Okay, while this novel is very good, there are still a few flaws, inconsistencies and what not. So here's a short list of what I've been able to come up with. Feel free to add, comment or criticize:

• Nita's changing hair color: Okay, in the first book (and probably elsewhere as well) she was described as "dark-haired." Later in the afterword to the 20th Anniversary Edition, a girl with "dark blonde" hair is described as looking "exactly" like Nita. Now on the first page of W@W Nita is described as a "light brunette." So, explanations anyone?
  
• Dark matter, dark energy, and, well, dark stuff: Okay, the idea that dark matter is pushing the universe apart does make for an neat premise for W@W, except that, it's technically wrong. Dark matter in fact, may actually be keeping the universe together, not pushing it apart, it is dark energy that is pushing the universe apart. So, if a cosmologist were to read this book for fun, he or she would be in for a bit of a surprise. The names "dark matter" and "dark energy" are in fact a bit misleading. The word "dark" here has less to do about their color, and more to do about what little we know about them. Cosmologists so far have inferred through gravitational effects that the mass of the universe is much higher than what is observed, so the "missing" matter is dubbed as being "dark," and similarly, when cosmologists discovered that the universe was expanding after observing a type 1A supernova, and couldn't explain what was causing the push, they dubbed the extra energy as being "dark." The word has been used this way in the past, for example, Africa was once called the "dark continent" by Europeans for a while because they knew little about it. So, just a technicality, but it would've been interesting to see DD dealing with "dark energy" as the Pullulus .
  
• Ronan's pup tent: This is very minor, but since when did Ronan have a pup tent? Did the Defender want to do him a favor for sharing his head space and give him an excursus for spring break too?
  
• The color of Roshaun's re-attuned gem: At the end, Dairine gets to keep Roshaun's gem which has adjusted itself to be attuned to the Sun and takes on it's color, namely, a light golden yellow. The only problem is that that's the color of the sun after it's been filtered through the Earth's atmosphere (the same reason the sky's blue), it's really bright white. This doesn't affect the storyline much though, just another technicality.
  

Anyway, this is about all that I came across, as a I said, feel free to comment or add your own.

• Nita's changing hair color
  There was a bit of discussion of that after the first excerpt went up, and we decided her air went lighter because of all the sunshine while she was lazing around on Alaalu's beaches.
  
• I'll leave others to talk about dark matter.
  
• Ronan's pup tent
  Maybe he was given one because the Powers were sending him on this mission?
  I wondered about Dairine's pup tent, but then realised she's using Nita's tent. (And her lemon sodas.)
  
• You didn't nitpick "Darrell" on page 101 .
  

Regardless if the "dark materials", as I will call them, are keeping the universe together or pulling it apart is irrelevant. If the amount of something like that begins to increase so exponentially, it will begin to expand the universe, regardless it's original intent, or so I would think.

Nita's hair, on the other hand, may go through phases of color. When I was younger, i had black hair, now I have brown hair, which gets darker or lighter randomly enough. It's just natural. The beach lounging could also be a part of it, as that will make hair lighter.

Also, we see the sun as the yellow color, which is why it would appear as such in the ring...it's simply reflecting the color accepted by the planet's peoples, I woudl assume.

Concerning dark stuff:
Evangelion999, I take your argument being that if there's more dark stuff (of whatever kind) the effect is the same (that is, the universe is pushed apart). This is not true as far as I can tell. Dark matter pulls things together, so introducing more of it would probably pull things closer together (in extreme cases in might even create a black hole, but I'm not too sure about it). Increasing mass doesn't mean you have increasing volume, as black holes can attest to. Dark energy is essentially antigravity, and so would push things farther apart, which is what you really want. So if W@W wanted to be true to physics, dark energy would have to be used. However, I think DD's main point is that introducing dark stuff could alter how physics works slightly and make wizardry harder to implement. She could get away with this if dark matter or dark energy does change how you do physics locally, but I'm not sure if that's really true.

Nita's changing hair color:
Evangelion999, you're the first person I've ever heard of to have naturally changing hair color. I guess yours or PM's explanations are plausible, so I won't argue. I have a hunch though that DD doesn't really have an exact image of Nita in her mind, or if she does, it's one that's changed over time, and so she hasn't been paying too close attention to how Nita's been described before. (I also feel that she's been similarly lax with the timeline, but that's another story.)

Roshaun's "sunstone":
Well, a I don't really know how it works, it may not be worth nitpicking, so I guess Evangelion999's explanation works.

quote:

PM said:
You didn't nitpick "Darrell" on page 101 .

Heh, I can't believe I missed that one! Maybe I did notice it, but then forgot about it. What's harder to believe is that DD missed it!

*raises hand*

Before I started dying it (it's green now...), my hair changed color (naturally) too. It started off blonde, then got darker, then got redder. My roots now look like a dark reddish brown. My mother has the same sort of hair, and she was blonde until her mid forties because she was outside so much, but now her hair is dark red/brown too. Also, I have a friend who was born with black hair and now has light brown/blonde hair. So these things can change with age.

And now that you've been thoroughly ganged up on...

*blushes* I must also say that my hair changes color as well. It's nothing dramatic really, but in the summer it gets a lot lighter because of the sun. Normally it's sort of a medium golden blonde, and when I'm outside a lot it turns sort of bright gold. Crazy, huh?

What bothers me is that Dairine was born in 1978 and yet she's still like 11 when the iPod comes out...xD

Moeen - Dark matter's just our name for "matter that we know must exist, because we see its net gravitational effects slowing the expansion of the universe, but we don't know where/what it is", yes? It's not like it's a specific kind of matter, which seems to be what DD is using the term to mean.

So DD's pseudophysics work if we pretend Dark Matter isn't our usual notion dark matter, but something specific the Lone Power devised to mess with physics. I think I'd have preferred it if she'd not bothered with the matter and just gone with "space is suddenly expanding way faster than it should be in various places."

I'm not sure if physics actually changes in very high gravetational fields (such as neutron stars. From what I understand there, the atoms more or less fall apart and you just get a big ball of neutrons), or if it's more accurate to say that our current best descriptions just fail in extreme conditions, just as classical mechanics fail at speeds close to the speed of light, and we need relativity. And at very small distances, classical mechanics fail and we need quantum mechanics.

It seems kind of interesting to me that wizardry might not know the fully generalized form of all the laws of physics yet. Wizards, yes, so you'd get spells not working quite right just because of that.

Reboot: You're right that DD's timeline for the the YW series doesn't correspond to the timeline in real life, but DD doesn't see that as a problem. I believe she addressed this in one of her podcasts, and definitely addresses this (at least partially) in her forward to the 20th Anniversary Edition of the first book.

Mercredi: Your pretty much on top of what Dark Matter is, but I don't think it's directly related to the expansion of the universe. It's true, she could've just said that space is simply expanding much faster than usual, but she likes to ground her stuff in reality, so I'm guessing she tried to give some sort of scientific explanation. She also probably likes this stuff, so tries to include in her books in some way. It's just that she seems to have slipped on the terminology a bit, but it's not something the average reader would pick on.

Well, quantum mechanics tries to describe what's small, and relativity what's fast, it's just that in cases where you have both, say in a black hole, physicists don't have a formulation that can describe what's going on. You bring up an interesting point though. If doing wizardry involves being able to descibe something exactly, and can include such things as white holes or black holes, don't wizards then have answers to all of the physicists questions? The Speech, in the YW universe, after all is capable of describing anything, which means it should be able to transcend even mathematical models of the universe (which is what physics is all about really). The Speech should then provide also the ultimate form of mathematics. This then begs the question, what are wizards in the YW universe waiting for? Anyone of them could become more famous than even Einstein and solve pretty much all scientific problems!

My hair colour likes to randomly change as well. When I was born, it was dark, dark brown, almost black. By the time I was three, it was lightish blonde. Now, it's darker blonde, and in several years will probably darken enough that I can call it brown.

I heard somewhere that your hair colour actually changes, albeit somewhat subtlely, every seven years.

Well, okay the hair color is different and the dark matter is off. As a regular reader who knows nothing about anyhting other than YW I don't know and I don't care. I don't use the information to impressive people with my physics knowledge. Here's my question, since when is Nita 14??? Wans't she fifteen in the last books?

the daryll thing...
The Daryll thing? Were?
hair color...
When I was born my hair was brown and one weekend it just turned red. Now I am blonde as can be, but my hair is slowly starting to get darker again.
sehlinger
And i am going to eat... it... all...

At risk of thrashing the subject to death, I was born with straight black hair, a year later I had straight white hair, in Intermediate school it was wavy blonde, and now at the age of (insert something sufficient for me to have a university degree), I have brown hair in natural frizzy ringlets. Another ten years, and who knows what my hair will be like?

quote:

Originally posted by Peter Murray:

• 
  
• Ronan's pup tent
  Maybe he was given one because the Powers were sending him on this mission?
  I wondered about Dairine's pup tent, but then realised she's using Nita's tent. (And her lemon sodas.)
  

Ronan is probobly using Roshaun's tent seeing as he didn't bring it along/use it during the book

The question then is where did all the stuff go...

It wouldn't have worked if DD had just said "The universe is expanding faster than it should have." For the sake of adding drama, the wizards had to have something physical to fight with: the Pullulus, the aggregate of dark matter. You take that out, and half of the story is gone.

And I don't think we can compare it to what we would usually refer to as dark matter. Ronan refers to it as "a perversion of dark matter" by the Lone Power (164). And Nita says that it felt like "the dark matter...had had something added to it...something terrible" (162). So the Lone Power could have twisted the properties of dark matter, or made up a new "dark matter" of his own. Even if DD doesn't have the correct concept of dark matter, it really doesn't matter. Perhaps she should have called it something different, though...

Some comments (and even nitpicking ) about the above discussion, as well as some further (nitpicky) discussion of the physics and astronomy of WAW:

First, just to be completely correct pedantic, the standard terminology for the white-dwarf-accretion supernova that Moeen mentioned in his first post is a Roman numeral 'I' and a lower-case 'a' (i.e., 'Ia', not '1A'). Also, to be really picky, 'Type' should be capitalized (as in "Type Ia supernovae").

Some more substantive points about Moeen's presentation of dark matter and energy:

While the cosmological evidence for dark matter is compelling, it is not the only—or even the first—astronomical arena in which observations required dark matter (or modifications of gravity leading to dark matter-like effects): Dark matter made its first appearance as the 'missing mass' required for galaxy clusters to remain bound, and then in the dark matter halos needed to explain the observed flat rotation curves (of galaxies as close to home as our own Milky Way).

Also, it is not simply the expansion of the universe that requires dark energy, but the accelerated expansion—the simple expansion has been well-understood since Edwin Hubble first observed the cosmological redshift in 1929 (Vesto Slipher's observations significantly pre-date Hubble's, but the effect only received widespread attention after Hubble's announcement). Indeed, the expansion of the universe is regarded as the most sweeping—and astonishing—prediction of general relativity, although Einstein just was too afraid to make it (back in 1917), and thus go against the widespread philosophical prejudice of the time (which he shared) that the universe was static (and had no beginning). In addition, the observational cosmologists who discovered the accelerated expansion (in 1999) were able to do so only after observing many Type Ia supernovae—no one would have believed them if they had based their conclusions solely on one supernova! (It could have so easily been something anomalous—they have enough trouble with fellow astronomers worrying about changes in the luminosity of their putative "standard candles", or other possible scenarios with no acceleration.)

Nevertheless, I concur that DD's use of the term dark matter in WAW is highly suspect, and even misleading. However, I am not so concerned with its connexion (or even possible confusion) with dark energy, or even its altering of physics (having offered some possible scenarios for how this could work using known—albeit sometimes speculative—physics in other topics that have seem to have recently disappeared! *) as with its appearance and (presumed) internal structure. First, while the term "dark" may suggest otherwise to some people, the raison d'être of dark matter is not only to supply curvature of spacetime without emitting light, but that also not to absorb light, at least not significantly. Indeed, by my understanding, the nonbaryonic dark matter that Big Bang nucleosynthesis requires cannot couple strongly (if at all) to electromagnetic radiation (and thus cannot absorb it strongly, if at all). This means that the dark matter in WAW should not obscure the stars, as it is seen to do in several scenes (most notably the climactic scene on the Moon). In addition, so-called particle dark matter (on which DD's 'dark matter' appears to be based) is indeed elementary particles, and thus should not be destroyed by being heated—even violently—as it is in Roshaun & Dairine's solution (albeit incompletely). It may be possible that its 'dark energy' effects could be denatured by heat, if they are solely provided by its structure above the level of elementary particles—there doesn't appear to be any 'no-go' theorem that prevents matter from having negative pressure due to its structure (particularly if it is constituted of unusual particles), but I can't claim anything even approaching a comprehensive knowledge of known results in statistical mechanics, so there might be. (However, 'dark energy' is usually thought of being some new field and not a complex form of matter at all, though so little is known about it that these models are mostly in the form of simplifying assumptions.) Moreover, it is not clear (apologies for the unintentional pun) that heating most matter would make it (more) transparent (particularly if it made it undergo a phase transition; for instance, steam is far more opaque than is water)—it certainly would not remove its effects on the curvature of spacetime, by conservation of energy (and, indeed, would increase its temperature, and hence energy, making it curve spacetime more than it did previously, albeit by most likely a miniscule amount); however, this heating could lessen its effects by decreasing its energy density, if it caused the matter to expand greatly, which seems quite likely (and would also increase the matter's transparency).

Back soon after the first one or two WAW excerpts had been put up on YW.net, DD posted, in response to Selden, several possibilities for what could be going on with the (then) putative problems with a possible confusion between dark matter and energy in WAW—unfortunately, she did this in the more recent "The New Excerpt!" thread in the "Wizards at War" section of the forums, which has since been culled, and I have only a rather hazy memory of what she said, though I think that it might have been highly pertinent to this, in retrospect: I recall her mentioning three possibilities of what could be going on with the supposed confusion between dark matter and dark energy, one of which was that they were "'placeholders'" pending her visit to CERN (she mentioned some frequent time interval on which she made these visits, but I can't recall it exactly); I think that another one was that it was a "'deliberate error'" that would be clarified as the book progressed, but I cannot recall the third, and—I believe—most apropos possibility. Does anyone else have a better memory of these? (Or, better yet, saved DD's post for some reason?)

quote:

Originally posted by Moeen:
So, if a cosmologist were to read this book for fun, he or she would be in for a bit of a surprise.

…and probably at least a few have, given that DD has mentioned that there are quite a few fans in the high-energy physics community, and, as Michael Turner put it, "Cosmology and particle physics are now joined at the hip". (In fact, as I realize when looking up the link for the DD reference, her mention of this was in response to a question from Moeen in the July 30th 2005 chat—these fans include several at Fermilab and CERN, as revealed in DD's answer to my question about Roshaun's T-shirt in the first [and so far only] Q&A WizCast, of July 28th, 2005—indeed, she mentions there [in answer to my question] that "the physics and science communities [as a whole] are very strongly represented among YW fans".)

quote:

Increasing mass doesn't mean you have increasing volume, as black holes can attest to.

Using black holes for this example is slightly fraught with difficulty, as most people would think of a black hole's volume as being that of the space enclosed by its event horizon (and the radius of the event horizon increases with—indeed is proportional to—the black hole's mass, and the enclosed volume increases as well, proportionally to the cube of the radius, even taking into account the fact that space[time] is curved inside a black hole—this just changes the constant of proportionality for a Schwarzschild [i.e., uncharged, non-rotating] black hole from its flat-space value). However, you were presumably thinking of the (classically) zero-volume singularity at the centre of the black hole, or even just that the Schwarzschild radius for a given mass is much less than the radius of a star of the same mass (e.g., a 1 solar mass black hole is much smaller than the Sun). Nevertheless, it's probably cleaner (and clearer) to use white dwarfs for this example: They exhibit an inverse relation between mass and volume and have no ambiguity in how to define their volume. (And, of course, they also have much smaller volumes than an ordinary [non-degenerate] star of the same mass.)

quote:

However, I think DD's main point is that introducing dark stuff could alter how physics works slightly and make wizardry harder to implement. She could get away with this if dark matter or dark energy does change how you do physics locally, but I'm not sure if that's really true.

As mentioned above, I offered several (very rough) proposals elsewhere for how dark matter and energy could be connected, as well as how they could influence physics, based on current speculative ideas as to possible explanations of dark matter and energy that involve (large) extra dimensions and some concepts from string theory—these seem particularly apropos in the YW universe, as they form a significant part of its 'canonical science'. (I can supply further details [in the form of a re-post] if there is interest.) However, I know of no reason, a priori, why either dark matter or dark energy would have to modify physics, beyond the effects on spacetime that their very natures require, though their unknown status leaves abundant room for such possibilities.

To move to some other topics: First, I am not particularly bothered by the lack of accuracy concerning the gem's "re-attuned" colour, particularly as the perception of colour seems to be highly subjective; moreover, I have argued elsewhere that one sometimes has to look beyond purely physical concerns when dealing with wizardry, so I concur with Evangelion's supposition that it is the perceived ('cultural') colour that is pertinent here, and is most effective in indicating the blue-ward shift in the blackbody peak of the star to which it is attuned (from that of G5-K0 III-IV Thahit, with a peak somewhere from ~5090–~6560 Å, probably around ~5590 Å—ranging from the cyan edge of green to well into red, with the 'probable value' [which, by the way, is very rough] near the yellow edge of green, corresponding to [photospheric] temperatures from ~5700–~4420 K, probably around ~5180 K ** to G2 V Sol, with its [photospheric] temperature of ~5770 K corresponding to a peak at ~5030 Å—near the cyan edge of the green portion of the spectrum [!]). (There are some interesting sites related to the Sun's 'true' colour [without atmospheric interference] here and here.)

In fact, to me, the second-most serious scientific misconception in the book (though one that is even more incidental to the main thrust of the plot) is not the problem with the gem's colour, but the statement that the strong force is present in the "interstitial space between … atoms" (during the description of the mobiles' imaging routine). In the strictest sense it is, but it is completely negligible there, as it dies off exponentially with increasing distance with a length scale of approximately the nuclear scale (~1 fm [femtometre]), while the distance between atoms in ordinary matter is greater than the atomic scale, which is approximately that of the Bohr radius (~0.5 Å—five orders of magnitude greater!).

In addition, I am rather concerned about the physics underlying Callahan's Unfavourable Instigation: My worry is that it was described that she was "choking" the fusion reaction by simply confining it to a smaller space than it was designed to occupy—it seems that this would just increase the rate of the reaction (cf. the effects of contraction due to gravity on the fusion reactions in stars); what she might have been doing was confining the reaction away from its fuel source (though that seems difficult to do, considering that the fusion reaction is probably taking place among much unfused substance, simply because of the high densities required to get fusion to occur with any degree of frequency), but I could be missing something here. (This makes the parallel between Callahan's Unfavourable Instigation and the Lone Power's method of 'snuffing' the Sun in SYWTBAW that Nita remarks upon hard to discern, though the fact that changes in the Sun's core are not discernable in its energy output for over a hundred thousand years, due to the lengthy process of photon diffusion through the outer layers, means that shutting down the Sun's fusion reaction is, in and of itself, insufficient to keep the Sun from shining, so the parallel is mostly likely not very strict. Indeed, I am, no doubt, being entirely too picky—I greatly enjoyed the book overall. For that matter, the dark matter/energy plot seems something of a sidelight to the book's main thrust, about which I shall have more to say in a post destined for the "General Thoughts" topic [currently in preparation].)

quote:

You bring up an interesting point though. If doing wizardry involves being able to descibe something exactly, and can include such things as white holes or black holes, don't wizards then have answers to all of the physicists questions? The Speech, in the YW universe, after all is capable of describing anything, which means it should be able to transcend even mathematical models of the universe (which is what physics is all about really). The Speech should then provide also the ultimate form of mathematics. This then begs the question, what are wizards in the YW universe waiting for? Anyone of them could become more famous than even Einstein and solve pretty much all scientific problems!

I think that there are quite a few points in play here, most of which argue against a wizard's choosing to publish scientific results inspired or influenced by her or his experience with wizardry: First, while there are probably some wizards in academia (and we could argue that, perhaps, those scientists who have been the most visionary have been influenced, probably subconsciously, by what they have learned during Errantry), those who are not would most likely have a hard time getting any putative papers accepted in journals, particularly any proposing the no doubt large number of highly radical paradigm shifts that the significantly deeper understanding of the universe wizardry provides would require. (This would be difficult enough for an academic with an established record of insightful, though uncontroversial, papers.) Second, very few (if any!) of these results would be original to the author, who would thus be bound to cite the original discoverers, which leads to great difficulty in our current state of affairs—do we just cite other wizards (or scientists) who came up with these results (which is problematic enough, considering that the great majority of the discoverers are doubtless alien), or do we go all the way back to the Powers? Thirdly, if we assume that wizards know (or can easily find out) the truly fundamental laws of the universe, would a wizard necessarily find it stimulating to work on these problems (which would be, to the serious research wizard, probably trivial), and have to go to all the trouble of figuring out a way of explaining them to the general public without raising suspicions (as to where, for instance, the experimental impetus for various theoretical steps came from, even disregarding the issue of crediting priority)? I would say not, particularly as such a task seems greatly divorced from the primary mission with which a wizard is charged. In addition, it seems possible—even likely—that a much deeper understanding of science would need computing powers far beyond what we have at present, leading to further problems in dissemination. (Does the Manual do quantum computing?) Moreover, it may be the consensus among wizards that the technological advances that would be made possible by such scientific advances would be, at the present time, more likely to cause harm to Earth than help it (perhaps even in the fields of medicine, climate change, ecology and both environmental remediation and the prevention of further environmental degradation, where I think that several wizards guiding scientific research could do the most good for the planet and its inhabitants), perhaps most obviously if they had an immediate application to highly destructive weaponry (something of a science fiction cliché, I realize, but cf. TVTQ/OHMWS). Also, and perhaps most importantly, I doubt that the assumption in the third point above is necessarily a good one, for deducing a compelling framework for the physical laws in the universe may very well be a far from easy task, even for a theoretical wizard, particularly given what is implied in Carl's comparison of the universe to a balky dishwasher in WAW. (And, as I posit in a post in preparation for the "Wizard [sic] Holiday Horizon Level" topic in the "Nitpickery" section of the forums, it is possible that most wizards may have at least part of the 'nitty-gritty' of the science behind their spells handled by the Manual.)

* I present my thoughts on this in extenso here. The threads in question were the newer "The New Excerpt!" thread in the "Wizards at War" section of the forums and the "elevens" thread in "The 'Feline Wizards' Novels" section of the forums.

** Data from Bailer-Jones (chap. 6, p. 181). I assume that Thahit is a giant or subgiant (luminosity classes III & IV, respectively), since, according to the Concordance, it is not a dwarf (luminosity class V), and is somewhat larger than the Sun. I also use the largest possible range of temperatures (and thus spectral maxima).

Edited to fix the luminosity class for giants (previously "V", an obvious typo), to correct some grammatical errors and clarify the exposition (still, I fear, rather convoluted in places) in the final paragraph, and to give the reference for where the strong force comes up in WAW.

Edited again (much later) to remove two unnecessary repetitions.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Nathan,

o_0 Wow, this became one big scientific discussion. And, as I'm only in 9th grade, I can't keep up.
*leaves to take some tylenol*

Nathan, you never fail to diasppoint. Snap. Meant to say impress there. gah. *pokes self*

And even though my brain's feeling a bit wonky now, that was awesome.

*to comment upon the bit that doesn't make my brain feel wonky* There is also the point that wizards in research could not be very interested in getting published on earth. There are probably some much more expansive and prestigious venues to be working in than just those of a wee little self-concerned planet out here in the sticks of the universe (ish). The major research wizards are probably much more focused on the big projects (i.e.- the dark matter). As to Nathan's reference to wizards in acadamia, they may only be there to help guide us along and insert random bits of knowledge only when we're ready for them.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Caitlin,

You know, despite beliefs to the contrary, sometimes, little things like this really aren't done for a reason. Not that any author will admit if of course. sometimes they change because the auther realizes they've backed themselves into a corner and need to change something, and sometimes they just make a mistake. If you insist on nitpicking the story, i've got something for you: the second haiku in wizard at war, wasn't a haiku at all. it only had four sylibols! the line was:
a world of dew. That's only four!

young reader: "world" can be pronounced as two syllables (at least according to Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary: /'wɚ( ·ə )ld/ in IPA [but see particularly the entry and brief chart for the IPA vis-à-vis English; also, take this with caveats, as it's my own transliteration {if that's even the correct term} from the Merriam-Webster system, in which it is \'wər( -ə )ld\—I refuse to follow the online version in using an ampersand for a schwa, particularly as the printed dictionary I consulted uses the proper symbol]), and here would be 'poetically forced' * into that pronunciation. (I have only seen the two-syllable pronunciation given as a possibility in the above dictionary and Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, but presume that it is standard with certain accents. † )

Also, while you might not have been commenting on those, many of the nits I, at least, was picking at were of a purely scientific nature, and not related to "writing oneself into a corner", at least not as far as self-consistency is concerned. (However, what might have happened is that DD, based upon a somewhat sketchy grasp of some bit of science, develops a portion of a book, either a 'throwaway' reference, or as a more integral part of the plot, and then either failed to check that what she had written is actually scientifically correct or found out that it is not and then feels that it is so integral to the book [or not a large enough matter to worry about] that she leaves it as it is—deliberately wrong [cf. my memory of DD's comments about dark matter/energy in WAW presented above]).

Caitlin: You're absolutely right about Earth not being a particularly prestigious publishing venue for the research wizard; however, I'm not sure that that is even asking the right question—as I meant to mention in that portion of my previous post (as you might have guessed, it was written the most quickly; I think that it definitely shows), I don't think that research wizards are particularly concerned about being published, particularly as any results of note are probably disseminated via the Manual (cf. Callahan's Unfavourable Instigation). Moreover, if A. R. Davidson is at all typical as regards the attitude of research wizards to 'fame and fortune' (or at least fame), most (if not all) research wizards would prefer to work on interesting cutting-edge problems, perhaps thus gaining a reputation throughout the Universe, as opposed to simply becoming celebrities and being fêted on Earth. (Some of this is adumbrated in your comment.) However, I'm not sure if there are major research institutes for wizards (certainly A. R. Davidson was happy to be consulted at his farm), though I'm sure that there are major ones for the jet (warp drive?)-set alien scientists scattered around the Universe and some of the less reclusive theoretical wizards could conceivably visit them to collaborate with alien scientists (and thus get published as co-authors in, say, the intergalactic version of Nature). (I am now having thoughts of the Crossings sponsoring a string engineering conference, and other such amusing scenarios. This then sets me wondering as to what the scientific lingua franca of the galaxy is, for those alien scientists living in sevarfrith worlds who are not wizards and thus don't know the Speech [otherwise we have problems with peer review, if such a thing even exists at this level and there's not simply some intergalactic version of arXiv, though even this currently entails a modicum of content supervision]. Also, perhaps the most interesting question is whether all the scientists in an astahfrith society would be wizards. I think not, but it seems that nonwizardly scientists could be at such a serious disadvantage that they might not choose to pursue science—contrariwise, however, not all wizards would wish to be scientists, and, indeed, wizards are, as a group, charged with a rather different mission [though not one that excludes scientific research]. However, the Rirhait may show that, for a sufficiently advanced society, there is actually not a significant bonus to being a wizard in scientific—or at least engineering—endeavours. Certainly, the Stationmaster does not view Sker'ret's wizardly status positively.)

Also, you shouldn't worry about any possible misconceptions of your original problem with multiple negatives in your compliment—I originally took it with the intended meaning, reading it (obviously not too closely) as a litotic (< DD >Is that a word? Well, it is now.< /DD >) compliment. But providing an insightful response to one of my posts is perhaps the highest compliment that a fellow member can pay me—I often fear that my contributions to the forums may prove somewhat highly impenetrable (or at least formidable) due to their often mildly very abstruse content and my rarely straightforward prose style, which I fear leaves much to be desired in terms of readability, particularly if I don't edit it sufficiently. (Indeed, I tend far too much towards an unholy amalgam of German academic and discursive literary styles, with a smattering of experimental poetry and a Flaubertian concern for le mot juste thrown in for good measure, all aided and abetted by a decided tendency to cram as much as possible into one sentence [or paragraph], (over)using abusing punctuation as necessary ‡—I hope that I avoid too many actual run-on sentences, though my propensities in this regard are probably best indicated by the fact that E. R. Eddison hated to see one of his sentences end §, and I find many of his sentences to be quite short and easily digestible compared to my own [though this is probably simply an indication that he is a far better prose stylist than I am]. All of this, along with general perfectionist tendencies [as well as more pressing obligations], is a primary reason why I am often so slow in replying to posts.) In addition, the fact that I often reply a long time after the initial discussion has lapsed of its own accord is doubtless another reason why many of my posts are not replied to as fully as I might hope.

The preceding paragraph appears to have devolved into a lengthy and discursive apologia for my stylistic idiosyncrasies and shortcomings, which I probably should not have burdened you with; but I've already typed and posted it, so there it shall stay.

* There is doubtless a technical term for this, possibly even one I knew at one time, but I can't dredge anything applicable out of the inner recesses of my brain at the moment. A prime example of this (but perhaps too severe and widespread to even properly be considered of the same type—for all I know, it may be sui generis) would be the pronunciation of "Juan" to rhyme with "new one" in Byron's Don Juan.

† The attentions of a linguist are what we chiefly need... (Oops! Starting to sail off into The Walrus and the Carpenter) ...need here, and I think that we may have a few who visit the forums, albeit infrequently (e.g., Eavan Moore).

‡ I sometimes think that my flow (and possibly readability) might be aided by a less sparing use of footnotes, but fear that that would just lead to the undesirable outcome of the footnotes being longer than the body of the text. It is also common family opinion that many (if not all) of my worst stylistic instincts were influenced by studying Latin and reading a fair amount of somewhat early British literature (for instance, the long Miltonian periods [and Milton's English, which is, as somebody pointed out, really Latin {I can't find a reference for this either—I should probably start making note of these quotes somewhere}] reinforced the influence of the Romans quite nicely)—it's probably just as well that I haven't gotten around to Sterne yet... (The nested parentheses can probably be blamed at least in part on my early computer programming experience.)

§ I can't unearth my source for this at the moment, so the attribution must be considered slightly suspect.

Edited to add the apology for my apologia as well as to fix the slashes used for the IPA transcription (different from those for the Merriam-Webster!), unify the introduction of otherwise unnecessary spaces that Groupee's overzealous rendering of certain character combinations as emoticons requires, change one set of parentheses to brackets, as nesting rules require, and use more compact footnote symbols.

Edited again (much later) to remove yet another anomalous emoticon and insert a much-needed comma into the above edit summary.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Nathan,