May 27
It was another beautiful day outside, which I knew because Meghan had forgotten to close her curtains all the way. I don't know why she likes to close them anyway, unless the light bothers her in the morning; Aric never closes his.
She woke up right before her alarm went off. She'd reached up and had just started brushing my mane, then she had to stop and make it stop. The longer she ignored it the louder it got, which I thought was pretty clever. If I ever needed an alarm to wake me up in the morning, I'd want one that did that.
Since she never liked to get up the first time the alarm sounded, I tried to take the opportunity to use her as a pillow, but this time she was too quick for me and rolled all the way over to face me. I pushed at her a little bit, but she didn't want to give, so I let her have victory this time.
She hugged me against her and closed her eyes. I could feel the square block of her telephone right against my ribs, and ten minutes later it started to vibrate right before the alarm.
When she picked it up to look at it, I was in the way, so she turned onto her back and this time I was ready and claimed my spot, which got her to laugh. And we stayed like that until the alarm went off again, and then it was time for me to go if I wanted to fly, so I kissed her goodbye and took to the sky.
Dori was directing the airplanes, and she gave me a big block of clearance again, which was really nice of her. It was the same wedge I usually got, between Stadium Drive and Main Street, and I used all of it to my advantage. I went all the way up to the highest altitude I was allowed, and made a big circle of my territory. I could have flown down and moved off the hawk I saw circling if I'd wanted to, but I let him have his space instead.
I did a few wing rolls on my way back to campus, just for the fun of it, then came around in little arc above the Trowbridge parking lot, and I landed on the outside boardwalk between the two wings. It was called Pebble Beach, because the roof had rocks in it. Lots of flat roofs had rocks on them, actually. That was something I'd noticed while I was flying.
Not only did going in from the doors there save me time—I had to go up one less flight of stairs—but unlike all the other doors into the building, this one didn't have a little slot to see my card; I could just open it and go in.
I was a little late; Peggy was dressed except for buttoning her shirt when I got back to the room. I stripped off my flight gear and put it away, then went into the bathroom and waited for my turn in the shower.
I got a little bit greedy at breakfast, 'cause first the chef who sometimes made omelets was there and so I got one with a bunch of vegetables and two kinds of cheese, then I saw that the waffle-maker was working again, and I made myself a waffle, too. I was sorry I'd had so much food later, but I enjoyed eating it.
Professor Sir Doctor Banerjee moved away from fractals and started talking the statistics of chaotic attractors. I would have been happy if we'd stuck with fractals for the rest of the year. And at first it was kind of a repeat of what we'd had before, with bifurcated lines. But then he started to tell us more about how chaotic orbits worked.
He told us that there was a way to do it on computers, where you made little boxes and the iterates would fall into the boxes, and then you would know where the most were landing. Then he said that you wanted a large number like a million, and I thought it would take forever to calculate that all out.
Then he told us that we could derive some systems ourselves, and my ears perked up. He told us about the Birkhoff theorem, where we could sometimes use a function on a function to get the invariant density. That could give us a general idea of how things were going to work, even when you didn't know exactly how they were.
A lot of what he taught us seemed like it would be really useful for weather work, especially things like Markov maps. I thought that they could relate to things like atmospheric humidity, or pressure—because there were always times when you knew something wouldn't happen or it would, but there was a lot of stuff in the middle where you didn't always know, so you made your best guess and sometimes you needed to get a couple more mares in the sky, or push some of the clouds back into reserve.
I was kind of distracted during lunch, because I was playing with some of the equations. We'd never learned math this good in Equestria, and it looked like it would be really helpful. Plus I didn't want to have too much to eat anyway, since I'd had a lot for breakfast.
Professor Amy told us a little more about agriculture, but this time it was about how specific cultures had treated it, and other things that they had done. And she also talked about how different crops had come from different places, like when Europe had discovered North America, they had suddenly discovered a lot of new crops that nobody had ever heard of before, like tomatoes and potatoes and corn. And some of those went on to become staple parts of their cultures—she reminded us how potatoes had been important to the Irish, and then asked people to imagine Italian food without tomatoes.
Then while I was waiting to show my essay to Professor Amy, a girl named Lynn who I barely knew stopped at my desk and said that she'd been thinking during class today with all the talk of agriculture moving from one place to another and did I know that Europeans had brought horses to the New World (which is what they called America, even though it was as old as all the other continents). And then she said that wasn't the funny part; the funny part was that horses had already lived in the New World, but they'd gone extinct and the Europeans didn't know until Darwin's friends were sorting bones and couldn't find any transitional equine fossils.
I wasn't sure what to make of that.
My essay was a lot better, but still needed some work. I guess Professor Amy saw that I was looking a bit discouraged when she told me that, 'cause she said that most students just hand in something mediocre and never bother to ask for help or guidance on the assignment, and she said that this attempt was a lot better than my first, and there really wasn't all that much that needed to be improved upon.
I went back to my room and I was about to get back into the World War 1 book when I thought that maybe I should have a gift for Aquamarine, so I thought I would make her a dreamcatcher. I figured she'd like it.
Peggy helped me make it, and we were having so much fun that we made a second one, too. As we were finishing up, I knew who I wanted to give it to, but it needed one more thing before it was perfect, so I hung it unfinished next to my bed.
She asked me what time Aquamarine was coming tomorrow, and I told her when the train would come in, but not to worry about it because Aric and I were going to go to the station to pick her up together, and then he was going to drop us off on campus.
She said she'd thought Aquamarine was going to come tonight, and I said I'd wished she was, but the train schedules were kind of dumb, and the bus was also dumb because it went to Grand Rapids first, rather than coming straight to Kalamazoo.
We went to dinner together, and Peggy got a big bowl of mashed potatoes and when we sat down she said that the first person to talk about politics tonight was going to get a new hat.
Then Joe said that soup would be better, because if it was a choice between being blown up or having soup in our hair, the soup was more fun every time. And that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but Joe said it was an ancient Chinese proverb. Then Sean told him that was from Firefly, and he said that they spoke Chinese in Firefly so it counted.
It turned out that Firefly was a television movie series, and since I'd never seen it, everyone agreed that I had to watch it, so after dinner we all went to Christine's room and had a little party where we watched several of the movies. We watched the first two in order, and then Sean said that now that I knew the characters and the ship he was going to change to one of his favorites so that we could see how they got Serenity. Christine said that I should watch them in order, and he asked her if that was why she showed me the Star Wars movies in series order, and changed to a different movie disk.
That one was my favorite of them all. It was kind of sad in parts, but it had a really happy ending, and a good moral that people should stick together.
I would have liked to watch more, but it was getting late and I'd told Aric that I was coming over so that we could pick up Aquamarine later, And then they did manage to talk me into watching one more anyway, which was about Jayne becoming a local hero for accidentally dropping money on the town below.
I felt really bad that it was so late when I got to Aric's house, and he asked me if I had been doing more math, but I admitted that I had been watching Firefly movies instead.
He said that was a really good excuse. Then he asked me what my favorite one was so far and I told him that I had really liked the one where the ship broke because the catalyzer was bad, and he said that was one of his favorite episodes.
Then he said that if I didn't mind staying up a bit longer we could watch Objects in Space in his room, because he didn't have a movie disk but he had them right on his computer. So we went upstairs and sat on his bed, which was still in front of the window.
I liked that one, too, because they had learned how important it was to stick together (except for Jayne). I did feel kind of bad for Early, though. He was supposed to be bad, but he was sort of nice sometimes. I hoped he'd be okay in the end.
I was really tired, so I promised Aric I'd make it up to him in the morning, and I said it was his fault anyway, and he agreed that it was. He got undressed and lay on his back and let me curl up with my head tucked against his chest.
I'm a fan of the 1632 universe over on Baen Books. (Town of Grantville, WVa sent to 17th century). They get in to sugar beets & sugar production in some of the short stories. Beets are naturally sweet, but sugar beets were bred in the 19th century. Sugar comes from
Sugar cane (best source)
Various related plants (not widely grown)
Maple syrup (doesn't work outside New England. Climate, perhaps)
Sorghum (also called Chinese sugar cane)
Sugar beets. Will grow in mighty rough climates.
In 1632 some people are trying to grow them in England to try & slow (or stop) the slave trade. The idea is to make sugar plantations less profitable & thus reduce the demand for slaves to work on them.
Because I know everyone else is going to: "Our Dear Mrs. Reynolds"
"I call 'er Vera!"
Burn the land and boil the sea,
You can't take the sky from me....
Still hurts that they did Wash like that, man. Still hurts.
Firefly was a television movie series?
only 1 movie and it was made after the tv series was stopped it was a attempted to bring it back to bade it failed as it was a good show.
the movies was a way to give the series a ending as I think every one dies at the end.
7429401
Wut?
Um... Canada?
7429442 I'm pretty sure "television movie series" is just a Silverism.
Yaay for Birkoff.
His theory of gravity requires perfect fluid and speed of sound toequal speed of light?
I would think Twilight would recognise that as Starswirls description of the Aether and magic as mass energy.
That or information flow through the Planck Foam?
Until Sugar beet, the only source of sweetner in Europe was Honey?
Interesting timing, learning about this right before Aquamarine arrives. It kind of seems like Equestria has the same foods as Earth does (even down to orange carrots - a colour that was specifically selected for by human farmers for purely cultural reasons!), so I wonder what an earth pony studying plant biology/agricultural science-type courses would think of all the similarities...
Stupid Firefly, taking time away from World War 1...
7429504
firefly info
I think it is still on Netflix also. if you really dig I think they mite have the movie also.
serenity the movie
This part sounds off somehow: then you would know which ones were the most were landing.
7429447
Canada isn't part of the US, and had different laws and practices regarding slavery.
Cute chapter.^^
Heh. "Television movie series." It's not like Silver's had much experience with TV until now.
Also, part of me hopes that those silly unicorns already knew part of all of this impressive math.
7429676 now I'm even more confused!
We were talking about sources of sugar.
The problem for me with those kind of alarms is that I wake up briefly, turn them off, and then fall back asleep without ever remembering the alarm went off in the first place.
Excellent, we'll make an American out of Silver yet! One thing though, she said "i probably going to be sorry I'd had so much food later," but this is a journal she is supposedly writing at the end of the day. So shouldn't she know by the time she was writing if she regretted eating so much? Shouldn't have "later" already come and gone by now?
7429769
And the story mentioned that spawned the conversation was one about a town getting sent back in time and trying to stop or reduce the slave trade by providing an easier source of sugar. Since Canada had different slavery laws, they didn't need to do anything about it, and concentrated on sources that could be produced easily in the States.
Conrad? Dori? Trevor?
7429447 And a few places in Scandinavia, I do remember Norwegian mapple Syrup.
I've watched all of it at least twice, and I still didn't get the reference. The mashed potatoes? Something about being blown up?
Which order? As I remember, the network shuffled them already.
I don't remember my favorite, but Out of Gas is definitely up there.
7429504
"telephone telegram" is my favorite one.
7429845
Keeping the framing device consistent is always tricky, but I'm starting to get the impression that she writes this in bursts whenever she has time, and not just in the evening.
yeah, most magic societies are pre industrial. No need for heavy mathematics. And yes silver, it's really helpful.
It's really interesting to think about. I also like to think about how recipes are developed.
I actually didn't know that
In the movie Casa Blanca Rick is talking to the French police chief & says he came for the (spa) waters. The police chief protests that Çasa Blanca has no spa waters. Rick replies "I was misinformed'
I'll go with that. But still, you need the right kind of winter for maple trees to produce useful maple syrup and those areas are geographically limited & AFAIK most of Europe Great Britain don't have the right kind of winter. Plus, it would take IDK how many years for the trees to grow big enough to be useful.
My favorite Firefly/Serenity moment:
And Silver would probably be like, "I'm glad I don't have that problem, eh, Aric?"
A close second favorite Firefly/Serenity moment would be Jayne's "I'll be in my bunk." (Wish I could find a YouTube video of just that bit...)
7429505 And lead! Just ask the Romans.
Very cute.
http://mochastaroc.tumblr.com/image/148068888708
Had to share, someone bought this and drive 800 miles to return it to my Wal-Mart where I watched the employee put it in a $3 bin where I grabbed it.
Like, hell yeah!
It's a sign!
7430098 I didn't get it either, until I realized the potatoes weren't part of the reference. Then I went on the gargler and found it.
In Objects in Space, there was this exchange:
Useless trivia time: Malted (sprouted and then dried) barley is also a source of sugar that was once popular. There was barley syrup and the "malt" that made malted milk and chocolate malteds sweet. Malt sugar, called maltose, doesn't taste as sweet as sucrose.
Fortunately, it's a halfway step between barley and beer, so the less malt sugar people eat, the more beer we get!
7429401
I had mixed feelings when I read it the first time (just the first book, I think). Maybe I should re-read.
Works just fine in Michigan. I've got a one-pound bag of maple sugar in my 'fridge that's from a syrup farm about fifteen miles from my house. Besides, you can make syrup from practically any tree . . . like birch syrup.
7429411
Ah, yes the Callahan full-bore autolock. I gave that gun to Sparkler in a story once.
7429441
True words to a pegasus.
Yeah . . . why'd they have to do that?
7429442
Not everyone. But it was meant to tie up some loose ends.
And no, it wasn't a movie series; that's just a Silverism, as 7429504 so eloquently said.
7429505
Was it? I've got to imagine that there were other sources; they could have had tree syrup if they wanted, or milk sugar . . . assuming they knew how to make it, of course.
7429512
That one really was a coincidence: I'm taking most of the lectures right of my class notes from my cultural anthropology class (and wishing I'd taken better notes back then, sigh), and that's what came up.
If I were going pure AU, they wouldn't, but since this is fanfiction. . . .
Although it's been proposed that maybe there really is only a narrow window for life on other planets, so perhaps all plants and animals are similar across the universe. I personally doubt that's the case, but it could be. Alternately, if the ponies were the ones who initiated contact, they would be looking for a similar world to their own, so maybe it's not so much of a coincidence.
I think that's how I handwaved that away right near the very beginning of CSI/OPP.
7429560
But Firefly was a great show.
7429670
Correction made; thank you!
7429682
7429753
In another story, Twilight calls all TV shows documentaries.
Not what she's learning now; my headcanon is that ponies have barely scratched the surface of fractals and nondynamical systems. But much of the math that Silver Glow would have learned up to that point was unicorn . . . the stuff that they improved after they 'stole' calculus.
7429845
For me, it depends on how alert I am. Some days, I can get up at the most quiet setting . . . heck, in high school, my first alarm was simply a light on a timer, and that woke me up nearly every time.
But other days . . . one of the other nice features to a cell phone alarm is that you can set a lot of them.
She writes in it whenever she gets the chance. She said once that she wrote after her morning flight, but that was last semester, before her morning schedule changed. Now her normal routine is to write a little bit here and there whenever she can.
Although that is a particularly sloppy line, and I should probably change it. It relates to several deleted paragraphs which culminated with her farting in a tree, while a student on the ground looked around for the source of the noise.
7429857
You'll find out soon enough!
7430098
I've watched all of it at least twice, and I still didn't get the reference. The mashed potatoes? Something about being blown up?
It was a bit of a non-sequitur, which 7431497 correctly guessed.
The order they're in on the DVD set, which probably isn't the broadcast order.
My three top faves are Out of Gas, Objects in Space, and War Stories.
She'd have to. She mentioned once during the first quarter that she was writing them after her morning flight, but now that she's got a tighter morning schedule, and she's spending a lot of nights with Aric or Meghan, she's unlikely to have that window of time consistently open any more.
7430259
It's interesting how that's often a device in high fantasy stories, because I can't think of any reason why there couldn't be a modern society with magic. Granted, it would be very different from ours, but magic doesn't preclude cars or computers.
I sometimes wonder how we got the idea to eat certain things. I assume in many cases it was desperation, and then it turned into traditional cuisine.
Yeah, it was a big problem for Darwin's theory of evolution, because Europe had plenty of early equine fossils, no transitional fossils whatsoever, and then lots of modern horse bones. He knew, of course, that there had to be missing links, but why couldn't they find them in Europe? Well, it turned out because they weren't in Europe; they were all over America.
7430453
Oh man, that one's a classic. Also one of my favorites.
Silver Glow hasn't got that problem.
7430829
7430930
I like that it's got a price tag for Meijer. Do they not even check that?
7431922
No, but it's got its own unique taste, which I enjoy. I didn't realize that was a sugar, though.
Now I have a craving for malted milk balls.
7429441
I think Silver would appreciate that line/sentiment. Probably not what happens next, though. Ib4 Wash is her favorite character.
My teenage years in a nutshell.
Hmm... "Dear Princess Celestia, today I learned that friendship is magic and stuff."
7538598
"Dear Silver Glow;
It warms my heart to hear of another of my little ponies learning such an important lesson. Luna and I also absolutely love the dream catchers you included with your letter. Please see attached your complementary wings and horn.
Yours truly, Princess Celestia Sunny Skies Faust, Immortal Herald of The Sun, All Mighty Gaia of Equestria, and all around Best Pony. And Lu
mna.""Dear Silver Glow;
GET ME THE BUCK OUT OF HERE
Sincerely, Princess (I'm currently stuck in a dreamcatcher) Luna."
"I would've made a second one, but the waffle maker was already broken again when I got back."
Maybe on your weather wheel it might. But we have computers!
Also, I guess in Equestria they'd employ teams to do the calculations. (historically weather models were calculated by teams of women over a couple months. It was dark times.)
7440215
Wash was such a great character.
7442930
I know, right?
7538598
Hmm... "Dear Princess Celestia, today I learned that friendship is magic and stuff."
Hey, in Equestria friendship is a fundamental force. So it's good to learn that it's important on Earth, too. And she could do worse in a friendship letter. . . .
pre00.deviantart.net/5dcf/th/pre/f/2013/030/b/6/_vector__i_didn_t_learn_anything___simple_version_by_luckydonald-d5t9fb5.png
7795827
I really want someone to write a story where Luna does get stuck in a dreamcatcher.
The perils of college life. Get your waffle while you can!
(Actually, that's a good moral for life in general)
It's very likely that they do. In one of my stories, a BG character was going to be a calculator, but I changed her to a typist instead, just because I didn't think that most of my readers would actually know that calculations used to be done by teams with adding machines.
When it comes up in a longer story, though, I'm absolutely putting it in.
7803630
"Someone" doesn't have to mean "someone else" does it? Couldn't it be you? You're an amazing writer, and I really want to see how a story like this would turn out if you wrote it. Could you please at least consider writing it?
8344355
It could be me, eventually. Right now I've got quite the backlog on other projects I'm working through, and I doubt I'll be caught up before the end of the year.
I guess if nobody else does it, I'll pretty much have to, won't I?
8345393
Did you?
8730881
As of now, I have not.
Correction made; thank you!
I hadn't heard about the history of sugar beets before, but wikipedia says that they are actually derived from beets which were native to the Mediteranean and parts of Africa and Asia.
10027078
For me it's a mix of the touristy and the randomly meaningful stuff. One of my best memories from my exchange was when on one of the last evenings there, my friends found out I'd never had sushi in my life and insisted on driving to the next QFC to get reduced price supermarket sushi.
10029458
Hmm, yes they did. Research failure on my part. I just assumed they were a new-world crop, since few outside of places that grow them know that sugar beets are a thing that exists.
I’ll have to fix that.
Probably because people threw them up there. I remember when I was a kid, once I used a slingshot to launch rocks over the neighbor's houses. Not my best idea, in all honesty. I hope I didn't break anything.
11684237
Nah, it's a common way to protect industrial flat roofs. Put down gravel and tar on it, it's waterproof and durable, and a lot cheaper than some other options. They also provide some fire protection, according to the internet.