Lord Liaden

I've always maintained that results discarded as "experimental error" could be signs of something really significant, but are usually discounted out of hand because they don't fit orthodox expectations. "Science" can sometimes be as hidebound as religion. Discoveries come when researchers are willing to imagine a different perspective from which to look at data. Maybe in a super world there's even more potential in those "errors." Now I'm wondering if an experimental approach could be added to the discipline of martial arts in order to develop a new technique, even a new use of ch'i. I know there are modern martial arts like Krav Maga that were assisted in development with such scientific studies as kinesiology, but they lack the spiritual dimension of traditional arts, having the exclusive design goal of efficiency in defeating an opponent. The Champions villain Green Dragon (CV3) is a powerful fighter, but has no patience or respect for the spiritual component of martial arts, and thus his skills are described as stagnating. As has been said of Dr. Destroyer, is someone really insane if they can back it up?

I didn't find either to be easier to teach, use or keep track of. However, 1 END per 5 CP tends to make characters more expensive, as Reduced Endurance becomes more essential.

All right, it is with considerable pain that I have to say, this first entry in the Champions International sectional book was a disappointment. Aside from the minimalist color cover, almost all the rest of the book's 16 pages is text giving background information about Lugendu. While it is pretty broad in the range of subjects it covers, as far as its style and focus goes it reads more like a travelogue than a gaming supplement. The text is laid out in a sparse two-column style that looks like a fan product rather than a professional one. There are exactly two character sheets. Aside from the cover, "artwork" amounts to several silhouettes of modern weapons, and a "Top Secret" stamp at the start of the GM's section. The layout of the land in Lugendu is only described -- there is no map. There are a few suggestions for plots to be inferred from the text, but details are sparser than has been typical for Hero books under DOJ. I've bought quite a few of the smaller PDF books published for Fifth and Sixth Edition, on a range of subjects. Every one of them provides considerably more game utility in an equal or smaller number of pages, and looks better doing it, while costing me less than Lugendu. I understand the company's need to make a decent profit, but I don't feel what I got was an adequate return on the $7.50 US I paid for it.

Well, the approaches that humanity has used for millennia to understand the universe, before empiricism came to dominate. Intuition. Philosophy. Metaphysics. Approaches which spawned the concepts of magic, and of ch'i. On real Earth the results of those approaches have been questionable at best, but on Champs Earth they're clear and undeniable. Sure, Angelstone Laboratories and the Goodman Institute study such phenomena, but have had very limited success duplicating or even explaining them. Notice that your own examples are attempts to study the effects of these forces, but can't detect and analyze the underlying causes. (Hearkening back to dark matter again.) When you're dealing with something that can transcend or even alter physical laws, an approach designed to identify physical laws is rather iffy. Let's look at a CU example, perhaps the most accomplished "technomancer" on Earth today, Gyre of the Devil's Advocates supervillain team (from Champions Villains Volume Two). Sarah Benton was a physics doctoral student when her parents, who were members of the Trismegistus Council, were killed in a car crash. Sarah inherited their occult library, but she had never shared their interest or belief in the occult. "Sarah felt enough curiosity to read a few of the old books and her parents’ diaries before she threw them out. She read of planetary spirits and astral influences, of Hermes Trismegistus and the Kabbalah. It made an odd kind of sense... actually, some of this superstition had parallels in math and physics... if she used symbolic logic to cut through the archaic jargon and the contradictions.... A few months later, Sarah abandoned her dissertation. The occult concealed a strange and misunderstood science. If she could lay it bare, she would go down in history with Newton and Einstein! She raided the library for more mystic lore. The spinning of the astral spheres — Penrose’s twistor theory — the I Ching as a binary logic system for computation — Yes, she was close! ... The veil parted at last. Sarah chanted strange words for hours as she filled legal pads with diagrams that twisted into the fourth and fifth dimensions before her blurring eyesight, and for one shining, shattering moment, she knew. She saw the wheels of Ezekiel’s vision, and knew them for the spinning of protons and galaxies. She understood the cycle of creation and destruction, and the path from spirit to matter and back again. She knew God’s own equations for making universes." (CV2 p. 84) I think the example of Gyre demonstrates the only approach likely to yield more fundamental insights into how these forces unite -- an integrated approach utilizing insights produced both by science and by "un-science," requiring expertise in multiple disciplines and belief systems not normally compatible. Gyre is one of the very few people with the breadth of brilliance to perceive some of those concordances.

Yes, it is. That program also used those investigations as a basis from which to explore theoretical and practical ideas for aerospace engineering and security. But the documents still don't confirm any of that stuff came from recovered materials from UFO sites.

I'm not afraid of Donald Trump. I'm afraid of the next person to try to follow in his footsteps, who'll probably be smarter. As a Canadian I've always been grateful that the United States is our closest neighbor, friend and ally. Like all Canadians I've complained about stuff America has done from time to time, but I was never scared by it. I'm scared now.

Thank you for the links. I'm seeing much information about the composition, properties, and potential uses of experimental materials. So far I haven't found anything that confirms any of these materials are or are based on recoveries from UFO sites. If you can cite a specific passage from this document to that effect, or refer me to such documentation, I'd love to see it.

"Laboratory" presupposes a scientific approach. The majority of these sources probably can't be analyzed that way. They certainly haven't been in the real world.

This was published in the Sun? Yeah, I think I'll wait to see the documents.

Forget mother-in-law, I want that for myself! That's all I ever wanted a telephone for. My primary 'phone is a land-line. I have an antique flip-'phone, but I literally used it only for emergencies. Most of the time I don't even turn it on.

Dang. That was closer than I expected.

"Tell Mike I always liked him. This was just business."

I feel like I should recognize that face, but I don't. Although I am rather distracted...

Reportedly Trump and Pence really got into it in their first meeting after the riot. Even Trump's closest allies are fed up with that ungrateful, selfish, backstabbing pumpkin. Trump is the epitome of, "What have you done for me lately?"

Which, of course, they did for several of the Showa-era films. There were still echoes of that lightness in some of the Heisei and Millennium era movies, too.

I remember when I encountered Godzilla 1954 as a kid, I was enthralled by the scenes of the giant monster rampaging through the human landscape, but rather put off by the tone and pace of the rest of the movie. I was in my thirties when I rediscovered the movie and could appreciate what it was trying to do, and how well it does it. The whole kaiju genre wasn't really part of my childhood -- I came to my love for it later in life. Maybe that's part of why I prefer the more serious stories to the lighthearted and silly ones.

Exactly. Lawyers will sometimes take high-profile cases where the money is incidental to the publicity the case will bring them. However, association with Donald Trump at this time and in this situation may not be a career-booster, and might even be detrimental.

Yes! I've made that same argument before. Champions Beyond draws a pretty clear distinction between "cosmic" and "mystic" entities, but at the level of entities embodying fundamental concepts of Reality that distinction seems rather arbitrary, and as you point out doesn't really match the source material. (DC's New Gods also blur that line.) In the CU making that distinction has also led to redundancies. Take Dean's definition in TMW of a major Archetype of Nature, the Triple Goddess, responsible for the cycle of Birth, Life, and Death. Yet CB describes a cosmic conceptual entity called Mortalus who essentially performs the same function, with the added dimension of acting to correct major imbalances in either Death or Life. I've considered rejiggering these cosmic types to fit within the framework of the Zoas and give them more interactive roles. In the case of the above examples, I postulate that while the Triple Goddess embodies the instinctive cycle of life, Mortalus embodies the balance of life, the equilibrium among all life forms within an environment. On that basis I would declare Mortalus an Archetype of Order.

Indeed. If you have and are playing the 4E rule set, with the Fantasy Hero genre book plus the two Companion(s) you'd have nearly everything you need for years of play, game-world and real-world.

It appears Trump found a defense attorney as addled as he is. Perhaps by this point his reputation is too toxic for anyone sharper to take him as a client.

Okay, to be clear, I fully accept that the coup attempt was premeditated by Trump. I was only responding to the specific scenario archer had suggested. I don't believe Trump has the brains or guts to have pulled that scenario off. But the overall failure of the coup attempt, like every other Trump failure, was mostly due to his own incompetence. Had he been competent, while I believe the attempt would ultimately have failed, the situation would have been a lot worse. But Pence being killed would not have stopped certification by the Electoral College. The vice-president's role as supervisor of the count is ceremonial, as Pence tried to explain to Trump. He had no power to affect the outcome, it's a formality. Everyone already knew what the count was. Yes, there would have been procedural confusion to sort out, but it wouldn't have stopped Biden's assuming the presidency.

This line came out of a video by Beau of the Fifth Column on a completely unrelated subject, but it's too good not to quote: "At the end of every episode of Scooby Doo, what happens? They rip the mask off of that thing, whatever that thing is, and it's Congress. Some old white dude doing something behind the scenes for money."

But all the Capitol Hill dominoes didn't fall into place until the last moment: the rioters breaking into the capitol, Pence with the nuclear codes being in a vulnerable position. Yes, Trump could have planned out an entire strategy, had his agents planted to manipulate the rioters, to take out Pence and blame it on them, to manufacture a security threat great enough to declare martial law. But that would have required foresight, discipline, and courage, none of which Donald Trump has. But he didn't even need to do that much. Imagine how things might have turned out if Trump just did what he promised his followers he'd do, walk with them to the Capitol. The President of the United States standing with them facing down Congress. Had he been a real leader prepared to seize the moment, that's what he would have done. Luckily for democracy, he has no leadership qualities.

That would have been a very clever, imaginative and bold adaptation to a rapidly evolving situation. Hence completely beyond Donald Trump. Don't get me wrong, IMO he's selfish, ruthless and desperate enough to have tried it if he thought of it. Just not smart or brave enough.