Random Conworld idea thread

[cybrxkhan]

I wonder if the skins of potatoes are varied enough that they could be used for divination. It might be an interesting little tidbit for my Aidisese culture. Something like pick a potato, peel it off, and see what patterns it has, like tea leaves or something.

[thaen]

Yeah. Totally. I don't see any reason why not.
Perhaps they could soak it in a chemical, then press it onto a medium (I'm not sure how advanced you culture is, but if they are reading potatoes, they can't be that far along ) like paper or a light-color bark and read that.

[Ossicone]

I had this idea for the Amjati a few days ago.

Most Amjati will eat using a spoon and knife except for the nobility. They will eat using only their hands. The idea being that noble hands are clean from not working and that they have the resources to have food prepared for them in small finger sized bits.

[thaen]

Not that bad of a reason, actually. I find it quite astereotypical.

[cybrxkhan]

*arise, dead thread, arise!*


Had a little idea for my Athlian conculture (basically Arab-Native American-Silk Road-ish nomads/somewhat urbanized traders):


Itching (like when you want to scratch yourself) is believed to be caused by mischievous but well-meaning elf/fairy-like creatures called "sand guards" in the classical Athlian language. The sand guards are supposed to warn you that malevolent spirits are trying to seep into your body by sprinkling some magical red-colored dust stuff on you that causes you to be itchy - when you scratch, you're chasing the malevolent spirits away. The itchier you are, then usually the more malevolent the spirit is. However, sometimes the sand guards, being mischievious, spread too much of their magical dust for the lulz and cause you to be more itchy than necessary.

In Athlian culture, if you are itchy, it is considered proper to start scratching as much and as necessary as you can, in order to remove the bad spirits as quickly as possible. However, you have to do it away from others so the bad spirits don't go to them.

Also, monkeys are always itchy because the sand guards love trolling them.

Lastly, the magical red-colored dust stuff is believed to be red because when you scratch your skin turns red.

Thoughts? Anything that doesn't make sense?

[eldin raigmore]

So OK, I've been thinking of worlds where biology needs more than 64 amino-acids.
There are two ways that give you roughly the same increased capacity in the genetic code:

1. If you keep your codons three nucleotides long as they are in real life, but increase the number of available nucleotide bases from four to six, you can have up to 6^3 = 216 different codes, counting the "stop" codes.
2. If you keep the same four nucleotide bases we have in real life, but lengthen the codons to be four nucleotide-bases long instead of just three, you can have up to 4^4 = 256 different codes, counting the "stop" codes.

So far I've made most progress on the four-base codons.

I have 116 amino-acids; I haven't decided what they'll be yet, but I'm sure that wouldn't be the most interesting part of the story anyway.

The "stop" codons are any codon with at least three Gs; GGGN, GGNG, GNGG, or NGGG, where N stands for any of the four nucleotide bases, A or C or G or T. (In real life, in the genetic code used in the nucleus of eukaryotic cells, there are three stop codons, TAA and TAG and TGA.)

Every gene ends with three consecutive stop codons, STOP-STOP-STOP. (In real life every gene ends with two consecutive stop codons, STOP-STOP.)

The consensus "start" sequence is:
tatt tctg aaat acag gagt gcgg cact cccg
where a lower-case letter means "it's usually that nucleotide-base, but sometimes may be some other nucleotide-base".
(In real life there's a different "consensus start sequence" for prokaryotes than for eukaryotes. For eukaryotes, or at least for animals, or at least for vertebrates, or at least for mammals, the consensus start sequence is
... g ccg ccR ATG GNN ...
, where R means "either purine", that is, either A or G. The first codon translated is the ATG, which stands for methionine. So the first amino-acid of any protein, when it's first tranlated, is N-formyl-methionine. Elsewhere in the gene ATG stands for ordinary, non-formylated methionine.)

Note that "my" fictional consensus "start" sequence contains a GCGG "stop" codon. So it's just the opposite of the Windows operating system; in Windows you have to go to the START menu to figure out how to stop the computer, while in "my" genetic code in order to start a gene you have to include a STOP codon. Translation starts with CACT CCCG; so when it's first translated every protein starts with the same two amino-acids.

The point of such a long start sequence is to unambiguously establish the reading-frame. Out of the thirty-two positions in the sequence, the most base positions that can match up when it's shifted to overlap its original position, is twelve; if it's shifted two or eight positions, twelve of the bases match where they're shifted to. Second prize is if it's shifted one or three or four or sixteen positions, in which case eight of the bases match up to where they're shifted to. To sum up, if two sequences match the start-sequence consensus pretty well, they can't overlap; if two sequences overlap, they can't both match the start-sequence consensus.

The point of having
tatt tctg aaat acag gagt gcgg cact cccg
instead of
TATT TCTG AAAT ACAG GAGT GCGG CACT CCCG
is that I don't want a change of just one nucleotide in the start sequence to completely knock out an entire gene. Thirty-two bases is a bit long to be really sure not even one base will get mutated.
But I've done the arithmetic, and, if the odds of each single base mutating (independently of any other mutation) to a different base are one-in-a-thousand or fewer (in real life it's between one in 10^4 and one in 10^9), and an organism has 30,000 genes each starting with a consensus start-sequence, then the odds that even one of those start-sequences will have four or more mutations is so low that Excel displays it as 0; in other words, less than about 10^-14.

The point of having thirteen different stop codes, namely GGGG and any other tetranucleotide that differs from it in only one position, is that if just one base in a stop codon gets mutated, there's a good chance the mutant codon will also be a stop codon.
If genes end with a sequence of two or three consecutive STOPs, then both (or all three) of them would have to be mutated for the translation to run on after the gene was supposed to end, and start translating the DNA after the end of the gene and sticking it onto the end of the forming protein.
I decided to end genes with three STOPs instead of just two, because I wanted a STOP to be read somewhere in the end-sequence even if the reading-frame shifted. So even if none of the three STOP codons is GGGG, even if the reading-frame is shifted, the reading mechanism will read at least one STOP codon in the end-sequence.

---

Note that the first thirteen places of the START sequence contain eleven "weak" nucleotides (6 Ts and 5 As) and only two "strong" nucleotides (a C and a G); it's AT-rich and CG-poor, so the two strands of the DNA will comparatively easily spontaneously "melt" apart there. OTOH the last seventeen places contain thirteen "strong" nucleotides (7 Gs and 6 Cs) and only four "weak" nucleotides (2 As and 2 Ts); it's CG-rich and AT-poor. So the strands won't easily "melt" apart from each other there.

[kiwikami]

Smart things.

Are you... you are. You're con-geneticsing. This... you...

I feel so stupid after reading this. I understood about 68.25% of it, thanks to a high school Organic Chemistry course that covered this. I understand start sequences and whatnot, and if I dug out my old textbook, I could probably comprehend even more of what you are saying. But... I could never... wow.

*clap* *clap* *clap*

[Lambuzhao]

I'm maybe a step ahead or just behind Kiwikami. But reading it, Eldin, it's just amazing how elegant the whole DNA double-helix is, how it became so ACCIDENTALLY over a billion or so years, and can even be made to include even more amino acids than what exist in nature. Your post reminds me of a recent article in Discover or SciAm about XNA, how scientists are creating strands of DNA with artificially produced amino acids that up till now did not exist.

Viz.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109443/
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2 ... genes.html
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notro ... -like-dna/

And I was recently (after the male child-unit and I watched a good bit of Alien Planet) reading about alternatives to carbon-based macro-molecules.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetic ... ochemistry

Codons away, My Friend! Codons away!

[decem]

I had a vision that the traditional dress of the Sarian king is basically a toga.

[Lambuzhao]

I had this idea for the Amjati a few days ago.

Most Amjati will eat using a spoon and knife

Why not a spife?
http://zesprikiwi.com/wp-content/upload ... pifes1.jpg
{Sorry about the retina-burning day-glo colors}

except for the nobility. They will eat using only their hands. The idea being that noble hands are clean from not working and that they have the resources to have food prepared for them in small finger sized bits.

This reminds me of my ex-girlfriend who is Muslim -
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_do_Muslim ... right_hand

Spoiler:

She similarly thought she was noble & did not need to work.

Much of Arabian (Middle Eastern) cuisine is made into small chunks, skewered, or stewed into (thick) pastes, precisely to be eaten with the three fingers, or by dipping/sopping with bread.

[Ànradh]

Cool genetics stuff.

I learned something very recently about how the non-complementary bases in DNA can sometimes pair due to quantum tunnelling of a proton, for example, changing the shape of the base. Not sure if this would have any relevance to your work, but I thought you might find it interesting none-the-less.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_do_Muslim ... right_hand

*twitch* Could the guy not have left it at "'cause the Prophet said so" and leave it at that?
Using ones right hand to eat will not make one think more logically, any more than using ones left will make one think any more 'intuitively'...

[Lambuzhao]

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_do_Muslim ... right_hand

*twitch* Could the guy not have left it at "'cause the Prophet said so" and leave it at that?
Using ones right hand to eat will not make one think more logically, any more than using ones left will make one think any more 'intuitively'...

:gla: gabh mo leisgeul - my bad.
I could've picked a less hair-raising, less Quran-thumping explanation.
The debbol made Bobbie Bucher do it.

[Ànradh]

Hah! Math fhèin. :P

[eldin raigmore]

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_do_Muslim ... right_hand

*twitch* Could the guy not have left it at "'cause the Prophet said so" and leave it at that?
Using ones right hand to eat will not make one think more logically, any more than using ones left will make one think any more 'intuitively'...

:gla: gabh mo leisgeul - my bad.
I could've picked a less hair-raising, less Quran-thumping explanation.
The debbol made Bobbie Bucher do it.

It's wrong anyway.
The reason is that in the desert there's nothing to use as toilet paper and the Bedouins -- "those who lack" -- don't have enough water to wash anything clean. So they use their left hands to wipe their butts. You don't want anybody to touch any food with their left hand, especially if they can't have cleaned it since the last time they used it to wipe their own or some child's or invalid's butt.

Of course, theoretically, you can scrub a hand clean using sand.
Using sand on your butt would really chap your ass (or chafe your arse, depending on your dialect), though.
You could wipe your butt with cloth; but then how could you clean the cloth without water? A bedu couldn't afford to throw such cloth away. And scrubbing cloth with sand just doesn't work the way scrubbing skin with sand works.

So, just like one congregation of Nazarenes I once met, the rule is that whatever the poorest members of the congregation have to do, is the ethical thing for all the other members to do.

[cybrxkhan]

Random idea I had while playing Morrowind - land-based flying manta rays.

[Lambuzhao]

I wonder if the skins of potatoes are varied enough that they could be used for divination. It might be an interesting little tidbit for my Aidisese culture. Something like pick a potato, peel it off, and see what patterns it has, like tea leaves or something.

Or even the knobs and tchotchky on the potato surface itself (like a Mandrake root)
http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/defaul ... k=OF-X2qkC

But the darker purple and blue potatoes have kaleidoscopic cross-sections, that could yield more interesting solanomantical results.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-96xyEdtX5jI/U ... rgundy.jpg

http://0.tqn.com/d/gardening/1/0/y/7/po ... l_blue.jpg

Or, they could use nuggets Chuño (kind of naturally freeze-dried potato) sort of like divination knucklebones or Urim and Thummim.

[eldin raigmore]

In real life, in many cultures (not just ours), many people (not just men) think men should have meat to eat every day.
Some go further and say boys also should have meat every day.
Some go further in a different direction and say men should have meat with every meal.

---

Can anyone imagine a conpeople/conworld/conculture in which this was, in fact, true?

---

Not quite an example:
Poul Anderson once wrote a story about a mutant group of humans on another planet whose boys could not make it through puberty unless they ate the meat of a grown man. One victim was enough for four boys, but not for five, so I guess they needed to eat more than 20% but not more than 25% of an adult man's flesh.
Therefore every sexually mature male human had committed cannibalism at least once, and probably only once.

[Iron]

In real life, in many cultures (not just ours), many people (not just men) think men should have meat to eat every day.
Some go further and say boys also should have meat every day.
Some go further in a different direction and say men should have meat with every meal.

---

Can anyone imagine a conpeople/conworld/conculture in which this was, in fact, true?

I assume that the people there would most likely need a special chemical/whatever found only in meat and not in any other plant or whatever, or that those plants or whatever are very hard or impossible to get.

Or a conculture of cannibals/anti-vegetarians/etc.

[Lambuzhao]

1) The easiest scenario would be inaccessability to plant matter, or extreme difficulty in accessing the same:
Deserts, Arctic regions; secondarily mountaintops, caves.


2) If the race developed from a purely carnivorous ancestor....?
Like a felid or canid or dromaeosaurid or strigid....?
But one of the interesting, apparently concommitant trends that helped lead to domestication in both cats and dogs was the increased ability to digest plant (specifically starchy) material.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/obs ... stication/

This, of course, has nothing to do with a putative independent evolution of said animals into a sentient species.

[cybrxkhan]

The Bosmer or Wood Elves in the Elder Scrolls sort of have that, except where the entire race - both men and women - have to eat meat. However, this is more due to magical/supernatural reasons, where (if I remember correctly), they made a pact with some god where they would basically gain some awesome abilities but it required that they respect nature/the forest/whatever and only eat meat. (I think - hopefully I didn't butcher the TES lore too much) While the reasoning behind that is magic/supernatural, it might work well as a religious or mythical excuse for why cannibalism is practiced.

I wonder if the skins of potatoes are varied enough that they could be used for divination. It might be an interesting little tidbit for my Aidisese culture. Something like pick a potato, peel it off, and see what patterns it has, like tea leaves or something.

Or even the knobs and tchotchky on the potato surface itself (like a Mandrake root)
http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/defaul ... k=OF-X2qkC

But the darker purple and blue potatoes have kaleidoscopic cross-sections, that could yield more interesting solanomantical results.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-96xyEdtX5jI/U ... rgundy.jpg

http://0.tqn.com/d/gardening/1/0/y/7/po ... l_blue.jpg

Or, they could use nuggets Chuño (kind of naturally freeze-dried potato) sort of like divination knucklebones or Urim and Thummim.

Ah, thanks for them pics. Those potatoes all look so funny.