Reincarnation: A Least-Energy Approach

A question has been posed: "Is Reincarnation easy?"

As human beings, our lives our complicated. Everywhere one might turn, humanity is breaking nature's norms. We float our bloated population on technology. We live in otherwise inhospitable climes. We alter our surroundings in really crazy ways. We fight wars. What the hell.

So is reincarnation easy? The likely answer is yes, with an important caveat. Reincarnation is most likely to yield one of two results:
1. Reincarnation as some other animal
2. Reincarnation as pure spirit (enlightenment)
A third, less likely result is being reincarnated as another human. Due to the incomparable number of other animals, this is highly unlikely. It is statistically reasonable to assume that those who end up as humans are almost entirely from non-human animal backgrounds., as this is simply the largest pool of spirits/selves/beings. The inverse of this is true by the same merit: we are also most likely to travel back to animality.

So how does this mean reincarnation is easy? Well, it means that for us, those reading this post, it is. We are humans, the most complicated-ass form of life to be. Up next for us is either the simple life of a baser creature, or the simple life of an enlightened spirit, both of which are often touted as models for the buddhist ideal of "simplicity."

On a Time-Delayed Conservation of Momentum

This post begins with the age-old question: so why don't they just make the whole plane out of the black box? (And what IS the deal with airline food?)
The answer, obviously, is "that plane wouldn't fly, dumbass, and the black box construction wouldn't be as strong if it were the size of a plane, and even if it did fly and were strong and crashed hard enough that a regular plane would have been destroyed, the people inside would be torn to bits from the inertial shock"

...or would they? The authors here propose an alternate means for momentum to be conserved.


According to the old ways, momentum must generally be conserved at the very moment in time that is under scrutiny. To quote its original formulation in Principia Mathematica, "As yonder fast thing occurreth, so will the selfsame fast thing tend to continue at the selfsame time unless it hitteth a wall."

Under the new theory, the momentum must be conserved only within a reasonable amount of time - say a day or two. So in taking after the classic Einstein's Train thought experiment, suppose you are riding east in a box car, and holding a baseball out the large side door (to get to this point, suppose also that you are a soulful hobo, full of rich stories and a deep, caring personality that may explain why you decided to hold a baseball out the door). The train crashes catastrophically, the box car is crushed to splinters, and you are crushed to pieces, never to be remembered by the world nor mourned by anybody. You are dead. Wake up, reader. Wake up. Please wake up.




The baseball is free to go about its business. It may decide to fall to the ground, or perhaps go about the town. Perhaps another hobo will pick it up and carry it elsewhere, carrying on its journey and perpetuating the great circle of baseballs. But that baseball carries a substantial momentum debt - assuming it slipped frictionlessly from your lifeless hand, it should have flown east at the initial speed of the train. At some point, it must fulfill that debt.
So whenever it might decide to (likely at a more opportune time than when in the train), the baseball will suddenly jolt eastward at train speeds, and come to rest naturally through e.g. air resistance.
With this new manner of inertia, the rigid black-box plane could crash violently without harming the passengers, assuming that within the day they get to a safe place to allow their inertial debt to be repaid.


This means that planes, rather than "landing" (an action the authors predict will soon become archaic), can simply crash into a wall above the target city - the wall presumably also being made of the black box material. The plane sticks into the wall like a dart thrown at a board.

The passengers save their forward-facing momentum debt. They then jump through the windows. Nearing the ground, they orient themselves such that their front-side is facing upward. At the moment before hitting the ground, they choose to repay their inertial debt, and jerk forward (upward). Since they were falling downward, this cancels out their fall and even jerks them upward a bit, allowing them enough time in the air (and at more manageable speeds) to re-orient themselves feet-downward and land gingerly upon the ground.

The Roll-Over Restaurant

Warning: This idea may have actual merit. The authors do not claim responsibility for posting a realistic or otherwise reasonable idea.

Ever been taken to a table at a diner only to see the busdude take away some plates half full of side dishes? Ever think about asking them to leave it behind as an appetizer? It's time to start a new kind of restaurant for all of us dirty kids who don't care about germs and hate seeing all that food go to waste!

Consider the assumption that all parties have equal hunger and order meals of equal sizes. Think about it: One party isn't super hungry and leaves 10% of their meal behind. The next group eats that 10%, and so their hunger is diminished by the same amount, causing them to leave 20% of their meal behind.
The effect snowballs, and every 10 customers, someone gets a free meal! We all get to enjoy a free appetizer (except for that first party, who might receive it gratis for being part of the great cycle), no food gets wasted, and people keep coming back both for our delicious cuisine and in hopes of winning that theoretical every-10-customers lottery! Of course, not everyone has the same hunger, or orders the same-sized meal, but that thought experiment would occur in less-mathematically-precise, less-repeatable ways!

If you think this is gross and unsanitary, you probably won't frequent this restaurant. If you are from the health department, please don't come to this restaurant. But if you don't like seeing food go to waste, this may just be the place for you.

Unified Field Fighting Force, Go!

A brave cadre of heroes lives among us! The Four Interactions is their name, and fighting the enemies of the laws of the universe is their game. Our heroes are:
Graviton Man - Using his great mass, he draws enemies in close like a great Scorpion (the Mortal Kombat one) so that he might pummel them with his vast strength! Though his enemies may flee a great distance, they can only asymptotically escape his grasp.
Electromagnetia - Wielding her powerful Photons(TM), the lovely Electromagnetia can use pulses to throw enemy technology into disarray, extremely shortwave beams to imbue them with a deadly sickness, or simple high-energy emissions to attack many enemies at once!
Strong Nucleo - With his mysterious Gluon Gun, Nucleo can bind enemies together, even causing them to lose mass! If he reverses the gun's polarity, watch out! He might just unbind his enemies' nuclei!
Little Nukey - Strong Nucleo's little brother can drive his enemies to illness and even decomposition with his special power, Beta Decay!

Fighting for the well-being of our physical universe, our heroes must every day battle the scum and villainy of space-time such as their arch-rival, Maxwell's Demon. But their individual powers alone are not always enough to defeat their enemies. Strong Nucleo, his wife Electromagnetia, and their pal Little Nukey can fuse together to form the powerful Grand Unification! This, of course, takes very high energies, so they need the help of their human allies. At the peak of their strength, all four fighters can combine into the Unified Field Fighting Force, an unstoppable beacon of fighting!

More than good: They're mandatory

That's what the slogan should be for popular breakfast cereal Frosted Flakes _{of corn}, according to a recent study published in Breakfast Weekly. A new natural law was discovered regarding the sugary part of this complete breakfast - in short, when you see it, you must eat it. The exact cause - biological? physical? chemical? - of this phenomenon is as yet unknown, but one absolutely must consume Frosted Flakes (or any off-brand knockoff) on sight.

The repercussions of this are many. Health aside, the impact it will have on combat is huge. Assassins will merely, shielding their eyes and skin from the package, chuck an individual serving of the stuff at their opponent, who will then be too taken by eating them to defend himself. Automobile accidents were also found to be affected - in fact, the study says, 69% of auto accidents were directly caused by the driver opening his or her sun visor, having a pack of Frosted Flakes fall onto his or her lap, and proceeding to crash his or her car for obvious reasons.
You just hafta eatem.

Tag! You're absurd.

Meet the AA-12, perhaps the most unnecessary weapons ever conceived. Capable of firing 300 nearly-recoilless rounds per minute, and also being A SHOTGUN, it has the added bonus of being banned from combat by the Geneva Convention - which makes it all the more fun to use.

That particular pleasure aside, the main purpose of the AA-12 is for sweet games of tag. Usually, games of tag are limited by the slow firing rate. The AA-12 opens a whole new world of tag-tagback chains, as well as multiple chances for successfully tagging a new "it" despite having missed.

Of course, the anti-recoil feature of the AA-12 renders it useless for use in inertial dampeners, another common application of shotguns (and arguably the one most relevant to space travel). More on that particular technology is forthcoming.

M.A.D. is Mad, or: How both the Asteroid Belt and Life on Earth Came Into Being

M.A.D. is Mad, or: How both the Asteroid Belt and Life on Earth Came Into Being
(A Spenserian Sonnet)

Our sun once had a planet number Five
That came between our Mars and Jupiter.
In fact, this planet once was quite alive -
And so was Mars, and not at all was Earth.

A terrifying War was raging on:
Destruction was both mutu'l and assur'd,
But days before the tragic denouement,
Fifth planet sent to Earth a seeding bird.

The weapons, all beyond our field of thought,
Came first from Mars, to get an early lead.
Fifth planet didn't get to send a lot,
And only charred Mars' surface with their deed.

The poor fifth planet heard the bigger thunder:
Though seeded Earth, their home was torn asunder.

A Long-Ass History of Time

It has been noted that Jake and Billy, your Authors, are in reality millions of light years across in size. It follows that, each minuscule motion we take, millions of light years pass, and entire species wax and wane into extinction, each of them assuming (if sentient) that the current shape of whatever we're doing (perhaps one of us typing) is and always has been the shape of the local universe. Also, every time one of your Authors completes this slow motion and successfully punches some object, millions of solar systems are destroyed and rendered neutron stars or supernovae.

The NSF and their Future Truman Show

We are all (excluding myself and Jake) aware of the Truman Show that is about me and Jake. The National Science Foundation actually has access to the Future Truman Show, which shows what will be happening on the show about 3 or 4 hours ahead of the present time. They can accomplish this because they have science.

Pending my acceptance or rejection into the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program, the folks at the NSF must have turned on the Future Truman Show and seen the profoundly stupid, goofy way I informed/pouted at my esteemed colleague Jacob Brunner about my rejection. Namely,
"I didib get da en ed eb belloshib! I didib get da en ed eb belloshibb!"
This is, of course, not the kind of person they want as an NSF fellow. They had no choice but to reject me, not realizing that in so doing they were only fulfilling the potential future they had seen on TV.

Twelve Miles Out

Recent research in the technicalities division has revealed that the space within a doorway constitutes international waters. That is to say, standing inside of a doorway grants one complete freedom from the law.

We know what you're thinking, and yes, it DOES negate the effects of Grimace Cookies, and vice versa (i.e. only one of the two can be active or the effects cancel out).

Interestingly, several governments have attempted to render it illegal to take shelter under a doorway during an earthquake, but quickly found that their law could scarcely be enforced.

Death Rites are One of the Features Common to Every Human Culture

The title is according to E. O. Wilson's On Human Nature, wherein he actually cites it to some other guy. Pretty neat, huh? But this important work was written in the 70s. Had it been able to predict the future as your Authors can, it would have certainly gone further into what will become the sweetest funeral rites of any culture. Namely, the culture consisting of the entire world.

The macro-culture of all of humanity - that is to say, the features shared by every culture - will be transformed by the zombie crisis of the year 2xxx. According to Romero canon, anybody who dies will be reanimated by, uh, radiation. This applies even if they were not attacked by a zombie. It necessarily follows that after quelling the zombie horde and regaining stable footing of civilization, humanity will have to instate new death rites that are swift and entail complete destruction of the body, so that the deceased will not reanimate.

Of course, humanity has their own way of twisting customs past their original functionality. What follows is what this will evolve to after many decades.

• Anybody who finds the deceased (henceforth referred to as the executor, with apologies to Tassadar) must first be sure that the deceased is in fact dead. Any child can tell you that this is a simple matter of examining whether the tongue is sticking out, and whether the eyes are replaced by letters X.
• The executor then pushes the deceased up against a wall or some other sturdy object, while shouting "YOU ARE DEAD!" in a scary voice.
• The executor draws a ceremonial dagger that all people carry. With it, he deeply cuts the throat of the deceased to ensure a severed connection from body to head.
• With the same dagger, the executor carves a large rectangle into the torso of the deceased, effectively disembowling him. The executor proceeds to rip as many organs and guts from this hole as he can in one rough grab, and to dump them upon his own head to experience spiritual bonding with the deceased. There is no greater sign of respect than to show that the dead's entrails are fit to be the finest headwear.

The preceding steps are, as it is plain to see, the very logical conclusion of cultural evolution after the zombie crisis. The strange bit that seems to stray from the functionality is that, in most cultures, it eventually becomes normal for the executor to slit his own throat, eviscerate himself, and dump his organs upon the head of the deceased. Perhaps this reciprocation is to show that the deceased, too, once respected the executor. Nonetheless, it makes encountering a corpse seem much more troubling from our cultural perspective.

Two final notes:

1. Assassins with two targets have a much easier job when this custom is about. They need only wait until the targets are near each other and relatively secluded, and then kill one of them from afar. The custom is so ingrained that the other target would proceed to perform the fatal funeral rites.
2. In order to protect one's loved ones, someone who wishes to commit suicide would likely commit what is considered a "complete suicide" - that is, do so in some manner that results in his own throat already cut and his own viscera already atop his own head. This way, since the executor and the deceased are the same person, both the first part and the reciprocation of the custom have already been carried out, and any discoverer is safe.
   

On a Novel Method of Conducting a War, or: Sleepytime Warfare

There are few who will deny that warfare is a grim and grizzly affair. This is for a number of reasons, but if one primary downside to war could be isolated, we think everyone knows what it would be.
Perhaps it was John Hammond, of Jurassic Park fame, who put it best: "People. Are. Dying."

So war is nasty. Most who realize this call for an end to war in general, but experience has shown this to be impractical due to the insidious nature of global politics and, arguably, human nature itself. People will always say "give peace a chance," and then leaders will say "okay, sounds good," and then later double back and explain that "it's just pretty necessary right now is all."

If war is a feature that refuses to be removed from existence, we propose an alternate solution: to change that feature rather than fail to remove it. If dying is the nastier part of war, then war without death would be a desirable alternative. This can be accomplished with chloroform.

Chloroform warfare would involve two sides battling with supplies of rags and chloroform. Unarmed combat would ensue, resulting in no more than some bruises and at most a broken limb, in order to force one's rag into the opponent's face and cause him to fall asleep. At the end of the battle, the winning side would have more people awake and therefore be able to drag the opposing side away from their fortification or what have you.

Administering chloroform is a delicate operation. Too little causes mere dizziness, and too much can cause death. Two likely opposing arguments are:

1. That soldiers may still kill their opponents, be it through lack of skill or under orders to reduce the number of enemies for a later battle.
   
2. That some sort of chloroform arms race would ensue and armies would attempt to build better and better means of deploying the stuff, i.e. chloroform bombs and grenades, launchers, etc.

This is why each soldier's chloroform must be imbued with a unique tracer, and killing is strictly outlawed in such a war. The charge would be murder, or perhaps manslaughter if the soldier can prove the death was accidental. Indeed, many opponents of war would be happy with this, as they already often say that a war-killing and murder are one in the same. Note that tracers would be benign and degrade within a few months.

The resulting procedure is as follows: when a man is found dead on the battlefield, an autopsy is performed to determine if he indeed died of chloroform overdose. If so, the tracer is found. It is possible that, say, soldiers A and B both chloroformed this man. Perhaps soldier A did first, and did so properly, and soldier B, perhaps having a personal grudge against the victim, arrived and gave him more. The tracers would coat the lungs in the order in which they were administered, and in a quantity proportional to the amount of chloroform. It could therefore be seen if soldier A overdosed the victim, or of he dosed him properly and then soldier B administered an unnecessary dosage that pushed him into death.

If no tracer is found, but the cause of death is chloroform, the commander of the opposing outfit is charged for allowing one of his men to use untraced chloroform. This would keep commanders on their toes about regulating all chloroform in their unit. Some may call this unfair, as it is hard for one commander to keep a close eye on every one of his men, but it is a lot more fair than people dying in war the way it happens today. Becoming a commander of any sort should be a big responsibility, and anyone who becomes one should either really want to despite the risk, or be afraid of their responsibility (also because of the risk) and therefore more careful and watchful with their power. It is likely that units would be smaller and armies would self-regulate very strictly because of this.

There would likely be some kinks to work out as the world got accustomed to this new system of warfare. This is inevitable but necessary; to once again borrow from the wisdom of John Hammond, "When they opened Disneyland in 1956, nothing worked!"

(Turtle Recall)^(-1)

You may be familiar with the idea of a space colony. It is essentially a colony that lies wholly and entirely in outer space. You may also know that on the next major solar orbit outward from our own lies a planet called Mars. Finally, you are likely familiar with the concept of something's outside being in, or its inside being out. Teenage rappers/philosophers Kris Kross popularized this idea when they pointed out that inside-out is 'wiggidy wiggidy whack.'

What you may not know is the way in which these three concepts are related. As it happens, there is a space colony that is not on Mars per sé, but rather on the inside of it. This causes confusion in many, because:
1. A space colony, as previously defined, must lie wholly and entirely in outer space.
2. This colony is on the inside of Mars, which is not outer space.
Therefore, 3. The colony cannot be a space colony.
Take heed, gentle reader, of the aforementioned postulate made by Kriss Kross. A colony being on the inside of a planet is, by nature, inside-out. Anything that is inside-out is wiggidy wiggidy whack. Therefore, it is possible for a colony there, which is technically not in outer space, to classify as a space colony. "That is whack!" many would argue, but such is the nature of the inside-out.

Due to galactic regulations, space colonies must have a certain number of escape pods per number of occupants. In the inner-Mars space colony, these regulations technically apply, despite the fact that the pods will fire into solid rock and be instantly destroyed, likely causing collateral damage from vibrations and heat.

An eventual SPACE BATTLE is inevitable on most space colonies. The inner-Mars colony is no exception. Two rival factions will battle to destroy the main reactor of the other faction. As it turns out, due to not losing a ton of heat to space, this colony only needs one reactor. Therefore, they are battling to destroy the same reactor, on which they BOTH rely. The resulting explosion will doom them all, and the escape pods will not be much help. Such is the tragedy of inside-out, as propheted by Kris Kross.

Long-Eyed and Painless

It is a fact of biology that the legth of the optic nerve in an organism affects the time offset perceived by it. There is a certain null point; with a nerve of this length, the brain perceives the present. Any longer, and the organism will see further and further into the future. Any shorter (i.e. closer to the brain), and the organism will see with a time delay.

In humans, the optic nerve length is nearly exactly at this null point. It is, in fact, a tiny bit short of it, which accounts for the nearly immeasurable delay between occurence and perception in humans. In most semi-intelligent animals, in fact, the optic nerve length is close to this null point. Contrary to what intuition may tell you about the advantages of seeing into the future, evolution favours the present because of the complexities that come about with offsets in hand-eye coordination.

The most advanced animal brains on the planet, dolphins, are still only able to handle about 0.69 seconds of future offset. Some microorganisms and insects see into the future , since appendage-eye coordination plays a smaller role in their survival. This explains some of the more mysterious behaviours of ants and bees.

Neuroscientists, biologists, and physicists are working to perfect a technology that will allow the eyeballs to extend forth from the head, with an elastic optic nerve. This, of course, can only go so far - tests of current candidate materials show a theoretical maximum of 4.20 seconds into the future.

Suggestions have been made that Wi-Fi optic nerve transmission may be possible to allow greater separation, but whether the nervous-temporal link would still apply without a physical connection remains to be seen.

Nothing can kill the Grimace

For years, nay, decades, unhappy McDonalds customers (is there any other kind?) have been petitioning for Grimace-shaped cookies. It seems only logical - why should they not offer cookies in the shape of their coolest, most mighty and powerful mascot?
Yet McDonalds has resisted. Why?

Tasteologists at McDonalds R&D, however, know better. The restaurant has declined to comment on why they will not provide Gimace Cookies only because the truth is too dangerous. Grimace Cookies provide their eater with the most powerful diplomatic immunity known to man. That is to say, anybody eating Grimace Cookies is imbued with absolute immunity to law enforcement of any kind, including vigilante justice.

The duration of this immunity is not long. Moreover, any criminal act committed while eating Grimace Cookies is not simply erased in the memory of the law once the act itself is done. A criminal of sufficiently high-profile would likely have police and vigilantes just waiting outside of his house for him to stop eating Grimace Cookies. It follows that, to truly get away with a crime, one would have to eat Grimace Cookies constantly until the statute of limitations passes. Also, no law can be passed outlawing the act of eating them.

The result of releasing these Grimace Cookies, McDonalds knows, would result in a society of absolute lawlessness, anarchy, and extreme malnourishment. Even with sufficient vitamins taken in between cookies (even, perhaps, intraveneously), eating sugar cookies constantly cannot lead to a very long life. Therefore, a great many people would - ahem - leave the electorate, if I may borrow a euphamism from political science. What you get is:

Huge, rapid decrease in population
+
Extended period of anarchy
=
Sweet post-apocalyptic Mad Max ness.

Ladies and gentlemen, start petitioning McDonalds like you've never petitioned before.

The Beer Bucket

The term "beer bucket" has fallen into misuse and abuse. It is often used to refer to a bucket full of ice with six (6) bottles of beer in it. Ever had a gin bucket? It's not an ice bucket with bottles of gin, is it? So why all the confusion about beer buckets?

A beer bucket is necessarily and inextricably a bucket filled with beer.

A recent breakthrough has led to the latest in beer bucket technology. It is inspired by those mugs, with hollow lining filled with liquid, that may be placed in the freezer to later house and chill a tasty liquid treat.

The ultimate beer bucket is a bucket-sized version of this mug: its lining is hollow, and it is frozen beforehand to keep the beer quite cold. In fact, this design is greatly improved by the addition of heat-exchange fins extending from the bottom of the bucket, also hollow and filled with freezable liquid. The heat transfer rate of these cool fins would be:

q_f = M*[sinh(mL) + (h/mk)*cosh(mL)]/[cosh(mL)+(h/mk)*sinh(mL)]

per fin, where

m=sqrt(hP/kA_c)
M=sqrt[hPkA_c(T_base-T_inf)]
h=convection coefficient over fin
k=conduction coefficient of fin material
L=length of fin
P=fin perimeter
A_c=cross-sectional area of fin

Additionally, why would one fill the fin with WATER when one could use a liquid of a similar freezing point, but a much higher heat capacity? This way, it would cool the beer to the same delicious temperature (about 3ºC) for much longer. Research is currently being conducted into the perfect fluid to use.

I hope that there are no further questions on the matter.

Pi (π)

On the lowercase variety of the Greek letter pi, the top is curvy for a very important reason.
It represents the whipped cream on the pi.

The uppercase version represents the less fanciful tastes of a matured individual, who gets to eat more but might not want something childish like whipped cream (note: I am not that individual).

Video Gaming Into the Past

In the near future, it will be possible to play a video game that is in the past, and is in fact real. In other words, imagine something like Oblivion where you're actually in a real place and time in history, and what you do is effected upon the real world in the past.

There will be laws governing this, however, because you can't just have everyone going and messing with history, even in the smallest ways. Fortunately, there is a compromise that allows people to play with the past to their hearts' content: They may do whatever they want only in a certain level. Job.

Gamers can do whatever they want to mess with Jobe, because he was messed with so much anyway that it would go un-noticed. Even by God, the primary and original messer-wither of Job.

On the Improvement of Education

It is well known that the increased use of libraries increases the average intelligence of the surrounding community. Also, Librarians are arguably the best way to access knowledge inside of a library. Thus, the more a community uses the Librarians, the greater the increase in average intelligence will be. However, it is also well known that Librarians are generally left unused for their most advantageous reasons. People would much rather browse or check a computer to find things in a library. We offer a method for the increased usage of Librarians.

First, the Library would be a Labyrinth. This would mean that there would be Minotaur(s) residing within the library, but it would also mean the inclusion of David Bowie in the library's staff. When one is using the Labyrary, they will be approached by a Minotaur and be asked scarily if they require assistance. The library user may be frightened, but also they might begin to utilize the usual tactics of avoiding a Librarian. During this, David Bowie would arrive. He would then ask if the user required any assistance, to which the user would always acquiesce: it is David Bowie, after all. Then David would inform the user that the Librarian would gladly assist them, and David would leave. Then, the user, out of fright and propriety, would accept the help of the Minotaur, and learn how helpful Librarians could be.

A Breif History of Opposite Day

Here we discuss the origins and consequences of what is know as Opposite Day.

Origins
It has come to the author's attention that one brilliant man, in what would be the most magnificent stroke of playground genius, created opposite day. "you are looking cool today" he said to his rival. "uh... hey, thanks!" was the reply. "Oh wait, it is Opposite Day!" quoth he. Then, his rival contemplated this masterwork of a conversation. He knew it was the ultimate in playground survival tactics. His use of the Opposite Day attack won him fame, wealth, and ladies, while the inventor, not quite aware of the brilliance he had unleashed, died in obscurity.

Paradox
The Opposite Day paradox is an important lesson that we can apply across the board. One can never express that it is currently Opposite Day. Any attempt to do so could be take as an opposite event, and thusly a circular logical loop arises. This must be planned in advance or retroactively. Additionally, and we wish to offer this for the gravest consideration of all, if you invoke Opposite Day, be prepared to stick with it for a day. All to often, Opposite Day lasts but a minute.

Improvement upon the seige cannon

Here we render unto you an improvement upon the siege cannon. This weapon is designed for attacking a fortified structure.

Similar in appearance to the cannon, this weapon shoots adult male humans who spit grenades out of their mouths.

The man is fired into the fortification, preferably over any walls and into the courtyard of the structure. The man is generated at the moment of firing with a fairly advanced conciousness. It varies from man to man what is considered during their breif existence, but when they impact, they invariably think, as they die, "i might as well spit a[nother] grenade out of my mouth."
They are always killed by the grenade explosion, and the grenade itself is capable of doing damage to anything it lands near. One of the main effects of this weapon, however, is the psychological impact upon whomever the weapon is being employed.

Upon witnessing the device and its aftermath, an attackee will be terrified that whomsoever is attacking them launches men who can spit grenades and then themselves explode.

It is the hope of the attacker that this will hasten surrender.

There was a time when the men were spawned before battle, so that they could be baptized and made to feel earthly pleasures before their launching, but the men were very prone to spitting grenades directly upwards, and having the grenades hit them on the head. They would complain that the grenades were heavy when they struck them on the head, and then would be exploded by the grenade.

For this reason, most operators of the cannon stopped this practice.

The Immigrant Song

Led Zepplin's Immigrant Song contains the lyrics, oft misquoted, "I come from the land of icing hoes." We would like to decrease the frequency of transgressions against Led and clarify the artist's lyrical intent, while adding our...reservations as to the subject material. However, we are an objective think tank, and wish to represent all ideas here in a similar fashion.
The land of icing hoes is a land where one person presides over a multitude of hoes, who regularly slather themselves with dessert icing. They then proceed to eat the icing off of each other, sensually.

Sometimes, however, they eat each other.

This is dictated by the presiding person giving a subtle signal (more on that in a moment) to the multitude, who descend upon the appointed hoe. At first the appointed one is unaware of what is going on, due to the only slight changes in the multitude's behavior. In fact the multitude is so skilled at the art of eating that there is little pain and it is surprisingly late in the game that the appointed one realizes what the deal is. After this, they continue their previous activities. The signal is given when a particular hoe has displeased the one who presides.

The subtle signal is one of great skill. It needs to be clear, specific, and noticeable to ... otherwise occupied and verily distracted hoes. The one it concerns must not perceive it, there must be enough signals that each hoe has their own. It must be executed casually, so as if it were observed by one with extensive training in such signals, excepting the particular one being performed, it would pass undetected. The extreme skill required limits the possible persons who can preside over the land.

The song proceeds to describe a scandinavian-esque viking-like peoples; we can assume that the barbarism (and offensive descriptor 'hoes') conveyed by this scenario is an attempt by Led to demonstrate the horrors of the warrior race they describe, and by extention reinforce their layered and signifigant metaphorical context.

Water Piano Drive

This concept is for the grim future when oil supply are depleted or otherwise inaccesible. It is titled the Water Piano Drive, and is an excellent method of personal transportation across waterways or bodies of water. The basic method is to play a real song on an imaginary piano on the surface of the water. One would be propelled to a destination, fixed in one's mind prior to the commencement of performing the song, at a rate depending on two factors:
1. The accuracy with which the piece is played. This includes the originally perscribed tempo. For each mistake made, flourish failed, or beat-per-minute of tempo off, the user travels more slowly.
2. How much the deity which operates the WPD (with many ears and sub-net mental IPs) enjoys the piece being played. Be warned that he mostly likes Baroque music. So every time you make a mistake, it also displeases him, so he turns your speed knob down a little. This is an analog process, though one will invariably make a pun about the process's "digital" nature. This displeases the WPD deity.
This is a naturally occurring phenomenon involving zero-point energy and harpsicordian control volumes. Direction is determined by desired destination, as held in the user's mind, but it is cemented upon his departure.
If the piece finishes before the user has reached his destination, one does not, as one might presume, sink into the depths. Instead, since one is making the worst "mistake" one could by not playing anymore, one's speed actually slows down to the point of reversal, and the user is pulled quickly back to his point of origin. This cannot be reversed once started. Only one song may be used for trip, also.
It should also be noted that any one piece can only be being used for travel by one person at a time. To prevent everyone from picking much longer keyboard pieces for every little 2 mile trip, the United Nations has formed a committee that delegates what songs are appropriate for different ranges of trip length. The Water-Piano Relay League (WPRL) releases lists that are published in any port and available for purchase for modest rates in a nice, laminated, spiral-bound booklet. Furthermore, collections of the sheet music can be purchased, either individually or by trip length category, from the WPRL at minimal prices.

On Drowning Somebody Out

If ever you need something loud to be doing, such that you would not be able to hear somebody (or something, i.e. the milk department), an electric toothbrush suffices quite nicely.

WHAT?
I...I CAN'T HEAR YOU. I'M BRUSHING MY TEETH.

The Ultimate Genie Wish

What follows is meant to be an instructive account of what to do if you find a Genie. The wish outlined here is rather complex, so the Reader would be well advised to first consider how many wishes are available from this particular Genie, and phrase the wish accordingly to squeeze all of these caveats into the appropriate number of long-winded wishes.

Since the beginning of time, people have used their fingers to make the shape of a gun and pretended to shoot at people in jest and in play. Indeed, Jake and I (your Authors) do this more often than most, often pretending to shoot our own heads as well as various objects.

So what if every shot ever fired by a finger-gun could be a real shot? And what if this were retroactive? That is the first part of the wish: that all imaginary bullets (or whatever type of weapon it is declared to be, barring nukes, bio/chem weapons, and large bombs) shot from a pretend gun are real, and that this is retro-active. Of course, not wanting one's own head to explode in a shower of hundreds of once-imaginary bullets is a reasonable request. Because of the possibility of violence in the post-imaginary-bullet-apocalyptic world, another condition of the wish must be that Jake and Billy are protected (retroactively as well as in the future) by an intelligent magic shield.

It is a well-informed assumption that boys play with imaginary finger-guns more often than girls, and it follows that there would be a lot more girls left than boys after this wish takes effect. It would be the regrettable duty of the wisher and his buddy to systematically, erm, re-populate the planet. Of course, because of the tremendous position of power this gives us, the magic shields become all the more important, for fear of assassination. What, though, about when one of the fortunate magic shieldees becomes bored with life and wishes to welcome death? A caveat of the magic shield is required to allow voluntary death, but it must protect from hasty decisions. Therefore, the magic shield will allow any particular form of shieldee death only after a week of discorporal meditation.

We hope this has been helpful.

I call First Postsies

Listen, Gentle Reader:

Hearest Thou that which I do? Hearken, Sir, and behold.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu.
Fresh bloweth the wind, and with it come Wisdoms of a caliber ne'er seen before. These Wisdoms are the stuff of our task here.
Indeed, gentle Reader, if Thou be patient, wilst Thou find untold thousands of ideas and thoughts lain here before you. It could be that Thou findest Thyself inspired to Action; verily, that is our sincerest hope as Thy humble Authors. We only beseech Thee, that if Thou some idea implementest, of that ilk which Thou findest here, that Thou art kind enough to lay proper creditte upon Thy Humble Authors.

So, Friends and Denizens of the Grand, Vast Internet: Let the expositionne begin!