Tigranes

That was the case for me too, I guess the big wish is that in W2 they have as good a city as Vizima in Ch2 - lots of stuff to do and lots to figure out. It wasn't perfect but it was very fun. That said, I hope W2 will start to explore more 'outlandish' areas in the setting - no swamps & sewers this time please.

They must be announcing a partnership between Bio social network and these folks.

The Witcher felt very long, even when I was enjoying it, though. Not sure what I clocked in in terms of hours. Hrm.

Agreed, for the most part. Science is science because it is based on the assumption that the scientific method is a valid way to understand the universe. I wonder, though. Every field of knowledge, every method, eventually realises its limitations, puts its hands up and say 'we're great at this, but we're not so great at finding this kind of stuff out'. That's why you know, we can't use psychology for everything, or contemporary humanities methods of qualitative research, or pure logical analysis for everything. I'm not very aware on science or its principles, I don't lean that way. So on the fine points of ID v. evolution I have no idea. But just speaking from a very broad and abstract view... is it really out of the question at some point, some scientists might say 'traditional scientific method is inadequate / not the best for this particular question, and we believe one leaves that particular area up to spiritual forms of investigation'? I don't think so. I am not saying this is/will be the case with ID, or this might necessarily happen. I'm saying, though, science is not the be-all & end-all, and it's my impression a lot of scientists know that. The scientific method is just one of many methods we currently use to make sense of the world. It's not so outlandish to me that in some areas that method may not be recognised as the most useful - it already isn't, in some. Yes, yes, I'm trying to blatantly break down this foreclosure we have on 'science' again. But I do think it's worthwhile. Again, it doesn't mean something as stupid as "but the world, it has God! and spirits! we can't explain that with your science! Hah!"..

Sounds like one of our forum threads.

I think I'm going to pass Awakening, for now. I haven't been able to get myself to play DA for a few months, anyway, and what mixed impressions I've been getting suggest that the combat isn't as challenging or exciting as in the original. And that was the only reason to play the game. I'm still curious, though. Is that not the case?

Huh. If I ever knew about this part I must have forgotten it, what with the protracted uproar. I stand corrected, then.

Hug & make up, babies.

I love kotor, the world is just so simple if we'd only listen to him. Wals, (I must really learn how to do those quotes with people's names in them sometime ) I agree, sort of. I mean, it's farcical what it's turned into and some Muslim individuals did use this as an opportunity for ridiculously disproportionate levels of hate and outrage. I was just thinking that before all that, the original event itself didn't leave much room for argument in my view - the cartoonist should have retracted it and that would have been that, instead of waging some self-righteous extremist crusade for free speech when it wasn't warranted. I mean, there are better places to battle for free speech.

You know, we could just teach science in science classes... and teach religion in religion classes (or, in churches). Or, you know, they choose to prioritise their faith in religion more than their trust in science.

BTW: Merged, we already have a healthcare topic.

I don't have a clue what's going on with the bill, but I can still tell that article is hugely biased bollocks. So without the bill would that figure of 23 million be lower, higher, the same? The 12 million 'undocumented workers' (illegal immigrants?) are given this huge sympathy paintjob just to add numbers to the argument. Pfft.

Find out what difficulty (and with what possible demo-mods) you're playing on, then gauge how easy/hard it is and how smart the enemies feel, will you? It's finally a chance to get a reliable word on that, possibly.

Instead, now you'll have 3.2 foot obstacles that force you to backtrack because you can only jump 3 feet, and you now waste time hopping like a moron to find out. Climbing sounds fun though.

I think I've heard of it but don't recall. Any description?

Finally getting on to play Gabriel Knight 2, I can't make up my mind - on one hand the live action movie sequences are really B-movie-ish and slow down the gameplay, but on the other hand, they're somehow charming in their own strange way and have a few zingers. I probably will get GK3 later on, though.

You know, it does occur to me that I picked a pretty bad example.

TW2 now has a Gamespot preview. We all know it's going to be more of the same, just (hopefully) better - fine with me. Screenshots look pretty nice. Sounds good, TW1 combat was a bit too simple. I don't mind what they're doing with 'arcade-y' combat, as long as it's done well. Like the previous game, right. Good to see Gamespot is still as crap as ever. Sounds like, uh, every other romance out there. Meh. I'll be ignoring them anyway.

Cause that's up to you/us to say, right? It's not like we actually have consistent freedom of speech regime going on where the Muslims are the only dissenters, anyway. In practice, freedom of speech in most of the West adheres to the cultural and religious sensitivities of the majority in that society. i.e. what if that cartoonist drew Obama/whoever munching on a baby fetus? A lot less people would be saying "get over it". Again I'm not swinging this all the way to the other extreme, I'm just trying to point out that it's not as easy as just saying the Muslims have weird wacky traditions and need to get over it.

Yeah, didn't really understand that myself. Surprised Conviction is going for so cheap, though?

I thought you were their representative...

Re: insult example, sorry, the insult was someone getting angry, not an actual example of free speech. Otherwise, this is a gross mis-summarisation of my argument so I have no response there. As for the rest, I'll come back to you, I'm sort of coming in and posting these in 10 seconds at the moment.

You are right, it's not 100% Pure Free Speech. But then, I don't think that's a good thing anyway. Are we saying the right of free speech should override deep religious offence, deep cultural offence? I mean, if you really think so, alright, but that's not my idea of a great society. I'm not saying there should be exemption from criticism. In fact, I think free speech as an ideal is soemtimes even more exempt from criticism than religion. "You effing bastard!" "no, no, it's free speech, YOU CANT STOP ME OR CRITICISE ME". Seriously? Free speech is important. But it's important for a reason and in particular ways, not in overwhelming extremities to the detriment of all other values. To me, is just as bigoted and short-sighted as a Muslim that might get incontinently angry about the issue and yell "burn the cartoonist" - effectively you've got people in the Western world who are so blindly devoted to the idol of freedom of speech, so that rather than truly understanding its (very positive) role in society, they just worship it. How is this different from....

Personal attacks no, arguments yes, people. Personally, I think this is an event that got way too messed up. If it is a deep offence for Muslims to see their Prophet drawn in a cartoon in such a way, then that cartoon should not have been drawn, or retracted & apologised for immediately. It's that simple. Just because the European norm sees such a convention as silly doesn't change a thing. That's ridiculous - 'we respect your culture/religion, as long as it doesn't sound too wacko to us.' That's not respecting culture/religion is it? People talk about some Muslims being way too stuck up about this - actually, it's some Westerners who've been way too stuck up. I mean, it offends their religion. So don't do it. Why's it so important for some Danish moolah to draw the prophet? Loosen up, let it go. But no, we had to get those imams and police and courts and all this hoopla about it. Doesn't help anybody involved or the relations between Muslims and the West.

Guys: your opinion of any user doesn't justify trolling. If you find their arguments laughable point it out, or move on.