A Boy Calling 2015-03-12

[GlytchMeister]

Boy, I really opened up a Pandora's Box when I mentioned fractals. Jeeze. I love this corner of the Internet. It's like my high school lunch table, but if somebody turned the nerdy-geeky up to eleven, broke the knob off, and ran away laughing.

It's... AWESOME.

As for Nadette seeing all possible futures, ie can see all possibilities as the waveform collapses and splinters:
I didn't get that vibe from Nadette. Remember when she went full-seer on Cricket? That wasn't a "this is the most likely scenario out of infinitely many possibilities" sort of deal. It was "you have no friends." Full stop. Not a whole lot of wiggle room there.
On the other side of the coin, she didn't understand what was up with Cricket, either. She sorta had friends, but they were indistict and now just gone. Because they were gossamer. So I guess she sees specific, pre-collapsed realities, but she often doesn't have the contextual knowledge to entirely know what's up.

[jwhouk]

And that is her inherent problem: she doesn't have all the context to know exactly what's going on. That was why she was embarrassed over Randi's response to Atsali asking her brother out - Randi was thinking it was one sort of context (happiness for her brother) but not the actual long-term (he and Atsali aren't "fated lovers" or that ilk).

The biggest problem with being a seer is that you get glimpses of own life. And you know what's going to happen - though you try your hardest to keep it from happening, it still happens, in a way you don't anticipate, perhaps, but it still happens.

[Thor]

The class thing, by the way, supports the longer time frame.

"I've been authorized by MIB to offer Atsali, and you, to go on more adventures with me. MIB will help with day-care and schooling, and you can both live with me!"

Considering that she had to receive authorization to adopt a couple of young paranormals, and that the MIB involved themselves in the process immediately, it is a reasonable assumption that the parenting classes--specialized for the creatures in question--started right away . . . you know, to keep Kath from dying in the first week or two.

Further supporting this would be the fact that in the storyline immediately following the adventure/adoption, starting August 7 2013 and ending August 23, we see that this adoption is important enough to the MIB that Phix herself has been informed and has become part of Pickle's adopted family.

Also, I just found another solid time reference. The adventure and adoption happened two months before Monica and Shelly get chewed out by Phix. So, to further update the time estimate, we have a solid two months between adoption and Pickle taking lessons from Nudge. Then an unknown period of time between that date (Monica's birthday?) and the shopping trip which is just after the beginning of the school year, then four months between the shopping trip and the current storyline which occurs during Winter Break. So I'll have to up my estimates a tad to (2+x+4) = 6+x months. Now x has a definite upper bound, since Atsali was 15 when she met Kath, and she's still 15 after she has started school. This means that if Atsali had just turned 15 the day she met Kath,and was going to turn 16 the day after Monica took her to Tina's coffee shop, which was a few weeks after Atsali saved Jessie from swimsuit malfunction, which was the day after the shopping trip.

So for ease of calculation, let's say "a few weeks" is a month. This means Atsali was 15 both at the initial meeting and at a time (2+x+1) month after that initial meeting. This means that the largest x can be is 9, and the longest time since adoption would therefore be 13 months. Now since x is the distance between the day of Phix's lecture and the day of the shopping trip, in real time the first strip of both days was August 7th 2013 and October 28 2013--or a real time gap of just under 2 months. Unless you are suggesting that time in the Wapsiverse had suddenly went faster than ours in this one instance, the largest x could be is 2 months. So with that as a new upper bound, and with 0 months as a lower bound we can now say with some authority that the time between Kath adopting the kids and the present is (2+(0,2)+4) months, or 6-8 months.

So unless you see any problems with my references or math, I hope we can agree on this and put the matter to rest.

[GlytchMeister]

The biggest problem with being a seer is that you get glimpses of own life. And you know what's going to happen - though you try your hardest to keep it from happening, it still happens, in a way you don't anticipate, perhaps, but it still happens.

"Are these shadows of things that will be or things that may be" (Scrooge, ERB)
Since she sees collapsed realities, not possibilities, yeah. I guess what she sees is unavoidable.

"Those who seek to prevent the end of the world may hasten it's coming, and yet those who seek to bring about the end may delay it." (Paraphrased from Paarthurnax, TESV: Skyrim)
Time is... Sensitive. Chaos is pretty much impossible to fully calculate ahead of time, so doing one thing in the name of a goal may have so many inintended side effects that they actually just make things worse. Or have no overall effect at all.

Very frustrating. I certainly wouldn't want to be a seer.

[jwhouk]

As a fan of Chaos Theory, being a seer would be the worst thing ever.

[Catawampus]

"Be careful with her." Be careful with her how? Like in the "She's taking advantage of our friendship" be careful or the "You're blind to what she's feeling, don't hurt her" be careful? Aargh, my head hurts...

I think that a generalised "careful in all regards" is the best course of action.

Somebody mentioned that sirens can shrug off romantic affection or that Atsali was doing so partly due to her siren nature. I can't remember who, but they get a cookie.

Ugh. This is a bad time for stuff to be added in. I already mentioned this issue was like staring too closely at a fractal. Adding more elements to the story will just make the thing into a three-dimensional fractal.

... fractals AREN'T three dimensional...?

Some are, some aren't. If memory serves M.C. Escher played dabled in fractals a few times.

Also, some quilt patterns are fractals.

Then there's always the old coastal survey problem.

I recall a conversation between two of the adults, sometime in the past year or so, to the effect that MIB has only recently started taking an active role in helping guide and protect the younger paranormals. Can't recall just when this discussion took place or who the conversation involved (Jin and either Bud or Monica?)

Atsali and Jin, at the beach.

[Dave]

I recall a conversation between two of the adults, sometime in the past year or so, to the effect that MIB has only recently started taking an active role in helping guide and protect the younger paranormals. Can't recall just when this discussion took place or who the conversation involved (Jin and either Bud or Monica?)

Atsali and Jin, at the beach.

Thank'ee kindly! I went right by that one during my archive scan for it, as I had it in my head that it was an adult (rather than Atsali) who made the point about new MIB involvement.

[Warrl]

The parenting class mention is a nice touch.

And it's the sort of parenting class where Mom apparently can mention that her adopted daughter is a siren/incubus halfbreed... and they know what she's talking about... and know she means it literally, not figuratively.

Since Kath is over 20 years away from childhood, I was wondering how she was able to dredge up such good parenting skills out of the blue. And the fact that they have a supernatural bent helps explain how she has managed to keep body and soul together over the last few months.[/quote]

insert 3-D Mandelbrot derivatives here

I either want those to be made in a videogame or I want a planet to be terra formed into that, just so I can explore them.

Those.
Are.
EPIC!

The first two look like Scanning Electron Microscope images of super-cool-as-crap things, and the last one needs to be put into Minecraft. It just has to. Before the month is out, I need that seed.

Well, then, check this out..


It's a photograph of a bismuth crystal.

[GlytchMeister]

Then there's always the old coastal survey problem.

Thats partially what i was thinking about with the 0.5th dimension of "roughness."

(Insert Bismuth Pic here)

Yeah, I've seen those before. I always thought that's what Minecraft would look like if Notch was high on LSD.

[AnotherFairportfan]

I think it is a very strong possibility that the orphanage and MIB are part of the same system to hide the paras from the norms.

I recall a conversation between two of the adults, sometime in the past year or so, to the effect that MIB has only recently started taking an active role in helping guide and protect the younger paranormals. Can't recall just when this discussion took place or who the conversation involved (Jin and either Bud or Monica?)

So, the parenting classes might be a fairly recent addition to MIB's work (along with e.g. the "mall visit" supervisions).

However, i sort of have the impressions that the Orphanage field trips to the Library have been an established thing for some time.

[Dave]

(Insert Bismuth Pic here)

Yeah, I've seen those before. I always thought that's what Minecraft would look like if Notch was high on LSD.

obSixtiesQuote: "Oh wow, man, look at the colors!"

Semi-interesting factoid of the week: did you know that Pepto-Bismol is radioactive? Yup. Bismuth is a heavy metal, one step past lead in the periodic table (although just a bit less dense). Its sole "primordial" isotope was originally thought to be a stable element (like many lead isotopes) but theoretical calculations showed that the nucleus is just slightly over the stability limit and that it should be very, very, very slightly radioactive as a result. The half-life of any individual bismuth-209 atom is about a billion times longer than the current age of the universe.

It took some very sensitive tests, using about 4 pounds of bismuth oxide cooled to extremely low temperatures, to detect the tiny heat pulses resulting from a handful of decay events.

Since Pepto-Bismol is made partially from bismuth subsalicylate, it shares this extremely slight radioactivity... a tiny tiny tiny TINY miniscule fraction of the amount we get from other natural radioisotopes and from cosmic rays. Truly nothing to worry about - having the runs is much worse for you

[GlytchMeister]

Semi-interesting factoid of the week: did you know that Pepto-Bismol is radioactive? Yup. Bismuth is a heavy metal, one step past lead in the periodic table (although just a bit less dense). Its sole "primordial" isotope was originally thought to be a stable element (like many lead isotopes) but theoretical calculations showed that the nucleus is just slightly over the stability limit and that it should be very, very, very slightly radioactive as a result. The half-life of any individual bismuth-209 atom is about a billion times longer than the current age of the universe.

It took some very sensitive tests, using about 4 pounds of bismuth oxide cooled to extremely low temperatures, to detect the tiny heat pulses resulting from a handful of decay events.

Since Pepto-Bismol is made partially from bismuth subsalicylate, it shares this extremely slight radioactivity... a tiny tiny tiny TINY miniscule fraction of the amount we get from other natural radioisotopes and from cosmic rays. Truly nothing to worry about - having the runs is much worse for you

Rrreeeaaalllyyy? Fascinating. Now that is the kind of trivia I love. Where did you find this?

...y'know those radioactive decay timers used by Hari Seldon to time when his holograms would activate to warn people before Seldon events occured? (I'm working off of 2-year old memories, forgive me if I messed up a Foundation series detail). I bet Bismuth clocks would be excellent for doing carefully timed things in situations involving quadrillions of years.

Most intriguing.

[Dave]

This is starting to sound like a soap opera, "as the stomach turns"

And -- what about Naomi?

I suppose you'll have to Foner to find out what happened.

Rrreeeaaalllyyy? Fascinating. Now that is the kind of trivia I love. Where did you find this?

I was doing a bit of background reading and investigation to follow up my interest in radioactivity (natural and man-made) and ran across it in a discussion of stable and quasi-stable/meta-stable isotopes. The alpha detection was done successfully back in 2003 - to physicists it's old news but it was a surprise to me. The Wikipedia page on bismuth has a link to the article.

I've got a couple of Geiger counters (a classic CDV-700 and a small modern kit version), have built one working scintillation probe, and am working on another with which I hope to be able to do some simple gamma-ray spectroscopic analysis. None of these would detect any radiation from a bottle of Pepto-Bismo. I've successfully confirmed low-level gamma from a bottle of "light salt" (potassium chloride) and some sand collected from a nearby beach (a bit of thorium in monazite sand weathered out of California granite, probably).

[AnotherFairportfan]

Semi-interesting factoid of the week: did you know that Pepto-Bismol is radioactive?

Mostly what i know about Pepto-Bismol is that it's PINK.

Brand-new Coleman lantern mantles are radioactive, too.

[oldmanmickey]

Yall keep this up and we will all be glowing in the dark. Aint worried about Naomi, she can find her own soap opera.

[GlytchMeister]

Yall keep this up and we will all be glowing in the dark. Aint worried about Naomi, she can find her own soap opera.

Who's Naomi? Is this a joke people under a certain age don't get, or is it something I should totally know but I wasn't paying enough attention? (the latter happens all the time. I have a strange rate of exposure to culture)

[jwhouk]

Poor child. You need a dose of The Electric Company.

[Opus the Poet]

Who's Naomi? Is this a joke people under a certain age don't get, or is it something I should totally know but I wasn't paying enough attention? (the latter happens all the time. I have a strange rate of exposure to culture)

Old soap opera trope, Naomi was a peripheral character who never got any air time in a radio soaper, but got mentioned in every closing asking if anything was going to happen to her character. We're talking 1930s old trope.

[shadowinthelight]

Since Pepto-Bismol is made partially from bismuth subsalicylate, it shares this extremely slight radioactivity... a tiny tiny tiny TINY miniscule fraction of the amount we get from other natural radioisotopes and from cosmic rays. Truly nothing to worry about - having the runs is much worse for you

That's disappointing. I could live with being a pink radioactive mutant if it came with superpowers.

[AnotherFairportfan]

Who's Naomi? Is this a joke people under a certain age don't get, or is it something I should totally know but I wasn't paying enough attention? (the latter happens all the time. I have a strange rate of exposure to culture)

Old soap opera trope, Naomi was a peripheral character who never got any air time in a radio soaper, but got mentioned in every closing asking if anything was going to happen to her character. We're talking 1930s old trope.

Actually, as pointed out in the comment above yours, it's a reference to The Electric Company, which makes it 1970s.

(I think i was the one who dragged the reference , kicking and screaming, in here.)