Posted on 01/31/2008 3:36:33 PM PST by mattstat
A new study by scientists has suggested that zombie attacks might increase if the current projections of global warming are realized. “If the earth gets warmer, it means longer springs, summers, and falls, and shorter winters,” said John Carpenter-Romero, Ph.D., a zombie-ologist who co-authored the study. “And shorter winters means more time for the undead to prey on the populace.”
Dr. Harrister, the other co-author, and head of Zombie Robotics at Wayward Robot, Inc., explained that cold winters typically stalled the walking dead. “It is well known that zombies can’t operate in cold weather. It freezes their brains.”
The pair calculated a 32.782412% increase in zombie attacks if CO2 increased to twice its pre-industrial rate. “Clearly, this is a very troubling result,” said Dr. Harrister, “If we don’t do something soon, the streets will be filled with blood.”
I guess the oddest thing to get used to, when living in a habitat in space, (and we have three habitats!), in addition to the lower gravity, is the lack of seasons.
That alone makes it seem as though you are living indoors. All three habitats have a “shirt-sleeve” environment, even though the large open spaces give them something of an outdoors feel.
More than anything else, I guess it resembles a shopping mall. That perception is probably enhanced by having so many little shops everywhere, especially in Habs A and B.
It sure feels like home to me, though.
Yepper!
Home Sweet Home!
I can’t help but wish sionnsar was back. We need to get the distillery up and running again. I mean, St. Paddy’s Day is coming!
Good man!
We’ve been bottling that stuff for years. There should be a pretty good inventory.
Truth to tell, I’ve been using the microbreweries. Nothing like fresh beer. You can even feel guilty about releasing all that carefully sequestered carbon dioxide when you open the bottle.
I prefer a fresh beer meself, but it puts me to sleep...
:o|
Yeah, well just think what would happen to the S.F. Bay Area commute if a late night rain cleared up and gave way to a hard overnight freeze. Can you say “natural selection”?
The Undead Thread is where you end up if you roll “00” on your saving throw. TWO in-a-row is “Divine Intervention”, so the UT is in pretty high cotton.
Which is why I’m here...I’m tall!
;o])
*snort*
Well, we have some cotton crops. Not as much as you might think, because we also have plenty of various types of wool, and we have other fibers as well.
Bamboo can produce elegant fabrics, and there is even a nascent silk industry on board. No sense letting the mulberry trees serve only one purpose.
The real fabric production emphasis, of course, is in carbon fiber. We're using it all over the place to strengthen things.
Fortunately, we still have plenty of carbon in our cycle. Initially, it gets compressed as CO2 and stored in the reaction tanks, so access to it is quite easy.
I love the silk worms...but hate the mulberrry trees...
Not much feels as good as raw silk next to the skin.
;o])
Mulberries aren’t as tasty as other berries, but I understand they help in the jelling process. So the thing to do is mix them in with more flavorful varieties.
Hmm. That would indicate that mulberries and cranberries would be a good mix. Anyone want to try it?
(”I’m not going to try it. YOU try it!”)
Silk worms only eat mulberry leaves.
As far as I’m concerned, that’s all the trees are good for.
Well, certainly, that’s all the leaves are good for.
My mulberry tree gives me shade, mulberries, and regular messes to clean up, but so far no silk.
Like I said....
This valley is full of mulberry trees. They give great shade in the summer, but they also attract birds with nasty habits, so one avoids the sidewalks that are anywhere near the trees.
The other “pest” is Russian olive trees. Both are banned, now, but DANG!!! Those trees live SOOO long!
I’ve got a clear shot of the moon, and something appears to be happening to it.
Cue “Twilight Zone” music.
(Special note to equipment engineers monitoring our Lunar North Pole base, we’re about to experience a power interruption.)
Several of my family members are out looking at the moon. I need to take a shower. Or shake a tower, or something.
Our tower on the moon elevates the solar collector to the point where it is always bathed in sunlight. — except during an eclipse.
That is the reason to locate at the Lunar Pole. With twenty-four hour sunlight, one has sufficient power to operate an extensive base. Other than the equipment which is intended to monitor or act on the lunar surface, everything is underground.
Our hydroponics tunnels have all been excavated, but only half are growing plants. The problem is a lack of sufficient water. We suppliment our present supply with ice found in polar craters, but that is a rather tedious process. One has to be careful not to lose the ice to sublimation.
The rest of it comes from cooking it out of lunar ores. As the water quantity increases, our capacity to welcome human visitors back to the moon will increase. Soon we will have the capability to support a full-time crew of from twelve to twenty.
Having people available at close range will speed up construction projects, even those located at, for example, the center of the moon’s near side. There we will have to construct a base to interact with the beanstalk cable that will eventually be sent down from the balance point between the moon and Earth.
Once that cable is tethered, supplies and personnel will be able to ride the elevator up to space. Or down.
That beanstalk is only useful for sending and receiving things from Earth. To launch elsewhere in the system, you would have to use the Earth beanstalk, which whips around pretty good in order to counteract Earth’s gravity.
The lunar beanstalk is just balanced between Earth’s attraction and the lunar attachment, although both have about the same length, nearly sixty thousand miles.
Of course, that’s all in the future. Right now, we’re still trying to get our spider robots to learn how to handle tomatoes.
First from PST...
We survived the eclipse!!!
And occasionally it gets used to shoot paintball's, BB's, and the rare cannon ball across the forest.
We are also using a lot of ceramic, carbon in a isometric-hexoctahedral crystal lattice, and C60 aggregate nanorods in some of our cconstruction efforts. Allotrope's can be a lot of fun and extracting the base elements from carbonaceous chondrite is ridiculously easy when you have the surplus energy production capacity our "shuttles" give us.
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