The Old Hack

Me, so I am sure he can arrange a nice funeral for me.

I am not sure. What octane was it? And stay away from gas pills produced by British Petroleum, I hear these are dodgy.

The differences between cultures. Copenhagen is brim full of bicyclists and on my bad days I am convinced that half of them are complete idiots. Many bicyclists will run red lights, cut across traffic and generally make a huge nuisance of themselves in their confident assurance that car drivers will hit the brakes in order to not run them down. I have no such assurances, and while the legal advantage will often lie with the bicyclist, I have a different kind of law in mind. To wit, Newton's laws of motion. I am precariously balanced on my bicycle as I glide through traffic. Together, I, my bag and my bicycle weigh perhaps something like 250 lbs. I drive at a speed of, say, 12 mph. Now I happen to encounter a car going in the opposite direction. The car is going at a modest 35 mph. With driver and occupants included, it weighs around 2000 lbs. The people inside the car are seated inside a well-balanced metal box that has contact with the ground in four different spots. They are presumably fastened to their seats with seat belts to further improve their safety and the metal box has various means of absorbing and distributing the energy of potential impacts so these will be less likely to harm the occupants. The two above parties now run into one another frontally. Exercise for the class: which side is the most likely to come out second best in this collision?

Tedd is a better person than many suspect. It is precisely because of his empathy and his desire to protect those he cares about that he is vulnerable to becoming corrupted. With all the hurt and injury done to him early in his life he withdrew into himself to protect himself. Getting Elliot as a friend was the best thing that could possibly have happened to him; if Colonel Sanders had succeeded in killing Elliot, it would have been the worst -- provoking the kind of anger and hate in Tedd that was precisely what Sanders wanted. We have time and again seen Tedd step up to the plate when his friends were in danger or someone was trying to harm them. And that is no small thing. He is also the sort of person who would intercede if he sees a perfect stranger in pain. This is Tedd at his purest. Like Elliot, he is a protector and possibly more. Perhaps even a healer. ETA: I also see the first hint of a possible non-selfish motivation for Noriko to withdraw from Tedd. Maybe she was afraid that her profession would draw dangerous attention to Tedd and potentially make him a target for anyone who wanted to get at her. It is not as if this hasn't precedent. (It is usually also complete codswallop and the idiot doing it ends up doing more harm than good, but there you are.)

His own fault for insisting on going in the wintertime. I have no sympathy.

It doesn't. It just adds painful irony, which makes me even more angry.

This would not change the hilarity factor for me. Mind you, it would be a very bitter hilarity. In both cases. I am glad it is not me. I would most likely tell Noriko to take a flying dive. I am unfortunately capable of nursing resentment for a long, long time.

Tedd has one bit of knowledge that Mr. Verres doesn't. Tedd now knows that the potential measuring wand failed. It has changed the equation. Also, to be fair to Mr. Verres, what he feared was a worst case scenario. He might not have assumed it would happen automatically, he just didn't want to run the risk.

Let's stick to hugs for Tedd. As far as I am concerned, the jury is still out on Noriko. But she better hope that the defence has some damned good arguments and that the prosecution takes a nice, deserved and above all long rest.

It is probably been mentioned before but I am starting to suspect that the hidden second potential power Tedd has as a Seer is that if Magic does change... it will be his job not just to codify the new rules, but to make them. In other words, he would be the one to set up how magic works, how you can get it and what is possible to do with it and so forth. I find this speculation hilarious in that it creates the mental image of Noriko having to come back to the child she abandoned to beg for instructions in how to do magic again.

Mph. A well-meaning transphobic parent can still do harm. But at least Edward cares.

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, No escape from reality...

I want to write something about Noriko back then but it would emerge purely in the form of obscenities and pejoratives. So I am withholding my opinion for now, hoping that new information will emerge that will make me despise her less.

Frankly, this is more or less how I feel about her, too. Again, at present.

Savory is a good choice. I vastly prefer it to unsavory, no matter how sweet it might be.

I still remember that boardgame where it took a WWII troop transport three months to cross the Atlantic. The poor sods must have been so frigging bored.

The Moderator: I would like to take this small occasion to thank two of our regular forumgoers, HarJit and Illjwamh, for going above and beyond to make the forums a good place. HarJit for their unceasing work with the Greasemonkey scripts to improve the forums and Illjwamh for patient dedication with sharing statistics and character appearances. I have pinned the Greasemonkey thread for ease of access. Illjwamh's Crazy Counting Guy thread, of course, is already pinned. Once again, thank you both. ~tOH.

You would be the expert. How long a time did those comics on the walls of the pyramids span?

Talk about a long, slow and tortuous death.

If you don't stop apologising, I am going to tell the bailiff to strike you and your apologies with a lint roller.

The Moderator: Done.

I liked it on the Prof's behalf. Seconded here. If I can help chip in, I will.

You should consider driving a Cnadillac instead of a Fnord. It has a much better AC.

You should not let this keep you from blogging. If nothing else, you may give the rest of us an interesting read. I know I would like to read what you write about it.

It can nonetheless be amusing to read older history texts. I have in my collection an early 20th century history text that discusses World War One; it is titled 'Lions led by Donkeys.' I was somewhat startled when the writer at one point detoured to what had happened in Italy after the war and spoke of 'the excellent Mr. Mussolini.' I checked the date of print and found it was written and printed in 1929.