Alexandria's Genesis

OK, here's one that belongs on SWM but is circulating as "fact" in certain areas of the Internet. I found it on the rumor control site Snopes.

Apparently it all stems from a late 90's bit of SF/Fantasy fan-fiction, but seems to have made the leap to reality in some people's minds.

www.snopes.com/fact-check/alexandrias-genesis/

It's a cool read. With a few extra tweeks, we could make this in a great SWM story.

Shadar

It's not even sci-fi/fantasy fanfiction, it's Daria fanfiction, which I'm not sure if that makes it better/worse/neutral.

That said, I could totally see this being used for the basis for a story. From what I can understand it's your relatively-standard 'Touched by Vorlons' or chosen by God type mutation, albeit one that appears to be sex-linked to the X chromosome and linked so it appears (almost) exclusively in women, not unlike how tetrachromancy (the presence of 4 cone types rather than 3 in the eye, allowing for 'superhuman' color-differentiation abilities) are suspected to work, albeit without any solid proof of its existence. No doubt the discovery of such a thing (especially if it's similar to TCY in that a theorized 2-3% of women have it) would have world-bending implications. With the onset of technology like CRISPR, you may even have people attempting to change their eye color or full-genome to try to get the effects of such a mutation, whether it is actually possible or not.

circes sent me this link today, first time I've heard of Alexandria Genesis. Great story name, btw. Besides the coincidence, the Purple Eyes on Bitten is unrelated to that, I just needed a device for all characters to know which one has been bitten

giving a google on this 'myth'

According to the legend, one night during ancient Egypt time there was a lighting interrupt peaceful night. Everyone went out see the light get purple eyes and white skin. They were called “spirit people”. After they got these facial features they start being not accepted by local people. They moved and disappeared at last. However, in 1329 a new born accepted and finally they disappear. However a girl who has purple eyes named Alexandria was treated as the reappearance of spirit people. She was the first person has purple eyes according to the record. Alexandria Genesis is kind of a myth.

I used Purple because of its scientific/mythical connotations, it is a color that doesn't actually exist. the purple die has been the most expensive substance on earth from the antiquity to the renaissance. the purple royal die needed the killing of hundreds of thousands of deep sea snails to produce some few ounces of it.

it is a very feminine color like pink and violet. (violet wavelength exist, though). I always found amusing that a feminine color used to belong only to the royalty and army flags for millennia

funny that so many other works have been created over it. I even feel less imaginative knowing now that there is even a tvtropes article about it.

lowerbase wrote: circes sent me this link today, first time I've heard of Alexandria Genesis. Great story name, btw. Besides the coincidence, the Purple Eyes on Bitten is unrelated to that, I just needed a device for all characters to know which one has been bitten

For those of you that haven’t been followng Bitten by the Queen, it’s worth pointing out how freaky a concidence this is.

Lowerbase wrote that story a year ago, and in it, all the supergirls have purple irises. And yet he had not idea there was already an internet rumor cicrulating about the very same thing. AND the story is rife with conspiracies and cover-ups, so that an internet rumor circulating about women with purple irises, followed by the debunking of that rumor, is the type of thing you’d expect to find in the story itself.

Or maybe we are actually the story.....

circes_cup wrote:

lowerbase wrote: circes sent me this link today, first time I've heard of Alexandria Genesis. Great story name, btw. Besides the coincidence, the Purple Eyes on Bitten is unrelated to that, I just needed a device for all characters to know which one has been bitten

For those of you that haven’t been followng Bitten by the Queen, it’s worth pointing out how freaky a concidence this is.

Lowerbase wrote that story a year ago, and in it, all the supergirls have purple irises. And yet he had not idea there was already an internet rumor cicrulating about the very same thing. AND the story is rife with conspiracies and cover-ups, so that an internet rumor circulating about women with purple irises, followed by the debunking of that rumor, is the type of thing you’d expect to find in the story itself.

Or maybe we are actually the story.....

Just keep taking Morpheus's blue pill. But sometime's there a pesky reality leak.

Shadar

When in doubt, I go back to Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, where the Earth was a simulation created by aliens to try and understand the universe and every that was. It ran for a billion years.

Fortunately, they got their answer just before Earth was bulldozed out of the way to make room for a new interstellar freeway, and the answer was: 42.

Unfortunately, nobody could figure out what the answer meant. Or if they did, they weren't talking.

Shadar

shadar wrote: When in doubt, I go back to Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, where the Earth was a simulation created by aliens to try and understand the universe and every that was. It ran for a billion years.

Fortunately, they got their answer just before Earth was bulldozed out of the way to make room for a new interstellar freeway, and the answer was: 42.

Unfortunately, nobody could figure out what the answer meant. Or if they did, they weren't talking.

Shadar

Not _quite_ right.

Earth was the computer built to figure out the QUESTION, a previous computer (Deep Thought) figured out the answer and then designed Earth to compute the Question. Earth was destroyed "to make way for a new instersellar bypass" so that it couldn't complete the program and produce the question. It's destruction wasn't accidental.

In a later book Marvin reads the question out of Arthur's Brain, but it'd been scrambled because the program didn't complete, and the question read was "What do you get when you multiply 6 by 9?"

I love Douglas Adams.

TwiceOnThursdays wrote:

shadar wrote: When in doubt, I go back to Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, where the Earth was a simulation created by aliens to try and understand the universe and every that was. It ran for a billion years.

Fortunately, they got their answer just before Earth was bulldozed out of the way to make room for a new interstellar freeway, and the answer was: 42.

Unfortunately, nobody could figure out what the answer meant. Or if they did, they weren't talking.

Shadar

Not _quite_ right.

Earth was the computer built to figure out the QUESTION, a previous computer (Deep Thought) figured out the answer and then designed Earth to compute the Question. Earth was destroyed "to make way for a new instersellar bypass" so that it couldn't complete the program and produce the question. It's destruction wasn't accidental.

In a later book Marvin reads the question out of Arthur's Brain, but it'd been scrambled because the program didn't complete, and the question read was "What do you get when you multiply 6 by 9?"

I love Douglas Adams.

You are an Adams scholar, my sir. I've learned something. today. Like everything with Adams, the details are way more interesting than the rumors.

Shadar

TwiceOnThursdays wrote: Not _quite_ right.

Earth was the computer built to figure out the QUESTION, a previous computer (Deep Thought) figured out the answer and then designed Earth to compute the Question. Earth was destroyed "to make way for a new instersellar bypass" so that it couldn't complete the program and produce the question. It's destruction wasn't accidental.

In a later book Marvin reads the question out of Arthur's Brain, but it'd been scrambled because the program didn't complete, and the question read was "What do you get when you multiply 6 by 9?"

I love Douglas Adams.

I thought the answer got scrambled because some aliens landed on Earth in prehistoric times and that threw a wrench into the calculations that was never adjusted for?

Woodclaw wrote:

TwiceOnThursdays wrote: Not _quite_ right.

Earth was the computer built to figure out the QUESTION, a previous computer (Deep Thought) figured out the answer and then designed Earth to compute the Question. Earth was destroyed "to make way for a new instersellar bypass" so that it couldn't complete the program and produce the question. It's destruction wasn't accidental.

In a later book Marvin reads the question out of Arthur's Brain, but it'd been scrambled because the program didn't complete, and the question read was "What do you get when you multiply 6 by 9?"

I love Douglas Adams.

6 by 9? Are you sure?

I thought it was 6 by 7.

From the Independent, who should know:

"When Douglas Adams wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, he added a central joke which has become more famous over the years than the novel itself: "The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42." Geeks have since wasted years and massive effort trying to ascribe some deep, symbolic significance to the number and its occurrences.

Now, in an attempt to cash in on their obsession, a new book published this week, 42: Douglas Adams' Amazingly Accurate Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, looks at real-life occurrences of the number 42. The book is timed to coincide with the 10th anniversary of Adams's death this spring.

Scores of adolescents have posited theories about significance of the number. The actor Stephen Fry claimed to know the true answer, but won't tell, saying he'll take it to his grave. The author himself rather undermined the myriad analyses when he dismissed them all with the simple answer that the choice of the number was a joke."

"The answer to this is very simple," Adams said. "It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base 13, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat on my desk, stared in to the garden and thought 42 will do. I typed it out. End of story."

Woodclaw wrote:

TwiceOnThursdays wrote: Not _quite_ right.

Earth was the computer built to figure out the QUESTION, a previous computer (Deep Thought) figured out the answer and then designed Earth to compute the Question. Earth was destroyed "to make way for a new instersellar bypass" so that it couldn't complete the program and produce the question. It's destruction wasn't accidental.

In a later book Marvin reads the question out of Arthur's Brain, but it'd been scrambled because the program didn't complete, and the question read was "What do you get when you multiply 6 by 9?"

I love Douglas Adams.

6 by 9? Are you sure?

I thought it was 6 by 7.

It's 6x9. it highlights that the question is wrong, and not complete, and is part of the joke.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_H..._Guide_to_the_Galaxy