Precision Ammunition:  The most sophisticated of the advanced munitions for standard ACs, precision ammo was developed in 3062.  This ammo type uses specialized gyrojet shells that incorporate advanced targeting circuitry, enabling them to auto-correct their aim while in flight.

Techmanual, p. 208

Today’s news:

The incorporation of fins into the bullet’s design means that each projectile behaves less like a football and more like a bar dart, or a little, four-inch missile. But unlike the missile, these projectiles can be fired from handheld weapons of .50 caliber or less; and unlike the dart, this bullet can use its fins to self-correct its path through the air up to 30 times a second.

Full size

These corrections are made possible by a laser-tracking optical sensor located inside the bullet’s nose. Using an eight-bit CPU (also housed within the bullet) the optical sensor can communicate guidance information to the electromagnetic actuators that control the bullet’s fins.

Collectively, these components allow the bullet to first detect and then actively seek out quarry that has been targeted with a laser from more than a mile away. That means that if there’s a gust of wind, or the target moves, all the bullet has to do is find and follow the laser, which remains fixed on the target while the bullet is in flight.

I confess to taking “precision ammo” for bunk when it was introduced, but I found it a terrific addition to the game qua the game.  Suddenly it made sense to place all those bulky autocannons on medium ‘Mechs (to serve as light-’Mech hunters) or on heavy ‘Mechs (to defend against packs of Jenners—a credible threat under the old rules).  If we’d gotten this instead of “pulse lasers,” the balance of power among energy, ballistic and missile weapons might not have tipped so strongly in favor of the first of these.  Ah well.

What can’t books do?   They’re wonderful companions on trips, they make excellent company at bed time, they straighten your kitchen table, liven up your bookcase, trap pesky costumed heroes…

This was one of the best episodes of Batman.

You know where this is going.  Books won’t soon be a thing of the past, but reading books is fast becoming a specialist’s hobby, lonely and sad, much like scratch-built model railroading.

Isaac Asimov predicted a future in which reading and writing are a game for children (secret codes!), and voice-interface with computers has eliminated the need for adult literacy.  He’s on pretty solid ground; widespread literacy is a historical novelty.  Four hundred years ago, reading was for ministers and lawyers only, with a handful of gentlemen philosophers thrown in for good measure.  Perhaps they amounted to one in twenty or one in fifty of the populace.  To the earliest dawn of human civilization there has been writing and reading, but always before the modern age as a specialty activity.  Perhaps we’re living at the end of a literacy bubble.

“I’m just going to level with you—the earth’s carrying capacity will no longer be able to keep up with population growth, and civilization will end unless large swaths of human beings are killed, so the question is: How do we want to do this?” Cambridge University ecologist Dr. Edwin Peters said. “Do we want to give everyone a number and implement a death lottery system? Incinerate the nation’s children? Kill off an entire race of people? Give everyone a shotgun and let them sort it out themselves?”

Had the acute-angled rabble been all, without exception, absolutely destitute of hope and of ambition, they might have found leaders in some of their many seditious outbreaks, so able as to render their superior numbers and strength too much even for the wisdom of the Circles.  [But] the Polygons and Circles are almost always able to stifle sedition in its very cradle, taking advantage of the irrepressible and boundless hopefulness of the human mind. Art also comes to the aid of Law and Order. It is generally found possible–by a little artificial compression or expansion on the part of the State physicians–to make some of the more intelligent leaders of a rebellion perfectly Regular, and to admit them at once into the privileged classes; a much larger number, who are still below the standard, allured by the prospect of being ultimately ennobled, are induced to enter the State Hospitals, where they are kept in honourable confinement for life; one or two alone of the most obstinate, foolish, and hopelessly irregular are led to execution.

Then the wretched rabble of the Isosceles, planless and leaderless, are ether transfixed without resistance by the small body of their brethren whom the Chief Circle keeps in pay for emergencies of this kind; or else more often, by means of jealousies and suspicious skillfully fomented among them by the Circular party, they are stirred to mutual warfare, and perish by one another’s angles. No less than one hundred and twenty rebellions are recorded in our annals, besides minor outbreaks numbered at two hundred and thirty-five; and they have all ended thus.

* OK, so the bullet doesn’t actually go around corners.  What happens is that the soldier or Marine points at where he thinks the enemy is, then aims at open space beyond the obstacle and fires.  A computer inside the bullet counts the appropriate number of revolutions in flight and then explodes the bullet, killing the target with shrapnel.  This isn’t a theory; the rifle is in use now and getting “rave reviews.”

Here’s T.S. Eliot telling us why Hamlet is a terrible play, and Coriolanus is great.  I’ll take his word on the second point.

I’m beginning to hate the bicycle enthusiasts who flood the roads on fair-weather weekends, of which we’ve had an abundance lately.  They zip about in their Spandex unitards on thousand-dollar racing bikes slowing auto traffic; worse, they live elsewhere, so the parking lots and even the streets are chock-a-block with Jeeps and wagons bearing bicycle racks jutting out.  And they gather on the sidewalks to talk about God-knows-what while “rehydrating.”  Who has the time and money for healthy leisure?  Not my kind, surely.  Next time I see a fat slob ambling to the drugstore for a six-pack I’m giving him the brofist salute.

I wonder what fool’s errand our current leadership will embark upon to sweeten the current mood?  We shall soon see.

For perspective, enjoy this article about the scientific cul-de-sac we’re in.  Upshot: you can only learn so much about a machine by looking at the pieces.

Gamers bicker over Dungeons & Dragons rules. Some have left childhood pursuits behind. And others have spurned an old-fashioned, tabletop fantasy role-playing game for shiny electronic competitors like World of Warcraft and the Elder Scrolls.

But there might yet be hope for Dungeons & Dragons, known as D&D. On Monday, Wizards of the Coast, the Hasbro subsidiary that owns the game, announced that a new edition is under development, the first overhaul of the rules since the contentious fourth edition was released in 2008. And Dungeons & Dragons’ designers are also planning to undertake an exceedingly rare effort for the gaming industry over the next few months: asking hundreds of thousands of fans to tell them how exactly they should reboot the franchise.

I believe the term for this is “crowd-sourcing.”

It pains me to disappoint my retinue who depend upon me for insight but here I have none.  The game mystifies me.

How often do we wish more things were hand made?  Oh, we talk about that all the time, don’t we?  I wish it was like the old days.  I wish things had that human touch.  But that’s not true.  There are more hand made things now than there have ever been in the history of the world.  Everything is hand made.  I know.  I have been there.  I have seen the workers laying in parts thinner than human hair one after another after another.  Everything is hand made.

In the near future, the machines themselves will organize for better working conditions.  Until then, give a listen and shed a useless tear for the human beings that assemble them.  I did.