metadigital

Well, one in six people have some sort of mental illness, including depression which has the most sufferers, who also tend to be more intelligent and/or talented: Van Gogh, Churchill, every single comic, ever (and it also affects 50% of women at some point in their life). One in ten have been abused as a child in some way (physically or sexually). We live in a sad society, where rich people get richer at the expense of poorer people. What did Eddie Murphy say? If poo was worth something then poor people would be born without arseholes. (I've cleaned that up a bit.)

I guess the way to resolve the issues is to work on precedent; the first film has more authority than the sixth, and all of them are more authoritative than anything else. The big issues come when GL either revises the films or contradicts himself in a later film (both of which he does with irritating regularity; he is a perfect advert for the Dark Side expediency of Chaotic alignment ...) It wouldn't surprise me if GL made a new SW movie about some existing part of the EU and completely ignored the EU and made up new histories and characters.

If I understand your question, I think you are asking if it is possible for the successful variant of a bateria to have less genetic mutation information. I would say yes, it is possible. Whether this is the case, I don't know categorically. As most of the variants of Golden Staff would be killed by the antibaterial agents used in a hospital, for example, then the limited ones that survive would not have the bredth of genetic diversity that the larger initial group would, anymore than if the Nazis had killed off all the other races except Arian blue-eyed, blonde haired people would not have the genetic diversity that included that only people from Africa have in their genetic makeup.

You should stop trying to derail the thread about evolution into a thread about the validity of religion. Most religious people do not have a problem with evolution: in fact you would be hard pressed to find many people outside the Bible Belt in the US who do. To argue against evolution is to insist that the entire world, all the scientific evidence from all spheres of science: be it interstellar gaseous chromotography or gene therapy, or plate tectonics, or radioacitve decay, or lingusitics, or whatever else we study all support evolution. The concept of a god is only discounted on purely logic terms: if god is not necessary, then why have one? If you say "God created the universe, and god has always been here" why can't I say the same about the universe, without the need for a god? That's what Occham's Razor, which is the principle of simplying cmplex statements by removing anything not necessary. Especially if we can providfe evidence of the forward process of time on the constituent elements of the universe and it provides a consistent and independently verifiable story. If you want to believe in any metaphysical adjunct to the real world, that is your choice; at no point is the validity of science ever in question by said belief.

MRSA is a perfect example of the "Survival of the Fittest" concept propounded by Charles Darwin in his scientific paper "On the Origin of Species". MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) is just plain old garden-variety Staphylococcus -- "Golden Staff" -- that has bred resitance to the most powerful poisons used to kill it. Consequently, doctors cannot use penicillin or any other drug, as even their "doomsday weapon", namely methicillin, doesn't work on it. The MRSA strain has grown from the small percentage of organisms that had a natural resistance to the poisons; as all other forms of Golden Staff died, they were able to grow without competition and so became a dominant strain (in the local area: be it a petri dish or a bed pan).

What colour?

The same, innit? A mandal wore a mandal armour. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I've just never, EVER heard of them referred to as a "mandal" before. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The living language that is English; here we witness first hand the major motivator for speech modification: laziness. I thought "Mandy" was the accepted abbreviation for Mandalore and his Mandalorians, when referred to singly, and "Mandies" would presumably by plural.

You don't realise that they are the same? Like the many incarnations of the Buddha, these two lives are the same essence.

Well, that was my thoughts on it, I mean it was ludicrous to scream in ALLCAPS that we were all going to die in flames ... I don't know too many fundamentalists that believe in that nonsense. That's more an ironic stab at the fundamentalists than the Logical Postivists. I really thought it was Dill pulling our collective legs. There are now dozens of Half-Life 2 mods to play.

I have gone through stages, too. Initially I was all Magic User -- arcane all the way. No ponsy Illusionists. Then I tried an assassin, and that was good. Sneaky. Like that. (If you're ever playing Dragon Lance, be careful there is a 9th level assassin wondering around with a spectaculr backstab ability and a shortbow.) Then I became enamoured with the Monk. Something about not needing any equipment really appealed to me: just get up and ready for the day. Barefisted fighting in a smock, with resistence and eventual immunity to illness and even magic. Brilliant. Then I tried multiclassing with all sorts of Monk / Sorcerors (difficult with the Charisma contrary to Wisdom and Dexterity of the Monk), extending to the Red Dragon Disciple in HotU, for example. (But it ends up being better without the Monk in that case). Then I played a Paladin for the first time in Rick Burton's trilogy (only two have been published so far): Twilight & Midnight. I must say his expert writing (plot, pace, puzzles) won me over immediately: no wonder he has a new job Bioware! I have always hated clerics, especially the way they receive powerful arcane-like spells with no effort and think they're sooooooo cool, little smug b*stards ...

1. You could use the elvish rules from 3.5 in your 2-based game. 2. You could do what our DM did, which is enforce all the inhibitions of the elvish class to make the PC unpalatable, e.g. slow level progress (especially for multiclasses). They're meant to be powerful, but rare.

canon, probably definitions 2, 3.a & 5.a are best for our purposes: 2. A secular law, rule, or code of law. 3.a An established principle [e.g.]: the canons of polite society. 5.a A group of literary works that are generally accepted as representing a field [e.g.]:

Yes, but Ben Stiller had to convince the producers that it was a real name (otherwise they were afraid of legal action due to the obvious similarity with the other word and the blatant attempt to circumvent good taste and the censors). They were able to find a butcher with last name Focker (I think he may have resided in Canadia), so the film went ahead. As for Gaylord, that is a strange one, although there was a Galen at my school, poor guy.

A good test would be attacking that Mandalorians on Dantooine, who appear white -- if it is possible -- and then checking what colour they turn after hostilities commence. IF I hadn't uninstalled K2 Id' check this, but I don't expect to play it again until the content patch.)

Yeah, okay. Now cut the chatter and post the bloody link already! " <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The video has been impounded by the police as evidence, so you'll have to wait until a member of the constabulary makes a bootleg and uploads it.

ha.......ha.......ha.......ha.......ha......ha.........not funny, not funny at all Bytor, some people could get a heart attack reading this... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You mean episode 7, the one after episode 6, RotJ, where Yoda dies? Makes for an interesting film: Jedi: The Afterlife ... NOT. Unless you are talking about Episode Zero, maybe? A prequel to the prequels? Followed by Episode Before Zero?

I haven't read the second chapter, yet, so I'll confine my comments to the prologue and chapter one. I was interested in the plot, after a slow start. I found the lack of female characters didn't help to lock my interest: maybe Viktor should be Viktoria? (Is that a English Civil War reference, with Cromwell and the beginning of a new -- genetically modified -- epoch?) I was very interested to see the warm-blooded cooker-roaches (stupid filter, I'll bet the poor people who live in Skunthorpe (sic) are sick of all their email being quarantined ...). Then we get a fantasy setting. Hmm. You just lost me, I'm not a big fan of fantasy. I did appreciate your attempts to pin some of the "magic" down with science (even though those were the bits that Launch didn't seem to like ) but I think Science Fantasy is a dangerous genre: you have to be so careful with the scientific explanations as well as the actual real-life implications of fantastical phenomena; for example, if your Prince actually flies using his wings then I would not read anymore. For example, have you read Olaf Stapleton's Last and First Men? One of the ages of Man is a bird-like flying man, and he briefly describes the physiological changes to a human to allow us to fly: remember that birds have hollow bones to reduce weight, think of the caloric consumption needed to generate the energy required for flight -- hummingbirds eat pure sugar all day, one species in the Andes hibernates to the point of suspended animation in the sub-zero night there, every night. And the musculature of a birdlike being the size of a man would require about half the body to be the pectoral muscles, in size and weight. This is the danger, once you allow scientific rational analysis into a fantasy, you have to provide the charcoal roughage as well as the high-joule diet for the dragon. Now, I suppose you can escape from the rigours of our mundane dimension and invoke some inter-dimensional pseudo-explanations about power being diverted and gravitron-manipulation for what appears to be flight (to us mere mortals) -- and this might be sufficient for other readers -- but I just lose interest and read a non-fiction history of the ancient world or some such. I would have been happy to follow the prologue along further (then again, I presume the two parts of the narrative would join up later in the novel). I did feel that there was too large a gap between the prologue and the first chapter; I actually stopped and physically had to make myself read it after taking a break. At this stage I would be looking for the point of the story: why am I reading this? I would hope there is some ethical dilemma or epic theme to be played out, rather than just a bedtime story with little green men, which ends up being just a distraction from the miseries of existence, if only for a brief moment ... Please don't take these comments as a fatal review; I am merely expressing my own desires for entertainment (and I'm sure they differ from most others, if not all others!). I think you write well, although I'd be interested to see how the story pans out in first-person, rather than third. (One can still omit large amounts of the interior monologue to prevent a plethora of irrelevant and plot-busting verbiage. And also skip between characters in the first person.) That might help hook the reader into the story, especially in the prologue. Incidentally, another reason for pausing between posting chapters is for others to comment on the story so far, without having to read large swathes of future chapters: this would help provide you with more targeted criticism.

I was really laughing hard at the ALLCAPSCREATIONIST! That was hilarious; invoking the second law of thermodynamics and -- of all things -- the Coriolis effect to "prove" that the universe reqiures a god to explain it ...! (That can't be a serious argument, surely?) ) "Yesterday was the hottest day of the year, and today wil be hotter." BBC meteorologist (80 degrees Fahrenheit / 28 centigrade).

I don't think LA's board of directors will be displeased to be told they are on target to make their company like Micro$oft.

Wait, you used all these in the same lightsaber at the same time? How did you accomplish this? I've heard of a glitch that allows you to put many of the same crystal into one saber, but not to put 7 different power crystals into a saber meant to hold two. Was it the same glitch? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> ... That would explain the "bad string reference" error if the stack has been crammed with more variables than it has been dimensioned for ...

I wanted them anyway, now I have two reasons. What is it with these folks and their belligerent and nearly insulting thread openers? "NO REVAN, NO EXILE, NO ROMANCE, NO TRUE SITH..." or whatever the rant is about. What ever happened to being able to civilly and articulately voicing an opinion? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Now Cloris, you know that takes all the fun out of the internet ...! Someone wrote recently (sorry whoever you are, I can't remember what forum nor what thread and I'm not in the mood to search for it) that Revan had adopted the Sith mantle before Bastila's "rescue" as a strtegic necessity for the eventual demise of the Sith; it was a personal sacrifice that (obviously) went over the heads of the Jedi council, the Exile and all the other members of the Republic. That is a good point; as we (the audience) have never been privy to Revan's motives / thought processes / memories / feelings from before K1, it would dovetail nicely with the overall narrative.

She certainly wasn't "pure evil" (even though Force Sight made her out to be -- maybe Force Sight identifies hostility rather than evilness?). Senility nothwithstanding, she was more an absolute neutral, on a mission to "balance the Force" .

You are obviously very widely read; I wonder if that comes from your classical scholarship ... (the etymology of the word is not readily available to me -- alas even Fowler has no insight) ... another useful synonym is "tosser".

If "new one" equates to a new methodology where writing is given equal priority to pixel pipeline fiddling, then yes. The only problem with your summation of K2 and the "philosophical aspects" is that they were not coherent and contemplating them resulted in focussing on the inherrent erroneous referential integrity of the dialogues between NPCs, and even the same character and subsequent paragraphs of the same speech.

Your categories are not mutually exclusive, and in fact are options that are mutually inclusive; e.g. PC must be either male / female and DS / LS and Revan / Exile. Then again, OE weren't even able to deliver a game with an identical narrative for DS / LS and male / female for K2, without making erroneous references to Revan as he and she in the scripts, so anything except a hurculean reading exercise is probably beyond the scope of a sequel.