Goldengirl

I'd love to do one of these; I remember participating in the ones we did a few years ago that were Darkside Loyalist themed. That said, I'm just too busy to be able to devote a solid block of time to do something like this on AIM. If we followed the format we did last time (PM-based groups, play by post) I'd definitely be able to commit and play. Is there any interest in doing that?

The difference between the weapons you're citing, Harehunter, and guns is that guns primary purpose is to injure. All too often when they injure, they kill.

The author is dead, and this time it's actually true.

Please tell me you see the contradiction here.

Your implants should make that option appear two Thursdays before tomorrow.

If only I'd have known that before, I could have tailored the joke better. This is why we need an incredibly comprehensive beverage poll.

It's good to see that time has improved Dantius and aged him well, like a bottle of fine wine.

I can definitely agree that simple tends to be good, and I don't really much care how many new graphics are in the next Spiderweb game. To be honest, I don't even care if there are new graphics, per se. However, there is one graphic element that irked me relatively recent. In Avadon, there's a part where someone is bound in a stock for public ridicule. The graphics just have a regular person standing next to a graphic for a stock. The contradiction there was annoying enough for me to remember, obviously, but I think that also points out what I like in Spiderweb graphics. They help to illustrate the story, and so long as they do that without contradicting it in any way, I'm happy.

I can think of plenty mad historians, such as Foucault, Hegel, and Marx. Famous enough, I'd say!

My school does an in-between January term that's one class (or two, if the second one is a basic PE class) for an entire month. I chose to study linguistic anthropology, which is a 100 level course that's designed as an introduction to basic theory (the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, indexicality, pragmatics, performatives, etc.) and a few famous case studies. For spring semester, though, I'm taking... An independent study history course on the theory of history - looking at Marxist, post-modern, post-colonial, and feminist lens of analysis of history. Independent study means it's just me and the professor meeting up to talk every now and then, as well as writing papers; An introductory course on ballroom dancing; Meteorology, and its attendant lab; Public Finance; and Calculus I.

My counters aren't strong enough? Alright, fine, let me explain in detail what's problematic about what you're proposing. Nature needs to be allowed space to exist on its own, regardless of whether or not it's beneficial to humanity. To relegate the world to solely anthropocentric (people-centered) purposes condemns that possibility. We, as humanity, are not the center of the universe; life has existed long before us, and chances are life will continue long after we are gone. However, society has the unfortunate predisposition that human life is always the most valuable. We can see it encoded in our legal system. If one were to kill plants, there is rarely if ever a penalty, unless they belong to someone, and the same holds for animals. Other organisms, except perhaps some fungi, don't even get that benefit. Kill a human, though, and things get crazy; the concept of owning another human likewise has been expunged from the legal code. There are multiple consequences of thinking that non-human nature is something to be controlled by animals. First, let's talk about metaphors. When one wants to belittle someone, one route possible is to liken them to animals. This pattern extends to entire classes of people, as well. Fat people are likened to pigs, for instance. Speaking of slavery earlier, Africans and African-Americans have been likened to monkeys as a type of racial slur. From simple insults to serious slurs, comparing people to animals cognitively dehumanizes (literally) the people one may choose to attack in this manner. Once this dehumanization occurs, it's little difficulty to justify further abuse, such as further verbal abuse, physical violence, etc. This all ties into the anthropocentric frame of thought by that initial judgment that non-human nature is less than humanity, and moreover that people can decide who truly counts as "human" in the first place. However, there is no objective measure to why people are better than nature. Indeed, the dichotomy between people (or civilization, society, etc.) and nature is a false one to begin with! When does one separate from the other? The rubric that distinguishes the two and places a higher value on the one than the other, that is the anthropocentric viewpoint, and since it can define what is nature and what is humanity, it inherently holds the power to exclude people from the classification of humanity. Thus, any anthropocentric view will hold the potential to dehumanize others to terrible effect. Now, let's talk about the ecosystem itself. I already brought up desertification. I can bring up countless other examples of humanity destroying or contributing to the destruction of the ecosystem for their gain, only a handful of which would be climate change and the on-going mass extinction crisis. As a result of these crises, biodiversity is going down. What are the costs? Well, take for instance the example of a simple food chain. If you take one species out of it, it may survive or it may collapse entirely and bring other species with it; that's varies depending on whatever food chains we're discussing. Sometimes we may get lucky and the effects of an extinction are minimal; however, that cannot always be the case. These organisms that are dying off represent incalculable losses - potential cures for cancer, for instance. Even beyond just potential uses for these organisms to benefit humanity, though, they have their own intrinsic values that we should respect because life itself is sacred. We are all interdependent across the broad range of the ecosystem. The bacteria inside of our GI tract, the wide array of animals, plants, and fungi that we have domesticated, and more still are all examples of symbiotic relationships we maintain as a species. To value humanity as greater than the rest of nature may be impossible to avoid, but we must never forget to respect nature at the same time and give it its place - for we are nature, too. We are all a part of the circle of life.

A habitat for desert animals, plants, and other organisms. Desertification can occur naturally - that much is obvious. However, the current issue with expanding deserts, in the context of the Sahara, seems to be more an issue of poor water control due to competing interests between cities, agriculture, etc. over a limited supply of water.

Just because land isn't being used by humans doesn't mean it's being wasted. Just the opposite may be true, in fact.

Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) protest groups are common when fracking and the like are proposed for a community. The idea is admittedly less than what most environmentalists want - "fracking is fine! just don't do it HERE!" - but if such movements become widespread enough, they transform into Not In Anyone's Back Yard. Wind energy, solar energy, etc. are nice but cannot sustain us at their present level. I agree with Alorael that nuclear power is ultimately going to be the way to go. Fracking and like innovations aren't actually the great oil renaissance that they have been made out to be. Fracking can only reduce the cost of a barrel of oil to ~$80 before it's no longer profitable (cite: http://studies.aljazeera.net/en/reports/2012/08/201285105326812933.htm).

I always interpreted Athron's babies in a loose way contextually, such that they are her creations and precious to her, much the same way one might coo to a pet, "Oh! my baby!" Athron's babies, after all, come later.

Dragons and drakes are different species. Dragons are nearly extinct due to the Empire hunting them down, but there are abundant amounts of drakes. However, drakes may be conceptualized as smaller, dumber, less long-lived dragons.

I just finished Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. I'm now working on Keith Basso's Portraits of "The Whiteman" which is turning out to be very interesting. It's about linguistic representations of whites by the Apache tribe of Native Americans in the United States.

Chimps and humans share all but 1% of DNA, and we wouldn't really say that they're similar. I still side with serviles being their own species, originally Shaped. As for whether they love to serve, I'd say it's a propaganda tool. Some intelligent serviles, such as the scribes, rationally pose that they dislike working but it's all they know, as well as the fact that it's safe. The dumb serviles don't even know better. For them, to work is to live, and why wouldn't they love life? Therefore, from whatever instinctual network made life desirable, so to is work desirable. Or at least, that's how I'd explain the dumb serviles. Yes, smart and independent serviles started on Sucia, but those there were originally the loyal variety as well. There's no reason they'd be any different. Moreover, there are regular serviles, both intelligent and dumb, who defect to the Rebellion from the Shapers.

First of all, I agree precisely with what Kel said. That said, there were a few things you mentioned about Avadon in your critique that are worth defending. Specifically, you attack the repeated places, which I think are one of the biggest innovations that the game presents. In just about every Spiderweb game (haven't played them all all the way through, hence the qualifier) once you finish something in a region it's done and stays static. You get all your quests from the Bob, and then everything is happily ever after. Sure, in X3 there was some transformation as the plagues took their toll, but once you solved that province's plague then that region stayed unaffected. Avadon gets closer to a sense of realism as the areas are revisited and change occurs between missions. The problem, of course, doesn't go away, but it's a huge step towards increasing realism.

Goodbye Miramor! It was always a pleasure to see you around. Hopefully you'll return one day with a taste for animated, isometric games.

That's not really an issue. After a certain point, it will hold itself up, unless it gets hit by space debris and loses structural stability. The concept is simple to grasp, though hard to implement. Imagine yourself spinning around very fast with a length of rope that has a counterweight at the end, though that technically isn't necessary. As you spin, if you're going fast enough, the rope will pull out straight and level; as soon as you slow down, the rope falls back down. That's the basic idea behind a space elevator. The term 'elevator' is also misleading. It's not a giant Tower of Babel or anything like that. Rather, it would be a series of cables made of a very strong metal, probably nanocarbon. These cables would extend from the Equator far, far up into space to the point where they serve as their own counterweight to keep themselves taut. Thus, they don't need to be attached to anything.

The obvious problem with a space elevator (besides building the thing) is how to keep it from collapsing. Space debris is the great danger that no one really likes to talk about, because it pokes holes (in more than one way) in all sorts of great schemes. High speed flying trash from the astronauts of yesteryear may destroy the space elevator and create more trash. This compounds until you have the Kessler Syndrome and there's so much space debris it's unfeasible to enter space. Fortunately, magnets, lasers, nets, and all other sorts of odd mechanisms are being developed by NASA, Japan, and other entities to deal with the problem. Nothing is fool-safe, though. Another idea that has been floated around is setting up a space station on the Moon. A space elevator is probably a prerequisite to that, though, or to any serious staffed exploration of space. There are lots of issues with setting up a space station anywhere long term, though. Radiation, terraforming, energy, heat, long-term effects of zero gravity, and many hypothetical questions about health such as how sex and pregnancy would work (rather important for any attempts at colonization). Good luck getting someone up after them, though!

Not what I meant to say at all, though I still think it makes sense.

I don't want to commit to any RPG, unfortunately. I'm all down for an RP, but I was hoping that was all that would emerge from this discussion of what RP we should have next. That said, the concept itself sounds interesting, and I could even see a controlled RP working under the premise of having someone dictate the events of each island, so that there's someone leading the RP in that sense bit by bit. I'd do this, though just the RP part. My schedule just doesn't have the predictability or the flexibility for a cooperative RPG.

I've been dying to see OTR, being a Kerouac fanboy myself, but I've not had any chance. I've also heard that, regrettably, it's not that great of a movie, according to the critics. They've been wrong before, though. Films I've seen this past year: 21 Jump Street - Lighthearted, humorous, probably wouldn't watch it again. The Avengers - This was a good action movie that got around the problems of cliche plot and long exposition by having that in its prequel movies. Thus, it escaped the trappings of most superhero movies. Chernobyl Diaries - Generic horror. Meh. Men in Black 3 - This was a decent franchise, and the 60's novelty was cool for a little, but not that cool. Especially with the sci-fi lite apporach to time travel. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - Someone played this when we had nothing better to do. Decent action, terrible plot. The Watch - Funny, but not that funny. It would have been better without the marriage drama and the aliens. The Dark Knight Rises - This would have made a lot more sense if I had seen Batman Begins right beforehand, but I didn't. It was good, but the Dark Knight was still far better. Pitch Perfect - Funny and musical. Very funny, in fact, and one of my favorites from the year. Cloud Atlas - Rarely do I say this, but I liked the movie far more than the book. Things were different, sure, but I felt like a lot more was done to tie everything together meaningfully. The Hobbit - Holy hell, I can't imagine the extended edition of this. Great movie, but it took a while to get moving. Les Miserables - Some of the changes they made didn't make much sense to me, but I love all the hints to things they put in to the film that would only make sense if you'd seen the book. The very ending was a bit problematic for me, as they sing about peace while standing at a giant barricade with guns and swords in hand, but everything prior was amazing.