Lawnmower Boy

Re: Currency . . . of the Future! Bullion money does have an intrinsic value above and beyond that of the bullion content, which does fluctuate in time and space; and that's not even getting into bimetallic ratios. Oh, making jokes here. How much gold can latinum press in the HERO system? (Must ..try...harder..)

Re: The Price of Land The thing about the middle ages is that the only theoretical system is that there is no system. Law of property did exist, and I am not aware of any that excluded anyone from owning land. I know that medieval theologians specifically considered and rejected such laws. I'd watch out for "there's some lovely filth over here, Dennis" stories. Anyway, the rule of thumb for land prices is that price of sale is regulated by the common rate of interest. In a society of high risk, high-capital investments, land might go for as little as 5 years of rent, while in Adam Smith's time the rule of thumb in Britain was 30 years, 20 in France with its higher government deficit. Rent might be fixed by some kind of sharecropping arrangement, so figure out the value of one third of the crop, and you're done. That's easier said than done, but assume 60 bushels of wheat/acre for prime farmland and use this to "regulate" the rent of other land. (This prescription of classical economics makes projecting easy; pity that it is wrong.) I'm sure you can run up a price series for wheat somewhere. i thought I was going to pull one out of my handy copy of Wealth of Nations, but it's not jumping out of the index at me.

Re: What a drag! Clearly swinging is an option when you're in drag.

Re: PA water supply Actually, any small town where I've lived would be able to do this. The problem is lack of electricity. A town might be terraced on a sidehill with a water tower at the top, but the water is pumped up out of the aquifer. A town with a water tower on high ground would use electric pumps to push the water up from lower ground. Lack of electricity is the Achilles heel. I know! Save a local nuclear power plant from being overrun by a cannibal army of urban gangsters and malcontent deserters! Nothing ever goes wrong with undermaintained nuclear plants.

Re: How long does tech last after The End? There's an argument in economics (but Vernor Vinge does it much better, so read A Deepness in the Sky instead) that technology is just an epiphenomena of the division of labour. More people equals more specialists equals more elaborate text. Braniac would end up being a very intelligent caveman, if only because of the amount of time required to learn what the arsenic fraction is in the local copper deposit, finding kaolin for his blast furnace and so on blah blah. With legacy technology things are a tiny bit more complicated. Light bulbs are a lot harder to make than windmills, which is why historically people used windmills to pump water to irrigate land to produce more oilseed (while hemp grows well in the Northwest I would recomend sunflowers as they produce better seedcake) etc to make more oil to light more lamps. But if you have the bulbs sitting around it is a very different matter.

Re: Iconic Heroes Squirrel Girl --iconic social critic Phoenix the Protector --iconic stupid idea Captain Canuck --icon of trying too hard Black Lightning or possibly American Eagle --icon of just not getting it Aquaman --icon of high concept with nowhere to go

Re: [Review] Arcane Adversaries Sure there's a Master Villain chapter. It's just hidden from our profane eyes. Try holding the book upside down and squinting while holding your breath. Just before you lose consciousness, you'll see that it is about Archimago.

Re: [Character] Professor Powerful This is a very charming character, but I prefer the original origin. Energy-wanders-out-of-the-physics dept-thing means interdepartmental politics, always the spice of faculty life. Also, he needs at least 2 points of Greek and 3 Latin; also probably 2 each French, German and Italian and a KS: Linguistics. If he's old-fashioned enough he doesn't get Archaeology and Aramaic/Assyriology. I'd also throw some points towards reflecting a good writing/speaking style.

Re: Paladin Vows Okay, I'm still pretty new to this message board thing, but I'm pretty sure I know how to do this. Miko. Miko Miko Miko. Miko Miko Miko Miko Miko Miko Miko Miko Miko. Oh, like none of you were thinking it.

Re: How many crops to support one adult? A three-field rotation makes things more complicated because you get three crops in two years, one spring sown, two fall sown, and I don't know if my data is for spring crops. But, 1 acre produces 7300lb straw, 4700lb grain (wheat and barley). assuming that works out to 4200lb flour and 500lb bran, at 2 lbs grain/person/day for two years and 25lb straw/oxen, 1 acre feeds 2 2/3 people and 1/2 of an oxen. (Warning, sums done in head. Throw in another 1.5 acre of permanent meadow yielding two mows a year, and you get enough for a nuclear family and two oxen. However, in order to work like a nineteenth century British draught animal (which is to say, a lot harder than a medieval one), you would have to throw in some concentrated feed. So 3 acres will cover the basic calorie needs of a small family. You still need to cover the family's textile needs, though. I have no idea where you'd get figures for yards/linen/acre, but I've a hunch that the 6 acres you have left over above would run enough sheep to keep your family clothed. And provide you with a margin in case of bad weather, like that ever happens up here in the Northwest.

Re: How many crops to support one adult? Whippin' out the 9th Edition Britannica, turning to "Agriculture," 1: 401--405 I get a range of tables. In 1895, per acre yield was (bushels) Wheat: 26.33/Barley 32.1/Oats 38.7/Beans 23/Peas 22.6/[tons] potatoes 5.6/turnips 13.1/[hundredweights --yeah, whatever] hay (in rotation) 29.08/ hay (meadow) 25.2. It is not clear to me whether this is before or after superphosphates, but note an average yield from another source for the 1850s, certainly before scientific fertilisers, of 28 (60lb) bushels wheat per acre. A more telling table in many ways gives per acre yield by dry weight separating fruit from straw and giving the "nitrogen" content of both: Wheat: 1530(34)/2653 (16); barley 1747(35)/2080(14); oats 1625(34)/2353(18); corn 1500(28)/1877 (15)/meadow hay 0/2822(49); beans 1613(78)/1848 (99); turnips 3126 (61)/1531 (49); potatoes [NB: this is dry weight, so think instant mashed potatoes!] 3360(46). YMMV, but not very much, in Oregon. Just to clarify, that's "fruit" first, and the nitrogen content is the estimated weight in lbs of elemental nitrogen, without considering what proteins it might constitute in a given case. This doesn't give yield in flour, but most of the dry weight of wheat is going into a whole grain flour, and supposedly 2lbs wheat constitute a garrison ration. That said, I have doubts about whether anyone has the digestive system to deal with 3300 calories of wheate flour a day. And notice that grass turns out to be the most efficient food of all, if not for people. Bring on the beef, I say! PS: For converting into distances on the ground, I convert to hectares (1 acre=0.42 hectares). A hectare is 100 square meters, so a typical city block is about 6 hectares.

Re: What if: Japan won World War 2? The current strategic thinking on the Pacific War is that Guadalcanal was the "turning point." Win the naval Battle of Guadalcanal and Japan would have been able to resume its drive towards New Caledonia. Take New Caledonia in the first months of 1943, and the direct supply route to Australia is broken. This will curtail the New Guinea campaign. Once Japanese naval forces can operate in the Timor Sea, Darwin will be unavailable as a strategic base, and the Japanese will be able to impose a coastal blockade on Australia. Next, an offensive into India. And so on. With a war on against Germany as well, the Allies were not in a position to recoup unlimited ground from the Japanese, and the more the Japanese gained from the Allies, the more goods they had to give back in return for peace and an end to the American fiscal blockade. In short, Tokyo expected the Allies to sue for peace, which is the only way it could win in the last analysis. Granted that happens, Japan would have what it really wanted (a free hand in China and more of Southeast Asia than it could digest). It would offer its good offices to negotiate a peace in Europe --and start selling war munitions to the US and Britain. Then it would have to fight the Vietnamese War, and live to regret its "victory."

Re: Seven unusual propeller-driven vehicles True fact: Cusinart bought all the patents to suppress the ultimate power-saving puree making technology!

Re: Pulling Authority & Other Genres No, he's right. The Authority ought to take over. Me: "Midnighter, could I please rezone this lot to mixed-use/residential R4?" Midnighter: "I'll get back to you when I've finished reviewing the new international civil aviation safety protocols. Hmm, what grade plastic do you think seat/life preservers need to be made of?"

Re: Initial background for my Pulp Hero in space circa 1935 game And I'll just close this out by apologising to Spence for being the cranky horse's end I so obviously am.

Re: Initial background for my Pulp Hero in space circa 1935 game Bear in mind that my opinions were solicited, and the setting as given is entirely historical. I'm sorry that I sucked the life out of them with all my reality. I am the buzzkill. I do think you're underestimating the power of real history to be interesting. I ran my only Pulp campaign to this point as close to actual history as I could because it gave me a framework that gave lost continents and pirate submarines a great deal more traction.

Re: An idea I have broached before, I think... You mean they waited 20,000 years to genetically tatoo their Secret Plan on Jessica Alba's body? I had trouble believing 3500. .... Oh come on, I can't have been the only person paying attention to season 2 of Dark Angel.

Re: Initial background for my Pulp Hero in space circa 1935 game Hmm, thoughts. i) There would be severe economic troubles in Japan due to the utterly insane way it crossed its major trading partners in 1914. ii) China's war shows a complete defiance of strategic realities. Presumably they have rocket ships, too. iii) Look for the reemergence of an Oirat/Kalmyck state stretching from Urumchi to Volgrograd, guided by the Dalai Lama and backed by the Indian government. iv) I cannot even begin to imagine the extent how nasty German postwar politics would be. The creation of a Catholic voting majority would certainly provoke a secessionist effort in the North. The Kaiser would never get the Conservatives to form a government. Perhaps the nationalists imagined ruling Belgium, etc, as "Reichslands," but in practice a Catholic majority would mean governing through the Catholic Centre? If so, I cannot see the German government holding onto eastern France, Belgium or Poland. Who else? The Social Democrats? Now we're talking army coup. And, by the way, forget the image of Germany as a military dictatorship. That was not how it worked. v) I assume that since the other global powers ignore the dissolution of Russia that they're being governed by alien pod people. This is evidently especially so in the United States. Clearly Wilson didn't win re-election in 1916. So who did?

Re: Order of the Stick Cut Eugene a break. He is at worst a "mediocre" father and a good man. His problem is that his son is throwing his lives away as a fighter. Roy is in his early 20s. Men that age do admit they've made a mistake and go back to school for a real degree all the time. So Eugene's tough. The stakes are large, and growing.

Re: Another human civilization may live inside Earth's hollows A society that would misplace a scantily clad woman is not a "civilisation."

Re: Vikings? Spam (Life Support, only for eating) 1 point. You're welcome.

Re: Star Hero:? Let's face it. Involving people in a sci-fi setting is hard. That's why fantasy outsells it in the bookstore, and it is that much harder in gaming. Most sci-fi settings are "hard," and manage to drain even more of the thrill away, while ones that aim for space opera have a hard time not being self-consciously silly. Look at the way that Steampunk ends up looking like warmed over D&D when its roots lie in what Victorians thought would be possible in the next decade! Worlds of Empire did a great job of getting beyond that, but I probably wouldn't have bought it in the first place if it weren't for the Thanes.

Re: [Review] Solar Smith And The Sky-Pirates Of Arcturus This sounds almost sounds like more fun to write than to play. (I explained the "canals of Mars," etc. to my eight-year old nephew the other day. You should have seen his eyes go wide as he gave a moment's thought to the notion that all that stuff about ancient races, dying planets and dinosaurs of Venus could have been true.)

Re: Steampunk Campaign Ideas In the good old days (stupid automated retrieval system), the University of British Columbia had its entire _Engineering_ collection going back to 1871 on the open shelves. Some ideas: i) We're running out of fertiliser? No problem: the coal seams of England have lots of fossilised dinosaur, er....doodies in them. All we have to do is dig it out, mulch and spread it around. Of course, who knows what else is down there with it, or what kinds of seeds might survive. ii) Train tracks are expensive, but there's these "endless tracks" that loop around tractor wheels. Why not land trains to penetrate the wilds of Canada/Australia/Africa? iii) New miracle explosives such as "cordite" can change the world! For example, we could cut a channel into the interior of Australia/the Sahara and create an inland sea and an entirely new Mediterranean coast. And sail places where only the Tuareg go now. But it is a reasonable geographical supposition that those seas have existed before. Surely urban civilisation was not invented in the Middle East (I say "surely" because if I filled in the assumptions of the 1890s I would sound like a Nazi). What lost cities await on reborn coasts for the first intrepid steam-explorer, full of artefacts for archaeologists to plunder? iv) The great scientists of the age are constantly working on new steam valves and drive cycles, as well as novel high tensile alloys of steel for engine components, using exotic elements such as chromium and nickel. A sufficiently powerful steam engine could generate almost unimaginable amounts of energy, especially if radium were substituted for coal. For example, a sufficiently powerful "electromagnetic" could veritably fling an sealed vessel into the airless void of space. A visit to Mars (which will be reaching its conjunction with Earth in 1897), might reveal the truth behind the "canals." Yes, I know iv) has been done, a lot. I just think that all this talk about aether flyers underrates just how _practical_ people thought these plans were in the 1890s. They didn't have to imagine antigravity because the real world technology seemed to be almost in their grasp.

Re: [PAH] 50 years After Looking at the "small smash" grim and gritty model. I'll assume a spontaneous meltdown of largescale infrastructure. The POL in the pipeline and tanks just goes away. The main problem: there's not food where most people are (big cities.) People are mobile, and will go where there's food, although big cities are also built over a great deal of agricultural land, much of which is reasonably accessible in North American cities, at least. The earlier the exodus/planting-the-park happens, the more lives will be saved. But it will be a mob scene. Just how violent and unpleasant is left to the people involved, but most survivalists expect to have to defend their self-sufficient nuclear plants/farms in the middle of nowhere from desperate mobs of urban cannibals. That's cause they're dorks, but it doesn't meant they're wrong. The next stage is rebuilding economies appropriate to a more spartan transportation system. Assuming POL isn't available still, IC will be a luxury, since they burn fuel oil. Steam locomotives are another matter. Modern ones are few and far between, but hardly unknown. On the other hand, I suspect that railroad park enthusiasts could turn them out of LRT chasses pretty durn quickly, if you don't demand too much in the way of drawing power. I'd say that the result would be an 1850s-style economy. Local road transport links to the restoration of local economic balance. The big change since 1914 has been the collapse of the very large portion of the agricultural economy that produced grass (and other feed) for horses and cattle. There's no way to restore the hundred million-and-more working horses that existed on Earth in 1900 overnight, but cattle stocks would be replenished much more quickly. Here in British Columbia you might see massive cattle drives from the Interior ranching country to the much wetter Coast, where pastures are crying out for hooves. Oxcarts would be a good bet within a few years. Carpenters would really miss their power tools, so that might be an island of rapid reindustrialisation. Water/wind mills/steam engines to generate electricity, electricity to run the ol' Black and Decker. Guns are not overwhelmingly hard to make, but at least in the short term, modern ammunition is even easier. An industrial chemist could turn out fulminate and cordite without too much trouble (barring the occasional explosion), and that's all that's required for a home reloader. Cartridge shells would be another matter. Hold onto your brass! How much ammunition is another question. Anarchy and tyranny make for a cool adventure hook, but are not nearly as common a mode of social organisation as some people think. Mob justice, random executions, houses burning down in the night and local feuds settled by "unsolved" shootings? That's another matter. 'Course, that kind of thing quickly leads to a countryside organised into two well-armed factions that transfer most of their aggression to court. Look for a county seat where some luckless executive trys to steer a middle course between the factions to get anything done, ending up instead randomly swerving from one faction to another, political shifts being signalled by either elections or "conspiracy" plots accompanied by random executions. See seventeenth century history (any) for details. Once intellectuals get involved, expect a veneer of principles to be laid over the naked competition for positions as county dike warden, road contractor, and sheriff.