From: maa32 <maa32@dana.ucc.nau.edu>
Subject: For everyone: chromosomes and a chat with Occam
Date: Tue, 08 Jan 2002 22:23:58 -0700

Matthew so kindly pointed out:
>Methinks a chat with Richard of Occam would be good for you. :-)

Maybe there was a bottlekneck effect that really favored multiply limbed or 
allopolypliod mutation (and by the way, in plants, you can usually double the 
chromosomes and still get a viable (but perhaps not always fertile) plant - 
it's a very common vegetable mutation).  Polyploidization restores fertility.  
And this also supports my idea that all life is descended from terraformed 
plants, that ate the animals, added their chromosomes to their own, and became 
them, only multiply limbed because of the chromosomal abberations.

All right. I will repeat this stuff one more time. If we have two huge planets 
that are green and blue, and all those details that I brought up about the 
moon's relative position, and how every change that Hoof notes from Urth and 
Blue can be accounted for by the coming of the New Sun (hoof emphasizes how 
the color of the sea is different, mostly due to the Sun, and how salty the 
water is TWICE ->and when the ice is melted, it is going to make the sea less 
salty, and the sun will make the sea a different color), and how he CALLS LUNE 
GREEN, and how all those little bits about the narrator's voice coming from 
the distant past somewhere, versus a scruple about the Neighbors, who are 
called THE PEOPLE OF THAT TOWN, with a Greater Scylla on both worlds, either 
of which can tell Silk where Seawrack is, and a big ass wall underwater that 
Seawrack talks about, what would Occam say? (And why the heck does Malrubius 
look like Silk?!) The spirits of the people of Nessus are angry at being 
drowned.
But, as I've already said, I really don't care about this scruple.  I just 
think it isn't too cool to ignore all those details from a writer like Wolfe.  
What would Occam's Razor say? Throw out that double-limbed crap -> we know 
that urth knew how to genetically engineer any kind of beast it wanted to, as 
well as having encountered indigenous animals that can form as many limbs as 
they want in the inhumu - who can mysteriously feed on and become like both 
the Vanished PEOPLE and regular people, too from eating their blood -> it's 
pretty obvious these animals can change and adapt in one generation.  And that 
those trees eat each other.