Goldengirl

That said, as Synergy proved a few years back with the Insidious Infiltrator, it is entirely possible and fun to go with the Infiltrator (= Agent) and dominate the game.

I finished Basso. The jokes weren't that funny, but I'm too culture-bound to truly appreciate them anyway. The explanations made sense, at least, of the jokes. Moreover, they provide as a good access for an explanation of cultural practices of joking in general and the social effects of play. I'm now reading Kerouac's Big Sur. I thought his earlier writing was good (and it was) but this prosaic picture of alcohol-inspired insanity and its heavy tolls is gripping.

More importantly for the Geneforge series (no offense Trenton) they have a lot of replay value. But seriously, don't just take our word for it. Try all the demos!

Waking up in the morning. How quaint.

Perhaps a poll would be a more efficient way of gathering data.

I don't recall that being a problem we had last time around.

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.