(urth) note Re: Short Sun blog

[Jeff Wilson]

On 9/28/2010 2:33 PM, DAVID STOCKHOFF wrote:
> I took the sponge comparison as a metaphor. It does not strike me as a
> biological process.
>
> But at least it isn't hostile to life---as so many sci-fi-physics
> transformations must be, from scanning to teleporting.

Thinking more about it, it makes sense for a size-changing, 
detachable-body-part giant to have decentralized viscera. There might 
already be hearts and lung tissue, notochords, etc distributed through 
out a Hierogrammate's body to assist in perfusion and reflexive 
movement, but it's still a stretch to have giants who suffer square-cube 
law problems like Baldanders and Juturna in the same book as beings who 
can reformulate huge finger bones into a normal-scale full skeleton in 
seconds without even a hint of waste heat or other biological side 
effects, if both are equally biological in nature.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >