The Planets in Star Wars

George, Idea Polish Level: 2, My Ideas, , ,

My family an I just watched Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and I enjoyed it more than I ever had before by thinking of how amazing the galaxy of Star Wars is. Having just finished reading Orson Scott Card’s book Speaker for the Dead, I have an even greater appreciation of what an interstellar society would be like.

What I thought was most interesting about the film was something its makers probably didn’t intend. When Qui Gon Jinn left the space ship and set foot on Tatooine without any preparation I realized just how much technology it would take to make it safe to do that. Think about it. What is the likelihood that so many planets have the perfect atmosphere and gravity to support not just humans, but aliens from thousands of different stars?

This is a feet of massive scale. Somehow, the sentient species of the galaxy have managed to make every planet compatible with every species in the entire galaxy! This could be accomplished by a combination of a few things that we currently know of.

Massive Terra-formation (the changing of the planet itself) would be required, ranging from increasing or decreasing gravity, changing or even creating an atmosphere, and maybe even moving the entire planet, so that the planet is the “right” temperature. And they would have to do this to almost every single planet they encountered, because face it, not very many planets would be even close to being able to sustain human life.

Now that there are planets that are uniform, every species needs to be uniform. Large changes in the very genetic nature of the aliens would be required. Every species of sentient life form (and some non-sentient life forms) would need to be genetically modified so that it could breathe the same air as every other species, survive the same level of gravity as every other species (so as to not be crushed because of stronger gravity or accidentally destroy everything because of weaker gravity), and endure the starkly different levels of radiation than their home planet would usually have. Biotechnology would be able to help in some cases, but not in every case. Biogenetics and Biotechnology would also be used to make every species more adaptable to different climates, because there is no way that every planet would be the exact same.

In addition to modifying the body, the brain, or whatever passed as a brain for different aliens, would also have to be genetically changed. Vastly different species would surely speak in vastly different ways, and something would need to be done for aliens who don’t “speak” like “normal” aliens do, instead using various forms of communication from body language to physic thought. There would also need to be a huge change in the culture and way of thought for some species. With vastly different cultures would come vastly different ideas, and many cultures would be completely incompatible with a uniform galactic government, among other things, with some cultures whose sole focus would be warfare and other cultures which would have no concept of government.

And even after all that, I haven’t even started to talk about what it would mean to have a planet with an aquatic center, or why everyone knows English, or what a moon sized spaceship would be. Star Wars has suddenly become a lot more interesting to me 🙂

~ George

Change Log of August 12th, 2014

Change Logs, George, Miscellaneous Posts

At the end of every day (or, at least every day that I change something), I’m going to make a post that highlights all of the changes and/or posts that have been made that day. This way I can change previous posts and actually have the changes be found, plus reader will be able get to all the new posts without scrolling down too much. Note: Since this post will be the last thing I post each day, it is less likely to be properly cleaned up, as I will be rather tired at that point

New posts:

  • Universal Solute came from a joke that I read about a universal solvent. If I have more time tomorrow I’ll add it to the post

Major Changes:

  • I’ve update How To Randomly Choose A Winner Using Only A Watch (previously “How to do a Coin Flip with a Watch”) so thoroughly that it might as well be a new post, but nonetheless it’s an update. Also, because of the large increase in polish-ness of the post, it has been upgraded to Idea Polish Level 2, being the first to be leveled up purely because I added more to it
  • I’m trying to work out the my Idea Polish Level system again, so I changed a few Polish levels: Funny Knights Names from 1  to 2, and Story Idea: Benedite from 4 to 3;

Minor Changes:

Of Special Note:

  • none

 

~ George

Change Log of August 10th, 2014

Change Logs, George, Miscellaneous Posts

At the end of every day (or, at least every day that I change something), I’m going to make a post that highlights all of the changes and/or posts that have been made that day. This way I can change previous posts and actually have the changes be found, plus reader will be able get to all the new posts without scrolling down too much. Note: Since this post will be the last thing I post each day, it is less likely to be properly cleaned up, as I will be rather tired at that point

New posts:

  • How to do a Coin Flip with a Watch is a step toward my goal of having something that is equivalent to a coin flip without needing anything at all. Because I always wear a watch and rarely have coins, this life hack has helped me a number of times

Major Changes:

  • none

Minor Changes:

  • Fixed a bunch of titles in the last few change logs, and also categorized and tagged them properly
  • Added Sir Loin’s occupation in the post Funny Knight Names. Feel free to leave your own knight occupation/name suggestions in the comments!

Of Special Note:

  • none

 

~ George

How To Randomly Choose A Winner Using Only A Watch

George, Idea Polish Level: 3, My Ideas, ,

Do you ever need an easy, random way to choose who among you and your friend(s) can go first? Just look at your watch.

How To Replicate A Coin Flip With A Watch

My friend and I often have trouble deciding who goes first. We usually end up doing some sort of coin toss, but (over) half the time we don’t have coins. This is my solution: I’ve only tried this with a digital watch, but I’m sure it could be applied to analog watches too in some way (I’ll update this if I can think of how). Have the other person choose Even or Odd. Then look at your watch’s seconds (or minutes, if necessary). If the number is even then whoever chose even wins, and if the number is odd then whoever chose odd wins. Simple as that.

How To Choose A Winner From A Small Group of People Without Checking Your Watch More Than Twice

The basis of the randomization process is the seconds on your digital watch (or the seconds hand on your analog watch). Give everyone a number, starting with one and working your way up from there. Then check your watch and see how many seconds have passed since the last minute.

  • If there are…
  • 2 people and number of seconds that have passed is below 30, then person #1 wins. Otherwise he loses
  • 3 people and number of seconds that have passed is below 20 then person #1 wins, if the number is equal to or above 40 then person #3 wins, and otherwise person #2 wins
  • 4 people, do the same thing as with three people, only the seconds are split into four areas, 0-14, 15-29, 30-44, and 45-59
  • 5 people, analog watches would have a harder time, but digital watches’ would have the five areas be 0-11, 12-23, 24-35, 36-47, and 48-60
  • 6 people, it should be obvious if you’ve read this far, just divide 60 by 6
  • 7 people, I don’t know yet
  • 8 people, then split the group into two groups of four and check your watch, selecting one person from both groups at once. Then check your watch again to see who of the two of them wins
  • 9 people, split the group into three groups of three and check your watch. Pick the winner from each group and check your watch again using the method for three people
  • 10 or 12 people , instead of giving each person 6 seconds give them each five, that way it would work for an analog watch
  • For greater numbers, try dividing 60 by the number, breaking them into groups, or using my next suggestion which I came up with while writing this one
How To Choose A Winner From A Large Group Using A Watch (Or A Coin)

Have everybody pick 1 or 2 (this would also work with heads or tails). Decide if 1 equals odd or even, and decide that 2 is the other. Check your watch, and say which group stays based on which number they picked. Keep doing this until there is only one person left, and if everybody goes out in one round then have a do-over. If everybody keeps picking the same thing, try having them pick between other numbers, letters, or even colors, and keep switching up what they have to choose from.

~ George

Change Log of August 8th, 2014

Change Logs, George, Miscellaneous Posts

At the end of every day (or, at least every day that I change something), I’m going to make a post that highlights all of the changes and/or posts that have been made that day. This way I can change previous posts and actually have the changes be found, plus reader will be able get to all the new posts without scrolling down too much. Note: Since this post will be the last thing I post each day, it is less likely to be properly cleaned up, as I will be rather tired at that point

New posts:

Major Changes:

  • none

Minor Changes:

  • none

Of Special Note:

  • The feature I tried yesterday didn’t work properly, so I accidentally published the post. I’ll try again next time

 

~ George

Funny Knight Names

George, Idea Polish Level: 2, My Ideas, ,

I once played a game called Adventure Quest Worlds (AQWorlds, for short), and one thing that I thought was funny was that many of the knights in the game had funny titles, like Sir Junn, the doctor.  So I decided to try to make a list of all the commonly recognized words that could combine Sir and a surname (ha ha) to make a word. I also decided to add suggestions of what the knights personality/job would be, next to a bunch of the names:

  • Sir Prize (a prankster)
  • Sir Plus (quartermaster or farmer, maybe a grocer)
  • Sir Ten (idk, a logician?)
  • Sir Vive/Sir Vival (wilderness-guy)
  • Sir Cumstance
  • Sir Gent (a sergeant, of course)
  • Sir Up
  • Sir Kull (maybe this guy is a mathematician. Slight name change from “Sir Cle” to “Sir Kull thanks to suggestions in the comments 🙂 )
  • Sir Vant (butler, perhaps?)
  • Sir Loin (a butcher)
  • Sir Cher (a detective)
  • Sir Pent (traitor)
  • Sir Rogate

Those were all of the names that I could think of without looking anything up, many of which were names from AQWorlds. After making that list I decided to finally look in the wiki for AQWorlds, and found a few more names:

  • Sir Pass
  • Sir Render (a cowardly fellow)
  • Sir Rated
  • Sir Kuss
  • Sir Junn (a doctor)
  • Sir Ver (the name of one of the game’s servers)

I decided that I could find more words than that, so I looked at www.scrabblefinder.com, and I searched for words starting with everything from Syr to Cir, and managed to find a lot more words (although that did take a while):

  • Sir Fur (a surfer)
  • Sir Real (maybe a madman or mystic)
  • Sir Round
  • Sir Mount
  • Sir Face
  • Sir Name
  • Sir Vey (A surveyor, or maybe a critic)
  • Sir Mise (a thinker)
  • Sir Lee (a surly man)
  • Sir Tificate (a game show host?)
  • Sir Tify
  • Sir Ene (a monk)
  • Sir Inity
  • Sir Mon (a preacher)
  • Sir Cumferance, the person who built King Arthur’s Round Table (suggested in the comments)

It was pretty fun to make this list, although I think that a lot of the names would be too weird to use (like Sir Face). Either way, I hope you found this list amusing. Leave suggestions for occupations and/or names in the comments!

~ George

Highlighted Post: You have just found the fabled Genie of the Lamp. Do you know The Ultimate Wish?

Spherical Properties

George, Idea Polish Level: 1, My Ideas,

I was reading the Wikipedia article about the eleven properties of a sphere (I can’t remember why, but I do stuff like that a lot) and I noticed the first property, which I’ll quote:

The points on the sphere are all the same distance from a fixed point….

The article then says:  “[This] is the usual definition of the sphere and determines it uniquely.”

The fixed point described is, of course, the center of the sphere, and the article says that only the sphere has the property described there. What I was wondering was, what if there is a fixed point for every shape from which the distance between it and any point on the shape is the same? I’d imagine this would have to involve curving space and some sort of 4th spatial dimension (not including the ones predicted by string theory). This would have to include everything from planes toruses (doughnut shaped, and yes, I Googled “what shape is a doughnut”. The Wikipedia article has some cool pictures in it :).

~ George

Change Log of August 6th, 2014

Change Logs, George, Miscellaneous Posts

At the end of every day (or, at least every day that I change something), I’m going to make a post that highlights all of the changes and/or posts that have been made that day. This way I can change previous posts and actually have the changes be found, plus reader will be able get to all the new posts without scrolling down too much. Note: Since this post will be the last thing I post each day, it is less likely to be properly cleaned up, as I will be rather tired at that point

New posts:

Major Changes:

  • none

Minor Changes:

  • none

Of Special Note:

  • I’m testing the blogging feature that allows posts to be set to be published in the future, so hopefully there will be a post showing up about noon tomorrow 🙂

 

~ George

Change Log of August 7th, 2014

Change Logs, George, Miscellaneous Posts

At the end of every day (or, at least every day that I change something), I’m going to make a post that highlights all of the changes and/or posts that have been made that day. This way I can change previous posts and actually have the changes be found, plus reader will be able get to all the new posts without scrolling down too much. Note: Since this post will be the last thing I post each day, it is less likely to be properly cleaned up, as I will be rather tired at that point

New posts:

  • Story Idea: Benedite popped into my head I think earlier today. It fascinates me to think of what a world like the one described in the post would be like
  • Story Idea: Useless Magic also seems like an interesting world, although it doesn’t have much of a plot yet

Major Changes:

  • none

Minor Changes:

  • none

Of Special Note:

  • none

 

~ George