Ill in January, I bounced through a series of medical appointments which. thanks to one doc and two NP’s, bounced me to a colonoscopy. which found, yes, cancer. I was in surgery within two weeks, on chemo the week after that, and am glad to report I finished chemo in August, underwent a series of tests and scans, and they got it. A second colonoscopy finished up (the earlier problem precluded finishing the pass) and took care of several potential future problems.
So I can now report I’m cancer free, and getting back to work, after 8 brain-fog months in which I couldn’t write, and Jane was busy taking care of me, so she couldn’t write. Now I’m done with treatments, have some lingering issues (chemo can leave you little problems) one of which has been stiffness and pain in hands and feet, but I am onto therapy for that, clear-minded and ready to get back to work.
So I am glad to report both of us are getting back to normal. I had a close call and got away free. I do urge anybody who’s due for a colonoscopy to go see to that, or any other issue that you’ve been delaying for. As for safety in a hospital—with Covid and all—they’re careful. They’re a heckuva lot more careful than most places. And I’ve been spending 4-5 hours every two weeks there feeling safe in the process. Wishing you all the best. I don’t have cancer. Pluperfect—I have HAD cancer and am free of it, by the most delicate and precise scans available. So this has all come to a very good outcome. They’ll be tracking me every 3 months, now, and I’ll be fine.
I’ll also be back at writing. Books will be a little late. But books will happen.
Indeed, Respects to you both. Happy Birthday to Jane.
happy day, Jane!
happy birthday to Jane!
Been moving house, took many weeks, haven’t looked in here for far too long. Wow
Don’t rush. Pace yourself, rejoice in experience you have now.
Happy birthday Jane !!
Xxx to you both
Happy belated birthday, Jane!
Happy belated birthday, Jane!
Hope everybody is having a better week than I am. 5am this morning, dog went outside and got sprayed by a skunk. You’d think he’d learn not to mess with skunks, after he got hit by one two years ago.
Had a run in with Pepe le Pew, eh?
Comment –> I think I may have mentioned this before but we have a Westie that on two separate occasions this year, tried to attack a hedgehog in our garden in the early hours
One of my Yorkies went after a black bear a few years ago. I yelled at him to come back and the bear ran off.
Readydog remains ready at all times! More skonk pls!
My sis has skunks that come to her patio for food. They’re generally well behaved, but the younguns will spray each other – not a full-charge spray, but a little. (I went through a cloud of eau de skunk last week, when I had to renew my driver’s license. It was fresh that morning, I think.)
In other news, I did the bloodwork this afternoon for getting the IV port out of my shoulder – it was supposed to be done last spring, but Things Happened. They haven’t given me a date for the adventure – but it will be within the next week.
Good luck, PJ!
Good luck with your cyber removal process, indeed!
Hope the de-Borgification process is smooth and as painfree as possible.
Supposed to be next Monday (the 9th) but first a virus test, and they have to tell me when to show up for it. Today or tomorrow…supposedly.
CommentMay your strong recovery continue
“The sun will come up tomorrow…”
I am SO tired of all this campaigning, all the despicable ads so flimsy a fourth-grader could drive a truck through them. But what does it say about us that campaigns think they work?
I’ll bet this isn’t the avatar you expected for November. But remember the first Thanksgiving, or at least its mythology. And yes, this is northern Plains regalia that Americans weren’t to meet for about a century more.
I think it’s appropriate; November is, after all Native Peoples month, so let’s honor the Native Americans, First People, or others who got here before the haoles.
The ads do work. I think its a combination of many people want to believe what they want to believe and many people avoid paying any interest to politics so they vote for the same party they believed in when they used to be interested in it enough to pay attention 20 years ago.
The Mailbox Adventure
T.A.Murotake
On the Wednesday that Zeta came in, I arrived home from work to the news that the mail had not been checked. It was raining heavily, so I didn’t want Mama to take her cane or her walker and go the 50 yards to the mailbox.
I drive a smart car. When I bought it, the hood was black, though the rest of the panels were red. I painted it to resemble a seven-spot ladybug and slapped a couple of Buggatti stickers on it. In this I was to fetch the mail while staying mostly dry.
When the rain slacked off a little, I drove out to the mailbox and turned around so that the driver side window was close to the box and opened both. It was dark enough that I could not see into the mailbox, so I closed the window, backed up and straightened out so that I could open the door and get out. I put the car in park, opened the door and stood up.
I noticed the door approaching my feet and turned slightly to reach for the seat, as I thought my feet were slipping on the wet pavement. Not so. Either I had not shoved the gearshift far enough forward, or had caught it with my clothing as I got out.
The door hit me and knocked me flat. I watched the door pass over me and the front wheel roll past my head. I got to my feet and watched Ms. Buggatti accelerate backwards down the street faster than I could run.
Fortuneately, the wheel was slightly turned, so instead of going into the deep, narrow ditch on the far side of the road, it backed through the equally deep but very wide ditch on the near side. It hit a small tree back on and stopped moving. I walked after it and pulled enough branches of the azalea which grows next to the tree out of the drivers’ seat that I could firmly put the car in to park. I pulled most of the rest of the azalea branches out of the car and got in. I pushed the branches that were left out, sat down and belted in. I put the car in drive, pulled slightly forward and shut the door.
I pulled up to the mail box, put the car in park, got out and checked the mailbox. There was no mail; I was soaked.
I bet you got a really great adrenalin rush out of your Mailbox Adventure too, in addition to a good soaking!
“Lady Bug, Lady bug, fly away home.”
I like it. I’ll bet you get a lof of appreciative comments.
Even offers to buy her for more then she cost me. I think that the eyelashes do it!
Tommie, I’m very glad you didn’t get hurt, and your car still works.
The way you tell it, it’s a funny story, but it must have been very scary when it happened, especially rolling so close past your head.
Next time, an umbrella might be a better idea?
Honestly, the idea of taking the car to go 50 yards sounds so very American to me… that’s not even worth getting the bike out to a Dutchy.
But then, we’ve all got raincoats ready at the door, with our usual weather.
Sorry, I could have been clearer. Hurricanes have high, unpredictable winds, and Zeta put out quite a downpour.
My first feeling was disbelief. After that I was indeed afraid, but I was on my feet by then.
Ah, I hadn’t realised how hard the wind was still blowing, when you mentioned the rain slacking off a bit. No, an umbrella would not make sense at all in a high wind!
There’s a “storm umbrella” developed by some Dutchy for use walking or cycling in bad weather, but even that would not stand up to hurricane winds.
I’m glad you’re alright, Tommie! Even though that’s a small car, it would have hurt rolling over you!
…and DH and I are breathing a huge sigh of relief — they just called it for Biden.
Yeah, almost the whole world is relieved by that, except maybe some other authoritarian far-right people.
But the leadership of the Senate is still dependent on the 2 run-off elections in Georgia in January. If those both go to Republicans, Biden and the democrats will still be blocked by Mitch McConnel from ever achieving anything, like he did for president Obama. Even if they get one each, there are a few senators that run as centrist Democrats but will very often vote with the Republicans, making it less likely the vice-president could cast the tie-breaking vote on some really important issues.
Then there will be no way forward towards resolving some of the problems with the US.
Rejoining the Paris climate agreement? I’m not so sure that can be done, with the Senate obstructing everything and trying to get the heavily partisan Supreme Court to throw out what they can’t block. An ungovernable mess, that looks like, to me.
Also, the Republicans kept their hold on a majority of state governments, which means they will be the ones to draw the electoral districts for the next 10 years, and are very likely to maintain or increase the gerrymandering of said districts, to further increase their already disproportionate grip on the seats of power.
That first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all style of elections used in the UK and the US really encourages two-party polarization and undemocratic power-plays. The guys with less votes getting the power more often than not is very strange to anyone in a real one person, one vote proportional representation democracy. But with this limited downballot success any chance of moving towards a more representational result, less susceptible to dark money influence, seems out of the question.
Hanneke, one only wishes that more of the US citizenry were as well-informed about the workings of their political systems as you! 😀
My family in Montreal just breathed a huge sigh of relief; my friends in Edinburgh have got to be relieved at the US election outcome. I’ve got my fingers crossed for our future here in the US. We need to rejoin the Paris Accord. We need to have the Federal government take COVID… and the economic suffering of people seriously. I think/hope/pray that the US Senate comes more to its senses. I think it may with Trump hopefully moving out of the picture. For now, I am going to be optimistic… and in a few minutes listen to Biden’s speech.
@Hanneke My apologies in advance if this seems to jump around, touching deep subjects without adequate exposition thus seems not to your point, but needs must.
I think we, here in America and worldwide, are experiencing change at a rate many cannot adapt to.
It has turned up in the SCOTUS as “Originalism”, the virtual idolatry of our Constitution, intellectual conceit that modern people can feel the original intent, or that it is entirely relevant 231 years later, jot and tittle. [Transferal of what many believe of the Bible.] For example, the 3rd “Billeting” Ammendment, which was entirely a reflection of colonial British practices and NEVER relevant in our history. Yet they overlook the first predicate clause of the 2nd.
The Electorial College is another, entirely a concession to the inadequacies of 18th Century travel, assuming travel was necessary for timely decision-making. [Zoom wasn’t a word.]
I have observed many people “born too late”, who would’ve fit much more comfortably in the 19th Century [John Wayne’s movie career is a testament to them], many even now in the earlier 20th. We’re not there and that’s a problem for them.
Yet our Founding Fathers did a remarkable job creating a document of principles that was not too much of its time. One that is too adaptable to its time wouldn’t provide stability. On this I often speak of Dynamic Balance vs Static Balance. You can’t turn a broom upside down and balance it on the tip of its handle on the floor, but put the tip in my palm and I can keep it balanced as long as you like, walk it upstairs, downstairs, in my lady’s chamber.
So to borrow from the Bard, the fault is not in our politics, but in ourselves.
Having half the country unhappy is not good, either way. Scorched earth policies breeds revenge. We need to remember how to work together again.
Biden’s speech called on all for unity—may it prevail. For tonight and at least the next few days I shall focus on that hope.
Yes, I agree, Spence.
If the Republicans want to continue to rule, they need to work hard to convince more people to vote for them by promoting good policies.
If the talk and debates between people of different political leanings can agree on the basic facts of life being what they are, and focus on the practical results people want to gain from the policies their government enacts with their tax dollars, and then having some clear give-and-take “haggling” on which points people might be willing to give the other side a little in order to gain something they really want, I bet there would be a lot more common ground to be found.
In fact, I believe the anti-majoritarian measures in the US system, with the Electoral College and the disproportionate representation of smaller rural states, were put in place not just to pacify the slave states after the civil war, but also to encourage this kind of give and take, working together.
The whole system was never designed to become this hyper-partisan two-party system in which the minority rules over the majority along strict party lines. Now that it has, it’s hard to see how to get it back on a more evenhanded keel.
Shifting a country over to authoritarianism and oligarchy or kleptocracy by spreading lies, fear and distrust of one’s fellow countrymen does have a good chance of working, if enough people are willing to swallow the lies and follow “their team” regardless – countries all around the world have proven this or are in the process of proving this, by electing populist authoritarians (mostly far right, but a few far left) who then start undermining the democratic institutions and safeguards in their countries.
It’s a great pity that almost half the people of the US, which was still seen as a “beacon for democracy” around the world until 4 years ago (despite several earlier bouts with electing a president who lost the popular vote, and Congress being willing to block everything along party lines for the first black president), seem to be willing to follow that path to keep and further strengthen their present power imbalance.
I don’t know anything else that I could do that might help to get this back to a normal democratic situation than to be open to having these conversations, in as open- minded a way as I am capable of, and quite separate from possible US party affiliations. So I’m sorry to be talking about politics in this politics-free zone, but as this blog has been so quiet and only visited by polite, nice and reasonable people who I know are from different political spectra, it’s the only place on the Internet where I would dare to have this sort of conversation.
Congratulations. Really hanging out for your next book in the Hinder Star series. Congratulations too to America for the election result. I was bleeding with all the things Trump was doing. My friends in Aus couldn’t believe how he got elected in the first place. He would make a great fantasy writer (but he’d probably need a ghost writer to put the words in the right order!) Sorry if this is too political.
At last my daughter and daughter-in-law will be able to bring their children for a visit if they like. They refused to come over while Mr. Trump was president, and I can’t say as I blame them at all. They live in Canberra, BTW.
Donald Trump is still President, and his direction to DHS and TSA are still in control.
And CDC.
But now there is some hope for the career professionals to hold on for another 9 weeks or so. Perhaps many who have been fired (By tweet? How classless!) will find their way back. And that’s hope for us that professionals will run specialized departments rather than political loyalists.
I’ve always had an interest in History, mostly Ancient, but abandoned hope during my upper division studies, ’65-’67, because it wasn’t considered “important enough”, while my Chemistry was of “national interest”. In the last four years I’ve increasingly seen many striking parallels to post-Weimar Germany, and we know how THAT turned out. It’s hard for me to forget, bring born on what was s’posed to be the eve of D-day–but the weather in the Channel was bad–Ike could wait a day, Mom couldn’t.
Paul, a lot of the world sees it, and worries.
Totally on a different tack: CJ, now we’re moving into a period of winterizing things, how did the pond do over the summer?
Indeed! How are the kitties, the fish, Jane? I would be delighted to hear about the mundane things now that one of the current crises has eased.
The neighbors over the back fence cut down 2 big trees on the fenceline and pulverized some of my plants and construction work by dropping huge branches on my bananas and the shed I was starting to build. They were apologetic and took away most of the debris, but I’m still raking up twigs and leaves galore.
I’m relieved to hear positive news, and hope everything continues to improve on all fronts.
Last Saturday, by sheer coincidence (hah, Biden was declared the winner) my blood pressure dropped a full ten points from it’s ‘resting’ state it had held for the past year (and has mostly stayed down since, thank goodness).
I’ll take all the happy news I can get right now.
On a separate topic – just how ignorant is Bren about elevations? I should admit I am finishing up the THIRD complete re-read of the entire Foreigner series in the past month (the vibe is totally different from the first couple of books, where everybody is flying everywhere with no trains in much evidence and considerable swearing from Iliside, Tabini and Damiri as well -)
but when Bren says Shejidan as at 1300 meters (close to Denver) and Malguri is four times that – which is 5200 meters, or almost 17000 feet, where most humans are having difficulty breathing – then HOW high up is Hasjuran, and never mind that but the PASSES which are obviously even higher up – do the trains have supplemental oxygen for passengers or is Bren just flat out clueless about actual elevations?
Sorry – three complete re-reads in weeks and I’m nitpicking the plot details to death. I do hope Hasjuran is picturesque, rather than picaresque, although that was sort of charming.
Also don’t bother to stress about this stuff. It entertains me, that’s all.
Have a beautiful Thanksgiving, and I hope you don’t get too terribly cold this year (a vain hope, I’m afraid, but still).
I admit that those altitudes gave me pause, also. I can see Maguri as being at 2500m, and Hasjuran at 3000-some, even 3500 – that’s doable without auxiliary O2, but it’s definitely thin air (11000-plus feet).
Perhaps the air on the Atevi world is thicker than that on Earth? What difference would a nearly all ocean world, like theirs is, make on the atmosphere?
I think to have a thicker atmosphere you’d need a higher gravity planet, not a wetter one. A wetter one gives you bigger storms and more rain and snow – depending on where a continent sits relative to the equator. Really REALLY high mountains are usually due to a continent/continent collision, which gives you earthquakes and super high plateaus and mountain ranges, but without volcanoes. That’s if your planet has tectonic plates, which the atevi world apparently does (the Southern Island area has volcanoes, earthquakes and a notable tsunami – though I’m wondering how the Marid bay protected anything in a tsunami – a bay like that would usually funnel the water up even HIGHER – but it could easily depend simply on the geometry of the bay opening relative to the tsunami I suppose.
Geigi has noted small volcanic islands forming off on the other side of the world, which argues for some kind of internal heat release (could be a hotspot?) or a plate boundary of some unidentified kind (spreading centers also have volcanoes – see Iceland).
La Paz, Bolivia is the highest national capital, and it is roughly 11 thousand feet or so I believe.
Maybe a confusion of feet or yards and meters?
Feet seems likely, considering the starting points.
We used to vacation at 1700 meters in Switzerland, walking up to the Hospice du Grand Saint Bernard at 2473 meter on the Swiss-Italian pass, and those landscapes and winter snow layers seemed to fit the Malguri description rather well. So that would argue that Shejidan, which is after all in an area closer to the coastal plains and Padi valley, could be at 1300 feet (nearly 400 meters).
That would put Malguri at 4×1300=5200 feet or around 1700 meters, comparable to our high Alpine village, close to the ski slopes (and historically primarily used for summer pasture, and inaccessible in winter except on skis).
Malguri is on the eastern side of the pass throught the central mountain range, guarding the approach to the pass – so might be well below the level of the pass itself, if the approach is narrow enough.
I am not a geologist, but I seem to remember that the high and nearly-impassable mid-continent mountain range between east and west was the result of two tectonic plates shoving up against each other.
So is that high plateau and mountain range at Hasjuran, on the border with the Marid, part of that central mountain range? Maybe the Marid is on a southern part of the Eastern plate that is breaking off under the ocean and curving around north where the western plate was shorter than the eastern one?
That might be a trigger for tsunamis like the one that devastated the big island; and if the direction of the tsunami came from the southeast it could mostly pass by the big Marid bay which has its opening towards the northwest.
Or is the Marid on a separate (smaller, or mostly oceanic) plate coming up from the south or the west, throwing up a separate mountain range?
It doesn’t appear to have a subduction zone as we’ve not heard anything about volcanoes on the big Atevi continent, so are the edges of both still crinkling up? IIRC ocean plates are often slightly less dense (among other things, they get built up with calcium deposits from seacreature shells etc.) than the landmass plates, so mostly-oceanic plates tend to subduct under the edges of continental plates, getting their material melted in the hot mantle of the Earth, and coming up as volcanoes along the inland side of the edge of the continental plate – as is visible in the ‘ring of fire’ volcanoes around the Pacific ocean.
That makes me think the first option is more likely, and the Marid is probably not the tip of an oceanic plate approaching from the (south)west.
Other option:
A meter is not a fixed natural constant (yet), just a bar of metal in Paris. So an Atevi meter might be closer to a yard or so.
Then it’s just a bit less high than it would be in Earth meters, maybe just enough not to run into the supplemental oxygen limit. Some people ascend Everest (8848 meter) without extra oxygen, though it’s dangerous, and just not possible for most.
OTOH, Atevi aren’t human, so for Atevi the height limit for supplemental oxygen might be higher than it is for humans.
The passes above Hasjuran may be un-doable for Bren without oxygen supplements; he did have to get used to the effects of the height on the ascent to Hasjuran on the train (even going from -2 to 1700 meters we would take a day or two to get acclimated before walking far and higher).
Hmm, thinking about those nearly impassable high mountains got me thinking about how people from Nepal or Bolivia or Tibet or Switzerland would think about that.
Would they *know* in their bones, that mountain people would have sprung up to colonise all those inaccessibly high little valleys (safe from more powerful/numerous lower-altitude groups), and developed hidden smuggling trails between different sides of that range?
Rather like me being “triggered” to doubt, in a similar manner, by CJs explanation for the southern part of the East playing little role in the politics and economy of the east, being poor and sparsely inhabited as it was all barely habitable or productive swampland.
As a Dutchy that immediately makes me think “that can’t be right”: swamps and river deltas are generally very biologically productive, people live and thrive there all over the world – the Netherlands, Bangladesh, the Swamp Arabs that Saddam Hussein had to try to drive out by draining their swamps, the original Louisiana native people, Venetia – swamps can give reliable good eating for a hunter-gatherer society, and from that starting point quite a lot of development is possible.
They are also a good place to get away from other, more powerful groups, who don’t know the ways through the swamp (as with the swamp arabs resisting Saddam, or rebels and smugglers hiding in the English Fens).
The counterpoint is that swamps don’t just produce lots of edible biomass, they also produce lots of disease vectors – people might need to develop fashions for walking around coated in mud or painted green with smelly sap to deter mosquitos, but that’s never stopped humans.
It’s true, most of the swamps that developed into rich & important places did so by becoming trade ports, accessing sea and river trade. So when CJ declared the swampy southeast coast was bordered by cliffs, so it didn’t have much access to the sea or the hinterland of the East, that would limit the options for economic growth and development.
Still, for a Dutch person, it feels as if those southeastern atevi must have missed some good opportunities.
Funny how one’s own environment can invisibly permeate one’s worldview, and only become noticeable in such instances, where you suddenly notice that not everyone has the same immediate reaction to a descriptor like that: (“there’s no such thing as”) uninhabitable swamp, impenetrable mountains…
They’ve fixed the meter as the distance light travels in 1 second.
There’s a highway pass in California, open generally from the end of May to the end of October, that’s a little above 3000m. You don’t need oxygen to get over it, but it’s pretty high.
(Generally, you want to spend a few days at altitude before doing anything strenuous, but just passing through isn’t a problem. Some people can’t do it even with the adjustment period, and even at lower elevations.)
I think you may have mistyped that lightspeed conversion 🙂 1 Meter: Distance light travels in 1/299 792 458 of a second in vacuum.
When I visited Yellowstone a couple of years ago, I was expecting some adjustment issues, as the rest of the year I mainly spend at sea level and Yellowstone straddles the Continental Divide, but remarkably, nothing. We wanted to try driving the Beartooth Highway; Route 212 is reputed to be incredibly scenic and even higher, but we ran out of time. I go to the summit of Haleakala maybe 2x a year, which is 10000 feet; so far (touch wood, scratch a stay, turn three times) no problems there either.
No, oceanic plates are DENSER and therefore heavier than continental plates, which is why – in a collision – is the oceanic plate that generally goes DOWN as the LIGHTER and less dense continental plate rides over.
The Himalayas are the result of a continent/continent collision, and BOTH sides basically are going UP. Since the crust is extra thick there (crumpled up) there are NO volcanoes, but plenty of earthquakes.
volcanoes are mentioned in connection with the Southern Island, so ‘island’ plus ‘volcanoes’ tells me there is likely a subduction zone (trench) just off the southern island -somewhere.
I have some trouble with figuring out the tsunami – a major cause is an earthquake resulting in rapid change in elevation under water – the most likely location for that would be on the OTHER side of the island, probably – so no tsunami would head toward the continent in that case.
Another cause is a drastic and huge landslide INTO an ocean, which could be the case – did the Southern Island basically blow up? Like the island volcano in the Med which caused the near-destruction of the Minoan civilization?
The Med is full of plate boundaries, by the way – it is slowly closing, building volcanic chains along Italy and Greece, and bolstering the Alps.
These things move VERY VERY SLOWLY.
Volcanic eruptions and earthquakes are ‘hiccups’ along the way, compared to the end results of entire mountain ranges and new continents. Not thousands of years, or tens of thousands of years, but millions and millions of years.
Venus is basically the same mass as Earth, but has a much heavier atmosphere… so it is not mass>gravity alone that impacts the density of the atmosphere. Although, smaller planets=less able to hang on to their atmoshere overall, we presume (based on the case of Mars). I’m in the midst of teaching the solar system & planets in my Astronomy class right now… and reading the latest Foreigner book at bedtime.
There have been several different epochs in Earth’s history where the atmosphere has been radically different than it is at present. Perhaps, differing ecosystems or different chemistries could make a difference in the oxygen content at such high elevations on such a different world.
Let me think about that. I’ll get back to you. But given that humans have no difficulty either breathing or with gravity at sea level (if it’d be much different than earth atmospheric stratography at altitude in the way you question, it’d be way different at sealevel), I think it’s be difficult, within the known laws of physics and chemistry.
If a planet had a significant amount of a heavy gas in its atmosphere, say argon or CO2, then lighter oxygen would rest on that higher in the atmosphere. Then it would have to be “heavy” if it were around a G or K Class star, or around a Class M red dwarf, to hold the lighter fraction down, or farther away at the cold-edge of the habitable zone, preventing it being blown off by a solar wind. That isn’t the Atevi planet.
That’s all that occurs to me.
It’s mostly CO2, atomic weight 12+8+8 = 28gm/22.4l, while air is 79% N 14gm/22.4l, 21% O 16gm/22.4l, less than 15gm/22.4l. nearly twice as heavy.
Yeah, our Swiss friends used to prefer the walk along the higher mule-path to the St.Bernard monastery, which went along at about 3200 meters (with a chance of spotting Edelweiss), for a nice afternoon’s walk, when visiting us during the summer holidays. There were sheepherders staying in old huts (and one airlifted-in caravan) up there over the summer, and some of the huts the real climbers used were at 3400 meters or so. So people do live and work normally at that sort of elevation.
But if Malguri really is at 5200 meters, and Hasjuran even higher than that, I really would have expected more breathing trouble for Bren, at least.
Also, higher mountains mean they haven’t had the time to wear down, which indicates a more active geology. We haven’t heard much about earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis occuring since the human landings, only the one long ago that displaced the Marid peoples. I’d have expected more earthquakes in the mountainous regions if the earth was still actively being crumpled and uplifted there, to have those mountains be so high.
OTOH, when do we ever hear about earthquakes in the Himalayas, which would be the Earthly equivalent? If they don’t cause a lot of destruction or death to humans, they don’t get wider attention – certainly with the lack of quick continent-wide communication and automatic monitoring any small quakes in sparsely-populated mountains might not make it onto the Shejidan news.
Firstly, the speed of light is roughly 300,000,000m/s. Not 1m/s.
Secondly, “Nepal [7.8Mw] earthquake of 2015, also called Gorkha earthquake, severe earthquake that struck near the city of Kathmandu in central Nepal on April 25, 2015. About 9,000 people were killed, many thousands more were injured, and more than 600,000 structures in Kathmandu and other nearby towns were either damaged or destroyed.”
“[May 12, 2015] An earthquake of magnitude 6.0 on the Richter scale [7.3Mw] jolted central Nepal on Wednesday morning. The epicentre of the tremor has been recorded at Ramche of Sindhupalchok district which has already been ravaged by flood and landslide and earthquake of 2015.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Nepal
Exactly – the Himalayas are still rising. That’s what the earthquakes are doing. But no volcanoes, because the crust there is double thick, and magma can’t make it up through to the surface.
No, not in Tibetan Plateau, but in time you can expect them in the Takla Makan, Sinkiang, even Kyrgyzstan & Kazakhstan.
Are you thinking of the hot spot that reputedly created the Deccan Traps? I think that one is going in the other direction; it currently is located under Reunion. Is there another one to the N of Tibet? I know very little of the geology in that area.
Yes, it may well be, in reference to the center of the “Indian subcontinent” which is moving to the north-northeast. We see mantle plumes are relatively immobile as the surface skids around.
But no, I’m thinking of the fractionation of lighter-weight hydrated basal crust that floats to the surface creating gassy, explosive, andesitic volcanoes, as in, well, the Andes, the Cascades, and all around the Pacific Rim. The Tibetan Plateau may well be thick enough to cap it, but the “conveyer belt’ doesn’t look like stopping, so I expect the “melt” to be carried along, with eruptions at the farther side of the plateau.
Y’ know, it was the Pacific, Farrallon, Juan de Fuca plates subduction that pushed up the Rockies in the Laramide Orogeny, q.v., well inland, later the Cascades with their andesitic volcanoes. And there WAS volcanism associated with the Rockies, i.e. Black Canyon (hint, hint), Colorado.
p.s. The 170,000 cubic meters of liquid pahoehoe of the Columbia Basalt Group came from fissures (as we saw on the Big Island a few years ago south of Hilo) associated with the Yellowstone Hotspot when it began in SE Oregon.
Isn’t Hasjuran heated by hot springs, like certain cities in the Caucasus?
Venus’ atmosphere also has a very different composition than Earth’s, which changes the density. Atevi Earth is breathable for humans with reasonable ease, so it is probably Ni/Oxygen and of similar density to Earth’s atmosphere.
I’m going to assume that ‘meters’ are actually ‘feet’ unless and until Her Ladyship does a massive rewrite of the entire series, and fixes a host of things more vital than elevation figures most readers don’t blink at, because most Americans don’t have a clue how long a meter is.
I’m collecting plot holes and different histories, for my own interest. How old WAS Damiri when she was taken from Tirnamardi to the Ajuri house? three days old or four years? When did Valasi die? Did Wilson serve Valasi and then Ilisidi when she was regent? How old was Tabini when his father died? ten or twelve, or was he close to 23?
If Damiri’s father only became Lord shortly after Murini was defeated, how did he manage to marry ‘after’ and end up with a grown daughter (sister of Damiri) who has a child of her own? Or is this an uncle? In one book, Damiri’s father was long dead and the Lord of Ajuri was an uncle….
And what happened to Shawn’s wife and kids (mentioned several times over several books)? Because in Convergence (I think it was Convergence), he’s conveniently single (divorced?)
How old was Toby when he married? He’s younger than Bren, isn’t he? Bren – at 26 or 27 – mentions that Toby’s kids are followed ‘to school’, which implies they are at least six. Did Toby marry as a teenager?
Anyway.
I am making LISTS.
More Cajeiri, please.
Also I promise you, if you have a human population on Mospheira, sure as the world SOME kid, somewhere, tried turning SOMETHING into a pet. There have to be pets on Mospheiri. Pet lizards maybe. Pet – somethings.
You know that if there were any on Mosphei’, kids would be desperate to catch and tame a wi’itkitin. Pet dragons!
Though off-topic, the linguists among us may be interested in Tor’s article by C.D. Covington “Man’chi” Is Not the Same as “Liking”: Intercultural Communication in C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner Series. Tommie, I wish we had some hot springs (well, no, I’m aware of the implications). Winter has arrived at the North Coast. Chris and I are trying to decide if I’m well enough for me to keep working for another three years. I feel rather stubborn about it. So does the corpus. I seem to have an inflated view of my abilities.
BTW, I haven’t see BCS around. Everything okay with him?
At any rate, a huge pre-holiday hug to my salads!
Fascinating! I’ll have to pop onto tor.com and try to find the article.
Re: BCS, I’ve sent him email and contemplated calling him. His website is down and so far he hasn’t replied to my e-mail. It’s starting to look a bit worrisome; we haven’t seen him about since February and the long-winded venting debacle.
I tried emailing BCS four times, but haven’t had an answer from him either. I’ve been worried about him but don’t know what else to try, with his website down and him not responding here or to emails.
I’ve been hoping it’s because he got busy completing the sale and moving house, and the new place didn’t have internet right away, as he talked about shortly before he stopped commenting here.
But he also said his friend was sick, the one who was helping him with errands and the house, and with whom he was investing his savings; so I’m worried he and/or his friend might have got Covid, and something bad might have happened.
Oh dear, this is worrisome that BCS has not been replying to emails either. He was in a very fragile state emotionally when he dropped off commenting on CJ’s blog. Those who do have his email, please do communicate people’s concern and care. I’m afraid that he has been feeling intensely isolated.
Quiet…
Was it something I said? Then let me say this, being the first to offer all our salads a pleasant turkey dinner (“Feed me, Seymour!), and thankful Thanksgiving Day, small and safe.