Science can get in the way of fun

I kind of wish I had never done out the math for how much matter would be required for an earth orbit ringworld. I also wish that, having discovered that the unit with which to most meaningfully expresses that number is the Stellar Mass, I had stopped there and not continued on to calculate a minimal space station-like ring in the bio-zone of a red dwarf. (one tenth the diameter) Having done so, I have been stuck noticing the absurdity of any astronomical scale constructions I have encountered in stories since. The Death Star is fine, even planetary sized constructs don't require more matter than could be supplied by a terrestrial planet or two. But if there is any dimension that is measured in astronomical units (even fractions thereof) there better be some god-level tech going on.

I mean, best case here, we're talking about harvesting something like Jupiter for material and transmuting all that hydrogen into the elements needed. For many of these projects you'd probably be better off skipping planets entirely and going to a star much larger than you want the final result to orbit. Then you just skim your material of of the star while regulating it down the size you want. (abilities you probably ought to have before you even consider building something like a Dyson sphere)

Sorry, this complaint brought to you by a hard sci-fi author who tossed an abandoned (and by a current race too, not some all powerful ancient race) half AU cyclotron near the end of a book I had previously been doing a good job of suspending disbelief through.

On an unrelated note: Mogwai makes a nice addition to my Pandora station of "instrumentals with modern instrumentation"

music

Bands whose normal work I find eminently forgettable but whose one-off side projects I greatly enjoy count = 2. Actually, it might be more than that but mostly I'm remembering individual songs from artists whose other work I don't care for, rather than whole albums. And there are also bands that I do like in general, but whose oddball albums I like even more, but I seem to be wandering...

Anyway, the first one was Black Aria from Glen Danzig and the new one is The Score - An Epic Journey from Epica. In both cases, these are ordinarily metal bands doing non-metal albums, and in both cases the albums are somewhat hard to find because their normal fan base didn't know what to make of them. In both cases it took careful choice of search terms to get results from the album, and in neither case was I able to get the particular track I wanted to link to. Oh well, that's why I don't go to YouTube when I just want to listen to music.