Goldengirl

This may be joking, but I think there's a lot more to this for a subset of posters that includes Iffy and me. We both joined with others as kids, essentially, and have grown up with this forum. I actually remember for a long time being proud of being able to hold my own with some really smart, grown-up people on these fora. Anyway, though, as time has gone on we've grown up to have more responsibilities and less free time to post (or game, for that matter) which has led to a decrease in activity. That, compounded with other things mentioned, can help explain it.

So, everyone likes compliments unless there's something that makes them not compliments? Your definition of compliments is tautological. Unfortunately, though, not everyone has the same qualifications of what counts as a compliment, so what may be a compliment to you could just be creepy and rude to someone else. This ties in with the discussion of whether or not the boss that ES is "flirting" with is actually flirting or not. I recommend paying attention to how she interacts with other people, as she may act that way with everyone.

Not really reading too much into it. As it turns out, women are an incredibly diverse set of individuals with a fluid set of characteristics, none of which are universal or essential, that make up a social group. They don't all have the same interests or the same reactions, just as much as men don't all like or dislike the same things, just as much as other non-binary genders don't all have the same preferences. I can think of plenty of examples where women I've known would much rather not be told that they're attractive in a given context. Don't exclude their experiences just because they're not what you expect.

I don't recall any such shamans, but it's been a long time since my last playthrough. I do, however, recall the segregated Nephar communities and the use of the word mule. With that in mind, I assent to the fact that there are historical, geographical, and cultural variations in the patters of relations between Nepharim and Nephilim. However, I'm going to hold to the general argument that the Nephar who tend to attain leadership of warrior states tend to do so due to their physical prowess, juxtaposed to the more magically-inclined groups which tend to be lead by Nephil. This especially seems to be the case with necromantic groups.

That's their biological definition. This specific biology affords them a social role of leadership, which may be attributed to their inclination to being better warriors. As a result of this tendency, they can be contrasted with the other upper echelon of Nephil warrior society, the magical class of priests, sorcerers, and necromancers. This suggests that in a sufficiently large Nephil society there is a culturally mandated dichotomy of physical strength and magical prowess as conflicting means for achieving power. I cannot recall any instances of the Nepharim being the chieftains in these larger societies, nor of Nepharim being able to cast magic. This may be more cultural than biological, however; due to their strength, they may not perceive any need or desire to be able to cast spells in combat.

I've been crossing some books off of the list that I've been meaning to read for a while now. Specifically, I recently finished The Great Gatsby and I'm now working on Hunger Games.

I mean, I feel like we can all relate to this thread.

Historically, I guess the answer is salty. Salt used to be used as a currency due to its value, especially its value as a preservative. The salt trade is one of the oldest trades of material goods. That said, I don't really know much about the history of human usage of sugar as a good, but I imagine it's shorter.

Why are these the two options? I'd rather go for some carrots and peanut butter, which doesn't really fit into either category. I ended up voting sugary, just because I also enjoy apples, which I guess are sweet.

Well, isn't hating towns one of the major themes of the Avernum games? The sharp contrast between the attempts to create security and order in the towns of Avernum and the fundamental chaos and wild magic of Exile is the source of many of the problems in the games. The philosophy of civilization, trying to establish a home and stability, is incompatible with the caves of Exile and with the figure of the exile, the wandering one with no home. This is highlighted by the juxtaposition between the Avernites, who try to establish a permanent and stable kingdom, and the Vahnatai, who allow the caves to have their discord and danger. And it is not the powers of order and civilization that conquer Exile and save it for the Kingdom of Avernum; the best resources of Avernum are often flummoxed, leaving the wandering adventurers who survey the frontier to save the civilization. These adventurers are helped buoyed by the hermits and those that reject the fundamental thesis of order and stability offered by towns, figures like Erike Redmark who were spurned multiple times by the politics of civilization as esoteric and eccentric and therefore dangerous. But these solutions are always temporary, and in the end always unsustainable as the hermits and adventurers who save Avernum themselves are destroyed or assimilated into its civilizing project. For instance, Solberg loses his edge and grittiness by the last game as he lives complacently in the Great Cave, and Starrus ascends to the throne not the warrior king his father was but a politician from birth. Even the towns themselves become the direct symbol of this process for a time, as the Council takes over the Kingdom for a time and creates a functional republic, miring Avernum in bitter politics that is not practical in the rough context of the imminent threats that loomed. In the end, the civilization and towns are shown to be unsustainable as the Kingdom cannot defend itself against the wild threats that always brimmed at the periphery (e.g. the Slithzerikai) and the danger of the Caves themselves, the Blight. The destruction of the towns as the fundamental thesis of Avernum, and the restoration of the philosophy of the exile who has no home, who has no stability, and who accepts chaos as the ordering of life, then, is the resolution of this conflict of forces at the end of the Avernum saga. The Surface may be civilized, but chaos reigns supreme in Exile. There may be true citizens on the Surface, but in the Caves there can only be exiles.

My life-affirming and cheerful studies this next semester will be the history of Atlantic slavery, the history of the Holocaust, Christian environmental ethics, and an independent study course with a professor that's geared towards publishing a paper on the history of intercollegiate debate.

re:Land issues with the legionnaires I highly recommend the book Debt by David Graeber. It's not a Roman history, really, but it does provide a broad sweep of fascinating anthropology and history behind debt relations and the way debt is viewed in a myriad of world cultures. I bring it up because that's where I'm drawing my analysis from on this issue. Graeber's analysis of this time period is that rich people have excess that they want to invest, while other people, rich and poor, have a need to borrow that wealth. When people can't repay their debts, they become debt peons. In the long run, this is extremely unstable for a society because it creates extreme wealth inequalities that can lead to class conflicts. Indeed, Graeber posits the fall of the Roman Republic as due to this very reason, as people were forced to sell their land in the chaos of the Second Punic War. Where the military enters into this equation, then, is as a stabilizing mechanism for social movement. The Roman military gave land to dedicated legionnaires, creating what Graeber calls the military-coinage-slavery-welfare complex. The Roman military conquers a territory, and in doing so enslaves the population to keep their economy powerful and harvest bullion for the maintenance of a coin economy whereby debt cycles could be abstracted. These coins, in the Roman treasury, were used to sustain a welfare system of "bread and circuses" and thereby placate the population. This managed to stave off the instability of pure debt cycles, but in the end it proved unsustainable and the complex had to be scrapped in favor of a more defensive military system. Using Graeber's analysis, the nature of the complex may very well have been the reason that the practices of using legions fell out of use. After the Romans had conquered enough, they were able to keep their system more or less functional and thus had no real incentive to keep conquering. Rather, they could afford to let their military wane as they merely defended their territory. I'll admit that I don't find this analysis particularly compelling in relation to this particular question, but it does provide some meta-historical rationale for the loss of Roman military tactics.

re:Economics I stand vindicated that my basic thesis, that "it's hard for governments to determine how much their stuff is worth" holds. Adding a little more on the education discussion, though, it's interesting because average lifetime earnings has a correlation with higher education, but it has a much higher correlation with the average lifetime earnings of a person's parents. These three things are all obviously related, as richer parents can afford to give their kids a better education, but it still casts a lot of doubt on the concept of social mobility. And on the military discussion, markets are amazingly efficient at establishing value. Without a market for a military (refer to my previous post as to why there can't be a market for national defense) then there really is no good way to establish the "value" of national defense, security, and such. Thus, we only have a series of methods for estimating, with full knowledge that these are only approximations but also with full knowledge that we have to have some sort of idea, even if it's just a ballpark figure. I don't think it's a stretch to say that colonialism is a failure of government, from the colonizers' point of view. I've not been in that position, and if anything I'm more the benefactor of colonial relations as an American citizen, but I believe that the historical records and modern testimony can back me up on this statement. Tying this argument in with colonialism, a lot of the issues with governments that have a adopt a strong executive are rooted in colonial issues. In (formally) decolonized parts of the world, the process of nation-building is exacerbating. Take Nigeria for example, which I'm going to take as a representative case for Africa. Of course, with any representation, there will be misrepresentation, so bear in mind this is not the perfect example, merely one I'm familiar with. Like most African countries, it has a colonial history in which borders were drawn more-or-less arbitrarily in regard to the actual divisions between existing polities. And, like many African countries, native Nigerians were not given much say in their own government; they were subjects of the British empire, not necessarily citizens. The old systems of government from pre-colonial Nigeria (though to call that area Nigeria before its colonization is problematic, since it's a term invented by the British government for the colony) were dissolved. After attaining independence from the British, the Nigerians had the difficult task of building a government from scratch. The important idea being that they could establish any type of government that they wanted (and indeed, they established a few different types after various periods of civil war and unrest). They failed, irrespective of the constitutional model, due to more historical reasons of being victims of imperialism. There are two pertinent counterexamples. The first was a settler colony in which the settlers had a large degree of self-government, namely the thirteen original colonies that later formed the United States. Their self-government was able to give them two important assets as they formed a national government under the Articles of Confederation and later the Federal Constitution. First, they retained previous forms of government, as colonial governments became state governments, to give themselves a sense of historical legitimacy. Second, they had a wealth of experienced statesmen who were able to lead the state. The second example was a colonized state in which the colonial subjects actually made up the bulk of the bureaucracy. As a British colony, India did not have the same degree of autonomy as the American colonies did, but they still were politically active. This experience in running a government and executing its roles and tasks proved invaluable in maintaining stability, and since Indians had had experience with political organizations such as the Muslim League or the National Congress that meant they were able to provide charismatic leaders. Indian independence neither began nor ended with Gandhi. These case studies essentially go to prove the point that there are a lot more issues in whether a country becomes a failed state or not than just their political systems.

There are actually some governments that do measure national assets like that, although they're understandably few. I recall that the United Kingdom has done that in the past, and I believe New Zealand was the other case study we looked at in my public finance class. The value of educating citizens actually isn't hard to calculate. An educated citizen tends to make a higher wage rate, which can be averaged and calculated. The private sector does a good job of doing this already through the labor market. However, Stareye's other example, the military, is the classic example of a public good. Public goods are goods that by definition are not consumed in use (one cannot "consume" national defense - it merely is) and cannot be restricted (if you live in a defended area, there's no way to prevent you from being defended). Any private market that tried to sell national defense would quickly fail; people would take advantage of it without paying, meaning that any private defense contractor for a country would quickly go out of business. That's why defense is in the public sphere. The government has the ability to force people to pay by taxation in order to prevent free riding. Since public goods by definition can't have a market, it's very hard to actually measure their economic worth (which is different than accounting cost). The way governments get around this is through two main means, both of which are problematic. The first is simply asking people through surveys and extrapolating from there, which gives people who have preferences that very from the status quo a strong incentive to lie in the extreme and skew results. For instance, if they want a small increase in military spending, but know that there are people who want the opposite, they'll lie and say they want a large increase in order to try and increase the average amount of spending. The other method is through revealed preferences, seeing how people's behavior reflects their preferences. This can work well for determining whether to build a road, which is also a public good, but I don't know of any means for evaluating revealed preferences for military defense. The result is that governments use a process that is guaranteed to be ineffective, but gets at the closest measure. If we do not have a private market for missiles or soldiers, we can do the next best thing and measure the opportunity costs (which are the economic costs) of the components. What else could the component parts of a military-grade rocket be used for, and how much do private markets value those? The reason that this is guaranteed to be an inaccurate measure is that a jet fighter is worth more to us than the metals, electronics, etc. that go into making it, but this method at least gets us a relatively close estimation. The issues only get more complicated when we realize that many of the markets for component markets are not, in themselves, efficient in most cases since there isn't perfect competition between firms to drive the costs down to the point where marginal cost is equal to demand. And that doesn't even touch the issues raised by externatlities, defined as costs that aren't included in the market price.. Without getting into any of the details of that, I'll just say that Stareye is basically right in saying that it's hard for governments to determine how much their stuff is worth.

re:Edgwyn I feel like the bulk of your argument has already been adequately addressed, so I'll just touch on the main points that are relevant to my scholar expertise. Your "bread and circuses" argument doesn't match my perception of reality on either side of the metaphor. In Rome, the "bread and circuses" practices occurred over a long period of time, and are more closely localized to the fall of the Republic. (Which wasn't really a fall for most of the subjects of Rome, as they remained equally divorced from the political process). I've never heard bread and circuses being a cause for the fall of the Republic, however, and while Roman history isn't my focus I've still done a far bit of studying there. The more prominent cause was the underlying class struggles between plebeian/patrician and Roman/non-Roman that spurred sporadic civil war from Marius and Sulla until the assent of Caesar Augustus. This class conflict was exacerbated by the consolidation of wealth in the hands of the owners of large plantations called latifundia, which itself was mostly a result of massive population displacement during Hannibal's Italy campaign in the Punic Wars. As for the collapse of the Roman Empire, it wasn't really a result of bad welfare policy either. Rather, in the east Roman Empire, they were unable to mobilize what had traditionally been a very diverse population against a series of determined religious offensives from the rest of Christendom in the Crusades or the Ottoman migrations pushed by the Persian Empire. The west Roman Empire likewise saw a collapse of its citizenry-military complex as it was unable to keep its military machine operating in the face of massive German migrations from central Europe. In both cases, the issues were exogenous to the actual political states of both societies. On the other side of your "bread and circuses" rhetoric, I don't see how this analysis, even were it true, could apply to the United States. I don't know what politicians are advocating that the population can do whatever it wants and just get handouts; moreover, I don't know any major elected official that's advocated that. FDR, often hailed as the father of the American welfare state, used mostly work-based programs. The 1995 Welfare Reforms, hailed by both Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton as a major victory, tied welfare payouts to seeking (and gaining) work. Working has been pretty commonly held as a virtue and necessity in American culture (what with ideas of the "workaholic" or the Protestant work ethic, etc.). The only major American historical figure I can think of who comes close to advocating these sorts of views was Charles Coughlin, and he was always merely an outside voice in the political process.

Bypassing all of this argumentation about whether direct democracy is or isn't a good idea, why is it that a financial crisis and the NSA leaks are signs that the United States is a failed government? Even granted the recent budget crisis and (very) recent dismal Congressional approval ratings, I see no reason to conclude that representative forms of government have utterly collapsed. I'm still befuddled by this belief that bankers are actually running the government. I have no idea what this talk of "bread and circuses" is about - debt rhetoric? Debt is an effective and useful tool for fiscal policymaking, and I'm not convinced by the latest apocalyptic rhetoric about federal debt levels being too high, which has been deployed as a veiled attack on small programs like Planned Parenthood. Moreover, who even are these "bad guys" that keep getting referenced?

To paint the sword as technically superior to the spear and a feat of martial technology is a little misleading. There are actually a multitude of advantages and disadvantages to each, some of which have already been brought up. Swords are expensive and technologically difficult to make; spears, in a rudimentary sense, can be easily constructed and replaced. In outfitting an army of conscripts without much training, the spear is clearly the more effective piece of technology. It is simple to teach (point-and-stab vs. more complicated strategies that vary based on the specific type of sword). Moreover, while there seems to be a general consensus in this thread so far that swords are the more efficient weapons for individuals in combat, spears have specific uses in groups where their excellence shines. The most classic (in two senses of the word) example is the ancient Greek phalanx, a tight group of soldiers whose job in combat was to stab repeatedly until their was no more stabbing to be done; contrast this with knights, who would charge into enemy ranks and do the hack-and-slash and then reposition themselves once more to repeat the process. Even in this context, though, a well-utilized group of soldiers with spears could be effective, as horses aren't too keen on charging blindly into a wall of spears. This tends to correlate with dominant ideological paradigms on equality within the military context. In ancient Greece, citizen-armies were deployed wherein each soldier was more or less equal to the others, at least in the military context. Knights, on the other hand, were the highly specialized products of years of training and were kept separate from the peasant-conscript army of regular soldiers. Greece had segments of society in which egalitarian principles were prominent (though definitely not all parts of society) and medieval European feudal systems were quasi-caste. One system is more conducive to the development of democratic systems of government than the other, clearly.

Welcome! Please leave your sanity at the door, things here make a lot more sense without it.

Tortuga.

I talked to a friend about a critical film class she took once and the result is that I can no longer merely enjoy movies; I dig into them far too deeply to merely enjoy them as they are. I suppose learning really is that contagious. Furthermore, I'm not going to give a lot of actual synopsis reviews, since that job has been done already, most likely far better than what I could do. As a result, read my criticisms with a grain of salt. Mama: This film explored a lot of interesting themes (how often do you see a film with feral children?) but I thought that it really failed to bring them to any satisfactory conclusion at the end, even though there was a major opportunity to do so. Moreover, I had a hard time taking the ghost seriously, as the animation made it seem more goofy than scary. This is one of those things were less is more, I think. Identity Thief: You know, this movie's probably great if you just want something light and humorous. The sex scene was a little more drawn out than I thought was necessary, but that's just a matter of taste. However, I felt pretty put off by Rebel Wilson's character, and this is something I noticed happen in another movie she was in (Pitch Perfect). Directors get a feel good emotion out of putting her in a movie, as if they're progressive and revolutionizing Hollywood. However, in both movies, she plays characters who are crass, boorish, and unrestrained, serving as foils to prim and proper characters. I don't think this is a particularly positive representation of fatness, although I conclude that I can only say so much on how beneficial her inclusion in media is, not being of the relevant body type. Oz the Great and Powerful: This was a decent movie, and it paid adequate homage to The Wizard of Oz for my tastes. I was disappointed that the wizard was not actually magical, but that's also just a matter of taste. How tied up the Wicked Witch got over the Wizard struck me as excessively unrealistic, however, and made a lot of the movie rather pointless to me. Star Trek Into Darkness: I mean, yeah, this was a good movie, but man was it melodramatic. It was excessively clear to me how Kirk was going to be saved, to point out the most glaring example. Yikes. The Great Gatsby: I actually really liked this movie, surprisingly. I haven't read the book yet, though I still fully intend to after I finish the book I'm reading now, but from what I heard the movie was pretty faithful. A lot of people I've talked to were critical about how modern the soundtrack was, but I thought that the soundtrack gave the perfect connotations for the party lifestyle in the movie. Having a bunch of jazz numbers would have been oddly stultifying, I think. World War Z: As far as zombie movies go, this was good. However, a third of the movie is set in Israel and sends a lot of unsettling messages about Israel and territory, flipping the image of Israel from occupier to provider. That kind of narrative may be what ultimately prevails and is worth propagating at some point in time, but I feel like there needs to a lot of change from the status quo and a lot of discussion before I can casually see media that presents ideas like that. We're the Millers: Pretty good, a light relaxing comedy. The protagonist gets to make a lot of witty remarks that people don't really respond to in the movie, fulfilling a specific type of fantasy that I think people have ("If only I could tell you what I really thought...") without their being any real ramifications. The writers were just lazy, though, in my opinion. The basic premise of the movie is that a bunch of people get together to pose as a family to smuggle drugs across the border. The parent figures in the movie have adequate motivations and back story, but I'm still not sure why or how two teenagers were able to leave their homes to go smuggle drugs on a drop of a hat. Other than those points, though, I thought this movie was basically as it should be.

The mountains where Ghaldring has his fortress in G5 are the Drypeak Mountains. In G4, there's also some discussion of the lands beyond the Turabi Gate in Illya Province being the area where Drypeak is. Additionally in this game, there's a Servile in Derenton Freehold that gives the story of the whole saga up to that point, including his time with the Takers at Drypeak. There are other notes about Geneforge 2 that I can't recall off the top of my head, but I can't recall them at the moment.

I won't be able to participate in the discussion (I'm too busy with finals, and really I shouldn't even be here) but for my benefit, can the results of the conversation be posted here so I can evaluate whether or not I want to join? Thanks in advance.

There's romance present in the Geneforge games, but it's always a back current. Consort Leela and Shaper Taygen in G5, Alwan and Miranda in G4 (hinted at more in G5), more minor NPC's and probably some major ones from the first three games. (I haven't actually played the first three games all the way through, just the demos). A big part of the usage of canisters is the alienation factor, which makes the characters that do use canisters incapable of attaching themselves to love like that.

Along the scientific base concerning Great Britain, and partially because I can't really fathom how history would change if Newton hadn't done his business, consider this scenario. Charles Babbage successfully constructs his difference machine no. 2 and submits the design and a working model to the British government.

You'd have to be irrational to think that.