Starship Asterisk*

Sa Ji Tario wrote: ↑Sat Feb 13, 2021 1:32 pm
If it's potato, it originated in America

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato wrote:
<<Genetic testing of the wide variety of cultivars and wild species affirms that all potato subspecies derive from a single origin in the area of present-day southern Peru and extreme Northwestern Bolivia. Potatoes were introduced to Europe from the Americas in the second half of the 16th century by the Spanish.>>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_Potato_Museum wrote:
<<The Idaho Potato Museum is a museum devoted to the potato, located in Blackfoot, Idaho. The museum's exhibits include the world's largest potato chip, measuring 25 and 14 inches big, and a timeline history of potato consumption in the US (including the introduction of fries to the White House menu selection during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson).>>

Fred the Cat wrote: ↑Sat Feb 13, 2021 7:06 pm I started watching “ The Expanse” and Eros plays in the plot. The show reminds me of the Mars Trilogy in the fight over resources within the solar system.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Bojo takes over a snow pile lured there by his favorite biscuit.
Bojo in Snow.jpg

johnnydeep wrote: ↑Sat Feb 13, 2021 9:03 pm

Fred the Cat wrote: ↑Sat Feb 13, 2021 7:06 pm I started watching “ The Expanse” and Eros plays in the plot. The show reminds me of the Mars Trilogy in the fight over resources within the solar system.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Bojo takes over a snow pile lured there by his favorite biscuit. :ssmile:
Bojo in Snow.jpg

Ah, The Expanse. Everything points to my really liking it (hard SciFi and Star Trek lover that I am), but I didn't. Only made it through 5 episodes. I didn't care about any of the characters. Perhaps I should give it another shot.

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Sat Feb 13, 2021 3:43 pm Cross-eyed non-anaglyph for those without glasses or who prefer this format.
PIA02471_800_crossed.jpg

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Sat Feb 13, 2021 9:33 pm

johnnydeep wrote: ↑Sat Feb 13, 2021 9:03 pm

Fred the Cat wrote: ↑Sat Feb 13, 2021 7:06 pm I started watching “ The Expanse” and Eros plays in the plot. The show reminds me of the Mars Trilogy in the fight over resources within the solar system.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Bojo takes over a snow pile lured there by his favorite biscuit.
Bojo in Snow.jpg

Ah, The Expanse. Everything points to my really liking it (hard SciFi and Star Trek lover that I am), but I didn't. Only made it through 5 episodes. I didn't care about any of the characters. Perhaps I should give it another shot.

I position it as the greatest television scifi ever created. Interesting and believable politics, and an extraordinary degree of attention to scientific detail and accuracy.

johnnydeep wrote: ↑Sat Feb 13, 2021 9:56 pm

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Sat Feb 13, 2021 9:33 pm

johnnydeep wrote: ↑Sat Feb 13, 2021 9:03 pm

Ah, The Expanse. Everything points to my really liking it (hard SciFi and Star Trek lover that I am), but I didn't. Only made it through 5 episodes. I didn't care about any of the characters. Perhaps I should give it another shot.

I position it as the greatest television scifi ever created. Interesting and believable politics, and an extraordinary degree of attention to scientific detail and accuracy.

You've convinced me to give it another try. Was that seemingly exaggerated Coriolis effect seen when one of the characters was pouring some liquid in an early episode really accurate?

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Sat Feb 13, 2021 10:02 pm

johnnydeep wrote: ↑Sat Feb 13, 2021 9:56 pm
You've convinced me to give it another try. Was that seemingly exaggerated Coriolis effect seen when one of the characters was pouring some liquid in an early episode really accurate?

Not sure. Certainly, in the books, coriolis effects that occur living inside small bodies that are rotating rapidly are accurately described and tangentially important to the story. There are a few instances when they needed to bend the science a little for practical reasons, but really, I can't think of a scifi film, TV or theatrical, that gets things this right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocinante wrote:

---

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

<<In the novel series The Expanse and its TV series adaptation, the Rocinante is the new name given to a Martian gunship that becomes the primary setting for much of the series.

The progressive rock band Rush sing about the ship Rocinante in both "Cygnus X-1 Book I: The Voyage" and "Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres" on the albums A Farewell to Kings and Hemispheres respectively.>>
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<<Rocinante is Don Quixote's horse in the two-part 1605/1615 novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. In many ways, Rocinante is not only Don Quixote's horse, but also his double: like Don Quixote, he is awkward, past his prime, and engaged in a task beyond his capacities. Rocín in Spanish means a work horse or low-quality horse, but can also mean an illiterate or rough man. There are similar words in English (rouncey), French (roussin or roncin; rosse), Portuguese (rocim), and Italian (ronzino).

The name is a complex pun. In Spanish, ante has several meanings and can function as a standalone word as well as a suffix. One meaning is "before" or "previously". Another is "in front of". As a suffix, -ante in Spanish is adverbial; rocinante refers to functioning as, or being, a rocín. "Rocinante", then, follows Cervantes' pattern using ambiguous, multivalent words, which is common throughout the novel.

Rocinante's name, then, signifies his change in status from the "old nag" of before to the "foremost" steed. As Cervantes describes Don Quixote's choice of name: nombre a su parecer alto, sonoro y significativo de lo que había sido cuando fue rocín, antes de lo que ahora era, que era antes y primero de todos los rocines del mundo—"a name, to his thinking, lofty, sonorous, and significant of his condition as a hack before he became what he now was, the first and foremost of all the hacks in the world".>>
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In popular culture:

Rocinante is the name of the camper truck used by author John Steinbeck in his 1960 cross-country road trip, which is depicted in his 1962 travelogue Travels with Charley.

Rocinante is the name of Monsignor Quixote's car in Graham Greenes's 1982 novel Monsignor Quixote.

In the television series Once Upon A Time, which is based upon retellings of literary classics, Rocinante is the name of the horse belonging to a young Regina/Evil Queen.
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In chapter 1, Shelton describes Don Quixote's careful naming of his steed:

<<Then did he presently visit his horse, who (though he had more quarters than pence in a sixpence, through leanness, and more faults than Gonella’s), having nothing on him but skin and bone; yet he thought that neither Alexander’s Bucephalus, nor the Cid his horse Balieca, were in any respect equal to him. He spent four days devising him a name; for (as he reasoned to himself) it was not fit that so famous a knight’s horse, and chiefly being so good a beast, should want a known name; and therefore he endeavoured to give him such a one as should both declare what sometime he had been, before he pertained to a knight-errant, and also what at present he was; for it stood greatly with reason, seeing his lord and master changed his estate and vocation, that he should alter likewise his denomination, and get a new one, that were famous and altisonant, as became the new order and exercise which he now professed; and therefore, after many other names which he framed, blotted out, rejected, added, undid, and turned again to frame in his memory and imagination, he finally concluded to name him Rozinante, a name in his opinion lofty, full, and significant of what he had been when he was a plain jade, before he was exalted to his new dignity; being, as he thought, the best carriage beast of the world.>>

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Sat Feb 13, 2021 3:43 pm Cross-eyed non-anaglyph for those without glasses or who prefer this format.
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PIA02471_800_crossed.jpg

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Sat Feb 13, 2021 3:43 pm Cross-eyed non-anaglyph for those without glasses or who prefer this format.
_
PIA02471_800_crossed.jpg