Callie

I am looking for at least ten players to play Lynaeus; you can find the rules here. To sign up, just post "REGISTER [YOUR NAME]". Please note that in order to play, you must be able to login daily for seven days. I will close registration on Friday, June 13th at 6:00 PM Pacific time (Saturday 1:00 AM GMT). If enough people sign up, the game will begin on June 13th at 9:00 PM Pacific time (Saturday 4:00 AM GMT). The game lasts seven days, so it will end on Friday, June 20th at 9:00 PM Pacific time (Saturday 4:00 AM GMT). Thanks for signing up!

I'll probably post a signup in a day or two, but I'm worried I won't have enough people due to the dearth of activity here lately. That's my biggest concern, but I remember Northern Isles became fairly complicated in later games, and *i had enough people to play.

Because I unfortunately have too much time on my hands this summer, I wish to moderate a game. I have proposed the game below; however, I am open to suggestions for other games to moderate. Please provide some constructive criticism - I really want to run a fun game for everybody! I have no idea if this is a kind of game people would play. Rules: Appendices

Avadon has quite a bit of companion interaction, but it's not voice-acted like Baldur's Gate. Carrying a party from one game to another makes the games difficult to balance and forces the next game to start at a higher level; all of Jeff's games start at level 1.

I am interested. (Now I understand what that map means. )

I've been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the third time (such a great show!). I've also been watching the spinoff Angel for the first time. IIRC, the last film I saw was Wolf of Wall Street back in January.

I've decided that I should worship the Surprise Gopher. Nobody knows what the doctrine of the Surprise Gopher is: that's part of the surprise. Someday, the Surprise Gopher will provide us with a doctrine. And we will be surprised.

I picked up a collection of Bertrand Russell's essays regarding religion; it's a good read.

I reluctantly sided with the pact. The nations of the pact are ultimately better off with the defense provided by Avadon, even though it provides that service in a terrible manner.

IIRC, the fluffy turtles were based on a plush toy owned by Almighty Doer of Stuff. They're mostly part of the sanity joke.

Wow, I played through the game forgoing the opportunity for so much loot. Shame on myself!

Ah yes, the interrogative pronoun. Those'll make great items of worship. All bow before our holy prophet Lilith!

Behold ye fellow Spiderwebbers, our once vibrant gods are no longer! Richard White has vanished into the galactic core. The Nine-Headed Cave Cow is spending His and Her kineness in a state of eternal facehooving. The Great Spider in the Sky no longer thinks you're cute. Cthulhu now has an adorable kitten named Samuel Longbottoms. Followers of Divine Lucre have caused Punctuated™ hyperinflation. Vahnatai creationists have dwindled due to the Great Ihrno schism. Anama temples are full of skribbane addicts. Chicken gods, yes the chicken gods, are no longer heard of! What gods shall we now exalt, o murderers of murderers? Half-Sicilian, half-Javan sausages? Eggplants with tails? Scorpius? Zoot-suit-donning dust mites? Shall we seek herds and believers? Or fellow creators? The fate of the gods rests in your hands; go forth and choose wisely.

I exclusively use my mouse for gaming; I use the trackpad for other general computer usage.

My main mode of transportation is a bicycle (even in the winter). I prefer my exercise, and a bicycle is much cheaper to operate than a car. I don't drink bottled water.* I recycle if a marked bin is conveniently located nearby. I never shower longer than eight minutes. I only keep the light on in the room I currently occupy. I avoid using printing paper, but will use the backsides if I'm allowed to. I suppose I'm more environmentally friendly than most, but admittedly my reasoning is more a matter of personal finance. I do care about the environment, but only to the extent that it aids humanity. *It really bothers me that some people exclusively drink bottled water. Bottled water in the U.S. is scarcely regulated, whereas tap water must be tested multiple times a day. Tap water doesn't fill natural bodies of water with plastic.

Yeah, that's definitely true. He's not as well-versed as other characters, although there are a few times early on that his lore is useful. On Buffy his portraits are not discussed to great detail, but on Angel the other characters admire his portrait of Cordelia and whatnot. I don't think that counts for the very reason you stated: he's a primary protagonist on that show. On another note, why does the cursor skip around whenever I use italics or boldface? Is there something wrong with my browser?

Yes: there is an organization in the Buffy universe called the Watcher's Council who's purpose is to supposedly guide vampire slayers. I didn't know whether "watcher" should be capitalized or not, sorry for the ambiguity.

1a is a yes because he's well known enough that prospective watchers write theses about him. He wears a designer coat and is frequently shirtless for no reason (Buffy gazes at him doing t'ai chi), so 5a is a yes as well. He's well-versed in lore and well-traveled: the US, most of Europe, Sri Lanka, China, and likely many places in between. He's shown reading La Nausée in its original language during season three and speaks fluent Tamil in one episode of Angel, so he gets 6a and 6b. He lives in a mansion (exterior shots are a Frank Lloyd Wright construction) and later in an upper class hotel. Granted, both buildings are abandoned somehow, so 7 is probably a no. Angel is a gifted artist, as demonstrated by the portraits he leaves on Buffy's pillow, so he gets 9a. Randomizer did not mention Angel, but on that show he gets 4 because of the Shanshu prophecy and 7b because of his awesome convertible. He gets 10 accordingly. He scores a 15 overall, or possibly 16. Spike, on the other hand, is a definite no.

For 12-pt. font, Courier requires about 51% more paper than Times and 37% more paper than Helvetica (Sentences per page: Courier - 30.6; Times - 46.4; Helvetica - 41.8). If all of America's printing paper is used for single-spaced Courier and switched to Times, that would save 12.1 million trees. Of course, my analysis earlier was the extreme example without paragraph breaks. In that case, Courier requires 41% more paper than Times and 33% more paper than Helvetica (Sentences per page: Courier - 30; Times - 42.3; Helvetica - 40). That's 10.4 million trees. Spaces hardly matter if paragraph breaks are included. I've been doing crude back-of-the-envelope calculations, though. I use Dvorak and find it much easier than Qwerty. I've managed to memorize the qwerty layout, so I can type at half the words per minute while having to use qwerty. The computers at my work let me change the layout, which is nice. On the other hand, my university computer lab allows no such convenience.

I did some quick googling and found that a typical single-spaced, 8.5" x 11" page contains 2700 characters. The average sentence length is supposedly (I was skeptical of the sources) 14.3 words at 5.1 characters per word. The spaces within the sentence and the period amount to another 14.3 characters. That amounts to 87.23 characters per sentence without the spacing in between sentences. Accordingly, one single-spaced page contains 30.60 sentences with one space after the period and 30.26 sentences with two spaces. Putting two spaces after the period uses 1.13% more paper. By comparison, double spacing uses 100% more paper than single spacing. A typical pine tree produces 80,500 sheets of paper (.67 m3, only about half the tree is useful paper pulp). Printing paper has a density of 800 kg/m3. The United States produces roughly 75 million tons of paper per year; 45% of that is recycled. 28% of paper is used for printing, which amounts to 21 million tons of paper per year, or 35.6 million trees. I couldn't find numbers on how many people put two spaces after the period, but my impression from googling is that most people don't. I'm going to use the unrepresentative percentage from this poll (16%). I also can't find a number for the average word content of a page (a flier has much less words than an essay, etc.). I'm going to assume for the sake of calculation that printed paper is mostly filled with words, regardless of spacing. Additionally, let's say that half of printed paper is double-spaced. If Americans stop putting two spaces after the period, they'll save 48,000 trees per year (.13% of the trees cut down for printing paper). I think it's more useful to reduce paper usage by using backsides, recycling, avoiding paper entirely, single-spacing, etc. Edit: Spaces hardly matter if paragraph breaks are included. And yes, I currently have way too much time on my hands.

I suppose I am of a limited number in that tendency then.

I think that "wavelength was measured by a spectrophotometer" really is better than "a spectrophotometer measured wavelength". The active voice nearly personifies the spectrophotometer. It's appropriate in fiction, but not as desirable in scientific writing. Technical papers are often intended to be skimmed through, so otherwise agreeable prose would prove distracting. As for the quality of writing, the English level in many scientific publications is indeed lacking. Most examples can be attributed to English being a second language, but even native speakers exhibit poor composition. I've seen egregious uses of diction, such as the use of the word "beastly" to describe the performance of a hollow fiber membrane reactor. Also, you win the unsellable bonus points for using the word "effulgent"! I've realized that I often do not split the infinitive due to my education in French. Verbs in the language are almost always initially presented in their infinitive form, so that somehow stuck in my English-speaking mind (language transfer).

Nope: I'm only 21.

That's true. I was more being facetious than anything. It would be difficult to make a meaningful poll without cluttering several pages with options, and I doubt anyone would take that poll. I was expecting a lighthearted discussion based on the poll; I think that's what I got. Also, I've been enlightened about spaces. It looks like I'm the only one who does that, but it's a hard habit to break.

That is an impressive length of post to write without capitalization. Congrats!