The Ultimate Predator

Make no mistake, I'm still furious about this update, I loath it. But my precious blog still looks normal enough for the time being. I'm just having a hard time articulating to you that if they change the editor it would be tantamount to taking one of the few things I love in life away from me.

But for now, lets just pretend I'm not having a meltdown and focus on the real reason why we all came here: to choose the next master race. Yes, if you remember the post about lobsters I mentioned another crustacean who could make world domination work like a cashmere sweater. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Mantis Shrimp:



"Anyone else feeling fabulous?" -Mantis Shrimp

That psychedelic fiend up there is the Peacock Mantis Shrimp (Odontodactylus scyllarus) and it is a proven scientific fact that it is one of the most bedazzled invertebrates in the ocean today. Mantis shrimps are neither real shrimps nor mantids, but belong to an unrelated order called Stomatopoda. In general, stomatopods are known for three things; their incredible eyesight, their powerful claws and being too disco for words.



First of all, the claws. Mantis shrimps are very active hunters and spend most of their time strutting around coral reefs like they own the place, wantonly putting an end to gastropods, bivalves and other crustaceans with their deadly claws which are tiny doomsday devices for all intents and purposes.

See, there are about four hundred species of stomatopods and they all fall into two groups depending on what kind of claws they have: spearers and smashers. Spearers have thin, spiny claws that end in barbed tips. They use these like harpoons to mercilessly skewer their opponents, harpoons wrapped in barbed wire and glitter.



(An uncharacteristically bland specimen displaying the spears of his people.)

Smashers on the other hand have huge claws like brightly colored maces or maybe disco balls. They use these to bludgeon other sea-beasts to a bloody pulp with. There's even been reports of aquarium owners being injured by the cruel morning stars of mantis shrimps who've snuck into their tanks during the transfer of fish from one into another, earning them the nickname thumb splitters. So yes, you can add espionage to the list of things stomatopods are experts at, along with crushing their foes and color coordination.



(A female peacock mantis shrimp with smasher appendages. Neon red is in season obviously.)

A final word on their weapons: they unfold and swing their raptorial claws to land a lethal blow. Essentially the shrimps punch their prey. They punch right through the hard shells of mollusks, disintegrating them into a fine powder and they do it with blinding speed. As far as I know, they strike with an acceleration of about 10,400 gees. That's 2080 times more force then an average drag racing car accelerates with. To put that in perspective their claws accelerate at a rate of 23 meters per second, the acceleration of a .22 caliber bullet. They have the fastest punch of any animal on Earth.

If that's not enough to kill you, your fancy fish and everyone else in the aquarium, don't worry, because they punch with so much force so fast that they create tiny bubbles between their weapons and the surface they're striking against. These bubbles collapse, producing a shockwave that can stun or outright kill their prey. Y'know, assuming they weren't already pulverized into a fine paste.

But that's not all, when these bubbles collapse, they do so with so much force that it creates a phenomenon called sonoluminescence, releasing small bursts of light at extremely high temperatures, somewhere on the magnitude of several thousand kelvins. They punch with so much force they make the water radioactive.



Finally, their eyes. Mantis shrimps have some of the most complex eyes on Earth; not only are they both mounted on mobile stalks that can move independently of each other, but they can see the entire spectrum from red to ultraviolet. It's not currently believed that they can see infrared light but you know they can. They so can.

They have compound eyes like flies, giving them higher resolution vision in high light environments like shallow coral reefs. Each eye is composed of about 10,000 ommatidia, each one specialized for things like color sensitivity, hyperspectral vision and even the detection of polarized light, something puny Humans are all but incapable of.

While we need two eyes to perceive depth, mantis shrimps have no such handicap. While we have binocular vision, the shrimps have trinocular vision. This means that each eye can perceive depth all on it's lonesome. Using both in concert? Suddenly they're open to a whole dimension of vision we cannot begin to comprehend.

As if that wasn't enough to make them some kind of eyesight wizards, at least two species (including the aforementioned peacock mantis shrimps) can see circularly polarized light. While certain species of beetles reflect left-handed circularly polarized light off their carapaces, only the mantis shrimps seem to visually interpret it. Apparently, the shrimps fluoresce (glow) during mating rituals, but at frequencies only other mantis shrimps can see.



Honestly, it's like they're the perfect animal. They have the fastest weapons and most advanced eyes of any animals on Earth. And that's no hyperbole, that is an objective statement of fact. It's a crime that there's so many people who don't know about these amazing beasts. Plus they're so bombastically colorful! People on acid could only wish they could see hallucinations as psychedelic as these real life killing machines. Plus they're very inquisitive, as if there's the glimmer of a fabulous, primordial intellect behind all the flash and sparkle. Now imagine what it would be like if could get them to replicate their telomere like lobsters. Then they would become like gods.

And to think, there's people who still like pandas. They're not even in color.

I Seriously Want to Punch Someone in the Mouth

I absolutely hate it when websites change their layouts to some godawful "new and improved" design which is neither. Blogger's done that in my absence apparently. They changed their editor to some crappy new design recently that looks like Youtube, that is, gray and unwieldy. Plus, it's made pictures an absolute chore to add to posts, it's taken all the effort I can muster just to figure out how to get this picture here to show you how god awful it looks.



It's so unintuitive to use now, I can't resize anything and any attempt to fiddle with the pictures shifts all the text to one side of the screen. Honestly, if someone could tell me how to revert to the old editor I would GREATLY appreciate it because this is pure, unadulterated garbage.

I was going to make a post about mantis shrimps today but now I'm not in the mood because there's this annoying flash pop up and I feel like if I see it again I am going to throw this computer out the window.

News Flash:

Okay...okay. Crisis seemingly averted...for now. Apparently if you mess with the URL you can revert to the old layout. Still, that's obviously not a legitimate method and I don't know how long it'll take until the backwards hicks that maintain this website to realize this. But I'm serious, if they pull anymore snafus like this I feel like I'm going to go to a different website altogether. I just want my blog to be simple! IS THAT SO WRONG!?



If you want to revert to the old editor this link was very helpful. It's not perfect but it's better than nothing. But I'm serious, if this new design becomes the default and they make the switch permanent I WILL look for a superior site.

Boldly Gone

I feel like I'm starting to get a knack for these list-based posts so I think it's high time to cover a topic that's been long overdue: spaceships. Specifically, the eleven best spaceships in fiction in my not-so-humble opinion:

The Klingon Bird-Of-Prey



I've always loved the Bird-of-Prey. It's really too classy for it's own good. It's got a weapon for every situation, a cloaking device and still has enough room in the trunk for two humpback whales. Now that's luxury!

The Discovery One from 2001: A Space Odyssey



You can't beat 2001 for sheer scientific rigor, especially when it comes to the ship Discovery One. Arthur C. Clarke was brought in to design this great space cotton swab. It's got everything, a nuclear reactor, a centripetal torus to simulate gravity and a completely trustworthy, 100% reliable computer to make sure the crew is sleeping soundly in their hibernation pods. The only thing that's missing are the giant radiator fins to get rid of excess heat!

Actually, they aren't missing, they were deliberately removed. See, the ship had giant radiator fins, making the ship look like a huge dragonfly at first. But test audiences thought they were wings so they were removed to reinforce the fact that the Discovery was made for space travel and space travel alone and as you should know, there's no air in space so wings would be pointless. Plus, most people probably don't even realize waste heat is a huge problem on spaceships.

So, by taking away a very realistic element of design the ship ends up apparently even more realistic as a result, but that's Hollywood for you.

The Satellite of Love from Mystery Science Theater 3000



If the Discovery One put the science back in science fiction, then the SOL took it right back out, stomped on it, threw it in the ocean then went back in time and killed it's grandfather. At no point is it ever explained how anyone on the Satellite eats or breaths (or other science facts), opting to repeat to itself it's just a show, we should really just relax.

Plus it looks like a giant doggy bone.

The Flying Saucers from Earth Versus the Flying Saucers



When I first saw Earth vs. the Flying Saucers I was expecting the archtypical silly B-movie. To my pleasant surprise it was actually very good and had some solid special effects, especially the eponymous flying saucers, animated with stop motion. Plus, they had death rays. How could someone not love death rays?

The Rocket from Destination Moon



The classic rocket ship; sleek, stylish and entirely chrome. It's the hot rod of space travel.

The great thing about Destination Moon is that it was made before the Space Race even started. Sputnik hadn't even been launched yet but this movie was already predicting nuclear powered rockets on trips to the moon and back, something that still hasn't been attempted by any space agency to this day. Plus, it was all a single stage rocket, meaning you never have to worry about discarded propellant tanks burning up in the atmosphere after launch and it was as tall as a high rise apartment.

It was one seriously stylish ship is what I'm trying to say.

The Red Dwarf



I'm not sure where it was first said (probably in a spin off novel) but apparently the Red Dwarf is powered by a Bussard Ramjet. This means that it sucks in free-range hydrogen from the space around it and shoots it out the thrusters at high speed. Theoretically, the ship could keep going forever.

Given how many years this show was on, I don't have any trouble believing that.

The Orion Project



Do plans for real life spacecraft that never made it past early planning count as fictional? If so, allow me to elect Project Orion as an example. The original plan was simple enough: use timed explosions to push the ship forward without the need for bulky propellant tanks. These "pulses" could accelerate the ship to high speeds like something out of a Wily Coyote cartoon.

But what kind of explosion would be enough to give this giant spring board the ompf it needs to get to the other end of the solar system? What can provide the sheer, raw power needed?

Two words: hydrogen bombs.

Theoretically speaking, nukes offered the highest available payload and the efficiency of the system was estimated to be higher than any other proposal. The only problem is a lot of bombs were needed for long distance trips. Like, hundreds of bombs. Each one capable of ending all life on Earth several times over.



So why didn't this project get off the ground? Well for one thing the Orion would have been a giant nuclear machine gun in orbit, something the Soviets weren't too keen on. Plus international treaties would probably have frowned on it. No doubt the phrase "doomsday device" was thrown around pretty often during the planning committee.

The USS Enterprise (Constitution Class Refit)



I admit it, I love all ships from Star Trek, yes, even the Voyager. So for the sake of brevity, the refit of the Constitution-Class will be the last one I put here, mainly because it's the best looking.

The Starfury from Babylon 5



I've never actually seen Babylon 5 so I know absolutely nothing about the plot. But from what little I've heard, the show actually had some pretty solid science for the first couple seasons. For example, this ship is absolutely covered in thrusters. Why? Well, something a lot of writers forget is that navigating in space is a frustratingly awkward affair.

See, because there's no air in space, there's no friction. So if you turn off the thrusters you don't stop, you keep going in that direction until you hit something. If you want to stop, you have to thrust in the opposite direction. That's one of the (many) reasons why Star Wars is so stupid, all it's ships have thrusters in the back and nowhere else. If you ever wanted to turn in an X-Wing you're out of luck, you're stuck moving forward. But not in the Starfury. You have thrusters forward, backward, up, down, basically everywhere.

Imagine space like a slick icy road and the ship like an out of control semi-truck. The truck is going to be sliding around, totally unable to get a grip. If it wants to make a turn, it's going to have to spin itself around as it's sliding and drive in the direction it wants to go even as it's still sliding along it's previous course.

Space travel is a lot like that, but worse. At least with the truck you only have two dimensions to worry about, but in space you have a lot of, well, space to move around in, three whole dimensions to take into consideration. That's why space battles won't look like World War One dogfights, with lots of banking turns and dramatic swooping. It'll be two lumbering propellant tanks lazily orbiting each other until one is reduced to molten slag.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the Starfury addresses all the issues of navigating in a frictionless, zero gravity environment but it still looks good doing it.

Spaceball One

This list wouldn't be complete without the largest, fastest ship in the Universe. Ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourselves...FOR LUDICROUS SPEED!

Status Report: Still A Horse

I'm here with a very quick post for now, mostly because every project I'm working on at the moment is top secret. All I can tell you is that cubes are definitely in right now, so are purple lights. This all ties into a short story idea I've been having that involves half-digested fungus spores, more on that later. For now, it's necessary to keep a low profile.

Basically, be on the look out for cubes and huge T.V. screens because they're going to be the talk of the town very soon.



Also I'm still a pony, I wasn't joking about that.

A New Direction

Now that the Paranoia trilogy is done I want to take my mapping in a new direction. This new map will be based off my previous work at the nearby community college, a one-man interpretative dance routine called Un Omelet du Fromage: The History of a Struggle. It was very well received for it's bold approach of it's core theme: the de-emasculating effects of modern society, especially the world-wide misandrist conspiracy to dump estrogen in the water supply.

My new map continues these themes with the added murder mystery subplot. Playtesters are already going gaga for it so let's not waste anytime, here's my new magnum opus, Porkchop Sandwiches:



This is the arena where the player fights a hoard of antlions that represent their repressed feelings of betrayal.



Only Judith knows the super-secret alternate ending. (Spoiler alert: 7355608)



Doctor Breen got what was coming.



A panoramic view of the belvedere.



A house for all you role-playing fans.



The bright light represents the main character's yearning for his mother's approval. The barrels represent explosions because that's what's about to happen.



I'm a pony now.