Mesan super-baby market

George J. Smith wrote:Audrey Hanrahan (sp) is an Alpha line, and I don't think she is aware of the MA, likewise the reporter who gave her the New Tuscany records is a beta line and also not aware of the MA.

I suppose we should consider whether or not knowledge of the MA is the same as knowledge of the Onion, I think they would not be the same.

No, she is aware of the MA. Exactly what she knows is unclear, but she knows what her role is. I doubt she knows about Darius, I certainly don't expect she knows the name and I would be absolutely dumbfounded if she had any idea where it was.

In Calderon of ghost it was pointed out that had Mesan Alignment used their resources on a PR campaign they could have achieved such a goal centuries earlier. At fraction of the cost with no connection to slavery.

pnakasone wrote:In Calderon of ghost it was pointed out that had Mesan Alignment used their resources on a PR campaign they could have achieved such a goal centuries earlier. At fraction of the cost with no connection to slavery.

Criminals tend to choose illegal methods to achieve their goals because that is how they think.

kzt wrote:Criminals tend to choose illegal methods to achieve their goals because that is how they think.

Also add that very intelligent and arrogant people are sometimes unable to think of or use a simple solution/plan. They have to make and use a one worthy of their superior intellect.

pnakasone wrote:In Calderon of ghost it was pointed out that had Mesan Alignment used their resources on a PR campaign they could have achieved such a goal centuries earlier. At fraction of the cost with no connection to slavery.

You also get the counter PR from Beowulf and people wondering who is right. But now, we will SHOW them who is right. Or something like that. So I can see the Detweilers going the secret plan to set everything up and then springing it on the Galaxy and Beowulf to show who is right and who is dead.


p.s. Sorry, the ref just would not die.

pnakasone wrote:In [Cauldron of Ghosts] it was pointed out that had Mesan Alignment used their resources on a PR campaign they could have achieved such a goal centuries earlier. At fraction of the cost with no connection to slavery.

And if they failed to convince anyone, they could still have just set up shop a thousand light years from the edge of currently human-occupied space and done their own thing where no one would bother them.

I've said it before. It's not enough to proove that you were right, it's more important to proove that the opposition was wrong.
Even better if you can get them to admit it.

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kzt wrote:

pnakasone wrote:In Calderon of ghost it was pointed out that had Mesan Alignment used their resources on a PR campaign they could have achieved such a goal centuries earlier. At fraction of the cost with no connection to slavery.

Criminals tend to choose illegal methods to achieve their goals because that is how they think.

Not sure I agree with that statement. Criminals tend to choose illegal means because they are engaging in illegal activities. In states where pot is legal, drug dealers sell their products above board and pay taxes. Rare is the person who commits crime just for the sake of breaking the law.

JohnRoth wrote:There's been a lot of history in genetics since the early 90s when Weber started this series, but here it is:

Beowulf has nothing against removing genetic diseases or making piece-meal improvements as long as they're within "normal human variation." They don't even have anything against making wholesale improvements to fix environmental problems. There's a scene in Cauldron of Ghosts where the Beowulfer discusses Honor and Yana, and doesn't find anything particularly objectionable. Even though both of them are superior in certain respects, neither the Meyerhdahl II genome nor Yana's genome is going to take over the galaxy - they've got compensating weaknesses.

What they don't want is to restart racism by having a race of superior people - like the Mesan Alphas.

Also, Manpower doesn't make retail genetic fixes. There are a lot of medical clinics that do those.

It is yet to be decided whether the Malignment is a race of superior people. My guess is that they will turn out not to be. We already know of problems associated with going too far in some areas like intelligence. That said, the Malignment penchant for culling is actually a point in their favor re. genetic selection/engineering in the abstract, though of course most of us--and we see even a few of them--who are not sociopaths are appalled by this policy.

jgnfld wrote:It is yet to be decided whether the Malignment is a race of superior people. My guess is that they will turn out not to be. We already know of problems associated with going too far in some areas like intelligence. That said, the Malignment penchant for culling is actually a point in their favor re. genetic selection/engineering in the abstract, though of course most of us--and we see even a few of them--who are not sociopaths are appalled by this policy.

I have pondered that a bit myself. We have seen plenty of cases where both Ordinary humans and Genies have competed and both sides have been superior in the right circumstances i.e. Victor and Anton are both ordinary humans and have outmaneuvered and outperformed the Alignment directly on multiple occasions, while Thandi and Yana are master fighters (with Thandi as the superior due to both genetics and training), yet cannot think quickly when it comes to espionage/intelligence maneuvering.

I have to wonder if any of the Alignments military groups have ever actually trained against or directly fought against other "normal's" as they call them. The MA Navy has trained specifically to use specialist stealth based warships that cannot fight in ordinary battles. There are also several cases of super-enhanced body guards or solider breeds, but we have yet to see them actually compared against other humans, and Cauldron of Ghosts a pair of non-combat specialists took down one of the MA's GAUL's without too much trouble.

I suspect the Alignment will have taken steps to prevent the common early pitfalls that most other so called super-humans have experienced in the past, but I have an inkling that apart from looking much better, and living a lot longer (5 centuries + prolong), they are not actually all that superior. They have probably once again repeated the same mistake the Scrags once made, remember Robert Tye's words to a Scrag in From the Highlands
"Your only a 'superman', Kennesaw, if you compare the average of the Sacred Band to the average of the rest of humanity."