Dikiyoba

Originally Posted By: Erasmus just saw a movie that claimed that the only way someone can bite himself (or herself) and draw blood is if s/he's insane. What do you think Myth or Truth? If people can cut, stab, and shoot themselves (with the intent to survive), then biting ought to be no problem. (Plus, people bit their tongues and such by accident hard enough to draw blood all the time, which definitely moves it into the "myth" category since it didn't make an exception for accidental bites.) Dikiyoba.

Once made, polls can't be edited, ever. If you make a mistake while making a poll, it stays that way. Dikiyoba.

Originally Posted By: Upon Mars Alwan is germanic for "good friend" Well, that's ironic, given the faction(s) Dikiyoba almost always joins.

Presumably, the algae in the glowing lichen are doing most of the oxygen production. Dikiyoba.

The links are updated (and the G2 map is added) in the forum header now. Thanks for keeping your maps available, Riibu, and sorry about the delay in getting them up. Dikiyoba.

Watch your language, Enraged Slith. "Retarded" is a slur that contributes to the continuing stigmatization of people with mental disorders and not appropriate to use here or, indeed, anywhere. Dikiyoba.

^ That is the best glass joke of all time. Dikiyoba.

Originally Posted By: Actaeon I had not seen a farewell topic or any such. What drew you away and how long were you gone? It was, er, not a voluntary absence, if you get what I'm hinting at. But that's in the past, so welcome back, MMXPERT. Dikiyoba.

Originally Posted By: Jerakeen Yes, I know Jeff's in Seattle, but close enough. That's like a 350-450 mile difference. Also, that spider looks like it's ready to catch and eat us, not kiss us and call us cute. However, it does live in a cave, and that's good enough for Dikiyoba. All hail the Great Spider in the Sky! You're cute!

Originally Posted By: Sylae Take the example below, which one does your eye tend to focus on? I personally focus on 2. 1 looks like gibberish, so my brain skips over it. *shrugs* Sylae, I respect your opinion, but you're only one person. If HTML characters annoy a bunch of people, then yes, perhaps we should put a stop to HTML characters and symbols in PDNs. But it would be unfair (not to mention impossible) to stop everyone from doing something just because it bothers one or two people. Dikiyoba doesn't mind an occasional symbols in PDNs, but a PDN that is one long string of symbols can be irritating.

Originally Posted By: MagusofStars What does the difficulty level do exactly? It seems that it makes monsters do more damage, but I don't know the mechanics of it, nor any other effects. Does it also affect monster health? To-hit? Evade? XP? Skill point gains upon level-up? The difficulty level basically acts as though monsters have a higher level. They are more likely to hit you, they do more damage when they hit you, they have more health, and they will be able to evade more of your attacks. However, your experience gain or skill points from leveling aren't effected. Quote: Also, if you change difficulty in the middle of the game, does it take effect immediately, only after you switch zones or will it only affect zones you haven't been to? It takes effect immediately, but sometimes it can be a little wonky--health often doesn't change properly, for instance. Once you switch zones, everything should be fine. Dikiyoba.

Hey, Thralni, it's been a long time. Planning to stick around for a while, or just dropping by? Dikiyoba.

Bye, Slarty. Dikiyoba is sad to see you go.

Well, SoT, I guess you see technological progress as orderly and predictable whereas I see it as unpredictable and incredibly situational. And that's as far as Dikiyoba can go in this discussion, since Dikiyoba knows so little about technology-ology.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Agricultural societies in the American Southwest also in spite of irrigation/canal systems still got wiped out during prolong drought periods. Dikiyoba thought the scientific consensus was that the societies weren't wiped out so much as dissolved, with the inhabitants moving off to find a better area, joining other tribes, or reverting to smaller, nomadic groups during drought periods.

Originally Posted By: Erasmus Is there something in those animals behavioral patterns that causes them to die of depression if left in one area for long (or anything else for that matter such as an extremely aggressive nature preventing them from being useful for plowing)? It's worth noting that the very similar European bison was never domesticated either, even though they were hunted for their meat, hides, and horns. Plus, American bison are a) huge and aggressive when spooked and, at the time, c) very, very wary of humans because humans were the top predator for adult bison. Not a good combination for a domestic animal. Also interesting: horses and donkeys weren't very useful for plowing or hauling loads until after the invention of the horse collar, which wasn't until thousands of years after the domestication of the horse. Oxen (that is, cattle) were typically used for plowing before then. Dikiyoba.

Originally Posted By: Dantius SoT would be more correct to state that the people of the Americas did not have large beasts of burden that they could domesticate- Right. Quote: One of the points that Diamond makes is that the people of Eurasia didn't get civilization because they were so much smarter than everybody else, but because they got lucky and got beasts of burden, crops, climates not hospitable to disease, and natural barriers. Any people that got those resources would have hit the world-historical jackpot and wound up ruling the place. Right. But that's not what SoT seems to be saying. (Also, dogs aren't very big, but they were used as beasts of burden, especially by Great Plains tribes. Edit: And in the Arctic, duh.) Dikiyoba.

Originally Posted By: Alorael Guns, Germs, and Steel goes into the details of why American civilizations didn't develop the way Eurasian civilizations did. There are bold hypotheses there I'm not qualified to reproduce, let alone critique. That might be a good thing. I've heard enough hearsay about Diamond having sloppy research methods (once as a tangent in a scientific paper) to be suspicious of his conclusions. --- Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity Nobody on the American continents had... horses. No definition of technological progress that relies on horses as a milestone can possibly be valid. They're a resource, not a technology. What, did the people of Europe and Asia go out and evolve the horse out of thin air? Dikiyoba.

Yay, congratulations on your post count milestone and creative milestone thread, Sylae. Dikiyoba.

Originally Posted By: The Ratt Using the metaphor of climbing a slippery slope... the situation just ends up with everyone pulling each other down and climbing over each other. You probably want the crabs in the bucket metaphor, not a slippery slope metaphor. Dikiyoba.

Originally Posted By: Dantius and that complaining that it does not march in lockstep to your ideology or desires is, indeed, a "first world problem" and you were wrong to deride SOT for suggesting that it was. No, I care that people are suffering in the US right now and that the government doesn't do everything it can do to stop it and sometimes does its best to encourage that suffering. (And that it engages in unjustified military conflicts and doesn't provide much foreign aid and so on, but those are different topics we haven't yet drifted to.) So what if other countries fail in the same way? I live in the US, not those other countries. There's not much I can do for people in those countries. But there is a lot I can do in the US. Whether I vote and who I vote for helps determine whether unemployed people get jobs or not, whether people get adequate health care or live in dehabilitating pain until it finally gets so bad they go to the emergency room and fall in debt, and whether people get to go a full month with plenty of food or whether they have to start skipping meals at the end of the month. Those are not trivial issues. I don't care how sustained progress towards solving them are made or who makes them. Democrats, Republicans, a complete rewrite of the constitution and government structure? All fine by me. Also, Dikiyoba's ficitious idealized government would turn every town into Dinosaur. That's just self-evident.

Originally Posted By: Excalibur Dantius isn't disagreeing with that, but rather, Diki's use of hyperbole. Hey, my response to SoT was sarcasm, not hyperbole. Nothing I said there was untrue or an exaggeration. Mostly I was responding to the idea that a government can be considered "competent and honest" while failing its own citizens so badly. Just because the US does better than many countries doesn't mean it's not falling short of its ideals. Honestly, I'm not even sure what Dantius' point is (except that parents in the US who don't vaccinate their children against deadly diseases are shamefully ignorant and misguided). Just because there are people hungry and sick in other countries isn't magically going to make the people hungry and sick in the US feel any better. Heck, we're a first world country. We can help ourselves and other countries at the exact same time. --- Originally Posted By: Lilith They just don't seem to trust anyone to actually implement it. The fact that a fair number of Republicans politicians or pundits have outright lied about universal healthcare (death panels, anyone?) might have something to do with that. Dikiyoba.

Originally Posted By: Dantius Due to the nature of the electoral college, Diki, there are vast swathes of the country where voting for national office is an exercise in futility. There's no more chance of Wyoming or Utah going for Obama than there is of Vermont or Illinois swinging for Romney, so if you're heading out to vote there, it's only for the purpose of state or local offices- and if you don't care about those, why bother? I am well aware of that, thank you. But even if the practical effect of a single vote is nil, it still has some symbolic effects. They may be small and unknowable, but they are there. (And they exist for local and state elections just as much--if not more--as for federal elections.) For instance, I grew up knowing that the registered voters in my town cared more about their convenience and money than they did the safety of myself and 450-odd children, since the measures that would authorize bonds to renovate the town's school buildings to ensure they would withstand a major earthquake (And it's Oregon I'm talking about. It's located right on the Ring of Fire. There are faults everywhere. Earthquakes happen. Mostly small, but one day there's going to be a big one. One of the small ones damaged the school cafeteria, forcing it to be turned into a storeroom and a new prefab-type building to be brought in to replace it.) failed every time they came up. That's a harsh lesson to teach a kid, and I'm sure it's not what any voter intended to say when they decided not to vote or decided to vote no, but it's what I learned. The voters who did come down to vote taught me that I mattered, that my peers mattered, that other people mattered, even if the yes-to-the-bond side lost. That's a symbolic reason to vote, even though there wasn't much practical reason to vote. Back to Randomizer's comment: if the Republicans are counting on people not to vote even though they aren't happy with what the Republicans are doing, then voting for another candidate, even if that candidate has no chance of winning, says "I am at least sort of paying attention, and I do not like what the Republicans are doing, and I want things to be done at least a little bit more like this instead." That's got to be a better gesture than not voting at all, because that just says, "I have already given up" or "I don't care. Do whatever you want." I don't see why anyone would want to go for the latter instead of the former. Dikiyoba isn't saying that anyone must vote instead of not voting (or convince you how to vote if you do decide to vote, at least not in this post), just that trying even when you can't reasonably expect to win still matters in small, subtle ways.

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity First World Problem: "My competent and honest government might not be the one I should have had!" Let's see... the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, no universal healthcare, and one of the presidential candidates just chose a VP candidate famous for wanting to decimate Medicare and food stamps. Yep. That's the hallmark of a competent and honest government. No problems there. Wealthy first world countries should always lock people up at the slightest provocation (usually for having too much melanin) and want their poorer citizens to suffer by forcing them to go without basic necessities. That's right. After all, we're not one of those commies or corrupt third world countries, so we must be fine. Dikiyoba.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Republicans are counting on... low voter turn out [...] I'm still trying to decide if it's worth the effort to vote Um, yes? Dikiyoba.