And I don't mean the Metro:  the catacombs and caves underneath Paris.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

From a comment on the IRC that triggered a flash of inspiration. An unnamed and thus far unknown Fen scientist working on some random project, notices a rather strange side-effect. Tagged Infinities because of what that effect is.

Quote:She was tired… so very tired. She reached for a cup of coffee and took a mouthful before she recalled that it’d been made at least two hours ago.

“ugh, cold,” she groaned, forcing it down. She’d have to make up a new pot.

It could wait until this job was done. Just finish the magneto-compression coil, test it, and with any luck be in bed just in time to get up again the next morning. Goddammit was this frustrating. With no ceremony at all, she pushed the little white button on the keypad. Somewhere under the device… itself little more than a tangle of shielded cables and copper tubing around some sort of toroidal core… a relay clicked on.

And that was it.

“Well, at least it didn’t fail with prejudice,” she said with ill humour. That was always a relief. She’d be around projects that had done that before. That was why her right arm was now made of metal. She’d been half asleep for the last three hours herself, and didn’t trust her own wiring to be up to scratch.

She checked it to be sure. None of the cables seemed to be heating up or unduly smoking. There were no leaks. Everything seemed to be running just tickety-boo. Next, she checked the output from the coil.

“Eureka.” She smiled. Not quite on the money, but the benefits of the alternating field on output collimation were already being shown. It was just a matter of adjusting it that little bit, and bingo, a twenty-percent efficiency increase, all for the simple addition of a few electronic controls. A yawn reminded her that all the fine adjustments could wait until the morning. It was working, and at 5am local time, that was the main thing.

She moved her hand to turn the coil off. Not thinking, she moved her hand over the top of the device and felt something. She was quite sure what. It was enough to make her thing twice about turning it off. She swept her natural hand over the top of the device once more…

There it was again… a sensation of some sort. From the magnetic fields? She tried it with her mechanical arm. Same effect. A piece of software noted that the effort on one of her actuators decreased by a noticeable amount, right when it was over the coil. Not a lot, but still something measurable. It might be magnetic, but it’d take one hell of a field to affect even her arm… and that lessening of effort. It almost reminded her of what happened when she went swimming.

Was the coil quirked?

That was her first bitter thought. A quirked coil was a failed coil, was all that work thrown in the goddam bin. But unless somebody’d sneaked in while her back was turned and liberally slathered it with goop, the coil was entirely 100% all natural hardtech. It can’t have quirked.

She grabbed a piece of paper… just an ordinary A4 sheet. This one had a few scribbles on it, a doodle of giant robot, and some quick scratch calculations that had stopped making sense without their individual context.

She held up by one of the long edges, and watched it droop. If there was some there above the coil, then it had to affect the paper. Just to be certain, she double checked that the ventilation in the room was off. Moving it slowly towards the still running compression coil, she observed the end closest to the coil seem to lift… ever… so… slightly.

What the?

Again, from a different direction. Same effect. Magnetic fields don’t affect paper, do they? So what else could it be? On a spark of inspiration, she grabbed a weighing scales she’d normally use to weigh out her coffee grounds before brewing up a pot. She loaded it with her favourite blend, measuring out about 50 grams of it sitting on the bench furthest from the coil.

Noting the mass down in her mind, she then set up a simple platform over the top of the coil. Somewhere she could rest the scale, and take the shaking of her arms out of the equation. She placed the loaded scale on top of the coil.

It read 35.53

A drop of about 15 grams.

It was then that she said the famous phrase which accompanies all great scientific achievements.

“Hmmm…. That’s funny.”

Okay, I am completely floored by this band, The Jezabels.  Here, have a listen to this song of theirs called A Little Piece.
Done now?
Great.  Help me figure out which of Zeke's girls that song fits best!  (O_O
And for that matter, have a look at the rest of their music.  I have a feeling it's going to figure into this story pretty heavily.

Ayn Rand Railed Against Government Benefits, But Grabbed Social Security and Medicare When She Needed Them

I don't understand why these people rally against social programs that can help them in their hour of need.  What do they have against being their brother's keeper? 
Granted, there are people that abuse the system, but that should not be enough to condemn everyone to a life of misery when bad times hit.  Are they so arrogant, so blind that they believe that bad things cannot happen to them as well?

Gizmodo, that is.  This... um....  Well, words fail me.  Definitely worth a look, though:

Songs about jobs.
Drill Ye Tarriers, Drill:

Quote:Every morning at seven o'clock
You see a gang of tarriers drilling at the rock
And the foreman yells, "Now don't stand still
But come down heavy on the cast-iron drill!"
CHORUS:
And drill ye tarriers, drill!

And drill ye tarriers, drill!
For ye work all day with no sugar in your tea
When you work on the CP Railway!

And drill ye tarriers, drill!
The Boss sent us to drill a hole
He swore and cursed our Irish soul
He cursed the ship that brought us through
To work on the CP Railway crew
CHORUS
The foreman's name was Pat McGann
By gosh, he was a darn fine man!
One day a premature blast went off
And a mile in the sky went big Jim Goff
CHORUS
When payday next did come around
Big Jim a dollar short was found!
"What for?" says he; come this reply:
"You were docked for the time you were up in the sky!"
CHORUS

Quote:Up in that far north country where the skies are always blue
They're waiting for the happy day when the PGE goes through
The squawfish will be squawking, the moose will start to moo
The grizzly bears will grizzle, when the PGE goes through
CHORUS:
Oh lord, I know my toil will end
When I hear that whistle coming 'round the bend
They say that all the members of the Ercat(?) survey crew
Will be working on the extra gang when the PGE goes through
Bill Hurlighe, he's got a gal, her name is Buckskin Sue
They're going on the trapline when the PGE goes through
CHORUS
The hornets build their little nests up in the spruce and pine
They love to sting the axemen who are chopping out the line
So if the railroad bends a bit like railroads shouldn't do
Just blame it on the hornets when the PGE goes through
CHORUS
While running lines on snowshoes the snow got very deep
Old Abrigeman, he dug a hole, crawled in, and went to sleep
The snow blew in and covered him, but we know what to do!
We'll dig him out in springtime, when the PGE goes through
CHORUS(x2)

Quote:Some like the sound of the outward bound
And the driver's clickety-clack,
But I like the tone of the motor's drone
In a Kenworth, Hayes, or Mac.
My windshield shows me where I go,
My mirrors where I've been.
My tandems roll and take their toll
Of the highways that I've seen.
Well I've learned to feel through the steering wheel
The road I cannot see,
And I hit the air 'cause I really care
For the rig that's under me.
Oh the rain beats down on the way so black
And the night is blacker still,
But I'll pull this load to the open road
On the far side of the hill.
Well she's made of steel and nuts and bolts,
But you've gotta treat her right,
Or the dizzy witch will hit the ditch
And leave you cold and white.
Well there's nothing left for me to say
That's not been said before,
So I'll just say as I go my way

That I like the diesel's roar.

Quote:1. Come all you jolly tugboatmen
And listen unto me
While I tell you a story of hardships and glory
Of a lusty old life on the deep briny sea.

2. There once was a stalwart old tugboat,
Her name was the Oda G.
And I'll let you know, boys, at pullin' a tow, boys,
There was no huskier tugboat than she.

3. She came off the ways in 'eighty-nine,
For storms she cared not a damn
It was boasted around, 'twas the talk of the town
That she knew that old coastline as well as a man.

4. Now her mate was an expert at running the logs
He ne'er seemed to come to no harm
But he ran out of luck when he fell in the chuck
With a rusty old boom-chain wrapped round his left arm.

5. Her engineer was a lazy young tramp
All day he did nothin' but read
On the fantail he sat on his young lazy prat
Till a big roarin' wave swept him into the sea.

6. And her deckhand was paintin' the bulwarks so fine,
Paintin' so carefully,
But he met his fate when, to admire his paintin',
He took a step back and fell into the sea.

7. Now her skipper, he was very fine man
At seafarin' he was a pip
But without a crew he didn't know what to do
So he grabbed up a lifebelt and abandoned the ship.

8. But the old Oda G. she kept tuggin' along
She towed those logs down to Long Bay
And old Penney hurrayed for the money he saved
And he sent her back north on the very next day.

UK company develops $1.50/gallon synthetic fuel with no carbon emissions.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

...now that I've discovered http://www.realmofsavage.com/ProjectSailorMoon.htm]Project Sailor Moon, the one-stop resource location for Poser/Daz resources to turn the base characters into Sailor Senshi.

Looks like I'm going to have to re-do the Leda image... but now I know where to get the hairdo for A.C. Peters. (ducks and covers)
--
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

Benjamin Rhodes has had quite a few Blue Hair Moments that have had a positive impact in general.  When he stumbled across an old MIT project to produce silicone chips with microscopic gas-turbine engines to produce power he locked himself into his lab for two weeks straight, leaving the operations to a fuming Gina Langley, a puzzled Jess Ayanami, and an indifferent R. Ruri Hoshino.
Those two weeks, however, bore fruit in the Gas-Turbine Power Supply Chip: a mass-produced silicon chip with capabilities envisioned by MIT, only vastly improved.  Running off of nothing more complex than kerosene, one chip could produce 150 watts of power for 120 hours using a mere 250ml of kerosene (or about 8.5 ounces).
The design is pure hard-tech, although refined to a very fine point to deliver such a huge level of efficiency.  Generally, nanofacs are the preferred manufacturing method, but a 'waved CNC machine that is properly suited and motivated can do just as well.  Benjamin, seeing that this was something that could add a massive boost to safety margins of any space-faring operation, made the designs public for anyone to manufacture.  Of course, this made certain that would-be mass producers of such chips would remain healthily competitive for as long as there was demand to support the market.

I don't think it actually uses the oscillation of cesium 133 so there isn't actually 9,192,631,770 cycles for each second, but the makers of this clock claim it has accuracy comparable to an cesium 133 atomic clock and is a chip level device.

http://electronicdesign.c...tter&NL=1&YM_RID=#email#

hmelton

God bless