Growing up with and around hippies, I was exposed to a lot of pseudoscience, so I had to develop a set of metrics to differentiate between science and pseudoscience. Many of them had to do with considering the reliability of the source, (if I heard this from some guy named Moonbeam at a Rainbow Gathering who can barely stand up straight: Probably not too reliable), but a few are more useful, and have stuck with me over the years. The main one has to do with mechanism.
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Month: March 2014
SETI@home vs. Bitcoin
I have an issue with bitcoin. Well, a few issues. It’s bad for the environment, it’s an unstable currency, blah blah, etc. Charles Stross covered most of my complaints. I have one in specific that really bugs me, though: All that computing power, and that carbon footprint, is just being applied to generating more bitcoin.
Well, duh, of course, what else would it be used for? Well, when I first heard about bitcoin, I didn’t quite get how it worked. I thought that the bitcoin mining process essentially loaned out your computer’s processing power to various networks that needed it, giving you bitcoin in exchange for that. I pretty quickly realized I was wrong, though, and that the mining process didn’t do anything but, well, mine. After a number of conversations and a good bit of thought, I’ve come up with an idea for a slightly more interesting and useful form of cryptocurrency: SETI@home Coin. (Note, not my original idea. I did come up with it on my own, but many others have come up with it separately before me. It happens.)
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The More You Know
So have you ever encountered a faster than light drive in fiction that CAN’T be used in or near a gravity well, at least without serious consequences? A good example of this is Halo 2. A Covenant ship jumps inside Earth’s gravity well/ atmosphere, causes a huge explosion. Other examples of this include the StarDrive universe, the Tom Swift III universe (I think, haven’t read those books since I was a little kid), and a number of others. There is a good reason for this: awesome space battles.
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If I got to make a movie…
I’d write a romance film. No, seriously, hear me out. Pretty typical story: teacher meets industrialist, couple falls in love, their lifestyles conflict and they fall apart, they eventually come back together again, have a touching reunion at an outdoor restaurant, truck crashes into restaurant, killing dozens, including the industrialist, cue Yakety Sax as rescue workers frantically try to save the survivors, teacher left crippled and burned in wheelchair, struggles with sense of loss, blows brain out in front of fourth grade class. End Yakety Sax.
Nothing too unusual. And don’t worry, I’m not a horrible person, I’d make sure that the ending would be a surprise for all the romance fans out there. No advance reviews, no script leaks.
Belated weekly pull review.
Sorry the pull review is late this week. Without further delay:
Beasts of Burden One-Shot: Hunters and Gatherers
Dark Horse Comics
Evan Dorkin, Jill Thompson
For those of you who have never read Beasts of Burden before: WHY? Seriously, this series about dogs and cats defending the town of Burden Hill from supernatural threats is amazing. Great characters, wonderful art, a dog lycanthrope, it’s got it all. I think it passes the Bechdel test, but I’m not entirely sure that it is particularly useful here, since you’ve got to guess the gender of the various animals from context clues/familiarity with the series, and there is no way to tell for some of the minor characters and extras. (I still have to finish the series proper myself, but I’m working on it). I think I’m just going to start commenting on whether a comic passes the Bechdel test, the test is non-applicable, or it is a serious failure. Otherwise, just assume it failed, which is sadly pretty normal in comics.
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Mountain Was Here 