Drachefly

So I read this slay http://the1smjb.deviantart.com/art/EGS-slay-GirlGeniusCrossover-202146525 As you can see from the title, Girl Genius Crossover. So, what if another world, with a different magic system, is Girl Genius? It does a LOT, but everyone thinks it's technology! Secret kept! Or it could be the other side of the world, maybe? It's not like griffins would be particularly out of place, and if they live in America then we wouldn't have even run into them. But the magic system was too similar, so I think not.

I was an answer-checker on a physics textbook aimed at pre-med students and I told them that their Bernoulli explanation of lift was completely bogus. I do not know if they changed it. I suspect they did not.

If you read the politics thread, you can guess where I stand. I have a hard time taking 'CANADA!' seriously, but fortunately this was for humor.

I'm not sure how a Bard crit-failing would lead to that.

Even if it's capable of it, I don't think the JWST is going to be assigned any synoptic survey duties.

This is getting a bit afield from earthquakes, but I would point out that the Hubble's mirror is a measly 2.4 meters and its FoV is tteeeeeeny tiny. Once we get a space-based synoptic telescope of the kind of size you'd expect down on Earth, those things are going to be far, far more visible. With launch costs going down the way they are, within a few decades that should not provide a noticeable strain on our budget.

'Never' is a strong word. I did only say it looks pretty clear.

Fortunately about the asteroids, we've checked the neighborhood out and it looks pretty clear.

So, Clarisse van Rossum?

I began Consider Phlebas last night. I would have continued Too Like the Lightning, but it looks like it hasn't appreciably changed since I was a beta reader.

I'm not very happy with the wording Pandora used. It doesn't flow well. I'd have just said, "darn it, her conscience is strong enough to interfere - I can't give her any of them." A core of inner goodness seems a bit over-the-top. Ah well, not a big deal. ETA: it seems like Dan is trying to take "ashley could be bad?" and hit it with a giant hammer when a screwdriver tightening would have done.

It is possible to shoot a good space battle without having exploding panels, but you need to do it right. Like, the Battlestar Galactica battle where Adama's directing the battle with a carefully selected set of observers (to identify spies), and then he lets loose the trap after it's too late. Galactica never took a hit, but it was a riveting sequence. You understood what was going on. I guess that took too much thought, for episodes where the fight was supposed to be brief? The alternative requires more external special effects, following the action outside the ship so you can see the damage directly. I can see why they didn't do that on a low-tech low-budget show.

Why didn't Disco Wizard assume that the notes she had from the previous incarnation were themselves preserved from a previous incarnation?

http://www.egscomics.com/index.php?id=1965 Reminded me of a class reunion where a bunch of gay guys were complaining that the one bad thing about being gay was that their relationships did not include any boobs, and they liked boobs. Around half of them agreed, and the other half were amused. Edit: I can't remember whether I said this before...

You aren't a white silhouette on a circular black background?

> I haven't seen anything concrete from you about what sort of military action against Iran you think would be effective. > If their facilities are not dug in enough to require a full invasion, bombs would suffice. ... that is concrete. > We wouldn't have known what would have happened if we'd helped the Greens. It is hard to imagine worse than what did happen to the Greens. Okay, I've gone and done a good bit more reading about this. Before I was reacting to the 2012 events, but now I think you meant the 2009 events. In that light, my objection doesn't make so much sense. But there's another perfectly good one - there was a major, MAJOR risk that all we'd accomplish is galvanizing the populace against us. Certain Green elements wanted our help, but many others very vocally did not. Of those that directly contacted us requesting aid, we had nowhere near the evidence required to tell how central their opinion was, or even that the letter wasn't a honeypot laid by the state police so they could blame us for everything.

They do not want to confront it? What would a confrontation that you think WOULD work look like?

Re - military action vs Iran - depends what was needed at the time, but I think I covered that enough in the last comment for it to be pretty clear. If their facilities are not dug in enough to require a full invasion, bombs would suffice. If we'd given the Greens the help... we don't know what would have happened, but as I've said it all happened so fast and the degree of support we would have had to have provided is so extreme that I simply cannot believe that you can think the objections you've made to the previous point and make this objection at the same time. Egypt had a very firm division of power between the military and the civilian government. The civilian government was not in charge of the military. No entity was in charge of both sides of Egypt.

I said military action, not an outright invasion. When Israel hit them before, it didn't take an outright invasion. Stuxnet didn't either. If they begin building sufficiently underground to house these facilities in a bomb-proof fashion -- that is also a slow process, slower than it takes to prepare an invasion. As for the greens, what you said is completely irrelevant. I just acknowledged that it went badly for them. Nothing we could have done would have made it any better. As for Egypt, there was a strong separation of military and government. The military remained secular, and was visibly non-cooperative with the Muslim Brotherhood. So, your glib characterization of the decision as "Hey, no problem sending weapons to the radical islamists running Egypt now. They (the radical islamists) will be out of power before they can use them, guaranteed." falls to pieces in the first sentence.

Be...cause... we're already easily strong enough? What would a ramp up look like? Going from around 20 times stronger than they are to... 22 times stronger? You don't need to tell me that nukes would be more dangerous than individual terrorists in Guantanamo. That's kind of obvious. As for the 'green revolution' it was election protests, it was cracked down on effectively in under a week. We never had the time to gauge how actually aligned with our interests they were, how likely they were to attempt violence with or without our assistance, how likely they - as a whole not the most eager elements - would be to accept our assistance, who to give such assistance to, etc. The most we could have done is make speeches that would be obviously, blatantly, interference in internal politics of a sovereign state. This could only go badly. As for Egypt - The army remained secular, and is what had control of the weapons. And then they kicked out the Muslim Brotherhood about 18 months later. The civilian government had not done anything particularly bad with those weapons in the mean time. And this was predictable.

Mary Sue does not apply to any of the immortal characters.

Iran already had all the materials and capabilities needed to build a nuclear bomb. The question was, when? Without a deal, the chances they would have been delayed as long as this deal is due to last are very poor indeed, and that chance relies on military intervention. As for the 'track record in the mideast' paragraph - all of those claims seem very shaky to me, especially... actually, yeah, all of them. The 'Apology Tour' was named that by Obama's political blood enemies, and if it contained any apologies, I'd like to see them. What could we possibly have done to help Green Revolution? Why would our arms sales to Egypt be canceled based on the outcome of an election? The efforts to arm the rebels in Syria were a failure, yes, but that's because the situation on the ground and who would end up aligned with whom was very murky. Of all the weapons set aside for rebels, we actually delivered very few - a farcically small amount... and good thing, because yes, they ended up on the wrong hands. This was not due to carelessness. Had they actually been careless, it would have been far, far worse. How does Iran cheat on the deal daily? The 'Bland Euphemisms'? He's avoiding using the words that the enemy wants him to use! "Violent Extremism" is literally true and a strong condemnation. He condemns it plenty. He just refuses to hand the enemy a major propaganda tool. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2015/02/how_obama_thinks_about_islam_and_terrorism_why_he_chooses_his_words_so_carefully.html

Taking a step back to before: I submit that the evidence you have provided is nowhere near adequate to the conclusions you draw. Also, there's a broad-brushed characterization of The Left, which surely isn't drawn from that one incident. Considering that we actually got something out of that trade, I'd be more convinced by his releasing prisoners in the past. But those had been approved for release by a risk assessment task force. This same risk assessment task force pointedly did not approve 65 other prisoners. I would agree that he would like to release the remaining 13 they did. I see no evidence that he would like to release the other 65. Obama's words about his plan for those remaining: (in reference to whether we will be able to hold them prisoner in the USA) And the actual plan, released 5 months ago, only mentions releasing prisoners as a thing that we need to avoid doing: http://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/GTMO_Closure_Plan_0216.pdf We all need to be careful not to take stories in our heads, and treat them as facts about the world. YES, 'The Left' has a tendency to think that treating people fairly is an important step towards creating peace in the world. YES, he released some people I suppose you might not have released. That does not mean that 'people you would not release' is the same set as 'people Obama would release'. And in general, when someone consistently says and acts like they don't want to do something that would be in line with their general philosophical guidelines except that it's obviously really, really stupid, maybe we can allow that they won't follow those general guidelines straight off a cliff, please? This isn't aimed specifically at VorlonAgent - I've seen plenty of people characterize all Libertarians as the 'disband all public institutions immediately' sort, despite their protests to the contrary, and anyone with issues around Abortion to be unwilling to consider any cases at all, despite their detailed statements.

This phrasing makes it seem like you were proposing that he wanted to just release them (even if you rule this out in later paragraphs). Why would ... eh, never mind. That was an odd implication to let loose. Our First-Past-The-Post single-representative-districts-redrawn-along-partisan lines system isn't worse???? PoWs who were not treated according to Geneva Convention protections for PoWs, hence their classification as 'unlawful combatants'. :| Can you provide a few concrete examples?

Carmen. Presently at the beginning of act 2.