metadigital

That doesn't account for the sound travelling through the vacuum of space. But I can suspend my disbelief for a little longer by pretending that, if I could hear it, that's what the battle would sound like. (It still bugs me that Hollywood insists on dumbing down to the audience like this: perhaps there are commercial imperatives to provide a suitable canvas for the spanky THX sound systems ...)

Obviously didn't notice my little "pulling your leg" emoticon there, then.

Hmmm, okay penitence is a good thing, but I still don't understand why the person decided that attacking the group of volunteers (about their spelling, of all things) was a valid way to question the status of the mod. I was merely trying to impart some empathy on the poor individual; I may have applied the lesson with a little excess vim. (Anything that threatens the project, even ignorance, should be combated and defeated!) And perhaps I was a little hasty in my pronouncements; time will tell.

I think "we" [read: Global Community] already have the means to...if we could somhow co-operate. There are always going to be countries like North Korea that will happily starve their population and sped money on weapons...until the US decides they are a threat to US Security and forcibly makes democracies out of them. How about you all? Would you support your country going to war against any government that was butchering its own people, or pretend it didn't happen, like everybody did during the Khimer Rouge in Cambodia? (I'm not suggesting the reason behind the war on Iraq was at all noble, merely asking if you'd support going to war to stop local/national genocide). <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It is a tough call. Generally local communities loath interference from any outsiders, and will actively oppose them in spite of the local political situation -- except in rare, extreme cases, when most of them would probably be more involved dealing with the more pressing issue of staying alive, such as Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge dictatorship, from the revolution in 1975, till he fled the Vietnamese in 1979. The thorny issue is who decides when to intervene? When does a government become an unwelcome / unrepresented / indefensible organisation? The UN decides? With the existing Security Council vetoes? China is particularly wary of any interventionist actions (can you say "Tibet", boys and girls?) and specifically blocks all such debate: the only reason they are onboard with the North Korean disarmament talks is because they share a border with these poor people with the nutters still running the asylum. The only security action ever passed before the first Gulf War, to push the Iraq forces out of Kuwait, was the Korean "police action", and that was passed when Moscow had temporarily boycotted the UN. The Balkan crisis of 1999 was not sanctioned by the UN; it was a NATO conflict operating outside UN durisdiction. So there you have the dilemma defined: try sorting out Northern Island or Somalia by wading in with a peace-keeping force, or preventing China from annexing territory it belives to be sovereign without starting WWIII.

Or I could take a crash course in Swedish ... Anyway, gott arbete!

This is for the most part an urban legend. While in many respects the Betamax format can argue a mild quantitative statistical advantage over VHS, the practical effect of that statistical edge on final home NTSC TV viewing was ultimately trivial, while the significance of the greater recording length of the VHS format over Beta proved immediately fundamental to the value of the format. Meanwhile, tape dimensions proved a non-factor. The reasons for the acceptance of the one over the other are in many respects political, but the idea that politics thwarted the inherently superior format which deserved otherwise to succeed doesn't really hold water. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well, not everyone uses the inferior NTSC standard. PAL, for example, has higher resolution and faster frame rate; just because the difference was negligible to the lowest common denominator doesn't mean it was non-existent. You may also think that analogue vinyl records have no better sound quality than a digital CDs, or vacuum tubes are obsolete in amplifiers but many audiophiles would argue the contrary. It is not an urban legend.

But, I LIKED the combat in Deus Ex. Deus Ex:Invisible War wasn't as good, but the original was kewl, especially how you gained experience and allocated it for particular weapon categories: I like the pistol specialization, so I could use the tranquilizer darts (after all, I'm not a brute) on the innocent grunts and my silencer-equipped pistol with scope to take out the evil mechs. Last time, I went most of the game without high levels of electronics / lockpicking / computer aptitude in order to gain mastery of pistols asap; also added all weapon distance- and accuracy-upgrades to the pistol, so that it had a long range and 101% accuracy. :D I thought the difficulty in aiming long distances was especially well done. (Okay, the "hostile reset" factor of the AI was a little silly, but I can suspend my disbelief by imagining my PC has to run-and-hide-for-a-set-time-before-returning in the time occupied by this game feature.) What didn't you like?

Hooray! I win by default. Now, let's solve world hunger. ...

I take it the dude in the middle doing a muscle pose is Carth, and the orange-suited one is Revan? Whoever is wearing orange looks like they might have filled their pants, though. (I thought the second from the end was Carth, but I decided that he was Jolee, instead.) Malak is cool!

Kaftan isn't German! You should instead say gott arbete. :cool: (Mein Gott!)

I knew a Danel once ... he was from NZ ...

And was she apprehensive in the photo, or did I totally misread your portrayal ?

Is this an imitation thread? Is it art imitating life, or life imitating art? :D

Now its my turn to require clarification: I am sure you are contradicting yourself in the above abstract of your last post. I assume you are saying that most women don't find abortion "causal" nor "easy". I would agree. There are always the sociopaths, but it pays us not to focus on the the extremes. (An estimated 2% of the men didn't feel emotionally bankrupt after the several weeks' non-stop combat commenced from the D-Day landing, for example: nowadays we refer to such people as sociopaths and psychopaths.) My objection to the pro-life campaign is the insistence of these people that their beliefs entitle them to decide how a woman may deal with what is ultimately the most private of all decisions. I still say we should all be compulsorily (reversibly) sterilized pre-puberty, and selectively licenced couples should be allowed to procreate. ...

Not at all, I am all in favour of scientific research. Morals are definitely required to temper the implementation of our discoveries into our societies, but they play no part in scientific research. (I was just playing a little Devil's advocado ) Well, morality is not necessarily religiousity ... maybe your "Chaotic Evil" forum alter ego is reforming ...? Or is it a cunning feint ?

Nope, that's evolution, on the only scale someone in the present day is likely to find evidence for it. That kind of evolution can take place in a few generations. Only people who call it 'micro-evolution' are 'Creation Scientists'. Thier 'research' is mostly taken out of context. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Evolution is more observable to us when we look at creatures with shorter lifespans: bacteria have a life cycle of approximately forty minutes, so they are ideal to study evolutionary behaviour. (MRSA is Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, and has come about from the decimated populations of bacteria that had a natural restitance to the drug -- Methicillin -- and have bred successfully in the environment that is toxic to less restitant strains.) Also the drosophila melanogaster (or fruit fly) is used to study genetic mutation and the consequential evolution. Genetically speaking, if there is a creator than that being is extremely lazy. The genome of a human shares about 90% of its (estimated mostly leftover rubbish) length with a potato. And about 97% with a lizard. The human embryo grows gills and a tail early on, before they disapear, and the legs are longer than the arms for most of the interuterine period, coincidentally () mirroring scientists estimations of evolution. (Don't take my word for it, go and read the Readers Digest Book of Facts: don't forget that the Readers Digest is a right wing religious mouthpiece.) Human evolution can be traced via different techniques: the migration and evolution of languages being one recent analysis that agrees with the established evolutionary theory. If you are interested in evolutionary theory, I read a book -- about fifteen years ago -- that is very educational for this subject called Timescale: An Atlas of the Fourth Dimension which I heartily recommend.

A bit like Woody Allen's character pretending to play baseball during intercourse to reduce the prematurity of his ... er ... finishing. I sure I could mount a convincing defence of hiring ladies of the night by calling on the precedents of the Masters, years before ... the poses, however, would require a more >ahem< modern interpretation. btw, Are you a fan of Calvin & Hobbes? Watterson had a bit to say about art (not to mention philosophy): The hard part for us avant-garde post-modern artists is deciding whether or not to embrace commercialism. Do we allow our work to be hyped and exploited by a market that's simply hungry for the next new thing? Do we participate in a system that turns high art into low art so it's better suited for mass consumption? Of course, when an artist goes commercial, he makes a mockery of his status as an outsider and free thinker. He buys into the crass and shallow values art should transcend. He trades the integrity of his art for riches and fame. Oh, what the heck. I'll do it. Or how about entering academia: "The dynamics of interbeing and monological imperatives in D1ck and Jane: a study in psychic transrelational gender modes". :cool:

Well, your arguing a utilitarian philosophy over a moral "the end doesn't justify the means" argument -- fi that helps. " Seriously, though, the only caveat I would stress to the aforementioned utilitarian argument is that, in extremis, you might end up with "hedonistic economics", whereby convicted criminals would have their organs harvested for more worthy members of society, for example. (I can see some people in the audience are all for this ... ) Another point that is rarely mentioned in these dicsussions is that, right now, there are more embryos in existence than can possibly live on the planet, unless we start mass exterminations right now. (This policy also might have some support out there ...) I guess we could start with all the stupid people ...

Good work, Kaftan! I like the woman in the portrait, and she does look Hindu (not sure about the actress part, though ... are you sure she's not one of those "performance artists" that need partners or implements). She looks uncomfortable to be in the room with you (understandable because she was naked and you were probably dragging your tongue on the floor ...) I do like the eyes (much better than Sigmund's -- that's in your painting of him, not in real life, of course).

This is where I get off: I cannot watch a film with the mental effort required to suspend my disbelief is larger than the creative effort used in its production. Phone Booth was a very silly concept for a film. The whole gothic look for Gotham City was an art-house triumph! That's like saying you like icecream but you wish it wasn't so cold. And casting Arnie as Mr Freeze was the culmination of a personal prediction of mine, so I have no problems there: I thought Arnie brought depth and power to the msiunderstood character ( :D dang! I nearly said that with a straight face) -- aside: he still hasn't played a bad guy before or since the original Terminator -- and Nicholson and Carey both gave stupendous performances; "over the top"? We're talking about Batman here, right? Where a man can ricochet bullets with his armour-plated arms? Holy veiled-innuendo, Batman! Some of the audience aren't getting our camp schtick! :cool:

Well, movement not in a physical sense, but the psychological imperatives and actions that follow the state of love. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Hmm, yep, I got that bit; I was more looking for some clarification on what, exactly, you felt love "and other emotions" added to the obvious biological imperative. Specifically, what value the feelings themselves, or the associated derivative experiences, give to the satients that have them? I'm not quite sure how I'm derailing a topic about Jedi love with philosophical analyses of love and the nature of the Force ... ... How did you propose to conduct the discussion: role playing rock, paper & scissors?

I'm not sure what you mean by "the state itself moves beyond that". Where does it move to? What are you adding to the biological urge? Indeed, even if we discount the recent publicity of p

I thought his performance for the first bit of American Psycho was wooden, and I didn't see the last part because the whole film was a tragic waste of time. NAY!!!! THEY ARE THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME.Adam West > Everyone else <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Subtlety of wit and wry humour may not be everyone's taste, Mr Barlast. " And may I be the first to welcome back the blessed sig!