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"Basilisk, good job on the fight club case. Here's your gold detective's badge!"

1 (1.9%)

Roko Basilisk P.I. (with May as her capable and tough receptionist)

15 (28.8%)

Asking Elliott (stammering and blushing) if The Secret Bakery has any open jobs working with b... b... bread

7 (13.5%)

The Kirouac Option - She quits, buys a bike and rides off to find herself

1 (1.9%)

SpookyBot makes a personal appearence to tell her about ways she can make a difference

9 (17.3%)

May personally pleas with her to stick with the force because they need some good cops

5 (9.6%)

Bubbles (clued in by May) gives her the 'one good Synthetic' speech

6 (11.5%)

A prolonged whodunnit story guest-starring Clinton, Melon and Emily

4 (7.7%)

Door security at The Horrible Revelation (which morphs into the prolonged whodunnit arc)

4 (7.7%)

Other (please specify in a comment)

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 52

[OldGoat]

Uh, Sitn', these are fictional entities in a fictional universe - you're talking as if this is an inviolable law of physics.

[Tova]

No more than anyone else, surely.

This is all speculative discussion. We really don't need to qualify every statement made as such.

[Is it cold in here?]

A story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Getting the end at the same time as the beginning is a different experience from what we organics get and it breaks authorial intent.

[JimC]

But why a light-rail commuter system has such a need for its own police force, in addition to all of the above, is a bafflement to me. 

Training for access to working rail lines. People without specialist training who wander round active rail systems have a habit of getting killed. We have specialist transport police in the UK too. We don't really have a national police force as such. its basically (simplification) regional forces.

[OldGoat]

No doubt there were people in the First Century criticizing those new-fangled codices and claiming that the experience of reading from a scroll was far superior.

[Morituri]

We actually do have baked clay tablets from Sumer that talk about the new invention of paper and decry its ephemerality.  It has no evidentiary value, the scribe laments, and can't be used to keep records because in a few years it's gone to rot and decay.  And yet fools who haven't proper facilities to store enough clay tablets for their needs desire the use of it, even though trouble shall surely befall them due to its inferiority.

Now, it is possible that the people who advocated the use of that early papyrus paper responded with a rebuttal.  But if so, it's lost to history.  Which sort of proves the tablet author's point about evidentiary value and records-keeping, I guess.

[sitnspin]

There have been people at various stages in history who decried writing things down at all saying it eroded our ability to remember things and made us intellectually lazy. With the advent of the internet and how easy it is to look something up immediately when you are curious and then instantly forget it again cos you don't need to remember, I can kind of see their point.

[JimC]

I see a distinction in that one is physiological cause and effect and the other is an assembly of choices that employers and laws and licensing boards have made.

Ultimately no. Your mistakes will always haunt you to a greater or lesser extent.
In societies without functioning law enforcement and criminal justice the payment tends to be very short term and of the type that involves stones, or ropes and trees... People forget that what we had before modern law enforcement was more arbitrary, more brutal and more error prone.

[OldGoat]

I see a distinction in that one is physiological cause and effect and the other is an assembly of choices that employers and laws and licensing boards have made.

Ultimately no. Your mistakes will always haunt you to a greater or lesser extent.
In societies without functioning law enforcement and criminal justice the payment tends to be very short term and of the type that involves stones, or ropes and trees... People forget that what we had before modern law enforcement was more arbitrary, more brutal and more error prone.

Sometimes cops actually are despicable, but criminals and lynch mob leaders always despise cops.

[Tova]

I agree enthusiastically with all three posts (including the two quoted ones) above. Just confused by the "ultimately no" bit. Ultimately no... what?

[Is it cold in here?]

JimC has to be the one to answer that but I read it as "no distinction", as making an argument that May's situation is natural cause and effect just like tooth decay.

[Tova]

I just don't see how the statement, "Your mistakes will always haunt you to a greater or lesser extent" (which I happen to agree with) supports that point, or contradicts the idea that there is a distinction between natural consequences and unnecessarily imposed ones (which I also agree with).

[cybersmurf]

There have been people at various stages in history who decried writing things down at all saying it eroded our ability to remember things and made us intellectually lazy. With the advent of the internet and how easy it is to look something up immediately when you are curious and then instantly forget it again cos you don't need to remember, I can kind of see their point.

The ability to store information beyond the capability of human brains made it possible to stockpile more knowledge than a single human could possibly hold.
Nowadays it's more important to know how to find what you need, and how to interpret information you can't or don't need to remember.

This all, of course, doesn't apply to basic knowledge, and a certain kind of people tries to justify being dumb as "I can look it up anytime I want!"

[mesterio]

Haven't seen Winslow in a while...or did he go with Hannalor? I feel like i'm forgetting something.

[Mr_Rose]

All of Hannelore’s “e”’s, apparently.
But yeah, Winslow is on Hanners’ road trip too.

[Jakk Frost]

How to almost burn your building down just by cooking rice:

Step 1 ~ Start rice boiling.
Step 2 ~ Check Facebook.

[OldGoat]

There have been people at various stages in history who decried writing things down at all saying it eroded our ability to remember things and made us intellectually lazy. With the advent of the internet and how easy it is to look something up immediately when you are curious and then instantly forget it again cos you don't need to remember, I can kind of see their point.

The ability to store information beyond the capability of human brains made it possible to stockpile more knowledge than a single human could possibly hold.
Nowadays it's more important to know how to find what you need, and how to interpret information you can't or don't need to remember.

This all, of course, doesn't apply to basic knowledge, and a certain kind of people tries to justify being dumb as "I can look it up anytime I want!"

Exactly.  The days of the polymath who knew everything there was to know are gone-gone-gone.  We dull down in one area and sharpen up in another.

There's a similar and no doubt overlapping faction - those who decry the decline of cursive handwriting as a basic academic pursuit as the root cause of all the ills of Western Civilization.  My great grandfather had amazing handwriting; his diaries are works of art regardless of the content and to look at it today the consistency makes one suspect it was machine generated.  Some of the entries from his business college days describe this 20 year old man and his classmates practicing a single lower case letter.  Then I look at his great great grandkid's handwriting that seemed to stop developing in 4th grade, about the time she started keyboarding everything she wrote - complete sentences, proper punctuation & use of capitals, and rate & accuracy that amazed her Old Man. 

Our technology changes us.  Maybe that's what QC is about.

[cybersmurf]

{cropped part about handwriting and knowledge}

Our technology changes us.  Maybe that's what QC is about.

Yes, thank you. It does. For the better or worse, we can never tell.
And yes, among other things, this is what QC is about.



Where I live, hardly anyone learns nothing but cursive handwriting (or whatever thing it is over here). Being born mid 80s, I did most of my writing as handwriting, as typing it on a PC and printing it was frowned upon for some time. My handwriting sucks though, I never did train it to be a nice handwriting. My dad, who has a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the 60s had to learn to write in a certain way, immaculately, in case he had to create one of those wiring plans, as most of the fonts used are standardized (some of them might still be in use, but it's all electronic now). Most technical colleges and universities had a mandatory 'nice writing' class for drawings of all kinds (again, standardized fonts, and stencils did exist but were frowned upon).

[Zebediah]

I was one of the last people who had to take a class in manual technical drafting back in my freshman year at NC State University. By the time I graduated the class had been completely revamped because it was all computerized. And yeah, we were told that the ideal was that all of our lettering on the plans would be indistinguishable from anyone else’s. I never quite mastered that.

My dad wrote that way for decades, though. And my mother had perfect Palmer Method cursive script. My own handwriting has gone to hell over the last few decades, and my son’s is atrocious.

[OldGoat]

If they teach calligraphy as an art class, cursive will never be lost.

[Morituri]

Yeah, I also learnt that perfect engineer's printing, although not in school.  It was never taught us in my own discipline, but in my discipline we have source code (and cryptographic keys, and passwords), and the distinctions between different glyphs can become very very important.   

There used to be a lot of jokes about the difference between engineers (incredibly precise) hand printing and doctors' (stereotypically incomprehensible) handwriting.  Much of the angst against doctors' handwriting was misplaced, though; In medical school, they used to teach future doctors (for reasons unknown to me) to write their prescriptions in Latin. People who couldn't read it reached the conclusion that it was illegible. 

[Is it cold in here?]

Haven't seen Winslow in a while...or did he go with Hannalor? I feel like i'm forgetting something.

Welcome, new person!

[Cornelius]

Yeah, I also learnt that perfect engineer's printing, although not in school.  It was never taught us in my own discipline, but in my discipline we have source code (and cryptographic keys, and passwords), and the distinctions between different glyphs can become very very important.   

There used to be a lot of jokes about the difference between engineers (incredibly precise) hand printing and doctors' (stereotypically incomprehensible) handwriting.  Much of the angst against doctors' handwriting was misplaced, though; In medical school, they used to teach future doctors (for reasons unknown to me) to write their prescriptions in Latin. People who couldn't read it reached the conclusion that it was illegible.

The idea was that you could take a prescription in Latin to any pharmacist, anywhere, and they'd be able to make up the right prescription. Even if you can't understand them.

There used to be a time that illegible, messy script was a sign of the idle rich, signalling that they had both the leisure to write, and no need to do it professionally. At the time,  there were also advertisements for scribes offering courses in the different kinds of professional script.

[Storel]

Much of the angst against doctors' handwriting was misplaced, though; In medical school, they used to teach future doctors (for reasons unknown to me) to write their prescriptions in Latin. People who couldn't read it reached the conclusion that it was illegible.

They probably haven't taught doctors to write prescriptions in Latin for at least a hundred years, and trust me, doctors' handwriting is still extremely illegible. My wife the ex-nurse can testify to that. The main problem seems to be that doctors do so much writing that they write as quickly as possible, a habit which has extremely detrimental effects on legibility.

[OldGoat]

Much of the angst against doctors' handwriting was misplaced, though; In medical school, they used to teach future doctors (for reasons unknown to me) to write their prescriptions in Latin. People who couldn't read it reached the conclusion that it was illegible.

They probably haven't taught doctors to write prescriptions in Latin for at least a hundred years, and trust me, doctors' handwriting is still extremely illegible. My wife the ex-nurse can testify to that. The main problem seems to be that doctors do so much writing that they write as quickly as possible, a habit which has extremely detrimental effects on legibility.

All mine moved to computer printed 'scripts a while ago, but for the past year of so everything's been sent to the pharmacy electronically.  Mrs. Goat RN agrees, the doctor with legible handwriting is a rare beast indeed.  Nothing like a large malpractice settlement pay-out for a disastrous medication error to change long standing custom real quick.

[Storel]

Much of the angst against doctors' handwriting was misplaced, though; In medical school, they used to teach future doctors (for reasons unknown to me) to write their prescriptions in Latin. People who couldn't read it reached the conclusion that it was illegible.

They probably haven't taught doctors to write prescriptions in Latin for at least a hundred years, and trust me, doctors' handwriting is still extremely illegible. My wife the ex-nurse can testify to that. The main problem seems to be that doctors do so much writing that they write as quickly as possible, a habit which has extremely detrimental effects on legibility.

All mine moved to computer printed 'scripts a while ago, but for the past year of so everything's been sent to the pharmacy electronically.  Mrs. Goat RN agrees, the doctor with legible handwriting is a rare beast indeed.  Nothing like a large malpractice settlement pay-out for a disastrous medication error to change long standing custom real quick.

Yes, I understand the rate of medication errors in hospitals has gone down considerably since they got all computerized. Good thing, too, because the error rate was scarily high before then.

[Nycticoraci]

They probably haven't taught doctors to write prescriptions in Latin for at least a hundred years...

You say that, but have you ever seen script abbreviations such as "a.c.","b.d.s", "q1d", "tds", "ud", or anything else on this list?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_medical_abbreviations:_Latin_abbreviations

I'm sure most doctors don't write completely in latin, but many of the doctors where I am use latin abbreviations on their scripts.

[Storel]

They probably haven't taught doctors to write prescriptions in Latin for at least a hundred years...

You say that, but have you ever seen script abbreviations such as "a.c.","b.d.s", "q1d", "tds", "ud", or anything else on this list?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_medical_abbreviations:_Latin_abbreviations

I'm sure most doctors don't write completely in latin, but many of the doctors where I am use latin abbreviations on their scripts.

Excellent point!  Abbreviations like "bid", "tid", and "qid" (two, three, and four times a day, respectively) are absolutely still in common use, and I forgot all about that.

[Scarlet Manuka]

No doubt there were people in the First Century criticizing those new-fangled codices and claiming that the experience of reading from a scroll was far superior.

https://www.gocomics.com/phoebe-and-her-unicorn/2014/12/07