Further Stuff that Falls out of Trees

Potpourri, oué?

• You know those commercials for alternative energy, with the scrawny non-actor little girl in the saggy bikini frolicking unenthusiastically in water while lucubrating chirpily on hippie-approved energy sources? Without mentioning those sources' relative inefficiency, or that Kennedies and Streisands wouldn't let you build the facilities in advantageous spots anyway?
  
  I bet commercials for nuclear power (you know, the one that actually works?) would drum up a lot of support just by kicking a simulacrum of the twee little hippie-larva into a reactor core.


• So I decided that the MC-fusion ships in my book go with the .48 gs acceleration, and use artificial gravity to make the ship more comfortable. The more powerful ships, which do around 10 gs (except for one that does 51), have more powerful and precise artificial gravity systems, for compensating for their big rockets' accelerations.
  
  I don't think the artificial gravity system can be used as an engine on its own, à la the Kzin gravity planer; I think it's restricted in where it can place the locus of the gravity. I've left it a bit vague—since if I knew how to do it I'd be patenting it, thank you—but I think it uses the Casimir effect.


• So if you ever have a lit class, or something, where people do haikus, permit me to suggest this one, as a corrective of the vaguely naturalistic inconsequence of the typical haiku. Okay technically it's not a haiku, it's a senryu (much more interesting, by the bye), but do you think a lit teacher knows the difference?

  Nakanunara
  Koroshiteshimae
  Hototogisu.
  
  If it does not sing
  Go ahead and kill the bird
  (It is a cuckoo).

  Yeah, I just did the English version right now, so that's why it ain't so great.
  
  It is, of course, Oda Nobunaga the Devil King, whose motto, let's recall, was Tenka Fubu: [All] Under Heaven by Force of Arms.


• I recently found Wikipedia's page on Soviet political jokes. And damn, those may be the funniest things I ever heard. Here's one:

  Stalin's giving a speech, when someone sneezes. "Who sneezed?" Stalin asks.
  
  Nobody answers; so Stalin has the first row stand up. "Take them to the firing squad!" he orders. "Who sneezed?"
  
  Nobody answers. Stalin has the second row stand up. "To the firing squad!"
  
  "Now, who sneezed?"
  
  Just as he's about to send the third row off to the firing squad, a man in the back raises his hand. "It was me," he says tearfully.
  
  "Bless you, comrade," Stalin says.

  Messed up, huh?


• So everyone's all excited about the new Avatar (as in Aang) series, but, uh, why is it set in the Taisho era? I allow Taisho settings only on condition they involve psychic opera troupes (that are also troops). Okay, well I'm actually a little more lenient than that, but dude, apart from some of the fire-nation's tech, they jumped right from Emperor Chi-U of Baedalguk's Red Devil Army to the era of steam.
  
  Maybe I'm just really negative, but somehow I doubt lightning will strike twice.


• Which reminds me, you know hihiirogane, in Japanese mythology, and yugi in Korean? And orichalcum, in the west? Well you know what I realized?
  
  Wait, lemme back up. Hihiirogane, orichalcum, and yugi are legendary, lost, red metals, said to be far stronger than the weapons of common men. Orichalcum is from Atlantis, by the bye. But anyway, there's all this speculation about what they are, and they're pretty much the go-to substitute for mithril in fantasy settings.
  
  Only dude, I think they're actually just bronze, and their magical qualities are the exaggerated memories of Stone Age peoples, encountering it for the first time. If that doesn't get hold of you by the nerdy bits—don't you just boil over with story ideas?!—I'm gonna have to take your card away.


• Finally, and speaking of cards, don't you want someone in our current political scene to say "Dude, you've already tapped the race card this election cycle. You have to untap it and wait till the next one."