Ah yes, the Small Child Chase. My 4yo niece has been a proficient dasher since she learned to walk, which is especially impressive since she learned to walk with one leg almost fully encased in a cast to support broken bones.
At least Nick is hot on the heels of his Small Child, and in the worst case can summon a lot of help. (Think Ginny has considered planting transceivers in her daughters’ heads so that Nick could overpower their bodies by force? Not that Nick would ever want to have or use that power, which is why Ginny wouldn’t *do* it, but… would Nick’s reluctance be the only thing ultimately stopping her?)
He may be a rationalist, but he’s also an empiricist. He’s actually seen the dream communication in action and knows how it works, so it’s not fantastical to him.
Dream revelations are not particularly rational in our world. This one has different rules.
For Artie, thinking dream communication was impossible would be irrational. Not every dream will be a message, of course… but presumably Artie believes he can tell the difference.
Way back when someone had written a dungeons and dragons class of extreme skeptics who absolutely steadfastly refuse to believe in magic in any form; The description depicted them frequently hacking apart the body of dragons to find the flame-thrower. Most of my friends thought this was funny but I was left muttering to myself “but… do dragons breath fire by magic???… how *does* that work … and if magic does exist in that world then… what’s the basis of the skeptism… I don’t get it”
The Mothership sent out a message,
And what did they use to transmit?
Old Artie picked up the sending,
But all it revealed was just cosmic dreams,
Not on a screen,
Revelations from the others unseen.
The ship had departed for Lovetron,
And filled with a bunch of misfits.
But they mutinied when they got out there,
And found that the journey was cosmic dreams,
Not on a screen,
Revelations from the others unseen.
Five years have now passed since that moment,
They haven’t been seen since they split.
They’re calling to say they are coming,
To bring them some serious cosmic dreams,
Not on a screen,
Revelations from the others unseen.
The Skin-Horse co-op had decided,
This problem was too big a fit.
Invited friends up to a party,
And discover that they’re in deep cosmic dreams,
Not on a screen,
Revelations from the others unseen.
Nick started a family with Ginny,
Two kids and soon three, quite a bit.
You ask him, “Nick, how are you doing?”
He’ll tell you that you’re full of
cosmic dreams,
Not on a screen,
Revelations from the others unseen.
The strip’s coming soon to an ending,
Too soon for us all, we admit.
It kept us delighted for ages.
It wasn’t a pile of cosmic dreams,
Not on a screen,
Revelations from the others unseen.
Five years away from Earth, away from other humans, experiencing untold wonders and madness, and Tip remains Tip. There’s something comforting about that.
I don’t think it’s come up, but if the Lovetron Express Saucer Mothership ever got close to the speed of light, maybe the time dilation effect would kick in. For the guys at Annex One, five years might have passed…but maybe for Tip and the others, could be just a week and a half, just like us.
They could have been gone for just a few hours – barely long enough for Sweetheart to make a solid org chart – for five years to have passed here on Earth.
I’m not real clear on the real-life specifics of time dilation – like how much the time differential is in relation to how close you get to light speed – but in the anime Gunbuster, IIRC, they were only gone for a few hours, and 10,000 years had passed on Earth. Granted, you really had to exercise your suspension of disbelief for that movie, considering they used an entire planet as a bomb, but it was the first SciFi movie I can remember seeing that actually dealt with time dilation, instead of just hand-waving it away like Star Trek and Star Wars always have.
It’s not just a science fiction concept, it’s implicit in Einsteinean physics. And it has been measured on Earth. Atomic clocks have been put in planes and flown ’round the world in the direction the Earth is rotating, then compared with the counterparts they were synced with before the flight. It’s below perception at that level, but it is measurable.
Oh, I know it’s real (I thought I kinda said that above). I just don’t understand precisely what the correlation is between an object’s (e.g. a spacecraft’s) speed and the time lapse differential between that object and the Earth.
And of course, since I didn’t actually study it in depth, I have to wonder if the differential is only in the clocks measuring the time lapsed, and the people at each position actually experience the same amount of “time”, even though the clocks say otherwise. And would an electronic clock measure time equally in both cases, while a mechanical (or atomic) clock would be affected by the dilation? I didn’t get into relativity at all in college, and certainly not special relativity.
It’s all moot anyway. If they were travelling at relativistic speeds they all would have died of old age (well, the mortals, anyway) way before they reached their destination. Light speed is actually pretty damn slow, universally speaking.
The Startrek warp drive generally conforms to one of the FTL theorys where space itself is warped and moved around the ship. The ship is effectively in its own spacetime bubble and could be said to be stationary. It’s the bubble that moves so no time dilation occurs to the ship.
Any FTL technology implys time travel making “what time is it?” ambiguous at best.
While I enjoyed it, Star Wars makes no pretense at all of of being scientifically accurate.
They learned of the Mothership returning. It set all their stomachs a-churning. So to meet their old friends, they brought up their ends, back on Earth where they went out sojourning.
Don’t do it Artie!
Be your own, um, were-gerbil!
Wouldn’t he rather be a were-human (he’s a gerbil by origin, after all)?
But “were” means “man”!
…gerbil-were?
Miguel: Gerbil-were?
Tulio: Gerbil-were.
Both: Gerbil-were.
Miguel: Gerbil-were is good.
No real analogue for “gerbil” in Old English, which is where “werewolf” comes from. Least as far as I can tell.
How ’bout “rateman,” “rat man?”
Spoken from the back of a hay wagon,
TheDoc; ….gerbil-were?
Eyegor, pointing…. gerbil there!
I adore the hijinks going on in the literal backstory of panel 1!
Wonder if Nick’s swear filter is on or off?
Ah yes, the Small Child Chase. My 4yo niece has been a proficient dasher since she learned to walk, which is especially impressive since she learned to walk with one leg almost fully encased in a cast to support broken bones.
At least Nick is hot on the heels of his Small Child, and in the worst case can summon a lot of help. (Think Ginny has considered planting transceivers in her daughters’ heads so that Nick could overpower their bodies by force? Not that Nick would ever want to have or use that power, which is why Ginny wouldn’t *do* it, but… would Nick’s reluctance be the only thing ultimately stopping her?)
I cackled at the last panel. Go Tip!
Tip giving hair tips.
But of course.
Well, his hair does kinda scream “nineties”…
As immortalized by Disney’s Tarzan
Artie is not militantly rational, it seems. He accepts dream revelations as valid. But… he has a a psychic connection to Tip?
Their mojo overlaps.
When you consider his early years, there’s really no reason at all to expect him to be entirely rational.
He may be a rationalist, but he’s also an empiricist. He’s actually seen the dream communication in action and knows how it works, so it’s not fantastical to him.
Dream revelations are not particularly rational in our world. This one has different rules.
For Artie, thinking dream communication was impossible would be irrational. Not every dream will be a message, of course… but presumably Artie believes he can tell the difference.
Way back when someone had written a dungeons and dragons class of extreme skeptics who absolutely steadfastly refuse to believe in magic in any form; The description depicted them frequently hacking apart the body of dragons to find the flame-thrower. Most of my friends thought this was funny but I was left muttering to myself “but… do dragons breath fire by magic???… how *does* that work … and if magic does exist in that world then… what’s the basis of the skeptism… I don’t get it”
Don’t listen to him, Artie, your hair is already beautiful and perfect. <3
Were-Gerbs of London?
“…And his hair was perfect.”
“Ah-Whooooo ,”
The Mothership sent out a message,
And what did they use to transmit?
Old Artie picked up the sending,
But all it revealed was just cosmic dreams,
Not on a screen,
Revelations from the others unseen.
The ship had departed for Lovetron,
And filled with a bunch of misfits.
But they mutinied when they got out there,
And found that the journey was cosmic dreams,
Not on a screen,
Revelations from the others unseen.
Five years have now passed since that moment,
They haven’t been seen since they split.
They’re calling to say they are coming,
To bring them some serious cosmic dreams,
Not on a screen,
Revelations from the others unseen.
The Skin-Horse co-op had decided,
This problem was too big a fit.
Invited friends up to a party,
And discover that they’re in deep cosmic dreams,
Not on a screen,
Revelations from the others unseen.
Nick started a family with Ginny,
Two kids and soon three, quite a bit.
You ask him, “Nick, how are you doing?”
He’ll tell you that you’re full of
cosmic dreams,
Not on a screen,
Revelations from the others unseen.
The strip’s coming soon to an ending,
Too soon for us all, we admit.
It kept us delighted for ages.
It wasn’t a pile of cosmic dreams,
Not on a screen,
Revelations from the others unseen.
—from “Shaving Cream,” written by Benny Bell.
Five years away from Earth, away from other humans, experiencing untold wonders and madness, and Tip remains Tip. There’s something comforting about that.
I don’t think it’s come up, but if the Lovetron Express Saucer Mothership ever got close to the speed of light, maybe the time dilation effect would kick in. For the guys at Annex One, five years might have passed…but maybe for Tip and the others, could be just a week and a half, just like us.
They could have been gone for just a few hours – barely long enough for Sweetheart to make a solid org chart – for five years to have passed here on Earth.
I’m not real clear on the real-life specifics of time dilation – like how much the time differential is in relation to how close you get to light speed – but in the anime Gunbuster, IIRC, they were only gone for a few hours, and 10,000 years had passed on Earth. Granted, you really had to exercise your suspension of disbelief for that movie, considering they used an entire planet as a bomb, but it was the first SciFi movie I can remember seeing that actually dealt with time dilation, instead of just hand-waving it away like Star Trek and Star Wars always have.
It’s not just a science fiction concept, it’s implicit in Einsteinean physics. And it has been measured on Earth. Atomic clocks have been put in planes and flown ’round the world in the direction the Earth is rotating, then compared with the counterparts they were synced with before the flight. It’s below perception at that level, but it is measurable.
Oh, I know it’s real (I thought I kinda said that above). I just don’t understand precisely what the correlation is between an object’s (e.g. a spacecraft’s) speed and the time lapse differential between that object and the Earth.
And of course, since I didn’t actually study it in depth, I have to wonder if the differential is only in the clocks measuring the time lapsed, and the people at each position actually experience the same amount of “time”, even though the clocks say otherwise. And would an electronic clock measure time equally in both cases, while a mechanical (or atomic) clock would be affected by the dilation? I didn’t get into relativity at all in college, and certainly not special relativity.
It’s all moot anyway. If they were travelling at relativistic speeds they all would have died of old age (well, the mortals, anyway) way before they reached their destination. Light speed is actually pretty damn slow, universally speaking.
The Startrek warp drive generally conforms to one of the FTL theorys where space itself is warped and moved around the ship. The ship is effectively in its own spacetime bubble and could be said to be stationary. It’s the bubble that moves so no time dilation occurs to the ship.
Any FTL technology implys time travel making “what time is it?” ambiguous at best.
While I enjoyed it, Star Wars makes no pretense at all of of being scientifically accurate.
They learned of the Mothership returning. It set all their stomachs a-churning. So to meet their old friends, they brought up their ends, back on Earth where they went out sojourning.