[511] You can never lose a blinker stone

Your post reminds me of this xkcd strip.

Guess we sorta already knew that it can be retrieved easily.

So if they can't be lost, can they be given away? We know Mort gave one to Annie, but perhaps the rules are different for ghosts.

That is so cool *wants*

So, I wonder where Mort got it from?

I wonder, if Ania can retrieve her blinker stone literally in one snap, why did she asked to borrow Annie's stone to answer the forest's signal?

She wanted to ask Annie about hers.

There do seem to be some interesting rules regarding ownership in the court (like Annie's possession of the Reynardine plush), so Mort giving Annie the stone was probably an official transfer of ownership.

For a minute I thought that the blinker stone was how Mort was able to do all his scariness back in the earlier chapters, but 392 disproves that. So why did Mort have the blinker stone in the first place?

Is it a hand-me-down from Surma? That's my guess.

Also, I'm a huge fan of Kat's face in the sixth panel.

Kat should stick to robots right now, or she's going to have a seizure trying to to rationalize this blinker stone thingie...

and adding to the 3 things tetsamaru want's to work like a blinker stone, I say my glassess... don't wanna know how much time I've spent looking for them

Heh, just throw it into a corner, drop it to the ground or something and when you need it again just summon it back

However, depending on how "ownership" is defined in this context, giving up the stone in a way like this may cause a problem.

Aha, an object that responds to abstract notions of ownership! That means:

1. The stone responds to notions of ownership in the surrounding world. In this case someone who appropriated a stone might effectively gain ownership of it by believing strongly enough that it's now theirs.

2. The concept of ownership is encoded in the stone itself, like some kind of property/function, and the way the stone is used and transferred must follow this.

3. Same as 2, but the concept of ownership is encoded not just in the stone but in the world like some form of natural law.

4. Huffi-muffi-guffi (= blaharg = it just does = tomorrow it might be a potted plant etc.).

They stole that from Arthur C. Clarke, but reversed "science" and "magic." Tacky.

I imagine being science teachers is difficult when many of the things you do are inexplicable and unprovable.

Have you lot seen the apostrophe wars in the comments thread? Hilarious! And Tom fixed it, appropriately. Yay editing - the artist's job is never over.

I love the blink sound effect, as well as Kat's nonplussed look in panel 4.

I wonder if all Blinker Stones have the same shape. Does form convey function, in etherics?



It's a not stealing, it's a reference. And it was hilarious in the steampunk Cinderella context the Foglio's wrote it in, too. Take it easy.

That is correct. Here are the variations on this quote that I came across so far:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- Arthur C. Clarke

Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
- Barry Gehm

Any technology, no matter how primitive, is magic to those who don't understand it.
- Florence Ambrose

Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science.
- Agatha Heterodyne

Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology
- Larry Niven

Hmm, actually, reading the comic again, the only thing that implies "ownership" may have any relevance here is Anja talking about "my" and "your" blinker stone. That's rather thin.

Anja was able to retreive Annies stone after she made the floaty sky thingie. Granted, Annie lent it to her, which could be considered a temporary transfer of ownership. But, Anja was also able to retreive her own stone from Kat. If Annie giving her stone to Anja counts as transfer of ownership, Anja giving hers to Kat has to count, too.

Now we might of course start to nitpick about the words used and the intentions behind them: Anja expressly asked Annie if she could "borrow" her stone, but merely told Kat to "hold on to it"...

In the end "it just does, okay?" is the version I like best.