Don Edwards

"Heterosexual" and "homosexual" and the various clinical and slang synonyms thereof kind of fall apart when trying to deal with non-standard genders or non-cisgender individuals. Tedd has, to my recollection, shown no romantic or sexual interest in males, regardless of Tedd's form. With the possible occasional exception of Grace when Grace is in a male form. So if Mr. V persists in seeing Tedd as male, that would be "straight". But I would prefer "gynosexual" because it isn't affected by whether Tedd is currently male, female, or indeterminate.

In one of Mercedes Lackey's books, a priest-mage briefly discusses the fact that many of the miracles attributed to his deity could have been faked by mages - he was specifically trained in how to do so, and also how to distinguish mage fakery from genuine miracles. (Unfortunately, if no suitably trained mage is present at the time of the event, determining afterward whether it was a miracle or a mage is more difficult. Fortunately, the specific event in question occurred at a major religious ceremony - and at the focus of that ceremony - and thus was observed by a few hundred priest-mages.)

No, Arthur obviously does NOT think that. But he WAS thinking there were only a very few seers - possibly he thought there were just five. In the whole world. (If he thought less than five, he definitely wasn't paying attention.) Think of the implications of there being only five seers - with two of them in Moperville. That (if it were true) would mean there are only a very few places in the world where magic can quickly start spreading again - a maximum of four places, currently. He's in one, and he can make inquiries through DGB channels to find where Van is, to immediately monitor two of them. Now that he knows the correct number is likely somewhere in the vicinity of a thousand, he's somewhere in the general vicinity of panic. Maybe not quite there, but close. Because he knows there's no way that a thousand people will all keep quiet about it. It also means that approximately 995 seers have no prior knowledge of magic, and thus are unlikely to be monitored by their countries' equivalents of DGB. So magic can start erupting at roughly a thousand different places, the large majority of them being unidentifiable until after something happens. Result: most likely, about half of those places will come to DGB's attention by way of YouTube and equivalents. Which is extremely inconsistent with keeping magic secret.

oops... link fixed (Hack got it right.)

I think I remember a book or two about that world...

"This blaster? Dead as a doornail." (points it at ceiling and pulls the trigger) (shortly thereafter, outside the burning building:) "There is a profound difference between 'insufficient charge' and 'no charge'." -- from one of the Man-Kzin books

If Arthur was alive the last time magic changed, and he's a seer, AND he was then (prior to that change) at least old enough to speak and be aware of magic, but unaware of the role seers serve in the magic change, he would have been consulted at that time and thus learn of that role. So either he was too young then to be consulted - which presumably would mean he didn't personally witness and recognize the consequences of the change - or he is currently ineligible. The latter is disproved. He was too young then to be consulted. Note: "too young" includes "not alive yet".

My first thought with the dual-world thingy was that magic energy naturally flows in a continuous cycle between the two worlds, and the actual use of magic shoves some of that energy through to the other side... but if that were the case, a situation with magic being commonplace on one side and rare on the other would be untenable: nearly-all the energy would be on the side with little use of magic. Magic would be very easy to use where almost nobody uses it, and very hard to use (due to insufficient energy) where almost everybody uses it. Therefore it would become more common on the one side and less common on the other. Eventually a rough equilibrium would emerge, where (over time) magic use in the two worlds is approximately equal. Unless the natural flow is slower in one direction than in the other, so that it naturally builds up on one side...

Not exactly. Elliot said that eventually Magic would have to compromise - not with any specific person, but with the reality that even Elliot has a video camera in his pocket. Either Magic must allow magic to be more widely known, or there'll be an annual magic reset.

Ahem... While I definitely sympathize with this attitude, I have to ask: who moderates the moderator?

We have no direct basis for an opinion on that question, other than that he doesn't look much like Adrian or Diane or Susan - which doesn't necessarily mean much. Indirectly... how many children has Adrian sired? We know that he hasn't sired many that he is aware of the woman being pregnant shortly after their relationship - otherwise he wouldn't have so quickly identified a prime prospect for Susan's ancestry. On the other hand, we know he has sired some (at least one) that he was NOT aware of the woman being pregnant afterward. Probably somewhere between a few thousand and a few tens of millions of people of European ancestry are his descendants - but probably not a majority. So the odds are against Arthur being his descendant. I'd add that Sarah's magical affinity is (according to Box) not for magic weapons, and neither Elliot, Ellen, or Tedd have shown any sign of such an affinity. Although, if someone is descended from *two* immortals with different affinities...

Most people don't get very sick with this flu, just congestion and sore throat and coughing and maybe headaches (I can't tell for sure because all the cough drops I can find have menthol in them, and menthol gives me a headache). But it drags on and on and on and... we're probably going to miss our THIRD weekly Spanish class tomorrow over it.

Ah, yeah, that's the sort of thing that probably should be cc'd to everyone in the building. Possibly with a more strongly worded, but private, note to the specific people creating the problem.

Still, there is remembered, and then there is actually known. The old (seriously old) book that the following text is taken from is very widely known-of, and of a subject matter such that one would expect it to be reasonably widely read. Yet I've quoted this text on several forums and only one other person has ever mentioned that they identified the source. (I wish I knew how to do spoiler blocks on this forum.)

I believe it was Tedd that pointed out that with camera phones being ubiquitous in much of the world, it will be quite difficult to keep magic hidden for any length of time unless it's very close to nonexistent - fewer magic users than is now the case, and none of them having powerful or showy spells. Almost every bit of magic we've seen any human use qualifies as powerful and/or showy. The exceptions we've seen so far are all some sort of detection spell or ability. Or at least all of them I can think of. Would the Will of Magic be satisfied with a world where Nanase's "how many are looking" spell and Sarah's pseudo-time-stop are the height of dramatic magic? Or with a magic reset every ten years? I don't see it. Therefore I think the change will be to accommodate magic being more public. I expect Tedd to argue for an "informed consent" rule. (I just hope it's broad enough to allow for things like Goonmanji II.) I expect Arthur to be supportive of the basic idea of magic being more public (as he said "adapt or die" in response to the bulldog dragon) but I don't know what sort of adaptation he'll argue for. And of course we know essentially nothing about Van except that he probably has a parent or grandparent of oriental origin and makes some British-typical word choices when he speaks English. (Or, perhaps, the Will of Magic makes those word choices when magically translating his speech into English. "Van" is not, to my knowledge, a common name in any English-speaking country. But out of the less-than-a-dozen Vietnamese I've known, two of them had that name.)

Was the letter addressed specifically to you demanding that you clean up "your" trash, or was it relatively generic, or addressed to the culprits with a copy to you so you know it's happening?

Cat is wearing poodle's shorts though. (By definition. They're her shorts, she's a poodle, so...)

I agree. They are a poodle's shorts though.

I kind of expect Tedd to argue for opening up but with an "informed consent" restriction. Of course, I didn't expect Tedd to be so open about her identity that Arthur would figure out this quickly that she's Edward's son. (That is a weird way to end that sentence.) Not saying it would be smart of Tedd to be secretive, just that I expected it of her. (It's also kind of weird that in the past 5 to 20 years Arthur hasn't worked with anyone other than Edward who has a kid about Tedd's age - plus or minus several years, because when people haven't seen a child for several years they tend to underestimate how old that child currently is.)

IMHO, the Will of Magic would prefer a small number. It's been said that a committee is a life form with three or more legs and no brain.

No it wouldn't. It would mean that the watches are, overall, of low quality. Now consider what Tedd was likely to start with. He has more than just one or two watches. He gives them away. And while Mr. V isn't poor, he doesn't show signs of being extremely wealthy, so Tedd probably doesn't have a couple dozen spare $50 watches. Most likely he bought a box of "watches" from the toy department at a cost of noticeably under $5 each - perhaps he found them at a dollar store. Cheap plastic cases on cheap plastic bands that aren't even replaceable.

My theory is that a person using a magic implement such as a wand or watch *can* feed their personal energy into it, but they would have to know to do so, know HOW to do so, AND have sufficient energy to (in combination with the implement's innate energy, which is near-zero in the case of a watch, and whatever ambient energy the implement can draw on) activate the desired spell that was previously implanted into the implement. If Tedd made some watches specifically for his father and associates to test, he'd probably set them up with a spell such that that "it's really obvious but non-harmful and short-term" is all the testers get told. That way they CAN'T feed it. (Also, obviously, the watches would have to lack the usual safeguards. So "also, please return or destroy the watches after testing.")

Looks like a cloudburst to me. (Or maybe a popcornburst.)

That's either a great deliberate pun or an absolutely wonderful typo. Once in a game I had just transformed into a werewolf, so the next time I needed to roll dice I reached into my bag and pulled out a pair of big fuzzy hang-from-the-car-mirror type D6's. But it was just as a joke. The things don't roll worth a darn, and I didn't need D6's at the time anyway. (I have NOT been able to find big fuzzy dice that aren't D6's.)

I suspect any wand-maker (we don't know that wand-makers are necessarily seers; I'd say the abundance of wands argues against that) could reproduce the watch programming - although they might have to be shown how first. Researchers by definition have "need to know" about the underlying principles and mechanisms of what they are researching. And if you want rigorous testing, the test designers qualify as researchers - you can't know that you've properly tested edge cases if you don't know where the edges are. My guess: Tedd is keeping it secret. Consider how badly Ed reacts to Tedd in girl-form. Do you suppose Tedd chooses to invite that by routinely being in girl-form while his father's around? And yet quite a lot of Tedd's work is done in girl-form. So for Ed to know about Tedd's magitech experiments, either he'd have to read Tedd's written notes or Tedd would have to make a point of telling him separately. And if Ed doesn't know, he can't tell DGB.