2014-12-31

漫画 Maja Dresses Up

Whole Comic IndexWhole Current Vignette

2014-12-24

2014-12-15

Japanese Class

Next week: we finish the So-Soo-Yoo translation and then go into the Little Mermaid song again.

"Rolling stone gathers no moss"
Are we done with the Translation?
Yes, completely
Today we finish early
doneness

Little Mermaid Song
"What is a 'cave'?"

Holiday Warning

ATTENTION
There will be swift and severe PENALTIES meted out to anyone showing insufficient HOLIDAY CHEER or failing to take part in any and all REINDEER GAMES (*) when either the MERRY CHRISTMAS LIGHT or the HAPPY NEW YEAR LIGHT is put alight by the WEINACHTESFROELICHHEITUBERSTUPPENFUHRER.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

(*) These shall include but by no means be limited to: frosting of Christmas cookies (but not eating more than two or three GOD HELP YOU if you eat more than three!!!) in strict accordance to prescribed themes, watching endless claymation holiday specials, wearing ridiculous clothing (usually too hot) and sitting around for hours, drinking too much including nauseating concoctions such as "Egg Nog" (what other sort of "nog" is there?) that you never touch any other time of the year, spending tense hours preparing insane quantifies of elaborate foods, waiting anxiously for meals to begin, watching elderly and other relations whom you never see watch "special" ball games and parades that only happen around this time while never speaking, playing obscure card games and other such with relations whom you never see just to kill the boredom, etc., etc., etc.

漫画 Wardrobe

Whole Comic IndexWhole Current Vignette

2014-12-09

詩 people like to bait me...

I seem to have this problem.
clinging to the legality
of how we treat one another
an appeal to the rules
a cold replacement for love
so sacrosanct
yet so often violated
In conflict with others
I always have a part
Easier to peer
through a cracked window
mutter out of earshot
About the wrongness of others
Facing rather the pane of glass
Than the pain of the mirror
Though they show the same picture
When I reach that last blind alley
I shall finally have to face myself
and make peace
with the rest of the world

漫画 #StandByYourMan

Whole Comic Index





2014-12-08

Japanese Class

My method of diagramming Japanese sentences

We are almost done with the transcription of the translation of the rules of So-Soo-Yoo.

2014-12-07

漫画 A Jigger of Blood

Whole Comic IndexComplete Current Vignette

Hey folks! I am going to downshift to one new comic every two days for now. Thanks for reading and feel free to make comments!

2014-12-04

漫画 Compartmentalize THIS!

Whole Comic IndexComplete Current Vignette

Reactionless Space Drive

"Strange thrust: the unproven science that could propel our children into space"

The idea of non-rocket propulsion. There's also a discussion going on here.

This is interesting. I actually thought about a propulsion system like in their diagrams, when I was a child, but couldn't think of a way to vary the mass of the piston on each half-stroke. I think I thought about pumping a fluid back and forth but that would be slow and would still be subject to Newton's Laws.

I can't get no satisfaction
I can't get no delta-v without reaction


I didn't see how the piece's discussion of Mach's theories of relative mass really supported anything. One does speak of things such as "rest mass", for example.

I didn't get how capacitors and piezoelectrics produce the variable-mass piston. I guess you could imagine that a charged capacitor contains more energy (and more electrons) and therefore a tiny amount more mass, and if capacitors which were charged were shifted in the opposite to the direction of travel, discharged, then shifted back over and over with piezoelectrics, it would yield some non-zero thrust.

Did they actually say that? They said the amount of thrust would be hard to measure over background noise. I bet. A piece like this should have pictures of the mechanism and some numbers about its function, since it had other details, just not that.

Capacitors are interesting things, simple, but interesting. It would be interesting to know their input and output numbers, if they have any. Oh, I could probably throw together some theoretical values for sample capacitors and piezoelectrics. Might be fun, no?

I'll try to look up displacements for piezoelectric materials and charge capacity of typical capacitors and mass of electrons and also energy to mass equivalences to get a ballpark idea.