From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Mused [mused@idirect.com] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 9:09 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Bizarre suicide Easy. Autoeroticism. Damn stupid way to die I would think. -----Original Message----- From: Don Juneau To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Date: Thursday, March 23, 2000 7:59 PM Subject: Re: DG: Bizarre suicide >On Thu, 23 Mar 2000, Jonathan Turner wrote: > >> Instead, he was found in his house, with his legs and left arm tied to a >> chair. He had a plastic bag on his head and had apparently strangled >> himself with a ligature using his free right hand. Is it just me, or is >> that a freaking bizarre way to go?? While of course the inquest returned a >> verdict of suicide, you would think that sounded more like murder. Or I >> would, anyway. Obviously, I'm spending far too much time reading this >> flipping list... From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of LizardRoi@aol.com Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 9:18 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Games and such In a message dated 00-03-23 18:37:35 EST, you write: << A new ball is rolling and I like it a lot. Yeah, like he said. << . Chess has a small, crowded board, that gets progressively emptied as the pieces get eliminated. The game dinamic comes from piece movement. . Go has a large, empty board, that gets filled progressively as new pieces are laid and territories are staked out. The game dinamic comes from the laying of more new pieces.>> There ya go, I think many are rushing a little headlong to find an immediate use or smoking gun for games. No one said that GOOs made the games, or even play them. Or give two [whatever they use for elimination] about them. But we do. Think of games as products of worship without a rulebook. Or what came out of a dream about something else entirely. Think of the evolution of the Tarot. Would the connection between the modern 52 card deck and a Tarot deck with Major Arcana be obvious if you didn't already know about it? It's quite a leap from gypsy fortuneteller to Las Vegas. <> Yeah, why not? I'm reading Ender's Shadow right now, and I'm starting to suspect the motives behind every game. What is the subliminal message of the game of chess? I look at the 64 squares and think about the "infinite" permutations in a restricted area with absolute rules, and then something about the phrase "thinking outside of the box" makes me look again. Chess plays in the square, Go on the intersections that form squares. Thinking outside of the box? Everyone keeps saying things along the lines of "we are merely pawns of the yada yada", but those pawns can turn into a Queen, or Bishop or Knight or Rook. Much like many cults we write about promise. Only the Inner Circle knows that they are really trading places with a fallen Royal. A Pawn is just as powerful as any of the VIPs on the back row. Any piece that lands on an enemy piece kills it, a Pawn has the same Damage stats as a Queen, just different rules for movement. << When I hit university I met a few Club-quality players and they disgusted me with their cold-blooded veneration for victory above all else. I decided back then if that's the price to pay - sacrificing fun for victory - I'm not buying. I'm a committed amateur.>> When it stops being fun, it stops being a game IMHO. I like playing chess, but keeping score would ruin it for me. I figure anyone watching the scoreboard rather than the gameboard just doesn't have the same priorities I do. Or doesn't have a handle on the map/territory dichotomy. See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya. Callous, I know, but so far it appears I only get one life of mumbledy mumble years and the clock is ticking. Why spend it with people who don't interest me when I'm not being paid to? And constantly having to flip them on their backs and and placing my teeth on their throat gets old fast. Why is it people who care so desperately about status and winning are so piss-poor at spotting the Alpha? Mark McFadden Always enjoyed the Rubik's Snake, since there didn't appear to be a goal to the activity the possibilities were endless. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of LizardRoi@aol.com Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 9:31 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Bizarre suicide In a message dated 00-03-23 22:01:09 EST, you write: << Easy. Autoeroticism. Damn stupid way to die I would think. >> But preferable to so many other unplanned deaths. So the "victim" is thoroughly enjoying themselves, working themselves to a hot frenzy that implicitly involves choking themselves to unconsciousness...then they don't wake up. Everyone else who dies in their sleep gets to remember a nice cup of coacoa as their last conscious thought. Whoop de doo. Oh sure, everyone gets to stand around and laugh at the corpse, but what does the corpse (smiling and erect) care? Mark McFadden Plans to make a SWAT team take him out. TOP OF THE WORLD MA!!! From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of David Farnell [daf@iwa.att.ne.jp] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 8:57 PM To: Delta Green List Subject: Re: DG: Re: GO and the GOO From: Davide Mana > Food For Thought: Bobby Fisher preferred to play on a gold-yellow/dark > green chessboard. Checkmate to the Green? The King in Yellow wins. > Suggestive, eh? And Bobby Fisher's philosophical outlook would fit in very nicely with the "alternate future" history in "The Repairer of Reputations." He is, in fact, quite Castaigne-like. Hmmm. > So... could Go be an attitudinal test for 'those with the spark'? > I'm assuming that both Elder Things and Yithians, for instance, have the > 'spark'. > Ghouls and Deep Ones might have something similar, if twisted. > Funguys lack it. Byakhee did probably forsake it whent they bowed down to > hastur. > Shamblers? Ah! Since Intelligent/Non-intelligent is obviously too simplistic a way of classifying aliens in an HPL universe, perhaps we could have some mad Mythos researcher (perhaps in the Endtimes) who classifies them acording to gaming preference. You've got me thinking about Byakhees again. Which is a good thing, just now. > Then I go on remarking that chess is a fine game for machines. > We humans prefer to play go. Every now and then, I try to get back into Go, but here in Japan, the only people who care to play seem to be Grandmasters (compared to me, anyway). My level of play is so poor that I just bore them too much to keep them teaching me for long. From: James Holloway > I really think of RPGs as a KiY kind of thing. I imagine that the KiY game > would end with people being unable to return to their out of game identities > - the kind of people who really would need a good session of Power Kill. [snip] > CCGs are actually a good path for the Vibe to go down... all the kids would > kill to get their hands on the Yellow Sign card, but you have to be pretty > special to find one - like a Golden Ticket (now that's wrong!) There's > something about the Yellow Sign and its mythology that is very much like the > way adolescent boys think anyway... or at least the way I thought in those > days... > > Kids gathering in schoolyards during recess: "so, have you found the Yellow > Sign?" Tasty! Something dear to my heart, here. KiY is all about Masque, which is the heart of RPGs. The flesh is malleable--we can be whoever we want, we can Change, we can wear any mask. Just don't take it off (don't step out of character), or the Yellow King (GM) will come for you. The players have limited control over the environment, but sometimes stuff just seems to happen to them. Still, the King follows rules--sort of. As long as it's aesthetically pleasing to do so, anyway. "Becoming the Mask" is a danger for those with weak individuation. Dave Join us! http://n.ethz.ch/student/hankef/DeltaGreen/tshirt.htm From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Mintarr@aol.com Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 11:09 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: On Gates and similar matters > When a billiard ball was rolled into the field, it > apparently shot off at a healthy percentage of the speed of light. But what > actually happened was that it came to a complete and utter stop as *we* shot > > along at a high "speed". I know its not the same thing exactly...but this makes me think of Smith's ability to send things 'away' in Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land. Yet another psuedo-magical form of gating? Joel From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Popeyesays@aol.com Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 11:40 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Re: Re: Games and the Mythos In a message dated 3/23/00 6:39:45 PM Central Standard Time, Appelion@aol.com writes: << Mancala and Go spring immediatly to mind... Also reflecting the GOO's attitudes, since in chess a piece has at least a little individuality (i.e. it's a rook, or the queen's pawn)... >> i rather like the idea of the chess game as a metaphor for the ambitions of a "cult" leader - sure his side may get smoked in the game - but getting to the opposite King's row and being "QUEENED" is why he's in the game at all. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Popeyesays@aol.com Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 11:42 PM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Lifepath character generation In a message dated 3/23/00 7:15:52 PM Central Standard Time, djuneau@io.com writes: << Might have to dig for CyberPunk 2020 PC generators to see if I can kludge them into doing this... >> Look at FASA's 2rd Edition of Mechwarrior - it is full of ideas for a life experience track system for rolling up characters - well worth the look - a gem of a system. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Joseph Camp [alphonse@delta-green.com] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 11:41 PM To: dgrpg Subject: Re: DG: Alternity / Dark Matter / Wizards of the Coast News >I still hate them for fragging SLA Industries before i could get a chance >to try it. >Maybe the game sucked, maybe not - I just never had the opportunity to >check it out. >It bugs me. Hogshead Ltd., publishers of the WARHAMMER RPG and PUPPETLAND, are now producing SLA and I believe they have the rulebook back in print with errata fixed and new books on the way. http://www.hogshead.demon.co.uk/ be seeing you, Alphonse From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Joseph Camp [alphonse@delta-green.com] Sent: Thursday, March 23, 2000 11:42 PM To: dgrpg Subject: Re: DG: Alternity / Dark Matter / Wizards of the Coast News >If anyone can give me a different interpretation of what it means to "drive >support for all other game systems to the lowest level possible in the >market" other than "bankrupting all other systems but AD&D", I'd like to >hear it. It's important to understand that when Dancey says "other game systems," he specifically means "other sets of game mechanics," not "other RPGs" or "other RPG product lines." In short, he would like to see FASA publish SHADOWRUN using D20 rules, Chaosium publish CoC using D20 rules, and on and on. He ideally wants a plurality of games, but a singularity of rules systems. In return, he's offering D20 at no cost and with no form of editorial oversight or control. It's also worth nothing that D20 does not equal D&D. D20 is very basic mechanical conventions such as the six characteristics, roll high on a D20, etc. It's more like a common motherboard design reference than an operating system, because D20 by itself is not necessarily playable entirely on its own--it's a set of basic assumptions about game mechanics onto which you build your customized rules set. This is indeed a dreaded OT thread and should be winding down. Interested parties should visit the open gaming website and subscribe to the discussion forum there. be seeing you, Alphonse From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of LizardRoi@aol.com Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 12:05 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: On Gates and similar matters In a message dated 3/23/00 9:12:21 PM Pacific Standard Time, Mintarr@aol.com writes: << I know its not the same thing exactly...but this makes me think of Smith's ability to send things 'away' in Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land. Yet another psuedo-magical form of gating? Joel >> And remember, Michael Valentine Smith made things go away by turning them 90 degrees to *everything*. And how about The Number of the Beast? Travel through space\time and alternity by pressing on all 6 axis of a gyroscope *simultaneously*. Since the force at each cardinal point will be transferred at 90 degrees to the input, where does the force go? How does the gyro deal with it? And just to flirt with the edge of the Heinleinian abyss, how about that Waldo, eh? About a fella that takes quantum physics to heart and tricks the world into running off of power from beyond. Solid metal antennaes flexing and *reaching* for the power due to some glyphs drawn in chalk by an old hermit. Nope, nothing Lovecraftian or DG there. Mark McFadden Chillin' with Dorcas, Anne and Miriam. Front! From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Popeyesays@aol.com Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 12:11 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: On Gates and similar matters In a message dated 3/24/00 12:07:55 AM Central Standard Time, LizardRoi@aol.com writes: << And just to flirt with the edge of the Heinleinian abyss, how about that Waldo, eh? About a fella that takes quantum physics to heart and tricks the world into running off of power from beyond. Solid metal antennaes flexing and *reaching* for the power due to some glyphs drawn in chalk by an old hermit. Nope, nothing Lovecraftian or DG there. >> And don't forget Jonathan Hoag - which I was reminded of by the sudden appearance of a "glove" cleaner in our group. Maybe he is trying to avoid disturbing gunk beneath his nails. From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Andy Robertson [andywrobertson@clara.co.uk] Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 12:53 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: They Ain't Even Trying To Hide Any More The world's leading science mag, NATURE, is running a series of "Futures" which purport to be SF oriented essays. The latest "futures" is by one Charles Dexter Ward "Charles Dexter Ward hopes to be the first writer-in-residence on the Space Station. A collection of his fiction, God Among the Robots and Other Stories, will be published in 2000 by Unicorn Gardens Press." Yeah, right Agents, if you want to check, http://www.nature.com and get this week's full text. (You can use my login id "Pinlighter", and my password - Ol' tentacle-face in lowercase. To avoid possible legal problems I will revise this after 24 hours.) The article itself is a pretty transparent bit of MiGo propaganda - the desirability of mixing human genes into GM crops The Glove Cleaner From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Andy Robertson [andywrobertson@clara.co.uk] Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 1:16 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Re: Games and such ----- Original Message ----- From: > There ya go, I think many are rushing a little headlong to find an immediate > use or smoking gun for games. > No one said that GOOs made the games, or even play them. Or give two > [whatever they use for elimination] about them. But we do. > Think of games as products of worship without a rulebook. Or what came out > of a dream about something else entirely. Yeah, we can be too eager to sniff the GOO in everything. Despite my ideas on the Hare & Hounds (which is indeed Fox&Geese). Going back to the original Leiber story, I tend to see games as perhaps the only possible way of contact or communication between entities at entirely different orders of being. (Maybe involuntary contact). GO is the most profound human game and it is _also_ one of the simplest (in terms of rules). I'm sure these two things go together. Great simplicity of rules leads to an efflorescence of complexity of strategy. Greatest simplicity of rules leads to greatest complexity of strategy, - it's the least computer-simulatable game, as someone else pointed out. So having the simplest rules, it may allow the broadest range of "contact". Less noise. Contact, of course, is a weasel word - it includes seduction, rape and murder. So, moving on to what James said about TKIY - I was only thinking of board games, symbolic manipulation games, but now I agree that Role Playing may be the Game that lies at the heart of HASTUR's being, as the two-sided Battle lies at the heart of our being. Hmmm. Imposing his game-worldview to "Communicate with" / seduce / envelop us. The PHYSICAL forcing & seduction of reality to conform with the rules of a "play" . . . That makes a lot of sense. The Glove Cleaner From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Martin Ostergaard [MAOS@int.tele.dk] Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 2:41 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: On Gates and similar matters "Crossingham, Adam" wrote: > * are there any other forms of gates and gate travel I'm missing or > forgotten about? I'd like to exclude magical transportation by spell or > god's whim. Yes, I know Create Gate is a spell, I'm talking about using a > gate after creation and treating it as an artefact or as > high-technology-turned-magic. If you have ever read The Amber Chronicles by Roger Zelazny, you would be aware of another type of gate or dimension-shifting. The main characters are capable of doing a socalled "Hell-ride", where they change subtle details in terrain and surroundings, until things match where they want to be. Example: Walking along a trail in the woods, maybe you want to get to a dimension where trees are red instead of green and the ground is more hilly. You start out by imagining one red tree after the next bend, and a small hill, over the hill you imagine more red trees, etc, etc. This can go as far as changing the vehicle youre driving/riding. Obviously you do not have to be in control of the process. This is close to the wormhole kind of gate, but is more gradual and you may not even realise what is happening until you are unable to get back to your starting point by the same route. -Martin From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Jonathan Turner [j.turner@irishnews.com] Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 3:22 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Bizarre suicide At 03:20 PM 3/23/00 -0500, you wrote: >Sounds like the way one Tory politician (whose name escapes me) went in >the late 80's/early 90's. Except that case was put down to a cock up (oh >yes, the punmeister returns!) during a bout of autoerotic asphyxiation. >Besides, I don't think that murder sounds plausible - I mean there are >easier ways to fake a suicide. > That was Stephen Milligan... found on the kitchen table in women's underwear with a satsuma soaked in amyl nitrate in his gob, IIRC. Yeah, there are easier ways to fake a suicide, but still... if you wanted to totally ruin someone's reputation then this is way to go. And when they're dead they can't defend themselves from all kinds of allegations. I think this is DG-related, as we often discuss tying up loose ends and other misnomers - there's a case currently running in the Belfast courts about the murder of a guy in a top security prison, David Keys. He was strangled, but then hung up from the bars of his cell window in an effort to make it look like suicide. But the pathologist found that the bones in his throat - not his vertebrae, but the tiny bones in his voice box - had been broken, a sure sign of strangulation. So it's maybe not that easy to fake that kind of suicide. What struck me about this other case was that it bore the apparent hallmarks of someone being secured and then interrogated or something. Still, as Graeme says, when it comes to bizarre suicides - Stepehn Milligan beats them all. JT From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Jonathan Turner [j.turner@irishnews.com] Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 3:29 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Stolen lap-top And from today's Northern Ireland news... An MI5 agent had his lap-top stolen while he was in Paddington Station a few weeks ago, though it's only emerged today. There are two versions of what happened, which are both cracker for surprising a PC with... Firstly, he is said to have set the machine down while he was buying a ticket and it was nabbed. More interestly, he apparently went to help a group of youths who were ``in distress'' and they grabbed it on him. The Home Office has played it down by saying the information on the machine - about the peace process - is encrypted. You can imagine that if he was PISCES DG would like to get a look at that - and they might even be able to crack the damn thing... JT From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Jonathan Turner [j.turner@irishnews.com] Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 3:23 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: DG - Suicide and Gates From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Martin Ostergaard [MAOS@int.tele.dk] Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 3:37 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Bizarre suicide Mused wrote: > > Easy. Autoeroticism. > > Damn stupid way to die I would think. Indeed, a friend's nephew did that, he was appearantly a first timer and thought it would be easy to use gravity to keep him from breathing, slipknot tied to high point, lose balance, in effect hanged himself. DUH. Could think of much better ways to do that, not that Im into not breathing. But well he was only 14 or something like that. -Martin From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Jonathan Turner [j.turner@irishnews.com] Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 3:59 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Bizarre suicide At 10:37 AM 3/24/00 +0100, you wrote: >Mused wrote: >> >> Easy. Autoeroticism. >> >> Damn stupid way to die I would think. > Completely irrelevant, perhaps, but isn't Agent Mulder supposed to die that way? The episode with the precog who starts laughing when Mulder cracks a joke about it? JT From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of David.Clements [David.Clements@astro.cf.ac.uk] Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 4:38 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Bizarre suicide On Thu, 23 Mar 2000, Graeme Price wrote: > >Instead, he was found in his house, with his legs and left arm tied to a > >chair. He had a plastic bag on his head and had apparently strangled > >himself with a ligature using his free right hand. Is it just me, or is > >that a freaking bizarre way to go?? While of course the inquest returned a > >verdict of suicide, you would think that sounded more like murder. Or I > >would, anyway. Obviously, I'm spending far too much time reading this > >flipping list... > > Sounds like the way one Tory politician (whose name escapes me) went in > the late 80's/early 90's. Except that case was put down to a cock up (oh > yes, the punmeister returns!) during a bout of autoerotic asphyxiation. > Besides, I don't think that murder sounds plausible - I mean there are > easier ways to fake a suicide. I beg to differ on this. There was a case of a British journalist in Chile investigating dubious arms deals in the 80s(?) who was found in a similar situation. Suicide was the verdict of the local authorities, btu there is a lot of suspicion that he was killed by the Chilean authorities (this was still in the Pinochet era) since he had found out too much. The staging of an autoerotic asphyxiation scene is almost meant to shame relatives and friends into silence on the matter, but that didn't occur on this occasion. I can't remember if there was any fdinal conclusion to the case. Michael Hutchence of INXS also went this way. Dave From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Jonathan Turner [j.turner@irishnews.com] Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 4:56 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Bizarre suicide At 10:38 AM 3/24/00 +0000, you wrote: >I beg to differ on this. There was a case of a British journalist in >Chile investigating dubious arms deals in the 80s(?) who was found in a >similar situation. Suicide was the verdict of the local authorities, btu >there is a lot of suspicion that he was killed by the Chilean authorities >(this was still in the Pinochet era) since he had found out too much. The >staging of an autoerotic asphyxiation scene is almost meant to shame >relatives and friends into silence on the matter, but that didn't occur >on this occasion. I can't remember if there was any fdinal conclusion to >the case. Or with Paula Yates, either! There is also the fictional use of such a technique to cover a murder in a Patricia Cornell novel. The only one, I hasten to add, that I have ever actually ploughed my way through... Shotgun-toting pathologists. I mean, really... JT From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of David.Clements [David.Clements@astro.cf.ac.uk] Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 4:58 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Bizarre suicide On Fri, 24 Mar 2000, Jonathan Turner wrote: > At 10:38 AM 3/24/00 +0000, you wrote: > > There is also the fictional use of such a technique to cover a murder in a > Patricia Cornell novel. The only one, I hasten to add, that I have ever > actually ploughed my way through... Shotgun-toting pathologists. I mean, > really... Not shotgun, but I have a Glock toting medical examiner in my DG cell, so show a bit of respect! Dave From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Jonathan Turner [j.turner@irishnews.com] Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 5:15 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: Bizarre suicide At 10:57 AM 3/24/00 +0000, you wrote: > >Not shotgun, but I have a Glock toting medical examiner in my DG cell, so >show a bit of respect! > Obviously a Glock is a clinical, precise, almost surgical weapon by comparison. My respect knows no bounds... ;-) JT From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Jonathan Turner [j.turner@irishnews.com] Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 8:10 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Mobile command centre Well, if FEMA have one, surely DG can get something similar! http://www.fema.gov/r-n-r/mers.htm From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Jonathan Turner [j.turner@irishnews.com] Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 8:27 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: LLWs... again As a follow-up to the posts on LLWs, these two writers were featured in that documentary on Discovery. Apparently, they used to be science fiction writers. Now they advise the DoD on LLWs. Their company is called M2 Technologies - one figure away from the Bronsons? Here's an article on the non-lethal battlefield of the future. It actually has some good ideas about advanced technology such as sonics, etc http://www.unh.edu/orps/nonlethality/pub/tomorrow.html JT From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Jonathan Turner [j.turner@irishnews.com] Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 8:41 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Nuke accidents... For Homer Simpson fans... a highly informative article on nuclear weapons accidents, including a little table which gives all the codes - such as Broken Arrow - for nuclear emergencies. Perhaps we in DG should have our own little lexicon? JT From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Juergen Hubert [snjuhube@pop.rrze.uni-erlangen.de] Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 8:45 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: On Gates and similar matters Andy Robertson wrote: > > Maybe a really bright scientist could work this out and apply it? (back to > my old complaint - we physicists should have a few Mythos points by default, > by Cthulhu!) "By Cthulhu?" Personally, I think of myself more of a Daoloth cultist... Hmmm... What Mythos entities would fit in best with the various academic fields? What type of scientist has the best chances of "accidentally" making contact with a Mythos deity? - Juergen Hubert, student of physics From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Jonathan Turner [j.turner@irishnews.com] Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 8:55 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: On Gates and similar matters At 03:45 PM 3/24/00 +0100, you wrote: > >Hmmm... What Mythos entities would fit in best with the various academic >fields? What type of scientist has the best chances of "accidentally" >making contact with a Mythos deity? > Archaeologists, anthropologists, physicists, theoretical mathematicians. JT From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Jonathan Turner [j.turner@irishnews.com] Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 8:57 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: USS Scorpion I was wondering if anyone had any information about the mysterious disappearance of this sub. I saw a piece on it on the nuclear accident URL I posted, but has anyone heard anything else? JT From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of cd skogsberg [d97skog@dtek.chalmers.se] Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 9:18 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: USS Scorpion Jonathan Turner wrote: > I was wondering if anyone had any information about the mysterious > disappearance of this sub. I saw a piece on it on the nuclear accident URL > I posted, but has anyone heard anything else? Actually, that message contained no URL. Perhaps you could resend it? Anyway, here's a URL that appeared on a quick google.com search: The USS Scorpion - Mystery of the Deep "The Navy says the submarine's sinking was an accident; revelations suggest a darker scenario." http://members.aol.com/bear317d/scorpion.htm /cd -- The Hell Law says that Hell is reserved exclusively for them that believe in it. Further, the lowest Rung in Hell is reserved for them that believe in it on the supposition that they'll go there if they don't. HBT; The Gospel According to Fred, 3:1 -- Principia Discordia From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of William Timmins [wtimmins@hotmail.com] Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 9:35 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: Re: DG: On Gates (relativity and time travel) A big followup... I apologize for how long this is, but I hope it's useful. Grew a bit larger than I expected... ;) Here's a simple rule for how much time has appeared to pass. time travelled = vector x distance travelled vector is in c, positive if moving in the same direction as the teleport, negative if moving in the opposite direction. Distance is in lightseconds, lightminutes, whatever. If distance is in lightminutes, time traveled is in minutes, etc. If the observer is considered at rest, the vector is of the reference frame of the teleporter. If the teleporter is considered at rest, the vector is of the observer. So... a gate orbiting Jupiter (5.2 AU, or about 43 lightminutes from the sun) connected to Earth is an instantaneous teleport of 43 lightminutes (very approximately). If an observer is travelling from Earth to Jupiter at 50% the speed of light: time = .5 x 43 lightminutes A person teleporting from Earth to Jupiter will, to the traveler, step into the gate on Earth, seem to disappear for about 22 minutes, then appear on Jupiter. If a person is teleporting from Jupiter to Earth, however, the traveler will see a copy of the person walk out of the gate on Earth. 22 minutes later, the traveler will see the person walk into the gate on Jupiter. In the intervening period, there will be TWO copies of that person. You can experiment yourself with some graph paper and some thought. It's not at all hard to set up paradoxes, where an observer sees someone exit a gate, then sends a signal to the 'earlier' timeperiod and tells them not to enter the gate (or blows it up). Now, the fact is that in the normal universe, most reference frames are somewhat close. These effects would probably never occur in normal situations. It's still possible, however, and that's a problem (for causality and physics, at any rate) There are, however, some other situations that complicate matters. What happens if the two ends of the Gate are in different reference frames? Niven had a great article on teleportation and such issues. If you teleport from a low point to a high point, you've gained energy, vice versa if you teleport the other way. Where does the energy come from? He postulated getting colder if you teleport uphill and hot downhill. How about teleporting from one side of the Earth's equator to the opposite side? You'd have a huge linear momentum to bleed off. What happens if the ends of the Gate are moving, relative to each other? As a matter of esthetics, I'd argue that the 'travel line' is the shortest distance between the two lines, on the time-space graph. Or: Time = closing vector/2 x distance Closing vector is positive if moving together, negative if moving apart. If you are at rest and two gates are moving at .5 c away from each other, closing vector is -1c. Or: Angle of gate travel line from horizontal is half the angle of the reference frames of the ends of the gate (the two more or less vertical lines, 'at rest' for each end) So travel time can appear positive or negative, depending on the set up. No big deal. One hour on one side of the gate is still an hour going by on the other. No big deal, except for sending signals back and forth to create paradox.. HOWEVER: The signals are an eye into another problem. Acceleration. If you accelerate one end of a gate, it's possible to set up two bad situations (at least for any sane universe) First bad situation: This is easier to explain if you have scratch paper. Draw horizontal space line, vertical time line. Draw a 45 degree line angling right. Draw a line connecting the vertical time line (our imaginary 'at rest' end of the gate) to the 45 degree line (the other end), the angle should be half of a 45 degree line. You could estimate it by drawing a horizontal then a 45 degree angle down, and drawing a line midway. This is the gate travel line. No biggie, except that for some reference frames matter seems to have been destroyed and, in others, created. Oh well, screw physics. Well, it gets 'worse'. You teleport to the right line, then accelerate the other way, real high acceleration, until the line is vertical. Connect, from the same dot where the gate touches the right line, a horizontal line to the left line. You will now see the problem. You teleport across, accelerate, then teleport back, and have promptly gone back in time. Instant matter/clone maker.. just keep sending goods or people through. The time trip is more extreme if you actually accelerate the right line to angle back toward the first. Second bad situation: With non-accelerating gates, causality and 1:1 relations between things (matter not created/destroyed) were screwed up, but only in 'other frames'. With acceleration, things no longer are 1:1. Consider the gate. If one end of the gate is accelerating, then the other end is now clearly connected to more than one end points. Refer back to your original doodle. A point in the vertical, unaccelerating end of the gate can be connected, at various angles, to different times and spots on the right line. A huge bunch of them, depending on acceleration. So if you step from the left line to the right, which point on the right do you go to? In conventional space, the 'angle' depends on your velocity. Different velocities from different points can reach the same point. With the gates, an accelerating end implies some sort of variable 'gate speed', or some other mechanism to synch them up.. The problem is significant because planets orbit and stars move, relative to one another. These effects can be ignored for the average investigator, but a character with Physics and his hands on equipment can push the envelope. Among other things, a gate orbiting a Neutron star could probably be used, with some suitable magic to protect a character from radiation and gravitational tides, as a cyclic time travel, by bouncing back and forth. Expensive in MP, though. I've avoided math with this last part, because accelerations are a bit beyond my ability. Still, this all is food for thought in my Endtimes game. Will have to be addressed. Hrm. Maybe I'll write something up with visual aids. -Will ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com From: owner-dgrpg@delta-green.com on behalf of Jonathan Turner [j.turner@irishnews.com] Sent: Friday, March 24, 2000 9:58 AM To: dgrpg@delta-green.com Subject: DG: Nuke accidents... again D'oh! D'oh! D'oh!! URL is http://www.milnet.com/milnet/cdiart.htm