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Ship of Fools: A Taylor Varga Omake (Complete)

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Ship of Fools: A Taylor Varga Omake (Complete) Demons and Angels Seven Days to Skitter
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Just read a mathematical joke that I didn't get but the punchline was about the approximately equals sign and how if you see a mathematician use it you know he has almost given up on finding a proper proof. For some reason as soon as I read the joke I couldn't stop thinking of Taylor... I wonder why.o_O

For those that didn't know of the approximately equals sign (≈), it is something to use when you have almost but not quite gotten the right answer but the effort to get closer becomes prohibitively more difficult. You don't use it to say 2≈3 but maybe that x≈10^6 instead of having to find out after a year of computation that the answer is 1 000 023.

It's an approximation and no your teachers will not give you a pass on your math tests if you guess the answer and preface it with this sign. More likely is you'll get a verbal spanking.:D
 
E M Berner said:
Just read a mathematical joke that I didn't get but the punchline was about the approximately equals sign and how if you see a mathematician use it you know he has almost given up on finding a proper proof. For some reason as soon as I read the joke I couldn't stop thinking of Taylor... I wonder why.o_O

For those that didn't know of the approximately equals sign (≈), it is something to use when you have almost but not quite gotten the right answer but the effort to get closer becomes prohibitively more difficult. You don't use it to say 2≈3 but maybe that x≈10^6 instead of having to find out after a year of computation that the answer is 1 000 023.

It's an approximation and no your teachers will not give you a pass on your math tests if you guess the answer and preface it with this sign. More likely is you'll get a verbal spanking.:D
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NOTE: One academic field where you can sometimes get away with using an approximation is Engineering, so long as you get reasonably close and then build in a safety margin.
 
Rihtan said:
Perhaps it does, there, then. Perhaps this is the author locking it down for their story. But as Dresden cannon explicitly says, magic's side effects change with popular belief, so every time they jump there is a possibility that Dresden might end up with a different bane. Nothing keeps the author from dropping Techbane and giving Harry his own background theme music any time he wants.
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I'm probably going to leave it alone unless I can come up with a really amusing concept for having Dresden curdle cream as a side effect of his magic. There just aren't enough opportunities for fights in Dairy Queens to make it worthwhile...
 
Well, current Earth Bet popular belief about 'magic' seems to be that you're supposed to dress up in a silly costume and get in lots of fights.
 
E M Berner said:
Just read a mathematical joke that I didn't get but the punchline was about the approximately equals sign and how if you see a mathematician use it you know he has almost given up on finding a proper proof. For some reason as soon as I read the joke I couldn't stop thinking of Taylor... I wonder why.o_O

For those that didn't know of the approximately equals sign (≈), it is something to use when you have almost but not quite gotten the right answer but the effort to get closer becomes prohibitively more difficult. You don't use it to say 2≈3 but maybe that x≈10^6 instead of having to find out after a year of computation that the answer is 1 000 023.

It's an approximation and no your teachers will not give you a pass on your math tests if you guess the answer and preface it with this sign. More likely is you'll get a verbal spanking.:D
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But 2≈3 is accurate when speaking about extremely large numbers, like infinity. Numbers can be weird, which is why it is a particularly apt domain of expertise for the Family.
 
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Derek M said:
I'm probably going to leave it alone unless I can come up with a really amusing concept for having Dresden curdle cream as a side effect of his magic. There just aren't enough opportunities for fights in Dairy Queens to make it worthwhile...
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Now the really big opportunity for this to be fun is for when they transfer to a magical girl anime dimension! Or one that is so focused on that genre that it's the same thing. Forcing Harry into a Twirly Naked Light Show™ would be hilarious! :D

For this dimension, you can just say that Harry is a primary impact person for what is expected from magic and everyone else simply doesn't believe in it except for maybe one or two that Myrddin might have convinced. And who knows, maybe Myrddin kind of expects the same thing as Harry?
 
Waffelmeister said:
The comic Schlock Mercenary has been exploring this issue for... well over a year now. Oops, over thirteen years from the first resurrection, which is technically over a year... With a nanite swarm in their bodies that actively record genetic templates, neural structures and memories. All of which can be remotely stored on secure servers. They have gone so far as to have FIVE levels of dead. From 'body isn't working, but nanites are keeping the brain alive and oxygenated', the middle ground of 'brain is missing, but the nanite swarm in the body still has all the current memories', to 'whole body was atomized completely, but we still have their last backup on file, and can print a new body'. A lot of their current human level plot is dealing with the fallout of going from being able to live around a hundred years to being able to live forever.


Tuesday 6 December 2016
Be warned, there are around nineteen years of archive. It's like a wiki walk. You may wake up weeks later and be halfway through.
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Nice, but all these issues had been explored in science fiction by, I think, the late 1970s, or the early 1980s at the latest... I am impressed by the job Schlock Mercenary is doing, though. Including exactly what the relationship is between Para Ventura and robots... And, whether there's any interesting ancient data hidden in Schlock (he is descended from a data storage device which was used to replace organic brains, after all...).

A visit to that universe by the Ship of Fools would be interesting, but I don't hold out that much hope. :)

About as likely as a visit to the Perry Rhodan or Dray Prescot one I suspect. :)

I just write said:
The former comes with a funny hat, the latter has scales.
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Maybe Harry will find himself wearing a pointed hat covered in scales? :)

Growing a lizard tail would be a bit of a shock to him...
 
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Anfan said:
They don't need a scale. They know down to the molecular weight of an item in question simply due to it's makeup. :)

Who needs to weight stuff with possible errors when you can hit it with math and get a more detailed answer? :D
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Because when measuring out a precise weight of onions, you may not want to be dealing in multiples of 3.1415? And not every Family member is a mathmagic genius? Not to mention there's the aesthetics.
 
I want to see the Ship of fools stop off and collect the lizard witch, Hermione
and then stop off in Mercedes Lackey's Valdamar and collect the lizard wizard, Gervase.

Gotta collect them all, after all.
 
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