so many physical & mental ailments, syndromes and maladies that some families find they can't cope. Their economic & social architectures don't help any. Social stigmas, class stigmas, caste stigmas, racial stigmas all exist and often play a part in whether a baby will be aborted or dumped. Or even sacrificed.

The best teaching of Daine to early Men didn't have effect on their social evolution. The broad prevalence of Kristianity in the East has done quite a bit to ameliorate the situation and has certainly given the Philosophers some food for thought. Certainly among the wealthy classes and educated castes, infanticide is rather looked down on. It's the sort of thing that civilised folk "just don't do". Or at least, not in public. As a matter of fact, it caused quite the scandal in the broadsheets back in 1914 when the Emperor publicly sacrificed one of his (less than perfect, syndrome unknown) children in thanksgiving for a well born child. Even the most traditional of Pagan churches were all like "dude! Don't make such a spectacle of it!" Mind you, the hierarchs never actually made statements or pronouncements suppressing the practice. They just sought to sweep the practice under the metaphorical carpet.

Naturally, Daine are quite scandalised by these behaviours of Men.

What about other issues, be they physical, psychological, spiritual or what have you? Does the speeding process edit genes for example in such a way that Syndromes are no longer at issue? (No people speedborn without limbs or with extra genes.)

Those are usually changed during fetushood, rather than during speedlinghood, if they are changed at all. People can also be regened as adults. GST (genetic selection technology) also allows prospective parents to assure that their kids will be born without Down syndrome or whatnot. (Obviously, though, non-human sapients are going to have their own chromosomal disorders instead of Down syndrome.)

I see. Kind of "reformat the hard drive before installing the software" thing.

I guess I'd need to know more about family dynamics in speedculture (if any, and I get the sense that there are not): do / have anyone choose to not use GST? Or is that also a matter of law? Does / has anyone intentionally sought to use GST to create a syndromed child? Deliberately making a Downs or an XO (Turner's) child?

Uncle Joe Stalin. On account of both of them being idiot Socialists.

I love Bernie Sanders!

He wants to fix the prison-industrial complex, voted against the invasion of Iraq (unlike Hillary Clinton), doesn't take campaign money from Big Business, stood up for Edward Snowden as "defending American freedom", supported gay marriage before it was mainstream, voted against the Patriot Act, and opposed the Keystone XL Pipeline. You can't say the same thing for Hillary, nor for the Republican 2016 candidates.

Well, then you should love me too! I want to fix the prison-industrial complex, I never take Big Business (or any!) campaign money; fundamentally agree on the E.S. thing; dissent against the Unpatriot Act (though I do give kudos to the acronym's inventor -- that's a piece of work and no mistake!). I don't hold with gender & sex being politicised the way the Left do, but am not against social bonds for same sex attracted individuals.

I don't like Mrs Clinton's positions any better. But really, when you get down to it, and for all the political quizes and personality tests that tell me I'm left of Engels, Lenin & Marx combined, I thoroughly detest and am constitutionally abhorred by the social platforms of the modern Democrat party. Sweetie Pie has recently taken a liking to CNN (which under less ideal circumstances, I'd actually consider more than five minutes a week of CNN or MSNBC or NPR to be clear cases of abuse) so I listened to Mrs Gillibrand's stump speech today. Apart from sounding entirely like a child running for grade school president, her social ideas and moral compass are just horrendously off base!

Mind you, I don't care any more for the Republican or Socialist or Communist or Green or any other party's platforms. Rotten to the heartwood, each and every one of them. I did mention my preference for moral monarchy, right? Sheesh! Give me a proper Daine queen any day and I'd be happy!

And so would you!

I think one of the main problems with the test, apart from the premise itself!, is the way it asks the questions. I mean, I was literally not "disgusted" by any of the things in that list. And most questions had some kind of "out" -- like "under certain circumstances..." I mean, if you keep a person in a cell for a month without food and then offer them a choice of eating Manflesh and then being freed or else going back to the cell to die, I think most people would sample the Manflesh. If it's well seasoned and cooked, I certainly would. But being disgusted is quite different from making a rational & informed moral choice on a matter! If the local fast food restaurant offered a monkey-mc-burger, I wouldn't eat it. But I wouldn't be disgusted by the concept.

That's a good point too. A Monkey McBurger wouldn't sell as well as, say, a Ribwich!

Ribwitch made from random porcine byproducts or Ribwitch made from USDA pure grade-A monkeyflesh? A world of difference there! Or, as far as the disgust-o-metre reads, maybe not so much of a difference, once you learn what constitutes "random porcine byproducts".

Re animal "rights", as conceived by the Left, I think that's a good example of heart being in the right place but mind not being engaged. You already know a little of my mindset, so oughtn't be surprised that para-cannibalism is not something I'd be into. Killing and eating a chimpanzee or a whale or an oliphant or a dog or some other clever-and-very-likely-near-sophont is a matter of morality. Not that a chimpanzee has rights. It's more like the closer a creature is to being a sophont, the greater are our (human) responsibilities towards them as a race, protecting their environment and respecting their individual wellbeing. But do we extend that down to amoebas?

I enjoy eating vertebrates, and, as you already know, octopus. I also enjoy bivalves, escargot, crustaceans, and trepang. (Jellyfish isn't as delicious.) I wouldn't extend it to any individual of an excerebrose species, however, such as a coelenterate or sponge. Limiting my scope to the phyla and classes found on Earth, I'd say individuals of the phylum Chordata, plus the cephalopods, as well as any individual that's anyone's pet, should have basic "animal rights" like freedom from cruelty. By extending it to pets, I mean that if a cop comes into someone's room and shoots her pet hermit crabs, he should get in legal trouble, just as if he shot someone's dog. I often kill spiders in the house (but wouldn't kill someone's pet pinktoe or Chilean rose tarantula). I also believe in should be illegal to kill members of an endangered species. With candidate intelligences (non-human primates, cetaceans, elephants, parrots, corvids), I'd boost those rights to not being killed/eaten, much the way you would. I'd sure hate to give up eating octopus, calamari, and cuttlefish, though. I wouldn't touch one of the near-sapient cephalopods on Syprian, however, let alone a sapient from Syprian!

There's only one local place that does calamari in such a way that I'd eat it regularly, so cephalopods (sophont or otherwise) have little to fear from me!

Conservation & protection of endangered species -- yep, I'm all for that! I concur with your list of non-human intelligences, though would most likely add octopus.

It will be interesting to see how the sophont interactions in Auntimoany pan out, what with the recent outwer-sea explorations of the Polupode realms. First contact didn't go so well, leastways for Men, who lost a decent consignment of assorted seafood! The Polupodes didn't actually seem to recognise the inherent intelligence of the Men on the quays... Kind of ironic, really.

Bizarre. One could say that the System is doing little more than setting children up for disaster and not preparing them at all well for crisis. Capital C or otherwise.

Very bizarre, although you have to actually read one of Howe & Strauss' works to get the hang of how these two authors think.

Here is a good introduction to the Howe & Strauss take on Millennials:

https://www.vox.com/2014/7/26/5936723/m ... illennials

Interesting read! Again: history rhymes. People make predictions, and some turn out close while others turn out simply hilarious. I recently found in the local used book shop a couple books of general social prediction written decades ago about what the early 21st century will be like. Isaak Asimov wrote one of them (actually an article in an old Almanac), though I haven't yet read through either. Some of his predictions are scarily inadequate to reality. Others are spot on. Still others are just so hilariously wrong that I couldn't help guffawing uproariously.

Curious the fixation on uniforms. Wonder if either of them are Prussians. Or Nazis or Socialists. They all seem to go gaga for spanky uniforms. For us, they were just cost effective clothing with a side of school spirit, etc.

Yes, it was Catholic. I was (and obviously failing) trying to distinguish Catholic schools from what I've read about typical denominational Christian schools.

I don't recall any rules about facial hair.

Ah, I see. Catholic instead of a Protestant denomination (or Mormon, for that matter). Given your Filipino roots, I had expected you to be Catholic. (I have Jewish roots ethnically, but wasn't raised in the Jewish religious tradition -- no bar mitzvah -- and my brother is an atheist.)

Hm on the Mormon matter. I personally (and it turns in concurrence with the Church) consider Mormonism to be a separate religious tradition. Like Islam (and Jehovas Witness and some others), they descend from Christianity but are no longer actually Christian.

Pipe smoking on the other hand is an entirely different culture. The tobacco is high quality, properly matured and is not intended to be inhaled. You don't get the nicotine or low quality additives you do in cigarettes. It's basically aromatherapy. Definitely not an ugly smell!

Oh, cool!

Haven't tried it myself, but am definitely in the Hobbit camp when it comes to choice of aromatherapy. Cigarettes =

Many Daine cultures, too, have a strong affinity for burning aromatic herbs, though they don't use pipes unless they're far from home, where any village will have a cosy smokehouse!

A few do indeed hate their children. That is shameful and sad. Some people who are really don't deserve to be parents; and their children certainly deserve better!

Yes, parents like these would be executed in Inner Bruise!

Again, curiously brutal!

Spoiler:

Dylan Owens
Dylan Owens, I've written, I'm writing, and I'll write.
Answered Dec 6, 2017

My best friend is 15. These are his rules:

His bed time is 8:00. He has to be in bed, lights off, and not moving. He breaks it, no phone for a month.

He usually has go to church three times a week. This is not optional. He has never missed church.

He can’t watch any movies, videos, or TV shows that contain magic. He does, no phone for a month.

He can’t ever argue with his mother on anything. If he does, he gets beat with a belt.

He fights with his brother, he gets beaten with a belt.

He uses Quora, he gets beaten with a belt.

He forgets to put the cap on the toothpaste, no phone for a week.

There's always two sides to the story. I'd be interested to hear the whys and wherefores. To be honest, these rules sóund petty and draconian, and I know my 15-year-old-inner-self would rise up in self-righteous indignation over the terribly injustices suffered here! But there's got to be múch more to this story than we're hearing here.

To be frank, none of the rules are terribly onerous, though I'd really rather explore the family dynamics -- the young man's state of mind & maturity with respect to his behaviour; the style of parenting used since the boy was very little; the relationships between Mom and Dad and between each of them and the son. It's just not realistic to plop this list down and expect one to determine a reasoned conclusion from so little evidence.

I suspect, but can not be certain, that this situation arises from the friend's immaturity and rebellious attitude more than anything specifically wrong with the parents or the son. They certainly don't seem to hate him! Far from it! These rules seem to be the kind of things a loving parent has to evolve as a result of the child simply not getting it.

I note that one of the rules is going to church three times a week. Even most Bible-believing Christians only go to church on Sunday. To me, it seems less like parents going to lengths to guide an immature child than like fundamentalist Christians with some right-wing fundamentalist beliefs that guide their view of the world and parenting. (Note also the rule about entertainment with magic.)

Many Catholics go to church seven days a week. And not a few attend adoration in addition to that. As well as other devotionals.

But, at least for a deeply faithful Catholic, "going to church" I think does not entail the same set of meaning and practice that it does in the denominational churches. The church experience is just worlds different. Literally!

Spoiler:

Children are children! They are not rational and not mature. This fellow leaves the cap off the toothpaste. Parents want the cap on the toothpaste. Is the rule petty? To an irrational and immature 15 year old, of course it is! It's a sodding gulag! It's a veritable Auschwitz around here! That's because the child can not yet see the bigger picture. Toothpaste is a resource that costs money. It's not cheap. If you leave the cap off, it leaves a little mess on the sink that someone (Mom!) has to clean up; the toothpaste can dry and clog the opening. The behaviour is wasteful. An unsuspecting user might press a little harder and squeeze toothpaste all over the place. Basically, the rule here is Love. Mom loves you, so she buys you toothpaste (that way, you have nice clean teeth and hopefully no cavities!). She wishes to instill in you good stewardship of resources, so she teaches you to put the cap on the toothpaste when you're done! She has taught you this since you were like 2 years old, but now you're a 15 year old asshole so you don't really care like you used to. You leave the cap off and it makes a mess. Your sister goes in after you (or I guess if you're a Kankonian (or Daine!) family, at the same time!) and makes a mess of the toothpaste bottle because she expects the cap to be on. Now there's toothpaste all over the place, sister is hollering because of the mess, Mom is frazzled because the boy is an asshole and just doesn't get it. Dad's upset because Mom is upset because daughter is upset because son is an ass.

Hence the petty rules. You want to be an ass? Go do it on your own time when you have your own house. Here, you put the cap on the toothpaste. Not because parents like making up silly rules and arbitrary punishments (and don't even let's get started on corporal punishment!); but because, according to their best light and understanding, they wish to instill the virtue of love into their children. Are they perfect? No. Are they the best parents ever? Maybe not. Are they doing their best? Seems like it!

As for consequences, well, dear Dylan's friend naturally thinks the consequences are a veritable Hague-worthy crime against humanity! That's because he's an immature 15 year old who just doesn't get it! I see it like this: However it got put in place, there is a family rule about toothpaste caps. You put the cap on when you're done. Simple, really. If you don't, there's a consequence. I don't know what the consequences were when he was 5, but now he's fifteen. He knows better and is turning himself into even more of an ass than he was before. For as long as he wants to behave poorly, he can suffer the consequence of that behaviour. The instant he decides within his own maturing mind that hey! life without a phone sucks --- and you know what? putting the cap on the toothpaste really isn't that hard, and it seems to make Mom and sister happy, too... is the instant the restrictions come off.

Roolz.

The thing is, the rule against not putting the cap back on the toothpaste tube is far from the most unreasonable thing on that list. What about the rule whereby he has to be in bed -- and may not even move around -- at 8:00? 8:00! That's the kind of bedtime you give an 8-year-old, not a 15-year-old. Are his parents not aware that as a teen-ager, his body's circadian rhythms are slanting towards a natural tendency to sleep later into the morning? (And it's wretched that high schools reflect the body schedules of middle-aged teachers rather than teen-agers in this Prussian-based system -- yes, teens need to get up in time for school, but must public schools really be so maladaptive?)

.shrugs. When I was little, bed time was 7:30. That gradually moved up to 9 or 10 by the time I was in high school. Again, I'd be interested in the dynamics: what is the rationale behind the 8pm bedtime for a teenager? Is it because poor Dylan lives in a Nazi wehrmacht barracks or is it because he's abused his privileges or perhaps do his parents know that if he goes to bed much later he'll never wake up in the morning, miss school, etc.? So yeah, the rule seems draconian, but what's the context! Context is what Dylan and his friend conveniently gloss over, never report or outright ignore, thinking we out here are dumb enough to fall for it!

I totally agree with you: teenagers do tend to be terrible morning people. But his parents are wise enough to balance that with his need to get to school. He'll just have to deal until (and if) he can get into college and take all his classes starting at 10am or something.

And the rule against magic in entertainment? Do these parents even know that LotR is an allegory for Christianity? Or Harry Potter, for that matter? If they learned such facts, would they still make that rule? The parents may be so knee-deep in their runamuck fundamentalism that it doesn't matter much if they think they love their son. Leelah Alcorn's parents said they loved her, too. There's a saying: The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

I noted the proscription against Harry Potter et al. (I am nòt on board with that rule!) Or I guess narrative magic in general. I do recall (vaguely) that there was considerable backlash against its portrayal of magic. Interestingly, the Christian backlash was pretty starkly along Catholic - Denominational lines. Where Catholics had anything to say about HP at all, the opinions varied as one might expect. Much ado about nothing seems to be the general consensus, though! Evangelicals and so forth seemed to be most vigorous in their condemnation.

ngngng ngngng ... grr! Nòt an allegory! cries the good professor! (Though I certainly understand where you're headed!)

Well, I think (though don't know), that they have probably been affected by long years of preaching against various kinds of "occult entertainment". I'm sure Bewitched had its detractors in the day, just as Sabrina Teen Age Witch and Harry Potter do anymore. While I find HP in general to be sòmewhat morally ambivalent (Harry is no Aragorn or Frodo or Mithrandir! (to say nothing of the work's hero, Sam!)) I hold that its positive qualities rank it rather higher than the inane Buffy or Sabrina. I think his moral and ethical ambivalence can be explained (if not condoned) as can Frodo's failure. But in neither case do I find the magic (or the thaumology in HP) to be objectionable.

Me, I leave it to the parents to judge what they will let their children read and watch. After all, that's their primary job as guardians and guides for their children! If Little One had survived and grown up, I'm sure she'd be all into Harry Potter and LotR and so forth!

He should count himself lucky, really. If he were my kid, he wouldn't even have a cell phone in the first place! Website monitoring and keystroke logging? Damn skippy his online activities will be monitored! And not because I'm really interested in reading his CBB interactions; but because I love him more than anything else on this planet and want to keep him safe from predators. And I don't mean nasty pedophiles only -- I mean school bullies, I mean unsavoury political nonsense, I mean unsavoury ideologies, fake news, etc.

I'm a thirtysomething and still have never had a cellphone.

I have one, but don't really know how to use it.

As for keystroke loggers, I don't support them at this point. Keeping your son safe from predators like school bullies, or from fake news, is a legitimate reason for using them. But in the wrong hands, they can lead to micro-dictatorships across America. Parents who discover via their kids' online correspondence that their White daughter is dating a Black boy, or their Asian son is dating a Black girl, and descend on them like one of the Furies. Parents who discover an online confession that their teen-age kid is gay, and send him to Conversion therapy. Fundamentalist parents who discover their daughter questioning the existence of God, and retaliate by destroying her guitar. There are a lot of these parents out there. In order for parental keystroke logging to be acceptable, America's laws would have to change considerably to protect the rights of minors against parental overreaches and parental tyranny.

Absolutely true. I was being a little hyperbolic. Tech is the kind of thing that really has to be introduced to children very carefully. I was watching a video Sweetie-Pie's sister sent to us. Her one year old can slide and fiddle around with her mom's cell phone better than I ever could!

If the child has been given a strong foundation, then by the time she's a teenager, she should have a pretty good head on her shoulders and good parents will just have to learn to trust. Trust but verify! I didn't intend to make it sound like I'd be a snoop or anything, BUT, if my kid ever gave any cause for such snoopage, then snooped she would be. Because that would entail an abuse of relationship on the child's part and a loss of trust on the parents'. Child would learn very swiftly what breach of trust is all about and also how very hard it is to gain trust back, once it's lost.

Re microdictatorship. I like that word! I see parenthood as a kind of benevolent dictatorship (of the moral monarchical sort!). A child's life can be incredibly easy or incredibly difficult, and much of it really is up to the child. Especially as they get older. Assuming the parents aren't total monsters and the child is not "broken" in some way.

Heh. The dating thing. We were both blessed with families that didn't see any problem with cross ethnic relationships. I do know some (Asian) mothers who, perhaps just shy of Furyhood, do actually express such problems. Though usually in the positive (I hope my child will date a Filipino!) rather than the negative. Though the negative, I'm sure, is lurking not too far beneath the surface in some instances.

Re the "gay thing". Keep in mind, I didn't grow up in a media saturated environment or a social media inundated environment or an ultra left leaning culture. Kids now grow up in an even more fucked up culture than you or certainly I did! And sadly, it's only the same sex attracted kids that suffer from not only the culture but also ill informed and ill prepared parents.

Conversion therapy is nòt something I would send my child to. I don't think any child needs to be subjected to that. A lot of people struggle with homosexuality, and if they make the informed choice to undergo that therapy, that's their choice. But adolescents, no.

It's kind of odd, really, the "idea" of people being same sex attracted is nothing new in American culture. It was certainly mainstream and acceptable enough to be (reverse-)portrayed on television in the 1970s (Three's Company). And anymore it's pervasive in media. Everywhere you look you have to have so many female characters, so many handicapped characters, so many ethnically diverse characters, so many homosexual characters. It's just beyond belief that any parent your age or younger (old enough to struggle with teenagers!) would seriously consider conversion therapy or otherwise turn away any child that confides this about their nature! Again, if this were me, I'd see it as a parent's sacred duty to in a sense go to war fór their child who is just coming to terms (loving & keen eyed parents probably knew years ago what their child wouldn't even consider until later!). Kid's already a skull full of mush, got the hormones raging and now finds she's in a strange situation! Thoughtful parents of such kids need to be even more prepared and more vigilant for their little ones!

Re spirituality & religion. I don't understand fundamentalist ideology (among denomination Christians). Apart from the term having a completely different nuance than it would among Catholics. If my daughter expressed questioning the existence of God, apart from that being a normal part of a person's growth, I think it again would fall to thoughtful parents to explore that with their daughter. Breaking the kid's guitar doesn't make sense. The (excessive re)action serves no purpose other than to antagonise an already confused and truth-seeking youngster. She wants to understand. She desires to find the truth. Maybe even Truth itself. It's the parents' sacred duty (again!) to lead their children to understanding these things, not to punish them for something like that.

Whew! Again: these are all very sad anecdotes of poor parenting. And will probably lead to future anecdotes of similar type 20 years from now, because, you know, history rhymes.

Oh. Campolindo offered German, French, and Spanish. My junior college added in Italian, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, ASL, Tagalog, and Farsi. (Lots of Persian-Americans in the East Bay.)

Tagalog -- of course! California!

Sad but true. There was a time when those things just didn't happen. You could actually trust the policeman...

When I was 5 or 6, back in the eighties, my sister and I stayed at another family's house for a few days, and the family put on a kids' record. The first line in one of the songs was, "I'm a policeman, dressed in blue". The song went on to discuss how the policeman would do things like help you cross the street. How times have changed!

Indeed! Anymore they'll help you across the street alright! In a body bag too often!

Re uniforms, Daine are, perhaps unsurprisingly, ununiform. Hats are a thing, though, even among Daine. The greatqueen of Westmarche, for example, wears a hat. Kind of like a crown. Mind you, it's made from her own feathers, as well as those of the other regional queens. Kind of symbolic that way.

The emperor of Auntimoany wears a hat, too. It's very tall. Though, since the coup, they have an empress. She only technically wears the Hat, on accound of her hair being always done up nice. Some say that since she took over, the Hat has actually grown in stature.

Your matriarchal Daine must be excellent stewards of the environment![/quote]

See, there's hope for Men yet! Daine would say to that article, yeah, that's we tried teaching them like forty thousand years ago. Have they learned their lessons? No!

I like to think the Daine are actually pretty amazing stewards of the environment. You don't find huge swathes of clear cut deforestation (well, the Forest would fight back if anyone tried!, but that's neither here nor there); you don't find oversized industrial works or strip mining or industrial waste dumping or factory livestock farming. What you do find is relatively small & orderly communities which balance wild, semi-wild and tamed Nature into an organic whole; people live within that whole as part of it, not apart from it. Urban and suburban sprawl are things you never find; the wanton cutting of trees to build tracts of houses? nope. They prefer to maintain good relations with neighbouring Forests and the peoples and beasts in them. Except Elves. No one gets along with them.

I honestly don't know how or how long ago Daine came up with this scheme. But I think it must have predated even their first acquaintance with the Teyor, as they were already organised into little queendoms even then. I think the number of Daine polities of any size or level of organisation ruled by boys can probably be counted on two or three fingers. I'm not counting here various "extra-societal" brotherhoods of free warriors or the sheriffs or war-tattered peoples whose only surviving leadership happens to be a boy (and he's almost certainly be thrilled to find a queen!)

Food for thought! I'll be interested to read what comes next!

I've termed this a "speedbatch" in LIE -- a calque of the Kankonian sheizrermas. Sheiz means "fast", and sheizov is "speed". Rermas is translated in my Kankonian dictionary as "batch (of graduates, etc.)" or "crop (the current ~ of twentysomethings)".

I could work the idea of speedees having closer bonds with people who went through the same firm's speeder with the same knowledge-base than with other speedees into my conworld somehow, I think.

Speedees could call girls from the same speedbatch "sister from the womb" (in Kankonian, zwaniz ab fubos, or zaf). And they could call boys from the same speedbatch "brother from the womb" (in Kankonian, zhered ab fubos, or zhaf).

I think that makes great sense. Would I be close to right in surmising that an individual's speedbatch, especially in the immediate post speedbirth period, is analagous to the family of an Earth human? I get the sense that speedees have little or no connexion to their birth mothers apart from the fact of having been born; and I get the sense that "family" as we know it on Earth is a concept that doesn't exist in lifespeeding societies.

This may sound kind of odd, Daine being so fiercely family oriented and all, but they would actually find this practice of the speedees to be perfectly normal and healthy! It's true that very young Daine children are raised in the environment of the immediate family (mothers, mother-sisters and father) once they get out of their early childhood, they are most often sent to live at least part of the time in the "girl's house" or the "boys' house" where they spend much of their time being socialised by the young (and not so young) unmarried folks. This isn't to say that there are gangs of half-wild boys running around town unsupervised. It's kind of like having a boarding school in town, in a way. They gain critical social experience, but are still schooled by their parents and older siblings and are still part of the family in community.

Although Daine don't come in "batches", they do kind of sort themselves into kinship, age & experience related cohorts. These cohorts kind of act in some ways like your speedbatches. Like the speedees, their cohort mates will be those with a similar level of maturity, similar level of education and experience. These bonds of friendships can become quite strong. It's not unusual for these youthful friendships to last a lifetime.

[Khemehekis]

Brutal, but sensible --- they are, after all, breaking the law. Law breakers must be punished, right? Even in The World, a law breaking mother must yield up her children once sentenced. Unless the sentence is some sort of debtors' workhouse or exile. Capital punishment or labour punishments, obviously you can't take the kiddoes with you in either circumstance.

Baby seizure among Daine, that's quite rare indeed! That would be a crime in and of itself and likely to cause as much social upheaval as the crime that necessitated it.

Because the Daine are more humane than the humans or the Hotai or the Elves, right?

I've known for a long while that "amazon" cultures of Daine exist (communities comprising only girls), but I recently dreamed about a (very unusual) queendom of these "amazon" Daine who approached the time of their fertility rites rather more vigorously and folkloristically than most such cultures. Obviously, even ordinary all girl Daine societies need boys to make babies. Usually this is accomplished in a very satisfactory and enjoyable manner; but this particular society prefers a more brutal approach in sacrificing their victims during the festivities. Long story short, a couple survivors of the ordeal (out of perhaps a hundred victims) tracked them down and their own Queen brought a very definitive war against the agressors.

Those that survived the war were kept until they showed signs of pregnancy. After the time of giving birth, the babies were taken and most of the "amazons" were in turn ritually slain themselves.

Have you written this whole story out before? You could post it on this board if you haven't already.

A predominantly left-handed people? Sounds like the Domeheads of Bodus!

In more ways than one, it turns out!

"Paranormal" abilities of various kinds (strong empathic and weak telepathic capacities); aura visualisation; Daine are spiritually advanced (of course!) but can of course choose good or evil. Family arrangements & child rearing bear some similarities (FM & ffM & FFM are the most common; FFMM & FFfM are less common); children are raised by parents and their siblings; (Daine would totally respect the concept of linam-okos property) but view ownership of houses (and land in general) similarly; there are no police (though there are border guards!); they would also totally respect the concept of the Four Divine Relationships; meditation & spiritual exercise are key components of Daine life from a young age; Daine can, with practice, stretch the truth convincingly, but natively are horrible liars; Daine prefer being in physical contact with their loved ones or friends; various kinds of physical touch (from hugging to other things that would probably require a spoiler box) are regularly engaged in between strangers and friends alike; they revere their artists (generally this means instrumentalists, singers, storytellers and enchanters --- visual & dramatic arts are exceedingly rare to non-existent) and respect the wise and loredeep; the three genders are considered equal in dignity, but it is obvious that there are oceans of difference between one & the other two and these differences are universally understood in terms of complimentarity rather than disparity or superiority/inferiority; Daine are compassionate towards those who show congenital "disability" and respectful of their compensating gifts.

Lots of differences, of course, and many of the similarities are more parallelities that exact behaviour convergence

You must have typed "domeheads bodus" into a search engine and found the Bodus page on my website! Cool!

I'm amazed by how similarly you describe your Daine of The World to the way I describe Bodusian Domeheads! I had never heard of The World when I typed this all up back in 2006.

You'll have to explain undicity better... That might actually be similar to ordinary dwimmery.

Basically, the appliances have little conductor-tubes called waguls inside them that conduct the brain waves of a Domehead. As long as the Domehead is awake and conscious, the brain waves will power the undic device for as long as the switch is turned on, just as an electric current would power an electric device for as long as it was turned on.

And wow! I love your Bodusians already!

Many kinds of dog-like animals (actual dogs, wargs, foxlings, etc) have the capacity to learn & understand, at least at a rudimentary level, Daine (and presumably Mannish) speech. Much like how in Earth we can train a dog to "fetch" or "heel".

I see.

Daine have simply learned that Dogs are actually paying attention when we talk around them. Like children. And as with talking to their little babies and toddlers, they also talk to their Dogs. I think there must be something about Dogs' brains that "grow" with companionship stimulation. . . . It's kind of amazing to see how advanced Dog cultures interact with Daine. Dogs are just chilling, maybe wrestling with the kiddoes; but if talk turns to matters of national importance --- like hunting or conflicts along the border or the possibility of a good run or some sport --- then they're all pricked ears and eyes fixed lovingly & proudly on their alphas! . . . Dogs are the kind of animal a Daine can actually send out into the wild with fairly complex instructions that the Pack will accomplish without direct alpha intervention. The dogs of Men are clever, for sure, and are capable hunting & herding & guard hounds, but they do not experience the same kind of shared culture that Dogs have with their Daine.

Brilliant! So dogs are as sharp and dutiful as 1A troops. Am I correct in thinking the Daine don't draft Daine soldiers?

Even under Auntimoanian law, they can't prosecute someone until they've committed a crime. Kind of an odd circumstance, really, as a well practiced psychopath could, conceivably, maintain a torture victim in a state of continual torture for years or decades. So long as no other criminal offense becomes a fait acomplis it is not possible to search the premises, act on warrants or bills, detain, arrest, seize, charge, try or convict the perpetrator.

Mind you, the practicalities outweigh. Sooner or later even the best psychopath is going to do something else that will either cause a cessation in the crime being committed or else give someone else an opportunity to terminate the conditions of the crime, thus allowing for arrest etc.

So they can't punish a crime until it's completed/telic? Weird.

Keeping armory in your house and threatening to kill the monarch will likely get you a swift invitation to meet Auntimoany's answer to Jack Ketch.

I had to wikipedia Jack Ketch. Gripping story. The kind of thing that would be written about in the Horrible Histories (The Groovy Greeks, The Awesome Egyptians, The Cut-throat Celts, etc.)

Politicians (Daine don't have them, but anyway!) don't argue about it either. Among Men and many of the lesser / younger races, it (pre as well as post natal infanticide) is a reality of life. Especially among the poor, the ill educated, the socially or culturally backward. Men are prone to so many physical & mental ailments, syndromes and maladies that some families find they can't cope. Their economic & social architectures don't help any. Social stigmas, class stigmas, caste stigmas, racial stigmas all exist and often play a part in whether a baby will be aborted or dumped. Or even sacrificed.

The best teaching of Daine to early Men didn't have effect on their social evolution. The broad prevalence of Kristianity in the East has done quite a bit to ameliorate the situation and has certainly given the Philosophers some food for thought. Certainly among the wealthy classes and educated castes, infanticide is rather looked down on. It's the sort of thing that civilised folk "just don't do". Or at least, not in public. As a matter of fact, it caused quite the scandal in the broadsheets back in 1914 when the Emperor publicly sacrificed one of his (less than perfect, syndrome unknown) children in thanksgiving for a well born child. Even the most traditional of Pagan churches were all like "dude! Don't make such a spectacle of it!" Mind you, the hierarchs never actually made statements or pronouncements suppressing the practice. They just sought to sweep the practice under the metaphorical carpet.

Your humans are bloodthirsty! They are so classist, racist, and ableist compared to the Daine!

I guess I'd need to know more about family dynamics in speedculture (if any, and I get the sense that there are not): do / have anyone choose to not use GST? Or is that also a matter of law? Does / has anyone intentionally sought to use GST to create a syndromed child? Deliberately making a Downs or an XO (Turner's) child?

GST is pretty much optional everywhere it's used. You can have a designer baby with blue, brown, green, hazel, or grey eyes, but maldesignation (designing your fetus to have a chromosomal disorder that wasn't originally there, or to be bicipital, or to be blind when it was originally sighted) is illegal in most non-anarchist states across Lehola that have encountered GST.

He wants to fix the prison-industrial complex, voted against the invasion of Iraq (unlike Hillary Clinton), doesn't take campaign money from Big Business, stood up for Edward Snowden as "defending American freedom", supported gay marriage before it was mainstream, voted against the Patriot Act, and opposed the Keystone XL Pipeline. You can't say the same thing for Hillary, nor for the Republican 2016 candidates.

Well, then you should love me too! I want to fix the prison-industrial complex, I never take Big Business (or any!) campaign money; fundamentally agree on the E.S. thing; dissent against the Unpatriot Act (though I do give kudos to the acronym's inventor -- that's a piece of work and no mistake!). I don't hold with gender & sex being politicised the way the Left do, but am not against social bonds for same sex attracted individuals.

Great! And the USA PATRIOT Act was a brilliant backronym: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001. Did you know that it was drafted before 9/11? More evidence that Junior knew about the attack beforehand, and deliberately let it happen as grist for his neocon mill.

Mind you, I don't care any more for the Republican or Socialist or Communist or Green or any other party's platforms. Rotten to the heartwood, each and every one of them. I did mention my preference for moral monarchy, right? Sheesh! Give me a proper Daine queen any day and I'd be happy!

And so would you!

I wouldn't be so fond of a Mensinghian queen, but a Daine queen or a Bodusian prime councilmember sounds great.

That's a good point too. A Monkey McBurger wouldn't sell as well as, say, a Ribwich!

Ribwitch made from random porcine byproducts or Ribwitch made from USDA pure grade-A monkeyflesh? A world of difference there! Or, as far as the disgust-o-metre reads, maybe not so much of a difference, once you learn what constitutes "random porcine byproducts".

They never revealed what the Ribwich was made of . . .

It will be interesting to see how the sophont interactions in Auntimoany pan out, what with the recent outwer-sea explorations of the Polupode realms. First contact didn't go so well, leastways for Men, who lost a decent consignment of assorted seafood! The Polupodes didn't actually seem to recognise the inherent intelligence of the Men on the quays... Kind of ironic, really.

Keep the forum posted on those Polupodes! They are the Syprian sapients or the Squibbons of The World!

Here is a good introduction to the Howe & Strauss take on Millennials:

https://www.vox.com/2014/7/26/5936723/m ... illennials

Interesting read! Again: history rhymes. People make predictions, and some turn out close while others turn out simply hilarious. I recently found in the local used book shop a couple books of general social prediction written decades ago about what the early 21st century will be like. Isaak Asimov wrote one of them (actually an article in an old Almanac), though I haven't yet read through either. Some of his predictions are scarily inadequate to reality. Others are spot on. Still others are just so hilariously wrong that I couldn't help guffawing uproariously.

I think I remember reading about his predictions . . . was it on Zompist.com? Anyway, either Asimov or Clarke predicted that more and more voters would become disenfranchised because the populace would become more peripatetic. The fear was unfounded, though, as the Motor-voter Act passed.

And Howe & Strauss do believe that history rhymes. In fact, sometimes they write their predictions to sound more like a circle than a spiral. (That's one of my criticisms of them: the Millennials will rally blindly around the Crisis presidents during the Crisis, while Xers repeat Japanese-American internment, except with a different ethnic group, and then we'll have a High wherein Millennials (1982-2004) and New Silents (2005-20??) put women back into the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant.)

Curious the fixation on uniforms. Wonder if either of them are Prussians. Or Nazis or Socialists. They all seem to go gaga for spanky uniforms. For us, they were just cost effective clothing with a side of school spirit, etc.

A socially conservative Boomer (or a duo thereof) can dream, can't he?

Hm on the Mormon matter. I personally (and it turns in concurrence with the Church) consider Mormonism to be a separate religious tradition. Like Islam (and Jehovas Witness and some others), they descend from Christianity but are no longer actually Christian.

I can see Mormons being classed as non-Christian, like Muslims or Rastafarians. They do have an entirely new book in their canon, after all.

Many Catholics go to church seven days a week. And not a few attend adoration in addition to that. As well as other devotionals.

But, at least for a deeply faithful Catholic, "going to church" I think does not entail the same set of meaning and practice that it does in the denominational churches. The church experience is just worlds different. Literally!

Interesting. I wasn't raised as a Protestant, so I don't know what the Protestant church experience is like, except from how it's portrayed on TV and in movies. Then again, I wasn't raised as a Catholic either.

The thing is, the rule against not putting the cap back on the toothpaste tube is far from the most unreasonable thing on that list. What about the rule whereby he has to be in bed -- and may not even move around -- at 8:00? 8:00! That's the kind of bedtime you give an 8-year-old, not a 15-year-old. Are his parents not aware that as a teen-ager, his body's circadian rhythms are slanting towards a natural tendency to sleep later into the morning? (And it's wretched that high schools reflect the body schedules of middle-aged teachers rather than teen-agers in this Prussian-based system -- yes, teens need to get up in time for school, but must public schools really be so maladaptive?)

.shrugs. When I was little, bed time was 7:30. That gradually moved up to 9 or 10 by the time I was in high school. Again, I'd be interested in the dynamics: what is the rationale behind the 8pm bedtime for a teenager? Is it because poor Dylan lives in a Nazi wehrmacht barracks or is it because he's abused his privileges or perhaps do his parents know that if he goes to bed much later he'll never wake up in the morning, miss school, etc.? So yeah, the rule seems draconian, but what's the context! Context is what Dylan and his friend conveniently gloss over, never report or outright ignore, thinking we out here are dumb enough to fall for it!

I was going to go up to the Quora page and ask Dylan about it, but then I noticed something at the bottom of his answer that I'd missed the first time. I'm going to reproduce it right here:

https://www.quora.com/In-parenting-how- ... too-strict

"I’d say that’s pretty strict. His mother is a fanatical Creationist Pentecostal Christian. She likes to beat the sins out of her children. She’s also on her third marriage.

Please don’t use the Bible as a rubric for raising a child. It just messes them up."

She doesn't sound to me like a sane person, a good wife, nor a responsible parent.

I noted the proscription against Harry Potter et al. (I am nòt on board with that rule!)

Good.

Or I guess narrative magic in general. I do recall (vaguely) that there was considerable backlash against its portrayal of magic. Interestingly, the Christian backlash was pretty starkly along Catholic - Denominational lines. Where Catholics had anything to say about HP at all, the opinions varied as one might expect. Much ado about nothing seems to be the general consensus, though! Evangelicals and so forth seemed to be most vigorous in their condemnation.

Ned Flanders: "And then Harry Potter and all his wizard friends went straight to Hell for practicing witchcraft!"

ngngng ngngng ... grr! Nòt an allegory! cries the good professor! (Though I certainly understand where you're headed!)

Not an allegory for Christianity? Well, Harry is supposed to be a stand-in for Jesus, right?

If Little One had survived and grown up, I'm sure she'd be all into Harry Potter and LotR and so forth!

Wait, you're saying you have a child who passed away? I never heard about that!

Absolutely true. I was being a little hyperbolic.

Oh, OK, good.

BUT, if my kid ever gave any cause for such snoopage, then snooped she would be. Because that would entail an abuse of relationship on the child's part and a loss of trust on the parents'. Child would learn very swiftly what breach of trust is all about and also how very hard it is to gain trust back, once it's lost.

Sounds like the Berenstain Bears book in which Brother and Sister break Mama Bear's lamp and tell a lie thereabout, and they learn that "Trust is one thing that can't be put back together once it's broken".

Re microdictatorship. I like that word! I see parenthood as a kind of benevolent dictatorship (of the moral monarchical sort!). A child's life can be incredibly easy or incredibly difficult, and much of it really is up to the child. Especially as they get older. Assuming the parents aren't total monsters and the child is not "broken" in some way.

Yes, a dictatorship with about five citizens, two or one of whom are the dictator(s).

Conversion therapy is nòt something I would send my child to. I don't think any child needs to be subjected to that. A lot of people struggle with homosexuality, and if they make the informed choice to undergo that therapy, that's their choice. But adolescents, no.

I would ban conversion therapy nationally for anyone below the age of medical consent in his or her state. In Oregon, no one under 15 may undergo conversion therapy. In California, no one under 18. In Alabama, no one under 19! Then, if California lowers its age of medical consent to 16, 16- and 17-year-olds may request conversion therapy within California's borders, since no one of that age will be forced anymore by his or her parents to undergo it.

Everywhere you look you have to have so many female characters, so many handicapped characters, so many ethnically diverse characters, so many homosexual characters.

Hmmmm . . . The Bittersweet Generation has:

11 female characters (Melanie Hayworth, Trina Evangelisti, Sarah Chiang, Meghan Conlan, Lindsay Bricker, Kate Kim, Nadia Kirschenbaum, Jocelyn Poirier, Judy Dahlgren, Carol Marciniak, Paulina Blumberg)

1 character mentioned to have a mental disorder (Alan Isaacs, bipolar) plus 1 unseen character mentioned to be disabled (Brian Himmelfarb, Asperger's)

3 Hispanic characters (Paul Moreno and his father Raúl, Scott Orozco)

6 Middle Eastern characters (Alan Isaacs, Rostam Zavvar, Nadia Kirschenbaum, Officer Sheldon Malinowitz, Paulina Blumberg, Richard Haddad)

1 South Asian character (Sanjay Ghosh)

3 Asian characters (Sarah Chiang, Kate Kim, Tony Pham)

3 characters known to be LGBT (Paul Moreno, gay; Alan Isaacs, bisexual; Trina Evangelisti, lesbian)

It's just beyond belief that any parent your age or younger (old enough to struggle with teenagers!) would seriously consider conversion therapy or otherwise turn away any child that confides this about their nature! Again, if this were me, I'd see it as a parent's sacred duty to in a sense go to war fór their child who is just coming to terms (loving & keen eyed parents probably knew years ago what their child wouldn't even consider until later!). Kid's already a skull full of mush, got the hormones raging and now finds she's in a strange situation! Thoughtful parents of such kids need to be even more prepared and more vigilant for their little ones!

Yes, I've never heard of a Millennial sending his or her child to conversion therapy.

You think parents can sense that their child is going to turn out gay or bisexual before s/he reaches adolescence?

Re spirituality & religion. I don't understand fundamentalist ideology (among denomination Christians). Apart from the term having a completely different nuance than it would among Catholics. If my daughter expressed questioning the existence of God, apart from that being a normal part of a person's growth, I think it again would fall to thoughtful parents to explore that with their daughter. Breaking the kid's guitar doesn't make sense. The (excessive re)action serves no purpose other than to antagonise an already confused and truth-seeking youngster. She wants to understand. She desires to find the truth. Maybe even Truth itself. It's the parents' sacred duty (again!) to lead their children to understanding these things, not to punish them for something like that.

What would you tell a child who asked you, "If God can do anything, can He create so much food that He can't eat it all"? Or asked you, "If God is all-good and all-powerful, how did the Holocaust happen"?

Whew! Again: these are all very sad anecdotes of poor parenting. And will probably lead to future anecdotes of similar type 20 years from now, because, you know, history rhymes.

Or will result in their kids growing up never wanting to have children. I'm 39 now, and I had made up my mind, back when I was a teen-ager, never to become a parent. I'm holding true to it to this day!

Oh. Campolindo offered German, French, and Spanish. My junior college added in Italian, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, ASL, Tagalog, and Farsi. (Lots of Persian-Americans in the East Bay.)

Tagalog -- of course! California!

Yes! Yesterday, I had a dream wherein I was in a Filipino family's house. I saw an unabridged Tagalog dictionary, and given the non-Roman characters I saw in its pages you had to turn gently (one letter looked like the euro sign!), I could tell it was quite old and probably badly out of date. Then the mother of the family offered to make some lumpia for me. She took some egg yolk, then held up my white turtleneck and fried a rectangle of it until it turned yellow. She then cut it, and wrapped the piece of turtleneck around the filling to make a lumpia tortilla. The lumpia was delicious, but I kept looking at the gaping hole in my shirt.

When I was 5 or 6, back in the eighties, my sister and I stayed at another family's house for a few days, and the family put on a kids' record. The first line in one of the songs was, "I'm a policeman, dressed in blue". The song went on to discuss how the policeman would do things like help you cross the street. How times have changed!

Indeed! Anymore they'll help you across the street alright! In a body bag too often!

Your matriarchal Daine must be excellent stewards of the environment!

See, there's hope for Men yet! Daine would say to that article, yeah, that's we tried teaching them like forty thousand years ago. Have they learned their lessons? No!

I like to think the Daine are actually pretty amazing stewards of the environment. You don't find huge swathes of clear cut deforestation (well, the Forest would fight back if anyone tried!, but that's neither here nor there); you don't find oversized industrial works or strip mining or industrial waste dumping or factory livestock farming. What you do find is relatively small & orderly communities which balance wild, semi-wild and tamed Nature into an organic whole; people live within that whole as part of it, not apart from it. Urban and suburban sprawl are things you never find; the wanton cutting of trees to build tracts of houses? nope. They prefer to maintain good relations with neighbouring Forests and the peoples and beasts in them. Except Elves. No one gets along with them.

How lovely -- they're like the Na'vi! Or the Bodusians! Or the Shaleyans! (I don't have a webpage on Shaleya up yet.) And it's good that you broke with the saw of Elves being a "beautiful", merry people in The World.

I've termed this a "speedbatch" in LIE -- a calque of the Kankonian sheizrermas. Sheiz means "fast", and sheizov is "speed". Rermas is translated in my Kankonian dictionary as "batch (of graduates, etc.)" or "crop (the current ~ of twentysomethings)".

I could work the idea of speedees having closer bonds with people who went through the same firm's speeder with the same knowledge-base than with other speedees into my conworld somehow, I think.

Speedees could call girls from the same speedbatch "sister from the womb" (in Kankonian, zwaniz ab fubos, or zaf). And they could call boys from the same speedbatch "brother from the womb" (in Kankonian, zhered ab fubos, or zhaf).

I think that makes great sense. Would I be close to right in surmising that an individual's speedbatch, especially in the immediate post speedbirth period, is analagous to the family of an Earth human? I get the sense that speedees have little or no connexion to their birth mothers apart from the fact of having been born; and I get the sense that "family" as we know it on Earth is a concept that doesn't exist in lifespeeding societies.

Kankonia, for one, has both lifesped and non-lifesped people. Family as we know it still exists for the non-speedees among them; families just aren't as authoritarian on Kankonia as they are in the U.S. No Kankonian parents grounding their teen-age kids for dating a hot blonde Shaleyan and then having the police arrest their kids for running away when they go outside anyway despite being grounded. But kinship terms are useful for Kankonians, and even speedees will generally know their parents, similar to a Terran adult finding out the sperm donor who fathered her.

This may sound kind of odd, Daine being so fiercely family oriented and all, but they would actually find this practice of the speedees to be perfectly normal and healthy! It's true that very young Daine children are raised in the environment of the immediate family (mothers, mother-sisters and father) once they get out of their early childhood, they are most often sent to live at least part of the time in the "girl's house" or the "boys' house" where they spend much of their time being socialised by the young (and not so young) unmarried folks. This isn't to say that there are gangs of half-wild boys running around town unsupervised. It's kind of like having a boarding school in town, in a way. They gain critical social experience, but are still schooled by their parents and older siblings and are still part of the family in community.

This sounds healthier than the cosseted, not-let-out-of-the-house experience that children under 12 have in America today. I'm just glad I'm a Millennial; it must be awful to be what I call a Fifth Worlder! Plus, Fifth World boys who don't play video games are probably very lonely. And I can't imagine life without meatspace relationships with the people I love.

[elemtilas]

Baby seizure among Daine, that's quite rare indeed! That would be a crime in and of itself and likely to cause as much social upheaval as the crime that necessitated it.

Because the Daine are more humane than the humans or the Hotai or the Elves, right?

Of course, I like to think Daine are more humane! More consistently humane, to be sure. Doesn't always pan out, though. Men are, not quite human. Kissing cousins certainly. (I suppose if Men and humans ever met, f*cking cousins would be the more likely outcome!) Men are capable of great heights of humaneness -- but more often they demonstrate their capabilities of inhumanity. Orcs, of which Hotai are but one subtype, are much maligned. Even by the Daine. I would say, if given the chance, and if not under a force of Compulsion, Orcs can be every bit as humane as Men. Not that that's saying much! Also, you'll find a gulf of difference between their various genders. The ones most outsiders see are the "super-male": terribly violent, reckless, warlike, destructive, wanton. Females are much more like female Daine (the two races are related, after all, so no surprises there) but more socially and spiritually degenerate & "primitive" because of the circumstances the whole race finds itself in. There are also "lesser-males" -- these tend to be physically very like the females (small, relatively weak, not so violent). If the super-males could be removed from the picture, Orcs could very easily fit themselves back into the Daine family tree.

Elves...they're just orthogonal. As a race, they're probably what we'd think of as sociopathic, egotistical, self centered, violent and uncharitable. Definitely not high on the humane scale! I haven't heard of any, but I would suppose that there could be a broken Elf who actually isn't a sociopath. It doesn't help matters that they are highly skilled glamourists --- able to override the senses of other peoples & beasts making them seem beautiful, fair, wise, gentle and good. Usually Daine are much better than Men at most things, but when it comes to Elves, they fall prey to and are just as terrified of Elves as Men or Dwarrows or Orcs. Out of all the usually met with peoples of Yeola, only the Turghun can see them straight. Give a Turghun an iron sword and he'll never lack for Elf hunting work!

I've known for a long while that "amazon" cultures of Daine exist (communities comprising only girls), but I recently dreamed about a (very unusual) queendom of these "amazon" Daine who approached the time of their fertility rites rather more vigorously and folkloristically than most such cultures. Obviously, even ordinary all girl Daine societies need boys to make babies. Usually this is accomplished in a very satisfactory and enjoyable manner; but this particular society prefers a more brutal approach in sacrificing their victims during the festivities. Long story short, a couple survivors of the ordeal (out of perhaps a hundred victims) tracked them down and their own Queen brought a very definitive war against the agressors.

Those that survived the war were kept until they showed signs of pregnancy. After the time of giving birth, the babies were taken and most of the "amazons" were in turn ritually slain themselves.

Have you written this whole story out before? You could post it on this board if you haven't already.

Not yet! Just an outline.

I guess you're expressing interest in hearing the tale!

You must have typed "domeheads bodus" into a search engine and found the Bodus page on my website! Cool!

I did!

I'm amazed by how similarly you describe your Daine of The World to the way I describe Bodusian Domeheads! I had never heard of The World when I typed this all up back in 2006.

Well, this certainly makes we want to learn more about the Bodusians! Like, what they look like, how they behave, what stories they tell...

In 2006, The World was not well advertised. I think only in Conlang-L and Conculture. There were certainly no online places for it. Even now, it's not well represented. The CBB thread, Deviant Art gallery and a slowly growing wiki are the main online places.

You'll have to explain undicity better... That might actually be similar to ordinary dwimmery.

Basically, the appliances have little conductor-tubes called waguls inside them that conduct the brain waves of a Domehead. As long as the Domehead is awake and conscious, the brain waves will power the undic device for as long as the switch is turned on, just as an electric current would power an electric device for as long as it was turned on.

Ah, I see. That's actually very nifty! One of those stealworthy, "why didn't I think of that!?" kind of things!

And wow! I love your Bodusians already!

I can only wish I'd met them back in 2006!!

If I might, I'd suggest making a thread here in CBB so, you know, we can learn more about them! Read their stories and talk about them?

Many kinds of dog-like animals (actual dogs, wargs, foxlings, etc) have the capacity to learn & understand, at least at a rudimentary level, Daine (and presumably Mannish) speech. Much like how in Earth we can train a dog to "fetch" or "heel".

Daine have simply learned that Dogs are actually paying attention when we talk around them. Like children. And as with talking to their little babies and toddlers, they also talk to their Dogs. I think there must be something about Dogs' brains that "grow" with companionship stimulation. . . . It's kind of amazing to see how advanced Dog cultures interact with Daine. Dogs are just chilling, maybe wrestling with the kiddoes; but if talk turns to matters of national importance --- like hunting or conflicts along the border or the possibility of a good run or some sport --- then they're all pricked ears and eyes fixed lovingly & proudly on their alphas! . . . Dogs are the kind of animal a Daine can actually send out into the wild with fairly complex instructions that the Pack will accomplish without direct alpha intervention. The dogs of Men are clever, for sure, and are capable hunting & herding & guard hounds, but they do not experience the same kind of shared culture that Dogs have with their Daine.

I see.

Brilliant! So dogs are as sharp and dutiful as 1A troops. Am I correct in thinking the Daine don't draft Daine soldiers?

Not sure what a 1A troop is, but yeah, pretty sharp. And, indeed, dutiful to the utmost.

No, Daine have no draftees. Kind of goes against their nature. But also, everyone in a queendom is what you might call "in the militia". Like most countries of Men, very few Daine realms have standing armies. People just kind of do their thing until a need arises. In some respects I suppose that is one reason why they are so feared. One day you might visit a Daine land and it's just kids running about and folks going about their tasks --- but in a fortnight time the same place could instantly turn into a bristling army of thousands, well trained and ready to slice throats and rip nut & arm off any Orc, Man, Dwarrow, Wereboar or anything else that threatens their joyful existence.

And then, war fought and the dead looked after, it'll be all hands to rebuild and the kids'll be running about and everyone will about their tasks. I mean, if you look at a picture of a Daine, "Slayer of Orcs" and "Trampler of Trolls" are not the kinds of titles that would immediately come to mind. But they are indeed fierce; they brook no drafts but will to their best ability stand forth when the fight is a good one. If you're on the wrong side of a war against Daine, do stand out of their way!

There is a good reason why, during the great Orc Wars, the bad guys took the long road up towards the bleak north shores by the icy Ocean in order to race down upon the lands of Men, rather than fight their way through Daine countries.

Even under Auntimoanian law, they can't prosecute someone until they've committed a crime. Kind of an odd circumstance, really, as a well practiced psychopath could, conceivably, maintain a torture victim in a state of continual torture for years or decades. So long as no other criminal offense becomes a fait acomplis it is not possible to search the premises, act on warrants or bills, detain, arrest, seize, charge, try or convict the perpetrator.

Mind you, the practicalities outweigh. Sooner or later even the best psychopath is going to do something else that will either cause a cessation in the crime being committed or else give someone else an opportunity to terminate the conditions of the crime, thus allowing for arrest etc.

So they can't punish a crime until it's completed/telic? Weird.

Correct. Letter of the law, you see.

Keeping armory in your house and threatening to kill the monarch will likely get you a swift invitation to meet Auntimoany's answer to Jack Ketch.

I had to wikipedia Jack Ketch. Gripping story. The kind of thing that would be written about in the Horrible Histories (The Groovy Greeks, The Awesome Egyptians, The Cut-throat Celts, etc.)

Neat history, that. I read a book about Jack Ketch (i.e., the office of executioner) throughout Britain's history. In Auntimoany, he's Jhonam Caftund. (Regardless of what his own name might actually be.) Always impeccably dressed, always punctual, always polite. That's the motto of Jhonam Caftund. That and Punish them in a publicly educational manner as befits the horror of their crimes and the fancy of the Lords Judges of the Emperors Justice. Course, Auntimoany doesn't hold a patent on the death penalty. Angera, historically, has probably the most insane roster of cruel and usual punishments. Teleran is not too far behind. But I hold that Auntimoany does it with more flair.

Politicians (Daine don't have them, but anyway!) don't argue about it either. Among Men and many of the lesser / younger races, it (pre as well as post natal infanticide) is a reality of life. Especially among the poor, the ill educated, the socially or culturally backward. Men are prone to so many physical & mental ailments, syndromes and maladies that some families find they can't cope. Their economic & social architectures don't help any. Social stigmas, class stigmas, caste stigmas, racial stigmas all exist and often play a part in whether a baby will be aborted or dumped. Or even sacrificed.

The best teaching of Daine to early Men didn't have effect on their social evolution. The broad prevalence of Kristianity in the East has done quite a bit to ameliorate the situation and has certainly given the Philosophers some food for thought. Certainly among the wealthy classes and educated castes, infanticide is rather looked down on. It's the sort of thing that civilised folk "just don't do". Or at least, not in public. As a matter of fact, it caused quite the scandal in the broadsheets back in 1914 when the Emperor publicly sacrificed one of his (less than perfect, syndrome unknown) children in thanksgiving for a well born child. Even the most traditional of Pagan churches were all like "dude! Don't make such a spectacle of it!" Mind you, the hierarchs never actually made statements or pronouncements suppressing the practice. They just sought to sweep the practice under the metaphorical carpet.

Your humans are bloodthirsty! They are so classist, racist, and ableist compared to the Daine!

Men are Men! In that regard, they are little different from humans. Mind you, even the most modern & the most advanced and the most learned of countries lacks what we in America take for granted as historical precedent. I think they've pretty much got it all: caste and class systems, racism, speciesism, slavery. On the other hand, one thing they do lack is sexism. As I hinted at with the lecherous female Member of Parliament, women in most Mannish countries of the Eastlands are every bit as capable of wallowing in their own bloodthirst, right along with their men.

This is one reason why Serendarzhan, she's the Greatqueen of Harathalliê (or Westmarche as it's also known), is so mistrustful of Yesseraê, the Auntimoanian Empress. Can't trust a Man as far as you can throw her. And that ain't very far. And the Empress is definitely up to something. I mentioned (somewhere, maybe not CBB?) that the Hidden Queen (the real ruler of the Daine of Auntimoany) recently uncovered a plot against Yesseraê's life. Just the kind of pretext a political wolf such as herself would need to foment a big old war in the East. It's not all unknown, among Daine anyway, that many folk of Harathalliê do not trust the lands & rulers of Men -- Daine have long memories, you know -- and the Greatqueen would almost certainly take the bait if Auntimoany tried to break the treaty.

The ball is, and really, has always been in the Hidden Queen's court. She is both puppet master and mile high tightrope walker. The Empress of Auntimoany has no idea she even exists or the power she wields over Man and Daine alike. She herself is walking a pretty tight line! And let's not forget that not too far away in the Near West lies Vana, an ally of Westmarche as are the realms of the Turghun all up and down the Canasawack and the Greatqueens of Withwandiê and Darirenalliê. Men, if they cared to open their eyes, are surrounded. Surrounded by a people who rightfully despise their evil, yet feel obligated to drag them kicking and screaming if need be into the Century of Cured Bacon. If they get ticked off enough to carry though with the race wars brewing in the West. Time might come when Men will truly be an endangered species.

Interesting times!

I guess I'd need to know more about family dynamics in speedculture (if any, and I get the sense that there are not): do / have anyone choose to not use GST? Or is that also a matter of law? Does / has anyone intentionally sought to use GST to create a syndromed child? Deliberately making a Downs or an XO (Turner's) child?

GST is pretty much optional everywhere it's used. You can have a designer baby with blue, brown, green, hazel, or grey eyes, but maldesignation (designing your fetus to have a chromosomal disorder that wasn't originally there, or to be bicipital, or to be blind when it was originally sighted) is illegal in most non-anarchist states across Lehola that have encountered GST.

Oh, that's interesting! IGST is optional even in the lifespeeding required societies? Among those non-anarchist GST maldesignation legal societies, why is it legal there but nowhere else?

How far can progenitors go in designing their offspring? Eye and hair colour I get --- can they choose height & build? Gracefully pointed nose, sure! What about favouring one sex/gender over the other? Assuming that humans in LG have "gay gene" is that something that could be chosen? How far is too far -- where is the sharp edge of the envelope when it comes to designer babies?

Designer babies is something I've considered in The World. Not that they have genetic management techniques! But I have done some thinking about how much actual work goes into making a Daine baby (well, really, ány baby of any race but I focus on Daine). And how many odd and curious things can be done, even consciously done, to nudge the future little one into one form or another.

And the USA PATRIOT Act was a brilliant backronym: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001. Did you know that it was drafted before 9/11? More evidence that Junior knew about the attack beforehand, and deliberately let it happen as grist for his neocon mill.

Politix aside, acronyms like that are just a crime against English. The perpetrator of that ought to sentenced to life at hard labour, conjugating every single conceivable English ever and in any dialect, fully in all persons, numbers, tenses, moods & voices.

By hand.

But yeah. I'm not surprised such a thing was drafted before. The devious are always drafting cunning plans in advance of any eventuality. Just awaiting a convenient pretext...

Mind you, I don't care any more for the Republican or Socialist or Communist or Green or any other party's platforms. Rotten to the heartwood, each and every one of them. I did mention my preference for moral monarchy, right? Sheesh! Give me a proper Daine queen any day and I'd be happy!

And so would you!

I wouldn't be so fond of a Mensinghian queen, but a Daine queen or a Bodusian prime councilmember sounds great.

I googled that, and also recall our (all too brief convo over in the religious influence thread).

Tell me more! Why would a Mensinghian queen be undesirable? And a Bodusian Prime Council Member be excellent? I mean, apart form the obvious awesomeness of the Bodusians themselves!

It will be interesting to see how the sophont interactions in Auntimoany pan out, what with the recent outwer-sea explorations of the Polupode realms. First contact didn't go so well, leastways for Men, who lost a decent consignment of assorted seafood! The Polupodes didn't actually seem to recognise the inherent intelligence of the Men on the quays... Kind of ironic, really.

Keep the forum posted on those Polupodes! They are the Syprian sapients or the Squibbons of The World!

I think I remember reading about his predictions . . . was it on Zompist.com? Anyway, either Asimov or Clarke predicted that more and more voters would become disenfranchised because the populace would become more peripatetic. The fear was unfounded, though, as the Motor-voter Act passed.

I'll have to crack open that book (the one that wasn't written by Asimov). I thought it would be cracking fun to write an article in response to it. You know, see how well predictions stack up to reality.

And Howe & Strauss do believe that history rhymes. In fact, sometimes they write their predictions to sound more like a circle than a spiral. (That's one of my criticisms of them: the Millennials will rally blindly around the Crisis presidents during the Crisis, while Xers repeat Japanese-American internment, except with a different ethnic group, and then we'll have a High wherein Millennials (1982-2004) and New Silents (2005-20??) put women back into the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant.)

Funny how they assume that "generations" will just fall into lockstep together according to them.

This Howie Strauss...are they Prussians by any chance? I'm just going to say this straight up: they sound honest to God just like Adolf Hitler. Mind you, I wasn't able to stomach much of his writing (I think I managed to read about 100pp of M.K. without barfing), but they make the same assumptions! That groups of people with similar backgrounds (he didn't write about generations) will just fall in lock-step with one another unthinkingly!

I don't know what generation I am, and I don't know what generation you are, but let's please not fall in lock-step with any kind of lunacy or political idiocy!

Curious the fixation on uniforms. Wonder if either of them are Prussians. Or Nazis or Socialists. They all seem to go gaga for spanky uniforms. For us, they were just cost effective clothing with a side of school spirit, etc.

A socially conservative Boomer (or a duo thereof) can dream, can't he?

I suppose... Doesn't sound like very appealing dreams to me.

Hm on the Mormon matter. I personally (and it turns in concurrence with the Church) consider Mormonism to be a separate religious tradition. Like Islam (and Jehovas Witness and some others), they descend from Christianity but are no longer actually Christian.

I can see Mormons being classed as non-Christian, like Muslims or Rastafarians. They do have an entirely new book in their canon, after all.

Rastafarianism is interesting. I often wonder what HSM Haile Selassie thought when he visited Jamaica back in the day.

Mormonism is also very interesting, historically as well as culturally and theologically. Especially it being a homebrew. And a very successful one at that.

[qutoe]

Many Catholics go to church seven days a week. And not a few attend adoration in addition to that. As well as other devotionals.

But, at least for a deeply faithful Catholic, "going to church" I think does not entail the same set of meaning and practice that it does in the denominational churches. The church experience is just worlds different. Literally!

Interesting. I wasn't raised as a Protestant, so I don't know what the Protestant church experience is like, except from how it's portrayed on TV and in movies. Then again, I wasn't raised as a Catholic either.[/quote]

I've heard it said, by more than one convert, that the experience in the Protestant churches is one of "Christianity lite". I guess kind of like splashing about the wading pool until they were ready to jump into the Ocean. I think I'd concur.

I was going to go up to the Quora page and ask Dylan about it, but then I noticed something at the bottom of his answer that I'd missed the first time. I'm going to reproduce it right here:

https://www.quora.com/In-parenting-how- ... too-strict

Heh. My experience was much more like Sako's. And that's an excellent counter example: kids can (and do!) learn responsibility. That's why I'd like to know what went wrong in Dylan's experience. What Sako isn't saying is that, most likely, her parents brought her up with clear expectations and clear ideas about good and bad behaviour and the rewards and consequences of same since, literally, infancy. She learned well and chose right and now is living in teenage bliss! I suspect that, unless Dylan's parents are just little Hitlers, something precipitated the situation he finds himself in. There's got to be a sound reason why these two children's experience is so different. I don't buy that Sako just has laid back & permissive parents while Dylan lives in a family of psychos.

"I’d say that’s pretty strict. His mother is a fanatical Creationist Pentecostal Christian. She likes to beat the sins out of her children. She’s also on her third marriage.

.sigh. Beating sins out of people certainly isn't the way of going about it. If for no other reason, and if this actually true, I'd suggest child abuse is a pretty legitimate rationale for the child to rebel. A parent who's already willing to beat her children will have no issue whatsoever with creating a system of poor parenting choices. The child, not having a very loving and stable relationship with his parents can do little but act out, which will bring down ever more draconian rules.

I don't care if mom is a Creationist Pentecostal (though I am extremely suspicious of the one and ordinarily suspicious of the other); child abuse is doubleplusungood regardless of it coming from a Christian, Jew or Atheist.

Being on one's third marriage is not a deal breaker, though it does concern me how people can just toss aside a relationship without actually working at it. And that from the first assumption that divorce is not the answer.

Please don’t use the Bible as a rubric for raising a child. It just messes them up."

The Bible is actually is perfectly fine rubric for raising children. My opinion: I don't think it can be used properly by someone who does not understand what it contains or what it means. Just going to say it plain: I don't think Protestantism in general really understands the Bible. Everybody (every minister, every Christian) just makes up their own interpretation. (This is one of the starkest divisions / distinctions between Catholicism and the denominations.)

I'm going to hazard the guess that she's probably taken one or more verse out of context and applies them as she sees fit.

She doesn't sound to me like a sane person, a good wife, nor a responsible parent.

Indeed. Child abusers, if that's what's going on here, are in many ways nòt at all sane.

I noted the proscription against Harry Potter et al. (I am nòt on board with that rule!)

Good.

It's a silly rule. Probably born of a dysfunctional family life which itself is born of whatever dysfunction she brought to her marriage with the child's father. Very sad am I that the kid has to suffer when he does, actually, have the right to a stable and content family life.

Or I guess narrative magic in general. I do recall (vaguely) that there was considerable backlash against its portrayal of magic. Interestingly, the Christian backlash was pretty starkly along Catholic - Denominational lines. Where Catholics had anything to say about HP at all, the opinions varied as one might expect. Much ado about nothing seems to be the general consensus, though! Evangelicals and so forth seemed to be most vigorous in their condemnation.

Ned Flanders: "And then Harry Potter and all his wizard friends went straight to Hell for practicing witchcraft!"

Heh! Good old Ned Flanders.

ngngng ngngng ... grr! Nòt an allegory! cries the good professor! (Though I certainly understand where you're headed!)

Not an allegory for Christianity? Well, Harry is supposed to be a stand-in for Jesus, right?

I thought you were referring to Tolkien! Sorry!

Yes, I think HP could be seen as a (quite human / non-divine) allegory. Dumbledore, Snape and Potter (the three heroes of the work) all do the best they can according to their lights. Not a perfect allegory, to be sure. But there is far more to the story than just the window-dressing of magic.

If Little One had survived and grown up, I'm sure she'd be all into Harry Potter and LotR and so forth!

Wait, you're saying you have a child who passed away? I never heard about that!

Aye. I've never talked openly about it. It is, even now, such a wound. But you can find her in some of the things I've written or drawn.

BUT, if my kid ever gave any cause for such snoopage, then snooped she would be. Because that would entail an abuse of relationship on the child's part and a loss of trust on the parents'. Child would learn very swiftly what breach of trust is all about and also how very hard it is to gain trust back, once it's lost.

Sounds like the Berenstain Bears book in which Brother and Sister break Mama Bear's lamp and tell a lie thereabout, and they learn that "Trust is one thing that can't be put back together once it's broken".

Right.

But also, like with the Berenstain Bears, my hope would be only that she'd've learnt those lessons when still small. There wouldn't be a need for draconian measures later in life. My take on discipline issues (and I see this in the kiddoes of my friends) is "load up the discipline when they're young and impressionable". Like when they're two & three and four years old. That way, you've already got them thinking the right way around. Apply discipline lovingly but consistently, and by the time they're 14, you've got a wonderful little Sako who at 14 is pretty much a self-regulating and rather mature sounding kid. Parents should be proud!

Re microdictatorship. I like that word! I see parenthood as a kind of benevolent dictatorship (of the moral monarchical sort!). A child's life can be incredibly easy or incredibly difficult, and much of it really is up to the child. Especially as they get older. Assuming the parents aren't total monsters and the child is not "broken" in some way.

Yes, a dictatorship with about five citizens, two or one of whom are the dictator(s).

Well, one. Whatever the Queen says is what the lowly peons do! But yeah. This is because, unless and until the child demonstrates an increase in self-discipline, it has to be imposed from outside. The trick is internalising the discipline before it becomes an out-of-control issue. I can see other friend's kids who are heading down very perilous roads.

Everywhere you look you have to have so many female characters, so many handicapped characters, so many ethnically diverse characters, so many homosexual characters.

Hmmmm . . . The Bittersweet Generation has:

11 female characters (Melanie Hayworth, Trina Evangelisti, Sarah Chiang, Meghan Conlan, Lindsay Bricker, Kate Kim, Nadia Kirschenbaum, Jocelyn Poirier, Judy Dahlgren, Carol Marciniak, Paulina Blumberg)

1 character mentioned to have a mental disorder (Alan Isaacs, bipolar) plus 1 unseen character mentioned to be disabled (Brian Himmelfarb, Asperger's)

3 Hispanic characters (Paul Moreno and his father Raúl, Scott Orozco)

6 Middle Eastern characters (Alan Isaacs, Rostam Zavvar, Nadia Kirschenbaum, Officer Sheldon Malinowitz, Paulina Blumberg, Richard Haddad)

1 South Asian character (Sanjay Ghosh)

3 Asian characters (Sarah Chiang, Kate Kim, Tony Pham)

3 characters known to be LGBT (Paul Moreno, gay; Alan Isaacs, bisexual; Trina Evangelisti, lesbian)[/quote]

Hmgmg. No Philipinos! I'm contacting my lawyer right away! This is a travesty of modern culture politics! There hás to be a Pinoy somewhere!

You think parents can sense that their child is going to turn out gay or bisexual before s/he reaches adolescence?

I think so. Most parents are, I believe, sensitive enough about their children that they know these things. It may be many years before the child is mature enough to understand about herself, but I think a couple good, grounded parents and a loving family would be there when she finally comes clean.

Re spirituality & religion. I don't understand fundamentalist ideology (among denominational Christians). Apart from the term having a completely different nuance than it would among Catholics. If my daughter expressed questioning the existence of God, apart from that being a normal part of a person's growth, I think it again would fall to thoughtful parents to explore that with their daughter. Breaking the kid's guitar doesn't make sense. The (excessive re)action serves no purpose other than to antagonise an already confused and truth-seeking youngster. She wants to understand. She desires to find the truth. Maybe even Truth itself. It's the parents' sacred duty (again!) to lead their children to understanding these things, not to punish them for something like that.

What would you tell a child who asked you, "If God can do anything, can He create so much food that He can't eat it all"? Or asked you, "If God is all-good and all-powerful, how did the Holocaust happen"?

Well, the actual wording would depend on the child's maturity and current state of understanding. In other words, my kid? Or someone else's? And how old? Because questions like this need to be approached in ways that kiddoes can understand.

I certainly don't believe in white-washing or varnishing the truth. A little one doesn't need to know all the ugliness, all the sorrow. That's too much for many who are older. At seven or eight, she needs to know that God has already created a wonderful universe in which this little old Earth, when properly tended by humans, can indeed feed everyone on the planet like ten times over. Because there is abundant food. You can probably guess from my opinions about Men in The World, that words like "inhumane" and "evil" won't be too far away. She doesn't need to know the particulars, but she should be aware that there are bad people in the world who do not love others and keep them from getting it (especially during times of natural disaster). She should know that in many places, they don't have the machines or the technology or the learning to produce sufficient food for themselves. More importantly, she should know that it's our job to help them when and how we can -- to counteract the inhumanity of others in our own way. You know: feed the hungry? (That's a biblical rubric for raising good children!)

Same for the German Holocaust: she doesn't need to know Hitler's deeds & mindset. (One reason to at least monitor tech use by especially young children is just that there are words and images out there that they just don't to carry the burden of until they're ready). At that age, she doesn't really need to know the difference between positive will and permissive will. She doesn't need to know about the gift of free will and how God has constrained himself when it comes to us. (Because, yes, God could easily have eradicated the Nazi mindset before the first Jewish person ever got gassed. Could have poufed Gavrilo Princip right out of existence. Could have ... You get the point: there are any of twelvety-two squintillion points of departure where God could have intervened but didn't.) She need only know that God did not want those things to happen to people (positive will); but that God allows people to make bad choices (permissive will) even though God would be saddened and disappointed when people do those bad things to each other. It's just like how Nanay and Dada are sad and disappointed when you do something you know is bad!, right Little One? She should also know that there are many more people out there that are good, or that can be enlightened to the good. That can stand up and fight against evil. That can put God's love into action. That can right the wrongs and bring reconciliation to a broken world.

Or will result in their kids growing up never wanting to have children. I'm 39 now, and I had made up my mind, back when I was a teen-ager, never to become a parent. I'm holding true to it to this day!

Oh, I don't know!

You've got some wonky politics still sloshing around in your head, but you seem to be pretty thoughtful and upright. I bet you'd make a spanking dad! (And no, I don't mean corporally punishing!)

Tagalog -- of course! California!

Yes! Yesterday, I had a dream wherein I was in a Filipino family's house. I saw an unabridged Tagalog dictionary, and given the non-Roman characters I saw in its pages you had to turn gently (one letter looked like the euro sign!), I could tell it was quite old and probably badly out of date. Then the mother of the family offered to make some lumpia for me. She took some egg yolk, then held up my white turtleneck and fried a rectangle of it until it turned yellow. She then cut it, and wrapped the piece of turtleneck around the filling to make a lumpia tortilla. The lumpia was delicious, but I kept looking at the gaping hole in my shirt.

Hah! I hope you took of your shoes when you went in and got blessings from the parents and grandparents if any were there!

Hm. You might have gotten a glimpse of baybayin, the pre-Hispanic script!! As I recall, its origins ultimately derive from ancient India. I'm not aware of a glyph that looks exactly like a euro sign, but there are some that come pretty close!

The Visayan glyph nga looks pretty close to a euro sign. The Tagalog glyph for na also looks close, though both are turned 90deg.

Glad the lumpia was good! We had some the other day. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Ha! Maybe your shirt was made from rice??

mg. Now I'm hungry...but no lumpia in the house!

I like to think the Daine are actually pretty amazing stewards of the environment. You don't find huge swathes of clear cut deforestation (well, the Forest would fight back if anyone tried!, but that's neither here nor there); you don't find oversized industrial works or strip mining or industrial waste dumping or factory livestock farming. What you do find is relatively small & orderly communities which balance wild, semi-wild and tamed Nature into an organic whole; people live within that whole as part of it, not apart from it. Urban and suburban sprawl are things you never find; the wanton cutting of trees to build tracts of houses? nope. They prefer to maintain good relations with neighbouring Forests and the peoples and beasts in them. Except Elves. No one gets along with them.

How lovely -- they're like the Na'vi! Or the Bodusians! Or the Shaleyans! (I don't have a webpage on Shaleya up yet.) And it's good that you broke with the saw of Elves being a "beautiful", merry people in The World.

See, now you need to tell us about the Shaleya, too!

Well, Elves. Thing about them is their glamour. So, they áre beautiful and merry. Or leastways, that's what they want you to see. Then you fall under their power and they can play you! But beauty for Elves isn't even skin deep. Those are fortunate enough to be able to see them for what they are know their ugliness. And it sure runs deep!

I think that makes great sense. Would I be close to right in surmising that an individual's speedbatch, especially in the immediate post speedbirth period, is analagous to the family of an Earth human? I get the sense that speedees have little or no connexion to their birth mothers apart from the fact of having been born; and I get the sense that "family" as we know it on Earth is a concept that doesn't exist in lifespeeding societies.

Kankonia, for one, has both lifesped and non-lifesped people. Family as we know it still exists for the non-speedees among them; families just aren't as authoritarian on Kankonia as they are in the U.S. No Kankonian parents grounding their teen-age kids for dating a hot blonde Shaleyan and then having the police arrest their kids for running away when they go outside anyway despite being grounded. But kinship terms are useful for Kankonians, and even speedees will generally know their parents, similar to a Terran adult finding out the sperm donor who fathered her.

So, why would a Kankonian not want his kid dating a Shaleyan? Hot or otherwise!

This kind of family dynamic does happen among Daine families. Generally speaking, not to the same degree; and mostly in arranged-marriage cultures, as you might imagine. There are, at the opposite end, Daine who have no choice at all in the matter of who they end up with. Turghun are that way. Youngsters might engage in something like "dating" or "courting", but unless one of em's been living under a rock, both kids know that some day they'll meet their partner, their lifemate, and that'll be that.

This sounds healthier than the cosseted, not-let-out-of-the-house experience that children under 12 have in America today. I'm just glad I'm a Millennial; it must be awful to be what I call a Fifth Worlder! Plus, Fifth World boys who don't play video games are probably very lonely. And I can't imagine life without meatspace relationships with the people I love.

Indeed! That's probably the single greatest peeve I have against modern parenting is the gross overprotection. I mean, I get that you're supposed to look after your kids, but you really don't need to hover over them every second of the day and night.

? What do you mean by fifth worlder? Aztec mythology or something worse than a fourth world country?

Heh! Your take on interpersonal relationships sounds very Daine! (Though there's no cyberspace to contrast with in The World.)

Whewww! That was good talk! This is the kind of conversation I really love to engage in here. Thanks for keeping this going!!!!

[Khemehekis]

Of course, I like to think Daine are more humane! More consistently humane, to be sure. Doesn't always pan out, though. Men are, not quite human. Kissing cousins certainly. (I suppose if Men and humans ever met, f*cking cousins would be the more likely outcome!) Men are capable of great heights of humaneness -- but more often they demonstrate their capabilities of inhumanity. Orcs, of which Hotai are but one subtype, are much maligned. Even by the Daine. I would say, if given the chance, and if not under a force of Compulsion, Orcs can be every bit as humane as Men. Not that that's saying much! Also, you'll find a gulf of difference between their various genders. The ones most outsiders see are the "super-male": terribly violent, reckless, warlike, destructive, wanton. Females are much more like female Daine (the two races are related, after all, so no surprises there) but more socially and spiritually degenerate & "primitive" because of the circumstances the whole race finds itself in. There are also "lesser-males" -- these tend to be physically very like the females (small, relatively weak, not so violent). If the super-males could be removed from the picture, Orcs could very easily fit themselves back into the Daine family tree.

Oh, so Men are not exactly the same thing as Earth's humans? I didn't know that. Did you invent the word "Hotai" for goblins (and if so, were you inspired by the Japanese/English word "hentai")?

Usually Daine are much better than Men at most things, but when it comes to Elves, they fall prey to and are just as terrified of Elves as Men or Dwarrows or Orcs. Out of all the usually met with peoples of Yeola, only the Turghun can see them straight. Give a Turghun an iron sword and he'll never lack for Elf hunting work!

Whoa, even the Hotai and other Orcs are terrified of Elves?

I've known for a long while that "amazon" cultures of Daine exist (communities comprising only girls), but I recently dreamed about a (very unusual) queendom of these "amazon" Daine who approached the time of their fertility rites rather more vigorously and folkloristically than most such cultures. Obviously, even ordinary all girl Daine societies need boys to make babies. Usually this is accomplished in a very satisfactory and enjoyable manner; but this particular society prefers a more brutal approach in sacrificing their victims during the festivities. Long story short, a couple survivors of the ordeal (out of perhaps a hundred victims) tracked them down and their own Queen brought a very definitive war against the agressors.

Those that survived the war were kept until they showed signs of pregnancy. After the time of giving birth, the babies were taken and most of the "amazons" were in turn ritually slain themselves.

Have you written this whole story out before? You could post it on this board if you haven't already.

Not yet! Just an outline.

I guess you're expressing interest in hearing the tale!

Yes, I am! You can share it on this board when you're ready.

In 2006, The World was not well advertised. I think only in Conlang-L and Conculture. There were certainly no online places for it. Even now, it's not well represented. The CBB thread, Deviant Art gallery and a slowly growing wiki are the main online places.

I see. But you've written a whole lot about the World on the CBB. Your Frathwiki pages add some detail, too.

Most of the Lehola stuff online is on my Angelfire site. I have many pages I don't consider finished enough to put up on that site, though.

Basically, the appliances have little conductor-tubes called waguls inside them that conduct the brain waves of a Domehead. As long as the Domehead is awake and conscious, the brain waves will power the undic device for as long as the switch is turned on, just as an electric current would power an electric device for as long as it was turned on.

Ah, I see. That's actually very nifty! One of those stealworthy, "why didn't I think of that!?" kind of things!

Glad you like it!

I can only wish I'd met them back in 2006!!

If I might, I'd suggest making a thread here in CBB so, you know, we can learn more about them! Read their stories and talk about them?

I'm planning to make a Bodus/Bodusians thread soon. I even have an idea for a slice-of-life story I could tell.

Brilliant! So dogs are as sharp and dutiful as 1A troops. Am I correct in thinking the Daine don't draft Daine soldiers?

Not sure what a 1A troop is, but yeah, pretty sharp. And, indeed, dutiful to the utmost.

A troop made entirely of young men who were classified 1A for the draft board, as in physically, mentally, and morally fit for service. As a mentally ill open bisexual who weighed 99 pounds when I was of draft age, back in the days of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, I'd've been 4F for sure!

No, Daine have no draftees. Kind of goes against their nature. But also, everyone in a queendom is what you might call "in the militia". Like most countries of Men, very few Daine realms have standing armies. People just kind of do their thing until a need arises. In some respects I suppose that is one reason why they are so feared. One day you might visit a Daine land and it's just kids running about and folks going about their tasks --- but in a fortnight time the same place could instantly turn into a bristling army of thousands, well trained and ready to slice throats and rip nut & arm off any Orc, Man, Dwarrow, Wereboar or anything else that threatens their joyful existence.

And then, war fought and the dead looked after, it'll be all hands to rebuild and the kids'll be running about and everyone will about their tasks. I mean, if you look at a picture of a Daine, "Slayer of Orcs" and "Trampler of Trolls" are not the kinds of titles that would immediately come to mind. But they are indeed fierce; they brook no drafts but will to their best ability stand forth when the fight is a good one. If you're on the wrong side of a war against Daine, do stand out of their way!

There is a good reason why, during the great Orc Wars, the bad guys took the long road up towards the bleak north shores by the icy Ocean in order to race down upon the lands of Men, rather than fight their way through Daine countries.

Oh, cool!

I was talking with my friend John Hensle, my partner in musical-writing who passed away in December of 2016, and we were discussing World War II. I mentioned how I could never have fought for a country that was interning Japanese-Americans in concentration camps, even against Hitler, and then the conversation turned to how there should have been a stateless militia unit during WWII. We both praised militias. Even the U.S. has a militia, albeit a dormant one, with lads as young as 17 being members.

So they can't punish a crime until it's completed/telic? Weird.

Correct. Letter of the law, you see.

Ah, letter of the law.

"But I was just about to bang down my gavel, making it official!"

"The gown is down."

Neat history, that. I read a book about Jack Ketch (i.e., the office of executioner) throughout Britain's history. In Auntimoany, he's Jhonam Caftund. (Regardless of what his own name might actually be.) Always impeccably dressed, always punctual, always polite. That's the motto of Jhonam Caftund. That and Punish them in a publicly educational manner as befits the horror of their crimes and the fancy of the Lords Judges of the Emperors Justice. Course, Auntimoany doesn't hold a patent on the death penalty. Angera, historically, has probably the most insane roster of cruel and usual punishments. Teleran is not too far behind. But I hold that Auntimoany does it with more flair.

I'm guessing Jhonam is the parallel-universe-cognate of John? I see you have made Earth "more delightful" by making your own version of the archetype in The World.

Men are Men! In that regard, they are little different from humans. Mind you, even the most modern & the most advanced and the most learned of countries lacks what we in America take for granted as historical precedent. I think they've pretty much got it all: caste and class systems, racism, speciesism, slavery. On the other hand, one thing they do lack is sexism. As I hinted at with the lecherous female Member of Parliament, women in most Mannish countries of the Eastlands are every bit as capable of wallowing in their own bloodthirst, right along with their men.

And yet this nonsexist race is called Men, with a capital M, as opposed to Wo/Men! Ironic that!

This is one reason why Serendarzhan, she's the Greatqueen of Harathalliê (or Westmarche as it's also known), is so mistrustful of Yesseraê, the Auntimoanian Empress. Can't trust a Man as far as you can throw her. And that ain't very far. And the Empress is definitely up to something. I mentioned (somewhere, maybe not CBB?) that the Hidden Queen (the real ruler of the Daine of Auntimoany) recently uncovered a plot against Yesseraê's life. . . . If they get ticked off enough to carry though with the race wars brewing in the West. Time might come when Men will truly be an endangered species.

Interesting times!

So Daine monarchies have a Hidden Queen, too? The Daine's system of monarchy is more complicated than I imagined.

GST is pretty much optional everywhere it's used. You can have a designer baby with blue, brown, green, hazel, or grey eyes, but maldesignation (designing your fetus to have a chromosomal disorder that wasn't originally there, or to be bicipital, or to be blind when it was originally sighted) is illegal in most non-anarchist states across Lehola that have encountered GST.

Oh, that's interesting! IGST is optional even in the lifespeeding required societies? Among those non-anarchist GST maldesignation legal societies, why is it legal there but nowhere else?

Basically, these are places where GST has been done in rare instances, but not many people, even in the government know about it. Except for the anarchist places, everywhere where designer babies are fairly well known has anti-maldesignation laws. But there are a number of (less advanced) places where GST is mostly a marginal, underground thing. Like bidis in the U.S. before c. 2000.

As an analogy, suppose that you have a third-world country on Earth with a repressive government. Suppose that this government doesn't like self-expression much and censors the Internet a lot. It censors websites everyone has heard of, like Wikipedia, and some huge porn sites like Pornhub. But the people in the government are old fogeys who have never heard of 4chan, and have never heard of the Dark Internet. There are a few alternative or geeky, underground types who visit these sites. The government doesn't hear about these people, and they can visit 4chan or use the Dark Internet unregulated because these things aren't in the mainstream consciousness enough for the government to pass laws against them or censor them.

How far can progenitors go in designing their offspring? Eye and hair colour I get --- can they choose height & build? Gracefully pointed nose, sure! What about favouring one sex/gender over the other? Assuming that humans in LG have "gay gene" is that something that could be chosen? How far is too far -- where is the sharp edge of the envelope when it comes to designer babies?

They can choose height (as long as they don't turn a person into a midget or someone who'd have trouble standing up in stores) and build (as long as they don't create someone so obese s/he'd have heart problems or be otherwise sick). Parents are free to choose gender. They are free to choose sexual orientation, except in some homophobic countries where it is illegal to make a would-be straight designer baby gay/lesbian or bisexual, sometimes even asexual.

On the other hand, selecting personality traits that would turn your baby into a future sociopath or serial killer would be forbidden. Some have laws that make it illegal to give your offspring the genes for developing bipolar, or Asperger's, or borderline. A few conservative countries even have laws against creating a synaesthete!

Designer babies is something I've considered in The World. Not that they have genetic management techniques! But I have done some thinking about how much actual work goes into making a Daine baby (well, really, ány baby of any race but I focus on Daine). And how many odd and curious things can be done, even consciously done, to nudge the future little one into one form or another.

Oh, cool! So instead of technology of a Western science variety, it's eating the right herbs, casting the right spells, conceiving at the right time of day and year?

And the USA PATRIOT Act was a brilliant backronym: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001. Did you know that it was drafted before 9/11? More evidence that Junior knew about the attack beforehand, and deliberately let it happen as grist for his neocon mill.

Politix aside, acronyms like that are just a crime against English. The perpetrator of that ought to sentenced to life at hard labour, conjugating every single conceivable English ever and in any dialect, fully in all persons, numbers, tenses, moods & voices.

By hand.

Really? Looks like a clever idea to me. Like all those backronyms (FAST, DEAR MAN, etc.) we learned in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.

But yeah. I'm not surprised such a thing was drafted before. The devious are always drafting cunning plans in advance of any eventuality. Just awaiting a convenient pretext...

Don't forget that George W. Bush received warnings that Osama was planning to strike earlier that year, and didn't investigate. And that he advised Willie Brown not to fly on September 11, 2001. 9/11 may have been Mohammed Atta's plan, but passively-aggressively letting it happen was the Bushies' plan.

I wouldn't be so fond of a Mensinghian queen, but a Daine queen or a Bodusian prime councilmember sounds great.

I googled that, and also recall our (all too brief convo over in the religious influence thread).

Tell me more! Why would a Mensinghian queen be undesirable? And a Bodusian Prime Council Member be excellent? I mean, apart form the obvious awesomeness of the Bodusians themselves!

The thing about Mensinghi is that it is a rather corporate-thinking country. The second most widely spoken language, Palang, is spoken in the Palang province, where the planet's stock market is located. More than half of the borrowings from Mensinghian languages in Kankonian are money- and commerce-related borrowings from Palang. The last few monarchs on Mensinsghi have decreed a trickle-down economic policy. The bansaks of Mensinghi also have a cold, sort of fishy demeanor to them, in general.

As for the Bodusian Prime Council, it's just so peaceful and otherworldly. It guides the planet of Bodus on where to develop its strengths -- much like John F. Kennedy telling America in the early sixties that things would be great if it focused on the Space Race, and calling for a man to be put on the Moon by the end of the decade. The Prime Council never tells people they can't have gay/anal/oral sex or use oezha and phamein. It never tells children that they have to attend a shut-up-and-sit-down school based on the Prussian model. It never demands rain-forests be deforested. Since Bodus has no money, there's no money to take from powerful corporations, and no government-issued green lights for Big Banks.

I think I remember reading about his predictions . . . was it on Zompist.com? Anyway, either Asimov or Clarke predicted that more and more voters would become disenfranchised because the populace would become more peripatetic. The fear was unfounded, though, as the Motor-voter Act passed.

I'll have to crack open that book (the one that wasn't written by Asimov). I thought it would be cracking fun to write an article in response to it. You know, see how well predictions stack up to reality.

I believe that that author (whether it was Asimov or Clarke) actually looked back several years later and did a write-up on how well his predictions panned out.

Funny how they assume that "generations" will just fall into lockstep together according to them.

This Howie Strauss...are they Prussians by any chance? I'm just going to say this straight up: they sound honest to God just like Adolf Hitler. Mind you, I wasn't able to stomach much of his writing (I think I managed to read about 100pp of M.K. without barfing), but they make the same assumptions! That groups of people with similar backgrounds (he didn't write about generations) will just fall in lock-step with one another unthinkingly!

I don't know what generation I am, and I don't know what generation you are, but let's please not fall in lock-step with any kind of lunacy or political idiocy!

I believe you're an Xer -- they'd call you Gen-X, or, in their earlier works, a 13er (the Thirteenth generation of Americans counting from the peers of Benjamin Franklin). I'm a Millennial, although they begin the generation in 1982 instead of 1979, so they'd call me an Xer/13er, too! They say 13ers were born from 1961 to 1981.

As for generalizations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E ... ry#General

In 1991, professor and New York Times writer Jay Dolan critiqued Generations for not talking more about class, race and sex, to which Neil Howe replied that they "are probably generalizations not even as effective as a generation to say something about how people think and behave. One of the things to understand is that most historians never look at history in terms of generations. They prefer to tell history as a seamless row of 55-year-old leaders who always tend to think and behave the same way -- but they don't and they never have. If you look at the way America's 55-year-old leaders were acting in the 1960s -- you know, the ebullience and confidence of the JFKs and LBJs and Hubert Humphreys -- and compare them with today's leaders in Congress -- the indecision, the lack of sure-footedness -- I think you would have to agree that 55-year-olds do not always act the same way and you're dealing with powerful generational forces at work that explain why one generation of war veterans, war heroes, and another generation which came of age in very different circumstances tend to have very different instincts about acting in the world.”[7]

Mormonism is also very interesting, historically as well as culturally and theologically. Especially it being a homebrew. And a very successful one at that.

Yes, an American-created religion, much like Scientology! And all the conworlding, with the Deseret con-script and its own angelology and all. Then there are the Mormon guys with their characteristic beards. Of course, you also have the clean-cut, conservative Mormons who look about as Middle American as you can get, the kind who try to be respectable middle-class Americans even though some fundamentalist Protestants view LDS as a cult. Then you have Mormons like Brandon Flowers and Brendon Urie. It's a broad culture.

Interesting. I wasn't raised as a Protestant, so I don't know what the Protestant church experience is like, except from how it's portrayed on TV and in movies. Then again, I wasn't raised as a Catholic either.

I've heard it said, by more than one convert, that the experience in the Protestant churches is one of "Christianity lite". I guess kind of like splashing about the wading pool until they were ready to jump into the Ocean. I think I'd concur.

So you find the Protestant experience kind of bland?

I was going to go up to the Quora page and ask Dylan about it, but then I noticed something at the bottom of his answer that I'd missed the first time. I'm going to reproduce it right here:

https://www.quora.com/In-parenting-how- ... too-strict

Heh. My experience was much more like Sako's. And that's an excellent counter example: kids can (and do!) learn responsibility. That's why I'd like to know what went wrong in Dylan's experience. What Sako isn't saying is that, most likely, her parents brought her up with clear expectations and clear ideas about good and bad behaviour and the rewards and consequences of same since, literally, infancy. She learned well and chose right and now is living in teenage bliss! I suspect that, unless Dylan's parents are just little Hitlers, something precipitated the situation he finds himself in. There's got to be a sound reason why these two children's experience is so different. I don't buy that Sako just has laid back & permissive parents while Dylan lives in a family of psychos.

I believe you mean Dylan's friend. He said it was his 15-year-old best friend who was subject to those rules and had the crazy mother who "beat the sins out of" him.

Beating sins out of people certainly isn't the way of going about it. If for no other reason, and if this actually true, I'd suggest child abuse is a pretty legitimate rationale for the child to rebel. A parent who's already willing to beat her children will have no issue whatsoever with creating a system of poor parenting choices. The child, not having a very loving and stable relationship with his parents can do little but act out, which will bring down ever more draconian rules. . . . I don't care if mom is a Creationist Pentecostal (though I am extremely suspicious of the one and ordinarily suspicious of the other); child abuse is doubleplusungood regardless of it coming from a Christian, Jew or Atheist. . . . The Bible is actually is perfectly fine rubric for raising children. My opinion: I don't think it can be used properly by someone who does not understand what it contains or what it means. Just going to say it plain: I don't think Protestantism in general really understands the Bible. Everybody (every minister, every Christian) just makes up their own interpretation. (This is one of the starkest divisions / distinctions between Catholicism and the denominations.) . . . I'm going to hazard the guess that she's probably taken one or more verse out of context and applies them as she sees fit.

Food for thought on corporal punishment and religion:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/spankin8.htm

A lot of (mostly Protestant) Christians believe the Bible says, "Spare the rod and spoil the child". First of all, that line actually comes from a Samuel Butler poem, the line in the Bible is "He who spareth the rod detesteth his son". But also, it was Solomon who said that. The supposedly wise Solomon presumably raised his son Rehoboam thusly, and, well . . . look how Rehoboam turned out! So this is a perfect example of what you said: assuming the Biblical accounts of Solomon's and Rehoboam's reigns are historically accurate, reading the Bible would lead one to question corporal punishment.

It's a silly rule. Probably born of a dysfunctional family life which itself is born of whatever dysfunction she brought to her marriage with the child's father. Very sad am I that the kid has to suffer when he does, actually, have the right to a stable and content family life.

Yes.

Heh! Good old Ned Flanders.

Ned Flanders has had some pretty hilarious lines over the years. One time he said: "If romance is old-fashioned, that makes me a CAVEMAN! . . . if they existed, which of course they didn't!"

Wait, you're saying you have a child who passed away? I never heard about that!

Aye. I've never talked openly about it. It is, even now, such a wound. But you can find her in some of the things I've written or drawn.

I'm so sorry, Elemtilas. You have any drawings of her on this site (or Frathwiki)?

We all have our own cross to bear . . .

Right.

But also, like with the Berenstain Bears, my hope would be only that she'd've learnt those lessons when still small. There wouldn't be a need for draconian measures later in life. My take on discipline issues (and I see this in the kiddoes of my friends) is "load up the discipline when they're young and impressionable". Like when they're two & three and four years old. That way, you've already got them thinking the right way around. Apply discipline lovingly but consistently, and by the time they're 14, you've got a wonderful little Sako who at 14 is pretty much a self-regulating and rather mature sounding kid. Parents should be proud!

Wise thoughts, Elemtilas. We can see it in Sako, and you can see it in your peers' children. (BTW, are your friends raising toddlers? Elementary-schoolers? Teen-agers? Or do they have twentysomething kids? Or a wide range of age groups?)

Hmgmg. No Philipinos! I'm contacting my lawyer right away! This is a travesty of modern culture politics! There hás to be a Pinoy somewhere!

Pronounced "hmangmang", of course.

No, I think what's really a travesty is that none of the Daine are bisexual! We need bisexual Daine, lesbian Daine, gay Daine, asexual Daine, transgender Daine, genderqueer Daine! Oh, and please make one of your Daine agendered or bigendered!

You think parents can sense that their child is going to turn out gay or bisexual before s/he reaches adolescence?

I think so. Most parents are, I believe, sensitive enough about their children that they know these things. It may be many years before the child is mature enough to understand about herself, but I think a couple good, grounded parents and a loving family would be there when she finally comes clean.

Whoa, I wonder if my parents could sense that I was going to be bisexual before they found about it when I was 13.

I certainly don't believe in white-washing or varnishing the truth. A little one doesn't need to know all the ugliness, all the sorrow. That's too much for many who are older. At seven or eight, she needs to know that God has already created a wonderful universe in which this little old Earth, when properly tended by humans, can indeed feed everyone on the planet like ten times over. Because there is abundant food. You can probably guess from my opinions about Men in The World, that words like "inhumane" and "evil" won't be too far away. She doesn't need to know the particulars, but she should be aware that there are bad people in the world who do not love others and keep them from getting it (especially during times of natural disaster). She should know that in many places, they don't have the machines or the technology or the learning to produce sufficient food for themselves. More importantly, she should know that it's our job to help them when and how we can -- to counteract the inhumanity of others in our own way. You know: feed the hungry? (That's a biblical rubric for raising good children!)

Same for the German Holocaust: she doesn't need to know Hitler's deeds & mindset. (One reason to at least monitor tech use by especially young children is just that there are words and images out there that they just don't to carry the burden of until they're ready). At that age, she doesn't really need to know the difference between positive will and permissive will. She doesn't need to know about the gift of free will and how God has constrained himself when it comes to us. (Because, yes, God could easily have eradicated the Nazi mindset before the first Jewish person ever got gassed. Could have poufed Gavrilo Princip right out of existence. Could have ... You get the point: there are any of twelvety-two squintillion points of departure where God could have intervened but didn't.) She need only know that God did not want those things to happen to people (positive will); but that God allows people to make bad choices (permissive will) even though God would be saddened and disappointed when people do those bad things to each other. It's just like how Nanay and Dada are sad and disappointed when you do something you know is bad!, right Little One? She should also know that there are many more people out there that are good, or that can be enlightened to the good. That can stand up and fight against evil. That can put God's love into action. That can right the wrongs and bring reconciliation to a broken world.

Good answers to the omnipotence paradox and problem of evil! I had never heard the terms "positive will" and "permissive will" before.

"If God is all good, then he is not all powerful. If God is all powerful, then he is not all good. I am a disbeliever in the omnipotence of God because of the Holocaust. But for 35 years or so, I have been believing that he is doing the best he can." --Norman Mailer

Oh, I don't know!

You've got some wonky politics still sloshing around in your head, but you seem to be pretty thoughtful and upright. I bet you'd make a spanking dad! (And no, I don't mean corporally punishing!)

Wow . . . is all I can say.

Wonky as in wacky, or wonky as in wonkish?

Hm. You might have gotten a glimpse of baybayin, the pre-Hispanic script!! As I recall, its origins ultimately derive from ancient India. I'm not aware of a glyph that looks exactly like a euro sign, but there are some that come pretty close!

The Visayan glyph nga looks pretty close to a euro sign. The Tagalog glyph for na also looks close, though both are turned 90deg.

You're right, they do! Thanks for showing me the chart! And yes, I have seen the baybayin before (but couldn't remember how any of them looked).

Tagalog is one of my favorite natlangs. It's a shame I can't find a good English-Tagalog dictionary.

Ha! Maybe your shirt was made from rice??

Perhaps, but I've never heard of a rice turtleneck.

I have worn a turtleneck every day of my life for more than two decades.

See, now you need to tell us about the Shaleya, too!

Shaleyans are genetically engineered humans who live on Shaleya, the eighth planet in the Refea Solar System. They were created when the Greys of Tziel followed a scriptural order to genetically engineer humans from "the Fifth World" (Halenea) and place them on "the Eighth World" (Shaleya). They were genetically designed to be incapable of doing evil. They live on a planet on which most of the plants and animals are found nowhere else in the known universe, and are stewards of the wildlife there. They speak a split-S SVO language that uses footnotes.

Well, Elves. Thing about them is their glamour. So, they áre beautiful and merry. Or leastways, that's what they want you to see. Then you fall under their power and they can play you! But beauty for Elves isn't even skin deep. Those are fortunate enough to be able to see them for what they are know their ugliness. And it sure runs deep!

Elves: Humans, only uglier!

So, why would a Kankonian not want his kid dating a Shaleyan? Hot or otherwise!

Kankonians have fair skin, blue eyes, and straight hair. Kankonians have brown skin, brown or hazel eyes, and dark hair that's usually curly. So it's like White/Black dating on Earth. Of course, Kankonians don't *actually* have a problem with interracial dating and marriage, and the churches of Kankonia will even solemnize interspecies marriage (so a human could marry a Grey, or a Domehead, or añak, or an ilti, or a pacham, or a bansak, or a lef, or a Syprian, or a Red, or one of various reptoid species). That's just an example of a rule that Kankonian parents would never make, and the government would never enforce. There are many mixed Kankonian/Shaleyan or Kankonian/Tentan people, and even splicechildren who have Kankonian or Shaleyan or Tentan (human) DNA and Tzielan or Tayaonit (Grey) DNA.

This kind of family dynamic does happen among Daine families. Generally speaking, not to the same degree; and mostly in arranged-marriage cultures, as you might imagine. There are, at the opposite end, Daine who have no choice at all in the matter of who they end up with. Turghun are that way. Youngsters might engage in something like "dating" or "courting", but unless one of em's been living under a rock, both kids know that some day they'll meet their partner, their lifemate, and that'll be that.

Some of the Daine cultures have arranged marriages? I hope none of the teen-age boyfriends and girlfriends end up like that Japanese couple who weren't meant to be and ended up killing themselves.

This sounds healthier than the cosseted, not-let-out-of-the-house experience that children under 12 have in America today. I'm just glad I'm a Millennial; it must be awful to be what I call a Fifth Worlder! Plus, Fifth World boys who don't play video games are probably very lonely. And I can't imagine life without meatspace relationships with the people I love.

Indeed! That's probably the single greatest peeve I have against modern parenting is the gross overprotection. I mean, I get that you're supposed to look after your kids, but you really don't need to hover over them every second of the day and night.

What's interesting is that Howe & Strauss actually predicted that Xers would be overprotective (and very Von-Trappesque) when raising what they call the New Silent Generation. They say Xers were unwanted, neglected, and permissively raised children who don't want their own children to have to go through what they went through. They said "New Silents" would be suffocated like the seen-and-not-heard children of the Silent Generation.

What do you mean by fifth worlder? Aztec mythology or something worse than a fourth world country?

It's a reference to the Aztec mythology sense. The Fifth World Generation is my name for the generation after Millennials, the one born 2005 to today. I came up with the name back in 2001. Millennials were born, and have been having our coming-of-age, around the turn of the millennium in 2000. Most Fifth Worlders had or will have their first permanent memories of the world after December 21, 2012.

Heh! Your take on interpersonal relationships sounds very Daine! (Though there's no cyberspace to contrast with in The World.)

Thanks for telling me that!

Whewww! That was good talk! This is the kind of conversation I really love to engage in here. Thanks for keeping this going!!!!

You're welcome. You're right, we have hit upon a lot of interesting topics out of a discussion of lifespeeding! I thought this thread had been abandoned for good before k1234567890y necroed it on the first day of this year.

[elemtilas]

Of course, I like to think Daine are more humane! More consistently humane, to be sure. Doesn't always pan out, though. Men are, not quite human. Kissing cousins certainly. (I suppose if Men and humans ever met, f*cking cousins would be the more likely outcome!) Men are capable of great heights of humaneness -- but more often they demonstrate their capabilities of inhumanity. Orcs, of which Hotai are but one subtype, are much maligned. Even by the Daine. I would say, if given the chance, and if not under a force of Compulsion, Orcs can be every bit as humane as Men. Not that that's saying much! Also, you'll find a gulf of difference between their various genders. The ones most outsiders see are the "super-male": terribly violent, reckless, warlike, destructive, wanton. Females are much more like female Daine (the two races are related, after all, so no surprises there) but more socially and spiritually degenerate & "primitive" because of the circumstances the whole race finds itself in. There are also "lesser-males" -- these tend to be physically very like the females (small, relatively weak, not so violent). If the super-males could be removed from the picture, Orcs could very easily fit themselves back into the Daine family tree.

Oh, so Men are not exactly the same thing as Earth's humans? I didn't know that. Did you invent the word "Hotai" for goblins (and if so, were you inspired by the Japanese/English word "hentai")?

Physically, Men are quite close to human: rarely reach to six feet in height, are generally slight of build (though there are beefier & huskier ethnicities), they live longer on average than humans and they come in a rather wider variety of quite distinct shapes and colours.

Hentai . . . interesting.

No, I'm afraid any similarity there is quite accidental!

Usually Daine are much better than Men at most things, but when it comes to Elves, they fall prey to and are just as terrified of Elves as Men or Dwarrows or Orcs. Out of all the usually met with peoples of Yeola, only the Turghun can see them straight. Give a Turghun an iron sword and he'll never lack for Elf hunting work!

Whoa, even the Hotai and other Orcs are terrified of Elves?

Yep! But they're scared of Daine, too. But at least (from their perspective), a Daine will at least treat you with some dignity and respect if you get in a fight with one. And at least when you see a Daine, you know he's out to get you, but at least you know what you're getting into!

When it comes to Elves, all bets are off. They rarely reveal their true forms. Fair seeming and helpful they appear; wise and gracious. They are welcoming and openly friendly. Much like Daine. But their policies as a whole and as individuals are quite orthogonal. They are pernicious, malicious and they delight in the fear and terror they instill. They are masters at manipulation and discovering all the right levers to pull and buttons to push. Black widows and conmen have nothing on an Elf! Before long, even the wisest and canniest of Daine or Orc is taken in by their presence, even the auraskilled are very hard pressed to see the dark.

But then, it's too late. When an Elf has you in her power, you're pretty much doomed to play her games and go along the garden path she's leading you along. And no one can help you, because the glamour has clouded their judgement and veiled their sight with visions of delight and beauty.

If you're lucky, she'll abuse you, play with you and soon grow tired of you and leave you broken but living.

If you're not so lucky, well, you're not so lucky!

Have you written this whole story out before? You could post it on this board if you haven't already.

Yes, I am! You can share it on this board when you're ready.[/quote]

Will do!

In 2006, The World was not well advertised. I think only in Conlang-L and Conculture. There were certainly no online places for it. Even now, it's not well represented. The CBB thread, Deviant Art gallery and a slowly growing wiki are the main online places.

I see. But you've written a whole lot about the World on the CBB. Your Frathwiki pages add some detail, too.

Not really whole lot here, to be honest. Most of it, honestly, is off-line, on-paper. Most of the stuff on the Daine is completely unrevealed. Languages are mostly unrevealed. The Chorography is now long unpublished (and now in dire need of correxion). A number of stories are unrevealed and more languish unfinished or unbegun.

Most of the Lehola stuff online is on my Angelfire site. I have many pages I don't consider finished enough to put up on that site, though.

Ah! Now that I know this, I'm going to head angelfirewards and soak up as much life in Lehola as I can!



Though I'm a great one to talk, I'd still urge you get on to it!

Glad you like it!

Do undic devices "plug in" to an individual, or to the tubules serve as collectors as well as distributional conduits for undicity?

I'm planning to make a Bodus/Bodusians thread soon. I even have an idea for a slice-of-life story I could tell.

Excellent!

Hopefully more than one story!

Not sure what a 1A troop is, but yeah, pretty sharp. And, indeed, dutiful to the utmost.

A troop made entirely of young men who were classified 1A for the draft board, as in physically, mentally, and morally fit for service. As a mentally ill open bisexual who weighed 99 pounds when I was of draft age, back in the days of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, I'd've been 4F for sure!

Yeah! Have no idea what they'd mark me as. It's quite an interesting list, though. Maybe conscientious objector or something.

No, Daine have no draftees. Kind of goes against their nature. But also, everyone in a queendom is what you might call "in the militia".

Oh, cool!

I was talking with my friend John Hensle, my partner in musical-writing who passed away in December of 2016, and we were discussing World War II. I mentioned how I could never have fought for a country that was interning Japanese-Americans in concentration camps, even against Hitler, and then the conversation turned to how there should have been a stateless militia unit during WWII. We both praised militias. Even the U.S. has a militia, albeit a dormant one, with lads as young as 17 being members.

I always thought the internment was rather one-sided. I mean, it's not like there weren't zillions of Krau...I mean German-Americans! in the country!

Well, in those days, it was not unheard of for Americans to join the British military in order to fight. Presumably you could have gone that route.

Daine militias are, I think, something akin to the Swiss model. Basically, everyone is expected to learn how to use hunting and fighting weapons; everyone is expected to make or obtain their own kit and maintain it & themselves in readiness. There are quasi militaryesque units that are kept on duty at all times. The Sheriffs being the most prominent: especially in the marches they're the ones who are on guard for rogue visitors and stray megafauna. They're the ones who will, in time of dire need, will raise the hue and cry and will stand in defense of the whole queendom until the Greatqueen's armies can mobilise and get in place. Sheriffs are always boys and are generally taken from folks who are highly skilled with weapons and martial arts, trackers, hunters, scrappers and skinchangers.

Every holding also has watchers. These can be anybody, and their job is just to keep an Eye on things: they beat the bounds, check and test infrastructure, keep a watch on the wild lands, be on the lookout for the movements of travellers, unwanted ruffians and wild critters, they keep alert to fire, storms, natural disasters and are the ones that will mobilise to help travellers in trouble or round up ruffians that got past the Sheriffs.

Correct. Letter of the law, you see.

Ah, letter of the law.

"But I was just about to bang down my gavel, making it official!"

"The gown is down."

The law must be upheld! Without proper order, well, there's just chaos: no crime, no justice ; no justice, no peace. You know, justice for all -- swift, sure and terrible.

I'm guessing Jhonam is the parallel-universe-cognate of John? I see you have made Earth "more delightful" by making your own version of the archetype in The World.

Ah, Jhonam is an ordinary ethnic name. Yavenam is the usual form for John.

Men are Men! In that regard, they are little different from humans. Mind you, even the most modern & the most advanced and the most learned of countries lacks what we in America take for granted as historical precedent. I think they've pretty much got it all: caste and class systems, racism, speciesism, slavery. On the other hand, one thing they do lack is sexism. As I hinted at with the lecherous female Member of Parliament, women in most Mannish countries of the Eastlands are every bit as capable of wallowing in their own bloodthirst, right along with their men.

And yet this nonsexist race is called Men, with a capital M, as opposed to Wo/Men! Ironic that!

Heh! Curious how that happens...

Mind you, weraz = male Man; mannaz = "human being" in Avantimannish.

This is one reason why Serendarzhan, she's the Greatqueen of Harathalliê (or Westmarche as it's also known), is so mistrustful of Yesseraê, the Auntimoanian Empress. Can't trust a Man as far as you can throw her. And that ain't very far. And the Empress is definitely up to something. I mentioned (somewhere, maybe not CBB?) that the Hidden Queen (the real ruler of the Daine of Auntimoany) recently uncovered a plot against Yesseraê's life. . . . If they get ticked off enough to carry though with the race wars brewing in the West. Time might come when Men will truly be an endangered species.

Interesting times!

So Daine monarchies have a Hidden Queen, too? The Daine's system of monarchy is more complicated than I imagined.

Girls make things complicated.

The Hidden Queen is on the one wing the de facto ruler of the Daine of Auntimoany (the Empress of Men, Yesseraê, is their de jure sovereign). The Hidden Queen is also the ruler of Ôntumûn, the ancient land that was before the coming of Men. It is, perhaps, what we might call . . . not entirely there? Or rather there, but not entirely present. It's one of those places where you can be in two places at once and both places are the same place. Not really extradimensional, but certainly apart from the ordinary dimensions that Auntimoany resides in. Daine can pass through the Veil easily. Men would have to be brought across. Many locations within Ôntumûn are coexistent with locations within Auntimoany; those that can See can see both existing in the same place at the same time. Men are blind; but even the blindest, if they thought about it, would recollect instances where they perhaps suddenly sidestepped an empty space or took a not-quite straight path to go from A to B. If they could see with their minds, they might in fact understand that they are intuiting the existence of a Daine child carelessly running across the square or a couple lads shifting a potted tree!

This is sad. Men, by rights, should be able to See these things as well as Daine or Teyor.

Ôntumûn is thus no different than Harathalliê or Vana, but the wisdom of the Daine of this land has caused them to yield and allow Men to rule. But this realm is also the premiere and ancientest of Daine realms in the East. Of higher dignity and majesty than the other lands around, the Hidden Queen is looked upon as the queen of queens. Of course, she doesn't rule Vana or Darirenalliê or Harathalliê directly, but her voice is definitely one of coordination and humble authority.

Cosmically, her place is at the centre of the collegium of Daine queens -- elevated above them but still of them; equal in dignity to the true queens of Men & Teyor. They sit at the feet of the Heavenly Queen whose wings in turn caress the throne of the One above.

Oh, that's interesting! IGST is optional even in the lifespeeding required societies? Among those non-anarchist GST maldesignation legal societies, why is it legal there but nowhere else?

Basically, these are places where GST has been done in rare instances, but not many people, even in the government know about it. Except for the anarchist places, everywhere where designer babies are fairly well known has anti-maldesignation laws. But there are a number of (less advanced) places where GST is mostly a marginal, underground thing. Like bidis in the U.S. before c. 2000.

How experimental can parents be? Can they push the envelope of gene editing and for example make a child with slightly phosphorescent highlights along certain parts of their skin, or a crest of quills in stead of just head hair, or an unusual skin pigmentation (Andorian blue, e.g.) or polydactyly?

Bidis. Mentolatian death sticks! That's the kind of crap Men like smoking --- adulterated weed wrapped up in barely smokable leaves. Tsk. Thankfully, the habit hasn't caught on among Men, and Daine, as you know, already know how to smoke properly! The bidis made in Mentolatum are generally very thin and rather short and are smoked in a small mouth-pipe device of silvered bronze with a little finger ring so you don't have to keep it in your mouth. Might as well aerosolise a tar pit and breathe that in!

As an analogy, suppose that you have a third-world country on Earth with a repressive government. Suppose that this government doesn't like self-expression much and censors the Internet a lot. It censors websites everyone has heard of, like Wikipedia, and some huge porn sites like Pornhub. But the people in the government are old fogeys who have never heard of 4chan, and have never heard of the Dark Internet. There are a few alternative or geeky, underground types who visit these sites. The government doesn't hear about these people, and they can visit 4chan or use the Dark Internet unregulated because these things aren't in the mainstream consciousness enough for the government to pass laws against them or censor them.

Say it ain't so! North Korea is a socialists' paradise, struggling against the decadent US and its henchcountries, not a repressive third world country!

So, GST is sufficiently private and under (or between) the radar that interesting people slip through the cracks?

They can choose height (as long as they don't turn a person into a midget or someone who'd have trouble standing up in stores) and build (as long as they don't create someone so obese s/he'd have heart problems or be otherwise sick). Parents are free to choose gender. They are free to choose sexual orientation, except in some homophobic countries where it is illegal to make a would-be straight designer baby gay/lesbian or bisexual, sometimes even asexual.

In such a country, would it be a matter of law that those with a genetic predisposition would be altered via GST?

On the other hand, selecting personality traits that would turn your baby into a future sociopath or serial killer would be forbidden. Some have laws that make it illegal to give your offspring the genes for developing bipolar, or Asperger's, or borderline. A few conservative countries even have laws against creating a synaesthete!

Understandable. Some things, perhaps, are best not in the child's best interest. Let them have non-pernicious or non-debilitating traits I guess?

Designer babies is something I've considered in The World. Not that they have genetic management techniques! But I have done some thinking about how much actual work goes into making a Daine baby (well, really, ány baby of any race but I focus on Daine). And how many odd and curious things can be done, even consciously done, to nudge the future little one into one form or another.

Oh, cool! So instead of technology of a Western science variety, it's eating the right herbs, casting the right spells, conceiving at the right time of day and year?

Hah! All the things that dòn't work!

I'm working on the scheme now. The resulting baby arrives the way she does, simplistically, as a result of a curious mixture of genetics, thaumic orientation, the will & disposition of the parents, various physical and physiological parameters.

It's not like you can choose one from column A and two from column B. But if you work at it sufficiently, you'll be sure to end up quite unexpected!

Politix aside, acronyms like that are just a crime against English. The perpetrator of that ought to be sentenced to life at hard labour, conjugating every single conceivable English verb ever and in any dialect, fully in all persons, numbers, tenses, moods & voices.

By hand.

Really? Looks like a clever idea to me. Like all those backronyms (FAST, DEAR MAN, etc.) we learned in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.

Sure, acronyms have their use (recall tools being among them). This is just political mumbo jumbo and doesn't even really make sense.

But yeah. I'm not surprised such a thing was drafted before. The devious are always drafting cunning plans in advance of any eventuality. Just awaiting a convenient pretext...

Don't forget that George W. Bush received warnings that Osama was planning to strike earlier that year, and didn't investigate. And that he advised Willie Brown not to fly on September 11, 2001. 9/11 may have been Mohammed Atta's plan, but passively-aggressively letting it happen was the Bushies' plan.

If true, very sad indeed.

Tell me more! Why would a Mensinghian queen be undesirable? And a Bodusian Prime Council Member be excellent? I mean, apart form the obvious awesomeness of the Bodusians themselves!

The thing about Mensinghi is that it is a rather corporate-thinking country. The second most widely spoken language, Palang, is spoken in the Palang province, where the planet's stock market is located. More than half of the borrowings from Mensinghian languages in Kankonian are money- and commerce-related borrowings from Palang. The last few monarchs on Mensinsghi have decreed a trickle-down economic policy. The bansaks of Mensinghi also have a cold, sort of fishy demeanor to them, in general.

As for the Bodusian Prime Council, it's just so peaceful and otherworldly. It guides the planet of Bodus on where to develop its strengths -- much like John F. Kennedy telling America in the early sixties that things would be great if it focused on the Space Race, and calling for a man to be put on the Moon by the end of the decade. The Prime Council never tells people they can't have gay/anal/oral sex or use oezha and phamein. It never tells children that they have to attend a shut-up-and-sit-down school based on the Prussian model. It never demands rain-forests be deforested. Since Bodus has no money, there's no money to take from powerful corporations, and no government-issued green lights for Big Banks.

Hmm. Cold fishy queens. Slimey economics. No wonder!

Heh --- lack of a money economy is another similarity!

I'm guessing that most of those sorts of things are pretty much up to individuals, parents & communities? They sound like they must be quite wise and also world-crafty. I think I could live happily in that kind of political system. Are there also local level Councils --- those who do or might consider the positive and negative consequences of any or many of those things listed?

Hihi! Oezha...oazha is an old (very old!) Daine word for orgasm. With or without perception altering plant derivatives.

Funny how they assume that "generations" will just fall into lockstep together according to them.

This Howie Strauss...are they Prussians by any chance? I'm just going to say this straight up: they sound honest to God just like Adolf Hitler. Mind you, I wasn't able to stomach much of his writing (I think I managed to read about 100pp of M.K. without barfing), but they make the same assumptions! That groups of people with similar backgrounds (he didn't write about generations) will just fall in lock-step with one another unthinkingly!

I don't know what generation I am, and I don't know what generation you are, but let's please not fall in lock-step with any kind of lunacy or political idiocy!

I believe you're an Xer -- they'd call you Gen-X, or, in their earlier works, a 13er (the Thirteenth generation of Americans counting from the peers of Benjamin Franklin). I'm a Millennial, although they begin the generation in 1982 instead of 1979, so they'd call me an Xer/13er, too! They say 13ers were born from 1961 to 1981.

Interesting. A thirteener. Obviously, the best, luckiest generation of all!

As for generalizations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E ... ry#General

Well, there's a thing.

Well, I took a let us guess your generation personality quizzes and got, perhaps unsurprisingly Millennial.

Your turn!

Yes, an American-created religion, much like Scientology! And all the conworlding, with the Deseret con-script and its own angelology and all. Then there are the Mormon guys with their characteristic beards. Of course, you also have the clean-cut, conservative Mormons who look about as Middle American as you can get, the kind who try to be respectable middle-class Americans even though some fundamentalist Protestants view LDS as a cult. Then you have Mormons like Brandon Flowers and Brendon Urie. It's a broad culture.

That it is!

I've heard it said, by more than one convert, that the experience in the Protestant churches is one of "Christianity lite". I guess kind of like splashing about the wading pool until they were ready to jump into the Ocean. I think I'd concur.

So you find the Protestant experience kind of bland?

Actually, yes. In my experience, Protestantism generally takes the form of "high church" denominations (Lutheranism, Anglicanism) that are (quasi-)liturgical in nature or else "low church" denominations (Baptism, Evangelicalism, Oneness and all the squillions of independent denominations) that are non-liturgical in nature. The former I'd characterise as "form without function", while the latter I'd characterise as "excitement without cause". Historically, they all lack the deep theology and common experience of the Universal Church; they derive from human founders who base their practices on their own desires and wills; their theologies and doctrines are radically altered even from those of their founders; they have in general no sense of communion.

I guess most importantly, they lack one key belief and practice of the Universal Church, and that is the liturgy, the Eucharist itself.

I believe you mean Dylan's friend. He said it was his 15-year-old best friend who was subject to those rules and had the crazy mother who "beat the sins out of" him.

Quite possibly!

Food for thought on corporal punishment and religion:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/spankin8.htm

A lot of (mostly Protestant) Christians believe the Bible says, "Spare the rod and spoil the child". First of all, that line actually comes from a Samuel Butler poem, the line in the Bible is "He who spareth the rod detesteth his son". But also, it was Solomon who said that. The supposedly wise Solomon presumably raised his son Rehoboam thusly, and, well . . . look how Rehoboam turned out! So this is a perfect example of what you said: assuming the Biblical accounts of Solomon's and Rehoboam's reigns are historically accurate, reading the Bible would lead one to question corporal punishment.

Tough times.

Thankfully, we don't have to do it that way. After all: "Let whoever is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her." A much harder way. Parents need to think and not react. They need to understand the nature of parenthood and childhood and delve into the nature of loving relationship. They need to take their responsibility seriously.

Ned Flanders has had some pretty hilarious lines over the years. One time he said: "If romance is old-fashioned, that makes me a CAVEMAN! . . . if they existed, which of course they didn't!"

Ha!

Wait, you're saying you have a child who passed away? I never heard about that!

Aye. I've never talked openly about it. It is, even now, such a wound. But you can find her in some of the things I've written or drawn.

I'm so sorry, Elemtilas.

(._.) _(_^_)_

O mares of deepest starless night, bide, stay by me!
O Queen of Night, gaze from on high upon me;
Oh cast over us thy ebon cloak, even as I gaze lovingly upon her,
Aguy! Under stars I awaken : I do not see her.


. . . .

I evergrieve in joy and mirth:
I watch mothers rejoicing and daughters playing
yet I too long sought and ever shall seek that in fruitless search

I evergrieve in joy and mirth:
for the blacks of starless night I eversee
for amid gales and storms I evertread

I evergrieve in joy and mirth:
there those things are for your eyes
yet near at hand blind I stumble

You have any drawings of her on this site (or Frathwiki)?

https://www.deviantart.com/elemtilas/ar ... -791909584

We all have our own cross to bear . . .

Aye.

.sigh.

Good thing about crosses is we don't bear them alone. And anyway, the day is soon coming when I can set it down and look up...

to see her face...

But also, like with the Berenstain Bears, my hope would be only that she'd've learnt those lessons when still small. There wouldn't be a need for draconian measures later in life. My take on discipline issues (and I see this in the kiddoes of my friends) is "load up the discipline when they're young and impressionable". Like when they're two & three and four years old. That way, you've already got them thinking the right way around. Apply discipline lovingly but consistently, and by the time they're 14, you've got a wonderful little Sako who at 14 is pretty much a self-regulating and rather mature sounding kid. Parents should be proud!

Wise thoughts, Elemtilas. We can see it in Sako, and you can see it in your peers' children. (BTW, are your friends raising toddlers? Elementary-schoolers? Teen-agers? Or do they have twentysomething kids? Or a wide range of age groups?)

Goodness! They're eleven & twelve somethings! Beautiful, smart, creative boys.

No, I think what's really a travesty is that none of the Daine are bisexual! We need bisexual Daine, lesbian Daine, gay Daine, asexual Daine, transgender Daine, genderqueer Daine! Oh, and please make one of your Daine agendered or bigendered!

If you only knew...

Or rather, if I only understood well enough to be able to explain!



These things don't exist among Daine because they aren't human --- that doesn't mean they're a race of perfectly binary nothing in between. The reality is that their experience and their nature is entirely other. And, as with many things about Daine I don't talk about, I just don't have the understanding to make it plain. And, worse, mislead through poor explanation.

Most parents are, I believe, sensitive enough about their children that they know these things. It may be many years before the child is mature enough to understand about herself, but I think a couple good, grounded parents and a loving family would be there when she finally comes clean.

Whoa, I wonder if my parents could sense that I was going to be bisexual before they found about it when I was 13.

I would not be surprised! Did you ever ask?

Spoiler:

I certainly don't believe in white-washing or varnishing the truth. A little one doesn't need to know all the ugliness, all the sorrow. That's too much for many who are older. At seven or eight, she needs to know that God has already created a wonderful universe in which this little old Earth, when properly tended by humans, can indeed feed everyone on the planet like ten times over. Because there is abundant food. You can probably guess from my opinions about Men in The World, that words like "inhumane" and "evil" won't be too far away. She doesn't need to know the particulars, but she should be aware that there are bad people in the world who do not love others and keep them from getting it (especially during times of natural disaster). She should know that in many places, they don't have the machines or the technology or the learning to produce sufficient food for themselves. More importantly, she should know that it's our job to help them when and how we can -- to counteract the inhumanity of others in our own way. You know: feed the hungry? (That's a biblical rubric for raising good children!)

Same for the German Holocaust: she doesn't need to know Hitler's deeds & mindset. (One reason to at least monitor tech use by especially young children is just that there are words and images out there that they just don't to carry the burden of until they're ready). At that age, she doesn't really need to know the difference between positive will and permissive will. She doesn't need to know about the gift of free will and how God has constrained himself when it comes to us. (Because, yes, God could easily have eradicated the Nazi mindset before the first Jewish person ever got gassed. Could have poufed Gavrilo Princip right out of existence. Could have ... You get the point: there are any of twelvety-two squintillion points of departure where God could have intervened but didn't.) She need only know that God did not want those things to happen to people (positive will); but that God allows people to make bad choices (permissive will) even though God would be saddened and disappointed when people do those bad things to each other. It's just like how Nanay and Dada are sad and disappointed when you do something you know is bad!, right Little One? She should also know that there are many more people out there that are good, or that can be enlightened to the good. That can stand up and fight against evil. That can put God's love into action. That can right the wrongs and bring reconciliation to a broken world.

Good answers to the omnipotence paradox and problem of evil! I had never heard the terms "positive will" and "permissive will" before.

I actually learned the distinction pretty recently. It always got me wondering too!

"If God is all good, then he is not all powerful. If God is all powerful, then he is not all good. I am a disbeliever in the omnipotence of God because of the Holocaust. But for 35 years or so, I have been believing that he is doing the best he can." --Norman Mailer

Sounds like Mr Mailer could have done with this same lesson!

Wow . . . is all I can say.

Wonky as in wacky, or wonky as in wonkish?

Wonky as in rickety or off-centre or, you know, just plain wrong.

You're right, they do! Thanks for showing me the chart! And yes, I have seen the baybayin before (but couldn't remember how any of them looked).

Tagalog is one of my favorite natlangs. It's a shame I can't find a good English-Tagalog dictionary.

Inday's family are from Leyte, so I'm learning Waray-Waray. Tagalog sounds all different to me.

I have worn a turtleneck every day of my life for more than two decades.

I hope the world record book people are paying you well!

Shaleyans are genetically engineered humans who live on Shaleya, the eighth planet in the Refea Solar System. They were created when the Greys of Tziel followed a scriptural order to genetically engineer humans from "the Fifth World" (Halenea) and place them on "the Eighth World" (Shaleya). They were genetically designed to be incapable of doing evil. They live on a planet on which most of the plants and animals are found nowhere else in the known universe, and are stewards of the wildlife there. They speak a split-S SVO language that uses footnotes.

Hmg! Genetically incapable of doing evil... Now that I have to hear more about!

Elves: Humans, only uglier!

Kind of, yeah!

So, why would a Kankonian not want his kid dating a Shaleyan? Hot or otherwise!

Kankonians have fair skin, blue eyes, and straight hair. Kankonians have brown skin, brown or hazel eyes, and dark hair that's usually curly. So it's like White/Black dating on Earth. Of course, Kankonians don't *actually* have a problem with interracial dating and marriage, and the churches of Kankonia will even solemnize interspecies marriage (so a human could marry a Grey, or a Domehead, or añak, or an ilti, or a pacham, or a bansak, or a lef, or a Syprian, or a Red, or one of various reptoid species). That's just an example of a rule that Kankonian parents would never make, and the government would never enforce. There are many mixed Kankonian/Shaleyan or Kankonian/Tentan people, and even splicechildren who have Kankonian or Shaleyan or Tentan (human) DNA and Tzielan or Tayaonit (Grey) DNA.

Okay, I see.

So, whole nother layers of gene editing for designer children!?

This kind of family dynamic does happen among Daine families. Generally speaking, not to the same degree; and mostly in arranged-marriage cultures, as you might imagine. There are, at the opposite end, Daine who have no choice at all in the matter of who they end up with. Turghun are that way. Youngsters might engage in something like "dating" or "courting", but unless one of em's been living under a rock, both kids know that some day they'll meet their partner, their lifemate, and that'll be that.

Some of the Daine cultures have arranged marriages? I hope none of the teen-age boyfriends and girlfriends end up like that Japanese couple who weren't meant to be and ended up killing themselves.

Certainly a tragedy, when that happens!

Some regions of Westmarche and Withwandiê are known for the practice. The marriages thus made are generally not life-matings. They're ways of spreading genetic influence across a wide area and end up being either temporary unions or marriages for making children.

And as for fourteen or fifteen year olds doing those kinds of things, puhleeease!! That would be like an eight or nine year old human having such a relationship!! They don't even hit puberty until their mid to late twenties!

What's interesting is that Howe & Strauss actually predicted that Xers would be overprotective (and very Von-Trappesque) when raising what they call the New Silent Generation. They say Xers were unwanted, neglected, and permissively raised children who don't want their own children to have to go through what they went through. They said "New Silents" would be suffocated like the seen-and-not-heard children of the Silent Generation.

Well, at least the von Trapps were Austrian and not Prussian!

The New Silents, I think, might just end up doubly suffocated: by over-bearing & overly-protective parenting styles as well as by the narrow confines of their techaddiction.

Heh! Your take on interpersonal relationships sounds very Daine! (Though there's no cyberspace to contrast with in The World.)

Thanks for telling me that!

I think Daine would be interested in our tech, but I think they'd also be very wary of it. I don't know how social media and immersive gaming would affect them: socialisation & socialising are terribly important, but I think the long-distance / no physical contact nature of it might prove distressing to them ultimately.

Whewww! That was good talk! This is the kind of conversation I really love to engage in here. Thanks for keeping this going!!!!

You're welcome. You're right, we have hit upon a lot of interesting topics out of a discussion of lifespeeding! I thought this thread had been abandoned for good before k1234567890y necroed it on the first day of this year.

Indeed! I'm just happy it's we're on going!

[Khemehekis]

Physically, Men are quite close to human: rarely reach to six feet in height, are generally slight of build (though there are beefier & huskier ethnicities), they live longer on average than humans and they come in a rather wider variety of quite distinct shapes and colours.

So just an analogue. Like elephants vs. oliphants. Got it.

Hentai . . . interesting.

No, I'm afraid any similarity there is quite accidental!

Oh, OK.

Is this your first time hearing or reading the word "hentai"?

When it comes to Elves, all bets are off. They rarely reveal their true forms. Fair seeming and helpful they appear; wise and gracious. They are welcoming and openly friendly. Much like Daine. But their policies as a whole and as individuals are quite orthogonal. They are pernicious, malicious and they delight in the fear and terror they instill. They are masters at manipulation and discovering all the right levers to pull and buttons to push. Black widows and conmen have nothing on an Elf! Before long, even the wisest and canniest of Daine or Orc is taken in by their presence, even the auraskilled are very hard pressed to see the dark.

Elemtilas, once you've finished getting The World online, you ought to pitch your Elves -- and your world -- to the film industry folks and see if they'll give you a deal. You could be your generations J. R. R. Tolkien, and you could find your very own Peter Jackson. Your Elves are more interesting than the standard recycled fantasy most elf-langers and elf-worlders put out. (I've never played Dungeons & Dragons or similar games, nor did I know many classmates who did, so I have no idea what the experience is like, but the impression I get from reading posts on conworlding boards that mention using their conlang/conworld for D&D campaigns is that said campaigns are very low on originality, creatively fenced-in, color-by-number.)

The only other elves I recall that stood out in the Internet conlanging community were WeepingElf's Albic elves (actually humans) and Danny Wier's Techian elves (which had races like Caucasian and Asian, and practiced human religions).

Have you written this whole story out before? You could post it on this board if you haven't already.

Yes, I am! You can share it on this board when you're ready.

Will do!

Yay!!!

Not really whole lot here, to be honest. Most of it, honestly, is off-line, on-paper. Most of the stuff on the Daine is completely unrevealed. Languages are mostly unrevealed. The Chorography is now long unpublished (and now in dire need of correxion). A number of stories are unrevealed and more languish unfinished or unbegun.

Is it ever going to all be online? Maybe in ten or twenty years' time? Do you suppose you could get an Angelfire site or something?

Ah! Now that I know this, I'm going to head angelfirewards and soak up as much life in Lehola as I can!

Though I'm a great one to talk, I'd still urge you get on to it!

Yay!!!

I polished up Bodus (though my astronomical calculations need more eyeballs), and created 67 new Shaleyan fungi, plants, and animals. I'm getting closer to being able to present Shaleya and the Shaleyans in a CBB thread.

And since Bodus and Shaleya are both basically utopias, I should probably present Kebsabhaz, my hateworld, as well. You know, to be fair and balanced. Or just to mix things up.

Do undic devices "plug in" to an individual, or to the tubules serve as collectors as well as distributional conduits for undicity?

The latter.

Yeah! Have no idea what they'd mark me as. It's quite an interesting list, though. Maybe conscientious objector or something.

With my mental, sexual, and baric issues, I wouldn't even need to worry about pronouncing myself a conscientious objector!

I always thought the internment was rather one-sided. I mean, it's not like there weren't zillions of Krau...I mean German-Americans! in the country!

And then the Italian-Americans. Italians are Whiter than Japanese, but they're not WASP's the way Germans are. Italian-Americans could be forced to drink from the Colored fountains in some parts of the U.S. South in those days. Plus, to this day, the U.S. has never had an Italian-American president, whereas in World War II, they had already had one German-American president (Herbert Hoover, originally Huber).

Well, in those days, it was not unheard of for Americans to join the British military in order to fight. Presumably you could have gone that route.

Cool! Didn't know that! Sort of like the way many Americans of the Lost Generation joined the Spanish Civil War?

Daine militias are, I think, something akin to the Swiss model. Basically, everyone is expected to learn how to use hunting and fighting weapons; everyone is expected to make or obtain their own kit and maintain it & themselves in readiness. There are quasi militaryesque units that are kept on duty at all times. The Sheriffs being the most prominent: especially in the marches they're the ones who are on guard for rogue visitors and stray megafauna. They're the ones who will, in time of dire need, will raise the hue and cry and will stand in defense of the whole queendom until the Greatqueen's armies can mobilise and get in place. Sheriffs are always boys and are generally taken from folks who are highly skilled with weapons and martial arts, trackers, hunters, scrappers and skinchangers.

Oh, this sounds so cool! And I see Daine have a sort of division of labor by the sexes: queens are always girls, and sheriffs are always boys. And what's a skinchanger? Is that someone who helps others shapeshift?

I'm guessing Jhonam is the parallel-universe-cognate of John? I see you have made Earth "more delightful" by making your own version of the archetype in The World.

Ah, Jhonam is an ordinary ethnic name. Yavenam is the usual form for John.

Nice name -- Yavenam! Does Avantimannish have equivalents for all the common Biblical names (James/Jim, Rachel, Sarah, Paul, Peter, Mark, Thomas/Tom, Ruth, Elizabeth, Mary, etc.)?

And yet this nonsexist race is called Men, with a capital M, as opposed to Wo/Men! Ironic that!

Heh! Curious how that happens...

Mind you, weraz = male Man; mannaz = "human being" in Avantimannish.

Oh! So just like Old English!

So Daine monarchies have a Hidden Queen, too? The Daine's system of monarchy is more complicated than I imagined.

Girls make things complicated.

The Hidden Queen is on the one wing the de facto ruler of the Daine of Auntimoany (the Empress of Men, Yesseraê, is their de jure sovereign). The Hidden Queen is also the ruler of Ôntumûn, the ancient land that was before the coming of Men. It is, perhaps, what we might call . . . not entirely there? Or rather there, but not entirely present. . . . Cosmically, her place is at the centre of the collegium of Daine queens -- elevated above them but still of them; equal in dignity to the true queens of Men & Teyor. They sit at the feet of the Heavenly Queen whose wings in turn caress the throne of the One above.

Sounds straight out of a novel! Maybe you should put out a trilogy, tetralogy, pentalogy, hexalogy, heptalogy, octalogy, ennealogy, or decalogy of novels set in The World before you shop around for a movie deal! Good stuff.

How experimental can parents be? Can they push the envelope of gene editing and for example make a child with slightly phosphorescent highlights along certain parts of their skin, or a crest of quills in stead of just head hair, or an unusual skin pigmentation (Andorian blue, e.g.) or polydactyly?

That's getting into the domain of transhumanism, a complicated and controversial issue in human states. Blue skin or Na'vi-style bioluminescent freckles are permissible most places, and even porcupine quills are now legal in most human countries. People get away with sexdactyly on Kankonia, 5% of Kankonian humans being sexdactylous, but I can't see most places allowing heptadactyly or higher, nor hypodactyly for humans. (Tetradactyly would, on the other hand on both hands, be the norm on Hapoi, whose sapients are the Reds.) If someone doesn't like his quillhawk, he can get regened when he's old enough to object.

Some dystopias create warborgs, genetically-engineered sapients bred to fight in wars. The biological horror, they are!

Bidis. Mentolatian death sticks! That's the kind of crap Men like smoking --- adulterated weed wrapped up in barely smokable leaves. Tsk. Thankfully, the habit hasn't caught on among Men, and Daine, as you know, already know how to smoke properly! The bidis made in Mentolatum are generally very thin and rather short and are smoked in a small mouth-pipe device of silvered bronze with a little finger ring so you don't have to keep it in your mouth. Might as well aerosolise a tar pit and breathe that in!

Oh, that's so cool! I've never read about a conworld that had bidis before!

As an analogy, suppose that you have a third-world country on Earth with a repressive government. Suppose that this government doesn't like self-expression much and censors the Internet a lot. It censors websites everyone has heard of, like Wikipedia, and some huge porn sites like Pornhub. But the people in the government are old fogeys who have never heard of 4chan, and have never heard of the Dark Internet. There are a few alternative or geeky, underground types who visit these sites. The government doesn't hear about these people, and they can visit 4chan or use the Dark Internet unregulated because these things aren't in the mainstream consciousness enough for the government to pass laws against them or censor them.

Say it ain't so! North Korea is a socialists' paradise, struggling against the decadent US and its henchcountries, not a repressive third world country!

North Korea? To be honest, I didn't have any particular country in mind.

Bernie Sanders would puke at the North Koreans, by the way. They don't let boys grow their hair long.

So, GST is sufficiently private and under (or between) the radar that interesting people slip through the cracks?

Yes. In places where the vast majority of people are unaware of GST, they'll assume someone with blue skin, bioluminescent freckles, porcupine quills as a mohawk, and wings came from another planet.

They can choose height (as long as they don't turn a person into a midget or someone who'd have trouble standing up in stores) and build (as long as they don't create someone so obese s/he'd have heart problems or be otherwise sick). Parents are free to choose gender. They are free to choose sexual orientation, except in some homophobic countries where it is illegal to make a would-be straight designer baby gay/lesbian or bisexual, sometimes even asexual.

In such a country, would it be a matter of law that those with a genetic predisposition would be altered via GST?

Only in countries that both (1) are dystopias, (2) have longstanding norms against homosexuality, and (3) require everyone to genetically tweak their children before birth. Kebsabhaz is quite homophobic, but it doesn't screen all zygotes before you can become a parent (the amount of "freedom" Kebsabhaz gives to parents is such that Dylan's friend's Pentecostal parents would be allowed to do what they do to him), so Kebsabhazian pachams who had the genes to be gay but weren't designer babies would be dealt with some time after they began puberty.

On the other hand, selecting personality traits that would turn your baby into a future sociopath or serial killer would be forbidden. Some have laws that make it illegal to give your offspring the genes for developing bipolar, or Asperger's, or borderline. A few conservative countries even have laws against creating a synaesthete!

Understandable. Some things, perhaps, are best not in the child's best interest. Let them have non-pernicious or non-debilitating traits I guess?

I guess. Although I wouldn't be happy living in a Leholan country that frowned upon synaesthetes.

Hah! All the things that dòn't work!

I'm working on the scheme now. The resulting baby arrives the way she does, simplistically, as a result of a curious mixture of genetics, thaumic orientation, the will & disposition of the parents, various physical and physiological parameters.

It's not like you can choose one from column A and two from column B. But if you work at it sufficiently, you'll be sure to end up quite unexpected!

A work in progress -- coolness! One more thing to put into your novels/movies.

Don't forget that George W. Bush received warnings that Osama was planning to strike earlier that year, and didn't investigate. And that he advised Willie Brown not to fly on September 11, 2001. 9/11 may have been Mohammed Atta's plan, but passively-aggressively letting it happen was the Bushies' plan.

If true, very sad indeed.

And then, to think that after George W. Bush let it happen, millions of Americans said, "We must get behind Bush and not question ANY of his positions! I'm so glad Gore lost! Bush is The Right Man!" . . .

Heh --- lack of a money economy is another similarity!

Nice!

I'm guessing that most of those sorts of things are pretty much up to individuals, parents & communities? They sound like they must be quite wise and also world-crafty. I think I could live happily in that kind of political system. Are there also local level Councils --- those who do or might consider the positive and negative consequences of any or many of those things listed?

Yep. And there are town councils, for the different incorporated cities on Bodus. They deal with infrastructural things like the postal service, as opposed to moral/cultural/social issues like teen curfews or indecent exposure laws.

Hihi! Oezha...oazha is an old (very old!) Daine word for orgasm. With or without perception altering plant derivatives.

Oh, wow! Great minds think alike! Oezha makes you feel as if you're having an orgasm, after all, kind of. There's such a glorious history of oezha use on various Leholan planets. Did you know, for instance, that in the Povoian civilization that once existed on Kankonia, a boisangatru (warrior assigned to special operations to expand the Povoi's empire) was given oezha the night before a fight to see an omen of how to win the mano-a-mano combat? Or that Sivrut, a trendy religious movement in the dying days of the Povoian Empire, stated that oezha was the secret, just-discovered, long-lost key to understanding life and the afterlife?

Interesting. A thirteener. Obviously, the best, luckiest generation of all!

Exactly. They say thirteen is the floor buildings skip, the day on which you don't want Friday to fall, which bolsters their choice of "13er" as a name for the unwanted Generation X.

Well, there's a thing.

Well, I took a let us guess your generation personality quizzes and got, perhaps unsurprisingly Millennial.

Your turn!

I got Millennial too! Even less surprising, because am one!

Although I've never bought a television, so I sort of fudged around with my answers to 9 and 10. And no cellphone, so the only thing I use my phone for is phone calls. And question #21: Did you cohabit with your significant other before marriage? Why is the last of "Of course I did", instead of "Am doing now!"? Aren't the majority of Millennials still unmarried? And Martin Shkreli is a Millennial (born 1983), not an Xer!

Actually, yes. In my experience, Protestantism generally takes the form of "high church" denominations (Lutheranism, Anglicanism) that are (quasi-)liturgical in nature or else "low church" denominations (Baptism, Evangelicalism, Oneness and all the squillions of independent denominations) that are non-liturgical in nature. The former I'd characterise as "form without function", while the latter I'd characterise as "excitement without cause". Historically, they all lack the deep theology and common experience of the Universal Church; they derive from human founders who base their practices on their own desires and wills; their theologies and doctrines are radically altered even from those of their founders; they have in general no sense of communion.

I guess most importantly, they lack one key belief and practice of the Universal Church, and that is the liturgy, the Eucharist itself.

If you lived on Kankonia, I imagine you would belong to the Hazumi faith. Hazumas has saints, and Hazumi priests have liturgies wherein they cook these delicious liturgical sharks!

(._.) _(_^_)_

O mares of deepest starless night, bide, stay by me!
O Queen of Night, gaze from on high upon me;
Oh cast over us thy ebon cloak, even as I gaze lovingly upon her,
Aguy! Under stars I awaken : I do not see her.


. . . .

I evergrieve in joy and mirth:
I watch mothers rejoicing and daughters playing
yet I too long sought and ever shall seek that in fruitless search

I evergrieve in joy and mirth:
for the blacks of starless night I eversee
for amid gales and storms I evertread

I evergrieve in joy and mirth:
there those things are for your eyes
yet near at hand blind I stumble

You have any drawings of her on this site (or Frathwiki)?

https://www.deviantart.com/elemtilas/ar ... -791909584

Thanks for sharing your lovely poetry! And your daughter is beautiful -- black hair and green eyes? Does that look like a Daine version of her?

Good thing about crosses is we don't bear them alone. And anyway, the day is soon coming when I can set it down and look up...

to see her face...

Wait, "soon coming"? Are you saying you're terminally ill? Does this mean the world will never get to see your published compilation on The World? This is more bad news.

Goodness! They're eleven & twelve somethings! Beautiful, smart, creative boys.

Oh, that's good to hear. So they're from the Fifth World Generation!

No, I think what's really a travesty is that none of the Daine are bisexual! We need bisexual Daine, lesbian Daine, gay Daine, asexual Daine, transgender Daine, genderqueer Daine! Oh, and please make one of your Daine agendered or bigendered!

If you only knew...

Or rather, if I only understood well enough to be able to explain!



These things don't exist among Daine because they aren't human --- that doesn't mean they're a race of perfectly binary nothing in between. The reality is that their experience and their nature is entirely other. And, as with many things about Daine I don't talk about, I just don't have the understanding to make it plain. And, worse, mislead through poor explanation.

A mystery that humans cannot know! You've just stricken the golden mean between having rubber-forehead aliens with entirely human souls and psychology and having aliens that no human reader can identify with because they're not human enough, and you've made them the center of your conworld! Brilliant!

Whoa, I wonder if my parents could sense that I was going to be bisexual before they found about it when I was 13.

I would not be surprised! Did you ever ask?

No. But I could!

Wow . . . is all I can say.

Wonky as in wacky, or wonky as in wonkish?

Wonky as in rickety or off-centre or, you know, just plain wrong.

Oh.

Well, it was a homonymous word. I just had to ask.

Tagalog is one of my favorite natlangs. It's a shame I can't find a good English-Tagalog dictionary.

Inday's family are from Leyte, so I'm learning Waray-Waray. Tagalog sounds all different to me.

If I recall correctly, there are over a million (or was it a hundred thousand?) articles in the Waray-Waray Wikipedia.

I have worn a turtleneck every day of my life for more than two decades.

I hope the world record book people are paying you well!

Are you saying I'm the only person on Earth who's worn a turtleneck that consistently for that long? It would be pretty cool if I were!

Shaleyans are genetically engineered humans who live on Shaleya, the eighth planet in the Refea Solar System. They were created when the Greys of Tziel followed a scriptural order to genetically engineer humans from "the Fifth World" (Halenea) and place them on "the Eighth World" (Shaleya). They were genetically designed to be incapable of doing evil. They live on a planet on which most of the plants and animals are found nowhere else in the known universe, and are stewards of the wildlife there. They speak a split-S SVO language that uses footnotes.

Hmg! Genetically incapable of doing evil... Now that I have to hear more about!

Basically, the Tzielites learned that the human genome had been completely deciphered, and they had found out where evil lay in humanity's genome. They got to work taking the DNA and zygotes and embryos of Halenean humans and cut and spliced and engineered to completely eliminate the parts that would make evil possible. Then they set the first Shaleyans up on their planet, never before colonized by sapient life, with walkie-talkies and other technology, and raised them to the adulthood of the first generation. From there, Shaleyan civilization began, and the Greys of Tziel began watching them from more of a distance. But over the next few generations, they saw many Shaleyan humans were LGBTQIA. Sometimes they went naked in public. Sometimes they masturbated in public. They developed a culture that included a transvestite subclass. And they'd even make "beyond-life pacts" wherein two Shaleyans would consent to the surviving one of the two continuing to have sex with the other's corpse after the first of the two to die passed away! They also discovered drugs like phamein, and used them, albeit responsibly. This was to the utter mortification of the puritanical Sahandists of Tziel, who had an extremely Sahandocentric view of what should be considered moral and what should be considered immoral. They called the people of that planet "Akhlayit", or "those who are destined to fall", which over the millennia evolved into the word "Shaleya" in the Shaleyan language. The Tzielites completely abandoned their Edenic planet-creation and stuck to life on Tziel or joined a ufopolis. They closed down all the Tzielite bases on Shaleya.

There are many mixed Kankonian/Shaleyan or Kankonian/Tentan people, and even splicechildren who have Kankonian or Shaleyan or Tentan (human) DNA and Tzielan or Tayaonit (Grey) DNA.

Okay, I see.

So, whole nother layers of gene editing for designer children!?

Yep! Special xenomedical expertise like you'd find aboard an ARV!

Some of the Daine cultures have arranged marriages? I hope none of the teen-age boyfriends and girlfriends end up like that Japanese couple who weren't meant to be and ended up killing themselves.

Certainly a tragedy, when that happens!

Some regions of Westmarche and Withwandiê are known for the practice. The marriages thus made are generally not life-matings. They're ways of spreading genetic influence across a wide area and end up being either temporary unions or marriages for making children.

And as for fourteen or fifteen year olds doing those kinds of things, puhleeease!! That would be like an eight or nine year old human having such a relationship!! They don't even hit puberty until their mid to late twenties!

Oh cool, so marriages aren't permanent there! What an interesting concept! And on Bodus, it's the opposite: puberty begins between 3 and 4, and the Seeking occurs between 4 and 7. (As I stated in the Bodus thread, ages 4-6 on Bodus are like ages 16-24 in Western civlization!) Then again, Bodus is the fifth planet from a large sun, so it takes 3.65 Earth-years to complete one Bodus-year.

What's interesting is that Howe & Strauss actually predicted that Xers would be overprotective (and very Von-Trappesque) when raising what they call the New Silent Generation. They say Xers were unwanted, neglected, and permissively raised children who don't want their own children to have to go through what they went through. They said "New Silents" would be suffocated like the seen-and-not-heard children of the Silent Generation.

Well, at least the von Trapps were Austrian and not Prussian!

Hee-hee-hee!

The New Silents, I think, might just end up doubly suffocated: by over-bearing & overly-protective parenting styles as well as by the narrow confines of their techaddiction.

Definitely. Except instead of "children should be seen and not heard", it's going to be "Why won't my children speak to me instead of playing Angry Birds all day?"