The Life Experience ~ Spring '12

[bloodyrosemccoy]

What I Learned Since The Spring Equinox

• Mae Jemison was the first black woman in space, and continues to be completely awesome and I want to know more about her.
• While the term had been around for a while, the first computer bug on record was an actual bug. A moth who wound up flash-frying itself in a computer component in 1947.
• The snowflakes in Fantasia were animated using a system of gears under the black velvet against which the flakes themselves were shot. You can see photos of it here, reached via what must be the most misleading URL of all time.*
• Moles don't eat roots. They eat earthworms and bugs and things, but not their vegetables. BRIAN JACQUES, WHAT ELSE DID YOU LIE ABOUT?
• Science has officially gone on record saying that Fiction Is Good For You.
• Radishes have pretty flowers when you let a few of 'em grow up.
• Those goddamn pine beetles that've been eating all the trees and hazing up the atmosphere now pose another problem: the dead trees are WAY more flammable. Weather forecasts for this summer in the West say mostly sunny with a strong chance of scattered BEING ON FIRE.
• Braces are not magnetic.**
• When Michael Jackson pitched the idea of Thriller to his producers, it became rapidly apparent that he was staggeringly unfamiliar with monster movies. The producers made a list of films he should watch for research, but he couldn't do it: they were too darn scary.
• The Woolly Tyrannosaur is a REAL THING.
• Getting all the Gold Skulltulas in LoZ: Ocarina of Time really isn't worth it.
• Making a shepherd's sling is easy, but mastering it? Not so much.
• It is official canon that Star Trek: Nemesis never happened.
• LoZ: Skyward Sword has a glitch that won't let you finish the game if you get the Thunder Dragon's part of the Hero's Song first. Fortunately, I did not learn this the hard way.
• Kew Gardens has "the largest palm tree in captivity." Good thing they had tree wranglers to keep it from escaping!
• Hedy Lamarr was a glamorous actress and also an inventor. It can happen!
• Tempered glass can shatter in slow motion.
• Some con-goers really do fit the stereotype for hygienic laxity.
• The worst part about agent queries isn't the rejection; it's the WAITING.

*As a small kid, I always assumed that the snowflakes were CGI. Then I grew up a bit and realized that Not Everything Is Now, and in fact Fantasia was made in a Then when a "computer" was a lady with a pencil and a slide rule who did calculations so busy and important executives did not have to. And then I was really confused, because that meant I had NO IDEA how it was actually done.

**I deliberately looked this one up after watching Super 8, and spending the entire exciting and emotionally satisfying scene with the water tower turning into a giant electromagnet wondering just how it was Tinsel Teeth there still had a face. He gets a pass.

Comments

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

I read at one point--I don't have a cite to back this up--that the primary reason the bow & arrow became the primary ranged weapon of choice for mass combat over the sling had nothing to do with it being more damaging, or a greater range, or any of that. And it sure as hell wasn't for economic reasons; you can find rocks anywhere, slings are cheap to make and maintain, bad weather doesn't do them in like it can bowstrings...

No, it was that slings were so much harder to achieve reasonable competence in compared to bows that it was just easier to get the expensive, fragile, requires-constant-ammunition-making weapons and train thousands of people to use them quickly than the other way around.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I believe it. I STILL have no idea what I'm doing when I aim. This neighborhood will have little rubber balls everywhere before I get even close to worked out.

[shadesofmauve]

Ooh! I've been working on world-building for a maybe novel thing (I have this terrible lack-of-plot problem that means there's a lot of emphasis on the 'maybe), and I need space station names -- so far I've got Yuri and Laika. Was considering an Amstrong, but now I think I'll go with Jemison. Thanks!

(Each station has a slightly different culture and was built by different interests, but they're all named after space pioneers).

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Yay! Glad I could help! It sounds like a fun world to mess around in.

(I'd suggest a station named "Aldrin," but Buzz isn't fond of science fiction and I REALLY don't want to make him angry.)

[shadesofmauve]

I hadn't considered Aldrin because it just didn't sound right -- and I can't explain it more than that. I get odd about fictional names. Lack of plot is frustrating, but it IS a really fun and different (to me - my world building has all been fantasy) world to play in.

I wasn't aware that he doesn't like Science Fiction -- he's been in some! Though I'd understand if Transformers is too silly to count, he voiced a bit of the (crap) ending of Mass Effect 3.

[piccolo-pirate.livejournal.com]

WHAT?! No! Deeper'n'Ever Earthworm'n'Grub'n'Insect Pie just doesn't have the same ring to it.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I know, right?

Perhaps the Redwall moles were vegetarians.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I know, right? CG is such a perfect handwave--"Oh, yeah, it was done with computers"--right up until you realize that this was DECADES before computers could do anything CLOSE to that. And then you're like, "Wait, how the hell DID they do that?!"

[childthursday.livejournal.com]

WHAT on the Nemesis not being canon? I did not know this! What?!

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Well, okay, it kind of is, but the prequel comic to the reboot, which follows real!Spock just before he went back to start the series over, features a bunch of TNG characters, including Data. There are two panels basically saying "I heard you were dead!" "I got better" and they moved on. So they pretty much just fixed it with a handwave.

[stormteller.livejournal.com]

Tempered glass can shatter in slow motion.
Especially if you do it with a Sonic Screwdriver.

[van.livejournal.com]

Whelp. Time to go rewatch Fantasia. :D

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Hah! I did that recently, too. It's fascinating now to see the technical details. (I'm still convinced there was a synesthete doing the Toccata animation.)

I was particularly curious about the Rite of Spring bit now, because SCIENCE! They're perfectly accurate '40s dinosaurs (except for the time-traveling stegosaurus), which means they were very derpy and lumpy. (Also, I guess they inspired Ray Harryhausen, so ... there's that?) It's fun to compare cutting-edge animation of the past to the computer-generated featherdinos the BBC puts on nowatimes.

[baroncognito.livejournal.com]

And today I learned why Hedley Lamarr got so upset about the pronunciation of his name.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

Belated GIP