The sovereign has always been accorded latitude. The sovereign has the job of establishing public order, and stopping the killers and the spoilers is part of that. If the only means that will stop them is killing them, it's still within the common defence.
Killing in war falls under the rubric of just war.
1,851 2016-03-20 07:24:54
Re: NorthernSkies or NS - Janet (213 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
1,852 2016-03-20 05:04:37
Re: NorthernSkies or NS - Janet (213 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Not Romance. Revenge. She'd seen how civilized men behave; she never forgot and she never forgave.
1,853 2016-03-20 03:33:20
Re: NorthernSkies or NS - Janet (213 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Please note comments on the review reply. Will try to get to your short.
1,854 2016-03-19 17:09:46
Re: Getting rid of stickies (8 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Thanks. Hope Spamanice didn't get a refund.
1,855 2016-03-19 13:14:00
Re: Say the first word that comes to mind... (1,634 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
1,856 2016-03-19 13:05:24
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Hmm. Do I hear The Punting of the Snark?
1,857 2016-03-19 10:06:16
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Okay, mod complete. Maybe a little less elegant of its own, but I think it flows better from the previous chapter.
1,858 2016-03-19 07:50:51
Re: Faux connection request? (20 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Only to your reputation 
1,859 2016-03-19 02:00:34
Re: Faux connection request? (20 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Yeah. Database consistency problem. An entity is removed but ghosts of its relations remain.
Sol, would the processing/storage properties allow the connecion list or count to be re-verified when the user's Connections page is accessed, or would that require too many disk accesses or too much latency?
1,860 2016-03-18 12:42:25
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
I have a mod for the opening of =To Find a Sorcerer=. Later today.
1,861 2016-03-18 12:41:11
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
His voice was soft,
His manner mild.
He seldom laughed,
But he often smiled.
He'd seen how civilized men behave.
He never forgot and he never forgave,
Not Sweeney,
Not Sweeney Todd—
The demon barber of Fleet Street!
1,862 2016-03-18 10:11:23
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Don't fear the Harvester?
1,863 2016-03-17 11:10:48
Re: Acts/ Dictates/ Mandates/ Mantle - Amy's Thread (1,905 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
An Elevation of Elves
A Horn of Unicorns
A Chaste(Horn) of Unicorns
A Taling of Fairies
A Growth of Gillis
A Gruesome of Gillis
1,864 2016-03-17 09:08:04
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Following this chapter, I will have an action thread and two-to-four discussion threads to interweave. (Heal patriarch, discuss circumstances, events, plans, show evolution of Shassa and Engalt ... and cross-link.) (And, as I wrote above, I will have a week of disaster-dodging.) But I will try to work the individual threads out, starting with the action thread. I expect two chapters surrounding the patriarch (Maurand, I am thinking) and maybe a short chapter on planning and departure. And then ... the culturing-cellar of corruption.
And along the way, I expect I'll be renumbering a few existing chapters.
But that's a ways down the road.
1,865 2016-03-17 06:58:16
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Norm d'Plume wrote:
K appears to be winking in and out of our universe. I find conversations where he is being addressed, but when I look for his posts, they're not there.
The other day upon the stair
I saw a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
He must be with the CIA.
1,866 2016-03-17 06:56:39
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Okay, short transition chapter up. The next one may take a while; I've got another disaster to dodge (and I don't mean the next chapter). But I'm feeling better, and this episode will launch me into the next episode better than anything I thought of before.
1,867 2016-03-17 05:04:00
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
And take your fight out in the parking lot! Cheez ...
1,868 2016-03-17 01:02:07
Re: Acts/ Dictates/ Mandates/ Mantle - Amy's Thread (1,905 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
The collective singular is fine. When you need the particular plural (fishes instead of plural fish) use Gillis plants or Gillis pots.
Geez, some people don't know the proper past tense of sh*t. English is an irregular language, and whatever you're mapping into it can be just as irregular.
1,869 2016-03-16 23:52:15
Re: Say the first word that comes to mind... (1,634 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
What!ticism
1,870 2016-03-16 10:07:40
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Not so funny if you're the one who gets it. Apologize to Amy (grrrrr).
1,871 2016-03-16 09:16:34
Re: Acts/ Dictates/ Mandates/ Mantle - Amy's Thread (1,905 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Heck, present-and-past-in-parallel like Dark Shadows, which opened a huge genre door.
1,872 2016-03-16 09:14:16
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
I heard they missed one on the 'flu shot this year.
1,873 2016-03-15 17:24:51
Re: Repost Chapters? (7 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
I've done that. It confuses readers and potential reviewers. Die-hard reviewers are not deterred, but what about new ones?
1,874 2016-03-15 10:18:58
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Okay, updates to Shogran's Waifs are out.
If you want a repub so you can get the points you deserve, let me know.
Now, where are all those things I need to do today after I get some sleep?
1,875 2016-03-15 09:36:36
Re: A great loss (172 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Charles_F_Bell wrote:
njc wrote:Newton showed that the laws of physics in the sky are the same as those on earth; I'm arguing (on much less rigorous grounds, to be sure) that our learning of people-society-culture is of the same kind as our learning of hard-soft-hot-cold-safe-dangerous.
...
As a generality, I disagree, but my reasoning is from a complicated understanding that there is in reality no such thing as determinism -- except within a narrow context of classical physics -- which is why you'd have to reach out to Newton to support your assertion. Every horror of Man against man is brought by thinking that all we have to do is teach the individual that X is wrong, even if we have to kill him in the process. ...
Whether X (where X is nothing like landing a lunar module) is a right or wrong thing to do can be ascertained by looking through the prism of morality and not utility, and 'morality' is to an individual's actions as kinetics is to an individual molecules's actions.
I'm not sure I know how to evaluate your last claim, so all I'll say is that I wasn't addressing that point. I was addressing how we learn in the two realms, and to what degree the methods and mechanisms are comparable--if they are at all. I believe, on the basis of subjective experience and the Principle of Parsimony, that to a large degree they are. But of formal proof I have none. (Argument by analogy is an important mode of legal argument, and I believe it also plays a role in much moral reasoning, particularly in in considering what is just in a particular circumstance.)
Implicit in my point (but not occult) is that learning matters, ie. that morality and social regard of others is largely learned behavior.
