ߟehemoth: Seppuku by Peter Watts. In retrospect it probably would have been better to review both books as one as that was the author'soriginall intent, but too late now. First off, if the sadism was a recurring theme in the first half, it's teeming with it in this one. Yeesh. That aside, this half was much more entertaining than the first, both in it's new world and in that Watts brought back arcane little bits from the first book that give you that pleasant nostalgia. The notes at the end were also quite informative, including a site that demonstrates the relative ease with which one could make an EMP generator. Also on that site is a big f*ing Tesla coil that looks like it's straight out of Red Alert 2.
One of the other things that's big in the novel is the idea that the human consciousness and everything we feel and think is simply a matter of synapses firing, endorphins being released and other such things. Chemicals affecting the brain isn't anything new, but the idea that you can chemically suppress (or magnify) guilt is kind of unsettling. That means you can alter your conscience and morality with chemicals; goodness of heart and all of the things that are supposed to be reflected in your soul are reduced to interactions between neurons. Hmm...
Going back to that baby article I discussed the other day, I wonder if born sociopaths, ones who aren't a product of upbringing but of intrinsic faulty wiring in their heads, exhibit sociopathic tendencies as an infant. Would they not be empathic as other infants, or does the brain chemistry of an infant prevent them from expressing sociopathic behavior? Maybe I should just become a psych minor...

Handy Latin phrases. I think it's especially odd that they translated orgasmic moans into Latin too.