vol. 16 no. 2 - March 2000
The U.S.S. Alaric is a North Carolina chapter of STARFLEET, the International Star Trek Fan Association. Starfleet and the Alaric recognize Paramount’s sole ownership of all Star Trek copyrights. Annual individual member dues to the international club are $15.00 per year.
U.S.S. Alaric
How To Join:
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Carolina Communicator
Carolina Communicator (c) 2000 by USS Alaric. Promotional materials copyrighted by Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios, and other companies, and selected submissions copyrighted by individual contributors. INTERIM EDITOR: Fleet Captain Richard Heim
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The views expressed in the Carolina Communicator do not necessarily reflect those of the staff, or all of the members of the Alaric.
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Alaric
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ELECTED OFFICERS:
President (Captain) - Richard Heim
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FCapt. Richard Heim |
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Captain's Log, Stardate 200002.21, Fleet Captain Richard Heim reporting. We picked up a special Starfleet HQ team at Deep Space 12 and are now on our way to the Tri-Kappa Delta sector. This is well off the beaten path. It's an unusual mission in many ways, foremost being I, as ship's captain, haven't been informed why our destination has changed. I never have liked HQ staff mucking around my ship without telling me what's going on. I have been receiving unusual reports from my officers and department chiefs of strange malfunctionings happening in many ship's systems. Didn't have this many operational problems before our visitors arrived. May need to go head to head with Admiral Thunderbarre...
Late last year, the CO of a neighboring ship asked us if we'd be interested in hosting the Region One Summits. After considerable investigation and discussion of the crew, and checking with others within R/1, the Alaric decided that this is not something we want to pursue at this time. We're happy with the job the Bennu is doing. Speaking of the Summit, check out the Region One News section below.
0002.12 Regular Monthly Meeting: Had a fantastic turnout at this meeting. Dale Anderson is now in charge of our Campbells Label Project. This project collects Campbells product labels for Eliada Childrens Home, who can use them to purchase needed equipment. The Alaric Council decided how the ship will vote on the R/1 Summit ballot (we voted to keep the Summit in Gatlinburg for the next 3 years, and vote every 3 years on its location). David reported that Wal-Mart will be opening not one, but two Super Stores in the Asheville area soon. Ian reported that our eBay fund-raisers are doing well. The meeting was capped with our regular monthly door prize drawings and a special session of the Star Trek Uno game, which proved to be pretty popular!
The Region One Summit will be held the last weekend of April (April 28-30) in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Check out their web page for details (http://r1summit.sfi.org/) or email Bennu CO, Fleet Captain Ben C. Redding, at Trekscotty@msn.com
Vice Admiral Chris "Tigger" Wallace has posted a "proof of concept" web page for The Ships of STARFLEET Project. Details can be found at: http://www.nwlink.com/~tigger1/asdb/STARFLEET.pdf (file size is 750K).
The 2000 Starfleet International Conference will be held September 1-3 at the Sheraton Burlington Hotel & Conference Center in Burlington, Vermont. For information: http://www.sfi.org/ic2000
Issue # 96 of the Starfleet Communique was mailed recently. Did everyone get their copy? Vice Admiral Allyson M.W. Dyar, Starfleet Chief of Communications, reported that issue # 97 will be sent to the printers soon.
Capt Dallas Vinson, Director/FDC Starfleet Cadet, noted that the Cadet FDC web site recently moved to a new address: http://fdccadet.iwarp.com
The new Starfleet membership application and renewal forms can be found at: http://www.sfi.org/html/docs.html
Speaking of renewals, the following memberships will expire within the next four months: Ian Johnsson, David Moxley. Please renew soon!
(from the 10/7/99 Bits and Pieces)
In order to succeed in life you must find your F.O.C.U.S.
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F - Find what your talents are
O - Observe your mentors
C - Challenge yourself (set goals)
U - Utilize your resources
S - Strive to make a difference
- [Bart Conner, cited in The Most Important Thing I Know About the Spirit of Sport, William Morrow &: Company, Inc.
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Cmdr. Ian "Krell" Johnsson |
XO's report goes here
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Alaric Department Reports |
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DEPARTMENT HEADS:
Chief Science Officer - Richard Heim
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| Computer Operations Dept. | Cmdr. Ian "Krell" Johnsson |
http://home.sprynet.com/~ian/alaric/alaric.htm
CompOp's report goes here
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| Chief Science Officer | FCapt. Richard Heim |
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Chief Science Officer's Log, Stardate 200002.23, Fleet Captain Richard Heim reporting. Have had to recalibrate long-range scanners. Twice. Probably due to our HQ visitors. But long-range scanners are now detecting a high level of M radiation, originating from the Tri-Kappa Delta sector, which we couldn't see before. Maybe the HQ guys are doing some good, after all.
http://alaricrh.home.sprynet.com/science/AlaricSci.htm
The Alaric Science Department sent a representative to the Annual Conference of the American Meteorological Society which was held in Long Beach, California in January. This is the annual meeting of several thousand professional meteorologists nationwide (with representatives from other countries as well) at which reports are given on research being done. There's also an Exhibit Hall where organizations and companies can display their products. In my real-life job as meteorologist, I presented a research paper on the Climate Reference Network at the Integrated Observing Systems Symposium.
As always, if you're interested in running an Alaric department, we have plenty of positions open to you. The following departments need chiefs: Communications, Flight Operations, Recreation/Entertainment, Recreation/Gaming, Recreation/Sports, Science/Fortean Research Dept., Planetary Sciences, Security, Starfleet Marines, and Weapons. Let me (since I'm CO as well as CSO) know which one(s) you want: by email, AlaricRH@sprynet.com, or regular mail, P.O. Box 2072, Asheville, NC 28802. Check the Alaric Handbook for requirements. Two important requirements are: you must be OTS-qualified, and you need to make regular reports.
FCapt. Richard Heim
Chief Science Officer
USS Alaric
RDC REGION ONE SCIENCES NEWS
The 9912 Region One Sciences newsletter has been published. If you would like a copy, send me a large (legal-size) SASE (to: Richard Heim, P.O. Box 2072, Asheville, NC 28802 USA). The Region One Sciences newsletter likely will go electronic (like this CC) with the 0003 issue.
The winner of the contest to design the R/1 Science Award certificates is Capt. David Klingman, CSO of the USS Hawkeye, R/1 Science ARDC, and Starfleet FDC Science. We are now in the process of accepting nominations for the 1999 R/1 Sciences Awards. For details, check out the Region One Sciences web page: http://alaricrh.home.sprynet.com/science/R1Science.htm
FCapt. Richard Heim
Regional Division Chief, Sciences
Starfleet Region One
SCIENCE NEWS
I finally joined the SETI universe in February! After buying a new PC that runs Windows 98 and has enough RAM (minimum 32MB), I loaded the University of California-Berkeley's SETI@Home screen saver. And it looks great!. It's also a good feeling to know that I'm contributing (at least in some small way) to the real scientific exploration of the universe. For those of you who don't know, SETI@Home is software that analyzes radio waves recorded by the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope, looking for tell tale signs of radio signals sent by extraterrestrial civilizations. The software runs in the background on your PC when it is not in use (i.e., it functions as a screen saver). You can get more information and download the software from the University of California-Berkeley's web site: http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/windows.html. You can also get there from The Planetary Society's web site: http://planetary.org/news/SETI-join-update.html.
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| Social Sciences Dept. | LT.jg. Dale Anderson |
Archived by LTJG Dale Anderson
The Social Impact of Archimedes
According to a recent Science News report, an ancient manuscript hidden away from public view provides significant insights into the way Archimedes did his mathematical work more than 2,000 years ago. The manuscript, known as the Archimedes Palimpsest, is the only source of Archimedes' treatise "On the Method of Mechanical Theorems." As the oldest surviving Archimedes manuscript, it's the closest we can get to the mathematician himself, says science historian Revlei Netz of Stanford University, who has been studying the relic. Dating from the 10th century AD, the Archimedes text survives as writing on parchment that 2 centuries later was cut apart, roughly scraped, and overwritten with a description of a church ritual. The document was first rediscovered in Constantinople in 1906 by the Danish scholar Z L Heiberg. Aided only by a magnifying glass, however, he could not read every word of the text. The manuscript vanished from view in the 1920s before resurfacing in France in 1998. It was auctioned off last year for a $2 million bid by an anonymous buyer. The use of ultraviolet photography and digital imaging technologies -- unavailable to Heiberg -- now makes it possible to read beneath the lines about the church ritual and see important details of Archimedes' text and diagrams. The geometric diagrams, for example, suggest that Greek mathematicians tended to emphasize qualitative relationships over quantitative accuracy, Netz notes. Although no one expects any major mathematical discoveries, scholars may very well obtain a better understanding of Archimedes' original mode of thinking.
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| Planetary Sciences Dept. | (Dept. Chief currently vacant) |
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Mathematics Section Report: Tribble Troubles Times Ten
C/3 Joe McCollum |
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I had discussed this some time ago over e-mail, but recent developments require its discussion again. One wonders about the fate of one Cyrano Jones. Tribbles produce an average litter of 10 every half-day, and in three days, one tribble had become 1,771,561 (TOS). In the short story by James Blish, the number is somewhat less due to the size of the storage bins, the amount of available food, and so on.
Spock estimates it will take 17.9 years for Cyrano Jones to dispose of every tribble.
In the same episode, Dr. McCoy examines several tribbles and observes that they are dead or near death due to their having eaten poisoned grain (quadrotriticale). McCoy has also learned that withholding food from tribbles can stop their reproduction.
Is it known that every tribble has eaten the poisoned grain? It is not. Let us assume that:
- Tribbles with abundant food will reproduce at the rate of 10 times their own number every half-day
- Tribbles with subsistent food will not reproduce at all.
- Many tribbles have eaten poisoned grain and are dead or dying.
- There are X tribbles that are alive and well, and
- 1771561-X tribbles that are dead or dying.
- Cyrano Jones disposes of tribbles at the rate of Y tribbles per half-day.
- Whether a tribble is dead, decomposed, or not reproducing, Cyrano Jones will have to dispose of it.
The number of tribbles at time t is:
Z(t) = 1771561 - X + X*11^t - Y*t
where
Z is the number of tribbles, and
t is the time in half-days.
Suppose that all tribbles have eaten poisoned grain. Since 17.9 years times 365.25 equals 6538 days, that is about 13000 half-days. Cyrano Jones must dispose of 135 tribbles per half-day.
However, if there is even one healthy tribble, it can not be guaranteed to not reproduce. It is one thing to say that tribbles must be kept away from the food supply; it is something else to actually do it. Tribbles may reproduce very quickly. Put another way, if nearly all tribbles recover from food poisoning, the number of tribbles at the end of 17.9 years could be as high as 1113000, and Jones will have to dispose of them at the rate of 1112995 per half day. Of course, the total number of tribbles that the planet could support might be much less than this number.
Following large population explosions are population crashes; every introductory biology student knows this. The first germs exposed to penicillin died quickly, but the survivors were supergerms -- more resistant to the drug. One wonders if tribbles surviving the poisoned quadrotriticale might turn out to be their own version of supertribbles -- or shall we say, Octotribbles?
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| Medical Sciences Dept. | RAdm. Susan Bolick |
Medical Dept. has been quiet... the CMO has only recently returned to work. I have mostly recovered from successful shoulder surgery and will hopefully be starting pool therapy soon... the kind that involves water, not balls and a cue.
I continue to teach Child Passenger Safety to new parents in my paid job, and my CPS technician certificate is now hanging in a place of pride in my office. I also continue to volunteer at the Red Cross as a platelet donor and Health and Safety Instructor.
Get the Keys:
How You Can Intervene
The Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and The Advertising Council’s Innocent Victims public service campaign emphasizes the need to intervene and Get the Keys away from someone about to drive drunk. But sometimes this is easier said than done. Below are some helpful tips and advice from focus group research on how people can Get the Keys away from a drunk driver:
- If it is a close friend, try and use a soft, calm approach at first. Suggest to them that they’ve had too much to drink and it would be better if someone else drove or if they took a cab.
- Be calm. Joke about it. Make light of it.
- Try to make it sound like you are doing them a favor.
- If it is somebody you don’t know well, speak to their friends and have them make an attempt to persuade them to hand over the keys. Usually they will listen.
- If it’s a good friend, spouse, or significant other, tell them that if they insist on driving, you are not going with them. Suggest that you will call someone else for a ride, take a cab, or walk.
- Locate their keys while they are preoccupied and take them away. Most likely, they will think they’ve lost them and will be forced to find another mode of transportation.
- If possible, avoid embarrassing the person or being confrontational, particularly when dealing with men. This makes them appear vulnerable to alcohol and its effects.
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to the Alaric's web site by the CompOps Department.