Don Edwards

Simple answer: sometimes he wants to be conspicuously a wizard (e.g. when he went on TV with the complete stereotypical outfit including staff) and sometimes he doesn't - but still wants spellcasting ability, just in case. So he probably ALWAYS has the ring with him, even when he isn't wearing it. (It's useful for a high-power spellcaster to have an automatic way for his subconscious to know he is NOT casting a spell. That way a casual thought about a campfire won't start a fire. A firmly-set pattern of "I wear and use this ring to cast spells" would work.)

So Critterkeeper, on a day off, went to tour a place where they keep critters. This is an example of what was once called a "busman's holiday".

It was discovered that most of their stock was actually chicken, drenched in such a strong sauce that one can't taste the meat.

Considering how tiny Buffalo Wings are, it's unsurprising that flying buffalo are virtually extinct.

Yeah. For something like a magical golem, without any knowledge of how to build one I'd consider dismembering a good start, followed by sequestering the parts in separate sealed containers. Maybe later I'd encounter someone with sufficient knowledge to tell me that such measure are unnecessary... but better unnecessary and done, than necessary and not-done.

Abraham had already been persuaded to not kill Ellen, was surrounded by mages capable of dealing with him, and was submitting to arrest - and thus was no longer an enemy - when Magus declined to assist in killing him. The golem was apparently incapable of continuing to fight, but that might have been a temporary condition. Never turn your back on a dead enemy, unless you've made sure it's really dead.

For those not that familiar with details of the western US or of US interstates, I'll summarize some non-obvious info: * they probably don't have surveillance-camera footage of the place the body was found. Those rest areas (one for each direction on I-90) are forested. * random people enter and leave rest area at all hours of the day and night, without any log of who they are or what vehicles they are in other than whatever the surveillance cameras pick up. (The main, and consistent, feature of interstate rest areas is a convenient chance for people on the interstate to get out of the vehicle to stretch their legs and use a restroom, without any expectation that they will spend money. Most rest areas are not accessible from local roads, only via the interstate.) * most people who drive on that part of Interstate 90 and don't live in Coeur d'Alene (living there would mean they rarely use the rest area) don't even live in Idaho. The Washington state line is only about 15 miles away, and Coeur d'Alene is part of a metropolitan area most of which is on the other side of that line (in the other direction, Montana is only about 60 road miles away but the intervening distance and the first hundred miles of Montana are mostly national forests and the like); and I-90 is a major cross-country route, its ends being within a couple miles of both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, so there's lots of traffic from considerably further away. Combine the above and there's a pretty low chance of identifying the killer, unless he/she voluntarily steps forward. If they DO identify the killer... * without surveillance-camera footage or quite-substantial other evidence, prosecutors would have a difficult time disproving a "self defense" claim. Idaho recently enacted a stand-your-ground law under which if they charge the killer for killing this person and in court the killer successfully claims self-defense (resulting in acquittal on those charges), the prosecutor's office gets to pay for the defense. So the prosecutor is unlikely to bring any charges for the killing per se. * there is an excellent chance that the killer legally possessed and carried the firearm used to kill this person. So probably no weapons charges either.

I'm stalking you with obvious intent to kill you, and have made several indisputable attempts to do so, in a situation where you cannot escape to safety. (Maybe we're way out in the desert on a hot day, and the only water bottle and the keys to the only vehicle in the area are on my person. If you just run away, and manage to elude my pursuit, you die of dehydration and/or heat exhaustion.) Yep, you're justified in killing me from ambush. Aside: Let's see, yeah, call our hotline... we can't be bothered stating the number... now for the weather... Do ya really think they care who killed this guy?

You could still shake your cane at them.

And Magus's battle magic has, so far, appeared to be more controllable (in terms of what is damaged and how badly) than the golem's. In some circumstances that's kind of important.

The thing is, Magus' belief on the matter is simply not a matter of science. It wouldn't matter if the top 100 battlemages in his universe were all female, he could still assert "they'd be even more powerful if they'd been, and trained as, male 99% of the time" and there would be no way to prove him wrong. (And the same claim with the sexes reversed would also not be disprovable.)

Oedipus completely gets a bad rap for that stuff. People who've read the actual story have a much different take on it... First, he didn't "kill his father". He killed a random stranger who attacked him on the road for no apparent reason. Then, he didn't "marry his mother". He arrived at a city in a double crisis. He resolved one crisis, a sphinx threatening to destroy the city, by correctly answering the sphinx's riddle (sphinxes are big on riddles, although there are alternative ways of dealing with them). The second crisis was that the king was missing and presumed dead, with no heirs. The leaders of the city offered Oedipus the throne, with the condition that he marry the presumed-late king's widow to create more of an appearance of legitimacy. He accepted the deal, even though he and his new wife had no knowledge of having met before. Some time later Oedipus found out that the attacker he had killed on the road was both the missing king (so the presumption that he was dead, was correct) and his own father, and his wife was his mother. In response to this knowledge his mother/wife hanged herself, and he blinded himself. An accurate "Oedipus complex" would be a bad reaction to learning, after the fact, that you've accidentally married a close relative, and/or to the fact that the person you've quite justifiably killed was a close relative. Not a desire to kill or marry a close relative. Narcissus, on the other hand, totally fit the common image.

I suspect that the effect would be the opposite of helping.

My impression is that this is a problem with legislatures (and legislators) in general.

If I had ever heard of that entity, I would not have thought "Japanese" from the name.