Certainty in Alchemy

"We have a phenomenon very like that in industry," Galiagante said when she was done. "It's called green thumb syndrome. It sometimes occurs when a new plant establishes a complicated but known procedure for the first time. Your people set it up perfectly but nothing happens. The oxides won't reduce, the catalysts won't… cattle. Punishing the technicians accomplishes nothing. The reaction simply refuses to run. Eventually management will fly in somebody who's worked on the procedure before and have her run through it once. For her it will work. Then, ever afterward, it will work for the new plant. But that first time it must be run by somebody who is sure it will work, who knows it in the core of her being. It has something to do with quantum uncertainty events, I believe, though I wouldn't swear to it."

Notes:

Folksonomies: alchemy

Taxonomies:
/technology and computing/hardware/computer (0.634183)
/business and industrial/energy/nuclear power (0.491801)
/science/phyiscs/atomic physics (0.404558)

Keywords:
green thumb syndrome (0.934428 (negative:-0.568104)), new plant (0.876406 (negative:-0.261329)), known procedure (0.631092 (neutral:0.000000)), uncertainty events (0.615068 (neutral:0.000000)), somebody (0.474525 (negative:-0.230597)), time (0.386041 (neutral:0.000000)), oxides (0.327448 (negative:-0.415168)), Alchemy (0.321149 (positive:0.535845)), catalysts (0.321059 (neutral:0.000000)), phenomenon (0.319269 (positive:0.380998)), reaction (0.310139 (neutral:0.000000)), technicians (0.309512 (negative:-0.788938)), industry (0.299283 (positive:0.380998)), Galiagante (0.299096 (neutral:0.000000)), people (0.296593 (positive:0.481641)), management (0.287551 (negative:-0.230597))

Entities:
Galiagante:Person (0.820581 (negative:-0.434746))

Concepts:
Physics (0.921726): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Nitrogen (0.827964): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Epistemology (0.724065): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Cognition (0.705768): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Uncertainty principle (0.679694): dbpedia | freebase
UK Singles Chart number-one singles (0.621870): dbpedia
2006 albums (0.593306): dbpedia
American novels (0.579156): dbpedia

 The Iron Dragon's Daughter
Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book:  Swanwick, Michael (2004), The Iron Dragon's Daughter, Retrieved on 2015-01-23
  • Source Material [books.google.com]
  • Folksonomies: science fiction fantasy abused children