Honorverse ramblings and musings

cthia wrote:Cauldron of Ghosts

She raised her head again, just enough to give her two companions a ferocious glare. “What I do give a damn about is that I don’t want that chiseling scumbag landlord pocketing the money—which is what he did with Farouz’s remains. So when I die, keep it a secret from the shithead. Cut me up yourselves—the bathtub’s one of the few things in this dump that works—and freeze the parts. Then sell what you can.”

Anyone else think Weber is a genius in being able to see the ramifications of certain breakthroughs in medical science?

Although this passage is rather grotesque, I'm sure it is a reality. How many people may be murdered just to sell their parts. It reminds me of people burglarizing more and more visible sights to obtain copper - schools, businesses, etc. The copper epidemic - a new form of gold rush? It seems nothing is sacred. Apply that same mentality in the future and body parts have become the new copper. Damn. Humanity can be quite disgusting. I've heard of a high school football game being canceled because when they went to turn on the lights on the field they realized they had no power. Yards of copper wiring had been stolen.

It has gone from the stealing of cars for parts - to businesses and infrastructure for copper. And in the Honorverse, the human body has become the new source of bathroom chop-shops. Unbelievable.

Once upon a time, I used to be embarrassed that my parents drove their spaceship here to Earth and when we landed to fix a flat, I wandered off into the nearby woods and was inadvertently left (I think inadvertently ) but I'm no longer embarrassed of not being human. You carbon based life forms are disgusting.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/

It's not exactly a new concept. If you've ever read any of Larry Niven's stories set in the time of where he has the UN as a true world government, one of the things they administer is the "Organ Banks". I don't remember the title of the short story (it's in some anthology); but the plot is basically a lawyer trying to save his client from dismemberment and his "pieces" being sent to the organ banks over 3 traffic tickets

I may favor capital punishment for some crimes, but that's a bit much even for me.

Interestingly enough, about 45 years ago when I was a teenager in high school, in many of the more remote rural areas phone lines were run *individually* on poles with those glass insulators one now only tends to see in antique shops. One morning heading in to school on the bus, we noticed that a 2 MILE section of copper phone wire had been removed from the poles.

So the "copper gold rush" isn't a new phenomenon either.

SWM wrote:I don't see why you assume that treecat bodyguards would not do well without a colony. I think the reason that it wasn't mentioned in that discussion is because the treecats had already said they were willing to become bodyguards in the Anderman Empire. I don't think Honor or anyone else would assume they could get treecats to be Anderman bodyguards unless the treecats had already said they would. And if the treecats say they can be bodyguards in Andermani space, why should anyone doubt their ability to do so?

I think it is up to the treecats themselves to suggest a colony if they want one.

The only reason I *assumed* that is because Honor herself makes that observation in the conversation in question.

Obviously the issue doesn't arise with *bonded* treecats; but most of the new treecat "guardians" are not bonded. I suppose some eventually *could*; but from all the previous stories of treecats bonding with humans, it would appear it's a phenomenon that happens pretty much like "love at first sight"; not something that takes any lengthy time together to happen.

drothgery wrote:

kzt wrote:So yeah, the fact that something is today pretty much within our grasp if we applied a focused development effort to it means that the only reason this doesn't exist in an essentially COTS system is plot armor.

Well, it's possible that given Honorverse medicine, untreatable deafness may be all but unheard of. But given that a present-day cell phone probably has nearly enough CPU and a good enough camera for the job, it ought to be just a software issue if it doesn't already exist.

I suspect if deafness was completely curable, then Dr Arif wouldn't have known how to sign and be able to teach it to her treecat "student" originally.

kzt wrote:

OrlandoNative wrote:There's probably also no reason a "translator" DEVICE couldn't be developed, where a visual input device recorded the signing and a vocoder converted it to speech. If it had a small screen, speech could also be converted into sign, enabling 2-way communication.

Yes there is. Plot.

LOL. It could also just be that the author never thought of the idea.

No matter how good an author, or how much imagination they might have, that doesn't mean that they thought of every possibility.

cthia wrote:It may not prove to be so straightforward. Indeed, there may be people fluent in sign in New Potsdam, but it will probably be far removed from treecat sign. Remember, treecat sign language is already a variation of normal sign language. Because treecats don't have the same amount of fingers. And even more so, sign language relies on body language and facial gestures to communicate meaning - a range of movement that is probably not possible for cats. Then you must factor in the fact that German sign language is already much different than that of general sign language. So much so that Germans scoff at it. That awful German language apparently isn't conducive to sign.

I don't recall anyone ever suggesting a visual recorder to translate the physical signing. I'd certainly never thought of it. And I think it is a rather fascinating concept. Although implementing it may be fraught with more than its share of problems, because of a need to teach the computer body language and facial gestures.

Mmmm... there's no indication that most of the Andermani - at least those who would need guardians - don't speak "League standard English"; whether they also know (and speak) German or not.

That said, if a device could be created to translate, it's "human side" input and output could be programmed for probably *any* known human language. It wouldn't matter what language was selected, the device would translate first into, say, League Standard"; and then into sign. Yes, it would possibly occasionally "lose something in translation" - especially if it were something complex - but it would still be much better than no communication at all. Or trying to teach "dialects" of sign language.

As for sign language and number of appendages (fingers), I don't see that as a problem as long as there are not *less* than the number of appendages it was originally designed for. One just wouldn't use the extra one(s).

I would agree that interpreting/processing facial expressions and body language via automation might be somewhat involved and quite probably problematical *today*; but I think we can safely say future capabilities are likely to become much more sophisticated. Even today, however, we have facial recognition software that can pick out and identify a face in a variety of situations and expressions. What would be needed for the device I'm postulating is just the reverse, which shouldn't be too hard to program for even now.

Mmmm... if someone on this thread actually takes this idea and runs with it, I hope they at least acknowledge where the idea originated A small royalty wouldn't be unappreciated, either.

OrlandoNative wrote:Mmmm... if someone on this thread actually takes this idea and runs with it, I hope they at least acknowledge where the idea originated A small royalty wouldn't be unappreciated, either.

I'm sure they'll acknowledge the originator of the idea--Waddles For Desert, who suggested it back in 2011. Several others have come up with the idea independently since then, but Waddles appears to be the first to mention it in this forum.

cthia wrote:Trust me Hutch. It's quite new to ME! You're talking to a guy that had to have special allowances made for him in advanced biology. Dissecting a cat, "BAM!" What was that? Oh that was just a 195 lb quarterback hitting the phucking floor, passed out from watching "THE filmstrip," of open heart surgery and the beating of a guys heart while opened up like a can of sardines.

So I don't do those type movies or books. I'll toss them first descriptive paragraph. I'm here with my head threatening my desk now from this one exchange.

I don't do blood and gore. I don't do possessions. I've never watched "The Exorcist" all the way through, let alone the special edition. I was talked into it the first time - my silly ass! And what the hell was Linda Blair's problem? Will somebody just slap that bitch already! Little wonder that most everyone from that movie is now DEAD I've heard. And she was in therapy! GO FIGURE!

Organleggers? Unphuckingbelievable.

Next time you're near a used bookstore (or maybe Amazon), see if you can find a copy of "All the Myraid Ways" collection of Niven short fiction. The sotry to read is "The Jigsaw Man". I promise, nothing gory, but the conclusions may disturb you...for that matter, the title story may give you some deep thoughts too....

Sorry, I started with Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke, and now it's Flint and Weber, but in between that time Larry Niven was and is my favorite SF writer (albeit Poul Anderson and Spider Robinson are not far behind...).

OrlandoNative wrote:No matter how good an author, or how much imagination they might have, that doesn't mean that they thought of every possibility.

Even if RFC didn't think of it himself, the idea has been proposed here and at Baen's Bar off and on since the first signing treecat appeared (usually when some project doing sign to speech with present-day tech makes the news).

OrlandoNative wrote:

SWM wrote:I don't see why you assume that treecat bodyguards would not do well without a colony. I think the reason that it wasn't mentioned in that discussion is because the treecats had already said they were willing to become bodyguards in the Anderman Empire. I don't think Honor or anyone else would assume they could get treecats to be Anderman bodyguards unless the treecats had already said they would. And if the treecats say they can be bodyguards in Andermani space, why should anyone doubt their ability to do so?

I think it is up to the treecats themselves to suggest a colony if they want one.

The only reason I *assumed* that is because Honor herself makes that observation in the conversation in question.

Obviously the issue doesn't arise with *bonded* treecats; but most of the new treecat "guardians" are not bonded. I suppose some eventually *could*; but from all the previous stories of treecats bonding with humans, it would appear it's a phenomenon that happens pretty much like "love at first sight"; not something that takes any lengthy time together to happen.

It's been made pretty clear that without being bonded to a human, treecats need regular (and not brief) contact with other treecats due to their telempathy. IIRC, the issue arose during a discussion between Honor and Chien-lu Anderman on why Manticore couldn't just send one or two cats as bodyguards to New Potsdam - the mental stress would be far too much for them. The situation with Nouveau Paris is quite different as the figure mentioned there was "a couple of dozen", meaning all those treecats going could support each other mentally (so to speak).

Hutch wrote:

cthia wrote:Trust me Hutch. It's quite new to ME! You're talking to a guy that had to have special allowances made for him in advanced biology. Dissecting a cat, "BAM!" What was that? Oh that was just a 195 lb quarterback hitting the phucking floor, passed out from watching "THE filmstrip," of open heart surgery and the beating of a guys heart while opened up like a can of sardines.

So I don't do those type movies or books. I'll toss them first descriptive paragraph. I'm here with my head threatening my desk now from this one exchange.

I don't do blood and gore. I don't do possessions. I've never watched "The Exorcist" all the way through, let alone the special edition. I was talked into it the first time - my silly ass! And what the hell was Linda Blair's problem? Will somebody just slap that bitch already! Little wonder that most everyone from that movie is now DEAD I've heard. And she was in therapy! GO FIGURE!

Organleggers? Unphuckingbelievable.

Next time you're near a used bookstore (or maybe Amazon), see if you can find a copy of "All the Myraid Ways" collection of Niven short fiction. The sotry to read is "The Jigsaw Man". I promise, nothing gory, but the conclusions may disturb you...for that matter, the title story may give you some deep thoughts too....

Sorry, I started with Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke, and now it's Flint and Weber, but in between that time Larry Niven was and is my favorite SF writer (albeit Poul Anderson and Spider Robinson are not far behind...).

I think I actually started with Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs; along with the Doc Savage books, but I'd have to agree about Niven. While I'm not so sure some of his latest works are quite up to what he did with Ringworld, he's still got the "touch".

Anderson was also in that class; and, also, when it comes to "military science fiction" being mixed with morality and politics, I'd say Keith Laumer wasn't bad, either.