Davidson, A. R. - Revision history

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newimport>DianeDuane at 16:53, 23 April 2008

2008-04-23T16:53:43Z

Import>DianeDuane at 16:53, 23 April 2008

2008-04-23T16:53:43Z

newimport>DianeDuane at 10:45, 11 June 2006

2006-06-11T10:45:04Z

newimport>DianeDuane at 10:42, 11 June 2006

2006-06-11T10:42:31Z

newimport>DianeDuane at 10:40, 11 June 2006

2006-06-11T10:40:53Z

newimport>DianeDuane at 10:39, 11 June 2006

2006-06-11T10:39:27Z

newimport>DianeDuane at 09:51, 11 June 2006

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newimport>DianeDuane at 09:48, 11 June 2006

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 <P>Once he got started in active practice, though, Avery's specialty quickly manifested itself, and never changed until he finally lost the Speech near the end of his long life. His Ordeal had involved a personally-generated [[Timeslide | timeslide]] which saw him, after numerous other complications, dumped into the middle of a gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome. Avery was able to recover from this situation and get home again by building an [[Timeslide, everted | everted timeslide]] spell which should have been impossible, except that no one had told him that...so it worked. Afterwards, trying to work out the details of what he'd done right, and how other wizards could do it too, Avery started to become the kind of wizard who was never satisfied with any answer to the question "What time is it?". </P>
-<P>He absorbed all that the Manual could tell him about the [[Arrow of Time]] and demanded more;  and then, without any fuss, Avery began to reinvent the way wizards handled [[Time travel | time travel]], inventing new, less damaging ways to persuade the Universe to loosen its iron control of time's forward flow, and ways to mitigate the backlash when that flow was reversed.  But even the more geekly wizards said that, though the [[Powers That Be]] and Einstein might be able to analyze Avery's spell structures unassisted, regular wizards were going to need more help.  Unfortunately getting Avery to explain his conclusions, let alone how he'd arrived at them, proved difficult, since  he routinely felt that everybody else could probably see whatever problem he was working on more clearly than he could.  With a modesty that over the years became as famous as he did, Avery would only describe the great sequence of persuasions and instigations in the Speech which comprise [[Enthalpy, Davidson's Major | Davidson's Major Enthalpy]] as "Speaking courteously to the [[Second Law of Thermodynamics]] at all times, distracting it if possible, and if not, whacking it on the bum with a stick till it forgets what it's doing and comes after you."  When it was suggested to him that tinkering with the Second Law was more than usually dangerous -- since doing so regularly tends to attract the [[Lone Power | Lone Power's]] close attention -- all Avery would say was,  "Is it likely to be that much worse than being run over by a cow?"</p>
+<P>He absorbed all that the Manual could tell him about the [[Arrow of Time]] and demanded more;  and then, without any fuss, Avery began to reinvent the way wizards handled [[Time travel | time travel]], inventing new, less damaging ways to persuade the Universe to loosen its iron control of time's forward flow, and ways to mitigate the backlash when that flow was reversed.  But even the more geekly wizards said that, though the [[Powers That Be]] and Einstein might be able to analyze Avery's spell structures unassisted, regular wizards were going to need more help.  Unfortunately getting Avery to explain his conclusions, let alone how he'd arrived at them, proved difficult, since  he routinely felt that everybody else could probably see whatever problem he was working on more clearly than he could.  With a modesty that over the years became as famous as he did, Avery would only describe the great sequence of [[Persuasion | persuasions]] and [[Instigation | instigations]] in the Speech which comprise [[Enthalpy, Davidson's Major | Davidson's Major Enthalpy]] as "Speaking courteously to the [[Second Law of Thermodynamics]] at all times, distracting it if possible, and if not, whacking it on the bum with a stick till it forgets what it's doing and comes after you."  When it was suggested to him that tinkering with the Second Law was more than usually dangerous -- since doing so regularly tends to attract the [[Lone Power | Lone Power's]] close attention -- all Avery would say was,  "Is it likely to be that much worse than being run over by a cow?"</p>
 <p>His most fertile and inventive period more or less coincided with the Second World War.  It was then that Avery stumbled (or so he claimed) upon the third of the six possible solutions to  [http://www.answers.com/topic/loschmidt-s-paradox Loschmidt's Paradox].  This led more or less immediately to his development of possibly the best-known of his spells, [[Pleromic Trap, Davidson's | Davidson's Pleromic Trap]], now the basis for hundreds of other variations on the themes of [[Statis | stasis]]  and [[Timefreeze | timefreeze]] in the [[Wizard's Manual | ''Manual'']]. He was also one of the wizards who collaborated in the [[Time Management Studies]] of the 1930's through the 1950's.  Much of this work was highly theoretical, and much more of it turned out to be useless for its intended purposes:  but one very useful practical result of the Studies was Avery's involvement in an extremely dangerous rescue mission.  Avery and his colleagues were forced to use previously untested and as-yet unstabilized [[Amelostasis | amelostasis]] routines to "patch" a badly deranged timeslide accidentally initiated by scientists working for the US Navy who had been attempting to invent [[Invisibility | invisibility]]. Though the patch worked, over long periods some fragmentary memory traces from "before" the patch have emerged in the minds of the rescued -- resulting in some very garbled "conspiracy" websites and at least one truly terrible movie ([[The Philadelphia Experiment]], q.v.).</P> [[Image:TiggsAndOxen.jpg|thumb|left|250px|Davidson out with "the cows": preparing for the Devonshire Ploughing Match, 1933]]

← Older revision		Revision as of 10:45, 11 June 2006
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	[[Image:Ottery.jpg\|thumb\|Churchyard of the Church of St. Mary of Ottery]]<p>Avery Davidson died of Alzheimer's disease and complications in 1996, having lived to see spectacular changes both in the nonwizardly world and in the fields of errantry where he labored so long and memorably. He is buried very close to his lifelong home, in the churchyard of the ancient and beautiful [http://www.otterystmary.org.uk/default.asp?prmPage=dtl_churchMain.asp Church of St. Mary of Ottery]. Unfortunately his gravestone was destroyed when the churchyard was vandalized in the late '90s. But wizards know where Tiggs is. ([[SYWTBAW]])</p>		[[Image:Ottery.jpg\|thumb\|Churchyard of the Church of St. Mary of Ottery]]<p>Avery Davidson died of Alzheimer's disease and complications in 1996, having lived to see spectacular changes both in the nonwizardly world and in the fields of errantry where he labored so long and memorably. He is buried very close to his lifelong home, in the churchyard of the ancient and beautiful [http://www.otterystmary.org.uk/default.asp?prmPage=dtl_churchMain.asp Church of St. Mary of Ottery]. Unfortunately his gravestone was destroyed when the churchyard was vandalized in the late '90s. But wizards know where Tiggs is. ([[SYWTBAW]])</p>

−	See also: ~~ANTHEMERAL CONSTRUCTIONS~~: ~~ATOMIC STRUCTURE~~ (~~DENATURATION AND REARRANGEMENT~~): ~~BANTENG~~: ~~BOVINE WORD~~: [[Exomancy]]: [[Famous Wizards, Sol III / Earth]]: ~~MATTER~~, ~~SUBLIMATION OF~~: ~~NUTATION~~, ~~INDIGENOUS~~: ~~SNAIL~~, ~~PASCAL~~'S: ~~SPELL GUIDE~~: [[Spells, general construction and design]]: ~~TIME REVERSAL INVARIANCE~~: ~~TIME SLICING~~.	+	See also: [[Anthemeral constructions]]: [[Atomic structure (denaturation and rearrangement)]]: [[Banteng]]: [[Bovine Word]]: [[Exomancy]]: [[Famous Wizards, Sol III / Earth]]: [[Matter, sublimation of]]: [[Nutation, indigenous]]: [[Snail, Pascal's]]: [[Spell guide]]: [[Spells, general construction and design]]: [[Time reversal invariance]]: [[Time slicing]].

@@ Line 13: / Line 13: @@
 <P>They did, and so did the thousands of other wizards who made what became known as "the Ottery run" to seek the advice of the little stocky  man known all over the planet in the wizardly community as "the consulting wizard's consulting wizard".  His neighbors shook their heads in affectionate confusion at Avery's constant meetings in his local pub, "The London Inn", with strangers from everywhere in the world -- people who struck up conversations with him as if they'd known each other all their lives, and then went off to talk "weird talk with a lot of strange words" in the corner. Avery was three times offered the post of Senior Regional Wizard for Europe but refused it every time:  finally it seems that the Powers just stopped asking, perhaps realizing that Avery was of the most use to the Worlds right where he was.  His work on spell utilities like the [[Bridge, Davidson | Davidson Bridge]] and [[Pleusis, Davidson's Bourdonic | Davidson's Bourdonic Pleusis]] remains unmatched to this day. But this was also a man who until quite late in life preferred to plough his land with a quadruple hitch of oxen -- claiming to "have trouble talking to tractors" -- and whose greatest joy, after his family and his wizardry, was in the county and national ploughing competitions he and "the cows" had won.</p>
-<p>Avery Davidson died of Alzheimer's disease and complications in 1996, having lived to see spectacular changes both in the nonwizardly world and in the fields of errantry where he labored so long and memorably.  He is buried very close to his lifelong home, in the churchyard of the ancient and beautiful [http://www.otterystmary.org.uk/default.asp?prmPage=dtl_churchMain.asp Church of St. Mary of Ottery].  Unfortunately his gravestone was destroyed when the churchyard was vandalized in the late '90s. But wizards know where Tiggs is. ([[SYWTBAW]])</p>
+[[Image:Ottery.jpg|thumb|Churchyard of the Church of St. Mary of Ottery]]<p>Avery Davidson died of Alzheimer's disease and complications in 1996, having lived to see spectacular changes both in the nonwizardly world and in the fields of errantry where he labored so long and memorably.  He is buried very close to his lifelong home, in the churchyard of the ancient and beautiful [http://www.otterystmary.org.uk/default.asp?prmPage=dtl_churchMain.asp Church of St. Mary of Ottery].  Unfortunately his gravestone was destroyed when the churchyard was vandalized in the late '90s. But wizards know where Tiggs is. ([[SYWTBAW]])</p>
 See also: ANTHEMERAL CONSTRUCTIONS: ATOMIC STRUCTURE (DENATURATION AND REARRANGEMENT): BANTENG: BOVINE WORD: [[Exomancy]]: [[Famous Wizards, Sol III / Earth]]: MATTER, SUBLIMATION OF: NUTATION, INDIGENOUS: SNAIL, PASCAL'S: SPELL GUIDE: [[Spells, general construction and design]]: TIME REVERSAL INVARIANCE: TIME SLICING.

@@ Line 7: / Line 7: @@
 <P>He absorbed all that the Manual could tell him about the [[Arrow of Time]] and demanded more;  and then, without any fuss, Avery began to reinvent the way wizards handled [[Time travel | time travel]], inventing new, less damaging ways to persuade the Universe to loosen its iron control of time's forward flow, and ways to mitigate the backlash when that flow was reversed.  But even the more geekly wizards said that, though the [[Powers That Be]] and Einstein might be able to analyze Avery's spell structures unassisted, regular wizards were going to need more help.  Unfortunately getting Avery to explain his conclusions, let alone how he'd arrived at them, proved difficult, since  he routinely felt that everybody else could probably see whatever problem he was working on more clearly than he could.  With a modesty that over the years became as famous as he did, Avery would only describe the great sequence of persuasions and instigations in the Speech which comprise [[Enthalpy, Davidson's Major | Davidson's Major Enthalpy]] as "Speaking courteously to the [[Second Law of Thermodynamics]] at all times, distracting it if possible, and if not, whacking it on the bum with a stick till it forgets what it's doing and comes after you."  When it was suggested to him that tinkering with the Second Law was more than usually dangerous -- since doing so regularly tends to attract the [[Lone Power | Lone Power's]] close attention -- all Avery would say was,  "Is it likely to be that much worse than being run over by a cow?"</p>
-<p>His most fertile and inventive period more or less coincided with the Second World War.  It was then that Avery stumbled (or so he claimed) upon the third of the six possible solutions to  [http://www.answers.com/topic/loschmidt-s-paradox Loschmidt's Paradox].  This led more or less immediately to his development of possibly the best-known of his spells, [[Pleromic Trap, Davidson's | Davidson's Pleromic Trap]], now the basis for hundreds of other variations on the themes of [[Statis | stasis]]  and [[Timefreeze | timefreeze]] in the [[Wizard's Manual | ''Manual'']]. He was also one of the wizards who collaborated in the [[Time Management Studies]] of the 1930's through the 1950's.  Much of this work was highly theoretical, and much more of it turned out to be useless for its intended purposes:  but one very useful practical result of the Studies was Avery's involvement in an extremely dangerous rescue mission.  Avery and his colleagues were forced to use previously untested and as-yet unstabilized [[Amelostasis | amelostasis]] routines to "patch" a badly deranged timeslide accidentally initiated by scientists working for the US Navy who had been attempting to invent [[Invisibility | invisibility]]. Though the patch worked, over long periods some fragmentary memory traces from "before" the patch have emerged in the minds of the rescued -- resulting in some very garbled "conspiracy" websites and at least one truly terrible movie ([[The Philadelphia Experiment]], q.v.).</P>
+<p>His most fertile and inventive period more or less coincided with the Second World War.  It was then that Avery stumbled (or so he claimed) upon the third of the six possible solutions to  [http://www.answers.com/topic/loschmidt-s-paradox Loschmidt's Paradox].  This led more or less immediately to his development of possibly the best-known of his spells, [[Pleromic Trap, Davidson's | Davidson's Pleromic Trap]], now the basis for hundreds of other variations on the themes of [[Statis | stasis]]  and [[Timefreeze | timefreeze]] in the [[Wizard's Manual | ''Manual'']]. He was also one of the wizards who collaborated in the [[Time Management Studies]] of the 1930's through the 1950's.  Much of this work was highly theoretical, and much more of it turned out to be useless for its intended purposes:  but one very useful practical result of the Studies was Avery's involvement in an extremely dangerous rescue mission.  Avery and his colleagues were forced to use previously untested and as-yet unstabilized [[Amelostasis | amelostasis]] routines to "patch" a badly deranged timeslide accidentally initiated by scientists working for the US Navy who had been attempting to invent [[Invisibility | invisibility]]. Though the patch worked, over long periods some fragmentary memory traces from "before" the patch have emerged in the minds of the rescued -- resulting in some very garbled "conspiracy" websites and at least one truly terrible movie ([[The Philadelphia Experiment]], q.v.).</P> [[Image:TiggsAndOxen.jpg|thumb|left|250px|Davidson out with "the cows": preparing for the Devonshire Ploughing Match, 1933]]
-<P>Once in every few human generations a wizard comes along who truly embodies the concept of the [[Polymage | polymage]]: a wizard good at nearly every subset of the Art he turns his hand to, but utterly spectacular at his specialty.  Avery became that wizard for his generation, and hardly noticed.  He married in 1940 and had two children (and eventually five grandchildren, three of these wizardly), while continuing to farm the family lands as his father and his grandfather had before him: but he always had time for the cutting-edge researches which brought wizards to consult with him from all over the world.  He was surprisingly reluctant to leave the Otter Vale, and it was as if the startling work Avery did in the farthest reaches of time/space theory left him with a need to compensate by rooting himself deeply in the beautiful isolation of the West Country.  Avery was quite untraveled for a wizard:  he often said, "If the Powers want me, they know where to find me." </p>[[Image:TiggsAndOxen.jpg|thumb|left|250px|Davidson out with "the cows": preparing for the Devonshire Ploughing Match, 1933]]
+<P>Once in every few human generations a wizard comes along who truly embodies the concept of the [[Polymage | polymage]]: a wizard good at nearly every subset of the Art he turns his hand to, but utterly spectacular at his specialty.  Avery became that wizard for his generation, and hardly noticed.  He married in 1940 and had two children (and eventually five grandchildren, three of these wizardly), while continuing to farm the family lands as his father and his grandfather had before him: but he always had time for the cutting-edge researches which brought wizards to consult with him from all over the world.  He was surprisingly reluctant to leave the Otter Vale, and it was as if the startling work Avery did in the farthest reaches of time/space theory left him with a need to compensate by rooting himself deeply in the beautiful isolation of the West Country.  Avery was quite untraveled for a wizard:  he often said, "If the Powers want me, they know where to find me." </p>
 <P>They did, and so did the thousands of other wizards who made what became known as "the Ottery run" to seek the advice of the little stocky  man known all over the planet in the wizardly community as "the consulting wizard's consulting wizard".  His neighbors shook their heads in affectionate confusion at Avery's constant meetings in his local pub, "The London Inn", with strangers from everywhere in the world -- people who struck up conversations with him as if they'd known each other all their lives, and then went off to talk "weird talk with a lot of strange words" in the corner. Avery was three times offered the post of Senior Regional Wizard for Europe but refused it every time:  finally it seems that the Powers just stopped asking, perhaps realizing that Avery was of the most use to the Worlds right where he was.  His work on spell utilities like the [[Bridge, Davidson | Davidson Bridge]] and [[Pleusis, Davidson's Bourdonic | Davidson's Bourdonic Pleusis]] remains unmatched to this day. But this was also a man who until quite late in life preferred to plough his land with a quadruple hitch of oxen -- claiming to "have trouble talking to tractors" -- and whose greatest joy, after his family and his wizardry, was in the county and national ploughing competitions he and "the cows" had won.</p>

@@ Line 9: / Line 9: @@
 <p>His most fertile and inventive period more or less coincided with the Second World War.  It was then that Avery stumbled (or so he claimed) upon the third of the six possible solutions to  [http://www.answers.com/topic/loschmidt-s-paradox Loschmidt's Paradox].  This led more or less immediately to his development of possibly the best-known of his spells, [[Pleromic Trap, Davidson's | Davidson's Pleromic Trap]], now the basis for hundreds of other variations on the themes of [[Statis | stasis]]  and [[Timefreeze | timefreeze]] in the [[Wizard's Manual | ''Manual'']]. He was also one of the wizards who collaborated in the [[Time Management Studies]] of the 1930's through the 1950's.  Much of this work was highly theoretical, and much more of it turned out to be useless for its intended purposes:  but one very useful practical result of the Studies was Avery's involvement in an extremely dangerous rescue mission.  Avery and his colleagues were forced to use previously untested and as-yet unstabilized [[Amelostasis | amelostasis]] routines to "patch" a badly deranged timeslide accidentally initiated by scientists working for the US Navy who had been attempting to invent [[Invisibility | invisibility]]. Though the patch worked, over long periods some fragmentary memory traces from "before" the patch have emerged in the minds of the rescued -- resulting in some very garbled "conspiracy" websites and at least one truly terrible movie ([[The Philadelphia Experiment]], q.v.).</P>
-<P>Once in every few human generations a wizard comes along who truly embodies the concept of the [[Polymage | polymage]]: a wizard good at nearly every subset of the Art he turns his hand to, but utterly spectacular at his specialty.  Avery became that wizard for his generation, and hardly noticed.  He married in 1940 and had two children (and eventually five grandchildren, three of these wizardly), while continuing to farm the family lands as his father and his grandfather had before him: but he always had time for the cutting-edge researches which brought wizards to consult with him from all over the world.  He was surprisingly reluctant to leave the Otter Vale, and it was as if the startling work Avery did in the farthest reaches of time/space theory left him with a need to compensate by rooting himself deeply in the beautiful isolation of the West Country.  Avery was quite untraveled for a wizard:  he often said, "If the Powers want me, they know where to find me." </p>
+<P>Once in every few human generations a wizard comes along who truly embodies the concept of the [[Polymage | polymage]]: a wizard good at nearly every subset of the Art he turns his hand to, but utterly spectacular at his specialty.  Avery became that wizard for his generation, and hardly noticed.  He married in 1940 and had two children (and eventually five grandchildren, three of these wizardly), while continuing to farm the family lands as his father and his grandfather had before him: but he always had time for the cutting-edge researches which brought wizards to consult with him from all over the world.  He was surprisingly reluctant to leave the Otter Vale, and it was as if the startling work Avery did in the farthest reaches of time/space theory left him with a need to compensate by rooting himself deeply in the beautiful isolation of the West Country.  Avery was quite untraveled for a wizard:  he often said, "If the Powers want me, they know where to find me." </p>[[Image:TiggsAndOxen.jpg|thumb|left|250px|Davidson out with "the cows": preparing for the Devonshire Ploughing Match, 1933]]
 <P>They did, and so did the thousands of other wizards who made what became known as "the Ottery run" to seek the advice of the little stocky  man known all over the planet in the wizardly community as "the consulting wizard's consulting wizard".  His neighbors shook their heads in affectionate confusion at Avery's constant meetings in his local pub, "The London Inn", with strangers from everywhere in the world -- people who struck up conversations with him as if they'd known each other all their lives, and then went off to talk "weird talk with a lot of strange words" in the corner. Avery was three times offered the post of Senior Regional Wizard for Europe but refused it every time:  finally it seems that the Powers just stopped asking, perhaps realizing that Avery was of the most use to the Worlds right where he was.  His work on spell utilities like the [[Bridge, Davidson | Davidson Bridge]] and [[Pleusis, Davidson's Bourdonic | Davidson's Bourdonic Pleusis]] remains unmatched to this day. But this was also a man who until quite late in life preferred to plough his land with a quadruple hitch of oxen -- claiming to "have trouble talking to tractors" -- and whose greatest joy, after his family and his wizardry, was in the county and national ploughing competitions he and "the cows" had won.</p>

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