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Lyle Zapato

The Monorail Vs. Pneumatic Inteli-Tube

Lyle Zapato | 2004-06-01.6010 LMT | Cascadia | Monorail Danger | Pneumatics
Typical monorail commute
(Fire enhanced by ZPi for dramatic effect.)

Yesterday, a Seattle monorail caught fire -- the blue one, to be precise. No one was seriously injured, but the incident only further highlights the inherent danger in monorailular transportation methods, that of spontaneous combustion.

Some in the Republic of Cascadia -- mostly Federalists -- are pushing to have our entire nation monorailized. However, in their irrational zeal to chase after some failed 1962 vision of the future, they are overlooking a much better and safer solution to our nation's transportation problems: the Inteli-Tube Pneumatic Transportation System.*

The ITPTS is immune to the sorts of uncontrollable fires that monorails experience. Because pneumatic tubes are designed to create pressure differentials to push the personal transportation pods through them, they can be easily depressurized in an emergency to quickly extinguish any fires. Let's just see the monorailists try and depressurize Seattle! Furthermore, instead of oxygenated air -- which acts as a fire accelerant and through which monorails have no choice but to travel -- pneumatic tubes can be pressurized with inert gasses such as argon to completely eliminate the chance of a fire starting. None of these safety benefits have any effect on commuter comfort since passengers are safely sealed in their pressurized pods.

How many more monorail fires do there need to be before Cascadians realize that monorails are dangerous and that pneumatic tube transportation systems offer us our only hope, for both the future and today? If you ask me, one is already too many.

* The ITPTS was developed by Lyle Zapato & ZPi Laboratories.

Lyle Zapato

How To Disappear Completely (As Seen On TV!)

Lyle Zapato | 2004-06-01.2900 LMT | Technology | Fashion | General Paranoia

In public places, cameras watch our every move. They record where we go, what we do, and who we meet -- even what personal hygiene products we buy. While ostensibly for our security, these cameras are in fact being used by shadowy forces to monitor our lives and learn our secrets to later use against us. Is there a way for the conscientious paranoid to avoid the unblinking gaze of the modern panopticon? Indeed, there is.

Television meteorologists and digital effects technicians use a technology called chromakey -- also often called "blue screen" -- to aid in compositing different elements into a scene. The most common use of this technology involves having a subject stand in front of a usually blue or green screen that is then replaced electronically with some background image, such as a weather map or CGI alien cityscape. Although technicians try to avoid it, chromakey can also affect a foreground subject; for instance, a bright blue tie will result in the illusion of a gaping hole in a weatherman's chest.

While this downplayed side-effect of chromakey technology may be undesirable to those trying to project the image of weathermen as solid purveyors of truth, it can be used to the paranoid's advantage: by wearing a costume made entirely of chromakey screen material, a paranoid can become invisible to electronic surveillance cameras.

Here at ZPi Laboratories, we are working on such electrooptical camouflage in the form of a hooded unitard made of bright blue or green colored spandex, which I call the Chromatard. I believe that this outfit -- which is form-fitting to help the wearer avoid unnecessary, camera-detectable interaction with the environment -- will become as popular with the paranoid community as the AFDB has become. Unfortunately, it is currently unusable outside of laboratory conditions since its bright color will attract the unwanted attention of any enemy agent not hidden behind an electronic camera. However, this should be less of a problem in the future when nearly all forms of surveillance will be mediated by electronic visualizing devices -- either "security" cameras or the eyes of robots. This future will belong to the Chromatarded paranoid.

Lyle Zapato

Cicada Zapaticon Products

Lyle Zapato | 2004-05-30.3822 LMT | Crass Commercialism | Art
Lyle Zapato

Walking Downhill Perpetually To Prosperity

Lyle Zapato | 2004-05-29.0000 LMT | Technology

In The Two Towers, Treebeard the talking, walking tree muses that he always likes going south because it somehow feels like going downhill. While meant as folksy humor, this actually isn't far from the truth (at least in the northern hemisphere, where presumably all the talking, walking trees live).

As one walks across the surface of a spinning planet toward its equator, one is moving farther away from the planet's axis of rotation, meaning one is traveling at a greater speed around it and is thus experiencing stronger centrifugal force -- the pseudoforce pushing objects away from the center of rotation that is really the consequence of the conservation of momentum. As the centrifugal force increases, the centripetal force of gravity remains relatively constant (in reality, planets bulge at the equator, so gravity is slightly greater,) resulting in a decrease in gravity's subjective effect. Therefore, walking south while in the northern hemisphere becomes progressively easier since one weighs less with each step (that is until one hits the equator, then it gets progressively harder until one hits the south pole and it becomes impossible). The difference in effort is, of course, not consciously perceptible to us, although it may be to massive, tree-sized creatures. So Treebeard might really have felt like he was going downhill afterall.

In M. C. Escher's famous illustration "Ascending and Descending," hooded figures perpetually ascend or descend a staircase that loops continuously on itself. This seemingly impossible situation was illustrated by Escher using geometric slight of hand, but could it not be possible in reality? In fact, it could, and Treebeard was 90° from the secret of Escherian perpetual downhilledness: he should have gone east!

When walking eastward on Earth, you are walking with the rotation of the planet (your planet may vary). Since your momentum would send you at a tangent to the surface if not for Earth's gravity, you are falling somewhat with every step east -- in other words, you are going downhill. Contrariwise, when going west you are stepping into the Earth as it rotates at you, requiring extra effort to lift yourself on top of it -- exactly like going uphill.

To realize Escher's impossible staircase, we would need only to build stairs circling the globe along a line of latitude. The stairs would need to have a very low rise to run ratio, and be slightly curved toward the Earth at a radius to balance gravity and linear momentum when traversing them. The effect would be most pronounced at the equator; however, budget concerns may force the stairs to be built farther north or south, with grippy soled shoes used to compensate for the necessarily angled runners. Much like the planned space elevator, this project would be one of both international cooperation and global economic benefit from energy savings -- imagine armies of moving men and stevedores from all the nations of the world harmoniously carrying crates down the stairs ever eastward, satisfied in the knowledge that they are doing less work than if they were going the other direction.

Can humanity even afford not to build the stairs? I think not.

Lyle Zapato

The Terrible Secret Of Tundra

Lyle Zapato | 2004-05-28.0001 LMT | General Paranoia | Cascadia | Technology

Here's something from the Vaults of Unfinished Projects... a crude rendering -- created by ZPi Imaging Laboratories from partial blueprints smuggled out of Ottawa by Windingo agents sympathetic to Cascadian independence -- of a Canadian tool of destruction known as the McLuhanator Mark XI:

McLuhanator Mark XI rendering McLuhanator Mark XI diagram

This dastardly device -- which is being secretly built in a facility somewhere in the Northwest Territories -- is the end result of decades of Canadian giant-robotic-arm research, and was designed for the sole purpose of keeping British Columbia under Federalist subjugation. It's estimated to stand at over 100 feet tall and have the stomping power of over 70 enraged elephants, making an army of these megabotic weapons more than a match for the Sasquatch Militia. (In light of this development, Sasquatch Command has initated a plan to repel the megabots using an ingenious array of forest traps involving swinging logs and tripwires.)

What other horrors does the vast tundra of Canada hide? Probably nothing else, but this is horrific enough.

Lyle Zapato

O Brave New Layout, That Hath Such Clichés In It

Lyle Zapato | 2004-05-28.0000 LMT | Site

The index page was getting musty, so I redid it. As you've no doubt noticed, since you are reading it right now, I have added a mini-blog. And next week I'll start a grunge band and enter a roller-disco competition. Anyway, this isn't really a real blog (it's just some static text with no back end yet,) but I thought I should have a place on the site for general anouncements and musings, should I have any, and the blog Bauplän is the path of least resistence. Plus, I needed something to help balance out the sidebar which is now taller than it was before.