Don't Do the Thing: Decision Making For Dummies [Tues, 3rd Period]

[jedigrammarians]

There were no big red buttons in the Danger Shop today. Aphra was looking disturbingly cheerful though.

"So, as you might have noticed, people are dumb," she began. "They're also contrary, stubborn, curious, and all sorts of things like that which mean you tell them not to do something and someone'll try to do it the second you're backs turned.Find a room full of dead bodies, at least some of who clearly died trying to turn a mysterious machine off, someone will want to turn it back on, just to see what happens. Especially if there are any big, red buttons. There's just something about those."

Aphra clapped her hands together. "Just to illustrate this, I want you to come up with a foolproof way to warn people away from something dangerous. Then I want you to come up with ways of being a better class of fools and poke at all the holes in each others' plans. The freebie being even if there's a common tongue, not everyone's gonna speak it."

Earth Zoology

[livingartifact]

The classroom was extremely dark when the students entered, today, with small strips of glowing tape along the base of the walls and edges of the furniture hopefully preventing anyone from bumping into anything and injuring themselves. There was a single, old fashioned street lamp in the center of the table, casting a dim circle of light around the table, and illuminating Jenkins rather eerily from above. He waved the students over as they entered, though he kept getting distracted by something on the ceiling.

"Come in, come in. Any of you who might have thought that the darkness in here meant class was cancelled, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. I'm also not going to let you simply nap the class period away — though I don't suppose I'll do much to stop you, if you end up deciding to do so, anyway." Jenkins was a great teacher, no really. "I have the lights out today as we are going to be examining an animal that very much prefers to keep in the dark, sleeping by day and becoming active only at night. The term we use for that is 'nocturnal', as opposed to us day-dwelling creatures, who are called 'diurnal'. There's in fact a lot of vocabulary I could throw at you with regards to these critters: insectivore, hibernation, potential disease vector — but we needn't concern ourselves with those now, especially that last one. I've had our specimens for the week shipped in special from a nice, warm summer night, free of any rabies or white-nose syndrome. Students, I would like to introduce you to the North American big brown bat."

He opened a small box on the table, releasing several dozen tiny white moths, which proceeding to flutter about, aiming straight for the top of the street lamp. In moments, a sound of flapping filled the air as winged creatures about the size of squirrels started swooping in to catch their prey.

"With apologies should any of you have hearing sensitive to the frequency of the bats' echolocation — there's another vocabulary word for you all. Humans as a general rule are unable to hear it, themselves, though it can have a remarkable effect on the nervous systems of many of the insects the bats prefer to munch on. Mostly, though, the bats can sense the way the sound waves produced bounce off of every solid object in the room. So while they may seem sometimes to be swooping dangerously close to your hair, it is highly unlikely that they will be foolish enough to get caught up in it. There are a large number of bat species on Earth, should any of you be curious to learn more about them. They are the only mammals known to science that have true flight capabilities. Once our friends here have finished their lunch and gone back to their roosts, we can switch the lights on and take a closer look. They really are quite lovely animals, though perhaps not as traditionally 'cute' as their larger, fruit eating cousins from the tropics. Some find them terribly off-putting, though I've never understood that reaction myself." He looked over at his students. "Nor, do I suspect, will any of you. After all, why take a class in strange animals unless you're looking forward to seeing them in all their infinite variety?" He leaned back and looked up, a small smile on his face. "For the time being, I invite you all to sit back, relax, and enjoy watching them swoop."

The Cryptozoologist's Field Guide, Wednesday, Per 1

[arboreal_priestess]

Back in the Danger Shop today, where a chicken coop was sitting in a field, surrounded by boulders.

"Last week we got to play with cryptid cats," Verity said with a smile. "And they're a fun first introduction to the world of cryptozoology. Other than a few scratches and possibly losing your wallet to a lesser griffin, you don't really have to worry much about them. They're only slightly more dangerous than regular cats, even if lesser griffins are smarter. But unless you stand still and let them attack you, they're not going to do a whole lot of damage."

She pulled out a bunch of safety goggles and passed them around. "Today, however, we're going into the deep end. If you look close, you'll see the lenses on your goggles are polarized for your protection. That's because we're dealing with petrifactors today. All members of the Orphion family, a petrifactor is any type of cryptid that can turn flesh to stone. You might have heard of one them, Medusa, a greater gorgon. We're studying two of the non-sapient petrifactors, basilisks and cockatrices. There are also stone spiders, but I don't even want to program those. Now everyone put on your goggles because it's turning to stone isn't fun. It won't be fatal here in the Danger Shop, but it won't be fun, either."

Anyone screwing around and catching the gaze of a petrifactor here in the Danger Shop would find themselves frozen solid for the remainder of the class period and given detention when the class was over.

( Warning for potential body horror below. )

That disturbing bit of trivia shared, Verity leaned down to pick the mole rat up, too. "So, if you find something turned to stone and they're too late to help, the best thing to do is check the eyes. If they are more transformed than most of the rest of the body, you've probably got yourself a gaze-petrifier. If not, or there's too much petrification to tell, examine what you can of the body. Unlike the movies, clothing and accessories don't turn to stone, so you should be able to get a full view. Puncture wounds suggest that the venom has been injected and the size of the wounds can give you a general idea of the size of the predator. A lack of puncture wounds suggests gaze-based, but with cryptozoology, nothing is a guarantee. Fortunately, if caught soon enough--by which we mean before death and usually just a few minutes after initial contact--the effects can be halted or even reversed. If you know the recipe for the antidote."

And suddenly there was a miniature chemistry table behind her, causing several of the cryptids to squawk and poke at the dirt elsewhere. "Guess what you're learning today."

Library, Wednesday

[era_two_triangle]

Peridot's day had gotten off to a slow start, today. First she had to take Pumpkin for a walk. Not that Pumpkin really needed to be taken for walks, but today she was absolutely insistent on it. And then she had gotten in to the library and had gotten absorbed in pretty much every book she picked up from the returns cart, which meant she was doing more reading than shelving.

And then the ladder had gone missing again, which meant that in order to do any shelving she was going to have to get creative, which meant a quick duck back out to go raid her scrap pile, gathering parts that she was dragging back and scattering across the desk while she set to work.

Fortunately, she was a fairly quick worker, because before long she had built a sort of... drone... hand... thing. A hand-shaped apparatus with hovering helicopter appendages, not unlike her old limb enhancers. Now she didn't need a ladder at all. She could just make that thing shelve all the books for her.

With some supervision, anyway. It kept trying to put some pretty strange things into non-fiction. Mostly political satire books. Weird.

[OOC: Open!]

Practical Diplomacy, Wednesday, January 17, 2018

[sith_happened]

Today the students found themselves in the Danger Shop, where a podium was standing at the front of a large room full of reporters. "Today we're going to have a practical exercise in diplomacy," Anakin said. "For a vast majority of your life, you are not going to be the lead diplomat in a room. You will, however, be the one who probably briefed the head diplomat, and upon your head will the anger be heaped if he, she, it, or they get embarrassed, even if it's not your fault."

And sometimes your boss turns out to just be super evil, but that was a scenario for another time.

"Your boss is about to address a group of reporters," he said. "He has not read your briefing notes, trusting instead on knowledge he gained from Force knows where. He is about to make a huge, intergalactic meme-worthy ass of himself." He smiled and began the program. "What do you do to stop it from happening? Or do you just let it play out?"