Well I'm doing well on my paper (about one page more to write and 15 hours to do it...) so I thought I'd get some replies in before I become overwhelmed.
1) for about 300 days of the year the Prof works 24/7 with handwavium, always attempting to expand the boundaries of his knowledge. And he has been doing this for over 2 years. (the other 65.25 days are the time lost doing 'useless' things like sleeping, or attending worldcon etc.) If practice makes you any better then the Professor would be the best by dint of this alone.
2) The Proffessor has better equipment than most fen, getting the occasional shipment of expensive scientific or manufacturing equipment. Sent by his scientific contacts or because he spends a fair chunk of change on them, more than most fen would. And having a world class laboratory/workshop available to you probably does make a bit of difference.
3) Few others can be as indescreetly prolific with their tinkering as the Professor is, because the professor will always get new material to experiment on, either from fen who volunteer for an experiment (they want a specific biomod) or who just donate raw materials to the Professor in the hopes of getting something nifty back. The Professor is always gald to run an experiment that will push the boundaries of science, and if you have some use for his previus experiments he will ussually just give them out. Not always, but often enough. The Professor never manufactures something, he always makes prototypes (something handwavium is well suited to) Though he does post the specs of his experiments on the web (free exchange of ideas helping science and all that. Plus what good mad scientist doesn't have theories that are scorned by his peers?), it's just that for most they are hard to replicate. He does keep a few things quiet though, like any good mad scientist he keeps a surprise ace in the hole (though in this case it's more like a few decks)
but personally I prefer not knowing the exact why and how, it makes it easier to keep the ability mysterius.
Though this does make a good suggestion for the limits of what handwavium can do. Personally I am unhappy about the proliferation of weapons through fenspace. The reavers should have them, and the ninja's might have a few, but I would stop the spread of weaponry beyond that until a few weeks at least have passed since the convention.
Another thing Vales mentioned is having ships being near each other limit each other to atmospheric speeds, which I disagree with, since it isn't nessecary for dogfights at all, since if two speed based ships are reasonably close by they will have the same 'zero-point' and therefore can dogfight perfectly well, just at a significant fraction of c (Which jsust seems way cool). Also for our purposes it does not matter much if it takes an minute or five to get up to top speed so this is something else that fighters and race-ships could use to diferentiate themselves from regular ships, faster acceleration.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
Quote:I do like your theory, however you have overlooked that:
Personally, I would hypothesize that part of what Makes The Professor Tick is that there are significant accretions of handwavium in his brain. This does a few things. First, his brain tends to resonate with whatever handwavium happens to be nearby. This gives him a strong intuitive understanding of what various kinds of handwavium are likely to do. It gives him absolutely *no* intuitive understandings of *why* - but he's good at coming up with rationales. This partially helps explain his habit of putting out seemingly contradictory explanations that all test true. Second, the handwavium resonates with his brain, which means that it tends to follow his lead a lot more than it follows the lead of most folks. Third, his brain is always excited, which means his brainwavium is always excited, which tends to cause nearby samples of handwavium of various sorts to *also* be excited, which causes any number of entertaining efects. Fourth, his brainwavium is always excited, which means his brain is always excited - and, specifically, always excitd about handwavium. That's just *my* theory, though.
1) for about 300 days of the year the Prof works 24/7 with handwavium, always attempting to expand the boundaries of his knowledge. And he has been doing this for over 2 years. (the other 65.25 days are the time lost doing 'useless' things like sleeping, or attending worldcon etc.) If practice makes you any better then the Professor would be the best by dint of this alone.
2) The Proffessor has better equipment than most fen, getting the occasional shipment of expensive scientific or manufacturing equipment. Sent by his scientific contacts or because he spends a fair chunk of change on them, more than most fen would. And having a world class laboratory/workshop available to you probably does make a bit of difference.
3) Few others can be as indescreetly prolific with their tinkering as the Professor is, because the professor will always get new material to experiment on, either from fen who volunteer for an experiment (they want a specific biomod) or who just donate raw materials to the Professor in the hopes of getting something nifty back. The Professor is always gald to run an experiment that will push the boundaries of science, and if you have some use for his previus experiments he will ussually just give them out. Not always, but often enough. The Professor never manufactures something, he always makes prototypes (something handwavium is well suited to) Though he does post the specs of his experiments on the web (free exchange of ideas helping science and all that. Plus what good mad scientist doesn't have theories that are scorned by his peers?), it's just that for most they are hard to replicate. He does keep a few things quiet though, like any good mad scientist he keeps a surprise ace in the hole (though in this case it's more like a few decks)
but personally I prefer not knowing the exact why and how, it makes it easier to keep the ability mysterius.
Though this does make a good suggestion for the limits of what handwavium can do. Personally I am unhappy about the proliferation of weapons through fenspace. The reavers should have them, and the ninja's might have a few, but I would stop the spread of weaponry beyond that until a few weeks at least have passed since the convention.
Another thing Vales mentioned is having ships being near each other limit each other to atmospheric speeds, which I disagree with, since it isn't nessecary for dogfights at all, since if two speed based ships are reasonably close by they will have the same 'zero-point' and therefore can dogfight perfectly well, just at a significant fraction of c (Which jsust seems way cool). Also for our purposes it does not matter much if it takes an minute or five to get up to top speed so this is something else that fighters and race-ships could use to diferentiate themselves from regular ships, faster acceleration.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."