Main site of science textbooks
Crowdfunding site for the free
online science textbooks project

The Nukes of Blizzard County
Jay Maron


Blizzard County is a menacing mass of mountains

Within the mountains is Tundra Valley

The valley is an outdoor zoo. Humans are generous with food and animals have GPS trackers so that humans can find their favorite animals.

There are abundant plants with bird food.

There are abundant golf courses.

There are courses for soccer balls, frisbees, shot puts, and cannons.

Tundra Valley has abundant waterfalls, hot springs, and whitewater rafting. A fission reactor's discard heat powers a river and keeps it warm in winter. The river has a section where the water is focused into a surfing wave. The discard heat also makes an underground hotspot that looks like Yellowstone. There are artificial geysers.


Kane Heft's campground is lush with flora and fauna.

Dense pines give privacy and block noise and wind.

It has a daredevil playground called Risk Park.

A crowd gathers to watch the Heft Open, a contest for humans with gadgets. Many invent their own gadgets. It's a mixed martial gadget contest. A selfie factory.


Upon a mountaintop is the first tee of Meltdown golf course. 1000 yards, par 4. The green lies in a valley.

A group of golfers take shots. Among them is Boss Dogg, Blizzard County Commissioner. His shot is caught by the jet stream and sails over the green and lands in the lake behind it.

Dogg: The lake has geese that are trained to fetch golf balls. From a goose's point of view, golf balls are currency that can be exchanged for food. A goose sees golf balls the way a 49'er sees gold nuggets.

Kane Heft's shot slices and hits the cliff to the right of the fairway, stopping in the fairway below.

Heft: Happy I'm not in the water. The wind up here is too fierce to manage.
Bank shot.

Brutus Forcefeld is a member of the PGA Tour and he used his winnings to build the golf course. His shot is bullied by wind currents like a knuckleball but magically lands on the fairway, a short distance from the green.

Forcefeld: Thanks everyone for the intel on the wind currents.
Brutus has a superpower. Brutus can see air.

Aurora Wavecrest is a celebrity actress and Blizzard County Director of Tourism. She produces films in Blizzard County harnessing the rugged scenery. Her shot goes straight like a sniper bullet but then sinks like a spitball and crashes into the fairway. It bounces and rolles, and rolls and rolls, and comes to rest on the green.

How did you make the ball sink?
Wavecrest: This is a negative one wood that makes topspin. What's in yeeeeeeeeer golf bag?
It's like the man that skied down Mount Everest. He crashed early but still made it to the bottom.
The man that wiped down Mount Everest.
U.S. Air Force bombers have a perfect record. Every bomb they dropped hit the ground.

The golfers mount unicycles and roll down to the green. The fairway has moguls and jumps and is a ski slope in winter. Heft is a professional unicycle athlete and X games coach.

As they roll, a fleet of vehicles rolls into the valley and parks at Heft's campground. This is Barfleet, a fleet of land yachts and barships. It tours golf courses and golf tournaments. Some people have their own land yachts and some ride in barships. Barfleet is a mobile city, with trucks for water, gasoline, generators, sewage, etc. When it parks, people live in land yachts or deluxe tents. The Barfleet Captain is Brute Nuke, an eccentric billionaire and Blizztech Professor of Physics.

The fleet includes the team bus of the Blizzard Honey Badgers rugby team along with barships of fans. Tonight is a game between the Honey Badgers and the Hungarian National Team. Barfleet is accompanied by a cycling race tour, the Tour de Golf.

Rugby games happen in the Blizzard Bowl, a stadium-shaped valley that amplifies sound. The valley is deep and holds heat, and a warm river from the nuclear reactor adds heat. The surrounding cliffs support a retractable dome and the turf is natural. Warm tundra.

The stadium has subwoofers, drums, organ pipes, mountain horns, bass instruments, and cannons. Many are more than 20 meters in size. Underground mass drivers can shake the stadium. The jumbotrons are projectors aimed at cliffs. The subwoofers consume 100 megawatts and can be heard in neighboring counties. Blizzard has an orchestra with 100 string basses, 100 tubas, and 100 percussionists. Aurora uses the orchestra to record sountracks using the acoustics of the Blizzard Bowl.

The Blizzard Bowl has luxurious locker rooms. Visiting teams and their fans are accomodated by Heft's campground. The Honey Badgers are highly sought after for games because of their nice stadium and accomodations. The team is owned by Aurora, who puts big money into player salaries. She taps players for stuntmen for her films.

Dogg's ball was last seen splashing into water and now lies on the green. It's coated by a telltale sheen of water and a goose stands nearby.

Dogg pulls a loaf of bread from his golf bag and hands it to the goose.

What's in yeeeeeeeeeeeer golf bag?
This course has Easter eggs.
Goose eggs. That's Spruce Goose, the Blizzard County boss goose.

The goose tackles the loaf like a contestant at the Coney Island hot dog eating contest. He does his best but the loaf is too big and he succumbs to a food coma. He hands the rest of the loaf to other geese and experiences the thrill of being a goose pimp.

As Dogg walkes toward the green he slips on goose poop and falls on his ass.

Dogg is a narcissist. He's accompanied by a fleet of camera drones at all times, operated by a van full of media engineers. The van is envied bv NFL referees. The engineers post the video of Dogg falling on his ass and it goes viral. A meme mother lode. The meme is used to advertize Dogg's merchandise.

Why is Spruce the boss?
Spruce is biggest. Well fed.
By Dogg's golfing.
The geese float in the lake at day and take off to fly at twilight. Spruce Goose decides when it's time to take off. He stands on a big rock and honks and the rest of the geese heed and take off. Spruce himself takes off but takeoff is difficult for Spruce. That's why he's on a big rock. He jumps off the rock and flaps his wings, and his wingtips touch the lake 5 times before he achieves enough speed for cruising flight. But once in the air, he's like a World War 2 superfortress bomber. Spruce is a celebrity at my campsite. He occupies the Iron Throne in Central Pond.
I'm writing Spruce into my films as a stunt goose.


A pack of kids climb a mountain, and waiting at the top is a science and math contest. The stakes are high. High scorers get cash and privileges at the Blizzard Institute of Technology, which is like having privileges at Hogwarts. Blizztech teaches magic, but you must be worthy. Wielding magic requires math.

Kids come from all over the world. Once upon a time, kids from Wyoming went to Boston for school and now it's the other way around.

Oligarchs bribed a set of mighty scientists, mathematicians, and engineers to teach at Blizztech, and an institute of technology formed around this nucleus. Blizztech is the new Rome. Many gadgets at the Heft Open were custom-built at Blizztech. Blizztech has a campus in Blizzard County, and it also has a mobile wing with Barfleet.

Blizztech teachers have it good. They get a house, a lawn, a monster truck, free energy from the nuclear reactor, and free beef from local ranches. Their yards are landscaped by students.

Blizztech has no administration. Students handle administrative tasks in exchange for reduced tuition. Tuition is negotiated directly between students and teachers.

Blizzard County has abundant homeschools, hubbed by Blizztech. Homeschools are hip and public schools are stale. Teaching is done by an ensemble of parents, pastors, older kids, the elderly, and specialists.


Blizzard citizens hear a deep bass sound and the sky darkens. An Airbus A380 flies overhead and lands at Blizzport.

The plane carries a pilot and no passengers. The pilot debarks and is greeted by Brute Nuke, who hands him a cheesesteak sandwich and the keys to a Ford F-150 truck. The pilot drives off in the truck, which carries tons of gold.

Blizztech engineers strip the plane down to minimum mass and cut a hole in the back to drop bombs. On the outside of the plane they paint the name "Le May".

They load the Le May with small test rockets and take off. At 15 km altitude, they drop the rockets and pilot Vesta Garnet practices handling the plane. After a rocket is dropped, it fires and takes off forward and up. But these are test rockets and they then crash back to Earth.

General Le May: Flying fighters is fun. Flying bombers is important.
Bach: Playing violin is fun. Playing viola is important.

The Le May lands and is refueled and the engineers load one large rocket into it. An A380 is the world's biggest bomber with a payload of 300 tons.

The Le May takes off and drops the rocket at 15 km altitude and Mach 0.9. The first stage is a ramjet that gets the rocket to Mach 5, and then the ramjet parachutes down. Then 2 stages of solid boosters gets the rocket to orbit.

The rocket reaches orbit and unleashes its payload, a kevlar balloon 8 meters in diameter. The balloon has many layers for redundancy. Between layers is low-density filler. Kevlar converts micrometeorites into plasma and the filler absorbes the heat of the plasma. The balloon is impervious to space junk like a runflat tire. On the outside of the balloon is painted the words "Boar's Buffet".

A second rocket reaches orbit and delivers a prep kit to the Boar's Lair with things like canned meat, whiskey, coffee beans, spices, playing cards, gamestations, and sodium perchlorate for oxygen.

Another rocket delivers a Santa Clause bag of gadgets. Another delivers rockets that burn H2+O2 fuel, along with fuel. Another delivers communications satellites destined for geostationary orbit over Blizzard County.

                              km/second   Mach

Earth equator speed                .45     1.5
Ramjet speed                      1.5      5
Solid rocket stage speed change   3.0     10
Orbit speed                       7.8     26

A rocket carries astronauts to the Boar's Buffet. They are competitors from the Heft Open deemed the most daring, the most willing to take risks for space selfies. The astronauts practice operating the gadgets.

More balloons and fuel arrived from Earth and the astronauts use them to go to the moon.


A pack of Blizztech students grill burgers and drink beer.
They repose on tailgates.
Upcoming is a lecture by Gregor Rigel, Blizztech professor of science fiction, history of science, and Tamarian language. An hour before lecture a monster truck pulls up to the tailgate party and from it emerges professor Rigel. He opens the tailgate and sits on it and students hand him burgers and beer. This is office hours.

A bonfire cranks out heat and gasoline generators crank out electricity and people have electric blankets. It's a sauna.

Rigel: The Starship Enterprise has the mission of exploring new worlds. Can anyone give more examples?
Hickory Cloud: Odysseus
Arcturus Bulleye: James Cook
Vega Jade: Lewis and Clark
The Argonauts
Vikings
A circus
If I'd been Cook and discovered Hawaii, I would have stayed. I’d send letters to my friends telling them that paradise exists and welcoming them to join me.
Cook blew it. He could have pulled a Kurtz and been a god but he was a jerk and the Hawaiians killed him.
Cortez was a hero when he vanquished the tyrannical Aztecs but then he proved to be a tyrant.
It took 3 months to sail from England to Hawaii. You had to commit to one or the other. If a new paradise is discovered, how long would you be willing to travel to get there?
I wouldn't travel to Alpha Centauri on a sublight ship.
You'd die of old age before arriving. Perhaps your children will prosper.
Your ship better be as luxurious as a family van. No rest stops in space.
Don't get on the first ship to Alpha Centauri. The second ship will be faster and get there first.
If you're fleeing tyranny you'll travel far, like the Pilgrims and Mormons.
In Europe, every square inch of land has been owned for millennia. Owned by kings not farmers. Farmers were feudal slaves. The New World had unowned farmland.
People want to farm in peace.
The U.S. government gave 160 acres to anyone willing to get their ass to the frontier and farm it. People showed up.
People hustled to gold rushes in Alaska.
Ancient Romans knew the distance to China and they knew the size of the Earth. Could their ships have reached China?
For a bonus point, what was the tonnage of Columbus' flagship?
Each student wrote down a number on a white board and the student that was closest got the point. The student that's designated Scribe of the Day recorded the point.
Ancient Roman warships were 50 tons, Columbus' ship was 150 tons, American Revolutionary War warships were 4000 tons, and WW2 battleships were 60000 tons. Kon Tiki was a mere 10 tons and it crossed the Pacific.
Kon Tiki was uncomfortable but unsinkable. A raw raft.
Daring sailers.
Aircraft are like warp drive to the pre-industrial world.
For Tamarian language, one has to make wise choices about what to include in the canon.
You want material that everyone knows and that's rich in scenes and characters.
Contenders include:

             Films   TV Seasons   Novels   Graphic novel  Video games
                                              seasons

Avengers        33      14                    Many             27
James Bond      27       0           50         13             31
X Men           14      17          170       Many             30
Star Trek       13      34          850         27            139
Star Wars       12      41          450                        88
Batman          11       4           41       Many             41
Superman        11      11                    Many             17
Harry Potter    11       0            7                        20
Indiana Jones    9       2           47                        22
Game of Thrones  0       9            0

Novelizations of films are not counted.

We can also include world history, Christianity, Greco-Roman mythology, and Norse mythology. Greco-Roman and Norse mythology won the canon war because they're cool.
What if canon goes off the rails like Star Wars?
The Guardians of the Canon meet in a smoke-filled room and excommunicate bad canon. Papal bulls are issued.
Triggering religious schisms.
Canon wars.
Reboots unnecessarily discard canon that took hard work to build. Praise House of Dragon for sticking to canon. That being said, Game of Thrones season 8 should be excommunicated and done over.
Nuclear retcon.
Sometimes a reboot is necessary.
Mulligan.


Ganoo is an alien from planet Hulkan of the Alpha Centauri system, 4 light years from Earth. He lives in Blizzard County in a Hobbit-like house on a mountainside, and he adopts a humanoid form to socialize with humans. No one knows he's an alien. He's a Packers fan and has season tickets. Within the mountain is a secret base with space ships and nuclear reactors.

He's been on Earth for millennia recording Earth history and broadcasting it to the galactic streaming network, adding Attenborough-style commentary. Game of Thrones is a galactic hit. The galaxy is just getting the first seasons and is hungry for more. It's in for disappointment.

Ganoo follows the Prime Suggestion. He usually doesn't interfere but sometimes feels mischievous. The galaxy wants Earth to be more interesting. The galaxy eggs him on to commit mischief.

The "Boondocker's Guide to the Galaxy" has an entry on Earth that says:

Earth mastered gasoline and has nice cars. It has the technology to go nuclear but bafflingly declines. Its space program is a debacle. Earth is the Amish of the galaxy. Retro. Quaint. A contrast to nearby planet Hulkan, home of the Milky Way Institute of Technology. Earth is unaware of the existance of Hulkan and Hulkan likes it that way. Hulkan sees Earth as a nature reserve. But there's hope. There's a fellow named Helon Busk that finally figured out how to get stuff to space.

Earth is a hot tourist spot for aliens wishing to experience primitive culture. It has nice fjords. It's a galactic park. It's rich in therapy animals. But avoid humans. They're bad therapy animals. Therapy animals see humans as bummers.

Kingfisher
The Kingfisher, the first ramjet, built in 1951

Ganoo has a ship that he calls the Kingfisher. It's powered by a fission thermal hydrogen rocket, where a fission reactor heats liquid hydrogen to 4000 Kelvin and expels it at 11 km/s. A hydrogen+oxygen rocket is a mere 4.4 km/s. The reactor is liquid uranium-235 encased in hafnium carbonitride, which has the highest melting point of all materials at 4370 Kelvin.

Diamond lattice

The hull is a molecular composite of carbon nanotubes, graphene, amorphous LiMgAlScTi alloy, beryllium-aluminum alloy, diamond, and sapphire. The diamonds are isotopically pure and are in the form of a space frame. The frame consists of 200 nm wide microbeams, which have 10 times the strength of macroscopic diamonds. The outer skin is amorphous tungsten alloy for high-temperature operation and it has sapphire windows for sensors.

The ship is compact with a length of 10 meters and a power/mass of 200,000 Watts/kg, dwarfing the F-22 Raptor's 10,000 Watts/kg. Ganoo uses the Kingfisher to entertain UFO fans. They want to believe and they need hope.

The Kingfisher has a megawatt laser, a megawatt proton beam, smart missiles, EMPs, and jamming gear. Clouds can stop lasers but they can't stop high-energy protons. The explosives are heptanitrocubane and aluminum+LOX. It has a bay of combat drones powered by uranium-232 radioactivity.

HMX
Heptanitrocubane

Black=carbon, blue=nitrogen, red=oxygen, white=hydrogen

Electricity comes from generators with hyperconducting carbon nanotube wires and amorphous ferromagnets. They achieve 1000 Watts/kg whereas the best human generators are 150 Watts/kg.

The fission thermal hydrogen rocket has a fission afterburner that adds beryllium-7 to the exhaust to improve the exhaust speed to 100 km/s. Beryllium-7 has the highest fission cross section of all isotopes.

For interplanetary space, Ganoo has a bigger ship powered by a fusion plasma ring, with an exhaust speed of 2000 km/s.

For interstellar space, Ganoo has a colossal ship powered by fusion bombs, with an exhaust speed of 4000 km/s. Refueling it consumes an icy moon. The ship's metal comes from metal asteroids.

The mountain interior has fission and fusion reactors with 10 GWatts of power. Their existence is cloaked by using Yellowstone as a heat sink. Ganoo also has a terawatt reactor that uses the entire Earth as a heat sink. Ganoo has solar cells in space that produce 1023 Watts, and they power a fleet of planet-sized radio dishes that connect to the galactic internet.

The fission reactors make neutrons, and the neutrons are chilled by a dilution refrigerator to 3 millikelvin. At this temperature, neutrons bounce off walls and can be stored in a bottle, and the bottle focuses neutrons on a target. A fission reactor has a neutron density of 1016 neutrons/meter3 and the neutron bottle focuses it to 1023 neutrons/meter3, the maximum allowed by neutron degeneracy pressure. The bottle is the size of a pickleball court.

The reactors power a 1024 flops computer and the computer drives a holodeck. Ganoo has the history of all galactic civilizations and can simulate any era from any civilization.

For plasma fusion, the larger the torus, the easier it is. Humanity's largest plasma torus is ITER with a radius of 6.2 meters and a cost of $20 billion. If humans had the money to build a 100 meter torus, fusion would be easy.

A fusion reactor has a minimum mass of 1 million kg. A fission reactor can be as small as 100 kg and a radioisotope generator can be as small as a milligram. Ganoo has a fleet of sparrow drones powered by uranium-232. Ganoo sees everything.

Ganoo likes to role play and often poses as Batman or Iron Man. He has a stockpile of exotic isotopes to power his gadgets.


The astronauts land on the moon and unpack gadgets. Topaz Snowbank uses a rover to do jumps off craters.

Topaz: Someday we'll terraform the moon and you'll be able to hear a Dixie horn.
Beryl: In space, no one can hear the vuvuzela.

The rovers have ludicrously large wheels and predictive suspension, giving a smooth ride on lunar terrain. They hop over obstacles. They're powered by europium-152 radioactivity.

Ezekiel Aaberg sets up a soccer goal and Topaz takes shots while Ezekiel practices saves. Beryl plays sweeper.
One has to be careful to stay close to the ground. If you get caught off the ground it takes a long time to get back to the ground.

After the soccer session everyone grabs golf clubs and practices shots. The drivers have a club face of 45 degrees, which is the right value if there's no air. Their drives go 4 kilometers and disappear beyond the horizon.
We need tall flags for greens and we need artificial turf.
Zeke: The moon is a bigass bunker. I brought an osmium wedge to blast balls out of deep regolith.

After the golf session, Topaz, Zeke, and Beryl get on rovers and drive off in different directions to survey for metal asteroid craters, potassium, and phosphorus.

Enough damn science missions. We need prospecting missions. Every square inch of the Earth has been prospected.

A team of miners lands at the lunar south pole with equipment for mining ice. They build an underground base to be safe from cosmic rays. They use some of the ice to make rocket fuel by using solar cells to split the ice into hydrogen+oxygen. They load ice onto rockets and launch it to space where it then goes to various base stations.

Ice is needed in space for radiation shielding against cosmic ray protons. Hydrogen has the best shielding value per mass.


A balloon with a crew of astronomers travels to the Earth Lagrange point L2, the best place for space telescopes. At L2 you can block out light from the sun, Earth, and moon at the same time. Mirror segments are launched from Earth to the L2 base and astronomers assemble telescopes on-site. The station is supported by lunar ice.

Dogg owns a coat factory in Blizzard County. The coats use down feathers that are molted by wild birds of Blizzard County. No bird is plucked. The down costs $2000/kg and is one of Blizzard's prime exports. Bird down is special because it has a lower density than any synthetic fill. Dogg turned a chunk of land into a bird presidential suite full of nests and food and birds lay eggs there. Dogg collects the molt down. Virtue down. Plucked down is conflict down.

Dogg has a farm of minks, lynxes, and chinchillas, and he makes fur coats from animals that lived a luxurious life and died of old age. The pelts cost $4000/kg.

A Dogg coat has batteries and heaters that can make a blizzard feel like a sauna. It has platinum-catalytic heaters that can burn butane flamelessly. It has a gasoline-electric generator that produces 100 Watts and weighs 1 kg. It has inflatable air pockets for extra insulation, with hoses, pumps, and a fancy control panel. The hose system can heat the coat with exhaust from the generator. The coat has a circulatory system.

The coat is made of lightweight kevlar with an optional heavy layer of bulletproof kevlar. It has pockets for tactical gear and can carry enough gasoline to survive a month in a blizzard. It has a hip strap and internal skeleton in case of heavy load. It has a 100 Watt ultra-long-wave radio transceiver for long-range communication and a 10 meter extendable antenna. It has a tranceiver for connecting to Blizzard's geostationary satellites and communications balloons.

The coats are made entirely in Blizzard County and the brand is protected by making the coats uncounterfeitable. They contain isotope tracers that need an expensive accelerator and calutron to produce, which Blizzard has. There are also secret tags that are not disclosed. Each coat is an NFT with a soul.

Blizzard astronauts use a version of the coat that's heated by plutonium-238 alpha radiation.


Most of Blizzard County is mountainous and inaccessible by road. Many use hydrogen blimps, which have the virtue of silence. Plus hydrogen can power the motors. A blimp is the slickest way to store hydrogen fuel. Solar cells convert water vapor to hydrogen so that blimps can stay aloft indefinitely.

There are high-altitude blimps with cell phone hubs so that reception is good throughout Blizzard County. Phone blimps are shaped like long vertical cylinders to have minimum cross section when viewed from the ground and they're painted sky blue for cloaking.

A hydrogen blimp 10 meters in size can carry 2 people. Blimps tend to be shaped like cigars to make them easy to fit into hangers. Hangers are carved out of pine forests.

Nobody's afraid of blimp fires. Hydrogen blimps have an outer shell of helium. If a blimp ignites, people have parachutes. There's plenty of time. It took the Hindenberg 30 seconds to burn up, and the flames didn't touch the cabin. 2/3 of the passengers survived. If they'd had parachutes, all would have survived. A 2 kg parachute can support a 100 kg person.

Previous to the Hindenberg disaster, the Hindenberg had flown 100,000 miles without incident. Pretty good safety record, especially for 1936. No heavier-than-air aircraft was as reliable. The Hindenberg crossed the Atlantic many times and survived lightning storms.

Hydrogen fuel in a ground vehicle is a bomb under your ass. It's stored by liquification or by pressure vessel, and a crash releases it all at once. If you crash, you burn. Hydrogen is the most volatile flamable substance that exists. Volatility is inversely proportional to boiling point, and the boiling point of hydrogen is 20 Kelvin.

Electric planes are common. An electric plane is robust because it can have multiple batteries and propellers, and it doesn't need a powertrain like a gasoline plane. It has enough power to hover. The weakness is a maximum range of 50 km, but this is enough to cross Blizzard county.


The golfers stand at the tee of the 2nd hole. 300 yards, par 5. The tee is in a valley and the green is on a mountaintop. The wind is against them.

Dogg teed off with a nine iron to get loft to go uphill. The ball was seized by the wind, reversed course, and landed in the lake behind him, the same lake that ate his last tee shot. The trajectory was captured by drones and posted to social media.

Kane: Are you feeding the lake?

Aurora grabbed a four-inch tee from her golf bag, 4 inches being the maximum allowed by the rules. She set it on an uphill spot and hit the ball with upswing with a negative one wood. The upswing gave the ball loft to go uphill and the topspin brought it down before the wind could take it.

Kane grabbed a one-inch tee and set the ball to be just above the ground, in deep grass. He hit it with a zero wood and as the ball plowed through grass it gained loft and topspin, and the ball followed a trajectory similar to Aurora's.

Dogg: Kane is master of bank shots.

Brutus teed off with a 9 iron and aimed at a tree on the fairway. He hit the tree and the ball fell to the ground before the wind could take it.

Aurora: Base camp one.

A goose brought Dogg his ball and received a loaf of bread.

Brutus: Dogg's golf bag has a high-capacity bread magazine.
When Dogg golfs, geese gather.

They are playing in the Forcefeld Open. The field is open to players in the PGA Tour, European Tour, Japanese Tour, Asian Tour, Korn Ferry tour, LPGA Tour, and LPGA Japan Tour, as well as Cinderellas from qualifier tournaments. There are sponsor's exemptions for celebrities and there is the option to buy entry for $20,000. The purse is $10 million, enough to rival a PGA tournament. The field has 1000 players, 12 from the PGA. Players play 4 18-hole courses for a total of 72 holes, and there is no cut. If you pay, you get to play, and you get to play amonst pros.


Ajax Boulderfield is a Christian priest that owns an elderly home in Blizzard County. The home features a church, a golf course, a bowling alley, pickleball courts, and gardens landscaped by Kane Heft. Ajax is elderly and wheelchair-bound.

A pack of wheelchair enthusiasts repose in rugged wilderness. The terrain isn't wheelchair-accessible. One wonders how they got there. Most of the riders are elderly and Ajax is among them.

The wheelchairs are the Model Goat, designed at Blizztech and manufactured by Dogg Industries. They have an electric and gasoline motor, batteries, a generator, and 007 gadgets. It's a Bat Chair. It's a transformer that can grow a cabin around the rider. It can recline like an easy chair and it has a telescoping headrest. A telescoping trunk extends from the back. The seat can telescope upward to bring the occupant to standing level. In high speed mode, the axles widen and the front axle telescopes forward.

The wheelchairs can sprout legs and navigate rugged terrain like a mountain goat, with software designed at Blizztech. They can drive autonomously. Some riders have functioning legs and are in wheelchairs because they dig the chairs. One wheelchair carries a baby.
Ajax has a monster truck with 8-foot wheels. It has a tailgate that lowers to the ground like a ramp so that Ajax can roll up to the truck bed, and then he opens the door to the cabin and rolls to the driver's spot. Ajax is differently-abled. The cabin fits 8 wheelchairs and the truck bed can grow a cabin to fit 6 more wheelchairs. The floor sprouts pop-up chairs in case a passenger doesn't have a wheelchair. The cabin is convertible.

The truck is a mobile church and sports a gold cross on the grill. The truck has a crane and Ajax is part of a lumberjack crew. Ajax's wheelchair has a fancy control panel that runs the truck, crane, winch, and log splitters. If the truck bed is full, the crane can hoist wheelchairs into the cabin. Aurora often borrows the truck for film scenes.

Ajax often sermonizes while the crew works. Ajax is a standup comedian and his sermons are hilarious.

The elderly home has a saw mill. The home is a temple of stone and lumber and it's mostly carved out of a mountain. It's well-heated by firewood. It has a cistern system within the mountains above the home that can soak the home in case of fire.

The home is well-padded. There's a room of foam balls and an indoor pool.


Topaz Snowbank is on the moon and she calls Aurora, who puts the call on speakerphone.
Topaz: I found a metal asteroid crater.
Nuke: Mining equipment is on the way.
I found a crater that's great for the X games.
Aurora: I shipped a Dodge Charger to the moon for film scenes. It's painted orange like in The Dukes of Hazzard and it has a radioisotope engine.
Heft: 300 Dodge Chargers were destroyed in the filming of The Dukes of Hazzard, at an average of 2 per show.
This car was reinforced at Blizztech and can take a hard landing. It has 3 layers of suspension and the chair has 3 more layers.
It has attitude control rockets to ensure it lands on its wheels. The Dukes of Hazzard car had poor attitude control. The engine was so heavy that they needed 300 kilograms of ballast in the trunk to keep it from faceplanting.
The stunt drivers reported enjoying the flights but hating the landings. They also enjoyed the music.
The reduced gravity should help.
The reduced gravity means I'll make the jump 6 times higher.
You're going to need the attitude control.
I'll give you a backflip.
Your moon wushu video is hilarious. Love your scorpion kick style. Please film a scene of a brawl in Jackie Chan style. I shipped orchestral instruments to the moon for brawl props. They're expendable. They came from an online vendor that has a reputation for selling fragile products.
Zeke: Which instrument would you grab as a weapon?
I'd grab a trombone and separate the slider to make a club and shield.
How's the skiing?
The ice deposit is hard ice, like skiing in Wisconsin. Can you send a machine that turns ice into powder?
A ski Zamboni.
E strings are like skiing on ice
Take the path of most action
C strings are like skiing in powder

Boss Dogg got a call from Ajax Boulderfield, the Blizzard press secretary.
Ajax: The commissioner of Lizzard County, Boss Bogg, has announced he's abandoned all vice rules. Pretty much everything is legal in Lizzard now. It's a swamp. I'll give a press conference and emphasize that Blizzard is a family-friendly county that's a safe space from vice, that Blizzard values family tourism.
Dogg: Tell people that Blizzard confines vice to an isolated valley that's set aside for vice revenue, and boast that Vice Valley's casinos are better than Lizzard's. They have exotic games designed by professor Gage Arch at Blizztech.
Kane: Tell people that Kane Park will always be family-friendly.
I'll emphasize that churches and schools are being built next to the park, and that they're investing in the park. It has ludicrous playground equipment.
Toy stores are sprouting next to the park.
It's a boom town for toys and X games.
Blizzard is a lumber superpower. There's also a firestation and hospital next to the park, and Blizzard has a fleet of waterbombers and air ambulances.
If a Blizzard citizen or guest goes down, a jet goes to him and drops a bomb consisting of a doctor and medical equipment. Moments later a VTOL aircraft arrives to take the patient to the hospital like M*A*S*H.
Aurora: The Mormon tabernacle is vast. Some of the churches are engaged in a spire contest. A rich city slicker built a vanity Buddha temple with a gold Buddha statue. Rich source of movie settings.
Disneyland charges $120 and Kane Park charges $5. Disneyland gouges food prices and Kane Park lets you cook your own food. It has grills, sinks, fridges, freezers, electricity, and a farmer's market.
I'm using the park to film a scene with a spice-eating contest. Curry chefs from around the world are holding a convention in the park.
I'll emphasize that Blizzard is a cheap place for conventions, and that Kane's campground costs way less than a city hotel.
Lizzard is building wind turbines on the border with Blizzard, to sabotage the view and disrupt Aurora's movies.
Blizztech programmers can erase the wind turbines from the movie.
I built an agriculture lab on the Lizzard border, and the prevailing wind blows into Lizzard. The lab has abundant cows. Manure that's generated in Blizzard is shipped to the lab for processing. Before processing, it's aged, like wine. The lab specializes in sewage treatment.
Lizzard plans to launch balloons to clutter the sky with ads.
Nuke will out-balloon them. Blizzard welcomes a strategic balloon arms race. Plus Nuke has a loud aircraft.
I'm building a golf course for cannons on the Lizzard border.
The Blizzard bass orchestra holds rehearsals on the Lizzard border.
Lizzard casinos will project powerful lights into the sky, to pollute Blizzard's night sky and disrupt our asteroid-finding telescopes.
Lizzard has 1 Gigawatt and Blizzard has 10.
My agriculture lab will compel Lizzard to bend the knee. I ordered the researchers to explore sulfur chemistry.
Professor Sundial drilled a deep hole on the Lizzard border to release volcanic gas. She found a sulfur deposit.
At the Oracle of Delphi, the Pythias were high on volcanic ethylene gas. The temple has a volcanic vent in the basement.


Nuke owns a monster radio dish in Blizzard County that's supported by a dish-shaped valley. It has a gigawatt radio transmitter to hunt metal asteroids. Nuke knows where the metal asteroids are. The dish also looks for alien signals and a supercomputer analyzes the data. Nuke is obsessed with aliens.

Nuke also owns an array of shotgun telescopes to find asteroids optically. They have wide fields of view and they survey the entire sky every night.

Telescope data goes to a public archive at Blizztech and Blizztech astronomers analyze it.

Nuke has a team of scuba divers in the oceans trying to communicate with whales.

Heft's agents have been feeding birds all over North America to steer their migration patterns to Blizzard County. His agents tag birds and he has a massive bird tracking database.


A rocket delivers humans to a lab near the lunar south pole, near an ice deposit and a metal asteroid crater. The lab is 4 meters underground to block cosmic rays. It has a sewage lab designed by Kane Heft that recycles nutrients from biowaste. The delivery also includes tons of fertilizer in the form of ammonium nitrate and tripotassium phosphate. An array of solar panels and nuclear reactors power grow lights for hydroponics.

A machine pounds lunar rock into dust and then Topaz adds potions of microbes and worms to the dust to turn it to soil. The potions come from Heft's lab where he studies techniques for turning volcanic rock to soil.

There's a pond where biowaste is converted to sushi. There's a ranch with experiments on how large farm animals can get in lunar gravity. Big spherical cows. Farm animals wear VR goggles that make them think they're in Wisconsin.

Nebula Sundial is Blizztech Professor of mining and she's here to mine the metal asteroid, with the goal of extracting platinum-group metals. Metal asteroids are mostly iron, nickel, and cobalt, and these have lower boiling points than platinum-group metals. Metal ore is put into a distillation chamber and an array of aluminum+mylar mirrors heats the chamber. Once platinum-group metals are isolated they're shipped to Earth to become coins. The chamber is made of hafnium carbide for its high melting point.

Growing a kilogram of biomass takes 15 grams of nitrogen, 15 grams of potassium, and 2 grams each of phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, and sulfur. All these elements can be mined on the moon except nitrogen, so nitrogen is the prime target of nutrient recycling.

Nebula is focused on potassium and phosphorus mining because they are only 1 part per thousand in lunar material. She found deposits with 4 times this concentration and she chose the best ones to mine.

At low-Earth-orbit the situation is reversed. You can scoop nitrogen from the atmosphere but there are no other nutrients. Ice from the moon is shipped to LEO where it powers a nitrogen scoop, and the nitrogen is shipped to the moon.

Asteroid iron is great alloy. It's 91% iron, 7% nickel, and 1% cobalt. Historical swords of meteorite iron are stronger than swords of human iron. Game of Thrones has a meteorite iron sword. Nebula operates a machine made by Professor Forge that melts down metal to remove impurities, and the output goes to a machine that forges railgun track. Railgun launch works well on the moon. The goal is to launch vast ice and iron to space. Nuke plans to use lunar iron to build vast radio telescopes in space to look for aliens.

In the Age of Sail, the people that got rich were the ones that shipped the most spice. The Age of Rail produced oligarchs, and space launch produced the richest person in the world, Elon Musk. It's all about shipping.

Composition of fertilizer elements in ppt:

            Earth   Moon

Nitrogen       .02     0
Potassium    15        1.5
Phosphorus    1.0      1.0
Calcium      50       30
Sulfur         .42
Magnesium    29      190
Carbon        1.8
Hydrogen      1.5      1.5

An orange Dodge Charger is parked in a parking lot in Lizzard County and inside is Bo Nuke, Blizzard County Sheriff, and Luke Nuke, Agent 009 in the Blizzard County Secret Service. They operate a fleet of stealth drones to surveil a factory farm that's suspected of animal cruelty.

Luke: The farm has anti-aircraft defenses. I can't get the drones close enough to get video or audio of the interior. The buildings have no windows. The animals never see daylight.
Bo: I'm measuring the heat output of the buildings so our nerds can calculate the animal density.
I'm collecting goose down that's floating in the air so we can see if it's live-plucked.
There's a fish pond in there somewhere.
Humidity sensors report a likely location.
Carbon dioxide measurements can give us the fish biomass magnitude.
The nerds have work to do.
The audio dish is picking up goose sounds. They're in a foul mood.
I'm scattering the calcium isotope tracers in the air.
Party's over. Their sensors picked up our drones and they're sending a fleet of drones to fight our drones.
Time to go top gun on their asses.

Bo turns the key and revs the engine while Luke operates the drones. Bo leaves a calligraphic tire streak on the parking lot and gets on the highway that leads out of Lizzard. The Sheriff of Lizzard County, Bossco Ricotrain, builds a roadblock to stop them. Bo accelerates toward the roadblock like he's going to ram it. Shortly before hitting the roadblock the car sprouts rockets and launches into the air and clears the roadblock while serenading Bossco with a Dixie Horn at 10000 Watts. Everyone in Lizzard County hears it. Drones capture footage and post it to social media and it goes viral. Aurora will use the footage for a film.
We thank Bossco for being an extra in Aurora's film.
Lizzard's last chance is drones. Lizzard's drones go after the car as it nears the county border. Luke shoots them down.
What a turkey shoot. You can't beat Blizztech drones.
Bo and Luke get back to Blizzard County in time for rugby practice.


Bo, Luke, Dogg, Ajax, Kane, and Aurora are grilling steaks in the Blizzard family park and they examine data from the drones.

We have proof of animal cruelty at 12 factory farms.
We got videos for Aurora's documentary.
Dogg: I installed nuclear mass spectrometers all over the world. Anyone will be able to take samples to a spectrometer and get spectra. This will reveal the isotope tracers that we planted at factory farms.


Aurora Wavecrest, Boss Dogg, Gregor Rigel, Ajax Boulderfield, Nebula Sundial, Gage Arch, Nuke, and Ganoo are in the Blizzard Bowl watching a Blizzard rugby game. Ganoo is an alien in a human body, and no one knows he's an alien.

Gage Arch is Blizztech Professor of Mathematics and he owns a video game production company. He composes sountracks for the games and for Aurora's films. The company is mobile and spends much of its time with Barfleet. The company is supportive of employees with families and Barfleet has a homeschool. Employees value the perspective of their kids regarding gaming. Game production is fun for the whole family.

Blizztech has a world-class high school gaming team coached by Professor Arch. Professor Arch is world champion in many games.

Nuke: The Le May and the Boar's Buffet are equipped with zero-gravity film studios. The walls, ceilings, and floors are all-LED. We have Zeppelins with an all-LED exterior. LED Zeppelins. We can make a Zeppelin look like a Klingon warship.
Rigel: I'm writing scenes that happen on low-gravity moons.
Sundial: The elevator studio is complete. A bigass elevator with LEDs. Kung fu artists can defy gravity. The elevator can also move sideways. It's housed in a 4 km shaft in a mountain. It gives 50 seconds of zero gravity. The moon landings could have been faked with such a studio.
Sideways lurches will be great for spaceship battles.
Boulderfield: Let's have a scene with gravity-defying wheelchairs.
Ganoo: Most science fiction writers aren't strong scientists. Their job is to predict the future of science and most get it wrong. Neil Stevenson is a rare author that gets it right. Most science fiction is merely fiction. They don't even try to respect the known laws of physics. Technobabble.
We have technocandy. Blizztech has a team mapping out the future of technology.
My scripts rigorously respect the laws of physics.
Wavecrest: In most science fiction, no matter how bad a starship is damaged, artificial gravity still works. I'm making a film where starships don't have artificial gravity.
Give Babylon 5 credit for using centripetal gravity.
When a starship is in battle taking hits, one rarely sees seat belts. People on the Enterprise were often thrown around. Control panels were poorly designed. They should never blow up.
There are scenes where a control panel blows up and then still works.
It feels dumb that Star Trek puts the bridge in a vulnerable place. Why not have it in a hardened bunker at the center of the ship?
Klingon ships do this. Human bridges are spacious and have comfortable chairs. Klingon bridges are small and full of structural beams. A human ship is a family van and a Klingon ship is a Hummer.

Shields are boring and explosions are exciting. I'm glad Babylon 5 doesn't have shields. Shields are a literary anathema.
How do we handle FTL and time travel?
It will never happen, even for an advanced civilization. Science fiction authors should come to grips with this. There are deep physics reasons. The Standard Model of particle physics is built from 2 foundations:
*) Information can't travel faster than light.
*) Information can't be destroyed.
These laws are bank all the way up to the energy of quantum gravity.
Time travel is a literary anathema. It's impossible to make a time travel story that's consistent.
What if you have a black hole?
A black hole can do cool things but it can't do FTL or time travel. It can extract 50% of the energy from matter, and aliens likely have a black hole energy source. My X-ray telescopes look for such a thing. A black hole can also boost the speed of a fusion rocket like a powered pinball buffer, using the Oberth maneuver. The alien shipping network likely uses black holes. If the black hole is spinning it workes even better, and LIGO found that most black holes spin.
What's the nearest black hole?
The nearest known black hole is 1560 light years away, but there could be a closer hole. If a hole isn't eating it's hard to see. Astronomers try to find them by their gravitational lensing effect on background stars.
Can something like the Star Trek transporter exist?
You need a transmitter and receiver. The transmitter transmits brain information and the receiver places the information in a pre-prepared robot body. Star Trek is absurd because there's no receiver.
The only way to have FTL is to make the universe a simulation. The simulation can be on a real supercomputer that respects physics. It's reasonable to give the supercomputer ludicrous speed and memory. We could imagine a supercomputer powered by a black hole. Let the simulation have a set of planets and civilizations, all respecting physics, including the starships. Give starships a magic warp drive. Then you minimize the breaking of physics within the simulation. We have a scenario where a set of planets reach warp technology at the same time and another scenario where they're in the medieval age at the same time.
The simulation can have the history of every real galactic civilization, and be able to re-create any time period from any civilization.
If you have warp drive it means you can do lots of other cool things that break physics. We gloss this.
My gaming company strives to make vivid simulations. Gamers have the option of paying more money to boost vividness. The more you pay, the more effort you get from the supercomputer. There's an oligarch that pays $10000 per day for a presidential suite and it thrills his family. The vividness is also boosted by Ajax's elderly home, which the company pays to serve as dungeon masters and non-player characters. The elderly have cool stories to tell and they have a fine sense of mischief. They're like fairies from Midsummer Night's Dream. A house of Pucks.
If kids get too much virtual vividness, do they lose interest in reality?
Virtual reality is integrated with sports. We emphasize that the supercomputer can make you look like Tim Tebow or Lindsey Vonn in virtual reality, but not in real reality. A real soccer ball can only be influenced by a real foot.
Lizzard County's gaming company doesn't have sports and it encourages detachment from reality. It has addictive vices. It's an offer that kids can't refuse. It's turning kids into Daleks, a weak biological organism surrounded by a machine. Not many pedal bikes in Lizzard. My truck can run over Daleks and my crane electromagnet can pick them up and put them in a log splitter. Excommunicate!
I'll work such a scene into a film. Lizzard County is a rugby minnow. We don't play them because their stadium locker room is uncomfortable and their fans are hooligans. Lizzard doesn't drink with visiting teams after the game.
Their gaming team is formidable. The Blizzard gaming team spends big time training for games against Lizzard.
My virtual reality simulator has a family-friendly zone. Plus, my supercomputer is far faster than Lizzard's and my algorithms are far more powerful. Blizzard has math supremacy. We can win the vividness war.
The film "The Matrix" Was all about escaping the Matrix. Turns out most humans willngly dive into the matrix.
The gaming community discusses D&D rules. A possible set of rules is:

Everyone gets time as Dungeon Master. Have multiple domains where each person is DM of a domain.
If characters die, they're reincarnated.
Avoid identity spoofing.

Those are the Prime Directives. The Prime Suggestions are:

Characters are entitled to a backstory, and characters should study the backstories of other characters.
You are entitled to a character that possesses the powers that you possess, when you were in your prime. You may add a reasonable number of new powers and you need not include your weaknesses. Make interesting characters. Give them interesting strengths and weaknesses.
Dungeon Masters should make dungeons that are interesting and fair, and that reward synergy.
Don't be obsessed about level. Concoct scenarios where level is minor in importance.

Your LARP team is a asset for my films. Instant extras. Stealthy. Nobody sees them coming. Flash mob. Well trained in role playing and well trained as a military unit. They make things easy for directors.
The LARP team likes having a piece of the action. Many are students in my LARP class and the games are homework.
I wish my college had had a LARP class.
I'm launching a reality show where a pack of millionaire city slickers try to survive in the wilderness with no gear. All they get is a magnesium spark stick to start fires.
How did you convince them to do it?
They're narcissists and they want to be social media lords. If you want to stand out you need to do something original.
I'll produce a wilderness survival video game to go with the show. My games get the physics right and Lizzard games don't.
Classes are pass/fail and the wilderness is live/die.
I'll zone a wilderness survival park for tourists. On the edge of the park will be a crash lounge if people want to bail. The crash lounge will have full ammenities.


Wavecrest is filming a commercial for the Spruce Goose land yacht, manufactured by Dogg Industries. Boulderfield is the spokesman. He drives his monster truck and it tows a Goose. The Goose is the size of an 18-wheel shipping container and windows fill all sides. The interior is posh. Boulderfield parks by a lake and presses a button on a fancy control and the Goose transforms. The width extends from 8.5 to 14 feet and the roof sprouts railings. Decks and canopies extend out. Boulderfield drives the rig into the lake and it floats on inflatable airbags, and the truck and Goose sprout propellers. A lakestead. A fishing mansion with extendable fishing nets.

X games athletes emerge from the Goose driving aquatic X vehicles and they play around on the lake. Beavers and birds also emerge from the Goose.

Boulderfield races around in his powerboat truck while geese stand on the roof, stretching their wings to feel the moving air. The truck sprouts inverted wings that direct air upward and geese use it to glide.


Brute Nuke, Gage Arch, Otto Forge, Nebula Sundial, and Gregor Rigel are in Nuke's isotope factory, under a mountain. The factory produces exotic isotopes for gadgets and for medical use.

Otto Forge is Blizztech Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. He's a billionaire and he funds his own lab. He makes gadgets for the Blizzard County Secret Service and for Dogg's catalog of tactical gear.

Nebula Sundial is Blizztech Professor of Mining and a professional hockey player. She drilled the caves that house the factory.

Nuke: I got a new shipment of burnt fission fuel. I need more cave.
Sundial: You're never not needing more cave. The mountain is already Swiss cheese.
I need more mountain.
I already did the survey.
Rigel: Thousands of years from now, the cave will be abandoned and Dungeons and Dragons players will stumble on it.

Nuke buys "fishium", which is burnt fission fuel that's aged at least 60 years. Age removes short-lived isotopes, making fishium easier to handle. Age also allows plutonium-241 to decay to americium-241. The americium is extracted and neutronized to make americium-242m for fission afterburner rockets.

Fishium has abundant rhodium and palladium, which have high value and are great catalysts.

The heaviest isotope that's abundant in fishium is curium-244, at .1%. This is extracted and neutronized to make heavier elements like californium, einsteinium, and fermium.

Nuke's fission reactors make 10 gigawatts. Power is their primary purpose and they're also used as a neutron source for transmutation. The reactors are surrounded by a shell of material to capture neutrons. In the shell is lithium, which neutrons transmute to tritium, and then the tritium decays to helium-3. Helium-3 is for dilution refrigerators and Nuke built up a stockpile of 1 ton. Tritium is also needed for fusion reactors and for boosting fission bombs.

The shell has cheap tungsten and neutrons transmute it to expensive rhenium, osmium, iridium, platinum, and gold, and these metals become coins.

The shell has europium and thulium, which neutrons turn into nuclear batteries. The batteries power Iron Man gadgets designed by Otto Forge. Thulium can be used around humans because it needs only minimal radiation shielding.

The shell has thorium-232, which neutrons transmute to uranium-233, which can be a fission bomb. Neutrons also make uranium-232, which can power a turbofan or a thermal rocket.

Radium was once used for glow-in-the-dark watches but was banned, prompting people to sell their stockpiles. Nuke bought every ounce available and amassed 20 kilograms.

The caves host a vast number calutrons for isotope separation. Heavy isotopes that differ by only 1 nucleon can be separated. Boron-10 is separated from natural boron for fission afterburner rockets. Carbon-12 is also isolated for nanomaterials.

The shell has osmium for producing osmium-194, which can deliver heat at high temperature. This is cricial for turbines and thermal rockets.

The shell transmutes iodine to xenon. Xenon is a great anaesthetic.

Some isotopes need to be aged. For example, neutrons turn stable thulium-169 into thulium-170 (half life .352 years, 970 keV x-ray) and thulium-171 (half life 1.91 years, 96 keV x-ray). Thulium-171 is the desired isotope, so aging the mixture by 8 years eliminates the thulium-170, leaving behind pure thulium-171.

Uranium-232 is aged to produce thorium-228, which is for alpha rockets.


Blizzard County hosts the Blizzard Science Olympiad Open, a K-college science contest. 1000 teams show up because oligarchs and advertisers pledge a prize purse of 1 million dollars. Blizzard County makes it cheap to attend by offering free land to camp on and free food from farms. You just have to get there. Leading up to the contest is a month-long science camp with celebrity science coaches and Blizztech professors. The Shaolin Temple of science.

Accompaning the science contest are professional gaming contests with purses far exceeding the Science Olympiad purse. There is also a science fiction convention that Aurora Wavecrest uses as a source of extras for her films. Saves money on the costume budget. Some extras find a way to steal the stage and are promoted to bigger roles. Wavecrest has a stockpile of costumes that she bought from conventioneers.

The Blizzard Open features the standard 23 Science Olympiad events plus exhibition events, and exhibition events get most of the attention because they carry most of the purse. Exhibition events are designed to be thrilling to watch, such as robot soccer. The standard events are spiced up to make them more thrilling. The pentathlon event has a legit military obstacle course designed by SEALs.

The Fermi event has the biggest purse. It consists of back-of-the-envelope style numerical estimates with all of science and mathematics as fair game. It's science speed chess. Mixed martial science.

Teams can compete either in-person or online, though most of the purse goes to in-person teams. There are 2000 online teams and the Open has a fancy system for handling grading.

The balsa used in the contest comes from Heft's campground, where Heft breeds balsa.

The finals for a gaming contest are often the halftime show for a rugby game.

Nuke, Arch, and Dogg have been funding math and science contests for decades and they've given a billion dollars to competitors. Arch's gaming company hires Science Olympiad competitors.


A cabal of oligarchs known as the Legion of Gloom is in a smoke-filled room discussing the upcoming colonization of Mars. They're on a remote Pacific island that's only accessible by jet.

Boss Smogg: Mars has no pesky governments.
Boss Fogg: No pesky environmental regulations.
No labor laws.
No reporters.
Boss Sogg: What can be mined?
Metal asteroid craters. Platinum-group metals will fuel future oligarch wars. We need them for the currency war.
Boss Bogg: We need the ingredients for farming. Nitrogen is available from the atmosphere and there are potassium deposits. Phosphorus is likely the limiting element. We could ship a ton of phosphorus to Mars for 10 million dollars, or we could brute-force extract it on Mars with nuclear energy. Phosphorus-concentrating bacteria can extract phosphorus from biowaste.
What if laborers revolt?
Boss Waterlogg: The machines have kill switches that can be triggered from Earth. We can turn off the power and oxygen like in the film "Total Recall".
I'll go to Mars personally. I've always wanted to be a colonial governor. I've been studying historical governors. The Belgians were especially effective at extracting natural resources. I designed a board game based on colonialism.
Boss Frogg: You have an impressive record for extracting natural resources on Earth.
Mars has no pesky natives. What a dream. Natural resources with no natives. Only our indentured servants. A ticket to Mars is 10 million dollars, and that's steerage class.
Boss Pogg: We can ship more material to Mars than any nation. Nations won't be able to keep up with us. We can own Mars.
Is there science fiction that relates to this?
Orwell's "Animal Farm" is a good manual for how to run a colony. I write Animal Farm fan fiction. There's an online community for this.
Boss Cogg: Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". Don't make the mistakes that the oligarchs made in the novel.
In fiction, rebels tend to win. We know that oligarchs win in real life. I'm not worried about rebels.
Boss Clogg: Helon Busk already launched 100 tons of material to Mars and 4 astronauts. I'm obstructing Busk's rocket industry.
Boss Flogg: We can ship more material to Mars than Busk, but Busk's rockets have a better survival rate. Our steerage-class survival rate is 75%, the same as for Everest.
A sporting chance.
Boss Slogg: Crossing oceans in the Age of Sail was dangerous.
Boss Balrogg: Can we improve the survival rate?
Yes, but it costs too much. We have an expensive reliable rocket and that's what's taking me to Mars. First class.

They adjourn the business part of the meeting to play the colonialism board game. The board is made of gold and the tokens are made of cobalt, uranium, rare earth metals, conflict diamonds, elephant ivory, and rhino horn. It's styled like a Game of Thrones maproom. They dine on spotted owl.


Doctor Lumen Quasar is a psychology professor at an elite university and he makes big money with pop-psycholgy books. He built Buddha temples in Blizzard County, one in the temple district and one on a mountain that's hard to get to. The temples have a vast library of rare books. Quasar makes secret Buddhist literature available to the public and has a team of agents hunting for secret literature. His agents are well funded and are skilled spies. Many are graduates of his classes. Buddhist scholars around the world flock to Quasar's library.

Doctor Fathom Abyss is a philosophy professor at an elite university. He has a cult following among students. His teachings are powerful but scary. He built a philosophy institute in Blizzard County in the temple district where he stages philosophy debates. The debates are streamed to seminar rooms at universities. Debates often trigger food fights.


Ponceton is an elite university.

Ponceton professors are dining at the faculty club. They're accompanied by professor Quasar and professor Abyss, who gave seminars at Ponceton that day.

Professor Obfus: The average GPA of Haavaad inflated from 3.8 to 3.9. Ponceton should inflate its GPA.
Professor Hack: We achieved a graduation rate of 100%. It's impossible to fail a class.
Professor Quasar: Aren't you worried about the Ponceton brand tarnishing?
Professor Quack: Our endowment is 20 billion dollars. We can give free tuition to all students. We'll always be able to attract any student we want. We are an eternal feudal lordship.
Professor Bullhorn: Universities aren't about classes anymore. It's about being part of an exclusive club. Our admissions department decides the next set of oligarchs.
Professor Slack: We created a set of awards for undergraduates. Every undergrad gets an award of some kind before graduating. We designed cool trophies. We have award ceremonies with cookies.
Professor Abyss: How do you decide awards?
Professor Yack: By how much students kiss our asses. We're building a crony network. The modern measure of merit is ass kissing.
We kissed ass to get where we are and we decide the next generation of ass kissers. It's the cycle of life.
Darwinistically questionable.
Darwin didn't envision a 20 billion dollar endowment.
Darwin didn't envision that tuition is food for professors.
Jabba the Hut.
In nature, adults feed the young. This is the other way around.
Professor Crack: Brilliant, isn't it? Kids seeking advanced degrees pay us until they're age 30.
Professor Flack: We eat filet mignon. Let students eat ramen.
Professor Lack: A student should praise our papers in his thesis if he wants to someday eat filet mignon.
Is it possible for a professor to be hired from outside the academic nutshell?
No.


Aurora Wavecrest is filming a commercial for the Mastiff gun, manufactured by Dogg Industries. The actors are Bo Nuke and Luke Nuke.

The Mastiff is 50 caliber, 9 inch barrel, pneumatic recoil, rubber grip, and telescoping pneumatic shoulder stock with a rubber end. It has a silencer, whose purpose is not silence it but to make it less loud, and to suppress flash. It has a 10 cm telescope and lasers.

The telescope has a camera that sees visible, infrared, and UV, and it has a selection of band-pass filters. It has a laser for each band. It has a gallium arsenide detector that can see infrared all the way to 20 microns. The detector is cooled by liquid helium. The gun has a module with a liquid helium dewar, and another module for making liquid helium.

The telescope displays an image. Algorithms enhance contrast and classify targets.

The gun has gyroscopes and accelerometers for stabilization and aim, and algorithms connect the telescope to the aiming system.

The barrel is tungsten alloy, which can take a chamber pressure 2.5 times that of steel. The chamber pressure is 10000 bars and the bullet energy is 4000 Joules. It's overengineered and heavier than it needs to be, which helps with recoil. The mass is 4 kg and it can handle supermagnum cartridges that are 80 millimeters long. The barrel supports a barrel extension.

The gun is fully automatic and comes with clips of varying sizes, including a clip with 100 cartridges. In a gunfight, it's nice to have the luxury to splurge ammo. It has a clip that can shuffle ammo. The clip supports multiple ammo types at the same time, with the option to select the ammo type for each shot. You can compose a bullet symphony.

The gun comes with a belt with a holster for the gun, a holster for the barrel extension, and docks to hold clips, bullets, and other gear. There is a radar module with a mass of 1 kg.

There's a buffet of projectile types. Tungsten is used for its strength and density. Projectiles with a diameter less than 50 caliber have a sabot to connect to the barrel.

The Yap gun is a mini Mastiff. 50 caliber, 3 inch barrel, 400 grams, 400 Joules, 6 cm cartridge, and shuffling clip. It's made of tungsten alloy for compactness.

The Chihuahua gun is a subcompact 22 caliber pistol with a shuffling clip. The mass is 100 grams and the bullet energy is 100 Joules.

The Tuba gun is 100 caliber, 20 kg, 24 inch barrel, 20000 Joules, 20 cm cartridge, pneumatic recoil, muzzle break, and shuffling clip. It has the option to eject exhaust gas rearwards. It has a 36 inch barrel extension with a scabbard. It has gyroscopes that restore the gun's orientation after firing. It has straps so that the shooter can carry it like a sousaphone. The wearer wears a Tubasuit that's like a football suit, with elastic straps to distribute recoil.

Dogg Industries makes a helmet that has automatic ear muffs. It's wirelessly connected to the guns and knows when a gun fires, and deploys the ear muffs. The muffs have speakers to create an antipulse to cancel a gun pulse. The helmet has sensors to sense enemy gun pulses, using flash and sound. The helmet has a visor that can display the telescope image. The visor has sunglasses, band-pass filters, and a system to block sudden flashes. It has the option to block all light and project images from external cameras to the wearer. The helmet is airtight and comes with 10 minutes of air, with oxygen from sodium chlorate (NaClO3) and nitrogen from iron nitride (Fe2N).

Aurora films a scene in a rock quarry. Luke Nuke has a Mastiff in his right hand and a Yap in his left hand, and he's dressed like Rambo. The Mastiff gives cover fire and the Yap gives bombs. Bo Nuke fires a Tubagun. Bo and Luke are focused on destruction and not on accuracy. Rock shards fly around.

Aurora has a Chihuahua and hits everything that Bo and Luke missed. She does trick shots.

Aurora straps on a Tubagun and Tubasuit and fires the gun, and the recoil jumps her back 2 yards. Then she fires it in fully automatic mode and flies. She dances in the air.

Everyone grabs a Chihuahua and loads it with rubber bullets and they play billiards.

The Mastiff projectile catalog:

Projectile          Mass   Speed   Energy   Recoil   Diameter  Length
                    gram    m/s    Joule   Joule*kg     mm       mm

Bullet, standard      30     516    4000       60       12.7     25
Bullet, armor-pierce  40     447    4000      160        7       60
Bullet, heavy        150     231    4000      600       12.7     60   Maximum momentum
Bullet, fast           8    1000    4000       32        5.6     18   Snipe
Bullet, harpoon       20     632    4000       80        5       60
Bullet, rocket       120     100     600       72       12.7     60   The rocket gets the bullet to 2000 meters/second
Bullet, weak           8     300     360        3        5.6     10
Blank                  0       0    1000        0       12.7     60
Shotgun               40     447    4000      160        -        -
Shotgun, heavy       150     231    4000      600        -        -
Paint ball             6      50       7.5       .04    12.7     60
Rubber                 6      50       7.5       .04    12.7     60
Foam                   6     100      30         .2     12.7     60   Lightweight foam with a tungsten weight in back
Bomb, high explosive  40     447    4000      160       12.7     60
Bomb, armor-pierce    40     447    4000      160       12.7     60   Shaped charge of high explosives
Bomb, napalm          15     100      75        1       12.7     60
Bomb, thermite        30     100     150        4.5     12.7     60
Bomb, slow (mortar)   40      30      18         .72    12.7     60
Bomb, smoke           15     100      75        1       12.7     60
Bomb, flash           15     100      75        1       12.7     60
Bomb, loud boom       15     100      75        1       12.7     60
Bomb, chloroform      15     100      75        1       12.7     60
Bomb, tear gas        15     100      75        1       12.7     60
Bomb, laughing gas    15     100      75        1       12.7     60
Bomb, rocket         120      40      96       12       12.7     60   The rocket gets the bomb to 200 meters/second
Bomb, fly            120     100     600       72       12.7     60   Long-range artillery
Bomb, confetti        10     100      50         .5     12.7     60
Bomb, radar foil      15     100      75        1       12.7     60   Foil to confuse radar
Bomb, glue            15     100      75        1       12.7     60
Bomb, web             15     100      75        1       12.7     60
Bomb, web + glue      15     100      75        1       12.7     60
Bomb, lubricant       15      20       3         .04    12.7     60
Bomb, lubricant+balls 15      20       3         .04    12.7     60
Bomb, caltrops        15      20       3         .04    12.7     60
Flare                 15     100      75        1       12.7     60
Flare, fast           15     730    4000       60       12.7     60   High altitude
Flare, whistle        15     100      75        1       12.7     60
Flare, IR             15     100      75        1       12.7     60
Flare, UV             15     100      75        1       12.7     60
Dart, tranquilizer    15     100      75        1       12.7     60
Speaker               15      20       3         .04    12.7     60
Bug. GPS & Wifi       15      20       3         .04    12.7     60   Transmits audio and video
Fireworks             15      50      19         .3     12.7     60
Cable+hook, kevlar    15     100      75        1       12.7     60
Cable+hook, tungsten 150     100     750      112       12.7     60
Flash, visible        15     100      75        1       12.7     60
Flash, IR             15     100      75        1       12.7     60
Flash, UV             15     100      75        1       12.7     60
Strobe                15     100      75        1       12.7     60

The flying bomb has wings and a rocket. It's guided by a gyroscope, accelerometer, and GPS. The range is 100 km.

Dogg Industries makes kevlar suits of varying weights, up to 40 kg. They come with helmets with bulletproof visors.

Dogg Industries makes the Kodiak cannon for cannon golf. 6 inch bore, 4 foot barrel, 1 foot cartridges, 200 kg, 200 kiloJoules, and a shuffling clip. It rides on a 4-wheel cart with wide 4-foot wheels. The cart has active suspension and navigates automatically. It fires magnesium balls that make nice sparks. The balls are lightweight and susceptible to wind, which adds challenge to the game. The cannon barrel can adjust to control the ball's spin magnitude and orientation. It has dial-a-yield cartridges for golf.

The Koala cannon is lightweight and can be carried. It fires projectiles with large volume and low mass.

The laser has algorithms to map a room in the dark and project an image to the visor. There is a module for a UV or IR laser, and the telescope can see these wavelengths. The UV laser is 295 nm and the infrared laser is 980 nm. Lasers range from 5 milliwatts to 30 Watts, at 3 Watts/kg.

A laser can see farther through smoke than the eye, and algorithms can use the laser to see through a smoke cloud. Algorithms look for the most transparent parts of the cloud and reconstruct an image.

UV travels farther through smoke than visible light. There is a module that has a focusable beacon for UV or IR.

Algorithms can construct an image from a flash or a strobe.

Mastiff module catalog:

Silencer
Muzzle break
Barrel extension
Telescope
Laser.   Red, green, violet, UV, IR
Beacon.  Red, green, violet, UV, IR
Inertial damper
Flash
Smoke machine
Shuffling clip
Battery expansion
Capacitor expansion
Computer expansion
Liquid helium dewar
Liquid helium generator
Liquid air dewar
Liquid air generator

Guns and bullets:

Gun    Barrel   Cartridge   Barrel   Gun   Bullet   Bullet  Bullet   Bullet   Bullet    Bullet
      diameter   length     length   mass  energy    mass   speed   diameter  length  energy/area
        inch       cm         cm      kg   Joule     gram    m/s       cm       cm     Joule/mm2

Kodiak     6       30        120     200    200000   3400     343      3        25       280
Koala      6       30         40       4      1000      -       -      -         -         -    Not designed for bullets
Tuba       1       20         60      20     20000    400     316      1.2      18       180
Mastiff     .50     8         25       4      4000     40     447       .7       6       100
Yap         .50     6          8        .4     400     15     231       .5       4        20
Chihuahua   .22     3          3        .1     100      3     258       .3       2        14

The bullets are tungsen armor-piercers. For armor piercing, what matters is energy/area.

A typical gun has a value of bullet energy per gun mass of 1200 Joules/kg.


Brute Nuke has a Spruce Goose, driven by a monster truck like Boulderfield's. Both are amphibious. The truck can drive autonomously. It's called the Polk.

Steller's sea eagle
Bald eagle
Gyrfalcon
Peregrine falcon
Kori bustard

Mute swan
Andean condor
Wandering albatross
Ruppell's vulture
Blakiston's fish owl

The Polk has a zoo with big birds.

It has flocks of small birds.

It has border collies that can herd animals.

Lynx
Sloth
Koala
Lemur
Capybara
Squirrel

It has mammals.

The interior is lush with plants. Surfaces are alloys of copper, silver, and gold, with a rich range of colors. Onboard is:

                       Power   Mass   Power/Mass
                       kWatt    kg     Watt/kg

Goat chair x4                    200
Off-road vehicle                 200            Compact and amphibious
Haast aircraft            400    600            Twin propeller.  Pistons.  150 meters/second
Condor blimp               80    200            15 meters/second
Helium pressure tank            2000
Kevlar pond x2                   100            One inside and one that deploys outside
Water tank                       200
Gasoline tank                    200
Water                           2000
Gasoline                        1000
Satellite dish                   100
Satellite phones                  10
Scotch                           100
Animals                         1000
Plants                           200
Food                            1000
Fridge and freezer               100
Lab and equipment               5000
Supercomputer              50   2500      20    300000 cores, 10 Petaflops, 1 Petabyte RAM, 10 petabyte disk, 1000 petabyte tape
Monitor x4                       100            7680x4320 pixels
Generator                 200   2000     100    Gasoline-electric
Generator soundproofing         2000
Battery, lithium-ion     1000   2000     500    1000 MJoule
Capacitor              100000   1000  100000    10 MJoule
Solar cells                10    250      40
Subwoofers                 40   2000      20
Lights                    200   1000     200
Projector                  50   1000      50
Lasers                     10   5000       2
Radio transceiver          50   1000      40    Ultra-low wavelength

The Polk has 6 axles with 6 wheels each, and the wheels are 4 feet in diameter and 12 inches wide. The rear 3 meters has no axles so that the floor can be lower down. Heavy stuff is in front and the residential zone is in the rear. The Polk can carry 100 tons without stressing roads.

The Haast aircraft is twin-propeller and piston-based. It has Ferrari engines and can take off vertically with ease. The engines are over-engineered, ultra-reliable, and minimum maintenance. It has telescoping wings so that it can fit in the Polk. It has an option to attach a solid rocket. For the Haast,

Engine power/mass     =   4000  Watt/kg
Engine mass, total    =    100  kg
Engine power          =    400  kWatt
Hoovering power/mass  =    250  Watt/kg
Hoovering power       =    150  kWatt
Ballistic factor      =    2.7
Aircraft mass, empty  =    600  kg
Aircraft mass, full   =   1500  kg
Maximum speed         =    150  meters/second
Range                 =  10000  km
Ceiling               =     10  km

The lasers are mostly UV because most materials don't reflect UV. UV also pierces clouds better than other wavelengths.

Nuke has a house in Blizzard County on a mountain. It has an acre yard surrounded by dense hedges, with a big pond for waterfowl. The house has cavernous interior space within the mountain, and the mountain houses Nuke's labs and fission reactors.

The Polk hosts a party with Bo Nuke, Luke Nuke, Brute Nuke, Gage Arch, Otto Forge, Gregor Rigel, Sledge, and Boss Dogg. They socialize with animals and drink Scotch.

Forge: I built a Tungsten Man suit. The skin is 6 inches thick and made of carbon fiber and kevlar. The outer shell is tungsten for strength, hardness, and temperature resistance. The inner shell is foam. It flies with hydrazine monopropellant rockets. It's powered by rockets with 10 MWatts, a battery with 10 kWatts, a radioisotope generator with 1 kWatt, and a capacitor with 100 kWatts. Human maximum power is 15 Watts/kg.
Nuke: I built a radioisotope electricity source, with a power/mass of 50 Watts/kg and a total power of 1 kWatt. It has an efficiency of 50% for converting radiation energy to electric energy. It makes electricity with radiovoltaics, photovoltaics, thermovoltaics, and thermomechanics. It uses thulium-171 because it doesn't need much radiation shielding. Thulium-171 needs to be aged to remove thulium-170, and I have well-aged thulium-171.
The suit torso has 2 Mastiff guns mounted in it, one fore and one aft, with ammo embedded in the suit. They swivel and the user can select targets with the visor. The suit has bays for a Yap gun and ammunition. The user can extract the Yap and use it by hand.
Arch: I wrote algorithms to control the suit's rockets, motors, gyroscopes, and guns.
The suit is filled with interior pressure sensors to accept input from the human.
Bo, Luke, and Sledge don suits and try them out. Sledge is large, 6 foot 6 inches and 350 pounds, and Sledge's suit is extra large. Sledge: I feel like a rocket turtle.
Luke: An elephant can fly if you put a big enough engine on it.


Planet Hulkan

Star sizes and colors are to scale. Brightness is scaled logarithmically. The image is 40 light years across.

The Alpha Centauri system is 4 light years from Earth and has 3 stars. Alpha Centauri B is slightly smaller and cooler than the sun and it hosts planet Hulkan. Hulkan was built by an ancient alien civilization. Hulkan is a double planet, 2 Earth-sized planets orbiting close together. The orbits and spins are locked so that the same point on each planet is always the closest point to the other planet. The distance between the planets is 10 km at the nearest point, and there's a bridge of atmosphere between them with zero gravity. Whales can fly there.

Hulkan hosts the Milky Way Institue of Technology.

Space mirrors direct starlight uniformly over the planet's surface. The entire planet is temperate and the mirrors control weather. The light passes through a copper film that passes visible light and blocks infrared, so that all light reaching the planet is useful for photosynthesis. The sky is vividly blue. Both planets are rich in biomass.

The atmosphere is:

        Pressure    Density    Molecule    Atmospheric height
          bar      kg/meter3     mass             km

Oxygen     .25        .35        32.0          17
Nitrogen   .05        .06        28.0          20
Helium     .3         .05         4.0         140
Xenon      .01        .06       131.3           4.3
Hydrogen   .005       .0004       2.02        278

Total      .60        .52

Earth's total atmospheric pressure is 1 bar, the oxygen fraction is 21%, and the density is 1.22 kg/meter3. Hulkan's air density is low, enabling flying organisms to go fast. Hulkan's atmosphere has hydrogen and there are organisms that can use it for energy. There are plants that generate hydrogen. Helium is restocked continuously because it leaks.

Hulkan has low density to maximize surface area.

The crust has abundant metals of every type that were put there by metal asteroid impacts. Aliens also used rocky asteroid impacts to give the planet volcanism.

Meteors are rigged to give Hulkan mountains up to 50 km tall, and basins up to 20 km deep. In valleys, xenon is dense, making it easier to fly. Helium's large atmospheric scale height ensures that the tallest mountains have atmospheric pressure, so that water can be a liquid.

Hulkan has creatures that are genetically engineered. Some have skeletons of metal and carbon fiber. Feather is preferred over fur for its higher mechanical performance. Earth mammals should have chosen feathers over fur. There are creatures that can fly at extreme altitude.

Hulkan has a high concentraton of phosphorus and potassium, which helps biomass. It also has abundant lithium, magnesium, calcium, rubidium, strontium, caesium, and barium, and many creatures can use these as ions. It's nice to have a variety of ion sizes.

The eyes of a Mantis shrimp see 12 colors, including UV, and they see linear and circular polarization. Each eye is trinocular, giving it a total of 6 channels for depth perception.

Hulkan has creatures with eyes that are more advanced than the mantis shrimp. They can see into the deep infrared. There 1000 ton creatures that with eyeballs that are 2 meters in diameter. They can see by starlight.

Hulkan has creatures that can kick the butts of James Cameron's aliens.

Aliens and humans both divide the octave into 12 tones. It's decided by pure mathematics. Just tuning is based on integer ratios and equal tuning is based on logarithms. Violins use just tuning and guitars use equal tuning. For a 12-tone scale, just tuning is nearly identical to equal tuning.

          Red = equal tuning           Orange = just tuning

The 7 harmonic modes and the 7 melodic modes are also decided by pure mathematics, and both humans and aliens use these modes. A melodic mode is a 7-note scale with 1 tritone, and a melodic mode is a 7-note scale with 2 tritones.

Edward Lasker: While the Baroque rules of Chess could only have been created by humans, the rules of Go are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe, they almost certainly play Go.


An earthquake hits San Francisco and destroys most of the buildings. All bridges are down. Big glass office buildings like Google and Apple are shards.

Loot rush. Looters rush into San Francisco and loot every store, office, and home. They take the loot to other towns and fence it. San Francisco is a material town and now there's no material wealth in San Francisco. No gold.

The 49ers football stadium is destroyed. The 49ers are a refugee and move to San Antonio. San Antonio is a big market without an NFL team. California state tax is 11% and Texas is 0%. Free agents flock to the San Antonio 49ers because of tax.

San Francisco becomes an anarchy ruled by gangs. Every homeowner in the city moves out and city property crashes to zero value. San Francisco loses its property tax income and goes bankrupt.

San Francisco suburbs recover fast. Suburb land tends to be worth more than the house on it, and those with destroyed houses quickly rebuild. Those that move out find that their property has high value.

Rurals drive trucks around San Francisco suburbs selling guns, ammo, generators, gasoline, and farm food. They do big business. Everyone with a Tesla buys a generator and fuel.

A team of oligarchs meets in a smoke-filled room. The Legion of Gloom.

Boss Fogg: We expected this would happen and we planned ahead.
Boss Pogg: I have a square kilometer of rural land outside San Francisco.
Boss Sogg: I have 5.
Boss Frogg: I have 20.
Boss Bogg: Everyone put your chips on the table.

The chips are tallied and the oligarchs formalize an oligumvirate based on the chips. The private land is assembled into a confederacy to be ruled by the oligumvirate.

Boss Flogg: We are medieval lords now. We should appoint a king.
The medieval age never ended and never will.
Boss Waterlogg: We need walls. I stockpiled 1000 kilometers of barbed wire fence.
Boss Clogg: The zombie apocalypse is now.
Boss Slogg: I have autopilot trucks to ensure shipping within the confederacy. The trucks are armed and armored like in the game Car Wars.
Boss Balrogg: I have combat drones for package delivery. Pirates can't touch them. They can drop packages down chimneys.
Boss Cogg: I own land throughout the world, and it's stealthy. No one knows I own it. I imagine y'all have such land.
Everyone laughs. They adjourn the business part of the meeting to play Car Wars, using an updated version that includes drones. They play a zombie apolalyse scenario. They burn napalm for aroma.


A smoke-filled room is occuped by Boss Dogg, Boss Togg, Boss Jogg, Boss Blogg, Boss Nogg, Boss Ogg, Boss Glogg, Boss Sprogg, Boss Waagg, Brutus Forcefeld, Aurora Wavecrest, Otto Forge, Nebula Sundial, Kane Heft, Ajax Boulderfield, Gage Arch, Bo Nuke, Luke Nuke, and Brute Nuke. The Legion of Boom. Their base is on a mountaintop. A map of the United States is on a table and there are game tokens on it.

Nuke: Metal asteroids have platinum-group metals, and I sent a team of astronauts to fetch one. They used explosives to steer a metal asteroid to collide with Earth. It's the size of a football stadium and it will hit in remote land. Forcefeld owns the land. The asteroid is cut into pieces and it will hit one piece at a time, to moderate the impact.
Sundial: There's a coal deposit at the impact point that's deep underground, and the impact will expose it. Asteroid strip mining. Asteroids can also frack. Asteroids are great drills. There's vast kinetic energy in the asteroid belt to be tapped. Drill baby drill! Smash baby smash!
Forcefeld: I'll build a mining town on the land after the impact. Let there be an economy. An economic big bang.
We'll extract geothermal energy from the impact.
Wavecrest: I'll use the impact for film scenes.
Boss Glogg: A Lex Luthor plot.
Boss Ogg: Y'all are mad scientists.
Mad scientists are good for film.
Mad scientists win wars.
We need sports teams.
Ogg puts a table of sports leagues on the projector and everyone examines it.

                   Team value  Average pay
                       M$        M$/year

Football    NFL         4000     2.7
Baseball    MLB         2000     4.2
Basketball  NBA         2000     7.7
Hockey      NHL          650     3.2
Soccer      MLS          325      .051
Rugby       MLR            4      .04

Football    NCAA      Varies      .05
Football    UFL           10      .04
Football    FCF           10
Football    Arena League  10
Basketball  WNBA          50      .12
Soccer      NWSL          50      .038
Hockey      PWHL          10      .015

Soccer      England 1    400     4.7       Premiere League

The cheapest ways to make a new team are with Major League Rugby and with the United Football League. We can invade college sports with NIL.
Places that can support an NFL team are Salt Lake City, Oklahoma City, and San Antonio. Build a stadium in Salt Lake City and let Utah University use it. Utah U needs a bigger stadium.
Forge: I designed a stadium that uses the local mountains as a foundation. The upper decks are suspended like a suspension bridge and are adjustable. It can handle large crowds by retracting the upper decks to make the stadium look like Michigan's Big House. It can handle small crowds by extending the upper decks forward.
Forcefeld: It costs 4 billion dollars to put a new team into the NFL, and a billion for the stadium. The Mormon Church has more than 100 billion in the war chest. Dare them to do it. It's worth it. NFL teams make 400 million in revenue per year. The NFL club is good to be in.
Arch: Let's build up the United Football League and add teams on rural turf. We can put teams in Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming, Alaska, and West Virginia. There are lots of college stars that didn't make the NFL. We can put UFL teams next to colleges and use the college stadium. Put stars from a college on to the local UFL team. An alumni team. UFL salaries are 50 thousand per year. We can easily pool money to top this and attract the best alumni.
Oligarch put tokens on the map representing salary money. The stacks of tokens reveal where the new UFL teams will be.
We can also play games in both stadiums and arenas and make the Arena Football League obsolete. We can also have a flag football league for seniors and ally with PGA senior events. Wondering if Sanders can still run.
I'll put the money down to host a senior event.
College football is an oligarchy where the Big Ten and SEC are far stronger than other conferences. We have to lift up teams outside the superpower conferences, and NIL empowers us to do it.
Oligarch put tokens on the map representing NIL money for players. The stacks of tokens reveal which colleges will be uplifted. Boss Ogg is the coach of a college football team and the oligarchs put lots of chips on Ogg's college.
Celebrity coaches attract players. We can allocate money for celebrity coaches.
Let's lift the Mountain West Conference. We can offer to be easy on players so they don't get banged up before the NFL. Let them live luxuriously in college. No onerous rules. We'll stress that we're training players to pull down big NFL contracts. We'll encourage players to jump to the NFL early if they can. We will, however, demand that players play bowl games. They owe it to the team and the fans.
The jerks at Florida State that skipped the bowl game caused the humiliation of their conference. Endorsers should shun them.
Hockey pro minor leagues have larger revenue than college hockey. College hockey has the potential to eclipse the minor leagues, like college football does.
College hockey conferences are even more fluid than football conferences. Hockey conference supremacy is up for grabs. There are many strong conferences. The most strategic conference to uplift is the Big Ten Conference. It includes Notre Dame.
Senator Herb Kohl donated money to make an large arena at the University of Wisconsin that can do hockey and basketball. The Las Vegas Golden Nights built such an arena. We need more such arenas at colleges.
I'll fund a sumo tournament and invite wrestlers of all styles. We can synergize with the UFC. Sumo has the virtue that there's a sporting chance of an upset, and that you can wrestle many matches per day.
Boss Togg: How about a pickleball tournament? The Tennis U.S. Open is 60 million dollars of prizemoney and the Pickleball U.S. Open is 60 thousand. We can take over pickleball.
Chips are put on the table for a pickleball tournament.
The women's pro hockey average salary is $15000. It wouldn't take much money to invade the league. With 2 million, you can outclass the existing teams. Who wants to make a team?
Boss Nogg, Boss Waagg, Boss Blogg, and Boss Glogg volunteer to make teams and they put tokens on the table where the teams will be.
The price to buy into Major League Rugby is 4 million. I'll put down the money to get the Blizzard Honey Badgers into the league.
Several oligarchs volunteer to contribute to the team.
The Science Olympiad is the premier K-12 science contest. It has 23 events and 5000 schools compete. It inspires kids to study science, but the events are poorly designed and it holds the contest back. The events are also not TV-worthy. I designed a set of thrilling events that are scientifically legit. Let's host a contest near Salt Lake City
Chips are put on the table totaling 3 million.
We'll spend it on prizemoney, travel, and gear. Some events need expensive gear. We'll run our custom events and we'll run the standard 23 events. Our tests for the standard events will set an example.
I'll MC and make it like a WWE event.
We'll include a math contest. Bafflingly, the Science Olympiad doesn't have a math contest. There will be a contest in pure mathematics and a contest in computational physics. The computational physics contest is similar to the Mathematical Contest in Modeling.
We can include college. The Science Olympiad doesn't include college and it should.


The Big Bang

Brutus Forcefeld won big money on the PGA tour and feels like spending it. He hires agents to investigate rural land in North Alaska and they find a patch. Forcefeld buys 10 km2.

Later on, a metal asteroid crashes onto the land. The asteroid has platinum-group metals. Nebula Sundial arrives with a mining crew to extract the metals. The crater exposes a deep coal deposit and Sundial mines coal. She also builds a system to extract geothermal power from the crater. The ground around the crater is warm and the crater is in a valley that holds heat. Winters in the valley are pleasant.

Forcefeld is a Mormon with a wife and 11 kids. Him and his family often ride with barfleet and he owns 5 Spruce Gooses. 3 are for family, 1 is a Mormon tabernacle, and 1 is for Mormon missionaries. Forcefeld supports 8 missionaries.

Forcefeld designates an admissions committee and the committee decides who gets to move onto the land. Mormon values are emphasized. You don't have to be Mormon, but your values must be synergistic with Mormon values.

Miners flood onto the land. A platinum rush. A boom town forms. Forcefeld offers land to rent. The land is zoned for big yards. Alaska-sized yards.

Forcefeld builds a golf course on the land. He hires 18 golfers from the PGA senior tour and asks each to design a hole. Each hole hosts a statue of the designer.

Forcefeld hires a team of elderly oligarchs to design a clubhouse, and also to design an elderly home next to the clubhouse. Forcefeld puts down money and it's matched by the elderly, and they build it.

The clubhouse has posh telecommuting gear, an office wing, a Mormon tabernacle, and a Christian church. Many companies move their employees to Forcetown. The goal is to have a big yard and a short commute, which is impossible in a city.

Forcefeld buys a mountain of fertilizer and hires Kane Heft to distribute it on the land. Heft also plants seeds, especially apple seeds. Forcefeld likes apple juice. It's part of his style. He drinks apple juice when he plays. There's always a fruit snack nearby on Forcefeld's land.

The tee of each golf hole features a snack bar with roasted nuts and fruit juice. There's also a bar.

Forcefeld donates money to create the "Forcefeld Chestnut Foundation", with the headquarters on his land. The hope is to vanquish chestnut blight. Heft plants chestnut trees around the world and researchers study the trees.

Forcefeld's land includes a mountain and he builds a ski slope. There's a bullet train that hoists people from the valley to the mountaintop in comfort.

The residents of Forcetown gather in the clubhouse.

Parent #1: Let there be a school. K through college. I have kids in the 4th, 6th, and 8th grades and I hired a math teacher that my kids like. My kids persuaded the teacher to move from his previous school to here. The teacher is a professional gambler that's a master of probability. He designs games for the kids. He helps them with sports metrics for fantasy sports.
Forcefeld: Teachers get lease discounts and other privileges. Put out word that Forcetown seeks teachers. The school will be part of a global homeschol network and Blizztech will goose the school. We'll be a colony of Blizztech. I fund Blizztech professors.
Parent #2: I'll build a boarding school to attract students.
Parent #3: Let's call this school the Kodiak Institute of Technology.
The crowd approves.
Parent #4: Our bear is bigger than rival bears. Kodiaks dwarf grizzlies.


Cigar galaxy
Mimas

Drunk students horse around with a backyard telescope.
Al: I have the Cigar galaxy lined up.
Loraine: You often have a cigar lined up.
Margold looks into the telescope.
Margold: Nice prank. How did you add a death star to the image?
You're drunk and hallucinating.
Look into the telescope.
Could this be Mimas? Mimas looks like a death star.
Mimas is on the other side of the sun now.
It's smooth metal and I don't see any heat exhaust ports.
Al looks into the telescope.
It's moving. It's getting closer to Earth.
Al pulls out his phone.
I'm making stock trades and betting on volatility. Whatever the death star means, the market is about to get volatile.
Everyone pulls out phones and starts trading stocks.
We have the opportunity to tweet a tweet that launches a billion retweets.
The longer we keep this to ourselves, the more money we make.
After that, our souls are in the hands of god.
Let's start a religion of alien worship. Let's build a temple and get busy worshipping.
What do aliens want?


Nuke's telescope team finds the death star shortly before the backyard telescope. Nuke hails the Death Star.
Greetings from Earth. I'm Captain Nuke of Barfleet. What can we do for you? We have tourist resorts. We have cookies.
An alien appears onscreen. The alien is humanoid with blue skin and he's ruggedly good-looking. He wears a gangster suit in the style of 1920's Chicago.
I'm Captain Zorf of the Galactic Empire. We're taking over and installing humans of our choice to run Earth. Boss Dogg will be President of the United States and Spruce Goose will be Vice President. Dogg will pull Earth's strings and we'll pull his. We chose Dogg for his flexibility. It's very much a matter of flexibility.
At that instant, all Earth military hardware bricks and all military software deletes itself. Earth is as helpless as a worm in an Eagle's claw. The death star fires a ray at a mountain and blows it up to punctuate the point.

I formally disclose that I have a secret isotope lab under a mountain that could easily be mistaken for a weapons lab. In fact it is a weapons lab. Tour on offer.
We know about it. Fine work. Don't worry, we won't tell anyone. We enjoy good mischief. Carry on. We'll give you a piece of the action.
I've always wondered why aliens never destroyed Earth. I kiss the turf every day in thanks it's still here.
Aliens feel that Wisconsin farmers are doing a fine job converting starlight to cheese. Wisconsin cheese dominates the Galactic Cheese Championships. Wisconsin is unaware that aliens import Wisconsin cheese and that the Green Bay Packers have fans throught the galaxy. We also import Scotch.

The milk must flow!
The Scotch must flow!
Grill smoke must billow!

We like Blizzard's resorts and we booked suites. We're here for therapy animals, not humans. We also bought tickets to the next Blizzard rugby game. As currency, we offer Hulkan ale that's aged a billion years.
An offer we can't refuse. Blizzard County apologizes for the light pollution from Lizzard County.
The Death Star opens fire and destroys Lizzard's lights.
We value darkness.
Thank you. Blizzard astronomers especially thank you. What's the beam made of?
TeV uranium nuclei that penetrate 100 meters of rock.
We also have a muon beam that penetrates 1 kilometer of rock.
How long have aliens been on Earth?
A long time.9 Congratulations on being the first to see us.
Why wait until now to take over?
We held hope that humans are capable of governing themselves but then abandoned hope. We judge humans a failed civilization. Earth matters more than humans and the galaxy expresses its vote. Humans are arrogant in thinking that only they have a vote regarding Earth. Time for humans to learn their place on the galactic totem pole.
Nuke is on a barship with his crew. Vesta Garnet drives.
Garnet: Have you ever taken over before?
I did during the early Egyptian era. I acted the role of an Egyptian Pharoah.
Sounds fun.
At the time, humanity was enmired in gang wars and the only way to bring peace was to take over. Imagine explaining to Galactic Command why I pulled a Kurtz and took over.
Sledge is Barfleet Chief of Security.
Sledge: Does there exist undiscovered archaeological evidence?
Yes. I'm disappointed that humans haven't found the stargate yet. Earth linguists need to raise their game. I left a trail of heiroglyphic clues and linguists whiffed.
Your Death Star is beautiful. Compels humans to bend the knee. It's something they understand. Humans need to understand that they're under the boot. What if you also had a space pyramid? Pyramids look formidable and they look even more formidable in space.
Cool idea. I'll add a space pyramid.
I love the Washington Monument. I'm imagining a replica of the Washington Monument in space.
You got it.
Have you helped human technology in the past?
No. In fact I'm disappointed in the slowness of human discovery. Humans are retarded by galactic standards.
Have you solved quantum gravity?
Yes.
Have you solved the Riemann hypothesis?
Yes.
Have you solved turbulence?
No. We approach turbulence partly with theory and mostly with brute-force computing.
Nova Sharpstein is Barfleet Chief Doctor and also an Alexander Technique practioner. She reads body language so well that she's jestingly regarded as telepathic.
Sharpstein: Is Elvis an alien?
Yes. He didn't die. He tours planets and he moved on to the next planet. I'm giving Earth his new music videos. New dance moves.
Earth music is in decline and needs uplift. Does Earth have more aliens?
Yes.
Who?
Not telling.
Given how Charlie Chaplin moves, I'd guess he's an alien.
No comment.
Ajax Boulderfield is Barfleet Chief of Communications.
Boulderfield: Do you talk to whales?
Whales and us go way back, way before Ancient Egyptian civilization. We socialized with whales when humans were apes.
We're having trouble connecting to whale language.
You need to know galactic canon. I'm giving Earth the canon. Galactic Tamarian. Also, whales are sensitive to the Hulkan mind meld. You need to learn it. They can teach you.
Otto Forge is Barfleet Chief of Engineering.
Forge: What powers the Death Star?
Fission. It has better energy per mass than fusion.
Gage Arch is Barfleet Chief of Games.
Arch: What games do you play?
Aerial rugby is big on low-gravity worlds.

History of Science


The Death Star opens a bay door and a warship emerges from it. The warship goes to Earth and parks on the White House lawn and androids emerge from it. They look like bodybuilders and wear sunglasses. The president and his entourage greet them.
Android: Get out.
As White House staff evacuates, androids install bird feeders. Alien animals emerge from the ship and play on the lawn.
Air Force One lands at Blizzport and alien androids emerge from it. Boss Dogg and his entourage greet them.
Android: Get in.

In the Oval Office, President Dogg sits in the presidential chair and his feet are on the presidential desk. His boots are staggeringly large and made of blue suede. He wears a blue suede gangster fedora with a 6 inch brim that makes his big round head look like Saturn. His suit is black with a blue suede tie. Dogg smokes a Hulkan cigar and a fancy air management system hustles the smoke out of the room. The androids smoke cigars. Dogg passes out cigars.
Vice President Spruce Goose stands on the desk accompanied by Caboose Goose, the Court Jester. Spruce and Caboose wear gold jewelry and look like goose pimps. The office is full of cabinet officials and reporters. Androids stand stoically at the periphery. Caboose pushes the microphone stand off the desk.

A chamber orchestra occupies the room. Dogg is an opera bass and often expresses himself in song. Dogg is a narcissist, an asset to an opera singer.

Dogg: Let's have a new fairway and green on the White House lawn, and a waterfowl pond next to the green. Professor Sundial found exotic sand for bunkers and ponds, and colorful marble for the house. Professor Heft will design. Brace for biomass. Geese value good grass. Install Kentucky bluegrass using seeds from Lambeau Field, and hire a bluegrass band for tonight's party. Make the tennis nets adjustable to accomodate pickleball, and add cornhole and wrestling courts. We thank President Truman for the horseshoe pit and bowling alley. Also add a goose coop. I like fresh goose eggs. Business starts when roosters crow and geese honk.
Most of the reporters are groggy because it's 5 AM. Dogg and the geese are energized. Birds are awake and singing.
DC is a swamp with murky water. Blizzard's Lake Phurba is 60 meters deep and you can see the boulders at the bottom. Import Blizzard water for the pond and microbrewery.
Spruce: Honk
Blizzard has insects under control. Put abundant birdseed next to the pond to attract insect-eating birds, and install anti-insect lasers.
Reporter: Has the government been hiding the existence of aliens?
I order the release of all government files on UFOs, and give Geraldo Rivera first crack at the vault. Have Area 51 give public tours and tell them to kiss Rivera's ass.
Caboose flies from the desk to the reporter's shoulder.
President Wilson owns the record among presidents for the most number of golf rounds played and was regarded as the worst golfer among presidents. I hope to outdo him on both counts. If it snowed, Wilson still played, and he painted the balls black.
Caboose flies to a shelf full of busts and pushes the busts off the shelf.
The aliens added an amendment to the Constitution. Retiring presidents must farm. I shall serve exactly one term and then farm. I like farming. My favorite president is Polk and that's what he did.
What's the Galactic Empire's plan for Earth?
To colonize it and pump up the biomass. Earth is unfit for self rule and is better off as a colony. You'll find that being a colony of the Galactic Empire is a good thing.
What's your energy policy?
We need more power. I'm licensing fission reactor designs. We're not scared of fast neutrons. Large reactors with fast neutrons and portable reactors with slow neutrons. Nuke baby nuke! I love the smell of radioactive ash in the morning. Also, forest fires are 600 Watts per person up in smoke. We will capture the energy.

A gold statue catches Caboose's eye. It's a replica of the soccer World Cup trophy, identical in every way except that the real trophy is hollow and the replica is solid gold. The real trophy is 6 kg, light enough to be hefted by soccer players with skinny arms. The replica is 30 kg. Caboose tries to push the statue off the shelf and fails. Caboose is confused. Given the statue's size it should be easy to push off the shelf. Caboose experiences the concept of density. Caboose gives up and poops on the statue.
We will harness asteroid energy, which is colossally vast. An asteroid will make a crater in Alaska near the Yukon river, and hydro power is extracted as the crater refills. Then another asteroid blasts the water out of the crater for another round of hydropower. Brace for impact.
What about fusion?
Fusion won't be commercializable for a long time. A solar cell has a power per dollar of 10 Watts per dollar, and a fusion plant .025 Watts per dollar. Fusion falls short by 3 orders of magnitude. Also, fusion energy per dollar is orders of magnitude worse than coal. It's embarrassing that people pass around pop science articles about this. Fusion is a grift. Let it go.
What's your climate policy?
Solving climate is easy using ocean iron fertilization and tree carbon capture. Also, asteroids can trigger snow for albedo management. Do the homework. Read Dr. Koonin's textbook: "Unsettled" and read Blizztech's textbook: "Science for Politicians"
What's your science policy?
Particle physics is starved for data. We'll build a particle collider.
What's your environmental policy?
The oceans will have zones where motors are forbidden. Whales value quietness and the aliens value whales. They hold little valuefor humans.
Honk
We'll construct biomass reactors in rainy zones where we'll hyperfertlize, to maximize biomass density and species density. The aliens want more biomass. We need more power for fertilizer production.
Will the aliens give us advanced technology?
No.
Will they tell us what's out there in the universe?
No. We have to figure it out for ourselves. Aliens enjoy watching new civilizations figure stuff out. It's what makes us cute and we need to be cute. Be thankful that they give us the opportunity. Be thankful they didn't exterminate humans.
On a shelf is a replica of the Stanley Cup that's full of Jack Daniels. President Dogg takes a hit and dares reporters to take a hit.
My comedy is 6 drink minimum.
Caboose flies into the Stanley Cup for a swim.
The aliens demand a redo of Game of Thrones season 8. The galaxy is unhappy with this season.
Isn't your cigar intolerant of non-smokers?
Many non-smokers are intolerant of smokers and they need more tolerance. They crybully smokers. Cigars can make you feel good and the smoking section is an exclusive club. Non-smokers miss out.
Caboose flies to the chandelier and perches on it and everyone under it moves to a different place.
The Goose of Damocles
Caboose flies out the door to explore the White House.
Loose wild goose.
Reporters chase Caboose because he gets great ratings. People wager on what his next act of mischief will be. In Professor Arch's video game world you can play a mischievous animal.
Most people talk too much and rarely listen. Cigars help you talk less. Once upon a time tobacco was integral to socializing and there's a reason.
NFL?
The commissioner will be decided by votes from people who bought tickets. I hope the salary cap is abolished and that the NFL begins inter-league play. An NFL team of 2nd and 3rd stringers can play minor league teams. Get rid of preseason games. As it stands, you need 4 billion dollars to buy into the NFL. The money goes to existing owners and that shouldn't be. Plus the buy-in price is a tall barrier to entry. If a new college football team emerges they don't have to pay the Power 5 conferences to play bowl games, and the Power 5 is obliged to play good teams from outside the Power 5.
College Game of Conferences?
Fighting the collusion of the Big Ten and SEC requires that teams outside these conferences collude. Humans are good at collusion. It's human nature. In the good old days colleges decided their own game schedule and now it's locked in by long-range TV contracts. College sports needs more flexibility. During the Covid year, BYU and Coastal Carolina played a game on 3 days notice. The Big Ten adjusted conference championship day on the fly. Ask professor Arch for analysis.
Honk
The rules of American football are inelegant. Humanity needs to design better sports. Rugby is more elegant but it's still not perfect. Soccer is elegant but the offside rule is inelegant. Soccer should have less people on the field or there should be a 2nd ball. There should be an end zone beyond the goal like hockey. Hockey nets should be bigger and goalies should wear tight clothing, like soccer goalies.
I'm holding a conference at the White House with players and fans to discuss game design. We'll channel Teddy's spirit.


After the press conference, Dogg goes to the golf green and is greeted by Zorf.
I love how the androids add gravitas to the room.
Zorf: You add gravitas with your girth.
I'm assuming you're referring to my shoes.
Ha ha.
Hilarious how irreverent Caboose is of the androids. Hilarious how tolerant the androids are of Caboose.
We like geese.
What's my budget?
We'll fund science projects like the collider. It needs to get built fast. We'll also produce fertilizer for a biomass reactor in Florida. We'll use platinum currency. Humanity needs to design better currencies, especially heavy metal currencies. By the way, add metal to the White House band roster.
Happily. In my mind the Baroque Age evolved to the Metal Age and I don't give a damn about most of what's in between. Bluegrass is hillbillie metal.
I'll be at tonight's bluegrass concert. Human pop music forsook instrumentalism and needs to get it back.
As an opera singer I'm nice to the orchestra, the way a quarterback is nice to the offensive line.
Chess is inelegant and go is elegant. The rules of go are so natural that most alien civilizations discovered it. I'm giving Earth the rules to the most interesting board games that the galaxy plays. We have games that will flummox your AIs, like Hulkan chess.
We need inspiration for nerds.
Sumo and Mongolian wrestling have simple rules. They're fine as is.
The only sports where I have game.
Humans are enacting the film "Idiocracy". The galaxy mocks humans.
The Blizzard Science Olympiad team mocks California.
We enjoy watching the Science Olympiad. Congratulations on Blizzard winning the national championship.
California is prideful and didn't see it coming. Professor Heft has been breeding balsa since he was a kid and his balsa grove makes magic balsa. His high-end balsa sells for $1000 per kilogram. He can sense the breaking strain of a piece of balsa without having to break it. Heft is a telepath to fauna and flora.
We'll fund worldwide Science Olympiad contests and we'll fund gear for worthy contestants. Arch, Nuke, and I designed new events that make the contest more TV-worthy. As it stands the Science Olympiad gets poor galactic TV ratings. I'm taking over the Science Olympiad and installing Arch as commissioner. Events need to be more quantitative and Blizztech published example tests to show what quantitative is. The flagship event is the Fermi event and top competitors will get prizemoney on par with top professional gamers. Caltech pioneereed a class on Fermi style and Earth needs to see it. Fermi style is the right way to think, and humans need to learn.
How are human film ratings on the galactic streaming network?
Not good, however Blacklist and Magnum are popular, as are Aurora's films. Humans should revisit the classical film age. Modern film is in decline.
Are humans in danger of being cancelled by the galaxy?
Yes.
Dogg and Zorf move to the horseshoe pit.
Can you hit a hole-in-one on a par 5?
Yes, but only with a fleet of insect drones measuring wind and a supercomputer to calculate turbulence. You need the full power of the Death Star's supercomputer. I have a "drunk mode" where I function at reduced capacity to be sportsmanlike with humans. I can even play as bad as your handicap.
Is it euphoric?
Yes.
What should I do with the military?
Downsize it and maintain a small military for movie props. The military teaches skills and builds character. Keep the SEAL program. No federal military funding. People have to pay to play. Designate a zone for wargames. Auction off the combat gear and let people use it in the wargames zone.
An asteroid crashes into Mars and astronomers analyze the data. Spectra show abundant nitrogen and hydrogen, indicating that it was a comet from beyond Neptune. The comet was large, 100 kilometers in diameter. It gives Mars enough nitrogen for a thick atmosphere and enough water for an ocean. The collision outgasses enough carbon dioxide from the crust to heat Mars to Earth temperature.
A comet crashes into the moon and does unto the moon as was done unto Mars.

Topaz calls Aurora. Topaz is on the moon and wearing a tank top and no space suit. Her athletically-sculpted arms are in view. She has a scuba mask for oxygen.
Topaz: What an improvement! Now I can do wushu without the spacesuit. Please send wingsuits and aircraft. If the moon has an atmosphere, humans can fly with a wingsuit. Please paint my wingsuit like a pigeon.
Ezekiel: I want mallard.
Beryl: I want Canadian goose.


An agent notifies President Dogg about the comet strikes.
I'll have to make a statement.
Tell humans we terraformed the moon and Mars. All you have to do is crash comets into them, or a Kuiper belt object, or a moon of Neptune. A hydrogen fusion bomb can steer the comet to Mars with a delivery time of 30 years. Humans could have done this 50 years ago and it's disappointing they didn't.
Can you make Jupiter into a star?
No. Its mass is too low for hydrogen fusion. Too low even for deuterium fusion.
Professor Heft hurredly assembles a team of ecologists to figure out what to put on a Noah's Arc to the moon.

Heft: We'll include most of the therapy species from Blizzard. We have a long history of feedback for what humans like. I can't wait to see them play on the moon.
Boulderfield: I'm coming with you. Many residents in my elderly home want to move to the moon and I'm going to build a home there. Most have pets. There are people with disabilities that would find the moon more comfortable.
Spica Smokering, Vega Jade, and Crux Centaurus are Blizztech students that will accompany the Arc.
Smokering: No rats. Include pigeons. Pigeons have been bred by humans since the beginning of civilization in 3000 BCE. Pigeons served humanity well and deserve a place on the Arc.
Jade: Pigeons will notice that there's no magnetic field.
It'll take 3000 years for photosynthesis to build an oxygen atmosphere, so animals will be underground. Plants can be outdoors if they're resistant to low oxygen. Since we'll have large-scale outdoor farming we can support lots of animals. No oxygen means no ozone so I chose plants with UV resistance. We'll make glass on the moon for greenhouses for plants that can't handle UV. We already have a potion of microbes and worms and we're mass-producing it.
Are you worried about the possibility that there's already life on the moon?
Not possible.
The moon spins slowly and has low wind, so plants that need wind for pollen are at a disadvantage. There'll be no animals to spread seeds.
We'll have to spread seeds manually like Johnny Appleseed.
The Green Bay Packers gave us Kentucky bluegrass seeds from Lambeau field.
President Dogg released all seed patents.
Once we're on the moon we'll be busy breeding plants to adapt to the moon.
Redwood and Sequoia. We can make a monster tree like in Avatar.
Centaurus: Let's breed big eagles.
Can ostriches fly on the moon?
If they had full-size wings they could. We could give ostriches wing extensions. A human can fly with a wingsuit. I'll have Dogg manufacture wingsuits optimized for the moon.
We'll have big biomass production, limited only by how fast plants can harness regolith nutrients.
Day and night last a long time. Noon and midnight will be extreme.
We need orbital mirrors to deflect sunlight to the arctic.
How much would it cost?
A space mirror is 6 grams per meter squared and you need 1 million kilometers squared, costing 12 trillion dollars to launch from Earth. We're going to engineer a process for making mirrors on the moon. A railgun launches from the moon at $1 per kilogram. We also need mirrors beyond the moon to deflect light to the night side to amplify photosynthesis. If we don't do this, it take photosynthesis 3000 years to generate Earth-level oxygen.


Margold feeds wild cats and birds and she tends a public garden. As she feeds animals an android drives up in a truck. The android gives Margold 100 kilograms of sesame seeds, 100 kilograms of bread, 100 kilograms of salmon, and a kilogram of platinum.
Android: We're giving grants to humans with a proven record of feeding animals. Karma. We know who's naughty and nice.
The android releases alien animals into the wild.
Margold: Can alien animals eat Earth food?
Yes. Aliens store energy as sugar and fat, like Earth animals. Fat has the highest energy/mass of all biological foods. Their proteins are different but they can synthesize protein.
Does alcohol get them drunk?
Yes.


An android drives a truck to Al's house and in the truck is a 1-meter telescope. Al greets the android.
Congratulations on being the second person to see the death star, and that you did it with an amateur telescope. The Galactic Empire presents a gift.
The alien uses his android strength to carry the telescope to the back yard.
It has adaptive optics and fancy detectors.
The android returns to the truck and carries a keg of Hulkan ale to the telescope.


Zorf and Ganoo drink Hulkan ale at the top of Mount Erebus in Antarctica. There are no humans around.
Ganoo: You're just in time. I was about to take over Earth myself.


President Dogg is at the podium in the Rose Garden.

Dogg: Brace for impact. The aliens will bombard Earth with asteroids. They published a schedule of impacts so people can get out of the way. Many will hit oceans. The asteroids are small so tsunamis will be mild. There will be many asteroids. The aliens are landscaping.

There are big undersea plateaus northwest of Hawaii that are less than 10 meters deep. The aliens will carve undersea harbors in them for whales. Plateaus are quiet zones because ships avoid them, and the harbors will be extra quiet. The impacts will also stir up nutrients and make biomass.

The aliens built a whale internet and they're equipping whales with interfaces to the whalenet.

Asteroids will hit deposits of phosphorus and potassium to kick up dust to fertilize the Earth.

Asteroids will cut a gap in the Aleutian archipellago so that water can flow between the Pacific and the Arctic. This increases oxygenization of the deep ocean.

Asteroids will strip mine for deep coal. The deeper the coal, the higher the formation temperature and the higher the quality. We need coal for smelting metal.

Asteroids will make a deep crater next to the Yukon river. Hydro power will be made from Yukon water flowing into the crater. When the crater fills, an asteroid blasts the water out of the crater to repeat the cycle. This gives 30 Gigawatts. We'll also do this with the Mackenzie river.

Icy comets will crash into America's southwest plateau to make lakes for irrigation. Farmers should rush to New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada. Zorf wants to increase Earth's biomass and oxygen. Zorf is importing species that need big biomass.


The Oval Office is full of physicists and miners.

Dogg: Zorf pledged to fund a collider. What should we make?
Physicist #1: The choices are a linear electron collider vs. a ring proton collider. We prefer the electron collider because it gives better measurements. Proton collisions are hell to analyze.
Physicist #2: A linear collider can be built incrementally whereas a proton collider is all-or-nothing.
Nuke: There are cool things we can do with an electron beam, like an x-ray laser. We can also use other particles, like heavy ions. We want to study quark-gluon plasmas.
Boulderfield: We can also use the collider for proton-antiproton collisions, which can zap cancer. There are people that will pay big for this treatment. It can reach cancers that nothing else can.
How big can we make it?
The collider collides electrons and positrons head-on. The maximum energy is decided by the Earth's curvature. Electrons following the curvature of the Earth's surface lose energy to synchrotron radiation and this limits the energy to 23 TeV. We can add a straight section after the curved section to get the energy to 40 TeV. The curved section is 230 km long. The straight section is 200 km long and requires deep tunnels. Totaling the electron and position sections comes to 860 km.
Where do we build it?
Sundial: I mapped a route in the rockies.
Physicist #3: A linear collider can be built incrementally. Once it reaches the energy of the Higgs boson and the top quark, it can be used as a factory for these particles and it can make precision measurements. Once we reach 1 TeV we're beyond the Large Hadron Collider and in fresh powder. Then we'll build up to 40 TeV.
How do we power it?
Zorf will beam power from space as microwaves. The collider will need big power to produce the needed luminosity.
There's another reason why we want an electron collider. We don't know if the vacuum is the lowest-energy state or if there's a lower-energy state. If there is, then the universe could spontaneously undergo a new big bang and destroy all life. The only way to know is to have precise measurements of the Higgs mass and the top quark mass.
The univerese could spontaneously cease to exist? Why isn't this widely known?
Even if there's no spontaneous big bang, the universe is doomed to be destroyed by dark energy. Protons are also doomed to decay. All matter will disintegrate. Even black holes disintegrate.


Aurora Wavecrest, Vesta Garnet, Ajax Boulderfield, and Brutus Forcefeld play billiards. They're on a boat and in the background is an ocean with fierce waves, yet the table and floor are curiously stable. Aurora takes a shot and the ball rolls straight.

They're shooting a commercial for the Model Gull seastead, manufactured by Dogg Industries.

Wavecrest: This is not a film studio. This is a real boat. That's a real ocean.
Boulderfield: The billiards table has active suspension. It has lasers and level sensors and it calculates where the balls would go if the table were flat, and it dynamically adjusts the table to get them there. It has internal actuators to correct table warp. It's like a telescope mirror with adaptive optics. The floor is also stabilized.
Garnet: The boat deck is 10 meters above water to be above waves, and flotation elements are 10 meters below water to be below waves. They're connected by columns that are trussed together, and the columns are rigged to have minimum cross section at water level to minimize bobbing. It looks like a bamboo forest. There's a lower deck 1 meter above water level for calm weather.
With a standard ship, waves crash into the side and are deflected upward, often making it to the deck. The Gull has no sides.
Forcefeld: The boat is actively stabilized and there's a hidden breakwater just below the surface surrounding the boat. The boat and breakwater have fins for damping, and also motion damping systems that power generators.

The Gull has links to link to other seasteads, and the links improve stability. Gulls link like Tinker Toys. The links have adjustable length and orientation and they're disguised as cute Japanese garden bridges.
Boss Dogg collects retired wind turbine blades and turns them into motion-damping breakwaters.
Oligarchs are buying Gulls and building a vast linked city, and they're moving their companies to the city. An oligarch bought a massive platform the size of a football field and built a family park on it, and seasteads cluster around. The park has a freshwater pond called Galt's Gulf that's full of waterfowl and seagulls.

Kane Heft designed an underwater coral platform that's mobile and depth-adjustable. The seastead is in a warm part of the ocean where there's minimal shipping noise, to attract whales. It's on a bird migration corridor and serves as a rest stop. The seastead shines UV beacons to attract birds.

Heft harvests guano and sells it as virtue fertilizer.


Characters

Boss Dogg. Blizzard County Commissioner. Owner of factories in Blizzard County. Sumo wrestler. Bass vocalist
Kane Heft. Owner of a campground in Blizzard County. Blizztech Professor of Bioengineering. X games unicycle athlete.
Aurora Wavecrest. Celebrity actress and Blizzard County Director of Tourism. Film producer. Retired MMA fighter. Owner of the Blizzard Honey Badgers rugby team.
Brutus Forcefeld. Member of the PGA Tour and owner of a golf course in Blizzard County. Mormon with a wife and 11 kids.
Bo Nuke. Sheriff of Blizzard County. Member of the Blizzard rugby team. Tubist
Luke Nuke. Agent 009 in the Blizzard County Secret Service. Member of the Blizzard rugby team. Trombonist
Gregor Rigel. Blizztech Professor of Science Fiction, History of Science, and Tamarian Language. Author and scriptwriter. Professional gamer. Percussionist
Ajax Boulderfield. Christian priest with a congregation in Blizzard County. Owner of an elderly home in Blizzard County that hosts a church and a golf course. Himself elderly. Standup comedian. Barfleet bartender. Tenor vocalist
Brute Nuke. Eccentric billionaire. Barfleet Captain. Blizztech Professor of Physics. Sumo wrestler. Violist
Sledge. Barfleet Chief of Security. MMA fighter. Member of the Blizzard rugby team. Percussionist
Hickory Cloud. Blizztech student and member of the Blizzard rugby team. Audiovisual engineer.
Gage Arch. Blizztech Professor of Mathematics. Soundtrack composer. Owner of a computer gaming company. Owner of a casino. Professional gamer. Violinist
Topaz Snowbank. X games athlete. Blizztech student. Soprano vocalist
Ezekiel Aaberg. X games athlete. Blizztech student.
Beryl Finchfeather. X games athlete. Blizztech student.
Otto Forge. Oligarch. Blizztech Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. Owner of a research laboratory. Barfleet Chief of Engineering.
Nebula Sundial. Blizztech Professor of Mining. Member of the Blizzard women's hockey team. Percussionist
Vesta Garnet. Aircraft pilot and car racer. Professional gamer. Alexander Technique practitioner. Violinist
Nova Sharpstein. Barfleet doctor. Cellist and Alexander Technique practitioner
Spica Smokering. A student in the Blizzard high school homeschool network and member of the Blizzard Science Olympiad team. X games athlete
Crux Centaurus. A student in the Blizzard high school homeschool network and member of the Blizzard Science Olympiad team. Audiovisual engineer. Pianist
Vega Jade. A student in the Blizzard high school homeschool network and member of the Blizzard Science Olympiad team. Member of the Blizzard women's hockey team.
Governor Gunn. Governor of the state that includes Blizzard County
Procyon Cliff. Member of U.S. House of Representatives, representing the district that includes Blizzard County.
Ganoo. An alien that masquerades among humans. Author and scriptwriter
Zorf. An alien that's captain of a death star of the Galactic Empire.
Spruce Goose. Blizzard County Boss Goose
Caboose Goose. Court jester for Spruce Goose
Boss Bogg. Oligarch. Lizzard County Commissioner
Boss Fogg: Oligarch. Owner of a university
Boss Smogg: Oligarch. Colonial governor
Boss Sogg: Oligarch. Owner of mining companies
Boss Waterlogg: Oligarch. Owner of tech companies
Boss Frogg: Oligarch. Leader of a mutual fund that promotes mischief
Boss Pogg: Oligarch. Owner of a video game company
Boss Cogg: Oligarch. Owner of many political action committees
Boss Clogg: Oligarch. Part of the military-industrial complex
Boss Scrogg: Oligarch. Owner of an amusement park
Boss Flogg: Oligarch. Owner of a rocket company
Boss Slogg: Oligarch. Owner of a shipping empire
Boss Grogg: Oligarch. Owner of an online news empire
Boss Balrogg: Oligarch. Owner of a film production company
Hack: Ponceton Professor of Anthropology
Quack: Ponceton Professor of Marketing
Yack: Ponceton Professor of Public Policy
Slack: Ponceton Professor of Business Administration
Crack: Ponceton Professor of Astrology
Flack: Ponceton Professor of Journalism
Lack: Ponceton Professor of Art History
Obfus: Haavaad Professor of Law
Bullhorn: Haavaad Professor of Divinity
Lumen Quasar: Haavaad Professor of Psychology
Fathom Abyss: Haavaad Professor of Philosophy
Boss Togg: Gizzard County Commissioner
Boss Jogg: Wizzard County Commissioner
Boss Ogg: Coach of a college football team
Boss Nogg: Oligarch. Owner of whiskey and beer factories
Boss Blogg: Oligarch. Owner of a media empire
Boss Glogg: Oligarch. Owner of wineries
Boss Sprogg: Owner of a United Football League team
Boss Waagg: Oligarch. Owner of a seastead


Textbooks

Off-grid living
Astronautics
Materials and elasticity
Science for politicians
Nuclear power
History of Science
Ecology

Electric vehicles
Natural disasters
Astronomy
Astrobiology
Flight
Explosives
Bird down

Large flying creatures


Appendix

Dogg industries makes the Condor blimp.

Blimp mass, empty      =   200  kg
Blimp mass, full       =   500  kg
Maximum speed          =    16  meters/second
Engine power           =    80  kWatt
Engine power/mass      =  4000  Watt/kg
Engine total mass      =    20  kg
Diameter               =     6  meters
Length                 =    20  meters
Volume                 =   500  meter3
Lift                   =   520  kg
Helium gas density     =   .179 kg/meter3
Air density            =  1.22  kg/meter3
Buoyancy               =  1.04  kg/meter3
Helium cost per mass   =    24  $/kg
Helium cost            = 12000  $

Maps

Rain

Rivers

American national parks

Click for larger image.

Yellowstone
Zion
Bryce Canyon
Acadia

College conferences


Main page

Support the free online science textbooks project






© Jason Maron, all rights reserved.