[UA] Trivia question

Gregory Paul Stolze holycrow at mindspring.com
Sun Jun 25 19:12:40 PDT 2000


At 10:03 PM 06/24/2000 -0000, you wrote:
>>I was watching TV this evening, and this question came to mind. What
>>keeps a cliomancer from going to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and
>>winning the big prize?
>
>The fact that the last bloke who tried such a scheme is sleeping at the
bottom of a shallow grave, courtesy of the Sleepers.

I disagree.  In that hypothetical situation, why would the Sleepers give a
fuck?  So he won a million bucks.  That doesn't prove the paranormal exists.  

No, I'll tell you what keeps a clio from winning on WW2BAM.

Slow fingers.

Think about it: In order to get on the show, you have to phone in and not
only give the right answers, you have to give them FAST.  Once you're
actually on the show (and who knows what kind of screening process you have
to go through?) you're competing against people who are genuinely SMART and
who don't have to go through a complicated set of mental and spiritual
gymnastics to get the right answer.  

Given the time taken to cast a spell -- and the fact that the qualifying
questions to get to the hot seat would require multiple castings to put the
answers in order -- a cliomancer who didn't actually know wouldn't have a
chance in hell against someone who genuinely knew their stuff.

This is something near and dear to my personal vision of UA.  Magick can
work fine as shoehorn tool, but it simply cannot compete with a mortal
expert in the same field.  Do you know many entropomancers who routinely
carry a dozen significant charges?  Yet those charges only make them as
dangerous as one skilled gunman with a semiautomatic.

-G.
It's an honor just to be nominated.

http://www.thehungersite.com/index.html


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