[Bourgeois Class] Science.

[An employer]

Bespectacled man: “…And so in summary, my theory suggests that psychological characteristics such as intelligence are innate and inheritable, and if we wish to eradicate a form of mental weakness, we should cull the bearers of said weakness. Thus, our profession’s most sacred vow – “Fools – I’ll destroy them all!” – is finally justified…

Task


Through experimentation and/or logical deduction, you are to formulate and present a scientific theory that has some practical value for Yew
A small report must be provided for our files.


Rules

40+ Silver to be awarded
An entertaining, or report of high quality will be considered for a bonus reward.
May be completed alone, or as part of a group. Significant bonus Silver for group work.

[Bladius Dart]

It is rare that I happen across a moment whereby I am not only alone but free from the strains of responsibility.
There I was sat within an apple orchard digesting an exciting novel, I had been minding my business, had done little to disturb the natural order.

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It had all been so very pleasant when suddenly I became the victim of an unprovoked and vicious attack the likes of which you have never seen.

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I must admit that I was a little stunned by such a development and may have uttered an exclamation of surprise, perhaps even an unrestrained yelp of "golly!" or "fiddlesticks!".

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Fortunately I was able to regain my composure and set about enjoying the rest of my afternoon retreat.

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Then upon my departure I felt it necessary to convey my appreciation for the tranquility of this little grove of ambrosial bliss.
I am confident the trees understood the sentiment.

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However, such a stunning experience has left its mark upon my person and I now feel compelled to explain my theory that no good can come from sitting beneath an apple tree.

It could be construed that an apple tree is in fact merely a disaster waiting to happen, if you consider the fact that apples inevitably grow to such a size that they will detach themselves from the branches upon which they were grown, sitting beneath one is literally playing chicken with your very existence.
Some will inevitably claim "Bah, humbug, 'tis but only an apple!" to which I must sternly respond; "Yes, it is just an apple but apples hurt, they really really really hurt, especially when they are of the 'Bramley' variety and suddenly grow so disillusioned with life upon the tree of their birth that they prefer to take a leap of faith out of the boughs and plummet to the ground beneath."

Some will say 'At least they aren't coconuts!' and yes I would be forced to agree with this statement, I must admit I prefer significant blunt force trauma to instantaneous death from above, however if possible I would like to avoid them both in equal measure.

Therefore unless you delight in risking your mental faculties for the sake of some shade, apple trees should be vigorously avoided, like the plague, or a coconut palm, or Leo Madsen's syphilis infested groin ferret.

Henceforth my theory is thus: Prolonged sitting beneath an apple tree will result in death.

[An employer]

50 Copper awarded.

[Ian]

"The measure of a man is what he does with power."

I had recently tested my anger, or rather let it reveal itself more than usual. I will say this: it was quite unpleasant, not during, but after. The mere thought of that which went against me felt as though it would have me burst into a rage, and trying to control the malevolence sent me into a state of impaired awareness of my surroundings. I only saw it fit to retreat into solitude of my cabin.

Later that evening I found myself over a new book I had found at the Abbey. It was to my surprise about mathematics and the primary examples understanding the logics of mathematics. Of course I knew how to do my 1 + 1, but this book however shook my very foundations of comprehending numbers. Was it not so that 1 = 1? Obviously the man who wrote this must have had a hard night at the pub before he concluded in this preposterous of so called academic reasoning. The annoyance and the high pulse became ever clearer as I read on. At some point it became all unclear: the letters twisted themselves into shapes I'd never seen in my life, a ghastly cocktail of orcish and elvish writing appeared before me and my rage was evident. I threw the book in the wall and cried out in frustration and anger.

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Sleeping would probably do me good, thought I had little. The excitement of my newly brewed idea of seeking out the man who wrote it was ever present as though I could taste it. What would happen? Would I be able to rectify this man's conclusion? Or perhaps he would make his seemingly incomprehensible attempt to justify his mocking of basic knowledge clear to me? I set out with the first light of the day towards the city that I loathed, Britain, and after many hours I reached the city walls. The man who wrote the book was indeed an important man, clad in a cloak in of deep colour red. I sought an audience with him and I received it after some waiting in the large hall I was in.

It had eluded me that perhaps this man would be more intelligent than I, though this became evident as I sat down with him and tried to show him his tainted ways. The situation turned for the worse, the man appeared to be full of himself, speaking a language I could hardly understand. Amidst our debate on whether a simple logical question was right or not, the rage rose once again and I could not control it. Consequently the man swore to change it and I was left with a pleasant sensation of achievement and victory as I strolled out from the city.

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Well back at my cabin I leaned back and put my feet up in the couch and I could only conclude in one thing: Violence, if performed correctly, will evidently result in mathematical correctness

[An employer]

45 Copper awarded.

[Leo Madsen]

We are all familiar with artificial constructs that have been created by the enemy to mimic living creatures and to perform their bidding. Examples of this include the Betrayer, the Blackthorn Juggernaut, the Exodus Minion and the Exodus Overseer.

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Could these base creatures ever be used by good, faithful Avatarians? Or are they by their very design, evil creatures?

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These creatures are created, built with a purpose in mind. That purpose is battle. So like with all tools and weapon there are a few requirements they must meet to be considered useful. These rules are as follows.

1. A tool must be safe to use.
2. A tool must perform its function efficiently unless this would harm the user.
3. A tool must remain intact during its use unless its destruction is required for its use or for safety

http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/7267/robot3.png

So as these creatures have been made, then they must have no free will. Otherwise why would they continue to fight us when they are so swiftly crushed? They would turn on the masters sending them to their deaths, or flee.

This means that we could enforce our own set of rules and regulations on the Artificial Beings to prevent them from harming innocent citizens, such as those below.

1. An Artificial Being may not injure a human or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. An Artificial Being must obey any orders given to it by a human, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. An Artificial Being must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

With these rules in place, in theory an Artificial Being could be created to perform basic tasks that are hard, undesirable and even too dangerous for a human to do. An Artificial Being that would be unable to harm any single person.

http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/7090/robot4.jpg

However there could be problems, with various interpretations of the above rules. For example if an Artificial Being was designed to work in a mine it may decide than with the potential for poisonous gasses, floodings and cave ins that it is too dangerous an envirnoment for a person and attempt to remove them. Thus making work impossible. The answer however is simple, Artificial Beings with a specific purpose in mind such as mining could have their rules amended accordingly, like so;

1. An Artificial Being may not injure a human.

Another, more dangerous possibility is if someone creates an Artificial Being with a warped definition of 'human'. Such as classifying human beings as not have pale skin. This would then mean that the Artificial Being is free to harm any Yewish person as they do not consider them to be human.

http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/8467/robot5a.jpg

Conclusion

I feel with the right amount of thought that we could create Artificial Beings to benefit the people of Yew, but like everything else, there is always a risk it could be exploited or go wrong.


OOC: Heavily inspired and influenced by Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics.

[An employer]

45 Copper awarded.

[James Palmer]

Subject chosen: Karne Kaball - Retard.

Method to hold concentration: Engage subject in staring contest.

Method of recording: Record time of his concentration disengagement.

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The Experiment.

The subject was quickly baited into a staring contest upon my arrival in Stonekeep early one afternoon. Soon into this experiment the subject began suffering from severe bowel discomfort and had to pass waste.

After 20 minutes - my summary: The subject has eaten, and passed waste, his concentration has not wavered, he seems to be settling down for a long duel.

I continued to bombard the subject with questions, hoping to discover how the mind of the retard works. Sadly it proved to be harder than I thought, this retard actually knew what his job entailed.

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After 45 minutes - my summary: Subject is deeply retarded, I under-estimated.

Subject lets on how he is coping with the concentration. Apparently it is a false concentration whilst he keeps himself occupied with other matters in his head.

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After 86 minutes - my summary: Subject is too retarded for the concentration experiment.

95 Minutes - EXPERIMENT ABORTED.

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Conclusion: Subject has an endless concentration span.

Warning: Do not try to relay messages to subject if you repeat this experiment, it is likely to be playing games in his head.
I will look into further ways of researching "the retard."

*Signed*
Lieutenant Wilkes

[An employer]

45 Copper awarded.