VCH

@Niemand You know, I don't think I've ever written a book report, in school or otherwise. hmmm

Oh, well I didn't actually read every post you know. Ooops "Mistakes were made" That's exactly the kind of writing that makes science writing boring. But you're right, the passive voice has its uses.

I think Jeff was making the point that if most people don't understand the difference between whom and who, than it's not worth using the two of them in his writing.

Originally Posted By: FnordCola Quote: "Don't end a sentence with a preposition" is the classic example Ah, the many delightfully idiotic excesses of prescriptivism. "No splitting infinitives" is another fun one, as well as an irrational hatred of the passive voice. The passive voice sucks balls. If you read a lot of science writing (the stuff in journals) you'll know why it should be avoided if possible. Zzzzzzz Slarty, you seem to be quite passionate about this whole language thing. What did you study in university?

The apostrophe doesn't replace missing letters, it replaces a missing vowel sound. Can you give me a reference for this?

I'm in favour of bringing back proper contractions. EQUAL RIGHTS FOR LOGICAL CONTRACTIONS! ca'n't wo'n't sha'n't (interesting that my web-browser's autocorrect (safari) underlines sha'n't but not the other two)

I almost bought DA:O, but then I read the system requirements and decided I shouldn't. Old imacs (2005), although still beautiful, wo'n't run DA:O.

But can't US citizens buy automatic weapons, rocket launchers and tanks? If so, all it would take to rise up is a bit of collecting.

They're not snappy if they're wrong.

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba Originally Posted By: TheBadAgent This is man providing for themselves, social Darwinism. Dude, most of the big questions in evolution today deal with altruism. You're behind the times. Catch up. Dikiyoba. Altruism is only one of the big questions at the moment. For example, there's also WHY DO WE HAVE SEX? WHY DO WE AGE? WHAT IS A SPECIES? And Mr Badagent, you can argue without calling people idiots. Doing so will probably make your arguments worth reading.

Originally Posted By: kal I would have liked to flirt more with the farmer's daughter in the Kva. The game should let you flirt with Redbeard. Red hair and power is sexy.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer You do know that crashing the boards is a bannable offense? Please, please can I ban him? But how will you it was me? I wont use this account. I'll make one up, say, Randomiser, I think that will do.

Is there no federal sales tax in the US?

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES The Communist Manifesto was posted here, in its entirity, infamously. I don't remember if it actually crashed the boards or if it just ate up the thread it was in. This was long, long ago. Shall we try it again?

Originally Posted By: Lt. Sullust Yes, but you can't exactly say we'll give you more money if you perform worse than everyone else. Why not? Performing worse means something, doesn't it? I see no reason why a school with special needs shouldn't receive special funding.

Maybe you could place your party in the small openings between the palisade to prevent the soldiers from getting any hits in on the giants. I would think, if your group could survive, the soldiers would take enough damage to die, eventually.

Originally Posted By: Thin Gypsy Thief In the US, the high-scoring schools get paid more. Because we are an oligarchy. That is exactly what teachers want to prevent from happening in Canada.

Yeah, my mistake, Canadian schools (in BC any way) have roughly 5 hours for class instruction, 1 hour for lunch and 15 minutes for recess. Originally Posted By: It's a trap This. Last year I had the state's standardized test, and I can honestly say that there was nothing on there beyond, essentially, 'can you divide', 'can you read', and 'what is an atom'. And when the schools only focus now on making sure students ace the standardized test, it feels like everything is being dumbed down to the level of the test. In my school there is only really one teacher who actually, IMO, teaches the material as a subject rather than as prep for some test. That's the problem with assessing teachers and schools based on standardized tests. In Canada (B.C.) we have government exams for grade 4, 7, and 12. And of course the private schools always score at the top of the rankings, and the poor inner city schools at the bottom. I'm not completely against standardized tests. They could be very useful for directing funding and other resources. But in British Columbia nobody uses the data for anything more than showing how terrible such and such a school is. You can test the kids all you want, but if nothing is done with the data there's no point. The purpose of school, for the most part, is to learn how to learn, not to remember a bunch of mostly unimportant stuff. The absolutely crucial things are learned in the first 4-5 grades of Elementary school.

ignorant and vicious, I like that

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity Unfortunately, the tool chest of social engineering is a box of mallets. If at first you don't suceed, get a bigger hammer. Unfortunately 20 lbs is as big as they get.

Is it possible to let all the soldiers die?

Geneforge is a lone wanderer type game. I played all the Geneforge games with a blademaster guardian that never summoned creatures.

It's fun having some of the game play completely out of my control. For example, if Jeff forces two of my characters to get trapped somewhere, and I have to use the one remaining character to rescue them, that's fun. It makes for a much more dynamic story. Jeff could even outright kill one of my characters, (no resurrect) and I'd be cool with that. It would be shocking, and I'd be angry, and confused. But then that's a good thing, to you know, actually feel something when playing a game besides the standard dopamine rush from levelling a character.

Originally Posted By: FnordCola Even in the ending where the town's population take over Oghrym'tor, it's clear that life gets substantially harder for them, and that's about the best they could have hoped. Instead of letting them be over-run by a competing stead, I let them die on my blade. Now that's compassion

Originally Posted By: The Mystic Originally Posted By: VCH Recent food-web theory puts more emphasis on parasites as being at the top. After all, a lion eats a gnu, but a spiny-headed worm eats a lion. Now, how that translates over to the Internet, I don't know Well, since all computer data translates to a series of ones and zeroes, I'd say the internet is eaten by Number Munchers, which have escaped and started eating servers one byte at a time. This is especially bad because their only known predators, the Troggles, went extinct, so the Muncher population is growing out of control. I loved that game! I got super good at munching prime numbers.