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Tuesday, August 02, 2011

RANDOM THOUGHTS #50

Steve Cole muses: Just thinking to himself.

1. Pluto, which isn't even a planet any more, has four moons: Charon, Hydra, Nix, and P4. How can a non-planet have non-moons? Are they non-moons? Or maybe dwarf moons around a dwarf planet? I think there is an injustice going on here, somewhere. NASA's space probe (New Horizons) is due to arrive at Pluto sometime in 2015, and I can only hope that Pluto's proper status as a planet is restored before that happens.

2. Google and the internet have made trivia boring. There is just no worthwhile question that you cannot find the answer for in a few seconds, even with no prior knowledge of the subject.

3. I have been getting a lot of spam for the Genie Bra (which I don't need, being a guy), free airline tickets (we all know that's a scam, right?), reviews of local dentists (not sure how that is a scam but it must be), quick and easy loans (also a scam, this time to get your bank account info), great deals on cars (another scam to get personal info), and for aluminum wallets (which strike me as uncomfortable to have in your pocket while sitting down).

4. I get a lot of FC scenarios, and a lot of scenario authors asking if I have reviewed their scenario yet (or could I review it right away). If you haven't heard from me, I haven't reviewed your scenario, but I will when I can. What I have been wanting to do is to open up the file and do a scenario or two every week, just so I have a file of finished scenarios waiting whenever I need one, but I haven't had time yet.

5. FYEO reports that LRADs (long range sound-guns) have never failed to drive away Somali pirates (other than one time the guys who were operating it had it on the wrong frequency), but the Sea Shepherds on Whale Wars are bombarded by Japanese LRADs all the time and just keep on going. What's up with that?

6. While we were finishing Captain's Log #43, Jean Sexton annoyed the heck out of me, wasting my time making me put the people on the various awards lists in alphabetical order. Then I had to go back and do an audit (assigning ribbons to people who wrote a battle group article in a supplement but who did not already have a ribbon for the main issue) and boy, it would have been handy if she'd made me alphabetize the last six or eight lists like she did the last one.

7. One day last week, Steve Petrick walked into my office with a problem. (Being Vice President, a part-owner, and head of the SFB division, he has a right to demand a chunk of Steve Cole Time anytime he needs it.) A rules question had come up on SFBOL and he had tracked it down to a particular rule. He needed to know what I meant when I wrote the rule 23 years earlier. (Good luck!) I sighed, noting that I was going to take me half an hour to puzzle this out, but he said that he wouldn't ask if it didn't have to be decided now for an ongoing tournament game. So, I read his memo (he had properly placed the question, the rules, and all pertinent points on a single sheet of paper in type that did not require my reading glasses) and figured out (took 20 minutes or so) what I did mean when I wrote that. I assumed that everybody would reactivate their fire control immediately when their WW blew up as there was no benefit to waiting. Someone thought he had found a reason to wait, as the rule might imply (if you ignore three other rules that made the case plain) that delaying gave you an extra period of protection. (No, it does not; when the explosion period ends, it ends, and delaying fire control activation does not extend it.)

8.Three places that WW2 could have changed dramatically: 1-The US could have bought British torpedoes instead of wasting two years making their own work. 2-The Germans actually delayed jet production because they thought the war would be over before they could be ready. 3-The Japanese trained naval pilots to special forces standards. Lots of men who could have made excellent pilots were washed out of the program instead of trained for a reserve, and the Japanese just plain ran out of qualified naval pilots before they ran out of carrier aircraft.

9. It pains me that I can never run a restaurant or be a food critic because of my allergies (onions, peppers, mushrooms). There are just too many things I cannot eat.

10. The next Mars rover (Curiosity) is due to land in August 2012 specifically to look for evidence of ancient microbial life forms. I have kind of given up on staying alive long enough to see men land on Mars but maybe this will do.