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So when are we going to start really churning out the NWN2 threads? You know, "What character are you going to play" and that nonsense?

Probably the best horror book I've ever read, and I've read some good horror in my time. Totally better than the movie. Nicholson played Torrance too crazy. What made Torrance scary was that he wasn't totally out of his mind. If I had to "get lost" in some book, I dunno, I'd probably enter an old Greek epic, probably the Odyssey. I'd also probably be interested in Lovecraft, maybe "At the Mountains of Madness"

I have NBOS's Fractal Mapper 7.0, which is actually pretty useful. Not the same thing as this, obviously, but I got it off of a CD which I got from a friend, which leads me to believe that you would have to order it shipped. You could check P2P networks, but I doubt they'd have anything :[

Alright then. Done and done. Good luck on your thesis.

Hmmm, are you some kind of bot, Alfonso? Or r u for realz? I'll do the survey if not, but... we've got a few bot problems here you see. *edit - that's "4 realz", actually.

We're talking about sound logic, not common notions. Oftentimes common sense is not logical. The statement that "(1) Male homosexuals are attracted to males and (2) children are often male thus (3) homosexuals are attracted to children" is not a sound argument. The conclusion does not follow from the premises, since there are homosexuals who are not paedophiles, and thus that logic fails. The fact that children can be male is happenstance. It is certainly possible for a person to be both a homosexual and a paedophile, but those two conditions are connected via illogical assumption, not logical conclusion.

Eh. Empiricism is good for descriptive claims (it is the case that...), but it fails when it hits any kind of normative claim (it ought to be the case that...) Have you read any of David Hume's or Anthony Mackie's work? Empirical observation can only describe, it cannot prescribe, especially in ethical terms, lest we run into the is/ought fallacy. Hence, I'd say logic is just as important as empirical observation. Besides, one requires a working knowledge of logic (1+2=3, "A" cannot be equal to "not A") to even be able to make sense of empirical data. Take correlation / causation, for example. One could make the claim that consumption of ice cream causes Summer, because empirical data shows heat and ice cream consumption rising at the same time. It could be the case that heat causes people to want ice cream, or people consuming ice cream increases heat. Without logic, both of those conclusions are completely plausible, but using logic it's plainly obvious that only one of them can be correct.

She's got a point, I'm afraid. Used to be a stickler for 2nd ed, myself.

You're talking crazy talk

There are some effective ways to convert video to ipod-friendly format. I'm looking up some now. *EDIT* - There's this, but I don't know if it's reliable. You're likely to run into a problem or two with sound. Might want to, ahem, check bittorrent for better deals. Maybe on, I don't know, xilsoft. I like my ipod (I've got the black 30gb, heh) but there are a few reasons why I'm not a big Apple fan. A. The battery is the most terrible problem ever to be brought up numerous times and never addressed adequately in the history of time, and B. The reality distortion field. For those not acquainted with the concept, the reality distortion field is the combination of relentless corporate hype and "outsider" mentality that Apple employs, and those under its sway believe everything Apple ever does is hot **** in a champagne glass. Hence we have a useless, universally celebrated waste of air like the Nano, which doesn't continue the great advancements in utility that ipods are known for with their successive ipod generations, but goes much farther in the hip factor. Despite the fact that minis held more, were more durable and weren't inconvenient when it came to size, nanos were better because they were, like, sleek. In many tech forums, pointing this out is blasphemy. All that having been said, I like the new 30 gbs, but like any monolithic corporate entity, Apple is preoccupied with restricting the utility of their products in such a way that they can maximize what they make out of it. Hence we have the **** video selection and the restrictiveness of taking music off of an ipod.

That's, uh, most practices of just about every culture, ever. To my knowledge, women generally perform genital mutilation on younger women, but they don't usually do it to themselves. Which is the difference. We have to distinguish that which a society coercively imposes upon women, and that which women impose upon themselves, at society's behest. Mutilation belongs in the former category, and this particular incident of veil-wearing belongs in the latter category (although in many places and situations, it would fall into the former) Despite the fact that the practice effectively commodifies women, it would not sit well with many people to deny them their right to choose for themselves whether or not to wear the veil, which is the case here.

Oh. I don't go there. That's cool, then. Maybe we could see that TS make a comeback eventually :ph34r:

.. source?

I didn't read any epiphets stereotyping, maybe, but not name-calling. There's a nice, well thought-out editorial in Slate about this issue. To paraphrase, it argues that in the West, obscuring one's face is associated with being dishonest. It has to do with the idea that someone who's honest will present their whole self openly, and someone who has something to hide will hide himself. The last paragraph says it all, really. "Still, freedom to practice religion in the West shouldn't imply freedom to hold jobs that impinge on that practice. An Orthodox Jew should not have an absolute right to work in a restaurant that is open only on Saturdays. A Quaker cannot join the Army and then state that his religion prohibits him from fighting. By the same token, a Muslim woman who wants to cover her face has no absolute right to work in a school or an office where face-to-face conversations are part of the job. It isn't religious discrimination or anti-Muslim bias to tell her that she must be polite to the natives, respect the local customs, try to speak some of the local patois

Psssst

What they have to do is distinguish between healthy and unhealthy detachment. Take D&D. Sitting in your basement writing D&D for 3 hours is not obsessive. Writing for 14 hours without food or sleep probably is It might seem broad, but in practice it's not that simple. If you spend a lot of time invested in these fantasy worlds you could be labelled as a schizoid. A good example of schizoid fixation would be someone taking things that have happened in their lives and "reimagining" them in the terms of the fantasy. you could see a movie, and then "reimagine" the movie into the fantasy setting. You could imagine something happening in your fantasy and then actually have an emotional reaction to it. And this would happen constantly. One doesn't necessarily have to be paranoid, or even have a skewed perception of physical reality, they just have to be deeply invested in their fantasy. Like I said earlier, schizoid personalities can function, they're not psychotic. One could say they're "special", in the (lame) parlance of our times. But there's always the chance that this fixation on fantasy can be of detriment to one's life. They can have difficult holding jobs, relationships, what have you. And it's at that point that it becomes abnormal and a personality disorder.

Yeah, sounds like a lot of geeks. I'd probably be diagnosed with it if what I already had didn't cover the symptoms. Does it make you feel any different about who you are? I'd say the worst thing to do in this case would be to let this define you.

if there's no treatment, nothing. You live with it. This is an formal diagnosis? btw I know a few people with schizoid personalities who function just fine.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}> Bah, typo

The only game I have to buy this quarter is NWN2. Next quarter is going to be worse. Mass Effect, Bioshock, etc.

Like Alanschu said in the spam forum, if they were going to put it in, wouldn't they have put it in NWN1? Then again, there were a lot of things with NWN that they had apparently planned to connect to BG that they never got around to doing. Got a different team this time around that might be very interested in including BG touchstones. We have a week to get our hopes up.

Beat ToB and my wired, sleep-deprived self is psyched about a possible appearance by Imoen in NWN2.

Perhaps it would be possible to mod in? Does the toolset allow that kind of freedom?

Just finished ToB, and read the epilogue text for Imoen. Says she started up a thieves guild based in Neverwinter. Could it... ? No, too awesome.

I disagree. Individual FTW.