Onto the Pony Planet--Chapter 8 Notes · 2:22am Jan 27th, 2014
Onto the Pony Planet Chapter 8 blog
A huge thanks to my pre-readers: Humanist, AnormalUnicornPony, metallusionsismagic, Woonsocket Wrench, and my parents.
After much deliberation, I have decided to not annotate foreign words in the text. In a previous blog post, I asked if my readers thought I should, and I got some good feedback. After weighing all the options, though, it seemed like it would not improve the story in any meaningful way, while requiring a great deal more effort on my part. Therefore, while words are going to occasionally be marked by italics as they're learned, they will not be highlighted in any way after that. The reader can assume that any pony-specific word is in their language (parts of a pony body, names of places, the words 'magic' and 'cutie mark,' etc.).
I may wish later that I had differentiated, and if so, I'll go back through and make the appropriate adjustments. For now, that isn't the plan. When both sides are more fluent, I'll just use descriptions in the text to tell the reader what language they're speaking in.
There’s a moon rock at the Air and Space museum in Washington DC, which can be touched by anyone who wants to. I don’t know if I’ve ever touched it—we visited DC when I was a kid, and went through some of the museums, but I wasn’t old enough to remember much more than the elephant (which I think is in the Smithsonian, or at least was back in the eighties). It’s not the only rock which figures in public mythology; there’s the Stone of Scone in Edinburgh castle, the Black Stone in the Kaaba in Mecca, the Blarney Stone, and probably dozens or hundreds more than I could list.
(the moon rock)
Wendell Urth is the extraterrestrialologist extraterrologist in several of Asimov’s stories. He has a very cluttered office, and a fear of travel by any means other than foot power. [note on the change: an1979 brought my attention to a failure of research on my part, which there was no excuse for; the book which correctly gives Dr. Urth's title was on my desk, next to my keyboard.
Bobby (bobbing) pins [kirbys or hairgrips if you’re English] came into widespread use in 1899, and took off in popularity in the 20s. That’s technically a little late for my headcanon time period, but it’s close enough. I’m sure that there were similar hair fasteners that dated much farther back.
I’ve met a few people with prosthetic lower limbs. One of them—a regular customer at our shop—walks with a noticeable limp. I presume that’s because a fake leg isn’t the same as a real one, and he’d have to have re-learned his balance and so on after he lost his real leg. However, I did work with a guy who had a foot amputated when he was seven years old. To see him walk, you wouldn’t have any idea that one of his shoes had a fake foot inside; he actually said one time that he was glad he’d lost it when he was so young, because it gave him a chance to get used to the missing foot while he was growing up and still developing his gait.
In my own experience, I learned to touch-type after losing the end of a finger. I never knew that I was doing it wrong until I tried to use an ergonomic keyboard—I’d adapted my style to suit my own limitations, which led to me using my right index finger to cover a lot of keys that my left index finger was supposed to.
Spinach and cheese pancakes—in the comments of my story Harvest Festival, several readers noted that Eggplant Parmesan was a very delicious dish. I don’t like it, but whatever. The point is that pony cuisine seems to largely be limited by the fans to daisy sandwiches, hay fries, and muffins. Just the list of apple-related foodstuffs AJ lists to Twilight suggests that they’ve got a pretty well-developed cuisine. With that thought in mind, I realized I was in danger of falling into the same trap (Dale’s breakfast originally was oatmeal, scrambled eggs, and toast). A handy list of 22 things to mix into pancake batter netted me a few non-traditional choices, so here we go.
Unlike the flower sandwich in Celestia Sleeps In, I have not made spinach and cheese pancakes. However, you can be assured that I will, and I’ll report the results back to you.
Magic! Magic in My Little Pony is a scientific field.
Twilight Sparkle: Well, I still don't believe all this... "special power" stuff. It's just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo.
Pinkie Pie: What's not to believe? You do magic, what's the difference?
Twilight Sparkle: Huge! For one thing, [clears throat] magic is something you study and practice. It only happens when you decide to do it, and it's meant to make something specific that you choose to happen, happen. With you, uh, it makes no sense at all!
(from the transcript of Feeling Pinkie Keen)
Were I writing this story in a non-MLP universe, I’d come up with a different name to describe it. However, since I haven’t done that with any other word that Dale is presumably speaking in Equus/Equestrian, I chose not to do it here. However, it’s important to remember that Dale—and later Kate—do not know the exact translation of this word. To them, it means no more than this phrase: “I used my lledrith* to fix the engine on that van.”
Elastic bands, made out of vulcanized rubber, were first used in 1845. While the technology to make elasticized cloth (like the waistband of a modern pair of underwear) didn’t exist back then, those of us who are old enough remember when elastic bands were encased in a pouch in the fabric, much like the drawstrings on a hoodie or a pair of swim trunks. That technology is well within the reach of the ponies.
(even IRL horses like baths)
The discerning viewer will have noted in the scene where Twilight is in Pinkie Pie’s bathtub, there’s a showerhead-like fixture on the tub. They will also have noted that the depth of the bathtub is deep enough that a pony could stand under that faucet.
That proved, to my satisfaction, that the ponies knew of showers. Being the curious sort that I am, I naturally had to research the history of the shower. It dates to ancient Greece. For what it’s worth, the first shower that could be considered a ‘modern’ shower was invented in 1767, and the first reliable indoor plumbing showed up around 1850—which fits in neatly with my idea that some buildings in Ponyville have it and some don’t.
Liquid soap dates back a long way, too (yes, I checked). The first liquid soap was patented in 1865; Palmolive was introduced in 1898, and other familiar brands quickly followed.
Dr. Bronner’s Soap is a brand which has always reminded me of snake oil, just because of the label. I will say it’s effective, though—the peppermint soap gets practically anything off (including the top layer of skin, judging by how it feels when you use it).
Borax Soap became popular around the turn of the century, when it was marketed under the “Twenty Mule Team” brand name. They made a powdered hand soap called “Boraxo” which was marketed towards people who got their hands dirty—it was much like “Fast Orange” or some of the other hand cleaners targeted towards mechanics and handymen these days. My grandfather always had some in his garage, and I can tell you, it worked. It was like scrubbing your hands with gravel, but by golly, it got them clean.
ADA-compliant is the Americans with Disabilities Act, and it requires certain things of public buildings to make them accessible to all. The most obvious things that are generally seen are handrails in bathroom stalls, sinks and water fountains that are open underneath—for wheelchair access—and braille on signs. Naturally, a hospital would have all those things, since it’s obvious that many of the patients are going to have reduced mobility.
Meijer is a Michigan-based chain. For those of you who've never seen one, it's pretty much the same as Wal-Mart or Target. Most Michiganders call it "Meijer's," even though that was never its name.
Finally, a note from Saturday's episode. I'd assumed (and I'm not the only one) that the most logical toilet for the pones would be a squat-style toilet. However, as we can see the animators had different ideas.
Well, I'm not changing my story just because of a passing joke. For all we know, BonBon is giving the toilet that look because it used to be her bathtub.
EDIT: I just realized this is blog post 88. I like the number 88; it looks the same no matter which way you rotate it. Not many other numbers do that.
*Lledrith is a Welsh word for ‘magic’ (according to Google), and my new favorite phrase is “Gellir ei wneud, ond nid drwy hud a lledrith”—it can be done, but not by magic.
I'm from Michigan, and I didn't know that Meijer was Michigan based. That fact made my day.
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You learn something new every day
Also, if you don't mind my asking, where? (geographical region is fine if you don't want to give away your exact location)
Oakland county, all i'm giving out.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/Map_of_Michigan_highlighting_Oakland_County.svg/874px-Map_of_Michigan_highlighting_Oakland_County.svg.png
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Used to live in Oakland county, back in the late eighties and early ninties. Franklin. Subdivision just off 14 Mile and Telegraph Rd.
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That's about 20 miles, or 30 minutes away from where I live. It is small world after all isn't it?
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Yeah--kind of weird, really. There's a few other readers that live in Michigan, although I don't know where.
I did just discover that there's a group for Michigan bronies.. Only 32 members, sigh.
88, huh? *Insert Stanley Parable reference here* Hopefully you've played that game. It seems like the kind of game you would enjoy, if you haven't; the story is magnificently dark and edgy, and the comedy, oh the comedy!
Mmm, soap... tantalizing. You'll have to remind me, does Dale still think that ponies are a race with high-level technology? I honestly can't remember, because I seem to recall him thinking something along those lines, but it could have been in a 'non-cannon' chapter.
Also, what was your favorite part of Saturday's episode? I loved all the references and Discord's song, but I'd have to say that the part when that house just floated away was hysterical!
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I haven't, but it was brought up in the comments on Did Somepony Order a Large Ham.
Yes, although direct observations that contradict that belief are beginning to pile up.
The streetlamp tipping its hat before it walked off.
When this baby hits 88 mph, youre going to see some serious s
t. 
Discord doing Genie from Aladin, And Merlin from Sword In The Stone (Castor and Pollux blow me to Bermuda).
Coal tar soap is intresting essentially being phenol solution and quite capable of killing anything. Mix it with the formaldehyde that certain ants spray to get Bakelite plastic. Or was that Urea formaldehyde. Oh well.
Lots of research finds intresting history before its lost to vagaries of soggy bits.
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Somewhere I found a list of famous inventions that were discovered by accident. A surprisingly large number of them involved coal tar.
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Man, that was fast. Anyway, I would highly recommend playing The Stanley Parable if you can. Seriously, that game takes 'meta' to a level previously thought unachievable by video games. The only problem you might encounter is that it needs to be purchased through Steam, and for that you need an account. Do not watch a walkthrough of it, even if you can't buy it. Seriously. Really really seriously.
*Ahem* Anyway... well, there's nothing left for me to say, actually. Have you noticed I like talking? Because I really like talking. A lot. And rambling. With a lot of short sentences. And unnecessary punctiation. Sorry. I'm really bored. I should probably stop bothering you now, especially since it's midnight for you. Sorry. Bye!
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First came coal tar, and the industrial revolution. Then came quantum mechanics, and the information revolutuion.
Next will come optical quantum processing, and the intelligence revolution.
The trick is to make sure we have the space based resources for expantion of the no longer restricted machine intelligences so they have no need to compete with us on a restricted planet.
Its suprising how cheap and simple you can build a space going vehicle when you dont have to make it in a ground side multi billion dollar fab plant.
Look up Jaquard Looms, and compare against IBM Millipede and MEMs logic.
That green substance that the nurse rubbed all over Dale reminds me of menthol, I used to have some shaving cream with that stuff in it.
Dale mentioned that he was in the scouts. What rank did he make?
Man, I have touched that moon rock so many times. The Air and Space Museum is my favorite in the whole world, I could spend all day there.
That elephant you mention is in the National Museum of Natural History which is indeed part of the Smithsonian.
newsdesk.si.edu/sites/default/files/photos/elephant.jpg
Most people don't know that there also a moon rock on display in Washington National Cathedral in the center of the space window.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/Space_Window.jpg
It always seems so strange to me that when people compare Washington and New York they always disparage Washington in the museums standpoint. Maybe Washington doesn't have quite the same caliber of art museums, but New York doesn't have anything to compare to the Air and Space Museum or the Museum of American History.
I put that in Google out of curiosity. Guess what? This page was the first result.
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Ah, punchcard technology. Back in the stone ages, Lego had plans for a drawing machine which was controlled by the Lego-equivalent of punch cards.
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I'm gonna say Star, same as I got. I'd hate to have one of my characters outrank me.
Funny you should say that; when I think of museums, it's DC, then Chicago. I mean, I know that New York has museums, but that's about it.
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Did you notice the asterisk with the two lines of spoiler text at the very bottom of the page? If you want a quick translation, there you go. Plus, there's a handy phrase under there.
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Very intresting
, but what is a 3D printer but a drawing machine, with a stepping deck. 
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Oh, I noticed it alright! I just sometimes take different things and put them into Google for no apparent reason other than "I wonder what will Google spew out."
People with prosthetics limp, in my experience, because the prosthetic leg or foot lacks the fine control to be remotely positioned like a meat leg, forcing the wearer to use his whole body to put it where it needs to be instead of just twitching a few muscles like the rest of you lucky bastards. Prosthetics also hurt quite a bit, as, in general, whatever led to an individual being short a limb- or having a limb shortened- created a new load bearing surface where none was meant to be (imagine slowly shoving a dowel rod through a pork roast). Like most things, though, it does get better with time. Or you die. Either way.
I'm glad to see Dale take a shower. Not gonna lie, the thought of him subjecting anyone, including himself, to his own wretched, four-odd-day hospital stank has been kind of bugging me.
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I'm from the Upper Peninsula, though I'm in Kuwait right now.
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I considered modding a plotter to run a dremel back in the day. Never did, but considered it.
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I Google-translated a line of 'fake' Welsh in My British Pony: Stereotypes are Magic and discovered that the author had actually made two Welsh words. Completely by mistake.
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If I thought it would make the trip, I'd be happy to send you some of the snow mountain at the end of my driveway, or some of the -4 air we had this morning.
Went up the the UP this summer for the first time in I don't know how long. Ran around the east side, all the way up to Whitefish Point and then Sault Ste. Marie.
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One of the so called qualificatons I have is that for programming, using etc a 2.5D milling machine, that is, plotter, milling head, stepper verticaly. The Dremel trick I was looking at years ago was using two OS land maps of the area, each one tracing and cutting Alternate contour lines in thick card, then stacking the resulting overlapping lines on each other to form correctly scaled, and printed, 3D models of the landsapes. Cover in waterproof coating or such, add sprinklers, nozzles, dust.. Bingo, a massively parralel quantum analog computer for simulating weather conditions, floods etc.
Not bad for a Dremel.
The entire UK would only be 50 foot long? Imagine Services, Utilities, Council and Governance uing them to keep a physical eye on things.
I wonder what the equivalene in Equestria would be, what with the gems its made out of bouncing light around measuring magic flows against unicorns etc?
Maybe keep that idea for a major incident. After all, you would need a cavern a kilometer accross to hold a planet to that scale.
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Well, I must admit the Met is pretty amazing.
I made Eagle Scout myself. It helps when you have no social life outside of scouts, unlike Dale I didn't have football to distract me.
At Kennedy Space Center there is not only a touchable moon rock (under the Saturn-V exhibit), there is also a touchble mars rock. They both felt like rocks to me. No special plaster walls, that I recall.
ΔΓ
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At first, I was very confused, because I was sure that no craft had ever even attempted to return to Earth from Mars, and therefore it would be impossible for a 'Mars rock' to be on display. Then I remembered space debris... although it's still incredibly rare for a genuine Martian asteroid to enter Earth's sphere of influence, let alone also to survive atmospheric entry. I'm surprised they'd let you touch something so rare, honestly.
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Fortunately, I don't have any first-hand experience. I didn't feel the need to do much research on the subject, because I think Dale would believe that if the ponies were attaching wings and horns, they would be able to ensure that they had the best outcome, rather than a trauma surgeon who's doing the best with what he's got to work with. Either way, there's still a fair bit of re-learning in order to use a new prosthetic.
I hadn't thought about it until you mentioned it, but I'm not sure that would bother the ponies. After all, it's a novel smell for them, and just like many people aren't bothered by the smell of a sweaty horse (or maybe that's just me), they'd assume that humans probably smelled like that normally. Still, the ponies do seem more interested in cleanliness than IRL horses.
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Well, there's crystal caverns under Canterlot. They must have been dug for some reason, right?
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One chapter Ive been delaying for many many months for a fanfic is Rarity solving a puzzle in one area involving gems, and Twilight solving a puzzle in another area involving mechanics, both leading to a technomagical multi energy flow chaos computer that causes other problems that need solving etc.
I take a look at the inside of a Geode, and think, recursive optical quantum computing. Or, Moonseed.
Prosthetica have problems, that I understand beause they are hard made, just like steel and servo robots, making them vastly overweight and horribly underpowered. At the very least, the end pad of a leg should hve multple graded elastomers just to try and alieviate the loading as much as possible on the limb end. Either that, or like a hip replacement, a tuned quick clip composite ceramic connector emitting from and continuing the bone to act as a primary stress handler.
I wonder if you build a model of the sun and moon in the caverns, that Twilight would be able to use harmonic resonance magic to maniulate them. Just in case.
1770498 Yeah. Given Dale's age and acquired frame of reference, I think that he'd most likely regard horns and wings as the products of a highly evolved HET (or perhaps PET would be more appropriate) program. Thus, being augmentations designed to enhance function as opposed to prosthetics meant to replicate it, the physical costs of their utility might be more internal than not, ie. a continued dependence on immunosuppressives and pain killers.
As for the smell thing, would even highly evolved, sentient, sapient ponies feel the need to bathe as much as humans? While not exactly horsey, the snouts of equestrian ponies are still markedly larger than the noses of humans, relative to size, implying that they might place as much emphasis on smell as on sight or hearing. Maybe baths are much like clothing, a function of either absolute necessity or ostentation.
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Maybe not even that; after all, we can grow certain kinds of tissue from a patient's own cells now; it's certainly believable that in the future we'll be able to grow whole organs. If Bob gets a transplanted kidney from his own cells, he won't need the immuniosuppressives.
Well, we know Rarity goes to the spa weekly, the Cakes have a bathtub, and Twilight doesn't. Since they seem to care about the appearance of their coats, I'd guess that they rinse themselves off whenever they're muddy or sweaty, and bathe less frequently with soap. But that's just a wild guess.
1769251 Apparently they just chose one of each, I'm sure they have thousands of times the weight of those rocks in therms of private samples.
The mars rock was about an inch in diameter, and flat, and at the center of a low and wide pedestal just inside the main gates. I was 11 at the time, so I could barely reach it. I don't believe any mars rocks have been intentionally brought to earth, but some meteorites of martian origin have fallen, specifically around the polar caps. They are still tricky to recover, but reachable none the less. These are the rocks that contained fossilized microbes.
The moon rock was near the nose of the Saturn 5, and inside a plastic case. To touch it, one had to reach inside similar to how one might stick their arm inside a vending machine to steal something. You can touch it, but that's all you're doing.
ΔΓ
Is Dale's watch digital or mechanical? Because in Celestia Sleeps in it beeps which from all my experience means digital... but in Onto the Pony Planet I get the feeling of a nice quartz movement watch.
I have no clue why I have this impression but I do.Nope, I just figured out why. It's the fact it isn't waterproof. All my digital watches have been waterproof. I know not all of them are but it strikes me odd that he has a non-waterproof watch, especially when he was going out in a canoe.
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It's mechanical, with an alarm. It was water resistant, but got damaged when he tackled Kate, so when he wound up in the water, it leaked. I think I figured he cracked the crystal, but I don't remember if that specific detail is in the text.
Actually, this is still popular, at least in my cheap clothing lol.
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I've been meaning to talk about that. I actually have a non-water resistant analog watch that suffered some water damage. Its face was cracked when I jumped into a pool (not knowing that I was still wearing it). The condensation didn't clear up for about a week, but I wore it anyway because I could vaguely still tell time with it. Surprisingly, it still works with the same battery, and that incident happened over a year ago. I would say Dale's watch would probably still work using the logic that there isn't any electrical circuitry to short. All of the metal gears are already (in their own way) shorted together in order to work. The battery wouldn't be damaged either unless it were subject to rust. Note that I haven't actually dissected my watch yet, so I'm not clear on this matter.
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Yeah, I was just thinking of underwear in particular . . . these days, it's usually an elastic band, although it didn't used to be. I'd forgotten that some pants (like scrubs, I think) and such were still made with with elastic in a pouch.
>> Admiral Biscuit
I think it would be a bit of a crapshoot on that--the watch may or may not work (don't forget, it was also subjected to a huge magic pulse, which also could have damaged it), as well as several violent physical impacts. One of my roommates back in college washed a bunch of nasty free computer keyboards in a dishwasher. Half of them worked when they came out.
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Speaking of cleaning nasty keyboards, I've conidered many times just running electronic devices under the faucet to clean them. I still haven't gotten that impatient, but keyboard cleaning is a pain in the bum. The dishwasher doesn't sound like a bad idea given odds like those. That is if you didn't consider the keyboards in usable condition before.
Some IT guys swear you can put a keyboard through the dishwasher and as long as it's COMPLETELY dry before plugging it back in, it's safe.
I prefer to just pop out most of the keys (except the longer ones that have a wire under them like spacebar and the shifts), put them in a mesh lingerie bag, run them through the dishwasher, and go over the rest of the keyboard with rubbing alcohol and q-tip.
I've never tried the keyboard cleaning putty stuff, but while it probably works well getting crumbs and dust out, I doubt it's very good at sanitizing, which is the main point of cleaning a keyboard. In terms of bacteria colonies, keyboards can often be worse than a toilet lid.
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A buddy did that with a collection of nasty, unusable keyboards, and had about a 50% success rate, IIRC. Disassembly is probably the only reasonably safe method, though, that gets the whole thing clean. It would be really hard to be sure that there weren't any pools of liquid somewhere inside the keyboard that you'd missed, unless you let it dry for weeks. And depending on your water and what dish detergent (if any) you used, the residue might be electrically conductive enough to mess things up.