Just got back from seeing the third Madoka movie. Avoiding spoilers (at least in Ottawa, there's another screening this weekend), I'll just say the movie's title was not pulled out of a hat.

While they've laid the groundwork for a fourth movie, this one does stand on its own if you're familiar with either the TV series or the first two movies.

Stay for the after-credits footage, and note that it's supposed to be choppy with periods of blackness.

(Oh, and at least it wasn't smoked cheese.)
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

Latest Snowden revelation:  http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/09/tech/web/ ... ?hpt=hp_t2]NSA infiltrated WOW and Second Life to make sure terrorists weren't "hiding in plain sight".  They had so many spies in the games they had to set up a special group to make sure they weren't spying on each other.
Must be a great job, playing MMORPGs all day on the Government's dime.  Your tax dollars at work, people.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

MLP:FIM the CCG is hitting stores.

My FLAS had the pre-release tourney this weekend.

Anyone desperate enough want me to see if they have anything left?
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

This was inspired by a National Geographic Channel docudrama called Evacuate Earth, which itself was essentially a dramatization of a thought experiment.  The premise was that a neutron star is detected and it is soon learned that it will impact the Earth in 75 years.  Earth, and everything on it, will not survive such an impact.  Humanity has no way to prevent the impact.  The only option left: evacuate Earth for another planet.

The problems to be faced are:
(1.) Where do we go?  The neutron star is going to wreak havoc with the Solar System for somewhere between one and two centuries, which will make the entire system unsafe for humanity to live in.  The only other option is to find an Earth-like exoplanet and colonize it.  However, we first have to find such a planet, then determine whether it would actually be livable for humans.
(2.) How would we get there?  Until now, only a few humans have been to space, and none much further than the Moon.  Now we're going to have to take a large number of people out of the Solar System entirely--which won't be an easy task.  It'll require the use of new technology, much of which had heretofore remained mainly in the theoretical stage, in order to make it happen.  And remember, we have a deadline of less than a century...
(3.) Who should go?  Given that we're going to have to push the limits of technology very far in a short time, we most certainly cannot move everyone off of the Earth.  Indeed, we won't be able to get even one tenth of one percent of the human population off of Earth in time.  In addition, there are a number of other complications to deal with: figuring out how many people could be taken to allow the genetic survival of the human race, identifying people who (for various reasons) could pose a risk to themselves/others (and would thus be unable to go), providing food and water for large numbers of people for the long length of time it would take to get to a destination, etc.

In the show, it is ultimately decided to build a generation ship using a design similar to a Stanford torus, which holds 250,000 people on board and is powered by an Orion-type drive that accelerates the craft to 0.07c.  The destination chosen is an Earth-like planet found orbiting Barnard's Star, around 80 years' travel time from Earth.

Now, for our own take on that thought experiment:
Let's say that, sometime in the 2010s in the Fenspace verse (Fenverse?), a neutron star is spotted and its trajectory plotted, which reveals that it will hit the Earth in 75 years.  Keep in mind the same problem in that the Solar System will become a dangerous place for humanity until the neutron star has safely left, and that this will not be for another 150-200 years or so.  However, Fenspace has technology that will allow far more people to leave, as well as colonies already set up on other exoplanets by this time.

So now the questions become:
(1.) Can we evacuate everyone that's still in the Solar System, within three-quarters of a century or less?
(2.) If not, then what is the maximum number that we can save in time?
(3.) Can the colonies we've already set up elsewhere be able to support so many refugees?
(4.) If not, then can those habitable planets that we've not yet colonized be able to support those that the already-established colonies cannot?

Let's try to find out the answers to these questions...

(split of from the discussion in the "Android anatomy" thread)

When I started the "Gas Station" story I looked for a potential "bad guy" back on Earth willing to disrupt Europe's and Japan's operation at Saturn and decided to use China.

There isn't much hard facts what is going on in China in Season 0/1/2, only that China is hostile to Fenspace. My interpretation of this was that China's government feared about a loss of control... and Handwavium is a LOT about loosing control. What use is your great firewall and repressive regime if your population can begin to create spaceships, hacker AIs and all kind of crazy tech in their backyard?

I think China is looking for a way to regain a position of strength for dealing with Fenspace without loosing control. The "stealth spacecraft" project might be one result of this politics, but its not necessarily the only Handwavium based space project in China (or even an official one, it might be a black ops project of one powerful faction in China).

in Season 2 China seems to have one of the best waved stealth spacecrafts in Fenspace. Its good enough that the Chinese LOST one of their crafts within their factory when the pilot left the craft without switching off the stealth system. They have yet to find the craft, despite the fact that the craft has no AI so it should not be able to move on its own.

China managed to build a small base on an asteroid in elliptical orbit around the sun without anyone noticing. But the whole project has multiple problems, which might lead to its end in 2018-2020... the first is that all their stealth crafts are HIGHLY quirked, which means it takes a long time to build them and sometimes they are just unusable and have to be wrecked. There is also the problem of building up a secret base in the asteroid without allowing it to go independent, which leads to some self-sabotage of their success.

I assume that some heads rolled (literally) when they fired the shot at Pan (and did not succeed)... for the first time they left evidence about their operations in Fenspace and got nothing for it. The project also learned that their secret "long range bombardment cannon" is not the final answer to Fenspace warfare... even when attacking with total surprise and without any knowledge about their existence and technology among the Fen they did not achieve a full success.

There is also the accident when Ford Sierra rammed an unknown (and invisible!) object in low Earth orbit with the Dragon Wagon... which might also have been part of the "Chinese stealth system", just built into an Earth surveillance satellite.

Fighting alongside Grand Admiral Thrawn of the U.N. Spacey, wielding snowball 'flamethrowers' as we drive an army of sugar hating snowmen out of a gingerbread village and finishing up with gingerbread Orion women dancing in celebration.

Oh, and there's a yeti.

Just... Dammit Q.

Kohran Li, sans faux dermis, sprawled her five foot one mechanism across the clinical lines of a steel and leather daybed. Her only article of clothing, lensless glasses--so as not to coruscate under the glare of studio lights and the stutter of Twenty’s fantastic flash photography--framed green photodetectors housed in the  magnetically suspended orbits of a gold anodized titanium ‘skull’. Coupled with the flawless, lipless ceramic grin, and fine workings of mandibular & muscular apparatuses, the visual totality was as beautiful as it was disquieting. The body was no less spectacularly binary in its biologically analogous technical  perfection.
An eerily white ceramic bonded alloy ribcage was levered upwards out of her torso, grotesque salon doors to an arcane anatomical apparatus of pink polymer musculature, burnished nitinol plated organ systems, ersatz colour coded endocrine, exocrine and nerve matrices, the gold wink of an anodized spine at the nodes of neck and pelvis ; and, lower down, the uncanny analogues that were usually more euphemistically referred to as plumbing  than they were in this particular...casing.
Dr Drakken, referencing an enormous Grey’s Anatomy, nodded appreciatively at each positively identified body system analogue. That is until his eyes fell upon the box. “Is that a...?” He flipped to a page of the medical tome, looked triumphant, before melodramatically heaving the book out of his scramble to get a closer look.
Twenty complained, “Boss, you’re in the shoot!”
“What’s what?!” Kohran sounded a trifle miffed.
Drakken didn’t actually put his head within her torso, but he came close as he scrutinized the structure. “You’ve got an appendix!”
“I do?”
 “You do! Your physical structure parallels biology down to the vestigial tissue level...at least in your GI tract. This is fantastic!”
“But I’m not a biologic!”
“I know, but your body has at least one analog of evolutionarily scaled  time!”
They both were quite in the scientific moment until Twenty, off-hand tentacle waving in irritation,  barked, “Boss!!”
“Sorry, Twenty!” He stepped out of Twenty’s camera field.
“and where there’s one...”
“...There may be others,” Drakken finished for her.
“Fascinating! I may possess multiple evolutionarily obsolescent traits!”
“You might even have a coccyx!”
‘Tesla’s coils’, he thought, ‘the Transhumanists are going to go ape!’
****
Her dermis and epidermis reapplied, Kohran Li reviewed the images of her layout.
“Well this has certainly been...revealing! That’s a really good shot, Twenty : I love the way you bring out my photoreceptors!”
“ Thanks! I’d blush, but I don’t  have your  subcutaneous capillary load!” Twenty’s carmine oculus was focussed on his boss as this addendum was dropped with a diminutive dollop of dolor.
It wasn’t lost upon Drakken. “If you want capillaries, you’ll probably also be wanting feet.”
“And everything else?” The cyclopean eye socket was doing that dewy puppy dog thing that shouldn’t have been  possible given the inflexible structure of Twenty’s ‘eye’.
“Everything!” Drakken threw an arm around the choked up casing.
“Oh, Boss!” Twenty was the very happiest smart bomb.
****
Drakken displayed the selected images of Li to his wife.
“The closeup of her cranium will be the cover shot, and this full body shot will be the central June pullout. What do you think?”
“I think I’d better remind you about flesh before you go running off with a toaster!” She scattered the pictures with a casual swipe , and stalked towards him with anything but a casual intent.
“You think they’re ho...”He didn’t get to finish, but he really didn’t seem to mind.

First a disclaimer: my sister's friend sent this to her, so I don't know what level of trustworthiness the website has, or even how long ago this news came out.  But I thought it was too cool not to share anyway.
http://io9.com/5963263/how-nasa-will-bu ... warp-drive
I realize there's about a metric ton of hurdles to get over before warp drive can be even in the same solar system with feasible, but just the idea that it is possible with real science rather than magic science is awesome.

http://nh.en.craigslist.org/grd/4218208723.html]On Craigslist, of course. 
Cute story about it http://www.dailydot.com/lol/unicorns-fo ... raigslist/]here.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

A computer science professor at a British university assigned her class to write an article in the style of The Register.  One student sent his article to The Reg to get it, well, sort of pre-graded.  The Reg didn't print it, but they did printhttp://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/03 ... trent_uni/]a little note to the professor.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.