metadigital

That is actually a good exercise to practise reading body language: watch the tv with no sound. (90%-ish of communication is non-verbal for us people creatures.) Naturally, people who are signt impaired listen to an augmented broadcast with the stage directions vocalized. Or plug in their trusty braille-socket to their tv.

Wow, heavy dude, that's bleak! Hobbes was an optimist compared to you. I have a friend who is almost totally convinced that intelligence is a Darwinian dead-end: a cul de sac in the road to survival. It is not sustainable, considering the amount of life it takes to grow fully-fledged people, considering the amount of wastage (i.e. those people who never reach full potential) and considering the relative merits (costs versus benefits) of the alternatives (like the aforementioned mass spawning strategy of insects, etc). I have another friend who gave me the best definition of God I have ever heard: when multiple agents work in concert and the result is more than the sum of the parts, then the extra bit (total - sum of parts) is God. I could easily appropriate this definition for Love (as God equals Love anyway, right? " ). I would favour the second theory, without necessarily insisting on a God. (It could be The Force, for example, or some sort of group subconscious, as referred to by Freud, Jung, et alia.) Or as famously quoted by Billy Connolly, the first impulses scientists believe flash through a brain upon meeting another creature is: "Can I eat it?" "Can it eat me?" "Can I shag it?".

Wow, it's amazing to learn that all of my opinions actually have a name. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That's Thomas Hobbes, the seventeenth century British philosopher who wrote Leviathan, not the stuffed tiger friend of Calvin (but he's pretty cool, too ). :D

"You don't know the POWER of the dark side!" Darth Vader, RotJ :angry:

I was more seeking to make Love the embodiment of life, not a pre-condition. Sort of like the Force, life can live without, but to truly reach its potential life needs love. (Also, there is a species of spider that, when the eggs hatch into hundreds of little, tiny spiders, the mother spider performs a procedure to make her their first meal. Maybe the incy wincy spider has love for her little babies ... . :D .. okay, more likely the love thing is a higher brain function (frontal cortex) interpretation of this sort of sacrifice.) I really don't know - both could be true. From what is told in some novels even the Jedi don't have a clue about the phenomena. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> That's just a cop out: what do you think the Force is? :cool:

"Was I any different, when you taught me?" a certain Obi-Wan Kenobi in ESB. She was limited, but that gave her character places to grow, which (if you reach the Brianna conclusion) she certainly does do. Just compare her to her sisters; even at first she was curious and didn't take your opinion without question. "... Only now, young Skywalker, do you understand ... " ... the true demographic that she was trying to capture ... :D

I thought the Handmaiden backstory was better done: I found the whole Visas betrayal of her former Master very similar to the numerous previous attempts, with Bastila etc. Also, Visas reminded me too much of Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction ... I didn't think they had cosmetics or even female-suitable clothing in that galaxy so far, far away. GL didn't permit Carrie Fisher to wear a brasier, and I would have to assume that is because of his artistic integrity ... "

Ah, you've been brushing up on your Hobbesian philosophy, I see. True, I was referring to the human world, and our struggle to make life fair. Is the Force emotion-neutral? That's fair game for debate ... I maintain that Kreia was right and the Force is a malevolent agent acting in its own interest (probably towards some sort of self-actualization), which neatly prophesizes the next major cataclism between the Force Sensitives and the Anti-Force forces ...

) That is a very Jungian concept, and one I happen to feel mirrors a lot of experiences in my life ... I dunno about this Force malarky in SW, but I have seen my partner's intuition working ... looks more and more like Luke's vision in ESB every day ... :cool: And I'd be lying if I said that I fully understood every nuance of my work upon release; yet somehow all the nuances are in keeping with the themes. As to the nature of this phenomenon, I would sooner believe there is some subconscious overseer working than, well, super-sensory "group supra-consciousness", but as of yet I haven't been able to decide either way ... (... or it could be delusional narcisistic hubris ...)

What's a Revolution? "

What can I say. I'm an idealist and I don't agree. This may help to explain the reasons for my point of view: http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php?sh...ndpost&p=355675 <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Whether you are an idealist or not, being evil is -- from a certain point of view -- a lot of fun. You get to be totally self-indugent. Think of Bill Murray's Christopher Cross (Scrooge) character in Scrooged: he had a ball saying everything he felt like saying to people without having to be politically correct. Or Jim Carey's lawyer in Liar Liar (the Board Room scene) ) ... Even though I prefer not to be evil, there is a case to answer: the society would be Hobbesian, (i.e. according to the thought experiment propounded in Leviathan -- bellum omnium contra omnes -- life would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short"); but if you were the strongest, life would be very good -- while you remained so. (Very unfair, but then life is not that fair even though we try hard to make it so ...) Being evil is a moral choice, not (necessarily) an ignorant one. That was one of the conclusions to George Orwell's 1984. For a sociopath there is no downside: they have no empathy for the weaker members of the society and therefore don't identify with their suffering. Don't get me wrong, the Hobbesian society is one that I would not like to live in, even if I were strongest; an indifferent society is a very lonely one. And that doesn't encompass the postive (emotional/spiritual) growth engendered in a positive feedback loop in a warm, supportive environment. But, what would be worse is thinking one lives in a fair society when everyone else is working with the doctrine of "Modern Natural Right" ... <_<

Kreia makes a good point: love (more than anything in our universe, and arguably just as much as -- if not identical to -- The Force) is life. Life as in the verdant growth of Spring, the young growing f

Which means there must be some sort of precognition going on, because the signal from the brain to the limbs would have to be sent before the beam in order for the person to jump in time ...

So when Revan went to the Outer Rim ...

Nah, different marketing model: Walmart are differentiating wrt Price, Mandalorians have a more a mafia-pyramid-selling scheme (you have to join and no leaving: I don't suppose they like selling to many non-mandalorians, only those "most favoured trading persons") and marketing products that are differentiated by high quality.

I don't plan on upgrading my pc that early. The hardware development innovation cycles have co-incided neatly (roughly) with the depreciation on IT assets (i.e. over three years) for the last few years (since the GPU, by my calculations). That means I should be looking to purchase a new PC / convergence device with OHP and surround sound etc, etc in about 6-12 months. Even considering hardware is out of date when you buy it, the next wave of development should similarly last a couple of years. What would be intersting is if the had modular architecture for the consoles: not the out-and-out plug'n'play paradigm of the PC, but limited "standard" upgrades, like a new GPU and more/better (V)RAM and call it the PS3.1 ... " Well, according to Gamespot Hardware, it's the PS3 GPU that's 50 MHz faster than the Xbox 360 equivalent. Not that all this really matters anyhow. It's the games, not the hardware, that decides which console will win the war. I mean, the PS2 isn't close to the Xbox in hardware but still dominates the market. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> True, the Sony Betamax was much superior to the VHS.

Okay, I shall.

Spot on. I haven't played the Hitman series, so I was talking out of school. (I did play a demo of one of them, but I didn't really get into it: more about the controls than the ideology, though " ) So I would have to defer to your analysis of the games as I have no first hand experience. Nice to hear that I was correct in my assessment, though, in that people don't play games to murder people, but to stop injustices. (Role playing evil dudes aside, of course. :D )

I've been avoiding posting in this thread, despite some mouth-watering tidbits I'd love to have jumped on, because I've been tired and really don't want to get into some of the endless arguments again, but this one was too much. It's far from settled that Reaganomics "worked". In fact, in many aspects not only did they not work, they were at best an abject failure, at worst did immeasurable harm. But that depends on how you look at it. There were people who made great money, but any trickle down didn't make up for the losses the poor faced. So no, the debate is far from moot. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> What if the poor financed the defeat of the Soviet Union? Is that a reasonable dividend for their contribution during the eighties? After all, Regan did significantly contribute to the end of the Cold War ... (...And welcome to the discussion. )

I think Spain, Germany, France and UK contribute the most to the Eurovision, anyway. Maybe the UK regard it as a charity thing ... "

You are very fortunate not to know ! Peter Andre was Michael Jackson tribute singer when he was discovered by Ian "Molly" Meldrum (music commentator from the "Hey Hey It's Saturday Night" show and quondam presenter of "Countdown" (Top of The Pops), in Australia) when he was a young teenager. He subsequently released a bunch of terrible pop songs and was reknown more for his abdominal muscles than his singing (and since Molly gave standing orders to "Hide the white socks" he didn't get a chance to dance like Michael Jackson), before disapearing into obscurity on his family estate near Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. For some unknown reason, ITV called him up a decade later and invited him onto the Reality show "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!" (sic), which coincided with Jordan's

I guess I don't hold Katie Price responsible for the utter contempt I feel for the average male in the UK who drools over Jordan's beach-ball bosoms and Abby Titmus soft pr0n ... I must say Jordan certainly has done well for herself, what with the

That's one of those elements with a half-life of nano-seconds, isn't it? Not much time to spend admiring it ...

Is that irony, as the Dutch are neighbours? Stupid almost-Germans from the Netherlands ...

Why did you especially want young children to teach the Exile's companions about the Force? "