Don Edwards

You don't write much fiction, do you? I get into conversations with my fictional characters quite often. And I've lost several arguments with them.

Hm... what if, in the middle of her spellscape, Sarah tries to use her spell?

Well, technically, pretty much every computer that connects to the internet - including some routers - runs a nameserver. But it's typically a cache, not a repository. If a particular site isn't part of a network that the specified computer runs, and no request for a given site has gone through that computer since (typically) the last reboot, then it cannot find the IP address without outside help.

There are probably no nameservers within the scope of Sarah's spellscape. Let alone the servers she might actually want to connect to. So she wouldn't be able to retrieve reliable real-world information from the internet, even if a computer works, within the spellscape. On the other hand, she possibly could explore what IS on THAT computer.

Our daughter is employed as a computer technician and help-desk operator serving other employees of the same organization. She's one of the best at the job, and they are planning on sending her to project-management training because she's been doing project management too. She says someone asked her what education she'd had that made her so good at the job; her answer was "well... um... my dad was a computer programmer for 30 years."* And they replied "That's it? Wow! I want to meet your parents!" So recently they recognized a need to hire a contractor (to fix a program written in a language none of them know). She said "wait, I'll ask my dad!" and everyone she works with said "heck, yeah!"** * Her educational credentials include an associate degree in psychology and 12 years of stage dancing, doing choreography the last e years. I think the latter is probably the biggest contribution to her project-management talent. ** Unfortunately I don't know that programming language either.

Yes, I believe Sarah could cause fake-Box to appear and carry on a conversation - and fake-Box would say something Sarah would plausibly guess Box might say. No necessary, or even non-coincidental, connection to what real Box would actually say.

I don't think so. On the other hand, there are places in the human body where the distance between two things is important in the timing of chemical responses, and shrinking would alter that timing in unpleasant ways. Whereas maintaining the spacing in spite of major shrinkage would require removing cells... and brain cells are one area where this happens a LOT. Square-cube effects of a 50% (height) shrinkage would produce a person who can carry 1/4 as much weight - and weighs 1/8 as much. Has 1/4 the blood-flow capacity - and needs 1/8 as much blood-flow. Can eat 1/4 as much - and needs to eat 1/8 as much. It's enlarging where square-cube really bites you in the posterior.

KEEP ALL YOUR NOTES AND DRAFTS! Ask yourself if you don't actually have multiple stories in progress at the same time. It's perfectly feasible and acceptable to do so. (I have two books and a moderately long fanfic in progress... and interrupted all three to start-and-finish a short fanfic, which refers to some events in the long one.)

And how does that work if she's on a moving bus?

Sarah's mistaken. With a spell like this, she should tell Tedd what she's going to do then go into the spellscape and stick to the script. Repeat as often as seems appropriate, with the same script or different scripts. Pandora did want her casting the spell a lot, too.

Both, in a sense. Her real body is breathing real air. probably at a reduced rate considering it isn't doing much, while her spellscape (I'm not sure "illusion" is quite the right word) body is breathing spellscape air at a rate appropriate to what she's doing in the spellscape. Imagine if she were confined in an airtight space with a limited air supply such that she'll become non-functional after ten minutes. She can spend 20 seconds on each five-minute attempt to escape (or at least improve her air supply), in the spellscape, until she finds one that works - then repeat that attempt in the real world.

This forum has not established suitable provisions. The TwoKinds forum has, though.

Ever dressed a manikin - or a fourmonth-old who didn't want to get dressed? Dressing (or undressing) another human figure that isn't actively cooperating is NOT easy. Dressing yourself is much easier.

People who post cheesy puns are muensters.

You know, those old manually-activated acoustic modems did have a valuable auxiliary use... (But I only ever applied it to robocallers, not to humans.)

In at least two major varieties. While polar bears are a subspecies of brown bear, and there is another subspecies apparently descended primarily from polar bears but with light-brown fur, Kermode bears are a subspecies of black bear.

Just in sex-swapping, lots of people would do a round trip once or twice, some people would swap with the intent of it being permanent one-way (although in practice they might have to swap several times before getting all the details squared away for that), and some people would swap repeatedly. Then there are costuming possibilities. Perhaps the other interesting thing is, as someone in the Illuminatus! trilogy noted, a fair number of our problems are caused by the fact that people don't change color. (This person was high on acid at the time, and was watching everyone around him change color every couple minutes.) With widespread easy safe body-transformation technology, a lot of forms of prejudice would be harder to maintain. Actually, we don't know that. All we know is that the people we know about, whom Pandora has marked, are all in Moperville. Of course, Pandora herself hangs around town a lot, and presumably she can't mark people in places she isn't - and probably doesn't bother to mark people if she won't get to see what they do with it.

And then if someone tosses the petrified person against the Dewitchery Diamond, you get: One person who can turn to stone, and back again, at will. (How does the "at will" part work for turning back? Does a stone statue even HAVE any will?) One statue of a person, which can turn other people to stone. (Sounds dangerous. If it only happens when the statue wills it, see previous paragraph. If it happens automatically on contact, transporting, storage, or disposal of the statue will be problematic.)

My understanding is that fire ants are often considerably more than just annoying. Meanwhile, the next board with new messages is The Weather... which is just annoying.

Last time I said "Go {name of sports team}!", I followed it with "- and take {name of sports team in a different sport} with you!"

If she swaps with Tedd and it turns out she acquires the abilities of the person she swaps with, it could be useful - she could use Tedd's ability on her spell from the inside, while Tedd's using the same ability on the same spell from the outside.

Ah, so there IS a preferred frame of reference... distinguished by, among other things, the fact that it does not exist anywhere in the universe.

I'd also point out that there are probably perfectly-natural variations in the level of magical energy that tends to settle in one spot versus another spot, and the whales are used to that... but a relatively large area centered somewhere in Moperville was saturated to the high end of the natural range *or above*. The whales would want to work near the line where it starts getting dangerous for ( them | the average non-magical person). In other words, the peak area the whale referred to could be significantly smaller than the area of enhanced magical energy.

But a thing can't just accelerate. It has to accelerate its motion relative to something else. And it's equally valid to say that the something else is accelerating its motion relative to the thing.

There are webcomics I read where there would have been some toy creatures or robots on that shelf (appropriate for a comic shop) trying to look around the corner, climbing down to peek - or crawl - under the the door, etc. One of them is the recently-completed Sabrina Online.