Ooh, the latest Flash is interesting...
Do we know why Adelaide (presumably) killed those people? How did she kill those people? Did she in fact get super martial arts skills (or assassin skills, or whatever) from somewhere? What’s with the head trauma?
Is this backstory at all canon, or just made up here? Either way, human!Adelaide driving people off with a violin is awesome.
Okay. Addy can take Razi’s power and go with him, and Alice can scope out the area beforehand (has to, in fact) and note if there’s anything too ambushy or powerful there. Thus, single vampires can probably be taken out. It’s a pity all the trackers died, though they’re much less useful in the Empire phase as the vampire population increases because they have to meet everyone. I would be leery of teleporting to random places, were I Razi, but he can just jump out again on no notice if necessary, I guess.
What does Razi need to know about a place before he can teleport there? Alice can see anyone, but if there are no visual cues as to the location nearby she can’t tell where they are (as in Luminosity, in which she is fooled into thinking James is in Florida when he is in fact on a movie set). Does whatever information Alice has on the look of a location suffice for Razi to go there? If not, then a vampire can evade Empire justice for some time simply by staying in a dark room, or being in an undifferentiated forest somewhere. Not long-term, maybe, but enough time to turn a mate and ensure the bond is established.
Also, any penalty short of death is going to be relatively little actual deterrent, in the long run. It’ll encourage vampires to make a strong attempt to convince their mate, but if that isn’t possible they will be quite willing to simply kidnap and turn them, in the sure knowledge that they will forgive them once turned, and make sure that the bond is fully established before the Empire intervenes so that they aren’t serving N years hidden in the absence of their mate.
I’m not really referring to the health of the scientific field, per se. For all I know, there are plenty of brilliantly scintillating papers being published in climate journals, that would dazzle me with their astounding respect for methodology. Some anecdotal evidence leads me to believe that this is not, in fact, the case, but it is not of sufficient strength that I would make that claim. The area in which discussion of climate science seems devoid of actual science is in the realm where climate science is meant to inform governmental policy, which, of course, has obvious pressures for politicization of the science in either direction.
Yay, final update! Now I can put it on my Kindle and not feel like I have to replace it three times a week.
Two questions.
First, are the chapters in Radiance going to be rearranged the way the ones in Luminosity were?
Second, to what degree does Benjamin have control over the classical elements? Can he, for instance, summon fire from the air? If so, then he should be easily the most formidable fighter around, with the possible exception of Pera, and even she would be vulnerable to a less-metaphorical firewall. Can he put himself out if he’s on fire? If so, why were the Volturi so blase about igniting Bella and assuming her death, multiple times? (This one I could believe as basic laziness when they have no reason to believe her power makes her immune to fire, but it’s a thought.)
I’ve not read the science journals, and so cannot comment on them. I’m referring to informal debate (as in blogs and so forth) by climate scientists.
I don’t have any specific evidence—but even “scientific” debate on the topic, between scientists, tends to largely ignore the merits of the science and become a political affair a la Green Vs. Blue, centered entirely on whether or not the participants accept the prevailing theory.
I hereby dub this a Great Idea, and request a short story from Alicorn about it.
True. Okay. I forgot that they have perfect supernatural lie detection available.
This seems like a remarkably harsh rule, since the dynamics of the mate bond with a human provide sufficient incentive to turn the mate without permission—whether permission would have been granted or not—that many people will do it, and it seems likely that a large number of them will successfully finish the turning and bond to their mate, necessitating large punishments for both the perpetrator and the victim of an act of which the victim was entirely innocent and which the victim is overwhelmingly likely to retroactively endorse. Leaving arguments of the morality of nonconsensual turning aside, a law that seems so likely to lead to the Empire carrying out so many morally questionable punishments seems suspect.
That’s not the idea. The computational problem is simply a proof of work—you create a specific, verifiable string, with a changeable component greater than 256 bits, then hash that string using incrementing values until you find a SHAsum less than a certain value. Knowing a random, short preimage for each possible hash doesn’t help you there, because those will not allow you to create a verifiable string with the correct hash.
There is some value in criticizing that which has been improperly popularly lionized, but this introduces its own skew. Zinn managed to truly piss me off because in his chapter on WWII he either did not mention or mentioned only in passing the rape of Nanking and similar Japanese atrocities, spent a few paragraphs on the Holocaust, surprisingly didn’t particularly mention the firebombings of Dresden or Tokyo, but harped for several pages on the atomic bombs. Perhaps they needed examination, but incessantly and loudly examining them at the expense of everything else leaves the reader with a distinct impression of Zinn’s own political beliefs.
I think this might be behind much of (American) conservatives’ anger with liberals in the foreign policy domain, as exemplified by the insult “blame-America-first”. Liberals are questioning America’s policies, which is well and good, while leaving it as read that the actions of their adversaries (since the dynamic evolved, usually USSR or terrorists) are much worse. Conservatives see that apparent bias and gain the impression that all liberals hate America in particular. The situation is not improved by much political mind-death on all sides. This is probably going off on a bit of a tangent, but it’s at least marginally relevant.
The whole “science is settled” debacle in climate change? I’m not going to take a position on it, but it certainly seems to have become about that particular theory rather than the scientific method.
Bella’s law regarding no non-consensual turning of mates seems like it would be hard to enforce. If a vampire finds their mate and bites them before the Golden Empire can interfere, then even if the Empire finds out before the turning is finished, there’s no real way to prove that it was nonconsensual. The mate will be incoherent during the turning process, and after turning will a. have fuzzy memories of right before the turning, and b. be more than willing to lie on behalf of their own mate. The only real way around this is for the Empire to isolate the mate during turning, perhaps applying Alec in order to help them, and then quiz them before they see their mate. However, it also seems that this could be gotten around by simply making sure that the turning is finished before the Empire finds them. It is mentioned that Alice’s weekly check for eye color might find the turning, but I should imagine that turning through a syringe should not affect eye color. How might this be enforced?
Ah. Okay, I get it now.
Now I want to hear more about this nontrivial skill component to War. Unless it’s skill at cheating, I really can’t imagine what it might be.
That implies something very interesting about Allirea’s power. The usual criterion for the spreading of umbrella-type effects attached to persons is that events that are heavily influenced by the person are under the umbrella, apparently, and I’m going to assume that that applies to Allirea’s fading as well. This means that Allirea can trick someone into thinking that something vitally important to their survival is simply unimportant—that the fact that someone is currently reducing them to gravel is not worth remembering. Wow.
Hm. Would a quarter-vamp non-wolf be venomous or immortal? (Presumably a quarter-vamp wolf would be just as immortal as a wolf; would they also be immortal if they quit their wolves?)
While Allirea makes a very effective bodyguard in the combat sense, she is less helpful in the intimidation sense because, of course, no one can remember that she’s there. What would happen if a vampire who had a reasonable expectation to win against Bella alone, and was not talked by Elspeth into believing that he could not win a fight, attacked Bella and was taken apart by her and Allirea? Would he know what was happening? What would his relevant memories suggest? Would said memories become clear while Allirea was unfaded? Is this a valid method to control the vampire population? (It might actually be quite effective—anyone who attacks Bella is taken apart by something they can’t remember happening. Great creepy factor.)
It’s an interesting idea. I wonder if Carlisle has been publishing medical papers, or something. He’s the vampire that has been vegetarian, and hence high-probability for writing in free time, longest (I think). When did the Denalis become vegetarian?