Trash!
Shaenon: Trash!, page two. Look at Jesse’s faces. He draws such excellent faces.
Channing: Deep Space Tungsten Mining: good for getting rid of your species’s surplus of young adult males. Much like salmon fishing, or the Crusades.
Skin Horse
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Discussion (20) ¬
(TUNE: “We Are Family”, Sister Sledge)
[CHORUS:]
Hap-py Fa-mi-ly!
We sell ev’rything you can see!
Hap-py Fa-mi-ly!
Ev’ry ever-lovin’ thing!
Everybody wants to fly off
On the Darien!
(The crew!) Crew is from the small supply of
Finest women and men!
Engineer Terpomo busted …
Down to Class Two!
‘Cause we think you can’t be trusted,
Now you’re out! No space for you!
[repeat CHORUS]
I had no idea salmon fishing was so dangerous…
Assuming they are off Alaska – the weather is terrible during fishing season.
Additionally, between motion of the waves and swinging of the equipment – fishing in less than perfect weather can be extremely hazardous. Never mind that arctic waters will kill you in a few minutes – even in an exposure suit.
When Discovery Channel named the show Deadliest Catch, they weren’t joking. US Bureau of Labor Statistics says that deep sea fishing is the most dangerous profession out there.
The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was not just apocryphal, it happened.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadliest_Catch
One of the educational channels had a dive documentary on the Edmund Fitzgerald a few years ago – It is truly amazing that we can build these awesome vessels – but nothing is nature-proof. And every time we think we understand what is possible – something else pops up – like they finally found proof of ‘rogue waves’ a few years back.
I had assumed that Channing was referring to getting rid of excess male salmon ^_^
I wasn’t aware that most salmon was caught at sea. I’d always thought they were caught mostly in rivers or channels as the aforementioned young males came back to the spawning grounds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmon#Aquaculture seems to bear this out, as it mentions ocean ranching as being under development.
And Edmund Fitzgerald was a freighter on the Great Lakes, nothing to do with fishing at all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Edmund_Fitzgerald
I haven’t watched it, but I thought that show was about crabs, not salmon.
You don’t have to go to sea to fish salmon. Around here, many people fish salmon in rivers. Or if you do prefer the sea, you can catch them near the coast. You can ever farm salmon. So salmon fishing doesn’t have to be dangerous, unless you choose to do it dangerously, which I doubt many people do, since there are plenty of safe ways to get salmon. So I’m also puzzled by the notion that salmon fishing is dangerous. Perhaps Jeff is joking.
its a yes and no – Anything more than just chugging along at sea increases the hazards. And container ships regularly manage to lose some cargo at sea every year (i remember a study tracking rubber ducks in the pacific) during storms. Near-shore fishing can actually be more hazardous because of currents and shoals.
Deadliest Catch is about crab-fishing – using traps.
Some people claim farmed salmon isn’t as tasty as wild, and there are studies that indicate parasites attack farmed salmon more than wild (population density is higher) and therefore affect local wild fish. When i visited a hatchery (for release) back in 1998, they said that the salmon coming upriver to spawn were not as good (taste) once they got back to fresh water, that was why they did the fishing in the salt-water (and there is more room at sea than in a fjord).
I don’t like fishy-fish myself,
And by “apocryphal,” do you mean “very long, with and endlessly repeating sing-song melody”? I grew up in Milwaukee, near where the ship sank in 1975. I was singing in a revue, and for our New Year’s Eve show we could each pick a song for a solo. I insisted on singing “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” as a tribute, and handing out lyrics so the audience could sing along. I had them pretty panicky before I let on that I was kidding.
tune: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” Gordon Lightfoot
The Darien, yep, it’s a might fine ship
It’s the least unexpectedly burny
We’ll send this kvarship on a very long trip
But we don’t know the end of the journey
The all Class-Four crew now will not include you
As it seek out Class-Five folk to talk to
But you’re now Class Two ’cause we’re punishing you
I explain as our HQ we walk through
Ms. Terpomo, you were a Tech, CPU,
Which, in Esperanto, means potato
But all that you see comes from us, HFC
And to you, Ms. Akuba, we say no
[I’ll stop there, but if anyone wants to write the next 27 verses, knock yourself out.]
“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was not just apocryphal, it happened.”
That’s true, Wayne, that’s true. The Edmund Fitzgerald was a Great Lakes freighter, not a deep sea fishing vessel, but its final voyage was no less final for that.
HOT DOGS b(^_^)
Terpomo? Somebody looked up the Esperanto word for potato!
Still, I guess that’s better than Kolkapo (cabbage head) as a name.
“We’re in the people business.”
What color wafers is their Soylent subsidiary producing these days?
We’re going to go to space for Tungsten? I really hope we’ve found a better way of making light bulbs by then
Also tungsten carbide, for bearings and dies and cutters, oh my!
Tungsten is a metal with a very high melting point. It would probably have many uses if it wasn’t so rare. So if tungsten (or some tungsten alloy) is what the ship’s hull is made of, maybe that’s why it’s the least unexpectedly flammable?
I have the strangest yearning for a Special Clown Mug…but I have no idea why…
Junior CPU tech? What does that mean? They have CPUs so complicated they need dedicated technicians?
They sell people