Don Edwards

There were a couple of problems with spreading the word of the Emancipation Proclamation. 1. By its own terms it had effect only in areas where the government-in-control at that time denied the authority of the issuing government to apply it. So, while the US government thought it had effect in Galveston, the governments of the Confederacy, Texas, and Galveston thought it was a bunch of hooey. And they wouldn't want to tell the slaves about some foreign government's nonsense... 2. Of course, it should have taken effect in Galveston when the Confederacy surrendered. There was a little problem though: in Texas, the Union forces were on the run, having just had their hindquarters handed to them gift-wrapped in a basket a few days before. So when a Texan messenger caught up with them to inform them that they had won... they then relied on the Texan army that had just been chasing them to feed them and treat their wounded. Even a civil insurrection in Galveston might have wiped them out. As a result, their commander chose to skip over certain details, in order to not upset the local folks overmuch, until proper reinforcements arrived. Word of the Emancipation Proclamation was properly spread - when the Union forces in the area were able to enforce it. (In another odd twist, among the very FIRST people to lose ownership of slaves as a result of the Civil War was General Robert E. Lee. He freed all his slaves when he accepted command of the Confederate army. But among the very LAST people to lose ownership of slaves as a result of the Civil War was Ulysses S. Grant, the ultimate top general of the Union army, who held onto a few up until the 14th Amendment took effect.)

It was a somewhat larger island just west of Java.

You DON'T look like H... ?

It's the absence of connection between the old host and the new one that makes this more difficult and risky than necessary. There are a variety of ways to create a connection that will easily pass routine inspection, but they take some time and the new host must physically exist in the same universe as the old one. In this instance, the butler was a suitable candidate. Alternatively, Sirleck could have adopted and become the benefactor of an orphan, and changed hosts at some point in the orphan's life when the abandonment of prior non-family connections is pretty common - such as graduation from high school or college. Prior instances - there's no reason to assume he chose to do things the hard way. He didn't have the incentive of his intended new host being a wizard.

Could Sirleck have acquired ID cards with Elliot's picture and some other name on them? Not impossible, but problematic. To me the biggest issue is that there is no history between Sirleck and anyone-who-looks-like-Elliot. Transferring significant wealth from old-man-host to Magus-host, or to Magus, or to Elliot/Ellen, with no documentable past connection between them, is going to look suspicious no matter what. Them getting wealth seemingly out of nowhere would be equally suspicious. And the only ones of the possible heirs who could definitely stand up to both mundane and magical scrutiny, because they've done nothing relevant that's questionable, are Elliot and Ellen. (Plus, Magus probably does want to go back to his own universe.) Sirleck should have recognized that he'd be much more likely to make a successful transfer if he had stopped at just taking over his butler's body. Of course, that wouldn't get him a wizard body... but the way he chose to do that, pretty much maximized risk.

Or Elliot. The person who has the original of Magus' body, has a legal identity, and has a physical history in this world. Or, someone else who in the routine course of things, upon learning of the death of Sirleck's old-man host, goes looking for the heir to this account or other piece of property... whom does he find? Most likely either (1) nobody or (2) Elliot. Quite a lot of ways that Sirleck could transfer wealth from one host to another, would require that the new host have ID. If Magus has ID, it says his name is Elliot Dunkel. Elliot's ID also says that his name is Elliot Dunkel. If the aforementioned person-looking-for-an-heir goes looking for Elliot Dunkel, they will find Elliot's family, not Magus.

Yes. Plasma. Exactly. And in quantity. Plus, with control. (The finger writes upon the wall, and, having writ, blows something up as an encore.) The laws of physics aren't polite suggestions, they're vague hints.

I'd go for the plant. The one in Wapsi Square is vicious in melee, can make things just disappear, and her ranged attack is seriously explosive.

I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in... (edit: for the kids' benefit and edjumacation...)

Even more unfortunately, it also did not carry any politicians.

In my opinion, at least 2/3 of the objections to this sort of stuff is group A deciding that group B ought to be offended by it, and therefore it shouldn't be allowed - without consulting group B. Sometimes, I suspect this comes about because group A doesn't like group C and therefore looks for something group C does that group A can arrange to take offense at - and something totally irrelevant to why group A doesn't like them is perfectly acceptable.

Down in Oregon, one high-school league enacted a rule against team mascots depicting native Americans, on the basis that they are insulting. Apparently the representative of one school in the league missed that meeting, because his response later was "Excuse us? Us using a representation of our own ancestors as our mascot is insulting? To whom?" The league swiftly amended the rule to say that the tribal leaders on the local Indian reservation could authorize exceptions - and both teams affected by the rule were immediately granted exemptions. One was run by the tribe... (My reaction to the issue? Teams pick mascots representing something that, within the context of competitive sports, is seen as desirable; it's a compliment, not an insult. And if picking a mascot, team name, or slogan that identifies people is seen as insulting, singling out Native Americans as needing special protection as if they are peculiarly fragile should be REALLY insulting! Bog on that: rather than require one or two NFL teams to change their names to something obviously non-Native-American, let's require 17+ of them to change to something obviously non-human. Oh, also, good luck telling the people of Houston that calling their football team Texans is insulting...)

I suspect that the majority of MIB employees are involved more in logistics and bureaucracy rather than in field work. And not all of the ones doing field work necessarily have magic - I didn't see much evidence of magic-users in Commander Jaguar's cleanup team. Moperville is part of metro Chicago. As far as I can immediately recall, there are four known (to us) magic-users and one uryuom* in MIB-Chicago, and no explicit references to there being more than that. That isn't a lot for a metropolitan area that size, let alone one containing a weirdness-magnet city like Moperville. So I strongly suspect that the system is designed in part to keep the field wizards' involvement in paperwork to a minimum. Their own reports on their activities, and their payroll and expense-reimbursement forms, of course, but as little else as can be managed. * Four: Verres, Wolf, Cranium, and Arthur. One: Lavender.

If a vacuum cleaner sucks, is that good or bad?

Somehow I am already tired of this story.

Blu-Ray is definitively technically better than DVD, which in turn is better than CD. But they did not sacrifice marketability to get that technical quality, and for that matter while each generation of the media required new players, said new players were backward-compatible with old media. For that matter, most Blu-Ray media devices can play stuff recorded on CD or DVD in the (different) computer formats, while most CD and DVD media devices can't. So Blu-Ray is effectively more compatible with the older formats than the older formats are. By the way, the people in Japan who developed the CD format learned a lesson from the VHS/Beta conflict. They picked the longest popular-in-Japan piece of music (Beethoven's 5th or 9th symphony, if I remember correctly), and said "capacity MUST be high enough that THAT fits on one disk, or we don't go to market!". Thus, the standard capacity of a music CD is 64 minutes.

I've read that in terms of the genetics of getting a creature to grow them, scales and feathers and hair are extremely similar... Meanwhile, Ellen and Ashley are going for the gold medal in conclusion-jumping. They apparently are approximately correct - but Arthur may not know that, and THEY don't have sufficient evidence to justify their conclusion at the level of confidence they are expressing.

It does... but that and a quarter will get you a cup of coffee (in 1975). The people who designed VHS went after market dominance instead, and made a critical correct decision: right from the start, a 2-hour movie - that's a very common length - had to fit on one tape. Betamax, going after (and getting) higher quality, initially couldn't do that, putting only one hour on a tape. Later, after better plastics were developed for the substrate allowing the tape to be thinner, they got two hours, but by then VHS had an insurmountable lead in market dominance.

I would say that nobody at the party was transgender. Because the TFG also does the mental adjustments to make the person comfortable with the physical change.

Well, there is that...

I understand the objection to "transgendered" - it's a verb form. Transgender is not something that someone does - to themselves or to someone else - in real life, and only rarely in fiction. (The happenstance that I regularly read one webcomic where two characters have had it done to them, and am aware of at least two others where one or more characters have had it done to them, notwithstanding.) But there is a serious inconsistency on when it is, and is not, allowed to use an adjective as a noun referring to people that the adjective applies to. Some skin colors (as representation of ethnicity, even though skin color is not a reliable guide) are fine but others are not, any hair color is fine but "balds" is not, referring to people by their employment or profession is fine in most cases but not all, same for the location of their residence or citizenship... it makes no sense. If "homosexuals" is okay, why not "transgenders"?

Incorrect. The option which is likely to harm Tedd the least is for either Elliot or Ellen to have a separate, quiet conversation with Arthur. Catch is, Ashley is pretty smart, she may well figure out Tedd's secret just from what has already been said. ---- I agree with those who say it's Tedd's decision whether or not to have "the talk" with his father. I almost agree with those who say that outing him couldn't make things worse. But not quite yet. The expected course of Tedd's life over the next few months based solely on his age is that he's going to graduate from high school and get on with his life, possibly going off to college or otherwise moving out of his father's home, possibly hooking up with another person in a long-term sexual/romantic relationship. (Any guesses whom that other person might be? ) Now if we take into consideration what we (and Arthur) know about Tedd in particular, that gets some very minor adjustments. Basically, he has a good job locked down. If "the talk" goes horribly wrong after graduation, he loses his father - at a time when he'd be separating from his father and setting his own course anyway. And with the relationship the way it is, losing his father wouldn't be as big a loss as we might wish it would be. Painful, but not a huge disruption in every aspect of his life. Everything else stays much the same. But if it goes wrong now, he also loses his home unexpectedly and at a point in his life where he's rather busy on the standard course of life and shouldn't be taking the time to find another home and move out. It's a big disruption. Also Arthur might have a harder time hiring a kid still in high school (or a kid who just dropped out) as a researcher, as compared to even a high-school graduate.

1) All of the main 8 and anyone else who knows about Tedd's sex-swapping are aware that he's genderfluid. Or, at least, will know as soon as they form the mental concept - with or without the terms. I suspect that Tedd was late in actually encountering the term "genderfluid" because everyone around him assumed he already knew it. 2) You don't tell your friend's (non-criminal) secrets to people you suspect your friend wouldn't choose to share them with, no matter how you learn those secrets. And you err on the side of secrecy. Unless sharing the secrets is critically necessary for health and well-being.

Alternate theory: the scale was magicked up a bit to be the nucleus that a mana crystal would form around. The "diamond" consisted entirely (aside from the scale) of magical energy held in a physical form, and was constantly absorbing a trickle of additional magical energy and growing... at a steadily slowing rate, first because being larger means it has more surface area to spread newly-absorbed energy over, and second because it also served to insulate the scale from stray energy. Magus semi-accidentally (he knew it was a possibility but apparently didn't try to make it not happen) broke the equilibrium and the crystal shards converted back into magical energy.

Or just didn't pick up on the use of male pronouns. Now if Arthur says "Please clarify for me: is Tedd male or female?" and the answer is "it depends" or "it varies" or "yes"... (or, even more confusing, "yes, usually"...)