Raithe

The theory I have a warm feeling for was the suggestion that the universe at large is some form of intelligence that's slowly been growing up, and that all life within it is actually the universe experimenting to understand ethics and morality. Completely non-scientific, but just a quirky thought. The question shouldn't be 'Is there a perfect being who created the Universe' it should be 'Why would a perfect being need to create the Universe?'

I have a friend who used to work for the local constabulary.. the subject came up some time ago, and apparently there's only a handful of "official" hells angels members in the UK... (as in literally about 4 or 5). But then our roads tend to be built more for the nimble type bikes rather then the cruising hawgs..

Amidst the general assortment, my mother was one of the earliest people in the UK to get a bone-implanted hearing aid. Originally she had an infection that caused the ear canal to close up, then with some surgery that got ballsed up another type of infection kicked in (which none of the nurses or doctors noticed), and when she came home the family noticed she had an abcess about the size of an egg behind her ear. That ended up in a trip back to the hospital, it was so bad they lanced it there.. the Ear specialist blew his stack when he found out that the various people had missed that infection, especially when he realised just how bad it was. They discoved that it had actually killed the hearing nerve on that side. Which is why she's totally deaf on one side. And now she has a metal bolt coming out of her head from the bone-implanted conductor. It was very frankenstein. Edit: And for further elements, grandparents on her side of the family ended up blind/visually impaired. Grandad was an albino (which was part of what led to his blindness). So depending on the questions you want to ask.. I might be able to get a few different answers dug up.

For we are the deadly shadows that stalk in the night and go "Aaaaarrr!" ?

We went to Russia back in the early 90's. The days glasnost was starting to break through. Stopped off in both Odessa and Yalta as part of a cruise. The family had gone to the trouble of getting proper full visas rather then the "only as part of a guided tour" you got as part of the cruise packet. We actually went on one of the official tours in the morning, mentioned to the tour guide that we had those visas and intended to wander around on our own.. and she really tried to be persuasive that we shouldn't be on our own, and that she could take us around and show us the sights that most people didn't realise were there. So my parents thought why not, we met up with her later... and this "tour guide" took us around, would walk us up to private homes, rap on the door , the door would be opened and the tour guide would bark in russian, show some form of identification..and we'd suddenly be welcomed into these houses and shown the architecture and art inside.. After this happened a few times, we reaaaally got the feel that the woman might by chance be more then just a "tour guide". But yes, the locals if they realised you were a westerner.. really loved you. They'd flock around, and the black market would just.. hell, more then just the black market. A police officer on duty sold his uniform hat to crew members for american dollars. You literally had guys in seedy trenchcoats approach you, pull open the coats and pull out a rolled up newspapers festooned with watches.. or the inside of their jacket hanging with tins of caviar.. Off duty soldiers trying to sell pieces of their uniforms to tourists.. It was a little bit crazy in its way. They pulled out all the stops to get you to buy something with american dollars. They never wanted rubles, just clean dollars.

I've actually had to attend a couple of SG-1 related conventions. My mother was a fanatic, so I got called along to push her wheelchair around when she went to them. One of which included having tea and biscuits with both Richard Dean Anderson and Amanda Tapping. I have to say when you get the group of main actors and supporting actors together like that, they still seem to have a very natural give and take between themselves. Although that's got to be partly due to having worked together for x amount of years without killing each other. Of course, I will say it's slightly jarring to come down one morning to make that first cup of tea..and finding the fridge was suddenly plastered with magnetic "I don't need saving, I just need Him!" captioned pictures of RDA..

Well that's the thing.. picking up an xbox 360 seems to float around the

For a thread that seemed to me to start off on more of a philosophical question on how to approach life.. This swiftly went into physics and science...

Heh, the old "if you go into politics you're accounts are checked and frozen, and when you leave office if you caused a fething waste you'll be fined money but if it all ran well and true you'll get a bonus" idea?

Because you have no soul? Or just general game-anticipation burnout and disapointment from other releases....

Hm.. yeah.. for just Red Dead Redemption and LA Noire.. it's still not worthwhile picking up a console.

"Not only does God play dice with the universe, the dice are loaded."

If you're not careful you'll start up the whole Platonic Ideals vs Veil of Maya thing...

My bad. I've got to learn not to quote on the fly...

I know a good one, but I'll have to look it up. My father read the original version - fart jokes and adultery and all - when I was a kid. It's great stuff. I've read several versions, but they're usually turn out to be abridged or have several stories removed totally. Or the only ones you can find are the child-friendly versions. Heh, I was tidying some things away and found all my old Al-Quadim books and boxed sets.. which has me kind of nostalgic.

Just to really throw some fuel on the bonfire then.. I could say that one of the few good things to come out of 9/11 was that a whole heap of Americans suddenly stopped giving money to the IRA.

I guess that depends on whether you happen to be feeling new testament or old testament...

Woke up with a dull headache from a slightly strange dream involving WW1 soldiers and Faerie Folk in a prisoner of war camp holding discussions about Honor vs Duty vs Practicality.... Not too sunny yet, but it'll probably turn that way as the day spirals on.

Some fresh looks from preview builds that have been sent out... Is Deus Ex an RPG? Extensive Hands-On + Q&A (Note this is a thread from the DE forums)

Templars are like Nazis. Easy bad guys to use. Potential zeolotry + conspiracy overtones = instant bad guy. We just haven't seen Zombie Templars yet...

And while there's a lot of people wanting to say about Free Speech.. What we tend to have is more "potential free speech". The upswing of the internet does partially prevent the natural bias of various corporate / political media groups that tend to have more of a lock on the papers and tv markets. But then you tend to lose a lot of internet based media because there's so much drivel and few people want to be bothered with looking around for the few gems in the mess. Or maybe I'm just cynical, jaded and apathetic..

BBC - Atlantis End Of A World, Birth of A Legend. Apart from a few mentions at the start and right at the end noting similarities between Minoan culture and what Plato had said about Atlantis they don't really look into that angle. Mostly concentrates on what life was like, how they worshipped, and what the pre-eruption would have been like and how they reacted to it before it truly blew its top. Some of it was obviously a touch over-dramatised, but hey, still interesting enough. Edit: And for further comparisons - Vesuvius has a nice pyroclastic flow of around 6km. Mt St Helens was about half a cubic km... Evidence at Thera suggest around 60km...

Feeling a little tired (no pun intended) of the string of bad nights sleep I've been having. Yesterday I kept dozing off at random points, nearly did in the bathtub. But the sun is shining, the weather is keeping somewhat on the gorgeous scale and I've managed to prevent the puppy from eating the cat several times already today. Had a short time to relax and caught a bbc production I've had saved, one of those half-historical documentary, half-dramatical adaption of minoan life and the eruption at Thera. Based upon a lot of the recent archaeological discoveries around the area. Little things like how the tidal waves caused by the eruption hammered into Crete for (potentially) several days, and the initial tsunami was estimated at over 60 feet high and would have been travelling at around 200mph... The volcano was about 3 times more powerful then Krakatoa, and about 100 times more then St Helens.. The ash put the Mediterranean into darkness for several weeks, caused a worldwide drop in temperature..and even stunted plant growth in Britain.. Definitely puts some perspective on things. Easy to understand how that sort of thing can take a civilization which had been kicking around for around 1300 years...and screwing it over. Then of course there's the various theories that it's the stories of Crete/Thera and the devastation of both that inspired Plato's Atlantis..

I was randomly pondering on the fact that it's about time to add a complete Arabian Nights to my library .. but there seem to be an awful lot of cut down versions out there. Anyone know of any particular good current translations?

I know I played a lot of the guild related quests and storylines... but I couldn't get into the main plot.. and I realised I was just forcing myself to play because I kept hoping that I'd get that Morrowind feeling kick in eventually. It's a game I wasted too much time on trying to enjoy when I should have stopped much, much earlier. And that's making me be very wary of Skyrim. As much as some of these previews are providing elements that look interesting.. I'm still in the "wait and see" camp.