first batch of answers

[tylik]

"Which dynasty controlled China in in 243 AD? Also how much of China did they control?"

Let me admit, first off, that from memory I could only recall that this was the three kingdom (or, as Prof. Boltz preferred the "tripartate kingdom" period) wherein the region (rather smaller than today's China, mostly those regions surrounding the Huang He and Chang Jiang) was divided into three states whose heads all claimed Han descent, Wei to the North, Han to the west and Wu to the East.

Hmmm... looking around, it looks like Sun Liang was the Emperor of Wu, Liu Shan of Han, and Cao Fang in Wei.

"Do you prefer dark or milk chocolate?"

Dark. Definately dark. Even some entirely unsweetened darks, though 85-90% is more usual.

"What are some things that make you laugh?"

Things that surprise me that are also good ;-) Kitties. People saying unexpected and delightful things. My own weird cross associations that I generally try to spare the rest of the world from.

"You are required to relinquish human form, effective immediately, but may take on the form of any other critter you can think of. Which do you pick?"

Oh, heavens. The highest priorities are brain capacity and ability to communicate. The next would be improved transportation (flying would be good) and lifespan.

I think I would be a dragon. With a lab. And a good internet connection. And mountains. And I'd fly out to the ocean whenever I was feeling moody, and perch on the rocky cliffs of the San Juans. And eat sushi. Very fresh sushi. Oh yes.

"Do you think we'd be good friends if we ever met IRL?"

Well, I think it takes more than just meeting to be good friends, but I think I know what you mean.

I'm not sure. Part of this is because a lot of the things that make friends are ones that don't really come through online. Over the years I've noticed that some of my reactions to people that I've known online are very different in person. Other than that... we obviously have a number of things in common. You have lived your life rather more conservatively than I, which I can respect, but I wonder a bit if I'd be too much of a freak for you. And I'm a fair bit older, which might be relevant, or might not.

"What's the weirdest bread you've ever made?"

I used to sometimes make a Beltaine bread that involved at least three different kinds of grains, three different kinds of fruits, and a couple of kinds of nuts. It was tastey, but yeast risen breads with bannanas have a weird texture.

Then there was the first time I tried to make sourdough bread. I used a half remembered description of the procedure from a Laura Ingalls Wilder book, putting a small amount of flour in some water and covering it with a cloth and waiting for it to sour. It did attract yeast, and actually made pretty decent bread, except that no one had warned me how slow sourdough breads were, and the bread smelled distinctly alcoholic.

"What do you think of the peak oil scenario and if it happens, what do you think the U.S. and the Seattle area will be like afterwards?"

I tend to suspect that some of the current foo-rah about peak oil is opportunistic hysteria driven by current high oil prices. I think there is a fair bit of oil out there. That having been said, I don't know enough about how accessible or easily processed that oil is, and I haven't walked through a good set of projections that include the growth of formerly third world economies (the most obvious example being China). So I don't really know, I think we will hit peak oil eventually, and it might be sooner than the last set of good projections I read (which are probably ten years out of date) suggested. It's kind of on my list of "things I should look into more" for when I next get some time. (Ha!)

And I think the hysteria, even if it is hysteria, might be useful if it gets people looking at alternatives seriously. One of my favorite recent quotes involved someone pooh-poohing bio-deisel as an option, saying that to meet our fuel needs it would take the equivalent of the corn output of our four highest producing states. I wonder if that's a bad thing? I wonder if anyone has really looked at what moving over to biodeisel on a large scale would do for US agriculture? I like to think that the change of oil availability won't be so swift that it sends our economy into chaos.

As a writer, I've played around with future Earths built around transfer of information being cheap and ubiquitous, and yet transportation of people and goods being very expensive. I like the idea of a culture that was very local in terms of face to face communications, and yet very global in terms of the net. This is not to say I'd necessarily prefer to live there.

In many ways, I think the Seattle area would be relatively well off. We have a lot of available hydropower. We have reasonable access to waterways. We have a fair bit of local agriculture. (It seems reasonable to expect that if alternatives aren't found quickly the mass transportation of fresh produce will likely largely end.) I think I'd prefer to see the US broken up into a number of smaller countries. But really, if the change is quick, we're all screwed.

"My back is tweaked. Do you have recommendations for a chiropracter, by chance?"

Two Eastside recommendations -- Heidi Zappone, 425-822-2858, and Lew Estabrook, 425-814-2800.

"Am I better on meds or off?"

I'm not sure if I've spent significant amounts of time around you when you weren't on meds for years. So I don't really know what you'd be like off meds. I don't think I'd encourage you to replace yourself with a much younger version.

"why do people do things counter to their own self-interest?"

I really don't know. I mean, at a gut level, this mostly doesn't make sense to me.

Sometimes I think it is because there are so many competing versions of one's self interest, and the ability to integrate and compare them and prioritize them in a rigorous manner that works in the long term is fairly rare. Sometimes I think that many things that look like someone not acting in their own interest are expressions of some kind of internal metaphorical language. Sometimes I think people are so afraid of change that they will convince themselves that the changes aren't really possible, so that they can justify not putting themselves into scary situations. Sometimes people have very weird and complex relationships with their own motivations and, not understanding why they have the strong guy responses they do have trouble evaluating how best to handle them. Sometimes they have very strong ideals that limit the way they look at what is actually going on.

People are weird.

"Are you still living on the boat, and does your husband live there too? If not, why not? Tell me to fuck off if this is too personal, but I've neen wondering for a while because you never used the word 'we' when you talked about the move."

I am still living on the barge, and no, craigp does not live here, though I usually spend one night a week with him in Woodinville. It's more of a question of why I moved, rather than why he didn't -- the barge is small, and not convenient to his work. I moved partially because the daily commute into the city, on top of the rest of my schedule, was just about killing me, and the barge is close to the lab and doesn't require as much upkeep. And partly because Craig and I have pretty different ideas about how to organize both time and space, and because at the moment it seems like we're going in pretty different directions. This time apart is allowing me to get my stress level down, and both of us to re-evaluate the relationship.