Don Edwards

Not just trucks. Aircraft, cars, explosives, incendiaries, and toxins. There was actually a bill before the Washington state legislature to blanket-ban unlicensed private ownership of substances that could be used to make explosives. One of the people testifying to the committee it was assigned to told them that he could walk into ANY of their houses and prove that they were in violation of this proposed law - that they ALL possessed such substances. The next witness, one of the lead guys on a bomb squad, started with "I don't know who that last guy is, but he knows what he's talking about." (The bill, thankfully, died.)

Florida? Hardly unique. My mother-in-law lives in the Target Range area of Missoula. There's a town in Texas named Point & Shoot. Not to far from the latter is a building with a sign out front: "Security First Baptist Church" - I'm working on a vague idea for a story where it makes sense for churches to be named like banks... (the reality, of course, is that the church is in the town of Security). Then in parts of Washington you get names that look like badly-transcribed Klingon. Such as Kuakuitl.

And a fair number of terrorist incidents have caused mass deaths without the use of guns. There seem to be differences of opinion about whether reducing gun homicides by 1 while increasing non-gun homicides by 2 is an improvement or not.

America (the continent) has been home to camels twice, although the second was rather brief. The first time was in the far north, and it appears the camel's hump originally evolved as a fatty energy store to help keep the animal alive through the arctic or near-arctic winter. Like horses, camels evolved on this continent first. The second time was in the deserts of the southwestern US, about the time of the US's "Civil War" (there ain't nuthin' civil about war), as an experiment by the US Army. The experiment didn't work very well, not because of any inherent defect but because horses and donkeys - which were far more numerous - hate and fear camels. They ARE direct competitors for food... and to this day it's the law in Nevada that a person with a camel must yield the right of way to a person with a horse. But as the experiment was given up on, a fair number of camels got loose or were released, and there continued to be a very-small camel population for decades. There are still occasional stories of wild-camel sightings in Mexico...

I'm not so sure of that... I get a bit of a nonstandard vibe from Liz. Like maybe she's asexual.

The best known prevention for that - because everyone is occasionally careless - is the Eddie Eagle program of gun-safety training for very young children. "No. Stop. Go. Tell." Studies have shown that it has a profound effect - in the desired direction - on children's tendency to play with real and real-looking guns. In fact, it has that effect on the tendency of children who haven't been through the program to play with guns while in the presence of those who have - a sort of herd immunity. (It doesn't achieve perfection, of course. Nothing humans do can be relied on to achieve perfection.) Most of the most vociferous proponents of more anti-gun laws in the US are fervently opposed to this program. Because it was created, is funded, and is promoted by the National Rifle Association.

Or of Raven being the grandnfather of Susan's cheating father who is also Diane's cheating father. (n being an integer probably between 0 and 3.)

But that's a rather large group of people. Unless fairies mating with humans is a rather new thing. According to this article, any and every person who lived in Europe any time between 800 and 900 AD either (a.) has no living descendants, or (b.) is an ancestor of pretty much everyone alive today who has European ancestry. Another site I read pushed that commonality back to about 2000 years ago, mostly in order to connect Italians with everyone else in Europe. Either way, it wasn't really all that long ago. So if Edward Verres is descended from a fairy-human mating that occurred more than 1000 years ago, then probably his next door neighbor (whom we've never seen in the comic) is too.

What have you done to earn the right to speak freely?

My mate bought Pure Leaf brand bottled tea for quite a while. I like the bottles (they have square bottom sections, so pack together better than most bottles) and we've accumulated nearly a dozen of them which we refill frequently with water. However, I tasted the contents once... I don't regard the stuff as even a tea-like substance. It's vile.

It's also important to recognize that the color of their skin can be determined a great deal more easily and quickly - and, frequently, accurately - than the content of their character. On the other hand, it's only one data point. A couple proposals I have seen: * The Eddie Eagle program, which is a preschool-level gun-safety program summarized in four words: No, Stop, Go, Tell. Studies have proven that 5-year-olds can learn the program, and afterward are much less likely to play with guns they happen to find than their peers who haven't gone through the program. This obviously would reduce accidental shootings by such children, but since it's an NRA program (they created it, they publish it, they frequently fund it and sometimes even take it to the kids themselves) it obviously is evil and will brainwash the children into being homicidal maniacs. * Mandatory add-on sentence for anyone convicted of a felony, if they used a gun in the commission of that felony. This, again, is favored by the NRA, and therefore is evil (probably racist, since convicted felons are disproportionately black).

Don't worry about it so much. No matter how you word it, there will be those who read half of the first sentence, decide you don't agree with them absolutely perfectly, and demand that you explain why you are asserting that kicking puppies is morally required. Even though what you wrote contains no reference to canines or to kicking anything. And they will not listen to anything you say that they don't construe as an attempt to justify the absurd claim you never made.

I'm 100% unfamiliar with video-editing software (have done some sound-editing, many years ago, and not much of it). Is deleting the video from the project, and re-inserting it, helpful?

I would object to turning people into "loving and cheerful" (or "gay") anything-at-all without their informed consent, even to a greater extent than non-consensual shape-changes. It's a mind-control issue. But while we're on the subject of shape-changing...

Yesterday we went shopping for lunch meat, and in a store I noticed they had eggs in clear plastic cartons with a slight green tint. I thought about the contents of our refrigerator for a moment, and picked up a dozen. Yep, we bought green eggs & ham.

Real war hammers are fairly small. If you want to know why, try picking up a 5-pound sledge and swinging it nonstop for half an hour... (Well, that's one reason. Another reason is that if your weapon is slow, in melee combat someone's going to get to you from one side while your weapon is on the other. You need a fairly fast weapon.)

People do. There's passable transit service between the two sites - but not specifically set up for heavy traffic between those two exact sites.

Unfortunately, there is a body of very loud activists who define "the middle ground" as halfway between wherever current law is and a complete ban on privately-owned firearms - and if current law changes, "the middle ground" moves. These activists want to make the world safe for thuggery - or at least that's the effect of the laws they seek. Given the choice between a 200-pound wife-beating husband being shot, and a 130-pound frightened wife being beaten to death, they prefer the latter.

Xn = fractional portion of (Xn-1 + π)2 is absolutely deterministic but hard to predict.

Some years ago the people who ran Norwescon, the Seattle area's biggest science-fiction convention, rejected a request to expand the anime track at that convention - allegedly out of concern that it threatened to take over the whole show - but several of them actively assisted in creating a new convention dedicated to anime and comics. Norwescon continues to thrive with attendance around 3,500 - putting it in the top 10 of US SFcons. It typically occurs in the biggest hotel in the SeaTac area, with overflow into several nearby hotels. The anime convention, Sakuracon, is running around 23,000 attendees. It occupies the entirety of the Washington State Convention Center, with attendees staying in several of the hotels around that facility. Both occur Easter weekend, and Metro Transit should seriously consider running a couple special buses back and forth between the two sites on the four days that Norwescon runs (Sakuracon is only 3 days) to accommodate those who attend both events.

Did they have a separate restroom for good boys? Maybe they consulted with Santa to see who used which restroom?

I drive a 37-foot motorhome legally authorized to weigh up to 20,500 pounds. Special credentials or training required, beyond an ordinary driver's license: none. When the 2nd Amendment was enacted, "well regulated" was understood to mean that the people knew how to use their weapons effectively and could move in a group in a somewhat coherent fashion. And there was no weapon or weapon-system possessed by the United States or any state, that was not also found in private ownership. If you wished to own a cannon, could afford it, and owned or had authorized access to property sufficient to practice operating it without undue hazard to your neighbors, that was okay. If you owned a ship and wished to equip it as a functioning warship, and could afford it, that was okay - in fact, there's a reference to such warships in the US Constitution. That's the culture the 2nd Amendment was intended to protect - not make, it already existed. And remember, many of the very people who wrote the Constitution and the 2nd Amendment had, less than a decade previously, called upon the common people to take up arms against their government, and/or themselves done so. The reason the second half of the 2nd Amendment gets the emphasis is that the first half has no impact on the meaning of the whole thing. It merely explains one purpose of the second half. Here's the important part of what US national law, today, says about the militia, in 10 USC § 311-312: (The "except as provided" reference in 311 creates a higher age cap for certain persons. In other words it's an extension, not a restriction. Notice that 312 exempts certain people from militia duty, but not membership.) My very-rough estimate is that the US militias, collectively, are somewhere in the general area of 90-100 million people.

Some walls THUMP more than others. And she could have hit the wall with a shoulder - typically not as hard and thump-worthy as a head or elbow (which her crossed arms definitely eliminate) but still kinda hard in someone that thin.

In the context of EGS, that's a theory in the same sense that "water turns to ice if you get it cold enough" is a theory...

Other possible inspirations? Pretty much any superhero comic with female superheroes. (tvtropes warning) Lots of fantasy art with female figures. Romance-novel cover art. There's hardly a shortage...