Uncorrelated, Not Uncaused IV

With mention of a movie where an AI sings about a bike that's tandem, here's another post of thoughts at random!

The rest of it doesn't rhyme, though, sorry.

• It does my black heart good to discover, the Discovery One from 2001: A Space Odyssey couldn't have rotational gravity. Why? Well, its command module (the spherical bit at the end) is only 16.5 meters diameter, which would require 10.41 rpm if you wanted 1 g, or a tangential velocity of 8.99 m/s. Ouch.
  
  Which, I realize, means it's just as well I have actual-gravity (space-time distortion) artificial gravity, in my book, since my felinoids' ships aren't all that much bigger than the Discovery and they'd have to use roughly the same system. Also their home planet's gravity is slightly greater. I wonder, would a cat-like righting instinct like spin grav? I bet not.


• I shan't be reading Christian Toto again: he gave a ridiculously, and unjustifiably, bad review to Green Lantern. Look, you Edward Norton lookalike, I know you'd prefer everything look like the made-for-TV Hitchhiker's Guide miniseries, but the rest of us are willing to put up with CGI if it means the aliens don't look like shit. Also, they kept the exposition to manageable levels; I could've stood a lot more lucubrations on the Emotional Spectrum, the Book of Oa, Blackest Night...if you don't realize how much they were reining themselves in, you get to shut your speak-hole.
  
  I woulda gone with the Manhunters for this one, though, rather than Parallax. Or maybe the Weaponers of Qward, mostly because I enjoy saying Weaponers of Qward.


• So I checked Alternity and GURPS, and I know from memory that Spelljammer is the same story. Why, specifically, do RPGs base the turning ability of spaceships on some "maneuverability class" stat, when it's actually just a function of acceleration? I mean, I suppose it's complicated (basically it's a bit like calculating purely ballistic trajectory, with the acceleration in the new direction standing in for gravity), but no attempt to streamline that for playability? Really guys?
  
  Maybe I need to check out the purely tactical miniatures-battle spaceship games. I hope they let you see some basic overview of their rules for free, I don't wanna have to buy the whole set just to check for one rule.


• My brother got the 3DS port of Ocarina, and it's awesome. Except you have to sorta keep your eyes tense while you play with it—it's like a more intuitive Magic Eye thing.
  
  My brother's right, though, about the improved graphics, though he overreacted. He said he wanted to kill some idiot who said it'd only gotten a slight overhaul. Plainly, I said, that's excessive. It would be sufficient to pluck the culprit's eyes out, crying out gleefully, "I'll be taking these, since obviously you aren't using them!"
  
  What?


• Does anyone else hate it when people self-identify as alpha males? One of those men's rights weenies was doing it, and, come on. We all know the men's right's movement is composed, to a man (if I may use the term loosely) of sampi males. And that's an obsolete letter, only retained when they use the alphabet as numerals (it means "900"). In other words, if "alpha males" are first, the men's rights guys are 27th. And there are only 24 spots.
  
  Also, some of the people who were defending Rep. Weiner made the "everybody does it" defense that usually looks like either a confession or an emotional scar, by saying politicians do things like that because "they're alpha males far from home". The two obvious objections are that Weiner, male-wise, is somewhere between omicron and phi, and that this behavior—expectation of a harem as a natural right—is more typical of a silverback than an alpha male (though there are systems that class silverbacks as alpha males, the term in common parlance refers to pack hunters).
  
  My other thought is, "Know what I do to alpha males far from home? I short out their shield with a plasma-pistol overcharge, shoot their helmet off, and give 'em an automag round in the face. Then I use their gravity hammer to kill their friends." I expect political officials to have somewhat humbler attitude than Brute Chieftains, I was not aware that was a controversial position.


• Oddly, though, now that Weiner's resigned, a bunch of people were saying "oh no, the taxpayers are paying his pension". Yeah, well, don't they kinda have to? However scandalous he was off the clock, on the clock he pretty much did the job for which his services were retained by the people of his state. I don't think, objectively, his state or the nation actually benefited from his work, but the way this whole "representative government" thing works is, you only elect him if you want him to do what he tells you he's gonna. It's not like he ran as a states' rights tax-cutting strict constructionist; they knew what his positions were. And he seems to have worked pretty damn hard to enact the policies his constituents tacitly endorsed when they elected him. The man earned his pension.
  
  Also, his misbehavior was a lot milder than Clinton, even if you discount the Juanita Broaddrick allegations, but nobody complained about Clinton getting all the perks of an ex-President.


• Finally, so it's really really cool how the guy who murdered Barnaby "Bunny" Brooks' parents, in Tiger & Bunny, is a metahuman separatist who despises superheroes for doing the bidding of "lesser beings". Plus he likes to blow up buildings.
  
  Dude, you saw this coming.
  Who is John Galt?


• Late Addendum:Turns out I was wrong; I just wasn't lookin' in the right place. Alternity ships do turn based on their acceleration...but only if you're using the PL 6 ("Fusion Age") rules. You know, the more realistic rules.