Picking them off like wine goblets at the cardinals' feasts?
51 2024-04-12 00:00:09
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
52 2024-04-11 23:58:06
Re: Bugs & Maintenance Requests (135 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
I dunno. Chrome don't do that to me
53 2024-04-11 08:29:01
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Shooting meatballs off a pizza? Shooting tiramasu at a Roman feast? Plinking wine goblets at a Roman feast?
54 2024-03-28 17:04:19
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
See what it took to sink Yamato: https://youtu.be/xCkfPeMls7s?si=geEOvj6M5_zd_xv- . It may give an idea of how to kill a ship slowly. Obviously your ships won't involve water. (The actual attack comes in the last third or so of the video, but Drachinifel is generally worth listening to.)
55 2024-03-27 03:05:04
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
I rather like inxplode. But some self-important editor or, worse, some smaraifishul intelyjint ottokurruptor will change it everywhere to either 'explode' or 'exim bank'.
56 2024-03-27 01:28:48
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Ximplode? Imexplode? Some reference to (turning into) a shell as they pop? Bubplode?
57 2024-03-26 15:41:55
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Heinlein and "shipstone"s
58 2024-03-17 06:09:57
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Begin the handwavium here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_diode and here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonan … ling_diode .
59 2024-03-15 07:20:20
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Quanrum Tunneling with some handwavium to let 90% or more of the energy through.
60 2024-03-13 17:09:46
Re: As Darkness Gathers (the Connor series) - Dirk B. (1,438 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Why is that a problem?
61 2024-01-31 18:35:32
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Saw this recently: https://www.sciencealert.com/tapping-in … nsane-bomb
62 2024-01-05 00:02:58
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
You put cocoa puffs in milk. You take milk out of coconuts. There's a difference.
63 2024-01-04 23:45:59
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
I don't think that a breakthrough in fundamental physics would interest our journalists half as much as a political scandal or a seahorse romance. Besides, most of then couldn't pass high school physics, much less get Einstein's 1930s work right. Heck, they couldn't even get it wrong! (High school physics: show that the units are consistent in e = mc² .)
I read a mostly excellent popular history of precision. But in discussing electronics, the author applied something about field effect transistors to bipolar junction transistors, or vice versa. It shook my confidence in the whole book. Yes, the topic sounds esoteric, but if you know electronics it's like confusing a steam engine with a diesel engine, or an oil filter with an air filter.
64 2024-01-04 18:04:36
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Interestingly, I came across an article where scientists were able to test indirectly for the existence of a fourth spacial dimension, and two different teams using different tests found evidence that suggests it actually exists. It's not conclusive proof, but a cool result nevertheless.
Dirk, do you have a link to that article? What I've seen recently involves alternate solutions to the General Relativity field equations in which there are two or three timelike dimensions and two or one spacelike dimension, which allows for quantum mechanics' "spooky action at a distance" to emerge within Einstein's framework--and lab work that suggests that these are possible. I probably posted these before the "blip" but I'll try to find them again if you like.
65 2024-01-02 08:31:13
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
But the combined ((tech)) fields might overload local space, or the emitters might interfere with each other in a multidimensional phase relationship.
Did you know that a spectrum is a space of infinite dimension, of the sort called a Hilbert space? Just throw in Hilbert Phase Space and you can tech-abracadabra almost anything. Multiple powertrons driving a single load must be aligned in their Hilbert phase space. Perfect alignment is impossible, and the effect of misalignment grows faster than exponentially with increasing power ... . (Remember that the factorial grows faster than any exponential in the limit toward infinity. That's why power series converge. And the continuous equivalent to the factorial is the gamma function, offset by one in its argument.)
66 2023-12-31 16:56:34
Re: Hello! (14 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Actually, there is one copy of my Comma Heresy Manifesto, here: https://www.thenextbigwriter.com/forums … tml#p34847 . Read it if you dare!
67 2023-12-31 14:22:32
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
You could make this action risky by adding known and unknown likely consequences: energy spilling back and damaging the source vessel or others near it, energy reflecting back into the weapons and the power source behind them, perhaps with energy stored and falling back like a heavy weight that slips loose, or energy venting in unknown ways through the extra dimensions, as a consequence of loss of accuracy at higher power, or of overloading space itself, or of some ensign who won't stop chewing gum.
68 2023-12-29 06:39:25
Re: Group Cleanup - Mopping Up - See List of Surviving Groups Inside (38 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
This Luuurker is okay with the lisssst.
69 2023-12-29 06:28:49
Re: Hello! (14 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Look at the few differences and decide for yourself which is the more vigorous prose. Grammarly dropped a comma; tell me which reads better.
My guess is that my vivid, energetic prose defeated or flustered most of its algorithms. It fell back on a stylebook comma rule and the reduction of more colorful prepositional phrases to adverb and adjective modifiers. Its first change also turned a precise description (with an elided 'that is') into flavorless, stale mush of the sort favored by academics when pushing agendas
'budgeted as an adjective' reads like someone trying to hide a staff party in the quarterly budget. Has Grammarly has been helping with too much academic administrivia?
The Great Crash destroyed the only complete copies of my Comma Heresy Manifesto. I should reconstitute it.
Perhaps Grammarly's last name is Mediocre?
70 2023-12-28 21:11:31
Re: Hello! (14 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
njc - well said. Perhaps I should go over your grammar in this comment. :-)
Have at it.
71 2023-12-28 00:07:47
Re: Hello! (14 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Welcome!
To follow up on George FLC's comment on grammar, and since I'm mostly lurking these days, here's my minimized lecture on grammar:
Grammar is not just a thing right or wrong. Grammar is a tool of the writer. In English's magnificently rich grammar there are usually many ways to present a structure of ideas. In a complex sentence, we choose which idea deserves the high seat of the main clause, and which ideas should support from subordinate clauses. We decide which modifiers deserve the weight of a relative clause, which justify a prepositional phrase, and which can be budgeted an adjective or adverb, according to how much of the reader's attention we want to spend on each. We order our clauses and sentences with care so that the prose flows smoothly through one topic and into the next, with a minimum of jumping back and forth.
72 2023-12-26 19:33:48
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
The Mad Amos Malone stories by Alan Dean Foster have a numbed of situations with excessive heat, where Malone is engaged in contests with witches or demons. They're collected under that title. You might find something interesting in there.
73 2023-12-26 08:26:34
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Interview with an actual, certified, official exorcist: https://youtu.be/mX7L68p9exk?si=Qex7b5R6VctZKnm9 .
74 2023-12-22 19:05:28
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
"Free Stars" saves half the syllables in the battle cry. Making the name "Free and Sovereign Stars" would allow this.
75 2023-12-21 00:26:49
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
The islands were renamed after someone named Bezos (who could it be?) from the past (and why were they renamed?). I can't imagine.
Everything else is left up to the imagination of the reader.
Not Jersey Mike Bezos ?