Subject: ackanomic digest V2 #339
From: [email-masked] (ackanomic digest)
To: [email-masked]

ackanomic digest      Saturday, October 18 1997      Volume 02 : Number 339

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Date: Fri, 17 Oct 1997 23:44:27 -0600 (MDT)
From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Subject: Acka: Misc: What Phoebe Said

Having three heads is not all it's cracked up to be, I thought as my two
added heads(which I'd christened Ariel and Caliban)debated endlessly the
merits of different approaches to the Treasury Auction proposal, talked
about Azpiazu Church Policy(which I had been sadly neglecting), and said
rude things about passersby.  All in all, it had been easier when my
subsconscious didn't get its own mouths.  "Says you," they chorused in
unison.

"You think we like having all our worthwhile thoughts filtered through your
brain's attempt to sort through a barrage of mental images?" Ariel said
reasonably.  "That's like having parallel processors on your computer that
can only communicate through an unreliable Ethernet line that's trying to
make a computer backup."

One of the advantages of multiple heads, though, was an increased field of
vision(only a fool would put them on all facing the same direction...).  As
I walked through the meadows where Cow Town Hotel had once been, Caliban
said, "Hey, what's that?"

Accessing his eyes(which saved time, but usually gave me a headache a few
hours later), I saw what he had seen--a brightly-coloured object, red, blue
and orange, sitting in a small patch of bare ground.  "It's Phoebe!" Ariel
exclaimed, something I would have realized myself given another
half-second.  Of course, I(we?)walked toward what must be her Matchbox,
being careful not to step on her.

The diminutive and beautiful steel flea, Phoebe, had spread out what looked
like anti-static wrap on the ground, and seemed to be manipulating,
somehow, a pair of small paintbrushes, one red and one blue.  About half of
the matchbox was still orange(as I recalled hearing from Vynd's account), but
half had been repainted in a delightful almost-symmetric fractal-looking
pattern of red and blue.  She looked up at my(no doubt thunderous, to her)
footsteps.  "Oh, it's you.  And here I thought it'd be nice and quiet here
while I was repainting, at least until someone new joined and the
Map-Harfer realized that there was a big open space waiting for new houses
to be built in.  Not that there aren't enough of those around already, after
that last tornado...  Nobody seems too concerned about them, though."

After absorbing that, I said, "I can go away, if you want."

Phoebe sighed.  "No, you can stay, but just be quiet for a little bit.  I
have to finish this pattern, or...well, you don't really want to know what
would happen."  With that ominous statement Phoebe resumed working on the
pattern...which looked vaguely familiar, now that I thought about it.  But
my mind couldn't quite grasp it...something about a room in the Library...

"Hey, that looks just like something from the cover of the Ackanomicon!"
Caliban said.

Phoebe turned and looked both of my other heads in the eye.  (No, I
couldn't figure out how she did that, either.)  "I said, quiet."  And for
the first in weeks, they both shut up.  I enjoyed the blessed silence.

Finally she turned back to me and said, "Okay.  Well, it's been a long
time, Alfvaen.  I know that you've spent a lot of your spare time wandering
around, peering into the nooks and crannies of Ackanomia, in case you
happened to spy a red and blue matchbox..."

"Well...yeah.  I've been itching to meet you.  Um, so to speak."

Phoebe shook her head.  "That Vynd fellow.  What a character, eh?  'Joyous
Zeppelin', indeed.  But sometimes he needs to work on his phrasing."

"Don't we all," I said, remembering my tremendous string of retractions a
few months back.

"So, do you have any specific questions for me?  I imagine you have a few
saved up, and that most of those have become obsolete as time went on."

"Hmmm.  Well, I'm still not quite sure about this whole 'Orange Menace'
thing.  I know that as President it's my Duty to deal with it...uh...'to
marshall the forces of Acka against the Orange Menace at home and abroad.'
Not that the Senators have heckled me about my lack of action..."

"Well, I'm not sure how helpful I can be--some of this you _are_ going to
have to do yourself, after all--but let me mention a few things.  First of
all, you have to determine whether you really consider them a Menace or
not.  Well, I suppose they _are_, since that's what the Rules say, but they
don't say specifically how you should deal with them.  You have at least
one contact in the Patch; use him.  Nobody's done anything about the
Committee for Understanding's goodwill trip--"

"Well, I thought that since Balsamic Dragon had the parrots, and e's been
away--"

"Good excuse, but let's face it, it's just procrastination.  Still, e's
due back quite soon, so maybe that will get things moving."

"If you have a chance--and I know you don't, often, with the demands of
that other, non-Ackanomian world--check out the Menace's own views, what
their Rules tell them.  I'm not saying you need go so far as to join the
game or anything, but you should find out why they're considered a Menace,
and see if you can do anything about it.  Go through Internomic, go through
Mr. Lunatic Finger, or Balsamic Dragon, or whatever, just _talk_ to them.
You're the President, you're the leader of the Rebellion--they'll listen to
you."

"Alright."  I sighed.  "It's a lot of work, though."

"What, you thought that being President was all fun?  Just because it's not
a functional office doesn't mean that you don't have to do work once in a
while.  And speaking of not doing work, have you read anything from the
Codex of Kra recently?"

I fidgeted.  "No, I guess not."

"Well, the AckaPhysicist doesn't really have a lot of Duties, but I think
you've been a bit slack.  If you're 'hogging the Kra', maybe you should
step down, or at least throw it open to a vote and see if they still want
you.  Or get on your butt and do something.  Weren't you going to do some
sort of 'state-of-the-universe' Proposal?  That might count.  Even if the
floods have stopped, there's still the tornado, and the orbiting sun, and
retroactivity...and all the historical stuff, too."

"Maybe some weekend," I temporized.

"Up to you," she said.

Ariel spoke up and said, "So do you know anything about the Map of Jara?"
That's right, I had thought of Phoebe as being a 'more enlightened' person,
to possible ask about the Map, when Malenkai used the phrase.

"I might," she said.  "But perhaps the real question is: do you know the
shape of the Earth?"

"Well, it's both round and flat right now, isn't it?  With the northern
hemisphere attached, and the southern one cut off...  I guess it's
hemispherical."

She then leapt onto my shoulder and whispered something into my ear which I
cannot relate, though I'm not sure yet what it means.

"Anything else?" she said.

"I'm wondering why people are finding it so hard to find my Treasures," I
said.  "I've tried to drop hints--in almost every issue of the Big White
Gazette; some of them came up when you talked to breadbox a while ago; of
course, sometimes it's hard to figure out what the hint really means...  I
still haven't figured out Calvin N Hobbes's, for instance, though I think
I'm on the right track.  And that Uesticlox thing.  Do you think they're
too hard?"

Phoebe considered.  "Probably," she said.  "Though I suppose they helped
you satisfy the Map of Jara conditions...  But whether they realized the
thing about the meaningless bit, or why the size of the map is important,
or why it was impossible to come up with a human-readable keyword if the
letters were supposed to be distinct...  Maybe they need to listen to more
Vagner, or watch Christopher Reeves in 'Noises Off'...  Or maybe your clues
were just too oblique."

I sighed.  "Probably.  And the treasure hunting seems to have died down a
bit.  I know that I haven't done a lot recently--I figured out the Jara
thing months ago, and was just waiting to put it all into effect.  Well,
maybe Fortunato can cut his teeth on a few of them, like I did."

"Maybe.  He does remind me of this gung-ho fellow who joined five and a
half months ago, actually.  Hmmm...I wonder if he got his name from Poe, or
from Niven & Barnes?"

"I'll have to ask him."

Neither of us spoke for a moment(again, I enjoyed the blessed stilling of
Ariel and Caliban's voices), and then Phoebe said, "Well, I've got to
finish repainting my house.  Remember what I told you about the Orange
Menace.  You can't ignore it too much longer; ill-will between Nomics is
not good for the blood."

I watched her for a little longer, then wandered off.  Ariel and Caliban
soon fell to discussing all the things Phoebe had said to me.  When I
looked back to where she had been, somehow I couldn't see her through the
grass anymore.

- --
- --Alfvaen(Web page: http://www.telusplanet.net/public/alfvaen/ )
Current Album--Neil Diamond:Moods
Current Book--Dean R. Koontz:Midnight
Look up and smile for the satellite.

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Date: Sat, 18 Oct 1997 13:54:56 +0200 (EET)
From: Niccolo Flychuck <[email-masked]>
Subject: acka : Organizations/Institutions

Ackazens,
I see that player-sanctioned Organizations are popular. 

My greatest objection to the Mohamedan model is the single-player
Organizations. and I intend to nuke them. Of the two choices - neuter
Orgnizations with fewer than three members, or disband them, I prefer the
latter. neutering them will just mean  that there we are going to have a
lot of neutered Organizations around, and a lot of currency/entity that no
one can touch. So I'll adopt the Membership Drive model, perhaps under a
different name, as a default, I'll adopt ThinMan's concept of restricting
Organizations, and keep all that historical baggage  thateveryone insists
on keeping.

Mind the main difference between the Mohamnedan model and mine is that
under the Mohamedan model an Organization can become a Party even if it
formed as a Society(to use one of the proposed names), and under my model
the members could just and form a second Organizations which is a Party -
the latter would give players the freedom to be a members of just the
Party, or just the society, while in the former such mobility would still
be possible, but discouraged in practice. But that's the model Acka seems
to want.

I will also opposed any attempts to do unto  Churches what has been done
unto Parties. I posted my view of the concept of Church, and I have yet to
see text that attempts to encapsulate that in Mohamedan terms. From time
to time I might propose other non-Mohamedan Organizations.

Niccolo Flychuck

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Date: Sat, 18 Oct 1997 11:05:04 -0400
From: "Michael James" <[email-masked]>
Subject: re acka proposal 2337

Proposal 2337
Three Blind Mice
Karma (J.James)

This is a Modest proposal.

- - -----------------------

To create an entity called the "Anti-Mouse Potatoe".

This Potatoe is very similar to the "Magic Potato" except this tuber has a
long sinewy tail stapled to its larger end, and three clickable buttons
taped on its narrower end. 

The "Anti-mouse Potatoe" is distributed randomly to players exactly the way
the "Magic Potato" is. The possesor of the "Anti-Mouse Potatoe" may, within
the game of Ackanomic, be alotted an additional full day to reply to
anything that has a limited time for response. 

The "Anti-Mouse Potatoe" may be stolen before the end of a cycle and not
before 4 days from the chosen holder of this entity by anyone who holds
simultaniously in his possesion a
 
"Rank Piece of Cheese" 
and a
 "better Mouse trap". 

These are created at the same time as the creation of the "AMP" (Anti-Mouse
Potatoe). 

These latter two non-tradable entities serve only the purpose of aquiring
the "AMP" and will commence to be distibuted only after the first holder of
the "AMP" has gone through a cycle and the second random player is chosen
to hold the "AMP". When the second player holds the "AMP" the first will
get the "Rank Piece of Cheese". When the third is chosen to have the "AMP"
the second gets a "Better Mouse Trap". {{after that it will have a logical
pattern.}}

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Date: Sat, 18 Oct 1997 16:55:23 -0400
From: "Michael James" <[email-masked]>
Subject: re acka proposal 2337 is an RFC

I forgot to mention in the subject line that my proposal is actually an RFC
first.
Thank you for your unninterupted attention!:)
 - Karma

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End of ackanomic digest V2 #339
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