Student of Trinity

Have you talked to your psychiatrist about this? If it's stress-related, which it sounds as though it might well be, then a psychiatrist ought to be able to help. Can you make an appointment soon? The day off might really help, too. If you're under a lot of stress, a break is supposed to be really good, if you really take a break from whatever's bothering you. So getting right away from it for a whole day might help you make it through until you can get some real help.

Hey, go see a doctor. Seriously. This doesn't sound like one of those random aches and pains that goes away with two aspirins. Most likely there's something that can be done. Why waste any more time?

Interesting; I hadn't heard that theory before. The more familiar one is that 'wine' in the New Testament simply meant unfermented grape juice. I've never been able to see any remotely plausible reason to believe that, other than the prior assumption that drinking alcohol is wicked, so Jesus could not possibly have done it. The idea seems unlikely even simply within the text, however, because the references to Jesus as a wine-drinker are clearly meant to be pejorative. His opponents held it against him that he drank wine at parties. Why would it be an accusation, if the wine was non-alcoholic?

Well, the gospels do explicitly mention his reputation as a drinker, and not to deny it. But wine was evidently his drink. He probably never tasted beer.

Quid is neuter.

Wow. I haven't heard anyone say 'full quid' in about thirty-five years. I'd forgotten the expression entirely. It's like a verbal madeleine. All these memories come back.

Gin smells of juniper, and when my brother and I were small, we used to crawl through the mazy spaces under juniper bushes around my parents' cottage, looking for rabbits. So I like gin. Straight gin also reminds me of doctors' offices and needles, though. The alcohol is pretty medicinal. So I don't really like martinis, but gin and tonic is nice.

Yeah, most wine is actually not sweet at all. The yeast eats up most of the sugar. One issue is simply what grapes are made into juice. The North American standard purple Welch's grape juice is made from Concord grapes, I believe. I understand you can make wine out of them, but they're not one of the dozen or so standard varietals for wine. If you find you appreciate a better class of grape juice, you might find you really like wine. Alcohol is a great solvent for aromas.

One of my comments on the poll was that for most people it probably isn't a phenomenon at all, in the sense that it's just not on their radar. If anyone finds it hard to see how that could be true, except by some kind of self-deceiving pretense, then I'm afraid that's the point: it's intuitively hard for most people to see how gender identity could be anything but obvious, except by some kind of self-deceiving pretense. I think that's kind of the whole deal. Discussing gender identity is like a dialog between the color-blind and the tone-deaf. That's why I find the neuropsychology angle most helpful. Color blindness and tone deafness are useful touchstones. There are a zillion ways in which perception is filtered for all of us, and assumptions are hardwired. Seeing gender identity and sexual orientation as examples of this very general fact seems to me to defuse the whole issue. Brains are complicated, but people exist. Okay; fine.

Yes, actually I was just thinking that. In particular, thinking about just where gender identity might really lie, on the spectrum between height and salesmanship, I figured that the answer might well depend on social context, because gender identity means different things in different cultures. It may also depend on the individual, though. Character is the limit of culture as N goes to one.

If it helps any, what I thought the question was probably getting at was whether or not a person can change their gender identity if they try. This is a subtle issue, of course, since people can certainly pretend to have a different gender, and people can sometimes pretend things without realizing that they're only pretending. On the one hand, with some things, pretending is being; If you pretend well enough to be a great salesperson, then you really are one. On the other hand you can't pretend to be eight inches taller. Gender identity clearly falls somewhere between those two extremes, and the question about whether one can change gender identity by trying is the question of exactly where between them it falls: closer to height, or to salesmanship. To me, this is precisely the right question, so 'can one change gender identity by trying' seems like a good way to phrase the question.

@Miramor: I thought about this one a bit, too, but my feeling was that it wasn't up to me to decide how much my friend was willing to tolerate. If they wanted this job, then that was their call, and I'd help them as much as I legitimately could, to get it. If I thought they might not know the job environment, I guess I'd try to discuss it with them first, to see if they still wanted the job. But it's also worth bearing in mind that a lot of people change their attitudes when they meet a real person. Being transgender probably means counting on that a fair amount, at least for a lot of people. So my hypothetical friend would probably be willing to try a tougher-seeming environment than I might at first think. It would be their call, anyway.

Sure, but I'm pretty sure that all those instincts originate somewhere in the brain, as opposed to, say, the pancreas. This may be nitpicking, but it's relevant nitpicking. The fact that the brain is a material, biological organ, albeit of mysterious function, is why people can't just decide to be different from how they are. Nothing is 'all in your head', because everything is all in your head. So it's an unfortunate turn of phrase in this context.

A couple of questions seemed ambiguous to me. One mentioned 'perceived gender' but didn't say by whom perceived. Specifying the perceiver could easily reverse the question's answer. Another mentioned something being 'all in the head', but I found this a strange question. Most things are 'all in the head', in the sense that they're in your brain. So?

I can get grape juice bottled by vintners here, and it's very good, but it isn't really much like wine. Most wines aren't nearly that sweet, and the ones that are, are normally concentrated in some bizarre way (like deliberately letting the grapes shrivel, or even freeze) to make quite a different kind of elixir. In the early fall we get new wine, that starts out as grape juice and slowly turns to cloudy, slightly fizzy wine in your fridge. Do not leave a closed jug on the counter and go away for a weekend. It will blow up all over your kitchen.

I tried doing something like that with a tabletop game once, too, but unfortunately I only hit on the idea when it was really too late in my life for such things. First there was moving a lot and demanding jobs, then family. My scheme incorporated leveling of the world. That is, the world had an onion-like structure, of successive layers of reality. You had to find the secret portals that would take you further in, where everything was higher level, but you could also advance to higher levels, too. Finding ways to pipe the power of inner layers out to outer ones, through personal mini-portals, was going to be one of the main campaign maguffins. In the center lived the gods, who were really just the people who had made it in that far. Ultimately you could try to join them. Or destroy them. It was going to be a campaign in which all the gods were bad.

Well, you have to kind of read between the lines.

That's what I was asking for. That's all it would have taken. Grumble.

Exactly. If there were unambiguous facts laid down by an honest-broker narrator, I would grant Nalyd's contention that you have to accept the background world, and consider your PC's experience to be exceptional. But this is why I called Shaper competence a Big Lie. What you see as background knowledge is mostly from Shapers themselves or people heavily indoctrinated by Shapers, either in dialog, or as stuff that your character learned in a Shaper school. You can choose not to notice this or worry about it, and take all that stuff as gospel because the game told you it was true. In fact, though, it wasn't the game that told you. It was some Shaper in the game. There's a layer there.

Fact is, demand for our posting is exceeding our ability to make it, which means we're running very low on supply. We will therefore be forced to add water to our product. This will produce a lower content content, but maintain the same fine quality you've come to expect.

Let me tell you this as a friend. It's the cravat.

We normally don't bother with that. If you've got some private data there, you can delete it yourself. Ciao.

That's one of my main arguments: nobody in charge even comments on the absurdity. A ridiculously high rate of serious failure is considered routine. That's exactly what institutionalized incompetence is all about. So by 'because game', you mean that you assume there are many nicer places in the game world, and the PC just doesn't see them. This could have been put more clearly. Anyway, it's merely speculation on your part. You can speculate as you wish, but that's not an argument. The speculation part of my scenario is every bit as valid as yours. The non-speculation part of mine is a better fit with what you actually see. This seems to use unfamiliar definitions of 'competent' and 'reliable'.

You're supposed to be able to complete the whole game using stealth. You'll be too weak for some combats, but that's the point: you're using stealth instead. Somehow Jeff set himself that as a design challenge. I don't know how many people actually play the games that way. It doesn't seem to have been popular even as an Iron Man run.

Whistle blast, free kick, play on. No big deal. Summary for the TV audience: These boards are a little more formal than some, because we're not just a free association of fans. Jeff Vogel pays for the hosting, as part of his online marketing. Say what you want, as long as it's within the CoC, but please have something to say.