November 16
Even though I'd gotten to bed a little bit late, I woke up early and got ready to go trotting, and when I looked out the window it was all foggy outside, which was really exciting. It was thick enough that I couldn’t see Academy Street from our window, even though it wasn't very far away. And I could see the little bits of mist drifting around in the lights, and I watched that for a little bit until I remembered that I needed to wake Peggy up.
I went over to her bed and shook her until she rolled on her back and turned her head towards me and she sighed and pushed the covers back but when she looked out the window she was pretty excited for the fog, too. And she opened the window to feel how cold it was, even though her portable telephone could have told her.
She was running out of t-shirts, so she just put her sweatshirt on over her sports bra, and then stuck some water bottles in my camelback, and the two of us went outside.
We had to be a little bit more careful, because even with their lights, cars could get a lot closer to us before we'd see them, and the fog made their noise kind of deceptive, too—sometimes we didn't hear them at all until they were close enough to see, and other times we'd hear them but never see them at all, so they must have been further away.
And we went around to Jeff's house first, and when we got there we had extra time with Caleb, Lindy, and Trinity, 'cause it turned out that the bus was going slower than usual. So I gave Trinity a ponyback ride a little ways, and Caleb showed Peggy some more Pokemons that he'd caught, and he asked if we were going to be able to go Pokemon hunting with him any more. Peggy said that she wasn't sure because we would have final exams soon and then everyone would be going back home, but that maybe we could this weekend. And I thought that that would be nice, and Peggy said that she thought so, too.
Their bus had a blinking light on top like the one that I wore when I flew, and we could see it before we could see the rest of the bus or hear it, but they knew what it meant and picked up their backpacks and Trinity hugged me and I nuzzled her cheek, then nuzzled Lindy, too, and even Caleb gave me a little hug before getting on the bus.
It went around the corner, and faded off into the fog, and Peggy took a drink from one of her water bottles and then we started to trot again.
When we went by Aric's house, I kind of wanted to fly up to his window to wake him up, 'cause I knew that he liked fog, and Peggy said that I should, so I did. The window was open just enough for me to get my hooves under it and I kind of balanced on the edge of it and could stretch out a forehoof far enough to shake the side of the bed, and he didn't wake up right away and he was kind of groggy when he did, but then he saw it was me and got out of bed.
I warned him that Peggy was outside, in case he didn't want her to see him naked, and so he stayed back from the window a little bit and I told him how nice and foggy it was outside and said that I'd wanted to wake him up before the sun made it all go away. And he said that he was going to get some coffee and then go driving around in it and he said that I could come, but I couldn't abandon Peggy, plus I had class, so I had to tell him no.
And I pushed myself back out of the window and caught with my wings, and it was always strange to get flying right by a building like that because you'd instinctively go forwards but if you did, you'd run into the wall, so I had to get far enough back from it that I had room to turn around, and then I could fly normally.
I landed on the lawn next to Peggy, and told her that I'd gotten him up and then we went back out to the street and by the time we were at the end of the block, she was too hot so she took off her sweatshirt and tied it around me, and then we followed the road along the edge of Western's campus for a little bit before going back into the neighborhood.
When we got to the little triangle park, I started thinking how nice a roll in the grass would feel, so when we were passing by the high point, I turned towards it and then rolled down the hill, which wasn't as comfortable with my camelback on as it would have been if I hadn't been wearing it. And I went back up to the top and did it again, and then Peggy decided that she'd try, too, and so she rolled down the hill and said that the dew on the grass was a lot colder and wetter than she'd expected, and she was dizzier than she'd remembered being when she'd done it as a little girl.
She wiped some grass clippings off of herself and took another drink of water. The bottles that she had were really tough, because I'd forgotten that they were there when I rolled down the hill and it was lucky that none of them had broken.
I scraped at the ground a little bit, and nibbled a little bit of the short grass but it wasn't very good, 'cause it was cut too short. Humans cared more about how their lawns looked than how they tasted.
And then we got back on the sidewalk and kept on trotting until we had gotten back to Trowbridge, and before we went in, Peggy put her sweatshirt back on even though she didn't need to.
She made me take the first shower, because she said that I took forever to groom myself, and so I took off my camelback and took in my shower supplies, and I kind of hurried washing myself off, and I got out before Kat came into the bathroom, so Peggy could go right in.
I'd gotten my wings all the way preened and pulled almost a dozen loose feathers out between the two—sometimes I'd lose secondaries a whole bunch at a time—and I also got some grass clippings that hadn't rinsed out in the shower. And when I was grooming my coat, I found a few more, and so after I'd finished, I had to use my wingtip to sweep them into a wastebasket, so that I didn't have grass in my bed.
I was combing out my tail, which was getting too long and shaggy, when she came back in, and she got dressed over on her side of the room and said that today she was going to do laundry and she could do mine if I wanted, but I didn't really have anything that I needed to wash right away, plus I'd feel guilty if she was washing my things for me.
We walked to breakfast together and there were still no omelets and no waffle-maker, and I looked around and found more fresh fruit so I had that and oatmeal. And they had blueberries that weren't fake and so I put them in my oatmeal because I thought that they'd add a little bit of flavor to it.
Anna and Reese weren't there, and Sean wasn't, either. Christine said that he'd been up most of the night working on a project and so she'd let him sleep in and she said she was going to wake him up and stick a Pop Tart in his mouth before she left for her first class.
I think Meghan was a little bit disappointed that I'd preened my own wings, but she brightened up when I asked if we could go to the spa one more time before Thanksgiving, and she said she'd see what she could set up, and then I had to go to class.
Professor Brown told us how we could use flooding or the initial rate method to figure out complex reactions. The first one used lots of one reactant so it basically wouldn't get used up in the reaction, and the other involved measuring what you got right as soon as the reaction started, and then do it again with a different amount of one of your reactants.
Then he told us how to build mechanisms, which was where you decided that you had elementary steps before you got the finished solution, and he showed us how we'd figure out the steps.
He said that next we were going to go through a more complicated example, but that we weren't going to do the algebra in class because it was boring, and my ears fell. Algebra wasn't boring. And then he said that we'd have to do the algebra in our homework, and my ears perked back up.
He wrote out all the equations and then just wrote the answer without integrating, and told us that we wanted to look at limiting cases because they would give us more information.
Professor Brown also said that we should trust our intuition, because if things didn't look like they were supposed to maybe we'd made a mistake that we couldn't find, and it was better to admit that than to keep on working and get a completely wrong answer. And after he'd told us that, he set up another example which started with three differential equations and then filled up the whole markerboard, and he had to wait until everyone had written everything in their notes before he could erase it and put up more equations. But each one individually was still pretty basic; there were just a lot of them.
After class was over, me and Lisa went to the lounge. There were really big windows to let the light in except that there wasn't a lot because it was still very foggy outside, and I got a bit distracted looking out the windows, because we were high enough up that I should have been able to see downtown and the traffic on Main Street, too, but instead I couldn't see much beyond the theatre building.
Lisa got out the lab notes that she'd typed up and we both looked through it to make sure that there weren't any mistakes. And then we had time to review, and I'd been a bad pony and hadn't done any last night, 'cause I'd been too busy with math and then with getting petted by Peggy, so it wasn't as fresh in my head as it should have been. Fortunately, after we'd been going over the class notes for a little bit it all started to sound familiar to me again, and I did a lot better.
We studied until Lisa had to leave for her class, and then I flew across campus and just because I was curious, I flew up high enough until I couldn't see the ground any more. I didn't know how high I was, but I didn't think that I was too high, because I was sure that Severn was closer than a thousand feet to the Dow building, and I hadn't been able to see it. So I thought that I probably wasn't more than a few hundred feet up.
Then I did something really dumb, and instead of going right back down I flew a little bit in what I thought was east, or mostly east, and when I descended low enough to see the ground, I didn't recognize where I was. I'd flown further and not in the direction I thought.
And if I'd been more clever with my portable telephone, I could have used it to give me a map and read the street signs down on the ground, but I wasn't very good at making it do that, and I thought that I'd just follow a road until it went somewhere that I knew, but the roads that I could see were kind of angly and one of them was just a big loop that didn't go anywhere, and there was a lot more forest than I remembered that close to downtown, which meant that I'd flown further off-course than I'd thought, and now I was even farther from where I thought I should be.
But then I remembered house numbers, and I knew that they got smaller the closer that you got to the middle of Kalamazoo, so that gave me a direction, and once I'd found some houses on a straight road, I figured out which way I had to go so that the numbers would be descending, and if there hadn't been as much fog, I would have seen familiar landmarks right away. And I should have spent more time flying low over the area around campus, so that I knew the territory better, but I hadn't.
My plan worked, even though I had to make a couple of jogs where roads ended, and I was really feeling stupid for losing my way in the fog, especially since I had my watch that always knew where I was, but it couldn't tell me when it was sitting on my desk.
So I didn't get all my thermodynamics work done before lunch again, but this time I stayed a little bit later so that I could get more of it finished.
They had dinner leftovers again, and everyone hoped that meant that there would be a really good meal soon, but I kind of thought that they were trying to use up all the food that they had. 'Cause in a week, everything was going to close and there wouldn't be any more meals, and the food might go bad before people came back to campus.
But I was still hoping for a good meal, too. Sean said that last year they'd had a Thanksgiving dinner before finals, and maybe they would again. I hoped for another Chinese dinner, but I thought that was unlikely, since we'd had one not that long ago. Or maybe they could have a fish buffet; that would be pretty good.
Everyone was starting to get a little bit worried about their finals, and I was a little bit worried, too, although I was sure that I'd do well. I wasn't sure that I should say that, though, because everyone else might think that I was bragging, and I didn't want to do that. Nobody liked a bragger. Even when you really were the best at something, you shouldn't brag about it.
I walked with Sean to math, and Professor Pampena started by telling us how you could use flux to solve the diffusion equation, which was how materials diffused into air or liquids, and I knew about that, although I'd never learned the math behind it. And then we got to learn laplacian, which was del squared. And it could also be used for heat in still air.
Then he moved to line integrals in space, and said how when we were figuring out work the first thing we needed to do was decide the best variable to use to express it, and he gave us an example where either time or z would have given easy answers, and he calculated it with time, then I figured it out with z as well. And since he got one for the answer both times, it was also a gradient field.
We had to check three conditions instead of just one, if we wanted to know if we had a gradient field, and he showed us how to set it up and then how to solve it. And just like in two dimensions, there were two different ways to solve it, and he said that we could use whichever one we preferred, but we would be smart to practice both techniques.
Then he gave us the formula for curl in three dimensions and he said that nobody could remember that formula which was why del was so important, because instead of writing out the whole formula, you could simplify it all the way down to del cross F, which was a lot easier to remember, because then we could derive all the terms that we needed.
Before Professor Pampena let us out of class, he said that this homework was special because it was our last, and I was kind of disappointed, because math was so much fun. But I guess that for everyone who hadn't been studying, they were going to be happy that they could focus on that over the weekend, although I bet that anyone who hadn't studied yet wasn't going to until right before the test.
Me and Sean went to his room and did our homework together, and I wrote out one more problem in Equestrian, and then he asked if I was going to insist that we study before watching Numberphile movies, and I nodded and got my cards out of my saddlebags, and we spent an hour going through them and I thought it was time well spent, 'cause at the end of it, both of us could say what a formula was used for, or we could give a formula when we knew what we needed to calculate, and that was the most important part. The rest of it was pretty simple, as long as you didn't make any dumb math mistakes.
Sean found a video first about prime numbers, and how Earth scientists had discovered an interesting trend in consecutive primes, which was that it was most likely to end in one and not any other digit. And James said that they had checked the first hundred million prime numbers, and I thought that that must have taken forever before remembering that there was probably a computer that could do it in a few minutes.
James made a matrix which showed the probabilities, and then explained why some of the more obvious theories weren't any good, and he said that it happened in any base, which was interesting. I bet that was something that ponies didn't know, so I had Sean stop the movie a couple of times so that I could take notes to make sure that I got everything right.
And then he decided to show me a movie about dots and boxes next, which was a game, and there was an old man who had been playing the game for seventy years so he was very good at it, and showed the strategy to win.
I would have liked to watch another, but I still had my thermodynamics homework to do, so I went back to my room and finished it. And I guess that that was my last homework for thermodynamics, probably, although Professor Brown hadn't said so for sure.
Peggy came in and said that she had the dumbest final project for her art class and she couldn't think of anything to do, and so I asked her what it was. She said that she had to drop an egg off the balcony in the Fine Arts building and have it not break, but it had to be 'visually interesting,' because it was art and not physics.
She said that she'd done it in high school, and you got points for having the smallest container or the lightest, but nobody in physics cared how visually interesting it was, and she said that she'd been thinking about it all week and hadn't come up with anything.
I thought that I could carry it down, and that way it would land safely, but I wasn't sure if I was visually interesting, and anyway it might be cheating if I carried it.
Peggy said that if it was on fire, that would be interesting, and I said maybe she could hang it from Cincinnati Fire Kites, although maybe that wasn't a smart thing to do inside. And then I said that she could use a cable at an angle, and she said that she'd thought of that but wasn't sure it would be interesting enough, and she also wasn't sure about what she could tie it to.
So I asked her if she'd asked Rebekka yet, and she hadn't. I thought that Rebekka knew more about art than I did, so I said that maybe she would have a good idea. So she went down the hall to talk to Rebekka, and I thought about ways to keep eggs from being broken when they were dropped. Maybe I could make a little cloud, but would that count? Was I allowed to help build her egg-basket?
When she came back, it was time for dinner, and on our way there Peggy told me that Rebekka had said that she needed to think outside the box, whatever that meant. And Peggy had told Rebekka all her ideas, and Rebekka had said that they all sounded interesting and that was the problem with art, that there weren't rules about what was good and what wasn't.
So I told her my idea about the cloud, and she liked that but she also wasn't sure that it would be allowed. Although she said that there was an artist who had made fake clouds and they hung in a gallery somewhere, and I wondered if anypony had put real clouds in a gallery and called it art.
There wasn't anything special for dinner, which was disappointing. And I thought that I'd probably be seeing the same thing for lunch tomorrow, which was even more disappointing. It was kind of funny, because most of the year I'd liked eating the same thing all the time, but now that it was almost over I wanted to be a bit adventurous.
When I saw the hamburger patties floating in a little pool of oil, though, I decided that I didn't want to be that adventurous.
Christine said that if they didn't have proper food by Friday night, she was going to mutiny. And she said that they'd even taken the fruit loops away, so she couldn't have those for dinner.
I said that the salad that they had was pretty good, although I would have liked it if they'd had spinach instead of the watery lettuce that they usually put out.
Sean was hoping that they would have the real ice cream, maybe on Monday, because it would be nice after our first day of finals.
After dinner, I reviewed my astronomy some more, and it was kind of lonely doing it by myself. I should have asked Anna if we could study together, but I'd forgotten to, and I didn't know her portable telephone number and neither did Peggy. So I told myself I was going to ask her tomorrow, and we could do it in the afternoon.
When I was done studying, I got my Kama Sutra and my flight gear, and I packed them all into my saddlebags, then I went downstairs to Meghan's room, and knocked on her door. And she opened it and asked if I was ready to go, and I said that I was.
She picked up her duffel bag and put on her coat, 'cause it was getting colder out, and the two of us walked to Aric's house. She told me while we were on the way that she had gotten us an appointment for tomorrow afternoon, and she'd only been able to get a late appointment, so we'd have to go to dinner early or else eat at a restaurant late.
And then she asked me if I'd be mad if she stayed with Aric over some of winter break, because if she stayed in Kalamazoo she'd have the best chance to see me, but she didn't think that she could get a short-term lease anywhere else and she also wasn't sure that she could afford it. She said that she hadn't asked Aric yet, because she had been trying other options but she was out of ideas.
I thought that that was a smart idea, and I said that I didn't mind, especially since the two of them were getting along so well now. And that way neither of them would be lonely while I was off visiting Florida or Colorado or anywhere else that we went, so that would be something that I didn't have to feel guilty about.
So she said that she'd ask him later, and not to bring it up, so I said that I wouldn't.
We let ourselves in, and Aric was up in his room doing homework, which he said was his final project and it wasn't due until Tuesday, and asked if we minded if he kept on working until he got to a good place to stop. So Meghan sat on the bed and I laid down on her lap and I guess I must have been tired, 'cause I sort of dozed off and only woke back up when I heard his chair scraping on the floor as he got up from his desk.
I didn't let them get undressed yet, 'cause I said that it was more fun if they undressed each other, and Aric said that it wasn't fair that I got away without wearing clothes, so he found me a pair of underwear that I could put on backwards and stick my tail through the hole, and a t-shirt that didn't fit very well. And I felt pretty silly, but I'd made the rule so it was only fair that I followed it, too.
And I hadn't expected it, but it made me feel more aroused and more eager, so maybe there was more to wearing clothes than I'd thought.
Once we'd found a position that looked like fun, we all had to get undressed and that was just as much fun, because everyone took their time, and we were all really eager to start but didn't want to rush getting undressed, and the anticipation was half of the fun.
"A working waffle maker in every cafeteria": That's a campaign slogan that would win Silver Glow's vote!
I think there's a missing word.
needs a period.
needs a period.
needs a period.
When Silver said she wouldn't feel right letting Peggy do her laundry, right then I knew she was female & some things are apparently universal.
If EQ uses base 12, I'd bet there's an app that translates EQ & Earth numbers back & forth. Also, EQ measurements to both English & Metric. Prime numbers are prime in all bases, of course, but are irrational numbers irrational in all bases? I'd guess so, but IDK. I mention this because I'm mildly surprised Silver doesn't have to do it in EQ & then translate the results.
They seem to be doing as much as they can from that book before Silver Glow leaves I see.
But 'murrca, mang.
So... Are any of the studies Silver Glow has carried out likely to bring new insights to Equestrian research? Besides the Kama Sutra, I mean.
So I found this article today: Did Free College Save This City?
It's about how Kalamazoo, Michigan has been radically transformed over the last two decades by the "Kalamazoo Promise," apparently a bunch of wealthy people have promised to pay for free college to all high school graduates in the town. The city uses it as a key component of their branding, even mentioning it on their official signs.
I'm surprised this hasn't come up in the story yet, as apparently this has become a huge part of residents' identity.
7879533 Probably not. She is a good test case for integrating human technology into Equestria, though. I assume that once enough pegasuses have visited Earth, they'll be a big push to get GPS satellites up sooner rather than later.
7879617
That would presumably be very hard to do, the amount of resources and support needed to set up a satellite launching facility on Equestria would be huge.
On a smaller scale Silver's camelback seems to be her favourite possession so there could be a brisk export of them. I did wonder if she'd break it rolling around in the grass on it.
Oh dear, Silver very nearly met The Fog, with all the crazies round. At least the house number trick workd.
Wonder if she chould use the line integral thing to get a rough idea where the town is as houses get less the further away from it you are?
If she has such notes on Earth tech, wonder what Twilight has got?
I have this image of the GPS constelation being agreed to launch, using a medium airliner that has its wings and tail removed to pass through th portal, or a lot of work on having only power clock and GPS transmitter in a cubesat, then having an Orbital Launch missile fired from a STOVL. If it can handle the ton or two weight, let the Harrier have one last flight.
Although we on Earth assume GPS requires satellites, what about a system of towers instead?
And getting satellites above Equestria (assuming it's actually a planet) might involve using a first stage made of pegasi and a second stage made of unicorn (with one pegasus as the reentry vehicle) assuming they can't just be magiced into orbit.
I just realized…
Why has Silver Glow never encountered someone wearing a horse mask!?
7880101
Because that would be horribly racist, and the government opted to outright ban any form of Equine mockery that might offend their new Celestial overlord?
Can't say 'beat a dead horse' or 'out of a horse's mouth' either.
7879998 If I'm not mistaken, I think there was a navigation system using towers back in the 60s through the 80s called TACAN, but it was military only and lacked the range and precision of GPS satellites. It might still be in use in some areas, but it's been superseded by GPS.
7879998 It takes a LOT more towers to get a GPS system running globally than it does satellites. You can't build towers in the ocean beyond a certain depth. (Deep-water oil platforms float.) And towers are more subject to sabotage, weather damage, and other maintenance headaches than satellites, which if they survive launch are good for a decade or more. (Because they have to be.)
7880153 You're thinking maybe of LORAN? It was a system of radio towers built on the coastline around the East Coast (and, eventually, elsewhere, I imagine) that used the same general idea that became GPS. It was used by boats as late as the advent of GPS. They finally turned the towers off in North America in 2010.
You mean like this?
That's what the hoop shaped antenna on top of the old aircraft was for.
(Youtube won't let me designate a stop point. No need to watch it all.)
7879406
To my knowledge, irrational numbers remain irational in all rational bases.
But say, pi becomes rational in base pi. And everything else turns irrational.
so Pony couplers when ?
Well, that's because humans are crazy. But you knew that.
7880153
7880331 I know TACAN is still around. And what about VORTAC?
7880914 Again, if I'm not mistaken VOR/DME (in use for all private aviation for navigation; I think this is the same thing as VORTAC) uses much of the same technology as TACAN as both are used for relatively short-range navigation between fixed points. VOR/DME stations are found at most airports in the US and a pilot sets the broadcast frequency for a certain airport on the instrument in his cockpit; pilots can then navigate by homing on a set of stations. What VOR/DME lacks is the precision of TACAN, the range of LORAN, and the ubiquity of GPS. What it does have is that it is inexpensive to set up and easy for a licensed pilot to use and has enough accuracy to get a pilot from waypoint to waypoint. From what I've read, both LORAN and TACAN were used heavily by the US and NATO militaries during the Cold War, while airliners used LORAN for transoceanic flights and VOR/DME for navigation between airports.
Maybe there is a way to add a VOR/DME receiver to Silver Glow's vest? It sounds like a pegasus would need to pass some kind of a class on navigation and flight rules if they were to come to Earth.
Flying into fog and not being good with instruments?
john-f-kennedy.info/fileman/Uploads/Bilder/Familie/John_Salute.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_Jr._plane_crash
You're a pastel-colored flying magical horse.
Yeah, her harem is moving in together.
7879998
That's actually how older smartphones without GPS receivers get location data. Triangulating by cell towers can get the location down to within a couple hundred meters.
Such a shame Research in Motion decided to try to emulate Apple and completely ruined Blackberrys. We don't want both physical keyboard and touchscreen. Just a plain screen, the thumb trackball and physical keyboard was perfect. Also, programs that don't expect you to have an account somewhere. Completely local data without trying to sync with some offsite location and no ads contaminating everything is good.
¡That is terrible!:
Having a Thanksgivingdinner and than going home for another Thanksgivingdinner when one gets home is too much Thanksgivingdinner.
7880630
Except tau, of course.
If Christine gives Silver a goodbye gift, I bet it'll be a box of Fruit Loops to take back home.
I bet a few museums would like that cloud penis you mentioned earlier.
7879345
Yeah, that would certainly do it!
7879406
Although Silver's probably not that used to doing laundry at all.
Yeah, I'm sure that there is. Silver's never really gotten into using her smart phone, though, so she's likely just figuring it out by hoof.
As for the irrational numbers, I think that they would be irrational in all bases, except for the base where they are the base number (i.e., pi would be a rational number in base pi.) I think anyways.
7879425
That's pretty important, wouldn't you say?
7879493
7879533
Well, there's human climate science; that's something that will apply to her new job. New forms of poetry, possibly; she'll have her books with her still when she goes back. And a slightly increased understanding of human behavior, which will potentially benefit the ponies.
7879548
I'm did think about it but there was never really a good place to bring it up. It was a thing when I was in college, too, and one of my friends had a Promise scholarship. It's actually a really smart idea, because people who are thinking about how they might afford a college education could move to Kalamazoo, which increases the tax base, etc.
More cities in Michigan are starting programs like that, too. I think that Detroit just did.
7879617
GPS is a stretch, but in her pilot's training she would have learned about non-directional beacons and directional beacons and that's potentially within the grasp of pony tech. It would be much cheaper to build, although it wouldn't help you everywhere of course.
7879589
7879711
Unless the princesses could just launch them to the moon with a friendship cannon
But building the satellites would also be enormously expensive.
From what I've heard they're really tough. And she's not all that heavy, either. But there is a chance of making it leak by doing that, I would think. I would expect the weak spot is the nozzle where you fill it, or the tube you drink out of. I would expect that those would fail before the waterskin did.
7879865
In America, at least, we tend to have a very rigid, geometric system of numbering houses.
As long as she's within the city limits, yes; otherwise, the numbers will lead to a corner of the county. You could probably figure it from there, though.
Probably everything that she could get her hooves on
You could potentially do that (maybe), although I can't imagine that humans would be willing to lend the ponies cutting-edge military tech. I suppose it would depend on what they got in return.
7879998
There were tower-based systems (like LORAN) for boats, back before GPS. So it's doable. Not as precise, but probably close enough, since the pegasi are going to be visually navigating when they get close anyways.
While it's possible that a pegasus and unicorn working in tandem could get a small satellite up into orbit, getting the angular speed that it needs to stay in orbit might be problematic, but that really depends on the rules on how magic works.
7880101
For some reason, they don't seem to be popular in Michigan. I've never seen one.
7880142
I don't think that they'd actually do that. Pony masks, maybe, but not horse masks. Even that I think would be acceptable, though.
Also, 'I'm hungry enough to eat a horse.'
'Piss like a racehorse' is okay, though.
7880153
There was also LORAN for boats, as well as various beacons used for aircraft. LORAN is gone, I think, but IIRC many airplanes still use the old systems for navigation.
7880186
Not to mention, unless you build really tall towers, you're going to have a lot of area in 'shade' where the system might not work at all. That may not be an issue for pegasi, since they're in the air, but it would be for anyone else wanting to use the system. Although I think a lot of it would depend on how much precision you wanted, too.
7880331
I think that the Great Lakes had LORAN, too. Man, thinking about all the new systems, there used to be range markers that ships used to navigate, and I bet they're mostly gone by now.
7880466
Ah, the good old days when you had to calculate all that out yourself
7880630
That's what I thought, too, but I'm not very good at math.
7880727
Princess Cadance could start an online dating service with guaranteed love . . .
7880794
What's the point of having a lawn if you're not going to snack on it?
Which I think is the very definition of 'visually interesting.'
That's the best way to make sure things all work out, isn't it?
7881123
I think in her case since she mostly flies locally, and can land anywhere, she really doesn't need to use VOR/DME, especially since she's not instrument-rated (so she can't fly in clouds, for example). Even for longer navigation, there are GPS systems which would probably work just as well for a pony.
If she was doing all of her flying into and out of airports, that might be a different matter.
7881201
Silver Glow probably has better flight instincts than most human pilots, especially weekend warriors--after all, she's got tens of thousands of flight hours under her wings. Plus, of course, there's the old saying "if God wanted us to fly, He'd have given us wings." Well. . . .
As long as you're somewhere that has enough cell towers to triangulate from.
I never liked those tiny little keyboards, but that's just me. I miss Nextels and their radio function--those were what we used at one wrecker company I worked for.
7882236
I disagree. There's nothing wrong with having more than one Thanksgiving dinner.
7884614
7892162
And nopony would believe her when she claimed that humans eat those for breakfast.
7935988
Yeah, they would. That would be a great art installation, although you'd probably need a pegasus on hand to re-make it frequently.
7982245
Evidently, I did not make my point clearly:
Let us suppose that the Invisible Pink Unicorn —— ¡May her hooves always remain unshod! —— would sentence you to hell. This hell is a room with a table and chair. You feel hunger in this hell. On the table is food. Unfortunately, it is only your favorite food. Let us suppose that your favorite food is strawberries. After gzillians of years of eating only strawberries, you will find them disgusting, revolting, and have an aversion to them, but hunger will force you to eat them.
Eating 1 Thankgivingdinner is great, but twice in a row turns my stomach.
7982211
Yeah, that one's okay; everyone pisses.
*Whispers* You don't wanna say it too loud in a unicorn crowd though. They can be quite testy when it comes to analogies, especially the royals. They have no sense of humour.
7982335
I mean, if we're assuming that you don't die of a vitamin deficiency of some sort, or heart disease or any of the other potential dangers with eating the same food every day . . . but it was two Thanksgiving dinners, not a gazillion.
So do you just throw away all the leftovers then?
7983259
Even racehorses.
I've been meaning to write a short comedy piece where Rainbow and AJ have a pissing contest, but I've never gotten around to it. Mostly because I haven't figured out how to make it funny without being super fetishy.
7997681
¡Yuck! ¡Leftovers is eating the same thing over-and-over-again for a long darned fortnight! ¡We need to breed smaller turkeys!
7997712
Well, some of us enjoy eating the same thing twice in a row.
8007776
¡A fortnight is 7 times longer than twice-in-a-row!
8008055
That's true; however, the original statement was eating Thanksgiving dinner twice, not for a fortnight or a week or a lunation or any other measurement. Twice.
8014019
I do not want to eat the same thing twice. Monty Python did a skit explaining the loathing for eating the same thing repeatedly:
8015270
Mmmm, I love Spam.
wheresthevideojim.com/sites/default/files/field/image/spam.jpg
7982231
"Get your perfect match from an official Love Goddess today!"
Pony is always so happycited for fog. So cute!
Not the same between feeling the temperature, and having something tell you the number.
Ninja Cars! Beware them!
Huh, fog is that thick and the buses are just a bit slow? Around here we actualy have fog delays for days like that. Hold off school starting till it clears up.
D'awwwwww, they are so sweet with the kids.
Random window pony wake is random and silly.
Silly cute grass hill rolling pony! So much cute!
Peggy has the right idea, embrace the ways of the happy pone, and you too can be happy!
Silly humans, make lawns tastier!
Pony is big pony and can do thing like wash her few washable things herself! Though with how little she has, it really does make more sense to just toss them in with Peggy's.
And Christine gives Sean all the shit, but still good non-pony girlfriend.
But.. but.. Meghan needs to tend to Pony Mistress! No fair for Pony Mistress to preen herself!
Good advice, if something seems odd, it likely is. As has been said, great breakthroughs in science very rarely begin with 'Eureka' and far more with "Huh, that's odd."
Getting petted is a good enough reason to not do some school work. Does not make you bad pony.
Pegasi just have to fly East.....
Lost pony? NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Activate the pony tracker satellites!
Ehhhhhh, most of the type of food they have are the types that don't really go bad, they've been so freeze dried and are so low quality to begin with, they can just sit in a freezer for a few months. Baring some of the produce and such for the salad bar.
Cafeteria needs to cater to pony more, have more nummy fish!
"Even whe your the best, don't brag" But when you aren't, brag all you can to make up for it. Such is the Tao of Trixie!
Also, one last obligatory...
Or they are the lucky few that simply never need to study. Like me.
Somewhere, over in Equestria, Princess Twilight smiles as Silver does her proud and insists on study before fun.
Silver... having a pony carry the egg would be ALL the 'visually interesting'. So should have done that.
Well, burning down the building would also be visually interesting....
Yeah, art is very annoying like that.. stupid no concrete rules you can learn...
Someone either has, or soon as they get a pegasi to help them will put clouds in a gallery as art.
Silver, no one is THAT adventurous to think this beef patties are a good idea.
Silly Meghan, you know Pony no be mad if Pony Slaves have fun when Pony not around. And be very happy to have her Pony Slaves close by.
Gotta specify "Let me be the one to tell him" to pony.
Rules pony is good and follows rules. If she decrees all must be undressed before her to sate her fetish, then that includes her. Again, Silver, that feeling of the clothes making it feel even hotter? The word is 'fetish'.