VCH

Trenton just did what most people do when they feel hurt—they respond with some angry, and in their mind, equally hurtful remark. Just because someone says something hurtful about you in the "heat of the moment" doesn't mean they necessarily believe what they said. Gender and homophobic slurs are common missiles to sling because they are good pointy projectiles no matter who you aim them at. I may smash you in the face with a rock during a fight, but that doesn't mean I want to continue smashing you afterwards. In summary: if you're fat, expect to be called fat in an altercation; if you're gay expect to be called gay; if you're rich expect to be called a 1%er, etc, etc.

Quote: (Finally, if any of you science-y types have tips that would help this unmotivated demotivated Masters student continue writing his dissertation, I'm all ears.) Don't write a dissertation, instead write a paper or two, then, if need be, cobble them together. Dissertations are of no value any way, papers on the other hand, are. In other words, mimic a good published paper, in length and style, and forget the rest. (Disclaimer: for what it's worth I just recently got a paper accepted to the Canadian Journal of Zoology; this paper will now be my chapter one for that thesis junk)

So where is the link to this time capsule of Misc?

Yeah, I just learned a few weeks ago that there are three types of dashes, all with specific uses.

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S Wayback's archive of PPP is incomplete. However, I've spoken with Aran and he expects PPP to be back online in the relatively near future. Again, the litmus test for groups isn't so much "what groups could you count as a member of"; rather it's "what group is the most striking fit for you in an overview." For overview purposes, you fit better outside of Desp. (You should already have been in Establishmentarians by era 3-4, though.) TGM and VCH I had some reason for putting in era 1 with question marks. I think it was things they said, either here or on Lyceum intro forum threads. Really, era 1 is the tough one to suss out, plus any era 2 folk who were active on the Lyceum before SW. UBB has preserved account creation dates so UBB stuff is easy. In case you don't remember, which I expect is true, I used to go the embarrassing PDN of Corey, which was, and is, my real name. In my defence I was like 8 or 9 years old at the time. I also have a foggy memory of having major arguments with TM, who I thought was a major tool, and finally, if memory serves me correctly, I am the person that started the ORIGINAL Nephilim vs. Slith topic. I remember creating it after having some sort of a flame war with a a member whose PDN may have started with a "D". It was kinda my way of cooling things down, but, again, I was like less than 12 years old, so you know . . . (In fact, I'm almost certain I started that topic, as it was one of the few topics of mine that got past 100 posts) PS: Does anyone remember that short story that one of our members wrote about a Nephilim (plus goblin) attack on a Slith Fort? That was pretty cool and would be worth reposting at some point—maybe I still have it somewhere?

Originally Posted By: Lilith Originally Posted By: Harehunter Libertarians seem to be very pragmatic. the position that all taxation is theft does not strike me as "pragmatic" Agreed, that's rubbish.

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S Actually, yeah, that's a terrific idea -- particular those users like you three who span many years but may go a year or more between posts on General. Awww, but I want a group too.

Originally Posted By: Lilith go watch the . all of them. just do it. his philosophy of science is a little too popperian for me but oh well Excellent videos! Thanks.

Yeah, thanks Slarty. Witch Hunt was awesome; it's too bad it ended as it did. I even sort of remember the final scene. Any way, it's strange to think that I've been here off and on since 2001, although I have never been that involved in anything.

On a related not: The journal Nature has a collection of articles (Scitables) on various subjects. Apparently they're trying to provide some sort of alternative to wikipedia. All the articles are written by experts in that particular field. scitables But I don't know why they bother really, I mean why not just tap wikipedia's shoulder and say "hey, we have a some experts here that would like to edit and or create a few articles". It's about time academia jumped on board with wikipedia and made it better. Even the most complex or obscure things usually have at least a couple sentences on them on wiki; many times that's all I want any way. But it would be much, much better if scientists forced their grad or phd students to edit wiki articles, not that some don't already, but more should.

I'll go with William Shatner (look him up on google books).

Apple could just rename a device if that became a problem.

As if you don't do equally annoying things, Slarty. Any way, the worst thing is that you wouldn't even know what you're missing out on. I'd never really considered that before. Overall, personalization isn't a huge evil, as it can be useful. But I think we could all live without it. For the record I'm considering a switch to the web-browser "Duckduckgo".

I found this talk to be very interesting: GOOGLE AND ETC TAILOR YOUR SEARCH RESULTS TO YOU

I'm doing grad school in Ecology, or as they call it, Environmental Science. That name sucks by the way, as we already have a problem with people equating ecology with environmentalism, and now my school has made it worse And SoT, I have no intention of taking that long to finish. I've picked questions that are answerable in short order. In other words juicy but low hanging plums.

Yes, but that outcome is dependant on your party being positioned so they can kill him immediately after his wards go down. And also, I thought the golems were indestructible until his ward goes down. If that's the case you would have to deal with them too.

Well, it was actually an elixir, not a potion. So he would get a lot of extra rounds, which might have been enough for the guards to flood into the room, or for him to get to the secret exit which we all know is there somewhere.

There's an invulnerability potion in Hawthorne's room. I bet he wished he'd brought it with him.

Well yeah, life may or may not be composed of cell-like things. But I'm not an astrobiologist, so I have no idea what the alternatives are. By the way, has anyone ever done a poll to see what fields of science the spidweb members are either working in, or know the most about. I have a feeling that Math and Physics would top that poll.

Originally Posted By: Kelandon However, I suppose to know about the probabilities of complex life at all (say, multicellular life), we'd have to look at a mass extinction that wiped out all multicellular life and see what came about after such a thing. I'm not sure that there's ever been anything so extensive that we know anything about. The vast, vast majority of life on this planet is unicellular. And really, multicellular beings are just consortiums of single cells working together, like an ant colony, but much more specialized. We could therefore expect, based on that, that life out there should, by and large, be single celled, or single something any way. That being said, it's also likely that if life exists, there will be complex life-forms, meaning that there will be things with more parts, or more ways to move, (or whatever) than other life-forms on some newly discovered planet. Because, if evolution always starts with simple things, then there really is nowhere for the statistical average (complexity) to move but up. But just where that average moves, as you said, depends on the environment that exists: other life forms, gravity level, solar radiation, and whatever else. Evolution is only progressive in the sense that existing lineages of species see increases in the number of adaptations that fit them to their environment. Progressive increases in morphological complexity is expected only if it benefits a lineage; similarly, increased brain size is expected only if it is beneficial to a lineage. There is no ladder in evolution moving from the simple to THE US (humans). If we use an animal's definition of progress we see that lineages do progress, but like I said, the progress is towards things useful to them.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Besides even at the 90% cap it's easy to have two characters both get mental effects that keep them out of combat. But having two priests helps if only one gets hit. Adze-Haakai's terror area effect is where it happened to me. The dumb fighters both resisted. I just sat my mage back and spammed him with arcane blow, while my priest healed and unshackled a fighters mind. That fighter would then charge back at the demon and immediately get scared and run away. I found demon-slayer next to useless in this fight.

Yeah, you're right Jim, we need a working definition for intelligence. On the one hand, every species is a professional at whatever they do to survive—amateurs need not apply—but on the other hand, humans are really good at a lot of things that are absent or rare in the rest of life as a whole. But maybe that's because we choose what variables to measure. What truly makes humans unique on this planet is the fact that we can change our niche so readily. That is, we can change how and where we live without evolving. No other live form can do this so readily.

Originally Posted By: Actaeon I suppose, in order to calculate the probability of complex life, we'd need to better understand that causes of our own Cambrian explosion. The likelihood goes up if, in fact, early evolution can be spurred by the combination of simple life forms. (Another question that occurs to me is whether Earth is really as ideal for life if we think it is... might there be planets that would not have produced so many mass extinctions?) The Cambrian explosion, like many major upticks in speciation, occurred after a mass extinction, of which there has been 5, and perhaps now an ongoing 6th. (Mass extinctions are events in which large percentages of the Earths species are driven to extinction in a short period of time—a few million years or less). Species exists as groups of act-alikes and look-alikes because natural selection, most of time, punished innovation. No two species can occupy the same niche, that is, they can't live in exactly the same way, or require exactly the same resources. This is a well known principle called competitive exclusion. What happens after a mass extinction is a lot of niches open up, i.e., a lot of ways of life are open. Thus, natural selection no longer punished individuals that vary greatly from the species mould they came from. Hence, we get large scale speciation among the surviving taxa—for example mammals after the extinction of the dinosaurs. But it's important to note that the adaptive radiations that occur after a mass extinction just return the overall level of biodiversity (slowly) to what it was before the extinction event. Interestingly, as I alluded to earlier, many scientist believe we are currently in the midst of a 6th mass extinction. It will be interesting to see just how different life looks on this planet in the future.

Anyone have the dialogue for the auto-kill after assassinating Hawthorne? That must be amusing.

So does Erika warn you that 4 isn't enough to return?