It's all about where you draw the line

At the ripe old age of 35, I received for Christmas, for the first time in at least 20 years…

… a genuine bona fide toy.

I am now the proud owner of a real (*ahem*) Sonic Screwdriver.

Jeffrey Harrell has an interesting post up regarding the realistic science of Battlestar Galactica. I haven’t watched the most recent season of BSG (gonna get the DVD though…), but I do like the relative realism of the science, as far as it goes.

Pretty much any time you have a fictional universe in which people are traveling between solar systems in dramatically interesting periods of time, we’re looking at “magic” technology, in the Clarkian sense that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” In this sense, we’re really not talking about “realism” so much as “verisimilitude”. It doesn’t follow science, but does a good job of seeming to do so.

For example, when the ships “jump” to another point in space, we’re talking about ginormous amounts of physical matter popping out of existence in one place and (instantly?) reappearing some vast distance away. Nothing in modern science can explain this, but that really doesn’t say in any absolute terms that it is _impossible_ — it’s just impossible within the terms of what we know now. Two thousand years from now when we’ve harnessed wormholes for travel (a la Farscape), and are using captured black holes for power sources (a la Doctor Who), today’s “impossible” things are going to be included in science kits for children.

There are two elements of “magical” tech (at least) that we know about in BSG:

1) They can travel faster than light, as exhibited in their “jump” technology.
2) They have harnessed the power of gravity.

Let’s look at that second one for a moment.

We know that to some extent the people of the 12 colonies have gravity control, as evidenced by the simple (televisually convenient) fact that they walk around normally on board their ships. They’re not scooting around in near-freefall going from handhold to handhold — there is a distinct “up” and “down” on board their spacecraft, which appears to pretty consistently equate to their planetary norm.

I referred to this a moment ago as “televisually convenient” because it makes filming the show a lot easier. Without it, virtually every scene not set on a planet (that is, most every scene) would be a special effects shot. Just about every TV show set in outer space ever made follows that same conceit: Star Trek, BSG, Farscape, Doctor Who, Buck Rodgers, you name it. Artificial gravity. People walking around in space ships that conveniently share the same gravity field as, say, a studio lot in L.A.

So we know why they do it. But if we’re going to examine the show as a scientifically plausible universe, as Jeff attempts to do, then this technological feat cannot be easily dismissed. Artificial gravity is a big deal. These people have harnessed a fundamental law of physics. In the universe as we know it, there is only one thing that produces gravity, and that is the presence of mass. It takes a hunk of matter the size of our entire planet to produce the amount of gravity that we think of as “normal”.

That means that if a space craft has an “earth normal” gravity field allowing people to walk around normally, there are only a few possibilities:

1. There is an incredibly huge or dense chunk of matter somewhere in the middle of your ship, and all decks are arranged roughly concentrically around it. That of course means that to move, you’re pushing around an almost Earth-size mass. In addition, you either must have a really huge ship, or you’re _still_ manipulating gravity to keep that mass from crushing your ship in on itself. (Note: The actual size of the mass to create an Earth-equivalent gravity field varies with the distance of the decks from that mass, as well as its density). Not very practical on multiple levels, and I know of no show that has used this method.
2. Your decks are all perpendicular to the movement of the ship, and the ship constantly accelerates at a speed that produces one gravity of force. Not entirely implausible, but it would take a long time to get anywhere, and this system would be highly susceptible to turbulence or unexpected course changes. Again I know of no show that uses this method.
3. Spin the decks around the center of the ship, and have the crew areas oriented so that “down” is concentric away from the center. A false “gravity” is formed by centripetal force. This has been used occasionally in science fiction, probably most famously in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Plausible, but not commonly used. Note you need a pretty big ring to spin, as a too-small ring will do bad things to the people standing in its “gravity”.
4. Some sort of heretofore unknown, unexplained, or technobabble-ish “magic” science. That is science so advanced that we 21st century Earthlings can’t explain it with what we understand of physics. Most sci-fi shipboard gravity falls into this category. Battlestar Galactica certainly does.

So… as interesting as it can be to try to examine that show in terms of real science, and as much as the show does coincide with real mathematics (as evidenced by Jeff’s post), we are at some level dealing with “magic” science, and the ability to directly manipulate gravity, alone, has significant consequences for Jeff’s discussion.

He talks about G-forces and the limits they impose on acceleration. If you can manipulate gravity, you can effectively eliminate inertia, and thus G-forces. If I want my ship to accelerate forward at 100 gravities (which would be fatal to a human being), I can impose an artificial gravity field within the ship that pulls people forward at that same 100 gravities, and that would have the effect that the people in the ship don’t even feel the acceleration. Again, this seems common in popular sci-fi. (Actually, if you can readily manipulate gravity, you can use that as propulsion by making your ship “fall” towards its destination!)

I remember reading a book somewhere along the line (perhaps one of the Honor Harrington series) in which a saboteur specifically kills the crew of a ship by rigging the inertial dampeners to cut out at the height of acceleration, thus causing them to be instantly crushed into jelly by massive g-forces.

A fun-but-silly example of this same “magic tech” is the show Doctor Who in the 70s, in which the Doctor (as portrayed by actor Jon Pertwee) drove around in a vintage automobile into which he had installed an inertial dampener. There he is in this old open-top roadster accelerating at incredible speeds and stopping on a dime. I always loved that juxtaposition of old technology with advanced future tech — those kinds of touches are one of the reasons I am still a fan of the old show.

Getting back to Battlestar Galactica — Jeff openly admits that the show deals with “magic” tech, in his references to the ships having “magic engines ” and such. I do like it when writers keep within certain pre-defined bounds, I just think that such verisimilitude becomes really dicey as soon as you introduce any unexplained high tech. Larry Niven wrote an essay at one point about the difficulties of writing science fiction mysteries — if it’s a locked-room murder, for example, how do we know some alien didn’t just “psychic” the guy to death, or whatever? This type of thing became a significant weakness in Star Trek — after a while it seemed that they could solve any problem by whipping up some vaguely-plausible-sounding gadget, or making some sort of never-before attempted deathray out of the deflector array. The show lost a lot of tension when you knew the resolution was just a technobabble miracle away.

The aforementioned Honor Harrington series of books (not TV) by David Weber are another excellent example of verisimilitude in science fiction. Throughout the series, he gives solid explanations of how the technology in his universe works, and doesn’t stray out of the boundaries he sets up for himself. The tech becomes intimately tied into the methodologies of warfare in the series, and he manages to keep the battles interesting and diverse at the same time.

Personally I think any science fiction (or fantasy for that matter) does pretty well with this if they manage to be internally consistent. Set the ground rules, and then you can legitimately do “unreal” thinks so long as you follow your own rules. The worst thing a writer can do is to get the characters into a bind and then get them out of it by pulling out some cure-all gadget at the last moment that has no basis in what came before. The worst example I can think of of this is the end of the movie Cool World (a distinctly fantasy movie in the vein of Roger Rabbit) in which the main (human) character is killed in the climactic scene, but then one of the subsidiary characters turns to another and conveniently mentions that if a human is killed by a cartoon, they become cartoons themselves. Voila! Main character is not only saved, but this solves several problems that he’s been trying to over come for the whole movie. This is mentioned only at the critical moment at the end of the movie, but stated as though it’s something commonly known to anybody — yet if anybody had known it at the beginning, they could have skipped the whole movie by doing it at the beginning.

I think this gets into one of the defining factors of what separates good science fiction from the garbage — respect for the intelligence of the viewer, and a solid standard that things have to make logical sense. Science fiction is largely the art of inventing dramatically interesting “facts”, but maintaining the relationships between things in a way that keeps with reality. Okay, some dude makes a time machine — I can accept that. You don’t have to explain precisely how it works; but the consequences of going back millions of years and stepping on a butterfly had better make sense, or you don’t have a story. In the case of Battlestar Galactica, there are several “magic” aspects of the universe, but the glue that holds them all together is strong characters, and a universe that still makes logical sense after you accept the inclusion of the defined impossibilities.

Ed ol’ pal, I sw this an immediately thought of you:

A Squirrel in Armor

Now I just need to find a squirrel sailing a little boat. In armor. An armored boat, not the squirrel — that would be silly; if he fell in he’d drown.

(Reprinted from last year, with some editing)

I’ve got a lot of music in my ol’ iTunes Library — well approaching 3,000 songs — and in the spirit of Halloween, I have assembled a short playlist of the very, very best creepy songs I’ve ever come across (but you probably haven’t).

First off, we have “Lover’s Last Chance”, by a little-known Celtic group from New Orleans called The Poor Clares. It starts off sounding just a bit cheesy, as the singer goes on about Halloween night and “werewolves a-howlin’”, but it quickly takes a turn for the dark, moving to a haunting ghost story and… well, give it a listen and tell me if it doesn’t give you the creeps.

The album is called Resurrected Lover, and though it may be a bit hard to find, it seems they pop up on eBay and the like from time to time. Get going in time for next year! If you like good Celtic music, one of the singers, Beth Patterson, has released some other albums that are available as well.

Note: The Poor Clares’ rendition isn’t available online that I could find, but another singer’s version is on iTunes. I like the Clares’ version much better, as the haunting background vocals really make the song.

Next off is I Am Stretched On Your Grave, as performed by Kate Rusby.

Creepiest. Song. Evar.

No, really. If Edgar Allan Poe had been a songwriter, this would have topped his greatest hits. It’s a traditional Celtic song (what is it with those Irish makin’ wit’ the creepy, anyway?), and it has been performed by others before, but this rendition really takes the cake, with a minimal rhythmic drive carrying you along down a very dark road. The only thing a bit odd about this song is that it is a woman singing what is lyrically clearly a man’s “role” in the story, but that’s easily ignored. it’s from her album Hourglass. Go get it! (link is above)

Third in the list is yet another Celtic tune (funny, when I started this post I hadn’t realized the common source of these three songs — the sound of them is different enough that they are far from sounding alike!) called “She Moved Thro The Fair”. This one is performed by Finbar Wright (former member of Irish Tenors) on his album A Tribute to John McCormack. There are several versions of this song out there, but again, rendition means a lot when looking for the truly creepy song. The interesting thing about this one is that it can sneak up on you. It’s entirely possible to hear this one several times before it suddenly hits you what happens in it — the lyrics are clear but subtle, in a way sure to appeal to fans of ghost stories.

Let us not forget Sting’s “Moon Over Bourbon Street“. A song written by Sting, inspired by Interview With The Vampire. ‘Nuff Said.

Okay, okay, okay I’ve got a bonus song for you. You’ve all heard this one, you just didn’t realize how creepy it is.

First, it’s story time:

A man comes home late one night to find his wife murdered, lying in a spreading pool of her own blood. He actually catches the killer in the act! There is a struggle, during which he clearly sees the man’s face, but the man overpowers him and escapes into the night. The police never catch him.

Years pass. The man never really recovers from his wife’s horrible death, or the thought that he was so close to catching the bastard who did it. That face — those eyes — are seared into his memory.

Late one cold winter evening he is walking at night when he hears faint cries for help in the distance. He follows the voice, and comes to a frozen lake, where someone has broken through a thin patch in the ice. The man runs toward the lake, grabbing a fallen branch along the way that he can use to help the man trapped in the icy waters. He gets to the edge of the ice, and slowly starts to work his way out closer to the man struggling desperately for purchase on the slippery edge of the hole. Suddenly he stops.

He knows that face.

He knows intimately the face of the man in the water. He has seen it exactly once before and will never forget it. After standing there for a moment, watching the man reach out to him from the freezing water, he turns and makes his way back to the shore and drops the branch, then turns and sits down.

..and watches.

Now go listen to Phil Collin’s In the Air Tonight. It will never be the same song again.

Happy Halloween.

There’s a website out there called Woot.com, and what they do is sell one product a day at a big discount. At midnight, there’s a new product.

The product descriptions are usually pretty humorous — the admen at Woot are clever guys. But today’s description had me laughing. The product? A set of Klipsch speakers. Here is an excerpt — I defy you to go read the whole thing out loud and not laugh….

Scho, I wasch lischening to some muschic lascht Schaturday, schpeschifically the dischco schtylingsch of K.Schee. and the Schunschine Band, and it schounded to me like schomething wasch misching. “Where’sch the bassch?” I aschked myschelf. “Thisch schoundsch like schlop. How am I schupposched to dansch to thisch? I schupposche it’sch time to schpend a little schcratch on schome new schpeakersch.” I had alscho notisched that the schound left a little schomething to be deschired when I wasch watching moviesch.

Unbeknownscht to me, my life wasch about to change. For on that day, I was introdusched to the Klipsch Schynergy EschLXch Scheriesch Schpeakersch.

Schusch schound! Schusch schtyling!

Some how this really tickled my sense of the absurd.

I’ve been a fan of Apple for a long time now, and I’ve weathered a lot of claims that Apple was going to go out of business any day now, or that their products aren’t any good, or too expensive, etc. etc. People like to bash the company. But today I think I’ve seen the nadir of Apple criticism. Apparently, somebody thinks ol’ Steve-o is racist, because….

Oh hell. Read it for yourself.

The name of the post is “Is apple RACIST??????? …”

I hate to use the term people of color [I'm sure you do -- ed] but I didnt want to leave anyone out. by color I mean anyone not white as a ghost, sorry if I offend, but I was offended by the lack of thought. But if you are in a club, which is the best place to take pics or camping with friends, or just haveing a night out on the town you cant take a photo memory of it cause the iphone does not have a flash. I do not like looking like a little brown spot in photos with my lighter friends and i dont want to carry around a camera if my phone has a camera on it, just to much to carry[...]. I hear tail that apple mac is not going to do anything about this problem and that they are willing to lack in the giant shadow they have made.

So… this woman thinks that caucasians are “white as a ghost”, and is calling Apple racist? I wonder how she would respond if I said she was “black as pitch”. Beyond that the sheer lunacy of the claim is stunning. Really it’s a case of this person, (whose linguistic skills aren’t anything worth writing home about), using a word that she’s undoubtedly heard hundreds of times, but never understood.

Racism??? Somebody needs to read this barely-literate boob the story of the Little Boy Who Cried Wolf.

Insta-Update: Looks like I noticed this just in time. Apple has already pulled the post.

Two items:

• Saturday morning I spent about an hour posting corrections and additions to the Wikipedia entry for Doctor Who. I didn’t have to look anything up.
• Later the same day my wife wanted to test if you could write on a tile with marker and clean it off later. The test message she wrote was, and I quote:
  “Hello World! ”

Obviously she’s learning.

From The Wall Street Journal this morning:

The British Broadcasting Corp. made most of its shows available to download over the Internet, free of charge, in what may be the boldest online broadcasting push by a large television network.

Called the iPlayer, the BBCs service lets anyone in Britain download TV shows….

The BBC says the name isn’t playing off the Apple Inc. products with similar nomenclature and “i” stands for interactive.

[emphasis mine - ed.]

I find this kind of statement both irritating and hysterical. The short response is “Who do you think you’re kidding?” The longer response goes something like this:

Dear BBC: Are you actually claiming that, without Apple’s insertion into the common popular lexicon of such now-ubiquitous brand names as “iTunes” and “iPod”, you would have entirely independently come up with the exact same distinctive and never-before-seen quirk of starting your program’s name with a lower-case “i” followed by an uppercase letter? The funny thing is, I don’t have a problem with companies following a popular trend in marketing in an attempt to make their latest efforts seem hip to young audiences; but I do find it pathetic when somebody does so, and then claims that it’s their own original idea and has absolutely nothing to do with the trend.

News Flash: It’s transparent and sad. It’s as though you’ve looked your audience in the eye and said, “Apple? Never heard of ‘em.” The claim is so obtuse and blatantly false that it is an insult to the intelligence of your audience. Fortunately most of your audience is clever enough to know that the real insult is on you.

Ironically, from the same WSJ article….

Some critics have complained the iPlayer doesn’t work with Apple’s Mac computers.

Wow! You really are trying to convince us you’ve never heard of them.

This was originally published in January. Since it’s topical again….

I’m somewhat amused by the now-primitive design he assumed a cell phone would have. (Or he may have just been screwing with the geeks who notice such things….)

Update: added a link

Or going the homer route: “Mmmmm… Baaaconnnn…”

How to make bacon placemats.

Be sure to read the comments.