The Lotus Engine

I googled a bit for any references to a short story called "The Lotus Engine." What I found was not anything about that story but many articles about certain car racing engines.

It has been many years since I read it but I shall sum up what I can remember about the story:

There were two space travelers who came upon a planet that was quite dry and dead. Upon landing they discovered a large, rusty parabolic reflector of immense size. One of the men discovered large conduits that led down under ground, and assumed that there must have been power supplied to the machine through them. They were hooked up to the ship's power supply and suddenly the huge machine creaked into action and turned toward the planet's sun.

As soon as the machine found the sun they looked around to find that water was pouring out of the surrounding hills and very soon plants began to grow. The space men were taken by surprise at this occurance, but before long buildings and streets formed from the barren landscape.

Soon there were some kind of aliens peeking out of the buildings, and they came out onto the streets dressed as if there was a celebration. Soon there was music and food and the men found that the alien women were extremely attractive.

They lost themselves in the festivities and ate the most delicious food, listened to the most sublime music and danced with the most beautiful creatures they had ever laid eyes on. It was as if they had gone to heaven.

This went on for what seemed like days. One of the space men found the other and told him that it must have been a long time at this festival and that he was feeling very, very tired. The two men agreed that they were both extremely tired. This party was more than they were used to.

Just about then the planet's sun began to set. The darkness was about to fall. The festival seemed to end, with all the aliens retreating to their buildings. Then the buildings shriveled back into the dirt and the plants dried up and turned to dust. All the water stopped flowing and the land returned to arid, barren dust.

And in the fading light the two spacemen discovered themselves at the bottom of a deep crater -- a hole that they had been digging with their worn out, bloody gloves.

They barely made it back to their space ship to recover and escape the planet. The machine -- the Lotus Engine -- was simply a mind warping device that a dying race must have built in order to keep the remnants of their people digging for the last drying dregs of water.

Digging for Apples

I am finally moved, computers and all, back in to the house after my year in an apartment. That year away made room for my daughter and her baby, but things have changed. The extra money will do us good, but I think it is stressful on everyone, no matter how much they say they are glad I am back.

I think they are glad that I won't be found dead after x number of days, and they were afraid I would only get worse if I lived a lonely existence like that. I thought it was OK -- I had my computers and TVs and robot dog to comfort me.

I have been eating a lot of cinnamon apples lately, made from golden delicious apples, and they are like a drug, very addicting. Slice them, sprinkle cinnamon, microwave couple minutes. Non-fattening, fiber. Surely there is something wrong. Bug spray maybe?

Eating The Victim

Today I read about the 10 year old girl being prepared to be eaten by the human predator who kidnapped, murdered, and then raped her. The suspect lived in the same building as the victim and her father.

I have a daughter and a granddaughter. I can't imagine what it would feel like as a parent of such a victim. Surely it would completely ruin your life, as if a 12 inch cannonball punched through your soul. Few things could be so terrible.

At least the suspect was apprehended, but too late for the poor girl's life.

Intellectually I have problems with the concept of a death penalty, mainly because of the corruption that tenaciously grips the entire US penal system. I would not want the wrong guy to get it, nor get it just because some particular judge is getting re-elected -- that sort of thing.

Yet, when I try to imagine the feelings of the parents of this hapless girl, I see why death penalties could have some merit. Certainly, after having committed such a sick act as this, there is no further use in society for that person. It then comes down to either permanent total confinement or death. I'm not sure which is really worse. It doesn't seem that death is punishment enough for this guy.

I wish I could trust that God would pay these in kind in the end. But in today's world, I'm not able to believe that. It seems that there is an underlying injustice in existence and "you have to live the life you have, not the life you wish you had," to borrow a phraseology.

Time Travel News

Link to Physics Article

The scientist in the linked article thinks there is a way to bend time with lasers, and that some kind of time travel can be invented after all, eventually.

This reminds me of a boyish thought experiment I had. Since Einstein's work seemed to prove that light is the top speed anything could ever travel, I wondered about relative speeds, such as whether two bullets, each traveling in opposite directions at more than 50% the speed of light, would therefore have greater relative speed than light to each other. Each ultra-fast bullet would supposedly observe the other bullet to pass by at more than the speed of light. The excess of the speed of light, c, would be manifest as a warp in time that would prevent any simple observed speed on either bullet -- the apparent speeds could never exceed c.

So I then envisioned a sphere in which one could sit, which also fits within two outer spheres, like layers of an onion, but the two outermost spheres would be made of "unobtainium" and rotate at 51% of c in opposite directions. (Presumably these shells would be magically lubricated, magnetically suspended or use "very special ball bearings" in such a way to avoid coming in direct contact -- probably not possible.)

I imagined that this would produce a time warp and impart time travel to the occupants of the innermost, non-rotating sphere, who might simply sit there and sip coffee or have a smoke during their subjective experience of time.

I think time travel would present less of a crack-pot ambiance if actual time travelers from the future were to appear here and now, or any time in the past. Yet time travel into the future already exists. The faster any object travels, the less subjective time it experiences. If something could go exactly c, then it would experience no time at all.

BBC 40,000 Pills

BBC story

Doctors have revealed details of the biggest recorded user of ecstasy -- a man estimated to have taken 40,000 ecstasy pills in his life.

I wonder if he is 40,000 times more ecstatic than I am about anything.

But on this day in history, I'll bet that I am happier that Tom Delay kicked his political bucket of pig manure and called it quits. Yet, how could someone live through taking 40,000 pills of any kind?

I never liked Tom Delay or the horse he rode in on -- one of them pale ones.