Darth InSidious

Sega's Alpha Protocol PR to date can only really be compared to one thing, IMO:

Evidently Moore hasn't been watching the revived Doctor Who. ****, no. That's the second-most diabolical thing the BBC has ever put together. Honestly, are you trying to torture the OP? What about the remake of The Day of the Triffids? There is only one thing worse than Torchwood, and that is Bonekickers. Both ought to be avoided.

"If a game is giving you a hard time making choices, well, it's falling short in its expectation to be an epic game." What utter toss. Let's pause to consider what this correspondent is actually saying. He's complaining that a drama programme - and, furthermore, a tragedy - actually provoked an emotional reaction. I'm sure you can see the oddity. Isn't a few minutes' blubbing just a sign that the programme worked

All other species of the genus homo are extinct.

Become?

I assume you know the one about the amazonian tree-dwellers and their royal chairs...

What makes you say DA modding is dead in the water, Volourn? The issues with the toolset on release? I haven't got DA yet, so please excuse my ignorance.

****, no. That's the second-most diabolical thing the BBC has ever put together. Honestly, are you trying to torture the OP? Unfortunately, it was cancelled in 1989.

Finished Dorian Gray - an OK plot marred by some rather lazy writing, IMO; in particular the bits where Wilde quite blatantly plagiarised about four museum catalogues just to pad the thing out. Would certainly make a better play/film than it does a novel. Also read Pratchett's Nation - amusing, if fairly insubstantial. Not going to set the world alight, but it was quite fun, clearly discussed questions important to Pratchett, was amusing where it needed to be, serious where that was necessary, and generally good fun, even if it does at time feel as though he's laying the point on a bit thick. Next was Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders by John Mortimer; the quasi-hero recalls his first case, as a 'white wig', alone and without a leader; silly, rather insubstantial, and quite fun. The Man Who Was Thursday was probably the highlight of my Christmas reading - fast-paced, funny, thrilling, bizarre, and utterly stupendous. Although it took me a very long time to work out the ending. Nevertheless, quite excellent. Finally, and somewhat inadvisably, I'm grinding my way through Joyce's Portrait of the Artist, which is, to be quite honest, dire. It's not badly written - quite the opposite, really - but it's constructed in such a way as to actually turn you off reading it with a truly magnificent attention to annoyingness. None of this is helped by the banal, and often rather depressing subject matter - at present, the winter term at Clongowes boarding school in Ireland, for a boy of, judging by the style of narrative, between eight and twelve. Supposedly, this is Joyce at his most readable, and certainly it's a far cry from the gibberish of Finnegans Wake. It's still pretty ghastly stuff, though. I'm not sure what I'll think by the end (assuming I get that far), but at present I really wouldn't recommend it.

Wait, I think I know this one. Is the answer "macaroni handbag"? It's "macaroni handbag", isn't it?

Given the successes of von Moltke in the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars, I'd say that the build-up was more like from 1880 onwards. Given the trends of warfare from 1792 onward, I'd have thought killing Napoleon would have been more of a hammer-blow to the inception of WWI. Perhaps. We did try it in, IIRC, 1812. It went pretty disastrously, although there were, I'm informed, plans for a Canadian invasion up until 1945. Agreed. Hey, on another forum I visit, there used to be a guy who claimed that but for the baleful influence of religion, we'd be exploring the galaxy in the Starship Enterprise by now. Literally. He also insisted that lightsabers were entirely plausible by reference to... quantum states, or some ****. I forget, but he was hilariously eccentric. This was before we got on to his opinion on how the banks were secretly running the world... and his multi-coloured posting. I was sadface when he got himself banned.

So, like most who speak it as a first language.

Well, I'm sure you're right, Hal. Yeah, roleplaying with angry, militant Inquisitors and Space Marines....think of the possibilities! Yeah, roleplaying with angry, militant Sith and goody two-shoes Jedi... think of the possibilities!

The Picture of Dorian Gray. There's rather too much reverie for my taste... a tendency, like amorous birds of prey, to fly up, up into the dizzy heights of such Romantic prose as Wordworth might have dreamt... Ah! The exlcamations! (etc.) So far, I think Wilde was a far better playwright than a novelist; the structure and the content are fine, but the style is somewhat irritating. Perhaps I'm simply impatient. I also had no idea how many of his witticisms he recycled in various works.

Allowed, they may be. Advisable, they are not.

So it was co-written by Russell T. Davies? I'd join in, but this doesn't appear to be set on Bowl-World.

This thread is about British politics, not crackpot far-right American conspiracy theory. I'm saying this in advance this time.

... You mean, like half the banks in the City? Cheap shot, I know.

I think you bumped into the presentist fallacy: link. Pesky devil; the huge majority of just about everyone falls foul of it. See also: chronological snobbery, whig history, how to make competent historians explode and/or melt, Wicked Witch-style. This is partly why I really can't take statements like "The Roman Empire was evil" very seriously, or indeed as terribly meaningful. For my part I do believe there are absolutes of good and evil. Also, this debate appears to be backing into meta-ethics for no very good reason. I'd like to point out that as yet no-one has managed to define any of the terms being used, but that would spiral into another entirely redundant, circular argument. I will point out that no-one has, as yet, presented an argument as to why there is/is not any such thing as absolute good or absolute evil. Furthermore, the first person to seriously put forward non-cognitivism gets fed to the hounds. That's not evil, incidentally; just a way of expressing the mood, "Boo to non-cognitivism!", or "Hooray to cognitivism!"

"Creative stagnation" could be New Labour's motto. Unfortunately, the other lot aren't looking much more promising at present. True. Does anyone else think we're kind of reaping teh whirlwind as far as our attitude to political carrers go. A good friend of mine decided to run as an MP a few years ago and it was like he'd caught cat AIDS so far as social occasions. Everyone started treating him like ****. Partly, yes. But I also think that we have allowed the idea of a political career to develop is partly to blame. But the Commons has also removed a lot of the checks and requirements for accountability that used to keep it rather more constrained, I think, under the guise of democratisation. We also seem to have a tendency to complain about how unprincipled, vain, and two-faced our politicians are, and then vote them in rather than the few with principles. And I think that probably applies inside Parliament as well. Certainly I think it applies to the case of Ian Duncan-Smith.

"Creative stagnation" could be New Labour's motto. Unfortunately, the other lot aren't looking much more promising at present.

and Roman Catholics only come in the form of child molesters.. Yes I see where you are going with this! Whoa, whoa. That's only on Wednesdays; the rest of the time we're busy murdering "AIDS victims", destroying vital archaeological evidence, hunting symbologists and co-ordinating the secret world government with the Elders of Zion. You need to be careful with those generalisations!

A man who believes you should spend your way out of recession. Would you vote for him?

I heard about that... stupid parents. Not really seeing the connection to Al Qaida though. Even if you are still arguing from the stand point that fundamental Christians are just as evil/awful/etc as Al-Qaida I'm still not buying that refusing to give medicine is on the same level of disgusting as executing kids to use as propaganda. Hopefully the parents catch some horrible disease that requires regular treatment. I wonder if they'll still stick to their beliefs. No, no, see, you're doing it wrong. Christianity only comes in the form of moronic, buck-toothed Baptists from the deep South, blithely quoting the KJV verbatim. ... Sort of like Islam only comes in the form of child-exploding lunatics.