Hope you like it. I enjoyed it, but the author has a bit of Stephen King in him. Fantastic story ideas, great start, but it seemed he wasn’t sure how to end it. JMO, though.
And animal hair.
Less baffling when you know that early humans lived in the same area as these guys:
It’s small steps from seeing weaver birds at work to basketry (in fact, just last season’s nests make wonderful baskets as-is), and from basketry to textiles.
Thank you, I knew there must be small steps, and this fills in the blanks wonderfully.
@pullin @enipla Your discussion reminds me of a book series I read 10-20 years ago.
You may already be aware of the “1632” series by Eric Flint, in which a modern midwestern town is hit by some sort of techno-babble technology (like a quantum bubble or some such) released as a joke by an alien species, and transported / transplanted into the middle of continental Europe during the 30 year’s war (or just before it). The entire town; townspeople, cars, buildings, etc.
Fertile ground for exploring what-if scenarios, as in how modern technology and mature enlightenment ideas coming a bit sooner than they did historically.
An interesting contrast would be the Dies the Fire series by S.M. Sterling in which the modern world is trying to recover from a mysterious event which suddenly alters physical laws so electricity, gunpowder, and most other forms of high-energy-density technology no longer work.
I’ve read that series by Eric Flint and liked it very much. And I see the connection you are making.
My deceased father said that information was going to be the next commodity. He later said he wanted to write a book. But all he had was a title which was going to be “More and more about less and less”. And interesting idea IMHO.
That looks interesting too dorvann.
One thing that occasionally blows my mind is the fact that our brains, these grey blobs of stuff, can do so much. Sometimes if I’m in a meeting (pre-Covid at this point) with maybe ten people around the table problem-solving, I’ll try to picture ten brains just hovering there causing these amazing things to happen.
Another one for me is the bicycle, this inherently unstable thing that can do so much and multiply an individual’s locomotion. Once, a long time ago on a racing bike, I was descending this long hill and I hit 90 km/hr, just sitting on a collection of tubes and two really skinny wheels. How cool is that?
They aren’t. The first 3 books are OK, but Stirling then drives the whole mess over a cliff onto a pile of jagged rocks, then sets fire to everything. The only redeeming thing about it is that the base idea also spawned his “Islands” trilogy, which starts excellent and ends up pretty good. It also has a sequel hook.
Robert Adams (author of the Horseclans books) had a short series of books using this plot called Castaways Of Time. I read them long ago so I don’t remember exactly how the cross dimensional thing happened, but one weird thing was that water and electricity still worked in the houses even tho they weren’t connected to anything in the new dimension.
(For those who don’t already know). . . Voyager 1 had the option of doing a Pluto flyby after Saturn, but when they altered the course to to a Titan flyby, that course alteration took Pluto off the table. However, if they had sent it on directly to Pluto after Saturn, it would it would have arrived in 1986, 29 years before New Horizons–although, if they had done a Pluto flyby, there probably wouldn’t have been a New Horizons.
I used to ride bicycles 3,000 to 5,000 miles every year and have gotten close to that. I don’t remember ever beating that.
One of my routes when I lived in a city was to go over a tall bridge, rest at the top, and then go as fast as I could downhill.
More fun, though, was drafting trucks and buses. At least until one Sunday morning in downtown when I was drafting one bus that went through a stop light just as it turned red and a crossing bus that was clearly timing the lights came through the newly green light at speed, missing me by about a foot. After that, I quit drafting buses.
One day in a smaller city, the traffic was pretty heavy. As I approached a red light, I rode between the cars and it turned green just as I got up behind an RV at the light so I drafted the RV. The car in the left hand lane had to turn so the RV was by itself for a little bit but then a Chevy Blazer came by with two young couples inside going a little faster than the RV and so I moved over behind the Blazer and we passed the RV. Then, I said “Why not?” and pulled out from behind the Blazer into the clear street and passed the Blazer and stayed ahead of it to the next light. At that point, I pulled over to the right and rode about 10 to 15 mph up to the next light after to recover.
That felt good – one of my best times ever on a bicycle.
Great story! I personally ride a bike in traffic as a vehicle and I ride a lot in downtown Montreal.
I have one route which has about a two km descent with some good curves in downtown Montreal, and usually with motor vehicle traffic going about the same speed as my descent. So I’m doing a fair number of lane changes on the way down. It’s an absolute blast, and it basically ends at my favourite coffee places (also licensed to serve alcohol). A few espressos and/or beers I’ve got a flat 15 km cruise home.
When everything falls into place, it’s magic!
That sounds like fun.
I read once about some bicycle tour company in Hawaii (probably on Maui) that has a bicycle tour that is pretty much all downhill for something like 20 or 30 miles.
Okay. I just did a web search and found it (or something similar) on Maui. From Downhill Bike Tours:
I did some work on Haleakala, luckily it was mostly at night so I missed the bikers mostly. The few times I had to go up during the day, it was a miserable drive getting stuck behind the bikes.
Every so often, I get hung up on how scuba diving is even possible. The water and the pressure at depth affect our bodies in so many ways. We absorb nitrogen that can come out of solution and form crippling bubbles if we come up too fast. We get stupid on the density of the air we’re breathing. We can have seizures from too much oxygen. We have to pee more. We get cold much faster. We can’t see or hear very well. We’re not built for swimming. We’re so vulnerable to very sudden death if something happens to our air supply. We’ve come up with partial solutions to all these problems, but most of those solutions create or contribute to other problems, which require other solutions, which lead to more problems. It just shouldn’t be possible!
Someone–Gould, maybe?–once said something about how if you rewound the tape of life on earth and replayed it, the chances of humans existing at all would be nearly non-existent. I like to think of that when I’m mired in self-pity. This bloated, pathetic body, good for basically nothing without the assistance of technology, is the ultimate jackpot in the cosmic lottery.
The Spruce Goose will really blow your mind. 
If it spins fast enough, however - it vanishes.
Proving that if you provide enough energy, the matter disappears.
I believe this validates Heisenberg’s quantum cat.
Probably.
… and the Antonov AN-225 would have shred whatever was left - but it was based in the Ukraine and the only flying example was destroyed the other day
You never know, you know.