Actaeon

I should really lay off the excessive links. I'll just go with a couple of my favorites so far this summer and leave it at that. Lightning

Originally Posted By: waterplant A librarian showing you his/her witty side - you must be a favoured borrower. She's cute, too.

Originally Posted By: Shadowcat The only one of my favourites that isn't one of the immediately obvious ones is "The Taming of the Shrew". It gets bonus points for the awesome movie with Richard Burton. It's a good one. And "Ten Things I Hate About You" isn't half bad, either. I didn't select it, myself, because I thought going and naming my cat Katherine was enough.

Surely we could curb population growth on the reproduction end and avoid resorting to outright culling. I hear the US wouldn't even be replacing itself without immigration. And, if we're going to try the flipside of Darwinism, why not make it interesting? Ship felons off to the moon Australia style. Distribute firearms during Twilight-based arguments. Create an evil twin agency for the UN...

It's long, repetative, and has very little continuity. It ends oddly. It's really not for everyone. The other day, I had a librarian tell me "I used to call it 1000 years of solitude, it was so long."

Finished "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and loved it. I'll get around to reading the somewhat derivitive "House of Spirits" sometime soon. In the mean time, I'm on "Peace Like A River" and moving into "The Road" sometimes soon. To offset the heavy duty stuff, I've mixed in some occasional Carl Hiaasen and Jim Butcher. It's all be very enjoyable. I suppose I'll slow down when I return to school and am deprived of a room of $1 books a block away, but my list is long enough to sustain me through much of the fall. I gave up on Martin. I used to think willingness to kill off main characters was a sign of character in an author, but the man takes it too far. Besides, Feast for Crows was tolerable at best and Dance with Dragons is likely to be another decade. Edit: But hey! Wheel of Time's looking worthwhile again. New book in Novemeber and my hopes are high.

Richard III and Hamlet were blantant rip offs of "The Lion King". The Bard tried to hide it with flowery language, but I could see what he was up to.

Three choices? I dislike being made to choose between Julius Caesar and Richard III. Anyway, I continue to assert that Romeo and Juliet, if viewed as a tragedy and not as a modern romance, is an underrated play. With youth and blind love as a tragic flaw, several interesting side characters, and some great soliloquies, it doesn't deserve the rap it sometimes gets. Other tragedies don't manage to sell me on the protagonist. I know several people who love Othello, but I'm afraid I spent the whole time wondering how the man could be so easily mislead. It's essentially the same ruse as "Much Ado About Nothing", but without the happy ending or the snarky secondary characters. All that being said, I've only read a baker's dozen of his plays, and seen less, so my opinions may be ill informed and inherantly meaningless.

Originally Posted By: Means and Ends Committee He doesn't think they'll ever completely displace everything local, but he does think that some local businesses are dying breeds. Not being sentimental about mom and pop shops, he's fairly okay with it. Fair enough, although I'm curious which you think are dying breeds and what forms might stand. For myself, sentimentality is only, say, 40% of it. I like my money staying in the community and helping keep my own head above water. I also like it when the proprietor of the movie theater trusts me to pay him later when I forget my wallet. Sometimes, not having to deal with a long chain of command helps get things done. Of course, I concede that chains have the benefit of efficiency and mass production, and are generally cheaper. Originally Posted By: Dantius Even if fusion is infeasible, by the time we deplete all resources available on earth (which will take many thousands of years even assuming maximum projected growth), we should at least be advanced enough to mine the other rocky planets in the solar system, and after that there's always the asteroid belt... I hate to sound like a complete hippie, but do you really think continued mining is the answer? Extraction, transportation... It's quite the endeavor, given the abundance of renewable resources on earth. I think someone already mentioned this, but solar's improving rapidly. The raw forces of the sun and the planet, if harnessed, would more than take care of all our needs with a lot less hassle than mining. If we're going to bank on vast improvement in technology, why not there? Myself, I suspect that we'll run oil into the ground and leave ourselves without enough energy to manufacture the necessary technology to move forward. I don't know of that's optimistic or pessimistic, in the long run.

Originally Posted By: Master1 Originally Posted By: Actaeon OR it, like most words, has more than one definition. My dictionary has four, actually. Your dictionary has a whopping four definitions? Nice! Four for "sky", as I imagine you were aware. I was honestly surprised there weren't more. It's an unabridged Websters of over 2500 pages. I guess I should keep looking for an Oxford edition.

Last night, as I was standing on a hundred year old rooftop looking down at my moderately sleepy burg of 6,000 souls, a friend of mine had the gall to tell me "It won't remain little old Carbondale for much longer". I asked him to defend his hypothesis, as we've managed to weather the world pretty well so far, but despite his lack of a solid come back, it got me thinking. You folks are from all over, true, but if you live in anything much bigger than a single zip code, it's likely that your town is filled with the same chain stores, restaurants, and so on that I see at school. Well, maybe not in Europe so much, but still. I see people from opposite coasts chat about their favorite restaurants. It's a strange, brave new world for me, and I'm not sure I like it. So my question, with much lead up, is this: Is globalization inevitable? I don't just mean in my specific case. It's a term with a lot more to it than the proliferation of certain types of businesses, practices, or even ideologies. But I see very little local flair like the towns I visited in Italy. Perhaps I'm in a cynical mood at the moment, spouting about cultural appropriation and big business like the liberal I am, but I'd just like to know. Where are we headed? (Do you think?)

OR it, like most words, has more than one definition. My dictionary has four, actually. It can certainly mean "atmosphere", a fairly specific and concrete term which jives with our modern understanding of geology and meteorology. We inhabit the sky, under this definition. It can also refer to the more abstract and poetic concept of the unreachable space above us. It needn't refer to that atmosphere, but much less or much more. Under such a definition, you cannot be "in" the sky. It's the limitless space above you, away from the ground. Both are correct interpretations, just as "orange" can refer to both a color and a fruit. The same word covers two related, but distinct, concepts. Edit: I chose not to include the dictionary definitions. All that would do is lead to an argument about the term "heavens", which might pull theology into an already unnecessarily polarized argument.

He has been in the past, though. For an excuse, I don't think a perma-ban is necessary. I hadn't heard about the crack-down. Guess it makes sense, though. Things used to get pretty heated. What's the word on science and philosophy? That was always provided a nice backbone of only moderately outraged discussion.

I remember all of those save the Club of All. And Polaris. And Shadow Vale. And I'm quite sure that the RPGers cannot be blamed for the decline of this board or any other associated boards. I see no mutual exclusivity there. If there was a demand for discussions like those of yore, there is no reason they could not take place in addition to any other activity. Unless you're Alec, TM, or the like (as a ban rather excuses you from posting), the blame is yours, and mine, and the rest of this community's. If, indeed, you consider there to be a problem at all. It is summer in the Northern Hemisphere, after all. I'm going back outside.

Which allows us to arbitrarily point fingers. I'll start with Slarty, since he's so eager to point them elsewhere.

Originally Posted By: Fractal I've never met someone who knew of SW. Then again, this is Utah... Yeah. Colorado Western Slope, myself. That could have something to do with it. I bet your chances are better in Seattle.

That is a bit sad. The closest I got was a few days ago, when a friend of my actually asked me "Have you ever heard of a game called Avernum 6?"

So, I've been around long enough to know about the Spiderweb map, but I realized I don't have a clue how many people actually play the games. Does Jeff ever put out raw data on the subject? Does Aran have a bot for that? Are there places where someone might actually lean over your shoulder and say "Oh, hey, Avernum", or must such an eventuality be artificially formed?

Congrats on a good run, Diki. Hope your post-mod life is as capable and fulfilling.

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity ETA spring 2011. Looks like Jeff's taking a few extra months to get a new series off the ground. Giving those of us with Macs just enough time to get nostalgic and replay his old games several times. Would it be sacrilege to start with Geneforge?

Originally Posted By: Master1 I'm well aware of Nalyd's gimmick, as well as most of those by people in the Geneforge 5 and General threads (including Artie). And what about those of us without gimmicks? How will we be remembered? Edit: Is editing almost every post a gimmick? I hope not.

Perhaps I'm simply close minded, but the more science moves toward chaos theory and the like, the more I appreciate Einstein's unyielding determinism. From my perspective, there is something inherently incongruous about disproving determinism scientifically, since science is based on experimentation, which in turn relies on the presumption that the same conditions will produce the same result. You're an intelligent bunch. What am I missing here?

Having spent a good year in my little Tchaikovsky/Paul Simon/Norah Jones shell, I've been encouraged to expand my horizons. Consequently, I've been looking into various modernish female artists, from Enya to Dido to Vienna Teng.

I have decided to try out Stephen King, starting with "The Stand". I intend to complete it before returning to Boulder this fall, but have not made much headway so far.

That depends on whether you bought it or not. If you did, I'll let you going on believing it's the "whole" part they're advertising, or at least "roasted". If not, I can safely admit I suspect it's the "chicken" that's in question.