Darth Fluffy

I just noticed, four comics later, Camdin surprises Luke. Someone said they think Camdin is Smokey, I think they're right. There are smokey puffs in the first two panels, and Camdin sort of appears out of nowhere. It didn't seem like it when the comic was first posted, because Smokey hadn't been introduced yet, so there was no context to interpret it that way; it looks like maybe Camdin was just quiet as he walked up from behind. Oh, yeah, next comic confirms it. Camdin: "I can be sneaky! I just have to do it right." Luke: "What, by trying to blend in around bonfires?" If that's the case, I don't think Camdin is just a fanboy fishing for information, I think he wants to be able to turn into Cheerleadra.

Funny, I had that same thought, but it does not seem likely.

"Of all the comic shops in all the towns in all the world, Rich walks into mine." Yeah, but at least he buys stuff. (meager evidence of entering a tournament. And unlike Sarah and Sam, he appears to always be there, probably enters every one.) There is a disconnect between Rich thinking Tedd was a girl, which he eventually was, the last time they met, and constantly hitting on her, and how he's treating Tedd as just another dude now. I'd say I won't loose any sleep over it, except I'm in the process of loosing sleep over it by typing this. <Yawn>, Enough.

Thinking about this, I don't think this limitation is true. Since the mass is violently shed, it should carry away a disproportionate amount of angular momentum. Still, huge to begin with, and zero width. Hmm.

Y'know, an animated version of EGS would be fun, with over the top character theme and mood music, and a cheesy laugh track. And sound effects, like "Boing" when the eyeballs contract like that. Some kind of disco theme for the spots on the background. "Best date", ..., hmmm, ... Sam must have opened up and talked to her, she would value the intimacy of deepening trust. I'll bet he didn't tell her everything. She may still know less than Grace.

I need to get me some more dental xrays. Boo-yah!

At least you don't have to hear him say it.

I'm glad we had this talk.

Good point, if the collapsing star throws away matter, it's also shedding angular momentum, but not more than the proportion of mass it's shedding, so your huge star that shed 85% of it's mass still has 15% of it's angular momentum. In a space with zero width.

Not buying that there's any massive ones that don't rotate.

No. That is weird. If Earth life can participate, they would seemingly be DNA based, which is not a given, but does not seem unlikely, and the chirality has to match, that should be a 50%/50% chance, unless there's a reason that I'm not aware of why one would be favored. Encoding different sets of protein based on somewhat different sets of amino acids (expect much overlap, but not total) would lead to weirdness like needing to take alien vitamins. Grace, are you taking your Uryuom One a Days? The different species, DNA's not a set of blueprints, it's a library and machinery for constructing complex organic molecules; seemingly with timing and quantity instructions. How that freaking house of cards stays together is beyond me. But speciation appears to be important in an evolutionary sense or it would not be as big an influence on outcomes as it is. So, yeah, different numbers of strands and such should be a show stopper. Raising one of your questions, maybe it's not natural? Some species are hermaphroditic, earthworms come to mind. Some have both genders and become one during a mating process, sea cucumbers battle to be the male and female. Maybe the Urywhosits started that way, then "improved" themselves. H#!!, maybe the egg is a biotechnically developed device that they now produce naturally that can unwrap and rewrap DNA, fixing it's chirality. Maybe knitting together disparate strands into a consistent whole set. (Oh, God, I'm doing the midichlorians thing. I'll stop.) It raises the question, can Grace, a lespuko mate with Tedd, a human, and produce an offspring? Would her uterus handle all the anomalies without the benefit of the Uryuom egg? Might that be why she appeared to be squicked by the notion of human reproduction in one panel (was in the context of someone, Sarah, I think, explaining why people react badly to her nudity.)

Yes, and going where and when you don't know, and classically also tiny, you might send a signal through, but probably not a hamster. Sure, sure, we have a plan, trivially easy, we leave it as an exercise for the students, who hopefully have exotic matter to keep it open ... At a quantum level, sure. A positron might be an electron moving back in time, it would look the same; entropy barely holds with very small numbers and quantities. But scale it up, and it falls apart quickly. Something other than normal "stuff" is filling up most of the universe. Not sure about black hole nudity. It's based on spin, and I don't get why starting with the angular momentum of a star, as the object collapses to zero size, the rotational speed should be effectively infinite to maintain that angular momentum (think skater bringing their arms in), but apparently that's not the case. (Still, I would be really surprised if someone discovered a singularity of significant size that was not spinning.) Never been observed, yet, but that doesn't mean they're not out there. New topic My theory is time travel is easy, but every timeline that discovers it is inherently unstable, so only the ones where it's never discovered remain.

(O"o) ---(Ack!) (or perhaps: (O"o) ---(Usp !) ) The article on Uryuomoco spells it out in much detail. Definitely fourth wall knowledge that they are speaking coded English, I don't think it's supposed to seem that way in-universe. So I poked around the last link's website, and the owner's name is Sven Groot.

<sigh> George Lucas, ..., it's like a mental condition that won't let him let go and move on. Frankly, Han shooting after Greedo bothers me way more. You had a vision, man, own it. Not that I've ever read them, way before my time, but Hulk is somewhat akin to the original version of Superman from, who, for instance, couldn't fly, but could jump really well. But why does moving from a red-sun world to a yellow-sun world make him stronger? Shouldn't the more intense radiation kill him, since his physiology isn't adapted to it? Or perhaps his species is not native to Krypton, he just happens to be from there. Maybe he's just wrong about why he's superpowered; has nothing to do with the lighting, Krypton is just hugely massive. See, it's BS questions like this that make the writers want to fix their s#!%. (Don't get me started on Green Lantern. Is he allergic to Yellow light? How "yellow" does it have to be? A specific wavelength? A band? Does intensity matter. Why doesn't white light, like daylight, bother him? It has yellow. Or is it all in his head? The perception of yellow. Yellow paint, even if it's not reflecting much yellow light. What if he's presented with an optical illusion, where one background makes it look not quite yellpw, and another makes it appear vivid yellow? And we don't actually see yellow, our brain has to synthesize it from other information, mostly red and green balance, I guess. Can you "see" yellow if you observe the right balance of actual red and green, and would that affect him?) (And how does The Flash maintain traction to run?) I like Mystery Men because they are essentially mundane and avoid most of this. "I am The Shoveller. I shovel well." Or Batman; "My superpower is that I am a filthy rich genius martial artist." I don't disagree, that's a pretty astute observation, but I would like to point out that you just did the very thing we're talking about, applied a layer of science colored paint to it.

He might prefer to tell to tell her and to warn her of the consequences of disseminating the information, rather than have her find out on her own. From Edward's point of view, briefing someone in is more controllable than a loose cannon rolling around. I wonder if they can also learn by the same method (well, similar method, but reverse) of the way they taught Uryumoco? Also, how the h$## does that ability evolve? And did Dan channel Tolkien and design Uryumoco, or is it random gibberish? Also, they could make a fortune with that ability.

Maybe we'll find a loophole, but basic physics says, "Don't get your hopes up." Flip side, it has been pointed out the fundamental argument for why c is the speed limit have to do with avoiding cause and effect contradictions. As long as you are willing to toss the even more fundamental notion of causality, there is no reason c has to be the speed limit, for information at least.

Yeah, I've never found that retconning does much to help a series. That is the path to midichlorians, the dork side of the farce. (OMG, the Star Wars fan sites are hyphenating it. That can't be good.)

I'm pretty sure he meant exactly that, further out. But lets see, roughly 100 or so miles up, about an hour to orbit ~ 25,000 mph. Geosync, around 27,000 miles up, ballpark 85,000 miles around, in 24 hours, yeah, you've actually slowed down as well. You've added energy, but your forward velocity is lower. And if you put on the brakes, so to speak, you'll speed up as you fall inward (while you are still orbiting). Agree, evolution does not sit still; adapt or die. One scenario is, as we spread among the close stars, we become multiple competing species. Niven uses this in A World Out of Time.

I don't think he's changed that much. "Nice" is there, but doesn't seem to be his core. I'd say principled, pragmatic, within his understanding, a bit set in his ways and inflexible, but not too much, he's adapted to changing dynamics.

I liked it, but for me it didn't stand out so much. I liked the card game a lot. To each their own. 3 hours ago, hkmaly said: The watches are technically a wand. Yes. Although Pandora distiguished, "Let's have you make a proper wand." 3 hours ago, hkmaly said: Yes, he can do a glasses-shaped wand with such spell, ... I would say, we can infer that he can. A. It's not that different, and B. That's probably what he was doing with the glasses early on.

It's been years, but I've worked in places that had them, I've heard them called either. I've used a few, but much smaller and more bottle-like.

If you succeed too well, your instructor won't be able to give you a grade; it takes a bit of finesse.

I prefer to think of it as The Three Bears zone, rather than the break-in and enter perp. Ya gotta have standards.

Elliot knows that Melissa is aware of magic, and Justin should know that Noah is as well. I don't recall that anyone else (human) know about Rhoda and Catalina's magic. Susan is already invited. Diane could be invited by Susan or Nanase. A few of the crew were present for "you're a vampire slayer". I think Lucy might be a stretch at this point. We'll see.

Grace has gotten angsty lately.