The Old Hack

I am afraid it will not be that easy. Magus has a good deal of confidence in his magical power and it may well be justified. If there is a fight, it won't be an easy one.

Good for him. That stuff is lethal. My great-uncle died from it. Granted, that was because the ship he was aboard sank after hitting a mine, but you could with some justice call it an overdose.

It doesn't. Magus has made this to be all about him/her, and sees Ellen as a reminder of a painful past that must be 'fixed.' Ellen isn't a separate person at all to Magus but an extension of their own self, much like a parent trying to force their child into becoming what they themselves wanted to be. This, incidentally, also explains that spar between Magus and Terra we saw way back when. Magus wanted to prove the 'objective superiority' of the male form to Terra who responded with what she thought was 'true power.' Whether that also might have anything to do with the act of sabotage aimed at Magus back then is a little hard to say, though it might be possible, of course. I just don't think Terra was behind it.

Take it from me, that never works. Lee Harvey Oswald and John Wilkes Booth probably also thought they'd be a hit with all the girls after nailing a president. It didn't work out that way.

Bollocking dihydrogen oxide. It gets everywhere and no-one seems to do anything about it. Do you realise that it is so prevalent that people are actually born dependent on it? It is so addictive that you can barely go without it for a few hours before you start to notice. It's a planetary crisis and the governments don't even care.

This is true. But call me old-fashioned, when I am part of a manned expedition headed into space, I would like the calculations to be just a little more exact than that. Especially that bit at the end where you probably want to head back to the Earth without either burning to a cinder or becoming a huge impact crater somewhere. (Admittedly the odds are against that -- a huge splash is more likely by far. But even though the odds of the crater outcome are low, I am sure that those who potentially might live where the crater-to-be is about to form would appreciate more exact calculations, too.)

I suspect the mathematicians that spent decades working out the necessary formulae for actually getting your payload to where you want it to go while navigating a system with several bodies moving at different speeds and in different directions while gravitationally affecting one another might slightly disagree with that.

It is one reason we are glad to have you around, old friend. As a god among men you are many things, but one thing you are not is a jerk.

Two potential solutions: One, take it as a hint that exercising a little is good for you. Two, get a better chair. I recommend both.

He'll just get ticketed for illegally parking his car in orbit around Mars. Uryuom traffic cops are not people you want to mess with.

Nah, I think it was just a common naysayer. You know, the kind that insists nothing is new. Like, a space station is really just a cave someone put in orbit and the cavemen inside it wear space suits instead of fur.

If you need someone who is constantly overly excited, happy or angry, there is only one possible candidate.

I recently encountered a genius on Facebook who said that there was nothing impressive about the space program, that we had had rockets for centuries. I guess he didn't hold with the work of Sir Isaac Newton (the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space), astrophysics and the development of the maths needed to handle the interactions of multiple planetary bodies orbiting the same system.

Funnily enough, it was on WikiQuotes that I read an article which seemed to support him saying it, but the article stated the same thing that I also stressed above: that it is hard to predict the future and that in the context of the time he said it, it was just fine. Heinlein once wrote a very cool article in which he attempted to predict future political and technological developments. This was in 1950. In some he proved to be too optimistic, in a couple of others (mobile phones being a key example) his wildest predictions fell short and in just one did he prove absolutely correct: the collapse of Eastern Bloc communism. The point being that it is one thing to see humour in past remarks and another to blame the person involved for failing to predict the future. Most of us can manage to sound like idiots when speaking about the present just fine.

Overly excited, happy or angry... sounds about right!

That is what Microsoft's propaganda department really badly wanted you to believe. Unfortunately, the poor man actually said it. I personally do not hold it against him or laugh at him for it; at the time you didn't exactly see people argue against it in hordes. I have one constant in my life following me around: hindsight is always better. If I look hard enough, I have said far stupider things than Mr. Gates' unfortunate quote.

Hrm. I do not really see what you mean but that may be due to me being very tired. At any rate I am glad we came to some level of understanding. 640K ought to be enough for anybody. -- Bill Gates (1981)

As long as he isn't a lost Sherman tank. That one was awful. I'd rather think of the Prof as a Pershing.

That is what she has her fairy dolls for.

Oh I agree. Once again, he displayed what he was made of when he drew the line at murdering Abraham and framing Mr. Verres. Absolutely. Victimisation is often a cycle. This makes it especially important to break such cycles. The thing is, it is possible to be a victim without passing harm on to others. As Eli Wiesel said, victimhood does not ennoble nor confer special privileges. But it does make it important to help the victims. In this case, it also means that victims who in turn become victimisers (as noted, this is not all of them) must be helped but also brought to understand that what they did was wrong. That is a complex question and I have no ready answer. What I do know is that it is a bad idea to define a person by their victimhood. One does them no favours that way and they tend to find it supremely offensive. In short, remember that what you have is not a victim but rather a human being that was victimised.

Reading 'odometer' made me think of some sort of Star Trek gadget from Deep Space 9 that Quark might have come up with in order to try and spot Odo when he could be lurking in disguise. I am easily amused.

Yes, and please note, what I am arguing is that he still had a share of the responsibility. Not that he is entirely reprehensible. It is the notion of giving him a free pass I strenuously object to. It is the task of a judge to include extenuating circumstances, after all. This is critically important and is part of why I object to merely giving someone a pass. Let us say that Magus, now free, simply waltzed on his merry way and said, "That was fun. Anyone for pizza?" He would have learned nothing save the lesson that it is OK to manipulate and endanger people when you kinda think you have to. And the circumstances for 'have to' will erode over time. First you commit the crimes out of need. Then you commit more crimes to cover up the first crimes. Then you commit still more crimes, always driven by a 'need' which turned false somewhere on the road unnoticed by you... And there is always the need of the victims. The need to be recognised as people, their need for justice or at least closure. Justice does not have to be crippling punishment for the perpetrator. In fact, often it does not even help. Justice is societal recognition of the wrong, aid in overcoming its consequences and ideally preventing more wrongs at the source. It is certainly not saying "But think of the poor perpetrator, his life is ruined now" and then sending him off with a pat on the back to commit more crimes.

Ah. In that case I misunderstood you and I apologise for that. I am afraid this is a sensitive matter for me -- there are people who would feel that Magus was morally justified in his actions and I simply cannot accept that. I will certainly agree that in case those wronged forgive him he is at least absolved from what wrongs he did to them. The larger picture is still rather shaky and I am unwilling to declare judgment there myself; I merely feel that simply dismissing his deeds is a serious mistake. Once again I apologise for my harsh earlier words. I have apparently been under more stress than I realised and I allowed myself to take that out on you, which was a very serious mistake. I am sorry.

All that is true, but this merely means that Pandora and Magus share responsibility. And Pandora still has a lot to answer for. "Tell them my tale -- ill deeds along with the good -- and let them judge accordingly." Pandora is fortunate in that she is still alive to learn from her past mistakes as well as the mistakes of her past self. Magus, too, is still in a position to atone. What I completely object to and in fact refuse to accept is that responsibility is in any way mitigated by either the perpetrator's situation or by net positive outcomes. Magus could have refused to do what Pandora asked of him, and in fact did so when he disobeyed her orders to turn Mr. Verres into a murderer. That counts to his credit -- he refused in the face not only of personal loss but also imminent personal danger, and I admire him for that. But as for the rest of his actions, he remains responsible for them and no matter how you turn it about he endangered a lot of people with his actions. It is, of course, possible to mitigate judgment based on these circumstances. But that is a separate matter.

But this is exactly what he was saying. Magus should get a pass for mentally manipulating people, endangering innocents (Sirleck might have escaped if not for Ellen, just for one thing), inflicting emotional trauma (Ellen's creation) and for calling aberrants into Moperville as a distraction (that they would probably be killed is cold comfort to those they did manage to kill.) All of that is fine because Magus is actually really a nice person!