Pancake Universe

[knnn]

I doff my cap to your superior Dresden-Fu.  My fault I suppose for not re-reading GS.  One of my less favorites.

 

[Ms Duck]

yah its my less favorites as well.. I like the book but i dont like the ending, having this whole emotional lead up too 'find your killer' and it turns out ' its a shadow, sorry you cant knwo which one.' was a let down.

 

[Rasins]

I may use this.

now imaging Cthulu..eating enchilladas

Serrack, if you see this, is there any way i can unlock the orignal thread? id like to merge them, for OCD sake. 

No, no, no, Duck.  Cthulu would be the Crack-head who tries to rob everyone to get more crack.  No rhyme or reason, just the acquisition of crack.  Robbing other Outsiders, Us, the WG ANYONE and Everyone for a fix.

[Ms Duck]

No, no, no, Duck.  Cthulu would be the Crack-head who tries to rob everyone to get more crack.  No rhyme or reason, just the acquisition of crack.  Robbing other Outsiders, Us, the WG ANYONE and Everyone for a fix.

I am dissapointed in the intertubes. i searched for pictures of cthulu eating pizza, and enchilladas, and found them both, but honestly the art was terrible.

 

[Elegast]

Actually, I agree with Knnn on that one.

Mab didn't make a blizzard happen, it was just colder where she resides during 6 months. So there is no proof her own power made the air colder, it seems more probable that a "butterfly-effect" tended to bring all cold air toward Chicago. There is no proof that the actual average temperature on Earth diminished that year.

[Ms Duck]

Actually, I agree with Knnn on that one.

Mab didn't make a blizzard happen, it was just colder where she resides during 6 months. So there is no proof her own power made the air colder, it seems more probable that a "butterfly-effect" tended to bring all cold air toward Chicago. There is no proof that the actual average temperature on Earth diminished that year.

thats the point.

if it didnt, its becuase the effect was local- and the math says the power to do that would be enormous.

even 'drawing the cold air to her' implies massive power on a global scale. if its something that just happnes, and not an intended effect, that means shes even far more powerfull then calculated.

which is scarier.. godzilla knocking over a gigantic skyscraper, or the power of godzillas snores knocking it over while she sleeps? either which way this incredibly huge mass got moved.

[Paladino]

Um, Mab is the winter Queen. One would think that messing with winter/cold is a natural part of her and her court.  Such affinity to it gives credit to the idea that it has a facility when dealing with cold. In another words, it probally takes Mab a lot less power to get snow in Chicago in May that we puny mortals would need with technology or even a regular bunch of wizards who dosen't have this affinity. 

I just think that there is no evidence that it is costy for Mab to mess with the weather. For her it could be pretty easy and effortless. And her apparance at the end of GS is more for oposing Summer who wanted her out of there than for making it snow.

[wyltok]

thats the point.

if it didnt, its becuase the effect was local- and the math says the power to do that would be enormous.

even 'drawing the cold air to her' implies massive power on a global scale. if its something that just happnes, and not an intended effect, that means shes even far more powerfull then calculated.

which is scarier.. godzilla knocking over a gigantic skyscraper, or the power of godzillas snores knocking it over while she sleeps? either which way this incredibly huge mass got moved.

This is why I still posit that Mab is not a single pancake entity, but rather a multi-pancake being. I'm willing to agree that she didn't get there by her own power, but rather, that the cosmic-UN did something to her to make her reach that level in order to be capable of serving her purpose effectively, though I personally believe her purpose alone is enough to rate her at the multi-pancake level without need of this cosmic UN idea.

[Elegast]

thats the point.

if it didnt, its becuase the effect was local- and the math says the power to do that would be enormous.

even 'drawing the cold air to her' implies massive power on a global scale. if its something that just happnes, and not an intended effect, that means shes even far more powerfull then calculated.

which is scarier.. godzilla knocking over a gigantic skyscraper, or the power of godzillas snores knocking it over while she sleeps? either which way this incredibly huge mass got moved.

Sure.

But Knnn's point was that moving air doesn't require that much energy. According to chaos theory a small effect at the right place and the right moment can have huge consequences (propriety of many non-linear dynamic systems). The way I see it, Mab acts like a weird force of gravity: imagine if each cold molecule of air had a very, very slightly bigger chance of moving in Mab's direction? In 6 months it would have an important impact on the weather (as it's a chaotic system after 7-14 days), with a small expenditure of power.

[knnn]

FWIW, take a look at the following WoJ:

You've talked about beings who were on similar (or greater) power levels as Mab - Titania (obviously), Drakul, and Ferrovax to name a few. However, I believe that list was generated before Changes. Where does Odin fall on that list? Hypothetically (assuming they exist), where would entities such as Zeus or Quetzalcoatl fall?

Your question presupposes a linear hierarchy--which isn't surprising, since the series has come from Harry's viewpoint, and Harry is a straight-lines kind of thinker. Power is a much more nebulous thing than that, and something that is problematic to quantify. I think a reasonably simple argument could be made that Molly is a /much/ more powerful wizard than Dresden, for example. And in many situations, she probably is. Dresden tends to think in terms of "who would win this slugfest" when he's dealing with the supernatural world because, well, of all the slugfests. Odin isn't gonna slugfest with you. He /could/. But that isn't the Allfather's style. Odin saw you coming last year, and he made his countermoves to what you're doing right now a week and a half ago. For guys like him, fights are what happen when you /fail/ to win with /real/ power--knowledge and forethought.  Of course, sometimes everyone's knowledge and forethought cancels each other's actions out, and then it's time to get all Monday Night Nitro. No one in the Dresden Files universe is really sure how that would shake out. But everyone on that level knows that they might be about to find out.

Emphasis mine.

It's the same thing here.  The main strength of Mab is through her foresight, not muscle.

[wyltok]

... And here I thought Odin (or rather, Kringle) is Mab's source of foresight.

[Ms Duck]

Sure.

But Knnn's point was that moving air doesn't require that much energy. According to chaos theory a small effect at the right place and the right moment can have huge consequences (propriety of many non-linear dynamic systems). The way I see it, Mab acts like a weird force of gravity: imagine if each cold molecule of air had a very, very slightly bigger chance of moving in Mab's direction? In 6 months it would have an important impact on the weather (as it's a chaotic system after 7-14 days), with a small expenditure of power.

I understand, but chaos theory and domino effect do not apply in this case. in order to work, such forces have to apply to a balanced system- something where a small push can set off a chain reaction.. for example, using a small bomb to change the pressure slightly in an active volcano system to cause a controlled eruption.

please note, the eruption will occur sooner or later anyway, the bomb simply changes the when and how. the power in the system was allready there- the original 'butterfly effect' was termed by  physicst Lorenz due to the theory that the butterfly flapping its wings could change the path of a tornado, not to let it create one out of thin air.

a butterfly effect or domino effect cannot be used to explain the effects of GS as A: there was no such system in place and B: it was a local effect only.

if there is no tornado occuring, no numbers of butterflies flapping could ever create one. 

[knnn]

if there is no tornado occuring, no numbers of butterflies flapping could ever create one.

Thing is, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, et al.  are always being created.  The only thing that stops them from turning into the likes of Hurricane Sandy is that they are generally destroyed (i.e. friction with other systems) before they get pick up enough energy.  If Mab made sure to nurture one of these proto-hurricanes (or heck, even create one herself - they are not that powerful when they start off), then soon enough it will grow up to be big by itself.  I.e. butterflies.

Edit:  Look at this quote from Wikipedia (emphasis mine)

Note that the butterfly does not power or directly create the tornado. The flap of the wings is a part of the initial conditions; one set of conditions leads to a tornado while the other set of conditions doesn't.

So yes, a single butterfly can move around starting conditions so that a tornado suddenly occurs where before it wouldn't have.

[wizard nelson]

yah its my less favorites as well.. I like the book but i dont like the ending, having this whole emotional lead up too 'find your killer' and it turns out ' its a shadow, sorry you cant knwo which one.' was a let down.

 

point of fact harry never bothered to ask which shadow it was, the dolt
'you must ask the right questions' is prominent in several things(other series, movies)

[Ms Duck]

Thing is, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, et al.  are always being created.  The only thing that stops them from turning into the likes of Hurricane Sandy is that they are generally destroyed (i.e. friction with other systems) before they get pick up enough energy.  If Mab made sure to nurture one of these proto-hurricanes (or heck, even create one herself - they are not that powerful when they start off), then soon enough it will grow up to be big by itself.  I.e. butterflies.

ok, ill duck out on this one. youre missing the whole point and then half.. conservation of energy in the DF does still apply. any secnario you ahve metioned would cause worldwide changes, whcih is not what happened. You dont like my conclusions, fine. you dont have too.