The Old Hack

The problem is that Abraham was killing the copies out of sheer overcompensation. The first use of the diamond resulted in disaster, therefore all uses of it must do so, at least to his mind. And so he swore an oath he was unwilling to break even when he knew it would lead to evil. However, I am judging Abraham from a modern point of view. I can see your point and from a medieval point of view Abraham might be acting not only sensibly but even commendably. Even so, I personally still feel grave misgivings about what he may have done. And yes. I am hoping the diamond spent most of its time hidden away and that it only came to the attention of the Main Eight because of Pandora's manipulations. I prefer that to it just drifting around from owner to owner with its possessors being largely ignorant of the dangers it poses.

The Moderator: All right. My apologies for the sensitivity. You inadvertently echoed a past troll; this was not your fault. ETA: (In case you wonder about this mess of colours, by poster request here I am posting ordinary messages in blue and cautions and warnings in red. It avoids certain kinds of confusion.)

The Moderator: If this was a joke, it did not strike me as funny. If it is some puerile attempt at trolling, be advised that I do not have much patience with that. In either case, there are strict limits to how much nonsense I tolerate before I start to take action against it.

Abraham was a product of medieval times. Back then the general attitude was that afflictions such as leprosy, madness, childlessness and so forth were God's punishment for some evil or other. Since the only function of the diamond was a flawed removal of spells from persons touching it -- and we know from Nioi that it has a very broad definition of what it sees as a 'curse' -- it becomes all too plausible for me that Abraham has killed one or several beings whose only crime was to be duplicates split off from someone who wished to be free of an unwanted enchantment. Such beings might or might not have been dangerous, but I am willing to lay enormous odds against all of them being innately evil or the victims of an enchantment that made them dangerous to their surroundings. It would be immensely simple for this not being the case. Imagine someone who just wanted to get rid of a spell that had turned them ugly or afflicted them with a disease or the like. Abraham would still be ready to axe the duplicate.

That 'implication' got sort of boldfaced, underlined and chiseled into rock when he came within fractions of a second of murdering Ellen.

Prof, once again, you are more than welcome. And no, you did not bore me. I am just hoping this will lead to some sort of movement in the right direction, i. e. towards less pain, better sleep and generally improved quality of life.

Not necessarily. Grace herself is observant. I know that if I noticed that someone had, say, gotten six inches taller, I would at the very least do a double take. That alone would probably be enough to tell Grace that I had noticed. ETA: It also depends on the story universe. I have seen any number of animes, for example, where characters existed who would just outright say, "Your boobs are noticeably shrinking. Maybe you should stop dieting?" (That these would mere moments later also be crushed into the ground by some nearby Tsundere helps explain the anime origins of Susan's hammers.)

Or... To give an idea of the size of the pig, the girl standing next to it is thirty feet tall. (Even though she claims to only be twenty-nine feet tall. She is a little embarrassed by her height.)

Oh, it is not a question of running out of fodder. In fact, the principal problem with the Guillotine is that given just a handful of so, they can often operate much faster than you can keep supplies coming. But while the proportionate loss of fodder may get smaller, it will not go to zero and the absolute amount of losses will not be reduced at all. In fact, it may even drastically increase as discontent with the feeding process may grow and cause the general populace (the primary source of mass Guillotinage) to rise in protest and make strongly worded objections. In fact, such objections led to the end of the Terreur in France, with one of the last victims of it being Robespierre himself.

A twitter bot has gotten hold of a televangelist's tweets and replaced every mention of 'God' with 'your d***.' It is incredibly juvenile, not really safe for work and it had me snickering madly. Click on it with due caution, but if you do not like televangelists, it is pure gold.

While crash test dummies are less finicky about such things, real humans tend to be curiously reluctant to accept such matters on faith. As one example, back in the black and white Hollywood days they were making a Robin Hood movie. During the movie Errol Flynn was supposed to be fired from a catapult inside a castle and land in a haystack. So they started the shot, had Flynn climb into the catapult, then paused, told him to climb out again and told a stuntman to climb in. However, the stuntman asked if they had tested it first and was told, "No worries, it will work." But he insisted that they test it with a sack that weighed about the same as he did. The director got mad and threatened to fire him -- from the job, that is -- and the stuntman replied he would rather be fired from the job than from an untested catapult. With ill grace, the director gave in and ordered a properly weighted sack procured and the catapult tested, telling the stuntman that after this, he would be in trouble. When they did the test shot, the catapult overshot the haystack by almost a hundred yards. The sack impacted on the tree line and burst. After that they entirely reworked the catapult and the director meekly agreed to three successful test shots before the stuntman was fired. This time from the catapult, not the job. And yes, he did land in the haystack when they finally made the shot. ETA: While the guillotine is much more reliable in operation, it is nonetheless not a perfect method as Scarlet Pimpernelage may cause a certain amount of loss of executables before it has a chance to perform its job.

I'll take it. Thanks for the update. We are all very grateful to you for your efforts on his behalf! The times I have been ill I must have been at the very least a general nuisance to my wife. At least she gave me a disgusted look when I started to make Groucho Marx quotes like, whilst the nurse was attempting to take my pulse, "Either my watch has stopped or the patient is dead."

For some reason it fills me with deep satisfaction when politicians manage to come together and make a truly dramatic improvement for society, even on a municipal level. I am very glad you have that flood control system.

After a certain height is reached, any further elevation becomes moot. And people have -- rarely -- survived falls from incredible heights. An example was a hapless pilot about a mile above France during WW1. This was 1917, so due to the genius of High Command pilots were not allowed to bring parachutes as this would 'merely encourage them to abandon their expensive planes'. This particular plane was on fire so the pilot had a choice between jumping and burning to death. He elected to jump. After falling a mile he went through the straw thatched roof of a sleepy little nunnery and landed in a bed. Fifteen minutes later he walked out of the place under his own power. There have been other cases, many if not most of them involving extended hospitalisation. But if I personally had a choice, a huge pile of shit would not be lowest on my list of where to land after a fall like that. It has enough give to it that I might actually survive. I'd prefer the straw thatched roof and the bed, though. (Incidentally, if that had been me in the scenario above, I would probably have become a believer after that. All due respect to science, and I would not call it false, but I defy science to come up with a logical explanation that would overcome the emotional impact of that. Not to mention the physical one.)

The old Hack, of course.

Bah! Luxury! When I were a wee 'un and we learned oor numbers, we 'ad ta use monoliths. One monolith mean one, two monoliths mean two and so forth. An' teacher 'ad us set up math problems wit' oor oon monoliths so we 'ad ta go look all over plains an' hills of Denmark for 'em. An' when we run out, we 'ad ta swim ta Norway for more an' swim back ta Denmark wit' em. An' we 'ad ta fight dem droods from England for 'em because dey use dem ta build stonehenges. An' dem droods were so tough, ye 'ad ta bash 'em repeatedly wit' monolith ta make 'em lay still, an' den put ten monolith on 'em ta make sure dey didn't get up again. An' den swim really fast back ta Denmark wit' oor oon monolith so dey wouldn't chase us ta take 'em back. An' den we get back ta Denmark an' had ta use oor monolith ta make Fibonacci sequences an' we 'ad ta do it in space no bigger nor a rounders field. An' when we were done, teacher would beat us ta death wit' monoliths if we make even one mistake. AND WE WERE GLAD TA DO IT! An' when ye tell young people nowadays, they'll never believe ye.

Sounds rather like my wife's cat deigning to acknowledge my existence. With the possible exception of twitching an ear instead of scratching at her face.

I liked this one better. It struck me as more positive, somehow.

That reminds me of this rather interesting sign:

It tends to range from stupid through awful to mind-bogglingly senseless. It has been a pet peeve of mine for many years now and I have at times spent good parts of an entire game session chatting with friends of mine about how idiotic it is and/or about the latest horrors perpetrated by fandom, artists and the gaming industry. *sigh*

What?! You aren't bedazzled and held awake for many hours at end by the riveting tales of the heirs of the noble Luger? O.O

Thanks for keeping us posted, Prof. Sorry to hear that you are having so much trouble. :/ It does put things greatly in perspective. My own health troubles seem to dwindle into insignificance in comparison and I am grateful for being as healthy as I am.

Blessed are the Peacemakers.

I can chip in if needed.

Given the way the question was phrased, possibly the word order should be "Sum ergo cogito."