Acceptable behaviour

Suppose Viking raiders have been terrorising your coast. A few Vikings have previously settled here and become accepted. You know one noble in the capital city is a Viking, but this is generally unknown, and you suspect him to have *some* nefarious purposes.

However, you have some dealings with him, partly because he's rich and powerful, and partly to find out more about him, and he hires you to assassinate the leader of a band of Vikings who have settled in the nearby countryside.

However the leader is still a boy, just old enough to go into battle, but young enough you don't feel right about holding him culpable. Killing non-resident Vikings is generally regarded as a good thing, but you don't know if this specific band has been raiding anyone, or just settled there.

Do you:

(a) Find out if they have been raiding, and if so feel no compunction about one more regrettable but necessary death?
(b) Go ahead with the assassination anyway, them being here is problem enough
(c) Talk to the boy, find out if he's as malicious as Vikings in the country generally are, or if he might find allegiance with this country.
(d) Refuse to assassinate a boy whatever the circumstances, and try to expose the secret Viking noble who instigated it?
(e) Refuse to cooperate with the noble in any way, cooperating with an evil enemy is wrong even if the specific cause is valid in itself.

(The metaphor I'm seeking is Viking <=> DnD Dragon. And "leader of band" with "30-ft-long and breathes fire". Dragons are invariably but not in this campaign necessarily evil. Killing enemies is necessary. But this young dragon could be entirely innocent, his enemy, the dragon we became embroiled with, has politicl reasons for targetting him)

(no subject)

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_184.html

Straight dope asks "How can you suck a strand of spaghetti?" The question being, sucking a liquid, you create a vacuum in your mouth, and it's generally enough to say the pressure within the liquid is less than that in the mouth, so a force acts on the liquid in the straw. Sucking a solid object (eg. pencil), you can say the air pressure cancels out all over, except down the length.

But spaghetti is floppy. The air pressure on the *end* of the strand can't be relevant, because pushing their wouldn't force it into the mouth.

The answer doesn't seem very satisfactory. I'm sure it's something like, air pressure generally acts all over the surface, perpendicular to it, and this cancels out all over[1]. Except on a line through the part of the strand through the lips. So there's a force on that part, propagated down the strand to the next bend (where it acts sideways to the strand).

But I can't really put that into words (or symbols). Can anyone else provide a simple, satisfying description?

[1] May be hard to show, either by common sense or integrals, but we know it *does* because the net air pressure on a strand of spaghetti in midair (neglecting variations with height) is zero everywhere.

(no subject)

Tiresomeness:

* Bike puncture
* First line of defence, self-sealing inner tube. Failed (in fact, I think this was an old puncture which had been fixed fine, but finally failed again, permanently).
* Second line of defence: spare inner tube. Unusable due to shraeder valve too wide to fit hole in wheel.
* Third line of defence: get new inner tube and spare. Valves are broken and leaking sealant
* Fourth line of defence: Patch inner tube. Lasts long enough to go to the shop, and looks like it will last permanently
* Fifth line of defence: Still need spare tube. Go to get replacements for busted inner tubes. *Next* two are the same, fortunately I check in shop. Decide batch from factory is buggered. Find one that seems unbuggered, refund other.

Also:

* Old mobile telephone giving up the ghost. Doesn't like to charge.
* New mobile telephone getting back the ghost. After a few days, boots when put battery back in, and seems ok.
* Although, front buttons "talk to people" and "stop talking to people" are inoperative. Which you don't need, but is annoying.
* Any suggestions? I think probably due to some wine spill (no fault, just unlucky I had left it on the table) so not defective. Didn't iirc pay for any insurance policy.

Although:

* Acquired stacking trays for letters and living-room-stuff that now have a place in which they can be
* Phone works
* Bike works
* Productive at work
* Talked to glasses direct