12/19/12 Who’s Driving



Monday I did indeed take a weekend day. We and I walked downtown and entertained ourselves at the library flipping through art books and books on Ecuador and Denmark. We cleaned and made non-dairy butter. I built a small shelf which attaches to our bed. A good day.


  1. Yes, Meander, a parsec is considered 3.26 light-years, being the near side of a thin triangle with one AU the short side (Google it for more, much, much more, including an online game.) So yes, Han Solo had to be really pushing the envelope of the language in his assertion (unless the M.Falcon had a way of compressing the _distance_ during the Kessel run, which the surrounding bafflegab dialog doesn’t explain either.) Just, OOPS, facepalm.
    Now, if we were to define a different KIND of light year (thus overloading the term), so that say, it’s a year spent traveling at lightspeed (subjectively to the traveler), we’re talking about Millenia, bordering on Forever (uh-oh!) Hmmm…

  2. Huttj509

    @pbarnrob The canon explanation is that the Kessel Run passed near a series of black holes (something like that), and most of the time people took a longer, sane, route. Han and the Falcon took a shorter route closer to the dangerous gravitational sources, which required higher speed and engine output, thus shaving time and distance off the journey.

    Now, if this explanation was in mind BEFORE the line was written and uttered, or is a fasttalking retcon, depends on who you ask.

  3. Muzhik

    @pbarnrob; in one of the novels that covered some backstory, it’s explained in passing that the Kessel run involved skirting a number of rather steep gravity wells. The safe smugglers usually took the scenic route around the wells; the ones with thrill issues took more direct routes. Rather like those guys who ride unicycles around the tops of skyscrapers. Blindfolded. In the rain.

    Han’s statement is like his saying he found a way to drive a load of slightly illegal cigarettes from Buffalo, New York to Toledo, Ohio three hours faster than anyone else, without having to stop for police, fuel, or pedestrians. All it involves is taking your 18-wheeler down an abandoned 2-lane road running next to a steep riverbank and taking a couple of bridges that haven’t been maintained and were never rated for your weight load in the first place. Piece of cake.

  4. Metaphizzle

    Even if it’s not the explanation from the EU, I prefer to interpret Han’s line about “less than 12 parsecs” as meaningless BS. He just spouted it because he thought he was dealing with backwater rubes who would fall for it and be impressed.

  5. Christopher

    @Meander, ha! Right you are. What was I thinking. Maybe change it to decades or something.
    @Drillgorg, after posting the strip I WONDERED if people would see it like that (it’s supposed to be blood). Hm. I’ll tweak it.
    @Crestlinger, SOYLENT GREEN!
    @Jonesy, not fake. Maybe his brawl skills are a bit dusty and so the sucker punch caught him off guard.

  6. Night-Gaunt

    Ever hear of the term “space-time?” After herr Einstein it became. Since the further you look out into space the further back into time you also see. The speed of light is also a form of time travel. Spring forward (The Big Bang), fall back (Telescopic view of the past.) Does that help?

  7. zb

    I actually thought the Ite was just being a smartass with the “light years” thing. Like “Ha ha stupid humans, yeah we’ll get right on that, as soon we refill on pneumatic fluid and elbow grease.”

  8. Muzhik

    @Corpore Metal, simple. On their way into our universe, they swung by Earth and made a purchase at McDonald’s, gathering evidence so they could later get a warrant to arrest the human species for false or misleading advertising, to whit, calling McDonald’s products “food”.

  9. Ol' Gui

    Ol’ Gui to Corpore Metal – do you copy? The Ites said he had heard that the furrites were good with ketchup. You inferred that meant he knew what ketchup was. I’ve heard that haggis is tasty but that doesn’t mean I know about it.

  10. Corpore Metal

    Muzik and Ol’Gui,

    Well, I suppose there are lots of ways to rationalize this:

    1) Perhaps Ites visited Earth decades ago and we just didn’t notice. Nogg was able to shanghai Martina, Emily, Dustin and all the others and return to visit Mr. Zorilla without causing a stir. It follows that others could do this too.

    2) Perhaps that’s just another of Dimitri’s side projects? Maybe he’s shared a ketchup recipe along with his grandmothers tea cakes? Word got around the galaxies about those tea cakes pretty fast! Maybe the same is going on with ketchup too?

    3) Perhaps there is an alien sandwich condiment, that just by the sheerest coincidence, sounds just like the English word “ketchup.” Or perhaps the translator chips in everyone’s heads took the alien name for some weird condiment and just mapped it to “ketchup” for the sake of efficiency?

    There may be others.

  11. zb

    “Ketchup” doesn’t strictly mean a tomato-based sauce. Sauces by that name have been made from mushrooms, bananas, walnuts, and many more. So yeah, it’s a word that would translate easily, if not very informatively.

  12. Muzhik

    Rather like that scene in “Restaurant at the End of the Universe” where Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect wind up in the spaceship filled with hair stylists and telephone sanitizers, where the Guide talks about how every space-faring culture has an intoxicating drink whose name sounds remarkably like “gin and tonic” even though it tastes nothing like what we call a gin and tonic.

  13. Muzhik

    @Christopher, this is TOTALLY off-topic, related only in a tangentially-seasonal way and the fact that it’s related to food and that I first saw it on Spacetrawler:

    Why is it that I cannot find your recipe (including instructions and photos) for your Penuche (brown-sugar fudge) over on Cookrookery? I know that’s mostly Dan Wolff’s gig, but I thought you had a hand (or at least a sugar-claw) in that endeavor.

    (Ooohhhh — penuche molded into bird claws, with the ends dipped in melted chocolate chips to make the talons! I can feel my type-II diabetes kicking in at the mere thought of it! Yum! You could do it as an homage to Tim Burton. You know — “Sandy Claws”? I could do it, except I CAN’T FIND YOUR RECIPE FOR PENUCHE!)

  14. devilflamejr

    I know the canon in starwars has all kinds of fancyful explanations for how and why Solo’s “12 parsecs” comment made sense. I was however recently made aware that in the original manuscript it says something, more diplomatically worded of course, along the lines of “Obi-wan looks at him as if he’s an idiot” Which would indicate that in the original script the whole idea was that Solo had no idea what he was talking about… This of course has no bearing on the expanded universe, but in the movies I like to think of it like that, makes him even more space-rogue like in my opinion 🙂 Now if I could just find the source…

Leave a Reply
