zompist bboard

I just thought I might draw the attention of those of you who don't regularly check the Almeopedia for updates to the Historical Atlas of Arcél, which Zompist is starting to put up now.

Those rifters are getting ever more curious.... They're now described as a species!

Atlas!!
Rifters!!
*sits in corner giggling to self*

I've not seen how often each map will appear. What's the schedule?

dhokarena56 wrote:I've not seen how often each map will appear. What's the schedule?

If you go to the Really Old Changes page and scroll down to 2001, you can get some idea of the speed at which the Historical Atlas of Eastern Erelaé was published back then. Zompist may or may not put stuff up at a similar speed this time.

Rifters? Cannibals from space? Oh, wait, wrong movie...

hwhatting wrote:Rifters? Cannibals from space? Oh, wait, wrong movie...

Wrong name as well.

Yiuel wrote:

hwhatting wrote:Rifters? Cannibals from space? Oh, wait, wrong movie...

Wrong name as well.

That was part of the joke...

Hurray! Very very exciting!

The first map looks kind of.. odd. Not as clean as Zomp normally posts. Its probably just the green background.

It's gonna be fun!

A new Thinking Kind? Or have we found the descendants of the Giants?

1. Yay.
2. Needs moar maps.
3. How did some Murtani wind up in Arcel as well as Erelae?

To answer an earlier question, I'm presently planning on releasing two maps a week. The next two are now up.

Anyone really good with MediaWiki templates? It'd be nice if the green arrows went to the previous/next pages. There's supposed to be a link parameter, but either I'm doing it wrong, or it was only implemented in later versions of the software. (The arrows live in a template, so there's only one place to fix.)

zompist wrote:Anyone really good with MediaWiki templates? It'd be nice if the green arrows went to the previous/next pages. There's supposed to be a link parameter, but either I'm doing it wrong, or it was only implemented in later versions of the software. (The arrows live in a template, so there's only one place to fix.)

With some help I've managed to make it work.

The start of the Atlas looks very promising. So far I especially like the story of Ȟmeŋ. Can't wait to see more!

Awesome, thanks cedh!

Oh! The Rifters surprised me. In a good way. :) Have you perhaps read some Julian Jaynes recently? Your description reminds me strongly of his ideas about consciousness equalling the union of the two halves of the brain, while most mundane human activities can be done without such a union and are not actually conscious.

The Rifters are so cool! Its a very interesting idea, although it might be hard to explain to people without weirding them out...

I like the 'notable people' feature. Really helps make the maps somewhat more meaningful.

o deer

Rifters - yeah, what a surprise! I expected another species of lesuniae - and then this. Wow!

Indeed, we have all been fooled by the boardlord. But the idea is really nice, and freaking scary. I would like to see some Erelaean standing in front of a combined rifter.

So they can combine sex and fishing without problems?

They can, but they're not likely to— they don't need extra intelligence for fishing, and coupling isn't prolonged for hours.

eodrakken wrote:Oh! The Rifters surprised me. In a good way. Have you perhaps read some Julian Jaynes recently? Your description reminds me strongly of his ideas about consciousness equalling the union of the two halves of the brain, while most mundane human activities can be done without such a union and are not actually conscious.

Per contra -1) There are cases of people who have had their corpus callosum surgically severed. They appear to have a normal consciousness except when given carefully designed tests in which the left and right eyes are shown separate pictures. For example if a figure was shown to the left eye only (the right cerebral hemisphere), the subject would say he hadn't seen it (speech originates in the left hemisphere), but his left hand (controlled by the right hemisphere) would choose the right figure. But the subject would name the figure if it was shown to his right eye (the left hemisphere). These tests suggested that both sides of the brain were separately conscious but were not receiving the same information.

2) I have also heard of the case of a woman who lost the function of one entire cerebral hemisphere in early infancy (or possibly in utero). When the "dead" helf of the cortex was surgically removed (to cure her severe epilepsy) she suffered no ill effects and no cognitive loss. Apparently her developing brain had adapted her single functioning cerebral hemisphere to do the work of both!

(Now the link about the rifters is up, I see my earlier post was wrong. I'll have to look elsewhere for the giants and ogres.)

Yep, aware of that. The book was about the development of consciousness in early humans, and not about neurological disorders in present-day humans. Not being an expert in the field myself, I don't have an informed opinion on the accuracy of the ideas, but it was an interesting read, especially in what it had to say about the depiction of consciousness in the oldest recorded literature.

Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the List of Nouns is good science-fiction, even if it's not good history/paleontology. Which it isn't.