I keep forgetting the daily interest on Jin’s accounts is almost equal to M’s annual salary. There are advantages to living through 56 CM cycles, you figure out which banks will survive and put you money there for compound interest. So a spa day for Jin would be a trifle to be bought with pin money.
Monica sure manages to get a lot of time off from work doesn’t she. A day in the SPA, a day on the isle, a day in the jungle, time in the library, tracking down artifacts. Must be nice to have a boss that let’s you get away with it. Jin’s income is a lot more than Monica makes. Even with the recession. lol.
Given what we’ve seen of Monica’s job, it seems to be a combination of:
1) Her boss is both incompetent and preoccupied (Phix).
2) Her job seems fairly undefined (most of her scenes in-work involve her just wondering around the office often aimlessly).
3) Noone enforces workloads (Katherine’s proclivity to wander and operate from a pitch-black, fairly empty office, and maintenance’s ability to doze at the desk rather than perform any maintenance).
4) Noone tracks that work was actually done (considering the “Tepoz statue” was able to literally walk out the door without any questions asked, even by the two women who witnessed it strolling through the halls (Katherine and Monica)).
In short, Monica’s job is indeed pretty sweet, but like 99% of humanity, she’ll still complain about it. And when we consider she likely has access to the phantom-accounts that Jin (and possibly Bud & Brandi) created, Monica probably has no need to work beyond the masquerade and to give herself a sense of normalcy (considering she’s forced virtually all of her friends, sans Jacqui (are those two even still friends or just friends of a mutual friend?), into the Masquerade).
yes, well the timespan in most soaps and comics is not ’24 hour’ !! I guess all the boring ‘customer service’, ‘doing inventory’, ‘long weekly meeting’ & ‘boring day on the concession stand’ stuff is left out…
Unless you *want* a cartoon with her just ‘watching the clock’ ?? 🙂
In the midwest, “meteorological spring” starts March 1. That’s also when the road-construction cones sprout since the ground has thawed enough that bulldozer blades and power-shovel buckets can dig in rather than skittering off the surface.
The average daily high in Chicago on Feb. 15 is 35 degrees F. It’s still down around 28 in Minneapolis.
Am I the only person who has been wondering what on earth happened to the short hair cut that M got back around in July/August of 2011??
At least Shelly’s sudden transition of short to long is explained by the fact that version of Shelly died.
In the realm of “this had better never stop”. Yep.
Went camping with my sister to an island w/no anything, and planned going to the Philipines for a year. (We never went–it’s the principle of the thing).
Of course. Spa days may be fun, but would you trade them for being able to lay in the Sun, surrounded by light and warmth, safety and quiet? The one is nice, the other almost a necessity. Especially for winter haters…
Aahhh.. real “girl-time” as I remember my Mom and sis having.
Facials
peels
oil-massage
sweating
another shiatsu massage
aroma therapy
When they came back, they always stank like a perfume shop.
Another one of those classic “girl”things will never really understand, especially when they informed me that a “peel”involved scraping off a layer of skin.. eek..
Hm. I’ll have to keep that in mind. What, if anything, could a girl do to convince you she’s not trying to be manipulative? Or is it that it doesn’t matter if she’s trying or not?
Peels that scrape away a layer of skin don’t sound bad. It’s the burning sensation of a chemical peel that sucks (if that still involves scraping, I’ve never noticed for the relief I feel getting that crap off my face). I prefer facials that involve moisturizing and massage and less burnination. 🙂
As for the rest…sign me up! I can’t say I ever really got the whole sauna thing, but if that’s what it takes to get everything else, I’ll do it! 😀
I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find out that the spa where all this planning is taking place at is somewhere…oh say like on the Mediterranean perhaps?
Jungles are way too – ALIVE to be my choice for a getaway. Even teensy things consider you and your stuff to be edible biomass. And ’cause there are so many eaty things around, there are toxins and poisons a’plenty – not meant for you, necessarily, but somehow always underhand or underfoot.
And don’t get me started on the eaty things WITH poisons…
Someone did a study once – vertebrates (mammals, etc.) get smaller toward the equator and larger toward the poles (bears, etc.) and invertebrates (crawly stuff) the opposite – they get bigger near the equator. IN THE JUNGLES. Here’s one for your nightmares tonight: eighteen inch long centipedes…..
I – think I need a pill – and a lie down….
True. Before, it’d have been a non-issue, considering how everyone sans Monica’s baggage (Katherine + Amanda) were fairly indestructible (4 golems, a sphinx, an undead, and I swear Monica’s impossible to injure beyond a small bruise these days).
But nowadays, we’re not sure just how fragile Jin is. Bud-related projectiles are not a good gauge (unless she hit Monica).
The mammals get smaller. The reptiles do not!
Add to the invertebrate list cockroaches the size of mice and grasshoppers the size of small birds.
The Panama Canal Zone was such a wonderful place to camp…with its 8 month long rainy season. ;/
Those are actually things I miss after moving north, having all that wildlife. Sure, we have squirrels the size of housecats up here, but squirrels aren’t all that interesting.
@NOTDilbert – Okay…so I couldn’t even make it through your post without singing a little jungle-dangers-themed Little Mermaid song thanks to your “toxins and poisons a’plenty” comment…
I’ve got toxins and poisons a’plenty.
I’ve got boggles and monsters galore.
Vicious insects? I’ve got twenty.
Who cares? No big deal. I want more!
The Oxygen levels were much higher back in those days, allowing for much, much larger insects. As they have no lungs, they breathe through a pore network with air channels throughout the body, even into the legs and feet. The upper size limit is based primarily on the oxygen uptake at the end of the tube.
My faves are the FOUR FOOT LONG brontoscorpions. Sea-going; actually before anything came on land (except plants). Oxygen levels were up around 36 percent, even for ages after, lightning storms in the forests were kinda explosive.
And yet another day without O.T.B !! The lack of info is enough to make me want to scream . In the meantime – I’ll fill in my time by studying the local areas main attractions ..
OTB’s been placed back in the waiting room alongside Kevin and Allan, until one of the girls need to summon their boy-toy (what else do you think they’re doing with the empty Mica room?).
It may be a long wait, Shelly can’t poit him like Monica & Jin.
I always figured that the best way to hunt down a new sandbar would be a team of two. One person who can teleport, like maybe Monica, and one person who can fly. I sphinx would be a good choice for that. Hint.
Speaking of which, if I gained the ability to fly, what would be my radar ceiling? And how high should I be flying if I don’t wish to be visible to the average person on the ground?
You know. To avoid getting noticed.
“This just in! Sightings of an unknown woman seen flying over the IDS tower. Officials say it’s just a sexy weather balloon.”
no need to be bulletproof if they are poiting around… though i wonder about how Jin plans on dealing with gravity? as soon as she poit’s in at height, she’ll start falling, obviously she’ll poit out before she hits ground, but does the inertia in the downward direction she’s picked up before she does stay with her, or can she control that as well? if she CAN’T control it, then for every poit or two, up, then they’ll have to splash down in a pool or over a really fluffy mattress then poit again to a location a bit further away from the first poit. i tend to think that they CAN control it because then the scene with Tina, Nudge and Shelly would have to be retconned very differently because of how they started out separated and fell long enough to grab each other and hold tight, then got poited back to the coffee shop that way without getting splatted on the floor, since that is a serious amount of energy to dissipate without any visible effect on any of the ladies legs/knees.
Since their poiting range seems to be “anywhere on Earth, and possibly beyond”, all you have to do to eliminate your downward vectors is to poit to the other side of the world and ‘Fall Up’ for a bit.
Say you’re falling down over the Eastern US, you poit to the other side of the world and you’re falling up over the ocean somewhere past the west coast of Australia.
Since the ability to poit at all implies physicists were wrong about at least one major conservation law (namely, conservation of angular momentum), it seems reasonable that linear momentum is also not conserved, and you can exit a poit with any convenient momentum you like. The ability to poit from Minneapolis to the Bermuda triangle without being flung into the air at several hundreds of miles per hour (and back without being splatted into the ground) implies momentum can be adjusted “on the fly”, so to type.
But if they wanted convenient hang-time without too much wind noise, they could just take a hang-glider, and any time they got too low, poit it a bit higher. Lather, rinse, repeat. Or perhaps I mean PRN. (I say hang-glider because a paraglider or parachute is probably harder to manage in such aerobatics.)
Xref: Gould’s “Jumper” series, and O’Donnell’s “McGill Feighan” series. In the latter, teleporters ate called “Flingers”, and they can have a flung object acquire any convenient velocity upon exit. So, they can use small objects, like pebbles, as hypervelocity projectiles. Indeed, it seems likely that the ability to throw golfballs at the speeds Bud does implies she’s really “flinging” them in the poity sense, because otherwise she’d powder them in her hands before they ever hit atmosphere, due to the g-forces required to do it by actual arm motion. That is, it seems likely the windup and arm motion are theatrics, and she could simply hole up her hand with the golf ball held motionless, and have it leave her grip at any speed she likes without moving a muscle. Similar things are probably true of her diamond trick. Most likely, it’s simply more emotionally satisfying to do the accompanying gestures; if you did it with a serene, calm demeanor with minimal fuss and muss, it sort of misses the whole poit.
“We’ll try to stay serene and calm when Alabama gets the bomb!” — Tom Lehrer
throopw: poiting may not be against physics.. there was a good scifi story about teleportation that tackled the momentum problem… there was a huge water-filled tank in the center of the ocean, so you teleported somewhere, and the ‘energy’ was teleported to the tank – Its mass was big enough to absorb it by bouncing up and down…
throopw, for an example of a universe (with magic, albeit not poiting) where these laws of conservation apply, consider the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. There telekinetics can move themselves (by pushing or pulling on a heavier object) or the other object (if lighter).
I sometimes wondered if he avoided teleportation for that reason: the laws of conservation of momentum and energy could get rather dicey.
Illiad – you’re thinking of the essay The Theory & Practice of Teleportation, by Larry Niven; it’s available in his collection All the Myriad Ways along with the justly famous Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex and several highly readable stories. He did use the oceanic kinetic-energy sink in a short story or two as well.
Humans tend to absorb microwaves instead of reflect them.
About 300 yards (under a thousand feet) and your a dot to the human eye. Wind chill is the real problem.
Well to be nearly invisible from the ground you only have to be about 1000 ft AGL 2000 ft for sure. Just think, how easy it is to pick out a human figure from a quarter mile away, against a bright sky backgr.ound that human figure would be a dot
You know…I’ve noticed a lot of odd comma usage from writers (be they published, online comic artists, or just my friends), and never once did it occur to me that the commas were there to indicate the delivery of a statement. I just thought they were there to infuriate me.
*shakes head* Why didn’t I think of that before unleashing my inner grammar Nazi? It makes so many things I’ve read make more sense…
Just to help you save a bit of face, Paul, I think the reason you had it the way you did pre-edit is because you interrupted yourself in mid-thought and were originally aiming for:
“We could try scouting, ourselves, at a low altitude”
I forget the “proper” terminology for describing a mid-sentence highlight like that, but you get the drift.
Just finished my second archive trawl (*whew*). Actually was better the second time around IMO – since I knew what was coming, I was able to see Mr. Chekov load his guns. Major kudos to Paul all around – here’s hoping this roller coaster never ends :).
Ahhh Yes yes yes, Nothing like a bit of Fan Service Hmmm?
Still I wonder how Jin would do a low-level recon? Poit over the area, drop freefall lookabout then poit away? Could one poit Oneself with a Hang glider? hmmm.
The spirit of Calvin came by in the night, hoping to alleviate Monica’s plight. He knew that the winter’s dank chills would hang on unless driven away by commemorative song.
On top of Spa Getty,
all covered with snow,
I mourn my sweet sandbar…
It went boom you know.
Stinky brought the sub ’round,
and Bud played her hand,
and now my old sandbar
has lost all its sand.
The grains were all scattered
when Death came to call,
and now my poor sandbar
is just an atoll.
The Triangle’s toasty,
and here it’s so cold!
Must find a new sandbar
before I get old.
So Calvin did smirk, and Hobbes gave a grin, for they knew that adventures were soon to set in for Monica’s gang – why, they’ll soon be away, to find another warm place they can play.
I’m really not at all sure where that came from, but I suspect I need to cut down a little on the artichoke-and-anchovy milkshakes before bed on school nights.
As with most brainworms, the only way to get rid of it was to offer it a fertile field of other brains to invade. Sorry about that. I hope that none of you seuss me for damages.
If it gets too obnoxious, there’s only this to do, oncet or twain: to read “Pie and Punch and You-Know-Whats”, or go to the original “Punch, Brothers, Punch”!
80 thousand years and a butt load of money, I’m sure Jin took some flying lessons and could afford to charter a rather nice plane. That is of course, if they wanted to go traditional. Otherwise they could flag down a passing Shellinx
A guy I go to school with made that film and I really want to know whether the elevator shaft would fill up with dead bodies and let the guy in on the secret, or whether the fumes would kill him… and the only people I can think to ask are you guys. So… would an elevator shaft full of decomposing bodies release enough fumes to kill a guy before being fully filled with bodies? One floor only, btw… I bought a copy and this has been bothering me for almost a year.
It would depend entirely on how fast the bodies were put in the shaft, slowly enough and no problem, quick enough and no problem, but there may be an in-between rate that the bodies are decomposing fast enough that the toxic fumes are contained at a lethal level.
This whole little arc is particularly hilarious to me, because we only got like 2 inches of snow tops up here this weekend in MN, and it’s all gone already.
Mmmm spa… what? I like spas, I can say that.
Spa day!
Heehee, your avatar face makes your comment perfect.
All part of Kevin and Alan’s nefarious plans.
well, its seems Kevin and Alan need to get an invite to that spa!! :E
One better: Sub for the masseuse. 🙂
Is Fridays strip gonna tell us that Alan owns the spa???? Sorry for dropping that idea into the forumies already fervent heads.
I keep forgetting the daily interest on Jin’s accounts is almost equal to M’s annual salary. There are advantages to living through 56 CM cycles, you figure out which banks will survive and put you money there for compound interest. So a spa day for Jin would be a trifle to be bought with pin money.
Monica sure manages to get a lot of time off from work doesn’t she. A day in the SPA, a day on the isle, a day in the jungle, time in the library, tracking down artifacts. Must be nice to have a boss that let’s you get away with it. Jin’s income is a lot more than Monica makes. Even with the recession. lol.
Given what we’ve seen of Monica’s job, it seems to be a combination of:
1) Her boss is both incompetent and preoccupied (Phix).
2) Her job seems fairly undefined (most of her scenes in-work involve her just wondering around the office often aimlessly).
3) Noone enforces workloads (Katherine’s proclivity to wander and operate from a pitch-black, fairly empty office, and maintenance’s ability to doze at the desk rather than perform any maintenance).
4) Noone tracks that work was actually done (considering the “Tepoz statue” was able to literally walk out the door without any questions asked, even by the two women who witnessed it strolling through the halls (Katherine and Monica)).
In short, Monica’s job is indeed pretty sweet, but like 99% of humanity, she’ll still complain about it. And when we consider she likely has access to the phantom-accounts that Jin (and possibly Bud & Brandi) created, Monica probably has no need to work beyond the masquerade and to give herself a sense of normalcy (considering she’s forced virtually all of her friends, sans Jacqui (are those two even still friends or just friends of a mutual friend?), into the Masquerade).
Yeah, I rambled again.
yes, well the timespan in most soaps and comics is not ’24 hour’ !! I guess all the boring ‘customer service’, ‘doing inventory’, ‘long weekly meeting’ & ‘boring day on the concession stand’ stuff is left out…
Unless you *want* a cartoon with her just ‘watching the clock’ ?? 🙂
Meh…that’s what evenings and weekends are for. 🙂 And vacation time…:P
banks huh?? before ’95, a lot were sure of Barings!! Until some guy lost a few hundred mill…
Not too bad if you can poit to Italy or Switzerland to check your balance… 🙂
One and a half months till spring!
If you turn the heat up in your apartment, you can still enjoy a cold beer in February.
Or you can just enjoy a cold beer without wasting the energy and upping your heating bill. 😛
Meh. Seven and a half months till spring down here.
Oh, wait, that means it’s still summer.
Muhahahahaha.
Did you know that everyone already knew that the world was round when Columbus first set sail?
Or that Paul Revere never made the famous “Midnight Run”?
And did you know that spring actually starts around February 1st?
Now you do.
In the midwest, “meteorological spring” starts March 1. That’s also when the road-construction cones sprout since the ground has thawed enough that bulldozer blades and power-shovel buckets can dig in rather than skittering off the surface.
The average daily high in Chicago on Feb. 15 is 35 degrees F. It’s still down around 28 in Minneapolis.
Steven Brust says the Minnesota has two seasons: Snow Removal and Road Repair.
Love panel two.. let your hair down, indeed!
Am I the only person who has been wondering what on earth happened to the short hair cut that M got back around in July/August of 2011??
At least Shelly’s sudden transition of short to long is explained by the fact that version of Shelly died.
Hehe. Like some other people, M’s massage sounds are similar to her Gerard Butler sounds.
That’s only proper. 😉
Maybe our reference-material Mythics, Phix and Euryale, might offer some potentials?
Spa day? And they’re talking about finding an uncharted desert island?
Really? REALLY?
In the realm of “this had better never stop”. Yep.
Went camping with my sister to an island w/no anything, and planned going to the Philipines for a year. (We never went–it’s the principle of the thing).
really!! 🙂 if you were able to poit, you would!! 😀
Heck Yeah!! 😀
Some people have it all. 🙂
Of course. Spa days may be fun, but would you trade them for being able to lay in the Sun, surrounded by light and warmth, safety and quiet? The one is nice, the other almost a necessity. Especially for winter haters…
That’s a lotta work n’ planning for a vacation. XD
Aahhh.. real “girl-time” as I remember my Mom and sis having.
Facials
peels
oil-massage
sweating
another shiatsu massage
aroma therapy
When they came back, they always stank like a perfume shop.
Another one of those classic “girl”things will never really understand, especially when they informed me that a “peel”involved scraping off a layer of skin.. eek..
I think its more the case of doing it with a friend than getting it done yourself 🙂
The peel might sound scary but well.. if you have an itch on your arm and scratch it you have just scratched a layer off ^^
i think
No manicure/pedicure on that list? At least they’re not wallowing in a pile of moist earth like a swine. (>^_^)>
be careful what you say!!! that maybe tomorrow…
And while that’s all going on, the boys are at home sitting on the couch in their underwear drinking beer and watching football.
This sounds much more apeeling to me than a spa.
I detect the aroma of a pun. Do I need to put the heat on you for a donation to the pun vault?
[clink, clink]
Okay, okay, you got me. Here’s my coin for the stealth pun.
so you never had a sister?? such a shame, it sure helps understanding… 🙂
aaaahh.. THAT kind of sister… 😮 I have two, so luckily I was fairly safe from them… :/
so… back to my first statement… :/ stay cool, man, they not all bad.. :p
understanding what?
I had two younger sisters, now 52 and 44, and I STILL understand nothing about how they operate.
Having sisters may give the knowledge on how to survive around them (females); but you will NOT understand them.
Hm. I’ll have to keep that in mind. What, if anything, could a girl do to convince you she’s not trying to be manipulative? Or is it that it doesn’t matter if she’s trying or not?
well why would you want to understand women???
do you use a computer, or TV?? you can easily use them, without needing to know how they work, can you not??
Just cool it, and relax.. they are just normal people… wondering why you are being so strange!!
looks like a more advanced therapy course is needed for some… 🙂 🙂
Peels that scrape away a layer of skin don’t sound bad. It’s the burning sensation of a chemical peel that sucks (if that still involves scraping, I’ve never noticed for the relief I feel getting that crap off my face). I prefer facials that involve moisturizing and massage and less burnination. 🙂
As for the rest…sign me up! I can’t say I ever really got the whole sauna thing, but if that’s what it takes to get everything else, I’ll do it! 😀
PRISONER! Who do you have to kill to get sentenced to this joint?
“Hey, man, if this is torture, chain me to the wall.”
I’d find out where the powerball winner is going and ckout the islands around them.
nope, I think they want somewhere *secluded*!!
I wait 24 hours for the new strip, then read it and the comments in 2 minutes! AAARRRRGGGHHH!!!!
I usta be a massage therapist. I wonder if that spa is hiring?
I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find out that the spa where all this planning is taking place at is somewhere…oh say like on the Mediterranean perhaps?
You know, the room/pyramid that stored the Calendar Machine was in a warm, tropic area secluded from the rest of humanity.
Just saying.
Jungles are way too – ALIVE to be my choice for a getaway. Even teensy things consider you and your stuff to be edible biomass. And ’cause there are so many eaty things around, there are toxins and poisons a’plenty – not meant for you, necessarily, but somehow always underhand or underfoot.
And don’t get me started on the eaty things WITH poisons…
Someone did a study once – vertebrates (mammals, etc.) get smaller toward the equator and larger toward the poles (bears, etc.) and invertebrates (crawly stuff) the opposite – they get bigger near the equator. IN THE JUNGLES. Here’s one for your nightmares tonight: eighteen inch long centipedes…..
I – think I need a pill – and a lie down….
True. Before, it’d have been a non-issue, considering how everyone sans Monica’s baggage (Katherine + Amanda) were fairly indestructible (4 golems, a sphinx, an undead, and I swear Monica’s impossible to injure beyond a small bruise these days).
But nowadays, we’re not sure just how fragile Jin is. Bud-related projectiles are not a good gauge (unless she hit Monica).
The mammals get smaller. The reptiles do not!
Add to the invertebrate list cockroaches the size of mice and grasshoppers the size of small birds.
The Panama Canal Zone was such a wonderful place to camp…with its 8 month long rainy season. ;/
Those are actually things I miss after moving north, having all that wildlife. Sure, we have squirrels the size of housecats up here, but squirrels aren’t all that interesting.
Tasty, yes, but not interesting.
and preying mantis’ that pray and swallow swallows.
@NOTDilbert – Okay…so I couldn’t even make it through your post without singing a little jungle-dangers-themed Little Mermaid song thanks to your “toxins and poisons a’plenty” comment…
I’ve got toxins and poisons a’plenty.
I’ve got boggles and monsters galore.
Vicious insects? I’ve got twenty.
Who cares? No big deal. I want more!
*giggles* Thanks for that weird start to my day!
Uh – you’re welcome?
But if you lie down, won’t those centipedes be able to reach the back of your neck?
As long as they don’t get to be 1 m plus, like the centipedes in the Carboniferous.
oh yes. a time when dragonflies had two foot wingspreads, cockroaches could reach four foot, and spiders were large enough to eat either.
it was a time when ferns reached 10 meters tall (verses 1 meter, now).
Now what could possible have forced such a drastic ‘downsizing’, huh?
maybe an increase in gravity?
The Oxygen levels were much higher back in those days, allowing for much, much larger insects. As they have no lungs, they breathe through a pore network with air channels throughout the body, even into the legs and feet. The upper size limit is based primarily on the oxygen uptake at the end of the tube.
My faves are the FOUR FOOT LONG brontoscorpions. Sea-going; actually before anything came on land (except plants). Oxygen levels were up around 36 percent, even for ages after, lightning storms in the forests were kinda explosive.
And yet another day without O.T.B !! The lack of info is enough to make me want to scream . In the meantime – I’ll fill in my time by studying the local areas main attractions ..
OTB’s been placed back in the waiting room alongside Kevin and Allan, until one of the girls need to summon their boy-toy (what else do you think they’re doing with the empty Mica room?).
It may be a long wait, Shelly can’t poit him like Monica & Jin.
I always figured that the best way to hunt down a new sandbar would be a team of two. One person who can teleport, like maybe Monica, and one person who can fly. I sphinx would be a good choice for that. Hint.
Yeah, I sphinx so, too…
*kindly directs Rowan to the pun vault* Donation time! 🙂
That’s an idea that seems like it would work (as long as they didn’t blunder into any passing aircraft). 🙂
“We could try scouting, ourselves at a low altitude.”
is that comma properly placed?
I think you meant, “We could scout them out ourselves, at low altitude.”
Speaking of which, if I gained the ability to fly, what would be my radar ceiling? And how high should I be flying if I don’t wish to be visible to the average person on the ground?
You know. To avoid getting noticed.
“This just in! Sightings of an unknown woman seen flying over the IDS tower. Officials say it’s just a sexy weather balloon.”
Riiight. Unidentified Flying Woman.
well first you would have to be immune to cold, heat, and lack of atmosphere.. go too fast, and you would need to be bulletproof..
and then you would be too small for radar – its only large flocks of birds that appear…
no need to be bulletproof if they are poiting around… though i wonder about how Jin plans on dealing with gravity? as soon as she poit’s in at height, she’ll start falling, obviously she’ll poit out before she hits ground, but does the inertia in the downward direction she’s picked up before she does stay with her, or can she control that as well? if she CAN’T control it, then for every poit or two, up, then they’ll have to splash down in a pool or over a really fluffy mattress then poit again to a location a bit further away from the first poit. i tend to think that they CAN control it because then the scene with Tina, Nudge and Shelly would have to be retconned very differently because of how they started out separated and fell long enough to grab each other and hold tight, then got poited back to the coffee shop that way without getting splatted on the floor, since that is a serious amount of energy to dissipate without any visible effect on any of the ladies legs/knees.
I was answering Cherish.. 🙂 Poiting would naturally be better than just flying!
and it been said a while back that poiting does cancel momentum.. 🙂 now where is that notebook??
Since their poiting range seems to be “anywhere on Earth, and possibly beyond”, all you have to do to eliminate your downward vectors is to poit to the other side of the world and ‘Fall Up’ for a bit.
Say you’re falling down over the Eastern US, you poit to the other side of the world and you’re falling up over the ocean somewhere past the west coast of Australia.
Since the ability to poit at all implies physicists were wrong about at least one major conservation law (namely, conservation of angular momentum), it seems reasonable that linear momentum is also not conserved, and you can exit a poit with any convenient momentum you like. The ability to poit from Minneapolis to the Bermuda triangle without being flung into the air at several hundreds of miles per hour (and back without being splatted into the ground) implies momentum can be adjusted “on the fly”, so to type.
But if they wanted convenient hang-time without too much wind noise, they could just take a hang-glider, and any time they got too low, poit it a bit higher. Lather, rinse, repeat. Or perhaps I mean PRN. (I say hang-glider because a paraglider or parachute is probably harder to manage in such aerobatics.)
Xref: Gould’s “Jumper” series, and O’Donnell’s “McGill Feighan” series. In the latter, teleporters ate called “Flingers”, and they can have a flung object acquire any convenient velocity upon exit. So, they can use small objects, like pebbles, as hypervelocity projectiles. Indeed, it seems likely that the ability to throw golfballs at the speeds Bud does implies she’s really “flinging” them in the poity sense, because otherwise she’d powder them in her hands before they ever hit atmosphere, due to the g-forces required to do it by actual arm motion. That is, it seems likely the windup and arm motion are theatrics, and she could simply hole up her hand with the golf ball held motionless, and have it leave her grip at any speed she likes without moving a muscle. Similar things are probably true of her diamond trick. Most likely, it’s simply more emotionally satisfying to do the accompanying gestures; if you did it with a serene, calm demeanor with minimal fuss and muss, it sort of misses the whole poit.
“We’ll try to stay serene and calm when Alabama gets the bomb!” — Tom Lehrer
throopw: poiting may not be against physics.. there was a good scifi story about teleportation that tackled the momentum problem… there was a huge water-filled tank in the center of the ocean, so you teleported somewhere, and the ‘energy’ was teleported to the tank – Its mass was big enough to absorb it by bouncing up and down…
That is most likely how poiting gets it done.. 🙂
BTW, I get stack overload at 512 chrs, scantrontb narrowly missed my core crashing… 🙂 😛
so please be concise, if you want to be read… 🙂
throopw, for an example of a universe (with magic, albeit not poiting) where these laws of conservation apply, consider the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. There telekinetics can move themselves (by pushing or pulling on a heavier object) or the other object (if lighter).
I sometimes wondered if he avoided teleportation for that reason: the laws of conservation of momentum and energy could get rather dicey.
Illiad – you’re thinking of the essay The Theory & Practice of Teleportation, by Larry Niven; it’s available in his collection All the Myriad Ways along with the justly famous Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex and several highly readable stories. He did use the oceanic kinetic-energy sink in a short story or two as well.
I remember a scene when Monica poited with Tina Nudge, and Shelly into ‘skydiving territory’.
after an amount of time which frightened them; she poited them back to Tina’s shop with no inertia to speak of.
throopw: oh, and explain cartoon physics… 🙂 🙂
Cartoon physics: whatever is needed for the story, or when funny.
Humans tend to absorb microwaves instead of reflect them.
About 300 yards (under a thousand feet) and your a dot to the human eye. Wind chill is the real problem.
Well to be nearly invisible from the ground you only have to be about 1000 ft AGL 2000 ft for sure. Just think, how easy it is to pick out a human figure from a quarter mile away, against a bright sky backgr.ound that human figure would be a dot
I think tha comma may be where it is for to indicate delivery, rather than to conform to the rules of grammar.
You know…I’ve noticed a lot of odd comma usage from writers (be they published, online comic artists, or just my friends), and never once did it occur to me that the commas were there to indicate the delivery of a statement. I just thought they were there to infuriate me.
*shakes head* Why didn’t I think of that before unleashing my inner grammar Nazi? It makes so many things I’ve read make more sense…
Thanks for that! 😀
*squints at Julie*
…not sure if sarcastic or serious…
😉
You’re right. That does flow much better. 🙂
Just to help you save a bit of face, Paul, I think the reason you had it the way you did pre-edit is because you interrupted yourself in mid-thought and were originally aiming for:
“We could try scouting, ourselves, at a low altitude”
I forget the “proper” terminology for describing a mid-sentence highlight like that, but you get the drift.
What they are doing is already perfect…
Awww, poor babies. I feel so sorry for them right now, I could just shi- er, cry…
Just finished my second archive trawl (*whew*). Actually was better the second time around IMO – since I knew what was coming, I was able to see Mr. Chekov load his guns. Major kudos to Paul all around – here’s hoping this roller coaster never ends :).
That’s how I read it. 🙂
Yep. This is a temporary respite from the weather, while the island is intended to be permanent. Well, while they are there. 😉
Silly Monica- Cold weather is best! -40 degree windchill… Gotta love it.
so I guess you are out in that, in a swimsuit for half an hour ?? hope your mate has an ice pick or a welders torch…. 😛 😛 🙂
Ahhh Yes yes yes, Nothing like a bit of Fan Service Hmmm?
Still I wonder how Jin would do a low-level recon? Poit over the area, drop freefall lookabout then poit away? Could one poit Oneself with a Hang glider? hmmm.
The spirit of Calvin came by in the night, hoping to alleviate Monica’s plight. He knew that the winter’s dank chills would hang on unless driven away by commemorative song.
On top of Spa Getty,
all covered with snow,
I mourn my sweet sandbar…
It went boom you know.
Stinky brought the sub ’round,
and Bud played her hand,
and now my old sandbar
has lost all its sand.
The grains were all scattered
when Death came to call,
and now my poor sandbar
is just an atoll.
The Triangle’s toasty,
and here it’s so cold!
Must find a new sandbar
before I get old.
So Calvin did smirk, and Hobbes gave a grin, for they knew that adventures were soon to set in for Monica’s gang – why, they’ll soon be away, to find another warm place they can play.
I’m really not at all sure where that came from, but I suspect I need to cut down a little on the artichoke-and-anchovy milkshakes before bed on school nights.
As with most brainworms, the only way to get rid of it was to offer it a fertile field of other brains to invade. Sorry about that. I hope that none of you seuss me for damages.
If it gets too obnoxious, there’s only this to do, oncet or twain: to read “Pie and Punch and You-Know-Whats”, or go to the original “Punch, Brothers, Punch”!
Fascinating. I didn’t know that earworms of that nature were a problem that had been cleft in twain so neatly!
Definitely, that’s the heir of the doggerel that bit me.
Haha, fantastic!
I don’t see how they can stand the hell of prison life.
80 thousand years and a butt load of money, I’m sure Jin took some flying lessons and could afford to charter a rather nice plane. That is of course, if they wanted to go traditional. Otherwise they could flag down a passing Shellinx
I’ve finally caught up from the start for my first read-through… and joins everyone else for new pages to be posted. Confound it all!
OTOH, I’ll enjoy it when a new page hits the web tomorrow.
Is it time for Pre-Thursday Trivia?
What student film became a cult classic and featured a space ship with a talking bomb?
OH I know this one we had to watch the ending in class and I can’t remember what it was caaaalllled! whine whine cuss.
Dark Star
In what did Brian Blessed, Charlotte Rampling and Donald Sutherland appear together?
What film (first) featured “THX-1138” as an in-joke reference?
Yes!
Dark Star was a student film directed by: John Carpenter.
“I think, therefore I am.”
“Let there be light!”
Loved that movie. Certifiable cult classic.
I remember it well. It was just so wonderfully campy.
Time for all good Minotaurs to go to bed.
Post-midnight randomness!
Gah. Spoiler alert.
Ok. Look here. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1882056/
A guy I go to school with made that film and I really want to know whether the elevator shaft would fill up with dead bodies and let the guy in on the secret, or whether the fumes would kill him… and the only people I can think to ask are you guys. So… would an elevator shaft full of decomposing bodies release enough fumes to kill a guy before being fully filled with bodies? One floor only, btw… I bought a copy and this has been bothering me for almost a year.
It would depend entirely on how fast the bodies were put in the shaft, slowly enough and no problem, quick enough and no problem, but there may be an in-between rate that the bodies are decomposing fast enough that the toxic fumes are contained at a lethal level.
You need to email Mythbusters.
This whole little arc is particularly hilarious to me, because we only got like 2 inches of snow tops up here this weekend in MN, and it’s all gone already.
God created the world… and rested.
Then God created man… and rested.
The God created woman. Since then, neither God nor man has rested.