Woo! And, after only six weeks (or 215 years, depending which way you look at it), I have finished my game of Transport Tycoon, and finally reached 2050 for the first time in... when I did I buy the original? Musta bin around '97-'98 or so I guess... A Long time, anyway.

Might have another crack at AotrsCom soon, though I might do something completely different for a bit, I dunno yet. (I mean, I do have the Wicther 2 from last year to play, and I'm hoping to get Pokemon Black 2 for my birthday, so...)



Quote Originally Posted by Balmas View Post
I would just like to say that I love Contraptionology, and you should too.

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All right, then! High time we had an actual science lesson in this here story. So listen up, y'all: before we start in on the tale of the single worst half hour of my life so far, we're gonna gab for a second about a little something called the Cloppler Effect. In your basic technical terms, this here thing describes the apparent variation in frequency of an emitted waveform as the emitter approaches or moves away from a fixed observer. When the object that's sending out a moving waveform is itself moving, it causes the waves in front of it to get all bunched up, a bit like driving cattle. As a result, your hypothetical stationary observer is gonna perceive them waves as coming more frequently, thus, at a higher "frequency" (see how that works?) Now, this becomes powerful important in the study of celestial motion, because a light-emitting heavenly body which is moving toward you will tend to shine out bluer than a heavenly body that's more relatavistically stationary, all 'cause blue light has a higher frequency, see? The Cloppler Effect applies equally well to an emitter giving off physical propagation waves (sound, e.g.), and the effect there is not blue-shifted light, but rather, a higher perceived pitch!

Um. Y'all.

Anyhow, long and short of it: say you're a pony, a normal, sensible earth pony with her hooves on the ground, just as Grower and Nature intended. And you look up in the sky, where – and I cannot stress this point too strongly – earth ponies ain't supposed to be, and you see a frazzled-looking orange-colored earth mare zooming across the sky on a cloud-scooter in your direction, clinging for dear life to the back of her blue barnstormer pegasus friend, and you happen to hear that orange pony screaming her fool head off in absolute spit-blind terror...

...well, just keep in mind that she ain't really screaming all high-pitched and sissybritches. She's actually bellowing in a real respectable and adult-like fashion. If she sounds like a panicked schoolfilly to you, well, that's just science messing with your ears. Blame Mr. Cloppler for that.
Yes, I rather liked that bit too.