Randomicity

Thoughts. Oddly enough they actually are correlated (in the sense they're stream of consciousness), but not strongly.

• Those sons of bitches who wrote Kurogane no Linebarrels (the manga, not the anime). They somehow used evil mind-beams and stole my Heideggerian-evangelism idea. See, the Katou Organization, in that, plan to use oppression and torment to force people to contemplate their own deaths, and thus prevent humanity willing its own extinction (as occurred, or rather will have occurred, in the future they and the machina were sent back from).
  
  Damn it, damn it, damn it. Don't you hate when other people have the same idea you do? I thought I was the only one who realized that inculcating a sense of Sein zum Tode in others, for their spiritual good, made a great ideology.
• Serbia officially has the most badass dog breed, namely, this:It's a mastiff-type called the Szarplaninac, a type of Serbian Sylvan Dog, also known as the Zmaj. What's Zmaj mean? Dragon. And the name doesn't come from some ostensible resemblance to a dragon; no, it's called a "dragon dog" like other dogs are called "bulldogs".
  
  "Yup," the Serbs might be heard to say, "we have a breed for fighting those. Why?"
• Decided, my felinoids' streets all have a narrower lane on either side, between the main traffic lanes and the sidewalk. Basically a bike lane...except they have no bikes. What for, then?
  
  Because they can run as fast as a human on a bike, and thus need special lanes to protect people who are just walking. At the same time, since they're still significantly smaller than a car, they need a lane to protect them from cars.
  
  Speaking of alien traffic safety, their intersections only have one light, rather than three. See, they only need one to tell them to stop, since their reflexes are such that they don't need a warning light (and the stop-light just has to turn off, thus no green light).
• This thing I've been talking about vis-a-vis how your military develops differently, if you're basically a bipedal jaguar? Like, good luck stealing a march on your enemy with tanks: cat-type animals can hear the vibrations through the ground. Storms, earthquakes, tidal waves: they can hear all those, too.
  
  They can hear the auroras, too, which only serves to heighten their resemblance to fireworks—the colony planet my first book is set on orbits ξ Boötis, a BY Draconis variable (forms sunspots so often and rotates so fast its brightness visibly fluctuates). The auroras that creates are gorgeous, and accompanied (from the felinoids' view) by faint organ-music, but they play holy hell with EM communications.
• Huh. I guess (considering their senses) they probably would've sided with Edison rather than Tesla, in the War of Currents. Why? AC power would probably be irritatingly loud, that's why. 'Course, the major disadvantage of DC—that you need lots of generating stations, since it can't be run through a transformer—isn't nearly as much of one, if your society is as decentralized as the medieval model the felinoids' society uses. Plus, experience with boosting voltage ('nother disadvantage of DC) helps with lots of applications in the long run, such as capacitors.
  
  Then again, cats don't seem to mind AC power much (they can hear it though, lurking inside the walls, waiting—bet felinoid schizophrenics have a fun time). One of the interesting things about having hearing like that, is their brains evolve to process all of it. Maybe my worrying about it is like a dog SF writer doubting that a species that could see "infragreen" can process all the extra data.
• Mention of capacitors reminds me, the power-generating capacity of AMTECs would be greatly overtaxed by electronically fired caseless rounds, let alone coilguns (I envision coil vulcans and rail rifles, for different applications).
  
  But then it came to me: each weapon has its own power supply, independent of the one in the mecha. Still increases the drain on the vehicle's power (added weight), but nothing like trying to fire a railgun would.
• Okay, so, why do a bunch of period manga seem to think that kenjutsu training was anything like kendo? I mean, yeah, the spacing and the basic movements are roughly similar, in the sparring, but you're not gonna shout out your target like that—nor is your movement constrained by anything other than your fellow students. Indeed, if you've got the room, you can, and should, turn the line of your combat as often as possible; sidestepping the line of attack is basic tactics.
• It occurred to me, there's no reason that your main heavy-cavalry weapon has to be the lance. Oh? You mean you're pretty sure cavalry charges need lances to be effective? Well you're wrong. Polish cavalry used, rather than a lance, a giant rapier, the koncerz. Basically, it's a rapier or stiletto as wide as a regular sword, because it's 63 inches long; the hilt would be 8 inches.
  
  I decided my felinoids used those, when their nobles were heavy cavalry—and then they wore a shorter sword, that could also cut, on their side (the big one would go slung on their back). Then, when their main cavalry weapon became the pistol, the smaller sword remained as the sidearm.
• Speaking of alternate developments in technology, I felt like I'd done a bad thing, in my fantasy book: I had a carriage in a 12th-century type setting. Carriages were not actually viable until the 15th or 16th century, when the Hungarians invented leaf-spring suspension, for a comfortable ride. In fact, the city where they did it, Kocs, gave its name to the vehicles it made possible—Kocs is pronounced "coach".
  
  But then I remembered something: hansom cabs. You know what a hansom cab is? It's an enclosed chariot, with the charioteer on top. Now, a cab proper still has springs, but considering people did archery from chariots, I think we can conclude that the vibrations would be tolerable, at least with enough cushions.
• I'd really love to know who's in charge of procurements in the Russian Army, because they plainly don't own a pair of eyeballs. The MP-443 Grach looks like, well, an evil post-apocalyptic Glock. I don't know what it is with Russian guns, there's just somethin' mean-looking about them. Maybe it's how their finish is vaguely reminiscent of cast iron, not a friendly metal.
  
  But plainly, they should have gone with the Serdyukov SPS (aka the SR-1 Gyurza) as their main service pistol. Why? Well, they're still using a Kalashnikov, upgraded in various ways; so they should've had a little more pride, and paired it with a gun that says "Hey, remember the Makarov?" Only the SPS has an 18-round magazine and shoots special armor-piercing rounds. Plus, still has a bit of that mean post-apocalyptic cast-iron look.It is perhaps needless to say the Peacekeepers' pistols in my book look like the SPS?