I’ve been looking everywhere for my FTL drive formula


I must have dropped it in Wiltshire.

Why, yes, I always take notes by rearranging agricultural fields. This is the Midwest, doesn’t everyone do it that way?

Later. Now that I’ve got the formula again, I’m going to have to tune up my lawn mower and take off for Epsilon Eridani.

Comments

  1. davidc1 says

    Wiltshire is woo central as far a England is concerned ,similar to how Roswell has become for America .

  2. robert79 says

    I must say, that’s a work of art… A typical mathematical formula (or diagram) isn’t nearly as pretty.

  3. profpedant says

    How do those ‘crop circles’ affect the harvest? I would think that it would decrease it a measurable amount. I wonder if anyone has ever been sued for crop damage?

  4. Pierce R. Butler says

    Wotthehell kind of farming requires so many close pairs of parallel lines across a field in the first place, w/ or w/o Klingon annotation?

  5. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    re 4:
    I bet they think they will recover the loss through media coverage. 15 minutes of fame, and all that, so to speak
    Maybe the artists pay the farmers for using the field as a “canvas” to advertise their artistic skill, anonymously. oops

  6. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    re @6:
    I think those limes are tracks for the equipment they use to sow, maintain, and harvest the crops.

  7. lumipuna says

    The tractor tracks are probably about 10-15 m apart, so this would cover something in the order of 1000 square m. The lost harvest would be in the order of 1000 kg of grain, worth something like 100 £ when cut and dried. AFAIK energy for the drying can be a substantial expense for the farmer depending on weather.

  8. Pierce R. Butler says

    slithey tove… @ # 8: … tracks for the equipment they use …

    I s’poze – an image search implies as much, though skimming same indicates that European farmers do that a lot more than USAnian ones.

  9. says

    Hold on, I learned a little Alienese from watching every single episode of Futurama.
    WORD
    TO
    YOU’RE
    M.O.T.H.E.R.
    Hey! that’s the wrong conjugation of “you”.

  10. unclefrogy says

    I find the variation in green and tan intriguing wondering what it reveals
    uncle frogy

  11. Rich Woods says

    @unclefrogy #13:

    The colour difference usually indicates a change in the amount of water available to the crops. If you look in the top left hand corner there are several straight lines in green, which may suggest drainage ditches dug on an old medieval field strip system (the weather was warmer and wetter back then, so, depending on the geography, in various parts of the country strips were outlined either by raised footpaths or by drainage ditches, all now ploughed level).

    Going by the scale given by the tractor paths (where the outside edges of the drive wheels will be about three metres apart), the resulting 20m equates to one edge of one of the old definitions of an acre of land, which was four perches by forty perches. Unfortunately there was no standard definition of the length of a perch (anything from 16 to 24 feet) across the country until just a few centuries ago, and I don’t know which one may have been used in Wiltshire at the time so I could be off on completely the wrong track here.

  12. wzrd1 says

    Wow, thanks for finding my shopping list. My wife would’ve raised merry hell if I missed a few entries again!
    Please do excuse my poor penmanship.

  13. gijoel says

    It’s amusing to think that a species that has harnessed the power of the universe in order to travel uncountable light years to Earth can only communicate with us by stomping grass.

  14. says

    @12
    Based on what I remember of a general relativity class from grad school. If his lawn mower travels faster than light, it also time travels.

  15. says

    Somebody once got talking to me about crop circles, and I remarked that they had all appeared close to universities.

    Her response: “Wow! So you think the aliens are seeking out the smartest people to communicate with, then?”