#rampaciously

[sodomymcscurvylegs]

Halo is one of my favourite series. And I loved Halo 5 for the most part, but I really didn't like what they did with Cortana. Halo 4 was such an emotional and powerful experience with her coming to terms with her own mortality. And in Halo 5 we really saw a different side of her, I was hoping they'd kind of elaborate on why she was so manically driven to take hold of the mantle, like if she still has rampancy or if this was just one of the copies she split herself into in the finale of 4.

The EU hints that she didn't escape her encounter with the Gravemind in Halo 2 as unscathed the story makes you believe, and was actually infected with the Logic Plague. The Logic Plague is the way flood infects and corrupts AIs in a similar way it does to organics, and the suggestion is that Cortana wasn't just experiencing rampacy in Halo 4, but the Logic Plague was setting in. This would explain why Cortana shows signs of rampancy even though she's not built like other AIs and probably doesn't deal with the same sort of limitations as other human AI. It also explains the huge danger she represents because the Logic Plague is meant to infect AI in a way that advances the spread of the flood, and at the end of Halo 5 Cortana basically EMPs several worlds on a galactic scale, taking all of their defenses offline, making them extremely vulnerable to any attack by the flood. This seems to be hinted at with the Legendary ending in Halo 5 where it shows a single shot of a Halo ring somewhere coming online.There are other examples of this in the EU, such as the Primordial turning Medicant Bias against the Forerunners using the same methods (because the suggestion is that the flood is actually the remains of the Precursors themselves that evolved into a parasitic form when they were almost wiped out by the Forerunners).

[superlinguo]

Charles Dickens House 

I went for a visit to Charles Dickens’ House while I was in London. This is a lovingly restored townhouse that the Dickens family rented for a short period as he was really finding fame as an author. He wrote some of his most well-known books here, including Oliver Twist, The Pickwick Papers and Nicholas Nickleby. It’s been a museum since the 1930s, and contains many pieces of furniture owned by the family, thanks to the fact he’s had a fan club (The Dickens Fellowship) since 1902.

The house next door is also part of the museum, allowing them to present the family home as it more or less would have looked at the time, while also housing a cafe, gift shop, temporary exhibits and a reading space.

Dickens is one of the most cited authors in the Oxford English Dictionary. He’s number 16 on their list of sources, and some of those above him include The Times, Nature and Encyclopedia Britannica. When you visit his house, it becomes apparent why he is so often cited. Dickens wrote about, and for, the working class in a way no one had quiet managed so well until then.

There are over 250 words in the OED where Dickens is the first citation. This doesn’t mean he invented the word, but that he’s the first known person to use it in print. His own life included a childhood in the debtors prison when his father’s business failed, so his prose incorporated a lot of words that perhaps were not found in other publications. Some of my favourites include:

abuzz (1859, Tale of Two Cities)

butter-fingers (1836, Pickwick Papers)

confusingly (1863, Letters)

ickle (child’s pronunciation of little) (1846, Dombey & Son)

to put the kibosh on (1836, Sketches by ‘Boz’)

metropolitaneously (1852, Letters)

narratable (1852, Letters)

rampacious (1836, Pickwick Papers)

snobbish (1841, Old Curiosity Shop)

squashed (1856, Little Dorrit)

touch-me-not-ishness (1836, Pickwick Papers)

See Also:

Charles Dickens Museum London website

Charles Dickens and Boxing Day, Merry Christmas

[carthagian-chronicle]

Game 94: The Worm and The Water Dancer!

The worm continues to ravage the countryside and the damnable varmint has become the elusive thorn in our heroes sides! Now is the time to look for new ideas, inventions, or even maybe new blood to help handle this rampacious varmint or risk it all and roll the dice again, hoping that Thoorin and co don't strike out on another day in the hot sun? Along with that what's going on back at camp now that Ballrene and the Little Ray of Sunshine have posted up shop at their new location? Find out this week in Game 94: The Worm and The Water Dancer!