Saturday, August 03, 2002

Some more notes, ideas, etc.

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To the kid in Montana, USA, who's thinking 'who cares about a martian kid not memorizing the state capitals? Who cares?!' Well, there's that martian kid and a whole lot more who're thinking the same thing about you. And think about this, Montana, they've got a whole planet to terraform, and there's a good chance that your grandchildren will grow up there. Or Titan or Europa. So lose the attitude. This is my forum.

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According to the practical physical laws we know about, we can get data from Point A to Point B even all the way across the System as fast as will ever be possible.

Mass, however. According to all the cosmic laws we know we can get mass from Point A to Point B only as fast as our current technology (or, as has been pointed out, our application of current technology) will allow. We know there must be faster ways, we just don't know what they are yet.

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Communitats are being commissioned and built as fast as OR/Aeneid (and licensed contractors I feel obliged to point out, cousin thing) can go. There are stations in out-of-plane solar orbit that are practically perpendicular to everything else. There are all women mini-worlds, all afrigen, all tall. There is one communitat at L4 (Ell Fore not Ell Cat) where absolutely everything is decimal, including time. There is one where the humans are agitating in the UN for the granting of full citizenship to their AIs and the AIs are lobbying against it, claiming they're not ready. (!!!!) And if I didn't mention it before, one of my first jobs, and occasional contracts since, was training AIs, including etiquette and diplomacy.

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I have received complaints from some Clavians about my description of Clavius in the first item in this log. They feel that I was not kind.

There are two ways to design an underground city.

A) Contract all your tenants, occupants, and lessees first, then build.

B) Don't.

Clavius is a Plan B city. I ought to know because I used to live there.

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I've done a little research recently and found out something interesting.

After about 2020, when humans starting actually living in the Big, on the ISS and Luna, and then later at L5, UFO sightings went down, first in the West, then in the Third World (terms, I will point out, that are meaningless to a martian outside a purely historical context, like Holy Roman Empire or phlogiston are to you.)

Then, after the discovery of Wreck (but not so much the Czech Probe earlier) the reports of sightings increased again, especially during the wars.

Now with the Great and Terrible Humanic Protection Fleet of Fleets (q.v.) patrolling the skies, sightings have started to drop off again.

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And speaking of sightings, reports of Barbra Streisand have started to drop off, kind of like Elvis Presley about this long after his death. Now people are starting to see Lance Bass in odd places, like L5-l'Usine and Kyiv.

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Every database on the Dirt, every web server, every kid's homepage is probably backed up somewhere in the Big. Permission be damned in some cases.

Big companies like Stawarz and Xerox-Heptagon, Microsoft-Yoshioka, Kimura-Murdoch, GM - all of them have contracts with spacers that ensure that all databases are constantly copied and stored out here, on asteroids, long-orbit roboships, or deep shafts on Luna or Mars.

Hobbyists are constantly just trolling cyberspace in VR or letting bots do it, to take copies of every single website and copy it for posterity.

These aren't mirror sites. These are backups that will survive the worst that might happen down there. There's people who really do think it's just as important to save pictures and commentary on the most recent trip to Wasaga as it is to save all of Shell's credit transactions for the last quarter.

They've figured in some legal cases where the original page was defunct but a copy was maybe found in archives on Luna or wherever.

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My Grandda, Robert Joyes, told me that after my parents were married and living at 'the quarry' as they still called the fish farm, they seemed to be living in a world of their own. They worked, did their jobs, got along with everyone, but they spent a lot of time on the web, researching all sorts of things, and then a lot of time alone together discussing it. Sometimes, Grandda said, it was like they were play-acting everything but their lives together. He told two jokes about them, one for each. He said that the jokes summed up how they seemed to look at life and the impression they left on people. Gramma Eva told him not to tell me those old things, but he did anyway. Keep in mind that my mother was an only child and a moby, and my father was the youngest in his family by 18 years.

Lillian walks into this livestock vendor's and says 'Give me 200 chicks.' So he does. A week later, she's back and asks for 200 more. The vendor thinks 'what the heck, it's a sale.' A week later she comes in again and asks for 200 more. The vendor says 'I gotta ask, lady. What's happening to all these chicks?' 'Don't know' says Lillian. 'I must be planting them too deep or too close together.'

Norm calls 911 and says 'Help! My wife is having a baby!' The operator says 'It's alright, sir. We're here to help. Now is this her first child?' 'No!' says Norm. 'This is her husband.'

The thing is, looking back, even the way they left me at school when I was 15, I get it.

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