Leibniz Clockwork

How is there an east and west Antarctica? It’s all north! If you’re in the middle of Antarctica and going in any direction, you’re going north!

And if you’re talking about relative to anyplace else, it’s all south.

You know what’s east of Antarctica? More Antarctica.

Yeah, I get what they mean, but what they mean doesn’t make any sense.

Oh. Someone left Kudos on the Nine, and Raksha_the_Demon left some on Sauron Explains It All.

I really do appreciate kudos. Every time I get one I open the fic and read for a while. Both of those are pretty blocked, but I poke a bit, see if anything dislodges.

So there are a few major problems. They range from scope to motivation.

First, I’m not super interested in the vast cast. It’s too many people. If I’m running each thread to what I think is doing it justice, things get lost along the way. Flora’s use of the assassins is an example of that, because I meant them to be important but understated, and I don’t think anyone recognizes them. Huge casts are also kinda boring and too much work.

Secondly, the five act structure is constrictive and unpleasant. It makes me rush to an ending, but the entire movement of Melkor vs Random with Sauron, Corwin, et. al. waiting in the curtains has not yet started. As I setup things, I’ve only got one act left, and Melkor vs Amber is too much for one act.

Third, not everyone has an epic motivation. Corwin’s kinda done. Llewella is trying to go along to get along, and that’s realistic but not epic. Random has just fallen under the sway of the ring, and I’m not one who thinks he should topple like a playing card. Julian is motivated to protect Amber. Caine’s a coward. Benedict is dead. Gerard– there might be something in Gerard. Vialle is interesting because she’s not epic, and the contrast between her and Random, and especially her to Corwin, is what makes her such an interesting character. The fascinating element of her conflict is her juxtaposition with the Amberites. But that becomes boring if she starts smiting bad guys for great justice.

Who else do we have? Fiona? I’m going to level with you, I just don’t like Fiona. Bleys? Martin? Merlin? Hell, Dara?

On the Tolkien side, Turin is Corwinesque in that he’s fully understood his folly and consumed by despair. He’s in his prison cell blinded. Gogomoth is a balrog. I dig him, but I don’t have much ammo there.

Sauron?

Sauron is honestly a boring character. That’s what made him great in LotR. He’s an impersonal but off-screen source of malice and angst, and he deserved exactly as much screen-time as he got: almost nil.

New characters to take the plot are usually fairly annoying.

I just don’t have anything, and much as I want to play in this sandbox, I don’t have a plot.

I really want to play in this sandbox.

The last time I went on political Twitter there was so much bad spelling I thought someone was live tweeting an epileptic fit.

No. They were talking about Congress.

A nunatak is an isolated mountain summit that peeks out of a glacier. Isolated may mean there are no ridges above the glacier connecting it to other peaks, or there may be no other nearby peaks. They seem to be common in Greenland and Antarctica. It’s an Inuit word originally, and an accepted technical term now.

The people who hate mini cupcakes are unnecessarily harsh. I can eat eighteen, twenty of those little guys and enjoy every one.

My time in the Army was pretty rough.

It wasn’t the worst. It wasn’t the best. Innumerable people had it worse than I, and innumerable had it better.

But those are red herrings.

You need one egg to make four cupcakes. You want to make twelve cupcakes. They will be frosted with store-bought chocolate frosting. How many eggs do you need?

The frosting is a red herring. It doesn’t alter the question. You need three eggs.

The Army was pretty rough.

Bloomberg story today about the 737 Max Death here. (paywall)

The FAA is signing off on these aircraft going back up into the sky to kill some people.

The news story has a couple interesting points about the MCAS.

First, “Boeing’s engineers assumed that pilots would know how to disable the motor driving down the nose and the procedure for doing so is taught to all 737 pilots. But both crews apparently became confused during the emergency and neither was able to do so.” (17th paragraph)

Does that say the procedure for turning off the MCAS system was taught to all pilots?

It looks like it does, but that’s unclear. It could be ‘Boeings engineers assumed that…the procedure for doing so is taught to all 737 pilots.’ But why would the tense and voice switch? There’s no comma before the conjunction, so one would expect the subject to remain the same. However the engineers couldn’t assume the procedure for switching off the CMAS system was taught to all pilots at the time the made the assumption. So the article reads like the author is stating ‘the procedure for doing so is taught to all 737 pilots.’

From paragraph 20, “Originally, pilots weren’t told about the system. Both the company and the FAA didn’t realize it could pose a danger.”

So they couldn’t very well have been taught to turn it off.

So what does the para 17 bit mean regarding the MCAS system? Were pilots taught how to turn it off or not?

Since two plane-loads of people died because the system wasn’t successfully turned off, I’d say not well enough.

Secondly, let’s talk aviation for second. I’m going to capitalize my specific terms. Air moving over or past a wing moves with something called the Relative Wind. The angle of the wing and this Relative Wind is the Angle of Attack. Both are big deals in aviation. If the Angle of Attack gets too high, the plane does something called Stalling and loses lift. (Note that the AoA is dependent on the Relative Wind, not the orientation of the wing with respect to the ground or something else.) The propensity of a plane to Stall, for the nose to pitch up, the maximum AoA, and etc., are all Flight Characteristics of the aircraft. Aircraft with different Flight Characteristics are different Types of aircraft. For big planes, the pilot needs a new Type Certification for each Type of aircraft s/he’s licensed to fly.

Boeing put in the CMAS because the 737 Max Death has different Flight Characteristics than a typical 737. It is more likely to Stall. The CMAS, in theory, pushes the nose of the plane down when it Stalls.

Fixes to the CMAS consist of making it easier to turn off. If the CMAS is turned off, it is not on.

But the 737 Max Death is still flying, and it has different Flight Characteristics than a regular 737, the plane the pilot has a Type Certification to fly. Once the CMAS is turned off, the pilot is no longer flying an aircraft with Flight Characteristics s/he is trained to fly. They don’t have a valid Type Certification for an aircraft with these Flight Characteristics.

I rather insist on my pilots knowing how to fly the plane we’re in all the time. That is considered optional by the FAA.