* * Archive: UREAL07.NEW * * Created on: Tue Aug 3 15:24:41 1999 * * Number of articles: 5 * * Welcome! This is one of the files that goes to make up the archives of * Project Galactic Guide. To find out what the heck PGG is, go look at its * main Web site at , where you'll be able to find * an FAQ. * * * The articles in this file are: * * Europa-4 Europa * DimensionsNo-2 Dimensions, Number Of * Fairies-3 Fairies * RedButton-3 Red Button, The * Voting-3 Voting * %t Europa %n 8U25 %s A Moon Of Jupiter %a Aleksander Solum (zolum@online.no) %d 19980511 %i Moons: Europa %i Residence Of The Rulers Of The Galaxy, The %i Rulers Of The Galaxy, The Residence Of The %i Galaxy, The Residence Of The Rulers Of The %x Jupiter, Sol V %x Earth %x Sun, The %x Opinions On UFOs %x Boredom %e Europa As It Is =============== Europa is one of the moons of that solar system planet Jupiter. Please do not confuse Europa with Europe, a continent of Earth! Europa is pronounced "you're -- oap -- aaah!". Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system; if you have a spacecraft, finding it is easy. Simply aim for the ugliest planetary system you can find (can't miss), and look for the biggest planet. If you have trouble finding it, I suggest the book "Finding your way in the galaxy using a home-made Beetle spaceship," available in all reasonably decent bookstores. Europa has fascinated historians from all over the galaxy. Hidden under its ice-covered surface there is a biosphere teeming with highly intelligent life. Now what a fascinating place in the galaxy to find a highly advanced civilization. Just a couple of light hours away is the barbaric planet Earth, completely unaware of being so close to the great brains of the galaxy! Europa orbits its mother planet Jupiter together with its three companion giant moons. The tides and perturbations by the powerful gravitational forces of these bodies flex and crush Europa's icy surface. This has resulted in its core being covered by liquid water. In this liquid water life quickly arose. After only a few million years, its inhabitants realized the silliness of living in cold water. They dug holes in the ice and created warm, comfortable homes, from which they ruled the galaxy. Despite their brilliant brains, however, these rulers of the galaxy have some disturbing and perverse fancies... They simply cannot stand being bored, and one of their favourite ways of passing time is to molest primitive civilizations. A frequent target is their neighbouring life forms, the human beings on Earth. Their most frequent abuse of the "Protection of Primitive Species Act" is to dress up in silly grey suits, land on Earth, and haul some human beings into their spaceship. They then pretend to do tests and stick pieces of metal in them, as well as do some more sinister things not fit for description in an uncensored encyclopedia. Europa From The Perspective Of Humanity ======================================= The story of humanity's raising interest in Europa is both interesting and disturbing. We will be using the currently favoured time system on Earth, the BC-AD system, which is explained in detail in Harry Golombek's book "Time measuring in primitive civilizations". Around AD 1640 an individual, known to others by the name Galileo Galilei, made a crude lens he called a telescope, and used it to look at the skies. Around the `star' Jupiter, he found four orbiting stars -- one of which was Europa. After a little while, even the inhabitants of Earth understood that Jupiter was really a planet surrounded by (at least) four moons. However, it was not until the early 1980s that they finally managed to find out what these moons looked like. The inhabitants of Europa started to fear detection, but managed to arrange it so that the human "Voyager" spacecrafts would take very bad photographs of Europa. However, because of some small miscalculations from the side of the Europans, and pure luck from the side of the humans, some pictures survived, showing a planet devoid of craters. The conclusion? Something was removing the telltale signs of asteroids hitting Europa. Speculations about liquid water began to surface. Currently the species have a very primitive spacecraft called Galileo orbiting Jupiter. To the horrible despair of the Europans the spacecraft has now begun a special focusing on Europa! What is even worse, a human leader, Mr. Clinton, has indicated he wants to send a spaceship to explore Europa in detail. While the inhabitants of Europa are busily trying to avoid this by destroying Clinton's career (by inventing sexual scandals, for example), nobody knows if these primitive beings might actually survive and discover the Europans. _Then_ what would the Europans do when they are bored? %e *EOA* %t Dimensions, Number Of %n 9U8 %s How Many Dimensions Are There? %a Matt Baier (Geiiga42@cjnetworks.com) %d 19960116 %x Fourth Dimension, Creatures From The %x Murphic Field In Daily Life, The %i Number Of Dimensions %k Probability %k Dimensions %k Improbability %e A lot has been written on the subject of dimensions, while even more has been thought about and then forgotten. Most people think that the Earth resides in three dimensions: height, width, and depth. This is incorrect. Some more intelligent people think that there are four: the three above, and time. This is also incorrect. A few crackpots think that it's a two-dimensional world, and we can move through to different planes. This is not only incorrect, but clearly insane. The truth is that there are at least five: we move freely in space, in a straight line through time, and in a more or less random direction in probability. The reason for this is that every minute of every day, everyone makes a choice. These choices take us into random directions on the improbability axis. Because we only know that it's there, the improbability axis is the hardest of the dimensions to deal with. We never really know where we are on it, or what choices will take us where. It's like following an unfamiliar car; you don't know where you're going until you get there. The problem with not knowing which direction a choice will take you is the same problem slackers run into: they decide not to work, and find themselves in a bad part of the improbability axis, i.e. living in a van down by a river, to borrow a phrase from the late Chris Farley. If they had been able to see where each decision took them, they would be in a whole lot less trouble. Another problem is that when faced with an opportunity to go to a better place in this dimension, we are more likely to mess it up than do the right thing. We go left when meaning to go right and drive off a cliff, and things like that. The secret, thus, is to never make decisions. Unfortunately, this is impossible. We are immediately faced with the problem that this (lack of) action is already a decision in itself. After this it gets increasingly complicated, and as most of our lives are complex enough, I won't cloud the problem any further. %e *EOA* %t Fairies %s The Tooth Fairy, Her Motives, Her Family %n 9U9 %a Gavin Schmitt (schmitt@vbe.com) %d 19970114 %x Tunneling Theory Of Sock Disappearance %k Socks %k Teeth %e Everyone knows about the tooth fairy, right? She's the 3-inch high little imp that trades your missing teeth for her spare change. Besides that, what do we really know about her? Well, more than you probably realize. From this day forward, I share that information with you. Fairy Homes ----------- Fairies like the Tooth Fairy (who prefers to be called Grizelda) do not live in the sky like most people believe. Others believe that Grizelda builds a large castle out of teeth for her family. That just isn't the case, though [1]. The fairies live in the rain forests of Brazil, lost beneath the thick foliage of vines and moss -- hoping to be undiscovered by humans for at least another decade or two (but with our rate of jungle-burning, this seems just a tad unlikely). The moisture in the tree sap keeps the teeth preserved for many years. Where Do The Teeth Go? ---------------------- This is a fairly common question among youngsters, and several senile old men who no longer have any teeth. The answer is quite simple, and most people have figured it out with little thought. Grizelda has a workshop where her children (each one called 'fairchild' [2]) take the preserved teeth, coat them with a special gel called amphetalax, and produce dentures (which get sold back to the people who originally gave up their teeth). This is a relatively new process, really. Before Grizelda was born in 1946, dentures were made of wood. How Do Fairies Reproduce? ------------------------- Well, unlike other humanoid beings, fairies are all female (besides the king) so cannot reproduce the 'natural' way. So to compensate for this, they were forced to resort to cloning. And at a rapid rate! Fairies live no more than seven years. Grizelda has been cloned over and over again [3]. The Bloody Head Fairy --------------------- This creature, featured on "The Ren And Stimpy Show" is not a true fairy at all. It is really a cursed ogre and is not to be trusted. On slow nights when bloody heads cannot be found, it makes its own bloody head if you know what I mean. If you come in contact with this beast, start chanting "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" backwards, or perhaps just run. You do not want to have a conversation with this guy -- if his breath doesn't kill you, his knowledge and fascination for the New York Jets will. The Sock Fairy -------------- Possibly the most misunderstood fairy of all, Chuckles the Sock Fairy makes her monthly rounds to the homes of the middle-classed, borrowing socks. It was once believed that she kept the socks for herself -- a thief. This is no longer the theory, however. She trades them for other socks, more or less. No joke! This is why someone washing a load of white socks will always end up one white sock short, and next time he washes a load -- a red sock shows up. The sock fairy is not mischievous or troublesome on purpose. She merely needs socks quite desperately, and always forgets who she borrows from so will more often than not return the wrong sock. No one has ever seen her in action. We don't know if Chuckles hides in the Chlorox Bleach (which she feeds on), or if she lives behind the dryer where no one ever cleans. Fairies... what a bothersome lot... [1] This belief is understandable, though, because it was once true. At least until Grizelda's father (The Fairy King) discovered that "dead" teeth rot even faster than those still in use... [2] Historians, genealogists, and scientists alike are all trying to find out the exact connection between fairies and Morgan Fairchild. [3] As seen in "Multiplicity" (or from any Xerox machine), each copy gets less and less like the original to a state of complete madness. We are not sure how this insanity is stopped. %e *EOA* %t Red Button, The %n 8U26 %s A Tantalizing Thing To Press %a Claire V. Gray  (gray42@juno.com) %d 19970921 %i Shiny Red Buttons %i Buttons, Red %i Interesting Thing To Press, An %i Press, An Interesting Thing To %k red %k button %e Phenomenon:  the red button, a tantalizing thing to press. Description:  shiny, candy apple red, round, usually set into some sort of surface. Explanation:  if you stick a person and a shiny red button in a room, they are more than likely to come in contact sooner or later.  Humans are attracted to red buttons, partly out of curiosity and partly because they want to take a risk.  The shiny red button holds a sense of mystery for the will-be-pressing person.  It has to be pressed.  Shiny red buttons _could_ either kill you, erase you, destroy the universe, send you across the galaxy, change your personality, or make you a very happy carbon based life form.  Shiny red buttons are just plain irresistible to anyone that may come across one and will eventually get pressed. %e *EOA* %t Voting %n 8U27 %s Electoral Lottery %a Aaron Rice (a.rice@ukonline.co.uk) %d 19970710 %x Law Of Gravity, The %x Origin Of Stupidity, The %x Problems With Democracy %i Electoral Lottery %i Lottery, Electoral %i Democracy, The Levers Of %k vote %k election %k lottery %e Some people don't see the point in voting: their democratic right to have a say in the government. In fact, the intelligent portion of these people abstain from voting for one reason only: they know how it works. The voting system, namely, is called the "Electoral Lottery", and is based on the idea that with a vote you can enter the opinion of your choice (within reason) into a giant sweepstake. The outcome of the vote is decided by a random choice from this sweepstake. Knowing this, you might think when someone else also votes for the opinion of your choice, the odds of that choice being chosen increases. This is not so, as lotteries don't allow duplicate votes. An advanced computer system, BIN (Ballot Identical aNnihilator), which can screen duplicate votes, has recently replaced the older and less reliable machine, VOTE (Verifying Ordinal Tactical Extractor) [1]. VOTE, in turn, replaced a rather tedious process of hand exclusion, which had continually resulted a rather undesirable outcome based on the proportion of votes people had actually made for different candidates. The upshot of this is that the chance that your choice reflects that of the outcome of the vote is one in as many different choices as there are. Effectively, as long as one person is voting for whatever you would have voted for, you have just as much chance seeing your choice come up whether you vote or not. So remember, when next you think about voting, it goes straight into the BIN. [1] Its sister computer, RIPPER (Removal Instrument for Personally Published Entries to Referendum), failed trials when it appeared that each and every vote was torn to shreds indiscriminately. The technology has since been stolen by several budding dictatorships. %e *EOA* * * End of file: UREAL07.NEW * Share and Enjoy! *