Nuclear dampers and sexual cues

Steve Higginbotham writes:
>Hans:
>
>>So how long would it take to focus a node on every cubic meter of the
>>affected area? How long do you have to keep it focussed? Perhaps cleaning
>>up a radioactive planet is not quite so easy as running a vaccuum cleaner
>>over a carpet.
>
>A good battlefield damper can totally inert the radioactives in 288
>nuclear shells in 15 seconds.  It can also clear the induced radioactivity
>from an area of 78 hectares in the same time.

Where do you get these numbers from? And how can I invalidate them? I want
my half-radioactive planets, dammit! (All right, I'll settle for quarter-
radioactive planets).

>>Given that human beings have been known to consort with goats, and that
>>the prime sexual organ is the brain, I don't think we can rule out any-
>>thing.
>
>Humans I wasn't concerned with.  How do the ALIENS feel about it?  If
>they don't have the same kind of sexuality cycle we do, why should they
>consider us attractive?  Admittedly Vargr should have similar sexual cues
>to humans, and they might have been rebuilt with a year-round fertility
>cycle...

If you want to define aliens as unable to take an interest in anything
that dosen't give off the right cues, go right ahead. But the aliens
we're talking about are all intelligent. I'm not going to stretch my
neck out and claim that the ability to fool oneself and one's glands is
an inevetable result of intelligence, but I will claim that there's no
reason to think that humans would be unique in this department. And as
far as Aslans are concerned, Steven Bonneville points out something that
I think is a heavy indication that they at least can fool themselves:

> ALIEN ROMANCE:
>
>     I noticed in S&A that the Aslan seem to consider such liaisons *very*
> dishonorable.  The fact that they consider them at all probably means that
> there are some of the Ftierle who do engage in what most of their folk
> would normally consider perverted....

It's all in the mind...


      Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
     [email removed]
- ------------
"I know there are some people in the world who do not tolerate their
fellow human beings, and I just can't _stand_ people like that!"
                                (after Tom Lehrer)