Low Probability Events

I'm not sure what this is.  D&D campaign?  No, it has philosophers instead of monsters.  Philosophical dissertation?  No, it's a musical (and yes, there is real music, for some definition of real).  Dungeons and Discourse?  Possibly, but somebody else has already staked the claim on that.

 2D Goggles Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace fight crime.  The author is doing some heavy- duty research into the life of Babbage, and is having 'way too much fun with it.  The Nineteenth Century was packed with weirdos (or, to be polite, eccentrics) that make our current crop of nutcases look positively tame.  As an eccentric, Babbage was Right Up There.
Also, Babbage and Lovelace have a gig with the BBC!

Digger  Ursula Vernon is one of the funniest people on the Web (or at least on LJ)  (anyone who could draw this is seriously warped in some very interesting directions)  Digger (or to give her full name, Digger of Unnecessarily Convoluted Tunnels) is a wombat who made a wrong turn somewhere and ended up a long way from home.  In this mythos, wombats are solidly pragmatic and unimaginative civil engineers.  Digger has to deal with prophetic slugs, vampire squash, exiled hyenas, assorted gods, and the conviction that she's the only sane one in a hundred miles.

The problem with web comics is that, once you read all the back issues, the progress of the story is absolutely glacial.  I appreciate that the artist puts a terrific amount of work into each comic, and I'm sure it would be easier if I just waited until an entire volume came out and read it all at once.  Unfortunately, I'm not that much into deferred gratification.

So the car made this funny noise.  Sort of a mild squeak.  Stronger in reverse.  Car had to go in for the 90K checkup anyway; I told them to take a look.  Turns out that the squeak was from the rear brakes.  The calipers had seized up and destroyed the rear brakes.  New calipers, new disks, new pads.  This is after getting new disks and pads less than eighteen months ago.  Feh.  $750 down the drain.  But working brakes are *very* high on my list for a working car.

At least they gave me a loner.  Good thing, as it took them a couple of extra days to get the calipers in -- that's *not* something that breaks.  It was a shiny new Acura TSX, with all the trimmings -- leather seats, dual control air, satellite radio, GPS navigation system. , Unfortunately it handled like a rowboat and the engine had a distinct lack of zip, despite the engine and transmission trying to convince me that they're working really, really hard.

The next day, I happened to drive over a pothole with the left rear wheel (and with the window open) and something went "clank".  Now, "clank" is not a noise you want to hear from your suspension, ever.  "Thump", yes; you expect that.  "Squeak", yes, it means the suspension is going outside its normal range.  "Clank" is bad.

So I took it back to the shop and had them take a look at it.  Turns out that one of the suspension struts was loose.  They fixed it, no charge of course.  Only took about the first quarter of "Iron Sunrise'.

Anyway, I have my car back.  [Deep sigh of relief]

 Best MJ parody I've seen -- within the mythos of the comic, even.

If you're just in from Alpha Centauri, this is the original.  And yes, those really are two rival Chicago gangs -- getting together to dance with Michael Jackson.

This is the "classic" parody.

 Some houses have bugs.  Some houses have mice.  We have elves.

Normally, they're fairly quiet.  Things move around -- look for them, and you find them back in the first place you looked, after turning the place upside down.  Leaving out a bit of booze for them seems to work.  Put out a little bit of gin for them, and you find things faster.

Last night got noisy.  A thermos that had been sitting quietly on the counter for a couple of days suddenly made a quick excursion to the floor.  One less thermos, and a lot of little pieces of glass.  Fortunately, they're aluminized and easy to see -- sparkly!

I think I'd better put out some gin.

Wednesday night, there was a meeting/book signing with a bunch of SF authors at Reitier's Books in downtown DC.  Much fun.

Somebody brought up the issue of space debris. We've left a lot of junk in orbit, and it can cause real trouble if it hits something. Worst case is if Satellite A hits Discarded Booster B, creating a cloud of debris that hits Satellites C-K, creating more debris ... Result, no more satellites. The problems are:

• Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.
• We don't know what all is out there.  We keep track of the big stuff, but little things like paint chips are problems, too.

Some numbers -- at low earth orbit velocity, a kilogram of mass has about 49 MJ of kinetic energy.  That's a bit more than ten times the energy of a kilogram of TNT.  Those paint chips have more energy than ten times their mass of TNT.

How to get rid of it?  One person suggested a big net (presumably after reading Varley's Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance). That would work for big stuff; stuff that we can track and send a little "tugboat" satellite after (let the ion engine guys have some fun!).  But that leaves the small stuff -- and there's a lot more small stuff than big stuff.

So we use a sponge.

Seriously.  Send a tank of monomer and a tank of gas into orbit and blow up a big cloud of open-cell foam.  We'd want an elliptical orbit with a low perigee so the orbit will decay fairly quickly, and figure the rest of the orbital parameters to sweep an appropriate area.  How big a sponge?  I'd think there'd be no particular problem getting one that's miles across.

When a paint chip or whatever hits our sponge, it'll get pushed closer to the sponge's orbit.  Hitting one foam bubble won't do much, but going through a big chunk of sponge (many bubbles) should transfer quite a bit of momentum.  After a time, the whole thing will re-enter the atmosphere.

Low energy collisions are even easier.  The chip just sticks to the foam.

Side effect -- it should be really pretty from the ground.
 

A veggie burger and a dalek.

Yes, there's a story.  Photos when somebody posts some.