Number 55 - March/April 2009
For Point of Divergence #55
Ah! What a fun couple of months it's been...
Apart from the weather being unable to decide if it wants to be cold and wet, cold and dry, or summery-hot and dry, Dee Dee got in another accident with the Scion - her third...in three years...and not one of them her fault.
This one had a big old '76 Ford van side-swiping her as she went down Rosemead because he apparently couldn't be bothered to check before changing lanes. So into the shop (again) went the Scion, with the driver's side mirror snapped off, the front fender caved in and the driver's door unopenable.
Fortunately, it only took them a week to restore it to like new condition. Unfortunately we had to rent a car for that week and it took most of the time we had it to figure out who'd end up paying for it - our insurance, the van guy's insurance, or us. We so didn't want it to be us. Fortunately (again) it looks like it won't be.
Speaking of cars, it's hard to believe, but someone's actually found a way to make car alarms more annoying than they already were...by making them not sound like car alarms at all! Back in December, I heard what sounded like someone randomly beeping their horn, really impatient for a person to come outside or something...
...except it went on for a very long time.
After ten or twenty seconds I did my usual sarcastic "yeah, yeah, your horn works, how nice" and then it finally stopped...
...and then went on again a few seconds later.
It almost instantly stopped again...then went on again...then stopped a third time and finally the pattern of the whole thing made me realize "hey, this is a car alarm" and the owner was desperately trying to turn off his overly sensitive device.
You know, car alarms are pointless enough - 99% of people hearing them don't care if the car's being stolen, or broken into, or just bumped by a passing pedestrian. They just want it to shut off...now. Heck, one goes off at 3am and my only thought is "steal it faster!"
But then, to make a car alarm that - when it goes off - you don't even recognize it as an alarm...well, that's just pointless squared. Now you're just annoying people who - even if they'd be inclined to report a car alarm - don't even know that's what it is!
Serious Designer Fail here.
On a tastier note, back in December, along with annoying alarms, we discovered the best pizza in the world - or at least, the best we've run across. It's AJ Barile's Chicago Pizza and apparently Chicago is just east of Redlands...
AJ Barile's is run by an ex-Chicagoan - so he knows Chicago pizza. It's also in Yucaipa, of all places. Yucaipa is a small town about sixty-five miles due east of Pasadena, whose only previous impingement on our consciousnesses was that we had to drive through it to get to Oak Glen for apples - or drive through it to get further east on the 10.
View Larger Map
This time, we were trying for Oak Glen.
On the way through it to Oak Glen, we passed a place apparently being remodeled that said it was the Chicago Pizza Company and that it was the "2nd Place finisher (regional) at the International Competition and Pizza Expo." Well, that sounded good - or at least, interesting - and we started talking about pizza and saying "we should go there when it opens to try it."
And then a bit further down Yucaipa Blvd, we pass what we find is its current location and go "Oh! We could check it out now."
So on the way back from Oak Glen...we did.
The crust is perfect. Dee Dee is a fan of thin crust pizzas - me, not so much. But both of us absolutely loved the flavor, the crispness and the flush of garlic and olive-oil infused through it.
The sauce...just as good...as are the toppings...as is the pure buffalo mozzarella. How good? We started fighting over who got the bigger remaining pieces.
And AJ himself is fun to talk with.
We've been back several times now - it's spoiled us for any pizza closer to home - and the fact that we're willing to go on a nearly three-hour round trip to eat pizza should tell you something about the quality.
Oh! And they've got authentic Chicago dogs too - astroturf-green relish and all.
I'm not saying you should all rush out and try it - after all, most of you are just a bit farther than sixty-five miles away - but should you be within that radius...
Enough about pizza - On with the Show!
Apart from the weather being unable to decide if it wants to be cold and wet, cold and dry, or summery-hot and dry, Dee Dee got in another accident with the Scion - her third...in three years...and not one of them her fault.
This one had a big old '76 Ford van side-swiping her as she went down Rosemead because he apparently couldn't be bothered to check before changing lanes. So into the shop (again) went the Scion, with the driver's side mirror snapped off, the front fender caved in and the driver's door unopenable.
Fortunately, it only took them a week to restore it to like new condition. Unfortunately we had to rent a car for that week and it took most of the time we had it to figure out who'd end up paying for it - our insurance, the van guy's insurance, or us. We so didn't want it to be us. Fortunately (again) it looks like it won't be.
Speaking of cars, it's hard to believe, but someone's actually found a way to make car alarms more annoying than they already were...by making them not sound like car alarms at all! Back in December, I heard what sounded like someone randomly beeping their horn, really impatient for a person to come outside or something...
...except it went on for a very long time.
After ten or twenty seconds I did my usual sarcastic "yeah, yeah, your horn works, how nice" and then it finally stopped...
...and then went on again a few seconds later.
It almost instantly stopped again...then went on again...then stopped a third time and finally the pattern of the whole thing made me realize "hey, this is a car alarm" and the owner was desperately trying to turn off his overly sensitive device.
You know, car alarms are pointless enough - 99% of people hearing them don't care if the car's being stolen, or broken into, or just bumped by a passing pedestrian. They just want it to shut off...now. Heck, one goes off at 3am and my only thought is "steal it faster!"But then, to make a car alarm that - when it goes off - you don't even recognize it as an alarm...well, that's just pointless squared. Now you're just annoying people who - even if they'd be inclined to report a car alarm - don't even know that's what it is!
Serious Designer Fail here.
On a tastier note, back in December, along with annoying alarms, we discovered the best pizza in the world - or at least, the best we've run across. It's AJ Barile's Chicago Pizza and apparently Chicago is just east of Redlands...
AJ Barile's is run by an ex-Chicagoan - so he knows Chicago pizza. It's also in Yucaipa, of all places. Yucaipa is a small town about sixty-five miles due east of Pasadena, whose only previous impingement on our consciousnesses was that we had to drive through it to get to Oak Glen for apples - or drive through it to get further east on the 10.
View Larger Map
This time, we were trying for Oak Glen.
On the way through it to Oak Glen, we passed a place apparently being remodeled that said it was the Chicago Pizza Company and that it was the "2nd Place finisher (regional) at the International Competition and Pizza Expo." Well, that sounded good - or at least, interesting - and we started talking about pizza and saying "we should go there when it opens to try it."
And then a bit further down Yucaipa Blvd, we pass what we find is its current location and go "Oh! We could check it out now."
So on the way back from Oak Glen...we did.
The crust is perfect. Dee Dee is a fan of thin crust pizzas - me, not so much. But both of us absolutely loved the flavor, the crispness and the flush of garlic and olive-oil infused through it.
The sauce...just as good...as are the toppings...as is the pure buffalo mozzarella. How good? We started fighting over who got the bigger remaining pieces.
And AJ himself is fun to talk with.
We've been back several times now - it's spoiled us for any pizza closer to home - and the fact that we're willing to go on a nearly three-hour round trip to eat pizza should tell you something about the quality.
Oh! And they've got authentic Chicago dogs too - astroturf-green relish and all.
I'm not saying you should all rush out and try it - after all, most of you are just a bit farther than sixty-five miles away - but should you be within that radius...
Enough about pizza - On with the Show!
|
Divergent Opinions - Comments on P.O.D. 54
|
Cover
Kurt Sidaway
re: Vista and Word:
"...as I try to find how to actually do things that were done virtually subconsciously on the old pooter." Always a problem - and amplified by Microsoft's need to fiddle with things that don't need fiddling with.
You should be able to set a lot of the Vista "features" to "Classic Mode," which will be more XP like. As far as word processors, may I suggest a download of Open Office? Its toolbar is more like older versions of Word - and it's a better program too, as far as I'm concerned.
And being free, if you end up disagreeing with me on that, well, all you've lost is some download time...
You should be able to set a lot of the Vista "features" to "Classic Mode," which will be more XP like. As far as word processors, may I suggest a download of Open Office? Its toolbar is more like older versions of Word - and it's a better program too, as far as I'm concerned.
And being free, if you end up disagreeing with me on that, well, all you've lost is some download time...
ct: Me: ct: You:
"Germany would have to seriously think about what it wanted...since Tirpitz [they] had dreamed of a 'blue water school' navy." I can see them trying to go both ways - building the "armored box" versions as "blockade smashers" designed to get the "real" ships past the British and out into the Atlantic. Mind you, I don't think they could afford to do both, but little things like reality never seemed to get in the way of the Germans with their other naval plans, so...
ct: David Freitag: re: Mexico retains California:
"Perhaps they even resurrect a version of the late Roman practice of limitanei - land grants for military garrison service." I now have them doing just that in my TrolleyWorld timeline - based on an idea that was floating about Mexico City at the time. Of course, I added the following:
"Also, by giving them land of their very own, México City hoped this would give them a very real stake in defending the area.
As the Romans could have told them, this sort of thing actually worked. However, as they also could have told them, these new land owners could develop their own ideas about just who and what they needed defending from..."
I'm tempted to say that increasing the population in California just increases the chances it'll try and go its own way.
I think if Mexico wants to hold onto California, it's probably absolutely necessary that they hold onto New Mexico and - at the least - be able to hold Texas at the Nueces River. Or, preferably, keep it from breaking away at all.
Once the U.S. has Texas and New Mexico, the logistics of them getting men and supplies to California are just way easier than they are for Mexico, even though Mexico is technically "closer." And the desire of the U.S. to, well, "finish the job" and head for the Pacific Coast is probably unquenchable.
"Also, by giving them land of their very own, México City hoped this would give them a very real stake in defending the area.
As the Romans could have told them, this sort of thing actually worked. However, as they also could have told them, these new land owners could develop their own ideas about just who and what they needed defending from..."
I'm tempted to say that increasing the population in California just increases the chances it'll try and go its own way.
I think if Mexico wants to hold onto California, it's probably absolutely necessary that they hold onto New Mexico and - at the least - be able to hold Texas at the Nueces River. Or, preferably, keep it from breaking away at all.
Once the U.S. has Texas and New Mexico, the logistics of them getting men and supplies to California are just way easier than they are for Mexico, even though Mexico is technically "closer." And the desire of the U.S. to, well, "finish the job" and head for the Pacific Coast is probably unquenchable.
ct: Dale Cozort re: Nano-write:
"'one in one of the remote islands north of Great Britain' I'm sure the inhabitants of the Orkneys...would be flattered by such a description - NOT!" I'm confused. You seem to be equating "remote" with "uninhabited" here - or are you saying the Orkneys aren't remote?
re: "More Japans" scenario:
Interesting take on a possible series of Sahel states that can resist European takeover, at least for a while.
I'm not sure how stable the whole affair would be - but then, my knowledge of African history fits comfortably1 in a very small shoebox, right there, under my bed, so I'm probably not the best judge of that here. Just going by what's happened[ing] on OTL, a series of civil wars/breakups caused by rising nationalism/tribalism in the second half of the 20th seems likely - assuming the Confederation and its members survives that long in the first place.
Because one thing that does strike me is that if these states/confederation gets involved in WWI, given who they've been fighting (or at least, allying) against all these years, it will undoubtedly be on the side of the Central Powers.
Which means that unless you've totally butterflied the end results of WWI (or even the existence of the war itself, both of which could happen here), they're going to end up on the losing side...something that might very well lead to some Allied led breakups in the post-war period to the state(s) in the area. Probably with a lot of the territory ending up "mandates" of some form or another.
And if the Central Powers win...do some of the local British/French colonies end up as spoils of war themselves for the Sahel Confederation?
I'm not sure how stable the whole affair would be - but then, my knowledge of African history fits comfortably1 in a very small shoebox, right there, under my bed, so I'm probably not the best judge of that here. Just going by what's happened[ing] on OTL, a series of civil wars/breakups caused by rising nationalism/tribalism in the second half of the 20th seems likely - assuming the Confederation and its members survives that long in the first place.
Because one thing that does strike me is that if these states/confederation gets involved in WWI, given who they've been fighting (or at least, allying) against all these years, it will undoubtedly be on the side of the Central Powers.
Which means that unless you've totally butterflied the end results of WWI (or even the existence of the war itself, both of which could happen here), they're going to end up on the losing side...something that might very well lead to some Allied led breakups in the post-war period to the state(s) in the area. Probably with a lot of the territory ending up "mandates" of some form or another.
And if the Central Powers win...do some of the local British/French colonies end up as spoils of war themselves for the Sahel Confederation?
Me
A bunch of little spelling/word errors all fixed in the web version...I think.
re: Lowe's pamphlet:
After a bit of work (and thanks to a nice little freeware OCR program called, well, "FreeOCR," I converted the pamphlet to a nice webpage for my site.
Dale Cozort
re: "All Timelines Lead to Rome":
Very nice! But, yeah, you can see the lack of your usual polish. Here's a few things I saw:
"The lookouts in the watchtowers sounded the alarm minutes later." Minutes? That's...a lot of time between frantic dogs and an alarm!
"Popping sounds like huge kernels of popcorn popping..." Bit redundant. How about a simple "Sounds like huge kernels of popcorn popping..."
You list twenty-one portals, with the "close to Europe" one being in Iceland...but then mention the French have a (admittedly) small one and that there's one in Finland (potentially). It needs to be a bit clearer.
I'm kinda surprised no one suggested going through an American (or wherever) portal and then just traveling to Rome, even if only to have it shot down. I mean, it's true that this is exactly what the "bad guys" are doing, but the BTL has to have some reason why they'd discount that idea.
New Bristol changes to New Portland then back to New Bristol in the space of two sentences.
"Virtual Presence Screen" is quite a mouthful, and it seems unlikely the characters would think of it in its full, proper name. Probably something more like "the virtual" or even just "the screen."
I don't know how you'd do it, but it seems to me there should be a bit more story going by before "the thing in the mirror" is identified (to the reader) as a "pixie."
I noticed more flaws at the beginning than the end, but that's probably just because I was getting too into the story to notice the grammatical niceties by that point...;)
"The lookouts in the watchtowers sounded the alarm minutes later." Minutes? That's...a lot of time between frantic dogs and an alarm!
"Popping sounds like huge kernels of popcorn popping..." Bit redundant. How about a simple "Sounds like huge kernels of popcorn popping..."
You list twenty-one portals, with the "close to Europe" one being in Iceland...but then mention the French have a (admittedly) small one and that there's one in Finland (potentially). It needs to be a bit clearer.
I'm kinda surprised no one suggested going through an American (or wherever) portal and then just traveling to Rome, even if only to have it shot down. I mean, it's true that this is exactly what the "bad guys" are doing, but the BTL has to have some reason why they'd discount that idea.
New Bristol changes to New Portland then back to New Bristol in the space of two sentences.
"Virtual Presence Screen" is quite a mouthful, and it seems unlikely the characters would think of it in its full, proper name. Probably something more like "the virtual" or even just "the screen."
I don't know how you'd do it, but it seems to me there should be a bit more story going by before "the thing in the mirror" is identified (to the reader) as a "pixie."
I noticed more flaws at the beginning than the end, but that's probably just because I was getting too into the story to notice the grammatical niceties by that point...;)
re: Filters:
Well thought out set of articles here.
The problem with Amazon's "data mining" is that I'm not entirely sure that the descriptions of the items have information to do it correctly. It's suggested books are usually interesting, but if you buy one book "outside" your usual tastes (even as a gift) it seems to skew things...at least, to my mind.
It's also not too bright sometimes. Example, it often suggests - because I once bought a replacement blade for my electric razor - a whole variety of accessories, most of which don't even go with the model I have - including other blades! It's also not bright enough to realize that if I bought volume 1-3 of a series, I probably don't need to buy the collected edition of volume 1-3 as well...
It's possible that eventually we'll get some personalized filtering software that, basically, learns what you like enough that if it reads it, it can tell. Mind you, it would have to be very well designed to keep "what you like" (in it's "mind") from narrowing down to one thin line of material.
May I suggest that, in the emerging world of e-books, libraries might end up being one of your filters? Perhaps with a mix of library people having their suggestions and filtering off of what gets checked out a lot.
I don't think I've ever bought a book based on the publisher either.
The problem with Amazon's "data mining" is that I'm not entirely sure that the descriptions of the items have information to do it correctly. It's suggested books are usually interesting, but if you buy one book "outside" your usual tastes (even as a gift) it seems to skew things...at least, to my mind.
It's also not too bright sometimes. Example, it often suggests - because I once bought a replacement blade for my electric razor - a whole variety of accessories, most of which don't even go with the model I have - including other blades! It's also not bright enough to realize that if I bought volume 1-3 of a series, I probably don't need to buy the collected edition of volume 1-3 as well...
It's possible that eventually we'll get some personalized filtering software that, basically, learns what you like enough that if it reads it, it can tell. Mind you, it would have to be very well designed to keep "what you like" (in it's "mind") from narrowing down to one thin line of material.
May I suggest that, in the emerging world of e-books, libraries might end up being one of your filters? Perhaps with a mix of library people having their suggestions and filtering off of what gets checked out a lot.
I don't think I've ever bought a book based on the publisher either.
re: A Path to Electric Cars?:
I'm not sure NEV's will work out as a "path" to more standard electric cars. At least one good reason is that they tend to be very expensive for what they do. 10k will buy you, essentially, an upgraded golf cart that I'd be very hesitant to take out on most big streets (which makes it kinda hard to use for shopping, as most shopping is on big streets) or for the same amount I could get a decent used car that I could use for pretty much anything and probably still have money left over for gas.Another "chicken & egg" problem is one of repair. Most places, you've got more shops that will do auto repair than you could shake a very large stick at. But make it electric auto repair...heck, my garage doesn't even like to work on the electrical system of gas cars!
It's not quite as bad as a friend of ours who has a biodiesel Hummer - which he can either get repaired in one place in the City of Orange, California or one place somewhere in New Jersey - but it's bad enough.
Ironically, electric motorscooters might be a better path to electric vehicles. They're cheaper, for one thing, being about the same price as comparable gas ones. And those gas powered ones mostly have the same limitations of speed and range and so forth that the electrics do.Since the buyer gets those limits with gas or electric...and the price is roughly the same...it's a fairly easy choice to use the electric.
What with being for short range anyway, most people won't have problems with their only "recharging station" being back at home, but stores and such that put in their own might see an increase in people coming to their place. And handling the replacement/disposal of batteries for something that uses essentially a big car battery is a lot easier than something that uses a thousand pounds of them. This would help bootstrap in both a recharging and battery replacement infrastructure.
And as new battery types come down the pike, they'd be a lot cheaper to try out in a scooter than in half-ton lots. I can just see a promising battery company killed because an unexpected flaw makes they die way too fast - and they have to recall thousands of multi-thousand-dollar units. "Beta testing" your new battery as something that costs less than a hundred for scooters would be a real good idea, changing the results of that unexpected flaw from "bankruptcy proceedings" to "moderately bad year" in one go.
re: Later discovery of Saudi Oil:
Would this have an effect on the North African portion of WWII - or would Germany's desire to close the Suez still more or less require them to take the same (failed) path towards Egypt?
re: Earlier discovery of Saudi Oil:
I'm not sure that this would have much effect on British and U.S. economies. The U.S. still is going to be primarily feeding the local North American market and BP is almost certainly still going to end up being the spigot for Arabian oil - and still going to reap the profits. And this means they can still shut off the tap come Italian embargo time.
re: President Willie P. Mangum:
Now this has a lot of possibilities.
ct: Anthony Docimo:
At some point, the specter of an all-online (or at least, all digital) version of POD is going to have to raise it's head again. It's simply the only way that apa's in general and POD in specific are going to maintain large enough member bases to actually survive. A lot of people who, when POD started, would have been interested in joining are these days pretty much getting their AH fix at sites like AlternateHistory.com.
That said, there's nothing out there currently that really matches the apa "experience" closely enough so that it could be a match for the paper version. Boards are nice...but they tend to lead towards snap answers/responses to postings and other comments.
That's fine - but it pretty much eliminates (or at least near-buries) any of the sort of longer, more reasoned responses you're likely to see in an apa where you actually have a couple of months to respond. And not only buries, but brings them on the scene so "late" in the process that people complain "why are you commenting on that old thread?" rather than actually read the first reasoned comment that thread got.
Also, the treaded comment system is nice for following what's going on - but ironically you tend to lose track (well, I do) sometimes of just who is saying what - especially when people quote three hundred lines of multiple back and forth replies to add "me too" at the bottom.
Another problem is - at least to my mind - the sameness of the formatting. One person's comments and posts look pretty much like another's and even with the fanciest boards, that "look" is pretty dull and monotonous. Any sort of visual creativity in your zine pretty much goes out the window - which given apas were originally created so you could show your creativity in printing is particularly ironic...
So, ideally, what we need is a web site "POD" where each member can format their own look to their zine. Each disty is a group of linked zine-webpages, rather than a continuing comment thread and it would come out on a regular schedule - like the print version - rather than continuously.
Comments to others would have links back to those comments in that other person's zine, but it wouldn't look like a threaded list of comments. It would basically be just an easier way of thumbing through a back issue for the original statements.
Basically, what I'm describing would be as if each of the current zines in POD was scanned and placed on the web, all linked under a single "table of contents" and "cover" for that disty, with additional links going from each zines comments to the spot in the previous zine from which they came.
I don't even know how to begin to do something like this. No, that's not correct, I could do it...
...slowly...
...really slowly...
...by hand...
...every issue...
...while continually going back and forth to all the members, making sure I'm maintaining how they wanted things to look/be...
...and don't even get me started about the problems of fonts!
And all that's enough work to make all the problems of the current collation look like a half-hour's watching Cartoon Network...just to get a web version of POD that looks like the paper one.
And, to be honest, just because that's the kind of online POD I want to see, doesn't mean it's the kind the rest of you want, nor more importantly, the kind that will bring in new members!
That said, there's nothing out there currently that really matches the apa "experience" closely enough so that it could be a match for the paper version. Boards are nice...but they tend to lead towards snap answers/responses to postings and other comments.
That's fine - but it pretty much eliminates (or at least near-buries) any of the sort of longer, more reasoned responses you're likely to see in an apa where you actually have a couple of months to respond. And not only buries, but brings them on the scene so "late" in the process that people complain "why are you commenting on that old thread?" rather than actually read the first reasoned comment that thread got.
Also, the treaded comment system is nice for following what's going on - but ironically you tend to lose track (well, I do) sometimes of just who is saying what - especially when people quote three hundred lines of multiple back and forth replies to add "me too" at the bottom.
Another problem is - at least to my mind - the sameness of the formatting. One person's comments and posts look pretty much like another's and even with the fanciest boards, that "look" is pretty dull and monotonous. Any sort of visual creativity in your zine pretty much goes out the window - which given apas were originally created so you could show your creativity in printing is particularly ironic...
So, ideally, what we need is a web site "POD" where each member can format their own look to their zine. Each disty is a group of linked zine-webpages, rather than a continuing comment thread and it would come out on a regular schedule - like the print version - rather than continuously.
Comments to others would have links back to those comments in that other person's zine, but it wouldn't look like a threaded list of comments. It would basically be just an easier way of thumbing through a back issue for the original statements.
Basically, what I'm describing would be as if each of the current zines in POD was scanned and placed on the web, all linked under a single "table of contents" and "cover" for that disty, with additional links going from each zines comments to the spot in the previous zine from which they came.
I don't even know how to begin to do something like this. No, that's not correct, I could do it...
...slowly...
...really slowly...
...by hand...
...every issue...
...while continually going back and forth to all the members, making sure I'm maintaining how they wanted things to look/be...
...and don't even get me started about the problems of fonts!
And all that's enough work to make all the problems of the current collation look like a half-hour's watching Cartoon Network...just to get a web version of POD that looks like the paper one.
And, to be honest, just because that's the kind of online POD I want to see, doesn't mean it's the kind the rest of you want, nor more importantly, the kind that will bring in new members!
ct: David Freitag:
Another problem with Mexico "importing" more Californian settlers from Europe is that, given how Atlantic shipping went back then, most of them are going to end up if not stopping first in the U.S., at least sailing by it on the way to Vera Cruz or Tampico or wherever, followed by an overland plus probably another sea voyage to California.
Well, shoot, that means without some pretty hefty bonuses by the Mexican government, travel to the U.S. (and to all it's nice "free" territories) is cheaper and a lot easier. Heck, even if you then want to continue on to California, the overland route from the U.S. is easier than any possibly route from Mexico.
Oh, if gold is discovered in California, details like that will sorta get ignored by folk heading there - but Mexico is likely to have other troubles if the massive influx of a gold rush happens to its California.
The Chumash could do a lot of coastal trading just in soapstone, even without having to touch the Mexican coast. The stuff got traded as far inland as Colorado (I believe), so a coastal trade route up to "Canada" and "Alaska" would certainly be possible, given the ships (Haida carvers used their local soapstone, so why not?).
I'm not sure Chevron actually would be intentionally suppressing NIMH tech for use in vehicles. I mean, from their standpoint, having (literally) the patent on the technology needed to run (electric) cars is just as good for them as being a supplier for the (current) car fuel source - i.e. a license to print money.
Bonus! The cars will still need oil for lubrication and plastic too!
Okay, now you guys are going to get me worried about my computer!.
You might want to look into downloading Ultimate Boot CD for the next time you have problems like this (preferably on a computer you're sure of!). Nothing like bypassing your entire hard drive to solve a lot of problems.
Well, shoot, that means without some pretty hefty bonuses by the Mexican government, travel to the U.S. (and to all it's nice "free" territories) is cheaper and a lot easier. Heck, even if you then want to continue on to California, the overland route from the U.S. is easier than any possibly route from Mexico.
Oh, if gold is discovered in California, details like that will sorta get ignored by folk heading there - but Mexico is likely to have other troubles if the massive influx of a gold rush happens to its California.
The Chumash could do a lot of coastal trading just in soapstone, even without having to touch the Mexican coast. The stuff got traded as far inland as Colorado (I believe), so a coastal trade route up to "Canada" and "Alaska" would certainly be possible, given the ships (Haida carvers used their local soapstone, so why not?).
I'm not sure Chevron actually would be intentionally suppressing NIMH tech for use in vehicles. I mean, from their standpoint, having (literally) the patent on the technology needed to run (electric) cars is just as good for them as being a supplier for the (current) car fuel source - i.e. a license to print money.
Bonus! The cars will still need oil for lubrication and plastic too!
Okay, now you guys are going to get me worried about my computer!.
You might want to look into downloading Ultimate Boot CD for the next time you have problems like this (preferably on a computer you're sure of!). Nothing like bypassing your entire hard drive to solve a lot of problems.
ct: Me:
"Climate change is probably less unpopular in the Midwest than it is in California, especially during winters like this." Of course, global warming is likely to make for more storms and more snow in the Midwest (followed by more floods in the Spring) even if winter is, on the average, "warmer." And still, it would take a heck of a lot of "warmer" just to get Midwest winters up from "too damn cold" - let alone up to "okay, it's not too cold..."
...and it still would be "freezing" by Dee Dee standards...;)
The cover was fine - I honestly didn't expect all the details to show up (when you have to go to 200 percent while viewing the original just to see them clearly, hoping for them to show in the print off is kinda futile...). Heck, that's why my web page has full-sized images of just the islands.
...and it still would be "freezing" by Dee Dee standards...;)
The cover was fine - I honestly didn't expect all the details to show up (when you have to go to 200 percent while viewing the original just to see them clearly, hoping for them to show in the print off is kinda futile...). Heck, that's why my web page has full-sized images of just the islands.
Both California in general and Los Angeles in specific are doing/thinking of doing some very big solar projects. LA Department of Water and Power wants to build 400 MW by 2014, while the state is offering a lot of rebates for the "Million Solar Roofs" project. And even the private companies are doing things like SCE's 1,300 MW solar thermal project (they're still pissed at being burned by the natural gas suppliers and out of state power plants back a few years ago).
Mind you, we've now got major budgetary problems in this state (mostly due to politics more than the recession - our budgets always need a 2/3 majority to pass. With a legislature that's about half Democrat and half Republican...well, you can see the problem), but OTOH, we're likely to shove a lot of the stimulus funds at it too, so who knows what'll happen.
Think there's any way to keep monkeys out of South America so we can have your marsupial "monkeys?" I mean, they're currently conjectured to have rafted across the Atlantic "when it wasn't as wide as present" - but "not as wide as the current Atlantic" and "narrow enough to make it" could well end up being two different numbers on an ATL...
Mind you, we've now got major budgetary problems in this state (mostly due to politics more than the recession - our budgets always need a 2/3 majority to pass. With a legislature that's about half Democrat and half Republican...well, you can see the problem), but OTOH, we're likely to shove a lot of the stimulus funds at it too, so who knows what'll happen.
Think there's any way to keep monkeys out of South America so we can have your marsupial "monkeys?" I mean, they're currently conjectured to have rafted across the Atlantic "when it wasn't as wide as present" - but "not as wide as the current Atlantic" and "narrow enough to make it" could well end up being two different numbers on an ATL...
Robert Gill
re: Karl Marx's "Frankenstein?":
Karl Marx as a fantasy writer...now that might make for an interesting POD. I mean, the "Hitler becomes a writer/artist/actor" idea's been done to death. But this one has the possibility of not only changing a lot of political history (to say nothing of a couple of wars), but to quite possibly shove fantasy literature into a whole new direction.
And even if it doesn't change the literature itself, does it change how it's viewed? On OTL, people like to state that Lord of the Rings is a metaphor/ retelling of WWII (never mind that it isn't, they like to state that). On this ATL, is an equally popular (and probably equally wrong) metaphor-meme that it represents a fight between the proletarian Hobbits and the bourgeoisie Sauron?
And even if it doesn't change the literature itself, does it change how it's viewed? On OTL, people like to state that Lord of the Rings is a metaphor/ retelling of WWII (never mind that it isn't, they like to state that). On this ATL, is an equally popular (and probably equally wrong) metaphor-meme that it represents a fight between the proletarian Hobbits and the bourgeoisie Sauron?
re: Neanderthal Extinction:
I'm going to go out on a limb of my own here and state that their extinction was not due to any one factor - like Cro-Magnon dogs or a war with the Cro-Magnons or whatever's popular this season in anthropology. I mean, it's an interesting idea, I just don't think it's the idea, if you know what I mean.
re: "I Killed Adolf Hitler":
Not the only comic to tackle this issue...see the storyline starting here -
Wesley Kawato
ct: Me:
"The whole story about Stalin being surprised by the invasion was Soviet propaganda to make sure Stalin wouldn't get blamed for the invasion."
I'm not sure what this is in response to. You may have meant it for someone else - as I haven't mentioned Korea any time in the last four zines.
I'm not sure what this is in response to. You may have meant it for someone else - as I haven't mentioned Korea any time in the last four zines.
ct: Freitag:
Remember, you're going to need a source of hydrogen along with the CO2 to convert it back into "gasoline."
Also, the 2nd Law won't limit how much "gasoline" you get back out of the exhaust gases as such...it'll just ensure that the energy of that "gasoline" will be less (probably, a lot less) than the energy it took to make it.
Or, IOW, you actually lose energy (and make things worse) converting the stuff back.
Also, the 2nd Law won't limit how much "gasoline" you get back out of the exhaust gases as such...it'll just ensure that the energy of that "gasoline" will be less (probably, a lot less) than the energy it took to make it.
Or, IOW, you actually lose energy (and make things worse) converting the stuff back.
re: "Intruder Day":
The dialog is kinda stilted and, to be honest, no one shows much emotion, which is odd, given that they're mysteriously popping into transdimensional stores, or seeing people shot dead at their feet, or having lasers (real or not) pointed at them...
...you feel the next thing they're going to do after the story abruptly ends is calmly discuss where to go for lunch.
Other minor problems:
Sally notes the Wargaming Room is empty...right after she notes no one is wargaming. Kinda redundant.
"'What's a time line?' 'That tells me you don't believe in time travel'" No, that tells you he probably hasn't heard of time travel, or calls time lines something else, or believes in time travel but only believes in a single time line, or...
It might tell you he doesn't believe in time travel...but that's quite a leap over a bunch of other ignored possibilities.
Okay, the authorities who control time travel are so advanced they, well, they have time travel...yet licenses are still little bits of paper that can be stuck under cash register drawers? That's kinda like seeing someone at Microsoft doing programming with a wooden stick and a clay tablet...though to be honest, that would explain Vista...
...you feel the next thing they're going to do after the story abruptly ends is calmly discuss where to go for lunch.
Other minor problems:
Sally notes the Wargaming Room is empty...right after she notes no one is wargaming. Kinda redundant.
"'What's a time line?' 'That tells me you don't believe in time travel'" No, that tells you he probably hasn't heard of time travel, or calls time lines something else, or believes in time travel but only believes in a single time line, or...
It might tell you he doesn't believe in time travel...but that's quite a leap over a bunch of other ignored possibilities.
Okay, the authorities who control time travel are so advanced they, well, they have time travel...yet licenses are still little bits of paper that can be stuck under cash register drawers? That's kinda like seeing someone at Microsoft doing programming with a wooden stick and a clay tablet...though to be honest, that would explain Vista...
There have been a lot of "stories I have no idea what to do with" put through POD over the years and almost everyone here has done so at one time or another. So I guess, this time it's my time.
The following is based mostly on a dream I had a month ago (as I write this), with (almost) all the dream-illogic stripped out and an attempt to impose a more coherent narrative flow than dreams usually manage (since they - or at least, mine - tend to just cut from scene one to scene twenty-four while just implying the action in-between is something "everybody knows"...which since I'm the only "everybody," they usually do). That said, it's still weird. Still, you might enjoy it - and maybe someone could tell me just what the heck is going on, 'cause I'm lost...
So, 95% of the story goes by and - finally - we get to some obvious actual alternate histories. Or at least, alternate realities. And of course it's at this point I utterly run out of story.
I mean, thanks to the dream (and it's "everybody knows" way of handling a lot of the information) I know some things from further into the story...just not very many...
...okay, I know three things:2
One - the "Rose" in the bookshop is not the Rose from the motel room, nor is she from the timeline/reality/whatever that the bookshop's in. She's from a third timeline, one where she and Peter are an "item" rather than Allyson and Peter.
Two - there's apparently a "Rose and Peter" as a couple in the bookshop's reality as well - though where they went I haven't a clue. Maybe they're with Allyson...or the other (second) Rose's other Peter...and wouldn't that be interesting...along with tricky to keep track of.
Three - whatever else it is, the bookshop is not going to be one of those "nexus of all realities" shops. It's just a bookshop on a different timeline. We already have too many "nexus of all realities" shops in POD...and probably too many in fiction in general. For those who care, it looks, mostly, like the Hollywood Blvd "Pickwick Book Shop" in the 1970s, before "B. Dalton" bought them out (and well before it closed), with a touch of "Vromans" in Pasadena, before they redid their store in the early 90s, tossed in......yeah...and this is a pretty useless analogy for everyone here other than me, isn't it?
Anywho, this looks strongly like it could end up a sort of AH soap-opera, assuming that I could write such. For some reason, it also has an air of "hard boiled detective fiction" about it as well - though that could simply be because there's a first person narrator...and a "dame"...
The "POD Workbench" here has newspaper from Dale Cozort's "Spain Joins the Axis" timeline, created with the help of a lot of downloaded images of newspapers, a lot of cut and paste, and some careful textural additions.
Meanwhile, David Freitag's musings on "Can Mexico Retain California?" results in a book from one of those possibilities: A later Mexican/American war (or "American/Mexican" one on this timeline), a forty-three state United States, and California going its own way. Again mostly clipart (including the image of the book that acted as the "template") and the creation of three variants of OTL flags.
Finally Wesley Kawato's thoughts on Disney doing a "Star Wars" movie in the early 60's ends up on a movie poster. A "Star Wars" in an era where spaceships are still pointy things with flames coming out the back, images are still artwork (because you don't want the effects shown as they're too..."iffy" to stand up to long examination), and Annette Funicello is available to play Leia...
And just for fun, a recreation of one of my endless numbers of "To Do" lists is sitting on the bench too - with one of the items being making the cover it's on. And that bit of text boxed in the corner of that note: Yes, I do really write like that. It's a long, complicated story involving model rocketry, timelines I created as a teenager, and a lifelong fascination with different alphabets.