kengr

I'm looking for a "suffix" to a company name that *doesn't* have legal implications/meaning.

For example "XYZ Inc." means the company is incorporated. Ditto for XYZ Corporation. LTD, has other implications.

So what I'm looking for is something suitably generic

Got a few questions... of course, now that I go to post, I can only remember a couple of them.

For the language geeks out there: any idea what the proto-IndoEuropean word for "trader" was? Or I can deal with an equally old word in any of the other major language families from the Old World.

This is for background for an *old* idea of mine

Next, for the electronics geeks: I've got one of those Binary clocks. It runs of 9VDC. The power is supplied by a wall wart. I'd like make (or buy) a circuit that'd let me put a battery backup between the wall wart and the clock.

I want something where the battery *isn't* being used until the power from the wall wart drops. This is because I've had too much experience with battery "backups" on clocks that *don't* do that, so when the power fails, the battery is dead (I'd like to have a few words with whoever designed *that* circuit, just me, him and a baseball bat.

Oh a bit of silliness. The clock I have that has a battery backup *works* has gotten a bit strange. Somehow, a year or so back, the backup got 6 minutes fast. That is, if the power goes out, when it comes back, the clock is 6 minutes fast... WTF?

ps. Also had a silly thought while re-reading something. A "forged" cuneiform tablet. Can't be considered an actual forgery because when translated, it's so very moderm text. My first thought is the lyrics of "House of the Rising Sun"

Any one have any other suggestions?

(also pockets)

I've been thinking on yet another variation on the "people stumble across a spaceship and get it working" trope.

I'm trying to figure ways this (not alien, but from the future) spacecraft could be hidden yet findable. I figure it should have been hidden several hundred years ago, after getting sent back to the past via [much handwaving]

I figure that about the only practical way is for it to be in an underground location. Probably one that was excavated, not natural. I'm sorta stuck on how to hide the entrance since most of the ways that come to mind would either require gear they wouldn't have or look suspicious to surveyors ("Looks like somebody blasted down that cliff face, Charlie.")

So I'm asking for ideas.

Technology is pretty much that of the Treveller RPG, but with somewhat better computers.

An idea has come to me for hiding some things in plain sight.

I'm wondering if you can create a "food forest" and something similar in adjacent non forest areas (ie bushes and grasses) that would sustain a decent number of people, but still look "wild".

So it shouldn't look like (for example) an orchard or fields of crops. More intermixed and using plants that support each other (like the Native American "three sisters").

I'm thinking the pacific Northwest, and either the mountains and hills surrounding the Willamette Valley or maybe something up north of Spokane.

"Decent number" would be anything from a dozen to a hundred or so.

I'm pretty sure it could be done, but I don't have a clue about which plants that are native or at least seem to be common "wild" introduced species would be involved.

do note that I'm looking for a varied, balanced diet . Preferably one that can get them by with minimal hunting. But besides food, other resources (crafting materials, some construction materials and firewood) should be sustainably harvestable.

Yeah,, not asking much.

Got a variant on an idea I had in the past.

Both Luna and Mars are capable of retaining an atmosphere and hydrosphere for significant periods of time if they were somehow given them.

For Luna it's hundreds to thousands of years. For Mars it'd be *much* long, both because of the higher gravity and being farther from the sun.

Lot's of authors have written about terraforming Mars. I can think of only one who tried it with Luna.

But my new thought was what if Someone (aliens?) did it in the distant past and set up some maintenance methods.

So both Mars and Luna are habitable and have been stocked with terran life forms (including humans)

This wouldn't be obvious to folks on earth until at 1600s or later. Without telescopes, you might notice some clouds and the like on Luna, but that'd be about it.

Mars would likely take until the 1800s or so.

I'm assuming that Luna doesn't have tech beyond Medieval if that. Mars might be more advanced. But no radio at least.

Given all this, History would be mostly the same until recently.

I'm wondering what things you folks think would change in that universe. The big cvhanges would be in the last 100-150 years.

I'm also interested in folks take on how civilizations might develop on Luna and Mars.

ps. I have vague memories of some site that would display maps of Mars and Luna with oceans of various depths. If anybody knows what they are, I'd be grateful for the info.

I somehow came up with fun idea. I suspect it's *not* new, but I don't recall encountering it before.

Archeological dig unearths some cuneiform tablets. Definitely the real thing. Lots of context, carbon datable stuff in the matrix, they can even check the age on some of the broken pieces by that trick involving heating ceramic (somehow that can give an age range, I just can't recall how).

So, definitely from ancient Sumeria or Assyria or whatever.

But some of them seem to be random nonsense. They get scanned along with a large number of other tablets as part of a process of making info available to scholars online.

somebody runs some software against the database that contains them and a lot of other ancient and more recent inscriptions and documents.

Some graduate student notices something odd about the results of an analysis attempting to identify various languages by things like letter/phoneme frequencies.

The "nonsense" tablets show a high correlation with modern English. Obviously a goof of some sort.

So trying to figure out what sort of bug it is, the student examines the scans more carefully. He has to get some help from a friend in another department who can actually *read* clay tablets.

The friend asks who he got to make up the fakes. Much confusion as friend doesn't want to believe they are real.

Basically, the "nonsense" seems to be a "phonetic" transcription of some passages in modern English.

The original team hadn't picked it up because there are several *different* schools of thought on how many ancient languages are pronounced.

What do they say? Well, that'd be the story, wouldn't it.

Alas, pulling it off properly for a story would requires somebody who knows the language and the writing system. And *I* don't know anybody like that.

First thought (a quote whose origin I don't recall)

"You are entitled to your own opinion. You are not entitled to your own facts."

This lead to some interesting ideas for questions in a science class (high school or junior high)

1. scientists performed an extensive series of experiments that confirmed [something "everybody knows"]. Was this a good use of resources? Why or why not?

2. Scientists performed an extensive series of experiment whose results contradict [widely held belief]. Should they have released the results? Should they have bowed to public opinion?

3. it is a fact that "The Bible says creation took six days." . True or False.

4. it is a fact that "Creation took six days". True or false.

(add various questions that deal with correlation not equaling casaution)

(add various questions about the difference between what an experiment measured and what those measurements "mean")

This would definitely put the cat in among the canaries. Especially if you threw in fact/not fact questions about what various "holy books" say and whether what they say is a fact.