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[Mabuse]

Seamus seems rather touchy about his size; is this just a personal eccentricity or the result any sort of ridicule or marginalisation from others? You would think that a society that embraces (or at least tolerates) a whole spectrum of transhumans of all kinds would be perfectly accepting of a simple tall, fat person; or is there something else here that I'm not picking up on?

[ZeissIkon]

Seamus seems rather touchy about his size; is this just a personal eccentricity or the result any sort of ridicule or marginalisation from others? You would think that a society that embraces (or at least tolerates) a whole spectrum of transhumans of all kinds would be perfectly accepting of a simple tall, fat person; or is there something else here that I'm not picking up on?

I think it's safe to assume that one of the reasons Seamus lives outside L5 proper is because he stands out so much -- I doubt he's actually ridiculed, but in everything he does, his size is an issue.  He probably even has to have specially modified anything suits (though I gather folks still wear some "real" clothes, else even Nicole's one small case would be much larger than needed -- toiletries aren't likely to have gotten much larger in the next five centuries).  Given that, and the sheer amount of his over-limit mass (that's about the weight of a mid-size motorcycle of late 20th century vintage above what's included with the ticket), one might forgive a little grimace on his part (though you'd think both he and Nicole would have known how much mass her ticket would include, avoiding the unpleasantness with the "too much luggage" comment in yesterday's page).

[terry_freeman]

I don't know that society at large would ostracize Seamus due to his bulk, but mass transit is never going to be built for extra-large people. Designers must make assumptions about how much space to allow per person. If every seat were built for Seamus, there would be a lot of empty space, and fewer people would be transported on a given trip.

I am large enough ( 6'3", 245 lbs ) to be uncomfortable in what has become the "standard" airplane or bus seat. Seamus appears to be large enough to require two such seats - and might have trouble with legroom and/or headroom besides, since he's much taller.

One wonders why he does not have a private craft, built to his specifications.

Some people, when frequently irritated by their difference from the norm, become more sensitive. Others, in similar circumstances, learn to ignore it. When you are tall, you can expect a fair number of people to say "Wow! You are so tall! How's the weather up there? Do you play basketball?" Some people accept this as normal friction and let it go; others become deeply offended - they respond to each new pest as if he or she were personally responsible for each and every one of the hundreds of tiny offenses by different individuals over the span of decades.

[Scott]

Don't want to reveal too much too soon but I will say this: Seamus has not always been so large.

[macsnafu]

I'm a little surprised they still need anesthetic to implant a neural interface and processor; seems like they'd be able to drink a "shake" consisting of a seed cadre of nanites and a nanite construction supplement, flavored like whatever beverage is currently popular, or just swallow (or inject) a capsule if the nanites use materials normally abundant in the body -- carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, calcium, and iron (other minerals are enough less common not to be usable for significant nanite construction without supplementation).  Nanites seem like the most probable answer to things like radical reshaping of bodies (at least when done after gestation), and (given a few centuries of debugging) significantly less prone to accidents involving brain tissue than actual open-skull surgery.

When writing science fiction, I would think one would have to be careful to properly place the level of technology that your characters are dealing with, lest you make the mistake of assuming away the very problem you want the characters to grapple with.  A nanite shake might still be in their future, as well, although it might be inevitable at some point in the future.

[ZeissIkon]

When writing science fiction, I would think one would have to be careful to properly place the level of technology that your characters are dealing with, lest you make the mistake of assuming away the very problem you want the characters to grapple with.  A nanite shake might still be in their future, as well, although it might be inevitable at some point in the future.

That's a good point -- especially since nanites can solve such a myriad of needs and problems that you can pretty much use them like a magic wand.  On the other hand, perhaps it proved impossible ever to sufficiently debug the operating system for devices that could, should they run wild, literally eat the universe; there are mathematical proofs of things like "emergent programs", that is, getting programs out of a sufficiently complex system that were never put in (this is actually suspected at some layer of genetic evolution in what we call life, come to that: chromosome will have genes that overlap, and sometimes evolution of a new trait just requires existing genes to be expressed with different starting and stopping points).  If that should happen with nanites, a well-behaved population of utility "bugs" could quite suddenly convert their host to goo -- and be contagious; that would make the Black Death of the 14th century look like a few cases of the sniffles...

One wonders why he does not have a private craft, built to his specifications.

Why don't all billionaires of 2011 own their own jets?  Some of them just don't need one often enough or want one badly enough to bother buying, maintaining, paying a crew and maintenance staff, and then still having to fly commercial once in a while because their private jet is down for maintenance.  Some surely do (John Travolta, for instance, owns a 737 and at least sometimes flies it himself), but many don't (AFAIK, Bill Gates doesn't own a private jet, though he does, last I heard, have quite a large yacht -- he lives on a lake shore with lock access to Puget Sound; the yacht gets considerable use).

[NeitherRuleNorBeRuled]

Don't want to reveal too much too soon but I will say this: Seamus has not always been so large.

If he had been, I would feel extremely sorry for his mother 

[terry_freeman]

True, not all billionaires have their own jets.

However, if one's size is that far out of the norm, a custom conveyance is almost a required adaptation.

I find airline and bus seats quite uncomfortable, though I am not that far from the norm.

Do I recall Seamus as being 8 feet tall? If so, even first class seats might not suffice.

Back in the days of rail, it was not unheard of for a sufficiently wealthy person to have his own personal rail car, built to his personal specifications. ( In my youth, the Wild Wild West show was quite popular. Jim West and Artemus Gordon lived in a private train car. )

[ZeissIkon]

I find airline and bus seats quite uncomfortable, though I am not that far from the norm.

Do I recall Seamus as being 8 feet tall? If so, even first class seats might not suffice.

Back in the days of rail, it was not unheard of for a sufficiently wealthy person to have his own personal rail car, built to his personal specifications. ( In my youth, the Wild Wild West show was quite popular. Jim West and Artemus Gordon lived in a private train car. )

Indeed, I also find airline seats (at least those on the cattle-car lines I can occasionally afford to ride) and Greyhound seats uncomfortable, but that's not due to my size -- just under 150 cm and about 90-95 kg -- but rather due to their design.  Southwest Airlines, instead of 95th percentile, apparently sizes their seats for around 75th, making one person in four too large for comfort (after my last Southwest flight, I'd have said it was more like 55th -- I have no idea how my then-wife, five centimeters taller and almost double my weight, managed to tolerate an hour and a half in that seat).  And yes, I recall Seamus coming out around eight feet, but don't forget L5 natives run close to seven normally; he's just about a foot over normal size (as he pointed out in today's strip).  A first class seat designed for those people would probably accommodate Seamus without too much discomfort -- as does the lower berth in their cabin, apparently.

That said, yes, private rail cars were the big status symbol of the 1870s to 1890s (when a limousine or phaeton was a style of carriage and would have two or four horsepower, rather than a body type for an automobile driven by a chauffeur).  They didn't, however, cost anything like as much, in terms of the money of the day, as a private jet does now, and they were a much larger step up from the best accommodations in public rail of that time period than a private jet (short of Travolta's 737) is above First Class on a 747 or A380.  Unless you fly very frequently (like a couple times a week or more), you won't save much in either money or time by owning your own jet; what you save is inconvenience (flying on your schedule instead of that of a corporation seeking to maximize profit), unwanted contact with hordes of folk, TSA screenings -- all stuff most would willingly pay to avoid if they could afford it, but that isn't really worth owning a jet over unless you fly a great deal.

Let's see, rich folks far from the norm of size -- that sounds like basketball stars.  How many of those own their own jets?  I think Dennis Rodman does or did, along with Michael Jordan and possibly a couple others, but certainly not all those who potentially could afford one and are taller than, say, 210 cm.  The teams fly charter a lot, but the individual players don't fly alone or with their families often enough to justify it unless owning a jet is a passion for them.

[spudit]

Private ships? I really thought I saw a ship attached to the Castle Hodge Podge, above it at the end of that scorpion's tail looking tube. Maybe just a shuttle.

Private jet, I know an executive who is not all that tall but has a pair of private 747s. Call it a perc, comes free with the job.

[ZeissIkon]

Private jet, I know an executive who is not all that tall but has a pair of private 747s. Call it a perc, comes free with the job.

My comparison to NBA stars was relative to whether someone far enough from size norms might be more prone to own private transportation -- I didn't intend to imply one has to be large to own a jet (though 747-as-bizjet, in this case, is a perk, not ownership; I doubt your acquaintance would own that large a jet even if he/she were a private jet owner); rather than perhaps there's a class we could look at to see how likely Seamus would be to own his own ship if he'd been oversize for longer.

Meanwhile, we now know he's only been huge since his last rejuvenation; probably before that there was little incentive to own his own spaceship.

[spudit]

Alas, the fellow with the pair of 747s is not an aquaintance. Though I am part owner of his personal sky yachts, me and about 300,000,000 other folks.

I wonder how 'big' a person has to be to commute in a 400 seat airliner.
Me, I generally take the train

[terry_freeman]

I wonder if large space vessels of the future might have provisions for "space carriages", akin to the old private rail cars.

[Mabuse]

I wonder if large space vessels of the future might have provisions for "space carriages", akin to the old private rail cars.

Well first class accommodations on AAA international airlines have been moving in that direction with the introduction of privacy pods and even individual cabins on the most prestigious/lucrative airlines and routes; so the idea of prestige spaceliners which carry fully customised living quarters for wealthy, well-traveled clients isn't very far fetched. Methinks that Seamus doesn't travel enough to warrant such an investment though, and he probably booked this passage with speed rather than comfort in mind.

[macsnafu]

I wonder if large space vessels of the future might have provisions for "space carriages", akin to the old private rail cars.

Given the complexities involved in space travel, I would think that creating a modular spaceship structure that worked like a train would be quite a challenge.  However, a space ship with a large cargo area might be able to handle a "mobile home"-type structure installed in the cargo area.  Eureka!  An interesting idea...