Honorverse ramblings and musings

Kael Posavatz wrote:

cthia wrote:Oh, I don't doubt that Tester would have been on Honor's side. So there was no reason not to come clean and let Tester sort out the wicked.

To which I feel compelled to refer to:

Comte de Bussy-Rabutin wrote: God is usually on the side of the big squadrons against the small.

Honor is notably taller than most Graysons, which gives her the reach advantage.

And:

Voltaire wrote:God is on the side not of the heavy battalions but of the best shots.

While Honor might not have been the most experienced combatant, I believe that there is sufficient textev to argue that she is the superior shot (cut, whatever)


(Trying desperately not to make a pun about how it's a good thing Honor has never taken up golf)

God only requires faith, as little as a mustard seed . . .

E = MC² - A little faith (Mass) goes a long way.

God created all the Mass of the world in six days. Then he said . . .

"Let there be light." So that we can C.

cthia wrote:I've been meaning to ask. First, I have to admit that Honor & Co.'s discussion that there are undoubtedly many more unforeseen ways to squeeze utility out of the Apollo program never left my mind.

Consider the MDMs. Will it be useful to shut down the first stage just to force the enemy to lose lock then bring them back up, even if they are well within the missile's range and needing no ballistic stage? IOW, utilizing a ballistic component solely for the sake of confusing the enemy's ECM. Could that make them more effective under certain conditions, like a certain sweet spot in distance to target that wouldn't forego too much accel?

It is a tactic I always wondered about, which this new series of snippets reminded me of. Could it be useful? Especially if an enemy, perhaps malignant in origin, developed a more stubborn ECM and point defense.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:I've been meaning to ask. First, I have to admit that Honor & Co.'s discussion that there are undoubtedly many more unforeseen ways to squeeze utility out of the Apollo program never left my mind.

Consider the MDMs. Will it be useful to shut down the first stage just to force the enemy to lose lock then bring them back up, even if they are well within the missile's range and needing no ballistic stage? IOW, utilizing a ballistic component solely for the sake of confusing the enemy's ECM. Could that make them more effective under certain conditions, like a certain sweet spot in distance to target that wouldn't forego too much accel?

It is a tactic I always wondered about, which this new series of snippets reminded me of. Could it be useful? Especially if an enemy, perhaps malignant in origin, developed a more stubborn ECM and point defense.

Catching up on the forums after taking a break to avoid UH spoilers and came across this.

You'd be throwing away terminal velocity if you did an unnecessary drive shutdown. It might still have a place, but in a 3 drive MDM it wouldn't make sense to me to shut the 1st drive down early.

Yeah the defenders would lose tracking, but they'd be losing it in the earliest part of the missile's flight when they often can't separate an individual missile from the thundering herd anyway. They'd have lots of time (up to 6 minutes) once the 2nd and then 3rd drives came up to achieve a lock and engage, and the lower terminal velocity makes the intercept easier and gives the defense more time to take shots at the missile.

If you did a shutdown trick I think you'd want to insert the delay before your final drive, and hope that you'd guessed the enemy's future location well enough that you only needed to bring the final drive up for seconds to achieve firing position.



OTOH missile without wedges up lose most of their rad shielding, so if you were trying to coast in that close you run a somewhat higher risk of losses from proximity nukes. Plus if the enemy is maneuvering after your missiles go ballistic you'd have to run the final drive for much longer to get a firing position and that negates a lot of the advantage of disappearing off their tracking when the penultimate drive shuts down.

So maybe situtationally useful, but far from a slam dunk tactic - IMHO.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:I've been meaning to ask. First, I have to admit that Honor & Co.'s discussion that there are undoubtedly many more unforeseen ways to squeeze utility out of the Apollo program never left my mind.

Consider the MDMs. Will it be useful to shut down the first stage just to force the enemy to lose lock then bring them back up, even if they are well within the missile's range and needing no ballistic stage? IOW, utilizing a ballistic component solely for the sake of confusing the enemy's ECM. Could that make them more effective under certain conditions, like a certain sweet spot in distance to target that wouldn't forego too much accel?

It is a tactic I always wondered about, which this new series of snippets reminded me of. Could it be useful? Especially if an enemy, perhaps malignant in origin, developed a more stubborn ECM and point defense.

Catching up on the forums after taking a break to avoid UH spoilers and came across this.

You'd be throwing away terminal velocity if you did an unnecessary drive shutdown. It might still have a place, but in a 3 drive MDM it wouldn't make sense to me to shut the 1st drive down early.

Yeah the defenders would lose tracking, but they'd be losing it in the earliest part of the missile's flight when they often can't separate an individual missile from the thundering herd anyway. They'd have lots of time (up to 6 minutes) once the 2nd and then 3rd drives came up to achieve a lock and engage, and the lower terminal velocity makes the intercept easier and gives the defense more time to take shots at the missile.

If you did a shutdown trick I think you'd want to insert the delay before your final drive, and hope that you'd guessed the enemy's future location well enough that you only needed to bring the final drive up for seconds to achieve firing position.



OTOH missile without wedges up lose most of their rad shielding, so if you were trying to coast in that close you run a somewhat higher risk of losses from proximity nukes. Plus if the enemy is maneuvering after your missiles go ballistic you'd have to run the final drive for much longer to get a firing position and that negates a lot of the advantage of disappearing off their tracking when the penultimate drive shuts down.

So maybe situtationally useful, but far from a slam dunk tactic - IMHO.

1. Extremely stealthy and hard to hit.
2. As brittle as eggshells against RMN missiles.

It is not so long ago that a member of the Diplomatic Body in London, who had spent some years of his service in China, told me that there was a Chinese curse which took the form of saying, "May you live in interesting times." There is no doubt that the curse has fallen on us.
We move from one crisis to another. We suffer one disturbance and shock after another.

I think that you will all agree that we are living in most interesting times. I never remember myself a time in which our history was so full, in which day by day brought us new objects of interest, and, let me say also, new objects for anxiety.

The Chinese have lived so much in peace, that they have acquired by habit and education a more than common horror of political disorder.

“Better be a dog in peace than a man in anarchy”.

“It is a general rule, that the worst of men are fondest of change and commotion, hoping that they may thereby benefit themselves; but by adherence to a steady, quiet system, affairs proceed without confusion, and bad men have nothing to gain.”

tlb wrote:RFC has used the meme about an ancient Chinese curse that goes "May you live in interesting times". I hope most people know that this is neither ancient nor Chinese. I found this all in the internet (so you might want to recheck that I am not repeating falsehoods).

It was first used in that form by Sir Austen Chamberlain (brother of Neville) in 1936 when addressing a Birmingham association about the "grave injury" to collective security by German's violation of the Treaty of Locarno:

It is not so long ago that a member of the Diplomatic Body in London, who had spent some years of his service in China, told me that there was a Chinese curse which took the form of saying, "May you live in interesting times." There is no doubt that the curse has fallen on us.
We move from one crisis to another. We suffer one disturbance and shock after another.

His father had used the same figure of speech in 1898, but without claiming that it was either Chinese or a curse:

I think that you will all agree that we are living in most interesting times. I never remember myself a time in which our history was so full, in which day by day brought us new objects of interest, and, let me say also, new objects for anxiety.

The closest Chinese saying that people can find was reported in 1836 by a British diplomat named John Francis Davis, who published “The Chinese: A General Description of the Empire of China and Its Inhabitants” which included this adage:

The Chinese have lived so much in peace, that they have acquired by habit and education a more than common horror of political disorder.

“Better be a dog in peace than a man in anarchy”.

“It is a general rule, that the worst of men are fondest of change and commotion, hoping that they may thereby benefit themselves; but by adherence to a steady, quiet system, affairs proceed without confusion, and bad men have nothing to gain.”

ldwechsler wrote:But it's such a useful quote. Add to that the OTHER Chinese quotes:

"May could come to the attention of the authorities" and

"May you get your heart's desire" and you realize how interesting some quotes are no matter who actually said them.

tlb wrote:

ldwechsler wrote:But it's such a useful quote. Add to that the OTHER Chinese quotes:

"May could come to the attention of the authorities" and

"May you get your heart's desire" and you realize how interesting some quotes are no matter who actually said them.

It is better to have no attribution for outside quotes, than a false one.

The lines you give are fine without claiming to be Chinese (although I think you meant "May you come to the attention"), but it is much better to have the correct attributions for things both outside the forum and within. Which is something that really bugs me about people who mess up the begin-quote end-quote structure.

The problem is when you get into the borderline racist "Confucius say" jokes.

God only requires faith, as little as a mustard seed . . .

E = MC² - a little faith (Mass) goes a long way.

God created all the Mass of the world in six days. Then he said . . .

"Let there be light." So that we can C.

Chapter 21 Flag in Exile wrote:The news, as the Protector had known it must, had leaked, and the media was playing the story for all it was worth.

No, he told himself sternly, that wasn't fair. The Grayson press corps was more responsible than most. In fact, it was possibly a bit too much on the "tame" side—as a reflection of its society's deference-based mores and traditional respect for authority, no doubt—and the newsies had checked their facts carefully before going public. Unfortunately, they had those facts straight, and one thing Benjamin Mayhew had learned from others' mistakes was to never, ever lie to reporters. Refusing to comment and keeping a lid on stories was one thing; destroying his credibility forever was something else entirely, and it was a deadly simple thing to do.

So he'd confirmed the lab reports in as noninflammatory a fashion as possible and preserved his credibility . . . for whatever that was worth.

Flag in Exile, Chapter 29 wrote:weariness, the pain of broken ribs, the ache in bruised muscles, the stiffness of her left shoulder

Echoes of Honor, Chapter Chapter 6 wrote:"This is the long arm of what we call Chromosome Seven, Your Grace," she told him. "Specifically, this—" she tapped a macro on the holo unit and a cursor flashed, indicating a point on the image "—is a gene with a long and sometimes ugly history in medical science. A single gene mutation at this site produces a disease known as cystic fibrosis, which drastically alters the secretory function of the lungs and pancreas."
It was also, she did not mention, a disease which had been eradicated over a millennium and a half ago on planets with modern medical science . . . and one which still turned up from time to time on Grayson.
"I see," Sullivan said after a moment, then quirked one eyebrow at her. "And the reason for telling me this, My Lady?" he inquired politely.
"The reason for telling you, Your Grace, is that my research and mapping suggest quite conclusively to me that this portion of the genetic code of your people—" she jabbed an index finger at the cursor in the holo image "—was deliberately altered almost a thousand years ago."
"Altered?" Sullivan sat upright in his chair.
"Altered, Your Grace. Engineered." Allison drew a deep breath. "In other words, Sir, you and all your people have been genetically modified."

***Snip***

"Heavy metals enter the body via the respiratory and digestive tracts, Your Grace, hence your air filtration systems and the constant battle to decontaminate your farm soil. Apparently, whoever was responsible for this—" she jutted her chin at the holo image once again "—intended to build a filtration system into your bodies as well, by modifying the mucosal barriers in your lungs and digestive tract. Your secretory proteins are substantially different from, say, my own. They bind the metals—or a large proportion of them, at any rate—which allows them to be cleared from the body in sputum and other wastes, rather than being absorbed wholesale into the tissues. They don't do a perfect job, of course, but they're the reason your tolerance for heavy metals is so much higher than my own. Up until two or three months ago, the assumption, particularly in light of your ancestors' limited technological resources and, um, attitude towards the resources they did have, was that this must represent a natural facet of adaptive evolution, even if we had no idea how it had happened so quickly."
"But you no longer believe this to be the case," Sullivan said quietly.
"No, Your Grace. I've found flanking regions of rhinovirus genetic material around the cystic fibrosis locus indicated in the holo here, and I think I can say with some assurance that it didn't get there accidentally."
"Rhinovirus?"
"The vector for the common cold," Allison said dryly, "which could have offered several useful advantages to the med teams who made use of it. For one thing, with your people so tightly confined in the limited air-filtered habitats they could build, an aerosol vector like this would be very easily spread. Given the fact that I've found absolutely no mention of it anywhere in the records, I might also hazard the guess that the project was kept confidential at the time—possibly to avoid raising hopes if, in fact, it should fail. Or there could have been other reasons. And if there were, spreading the alteration via 'a cold' would have the advantage of maximum concealability, as well."
"Indeed it would have, and there could well have been 'other reasons' to do such a thing quietly," Sullivan agreed, and it was his turn to smile crookedly. "Despite my own analysis of why Father Church does not believe in suppression, not everyone in our history would have agreed with me, and no doubt there have been times when our freer thinkers found that . . . discretion was indicated. As I'm sure you've discovered in the course of your research, My Lady, many of our Founders were zealots. Heavens, look at those lunatics who launched the Civil War four hundred years later! However trying our own times may be, they do not compare to the Tests which faced the Founders, and it would certainly have been possible that the Founding Elders might have feared that some of the more blindly faithful among their flock would have reacted badly to the notion of such a thing as permanently modifying their own bodies and those of all their descendants."
"As you say, Your Grace," Allison murmured, then shrugged. "At any rate, we might think of this as a sort of weapon of beneficent biological warfare, an agent designed to modify the genetic material of your people in order to give them a fighting chance at surviving their environment. Unfortunately, it looks like it was a fast and dirty method, even by the standards of then-current technology."
Sullivan frowned, and she shook her head quickly.
"That wasn't a criticism, Your Grace! Whoever managed this was clearly working on a shoestring, with limited resources. He had to do the best with what he had, and what he managed was brilliantly conceived and clearly executed effectively. But I suspect that the need for speed, coupled with extremely limited facilities, prevented his team from carrying out as careful an analysis as they would have wished, and it looks like the vector carried a second, unintentional modification which they failed to recognize at the time."
"Unintentional?" Sullivan's frown was deeper now, not in displeasure but in thought, and Allison nodded.
"I'm certain it was. And the nature of their problem no doubt helps explain what happened. You see, whoever designed this modification had to make the adaptive mutation inheritable. Simply modifying the gene in those actually exposed to the rhinovirus wouldn't work, because it would have been a purely somatic mutation, which means it would have died with the first generation of hosts. To keep that from happening, he—or they—had to cross from the somatic to the germ line—modify the rhinovirus to cross the mucosal barrier and show a predilection for primordial germ cells in the host's ovaries and testes—in order to pass it on to the first generation's offspring. What had to be accomplished was analogous to, oh, the mumps virus. That infects the salivary glands, but also attacks the ovaries and testes and can account for some cases of male infertility."
Sullivan nodded to indicate understanding, and Allison hid another mental smile. Interesting that he showed no discomfort at all with the way the conversation was headed. Of course, with the high percentage of stillborn boys on this planet, Graysons had been fanatical about prenatal care for centuries, and men were just as involved in the process (at one remove, of course! she amended) as women.
"They had no real option about that," she went on. "Not if they wanted the change to be a permanent addition to the planetary genome. But in the process, they also got an unintended mutation. Their intervention introduced a stable trinucleotide repeat on the X chromosome, which wouldn't have been a problem . . . except that it in turn affected one of the AGG codons." Sullivan looked blank. "AGG codons are adenine-guanine-guanine sequences that act as locks on the expansion of other trinucleotide repeats," she explained helpfully.

cthia wrote:Remember the story of Samson and Delilah? The Walls of Jericho? David and Goliath? Daniel in the lion's den? God is on the side of the righteous, not the mightiest. Might doesn't make right in God's eye.

The faith of a mustard seed can move mountains. Be it mountains of evil or mountains of people. Strength comes from faith, not by secular magnitude. The bigger they are the harder they fall.

God only requres faith, as little as a mustard seed . . .

E = MC² - a little faith (Mass) goes a long way.

God created all the Mass of the world in six days. Then he said . . .

"Let there be light." So that we can C.

-cthia


"I can't see! I can't see!

"What's the matter?"

"I got my eyes closed."


O ye of little faith.



****** *


CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS

I am continuing to take a beating within my own circle of friends for opening this particular can-o-worms. My niece hasn't quite forgiven me yet. It is turning into a discussion of the males against the females. I suppose it is because it is a woman who wields the unfair advantage. If the situation was reversed I think they'd feel differently. I'll attempt to defend my stance a bit better.

The People's Champion vs Burdette was personal. It was not simply personal to Honor and Nimitz, it was personal to God. To Grayson. The Graysons. The Protector. The Keys. And to the Church of Humanity Unchained.

To deceitfully disrespect that which is represented by Tester is just plain old wrong. Τhe People's Champion deceitfully representing the Church and Tester is legally wrong, immoral and unrighteous. Burdette shouldn't have had to worry whether or not the contest would be fought fairly. That's just plain morally wrong. And its certainly not the Christian thing to do to mix inhuman like abilities like those found in Genies on a planet without Genies, and withhold the fact. And since it had been conducted in such a fashion . . .

JUST MIGHT MEAN BURDETTE'S RHETORIC IS TRUE.

The mistake of not coming clean could further taint the opinion of the galaxy against Genies.

Burdette could be made out to be the pure essence of a martyr, destroying the integrity of the Protector of Grayson and his People's Champion. I see a real potential for a Constitutional Crisis on Grayson. Just like that, the Manticoran infidels are indeed shown to be deceitful.

The duel was NOT carried out with respect to what is near and dear to the hearts and souls of Graysons—the teachings of Tester. Integrity. Tester, who does not engage in deceit, or murder. Honor has presented a can-o-worms which should never be set loose.


I think I was in error about Benjamin's decision never to lie to his constituents, because I haven't been able to locate the passage. At least not in Flag in Exile. The closest I've found is his decision to never ever lie to reporters, which is essentially the same thing when it comes to the can-o-squirming-worms I opened beginning here. If the Protector is ever questioned point blank about his Champion's secret and unfair advantage during the duel with Burdette, the Protector will not lie to the press.

Burdette had a right to know . . .

Morally and legally.

Expanding one of my past posts . . .

Is it exactly righteous to withhold knowledge of Honor's ability under the circumstances of this duel? Knowing full-well Burdette didn't have a chance, and knowing because of it, Burdette himself didn't know he had NO CHANCE. I agree that it is righteous for the People's champion to use her talents. It is part of the riches God has bestowed upon her. So why not proclaim it on high and scream it to the world for all who may dare to challenge the People's Champion, the truth about she who represents God - lest God be put in a position to be accused of deceit - and then let [him] be foolish, or wise, to challenge. Blasphemous actions by a Protector and his Champion could destroy Grayson.

At the very least, with foreknowledge of Honor's inhuman-like abilities Burdette may have chosen the low guard position, instead of the high guard . . . opening himself up to be sliced from asshole to appetite.

On present day Earth, one may have a right to know if one is going up against what is essentially a mutant.

Clark Kent's parents, to Clark's chagrin, told him he didn't have any business on the gridiron.

This is the entire crux of the war on present day Earth of those who object to letting mutants live amongst them. And they have a point. Are mutants going to be fair, honest and forthright in all exchanges and interactions with their fellow man? If there is a disagreement between two humans, does not he who may end up in a quarrel have a right to know who, or what, he may be angering? Do they have a right on the gridiron, unfairly running up tremendous points possibly hurting and killing people in the process?

Grayson is a religious planet completely devoid of Genies. Well, until Honor. IINM, Honor and Beth are the only Genies who have ever set foot on Grayson. It would be highly irresponsible, unfair and dangerous—arguably murderous—to mix the two without knowledge. Grayson's past time of baseball would be destroyed by the influx of genies. Heck, steroids has damn near destroyed it now. Genies, Scrags and San Martinos would kill people and the sport. Perhaps that is why there isn't many planets where contact sports has survived.


Benjamin's decision never to lie to reporters . . .

Chapter 21 Flag in Exile wrote:The news, as the Protector had known it must, had leaked, and the media was playing the story for all it was worth.

No, he told himself sternly, that wasn't fair. The Grayson press corps was more responsible than most. In fact, it was possibly a bit too much on the "tame" side—as a reflection of its society's deference-based mores and traditional respect for authority, no doubt—and the newsies had checked their facts carefully before going public. Unfortunately, they had those facts straight, and one thing Benjamin Mayhew had learned from others' mistakes was to never, ever lie to reporters. Refusing to comment and keeping a lid on stories was one thing; destroying his credibility forever was something else entirely, and it was a deadly simple thing to do.

So he'd confirmed the lab reports in as noninflammatory a fashion as possible and preserved his credibility . . . for whatever that was worth.

Pandora's box originally opened.