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236/512
Does a civilization really have to keep expanding?

Wang Xiaobo,
Luo Guanzhong

I love this opening from the aunt's perspective conversing about establishing basic axioms from which to build a scaffolding for cosmosociology. Very cool. This translation that I'm reading in French is the 2017 translation requested by the author apparently after the 2008 original translation, so I know there must be some difference here but I don't know what.

P. 391/395, I don't remember mentions of the two main characters frm ball Lightning, back when I first read this book also in french, but possibly a different edition because when it's read out loud it comes out in the accent of Quebec rather than Continental France so maybe the translations are different and left more in from the original Chinese version of this book as well. I'm glad I've read Liu's Ball Lightning.

Without particle accelerators we couldn't have invented computers?

P. 359/395: what a beautiful sacrifice by this low level observer and a fascinating thank you to the chancellor whom he points out he would never have gotten to meet if he hadn't committed his so-called crime of warning Earth not to reply, and the beautiful speech on the importance of beauty, art, literature, which a survival only civilization might consider useless or weak, but without those there's no reason to bo

Now how could Evan's possibly have insisted that the aliens were supposed to be coming to reform humanity, when he himself believes that humanity is no better than the bugs or the bacteria that bother us? Species egalitarianism would mean you can't eat anything and you certainly can't use pesticides, herbicides or even antibiotics, by his strict rules.

The inteligencia as an alienated group? Poetry, art? No...

La libération animale, par Peter Singer

Bethune ...

I love how Liu has worked in the name of this doctor into an oblique commentary on education levels both within China and also the rest of the world.
Now, I am going to find out more about this Dr. Bethune, of whom I had never heard until today (in spite of having watched both adaptations, the Netflix and Ten Cent, of this book...)

Her meeting up with three of the four who killed her father was not in either of the adaptations, but served to reinforce her decision that humanity must be inferior to the technologically Superior aliens which of course is not logical unless you confound technology with morality which obviously she does even though she neglects the kindness of those uneducated villagers for some reason.

Of 395 pgs: and thanks to wonderful poetic irony, she still ends up losing both husband and child as a result of her very own actions. At least when one is writing a book the actions can fit the crime or the consequences can fit the crime although she doesn't deserve this and of course neither did either of them.

228/385: the guy talking about the Aztecs being bloody and dark neglects the fact that the civilizations to the north particularly up in the modern state of New York area and even the Cherokee further south, were all extremely independent, what we would now call participatory democracies, and almost impossible to be added to the Aztec empire no matter how far it expanded because of the culture and the fact that to t

Excellent words. What good is temporary Glory of our entire civilization Falls? And by the inaction of the very people who are charged with protecting our civilization at that.

P. 149/395 ah, expat writers...
Cote Rouge II

P. 132 Of 385: le jardin au fleurs de pêcher, I don't remember this conversation with the detective having pointed out so many new cultural events and creations pushing for getting rid of technology

No! Don't fall off the wagon!!

Any technology capable of altering what's in front of your eyes can alter what you see at least temporarily, and it's child's Play to alter the satellite data if you're sufficiently technologically advanced, so the series portrays Wang Miau correctly in refusing to believe them, because as he points out, any science or technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from Magic but it's still only applied scien

So it's okay for men to leave, but women have to put up with everything in life? I can't really imagine that coming from the scientist, particularly the woman who chose for calling in the aliens to make humanity leave the planet...

P. 111/395: exactly, and how excellent. -never embarrass someone

A cloud against a blue sky an order of magnitude more information? Interesting.

P. 91/395: French version


So the entire universe is supposed to be getting the countdown now, rather than just in front of his eyes. This was not clear in either adaptation (Netflix or Ten cent).

So if all of the major super colliders are getting absurd results, that does not negate the previous centuries of research, including relativistic research. What it would say is that something has happened suddenly, now, and that as of a certain date none of our super colliders were giving valid results , but that doesn't negate the previous results of those colliders or previous experiments obviously.

P. 52/395, French epub from La BAnQ: okay, so how did he know that those two guys in the room were from the CIA? Also, there's a lot in this book even though I think I read the very same version 3 years ago or four years ago maybe, still there's a lot in this text that I just don't remember, although I admit to having been very stressed out when I read it the first time.

From the French and then Spanish inquisitions to the tarring and feathering of the American revolution to the Terrors of the French revolution, and the purges of Stalin, I guess every group of people has to take their turn at that accursed wheel.

Excellent analogy...

Not the right page, but come on species egalitarianism?

Learned from the French and Spanish Inquisition, I see...

Only 10 more pages to go, and most people already believe in a super-observer, the All powerful Big Beard, so I don't think that the human race being observed by another race would Force us to behave any differently at all.