[extropy-chat] 10th Planet Discovered

Mon Mar 15 14:49:49 UTC 2004

On Mon, Mar 15, 2004 at 09:26:48AM -0500, Brent Neal wrote:

> Its seems to me that a necessary condition for any outer planet colonization is a manufacturing base outside of our gravity well.  I'm sure some will disagree, but unless we -vastly- improve the cost of putting a pound in orbit, even Mars remains a difficult colonization prospect.

Sustainable colonization is equivalent to local fabbing. The launch
capacities are only a bottleneck if your seed size is not small. Not a
problem with small scale technology, especially nanotechnology.

> 
> I find the hype about Sudna to be an exceptionally amusing journalistic conceit, considering that many astronomers are proposing removing Pluto's 'planet' status. Categorically, it makes more sense to do that that to try to find some arbitrary size limit on KBOs that defines 'planet' or not.

http://www.hvgb.net/~sedna/story.html

Sedna is a very significant figure in Inuit mythology. There are a number of
different versions of the myth of Sedna. I will share with you the one I
prefer.
As the legend goes, Sedna was a beautiful Inuit girl who lived with her
father. She was very vain and thought she was too beautiful to marry just
anyone. Time and time again she turned down hunters who came to her camp
wishing to marry her. Finally one day her father said to her "Sedna, we have
no food and we will go hungry soon. You need a husband to take care of you,
so the next hunter who comes to ask your hand in marriage, you must marry
him." Sedna ignored her father and kept brushing her hair as she looked at
her reflection in the water.
Soon her father saw another hunter approaching their camp. The man was
dressed elegantly in furs and appeared to be well-to-do even though his face
was hidden. Sedna's father spoke to the man. "If you wish to seek a wife I
have a beautiful daughter . She can cook and sew and I know she will make a
good wife." Under great protest, Sedna was placed aboard of the hunters kayak
and journeyed to her new home. Soon they arrived at an island. Sedna looked
around. She could see nothing. No sod hut, no tent, just bare rocks and a
cliff. The hunter stood before Sedna and as he pulled down his hood, he let
out and evil laugh. Sedna's husband was not a man as she had thought but a
raven in disguise. She screamed and tried to run, but the bird dragged her to
a clearing on the cliff. Sedna's new home was a few tufts of animal hair and
feathers strewn about on the hard, cold rock. The only food she had to eat
was fish. Her husband, the raven, brought raw fish to her after a day of
flying off in search of food.

Sedna was very unhappy and miserable. She cried and cried and called her
father's name. Through the howling arctic winds Sedna's father could hear his
daughter's cries. He felt guilty for what he had done as he knew she was sad.
Sedna's father decided it was time to rescue his daughter. He loaded up his
kayak and paddled for days through the frigid arctic waters to his Sedna's
home. When he arrived Sedna was standing on the shore. Sedna hugged her
father then quickly climbed into his kayak and paddled away. After many hours
of travel Sedna turned and saw a black speck far off into the distance. She
felt the fear well up inside of her for she knew the speck was her angry
husband flying in search of her.
The big black raven swooped down upon the kayak bobbing on the ocean. Sedna's
father took his paddle and struck at the raven but missed as the bird
continued to harass them. Finally the raven swooped down near the kayak and
flapped his wing upon the ocean. A vicious storm began to brew. The calm
arctic ocean soon became a raging torrent tossing the tiny kayak to and fro.
Sedna's father became very frightened. He grabbed Sedna and threw her over
the side of the kayak into the ocean. "Here, he screamed, here is your
precious wife, please do not hurt me, take her."

Sedna screamed and struggled as her body began go numb in the icy arctic
waters. She swam to the kayak and reached up, her fingers grasping the side
of the boat. Her father, terrified by the raging storm, thought only of
himself as he grabbed the paddle and began to pound against Sedna's fingers.
Sedna screamed for her father to stop but to no avail. Her frozen fingers
cracked and fell into the ocean. Affected by her ghastly husbands powers,
Sedna's fingers while sinking to the bottom, turned into seals. Sedna
attempted again to swim and cling to her father's kayak. Again he grabbed the
paddle and began beating at her hands. Again Sedna's hands, frozen by the
arctic sea again cracked off. The stumps began to drift to the bottom of the
sea, this time turned into the whales and other large mammals. Sedna could
fight no more and began to sink herself.

Sedna, tourmented and raging with anger for what had happened to her, did not
perish. She became, and still is today, the goddess of the sea. Sedna's
companions are the seals, and the whales that sit with her at the bottom on
the ocean. Her anger and fury against man is what drums up the violent seas
and storms . Hunters have a great respect for her. Legend has it that they
must treat her with respect. Shaman's from the world above must swim down to
her to comb her long black tangled hair. This calms Sedna down. Once this is
done, she releases her mammals to allow the Inuit to eat from the bounty of
the sea. It is for this reason in the north that after a hunter catches a
seal he drops water into the mouth of the mammal, a gesture to thank Sedna
for her kindness in allowing him to feed his family.

This is the legend of Sedna.

-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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http://moleculardevices.org         http://nanomachines.net
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