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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 9/9/2013 6:49 AM, David Stockhoff
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:522DB5D4.6080403@verizon.net" type="cite">
<br>
On 9/9/2013 12:35 AM, Jeff Wilson wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">I would think that any volume of plastic
would indicate either enough time
<br>
for new petroleum to form, or that not enough time had yet
passed for
<br>
processed plastic to crumble.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Exactly. Severian doesn't call it plastic, but he refers to
colored bits of something, so it has already crumbled.
<br>
<br>
Possibly it's a stretch and simply put there as a general clue to
Severian's post-oil extraction time period. Since there could have
been a vast amount of it lying around (probable; in fact I always
took it as a bit of a joke, sort of dinosaurs-to-oil in reverse)
I'd think it would be difficult to get a good estimate of how long
it would take for all of it to disappear.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Ah! "....<em>the kind of sand that artists call polychrome (because
flecks of every color are mixed with its whiteness) is actually
not sand at all, but the glass of the past, now pounded to powder
by aeons of tumbling in the clamourous sea."<br>
<br>
</em>I can see the confusion of plastic with glass by unilluminated
people, but it should be too light to mix with sand, and perhaps
should be as familiar as Sev says prosthetic limbs are. <em><br>
</em>
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