February 24 [movie star]
February 24
I got up a little earlier than usual and went right to the closet and stood in front of the mirror and brushed out my mane and tail, even though I don't normally before flying. A mare ought to be allowed a little bit of vanity now and then.
I checked myself out to make sure that I looked good and then put on my flight clothes and walked over to Old Wells to meet Gates, hoping he was an early riser.
He was still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, and drinking a can of green Monster. That's an energy drink and it comes in different colors which all smell and taste equally bad.
He had a big bag which humans call a duffel bag (because it's made out of duffel fabric) and that had some camera bags in it and a helmet with a mount on the top.
The helmet was for me. If I had to wear much more equipment, I wasn't going to be able to fly at all! He helped me fit it on and it was really uncomfortable on my ears. It trapped them down and I told him I didn't think I'd be able to wear it while flying because I wouldn't be able to hear in it.
But he was ready for that, and took out a knife and carved some ear-holes in the helmet. He didn't do a very good job of it; the holes were really jagged and uneven and I think he wound up completely ruining it, but he said it was okay, it would be worth it for the video. Then he set it back on and it was a lot better. I didn't have full ear-range, but enough.
Then he strapped it around my chin and hooked the GoPro camera to the top of it. He had me stand in a neutral position while he adjusted the aim, and then said that it was good.
I reminded him that I had to get clearance before I was allowed to fly, and he said that was okay, it would give him time to set up his cameras.
I didn't think he'd be seeing too much; it was still pretty dark out.
Then I found out just how long it takes to set up a couple of cameras.
I was getting kind of bored by the end of it, and flicked my tail impatiently as he was setting up his tripod right where he wanted it and then focusing the camera on the open sky. And once that one was set, he brought out a shoulder-mounted camera and had to test that, too.
I should have waited to get my flight permission, and I hoped that there weren't any airplanes that were detouring around where I was supposed to be. I didn't see any: they almost never flew right over campus.
It was getting light on the ground when he finally said that he was ready, and I took to the air with a great sense of relief. It's stressful to have to wait when all I want to do is fly.
He'd instructed me to basically do the same thing I'd done before, so I did. I'd been concerned about how far his camera could see, but he said that the GoPro on my head would see everything that really mattered, and the other cameras were just to document what I was doing.
When I got up to altitude, I winged right over and dove down, then pulled back up and spiraled into the sky until I'd lost most of my momentum. Then I made a big circle, trying to keep my head as level as possible (he told me to avoid head movement as much as I could), and once I'd gotten all the way around, I dropped again, racing for the ground.
This time, I flared out my wings and braked as I dropped, keeping my speed down. Then when I got close to the ground, I pulled up and zoomed around the trees, darting as close to them as I could.
I finished off by going up a little bit and doing the same low buzzing flight I'd done before that got his attention the first time, rocketing up to the roof of Olds-Upton and then coming in for a landing at a more sedate speed.
When my hooves hit the snow, he kept following me with his camera until I got within a few meters of him, and then turned it off and set it down in its case, which was perched on top of a snowbank. He got the helmet off me, and the first thing I did was turn my head back and bite the end off a primary I'd broken when I got a bit too close to a tree.
Then he told me that my ear was bleeding, and as soon as he said that, I noticed it. If he'd kept his mouth shut, I probably wouldn't have.
He said that I ought to put a band-aid on it, but I was worried that I would be late to class, especially since I hadn't taken a shower yet, so I told him it was alright and did he want to meet me again for more movies in the afternoon?
He said that he would, and he promised to fix the helmet better and then shook my hoof.
Washing up opened the wound again and it burned like fury when I got shampoo in it, but there was nothing I could do but grit my teeth and carry on. Of course by the time I was done in the shower there just wasn't enough time for breakfast, so I ate my last can of anchovies and trotted off to class.
We moved from global cooling and ice ages to global warming and all the bad things that could cause. I wanted to know if more airplanes could make more contrails to help reflect the sunlight away, but the professor said that studies had been done and that contrails made it worse, because the heat still got in but then the clouds kept it from getting back out. He said that it was a good idea, though, and maybe to solve the problem we'd need to have out-of-the-box ideas like that (even if it wasn't actually a solution).
He said that the other danger with a warmer climate was that the storms would be bigger because there'd be more energy in the atmosphere, and I nodded when he said that. Besides keeping track of the water, we have to keep track of the potential energy, because that's what powers storms. Let too much of it build up, and things will go out of control no matter how good your weather team is. Plus once storms start to go rogue—or come in feral—it's difficult to control them. A small tornado can be broken up by a few pegasuses counter-flying, but if nopony notices and it gets big, it takes several flights to rob it of its momentum and break it up.
Humans hadn't been paying enough attention to their climate, though, and only started to notice when it started to change on them, and now they couldn't decide how to fix it, and some people weren't even sure it was a problem. I guess those were the global warming deniers that Luke had mentioned before.
(Which reminded me that I hadn't done anything beyond becoming friends with Cyndi on my Facebook. Maybe I could ask her to visit the television station.)
It was really frustrating to move from that to something that baffled me. If Nietzsche's values of values weren't confusing enough, we learned that he said that people had killed God by not believing in Him as a source of morals anymore but if that was true, why did Liz even bother to give me a Bible?
And then we discussed his ideas of nihilism and how Europeans were drifting along rudderless because they'd killed God, and overall he had a pretty bleak outlook on humans. I thought that was unfair; people mostly seemed friendly and happy and mostly the same as ponies, really.
Plus it was really confusing when he talked about happiness. He sounded like someone who's never really been happy trying to tell everyone else why they couldn't be happy, and nopony likes a downer like that. So I thought that maybe Nietzsche wasn't that smart after all, and maybe it would turn out like Descartes where he came up with a thing he thought worked but then someone else proved that he was wrong.
I don't understand why we have to learn about who's wrong. Even if philosophy doesn't have absolutes, surely some philosophers just aren't right. In my math class, we never spent any time discussing the dumb pony who wrote a proof that one equals zero using antiderivatives. Fundamental misunderstandings aren't the foundation of learning, except maybe as a cautionary tale.
Which I guess would be a good reason to learn about wrong philosophy.
After Equestrian class I asked Meghan if I could come over Thursday night to use their bathtub again, and she said that I could. Then I hurried off for some more filming with Gates, ate a late dinner, and worked on my poem for tomorrow until Aric drove over to pick me up.
He was a bit more relaxed than he'd been on Monday night. Instead of watching cartoons, we just talked on the couch and snuggled for a while. I told him about the poem I was writing, and he told me about the time he and David had explored the storm drains under Kalamazoo, and then I told him about how Gates had filmed me in the morning and then again in the afternoon.
We went and looked on his computer to see if it was on YouTube yet, but it wasn't. I did find a video of me playing in the snow, though, which I hadn't seen before. Aric said that he thought I looked really cute in the video. I told him I looked really cute all the time, and then kissed him on the lips before he could reply.
When it was finally time to go to bed, I helped Aric get out of his clothes. It was a lot more difficult than Peggy made it sound, but it was worth it.
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*reads last line*
.........kids look away now. This is all the warning you get.
Well... She's not wrong.
Insert Quagmire joke here.
But in all honesty. Good job.
Philosophy isn't a science, so there is value in looking at what might be considered "wrong" so that you can draw your own conclusions and perhaps forge a new line of thought.
But yeah, Nietzsche is a big ol' party pooper.
Twenty-eight more nights of this and we'll have to start calling Aric "Judas".
I dunno. It seems that Silver's introduction to Nietzsche is much more pessimistic and nihilistic than mine was. Maybe she is missing something in the translation. Anyway they're only 2 days into studying him.
On a related note have you laid out what topics Silver is going to be learning and how the classes progress? Or do you have a college student in your pocket who tells you what they learned last term.
Something tells me that Silver still doesn't quite understand what philosophy is about.
Despite, ironically, doing a pretty good job of it.
I was sooo waiting for that moment. Her face must've been priceless!
7143161 While philosophy is not a science, science is a philosophy. Let that cook in your noodle for a little bit.
I used to read an English comedy writer named P G Wodehouse. His most famous stories were about Bertie (upper class twit) & Jeeves (valet who ran his life). In one of them Jeeves warns Bertie that his girlfriend (a brainiac) is going to make him read Nietzsche. He warns Bertie
Still, if SG thinks Nietzsche is depressing, wait until they get to Sartre & The Existentialists. Don't think she'll like his quote "Hell is other people". Still, on Big Bang Theory Sheldon partially excused him on the grounds of who his roommate was (ICR & I'm too shiftless & inept to look it up)
7143261 One thing to learn about humanity, is that we have never created something we could not destroy
Well, there's a reason she hasn't learned about Thales or Parmenides.
7143276 It was Paul Nizan, and Sheldon was being an arse as usual.
Feel like that 'a' isn't supposed to be there.
hit
7143395 I'll bite.
How so? There's nothing political about evidence.
She's annoyed because scientists get annoyed when evidence is misrepresented, cherry-picked or labeled as made up. Also when somebody asks for evidence and then rejects it because it doesn't fit his expectations. Not when evidence is simply ignored, we're used to that.
I work in landscape ecology and rural development and it happens there as well. I can tell you that it's very difficult to remain completely neutral and unmoved when somebody repeatedly does that with your research. Very.
7143574
Corrections made; thank you!
That just looks soooooo much like head lamp fluid. But actually... Huh.
Now you know...
7143276
That was pretty much my exact thought when she first wrote who the class would be studying. I also can't help but wonder what Siver thinks of how Nietzsche spent the last part of his life in an insane asylum.
7143325 And that will probably stay true for a few more decades until we invent the first superintelligent AI. After that, all bets are off.
I hope her ear heals up all right, given she's not the first pony on earth presumably their immune systems can cope with most normal earth diseases.
7143899
No virus could hurt her and bacteria are extremely unlikely to be able to live in her body, so there's not much to fear. I'd actually be legitimately concerned that her immune system is going to weaken due it having nothing to fight for months on end.
Then again, maybe magic means you don't need an immune system in Equestria.
7143959 You might have it the wrong way, if anything she would be in even more danger. (Ref: Astronaut quarantine after Apollo moon landing)
7143996
That was just because NASA was being very careful.
A virus is a piece of genetic material that enters a cell and hijacks its mechanism to reproduce itself. To do that it needs to consists of genetic information that the cell can understand. A pony's "DNA" would be in different bases, so the virus would not be able to affect their body, because their cells wouldn't "execute" its code. There's no chance at all of a virus being cross-world.
A bacteria could affect their body, but it's a long shot. Bacteria have difficulty in affecting different types of animals. Admiral Biscuit didn't say anywhere Silver Glow can't eat earth food, so her biochemistry must be extremely similar to humans. That means a bacteria could theoretically use her body's resources to reproduce itself. But her blood ph, body temperature and a bunch of other stuff are going to be wrong.
Can't wait to see how Silver reacts to Ayn Rand, assuming they mention her briefly when covering ethical egoism.
7143959
They have yeast and bread, so they have to have similar microbiotia as earth. It's reasonable to assume that their immune systems are functionally indistinguishable from any earth critters.
I hope she's using condoms.
7144046
Yeast is a fungus, and it isn't one kind. There are tons of kinds. I guess you could interpret that as "they have the same microorganisms". Personally I think it's more "they also have tiny microorganisms that live on sugar and produce CO2".
7144031 Both virus and bacteria are likely to mutate. These thing are surprisingly good at adapting...
Not to mention that assuming a completely different DNA beacause of the "distance" is well... making assumption! Don't do that, your whole argument is at risk of falling apart.
Oh, the good old Nietzsche...
7144078
It works fine as a headcanon though.
why would you stick a go pro to a helmet ? when you could stick it to these Velcro-tapes and warp it around a ponys hoof ?
you can then just make a video where the pony records itself flying and one where the pony makes a film with its hoof, where it is flying ...
if you have two GoPros, you are gold, because you just need to wrap both around the front pair of hoofs and can have one do each thing ... and then gut the video nicely or do some picture in picture ...
"...He sounded like someone who's never really been happy trying to tell everyone else why they couldn't be happy..."
Pretty spot-on there. A whole field of philosophy seems focused on the concept of "I'm not happy, therefore everybody else should be reduced to my level." I find my life to be much better if I just ignore those people and let them wallow in their own muck without getting any of it on me.
7144060
Well, having organisms that eat sugar and emit CO2 means there is sugar. Sugar means traditional photosynthesis. Terran photosynthesis suggests a common ancestor somewhere around the first extinction event. That suggests that Equestrian biology is not much more removed from ours than, say, Australia. Still, don't let that ruin headcannon.
Stunts, nihilism, and a tender moment? Heck of a day.
7143255
I sometimes think that understanding philosophy may be more of an impediment to philosophizing than a help.
7143744
And it will satisfy values through friendship and ponies.
7144578 Still, it'd be nice if someone (like, maybe her professor) would just tell her not to take it as a given that any of these people she's learning about actually had the answers to anything.
7144496
And I believe that the government will always be able to afford more and bigger weapons and better propaganda if they go over the brink... not to mention everything else in their power.
Even supposing they don't go over the brink, they have a LOT of ways to squeeze people with weapons and then cast themselves as the victims of a group of madmen.
I was amazed that the events in Oregon went down as they did. Why didn't the government cut the power? Why did they continue to allow mail delivery? Why didn't they suspend or jam smartphone service to the individuals involved? All of those would be perfectly reasonable answers to an armed occupation of government property.
As for the Warsaw ghettos, Hitler actually loosened gun control for non-Jews in the same way that right-wing white people are more free to carry openly than ever before, yet black people are getting shot by police even when naked and unarmed. I don't know enough about Stalin's purges or the Cambodian genocide to address them in equal depth.
I agree with the famous statement about the price of liberty (not Jefferson, by the way), but we'll have to agree to disagree on what it means in this day and age and also disagree on the trade-off point between the pros and cons of heavily arming the populace.
I don't have citations handy right this moment, but I trust my sources on the second amendment being an appeasement to the southern states (to ensure the availability of guns to militias which doubled as slave patrols) which has been co-opted as an element of marketing propaganda by the gun-manufacturing industry to maximize sales.
Again, I doubt we'll convince each other of anything, so let's agree to disagree rather than taking over this comment thread with talk unrelated to the story. (I'll be the bigger man and let you have the last word if you feel the need.)
I love the times Silver spends with Aric. And not just because of their steadily progressing relationship.
Fun fact: I still haven't read this story, but the college on the cover looks just like the one I'm going to right now. Do you have any idea how weird it is to go on FiMFic every couple of days, stay on the homepage for a while and then--boom, there's your college! Freaks me out every time.
...still wanna read it, though. Just thought I'd share that.
7143595
You think that is bad I have my masters in atmospheric science. Luckily the author let's me help get the weather right.
7145191
If you're going to Kalamazoo College, it is. If not, then it's just a happy coincidence.
7144901
I completely agree with you that the government will always be able to afford bigger and better weapons, and propaganda... But you need to realize that the government, and the military, are made of people. That gives me hope for two reasons: First off, while we may not all live together in peace and harmony, we're all human beings, and as a nation we all share certain basic values and beliefs. While I don't doubt that in the heat of the moment, government personnel might fire on civilians (Take the Kent State Massacre for example) I believe that, by and large, our fellow citizens who serve in the government, police, and armed forces are unlikely to accept orders to use such force against the American people. If there are Abrams tanks rolling down Broadway and B-52s dropping 500lb bombs in Nebraska, the world has already gone way off the rails.
Secondly, the government is made up of people. And people are incompetent. Especially people in government. Have you SEEN some of our representatives and bureaucrats?? They can't pull off putting together a budget! Forget managing some massive conspiracy filled with manipulations, propaganda, and a military coup!
Mind you, they can do almost as much damage due to sheer incompetence...
On the whole Oregon kerfluffle... Meh, I paid it little attention. I assume the government handled it the way it did because they had a bunch of self contained jerks in the middle of nowhere... And didn't want a repeat of Ruby Ridge or Waco.
Erm... Did you just try to make a rebuttal to the Warsaw Ghetto with an article that admits (at the very end) that while Hitler loosened gun control laws for everyone else, he banned Jews and other persecuted classes from owning guns? Is it somehow better if the government treats everyone the same way the Nazi's treated the Jews? Sure, Right Wing White People are increasingly free to carry weapons... as are Left Wing Black People... Libertarian Yellow People... Socialist Red Skinned People... Though I guess that's somewhat untrue... Licensing requirements and fees and taxes and sundry other issues make firearm ownership more expensive, so it is more difficult to poorer individuals to legally acquire one.
As for the police shooting a disproportionate number of unarmed young black men... I'm at a loss as to how depriving law abiding citizens of access to firearms is going to reduce the abuse of said firearms by the police, who are agents of the government. The government does bad things with its guns sometimes, so we should take guns away from... everyone but the government?
As for the second amendment being a sop to southern states so they could round up their slaves, I have to say... huh? Let's see... We had just formed our own nation by kicking the British out through force of arms... Arms owned, maintained, and utilized by a small percentage of the citizenry. Ensuring that the citizenry would be allowed to keep those armaments so that the government couldn't become tyrannical was kind of a no brainer. Probably one of the reasons why it was the second amendment. No evil Southern slave owners required.
And believe me, the gun industry doesn't need that sort of propaganda to boost sales. Firearms are fun, useful, collectable, and traditional. And the best gun sales men in the world are politicians. Every time one opens their mouth about gun control, sales skyrocket!
Okay. Wow. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you actually meant that in an honest, straightforward, and non-manipulative fashion. But seriously, I could totally take that as a incredibly smug and arrogant jibe. "I've said my piece, and I'll even let you, you poor, sad fool, get in the last word. Aren't I benevolent?" Mind you, I'm not taking it like that, but I just thought I'd point out that to someone a bit thinner skinned, such an effort not escalate matters might be taken as offensive in itself.
But yeah, I suppose it might be best to just let things drop at this point. So... friends?
7145293
I'm not. It's just interesting how similar the architecture is...
7145328
Friends.
Any advice on how I could make my honesty more clear next time a situation like this comes up? (I actually have been professionally diagnosed with mild Asperger's syndrome, so I try to remain aware that I make these "diplomacy mistakes" occasionally. Any help learning from them is appreciated.)
Also, just to clarify without starting the discussion up again, I was trying to point out that, as horrendous as they were, Hitler's policies did start out superficially similar to the current state of firearms posession in the U.S. because both involved/involve loosening gun restrictions on a group which, for whatever reason, provided/provides the largest body of irrational, religious, and/or patriotic people while simultaneously enforcing very different standards for weapons posession on a recognizable minority that the prior group tends to have limited empathy for.
#NoLivesMatter
we?
7129702 7130800 7131004
I'm not much qualified to evaluate poetry, but you might like The Message. It's very poetic, and it does a good job with my favorite psalm.
I like it when the narrator's tone of voice has some character.
Aha! 7128738 was right!
Mine actually went much better than I expected. Psyching myself up for it was the worst part. I love my folks.
7145350
One of the recurring highlights in the story.
And that sentiment goes both ways. A great example is the Admiral's Silver Spanner, Journeymare. Can't recommend that one enough.
"When it was finally time to go to bed, I helped Aric get out of his clothes. It was a lot more difficult than Peggy made it sound, but it was worth it."
7146159
Since we are talking in context of the bible that would be as defined by God through Moses in the book of the law also known as Leviticus. Also, in eating the forbidden fruit mankind was given a sense of right and wrong by God that can also define it, though mankind has become very good at twisting it to their own selfishness thus making it untrustworthy.
7145557
Correction made; thank you!