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(Jon sez:) 
The corpus callosum connects the left and right hemispheres of
the brain. Since the fictional Mars has two "hemispheres" to its brain (the
Science and Artisan sides of its intellect, as mentioned on pages 150 and 151), it too requires a
connector between them. While the distributed nature of Mars' intellect
would mean that the "connector" could take the form of any collection of
Science/Artisan pairs speaking to one another, it's much more aesthetically
pleasing to have a location in which that communication is always going on.
Thus we have the Hall of Whispers.
Reading Rainbow: In Carl Sagan's book The Dragons of Eden, there's a plethora of information on the corpus callosum. Mind you, a lot of it is outdated (the book was written so long ago that it predates Luis Alvarez's impact theory of dinosaur extinction), and it's full of wooly-headed imaginings, but enough of it remains correct for it to be an interesting read. |
(Mark sez:) 
Wow, I could never talk like that to the President of Mars, even if the post is
largely ceremonial. I also think it's kind of cute
how no matter how much Benjamin acts like an ass, Mars keeps trying to impress him. I think
maybe it (she? he? they?) has a crush on him.
I was going to write a big sappy column about things that will be happening in the near future with A Miracle of Science (don't worry, they're good things) but I noticed that next page is Page 200, so I'll just save it for then. Can you possibly handle the suspense?!!! |
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