If the numbers are hard to find, they look bad. If they looked good, they'd be in every press release. That's a fairly good rule about organizational statistics.
]]>I can seem them doing it, but more out of convenience rather than brains. Executions are too monitored and recorded. It'd be better to take victims on the fringes of society.
]]>From some descriptions of Wall Street in the USA, that's also not an accident. Dropping off some work at 'Close of Business' that you've had hanging around all day is part of the culture.
]]>I think that it eats souls, including various 'demons'. Remember that 'This machine kills demons' is a sticker on the case, not known to be true. Mo's problem is that the thing just wants to feed, and she's got to restrain it.
]]>My theory is that Old George created her. It's clear that she's running some glamours (vamps have level 2; she was able to fool vamps). It was mentioned in the novel that Old George's driver and others were extremely thoroughly glamoured, over time.
]]>What surprised me is that I had thought that the archives warehouse was a regular hangout for Basil. He should have had it warded - at the very, very least, some warning wards. Especially as Old George wants to kill him.
]]>But then, with Lensmen it might be a question of historical context; the 30s is not that lon after the establishment of modern international drug legislation, and if you look up some of the surroundings of the first Opium Conference and like,
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InternationalOpiumConvention
quite some impetus came from the US, explained as the first decolonized nation helping the other colonies against the exploiting imperial powers. Of course, this also meant the USA was forced to intervent, e.g. in the Philipines, and create its own kinda empire, but I digress.
If we view it that way, the Galactic Patrol becomes some kind of League of Nations (one could argue somewhat perverted), and the leader of Boskone having a German name in the 30s, well...
On another note, sitting in Italy with a laptop with a broken keyboard and a 7 inch tablet, it hurts, so I guess it'll be some time till I join in the party again. It's not to bad, though, but I still wish I had made some remark to the guy reading "Atlas Shrugged" in the ER waiting room of the local hospital:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Italy
But then, Ayn Rand wasn't that consistent, either...
]]>Speaking of identity stuff: Bob seems to have started to identify as a hungry ghost (during the dinner date with Mhari: "Score: hungry ghosts: one; vampires: nil.") He's also relaxed in a slightly disturbing way about killing. While in book four he's still taking time out before the climax of the story to tell us how much he hates killing, in TRC he gets a bit startled by Janet and immediately, reflexively tries to eat her soul. And while that may be forgiveable because she did attack him, he's at least semi-ready to try again very soon afterwards, despite the situation, at that point, already looking less immediately threatening. Slipperly slope, Bob...
]]>Laws are by nature social constructs. No society, no laws.
]]>That proves it's hard SF!
]]>