PLASMABALL: A physical team sport with balls and goals, played in artificial free fall, with the “ball” being essentially ball lightning, controlled by electronic “rackets” wielded by the players. As a school sport it is as safe as any sport of this type–the players are required to wear protective armor. Professional players can elect to wear full shielding–which slows them down–or take the risk of playing with lighter shielding. Deaths are not uncommon if players elect to play with minimal shielding—ball lightning is dangerous!
Archive for June, 2010
FEATHER TREE: A R’il’nian tree with finely-ridged foliage producing interference colors like a bird’s feathers. Common on Central.
CONFEDERATION, JARNIAN CONFEDERATION: A loose confederation of Human-occupied planets. It’s closer to the United Nations than to a country, with much stronger powers than that body with regard to peacekeeping between planets, but can only advise on the internal affairs of any given system. Confederation law applies to R’il’noids and affairs between planetary systems; planetary law applies to individual Humans. Thus, for instance, the Confederation has no power to regulate slavery, even on Central, beyond controlling the maximum in R’il’nian genes allowed in a slave. The Confederation is ruled by the R’il’nai with help from the R’il’noids; planetary systems are ruled by Humans.
YEARDAY: The first day of the year on Central, it is an intercalary day with no month assigned. Occurs on the day when the northward equinox occurs at the Confederation Administration complex. The year length on Central is slightly longer than 364 days, so an extra leap day is inserted as needed to keep Yearday on the equinox.
ENCLAVE: Originally, and still legally, the smaller southern continent that the dwindling R’il’nai kept when they ceded the rest of Central to Humans. Over time, however, the term has come to be applied to the relatively small region on the west coast where the few remaining R’il’nai (eventually just Lai) live and the administration complex of the Confederation is located.
CENTRAL: The planet on which the Inner and Outer Councils of the Confederation meet and most of the R’il’noids live. Originally a R’il’nian planet, called Kentra, but by the time of Homecoming around 90 % of the free population is Human, and its internal politics are decided entirely by the Human population.
I stand beside my car, melting in the heat as I press the button for the doors to unlock. No response from the car, no click of locks, no flash of headlights in acknowledgement of my signal. I just changed the battery–or had it changed, since it was not at all obvious how to get at the battery–yesterday. Is the freshly-purchased battery bad? Well, it’s not a major problem. I hold the keys in my hand, and there is a keyhole in the door.
BLAT!
Startled, I jump back as my car’s anti-theft alarm goes off. The horn honks frantically, the headlights blink, I stand staring at my suddenly rebellious car. It’s my car, the key unlocked the door, why is the blasted thing suddenly acting as if I were trying to steal it? How do I turn the blaring sound off? I try climbing into the overheated interior and starting the car–it won’t start. I walk around it, again thumbing the keyless system. No response. Only continued loud embarrassment.
A cyclist rides up, looking amused. I try to defend myself. “I don’t know why it’s acting this way. All I did is unlock the door of my car!”
Luckily, I don’t look like a car thief. I look like what I am, the stereotypical little old lady in tennis shoes, with a name badge proclaiming that I am on campus legitimately. “Get in and turn the key on and off five times,” he advises, and it works. The blaring stops. When I stammer my thanks, he comments that he heard the car clear across the lot and it happens all the time, then waves and rides off.
Later I drive by the dealership, certain something is wrong with the car. The keyless entry of course works perfectly for the dealer. “Just make sure you press the button hard,” he advises loftily. No, there is no way to turn off the anti-theft system. The car is working correctly; it seems the manufacturers prefer that customers use the keyless feature. What happens if the batteries go dead? “Keep fresh batteries in the remote.” Interesting that they gave me more keys than remotes. And the only new thing I learn is that it only takes three times turning the key on and off in the ignition to silence the alarm in my new car.
If it’s that simple, and that widely known–remember it was a cyclist who first gave me the information–then any competent car thief surely knows how to turn off the alarm. Just use whatever he used to turn the lock in the door to turn the ignition on and off–probably much faster than I did. Bystanders are unlikely to interfere, especially if the nuisances go off all the time. Car thieves don’t necessarily look like car thieves; some may even be little old ladies in tennis shoes. So what is the use of having an anti-theft alarm that goes off if you use the key to open the door?
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The “perversity of inanimate objects?” Not exactly. When was the last time you considered a rock, a stick, even a tree, perverse? Annoying at times, even maddening, but not really perverse. That particular adjective is most often applied to made objects. Objects that are designed by human beings.
I am convinced that the inventors of Superman got Clark Kent’s profession wrong. He wasn’t a reporter; he was a designer–and a rather thoughtless designer, at that. One is expected to fly to the ceiling to change the batteries in a smoke alarm, and use X-ray vision to see how the battery is to be replaced. X-ray vision would also be useful in tracing the wiring of the anti-theft system, and great strength would have allowed me to open a glass jar of pickles in less than the three days it took.
More realistically, product designers act as if everyone were six feet tall, possessed of perfect vision and hearing, superstrength, and had an average body shape. Oh, and live in an average climate. That covers very few of us who actually use their gadgets.
Take climate. I live in Fairbanks, Alaska, and the first new car I bought was the year the law required that the car wouldn’t start unless the driver was wearing a seat belt. If the driver’s weight came on the seat and the seat belt catch did not report it was closed, a loud alarm blared inside the car. No problem, I thought. I always used seat belts. My father drilled holes in the frame of our old Woody to put in seat belts. That is, no problem until a Fairbanks winter. Then I discovered that the sensor that told the car that the seat belt was fastened quit working when the temperature of the car’s interior was below zero °F. I was a lot younger then, and I could still start the car by bracing my shoulders against the seat back and my feet against the floor. But the instant my weight hit the brittle plastic of the seats, the alarm started blaring. The cacophony continued until the car interior warmed to above zero, and when it was forty below outside–common that winter–it never got that warm inside the car. Since it was illegal for the dealer to disconnect the thing, and I didn’t know how, it blared continuously every time I drove anywhere. If a siren or the horn of another car had sounded, I’d never have heard it–what was intended as a safety device was anything but. I can blame Congress for that one, but it was the design of the implementation that was faulty.
(Congress is also responsible for my washing machine. To save energy, they have made a hot-water wash with a warm rinse nearly impossible, forgetting that powdered “cold-water” detergents are not designed to work with cold water half a degree above freezing.)
Good design includes the idea that it should be possible to use an object for its intended purpose.
PATTERN CHESS: An intellectual sport in which the players compete to move colored tiles into a designated pattern using mental powers alone. The simplest games involve a 2 x 2 grid of four tiles, but competition play normally utilizes an 8 x 8 grid with the starting pattern and the goal pattern for each player determined by a computer. There is also a non-esper version in which the players swap one pair of tiles at a time.
HARO TREE: A Riyan woody plant with limbs meeting in triangles and triangular, edible seeds called haro nuts.
Up until now I’ve posted a 500-1000 word essay near the end of each week. I’ve also been writing a glossary definition a day for Homecoming‘s Facebook page. Why not combine them?
From now on I’ll try to post a definition a day as well as the longer, weekly pieces, but for the moment let’s just catch up. Here are the definitions I’ve already posted on Facebook:
BUTTERFLY CAT: A Riyan ambush predator, lion-sized but striped in shades of green. Like most native Riyan wildlife it evolved from a six-limbed ancestor, but the two foremost limbs have evolved into killing claws near the mouth.
KHARFUN SYNDROME: A disease which in Humans is rather like flu, but which in R’il’nians and many R’il’noids is deadly. It destroys the motor nerves, working in from the periphery of the body and leaving paralysis, acute pain and uncontrolled muscle spasms. A vaccine and treatment were developed after the initial epidemic killed many of the R’il’nai and most of the R’il’noids descended from Jarn. Eventual death is due to respiratory paralysis.
MAUNGS: Aliens adapted to higher gravity, higher temperatures and greater air pressure than Humans. They are peaceful but symbiotic in nature, and one of the symbionts is parasitic on Humans in its early, insect-like stage. R’il’noids are not affected, and are able to detect and remove the parasite from Humans if it is caught early enough.
R’IL’N: a planet sterilized by a nearby nova some two hundred thousand years ago. The human-like inhabitants, the R’il’nai, fled in several groups to other stellar systems, but the groups lost touch with each other.
R’IL’NAI: (group noun; singular is R’il’nian.) Alien beings, very human-like in appearance and capable of interbreeding with Humans. Non-aging past maturity but not immortal, with psychic powers and great empathy. Very low reproductive rate, with women ovulating about once a century. Women change from an androgynous appearance as ovulation approaches, but are sexually receptive throughout their cycle.
R’IL’NOIDS: R’il’nian-Human hybrids with more than half of the active genome R’il’nian-derived. Most have esper abilities and are non-aging. Although many are sterile, others are fertile and can produce offspring with a wide variety of active R’il’nian genes.
RIYA: A planet settled by the R’il’nai during their original flight from R’il’n. The native fauna, which does not include birds, has evolved from a six-limbed ancestor
TINERAL: an animal widespread as a pet on Riya prior to the epidemic. They are born kitten-sized, but continue to grow throughout their life spans. Wonderful singers, with an instinctive sense of harmony and voices that resemble our instruments. They are feathered and resemble a winged monkey physically. Tinerals can fly as juveniles but are too heavy to fly as adults.
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