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Mesa--Seven Headed Serpent

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Re: Mesa--Seven Headed Serpent
Post by SWM   » Wed Mar 05, 2014 10:36 am

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There are a couple Pearls that may help understand the Mesan Alignment. Some of them are a bit old, but perhaps still useful.
Why Does Mesa Still Exist?
Manpower's Optimism in its Covert Operations
Aspects of the Alignment's Uplift Program
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Re: Mesa--Seven Headed Serpent
Post by JohnRoth   » Wed Mar 05, 2014 11:31 am

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biochem wrote:
HB of CJ wrote:Detweiler has at least seven sons. How many daughters, if any? Can you clone daughters from a male?


JohnRoth wrote:Yes, all you have to do is get rid of the Y chromosome and duplicate the X chromosome. Even easier would be to simply inactivate the SRY gene on the Y chromosome, thus producing an XY female. Heck, they could do that today using CRISPR, if they could actually get cloning to work, although they'd probably have to do some other stuff to avoid Swyer syndrome.

Cloning a male from female cells would be harder since there are essential genes on the Y chromosome needed for functional sex organs.


Male to female. Piece of cake with Mesan level biotechnology. As posters have said all you need to do is duplicate the X.

Female to male. I would remove one X and replace with a donor Y from another individual. But if they are too egotistical to do so, with Mesan level technology, they could probably build a Y chromosome from scratch utilizing the "best" genes for each gene contained on it. One note of caution though. They would need to carefully examine the remaining X chromosome for problematic recessives. There are any number of genetic diseases that usually only show up in males because they are carried on the X chromosome. Females are protected with a good gene on their second X. Color blindness is the best known of these.


I'd assume that any reasonably advanced planet with a competent health service would have filtered most of the deleterious recessives out of the gene pool by this time, if only to reduce the expense of providing health service. That wouldn't violate the Beowulf Code, and, interestingly, there's an argument that it would produce a significant amount of "uplift" all by itself.

The idea is that there aren't a whole lot of genes that produce improvements to the baseline; only that there are a huge number of mildly deleterious variations; so while there aren't easy ways of having smarter kids, there are a lot of easy ways of having dumber kids. The concept is called "mutational load."
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Re: Mesa--Seven Headed Serpent
Post by cthia   » Wed Mar 05, 2014 1:23 pm

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SWM wrote:There are a couple Pearls that may help understand the Mesan Alignment. Some of them are a bit old, but perhaps still useful.
Why Does Mesa Still Exist?
Manpower's Optimism in its Covert Operations
Aspects of the Alignment's Uplift Program


swm,
Thanks a million for this!
It indeed answered alot of my questions and one real worry.
About Herlander Simoes. I was worried that he might have been a part of the Alignment's plan, to sew disinformation. But after reading the Pearls I can see that he has real reason to turn.

Which lends even more credence to the possibility of playing to the emotions of a possibly scorned wife in one Evelina Detweiler.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Mesa--Seven Headed Serpent
Post by munroburton   » Wed Mar 05, 2014 2:19 pm

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cthia wrote:Which lends even more credence to the possibility of playing to the emotions of a possibly scorned wife in one Evelina Detweiler.


Eve seemed happy enough in the brief scenes she appeared in. Consider that motherhood goes much further than providing 50% of someone's genetic material - she would have played a significant part in raising the clones whilst Albrecht was busy with his Evil Overlord scheming.

The clones may even have been a means of getting more time with Albrecht - after all, once the "kids" grew up, they would take over some of Albrecht's duties and headaches.
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Re: Mesa--Seven Headed Serpent
Post by Tenshinai   » Wed Mar 05, 2014 4:22 pm

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JohnRoth wrote:I'd assume that any reasonably advanced planet with a competent health service would have filtered most of the deleterious recessives out of the gene pool by this time, if only to reduce the expense of providing health service. That wouldn't violate the Beowulf Code, and, interestingly, there's an argument that it would produce a significant amount of "uplift" all by itself.

The idea is that there aren't a whole lot of genes that produce improvements to the baseline; only that there are a huge number of mildly deleterious variations; so while there aren't easy ways of having smarter kids, there are a lot of easy ways of having dumber kids. The concept is called "mutational load."


There´s additional issues to this as well.
One HUGE issue is the fact that there´s a bundle of genes that are BOTH good and bad, including many of those "mildly deleterious" ones.

There are a number of genes that causes genetically inherited diseases, which also gives a very high probability for high IQ.
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Re: Mesa--Seven Headed Serpent
Post by KNick   » Wed Mar 05, 2014 7:41 pm

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biochem wrote:I tend to agree with cthia that in reality a centuries long conspiracy such as this involving this many people is unlikely to remain undiscovered this long. MAlign's technique of increasing the background noise is a good one. Signal to noise is always a problem in intelligence work.

Some of the problems I see are:

1. Individuals with a crisis of conscience similar to Jack McBride. We're talking generations of individuals with 1000s individuals each generation knowing something about the onion. Not as much as McBride knew but still enough to give the Beowulf authorities a starting point. To keep this a secret Mesan counter intel would need to catch ALL of them. Similar to the problem of terrorists. The FBI needs to be right 100% of the time, the terrorists only need to get it right once.

2. Individuals who act stupidly and get caught. I have known any number of people with high level intellects (similar to alpha line) who act as dumb as a rock regardless of their genetic gifts. With the sheer number of people who know enough about the onion, there are bound to be some meeting this description.

3. Murphy's law. Centuries of time have pasted and Murphy's law hasn't kicked in once?


1.) Except there is the problem of who do they report it to and how do they report it. The Onion controls both the people who the report is made to and the method of reporting. 99+% of the people who know about the Onion never leave Mesa. Of the ones who leave the planet knowing something, most are low level flunkeys who really can't tell anyone anything. Any that are truly in the know are suicidal by temperament or conditioning. Again, not very likely to give anything away. Look at the lengths Jack was prepared to go to just to hide until he could figure a way off planet before Victor and Anton came along. And he was in a position to intercept any reports about his strange behavior.

As for 2.) People who meet this criteria are probably never brought inside the Onion.

3.) Who says Murphy hasn't already struck repeatedly? It is just that such instances are widely distributed in time and space with nothing to link them together, hiding in the noise of the fact that most such instances would happen to people who actually worked for Manpower or Jessyk or..or... with nothing to lead back to the Onion.
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Re: Mesa--Seven Headed Serpent
Post by munroburton   » Wed Mar 05, 2014 9:30 pm

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KNick wrote:3.) Who says Murphy hasn't already struck repeatedly? It is just that such instances are widely distributed in time and space with nothing to link them together, hiding in the noise of the fact that most such instances would happen to people who actually worked for Manpower or Jessyk or..or... with nothing to lead back to the Onion.


Widely distributed incidents that went unnoticed because the knowledge of them or details associated didn't go far. To see them requires looking at the big picture - the kind of computer models generated by Victor, Anton and Ruth - and access to information that is inevitably classified. For example, no investigator simultaneously had access to evidence from the Hofschulte, Grosclaude, Meares and Rat Poison incidents until very, very recently. I bet that's one of the first things Kevin Usher asked Pat Givens about. That and how close she was to finding Bolthole.

As for the League, it's unknown if there's a federal agency for criminal investigation theoretically in place to pick up those sort of details. Kind of creates a thorn in the Transstellars' side... which means if one did exist, it would be as corrupt(if not more than) as the rest of the League's institutions. And many of the incidents engineered by the MAlign can be written off as Someone Else's Problem, file directly to archives, from the League's perspective.
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Re: Mesa--Seven Headed Serpent
Post by Garth 2   » Sun Mar 09, 2014 3:42 pm

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They have been spending a lot of time and money building there operation.

Don't forget Detweiler and co. founded the onion whilst the SL its self was all shine and new, which does raise the interesting question of how much of the current SL problems (corruption, infighting, criminal activity etc.) can be laid at the Mesans' door.
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Re: Mesa--Seven Headed Serpent
Post by Tenshinai   » Sun Mar 09, 2014 4:08 pm

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Garth 2 wrote:They have been spending a lot of time and money building there operation.

Don't forget Detweiler and co. founded the onion whilst the SL its self was all shine and new, which does raise the interesting question of how much of the current SL problems (corruption, infighting, criminal activity etc.) can be laid at the Mesans' door.


Probably quite a lot.
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Re: Mesa--Seven Headed Serpent
Post by cthia   » Sun Mar 09, 2014 6:23 pm

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Tenshinai wrote:
Garth 2 wrote:They have been spending a lot of time and money building there operation.

Don't forget Detweiler and co. founded the onion whilst the SL its self was all shine and new, which does raise the interesting question of how much of the current SL problems (corruption, infighting, criminal activity etc.) can be laid at the Mesans' door.


Probably quite a lot.

I'm thinking all of it!
That's the point of one of my earlier posts. For Mesa to be so deeply entrenched into the affairs of the SLN to be able to move entire fleets then they must have been at it for the better part of those active two centuries. Buying. Infiltrating. Coerscing, etc. And along with the first manouever came the seeds of corruption. Seeds of corruption flourish because there's always available fertilizer!

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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