Wapsi Square Forum

Dave wrote:

AnotherFairportfan wrote:Hmmm. "Intrinsic velocity vector". Monica has a built-in Bergenholm?

I hoped somebody would catch the reference

I don't think it's like a Bergenholm, in that Monica and her carry-alongs don't start puking their guts out from lack of inertia when they arrive.

Actually, it's a bit more like the momentum compensation system in Larry Niven's Known Space stories. If you use a transfer booth (or transfer discs), the system has to have a way of providing/absorbing/shifting your momentum so that you're "at rest" with respect to the location you arrive, rather than being in your new location but "at rest" with respect to your starting location.

That's exactly what I was thinking of.

If you teleport from west to east, your original momentum vector would tend to fling you up into the air. If you 'port from east to west, your original momentum vector would tend to slam you down into the ground.

"Doc" Smith dealt with a somewhat similar issue, in "Skylark Three", when Richard Seaton developed a "zone of force" which had the effect of isolating the user from all outside forces, including gravity. Turn it off, and you'd continue to move in a straight line, while the Earth rotated away from under you (and also moved away from you in its circular orbit around the sun). From the point of view of an observer on the ground, you'd fly off into the air at an ever-increasing velocity.

AnotherFairportfan wrote: . . . Did you ever encounter the "McGill Feighan" books? Feighan is a "flinger" - he can "fling" (it's not exactly teleportation) things instantaneously, even over interstellar distances. The author's handwavium includes a separate universe or dimension or something, from which or to which the flinger can channel kinetic energy to adjust momentum.

At one point, when he's on the run, Feighan realises that setting a ball bearing on his hand and pumping kinetic energy into it is a hell of a weapon. . . .

Jabberwonky wrote:IIRC, Paul confirmed that the teleport was done through accessing the Akashic Record and 'rewritings where you are, bypassing all the tricky math. Which would be good for a higher calculus dummy like me.

And, do any of the Old Time Religions consider butterflies psychopomps?

Have to do some research after work tonight...

Jabberwonky wrote:A preliminary finding:
From http://www.madelinemiller.com/greek-etymologies-ii/
Psychopomp/Psychopompos. This word doesn’t get very much airtime nowadays, but I think it should. A psychopomp is a being whose job it is to guide the souls of the dead to the afterlife, and in ancient Greece this was the messenger god Hermes, whose epithet was Psychopompos. It comes from the Greek word psyche, meaning soul, which has found its way into English in all sorts of compounds, including psychiatrist—a word which literally means “soul doctor” (iatros is Greek for doctor). In a lovely bit of metaphor, psyche is also the Greek word for butterfly.
The pomp- part comes from the Greek for escort, or guide, and can refer to either a single escort, or an entire cohort, making it the root of our “pomp” in pomp and circumstance. So, psychopomp literally means soul-guide. By the way, this word frequently provokes hilarity among my Greek students: “Dude, that guy was psycho pompous!”

Warrl wrote:

Jabberwonky wrote:A preliminary finding:
From http://www.madelinemiller.com/greek-etymologies-ii/
Psychopomp/Psychopompos. This word doesn’t get very much airtime nowadays, but I think it should. A psychopomp is a being whose job it is to guide the souls of the dead to the afterlife, and in ancient Greece this was the messenger god Hermes, whose epithet was Psychopompos. It comes from the Greek word psyche, meaning soul, which has found its way into English in all sorts of compounds, including psychiatrist—a word which literally means “soul doctor” (iatros is Greek for doctor). In a lovely bit of metaphor, psyche is also the Greek word for butterfly.
The pomp- part comes from the Greek for escort, or guide, and can refer to either a single escort, or an entire cohort, making it the root of our “pomp” in pomp and circumstance. So, psychopomp literally means soul-guide. By the way, this word frequently provokes hilarity among my Greek students: “Dude, that guy was psycho pompous!”

Psychopomps are sort of a secondary theme of Gunnerkrigg Court, which also has some of the best art of all the webcomics I read. In fact at least one of the main characters is technically a psychopomp.

jwhouk wrote:You mean THE main character (Antimony).