Humodour

Wow, you are really spinning things. What you actually said (and what I was quite clearly responding to since this is the third time I've quoted you on it) was this: On a thread about Turkey being mortared by entities in Syria, killing 5 innocent women, you stated that the rebels should attack Turkey from Syria so as to scare it into attacking the Assad regime. That sounds like a ringing endorsement of terrorism to me. 2 women and 3 girls were killed in the village the mortar landed on, and the Syrians fired yet another shell after that one a few days later. So, are those 5 women just "some dirt"? Oh, and those "occupied targets" Turkey has been firing on? They're occupied Assad regime military person. They're not civilians, they're seasoned, loyal members of a murderous regime that has slaughtered over 20,000 people in the past 1.5 years. Turkey has been putting up with mortars, gunfire, planes being shot down, citizens being killed, and a refugee influx of 100,000 thousand Syrians (projected to be 200,000 to 300,000 by the end of the year) for one and a half years now. I should think that if Turkey were looking for any excuse to go to war with Syria, they would have done so by now. By committing acts of terror?

The thing is, when we as Westerners support the use of terrorism by the rebels simply because the rebels are the good guys (or at least significantly lesser of two evils), in the minds of extremists (on either side) and likely even every day civilians, we're legitimising that practice. It makes it far harder for us to politically denounce unrelated acts of terror by deeply evil terror cells like the Qaeda. I am not saying that Turkey are the good guys (although, if we're willing to accept shades of grey, they're certainly some of the less **** guys). But Turkish civilians are. They're civilians. It doesn't matter if you don't like Turkey, the Turkish civilians don't deserve acts of terror commited against them to further another country's rebellion (even against a brutally murderous regime) any more than the American people do - and let's be honest, you wouldn't be talking like this if the country at risk were the USA instead of Turkey.

OK, so they have, and here is a summary of the roundworm connectome: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/06/20/science/brain.html Fascinating.

The linked article even contains a decent layman explanation of neural networks. I found it really interesting that Google's NNs are self-taught: Apparently Google's voice recognition software is a lot more accurate with this approach, and they plan to include this highly-distributed NN approach in their other products. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429442/google-puts-its-virtual-brain-technology-to-work/?a=f From memory, the enteric nervous system (our gut brain) is about 100 million neurons, which would make our thinking brains around 1 billion neurons (IIRC the enteric nervous system contains one tenth the number of neurons as the brain). I wonder how many neurons Google's NN has? Hmm, I was wrong by an order of magnitude. The human brain has around 20 billion neurons (and the enteric nervous system has 200 to 600 million, which is similar to the number of neurons in the spinal cord neural network as well): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_neurons#Cerebral_cortex The roundworm has only around 300 neurons in its ENTIRE nervous system! I'd love to see that network. Surely neuroscientists have pulled it apart? Even the Drosophila has 'only' around 100,000 in its entire system, and yet it is capable of performing extremely complex ballistic predictions and aerodynamic computations (think of take-off and landing), as well as obviously image and smell recognition.

...oh god... this is why I keep my geek interests private, so I'm not in any way associated with morons like this... it's a fantasy setting jackass! Says the guy who wants the game to be full of scantily-clad women. Yeah. OK.

What do you guys think of Ed Husic's price probe? Apparently the probe has the power to subpoena companies to appear if necessary. http://delimiter.com.au/2012/09/18/it-price-hike-inquiry-may-subpoena-rebel-vendors/

As somebody who is non-religious it actually kind of ****s me to see them putting 'soul' bull**** in the game. Surely they could have thought of a more intelligent system, or at least a less irrational name? I do not want to play a game that gives the stupid notion of 'souls' any air, especially not one whose entire setting is rooted in the concept. Is this designed to be a religious game, Obsidian? Can you just straight-up tell us that you're catering to your highly-religious American kin?

If the mortar was fired deliberately, then yes. Gfted, how else could you possibly characterise behaviour of "Let's fire a rocket at, and kill, civilians in a country not directly involved in our conflict so that we can involve them." But more importantly don't twist facts. You weren't talking about the single morter because you said this (in RESPONSE to the knowledge that a mortar had already landed on Turkey): Definitely seems like you are suggesting the rebels commit acts of terror that are sufficient to make Turkey go to war. So you are advocating that the rebels commit acts of terror on Turkey. Perhaps we should talk more favourably of those rebels over at Al Qaeda? The Qaeda rebels would have been stupid not to crash planes into the WTC in order to further their cause. Don't be so quick to support terrorism - it doesn't matter who is doing it, you are legitimising it.

I wouldn't waste your breath on him. I know it's worth debunking lies and trying to win over open-minded voters with rational arguments, but it's probably worth doing that with independents rather than rude rusted-on Faux News repubs like Ravenshrike.

My feeling is that Obama deliberately flunked that debate so that he would get American society's permission to demolish Romney with negative attacks. After all, negative attacks are exactly what Obama didn't do in the first debate, exactly what people claim to hate, and yet also exactly what people and the media are now asking for unanimously. Whereas if Obama had of attacked Romney and his policies mercilessly in the first debate, people might instead be talking about how negative Obama was. Seems like a pretty clever move to me. Especially since all Obama has to do is not screw up to win the election (even if that means being a little boring). Also, US unemployment fell a whole bunch to below 8%, and employment is now above the level it was when Obama took office. That kills one of Romney's strongest attack lines of the first debate. I wonder if Obama knew this figure was coming before the debate? You'd imagine so - these figures can certainly leak early to the political class in Australia.

Do you genuinely believe that the rebels should commit acts of terror on Turkey to instigate the elimination of the Assad regime?

What makes you think the world wants to be united? If there was such a desire it would be spontaneous, from the bottom up - not spoon fed by propaganda and politicians. And "democracy" will certainly not prevail when the usual method of delivery is on the wings of NATO bombers. I'm sorry to say but your argument is 99.9% wishful thinking. I will say this, a good sort of multiculturalism works in countries where it isn't an elaborate propaganda. The US prides itself on it, yet racial divisions are still extremely present. On the other hand you have Brazil or Cuba (but oh so undemocratic!), where whites, natives and blacks work together and the question of race is nowhere near as important as in the "progressive" US. And let me remind you that we had a functional multicultural society in Bosnia before the current model of multiculturalism was even concieved. It went to **** only when the economy was so bad that dissolution became inevitable, but it worked for a long while. So, 3 conclusions: a) multiculturalism can work when its spontaneous, born out of necessity b) it doesn't have to exist under a democratic rule c) multiculturalism created by a) is true multiculturalism because the "cultures" that comprise it are really preserved The logical conclusions that can be drawn from your train of thought are disturbing. If you are concluding that multiculturalism is bad, then what are you proposing it be replaced with? And how do you propose enforcing the replacement policies? Boo has, predictably, ignored my requests for further information on his beliefs about race and culture. But to anybody else reading this who supports what are Boo's seemingly highly xenophobic views, I've got an open question: how would you police the elimination of multiculturalism whilst protecting everybody's human rights (including those of immigrants - sorry, but they're human too)? Multiculturalism itself doesn't require enforcement. Multiculturalism is the acceptance of other cultures because history has shown us that trying to force people to adopt the local culture and abandon their own leads to violence, social tension, and the repeated violation of human rights. E.g. if a person cannot practice their own culture, within the laws, then is their freedom of expression not being violated? And if you're enforcing prevention of them practising their own culture, how else can you do that other than by forceful coercion - yet another human rights violation?

Odd. Publishers, eh? Who ****ing needs them.

The Turkish plane was within Syrian air space and thus fair game, despite all the obfuscation and posturing associated with the event. That was tacitly admitted when the Turks found the plane within Syrian territorial waters, though that particular fact never really got reported much, for some reason. But why did they shoot down a Turkish plane at all?

They're at $130,000 so far after one day.

More like "Sorry we threw a bomb at your civilians yet again. Our bad!"

Hopefully not.

What makes you think the world wants to be united? If there was such a desire it would be spontaneous, from the bottom up - not spoon fed by propaganda and politicians. And "democracy" will certainly not prevail when the usual method of delivery is on the wings of NATO bombers. I'm sorry to say but your argument is 99.9% wishful thinking. I will say this, a good sort of multiculturalism works in countries where it isn't an elaborate propaganda. The US prides itself on it, yet racial divisions are still extremely present. On the other hand you have Brazil or Cuba (but oh so undemocratic!), where whites, natives and blacks work together and the question of race is nowhere near as important as in the "progressive" US. And let me remind you that we had a functional multicultural society in Bosnia before the current model of multiculturalism was even concieved. It went to **** only when the economy was so bad that dissolution became inevitable, but it worked for a long while. So, 3 conclusions: a) multiculturalism can work when its spontaneous, born out of necessity b) it doesn't have to exist under a democratic rule c) multiculturalism created by a) is true multiculturalism because the "cultures" that comprise it are really preserved The logical conclusions that can be drawn from your train of thought are disturbing. If you are concluding that multiculturalism is bad, then what are you proposing it be replaced with? And how do you propose enforcing the replacement policies?

I guess we'll see when we get independent verification of what they bombed in Syria, now won't we? If they bombed Assad regime targets, which seems to have been the case, then I'm going to doubt that they're going after Kurdish militants. Don't get me wrong - I can entirely see how Turkey could go after Kurdish militants as a secondary result of being able to enter Syria, but it has to make good on its action against Syria being defensive in nature if it wants to do that. I.e. it has to take out the Assad regime - a notion which the majority of the world now comfortably supports given that Syria hasn't stopped its brutality against civilians. And even if it does go after Kurdish militants, it's going to have to be pretty selective about it: taking out Osama Bin Laden level leaders and leaving the rest to fall apart into chaos. Because people will watch intensely (due to the extreme volatility of the entire region), and Turkey is trying very hard to improve its image, not taint it with massacres against minorities. For the record: I don't know enough about the tension between the Kurdish minority in Turkey and Turks to feel strongly about either side. I do know that both sides feel strongly about each other, though.

Pretty surreal stuff. Assad's government seems to have shelled a Turkish town, killed 2 women and 3 girls. Turkey then launched bombs from within its own territory to land on multiple military targets in Syria. NATO has called an emergency meeting. NATO supports Turkey's response. And now Turkey is asking its parliament to authorise its military units to enter Syria. Personally I would be happy with the chance of one less dictator in the world considering that 'one less dictator' is killing, raping, and torturing more civilians, continually, than even Western collateral damage from intervention would. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=162200664

Personally I think this is a ridiculously strict penalty for a minor offense. But Muslim countries are very strict on drug related offenses. I travel to the Middle East for work regularly and there in most countries if you get caught bringing drugs into the country you could face the death penalty. So you could argue the teenager got off easy Well take it from somebody whose (geographically) closest neighbour is Indonesia: Indonesia is not so much a Muslim country (although it is the most populous one in the world) as it is an Asian country, and Asian countries hate drugs. Stupid, but that's how it is. They don't even drink much alcohol (so hey, at least they're consistent in they're vilification of drugs, unlike Western countries). I just thought that it was worth pointing out that Indonesia's drug laws come more from that influence, although this century it is true that fundamentalist Islamic culture (mostly funded by extremists in Saudi Arabia) has tried to exert more sway in Indonesia on things like alcohol and porn. There's a big liberal pushback against that sort of restrictive socially conservative ****, too, though. And the people pushing back are Muslims themselves (hard not to be in a 90% Muslim country). It's the same story as in Turkey. Liberal Muslims vs extremist Muslims. It's the same story in the United States, too. Liberal Christians (Democrats) vs extremist Christians (Republicans). The world moves forward. One day we will be rid of the current batch of bat**** social conservatives (even in Asia and the Mid East) as the younger generations replace them. I know that at least in Australia, conservatives my age are pretty okay with gay marriage and they want to solve and prevent global warming. They're also pretty lax about religion (at least by US standards - I still consider them pretty non-secular and extreme).

I came.

Paladins and Bards don't need to be in PE. BUT. They are excellent character classes because they violate archetypes. They mix it up. I don't think they mixed it up enough (although the Blade in BG2 was one of the most powerful and fun classes, and the Bard with Mordenkainen's sword in IWD1 and 2 was epic), but they're important. So I really hope that Obsidian adds some similarly unique classes in PE, aside from the 'base' classes, and aside from any multiclassing. Obsid could even decide to violate archetypes (Fighter/Healer/Thief/Wizard) completely and only do 'mixed' classes like the Paladin, Bard, Druid. I think this way makes a LOT more sense. For instance, consider the KOTOR classes. Fighter/Thief/Mage. Except they were super flexible because a) they all had spells, b) anybody could learn any skills, within reason, and c) all weapons were accessible to all classes. This is better than 3E D&D because all classes could use magic (the force).

I would think that this has less draw than Obsidian for rpg fans. But, certainly more than Banner Saga and Dead State. That game list sells it for me. Especially Anachronox (the best half-done RPG of all time!) and Jagged Alliance.