1 Oh, those poor catgirls....

2 Yeah, we go through a lot of them around here.

3 Aria is still on my "to watch" pile, but a question along these lines occurs to me.  In fact, it is an issue I've never seen brought up in any SF or real science discussion of the idea of terraforming Mars--the magnetic field.  Terraforming a planet is a trivial task compared to supplying one with a magnetic field so the living things on the surface don't get irradiated.

4

Just started watching this (partly because of your review, btw) First thing that struck me was- I wouldn't want to own real estate under the floating island thingy. Second was- why are the banks of the river (Alices's first appearance- ep 4 i think?) white? Did they bleach the rocks or something?

Toren- best solution i've seen is using GM to increase tolerance to radiation, but is most novels I've read ignore the issue

5

As to Ukijima, the answer seems to be that they've learned how to control gravity. They use it for the ships, which is why they don't have rocket engines. Woody's sky cycle uses it, too. And they use it to adjust the effective surface gravity of the planet to make it the same as Earth, instead of 1/3.

As to the magnetic field, and the danger from solar radiation, I think the answer is that this is a story about girls who paddle gondolas, not about terraforming, and we here in the beginning of the 21st Century wouldn't understand all the things they've developed that made interplanetary travel easy and cheap and made it practical to terraform Mars, so there's no use in us even trying to figure it out.

Somehow they created a moon, too. This is engineering on a scale way beyond anything we can imagine.

(Says the guy who's constantly stricken by Engineer's disease.)

6 Just in passing, Ukijima is the engineering center for atmosphere and climate control, and it's not impossible that they're controlling an artificial magnetic field for the planet too.

7 Ah. That would explain the French Press, then. There's a magno-gravitic device that works between the strainer plate and the lid, bringing the strainer to the top so it can be removed along with the grounds. Probably heats the water, too (or not -- for cold brew, it just draws the water through the grounds).

I also covet the tech that allowed the carafe to be assembled as a single piece, including the handle and the escher-like legs that seamlessly penetrate the sides.

Tech in service to mundane frivolity. Outstanding.

8

Yeah yeah, I know, and the button on the top is probably a rotary control, not the top of the plunger. Yeah, yeah...

As to the legs, you're misinterpreting the parallax. The legs go under the carafe, not through it. It looks just like the one I used to have, at least in that regard.

9 That French Press really jumped out at me when I finally watched episode 7 yesterday, I would have noticed the difference even if I hadn't read this thread.

As far as any technology vibe I get from the show, I get the sense that it has to be quite far into the future for Earth to be called Manhome and having a girl the age of Akari being able to take off to learn a career on another planet. Plus you have all the honeymooners visiting as well so space travel seems to be quite commonplace. Realistically for those kinds of changes to happen, I'd say at least a couple thousand years from our time.

It actually has kind of the same feel of the sense of time past as some of Cordwainer Smith's stories, specifically Alpha Ralpha Boulevard. Neo-Venezia is basically ripped from the far past and probably long gone Venice and recreated on Aqua. In Alpha Ralpha Boulevard, the government allows the people to live and recreate long dead history so they learn French and read newspapers and so on. That was supposedly set about 14,000 years in the future.

10 I've never seen this French Press thing (and therefore I noticed nothing amiss when it was show in Aria), but the description at Wikipedia is at odds with what Refugee describes. Apparently, the grounds go _under_ the plunger, not _over_.

Actually I think it should be possible to make a press without the rod. First, make the plunger with the mesh heavy enough to separate the grounds by itself (remember that it has to overcome the friction of the circular seal against the walls). Next, have it connected to the lid with a bayonet-type connector. When brewing, the bayonet lock keeps it up. When done, twist the rotary control that Steven mentioned. The plunger falls down and separates the grounds. Pour normally...  Unfortunately, to extract the mess you have to reach into the cylinder (if you attempt to shake it out, the plunger will fall into the waste bin...). So it's an inferior design to the rod. But it should work, if I understand the problem right.

11

Pete, the plunger has a seal all around the outside, and it doesn't move smoothly. It would have to be very heavy to move downwards on its own.

Pushing the plunger takes a great deal of force.

12 For posterity, Shamus -- http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2056