CritterKeeper

I just saw the assertion that Lavender is not an alien as being the exact same thing as Will and Gillian being natural-born Americans. Wolf was doing the equivalent of grumbling about the darned Mexican foreigner in regards to a Latina co-worker, even though she was born in Nebraska and has never been to either Mexico or the country her actual genetic origins were from. Of course they would send him to sensitivity training if he keeps calling her an alien!

"Awesomeness" would cover being an astronaut, dolphin trainer, or veterinarian! :-D

You might be right, but even so, it would be even more boring to have to go chasing all over town after a bunch of mortals. Why not Mark them while they're still close? It's not like it's difficult for her to switch back and forth between planes.

I've had a few times now, on either iPad, when a page I'm reading will suddenly start to scroll, and no matter what I do it won't *stop* scrolling. If I drag back to where I was, as soon as I let go it starts scrolling away again. If I let it get to the end of the page it was heading towards, and then try to scroll back to where I was, it will stubbornly insist on going back to the end. The only way to get it to stop scrolling is to close the tab and then reopen the page in a new tab. It moves far too fast to be anyone's intended reading speed, but it isn't a blur either. Anyone familiar with this phenomena? I'm sure I'm accidentally activating some sort of "feature" but if so they should make it easier to turn off!

Make sure to double-check whether any of them are supposed to be taken in an empty stomach or with a meal. That can affect what side effects happen. When you have a spare week you could put them all into one of those online interaction-detecting sites, too, make sure it isn't due to two of 'em duking it out in your stomach, or something not having its full effect due to another one blocking its enzyme or receptor. I know, you've probably done this in the past; it's kinda like making sure the modem is plugged in before calling tech support.

There's some EGS content that's gone astray through the years, too, but I wasn't here early enough to comment on that, I just get to enjoy the little extras when someone unearths them. Mostly that means whatever links we had accumulated to those scattered extras were lost in the big crash.

I picture it being a combination of the two options -- she'd interview a few people, then Mark whoever seemed like a good candidate before she lost track of them or they left the mall, then go back to interviewing.

They used to play The Shadow on the satellite radio system we use at work (we had to change type of subscription so we don't get that channel any more), and there's a Wisconsin station I can sometimes get that carries old-time radio on an unknown schedule (gotta catch a call sign to know what station to look up), so I've enjoyed The Shadow whenever I can get it. :-) I did watch the movie, seemed like it was good, but I don't remember a lot of details.

Yup, Ellen's unspecified beams with cooldown times are one of the more intriguing hints/teases Dan has dropped on us. We know the results are "less awkward." We don't know if the cooldown time is for that spell only or for all beams. Would a beam that makes an opponent, say, suddenly have really long hair, leave her unable to use her FV5 bean either until she cools down?

Oh, I meant being an actual astronaut, on the space shuttle or space station, not in a fictional reality. (Not that I'd have said no to being Medical Officer on a starship, it just wasn't an actual career aspiration.) Ah, yes, there was a poster of a veterinarian astronaut in the hallway of the building I took physics in. Definitely would have liked to combine two there. That's still part of the perception problem, I think. Kids don't seen themselves as having a chance at any sort of success besides sports or acting, maybe a couple of other things.

I know of at least two cases where vets took in a litter of stray kittens six weeks or younger, got the inevitable little scratches and playful nips, and then the kittens and/or mom got sick with neurologic signs, and it turned out all of the kittens had rabies. Not to mention a stray finding its way into your house could have fleas, various viruses, roundworms/coccidia/giardia/tritrichomonas/etc, and might have no idea what a litterbox is and prefer your hand-crocheted afghan or your delicates drawer to bury things in..... A kitten should be a planned acquisition, even if that means "I found it and caught it and took it to the vet and now it needs a home, I think I'll go buy a litterbox and kitten food!" They need too much (including love) and cost too much to be given without warning or to be an unwanted obligation. Okay, obligatory caution delivered, commence D'aaaawwwww!

Hmm, true, although she got the singing ability through lessons and practice, not through an Uryuom touching antennae to her head, which is the sort of language-learning we were talking about. It's possible that sort of lesson wouldn't stick the way actual experience does. Seems odd to me that the students don't have backpacks with them all the time. Don't they have books and notebooks and pencils, etc? Aren't they going to class where they'll need those things?

I've experimented a little, enough to develop a belief that Allegra works better for me than Clariton. As I tell my clients, if the same antihistamine worked the best for everyone, we wouldn't have so darn many of them competing!

A friend used to refer to feet under the blankets as "bed mice," since that's what his cats seemed to think they were. This is the same couple who named their trio "Yakko," "Wakko," and "Dot," one of whom was later nicknamed "Mr. Snugglesupwithus." I assume the door you're referring to was to your room and not your house; a completely unexpected kitten isn't always a good thing.

And getting to college is also a goal which would lead to the same sorts of decisions. And I think it's more that too many kide don't believe in their own futures enough to dream big. I had other things I wanted to be, like an astronaut or a dolphin trainer, both of which require college, or a professional writer, which requires a good command of the English language and familiarity with your chosen genre(s). There are plenty of these kids who are that determined and that focused, but they put it into attempts to become professional athletes, because they feel like they can't succeed in school well enough to do anything else likely to be seen as a success. In truth, for one example, there are more black members of the professional organization of Cardiologists than there are black members of the NBA, let alone doctors in general and all the other specialties. They just don't get splashed all over television every week as role models, or rallied around under the "Friday night lights" at their high school.

Yes, but would she retain those languages in this life? Or would she just remember being able to speak them fluently, the way I can remember being much more fluent in French when I was studying it in college?

I know for a fact that kids can think about the future and the effect their actions here-and-now could have on it. I knew I wanted to be a veterinarian since I was quite small, and I recall times in high school especially when I thought, "I can't do that, it might lead to X and then X might keep me from going to vet school." Don't do drugs, if you get caught and have a felony they won't let you prescribe controlled substances. Don't risk getting pregnant, then you wouldn't have the time or money, or at least it would be a whole lot harder. There'll be time for all that later. (Sex and pregnancy and kids, that is, not the drugs ;-) Even wanting to get good grades, from grade school on, so that I could get into college and then vet school. In undergrad, I joined a Tae Kwon Do club partly because a friend was, but also because I knew my resume could use something athletic. I became the president of the Double-Barrelled Tiger Cubs because it would give me some leadership experience on my application. (I just called it the Sherlock Holmes club there, but the name is a great inside joke.) So yes, kids can make the right decisions if they understand the possible consequences of their actions and they can see a bright future for themselves that is worth avoiding the risk for. If I'd grown up in a slum with no exposure to women in science and medicine, few proper books, and an environment that said I would end up on welfare, who knows if I'd have even thought of trying for vet school? A kid like that would have a very tough time believing in a bright future. A few manage it, but they've got so many obstacles, and so much focus on those obstacles, that it's hard to give kids the belief in themselves that will help them overcome it all. My dad was a math professor, and he used to show his catch-up math class the movie Stand and Deliver, about the true-life story of a class of students in one of LA's poorest schools, who managed to get passing grades on the AP Calculus test. According to Wiki, in 1987, 27% of all Mexican-Americans who scored 3 or higher (out of 5) on the AP Calculus test went to that school. When the test administrators challenged the results, and claimed they must have cheated, the students wound up taking a second AP Calculus exam, months after their last class and on one day's notice, and the same students all passed again. (Many with a lower score, and their teacher fought to get their original scores reinstated!) Those kids saw themselves waiting tables and raising babies until someone proved that they could learn and achieve, and reach for college and beyond. So yes, kids can make good choices, provided they can believe in the results. Teaching them the second part is often the hardest.

As opposed to police training courses, where trainees learn to take a good look at the figure that just popped up, and make sure it's a bad guy and not a child or a granny with a walker or somesuch. There are still incidents and civilians still get shot, but I suspect that has more to do with the types of figures they use on those courses -- do the targets they have to identify as civillians and not shoot in order to pass include, say, a young black man in a hoodie holding a cell phone? Or is a figure like that always holding a gun and trained to be seen as a threat?

Actually, we know that the *dynamic* morphing watches have a cumulative effect. Tedd specified "that would have a cumulative effect with these morphs," implying that such is not the case with regular morphs. Granted, it's ambiguous whether she's referring to morphs from watches in general versus other types of morph, or specifically to dynamic morphs versus preset morphs, but that means we can only be certain it applies to dynamic morphs unless/until there's clarification.

By teaching them about the consequences, and giving them a sense of self-worth so that they'll believe they have a future worth protecting. Anyone else flashing back to Blue Lagoon?

Yeah, I get annoyed at how many things insist that they want you to install a whole new app instead of just running on a web page like they normally do.

*voiceover as catburglar climbs over penthouse balcony and breaks into safe* A schmuck named Neitszche once said, 'Anything done out of love is beyond good and evil.' Now, here's the thing -- I love my job. So what does that make me? My feeling was always that good and evil could kiss my ass. But that night, they kinda got together and bit me on it." - opening of TV series The Invisible Man (2000 version)

I remember that story! The guy used a regular pen to draw the darn things freehand, completely from memory. Pretty good artist, makes you wonder why he settled on that particular way of expressing that talent.

15hEl Goonish Shive‏ @elgoonishshive You can't legally change your name to "Rad Lightningfist" and suddenly expect lightning based magic affinity, no. mark‏ @mithrilbowtie@elgoonishshive does a person's magic ever change when they change their name? and would that bother her

Hmm, Les Immortels know that they once went to investigate an inter-planar disturbance, and saw someone on-scene who looked like a black shadow, who fled, disguising his escape, before they could talk to him. That might be all they know, though. Sure, someone could have stumbled across his existence off-screen, but I can't think of any actual indication that anyone else knows about him.