Interesting Links for 12-12-2011

[andrewducker]

• First Private Spaceship Flight to the ISS now has a date.
  (tags: space iss Spacex )
• Motorola secures Europe-wide sales ban on iPhone, iPad - oh for goodness sake.
  (tags: patents germany law europe apple iphone motorola )
• This Banana Alien Might Have Ascorbic Acid for Blood
  (tags: banana alien sculpture awesome )
• The Evolution of Fictional Characters
  (tags: Character Comics tv comic )
• If Tarot Cards Actually Predicted the Future
  (tags: funny tarot webcomic )
• D&D;: More accurate than you think
  (tags: roleplaying dnd reality )
• Problems with anti-Mormons and anti-Adulterers - will the demographics hurt the Republicans?
  (tags: republicans voting usa )
• 57% of people thought that David Cameron was right to use the veto, with 14% disagreeing and 29% don’t know.
  (tags: europe uk opinion )
• Alternative Engineering - the future of architecture!
  (tags: architecture Alternative funny satire )
• Why Spotify can never be profitable: The secret demands of record labels
  (tags: spotify music business )
• AdBlock Plus to allow "acceptable" ads by default soon. I'm actually in favour of this.
  (tags: advertising adblock firefox )

Comments

[simont]

And I recommend the Brain Bugs article, if you can read it at a later stage. My Star Trek knowledge is too limited to actually check all the facts in the detailed dissection of the Klingons and Ferengi and so on, but I definitely approve of the later part where he has a go at more general SF tropes such as spaceships being powered by fusion reactors that blow the whole ship up at the drop of a hat.

(Paraphrased: we've tried to build fusion reactors, and it's incredibly hard, and the reason why it's hard is because it's very difficult to persuade stuff to start fusing in the first place or to keep it doing so once it's started. So why on earth would you expect a fusion reactor to even be able to suffer a runaway acceleration of the reaction culminating in explosion, let alone have that as its most common failure mode? Surely you would expect fusion reactors, should we ever get one working at all, to be devices which at the slightest provocation simply stop, and refuse to start again, ever.)

[andrewducker]

Aaah. I simply do not expect the physics in a show like Star Trek to map onto the real universe in any meaningful manner. I don't expect it from most SF novels either, unless they explicitly aim for that. I grew up with the likes of Lensman, and am quite happy with people turning solar systems into massive laser-death-weaponry because it sounds cool, without working out the physics behind it.)

(I will read the article though)

[simont]

Sure, there's nothing wrong with silly physics done on purpose for the sake of coolness or plot dynamic. The article's complaint is that a lot of these things aren't done on purpose any more: they've become unquestioned traditions of SF-in-general, and now ships' fusion reactors blow up all the time not because a particular show has decided to adopt a counterfactual premise for the sake of the plot but just because that's what writers in general think fusion reactors do – they probably don't even realise it's a counterfactual premise.

[andrewducker]

Aaah, gotcha.

I shall hold fire until I've read the piece!