metadigital

Reveilled is just as entitled to believe in Eris as anyone else is entitled to believe that their God spoke directly to them through several intermediaries (instead of directly, like an all-powerful diety would). If the Earth was created six thousand years ago, why do we have evidence: mutation of languages and migration of people (genetic and geographic evidence); fossils -- by the way, a sandstone stalactite forming in decades is in no way similar to a fossilized animal; there is an opalized dinosaur skeleton in the Simpson desert (the bones of a creature have become gemstones) -- how long would that take? Fossilized animals take millions of years to become rocks. This is why I don't argue with fools. @Reveiled: this is why innumeracy is dangerous. This person is asserting that fossilization can occur in decades.

But the point is, Dill, why do we need a God to create the world? The "Watchmaker's Father falacy". It's a simple case of logic: there is no need for this being you so desperately want. But, hey! I don't mind: you believe your fairy tale. WTF? Are you telling me -- what? That carbon dating is an imprecise science? That the evolution of language is not a reliable confirmation of the migration of the populations of humans? That genetics is a coincidence? The fact that every branch of science contributes in some small way to the entire jigsaw that is the "how" of life, and they all appear to be consistently giving overwelming evidence to support evolution. Here, assuming you can read, check out a brief, simple summary. Um, what's your point? A crocodile is a living dinosaur. The coelacanth is a living missing link between fish with fins and amphibians with feet. Why does a human embryo develop gills and a tail in the early stages of development? And the legs are longer than the arms until the last trimester? Summary: If you are arguing that science hasn't proved evolution, you are an ignoramus. If you are arguing that you choose to believe that God made this world look like there is an evolutionary history going back over 4.5 Billion years, that is your perogative. I would counter with "Why?". What possible purpose would a God have to create an evolutionary history? I would further suggest that this God is not necessary to explain the universe, and I see no compelling reason to add one.

You speak from the heart, your intentions are good, but still your logic is wrong. To paraphrase your argument, you are stating that gay people should not be permited to adopt children because of the endemic bigotry shown by children in our societies. In other words, you are condoning the flaws in society, and advocating that we should not fix society, but rather minimize the damage that these flaws produce. Shouldn't we try to fix the society, to prevent children (and therefore, hopefully when they grow up, adults) from having retarded world views? Instead on enshrining the sexist / homophobic / racist values, we should challenge them and defeat them. Surely, even from a strictly socio-political viewpoint (religion aside) we want the society to be fairer to all, not more unfair. I know you didn't mean this, but let's just take your argument to an extreme: let's look at racism. Would you advocate that people shouldn't be allowed to adopt children of a different race? No, I disagree. We need to do more to fix the society. And yes, I am aware it is easy for someone who has already grown up and will never face the truly ghastly scenarios personally, but still I see this as a way -- the only way -- to reach a better society. We let young innocent men die for their country in war; well bigotry is a war, too. When this war is over, think of the young children and their society giving thanks to the pioneers for creating a fairer world.

Yeah, but you could always glue them back together with the Force.

Another concept we've all failed to mention, so far, is that "love conquers all". okay, leaving the fermeted curd to the side, it is adequately demonstrated that love can topple the most hardened despot. (Heck, it can even calm the savage breast.) I'm not advocating that it is all-powerful or 100% successful, mind. So love is the ultimate weapon. Jedi would be foolish to ignore it.

Yep, in FarimirK's words, you're calling the Force an "ammo dump" for both sides (Sith and Jedi) to pillage in their ceaseless war of attrition. (Or a small "f" force, in mine. :D ) But what if there is some hidden agenda to be served by keeping the Force in balance, something unknown to the Force sensitives ...? They are not free to decide their own fate, they are merely pawns in the space opera ( :D ) that is the SW galaxy, merely for the benefit of the Force. I saw Kreia was right! Free yourselves, free the universe: kill the Force!

Already beat you to it, Phantom: :cool:

Depends on your definition of "easier". It is easier to play a DS character in KotOR2 because the ethical dilemmas are all for the LS. A DS PC just acts like a yob and is slavishly selfish throughout the game. This is my main criticism of the DS path; there is no depth to it. You can't be a puppeteer like Senator Palpatine or Darth Traya, you have to be a pantomime villain like Darth Vader, complete with ott costume.

Cloris, you could be the official team psychologist! (Mascot? :ph34r: )

That is what makes you all the stronger, my friend. "The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Or even: The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. --George Bernard Shaw

I suppose Gay men should just do what they've always done, get married and have children in the marriage (with their wife) and carry on staying out late at "the club" on weekday nights ... "

Yep, seen Mr Keaton in My Life, thought similar. Not sure about the Barbarian Invasions, but certainly Spartacus (the original with Kirk Douglas, naturally) was very moving when they all stood up and said "I'm Spartacus!". Then the Romans crucified the lot of them, to set an example.

Spotted it, but decided that decorum demanded I steer a polite course around it. See my post, above. At one point, when bad dude is talking to Xavier (why does he promounce it "EX-Zavier", it makes him sound retarded?) and Lady Deathclaws (cool name, btw) "wakes up". Also, regarding said claws, I am sure they are not just stuck on her fingernails; they are inserted deep into the phalanges. Well, both his and your problem is that you take this way to seriously. I have an odd sense of humor that may be difficult to fully comprehend, usually I tend to get as close as possible to being completely serious while still retaining full comedy. There may be some odd bits of material in here that could form the basis of a serious argument but that was for comedic effect The only real true thing I have to say is that i think its sad when they kill off beautiful actresses and keep the lame protagonistic ones. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I caught it, it was f'n hilarious too. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Me too. Kaftan -- odd sense of humour? Nah! :cool:

My recollection (and I have a copy of the film) is that she is brainwashed with the serum and is ordered to attack Wolverine. He initially doesn't attack her; but he is unable to subdue her. She repeatedly stabs him, faster than his "super healing metabolism" can respond, so he is close to defeat before he actually gets serious and kills her, more to stop her than out of some psychopathic urge (his dark character notwithstanding). What I want to know is how Miss Deathclaws was able to regenerate so quickly: I mean, this was the point of Wolverine, wasn't it? He was only suitable for the "adamantine bone-plating" process because his body could recover fast enough before he died from shock. How come Deathclaws can do that too?

You are forgetting probability. But we could go on ... mathematics is not irrelevant! It is integral to our lives; some people use it more than others, because it is available for them to use. Ask someone how many peanuts in a jar, or some other conservation-of-volume question. Chances are they won't have a clue how to begin to work it out. Mathematics doesn't just teach us algebra (I had a young adult ask me what the point of learning algebra was: "How often will I use it in my life?", to which I replied "I use it many times a day,") or calculus. It teaches us far more important concepts, like the beginnings of logic, whilst instilling a healthy dose of determination in pupils, to give up at the first attempt, if something doesn't work, then keep trying until it does. Also, just as practising running helps strengthen and improve the musculature, so too does the mental gymnastics of working out calculations in your head. It's healthy; not too mention mandatory tool in a skeptic's toolbox. I would recommend "The Music of the Primes" as essential reading. It deals with the brilliance of Riemann's quest to create an equation to predict prime numbers. It also mentions Gauss (who was correcting his father's arithmatic when he was three); he had the rare gift of transcending the dry figures of mathematics and visualizing them in geometric patterns, like the Islamic scholars were apt to (and their frescos of tiles in mathematical shapes seen in Mosques). Euler, Gauss, Riemann, Ramanujan: these were true giants of mathematics, without whom we wouldn't be conversing on the internet. Yet these were number theorists; they were not part of Napoleon's interpretation of the Industrial Revolution and the pragmatic mathematic imperative it demanded to teach military engineering, thus he created the

(w00t) Welcome back, oh rested one! I know what you mean about other people's interpretation of one's work: I have noticed a corollory to this, in that I manage to (far more often that can be explained by pure chance) add many subtle embellishments to my work, without any overt conscious effort. I explain it as a sort of "subconscious momentum", perhaps analogous to how a athlete can perform a complex sporting man

That is probably down to the environmental cues being deployed by the director (rousing music into a crescendo etc); you're just a Pavlovian dog salivating for your dinner! Yep, every time I watch the eulogy I can't stop crying. Braveheart was very ott, but I still found it moving. Schindler's List when Wilson was lost in Cast Away Wuthering Heights: Larry's performance is superb. Every time. Shawshank Redemption, Green Mile. Frankie & Johnie Planes, Trains & Automobiles, when Neil Page finally confronts Del Griffith at the train station. I was oddly very sad, and yet very pleased, when Ali Macgraw finally gave us peace in Love Story. A lot of Anthony Hopkins movies, especially Shadowlands Oh, and I sobbed in hysterical fits all the way home in the back of my friends car, from the scene with the mass graveyard in Normandy, at the end of Saving Private Ryan, though that was the first thing I did after giving the eulogy at my father's funeral (he was a soldier in WWII, so it was too close to the bone).

1. I don't understand your question. The Exile was a result of some (heretofor unexplained) event on Malchor V. Please explain what you would like me to explain (if I haven't done so, below). 2.Where does morality and Force-Sensitivity coincide in SW? At no point is there any evidence that The Force is anything more than some tangible manifestation of some sort of ether-like substance (as postulated by nineteenth century physicists). To my knowledge, GL doesn't ever equate morality with The Force, not even in a Zoroastrian tradition (where everything in the universe is composed of "good" and "evil" particles, the more good the better "goodness" of the resultant object, and vice versa). It might also be beyond our explaination (see Plato's Euthyphro dilemma). 3. The principle the Anti-Force forces would fight for is simply fredom of choice. (The only reason I concluded that The Force was malevolent was because it was giving the inhabitants of the universe the illusion of free will, whilst serving its own secret agenda. This is a very selfish act, hence the malevolence. Also, it neatly cicumvents the Epicurean paradox, which prevents [The Force, in our dicussion, but normally used to explain God] from being omnescient, omnipotent and completely good.) 4.Even if the Exile was not the first convert to Kreia's cause (and why not? We have many historical examples, such as Sual's conversion to Paul on the road to Damascus) this is not a deal-breaker. So we have to fight the Exile: that wouldn't be all that difficult to explain in the narrative: in fact it has already been used in Warcraft III. 5. How so? If I want to better myself I control my environment; I read books, write papers and eat food in my quest for betterment. How is this any different, except in scale and complexity? 6. Why is evil a delusion? Evil is a moral choice, not a mental illness. Hobbes's Leviathan propounded the doctrine of modern natural right, or bellum omnium contra omnes -- literally "the war of all against all". Granted this Orwellian society wouldn't be a picnic to live in, but that is precisely why The Force would be malevolent to create it (or, arguably, even to permit it as an alternative). Kreia is right! WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Can you say "Role Play" with me, boys and girls?

You miss my point. I use a calculator most (but not all) of the time, too. The point is that most people are innumerate to a lesser or greater degree. They have no appreciation for numbers, no idea what they represent. They have more idea about who is in bed with someone who can't sing, than the fact that if Jesus had been alive all this time, and played the Lottery every week, he would be about due for his first win. (Moses, on the other hand, would be due for his second.) People just think all big numbers and small probabilities are identical, because they are numerically illiterate. Hence flying is seen as dangerous by a majority of people, yet more people die from donkeys every year than are killed in aeroplane crashes. You can't have a rational conversation with someone about facts if the statistics are meaningless.

No, there were some Ewok Adventure movies (they may well have been animated, though -- I never watched them). I liked Willow, but was that made after RotJ? (Certainly GL has displayed a proclivity for height-challenged actors in his career, what with the above mentioned films and the Jawas, too.)

Wow, two bits of trivia! Penguin wrappers have trivia on them! Bonza! Fibonacci's real name was Leonardo Pisano, but he liked to use the name "Bigollo", which may mean good-for-nothing or a traveller in the Tuscan dialect.

Well, you can trace the abysmal grasp of English grammar back to the 70s, when the liberal establishment rebelled against the authoritarian institutionalised rote-learning of rules for pupils (things like times tables, spelling and syntax); preferring to allow pupils instead fredom to express themselves without being "stiffled" by rules. I think it is plain to see that this initiative was a total failure, yet I think it is now almost (but not quite) irreversable. The biggest lament I have is the total lack of mathematics (specifically) and science (generally) literacy. Most young people I meet are innumerate. Ask them to work out the division of a divisor into a dividend without a calculator and they have no idea where to start. Heaven help them find a cube root, or interpret statistics -- something we are expected to do regularly when digesting news and current affairs. Most people wouldn't know the difference between a million and a (US) billion, for example. Here's a test: ask some friends how long a million seconds takes, and how long a billion seconds is. Using seconds is an easy way to give scope to an all-to-intangible number, because everyone is familiar with a second, and just over 11 days (million seconds) and over thirty-one and a half years (a billion seconds). This extends into further education; most students do arts degrees at tertiary level, and most of those students wouldn't be able to name a single mathematician, let alone three. Yet of those who specialize in mathematics or science at the same level, there is an expectation (mostly met) that everyone knows (or should be familiar with) the arts -- from literature to performance and fine arts. Why is this important? How many politicians are totally innumerate? Controlling billions of dollars of public funds whilst not even able to understand the big picture, let alone examine the details. Then try and have an argument with a blinkered creationist about science, when they have no grasp of the weight of evidence -- from every known discipline of science, especially from those where it was not expected nor looked for -- or even what "significant" means. Reminds me of the cigarette company's marketing efforts before smoking became unpopular, when they maintained that "there is no proof that smoking causes cancer" because scientists could not provide a definitive causal link (mainly due to the inability to eradicate the many, many "contaminating" factors present in studies of humans which work against clean cause-and-effect pronouncements). Scientists are a cautious bunch, precisely because they do not believe they know everything. Fundamentalists are a dangerous bunch because, conversely, they beileve they know everything and it is the word of God (and therefore above argument).

"The candle that burns twice as bright, lasts for half as long.", or "Better to burn out, than to fade away."? :D

Well the Hollywood-men-who-know-best (irony filters can be turned down now) have doe similar cash-in spin-off films before, like "US Marshals" from "The Fugitive", and all those dire Ewok adventure movies after RotJ, so there is nothing wrong with your idea in principle. I fear that the film would be best suited without GL, though, as his writing is very sketchy without humming glow-sticks, and would suffer the same ignominious fate as said Ewok movies without a proper writer. PS the Romans didn't use decimals, that was not achieved until Fibonacci (whose real name was Leonardo Pisano) brought the concept of "zero" to Europe from India, in the early thirteenth century.