hkmaly

Then your precious metal standard would have the value of the lesser of it's current value and the value of producing it from other materials. We can actually do that now. We can synthesis gold from other elements. The cost to do so is prohibitive. The gold may well be an unstable isotope as well. ... actually I think producing gold was NOT what Newton made possible there. Although it's some time I've read it ... And yes: technically, we can already turn lead into gold, as alchemists wanted. It just needs unpractical amount of energy. No such luck with other alchemy goals, yet: no elixir of immortality, no universal medicine, no universal solvent. And electromagnetic waves are very useful but don't really allow everything aetheric manipulation was supposed to. Specifically, it doesn't allow to attract asteroid from space to Earth, which was part of plot in mentioned book ... That didn't really work out for them. No one has ever printed an excess of currency without damaging their economy; in the extreme cases devaluing their currency to such an extent that is became essentially worthless; no one remains rich, the regime changes, and the perpetrators are no longer in control. It worked for the first because they got other nation's gold before people understood how printing the money works. It stopped working since then, of course. Except for the perpetrators, those generally are able to find some way to get rich (certainly involving trades of those printed money for something more stable). Germany couldn't afford gold standard between wars due to reparations for the first one, so yes, definitely factor. An alternate point of view is that we've expanded the economic standard to include a variety of goods and services, not just one scarce metal. It makes more sense if you think about it that way. It would be nice if that would be true, but no: money are currently debt.

https://www.egscomics.com/comic/party-163 Did Grace made her boobs even bigger to distract Diane from Susan's name? Seems it's working. Also, yes, the name Jay being masculine DOES seem suspicious, ESPECIALLY with the clarification mentioning that "Jack" was rejected BECAUSE there was female named Jack in Mass Effect 2 ... Oh, and yes, Grace made the point about how ineffective rumor would the big boobs be ...

I have to be honest, I'm not tracking Dan's thinking here. Are these Schrödinger 's clothes? I feel like something is being lamp shaded, and I'm not in on what. What Susan is wearing is what a character wears when all "equipment" clothes are removed. With the "Never Nude" flag turned on she shows with underwear. That is what I'm assuming based on what The Dan has said before in this story line. Assuming? I would consider this directly confirmed by previous comics. That much I got. I guess I'm taking in-game unremovable underwear at face value. For me, the question boils down to, "Why should it be otherwise?" The comic implies that Cat does not even see the underwear, nor Rhoda, who is not wearing more herself. Naked: "You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it does." Yeah, there are two options: Either the "Never Nude" underwear is some filter on higher meta level and Susan is only one seeing it, OR other people technically also see it but because it's as much nude as you can get, they consider it being nude. Certainly. If Rhoda's tube top wouldn't be equipable it would look EXACTLY as Susan's underwear. And that it shows more skin? Videogame logic. (Also, maybe Japanese edition has smaller "Never Nude" underwear. I read article about games like that.)

https://www.egscomics.com/egsnp/parable-112 I wonder, will this make Susan start taking clothes seriously or at least get some? Wasn't she supposed to search for hero of range now?

If they have some evacuation protocols, that might work - with most people already in saucer and if they were transporting the people from lowest decks while the ones in higher decks used lifts ... Yeah, not counting ... seems that totally it could be 6000 with maximal capacity 15000. Definitely sounds like it should be Data.

The traditional object cited is a good quality men's suit; an ounce of gold buys you a good quality suit. I think it's been a fairly good illustration historically, but gold is rather high right now relative to suits. You mean, fashion is too sane for current prices of gold. Although, maybe if you include the smartphone, which definitely needs to be part of that suit nowadays ... More likely, the amount of gods and services would be lower. Which might not necessarily be bad, if it would mean less shitty low-quality products with short durability and instead something which lasts ... ... obviously, there might be some problem with having less gold available per person (there were just about 1.6 billion people in 1900) but on the other hand, it is debatable if the wealth is really spread in way which makes common people having more wealth that would be possible in gold-based economy. "What if" scenarios like this may seem simple on first look, but in reality are no more reliable than the "what if Newton have as much success in alchemy as he had in optics". Only two things are certain: the world will be different ... and rich people wouldn't be as much rich as they are now. After all, allowing rich people to be more rich was the main reason why the change was done, no matter what anybody is claiming. Oh, and, obviously ... it would be very unlikely to happen. Because the abandoning of gold standard was not decision made randomly. Governments were having increasingly bigger problems with getting enough tax revenue even before world war I, and afterwards it was obvious there is not enough gold to pay for the war ... then, few governments tried to abandon it and start printing money and found that they can get rich by it. Of course rest of the world followed. (Oh, and then second world war happened.) Since the abandonment of gold standard, we (whole world) are basically living on debt. We can't really return to gold standard without paying that debt - which is impossible. Only if in future we somehow manage to transition to different system (possibly post-scarcity economy) without major crisis the Great Depression would be fun when compared to, we could say it was good idea.

My 9th grade English class had 5 or 6 "Michael", which is the name I go by. The teacher, instead of using other given names for the students adopted the simple solution of calling every body by their last names "Mr. Looney" or "Ms. Smith". Going by my first name wouldn't have helped much, there were 2 "Joseph" or "Joe" other than me in that class. ... I remember that there were five students with same name as I had but don't really remember how teachers were solving it ... well, probably using last name, as we rarely have middle names around here. Officially. It wouldn't be too difficult to assume that "Jay" is simply referring to the first letter of "Jill" like she prefers to answer to her first initial, either because there's another Jill in her classes or she thinks it goes with her hairstyle, it could be a image thing, "Jill" doesn't sound rebellious when you shave part of your head like that, but "Jay" does, and it's not like she's giving yourself a new name when all she'd do is sign stuff with J. Lastname. That's true. However, it doesn't match well with what Dan said in the commentary. I don't think she would ever want that. Exactly. We don't see enough of her to know for sure, but the context suggests that's what she did.

Oh. I get it. Not enough of target audience are into bestiality so putting the ponies into high school was only way to collect on the "sex sells". Well, as much of it as is acceptable in G-rated show. More seriously: So just two characters actually transformed. That might be little better. Now that's just silly. The enterprise was built in orbit, in a space dock, and is not suited to landing. Didn't stopped Voyager. And that $10 grand was out of a total budget per episode of about $100 grand. Yes, that’s right—every single transporter sequence took up about a tenth of the episode’s entire budget. Yeah, that would explain the cardboards. I've heard that any landing you can walk away from is a good landing. How many hundreds of people are on Enterprise again? I suspect there were some causalities. Or at least should be. That was worse than I remembered. You don't evacuate that many people in four minutes. The Enterprise D is supposed to be huge. You don't crawl the length of engineering and the shuttle hanger, then up a series of ladders in four minute. But most of those folks there were evacuating should already have been in the saucer. Why is the counselor, who holds no formal rank, driving the ship, rather than a helmsman? I always wonder, too, why every space ship that crashes is oriented with the top up. Some comments. Obviously, it's because only named characters are allowed to do something as important as crashing piloting the ship. From named characters, she might really be the most suitable one left. Generally, you shouldn't think too much about it, because then you realize that either the computer is clever enough to pilot the ship by itself, or those few people on bridge wouldn't be enough.

I agree ... I'm just saying that communism disagree. For most of history, money was supposed to have the value of the metal but it only worked because everyone believed that. If the metal was not used for money, it's price would react much quicker on how much it's mined at that moment. Granted, the metal the money were made of had SOME value. Currently, not counting the faith in economy of specific country (and, seriously, how much faith you have in say Greek economy? Oh, right, they are paying with Euro so it's Germany economy holding the faith up), the money have less value than the electrons used to store them in bank's electronic systems. Not that anyone ever wanted to grow money supply just to match the economy. Banks always grows the money supply more, creating inflation, which is sort of tax on holding money. Which means that people who were working honestly all their live saving for retirement were ALWAYS robbed by their governments. Also, if economy really grows, you can get even MORE rich by investing in right way. However, it's true that inflation encourages you to invest even if you don't know into what, which is, again, a good mechanism to steal from people who spend too much time working to have time to play the economy. Based on success of capitalism in last few centuries, it seems that the system is better than all tried alternatives, but it's definitely not fair. Well ... maybe that's it: maybe unfair systems have better results than fair ones. Maybe it's good to have system of moving money from people who would only spend them on comfortable retirement to people who have ideas how to make world better. On the other hand, this kind of thinking is dangerously close to deciding to just kill those unproductive old people. After all, if they believed the promise they will enjoy their retirement, maybe they will believe the promise they will enjoy their afterlife ... oh, wait, THAT motivation system was also tried many times through history. Comparing price of car is useless, it's technology and is changing too much. Even basic stuff like bread could be unreliable as people eat differently now. "General price levels" are supposed to get the correct comparison, but I wouldn't be too sure they got it correctly ... the reasoning is probably still correct, but it's funny when you use exact figures taken from today commodity exchange and then process them with equation based on guesses. There are LOT of people who wants to grow their economy at some value. For some reason, they are very surprised that the economy doesn't care what they want. But, yes, mining all that gold likely wouldn't make it better.

Casting any spell with out knowing that you are doing so seems dangerous, never mind a mind altering spell like hers. Well, yes, point. But also yes, this would be even more dangerous than usually. Yeap. Granted she had cause to do so, but yeah Princess Celestia banished Princess Luna to the moon for a 1000 years. Was the plot of the 1st two shows in getting Luna back from being Nightmare Moon. First two? That's how they started? It still doesn't seem like good idea. I mean, sure, she's immortal, but thousand years? And, like, if they made her stop trying that in two episodes, wouldn't that be EASIER if she wouldn't spend thousand years alone? If I understood mlooney correctly, the back story is they were originally human. Probably not, but I would prefer mlooney's explanation. It's like using potions, dangerous if you don't know what they are. You might sample a bit, and that might give you a hint, but you're not going to be sure until you try it. As they say, "... and knowing is half the bottle". ... the stuff of which single drop will kill you is USUALLY not stored in bottles, but still sounds extremely dangerous. More dangerous than most EGS spells actually. You have to appreciate that while TOS looks crappy and cheesy in retrospect, it was absolutely ground breaking when it came out, Klingons we don't talk about not withstanding. If that wasn't the case, there would not be a Star Trek franchise today; no one would have cared to revive it. True. It only looks so bad because pastel colors went out of fashion and effects went much better since then. ... and much cheaper. Nowadays, even fan-made movies can afford better effects.

There is a whole other set of short movies spun off of MLP:FiM proper called "Equestria Girls" where the whole cast is more or less human. Other than Spike the Dragon, he's a talking dog... I really failed to see the point of this. Turning the ponies human, I mean. Did the authors wanted to put a lampshade on not really trying to utilize the more fantastic aspects of the show? Oh wait, talking dog not being the weirdest thing around ... I think that, given Diane’s use of it in the lunchroom, the spell affects all who hear her voice when it is in use. I suspect it's everyone that hears the spell, even if the caster doesn't know that they can hear the spell. Well, ok, right, but still not well-suited for spreading rumors, because for that you would need the rumor to be believable if someone WITHOUT magic is telling it to someone else. This points out more and more that Diane doesn't know she has a spell or spell like power and needs to be given some help in using it by Tedd. Hopefully soon. Agree. Could be dangerous spell to use without knowing. I saw some episodes when it was in TV but probably not the correct ones. And some parts on youtube. Might still have more exposure from fanart and from other comics referencing it - including Sinfest, but the one most convincing was this Does Not Play Well with Others one. I mean, that "stupid grim dark" thing at end is MLP canon according to their wiki. Also, that enemy was her SISTER. (Also, yes, I looked at some things on their wiki.) It's possible MLP turns out to be better when read than watched ... just like ST:TOS.

You can download many things from the net, but unless someone has taken archival information and converted it, then posted it and made it available, you can not. So, if you have a wax cylinder of a band performing Dixieland jazz from the turn of the previous century, odds are good that you are not going to get them together for a live performance for your website; you might need to digitize that archival recording. True, SOMEONE needed to do it. And the sooner the better. Do you mean off the shelf archival CDs? I'd be curious how long they actually last. I don't doubt they're better than CDs. Obviously, we wouldn't know for sure until enough time would pass since their creation. But if you mean if there were archival CD-Rs, then yes, although those probably wouldn't be THAT much more robust. Pressed CD, you can't make at home, but it allows to use more diverse materials with longer live expectancy. Of course, that doesn't mean every pressed CD has higher quality ... Its a stretch, but I think she would. Marriage is a step beyond just living together, it is a promise to another person. Not to argue rightness or wrongness, nor drag 'divorce is bad' into this, keeping your word is a salient aspect of any person's moral character; can you be trusted. Or flip side, if I can't trust you in this, how can I trust you in anything? I see monster hunter as a role that requires a strong character; I admit, that is a stretch. Perhaps a sleazebag could handle it. But I'm thinking of heroes both real and fictional, and it does not seem so. She wouldn't need to TRUST Mr. Pompom. She could keep her promise to Edward until the divorce but not care about promises of Mr. Pompom - like, consider it his own problem. Also, well, we already know that Noriko is not entirely without any fault. Because she left Tedd. She might know about some existing wizard family from historical records and search if they have some living descendants and who would that be. Maybe she even started with her own line - like, start searching for sibling of some person who married into her line in past and was success, then look for their descendants. Could be possible. However, personally I think that at some point, Adrian used to be on good terms with DGB ; his magic is his own, but it would be hard for him to get Uryuom connections (like Noah and presumably Max) without DGB. Now, that could either be before Arthur tried to deport him to Russia, or after Edward was already the director ... or, maybe when someone THIRD was the director, before Arthur (who tried to deport him when at lower position than director) became director. That would, of course, be hard to fit into timeline, and even harder if Noriko would never be part of DGB. Meanwhile, I think Adrian blames himself directly over the fact that he failed to teach Noriko that her family is more important than magic. I think that he was not teaching just magic, but whole way of life, and THAT's the part where he thinks he failed. Definitely looking forward to Dan's answers to this. BTW, I'm pretty sure the person Pandora meant when she talked about someone with similar talent like Sarah being strongarmed into DGB was agent Cranium. True, she wouldn't be a good conduit to send messages to Nanase, it would blow her cover. Is that what you mean? Yes. Mrs. Kitsune needs to get the message to Nanase, but she can't be the one doing it and might actually contact DGB to make THEM contact Nanase if she knew what's going on. Which she possibly didn't, everything happened too quickly. I don't think so. That is not the face of a man saying, "Oh, yeah, go ahead and do that. Take your time." Well, we started with "that face seem to be about strong emotion", tried to speculate what emotion might that be and were not satisfied with the possibilities. That DOES warrant going back to our assumptions. Nanase shouldn't be THAT much scary, her mother is more likely if we think about directly threatening Arthur. But if it's about risk of doing something hard to conceal, both Nanase and Mrs. Kitsune might be on scary level, and maybe not just them. (Meanwhile, Edward might be directly threatening Arthur, but I don't think he would do something hard to conceal.)

No, at some point you have private ownership, it is a question of where you draw that line. Even tribal or family. Your dwelling, where you sleep, your toothbrush. You could be in a situation, perhaps a cult, where there was no ownership of anything, but disease would spread, and life would be horrific. Even your own body might not be your, and that would not be fun. Your assumption that there must be some private ownership is based on assumption that communism must work. Of course, women do have experience with cases where their body is are not theirs ... However, money have no own value ; there are just a tool to ease trading. There really should be no point of single person having any money in communism. That doesn't mean you can't own bed or toothbrush. And if you are worried that some sort of trade with using toothbrushes instead of money would appear, then you are worried that communism won't work. Yes, that has occurred to me; while adhering strongly to the notions of central control and planning, China also has limited private ownership, but enough so that it's a real incentive, and a thriving economy. My take on this is you can have an economy that is both communist and capitalist. Without China to demonstrate, i would not have thought it was possible. On reflection, it seems obvious. Another point of view would be, 'they're not communist, they're socialist'. They would be the first to disagree, and there is that strong central control to account for, so unless you want to break it down into aspects of what they do, I'd say the communist label fits better. They have quite lot of central control, but actually less than they used to. They keep strong central POLITICAL control, but give lot of freedom in the economy sense. Also, well, just because they are saying something doesn't mean it's true. They keep strong control over what is allowed to be said as well, after all. It could be both. You're on a date with a really hot woman .... Oh yeah, she's definitely hot as well. Look at any volcano.

Hmmm ... good point. That may cost money. Also, personally I don't like people calling me because they usually call in bad moment. Like when I'm sleeping, having bath (or other bathroom activity) ... Catalina is definitely hiding it, but she's very bad at it.

Or you can download the music from net That's because CDs are not really designed for that. Well, MOST CDs, there are actually special archive CDs ... but in general, they didn't even tried. Technologically, you can actually create VERY robust CDs if you press them and don't use the usual materials. If Noriko knew that much about him, she would have known he was married. My unfounded impression of her is that she would have been thorough enough to secure his wife's permission to use him as a sperm donor and not just cheated with him. <shrug> The idea that she would somehow miss she's having sex with married man didn't even occurred to me. I though she just didn't cared. That only means there is limit how far into past the genealogy goes. For example, Noriko's family have pretty long records ... Not the public one. We know she's wizard. It would be very useful for her to have some. Remember that Edward does have spell he used to evaluate Elliot's transformation. ... or that, yes. That doesn't fit what we know about Edward. He's known to be diplomatic; granted, that might not carry over into his personal life. He's also on good terms with Mama Kitsune; she allows Nanase to visit, and cares about Tedd. That seems unlikely if this was a simple case of him disagreeing with her sister. It is possible that they only married because 'we work well together, we're a great team', but no emotional connection, no chemistry, or maybe it was one sided. I could see Edward not wanting to drag another child into that. We know that he's quote emotional in personal life, remember how he reacted to Nanase being in danger. Also, I said that the arguments STARTED that way. Then the general issue of Noriko wanting to give more importance to career than personal life AND the fact that she considers child part of her career would appear ... And regarding the marriage ... the emotional connection might be there originally but later disappeared. There ARE cases like this, and arguing about something will make it REALLY apparent. Yes, but Mrs. Kitsune is limited in how much she wants to tell Nanase. It's obviously just my speculation. There are alternatives, like maybe he's just that afraid of Nanase (doing something stupid) herself. Or, maybe we are just overestimating his emotions.

There is possibility Diane is considerably more known - and popular - in school than you were. If Jay's (and Diane's) spell is capable of making people believe what she says. It's possible she could spin a rumour anyway she'd want without even mentioning magic. Or maybe she wants to get people talking about magic without implicating herself as a magic user. If the spell works only on people she directly talks to, it's not really well-suited for spreading rumors. Also, if she wants to become friend with Grace, she may want to AVOID spreading any rumors about her, especially ones which could be easily traced to her. "Friendship is magic!" Which reminds me, so had Noah. Is it common to ALL chimeras?

Ill founded confidence in paper that represents the value of the economy of the nation that treats them like an adversary, but so what, how does that make Cuba not communist? Shouldn't communism work without ANY money? Monasteries as well. Well, I wouldn't expect monasteries to be bigger than village. I couldn't rule out I'm mistaken, though ... China is VERY capitalist. They are saying something about socialist market economy, but come on, how socialist - or communist - can be country where financial markets exist which permit private share ownership? (Also, rest of article.) Nah, it proves that mother Earth is very attractive.

Yes, and if they were children today, I might do that. You may have noticed that I mention grand kids occasionally, and did so here. This happened decades ago, the thought of which is weird to me, because it happened here, and it hits me how long I've lived in this area. They had a hand me down PC from when I upgraded. It did not have a CD Rom drive; software was still distributed or at least available on diskette. We had a CD player, but it had a large rotary bank, and once loaded, you did not see the CDs. We did not have home Internet yet, it was not yet a common commodity. This would have been early Wikipedia, which wasn't nearly as fleshed out as it is today, though I could not tell you if 'broken record' had an entry then or not. It is interesting, you essentially did what we are discussing, imagined this entire scenario in present terms. Not present exactly, but seems I didn't guessed correctly when it happened, yes. I though that vinyl stayed relatively known until CDs mostly replaced it, but maybe not. I tend to forget about him. 'Looks like Adrian Raven', is that sufficient evidence that he is the source of Susan's magic lineage? Not sufficient, but it's quite big hint ... How would she know that? Magic. I mean some spell like Luke's. Or like actually studying genealogy of magic user families. Remember this is all based on idea that Mr. Pompom was awakened magic user. Probably because Edward said no. I mean, I can easily imagine that they got into arguments which eventually ended with divorce BECAUSE Noriko wanted to try again as soon as possible and was not diplomatic enough about that, while Edward was not so eager and, like, had doubts about Tedd getting enough care in such case. (Sure, there are families which have no issues with having two children close to each other, but that doesn't mean Edward wasn't worried about that.) Interesting idea. Yet she specifically does not want her daughter to know she has magic abilities. You'd think she'd train her herself. Mama Kitsune, what is going on in your head.? Afraid of her, probably not, they have good resources. Not wanting to piss her off because of past events seems likely, like how they checked in with her about what they told Nanase in the hospital. We know - from Pandora - that Mrs. Kitsune is not as experienced magic user as Noriko. However, she may still be dangerous ... and possibly dangerous DUE to her low experience - she may have control problems and Arthur might be worried that if she WILL get angry and uses magic it will be hard to hide. Or, maybe it's not about magic but about connections she have. Like, sure, how they checked in with her when Nanase in hospital made sense even just because she's her legal guardian (and parent). But I agree with what you said about his reaction being surprisingly extreme for that. So I'm trying to find reasons for THAT. If he would be afraid of Edward, he could just call Edward. Noriko is out of contact anyway. But specifically reacting this way about calling Nanase, it seems it's either due to Nanase ... or due to Mrs. Kitsune and her reaction on Nanase possibly doing something harsh.

Cuba The country where US dollar is used in normal economy? I doubt it. Probably closer than Soviets, but that's not that hard. I think that's right, maybe even not as big as a city. A small tribal village or a communal enclave, yes, I can see that working. Blood ties help, to ease the social motivations and responses. Hunt large game, share it among the clan, this works. I think there are cities somewhere in Israel where it works - I'm pretty sure they claim so. Well, ok, maybe it's more like towns or villages, certainly not as big cities as New York. Hmmm ... (googling ...) ... around thousand people top? Ok that's more like village. Still, I would believe if someone would said it can be extended to ten thousand. Hundred thousand, no. Millions? No way. Both sides grabbed scientists, although quite a few fled to the Americans. We also got quite a few physicists before the war. You also got quite a lot of scientist from Germany during cold war ... and possibly in other times as well. In Soviet union, they forced the scientists to work in their way. You left the scientist work in their way, resulting in mentioned similarities between design philosophies. Oz have a muse, wicked witches, yellow road, smaragd city and no aging except for Dorothies. No marsupials. There are some explanations. Doesn't change the fact it's informal language not aligned with biological classification.

For some reason I assumed that the forms were done. I had assumed that they were TF gun forms, given that Grace can do those and has in the past. I must have missed or failed to remember that comic where Grace says that Tedd would need to make the watches. I just said that even I didn't remembered it so well. Could be and likely that is what happened, but given the "official word of The Dan", if it didn't happen in a comic, or mentioned in a comic, it's not canon, we really can't say that it's been done. Not that this detail being canon is all that important. It is possible that Grace was waiting for some good opportunity ... and then forgot about it.

Given Arthur's reaction when Ellen demanded she call Nanase, I wouldn't be surprised if DBG is well aware of Noriko's family and has a "don't mess with them lest we incur the wrath of Noriko and/or Edward" policy, Edward is included since we've seen how Edward responded to Nanase being hurt, it's pretty clear he still considers the Kitsunes family despite Noriko's behaviour. Of course they are well aware of Noriko's family. EVERYONE in magic community is aware of Noriko. Even total strangers like Jerry knows about Edward, Noriko AND that it's not good idea to talk about Noriko to someone connected to Tedd. Nanase probably doesn't need to fit the bill as a Wizard to still fill the role as apprentice, it could still be possible to train Nanase in a way that has her develop appropriate spells, we know Nanase got a bunch of disguise and stealth and decoy spells because she spent a lot of time hiding, which put her in the mindset for getting related spells, all Noriko would have needed to do was get Nanase in the mindset of monster hunting rather than hiding. Noriko would probably settle for strong magic user if it would be her child, but if it's not her child in addition to that, trying again makes more sense. ... and speaks with a British accent. It's obvious, sometime between now and the future portrayed in Star Trek, Britain successfully invaded France. Actually, maybe it happened back in '90 during eugenic wars. We already diverted. He knows what Noah is and has a 'cat' similar to Jeremy, so yes, he knows about the aliens, and might be able to speak their language, especially if they took a second to train him. It's obvious Adrian does, but I think that sentence was about Susan's father. Really not seeing this as an option. She left her family for her career, details why this was necessary not elaborated to date, but I don't see her treating abandoning her child lightly. I don't see her engaging in further entanglements unnecessarily. Presumably, whoever she eventually hooked up later with could further her or not hinder her; possibly, she was already pregnant with Van, and is still single. Even possible she wanted an apprentice, and used someone or a sperm bank to get pregnant without establishing a relationship. Seems more in character for the obsessed career monster hunting mage girl, don't you think? Well ... yes, she might fake being attracted and only used Mr. Pompom as sperm bank because he has correct lineage, yes. Arthur might have good reason to be specifically afraid of Mrs. Kitsune. Edward, Noriko AND Mrs. Kitsune, almost certainly. Just ... Mrs. Kitsune left earlier. He might be trying to limit himself like that, but I think it's a temptation he would eventually fail to resist. Maybe he would already be teaching Grace if her connection to Edward didn't reminded him WHY he decided to not train another group. Also, as I already mentioned, he may be observing closely their progress. And I think it was even MENTIONED somewhere that he didn't agreed with Noah's pursuing revenge. But, like ... he probably decided that teaching him AND trying to talk him out of it is better idea than to let him go unprepared. Must be centuries of experience speaking.

We don't have set time, but Noriko was already disappointed with Tedd as baby. I think it didn't take that long from that to the divorce. Also, it seems that Tedd's memories of divorce are not really clear, although that might be due to trauma. I can see him not thinking logically. I can't see him still not know better after years. .... and distances like that were enough for separate LANGUAGES in rest of Europe. ... which was foreshadowed by Liz ... Well, yes. I don't think the timeline would match. However, it is still possible that there is relation - Mama Kitsune might developed a distaste for British because Noriko liked them, and that's why Noriko moved to Britain ... I definitely think Adrian was specifically prohibited from training Nanase by Mama Kitsune. Indeed. Looking forward to it. Although it's possible we don't get the details no matter how much I would like to. He had how much time for it? He might not be that fast - remember that he can taste magic so he may be evaluating her progress and thinks she's getting well on her own (well, with Nanase) and he doesn't need to teach her yet. Or maybe he realized Ellen is connected to Edward and assumes Edward is training her and don't want to interfere. Or, maybe it's Ellen's connection to Nanase which makes him careful. I don't think Nanase was SPEAKING at that time yet. I mean, the timeline is not clear so it's possible, but I suspect that she scanned Nanase not that long later than Tedd. Good point. However, it makes very much sense Noriko wanted to know that. Idioms related to technology don't age well, yes ... note that you failed with the "diskette". They should know CD-ROM (well, DVD) and that makes much better analogy (to vinyl, which is source of the "broken record" idiom). Not sure what to do with grand kids, though, they may not know DVDs either. Also, well, there already IS a wikipedia redirect for broken record. On the other hand, diskette may remain forever as icon for saving, long after noone would know WHY that icon represent saving.

Well, some writers will tell you that story telling isn't part of world building and that it's the important part of writing fiction. A RPG designer that has that sort of attitude will tend to write very railroady adventures or rule sets that do not easily support sandbox gaming. I'm all about sandboxing. Just as an example, based on my experience, D&D 3.x and Pathfinder support sandboxing fairly well. D&D 4 really doesn't and D&D 5 supports it quite nicely. Traveller and it's offspring, of course, truly support sandbox universes. Oh. Right. If you railroad the story enough you can skip worldbuilding. If you are crappy author at least. I mean, seriously, this kind of stories are usually bad even in book, not speaking about having it as adventure / game / ruleset. (It can work in short story, if it's short enough there really isn't space for anything else. But something bigger, no.) Out of curiosity, what makes D&D 4 specifically bad for sandboxing in contrast with D&D 3 and 5?

We don't really know who Jay knows besides that nameless student she was with when Diane made her big speech at MSHS. We don't know how well she knows HIM either. Yup, hard to say ... but I would say that she knows lot of people but lack true friends, and that likely includes anyone she would trust telling she has magic. Now wouldn't that be fun. I'm having a hard time with the idea of Tedd going on a double date with some one he doesn't know. Could happen, but I'm not seeing it. Well, if Edward wouldn't stop THIS he's definitely incompetent. Also, I would hope he taught Tedd AND Grace better. ... but it does look like good plan for Jay. Maybe she tries and it will be an opportunity to show Edward is not as incompetent. I have a simpler response for them: "I have no idea what she's talking about." It WILL however make playing with change blindness harder.

I'm not sure there are any real communists (it's idea which looks good on paper but not as good in real life in anything bigger than city) but Soviets especially were very far from the idea. True. AK-47 is definitely technological accomplishment and in general, Russian technology was more robust (which is VERY important for weapons), but space race eventually showed that the complex systems are necessary. Note: it's not just page. You took the scientists too, was already mentioned Yes, but I would say they are still playing catch-up. But you are right they have vision. I don't think they can get better than South Korea in technology, but South Korea is too small to have enough money for things as space program ... and China and India CAN get better than US and Europe. It's appalling and dangerous, it can easily result in another war ... and THAT may get dangerously close to "war to end all wars" if nuclear weapons will be involved. A super volcano could change our albedo enough to stave off global warming. It's happened before. We could nuke ourselves back to the stone age, which might cu down on greenhouse gases and give fish and whales a chance to repopulate. Lots of peachy scenarios. True, there ARE ways how the catastrophes may counteract each other. However, I really hope we won't nuke ourselves to stone age, as there is not enough fossil fuels to get back to technology age from there without waiting hundred of millions of years for them to replenish. Ooo, another optimist. I do hope you're right. Venus does not look like a pleasant place to dwell. The sad theory is that at a certain point the enhanced heating becomes self-sustaining, and you reach a new much hotter stable point. At some point, from our PoV, the climate runs away and can no longer recover. No chance for carbon sequestration, for instance. It is a bit of a long stretch from 40 degrees C to 100 degrees C. Up until then I suppose we have some chance. Or something does. Venus doesn't look like a pleasant place, but is way closer to sun. There should be few stable points between current one and Venus for us. But yes, if we stop hoping we will be able to stop it and start to actually adapt, we should be able to survive and even keep most of technology. Not just over major groups like dinosaurs/birds or insects/bugs. The maned wolf is referred to in some languages as the "tall fox", and it's neither a wolf nor a fox - although it is a canid. The aardwolf, on the other hand, is not even caniformia - with "wolf" right there in its name, it's actually a species of hyena, which are more closely related to cats. And that's not talking about koala bears, who are about as close to bears as guinea pigs to pigs.