MuseBlog

Rhymes with cow? Rhymes with law? Never mind. The important thing is that tau equals two pi, and two pies are better than one.

You’ll find a more extensive explanation here.

You’re right: we’re long overdue for a new Quotations thread.

Continued from Quotations, 2010.3.

Make up games you can play on the blog, then play them. It’s simple and elegant.

Continued from Version 2010 (the original).

Ultracondensed versions of novels, stories, songs, plays, etc.

WARNING: WILL CERTAINLY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Continued from the original “Quick Reads” thread.

Paul Baker started this on the Random Thread:

I think I may have invented a new game. You may name it collectively, but its interim title is The Recent Comments Game. It will probably turn out to be rubbish, but let’s see.

Have a look at the Recent Comments column on the main page. It aggregates the most recent comments from all the topics, so mostly nothing relates to anything else. But occasionally it throws up random juxtapositions which are at least strange. If one copies, pastes, and deletes the references to which topic the comment appeared in, some of them raise a chuckle. This one isn’t spectacularly funny, but I thought it was worth flagging up.

———————-

Lizzie – “I think that if someone is having sex they should be mature enough to use birth control and accept the risk of pregnancy.

Rebecca Lasley (Administrator) – That’s a great idea! Do you have any particular requests for what designs you’d like to see?

———————-

Over to you. Spot the funnies or invent a better name.

These variations were added later:

~~ “I’ve decided it’s legitimate to remove extraneous words from the end of a comment to improve the flow, provided one doesn’t add any. Added full stops (sorry, periods) are OK.”

~~ muselover: Another variation I thought of is just taking random posts from the RC bar rather than consecutive ones, just to open up more possibilities.

Paul Baker (Administrator)
I think you’re right. No point in insisting on consecutive order if there’s a funny to be extracted.

Do you think it’s time 2011 had its own Polling Place thread, yes or no?

Continued from v. 2010.

Let’s light this candle!

Summary from the Planning Thread for easy reference:

Who: Any MuseBloggers who wish to attend. If you wish to assume the persona of a technician, astronaut, or spy or just create some sort of backstory for yourself, you’re welcome, but it’s not mandatory.

When: March 21st to April 17th, 2011.

Where: On the Yuri’s Night thread. Aboard Space Station Odyssey.

Food:

-In general: Foods that use scientific equipment for cooking, like an aspirator, gelatin… freeze-dried “astronaut” foods. (Not that we don’t have gravity, it’s just traditional.)

-Appetizers:
Fruit, Steamed dough (little soft bread things, Chinese), bread, soup, bruschetta.

-Entrees:
Pasta, Salmon/crab/veggie/whatever else puffs (little dough balls with stuffing, kind of like dumplings), puffin puffs sushi…

-Desserts:
Cookies, flavored ice, gelato, astronaut ice cream, chocolate fountain…

-Drinks:
Made by a machine featuring lots of chemical equipment and tubing.

-Miscellany:
Food and drinks served by robots. All catering courtesy of Piggy’s Happy Bottom Riding Club. (AKA the Hare and Hedgepig)

Décor: 2001: A Space Odyssey is the general reference. 2011 as seen by 1961.

– The Ballroom: A large ballroom entered through sliding doors in the Star Trek fashion. Models and framed photographs showing the highlights of spaceflight and SF in the past 50 years decorate the room. (Yes, lots of gorgeous Hubble shots) We are aboard a rotating space station, and large floor-to-ceiling “windows” will show the rest of the station, the Earth below, the moon and stars, and every now and then, shuttles and cargo ships flying up to dock with the station. Periodically, there will be announcements over a PA system to announce the “dockings”.

– The Rooftop Garden/The Pleasure Dome: Like the regular rooftop garden, only beneath an immense geodesic dome through which outer space can be seen. There are ornamental plantings, fountains containing statues of the planets, and models of rockets at various fractions of their actual size to stroll amongst. Telescopes are set up to allow guests to view various celestial objects they may find interesting- all are computer controlled, just punch in what you want to see and the scope will orient itself.

Music: A live band, playing a mix of 60s classics, New Age electronica, and any other favorites requested. Any MBer who wishes to drop in and play with the band may. Some specific music featured will include Holst’s The Planets and the music from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Dress: Futuristic formal. Black suits and ties, glow-in-the-dark dresses, neatly pressed jumpsuits, shirtsleeves with pocket protectors and skinny ties, Starfleet dress uniform, and the like. Go for a 60s feel, but nothing too hippie.

The goings-on: To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering spaceflight, and the completion of Space Station Odyssey, various distinguished employees from the space agencies of the world have been invited to enjoy a civilized evening of dancing, music, intelligent conversation, and Earthwatching. (Binoculars provided at windows by wungs.) But keep on your toes, as befits the anniversary of such a prominent Cold War event, espionage and intrigue are in the air…

Rumor has it that a new Paker game is forming.

To see how the last one turned out, check the previous Game Room thread.

A physicist named Michael Hartl wants us all to scrap pi and instead use a mathematical constant he calls tau, which is equal to two times pi. (It’s the circumference of a circle divided by the radius instead of the diameter.)

Tau makes a lot of formulas neater. For example, when you’re describing counterclockwise rotations on a unit circle, does anybody really understand why 180 degrees should be equal to pi? But a full 360-degree revolution equal to tau — that makes sense.

Anyway, we’re semi-convinced, so we’re adding Tau Day to the MuseBlog calendar on June 28. Now somebody has to invent something tasty called a “tau” for us to eat then.

We had fun with this topic on the second January random thread, so let’s give this a try. Post your new calendars, improvements to the existing calendar, new systems of timekeeping, or disquisitions on other ways people have kept track of time in the past.

Proposed in the Suggestion Box, v. 2010.2.

You’ve waited with commendable patience. Now here it is at last for your delectation:

Read more »

KaiYves’s description:

Maybe we should have a Muse TV thread, where we write a “TV Guide” listing for an imaginary Muse TV channel. There would be news reports covering Kokons and goings-on in Kokonino County, documentaries about things Muse has done articles about, serialized episodes based on events in the various RPGs, and in the commercial breaks, campaign ads for Koko, advertising for MA, the H&H, and the Emporium, and Army-style recruiting ads for fighting against the HPBs.

Talk Like a Pirate Day 2010 may be just a happy memory, but you salty sea dogs still have an excuse to party. The conservation group Whale Times has declared today (October 20) “Hagfish Day” to celebrate all weird and/or ugly denizens of the sea. The group’s website (at www . whaletimes . org/HagfishDay . htm) features a gallery of underwater grotesques and directions for hagfish-related activities, some of them involving copious quantities of slime (a hagfish hallmark). Altogether Muserly, we deem.

You’ve planned it, and now the time has come. Let the revels begin!

Who can explain why these threads are so popular? We sure can’t.

The rules: Pick a pseudonym; guess who the other pseudonymous posters are while they try to guess you. That’s all there is to it.

Continued from 2010.1.

REMINDER: Check your posts before sending them — the preview button is useful for that. The Administrators will not rescue you if you accidentally submit one under your “real” blogname or post elsewhere with your alter ego.

By popular request. We’ve had Factoids threads before, but the Trivia-Off component is new.

A thread for exploring other ways things might have turned out, if the past had taken a different turn. Steampunk is one subgenre.

(Counterfactual: contrary to fact, not the way things actually are; retro: backward; future: future.)

We could be wrong, but we don’t think the requesters intended this to be an RPG.

This group project started on the “Partial Scripts” thread and quickly became popular enough to warrant a thread of its own.

For times when someone else’s words are better than yours.

Continued from Quotations, 2010.2.

It’s today (Friday, June 11), as declared by bookgirl_me. Um, bookgirl, what are we supposed to do, exactly?

SudoRandom’s description:

MB Games thread, where people could play games they thought up that are playable on the blog.

Pick a pseudonym; guess who the other pseudonymous posters are while they try to guess you. It’s a little like “Battleship.”

Continued from version 2009.4.

REMINDER: Check your posts before sending them — the preview button is useful for that. The Administrators will not rescue you if you accidentally submit one under your “real” blogname or post elsewhere with your alter ego.

Strange as it might seem, the MuseBlog administrators do know a few things, and sometimes they’ll even tell you about them.

Continued from No. 7.

Script Frenzy (a.k.a. “Screnzy”) is in full swing. Those who are taking part already know all about it. For those who aren’t,

Script Frenzy is an international writing event in which participants take on the challenge of writing 100 pages of scripted material in the month of April.

You can find out more on last month’s Screnzy Brainstorming thread.