Heinlein Readers Discussion Group
Saturday 03-22-2003
Gulf-Friday Universe
Here Begins the Discussion Log
You have just entered room “Heinlein Readers Group chat.”
sir iso root has entered the room.
sir iso root: Third Time Lucky.
AGplusone has entered the room.
Sarah Hoyt has entered the room.
Sarah Hoyt: Hello.
AGplusone: Hi, Sarah, Jussi, David
sir iso root: Hello.
AGplusone: All awake?
sir iso root: I,m here. Just a bit nervous.
AGplusone: Nervous about what?
sir iso root: Well this is just my second time at one of these readers-group chats.
Sarah Hoyt: I’m almost awake…. It wasn’t a good night. Allergies.
AGplusone: Very hard to get physically injured in these things … mostly the best/worst that can happen is a headache.
AGplusone: Sinus allergies?
AGplusone: Or has Spring sprung in the Rockies while we weren’t looking?
AGplusone: Was reading a letter from a friend in Anchorage, complaining that they’ve had a winter without much snow to speak of this year . . .
AGplusone: so one of her friends, a grandmother, moved to Colorado to be closer to her children and grandchildren — into three feet of snow on the ground, last week.
sir iso root: I couldn’t sleep very well either during the day. Somebody was drilling holes.
sir iso root: (I need to take a nap so I can stay up for this)
AGplusone: I can understand that! What time is it in Finland now?
sir iso root: Minutes to midnight.
AGplusone: We could move this a little earlier. Make the lazy ‘Mericans get out of bed earlier on Saturday. 🙂
AGplusone: Correction: make the lazy Californians get out of bed earlier on Saturday. I think the rest of the country probably gets up in time.
aggirlj has entered the room.
AGplusone: Hi, Jane.
Sarah Hoyt: 🙂 Getting out of bed earlier! Honestly, David. As for allergies — yeah, sinus. I’m confined in the house with four cats who think it’s spring, judging from the amount of shedding. Pixel has lost enough fur this week
aggirlj: Hi there. Missed you call.
Sarah Hoyt: to knit a cat.
sir iso root: No, the time is fine.
Sarah Hoyt: Hi Jane. Sorry I didn’t send message. I’m still late with my story-writing. 🙁
AGplusone: Was picking up my daughter’s cake ….
aggirlj: That’s okay,
AGplusone: [think we both owed her a call, Sarah]
Sarah Hoyt: YEah. I’ve been very bad to people in the real world. My sense of time always gets disturbed when I’m deep in aproject.
sir iso root: Hi Jane.
aggirlj: Hi Jussi.
aggirlj: Brian M is supposed to make it too.
Kultsi KN has entered the room.
aggirlj: Hi Kultisi
Kultsi KN: Hello all!
AGplusone: Speak of the D, and you can hear his wings
aggirlj: Sorry extra i
sir iso root: Hi Kultsi.
BJ Maranta has entered the room.
aggirlj: Hi Brian.
AGplusone: Hi, Brian, welcome.
BJ Maranta: Hey Howdy Hey, everyone!
Kultsi KN: Jane, JV is prolly chuckling right now…
Kultsi KN: Hello, Brian
aggirlj: Okay slipped in a new word.
Sarah Hoyt: Hi Brian.
BJ Maranta: I think I know everyone except sirisoroot
aggirlj: Jussi.
sir iso root: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, at your service.
BJ Maranta: Brian Maranta, at yours!
QinJingYou has entered the room.
AGplusone: IOW, the Finns have us outnumbered and outgunned. There’s two of them.
sir iso root: Pleasure.
QinJingYou: Greets
aggirlj: Hi Dave, didn’t see you.
BJ Maranta: Howdy David
AGplusone: Hi, David ….
Kultsi KN: Hello, David!
QinJingYou: I just got here. Out walking the puppu
QinJingYou: puppy
AGplusone: puppu is okay …. what’s it going to grow up to be? Butterfly or moth?
QinJingYou: Well, at 70 lbs is gonna be BIG
aggirlj: har
Kultsi KN: puppu is what we normally talk over here.
aggirlj: What kind? I have a mutt.
QinJingYou: Staffordshire terrier (terrieorist?)
AGplusone: Wondering whether I’ve succeeded in enticing Rufo here today ….
Sarah Hoyt: Terrier. Hopefully not Terriorist 😀
aggirlj: Is that one of those huge water dogs?
QinJingYou: aka Pit Bull Terrier
Sarah Hoyt: Without the conotations.
Sarah Hoyt: connotations.
QinJingYou: right.
QinJingYou: Actually a small dog, just very solid
sir iso root: Note puppu = hogwash in Finnish.
BJ Maranta: There is a Canadian comedy group called “Kids in the Hall” who do a song called “Terriers.” Quite funny, actually
AGplusone: owww, nice
AGplusone: [I was eventually going to ask]
QinJingYou: I’ll remember puppu, might come in handy
BJ Maranta: Me too!
Sarah Hoyt: Yeah.
Sarah Hoyt: Today we’re kiddless. They went to the home of friends hit with more snow than we got — to play.
AGplusone: Little kids call feces poopoo over here. As in “Look at the staffordshire Terrier’s poo-poo!”
AGplusone: Bet it pronounces the same.
aggirlj: Most of my snow melted. Means I have to do something about the garden soon.
Kultsi KN: puppu has approx the same meaning.
BJ Maranta: Rather than “Hog Wash” perhaps something Bull related?
Kultsi KN: shooting s****
Sarah Hoyt: Oh, Jane. Me too. Frankly, considering importing snow from friend’s yards so it doesn’t look so bad.
AGplusone: Probably a basic Indo-European root word.
Sarah Hoyt: Like pecuniary from Pecus = long haired cattle?
aggirlj: Yep, waiting for the neighbors to send me their demands soon. I have very eclectic gardening style.
AGplusone: After all, it’s one of the five basic elements that makes up the world.
Sarah Hoyt: Money and puppu.
AGplusone: Earth, Air, Water, Fire, and Poopoo.
Sarah Hoyt: 😀
AGplusone: Guess what God used to make man?
AGplusone: . . . which always makes a great transition into Robert Heinlein’s satirical stories.
BJ Maranta: Did Devo not say, “God made man, but a monkey supplied the glue?”
aggirlj: Ewwwww.
Sarah Hoyt: Oh, dear, I forgot to do my homework again…. Cat ate my homework.
AGplusone: You’ve heard the Stephen King joke, haven’t you, Sarah? “Werewolf ate my homework.”
AGplusone: Does anyone read “Gulf” as a straight story, not ironic, not satirical at all? If so, then why? Same question for _Friday_, please?
BJ Maranta: I think I did for both, David. At least initially.
sir iso root: First time Yeah. For both.
sir iso root: Gulf though less so.
AGplusone: For “Gulf” I certainly read it straight the first time … that was long ago, before the satire got truly obvious with Heinlein.
AGplusone: By the time Friday came out, I couldn’t help myself ….
AGplusone: He’d given us too much satire in Stranger in a Strange Land for it ever to be the same.
aggirlj: He sure did a number on all the religious fanatics.
BJ Maranta: Either the satire got obvious, or your method of approaching a story become different
Sarah Hoyt: I never viewed Friday as satirical. Still don’t. Gulf struck me as a bit tongue-in-cheekish (I can too make up words) from the beginning.
Bookman99R has entered the room.
aggirlj: Hi Rusy.
aggirlj: Rusty
Kultsi KN: Hi, Rusty!
Bookman99R: Hi!
BJ Maranta: Howdy Rusty
sir iso root: Gulf was so weird for me, that I did take it with a pinch of the proverbial.
AGplusone: Hi, Rusty … we’re asking whether any of us first read either/both Gulf or Friday straight, as non-satire, non-ironic first time through.
BJ Maranta: First time I read Gulf, it was a cool, action, spy-thriller story
Bookman99R: Gulf is all I managed to read – Friday went missing again
Sarah Hoyt: Hi Rusty.
AGplusone: . . . and probably the first one I read. It was before James Bond for me, by years!
Bookman99R: Hi Sarah
Sarah Hoyt: Friday has an habit of doing that. It’s all the spy stuff. 😀
Bookman99R: I took them as straight reads
AGplusone: Did you identify strongly with Joe Greene, or KB Baldwin, when you first read Gulf?
BJ Maranta: Joe
sir iso root: Neither.
Bookman99R: Although I did recognize the satire of the California eddycatshun in Friday
Sarah Hoyt: Actually ALL the Heinleins disappear in this house. We own three copies of each, but Robert is heavilly into Heinlein (as is proper) and Eric has just started reading grown up books and might — for all I know — be reading them.
Bookman99R: Neither
AGplusone: [I did too, it was after I’d read Have Spacesuit–Will Travel, and I was very attuned to that, after Kip’s story]
Sarah Hoyt: Oh, the political stuff was hillarious in Friday. But I didn’t view it exactly as satire. I mean, I just viewed it as that essential mixture of humor necessary to make any book worthwhile.
Sarah Hoyt: Because life IS funny. Often painfully so, but funny anyway.
AGplusone: I didn’t identify too strongly with Joe, at first … not even close to how I ID’d with other Heinlein protogonists.
BJ Maranta: Humor and/or a real attempt to predict a possible future.
AGplusone: I was fascinately with the Balkanization ….
AGplusone: fascinated
Sarah Hoyt: My favorite throw away line in all of the Heinlein books was “Smoke the toke that Jesus smoked.”
Sarah Hoyt: The balkanization IS a believable future.
BJ Maranta: I am surprised more Quebecois don’t ready Friday; at least there they got their separation
Bookman99R: lawd knows Nationalism ain’t dead
jilyd has entered the room.
Kultsi KN: Hi, Dee!
aggirlj: Hi Dee.
AGplusone: I thought it funny that the Lone Star State seems to be where all the guerilla armies train ….
BJ Maranta: How Dee!
sir iso root: ‘that’s kind of funny actually, since I’m just trying to light my waterpipe…
Bookman99R: and the forces resisting the “melting pot” are stronger than when Friday was written
aggirlj: LOL
AGplusone: Hi, Dee, inquiring whether we all first read “Gulf” and Friday straight rather than as ironic or satirical stories.
Sarah Hoyt: No. Nor is partisanism, and I’m not even talking politics. People seem to simplify the bewildering choices of the modern world by becoming one-issue persons. I know people who live and die cat rescue and care for nothing else.
Bookman99R: Hi, Dee!! Hugs?
Sarah Hoyt: Hi Dee.
BJ Maranta: brb
sir iso root: No Wacky-backy, just turkish molasses tobacco.
jilyd: Hi, all. I guess I mixed myself up. I thought chat wasn’t due top start until 1700 EST.
Bookman99R: good point, Sarah
AGplusone: The ultimate sign of the breakup of a civilization: when people cease thinking of themselves as citizens of it — rather as Los Angelos, etc. …
Sarah Hoyt: And heaven knows my husband for instance can speak computer for hours and I don’t even understand him.
Bookman99R: My point xactly, David
Sarah Hoyt: And then since I became a pro writer, I find myself running into and around with all other pro writers, to the point that I don’t realize in jokes are in jokes.
AGplusone: one-issued on any point, but especially something that can’t collesce?
Bookman99R: I head there are Mexican Separatist extremists in So. Cal.
Sarah Hoyt: Yeah, David. Often the extremes people go to in stuff that’s perfectly marginal divides them from the rest of society.
AGplusone: Like we’re patricians? Or like we’re Baptists? Or like we’re Sons and Daughters of the War of Northern Aggression?
Sarah Hoyt: Something like that.
Bookman99R: I’m a Redneck, meself
AGplusone: I’m a “liberal” . . . whatever that means, or a Green.
BJ Maranta: ok, back
AGplusone: First, rather than . . . a ‘Mericun
Sarah Hoyt: But also — honestly, I have known people who will not talk to you if you let your cats out for the occasional stroll.
Sarah Hoyt: I used to be an anarchist, but then I grew up….
Bookman99R: whack-jobs evereywhere, not so?
Sarah Hoyt: Oh, I’m very American. Worked hard to get there.
jilyd: Maybe I would feel a lot better about identification as an Irish-American or African-American or Mexican-American or you name it, if “American” came first.
Sarah Hoyt: Yes, but it’s also these people are very committed — they know the truth and it’s become a religion and they’re not willing to compromise, even enough for sanity.
Bookman99R: yep, “…this land is my land…”
BJ Maranta: But, Dee, by putting it second, I always thought that made it the noun, and the other word the adjective, thus emphasizing the noun…
Sarah Hoyt: I’m American. I was born in Portugal due to a clerical mistake in the administration of the universe (new Angel, name Michael Smith) and corrected the mistake as soon as I could.
AGplusone: Looking back at what Voltaire was fighting: did everyone think “I’m Gascon,” or “I’m Westphalian,” or I’m “Suffolk,” or I’m a “New Yorker.” Was that part of the reason for all the turmoil even . . .
Sarah Hoyt: I am NOT Portuguese-American. Something completely different.
AGplusone: under the determinatistic governments, Divine Will of Kings and all that?
Bookman99R: I know a guy at work, was just granted Citizenship – gave me warm fuzzies
Sarah Hoyt: It was great when I got mine. I kept waking up smiling for years.
jilyd: I don;t really mean the phrase, Brian, but the sentiment. And if you left out the hyphen, I think you would be right, grammatically. Not so sure with the hyphen.
BJ Maranta: Good point
Sarah Hoyt: We teach kids they’re American. Not that we have much choice. Other than that, they’re Heinz 57.
AGplusone: We’re too many generations into this country for One Hyphenate-Americans to work, Dee.
AGplusone: My daughter is an Irish-Italian-Russian Jew-Filipina-Norwegian-American.
Sarah Hoyt: You know, at school they had the kids color the regions of a map their ancestors came from. I had them color the whole map, water included. … if you go back far enough. 🙂 The teacher was upset, but that was HER problem.
aggirlj: Cool.
BJ Maranta: lol
jilyd: Yeah, lots of us are. I think it is grand to celebrate all the cultures in your background, but not to lose the connection to each other as Americans.
jilyd: Love it!
Sarah Hoyt: That is OUR specialness. We are Heinz 57 — all flavors.
Sarah Hoyt: I didn’t realize how different we were until my mom came over and kept complaining that there wasn’t a “national look”
AGplusone: And Heinlein, who had English, Irish, Dutch, German, Austrian …. probably didn’t think of himself as anything more than an American from Missouri, living in Santa Cruz, California, when he wrote Friday.
jilyd: Somewhere I read, fairly recently, (was it someone’s post on afh?) that one of the great benefits to Americans is that we can adopt the best of all cultures that have gone into making America, whether it is personally “ours” or not.
Sarah Hoyt: BUT I think Heinlein was right about the fragmentation.
Bookman99R: I figure if my daughter marries a Greek-Russian, my grandkids will be Norwegian-Irish-
Bookman99R: Greek-German-English-Russians
Sarah Hoyt: Do you find yourself encourating her to do this?
jilyd: LOL!
Sarah Hoyt: Encouraging.
BJ Maranta: Lol, Rusty
Bookman99R: It’s a joke, Sarah
Sarah Hoyt: I figured that. But I must be missing something.
jilyd: AAcronym, Sarah.
Sarah Hoyt: Oh. I’m acronym-blind.
jilyd: Spell it out.
AGplusone: The N word, very evil, Rusty.
Sarah Hoyt: 😀
jilyd: He’s bad, isn’t he, Sarah?
Bookman99R: Thank you, David
Bookman99R: Anything to dilute it, IMO
aggirlj: I was workin’ on it . . . . used too many letters.
AGplusone: So, on Melting Bowl or Salad Bowl, which way are we going? Is the difference substantial? Is pointing to a difference, important?
Sarah Hoyt: Yes, but… Okay, today I opened the door to the mailman and was standing there, and I said something about “Niggling packages” and then stopped, worried
jilyd: Didn’t mean to silence the Finnish contingent while we talked about Americans. Kultsi, J-V? Didn’t run you off, did we?
Sarah Hoyt: Because he was black, and did he know this word has nothing to do with race.
Bookman99R: How about Nacho Platter? Gotta have a good sauce to tie it all together
AGplusone: Are people who insist on Salad Bowls more or less likely to lack common tolerance and courtesty? Any observable rules?
Sarah Hoyt: Which is silly, but we’ve got to that.
aggirlj: We go which way our fates take us, there will unfortunaely always be some racism and backlash. It’s jus the way it is.
AGplusone: I think cohesiveness is an important point for any society …
Sarah Hoyt: To some extent. One of the reasons I’m an American (by choice) is because we have more latitude to go off on our own little tangents than anywehre else.
sir iso root: No, still here. The pipeload was stlilborn. Have let it rest and start over after a while.
Bookman99R: right – gotta have the cheese sauce to stick it all together, smears onto everything
Kultsi KN: Still the US amplifies the ethnicity, frex.
AGplusone: Mannerheim, for example, was really what? A Prussian?
jilyd: It is not quite so bad with someone that knows you though. I was talking with a black, male client, and laughinginly said something like, “You better do so-and-so, boy.” The minute the words were out of my mouth, I realized that
Kultsi KN: Russian
aggirlj: We’re overconditioned on that Dee.
jilyd: it sounded different from what I meant. I apologized and explained that I would have made the same kind of remark to my husband or a colleague, and he just laughed and said he knew my attitudes well enough not to take offense.
Kultsi KN: At least he was an officer of the Russian armed forces.
AGplusone: I have a friend, spells his last name Ollikainen (first name Ari). First thing a lawyer friend of mine, who speaks Hebrew, asked him was: “were your ancestors Jews?”
Bookman99R: The flip side, Dee is the person who filed a lawsuit against Southwest(?)
aggirlj: ga
jilyd: Almost looks Armenian to me, David.
Kultsi KN: Very Finnish.
AGplusone: Kultsi, Jussi? What … thanks, K.
sir iso root: No, Arijoutsi is the ancient long form. Means like archer.
Bookman99R: ‘Cause the Flight Attendant tried to settle a seating dispute with “eeny-meeny-miney-moe”
aggirlj: Oh dear.
aggirlj: That’s funny!
AGplusone: But to Phil Barnett, a sephardic Jew, that last name sounded just like Hebrew.
Sarah Hoyt: My brother is Alvarim, a family name transmitted from grandfather to grandson and very rare in Portugal. I couldn’t figure out where it had come from until I came to the states and got a doctor named Avrim (pronounced the same way)
jilyd: Oh, yes, I saw that nonsense. A good case for frivolous lawsuit damages, if there is no more to it than the initial reports.
Bookman99R: claimed that it was originally a racist chant, or some such
Sarah Hoyt: Very silly.
Kultsi KN: Alvari is a male’s name here.
jilyd: I grew up hearing that version, but haven’t in many years.
Sarah Hoyt: Yes, but that comes from the root of the Portuguese Alvaro and it has something to do with elves.
aggirlj: And did we even know it was such.
Bookman99R: It was always a “tiger’s toe” to me
Sarah Hoyt: YEs.
jilyd: Brazil nuts used to get called a similar name, sometiomes, too. Would he have sued if his pkg of nuts had Brazil nuts?
BJ Maranta: I have also heard “Nickle’s toe” Rusty; which I admit makes no sense
Sarah Hoyt: “If he (?) let him go?” My kids would chase each other wildly after saying that, with one pretending to be the tiger.
BJ Maranta: Hollers, Sarah
Sarah Hoyt: It MIGHT have meant that once upon a time, but now the kids don’t even know. I think my kids said “roar”
Sarah Hoyt: Which doesn’t meter, but hey!
Bookman99R: It doesn’t _have
Bookman99R: to make sense to a kid
jilyd: I heard it both ways, I never used anything but tigers toe. My parents were not liberals, but that was a crude and vulgar word that polite poeple did not use, in the househopld I grew up in.
BJ Maranta: Agreed, Dee
AGplusone: So, are these all ways that brown monkeys tell the pink monkeys? Twisting back to Gulf …
Sarah Hoyt: 😀
AGplusone: so they can hunt them down and destroy them?
Bookman99R: likewise, Dee – my dad caught me with another chant
Bookman99R: “nigger” was a nonsense word to me then, but he froze my bones over it…
AGplusone: Why shouldn’t “superman” or “homo novis” or “master race” be an equally freeze your bones word?
Sarah Hoyt: Which are brown and which are pink, David.
Bookman99R: xenophobia always applies, IMO
jilyd: My father reacted that way when he heard me refer to a new boy in the neighborhood as “Gimpy.” Till he found out that A. That was the nickname the boy introduced himslef with; B. he did not have any sort of limp; and C. I had
Sarah Hoyt: And it does. Which is why I saw Gulf as an ironical tale.
AGplusone: Well, if you shave a brown monkey, what do you get?
jilyd: never heard of teh word gimp before to refer to anything but upholstery braid.
Sarah Hoyt: LOL Dee.
Bookman99R: No, David – my _dad_ gave me an Ice-Cold chewing out.
aggirlj: I’m not sure about Gulf, having not been able to read it, but fromas far as I’ve gotten in Friday I can see what the AP are getting into to.
AGplusone: I understood that.
sir iso root: Your dad didn’t know limped?
Sarah Hoyt: The AND it does referred to master rate.
Sarah Hoyt: race.
jilyd: No, I mean I didn’t know gimp as a slur against someone with a limp. My dad had not met the boy yet, and did not healize he did NOT have any limp.
AGplusone: So, here we are, writing in 1948, just after the war to exterminate those who planned a Master Race (two of them), and Heinlein is *seriously* advocating a Master Race? Somebody explain that one to me, please?
Sarah Hoyt: For my research, at one time, I had to read a bunch of things written in the nineteenth century about China and talk about freezing. I mean, that’s the other side of bakanization — my race is right everyone else’s is wrong.
Sarah Hoyt: I don’t think he was. Advocating it. ALthough there was the implication that if there were truly a master race, noblesse oblige, it would look after its weaker cousins.
AGplusone: The Wall, in China, was to keep out the Manchus ….
sir iso root: As a child I went to an “integrated” day-care. Regular and handicapped at the same place.
AGplusone: Yes, but who decides who gets assassinated?
Bookman99R: I didn’t see it as an advocacy, David – more like a prediction of evolution
aggirlj: Yes, that’s why I couldn’t think of an aswer, I agree not advocacy.
AGplusone: Who decides what toys the brown monkeys are allowed to play with. Telescopes must be out. Everyone knows the world revolves around the earth, don’t we?
jilyd: That sense of noblesse oblige, and that sense of evolution not advocacy, is why it did not chill me, I guess.
sir iso root: The evelution has not stopped idea.
Bookman99R: yeah
sir iso root: But still sentients hanging together against the universe in the final analysis.
Bookman99R: and a look at the question of, oh, call it “performance leveling”
Sarah Hoyt: David, I’m not saying that noblesse oblige would be enough of a protection. Some of the worst tyrants in the world honestly thought they were making the world better for others. However, I think Heinlein was trying to say
AGplusone: Evolution is something that happens but specization? We separate now? Breed good Aryan girls only to our heros … pedigrees extending back for generations, to keep the “mud people” out (to use a current phrase)?
Sarah Hoyt: if there were a master race, it wouldn’t exterminate the lower races, it would try to protect them.
AGplusone: Heinlein thought that?
sir iso root: But there is the hierarchy of loyalties question?
AGplusone: Then why does he have them leave to “be alone” in the words of the actress ….
BJ Maranta: Master Race is a lot about attitude, also, IMHO. A true “Master Race” would not be able to cop that attitude
jilyd: I saw Baldwin’s position as more that the evolution would occur, and it was important to foster the evolution among men and women of good will and responsibility, not the ones that would consider themsleves a master race.
jilyd: I didn’t see it as isolating, but developing.
Sarah Hoyt: A lot of Heinlein’s stories are — to me at least — like the scratch in a well-painted wall, showing what’s beneath. He doesn’t try to peel off the whole facade, just to make you think. And in that sense it works.
AGplusone: which attitude, Brian?
sir iso root: Self-offspring-parents-family-sept-population- and so on…
BJ Maranta: The “We is the Master Race” attitude. Most easily adopted by people who are in no way really “master” in any way
BJ Maranta: IE, less than average intelligence, compassion, etc
BJ Maranta: You know… Nazis 🙂
Sarah Hoyt: Actually, that would make a great funny T-shirt. “We is the master race”
AGplusone: And a vital population, Jussi, is maybe one in which the junior males are willing to go stand outside the herd on guard? I.e., his Naval Academy speech.
Bookman99R: OTOH, do you have the right to choose your mate, ect. to optimize the genes of your offspring?
BJ Maranta: LOL, Sarah
BJ Maranta: You can choose anyone you want, Rusty. The trick is getting her to agree to the idea 🙂
Bookman99R: Hey, I married up, intelligence-wise
jilyd: Me, too.
AGplusone: The trick, that Baldwin never really succeeded, was getting Greene to agree to the idea, also.
BJ Maranta: As did I
Sarah Hoyt: B J — Uh? I always thought it was a matter of picking him and then convincing HIM it was his idea.
Sarah Hoyt: Worked for me.
BJ Maranta: A chacun son gout, Sarah
sir iso root: David-> Different strategies in different situations.
Bookman99R: our daughter is in 3rd, reading on 9th, math 6th
AGplusone: Greene sticks (1) because they’ll kill him if he doesn’t, and (2) because he wants to pay Keithley back for killing the waitress, and (3) because he wants Gail.
sir iso root: Adaptability is key.
Sarah Hoyt: 3 is the root of it, I think.
BJ Maranta: Folks, I have to step out of the room for a bit… gotta cook supper. I’ll try back later, but don’t stick around on my account.
AGplusone: Greene never buys the “we pink monkeys” shall prevail.
jilyd: But does it neer grow beyond that?
Sarah Hoyt: I know people who have changed religion, culture, etc. for the sake of getting someone. And, what the heck….
aggirlj: See you Brian. 🙂
AGplusone: We’ll be here another two hours, Brian.
BJ Maranta: Cheers, All!
BJ Maranta has left the room.
Bookman99R: I gotta cook, too
jilyd: Bye, Brian.
aggirlj: See you Rusty, come on back.
Bookman99R: promised Jeri Eggs Benedict again
jilyd: Cook for me, too? I don’t wanna.
Bookman99R: I’ll leave it up, though
AGplusone: When Greene says that he’s still not bought into the Homo Novis idea, but will go after Keithley, marks the point at which I started identifying with him.
Bookman99R: pop in when I can
Bookman99R: would if I couold, Dee
AGplusone: So Greene is the Man Who Refused to Learn a Lesson, I think.
jilyd: I’ll take the thought for the deed, Rusty. Yumm.
sir iso root: I do think Kettle-Belly rail-roaded Joe. But I think if you give him the benefit of the doubt, he was actually sincerly worried about the Nova-bomb.
Sarah Hoyt: There is something to the brown monkey/green monkey. I call it the cucoo in the nest syndrome. Any kids noticeably smarter (at least intellectually) than their parents get treated like pink monkeys in the house.
Sarah Hoyt: Even those who don’t know they’re smarter.
AGplusone: I agree. But Greene refused to buy the bill of goods. He’d already decided (1) Keithley had to go, and (2) the Nova bomb was important enough, and (3) if Gail was going, he had to go too.
AGplusone: Maybe those who didn’t buy into the Lodge thing was what Baldwin was looking for, truly. The rest had horseback accidents?
Sarah Hoyt: Um…
AGplusone: After all, Baldwin says he is just the leader of a branch of this superman organization.
Sarah Hoyt: I remember in Friday he talks about the so called supermen in their world and advises Friday against them.
sir iso root: There is an interressting contrast between Lost Legacy.
AGplusone: Tell us about it, Jussi …
Sarah Hoyt: Which would tend to support your theory, David.
Sarah Hoyt: (Have I mentioned that I hate it when you’re right?)
sir iso root: There the iron fist is much better hidden in the silk glove.
AGplusone: Baldwin’s a spider … weaves very tricky webs I think …
Kultsi KN has left the room.
Sarah Hoyt: brb
Kultsi KN has entered the room.
sir iso root: And In Friday, we really never know who is good and evil at all.
AGplusone: So if Baldwin spouts the ‘party line’ he’s doing two things: (1) keeping control of the branch into which he’s infiltrated, and (2) weeding out the real nutcases by arranging for them to have accidents.
jilyd: Well, I confess I was very obtuse on that point in Friday. I never put the superman planet together with Gulf’s homo novis until it came up on the ng.
aggirlj: AOhell again.
Kultsi KN: Yes, indeed
AGplusone: I think Baldwin may be just as much a rugged individualist as Joe Greene was … simply rose in the organization until he led part of it, then split with them later and let them go … or maybe forced them off earth.
AGplusone: I always wondered how come Mrs. Keithley didn’t belong.
sir iso root: Hmm. Was Kettle-Bely himself playing Horatio at the Bridge that time?
AGplusone: [or maybe she did, to another branch]
aggirlj: brb
AGplusone: He could have been, Jussi.
sir iso root: Maybe he took the hit himself to make sure nothing on earth would come after the supermen.
AGplusone: What do you find a particular contrast with Gulf and Lost Legacy, Jussi.
sir iso root: A nice bit of chaos as a diversion.
sir iso root: Lack of overt brutality.
AGplusone: It’s all off-stage.
sir iso root: Seeming squeamishness.
aggirlj: b
AGplusone: Or they seem to fight with their minds more off-stage than not in Lost Legacy.
AGplusone: Of course, the brown monkey is left behind in LL, isn’t he?
sir iso root: Just the same method that Michael’s murders are made more palatable to the Flower-power people.
jilyd: I’d say just teh opposite, David.
AGplusone: Yep. Back to the end of the line.
AGplusone: But it was soooo painless, Dee. Just ninety degrees from nothing … and back to standing ahint the door while they pass out brains again.
AGplusone: “ahint” (old form of “behind”)
aggirlj: k
AGplusone: Why would you say the opposite, Dee?
jilyd: Oh, I think we are at cross-purposes. UI meant not leaving the brown monkeys behind but showing them that teh capacity was in everyone.
jilyd: I know ahint the door, David.
AGplusone: Oh, I agree. The brown monkeys are all potentially pink monkeys. [was telling Jussi and K]
sir iso root: Yeah, Teach the mystic ways to boyscouts… 😉
jilyd: Remeber I lie in an area where some people still say ary and nary.
jilyd: Oh, gotcha.
AGplusone: That’s why the last two words in Gulf are “fellow men” …. and it’s not irony.
AGplusone: The words on the plaque on Joe and Gail’s grave.
Kultsi KN: I think we both speak some German, so it was not that strange.
sir iso root: In Lost Legacy that was a big argument ISTR.
AGplusone: So the monkeys left behind are real monkeys, never evolved, but now free to do so?
Sarah Hoyt: yeah
AGplusone: Because the first team has moved out and vacated the field?
jilyd: I read it comppletely literally, yes.
jilyd: First team? Not necessessarily. Current team.
AGplusone: IOW, the rats aren’t the second team after all. If we leave, east Africa gets busy again …. ? Chimps take over?
Sarah Hoyt: But there’s the aching head, the idea that this evolution will be a burden upon the monkey.
Sarah Hoyt: Thanks, Dee.
sir iso root: With the Howards of course, those who remainded, found an other way to skin that particular cat.
Sarah Hoyt: People usually do.
AGplusone: Well, Jerry Was a Man, after all.
Sarah Hoyt: :-\
Kultsi KN: I don’t see it that way, David, not logical. The rest may evolve, but they may devolve as well. Much of it is just a matter of perspective.
jilyd: More man than a corporation is, anyhow.
AGplusone: True test of homo sapiens: cheats at cards.
jilyd: Laughs, or need to?
AGplusone: Most judges I know would have accepted that as presumptive
jilyd: Which, David, cheating at cards?
sir iso root: There is the “Pail of crabs” principle OTOH.
jilyd: What’s that, Jussi?
AGplusone: yep. We’re talking about a nice little story, Jane: Jerry Is A Man, found in the same book Gulf is collected in … I think.
aggirlj: And that is?
aggirlj: Wondered if that was a typo or not.
AGplusone: Another species of created slaves, like Friday, except these are derived from improved apes … chimps ….
jilyd: Assignment in Eternity, yes. Also LL.
sir iso root: If you put crabs in a pail. Even with a very low edge. They won’t get out, because those that are close to getting out get dragged in by their mates.’
aggirlj: Ah.
AGplusone: Remember, Kultsi, when they mention finding the decendants of the generation ship in Orphans (possibly) devolved?
AGplusone: That’s in TEFL, right?
AGplusone: Or were they?
sir iso root: That was the problem with the Howards. Maybe Lost Legacy and Gulf/Friday were RAH’s attempts at a more sophisticated solution.
Kultsi KN: Right, it is. Culturally, yes, intelligence, no.
AGplusone: And maybe Beyond This Horizon is also another attempt?
Kultsi KN: But speaking of the ones left behind — the thinning of the gene pool…
AGplusone: The intelligence remains (the potential) despite the legends about evil Huff ….
AGplusone: Wonder what Huff’s log said?
Kultsi KN: The gene pool thing was also explained in TEFL.
Kultsi KN: Also that the ancestors for the orphans were hand-picked.
sir iso root: Did anyone think the various types of offworld colonies in Friday might have been a nod to Gordon. R. Dickson?
AGplusone: yabut, Day 8,234: The morons have formed a religion. They’re burning all books except the manuals in the converter. Today, Shakespeare went. I gotta get out of this place!
QinJingYou has left the room.
sir iso root: I think. its arguable that Heinlein himself may have thought Botany Bay as the best of new worlds.
AGplusone: He named it in a way that encourages you to think it in the tradition he accepted.
AGplusone: Give us “your poor, etc. . . . ”
sir iso root: Again The Generation spaceship is meant to be an attempt to spread out, rather than up.
AGplusone: And I like the way he had them buy shares in the colony.
AGplusone: tanstaafl
sir iso root: (in Orphans)
AGplusone: Well, the superman thing is interesting. In Gulf, he says separate the smarter; but in the Howard stories, he says, just live long enough and you’ll get there anyway.
AGplusone: Time Enough to Think!
AGplusone: No death taxes.
sir iso root: Except Theodore Bronson is still a chump after all those milennia.
AGplusone: And eventually, since you retain potency, and have the time to finagle your way off earth, you’ll take over.
AGplusone: Ted was a mutant
Sarah Hoyt: Time enough to think indeed. Jusi — most men are chumps for women.
sir iso root: His mother and lover in that case.
Sarah Hoyt: Well — personal experience intruding. Sorry. I’ll shut up and go wash clothes or something.
AGplusone: Well, the wimmen get to think … and lead the men around by their tongues longer, get better at it.
Sarah Hoyt: Well, doubly vulnerable.
sir iso root: Yeah.
AGplusone: Ever think what would happen if all those women around Lazarus got mad at him all at once?
Sarah Hoyt: Dr. Fraud would say.
Sarah Hoyt: THey don’t get to, because he does what they want him to.
AGplusone: Sharpie gives you a little taste of it ….
sir iso root: Lazarus is sort of the anti-Kettle-Belly. Pretends to be hardnosed, but deep down he’s a wuss.
sir iso root: (Like me)
jilyd: Lazarus definitely has a bigger mouth than Baldwin.
sir iso root: Kettle Belly speaks softly…
jilyd: Oh, yes.
sir iso root: I don’t ever remember his having tried to browbeat anybody into anything.
AGplusone: Who, KB?
jilyd: Well, he didn’t give “Joe Green” many options.
AGplusone: yeah
sir iso root: But everyone does what he wants anyway (Kettle-belly that is.)
AGplusone: join us or we bury you right down here
Sarah Hoyt: Lazarus. He did. I’m thinking THe Cat Who Walks THrough Walls. He did browbeat, but only another male.
jilyd: But he did not bluster about it.
sir iso root: Yes the threat was real. (The Big Stick).
Sarah Hoyt: Okay, girls, I’m sorry — I think it’s time we told them. I mean, I know we swore not to and all, but after all they’re innofensive — guys, Homo Novis is here. You may refer to us as women. Fortunately for you we find you cute
AGplusone: He browbeats Colin Campbell/Richard Ames because he’s his son. Tradition! as the Fiddler says.
Sarah Hoyt: I’m sorry. I’m feeling evil.
jilyd: LOL, Sarah.
aggirlj: Go girl.
AGplusone: Heinlein already told us your secret. Says the United States has been a matriarchy since its inception, just concealed from us.
AGplusone: Look at Big Nanny!
Kultsi KN: Folks, I’m about to drop. Got up kind of early. Heave a nice time.
AGplusone: You too, Kultsi
sir iso root: bye. be safe.
aggirlj: We will, see you later K.
jilyd: Night, K.
Kultsi KN has left the room.
AGplusone: I propose ten minute break. Back at 50 after the hour. Sarah, my dear, you have the conn.
aggirlj: kay, brb.
sir iso root: okay.
AGplusone: Try not to sail us to the Isla d’Amazons while I’m gone.
sir iso root: I’ll try to light the pipe again.
AGplusone: Juan Fernandez would be okay, tho.
AGplusone: So long as someone knows how to cook goat well.
jilyd: Seems to work about the same as venison, David.
AGplusone: . . . so, while we’re on break, tell us about the novel you’re writing, Sarah, my capitana?
AGplusone: [she may be watering all four of her cats … ]
AGplusone: Did anyone reread Robinson Crusoe for this chat?
AGplusone: Or, better, find a copy of those essays that were the third segment written by DeFoe?
AGplusone: The instinct to enslave seems so remarkable with his Friday.
jilyd: Gotta go, folks. I enjoyed the chat, as usual. Wishing a good evening to all.
jilyd has left the room.
AGplusone: As if, ‘well, I saved him from being et, so I can do anything with him I like.’
AGplusone: And there’s always got to be a Master and always a Servant
aggirlj: The slave usually decides who the master is.
AGplusone: The whole notion of virulent anti-slavery that runs through Heinlein’s books ought to be subject of a chat we have one of these days.
AGplusone: The more advanced (like Friday) his humans become, the more the appearance of slavery appears and the harder it is to get shut of it.
AGplusone: There’s a juvenile you ought to read for fun next, Jane. Citizen of the Galaxy. Very interesting story.
aggirlj: Okay. The progression.
AGplusone: One reason he became so anti-communist was the aspects of slavery, the determinism by the state, that it contained.
AGplusone: Every little square peg in its square hole
AGplusone: the ‘bugs’ in Starship Troopers … all cannon fodder
aggirlj: Tis hard for some to not use that system. What can’t be explained must have a safe slot.
Dehede011 has entered the room.
Dehede011: howdy, folks
aggirlj: Hi Ron.
AGplusone: The Puppet Master aspects of a controlling government, boss, alien species, anything, drove him up trees.
Dehede011: Hi Jane
AGplusone: Hi, Ron.
sir iso root: Okey. Ii’m back
Dehede011: Hi David
Dehede011: Jussi
Dehede011: Ms Hoyt
AGplusone: That’s why, when I go back to Gulf, after all that came later, I read Baldwin as either the villain or an infiltrator.
Dehede011: Okay
AGplusone: Or someone so plainly wrong that he has to be a foil for Friday to reject, as did her father.
AGplusone: We got into the overall thrust of RAH’s writings somehow, Ron.
sir iso root: Problem wasn’t with payload distribution. More of a plumbing related gunk up.
Dehede011: Easy enough to do. After all as you said, “If you only see one level you probably missed something.”
AGplusone: Yeah. :-):-)
Dehede011: So it is natural to always be checking your six with RAH
AGplusone: Have to look behind the smiley faces.
Dehede011: Do you recall the description of red headed men in TEFL
AGplusone: I finally replaced my copy of Tomorrow the Stars …
AGplusone: the sneaky ones?
Dehede011: It is a description of LL but more likely RAH himself
sir iso root: Ahhh.
AGplusone: We were talking about how the Judge really didn’t need Jerry to sing that song, all he really needed to know was:
Dehede011: Yes, basically to beware red headed men
AGplusone: Jerry cheated at cards.
Sarah Hoyt: David — sorry, I wasn’t being anti-social. Got unexpectedly called away for a phone call. 🙁
AGplusone: For the definition of homo sapiens.
Dehede011: That proved Jerry was human — sure
AGplusone: Figured that something came up.
AGplusone: Just as well, Sarah, you’d have sailed us directly to Queen Hypoleta (sp?) and we’d all be in chains. 🙂
Sarah Hoyt: However, the idea of anti-slavery is what called me to Heinlein, I think. we are all enslaved somehow, somewhere.
Sarah Hoyt: … Well, Hypolita, where I came from. But you guys can’t be kept in chains for long. That way you can’t cook for yourselves… and there we are again into slavery.
AGplusone: The ‘elbow room’ to breathe idea
Dehede011: RAH said that he could not even lock another person in a brig
AGplusone: Which may be why he was so good at getting them out …
sir iso root: I’m not so about KB. Maybe he hasn’t made his mind up, but wants to be there in the mix, when the crunch time comes.
Dehede011: Yes,
Sarah Hoyt: Well, slavery enslaves both slave and master. In fact, I’ve seen a lot of women who enslave men by doing EVERYTHING for them. Poor gits couldn’t survive without them.
Dehede011: Yes, Sarah, look up the Enneagram and read a thorough discussion of a type six personality
AGplusone: I think that’s fair about KB, Jussi. I’m serious about KB as the Man Who Learned a Long Lesson (over generations) between Gulf and Friday.
AGplusone: Which is why I suggested that RAH with Gulf was jerking Campbell’s chain and felt he needed to add the course correction that Gulf needs so it isn’t taken seriously
aggirlj: brb
Sarah Hoyt: And, David, what I’m working on is a Victorian Africa fantasy. The search for the eye of the first goddess. Imperialism and how it enslaves both cultures… (didn’t I lead that in nicely.) But we’re not on break anymore.
AGplusone: or as his last word on ‘homo novis’ … because all homo novis would be would be a secret Master of all the brown monkey slaves.
Dehede011: Which is why RAH rejects the Master Race role for Homo Novis. It doesn’t show in Friday
AGplusone: And how much good music can you play out of a belly button, Ron … Tu-bal-cain’s invention isn’t very much.
AGplusone: Two-canes = Tubalcain
Dehede011: Yes, I got into Mastery accidently of the past day.
sir iso root: Mmm. mebbe. maybe that is why they are “Quarantined” on their own world.
Sarah Hoyt: Accidental mastery?
AGplusone: Instead they’re little more than a cult of rather stupid humans off by themselves in a Coventry where, by-and-by, they’ll be erradicated.
Dehede011: Check me if I am wrong — but all I know of RAH’s life shows him much more involved in his own life than almost anyone I know
AGplusone: Right, but he ‘tended his own garden’ didn’t he?
AGplusone: Found his metier, and stayed in it.
Dehede011: Sarah, the question is – is Mastery a noun or a verb.
Dehede011: Am I a HN to be a master race in charge of the world or to live my own life
Sarah Hoyt: Most very smart people actually fit the homo novis type. They’re very smart in a way, but rather obtuse about other stuff. They can do higher math but have trouble with kitchen math, for instance.
sir iso root: Possibly the point of the whole fracas in Friday is to split all the offworld colonies and earth from each other…
sir iso root: The Opening salvo..
AGplusone: Just as the three colonies in the juveniles split off … a natural progression of things.
Dehede011: RAH seemed to want to be a universal guy but to spend his time chasing his own life
AGplusone: But in the very next novel he writes, he shows the effects of isolation, in Job …
Dehede011: Until he finds his own kind, David
Dehede011: First Margarethe (spelling??) and much later some others.
AGplusone: where the Bryan isolation took hold resulting in a repressive society where, pretty soon, the theocracy will come out of the cloakrooms and kill all them other brown monkeys who don’t worship god the right way.
sir iso root: Hmm. Isolation? You mean kidnapping, don’t you.
AGplusone: And then we’re back to the beginning: “If this Goes On …”
sir iso root: Having to live without roots, but hardly isolated.
Dehede011: In the past I’ve insisted RAH had a pattern from TEFL to TSBTS with a couple of exceptions
AGplusone: Well, the entire story is to get Alex Hergensheimer into the other ‘real worlds’ where something other than his narrow vision of a deterministic society can be discarded.
Dehede011: Now you make me wonder if Friday and Job were exceptions
AGplusone: something other exists or can be shown him and then his narrow vision discarded
AGplusone: ‘xceptions’ to what?
sir iso root: ga
AGplusone: I think he planned to turn them back into each other
Dehede011: I see what looks like a pattern before TEFL of playing with different ideas.
Dehede011: Then beginning with TEFL he starts playing with his perfect world
Sarah Hoyt: The serpent always bites its tail. Heinlein knew wayyy too much history to think any revolution lasted forever.
AGplusone: Right: the world developed by the Howards ….
Sarah Hoyt: WHich doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
AGplusone: but then by the time To Sail Beyond the Sunset comes, he’s worked in to it the business about tieing all the other multiverses in …
Dehede011: Immortality, time travel, medical tech off the chart, etc. He could live forever and associate with every exciting person he had ever known
Dehede011: Plus limitless weatlh
Dehede011: wealth
Dehede011: And a foe that was worthy of him
AGplusone: Except the Number of the Beast throws a wrench into the project … and other Mythic Worlds start showing up in the Howards’ world.
Dehede011: Yes,
Dehede011: But that left him a perfect world because as a novelist he could sell us books resolving the whole
AGplusone: And, oddly, some of these other mythic universes have humans that are long-lived as well. Aren’t Deety, Carter, Hilda and Jake long-lived?
AGplusone: Baldwin is clearly long-lived.
Dehede011: I had that sense whether justified or not
sir iso root: Are they really resolved? I think they all had loose ends…
Dehede011: But it didn’t matter because they tied into the universe where immortality treatments were available
AGplusone: And how did Grandma Stone and Manny wind up in the Howard world?
AGplusone: They’re long-lived too.
Dehede011: Jussi, I loved the way RAH played with us in Friday. He hung loose ends out just to tie them up in the end
AGplusone: I think he planned (it’s really not much of a questin) to tie everything together just as James Branch Cabell did.
sir iso root: I Think I’ll have to have a go at Cat some of these days. I couldn’t really get it.
AGplusone: Be one huge supernovel or series by the end.
sir iso root: Maybe everything was made clear in that. I see the whole, but I also see the holes.
Dehede011: Yes, and he had startedd the resolution but didn’t get to finish
AGplusone: In Cat, I think that farm they meet Manny at is Kettle Belly Baldwin’s …
Dehede011: Interesting. I’ll look at that the next time through
AGplusone: . . . or was going to become it. Possible with Friday in charge.
Dehede011: Jeez
AGplusone: After she tended her garden for a while.
sir iso root: HMM. Very big if.
sir iso root: Or do you have inside info?
Dehede011: Now, if I could only learn to like Candide
AGplusone: No, just speculation … you can see what he was doing, the guesses are how.
AGplusone: Read Candide as a joke on mankind.
AGplusone: It’s a farce.
Dehede011: Okay
AGplusone: It’s also very “French” …
Dehede011: and that is probably why I don’t get into it.
Sarah Hoyt: I empathize.
AGplusone: and the French (Gargantula, Pantagruel) really have a very overstated way of writing parody. Jaded palates. Have to hit them with a two by four.
Dehede011: Thank you beloved child.
AGplusone: Probably because regular sneers are so common as to go unrecognized.
sir iso root: Probably why they Like Jerry Lewis.
aggirlj: LOL
Dehede011: And maybe vastly improved in the original language.
Sarah Hoyt: Checked out the personality types. Got suckered into test. To believe it, I’m a distinct 8. Saw myself in this: When I scream, curse, and stomp around, try to remember that’s just the way I am.
Sarah Hoyt: Skeptical as I am about his stuff, I started giggling.
Sarah Hoyt: Cursing, screaming and stomping around are right on my resume, under “hobbies”
Sarah Hoyt: Sorry. Couldn’t resist.
Dehede011: I had typed Ginny as an 8 with a strong attachment to her 2 side.
Dehede011: RAH I have as a 7
Dehede011: For the rest of you, Sarah and Ginny are female John Waynes but if they love you they show themselves as Mother Teresa
sir iso root: Ahhah.
AGplusone: Kin ya walk the walk, Sarah?
Dehede011: But give them a little bit of lip and you are suddenly dealing with Big John
Sarah Hoyt: Oh, I’m being put in the same category as Ginny? I think not. Woman needs some gods.
Sarah Hoyt: I mean, me.
Sarah Hoyt: I need some gods, even if most of them are human.
Dehede011: Type Sarah, I’ll let you assign the relative horsepower
Sarah Hoyt: (Drives my Jewish friends nuts.)
Sarah Hoyt: Oh. Low horse power. Definitely.
AGplusone: RAH point in Gulf, and Friday, tho, is we don’t need no stinkin’ Gods, right?
Sarah Hoyt: Yeah, right. And I got some swamp land, down florida way, david.
Sarah Hoyt: It’s programmed in.
Sarah Hoyt: I keep mine human and therefore mortal. Or maybe, as my friends say, I’m just Roman at heart.
AGplusone: So long as it supports a garden, Heaven is where Marguerite is.
sir iso root: Or at least hegemonies. Corporate, theocratic, international political or illuminist..
Dehede011: BTW, folks, I started reading that Roman series by McCollough
Sarah Hoyt: Well, in my case I prefer Dan and he’d best do the gardening. I’ve got a brown thumb. I want it to have trees and soemthing to write on.
AGplusone: Or an ice cream parlour
Sarah Hoyt: THAT I agree with, Jusi.
AGplusone: Enjoying it, Ron.
Sarah Hoyt: Ice cream parlor, always. And books.
Dehede011: Immensely
AGplusone: Doesn’t matter who the god in charge is …
Dehede011: I am now reading Fortunes Favorites
sir iso root: The Shipstone conglomerate was in charge in Friday.
Sarah Hoyt: It’s my belief, perhaps boneheaded, that there’s nothing an individual can do that a group can’t muck up.
AGplusone: so long as he doesn’t keep making bets
Dehede011: Hey David S. when you were at the library looking at the typewriter and computer.
AGplusone: yes?
Sarah Hoyt: Acckkkk. My secondary, (half the points, thoug) type is two. Gahhhh.
Dehede011: Was that RAH’s old T-squares in between
AGplusone: Yes.
KMurphy165 has entered the room.
Sarah Hoyt: Oh.
Dehede011: Man, that took me back to many long boring hours.
AGplusone: Welcome
KMurphy165: Greetings, All
Dehede011: Welcome KM
AGplusone: Friday and Gulf … tee up, KM
Dehede011: Do you know if he had a drawing board or did he improvise??
AGplusone: what would you like to note about the two of them?
sir iso root: Hi.
Sarah Hoyt: I’m being reminded of the phone call which was a demand from friends who have kids that we come to dinner or they don’t give the kids back. Temptation is awfully strong, but Dan says no.
Sarah Hoyt (4:33:30 PM): They don’t sell people. Dang. DavidWrightSr has left the chat room.
aggirlj (4:33:45 PM): So see you all later.
aggirlj (4:33:49 PM): Bye for now.
Sarah Hoyt (4:33:49 PM): I could use a couple of them who actually work around here. 🙂
Dehede011 (4:33:51 PM): Bye Jane
Sarah Hoyt (4:33:54 PM): Bye Jane.
Sarah Hoyt (4:33:54 PM): Hugs.
AGplusone (4:33:56 PM): You used to be able to buy a kit on Blue Light Special at K-Mart, probably just as good as anything on eBay, and cheaper.
Sarah Hoyt (4:34:01 PM): And now I’ll go. aggirlj has left the chat room.
sir iso root (4:34:02 PM): bye
Dehede011 (4:34:08 PM): bye
AGplusone (4:34:08 PM): bye Sarah Hoyt has left the chat room.
sir iso root (4:34:23 PM): just missed.
AGplusone (4:34:47 PM):
DavidWrightSr: Is Phil ever going to get that published?
BPRAL22169: It looks doubtful. No one’s fault really, but Jim Gifford ran into a big snag trying to convert it into a readable book.
BPRAL22169: The two purposes he had in mind couldn’t be reconciled without an extensive rewrite, which Iunderstand Phillip did not want to do.
DavidWrightSr: That’s too bad. I wish that we could get hold of the original at least.
AGplusone: Yeah, Andy never returned your copy to me, as he was going to do.
BPRAL22169: I’m sorry — he returned it to me. I didn’t know you were still waiting for it.
AGplusone: And that’s a book you cannot read in less than a week, which is the length I had it.
BPRAL22169: Remind me about it later.
AGplusone: I didn’t realize that, Bill. Maybe some time when you’re down here again, or I get up there.
DavidWrightSr: I suppose that I could get throught University Microfilms or are they still doing that sort of thing? Anyone know?
BPRAL22169: Yes. I got mine through UMI.
DavidWrightSr: Ah good. I’ll have to look into it.
Dehede011: Gentlemen, you lost me on Phil’s book
Dehede011: Sorry, I found the thread
DavidWrightSr: Jim Gifford announced it a year or so ago as the next big book, but alas, it never came about as Bill explained.
sir iso root: I saw the stuff on nitrosyncretic. Is there a synopsis even? In The Heinlein Journal, somewhere?
AGplusone: KM: Phil Owenby is a Ph.D in Education wrote his dissertation on Heinlein’s approach to adult, life-long self education, shown in Heinlein’s works.
AGplusone: Great job, but with a lot of what the committee on his diss wanted in the beginning which is academic blather.
DavidWrightSr: Hmm. I wonder if he ever commented on Zeb’s Ph.D in education from TNOTB?
DavidWrightSr: Which he got by studying professors of education, not education
AGplusone:
KMurphy165: Okey. I was wondering what the link was. This is all way over my bald greyhead.
AGplusone: Phil runs TVA’s adult education program which is still very busy.
Dehede011: You know I have read that section of TNOTB very closely and I swear it is autobiographical of someone
DavidWrightSr: He lives in TN? Where?
BPRAL22169: Works for the TVA. I think he’s HQ’s in Knoxville.
AGplusone: Look on roster, Dave
DavidWrightSr: Not too far from here. Maybe I’ll get up there sometime.
Dehede011: OOH, I would love to live out from Knoxville somewhere.
AGplusone: Which one of Heinlein’s brothers was the university prof, Bill?
Dehede011: In that publish or perish world I would love to see his bibliography
BPRAL22169: Jesse Clare
AGplusone: Jesse taught what?
BPRAL22169: Political Science at Cleveland, I believe
Dehede011: Cincinnati??
AGplusone: Case Western Reserve?
DavidWrightSr: Just did a google on phil+owenb+tva. Guess what I found? A link to the archived page of our chat on 4-14-2001!
BPRAL22169: I think Robert James looked up his doctoral dissertation and found it on Thomas Jefferson. that would have been right after WWII
AGplusone: Be interested to see what he wrote ….
sir iso root: Sorry, My machine just decided to purge temporary files. Still here.
AGplusone: might reflect a family viewpoint …
AGplusone: Windows does that?
sir iso root: Linux.
AGplusone: Okay …. I’ve noticed since we got to Unix with Mac OS X one hell of a lot of temporary files and caches.
DavidWrightSr: David. If I get knocked off, send me the rest of the log. I am going to bring up my tv program on this computer and it sometimes acts weird..
AGplusone: I will …. let me send it now … we’re nearly done.
BPRAL22169: I just checked my records — I think it was Cincinnati, rather than Cleveland.
sir iso root: Legitimate question here: Does anybody know why the Heinlein’s moved to California. Was it dust-bowl related?
Dehede011: Yep, I had that right, I have attachments to Cinncinati and it is easy to associate
Dehede011: No
BPRAL22169: Which Heinleins?
BPRAL22169: Three different group sfrom that family moved to California at different times and for different reasons.
sir iso root: Well RAH basically. I always assumed that some others moved too.
BPRAL22169: Bottom line: He was stationed in San Diego when he got ill; the things he got going in Colorado during his illness fell through
sir iso root: Silver mining etc.
BPRAL22169: When he was retired, he and Leslyn both had friends (and by that time family) in southern California
KMurphy165: I also read somewhere (SCRES again) that he and Virginia moved to California in large part due to Virginia’s trouble with the Colorado Springs’ altitude.
BPRAL22169: I think his father fell ill and was sent to the VA hospital out here.
Dehede011: Bill, David was kind enough to tell me the T-squares at Santa Cruz belonged to RAH. Do you know if he had a drawing board
BPRAL22169: Yes, that’s right — they searched from Washington down the coast and wound up in Santa Cruz.
Dehede011: RAH dad was a vet??
BPRAL22169: Yes, he had his own engineering drafting set up, adn he lived at it when doing the houses.
BPRAL22169: Yes. Spanish-american war.
Dehede011: Right.
KMurphy165: Now I remember, it was an excerpt of a letter included in Grumbles from the Grave.
Dehede011: I’ll be damned
BPRAL22169: What is surprising about that, Ron?
sir iso root: There were black soldiers in The Spanish American war?
Dehede011: That drafting setup could have been saved from his architect days
sir iso root: Not hes dad I mean.
Dehede011: How biographical TSBTS was?
BPRAL22169: I’m sure there were — there have been black soldiers in every American war.
sir iso root: But on a tangent. I’m wondering If his father knew any.
AGplusone: There were. The 9th and 10th Cavalry assaulted San Juan Hill and saved Teddy Roosevelt’s butt.
Dehede011: They did duty at West Point
BPRAL22169: It’s not impossible — but not likely, given the set-up. They were segregated into different units.
AGplusone: But he and his Rough Riders grabbed the glory of course.
sir iso root: I think WEB DuBois wrote about that.
Dehede011: True or not I love the story of there being two charges up San Juan Hill
AGplusone: The 9th and 10th Cav were the original Buffalo Soldiers … along with the 24th and 25th Infantry Regiments.
Dehede011: My references on WP have them handling horses or something at the point
AGplusone: There was a squadron of the 9th assigned to West Point between wars.
AGplusone: It was the demonstration, teach the kaydets how to ride, unit.
Dehede011: Maybe that is it. I am trying to remember. I was surprised to see it in the book
Dehede011: David, that has the proper ring in my memory
AGplusone: You can find the history of both regiments on some websites, Ron.
Dehede011: No, I already paid for the book and it is here at the house LOL
sir iso root: Wonder what colour Juan Rico’s teacher was.
AGplusone: Which one?
AGplusone: Dubois?
sir iso root: J. V. Dubois.
AGplusone: or the blind Major Reid, I think it was, at OCS
AGplusone: where you got a grade and had to pass H&MP
Dehede011: Guys, you know how African Americans often use Washington or Jefferson in the states. Guess what name my Indian relatives often use in Canada — allegedly
sir iso root: ?
Dehede011: DuBois — of the woods
AGplusone: Almost a Bush, eh?
sir iso root: Yup.
Dehede011: could be
BPRAL22169: DuBois translates into English as “woodsy.”
sir iso root: Or Woodsman.
Dehede011: Funny thing is one of my French ancestors was in fact Pierre DuBois
AGplusone: I’ve got a birthday girl here, and we’re due to eat dinner out in 40 minutes … gotta slip-slide away. Can someone else log for Dave Wright.
BPRAL22169: No, that’s “Coureveur du Bois”
sir iso root: Okay.
DavidWrightSr: Only needed if I get kicked off.
sir iso root: I, cant send logs.
AGplusone: Take care, and thanks all for coming. …
BPRAL22169: I sent that attachment to your verizon account, David.
sir iso root: I’m stilll learning all this stuff…
DavidWrightSr: My tv program just crapped out anyway andI probably won’t get it re-started without a reboot
AGplusone: :::::::: pooof ::::::::::: okay, bill, call me tomorrow if you find time.
BPRAL22169: Incidentally, all — Riverworld on tonight.
AGplusone has left the room.
BPRAL22169: Have fun.
BPRAL22169: Ciao
Dehede011: goombye, each and everyone.
sir iso root: bye.
Dehede011 has left the room.
sir iso root: I guess this is pretty much it.
BPRAL22169: So you won’t need a log sent, David W?
sir iso root: My pipe died just now.
DavidWrightSr: No thanks I’ve got it.
BPRAL22169: OK, then. Nice to see you all.
BPRAL22169: Ciao.
DavidWrightSr: Night everyone.
BPRAL22169 has left the room.
DavidWrightSr: Log officially closed at 8:22 P.M. EST
Final End of Discussion Log
