(urth) Sorcerer's House--First Read--Some Thoughts/Questions

[Gwern Branwen]

On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 5:46 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 2:37 PM, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> (and if we're going to make Jacob & Esau comparisons, though they
>> weren't twins,
>
> Um. Yes, they were. Check Genesis 25.

Mea culpa. I thought for some reason that they were by different
mothers, since that makes the story a little less bizarre. (If Rachel
is the mother of both, then the story makes even less sense, and I
like even more the higher criticism explanation of it as political
myth-making from centuries later.)

On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 5:53 PM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:
>> We could look at the legacy; which one got their undergraduate first?
>> I don't have my copy here, but I *think* Bax graduated first.
>
> For twins, that really wouldn't say anything unless one of them got
> his undergraduate degree 10 minutes before the other. It's just
> whichever was the better student.

It's a stretch, but it may be the case that the 'older' twin goes into
things first. We're going to have a hard time deciding precedence
between George and Bax in the absence of any positive statements
unless we make some sort of assumption.

> Modern guns require complicated manufactured bullets. You'd have to
> make a silver shell casing. There are probably people who can do that,
> but it requires less expertise (I imagine) to make a silver musket
> ball.

I've never heard that the entire bullet has to be silver. If silver is
poisonous to werewolves, and real people all the time add poison or
explosive tips to modern bullets...

-- 
gwern