And Then A Miracle Occurred

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Yesterday I was talking in the diner about writing a short story for an anthology. I wrote this short story in the midst of extended family turmoil (nothing unexpected. People get old, and I’m a long way from the family home) and it is a short story on a theme that’s slightly a reach for me – how will humans get to the stars.

Given a month or two, and time to read and research I could write it as hard sf (I’m not a polyvalent scholar but I’m a really good researcher.) In fact, I am for a YA series that will be like the Heinlein Juveniles, in which I’ll be collaborating with someone in the space industry (I’m not announcing it yet, because I want to finish the research and do the worldbuilding. Baen has already expressed strong interest, though. There will also be a YA fantasy with Wordfire Press, and a YA space opera collaboration with my son, which will probably be Baen, and also a non-YA collab with my older son by adoption… um… would you guys at some point like a list of everything that’s under way?)

Anyway, I didn’t have a month or two, and worse, all the concentration I can spare is going into writing the books that must be written for Baen. So, I stepped sideways and went with “by accident.” The story starts with:

It was the summer of thirty two and I was living in a dilapidated Victorian in the Colorado Springs suburb of Greater Denver, with two mad geniuses, both of whom were trying to court me.

As a group we were recipients of the Bezos grant for developing a system of instant package delivery.

We weren’t the only recipients of the grant, which was structured as both a stipend and a contest. Twenty teams had been given sufficient to live on and create a prototype for a year, and the team that created the winning system would get the prize of twenty million.

It goes on to involve pizza pans, coin tricks and intergalactic travel. It’s a decent story. At least Kate Paulk, one of my cheereaders tells me it’s good. But here’s the thing – it’s also unlikely and I know it’s unlikely.

Is it possible that a new discovery, a new process, a new concept of the universe will upend our beliefs and even make interstar travel possible? Something like folding space or wormholes, or whatever you want to call it? (My son has hopes of a new process but he’s still asleep having stayed up late writing, and I’m not calling the idea to mind.) Sure it is. It’s quite likely that in twenty years what we think the most likely way of space travel will be proven wrong and that the craziest ideas will prove right. That is part of what science fiction is, or used to be, the dreams of our species, which keep us flexible, so that if the greatest thing in spaceships turns out to be powered by sparrow tears, we won’t be surprised. I mean, remember for centuries oil was just a black substance that wasn’t really that good for lighting lamps.

The thing is, even though this is possible and even likely, and even though we might discover the process by accident, it’s not likely to be three graduate students fooling around with it. OR if it is, they’ll be the culmination of several decades of study by serious people.

Is my story impossible? Oh, heck, no. Not according to what we know right now. It’s just highly improbable. That’s part of what makes it a good story, because, again, SF/F is supposed to be stuff we dream upon, stuff we really want to be real and which is maybe, marginally possible/plausible. If we anchor all our dreams in the plausible… well… I actually like some hard sf, but not the kind that’s SO plausible it’s like I’m reading next week’s newspapers. There’s no magic there.

I like to introduce some miraculous/improbable turns into my novels too – powertrees, anyone? – first because I think the future, five hundred years on, will have some things that we would consider magic or just too bizarre to exist. And second because it makes my inner thirteen year old girl squee.

But – to get back to the beginning of this – I posted the beginning of the story in the diner on FB, because it amused it, both the nod to The Door Into Summer and the Bezos grant. It’s set in Colorado Springs because well, I know the region. (I tend to set things in CO Springs, Denver, or Goldport which combines both. If you read my stuff, you’ll find the old stories were set in Charlotte. Are there other areas I could use? Sure there are, but I don’t want to spend time just researching a location. If the kids ever leave (ah!) and Dan’s job is at al flexible, I’d like to take to spending a month a year elsewhere, just for new locations. [At this point it would be uncharitable to tell me, as Mrs. Heinlein is supposed to have told her husband “Honeychild, you don’t need a new location, you need a new plot.”])

I’d forgotten that Colorado Springs is associated with Nikolai Tesla. This was silly even though we’ve never visited the Tesla museum (It was closed before we discovered it was here) because once upon a time I THOUGHT I was going to write a mystery series centering around Nikolai Tesla. (Editors and agents shot it down.)

Anyway, so, one of the people in the Facebook diner said “Is this about Nikolai Tesla” and this devolved into a discussion of Tesla’s strange popularity.

It occurred to me that Tesla is popular because we’re all waiting for the miracle. So much of what he did might or might not eventually pay off, but was ahead of its time in the way that Leonardo Da Vinci’s machines were. The way he made them, they were somewhat useful, mostly as pageant fodder, but lacking the internal combustion engine, they were neither practical nor could they be widespread. In the same way, we’re probably missing some puzzle piece that would make it “go by itself.” But it’s great to dream on. “What if” his strange energy suddenly solved our energy issues?

Well, it’s not impossible. It could happen. It’s just highly implausible.

Which is why he’s popular. More people than ever want a miracle.

I remember the last time it felt like this, in the seventies. Even at eleven/twelve, I knew everyone was seeing UFOs and writing about the mystical age of the Aquarium to come, because the situation seemed impossible and everyone wanted a miracle.

Then as now, I expect miraculous solutions will lose their appeal once we’re on the way to recovery – however difficult getting there might be.

The thing about miraculous solutions is that they’re so great because we know we won’t be required to work towards them. They just happen. (They’re also much better for short stories, because shorts are compact. I could come up with a future history leading to the stars, but not in six thousand words. Because for that to be fun, the nuts and bolts would need to be hidden behind human interest, and that times time.)

Fortunately for us our Republic and its design is NOT a miraculous solution. Someone here, a few days ago, left a comment saying “But for our form of government to work, everyone must be involved—”

Never! For communism, or for pure stateless libertarianism, yeah, you need everyone to be involved. Note I created an almost working stateless system in Eden (in Darkship Thieves) but note also that it only could be made plausible by making everyone there the descendants of people who were almost massacred (that will work while the memory of danger lingers) and making it a small, isolated and insulated community. Once crisis occurs, bad elements who were already exploiting the system openly try to take over it.

Because here’s the thing – it’s not just that we’re human – it’s that we’re alive and life is a series of odd shocks. Or “life is what happens while you’re dealing with something else.” (Sometimes I think my life is more so than others.)

Regardless of how much “everyone” believes in a system or a theory, a system that requires continuous engagement of every citizen is a system that will fail quickly and ugly. Which communism does. Pure Libertarianism never has failed that spectacularly because the individualists have trouble organizing enough for it to be tried.

Our system? It requires that people concern themselves with their own business. It’s taken a series of allowed corruptions for it to be where it is: the centralization of power; the conversion of our elites – and notably our press – to a communitarian doctrine which allows them to lie to us and wish upon a star for their perfect system.

But the design itself? Nothing wrong with it. And no, it doesn’t require everyone’s attention to work. Thank heavens.

It’s a system of governance, not a miracle.

But having come as far away from it as we have, it’s also not going to be saved by a miracle. It’s no use, now, looking at where we got and saying “but it’s not perfect.” Nothing made by humans is perfect. Because we’re not. And anyone who has kids knows better than to believe in a system where “if we all think good thoughts ALL the time it will work.” Not even the North Koreans think about their (messed up) system all the time, and just the amount of attention Dear Leader requires makes the place h*ll on Earth.

So, Tesla ain’t gonna save us. Nor is any other shaman and miracle worker. Yeah, technology makes our fight easier, but it’s not going to give us victory overnight and by accident.

Those of us who are awake need to see what we can do to consciously restore the republic. And we need to be aware it might be incremental. It took us almost a century to get in this much trouble. Expecting to get out of it with a wave of a wand is like expecting to lose those sixty pounds you gained over the last ten years to vanish by wishing. (If you figure out how to do that, tell me.)

Meanwhile, we work. Our contributions might seem negligible, but one of them might be the grain of sand that brings down the sandpile of statism.

Here’s your little plastic shovel.  Go work.

 

384 thoughts on “And Then A Miracle Occurred”

  1. Nod, I believe Miracles can happen but IMO you can’t “plan your life” on depending on a miracle happening.

    Of course, IMO in a story you can “have a miracle occurring” but it better be at the beginning of the story with the story being about how the characters deal with the miracle.

    Having the “miracle” happening at the end (without hard work by the characters) ruins IMO the story.

    Oh, for an example, Stephen King’s _The Stand_ was ruined for me where the Bad Guys were destroyed by the “Hand Of God” not by the actions of the characters.

    Oh the “Hand Of God” in _The Stand_ was an atom bomb that one of the nutty bad guys had brought to the Chief Bad Guy which exploded at “Just The Right Time”. [Frown]

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    1. …it better be at the beginning of the story…

      Agree! I’m not fond of writer’s spending a few hundred pages getting their characters in nice and deep and being too lazy to spend the time to get them out plausibly.

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      1. The only think I like even less is when the characters get to the end of the story with everything about to finally go their way, and a miracle occurs to make sure things turn out badly.

        Yes, I’m looking at you John Irving.

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        2. You have to do that or it wouldn’t be gray goo. It wouldn’t do to have a happy ending. Didn’t you get the latest memo from the writer’s union? All stories must end as badly, gruesomely and as tragically as possible.

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            1. No, there’s something worse. There’s a book that has plucky heroes pluckily fighting their way along to defeat the dark lord… and they get there almost in time… and then they realize the entire world is going to end horribly… and then there’s a very bad piece of wordplay related to a rock song.

              Now, mind you, Tolkien ended the Akallabeth with a very bad linguistics pun/etymology. But you knew all the time that it was a tragedy, and you had a fair idea what story he was retelling. A stinkeroo piece of wordplay is fair. The fantasy book above was basically slapping your face and then telling you to laugh, or something.

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      1. My mind had a flashback to “For Texas and Zed”. A space drive created by a guy in his garage in an age when everything was done by Approved Research Facilities. The trick will come in getting it up and running in spite of the official process facilitators, bean counters, and rubber-stampers – whose minds are not flexible enough to look beyond their small horizons.

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        1. The thing is, when the bureaucrats try to run everything, people end up using backchannel for anything they actually want done.

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          1. In Black Tide Rising–a central character explains why back channel and black market are good, necessary even. It works as an explanation of the free market too. A subsidiary character is a former stockbroker who moves the story ahead in a positive way. Unlike many writers today, who revile those in the financial industry, Ringo shows them to be positive engines of growth. Having your house foreclosed because you couldn’t afford the mortgage, is your problem not your banker’s. If I buy ice cream and eat too much of it, it’s my responsibility, not the grocer’s.

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            1. Peter Hamilton has had several heroes who are multi-trillionaires. I suspect it’s why he will never win a Hugo, now that he’s past the whole infodump phase.

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    3. I can see having the book (one like this one, since it’s focused on researching what will become the miracle) being about the trials and tribulations of doing the research, and have the miracle at or near the end, but only if there was going to be at least a second book.

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      1. I see that ending working better if there were unusual events during the research that helped lead the research to the point where the “miracle occurred”.

        Of course, with my paranoia I’d have somebody comment that “somebody wanted us to have this result” with a response “but is that a good thing?”. [Evil Grin]

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      2. Ringo had a deus ex machina in his Black tide rising series, but he set it up over two books.He introduced a mystery near the end of the second book, and developed it further until when he used it at then when he used it at the end of the third book it worked quite well.

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          1. Yep, the thing about a “deus ex machina” is that it comes “out of the blue”. The flying bikes at the end of E.T. would have been a “deus ex machina” but it was set up by an earlier flying bike scene in the movie. Still don’t believe in the “flying bikes” but it wasn’t a surprise at the end of the movie.

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            1. Yeah. My brain seems to be enjoying plotting out the end of my fantasy series, and I’ll have the hero party find an evil artefact (sp?) that one of them will find a very unorthodox use for, at the end – but the item in question is captured probably around book ten.

              Something like that seems to be more of a plot-arc-tying in*, kinda like how something Jim Butcher put in at Storm Front (Book 1) gets brought up again in the books MUCH later on, and it hits Harry (and the reader) with “holy crap, wait a sec, WHAT?!” *reader rushes off to find relevant volume, to dig out scene.*

              * I know there’s a Trope for it but I’m avoiding the site because I desperately need a nap. This keyboard is not a comfy pillow.

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        2. Well, as others said the deus ex machina tends to come out of nowhere and the character in question was introduced in the end of the 2nd and was there surrounded by mystery for most of the third. It was kind of like having a god of war show up, but not quite.

          (Now I need to get the idea of that certain character from Black Tide Rising turning out to be Tomanak in disguise and asking Faith to be His first champion on Earth in a long while.) ;-)

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  2. The story (or the beginning of it) sounds fun. And yes, I need to write today instead of cleaning– although I could really clean– it is a job that is never done.

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      1. Forgive me for chuckling, but the irony for me is my situation is reversed. I’ve written a lot, now have to get the “day job” stuff done to get caught up.

        I have to get caught up because the parts are a little late, and of course I need the money to pay for covers, editing, and the like.

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  4. ” um… would you guys at some point like a list of everything that’s under way?”

    Of course we would. :)

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  5. Based on the snippet and the discussion, the Heinlein that immediately popped into my head was We Also Walk Dogs.
    Spent a quarter century in payload operations out of Marshall; Spacelab, MIR, ISS, and the Constellation program. If I can help your research in any way just give me a yell.
    We have reached the point of diminishing returns with current chemical rocket technology. Atomics offer some advantages, but nothing approaching a quantum leap. What we have or can develop with our existing knowledge could give us the solar system. All it would take is determination, resources, and some fiddling engineering details. To reach the stars we need “something else” to ever hope to get there. Especially frustrating as we now have the ability to identify systems with Earth sized planets, dang it.

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    1. What? You mean Project Orion from the ’50s wouldn’t work? (Never mind the launch itself would be a flippin’ catastrophe, and how you’d actually land it anywhere is another matter…)

      There’s that anomalous thrust they’re getting from a microwave system – http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/08/full-nasa-cannae-drive-and-emdrive-test.html – though that’s iffy also. (Measurement error? Wishful thinking? Dean Drive-type misinterpretation of the results?)

      Certainly not extra-solar, though.

      We definitely need ‘something else’.

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      1. I’ve read that there were graphite-coated steel spheres (hollow) at ground zero of the Trinity tests that emerged unscathed. The source where I read that went on to claim that a graphite-coated steel plate (large and thick) would make an ideal launch platform for an Orion. Said plate would be mounted on a seamount or other small outcropping in the Pacific, well away from any inhabited areas. Allegedly there would be little fallout (depending on the impulse unit’s design).

        Plausible?

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        1. I don’t think that an Orion would be necessary, anyway. It took me a good bit of time, including writing a program to test my ideas, but I determined that if you start with a mere 50km launch rail, bringing a vessel up to about 1km/s (about 3g acceleration) prior to launching on the engines, you can just about quadruple the payload, compared to the Space Shuttle launch mass (If you look at the launch timeline of the Shuttle, it seems kind of obvious that the improvement would be disproportionate to the starting velocity anyway – it takes about a minute for the shuttle to reach this velocity, and that’s about half the burn time of the SRBs) . Someone with more experience in such research and more time to investigate edge cases could probably improve on that.

          That would be enough to bring the per-lb launch costs down to the point where a lot of the other costs could be reduced, opting for more robust equipment over the super-engineered versions currently being used in order to shave any ounces possible from the finished product, making the production of space vehicles cheaper. I don’t see any reason it couldn’t result in the reduction of launch costs by a factor of 5 or more, which should put them into the range of being possible to commercialize.

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          1. There was a science fact article in Analog some years ago about using a superconducting loop with a current in it to produce a thrust at the magnetic North Pole. Wouldn’t put you in orbit, but it would give you the altitude.

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      2. Orion? Oh hell no! Not without a massive change in popular opinion. Not with the hoops and wickets we have to go through every time we try to launch a nuclear thermal power source about as dangerous as your average every day dental x-ray machine.
        The thing is we are under a massive handicap living as we do at the bottom of a 1 G gravity well. Now an Orion lunar launch, that has real possibilities, but practically necessitates a robust lunar base for staging. In fact once you lose the lead ankle weights imposed by our 1 G environment there are lots of very efficient low thrust high velocity possibilities for intrasystem travel.

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      3. The Orion guys had a pretty plausible plan for launching the Orion with a first stage SRB disposables. Put one into orbit, then use trans-atmospherioc vehicles like the Black Knight to get people up and down.

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        1. How far off is a space elevator? Is it a technologically achievable task (I expect it is politically impossible, but that is a tram of a different color) requiring refinement of tech but no significant breakthrough?

          If it is feasible then we build and launch in orbit, greatly increasing payload relative to fuel, nicht wahr?

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          1. Last time I looked materials science was very close to developing a cable with the necessary tensile strength to support a “beanstalk.”
            All sorts of other issues of course, a few engineering details to sort out, but primarily political. Would best be attached at or near the equator, and would by its very nature be the world’s number one target for terrorist attacks.
            But as you say, would immensely reduce our cost of payload to low earth orbit and above.

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            1. Carbon Nanotubes. Theoretically, the closest thing to Niven’s Monomolecular Wire. If we could make it miles long, it would do the trick. But right now the best they’ve got looks like the stubble from inside your electric razor.

              Neat thing is, it doesn’t actually have to be ATTACHED to the ground. Put a station out at Geosync, and the ribbon just hangs from it. Although to keep the system stable, you need another ribbon hanging outward for a counterweight, which conveniently provides a stepping off point for leaving orbit.

              The trick then is getting up there. 22,000 miles is a long way to climb. If your elevator ran 200 miles an hour, that would be a 110 hour ride.

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              1. Growing the nanotubes in orbit? Which comes first, eh?

                As for the 110 hour ride — would anybody here refuse it? So long as the car/gondola features adequate creature comforts, e.g. bathing & sanitation and wi-fi?

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                1. I’d do it without bathing and sanitation, just gimme bottled water, a bucket and a bag. Wouldn’t be the first time.

                  ‘Course, might be nobody’d want to take the trip with me…

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                2. One of the big issues is power for the car. I used to go to Seattle Robotics Society meetings, and sometimes guys from a little startup trying to get research grants who have been working on little climbing robots would make presentations.

                  The current working theory is ribbons. A Carbon nanotube ribbon can be built up on the edge by a bot climbing up and down it. And more interestingly, it can be split in half as well as built. But the issues with wind and twisting can also give you a bad day while trying to climb.

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              2. I am very familiar with the dynamics and physical properties of tethers. I was the payload data team lead for TSS-1R. That’s the one that was supposed to deploy an experiment package 21 km up on a clothesline thin tether. Unfortunately, at 19.7 km, just short of full extension, the voltage produced in the conductive tether arced to the support structure and severed the line. Since the experiment links were RF my team still pulled data from the package for 4.5 days after separation. Basically ran that puppy until the batteries died. Just one in a long career of successful failures.

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                1. You are the person to ask then, Uncle Lar. Will a space elevator cut magnetic lines and induce an electro-magnetic field of its own like the windings in an electric motor? Will it generate current? Is this something to engineer against or is it a new source of power or something to be taken advantage of?
                  Brazil or some country in central Africa would probably love to have a beanstalk if it meant pulling electricity down from the sky.

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                  1. The tether must be conductive to get the generator effect.
                    Another side effect is that a conductive tether actually slows down as the power is generated. We were looking at tethers for non reactive braking for orbital vehicles.
                    A conductive beanstalk would generate a great deal of power. We were seeing upwards of 8kv off a tether not quite 20km long. If attached at the base the beanstalk would actually very slightly slow the earth’s rotation. Never did the actual calculations, but likely a fraction of a second per year.

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                    1. Wouldn’t an anchored tether (tethered tether?:-), travel at the same speed as the Earth’s magnetic field? I’d think the cable would have to cut through the magnetic field lines to generate a current. It’s a gimmick that was used in Hamilton’s _Neutronium Alchemist_ books (spinning habitats with superconducting lines radiating outwards and spinning through Jupiter’s [or Saturn’s…I forget] magnetic field to generate power…which would also generate drag and drop the habitats into a lower orbit).

                      There was short story I read once that used the same gimmick in reverse for a space station that needed to do station keeping. They ended up running a current through their structure so it was *repelled* by the passing magnetic field lines, and pushed into a higher orbit. Don’t recall the title of that one anymore unfortunately.

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                    2. Oh – minor detail: Doesn’t the ribbon plan presuppose graphene ribbon? That would tend to be pretty conductive, wouldn’t it?

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                    3. You know, I think jabrwok is correct. With an orbital tether you’re passing through the magnetic field. An anchored tether would be static, so no generator effect. Actually simplifies things a bit, though sorry about the free power thing.

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            2. That is what my understanding had been, but it has been several years since I saw anything about the state of the technology. If we go to low-g* manufacturing environment i would not be surprised if we know all we need to for manufacturing the beanstalk.

              *Allows easier removal of impurities and growth of crystalline strands, among other things IIRC George Harry Stine’s arguments.

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            3. There is an island off the West coast of Colombia that used to be their version of Devil’s Island, in the doldrums, has its own port and is only half a nature preserve. Not even Venezuela has a claim on it. Gorgona island.

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      4. I stayed up too late last night reading Worlds of Wonder. I love your voice and your ideas. Future Tech is on my wish list … thank you!

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    2. To reach the stars we need “something else” to ever hope to get there.

      Naturally, this assumes that “getting there” involves something less than several thousand years’ travel. I personally am of the opinion that “getting there” should involve being able to arrive within the lifetime of the original crew of a ship, without suspended animation of some sort, and those kinds of speeds simply will not be achieved by anything we have available.

      I’m currently holding out hope that someone will figure out how to game the physics to produce an Alcubierre drive without requiring the exotic matter that the current math seems to require.

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        2. Oh, we’ve been discussing the matter over in Stephanie Osborn’s FB group at various times. The energy requirement has come way down recently, but there’s still a requirement for SOME exotic matter (or negative energy, maybe? Not enough coffee yet.), which we have never observed, and don’t know how to create.

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      2. My $0.02. If a way could be found to produce a complex thrust, a ship would acquire a complex velocity, so that c never equals v, and Lorentz can go bother somebody else.

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  6. What our system requires is an index. Several indexes actually. The way our system is supposed to work is that somebody or a lot of somebodies notice something is wrong and statistically enough of the people who notice actually work on that particular sub problem to fix it for everybody.

    Every time a significant bridge falls down, people get freaked out about it all over the country about our infrastructure. The panic lasts about two weeks. The problem is that before the bridge fell down, nobody did the work to compile the national bridge inventory into something actionable so that in the two minutes after the evening news scared the pants off you about bridges, you can figure out which bridges that you cross are the problems, and who is responsible for the mess and what you can do to fix it. If that information takes 2 hours to compile instead of 2 minutes, not enough people will do it and nothing happens.

    Updating the user experience for political action to 21st century 1st world norms would mean a really big upgrade for our politics and our economics. The problem’s been solved. It’s just that nobody’s implementing the solution.

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    1. The problem is that before the bridge fell down, nobody did the work to compile the national bridge inventory into something actionable so that in the two minutes after the evening news scared the pants off you about bridges, you can figure out which bridges that you cross are the problems, and who is responsible for the mess and what you can do to fix it.

      Are you kidding?

      That system *already exists*. Bridges, depending on type/class are supposed to be inspected regularly and remediation taken. Most are handled by the agency (county, state, federal) that “owns” that bridge. In most of the bridge collapses that weren’t caused by external forces there WERE inspections that showed problems, but often the reports were ignored, or there wasn’t money for the repairs, so they were put on a prioritized list.

      Heck, my wife’s brother (Iron Worker) spends about half his working life on bridges, either building or rebuilding.

      But here’s the thing, * maintenance* doesn’t get politicians re-elected. It might get them elected the first time, but repaving roads and closing bridges for repairs pisses people off, and is money that could go to new roads (or at least new lanes) and new bridges. Or even better (in all sorts of ways except the ones that matter) MASS TRANSIT. Say it with me and FEEL the good vibrations from the universe and city contractors “Light Rail” and “Trolley Cars”. Mmmm… feel that election campaign donation goodness…but I digress.

      Anyway, because of electoral maintenance is prioritized fairly low.

      Because people are peasants and would rather watch Seinfeld than think.

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      1. Um, paving roads can keep you in office if you do a good enough job people notice. I live in TN but work in KY. The difference in roads quality is extremely noticeable. We like our roads in TN and the companies that redo the surface every two years have it down to a science so the inconvenience only lasts about a week.

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        1. You can also feel the difference (especially in 120 PSI road wheels) between Illinois and Wisconsin, but this disappears in Milwaukee.

          There the issue is that the dairy farms *need* to get their milk to market in the winter, and dislike bad roads.

          This doesn’t seem to carry over to big cities though.

          And bridges need more than the occasional resurfacing.

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      2. I’m sorry but you haven’t convinced me “That system *already exists*”. Sure the inspections exist. But that’s not the system I’m talking about. Sure, you can download the database of inspections but that is not the system I’m talking about.

        The system I’m talking about is giving the ordinary person who is not professionally involved in bridge maintenance a mashup of the bridge safety data, a way to complain to the responsible parties, and the standard trip planning app that they’re already using. When google maps offers the ability to route around low inspection score bridges, that would be approaching what I’m talking about.

        The critical feature is not being able to figure out whether you’re regularly driving over dangerous bridges. The critical feature is doing it within a very limited time window so that a large portion of the population doesn’t find the research time burdensome. Since the average american is not interested in spending more than a few seconds on this task, user experience is the killer app here.

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  7. Re Tesla … you have already put the Musketeers to solving mysteries, quite wonderfully … I would think Tesla would make a fabulous detective, in the inspiration of Sherlock Holmes, but of course Tesla is his own very distinctive person, not at all a clone of Holmes … ??

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    1. It was at the same time I proposed the Musketeers. There were ten proposals. Tesla was one of them. The other was DaVinci, for which I have two books halfway written.

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            1. he was an illegitimate son, so… it’s complicated. At the time and in that place, the surname was “son of” but his father while he recognized him did not legalize him. The place name was the closest he came.

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              1. Yep, except… it wasn’t. Being illegitimate his name would be Leonardo di Katarina da Vinci, and no one would use that, because, etc.
                His father was an accountant. :-P

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                1. But but.. Wiki adds the “di ser Piero” and we know that wiki can’t be wrong. [Evil Grin]

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                  1. I researched, for the book.
                    He was actually raised by his paternal grandparents, so it’s barely possible they let him use the name, but probably not. If his father’s wife had “adopted/recognized” him, he’d have been trained as an accountant, not apprenticed as an artist. (And there’s a story in that.) Of course, the only reason she’d do that would be if she had only daughters.

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                    3. No fair! You’re a woman, you’re not allowed to “Mansplain” things!

                      (Fortunately we’re at the bottom of the threading, so I won’t get started on that one….)

                      Like

                    4. Y’know, nobody’s ever been able to explain what in the name of the Abyss ‘mansplaning’ is supposed to be, other than ‘explanation that exposes the person who is being told as a flaming, willfully ignorant and inept idiot, who happens to be a female about half the time.’

                      Well, that’s the idea I get from attempts to try find out, anyway.

                      (Besides, I appreciated Sarah’s explanation. I learned a new thing today!)

                      Like

                    5. There are all kinds of definitions where supposedly guys explain things patronizingly and overly thoroughly to people who already know and/or don’t care, but the real meaning is “You have testicles, therefore anything you have to say is invalid.”

                      Like

                    8. Page on down. There’s other definitions following that one and are also funny. [Grin]

                      Like

                    10. I’m a libertarian woman. That means I have a virtual penis. (It’s six feet long. Gets between me and the keyboard. Around the house, when I get uh… libertarian, the guys make jokes about it. They call it “the virtual.”)

                      Like

                    12. Yep. The only other circumstance I’m accused of having one of them is when I’m driving. Apparently I’m uh… a little aggressive. Also, I don’t like to stop and ask directions, being of the mind that if I drive in a random direction long enough, I’ll get where I’m going, dang it. Also, if you stop and ask directions they get to take your man away (or woman, depending on what your SO is.) Dan has been known to say “Sarah, do try not to drive with your dick. It’s obscuring the windshield.”

                      Like

                    17. So — did she give you a level look and walk away? That’s what I normally get from people when I try and explain.

                      Like

                    25. I’ll like to say it means they have them. Alas, knowing myself, I fear the philosophy more closely resembles “pin-” than 6′.

                      Like

  8. If “folding space and wormholes” are your idea of miracles, you’re severely limiting yourself and God, even for a SF writer.

    There is so much more in individual encounters and unwritten activity, usually spiritually based that fills our world. At least among believers.

    No, we don’t don’t need to “lay any groundwork” for mitacles to happen. Just surrender to the Creator.

    Like

      3. Respectfully, you have a misguided understanding of the Creator from the first part of your statement (and, no, it’s not in the Bible). He gives wisdom and knowledge and even understanding, but expects total surrender. I prefer to have Him as my coach.
        Regardless, you don’t have to “believe” to be smart and creative. It only helps.

        Like

        1. When Jesus Himself said “not my will, but thine” He didn’t surrender into passivity– He actively took up the desires of His Father and DID according to that will; contrast with your scolding at those who promote working to accomplish that which Himself might do by miracle, which would obviously be in accordance to His will.

          Like

        2. Stoney-boy, you’re not going to win any friends by proselytizing here. You’ve already won yourself the center of attention in the whackatroll stakes (which is not a good thing).

          First, the last time I looked total surrender wasn’t what any of the Apostles did, and that’s not counting the epic disagreements in the Old Testament. Personally I suspect that’s something someone added on because mindless followers are so much easier to handle.

          Second, it is incredibly arrogant to presume that your understanding of the Creator is both correct and the only possible interpretation.

          Third, while some of the more literalist sects like to think of the Creator as an intimate part of life, going so far as to liken said creator to a coach is a tad on the belittling side. It’s like likening him to the little blue pill.

          Finally, belief has absolutely no part in the presence of intelligence or creativity. Where beliefs come into play is in how a person chooses to use what intelligence or creativity they might possess.

          Like

        3. Maintaining your respectfully, I dislike people popping into a secular forum and lecturing people on their “misguided understanding of the the Creator.” It presumes far, far too much. Your certitude does not imply universality.

          But this isn’t my house, I’m merely a guest, and perhaps others are more accommodating.

          Like

          1. I’m not. It’s bloody rude to plop down in someone else’s virtual living room and start up with a thinly-disguised screed.

            I may not be the pinnacle of civilized behavior (stop laughing!) but I don’t do *that*.

            Like

              1. You’re taking an Aussie as your pinnacle of civilized behavior? That seems … probably ill-advised. Admirable? Certainly. Respectable? If there’s no beer, possibly. Civilized? No more so than you or I. We are Huns, after all…

                Like

                1. *chuckle* Dinner table conversation last night involved housemate relating how he found quite hilarious how, during WW1, Aussie soldiers on leave in England would make it a point to go to establishments that didn’t like soldiers entering, to get thrown out. “They were champs, and eventually SOMEONE has to beat them.”

                  From the stories I hear related by my hubby, I think the tradition survives very well.

                  Like

                2. Civilized? No more so than you or I. We are Huns, after all…

                  Precisely, sir. A noble breed.

                  :D

                  Like

            2. Tis bloody rude, and I was tempted to reply with ‘sod off back to whatever rock you crawled out from under’ to the stone (headed?) one, but this is Sarah’s virtual house and I’m trying to be a bit more restrained – and even that was somewhat cleaned up. But I’m still too sick to do more than nibble at chips while watching everyone else more expertly take him/her/it apart.

              Like

                1. Nor-QLD weather is being more bipolar than… well, it has been in the more than two years I’ve been here, and I picked up this annoyingly lingering plague from the petri dish known as the local elementary (The kids are aaaaaaaaaaadooooorably cute and nearly as tall as I am, but it’s taking my immune system a while to get used to the localized versions of colds, coughs, flu, etc.) Nearly 30 degrees roasting yesterday, and now crashed back to below twenties (and lazily climbing back up.)

                  I may climb back into bed and follow the various threads with a bag of chips and my netbook. If I don’t conk out, so we’ll see…

                  Like

            3. I may not be the pinnacle of civilized behavior (stop laughing!)…

              Now, would we laugh? Snort, perhaps. Or spew our alcohol-infused liquid refreshment on our keyboards, resulting in much pain and shaking of fists. Or even shout a skeptical, “HAH!”. But laugh? Of course not. :-)

              (Runs away, dodging)

              Like

        4. M (as in the honorific Monsieur?) Stone. Please. Do not come into a person’s house – a person you know nothing about!) and not only start a religious wrangle, but attempt to call your hostess to task for *your* assumptions concerning her relationship with her Creator and Savior. This is rude beyond belief. On the level of opening your overcoat to display your shortcomings. Please desist.

          Like

    2. BTW, your idea seems to be closest to Islam’s idea of G-d, where Allah can make anything work any way from minute to minute, which means there is no rational thought or organizing principle of the universe for humans to discover. JUST FYI.

      Like

      2. You do find this among the range of Jewish opinions- there is a blessing said daily thanking God “for the countless miracles which sustain us” (taken to imply that existence itself is miraculous, at least from human perspective), but on the other hand, you have the tradition that says that all of the miracles listed in the Bible were created in the last moments before God rested at the end of the sixth day, because if God were interfering with His creation all the time, it wouldn’t have been perfect, would it?

        On the gripping hand, perhaps the tension between the perspectives is instructive…

        Like

        1. You do realize, sir, that being insane I take a Torah class, and this tension thing seems to be all it’s about? It’s what I find most appealing about “the faith of my ancestors.” I like the mental exercise.
          I think Himself would be most disappointed, PARTICULARLY if Jews totally surrendered without a discussion.
          OTOH I get the “daily miracle.” It doesn’t imply the Lord is a capricious infant, which is what Allah sounds like to me, only that He is the source of all.

          Like

          1. Illustrative aside: I was asked once why Rabbis were always arguing with one another, and my response was that the Talmud devotes literally *hundreds* of pages compiled over thousands of years to determining when “dark” is.

            Like

    3. Did you google “miracles” looking for something to troll, M Stone? Because your comment sure sounds like you did.

      You also apparently lack the capacity to distinguish between what might be called the “writerly miracle” where all the odd coincidences just happen to further the plot or main characters – which is what this post is about – and the spiritual variety which, frankly, is rather thin on the ground in any context outside personal and easily explained by other things.

      Just in case you think that means I don’t believe, I’m not saying any such thing. I refuse to confirm or deny my personal beliefs because I happen to consider them just that. Personal.

      I’m saying that I’m not seeing the Creator doing any of the big ticket miracles these days. Nor am I saying there’s a need for it or it’s something that should happen. If it suits a Creator’s purposes to tweak chance a bit here or there rather than appearing in front of a mass live televised event and doing something unequivocally miraculous, then that’s said Creator’s business, not mine.

      As for laying groundwork, you remind me of the old joke about the fellow who prayed every night for years that he win the lottery. Finally he got an answer: “Meet me halfway. Buy a ticket.”

      Like

    4. In terms of a story, a “Miracle” can happen but works (as I said) best at the beginning of a story with the characters dealing with events caused by the “Miracle”.

      A “Miracle” happening at the end of the story makes a mockery of the efforts of the characters.

      IIRC the “laying the groundwork for miracles” wasn’t Sarah’s comment and only refers to “miracles” in the story.

      IE the characters were working on a problem and their work results in something miraculous happening.

      In terms of theology, God has set up a universe with “working laws of nature” which men can learn and use to create works.

      From time to time, God interferes into this universe with events that we call “miracles”.

      Normally these miracles are to announce that God has something to say.

      Even before mankind developed the idea of science, mankind has known that “certain things just don’t normally happen”.

      Thus when God wants us to listen, He may cause an event that “normally don’t happen”.

      Oh, if you want to discuss theology, be aware that some of us *are* believers in God and can respond with our knowledge of theology. [Smile]

      Like

      1. What I found bizarre about that comment, Paul, is that he didn’t ask if I believed, or seem to understand “miracle” in the context of science working in a way we didn’t know about — i.e. a miraculous development — and went immediately into lecturing me about faith. Does he think I’m an atheist because I write science fiction? Talk about an unearned assumption.

        Like

            1. Typical drive by troll.
              Funny though how when they do it here they always run away really fast and seldom return.

              Like

                1. Josh is not a troll. He can be sensible on other subjects. He’s just obsessive and has a blind spot. He reminds me of me in my thirties, may G-d have mercy on my soul.

                  Like

                    1. To be fair to Josh, there were a few of us who kept wrangling with him and he gamely kept coming back to argue his point.

                      His point just has several points of discord for a lot of people.

                      So, I’m gonna stick with you on trolls being human in other contexts: Nah.

                      Like

                    2. Yup. Josh is still one of us, albeit one of us we’d rather not introduce to family of delicate sensibilities outside of tightly controlled circumstances. Yet, for who of us can that not be said by at least one other?

                      Like

        3. I’ll withdraw my comment. You’re making too many assumptions.
          Actually Science and God go hand in hand very well.

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              1. People sometimes seem to forget that the basis of Western Science is that our Creator is not insane, therefore reality has a knowable order. This is as opposed to pantheistic beliefs which grant extreme latitude to local deities (re: your typical Greek myth.)

                OTOH, nobody says G-D doesn’t build in kludges, e.g., Quantum Physics. The limitations of our semi-four dimensional awareness should not be imposed on the Creator, eh?

                I wonder about the implications of String and/or M Theory for FTL* drive?

                *A misnomer, as string or m theory transit does not involve transiting of linear space and therefore is not “faster” than light in any common sense. If you run around the house while II walk through it, that does not make me “faster” than you.

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                1. Western Science is that our Creator is not insane,

                  Well, at least until we got down to the whole Quantum thing. There’s a bit of not quite sanity there, and that bothers some rather hard core Christians I know who are really well versed in Science.

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                    1. And a practical jokester, never forget that Murphy is but one of His aspects.
                      In all seriousness, I have never seen the disconnect that some seem to feel between Judeo/Christian religion and science. A true believer should marvel at the wonder of His works, and a true scientist simply wants to understand how the whole business works. Should not be any mutual exclusion in either of those goals.

                      Like

                    2. My theory on this: certain folks went about trying to “prove” biblical events with scientific explanation which invited scientific exploration of the validity of the proof. Because, science. Oops.

                      I see no reason why faith and science are not instruments of Creation. Humanity is not capable of complete understanding, but the yearning is natural and science is our outlet, our minds grasping for understanding. A good and pure thing. Faith is the leap, the hope, that which cannot be confirmed. A good and pure thing.

                      Can’t imagine why anyone would try to reconcile one with the other, or why one necessarily negates the other. I believe we should strive to understand, always. We should seek the boundaries of our knowledge and quest beyond them. And I think the object of faith will forever remain out of reach of our understanding because faith in the unknowable is an essential aspect of human existence.

                      But I’m nobody’s theologian.

                      Like

                    3. I probably shouldn’t chime in on this topic, but what the heck!:-).

                      One of my pet hypotheses has always been (well, “always” ever since I formulated it) that the resistance to evolutionary theory (and by extension, much of the rest of science) by certain religious groups (not just various Christian sects) has been tied to it’s de facto invalidation of Genesis. If Genesis and the Garden of Eden are just fables or parables or metaphors, and not literal Truth!, then the Fall from Grace didn’t happen, nor Original Sin, thus making Christ’s sacrifice meaningless. Dying to atone for a sin that never happened? That’s gotta present some theological issues. Easier to deny evolution (and decry the geological and biological evidence as traps set by the Devil).

                      Welp, I’ll go back to keeping my head down now, and let those better versed in matters theological address or ignore my hypothesis as they choose.

                      Like

                    4. And how, exactly, pray, was God going to get across the idea of eons to people who hadn’t even worked out the zero yet. No. He gives us what we can comprehend. And once you get away from literal 24 hour days, Genesis doesn’t contradict science (not surprising as science and religion answer completely different questions).

                      Like

                    5. Science and religion answering different questions is key, I wish it was more commonly understood.

                      It is something I was intimating above, though less clearly.

                      Like

                    6. Tell it to the Biblical Literalists. They’re the ones claiming that it’s all factually correct and non-metaphorical.

                      Like

                    8. As have I, usually on a weekly basis. I have refrained from throwing my geology textbooks at them, and while I’m not making much difference with the ancient hard liners, I am making headway with everyone else in the room, do it’s worth it.

                      Like

                    9. I tend to stay away from that debate, or I might be tempted to beat my cousin over the head with it, and generally, we get along very well otherwise…

                      Like

                    13. I observe that St. Augustine and St. Jerome both thought it obvious that Genesis was not literal. Which, of course, does not mean that they were not meant. “My heart is broken” is metaphorically but not meaningless.

                      I also observe that most Biblical Literalists think that everything in the Bible is literally true except the sixth chapter of John.

                      Like

                    14. Re: literalism- I remain bemused by the doggedness of proclamation of the literal truth of a *translation* of the Bible.

                      Re: sanity of western science- check out L Jagi Lamplighter’s “Prospero Lost” series for a neat take on this.

                      Like

                    15. Yes, I once had a huge argument with a co-worker shortly after I landed in the US (minimum wage job, retail) “Listen, I’m a translator. No, it’s not just replace this word with that one.”

                      Like

                    16. Well some people that I know who believe that the Bible is the “literal” Word Of God do study both Greek and Hebrew. Knowing the Greek/Hebrew brings more meaning to what the Bible says on a given subject. Of course, knowing the “customs of the time” is also helpful. For example, women keeping their hair covered makes much more sense when you know that at that time only prostitutes went around with their hair uncovered. [Smile]

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                    17. I read the Bible in the original Hebrew. Admittedly in a book and not on a Torah scroll. I’ll stick with it being literally true.

                      Like

                    18. I have it in English with footnotes, which are worth the price of admission, particularly all the arguments about what things meant and the enlargement with legends.
                      Older son wishes to learn Hebrew. I have to figure out how to arrange that. Eh. (Yeah, he could, he’s 23, but I’m probably better at “figuring out.”)

                      Like

                  2. The Almighty has a sense of humor. Just look at the platypus. I also think he built in several layers and stages (in EVERY aspect of science) along the lines of ‘You think you’ve got it so well figured out, well, if it’s that easy THIS should be no trouble.’

                    Like

                    2. A great writer always has layers of meaning, from the simple to the sophisticated, so probably, yeah.

                      Like

                    5. Mandatory Time Bandits quote:
                      Are we not in the hands of a lunatic? …Look how he spends his time! 43 species of Parrots; Nipples on men…
                      If I were creating a world I would have started with Lasers. Eight O’Clock. Day One.

                      Like

                    6. I don’t know whether to recommend The Book of Joby to all and sundry because I’ve only finished a quarter of it by now.

                      Nevertheless, this conversation reminded me of it.

                      Like

                    7. I sometimes suspect that Italy is a “take that!” at anyone who claims they’d *believe* if they only had a sign. God made a peninsula that looks exactly like an article of clothing, and you still insist that you’d believe if only you received a sign?

                      :P

                      Like

                  3. I get the mental picture of humans standing on one side of the Quantum Chaos Curtain saying – it’s too hard, I don’t get it. Meanwhile, on the other side, God is looking at it and saying one plus one equals two, one plus two equals three…..

                    Like

              1. Guess you have to admire how hard he must be working to get there from here.

                Or not. I’m going with not.

                Like

              2. It reminds me of the time that someone came through, and kept telling us that something or other had begun well before 2009. As that invalidated the point. Or even as if one of us had said it hadn’t.

                Like

                    5. The few that I’ve sampled didn’t taste bad to me, and my brain files them under “I liked the taste.” I kinda wished there was something similar here, because I found myself missing the sweet cream-filled cakes for a snack rather recently.

                      Like

                    6. My brain filed them under “too sweet, tasting of chemicals and with an unnatural texture.” Meh. If I want cake, I’ll ask Mrs. Dave to make it for me. “Sweet cream-filled snack” to me means good cannoli. But then, I like my chocolate at least 70% cocoa.

                      Like

                    8. But…but…where are you going to get your chemical tasting unnatural texture fix?

                      Never make the mistake of seeing little packages of commercial bakery goods and thinking “cake,” then you’ll not be disappointed by the relative comparison.

                      :D

                      Like

                    11. They can be shipped internationally. However the cost of shipping something to Australia from the US is quite high .

                      Like

                    12. So much for that idea then:-/. I was thinking we could put together an International HunCare Package. Maybe if anyone ever goes Down Under on vacation…

                      Like

                    18. Actually, I did a quick google search and yeah, you can buy them off of specialty ordering stores online here in Australia. …They seem oddly popular.

                      Woolworths did a brief run of stocking Hersheys Kisses and Marshmallow Fluff; it didn’t last long =( I can get Dr. Pepper for Rhys at the local Coles though.

                      Like

                    21. On Perishable. I’ve heard of an individual who had saved one of the caramel covered apples that he got at Halloween for several months. Since the outside looked OK he assumed the inside was OK. Just imagine what he found when he bit into it. [Very Big Evil Grin]

                      Like

                    22. I am advised that eating too many Diet-Twinkies can cause your Hoo-ha to glitter. It has something to do with being filled with sweetness and lite.

                      Like

                    23. Twinkies actually do “expire”, they just give no outwards signs of having done so.

                      (Holding back the college story about a Twinkie and some duct tape in the campus User’s Group office for a more opportune time.)

                      Like

          3. You want to borrow a set of work gloves?

            The work you’re doing with that shovel will give you blisters if you’re not careful.

            Like

          1. From where I stand, it looks like any good Father– He’s going to try to take care of His favorite children, even if they’re not currently seeing eye to eye on everything. Heaven knows that my folks have run into THAT enough, and they’re not even perfect!

            Like

    6. Metaphor for miracles:
      You come up ten bucks short for groceries and the person behind you in line hands the clerk a twenty.

      The proper response is to be thankful for the help, not to expect them to pay your rent as well.

      Like

    7. Certainly CS Lewis would disagree. As Screwtape put it, “He is looking for servants who will become sons”. It is his Adversary who possesses and takes away free will.

      Like

      1. The surrender is to the the Holy Spirit, who remakes our character – indeed our very nature – into one pleasing to Himself, the Author. Since what He wanted in the first place was a larger family, this will necessarily mean we have distinct personalities. Which, oddly enough, mirrors the Godhead, itself. I see no problem nor contradiction.

        Servants He got. One decided to bite the Hand, and got cast out. A third accompanied that one. Some say, “better to reign in Hell.” I say, “next year in the New Jerusalem.” YMMV, and certainly will…

        Like

        1. “Surrender” is more a mystical or love poetry term than a theological one. Frex, it’s not in the Bible anywhere. The OT and NT both tend to use familial, travel, animal, or work terms, although occasionally we’re warned not to be enemies to God. The strongest image is just turning around and going the right way (as a sheep or a human), or coming back to one’s lover and spouse.

          Now, there’s nothing wrong with mystical love poetry. But that’s optional enrichment stuff, and not helpful to everybody.

          Like

          1. “May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O’ Lord.”

            One form of love expresses itself in the desire to be what your loved one wants/needs. Paradoxically, in loving the Lord we become more truly ourselves. (Judeo-Christian theology is rife with such apparent contradiction.)

            Self-love involves demanding that our loved one conform to our desires, which consumes that lover and denies the object what he or she seeks.

            The corruption of the concept of love has consequences.

            Like

  9. Yes on the works in progress report, please.

    I love what the historian Bernard Bailyn said about the Founding Fathers and the Constitution – in short, they knew humans were corrupt and selfish enough to need a firm set of rules and limits, and trusted people to be good and generous enough that they could work together under a minimal set of rules.

    Like

  10. ) In fact, I am for a YA series that will be like the Heinlein Juveniles, in which I’ll be collaborating with someone in the space industry

    Good. I’m rah-rah for RAH, but it would be kind of nice to have stuff updated for new basics like “it’s something that needs explaining if you can’t reach someone immediately.” (Phones, text messages, etc– I can’t be the only one who seems to have to send a “sorry, was in church, what did you want?” message at least once a month.)

    Course, I’m also wanting to read some space stories of the sort you wouldn’t do, looking at the philosophical expectations of what aliens will be like if the universe doesn’t express in an agnostic/atheistic friendly manner. ^.^

    (Less looped around: know how the ah-ha!HARDscience stuff has aliens as non-human as possible, because pure evolution would likely to that? What does it do to science if all the intelligent aliens we meet are humanoid? Now, when that shakes out, what do you do when you end up with Spock? Or, for real head-hurting, Spock and his human wife’s kid having a kid with a human? *Grin* The genetics makes my head hurt… and if it worked, holy cow the massive shake-out of current assumptions…..)

    Like

      1. Does it have any housemates running away, screaming? *grin*

        *sigh* I’m going to have to study up on my theology and write something like a “all aliens are human” universe just to get the philosophy out of my head– and I know it’ll make Rand look like Tolkien, but I just keep coming back to the best definition of “species” being “can interbreed without problems” and I think it was Aquinus musing on the legend of the dog men and determining that they would count as “human,” and then a dose of the forms of “elf” that express so incredibly differently than Vanilla Human but can also cross with absolutely no problem, which means that the “long life” and such are more like red hair than “sometimes different species somehow manage to cross and the offspring survives”….

        Gah, I’ve had two mochas today and it STILL isn’t enough. (Yeah, we’re splurging.)

        Like

    2. On Humanoid aliens able to have children with Earth Humans, Chris Nuttall had started a story where all the Humanoid Aliens (included Earth Humans) were genetically related. The obvious explanation was that “somebody was meddling” and “was meddling in the recent past”. Interestingly, the characters had other evidence for the existence of the Meddlers. Oh, apparently the story concerned the return of the Meddlers and the characters were concerned about what their return would mean. [Very Big Grin]

      Like

      1. Makes more sense than the Star Trek patch of “there were humanoids a long time ago who seeded a ton of worlds and also wrote a genetic computer program to say hi.”

        Like

        1. Chris started this idea based on the Star Trek humanoids being able to have children. Of course, the “recent meddling” was to avoid the problem of that STNG episode. IE aliens may have started life on several worlds but the humanoids still wouldn’t be able to have children. After all human males can’t father children with a female chimp and chimps are closer to us than (for example) Vulcans. [Grin]

          Like

        3. // like this:
          #include
          #include

          struct warp {
          char base[20];
          long long factor;
          }

          main(){

          srand(time(NULL));
          long long twist;
          long long max;
          warp begin_sequence;

          begin_sequence.base = “Hi”;
          max = 18446744073709551615;
          twist=rand() % max;

          begin_sequence.factor = twist;

          g_splice << begin_sequence;
          return 1
          }

          Like

          1. That works a lot better when word press doesn’t eat the angle brackets and the stuff in them.

            Like

  11. The American Republic ended in 1913 with direct election of senators, the federal income tax, and the Federal Reserve Act. Insidiously, all of these perversions have developed strong constituencies, and will not be repealed. Nor do I see any historical precedent for corrupt Oligarchies being reformed. But such a system is not self-sustaining, since it burns through capital, human and financial. So it will end in a miracle, which will be a nightmare for the people involved.

    Like

    1. Really, no precedent?

      So, lessee, the Roman Plebians requiring the Patricians to write down the 12 tables of the law and then by God holding them to it?

      How about Magna Carta?

      I’m not saying the US is not in trouble. Indeed, the US _is_ in very real trouble. Civilization world-wide is on the ropes, however to suggest the Republic ended in 1913 when it is manifestly still here, or that we cannot straighten ourselves out, when this nation has been in much deeper trouble multiple times in the past (1861 and 1812 come to mind) is foolish at best.

      I suggest sir, that you need to read some more history if you find no precedent for the reform of a corrupt oligarchy.

      Like

    2. bar’ – go back further.

      The first cinderblock in the foundation necessary for the usurpations you correctly identify began on April 6, 1861, when #16 unilaterally granted himself the authority to provoke and wage war on the Citizens of the several sovereign States, which ultimately led to over one million dead or maimed Americans and then to the fundamental transformation of the Republic into a de facto empire. The so-called “Reconstruction” period which followed saw a burgeoning, omnipotent federal oligarchy capable of ramming through every insult to federalism from the 14th Amendment to Obamacare. This was precisely the oligarchy Jefferson warned of in his letter to William Charles Jarvis in 1820.

      Fixing this doesn’t require a miracle, per se. Rather, it requires the same initiative driven by the same resolve motivating the same authority which ratified the Constitution – and which thereby CREATED the federal government – in the first place. That is, the ‘miracle’ required is simply action, in concert, taken by the legislatures of the several sovereign States, acting on behalf of the will of their respective Citizens.

      The precedent by which the Republic is restored is the Amendment process – this time, one driven by the several sovereign States, and aimed at decentralization of power, rather than the previous Amendments, which have typically worked to do the opposite.

      Like

  12. Sarah, I’m not sure if the attractive aspect of miraculous solutions is that there’s no expectation of work, although maybe that’s part of it for some folks.

    Rather, I believe such solutions are most attractive when they provide an escape from a situation or a solution to a problem that we don’t yet UNDERSTAND well enough to solve, no matter how much work we’re willing to put into it.

    In this context, because it’s so very rare, it’s wonderful to see someone recognize and point out the Two Stage process that has led to our present, ongoing social and cultural decline, i.e., FIRST “the centralization of power” and THEN, “the conversion of our elites,” who stole the reins of power AFTER it was already effectively centralized. This centralized power amplified the damage their corrupted ideology has wrought.

    Those looking for a solution and a corrective for the resulting US decline seem focused almost solely on the latter in this two-stage process: i.e., the corruption of those in power. This is reflected in the fairly pervasive notion – misguided, IMHO – that the federal government could be fixed if we could only elect the right people to “serve” there, the assumption being that they will do the right thing. Thus we have inordinate focus on national-level elections, political parties and issues “that concern every American”.

    Unfortunately – as Milton Friedman pointed out years ago – this approach doesn’t work. The reason it doesn’t work in this case is that this solution still leaves power centralized and vulnerable to those who insist on doing the wrong thing. As Friedman pointed out, what’s necessary is to find an arrangement that makes it politically profitable for the wrong person to do the right thing.

    And THEREIN lies the Gordian Knot that motivates the desire for a “miracle” in this context: as a People, we don’t yet understand the problem well enough to achieve this goal. As a People, we don’t have a clue how to make it politically profitable for the wrong person to do the right thing, so we don’t have a clue what to do with the plastic shovel.

    The real problem as it turns out, is not Stage Two, i.e., it isn’t the conversion (corruption) of our elites. The “wrong people” have always and WILL always be among us.

    The real problem is Stage One, and the fact that centralized power does such pervasive damage when seized by the wrong people, which only ever needs to happen once to destroy an entire society.

    Clearly, the solution is not finding the “right people”, but de-centralizing power and, in so doing, creating a competitive environment whereby the People choose the winners and losers in that competition, which is a competition for the best methods of social organization. This is how we rig the game, making it politically profitable for the wrong person – for any person – to do the right thing.

    In fact – to your point about there being nothing wrong with our design – this arrangement is precisely what the Founders established. They created a weak, special-purpose general government whose sole responsibility was to manage the needs and systems which the States had IN COMMON – like defense, currency, treaties, etc. – and to adjudicate the differences that arose BETWEEN THEM. Most importantly: power over civil affairs was completely decentralized through administration by individual, sovereign State governments, which were left to compete with each other to find the best form of social organization in the physical manifestation of a Free Marketplace of Ideas.

    Our problem isn’t this design. Our problem is that this design was completely SCRAPPED. And the means by which that happened is the bit that we, as a People, have yet to understand well enough to solve today’s existential problem.

    The fact is that the design implemented by the Founders was effectively turned on its head in 1865. This was achieved through a fundamental transformation that we are all programmed to ignore beginning in kindergarten. The element we’re trained to focus on in place of that transformation is SLAVERY. This is why all discussion of State sovereignty – and the inversion of the Republic that has led to the destructive centralization of power – gets derailed into irrelevant thesis designed to demonize the South for the moral crime of slavery, as if slaves were never owned, bought, sold and/or mistreated in every single State at some point between 1788 and 1865.

    What we see if we use an objective eye to view the past is a fundamental transformation that hides behind the Appeal to Slavery Fallacy: a transition from a Republic comprised of voluntarily allied States into a de facto empire made up of what Pat Buchanan has called “conquered provinces”. That was the beginning of Stage One.

    So from a practical viewpoint, Stage One didn’t begin with the cultural Marxists. It began much earlier, with the Republican (formerly Whig) agenda of centralized banking, fiat currency, “internal improvements” pork, a large standing army, Hamiltonian crony capitalism, mercantilist economic decimation of agrarian society, “national” citizenship and “incorporation doctrine”. The 14th & 17th Amendments, the Federal Reserve and everything down to the Pledge of Allegiance have worked to concentrate all political, social, academic, economic and cultural power in DC, stripping away State sovereignty – the very embodiment of decentralization of power – at every step along the way.

    Americans can’t get a foothold on how to deal with the cultural Marxism that is destroying our society because all of the above history, and the manner in which it led to the scrapping of the Founders’ original design, is effectively airbrushed from our national consciousness.

    As a People, therefore, we are effectively blinded to the knowledge required to understand this problem well enough to solve it. If people are hoping for a miracle, I believe that’s why.

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    1. Until blacks understand that centralization is their greatest risk for renewed slavery, all the dismissal of the slavery issue will simply not work. The quickest way to get past what you are currently calling a distraction is to seize the anti-slavery high ground in 2014 and morally question the anti-slavery credentials of today’s centralizers.

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      1. I understand what you’re getting at, tm’, and I agree with your point.

        But the thing is, I’m not really interested in *dismissing* the slavery issue, per se. It’s an issue with merit in its own right, especially with respect to the implications of your comment (and not only for blacks).

        What I’m interested in is preventing the issue – when it is abused as an Appeal to Slavery Fallacy – from derailing every discussion of US history that is aimed at understanding the root cause of Stage One, i.e., the centralization of power that has led to an out-of-control federal monstrosity which is presently strangling this country.

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  13. Prizes have been really big in aerospace for over a decade now. The X Prize is modeled on the aviation prize for the Spirit of St. Louis, and I think that was modeled on the navigation prize the English offered. We’ve had the Ansari X Prize, which produced SpaceShipOne, the Lunar Lander Challenge, and now we’ve got the Google XPrize for the moon. All very cool.

    Using Bezos is great. One good reason to spend money at Amazon as opposed to elsewhere is because he puts it into his rocket at Blue Origin. Also very cool.

    Like

    1. For some definitions of really big.
      The Ansari X Prize award was for $10 million and was won by SpaceShipOne with a paltry investment by Paul Allen of only $25 million.
      And as admirable as that achievement was, it only involved a suborbital flight which is arguably the easier piece. Acceleration to full orbital speed, braking for reentry, and successfully returning for a safe landing are an order of magnitude more difficult in terms of propulsion and structural integrity.

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      1. And, interestingly, SpaceX has accomplished the latter and we’re still waiting on Virgin to commercialize the former.

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        1. YES!
          The Space X mission to ISS and return to Earth was a fantastic achievement. Only step remaining is to do it manned. Then we kiss the pesky Ruskies adieu.
          Virgin needs to get on the stick. They’ve been “a year away” from commercial suborbital flights for what, going on five years now. That so called space port in New Mexico will need a refurb before it ever sees use.

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          1. What do you think of the relative horserace merits of XCOR vs Virgin. Clearly both have schedule slip issues. Which one will be flying paying tourists first?

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  14. Glad to hear all of the YA work coming. I’ve got a niece/nephew coming down the pike and since the rest of the immediate family are vile pros, I’m resigned to being the one who has to teach him/her how to THINK.

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  15. Your post jibes neatly with something our priest said in his sermon today, quoting Augustine: “Pray as if everything depended on God. Act as if everything depended on you.”

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  16. “It took us almost a century to get in this much trouble. Expecting to get out of it with a wave of a wand is like expecting to lose those sixty pounds you gained over the last ten years to vanish by wishing.”

    This. This cubed. I get SOOOOOOOO tired of people denouncing Presidential candidates who seem to have some ideas because they aren’t promising to fix everything by halfway through their first year in office. That’s what Progressive Democrats do to get elected, and look where it’s taken us!

    Elect a President who really means to deregulate the Oil industry, or the power industry, or disband the BATF, or privatize Social Insecurity. Any single one is going to take all the energy and attention of a victorious President with control of Congress to achieve. Anybody who promised to do tree or more id lying through his teeth. He’s either not aware that he can’t (which disqualifies him), aware but doesn’t intend to try, or aware and means to try and expects to fail.

    LATER, maybe, we can get more than one major victory per administration. Maybe.

    Hell, getting Nancy Pelosi jailed for corruption would take a whole term, and be a worthy goal…..

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    1. In politics, depending on a miracle to make your utopia work is suicidal. The one that really annoys me is “We can make communism work if we have post-scarcity AI driven robots that do all our work for us! Then it doesn’t matter that we’ve wrecked the economy and stole everything from you because everything will be freely given to everyone.”

      On the other hand, outside of politics … is there really any other way for individuals to improve the lot of mankind? I happen to like technofixes – it’s why I’m an engineer. Without a lot of technofixes, mankind will run into all sorts of nasty limits that will end up being “solved” by political solutions like genocidal mass warfare or mass-oppression or imposed energy-starvation.

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          1. Anyway, so, one of the people in the Facebook diner said “Is this about Nikolai Tesla” and this devolved into a discussion of Tesla’s strange popularity.

            Something that always bugged me about Tesla’s popularity was that it was invariably tied up in demonization and hatred of Edison. It brings to mind that quote about no religion being able to exist without a devil. It’s annoying to me that the incredibly prolific and multifarous career of another great inventor is reduced to a morality play about the current wars in the popular historical memory.

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              1. Hatred of Marconi at least has the advantage of both Marconi having the patent priority dispute with Tesla, and of having been a literal Fascist. (As opposed to just having the label flung at him, as seems lately popular.)

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              1. Neg. Fornication is strictly between two people not married to each other. I suppose we could stretch the definition to include animals, though I have no personal interest in the matter, being happily married, myself.

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                1. Sorry, attempt at a joke. Fornication is from the latin Fornix which is for an arch or a vault. Making it a bald attempt at a vile pun.

                  Granted, fornication is called fornication because prostitutes would ply their trades in vaulted cellars and other such places.

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                  2. Ohhh, that was nicely played. I’m just not educated enough to have caught it on the first pass. :(

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                    1. My two tactics are obscurity, false and not so false cognates, and an almost fanatical devotion to…um, puns…hold on…let me count…

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                  3. Over-arching. Right. Right. Sorry. Right.

                    No excuse. I even knew that. My self-conscious (not the same as self-conscious, I swear) even pinged me on your word choice. The reasons I missed it are two-fold. In primus, I’ve been living in someone else’s head, and she doesn’t play with words like I do. Also, she just finished boot camp and really doesn’t have the energy. Reason the second: I have a three month old.
                    Maybe I am making excuses. Tired. Need coffee.

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                    1. Give ’em both hugs.

                      An old pen pal of mine had a baby last June 6th. Since she is Australian I congratulated her and commended her on not calling the baby Juno, Gold or Sword. She’s what my mom called, “head in diapers” so I’m not sure she got it. (Mom said head in diapers lasted either a couple of years or until all the kids were in school.)

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              1. I think it may be more like masturbation, albeit perhaps mutual.

                Just as the phrase used to describe the vice-presidency was not a”a bucket of warm spit” I suspect the adage “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” has been cleaned up for publication.

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                2. Y’know, that much saliva in one place is still pretty foul. Especially given the likelihood of personal hygiene of the induhvidual in question.

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        1. For it to carry any weight, we have to get to a post-scarcity world. We just ain’t there, yet. Given the way things are going, we may never manage it.

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      3. Walmart, with it’s brutal focus on logistics and driving down price has done more to make the lives of “the poor” better than all the government programs since FDR was dropped on his head.

        Liked by 1 person

    2. I get SOOOOOOOO tired of people denouncing Presidential candidates who seem to have some ideas because they aren’t promising to fix everything by halfway through their first year in office. That’s what Progressive Democrats do to get elected, and look where it’s taken us!

      Sing it, brother! Or refusing to vote for a Presidential Candidate because he didn’t do everything they wanted him to do in his first term. Or denouncing the entire party because they don’t have a record of turning the clock back on everything, even when they don’t have a large enough majority to do it.

      As anyone who has been severely sick or injured knows, recovery is a long process, and this country has a whole lot of ailments right now. They can’t be healed overnight.

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      1. They all want Daddy to fetch them the pretty moon, even the ones that claim not to want a Daddy.

        *sigh*

        There was never a Golden Age when all out Civil Rights and Liberties were respected by our elected officials. The Founders, bless their black elitist hearts, voted for one of the most radical political documents ever published, much less adopted as law. And they were weaseling their way around it in the name of momentary expedience before the ink was dry. They stood head an shoulders above anyone that had come before, and that was just high enough to create a society that would, eventually, respect the rights of the poor, the weak, and the differently colored at least a little bit.

        Before the Progressives was another bunch of Paternalistic swine and before THEM another, and so on all the way back to the first work-shy cavemen who came up with a way to pass on the title of “Chief” to someone who hadn’t fought or it or otherwise demonstrated any talent for the position (and who they could control).

        Liked by 1 person

      2. The only way to get a candidate you don’t disagree with on something, is run yourself. The important question is which disagreements you can live with.

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      3. Telling the unrealistic impatients to go make a Gantt chart of what has to happen to tie up all the loose ends so things actually get better when we get rid of a cabinet level agency and attach realistic times to those tasks would probably cure the condition.

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  18. My ideas on “miraculous developments that could potentially get us to the stars” all so far depend on some sort of power/energy-generation breakthrough.

    Accelerating an X-thousand-ton spacecraft to near the speed of light (and back from nearly the speed of light) implies a ridiculous amount of energy. Vaporize Nebraska levels of energy. (You can have your star-drive, but it also necessarily doubles as a weapon of mass destruction.)

    All the ideas that depend on known physics and sort-of-we-could-do-it-with-infinite-dollars engineering rely on things like laser-light-sails or particle-beam sails for acceleration and some sort of fusion drive (with a 99% mass fraction) for deceleration. That doesn’t get you anything like the Enterprise though – that’s a ship that can go one place over decades, and then has to build another particle-beam-driver if it wants to go anywhere else, or return to sol.

    Something like a very efficient fusion drive might be able to do low percentages of lightspeed, and refuel wherever there is a handy gas giant. That requires a much better idea of how to build a fusion reactor than we have right now. (One of the reasons I am doing Plasma Physics is that I’m hoping there is an unconsidered angle somewhere in there for fusion plasma confinement.)

    Anti-matter is our best idea of starship fuel – it has the theroetical maximum energy-per-fuel-mass that we can derive. You don’t need outrageous mass fractions if half of that mass is antimatter. IRL though we only have a few particles here and there, and can only confine them for limited lengths of time.

    If it were possible to do some sort of Baryon-number violating reaction, we could possibly convert normal matter directly into energy. If we could do this, it would open up the stars. You wouldn’t need to carry large amounts of unobtainable antimatter – you’d just need to carry around a manageable tank of normal matter to feed your mass-converter. So far the universe looks like it is mostly matter, even though all of our known particle interactions conserve baryon number. Something in the early universe must not have conserved baryon number, for us to end up with anything but an even matter/anti-matter mix.

    To make something like the warp drive work, we’d need a way to “induce a gravity field” that is as easy as inducing a magnetic field is for us today. Right now, the only way we know of to induce gravity is to stick an absurd amount of mass-energy in a small enough space.

    (Keep in mind FTL, in any framework where special relativity implies, would allow for backwards time-travel as a necessary consequence. In SR, there is no such thing as absolute simultaneity. Given events outside of a light-cone, which event happened first depends on your relative STL velocity. If you could go FTL, you could zigzag back in time if you wanted.)

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    1. 1. Solve mortality. Get veeeery patient. Invent a workable fusion reactor. Make starships that go 5% the speed of light between stars and chillax on your 300 year trip. (Here the only thing we need to do is invent the fusion drive. Sovling mortality is a chemistry/computer-programming problem – not a problem for physics, only technology.)

      2. Figure out direct mass-to-energy conversion. Go rocketing around space at 99% the speed of light, and get very paranoid about people building direct-mass-conversion bombs or reletavistic rocks that can vaporize the oceans of $PLANET.

      3. Figure out a way to derive energy from some quantum-vacuum-inflation-like process. Now you don’t need propellant, but you’re creating regions of space-time with altered physics as a byproduct.

      4. Figure out how to bend space and time into pretzel knots without millions of solar masses worth of mass-energy. Now you can do the warp-drive and travel any speed you feel like (including backwards in time/spacelike, or perhaps even turn yourself around to being able to travel backwards-in-time/timelike)

      5. Figure out how to exploit some sort of nonlinearity in the laws of quantum physics. This might not get you the stars (at first), but it might enable you to communicate with other branches of an Everett-style wavefunction (i.e. talk to yourself from an alternate universe)

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    2. Yes, the point I was trying to make earlier. We are approaching the theoretical limits of efficiency for reaction engines. Antimatter with a truly impressive thrust to weight ratio could very well deliver a constant 1 G thrust engine. Such would give us interplanetary travel measured in days to weeks. Still leaves us with interstellar at best measured in decades, and that to just the few very nearest stars.
      FTL, warp drives, wormholes, all are ideas with the barest of possibilities from esoteric advanced physics, but then again so was atomic energy not so very long ago.

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      1. Ehh, the ion/hall thrusters we have now are still in the 60% efficeincy range, and are designed around kilowatts (not megawatts or gigawatts of power). If we were designing them around really fun super-hot fission reactors/gigawatts of power, they’d begin to look more like MPDs – still very low thrust, but perhaps high enough to push cargo/people around the solar system on months long trips with modest mass fractions and flexibility about the working gas used as propellant.

        There is still a lot of room for improvement in the electric propulsion field though.

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        1. Star travel is a whole other order of magnitude though than interplanetary travel – mass, energy, time, everything.

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      2. And yes, atomic energy was just the barest laboratory curiosity in 1900. We didn’t have powered flight in 1900. Who knows what we’ll have in 2100 or 2200? Nature isn’t obligated to allow us a solution, but it’s been consistently more complicated and weirder than our wildest ideas of it.

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        1. “but [Nature has] been consistently more complicated and weirder than our wildest ideas of it”

          Well, it is true that Nature has repeatedly been weirder than people expected in some ways, as with the relativity of time being cross-coupled with how fast you move.

          On the other hand, spontaneous generation was an awfully complicated and weird idea compared to relativity or compared to the way things actually turned out to work. (Vermin and whatnot having ancestors just like everything else is a lot more elegant than all the rules you’d need to try to predict which vermin and whatnot spontaneously generated under which conditions.) And spontaneous generation is something that people evidently didn’t just imagine as a wild possibility, but believed as the most natural explanation.

          Also, sympathetic magic is at least as complicated and weird as relativity.

          (Though I suppose that both claims of relative weirdness are IMHO only, on the theory that de weirdibus non disputandum est.)

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    3. Keep in mind FTL, in any framework where special relativity implies, would allow for backwards time-travel as a necessary consequence. In SR, there is no such thing as absolute simultaneity. Given events outside of a light-cone, which event happened first depends on your relative STL velocity. If you could go FTL, you could zigzag back in time if you wanted.

      Interesting comment, I’ll have to think on that a bit because I never thought of the relationship between FTL and time travel.
      Tried to italicize the quote but can’t figure it out.

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      1. That idea has been expressed before in discussions of Special Relativity and FTL travel.

        Personally, there’s so many “oh come on now aspects” to the idea that I suspect that when FTL travel is discovered, Special Relativity will be shown as wrong concerning that idea. [Smile]

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        1. I was going to point out that some people believe that complex numbers in the equations mean that it is simply not applicable on that side of the line, and that once we can do it, we will figure out a new theory that encompasses SR, but works without complex numbers beyond the speed of light.

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    4. (You can have your star-drive, but it also necessarily doubles as a weapon of mass destruction.)

      Even if the drive itself doesn’t, any appreciable velocity is a problem when it comes in contact with something moving with a significant delta.

      AKA “Quantity has a quality all it’s own”

      If it were possible to do some sort of Baryon-number violating reaction, we could possibly convert normal matter directly into energy.

      Doesn’t this shorten the duration of the universe a quite a bit? Sort of like an Entropy Monster?

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      2. Perhaps the drive doesn’t actually move the object within its operating field, but holds its contents in stasis relative to the movement of the universe?

        Alternatively, a drive might operate to rotate the universe relative to the focus of the drive’s effect? Call it the “Don’t raise the bridge” drive?

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  19. I think not enough attention is paid to impedance in the system.

    Clock rates of systems differ, and “real” (non-electronic) systems have multiple cycles spinning at vastly different rates (by vast I mean Universe vast).

    Heinlein, I think, understood this.

    When I change something in an electronic system things don’t happen immediately – maybe a capacitor has to charge, or it is waiting for the next system tick to execute the next instruction etc.
    To human eyes this is not a slow process.

    However, if I change something in a geological system, it may take millennia
    before an effect is noticed.

    In human societies the full effect of changes may take much longer than most people think.

    A couple major changes that are still working their way through the social systems of the West are:

    Universal Suffrage (De Tocqueville, Anacyclosis)
    Mass Affluence (and the rise of a massive “drone” class)

    But to address Sarah’s main point – a huge change still working its way through the US is the discovery by lawyers of the Left that they could ignore the black-letter law, especially of the Constitution and find whatever they wanted.

    When the sky didn’t fall in after the first few times they became emboldened. Now it is mainstream, and jurists who rule according to black letter readings of the Constitution are reviled as “activists”.

    So, sorry Sarah, “The Constitution” will not help, other than as a forlorn rallying call to action among the patriotist extremists.

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    1. Your last paragraphs deviates from your larger point. Conceding the truth of slow signal propagation through human systems, reaction to ignoring black-letter law will lag behind the action.

      The Constitution need not be a forlorn call if the lagging signal coalesces around the framework and the push-back is shaped by the document.

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      1. Actually, Eamon, you are dead-right!

        I feel a bit happier now.

        Thanks :)

        (note to self: look at both sides of equation dumb-ass)

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          2. Sarah, Please don’t oppress a member of nameless american community :)

            Actually it appears to be a bug in WordPress – I can’t figure it out. Sorry for appearing mysterious. As you can see from my original comment (I am Robert, or Roberto if I comment on spanish blogs) it sometimes gets it right, sometimes not. My icon is a bit of protest …

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  20. Regardless of how much “everyone” believes in a system or a theory, a system that requires continuous engagement of every citizen is a system that will fail quickly and ugly.

    *funky connection*

    Folks here are probably familiar with the “high efficiency” ship that the Navy was talking about– basically, it was in theory designed to have next to no crew, because there was exactly one person who could do a specific job.

    Pause here, remember that this was about ’04 or so, and that it was– maybe still is– a serious idea supported by a loud portion of the officers in the Navy and other forces.

    Nobody I spoke to could say what would happen WHEN someone couldn’t do their job, which in the best case would be due to being sick (or dead– I used the USS Cole as an example) and the solution for people sleeping is that there would be cross-training. Nobody could explain what would happen when someone could only do the job on paper, and was actually carried. (A thing that is all too common even with departments scrambling to find people to kick out.) The answer was always along the lines of it just magically wouldn’t happen….

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  21. “Expecting to get out of it with a wave of a wand is like expecting to lose those sixty pounds you gained over the last ten years to vanish by wishing. (If you figure out how to do that, tell me.)”

    Diabetes? (Which may be an apt metaphor).

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        1. I’ve forgotten the early symptoms since I’ve had it over 10 years now. That’s how hubby found out that he had it.

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        1. I’m imagining the enormous grouper I saw at some municipal aquarium … close on 7 feet long, just hanging there in the water, opening and closing its mouth … barely swimming, just hanging there … now it reminds me of that bizarre thing they’re printing on Chipotle carryout bags … when nobody will work and we’ll all sit around luuuuuuvvvvving everyone …

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      2. I did experience the Age of Aquarium. When I moved to Cincinnati, there was no aquarium. Lo and behold, one was built, just across the river. Then one of my friends started volunteering there, and then a second one. Soon one or the other were inviting me to their volunteer appreciation events. Some of those events seemed interminably long due to speechifying and awarding. It was a veritable Age of Aquarium before we could get to refreshments.

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  23. I’m just happy to see Sarah use a word in her post that I helped to coin, with my queries. Cheerreader! Go Dan!

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  24. Hey, I saw lots of UFOs in the 70s!

    Of course, I was also living under the flight path between Groom Lake and Mountain Home AFB.
    And the UFOs all seemed to have FAA-compliant lights.

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    1. not long ago I saw an old repeat of a UFO show and all the drawings of several seen over Phoenix all look remarkably familiar. Now-a-days, instead of a ton of folks going “OMG!!1!1! A UFO!!” they would say “Wow…A Stealth Bomber! Cool.” Every drawing shown on that show were (now) obviously renderings of the Spirit Bomber, but because no one knew about them and how they operated … they are very quiet, and are hard to see clearly even in bright daylight, let alone the dusk to dark nights these were mostly seen during … everyone assumed Aliens!

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    2. When I was in Germany in 1994 there was a big to-do about a UFO in the Netherlands that led to scrambling of various government aircraft . . . a UFO that proved to be an ultralight with non-approved lights. You cannot tell me that the pilot didn’t know exactly what he was doing. :)

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      1. Idaho. I nearly got an assignment there when I worked for SAIC; wound up going to Spangdahlem AB in Germany instead.

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    4. I may have mentioned it before, but HOLY COW is a C-17 amazingly quiet. I’ve been driving down the road behind McChord airfield after dark, with the radio on but not loud, and had one that’s launching go right over my head. It took me a bit to figure out what it was because the lights that are on at that point are a bit different….

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  25. You know, I don’t know that we actually need a miracle to figure out FTL. Local space is dominated by a massive rotating body. If we want to figure out FTL, we probably need to do research on the fabric of space _outside_ the solar system.

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  26. Now, I’ve only read Goldport book (Draw One in the Dark> but I was convinced Goldport was Greeley . For a bit I thought Fort Collins (where my grandparents lived) but the descriptions of prairie in most directions sealed it as Greeley to me. Plus, not like Horsetooth came up when Tom flew south to New Mexico.

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      1. Are those under you or a pseudonym? I keep thinking I’m going to pick one up and then I forget…

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        1. pseudonym — Elise Hyatt. If you want them, ping me at hotmail — if you don’t mind a few typos. I’d prefer you don’t give the cheating sobs any money, and I want them to let it revert. If you buy them in paper, buy them used. The characters from DOITD appear. And Noah’s boy happens before the 3rd refinishing mystery.

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        1. Was that the camera that suddenly went off line after showing what looked like a group of rodents dragging wire cutters stormed up to the lens and covered it with something beret-like?

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  27. I would love a rundown on everything in the pipeline. I would also love to get a listing of all the books by all the Huns. My financial aid is due to arrive next Monday, and I will finally have a little cash to spend on books.

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  28. Sarah,

    As the general consensus is people aee tierd of hearing talk on this I’ll abdicate the floor to others.

    I’ll with one final thought:

    This is my dream.

    And deeams should strech beyound current accepted realm of possibilities.

    That’s why they are dreams.

    :)

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  29. I can’t find the diner, it’s not on Amazon, and I need to read this story. Somebody, please, help me.

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    2. It’s coming out in an anthology, Laura. But if this is MY story and if you want to see it, ping me on hotmail. My first two initials and last name, no spaces.
      I’ll send it to you.

      Like

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