Goldengirl

Calendar'd. Hope that things take a turn for the better soon.

Most of your actions and words have no consequences. You are the Law, unreproachable. To become a Heart, basically just be as loyal as possible. Kill Gryffin, fight Miranda, disobey the Wayfarer when it seems important, etc. Tell Redbeard everything you can at the end. Killing Redbeard, if you choose that route, is very hard. You will absolutely need to do all of the loyalty quests for your companions. You will also want to avoid the Shaman class, since the type of damage they do doesn't affect Redbeard. Mental magic resistance is important, too; Redbeard has wicked terror effects.

I (for once in a very long time) have some money burning a hole in my pocket. I know that either last year or the year before, there was a November Sadness sale. I also know that for years prior it was the October Sadness sale. It was supposed to commemorate the launching of Exile: Escape from the Pit, if I recall. Regardless, though, is there going to be a November Sadness sale? Is it happening already and my perusal of the Spiderweb Software site missed it? Is it being delayed for Black Friday/Cyber Monday/December Sadness? Did the October Sadness sale happen already, in which case I'm short on luck? Did it get scrapped because of the lower prices on other platforms? If so, I'll have no sale whatsoever, which will only stoke my Sadness.

I'll be unable to attend that session, unfortunately. That said, can we get a calendar set up for future sessions?

This is me completely guessing, but I don't think that it's as easy to weaponize a disease as you seem to think it is. Especially one that isn't very contagious.

ISIS is far more interesting to me as a cause than it is as an effect. Turkey has authorized sending ground troops into Syria, ironically enough to protect the Kurds. The United States is building a new coalition of the willing to save the Iraqi people. All of this is going on seemingly without dissent, sometimes with fanfare and sometimes with the tacit consent of silence. Is there a reasonable justification for the United States and other Western powers to fight ISIS? If thwarting a genocide isn't a good enough reason, I'm not sure what is. That said, I'm still suspicious.

That actually deals with my concerns perfectly. Thanks, and I'll work on generating a character and all that.

I'm interested in this flexible commitment, but I personally don't like CalRef chat. Is it possible to use something else, say Skype or AIM?

This topic is spawned by two contradictory discussions that I feel needs to be addressed. As I've mentioned at other times, I'm a member of my college debate team. In a mock debate on campaign finance reform, we repeated the oft-held belief that the party core (which we estimated as about 40% Republicans, 40% Democrats) are set and that elections are decided by the remaining people in the center, who don't hold their political convictions as high. This argument seemed rote to me, just because it seems like common knowledge that politicians can't shake the basically held beliefs of voters. This also gets to the belief that talking about politics and such on the Internet doesn't actually change anyone's points of view, that everyone is just arguing beyond each other like two ships passing in the night. A message I got the other day shook this idea a little bit. It's from an old friend who graduated last year and who was my debate partner for a while. He personally thanked me for educating him about gender and race issues and helping him become critical of his privileged position in society. He joked that even he, as a white, straight male, was shocked by the amount of privilege his classmates are showing in law school. It was really heartwarming for me to see that I had made a difference, even if it was just at the individual level. The tension between these two ideas is fundamental. At the one hand, there's a belief that talk is cheap and that it can only do so much when politics is an issue. On the other, I have a personal example of someone changing fundamental beliefs through the discussions (and debates) that we had. I know that neither is true absolutely. People can change their minds, obviously, but it isn't often that they change their basic tenets of belief. I'm not interested in saying that either is true, nor even of nuancing all the specific situations in which one trumps the other. It's tautological to say that someone is more likely to carefully consider a friend's opinions than a pundit's. Rather, I'm interested in a different approach. How effective is it to try to make social/political/cultural changes from the bottom-up? Is talking sincerely and frankly with people about big topics like race, gender, economics, etc. an effective means of advocacy? Is micropolitical agency any good? I encourage vignettes and experiences more than broad sweeping statements of logic, though I welcome both. I'm more interested in seeing how this has played out in the real world than in theory. That said, I am certainly posing a theoretical question, and theory is needed to organize and contextualize examples into a narrative.

It's not (just) for economic purposes, though I certainly agree that the Internet is essential for those purposes. I'd argue, more so than phones used to be, though I don't have a lot of experience with that so I can't say for sure. The Internet is essential for civic participation. Print newspapers are dying out and increasingly inaccessible, so being an informed citizen requires the Internet for news. Political participation is less often manifest and more often digital these days. Petitions and forums for political discussions have moved in large part to the Internet; twitter has shown remarkable potential for political organization, as seen in the Egyptian protests of 2011. Of course, physical sit-ins, campaign offices, and other areas of civil society are still extremely viable options, though often used in tandem with the Internet. All in all, we see an increasing digital creep as a foundation for political life. And in any vibrant and functioning political democracy, participation in political life is a right that must be held sacrosanct.

Why shouldn't the Internet be considered a right?

I don't know the process either, but if it does involve taking a laptop apart, I'd stray away from that since you're not experienced. I tried taking mine apart after my coffee spill and I gave up in frustration. My buddy is in computer architecture and he says that whenever someone takes a laptop apart they usually end up with an extra screw or two.

Personally, I just think that it shows the irrelevance of certain questions in philosophy. I am focusing my gaze here on the question of free will.

I'd recommend getting a heating pad, especially given how much you use it. Your computer will continue to work perfectly and not overheat after long sessions of use right up until the point that it doesn't. The nice thing I like about my cooling pad is that it's outlasted my laptop. My past laptop died due to an unfortunate incident with a cuppa coffee, but even despite that I can still use the same cooling pad on my new laptop.

What is the death sentence even supposed to do? Life in prison seems for all purposes like it would be an equally effective deterrent, especially since it's not like executions are a perfect deterrent anyway. It's clearly not useful for rehabilitation. So, the only thing left as I understand it is for its punitive nature, which life in prison can also accomplish. This isn't the Wild West with bandits hanging from gallows, and this isn't revolutionary France with its central guillotine. If anything establishes the deterrent factor, it's those kinds of semi-public executions. However, most people these days are executed far from society's gaze in a way that hardly produces a spectacle, ie in a sanitized room through lethal injection. So, we kill people because we want to really punish them. Forgive me if I'm unimpressed.

It used to be that two armies would meet up in a field or some other decently out of the way location. Heck, even castles were usually just self-contained forts rather than major urban centers. They would duke it out and then the winner would be declared, including a formal surrender (or else retreat). This is the kind of warfare that Carl Schmitt glorifies in his text the Concept of the Political, which is a pretty cool piece of political theory, at least from a historical perspective. A state is an organization that has the power to declare and wage war, according to his definition. War doesn't really happen at all like this anymore. Enemies are enemies to be absolutely destroyed, not merely defeated. Total war exists. Rules of war still attempt to guide conflict, but they are violated often and enforced loosely. The mere existence of nuclear weapons reifies this in an unfortunate way. Personally, I think that a world without nuclear weapons is desirable. However, I do not think it is one that we can achieve. In that case, we have a historical record that no two countries with nuclear armaments have gone to war with each other. Nuclear weaponry is a certain means of guaranteeing sovereignty, and in great enough proportion, even of establishing hegemony. I disagree that this is like the second amendment argument. People can be disarmed easily and voluntarily. The argument I'm making is more akin to saying that it would be unwise for South Korea to disband its military.

I disagree. Historically, the only case in which nuclear weapons have been used has been when only one (or a few) states have had them. There is a direct relationship between the number of nuclear armed countries and their usage. That said, a big part of that has been moving to the use of computer generated models for testing nuclear weapons. There is a myth that the United States is the only country that used the nuclear bomb in anger. There's a wonderful article out there by Masahide Kato about how the vast majority of nuclear bombs that have been dropped in "tests" have been dropped on the 'fourth world' - which is to say, the lands of indigenous and native people. Nuclear war isn't a mythic end, it's a lived reality.

I don't have the time to write an extensive analysis, but I think Pandora's box is opened irrevocably in the context of nuclear weapons. Thus, I think the best answer to them is to say that everyone should have them, rather than the current asymmetrical usage that disproportionately allows for nuclear imperialism by the usual suspects. The ability for the equality of harm can guarantee a larger equality. That said, I think nuclear weapons shouldn't be used. I think one of the best ways to insure that is, paradoxically, having everyone have them.

Holy necromancy! (I want that phrase to ring properly in its rich irony, so please take a few moments to enjoy it.)

For the longest time I liked to make fun of reality TV shows and game shows and all that. However, my partner and I have been watching MasterChef lately and it's ridiculous how much I learn from that show in terms of cooking techniques, as well as how attached I get emotionally. Tears have been shed. The other show I've been watching, purely for nostalgia's sake, is Pokemon. Ash and the original crew wandering through Kanto. It's funny thinking the things that I didn't bat an eye at as a child (eg Brock's constant objectification of women) now seem so ethically repugnant to me.

Welcome and greetings! What's your favorite Spiderweb Software game? And, if I may ask, how did you hear of us all the way out in Bangladesh? We have a couple members from places outside the US, and I've always been curious how they hear about us.

Playing as humans is boring. A2 should introduce the possibility to play as Nephils, maybe even Sliths! And it would be nice to see the Surface actually in the games. Maybe that could be A3? The only real recommendation I'd have is to keep the Freehold, or else have another area like it that's a mostly independent group of people new to this generation. Avernum is supposed to be full of hardy, independent folk, so it makes sense, right?

I'm in.

I've relatively recently decided that my area of focus in history is going to be modern Chinese history when I go for my doctorate. I think that explains some of the class choices I've made for this semester. Chinese 101 - I assume this will teach me Mandarin. Historical Research and Methods - this is a giant historiography course that is a prerequisite for my department's capstone program, which is a semester-long culminating project for your major. For history, it's a narrow research focus on a broad topic. For instance, last year the topic was genocide and mass killing. Relaxation Techniques - a freebie class that involves, at least sometimes, sleeping. For credit. Existentialism - because my school requires a philosophy course and yet almost exclusively only lets non-majors take survey classes. This was the best I could get without spending a semester trying to go from Heroclitus to Said. Intro to Holocaust and Genocide Studies - this is a new minor being offered at my school. The introductory course lit covers the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, the Khmer Rouge, and more, so it's trying to take a wide stance on the topic.

So, how many more users have to post their demographics before we have enough information for the Spiderweb Dating Service?