Then maybe if Seswatha was damned, for one reason or another (how deep a sin is infidelity?), then all the Mandati are therefore damned for sharing his soul. No matter what gnostic user TJE looks on, it sees only the blighted soul of Seswatha (Except, notably, Kellhus).

Don't know if anyone here watches "Through the Wormhole", its a dorky show on the science channel that tries to show scifi meeting reality.

Anyways, yesterday it was about brains. One of the things that was brought up was that a woman is developing a fancy headband that allegedly helps take a novice of a certain activity and train something like 300% faster than those without.

 The technology takes the brain activity of an 'expert' records it, and tries to 'train' the novice by getting them to come into the same mental state as the expert. This apparently does a spectacular job at helping people learn things.

I was curious as to what anyone thought about how that might affect humanity. If something like this could be used to drastically reduce the amount of time it took someone to become an 'expert' at any skill, say any athletic event, how would it affect everything? Would it cause an explosion of greatness? Reducing the time it takes to become equal to the current level of expertiese, allowing significantly more time in ones life to read new heights. Or, would it cause a great stagnation of talent, a completely level playing field, where no one bothered to work harder than the next guy, knowing that eventually they will be able to 'cheat' their way up after a few years.

I'm nearing the end of book 1. Its alright. Entertaining at times, others not so much. I think it could develop into an interesting series so  I'll probably read on.

I also decided to read every book in Orson Scott Card's Ender's saga. After the first 2 it was a waste.

Thats some interesting speculation there. The only thing is that we don't know if an elju has some kind of metaphysical connection with their nonmen or not. It could simply be that each elju is just responsible for remembering the events that occur only after they become a book.

Perhaps human minds have a great capacity to hold memories than Nonmen. It could be that a human elju or a sranc elju could somehow hold more memories than the nonmen themselves. Though barring that, I don't see how a person could hold all those memories. It would just drive them crazy like the Nonman they serve. I mean, the Mandate are half craven as it is (they remember only suffering, isn't that an interesting coincidence), and thats only with half the memories of 1 man. 10,000 years of nonman dreams would bow even the sturdiest of intellects.

How about an elju being like a flashdrive or an external harddrive. Nonmen offload memories into their elju and call on their elju to remember for them when it is important. Maybe then the difference of an Intact and an Erratic is that the Intact has a varitable army of elju that store all their memories, while the erratics just one or two and therefore losing many many memories.

This might be an interesting read for you. Its certainly a good question.

"The Cleric Suicides..."
http://second-apocalypse.com/index.php?topic=456.0

For myself, I'm on the fence a bit. It sounds pretty lame, to me personally, to believe that he just decided to die. Entirely possible but I simply don't like it

EDIT:
Also, Dusk, there are definitely wards that act as semi-permanent barriers once they are sung. Incipiant wards right? Remember when the Skin-Eaters are attacked by the Stone Hags and Akka's wards save him from arrows at the start of the fight? He wasn't singing at all or even thinking about it. There should not have been any reason for Cleric to have no wards at all hanging around. Unless he just forgot... but that would be so erratic of him.

I might direct you to this link, some similar questions where asked:
http://second-apocalypse.com/index.php?topic=760.0
There might be another thread around here that has a similar topic but I don't know where it is.


I find picked up China Miéville's "Perdido Street Station" as someone suggested in that thread. It was spectacular. A terribly dark fantasy, even depressing at times, which reminds me of TSA. Though to be sure its not TSA. Also keep in mind the China sees himself as a 'rule breaker' I think, so he likes to include strange and weird things into all his books.

EDIT:
here is another one:
http://second-apocalypse.com/index.php?topic=443.15

Would would be lucky to get to 10 , but I am tempted to say the more the merrier. For any given question there would probably be only a couple of "answers", and at least some support should be offered.

Seems to work well enough for me, though I am always signed in.