Don Edwards

Current understanding is that the Theory of Relativity dictates that there is no preferred frame of reference. Which means that the Earth IS the center of the universe... exactly as much as any other place is. (How that reconciles with the Big Bang... is left as an exercise for anyone who wants to take a whack at it.)

Sarah doesn't need to be in the deepest part of the energy pool in order to drain it somewhat - she just needs to be in it deep enough to power her spell. As she drains the pool, she probably will periodically have to move in order to stay in it - but she doesn't have to find the deepest part until it's almost completely drained. Of course, she may sort-of-coincidentally (translation: probably for plot convenience) be in the deepest part at any time before then.

Two spaces were adopted with monospace-font typewriters as the most convenient (or, in practice, only possible) way to get a wider space after the end of a sentence. In other words, it's something you do instead of what you should do: use a wider space. With proportional fonts and intelligent typesetting computers, there's no reason why the computer shouldn't just automatically create a wider space. But if it does that AND you have a second space, the result is a too-wide space.

For some of us, sadly, it's a question of which major candidate will bring the lesser disaster - particularly in the long term. Usually it's a question of whether there's enough difference in how bad a disaster each is likely to bring, to even matter. In this case I am of the opinion that the answer to THAT question is a very solid "yes".

The real miracle: will achieve lasting peace in the Middle East.

Guessing where that link goes... yep. just where I thought.

Believe me, I did - by at least two adjectives. But I'll go tone it down some more.

So an even better way to make that determination is to watch via a remote camera while someone else applies said test.

That would be only if he: a. recognizes Pandora; b. knows she's Adrian's mother; and c. does not know that the two rarely speak to each other. Since he and Adrian used to be close, it seems unlikely that both b. and c. would be true.

I prefer off-site forums because they make ongoing discussion easier. (There's at least one webcomic that allows on-the-same-page comments - which disappear or become inaccessible as soon as there's a newer page.)

He's not on the ballot in my state, and even if he were I'm committed to voting for the best shot at keeping the {expression of extreme disapproval redacted at moderator's request} out of office, but I also consider McMullin preferable to Trump. If this long-shot scenario happens, I'll cheer. (In fact, there are quite a lot of people I would prefer over Trump. Unfortunately, pretty much everyone who sought the nomination from either major party is not on that list - and the few exceptions went down early in the primary process.)

What Mr. V said about Tengu makes it almost explicit that there are ways the average random person can learn to use magic. Justin was using illusion magic before being marked, let alone awakened. As far as we know, Greg isn't marked or awakened. Doesn't sound to me like a mark, or awakening, is required.

Old record rainfall for Olympia WA airport on Oct 14: 0.99 inches, set in 1956. Neither my mate nor I were even born yet - and we have a great-grandson. New record rainfall for Olympia WA airport on Oct 14: 2.01 inches, set yesterday. We're in Elma, about 20 miles to the west of Olympia, and there were several times Thursday and yesterday that the motorhome was rocking due to wind. Supposedly there was a tornado about 16 miles from here, but I can't find any news reports on it (some about a tornado on the Oregon coast). There are places around Portland where, yesterday or Thursday, they saw old rainfall records for the day blown out by more than 4 times - some nearly 5 times. There's a major storm coming later today.

Grrl Power opened with a few pages of current time, and then started on a flashback. Four years and a couple months later - with twice-a-week full-page updates - it finished the first day of the flashback. I think that may be the slowest one day. (Which must be restricted to comics that have had at least one clearly-identifiable day.) The slowest month... I dunno. Freefall may be in the running.

Nope, it would not be Teh Evil Gummint. Based on the past record of government - US and elsewhere - in ALL of those areas, if the government is running it we won't have health care for everyone, good education, or support for the elderly and infirm. We'll just have hugely expensive programs in the name of providing those things.

I wouldn't even go that far. I'd stop at "Dex on his own is most likely to use the spell to summon fairies - he may or may not be able to summon other objects of similar size".

Your measures are a pair of three-syllable words. Neither of which contains the 'o' sound.

Complicating analysis of said final image, all of Susan's fairydolls (except Little Nase) were made in variations of Susan's image (by Tedd zapping Nanase into the desired form, and then Nanase making a new doll). And if Susan were to make a new fairydoll completely on her own, it would quite plausibly also be a variation of Susan's image. So, not really obviously different from the others.

Your lady was wise. Cats have six ends and five of them are sharp.

Actually you can do that sort of thing strictly within the history of English, in at least one case. Plurals: at one time in part of England, one made a plural - at least for certain words - by sticking "er" on the end. Later, that changed to "en". And then yet later, we switched to stkicking "s" on the end. So we have "children" - a plural of a plural (quite a few parents would agree that this sometimes seems appropriate). And then in some colloquialisms we now have "chilluns" which - aside from being quite slurred - is a plural of a plural of a plural.

Which means other people don't know just what to expect of any given fairydoll. Which is a good thing, in combat. Imagine: slice a fairydoll in half, it falls in pieces on the ground. Slice another one in half, it falls in pieces on the ground. Slice a third in half, BOOM! you're flat on your ass, stunned, and can't hear very well. You cautiously poke at a fourth fairydoll, and it throws a punch that breaks your sword. Maybe it's time for a different approach?

Our intelligence also evolved using genetic algorithms, which require sufficient hardware to run large numbers of independent experiments in parallel. Considering that each intelligent entity is likely to involve a massively-parallel processor... Developing AIs the same way would take quite a large amount of hardware.

It's a fairly common thing in magic systems that even if the energy that powers the spell doesn't come from the mage, the energy to shape the spell does. Think of cowboys directing a stampeding herd of cattle. The herd, collectively, clearly has much more energy than the cowboys and their horses, but the latter have to expend their own energy in attempting to get them under control. That's only one of gazillions of real-world examples of how it takes energy to control energy. So even if Sarah relies entirely on ambient energy to power her spell, she probably has to use some of her own to shape that power.

Believe it or not, the closest English equivalent of a male form of 'Sarah' is 'Prince'. Which is not a common name for boys. (For some reason it was okay to say your little girl is a princess, and even name her that, but not to say your little boy was a prince - unless of course you were a king.) Working with just the sounds, it should be "Sar" but that isn't an English name. Guessing how the original Hebrew word might have warped if it had been used as a name, English names that would be reasonably likely include "Sean" (pronounced "shawn") and "John". However, both of those are actually derived from a different Hebrew word that was used as a name.