Random Questions Thread

Several questions here, so please bear with me:

1) How does the black market acquire its goods, especially in a fantasy setting where technology would limit communication between buyer and seller? If they were to hire a homeless teenager, what kind of jobs would they likely have him do?

2) On that note, what kind of mildly illegal jobs could a homeless teen do on the street that would earn him money (barring prostitution)?

3) Where might I find resources on the structure of organized crime and the duties of members at various ranks? The main character in my story ends up becoming a member of a notorious drug cartel, and over the course of 10 years rises through the ranks. Namely I want to learn more of what that would look like and how he'd go about doing that.

4) Completely unrelated to the above three questions, but how does one write friends-with-benefits/casual relationships without going down the road of romantic feelings developing like they often do in fiction? The concept of that type of relationship is pretty foreign to me, and he's someone who Really Gets Around with women for most of his life until he actually does fall in love and marry (though amazingly doesn't have any accidental children, which I'm hoping doesn't break the willing suspension of disbelief). This isn't until later on and it's not a big part of the story at all, but I still want to know.

edited 23rd May '17 11:06:15 AM by randomdude4

"Can't make an omelette without breaking some children." -Bur

1): Basically however they can. Remember that "black market" just means "without taxes." Smuggling is common, such as by having a hold full of legal goods and hiding a few illegal ones hidden inside. If you're doing a fantasy setting, maybe it's stuff plundered from dungeons that people don't want to register with the king, because he always gets first pick of the best stuff. That kind of thing. As for a homeless kid, it depends on the age, but possibilities include a lookout, a messenger, and a delivery boy. Maybe a thief, if they get their goods by directly stealing.

2): Cutpurse is common, as is breaking into a shop after hours (that also lets them cut out the middleman and steal what they need directly). And again, criminals always need sharp eyes and fast feet.

3): I don't have any specific resources for you, but in general it's the boss at the top, then his closest lieutenants handle their own sub-gangs under him. Criminal organizations rarely follow a set structure, and everything is very fluid.

4): They start casually, just sex and then gone, then they start staying for longer after the sex, then they start doing things that don't involve sex, and then one day they wake up in the morning to realize they just slept in the same bed without having sex, and they're in a relationship. I mean, there are other ways to do it, but that's one of the ones without an annoying level of angst at every step of the way.

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How much data would it take to store all the information on a full strand of DNA? Not the full "this gene does this and that one does that," just the CGAT code necessary to build an organism.

Basically I'm trying to see how viable a sci-fi Noah's Ark would be, where the Ark contains the genetic information of ten thousand members of each species. Then they get printed out in Uterine Replicators and all that.

edited 24th May '17 8:09:02 AM by Discar

This is the one answer I've managed to found (most others were quoting this article). Tl;dr: 1,5 GB.

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Question: I'm making a fantasy zodiac, and each animal is supposed to represent a particular virtue. I already have eleven, but I can't figure out what the last animal could be - I figure either a wolf of a raven. So the question is, what kind of virtue could be associated with one of them?

For the record, diligence, wealth, beauty, fierceness, reliability, grace, patience, charitability, wisdom, strength and perseverance are already taken.

Rejoice!

Wolves if not going for their fierceness and strength are known for their pack behavior, so maybe a virtue about working well with others?

Ravens are quite smart. They also seem to be very canny. Maybe shrewdness?

Creator of Heroes of Thantopolis: http://heroesofthantopolis.com/

What about humour (as in, 'a sense of')? Ravens and corvids in general are pretty mischievous, and it'd be an interesting twist on the usual parade of virtues. *casual wave at handle*

@Sekantii
No answer for you, I'm afraid, but I'm rather intrigued by your story. ETA: You could try posting on little-details at Livejournal; they accept anonymous posts if you don't have an LJ account (see the pinned post at the top of the homepage).

edited 25th May '17 3:39:50 AM by LongLiveHumour

, I'd probably go with working well with others, if it wasn't for the fact that I don't know how to put it in one word. As it is, I think I'll go with humour. Thank you both!

Rejoice!

Synergy perhaps? Or amiability?
"Cooperativeness" is also a word according to the online thesaurus, but that's a mouthful even if that was true.

Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our lives

Hm, amiability seems like it might be it. Now I just have to figure out whether to go with humour or amiability... Anyway, thank you!

Rejoice!

@Kakai: that sounds good, and the leader can act as a mediator for the opposing personalities, thanks for your input.

I've had lots of questions for this thread lately. Sorry about that.

What kind of government department might especially value skill at synthesis (other than the police and Internal Investigations / Anticorruption)? Fictional country. The person in question has a mind like a filing cabinet, so he can pull up info from disparate sources at the drop of a hat. Anything infrastructure-related would be good.

Probably an Attorney General whether at the federal or state level would benefit from hiring employees with good memories, since a lot of law is based on precedent and remembering arguments and obscure rulings from old cases.

Creator of Heroes of Thantopolis: http://heroesofthantopolis.com/

Generally, and (especially) the local level, all of them value synthesis, down to parks and recreations. The reason is that (at least stateside), no department operates in a vacuum. For example:
Federally, the Department of the Interior accomplishes its goal with information and assistance from the Departments of Justice and the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Education in addition to the local teachers, councilors, and property owners to operate one of the last administrations programs in the Indian Bureau (and on that note, the DOI's internal departments have to coordinate with each other).
State level: More or less the same with the addition of national mandates and lobbying and occasional deals with other state/provincial governments
Locally: Ok...first of all, the namesake city of a metropolitan area may have to work with hundreds of other city governments for any development/conservation plan that won't turn into a race to the bottom. The slightest issues (like trying to designate a historical section of the city) will require fielding input from every group from homeowners associations (and their lawyers), to neighborhood associations (not the same as the previous), to chambers of commerce, to environmental groups, to research libraries and museums (especially the ones who stand to make money from a historical designation), to tax lawyers (that designation changes property values alot and the nature of the properties), to architectural groups (historical designations come with laws like no building taller than x/ no building shaped like y), to the state (for whatever reason they want), to statisticians (who'll help you guess at the opportunity cost of designating a historical section). And this is a small, incomplete example.

For an infrastructure example: just think about what every one conceivably affected by the slightest change in the course of a rail line will want coordinating them all. Legal will have to get land title (from thousands of parcels potentially), zoning, public financing (in alot of US cities and states its illegal to run debts of 1 yr+ w/o a referendum—it gets done anyway. Those laws don't often say anything about paying rent), thousands of negotiations, property taxes again (no one's going to want to pay the same tax with a train running through their backyard); then there's the group the city'll be working with (alot of projects are "public-private partnerships") that'll have its own fun to work out.

edited 28th May '17 10:15:11 AM by CenturyEye

Look with century eyes... With our backs to the arch And the wreck of our kind We will stare straight ahead For the rest of our lives

I have a question about solar panels. I know that currently, solar panels are less than 50% efficient (often a lot less than 50% efficient). Does that mean that a perfectly efficient solar panel would be completely black instead of shiny?

Would a race of humanoid insects have to avoid getting water on their wings so stringently that they cannot bathe in water, and must use something else?

AFAIK solar cells usually have a glass sheet as the topmost layer of the physical system for protective purposes. If we assume that "efficiency" is only applied to the actual solar radiation-absorbing layer(s) below the glass sheet, then the solar panel should still look shiny regardless of whatever color it takes (i.e. it could be both shiny and black-colored).

edited 1st Jun '17 7:39:34 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Well, birds take dust-baths to get mites off, and sand is perfectly fine at cleaning since the Quran specifically mentions using sand as an acceptable substitute for water.

edited 1st Jun '17 7:52:22 PM by Sharysa

I know about that, especially the latter because I'm a Muslim in the first place (that said, the fact that water is still preferred over dust/sand does allude to how it's generally superior in that regard). But what I'm really asking for here is the biological/physical POV; in other words, would it be plausible for insectoid wings to be water-washable? There's real-life precedent for insect wings that are structurally hydrophobic, i.e. they always repel water molecules and thus technically don't get "wet" ever (example: cicada and butterflies). But that doesn't really say anything about the plausibility of, say, a humanoid insect bathing under a stream of water with their wings fully exposed to said water without suffering physical damage from the pouring of so much water on it, without a handwave like "they're made of much tougher organic compounds than what real-life insect wings are made of".

edited 1st Jun '17 8:51:57 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

If you have Techno Babble-y super-panel that capture all photons and don't have a need for any lossy shielding on top (i.e. glass as mentioned), then they would look like vantablack.

@Century Eye: Many thanks for the detailed answer - gave me a lot to think about

A humanoid insect would by necessity have extremely tough wings, so if it can actually fly then a mere stream of water wouldn't be much of a problem - assuming of course that they're human-sized. Moths and butterflies are more vulnerable, because moving water can pull off the scales. If you want butterfly-type wings then yes, paranoia would be justified, as would fear of any contact whatsoever.

IIRC since insects are, as you say, pretty hydrophobic, the trouble with water and insects is not really about wings getting wet (although big fat falling raindrops can obviously cause damage, but this doesn't have to do with wetness) and more about the insect drowning when the tracheae are covered. This wouldn't be an issue with a human-sized insect, since tracheae simply wouldn't work.

https://askentomologists.com/2016/03/24/do-insects-get-trapped-in-water-drops-why-arent-they-constantly-drowning/

edited 8th Jun '17 4:50:20 AM by LongLiveHumour

I think you mean spiracles, which are the external pores to which the actual tracheae connect to.

What about a vertebrate-like respiratory system that is distributed across the tagmata (body divisions) of the human-sized insect? That is, spiracles still exist, but those in a given tagma connect to a set of actual lungs?

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

That seems like it might work. One issue to consider might be the space taken up by each "lung", and how efficient it would be to have multiple small sacs vs one large sac (plus all necessary vascularisation, assuming a closed circulatory system). The circulatory lungs of birds might be worth looking into. Your insects might have issues with partial asphyxia - spiracles on one segment are blocked, resulting in O2 loss to that section of the body. The spiracles would have to be quite large as it's no longer a tracheal system, and they might well have evolved some form of protection or even a closing mechanism so there's less risk of dirt etc entering. Washing might pose problems if you're constantly worried about inhaling water.

When it comes to publishing books that have more than one volume, how should one approach a publisher? To rephrase that, how to have one volume of an intended series published?

The standard advice is - unless you are established - to always write the first book to stand alone. If you are established and want to write a strongly plotted series, then you should talk to an editor or agent about it.

I'm reading a detective story set in the 50's. There a scene where a suspect tries to get away in a car, but the detective stops him by opening the hood of the car and pulling out the distributor cap, making the car stall. Would opening the hood from outside like that be possible? Modern cars require you to pull a latch from inside the car first; did 50's cars lack this?

But my plan is taking my first volume to Wattpad. I got the idea from a book that was the sequel to an earlier book by the same author who originally published both in Wattpad. Can that work?

If the crime case was paranormal in nature, how would it be solved?

MIA