FusionDynamo eXtreeem

Kiev, Ukraine – Fusion at last hits the mainstream! Man’s most powerful technology is no longer the province of war, nor the devilment of research laboratories the world over. The major problem in developing usable fusion power was one of control, but now with advances in power storage and transmission, fusion will become the power source of the future.

The first hint that practical fusion power was coming arrived last year when scientists at the Platha Battery Research centre announced a new theoretical technological framework for energy storage. Platha, well-known for its reliance on direct current to store and transmit power, has seen its only burgeoning technological sector evolve from the need for well-functioning direct current.

For decades the PBR centre has advanced the course of power storage. The AA battery was invented at the PBR as was the cumbersome DD battery which powered Platha’s only successful consumer electronics export: the People’s Ghetto Blaster, an overpowered combination tape deck and radio which sold moderately well between 1986 and 1988 across the U.S.

Able to last for up to 36 hours on a single charge, the DD batteries which powered the People’s Ghetto Blaster still outperform most modern portable electronics. People’s Ghetto Blasters in good condition continue to sell for hundreds of dollars at online auction sites, even while the unit’s 53 lb. weight adds substantially to the cost of shipping.

The PBR centre previously reached national prominence when its former director Nikolai Arkady was a 3-day champion on Jeopardy (later dramatized in “Jeopardy: The Movie” (see our ad on March 1, 2007)).

This publication had long been a proponent of direct power, with editorials from the period of Edison’s push for direct current extolling it as the only truly American form of power distribution. Calls for its adoption were still coming from these pages as late as 1987 with the introduction of the late-model People’s Ghetto Blaster. However, with little fanfare the subject was dropped by then Editor-in-Chief Samuel Smelt. In 2004 the subject was again raised with the introduction of direct current to Katharinetowne, WD (Volume 456-BR6, Issue 6 “March of Progress”).

With the PBR centre’s new FusionDynamo eXtreeem, the issue is now at the forefront again. The FusionDynamo eXtreeem is actually an array of 48 giant batteries. Each stands over 60 feet high, except for the first two in the chain, which reach nearly 100 feet into the sky and measure a diameter of over 700 Lincolns. Inside every battery exist billions of molecule-thin layers of voltaic cells sandwiched together with barely any space between. The entire system is able to store the entire power output of a single high-yield thermonuclear weapon and can power a small city for nearly six months.

To get the power into the FusionDynamo eXtreeem is another matter. Once the potential of the new battery system was perceived by scientists at Fermilab, and the schematics extricated from Platha by a crack team of Willinois Grenadiers, two problems with the plan were discovered. First, how to siphon off the enormous power of a thermonuclear explosion. Second, how to transmit that power effectively to the FusionDynamo eXtreeem.

The latter had the easiest solution as Fermilab called on colleagues in Velociraptor, Elizabethia, known as the nation’s Superconducting Capital. Researchers at Meissnercorp were able to provide miles of superconducting conduits for low, low prices. Often no more than 10% over wholesale.

Capturing the explosive power of a thermonuclear weapon was more problematic. The final design consists of a flattened spherical chamber located underground and over 3 miles across. The entire chamber is lined with turbines for direct conversion of the explosive power to electric current. The chamber sits underneath a second chamber of approximately the same size filled with water, which receives energy input in the form of the heat of the explosion which creates steam which turns another set of turbines. The surface of the lower chamber is coated entirely in a heat-resistant, semiconducting alloy.

The energy thus generated passes through the superconducting conduits to the FusionDynamo eXtreeem. The large initial pair of batteries accept the first set of charges from the explosion, then pass off the overflow to the remaining 46 batteries. Power distribution from this point on is quite simple and can be transferred over to an alternating current system at will.

This is of course not true fusion power as thermonuclear weapons are actually hybrid fission/fusion devices, but hopefully lasers in the future will make it happen.

Nine People Worse Off Than You

Having a bad day? The bakery on the corner gave you the wrong kind of muffin? Was one of your expenses rejected? Did your little sister mouth off to you? Oh poor you. If you’re having that kind of day, it might pay to keep these people in mind. It won’t make the hurt any less, really, but it would certainly distract your thoughts for a bit and get you thinking “I’m glad that didn’t happen to me!”

1. Charlie Parker
The seminal Jazz saxophonist became a huge success at a young age. He enjoyed money, fame, and women, but threw it all away for heroin and just about anything else he could put in his body. At one point the Kansas City native was forced to perform on a cheap plastic saxophone, having sold his in order to buy smack. Parker led such a hard life that by the time he died at age 35, the coroner believed him to be around 60 years old. And he was a fatass. You don’t want to piss off the pallbearers. Not that I know from experience.

2. The Stolen Generations
If you were an aboriginal child in Australia any time between the early 1900s and the 1970s, your life was fairly horrid. You were likely brutally torn from your parents’ arms at a young age, placed into a squalid orphanage, and if you were lucky you weren’t raped. Upon reaching adulthood, you were released back into society; angry, in great emotional pain, and probably a drunkard. I’m sure you feel really bad about missing out on the subway seat in the morning now.

3. Socrates
Most people think the Greek philosopher led a great life because of all the respect given to him since his death. This, however, is untrue. To start with, Socrates was incredibly ugly. He was also short. The man fought in three wars, had no job, a wife he didn’t love, and three sons who sound like shiftless layabouts. But Socrates liked to talk, and he like to be annoying. For which he was eventually forced to drink poison. Oh, I’m sorry, are you working a crappy restaurant job?

4. Ryan White
White was a young hemophiliac who contracted HIV through a contaminated blood transfusion. His infection was discovered in 1984 and his school expelled him. While he did gain national attention and help promote understanding of HIV/AIDS, he died at 19 without graduating from high school or ever getting laid. I’m sure that last sounds callous, but how would you feel if you died only ever having kissed your Mom?

5. Joanna the Mad
She ruled Spain, her husband was king, and her son was a Holy Roman Emperor. Imagine living in opulence, but being chained to a patriarchal system where you Father hated the idea that your son from elsewhere would rule. Then end your life imprisoned and unable to come to grips with reality. You never change clothes, bathe, or eat. I’m sorry, are you reading this and late for work?

6. Stephen Hawking
So you’re the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a position Newton once held. You’re one of the leading minds of your time, certainly amongst the top three in physics. You’ve made money from books and television, and you even left your wife for your hot nurse. But, you needed a nurse. And you needed her because you’re paralyzed. There’s no doubt you’re respected, but your mind is trapped in a body communicating through a robotic voice you control with your teeth and you can’t fuck the hot nurse. Remember our well-respected and good friend Stephen when you haven’t been laid in a while.

7. Mohammad Jawad
You’re fifteen years old and hanging out in Afghanistan. Things have pretty much already sucked your entire life, what with the Taliban banning dancing (amongst other things). Suddenly your country is invaded and you get picked up by some U.S. servicemen who say you tossed a grenade into their camp. Then you’re sent to a speck of land on the tip of Cuba and tortured for six years. Cuba of all places! You’re now old enough to drink in the U.S. (if you weren’t Muslim), but you probably couldn’t even hold a bottle with those shaking hands of yours. Yes, it’s a damn shame they didn’t put enough sugar in your Dunkin’ Donuts today, sugar.

8. The Ammonites
Hey, the Jordan River Valley is great. It’s some thousands of years BC, there are nice crops, good sunlight, sultry Mediterranean women, and only the occasional cattle raid. That is until a pack of scraggly, bedraggled, smelly desert wanderers come over the dunes and murder you, your family, and everyone you know because their God told them to do so. Just so they can get the land and sunlight. Yes, you just had an awkward moment with that girl you kissed a couple of weeks ago. Beats death.

9. Ferdinand Magellan
He’s got strait and two dwarf galaxies named after him, how is he worse off than you? Well, first he worked for years to get Portugal to send an expedition past South America, through the Pacific Ocean and on to the Spice Islands. They told him he could take a hike. Then he went to Spain and tried the same thing, but they were suspicious. It took them a year or two, but they finally gave in. At which point they were still suspicious because he was Portuguese. So he makes his trip, fights off mutiny and starvation, saves most of his crew across the Pacific, and then is killed in a land he doesn’t know, by someone only known to history because they killed him, and his body was never recovered. Plus he never actually made it around the world.

I ended the list at nine purely to annoy you. Number 10 would’ve been interesting, though…

Evil Madlibs, Matrix Kittie, Sloth

In celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day we here at Axes & Alleys are bringing you a very special Three Links today. What’s that you say? None of the links have anything to do with the MLK? Maybe they aren’t so special, then…Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!

Neo the cat is surrounded by Puppy Agents Smith!

If you don’t want to work hard at your next evil plan, try out this madlib evil plan generator.

One of our favourite animals gets its own poster. Have you seen his tie?

Crustacean Considered Kosher

Karakol, Kyrgyzstan – The serendipity of science continues in an onward direction! Children from a local village, in an attempt to play a painful prank on a visiting British scientist, have brought into the blazing beam of the lighthouse of science Pronephrops capranothus; the Mountain Lobster. The children and local villagers were denied the chance to name the lobster, however. Dr. G. Everett Spindle refused to consult them before submitting the discovery to the journal Biology.

“That’s what they get for being literal pains in the bum,” the irate Spindle responded when questioned on his decision. “I’m still unable to sit down a week later!”

The Mountain Lobster, whose scientific name roughly translates as “bastard of the goat” is not just the first lobster to be found on land. In fact, it is also the first lobster known to have hooves and to chew its cud. It is also the only known lobster to live exclusively on a diet of grass.

These discoveries have made for an influx of Jewish and other Hebraic tourists to the Karakol region on the assumption that they could now enjoy lobster like everyone else. Rabbis everywhere have cautioned that the appearance of hooves and cud-chewing does not negate the animal not being a mammal. A minority of Rabbis have posited that the Mountain Lobster could be the long-lost species of locust mentioned as edible in the Torah.

The creature is still rather difficult for non-locals to find. Though large in size (some approach nearly a meter in length), the Mountain Lobster is able to run at over 10 miles per hour. They dig extensive burrows in the mountainsides and, due to a symbiotic relationship with a slime mold, are able to blend seamlessly into the crags and crannies of the local valleys.

The benefit to the slime mold is, at present unknown, though it has been hypothesized that organism has created a culture based entirely off of wind power, which the lobster’s movement provides.

Slime molds with culture and windmills are also a biological first.

Kyrgyzstan was long ridiculed as the land of stone rolling competitions and a poor man’s Uzbekistan. This Mountain Lobster discovery, newfound tourism income, and a more prominent place on the world stage all bode well for the landlocked Republic.

Only time will tell if the Mountain Lobster becomes an income generator pending Rabbinical decision, though the fact that the lobster tastes slightly like motor oil mixed with wheat germ may preclude its eventual adoption as a popular food stuff.