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I've been thinking lately about how many young people's first jobs are fast food or some other wage slave work. It teaches them to have an "employee mind set". Maybe, the first job is the best time to start being an entrepreneur. Maybe, instead of flipping burgers, they should start learning about business tax, financial planning, etc.
The following words are from the Reverend Otis Moss, Senior Pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois concerning President Obama’s recent public endorsement of Gay Marriage. My Brother: Tell your brethren who are part of your ministerial coalition to “live their faith and not legislate their faith” for the Constitution is designed to protect the rights of all. We must learn to be more than a one-issue community and seek the beloved community where we may not all agree, but we all recognize the fingerprint of the Divine upon all of humanity. There is no doubt people who are same-gender-loving occupy prominent places in the body of Christ. For the clergy to hide from true dialogue with quick dismissive claims devised from poor biblical scholarship is as sinful as unthoughtful acceptance of a theological position. When we make biblical claims without sound interpretation we run the risk of adopting a doctrinal position of deep conviction but devoid of love. Deep faith may resonate in our position, but it is the ethic of love that forces us to prayerfully reexamine our position. The question I believe we should pose to our congregations is, “Should all Americans have the same civil rights?” This is a radically different question than the one you raised with the ministers, “Does the church have the right to perform or not perform certain religious rites.” There is difference between rights and rites. We should never misconstrue rights designed to protect diverse individuals in a pluralistic society versus religious rites designed by faith communities to communicate a theological or doctrinal perspective. These two questions are answered in two fundamentally different arenas. One is answered in the arena of civic debate where the Constitution is the document of authority. The other is answered in the realm of ecclesiastical councils where theology, conscience and biblical mandates are the guiding ethos. I do not believe ecclesiastical councils are equipped to shape civic legislation nor are civic representatives equipped to shape religious rituals and doctrine. The institution of marriage is not under attack as a result of the President’s words. Marriage was under attack years ago by men who viewed women as property and children as trophies of sexual prowess. Marriage is under attack by low wages, high incarceration, unfair tax policy, unemployment, and lack of education. Marriage is under attack by clergy who proclaim monogamy yet think nothing of stepping outside the bonds of marriage to have multiple affairs with “preaching groupies.” Same-gender couples did not cause the high divorce rate, but our adolescent views of relationships and our inability as a community to come to grips with the ethic of love and commitment did. We still confuse sex with love and romance with commitment. My father, who is a veteran of the civil rights movement and retired pastor, eloquently stated the critical nature of this election when speaking to ministers this past week who claim they will pull support from the President as a result of his position. He stated, “Our Ancestors prayed for 389 years to place a person of color in the White House. They led over 200 slave revolts, fought in 11 wars, one being a civil war where over 600,000 people died. Our mothers fought and were killed for women’s suffrage, our grandparents were lynched for the civil rights bill of 1964 and the voting rights act of 1965…my father never had the opportunity to vote and I believe it is my sacred duty to pull the lever for every member of my family who was denied the right to vote. I will not allow narrow-minded ministers or regressive politicians the satisfaction of keeping me from my sacred right to vote to shape the future for my grandchildren.” “The institution of marriage is not under attack as a result of the President’s words.” Gay and lesbian citizens did not cause the economic crash, foreclosures, and attack upon health care. Poor under funded schools were not created because people desire equal protection under the law. We have much work to do as a community, and to claim the President of the United States must hold your theological position is absurd. He is President of the United States of America not the President of the Baptist convention or Bishop of the Sanctified or Holiness Church. He is called to protect the rights of Jew and Gentile, male and female, young and old, Gay and straight, black and white, Atheist and Agnostic. It should be noted the President offered no legislation, or executive order, or present an argument before the Supreme Court. He simply stated his personal conviction. If we dare steal away from the noise of this debate, we will realize as a church we are called to “Do justice, live mercy and walk humbly with God.” Gay people have never been the enemy; and when we use rhetoric to suggest they are the source of our problems we lie on God and cause tears to flow from the eyes of Christ. I am not asking you to change your position, but I am stating we must stay in dialogue and not allow our own personal emotional prejudices or doctrines to prevent us from seeing the possibilities of a beloved community. November is fast approaching, and the spirits of Ella Baker, Septima Clarke, Fannie Lou Hammer, Rosa Parks, A. Phillip Randolph, James Orange, Medgar Evers and Martin Luther, King Jr. stand in the balcony of heaven raising the question, “Will you do justice, live mercy and walk humbly with our God?” Emmitt Till and the four little girls who were assassinated in Alabama during worship did not die for a Sunday sermonic sound bite to show disdain for one group of God’s people. They were killed by an evil act enacted by men who believed in doctrine over love. We serve in ministry this day because of a man who believed in love over doctrine and died on a hill called Calvary in a dusty Palestinian community 2,000 years ago. Do not let the rhetoric of this debate keep you from the polls, my friend. Asking you to imagine a beloved community, your brother and friend, Otis Moss, III , Senior Pastor Trinity UCC
The idea of a vision deck is that it is a set of pictures, typically on card stock, which can be used to generate character ideas or setting ideas or plot ideas, etc. I was first introduced to the idea of the vision deck years ago when I played Everway. Here's an example. (please, if you're going to use this particular deck, then buy Everyway. Its a very cool game with many great ideas beside this one and well worth your money. This is posted here only as a reference (i.e.. 'fair use')). Note that the images are quite vague as to what is going on in them. This is deliberate so that they can be used as a launching point for brainstorming a story idea. Back when I was GMing Everway, I found that I could generate a great storyline for the night in about 5 minutes of real time. I'd shuffle through the cards and pick out about 5 of them that appealed to me for the night and then figure out a link between the cards. The players had lots of complements on the creativity and complexity of my stories. I owe a lot of that to the vision deck. I think a cool community project would be to create an open source version of this deck which is centered on Golarian themes. I know there are several great artists on these boards and many of them are looking to gain some experience and have offered to do drawings for board members for free. I think this creating this deck would be a note worthy community improvement project for the game. Thanks
I've been thinking that a collection of characters that you are actually playing in games (ie. not thought experiments) could be a valuable resource.
2.) What skills/feats/classes/spells/weapons are most popular? etc. So, I'd like it if this tread were dedicated to you posting your characters (again, the ones you actually play in games, not thought experiments). The more characters that get posted from the widest assortment of posters, the better. So, let's see what you've been playing.
What feats do you think shouldn't be feats, rather they should be freely accessible to everyone? Some on my list are 1.) Weapon Finesse and Agile Manuevers - as long as someone meets all the other pre reqs for these feats, they ought to get the affects of these feats for free 2.) Master Craftsman
3.) Monkey Lunge
4.) Dimensional Agility
5.) Adder Strike
6.) Ammo Drop
7.) Ankle Biter
8.) Blade Binder
9.) Blind-Fight
10.) Bludgeoner
11.) Bloody Assault
12.) Bloody Vengeance
13.) Body Shield
14.) Bounding Hammer
15.) Brutal Grappler
16.) Bull Rush chain
17.) Bullseye Shot
The list goes on In addition, all featss which require other feats as prereqs should be free if those other feats are already taken (and the other pre reqs are met).
One of the things that often isn't mentioned by fanbois of science is how hypothesis are developed. They require quite a lot of thinking about problems - that sort of thinking has got absolutely nothing to do with the scientific method (the scientific method is what you do to a hypothesis, how it grows into theories and laws).
Reading the high level party thread, I decided that there is probably quite a lot of guidance and lessons learned on this messageboard. Collectively, we've got centuries if not millenia of experience. So, what I'd like this thead to be is a place for people to post their guidance and words of wisdom regarding how to handle the most common (and least common) problems a GM faces when running a high level campaign. 1.) If the destination is somewhere like a cave or forest, it'll be difficult for someone to provide you an adequate description of the place - descriptive enough for teleport, greater to work. In such a place, being off even by a few feet would put you in a cave wall or a tree. That wouldn't kill you with Teleport, Greater, but it would prevent the spell from working. Even the mind of a person who has been there might not help enough unless the person being read has a high Int, studied the area specifically for the sake of teleporting to it, and is being read soon after being there.
(with respect to Michael Hayne for the first ten) 1. People generally pay their annual income taxes. 2. People generally don’t have spreadsheets in place of a soul. 3. People generally have to make their own breakfast, wipe their own asses, and drive themselves to work in a vehicle that’s cheaper than the mini bar on a corporate jet. 4. People can show their faces in public without the fear of being bludgeoned by custard pies. 5. People don’t usually consider themselves a native of the Dutch Antilles for tax purposes. 6. People don’t generally dump chemicals into their drinking water and sell their coworkers to Vietnam. 7. People generally don’t eat caviar out the anus of a Michelangelo statue for breakfast during an economic recession. 8. People generally don’t forget how many pieces of real estate they own. 9. People generally don’t purchase golden commodes in which to crap on their lunch breaks during an economic recession (see Meryl Lynch CEO). 10. People generally don’t refer to multinational, lifeless, amorphous engines of soul-sucking greed whose sole purpose is to downsize and shed hard-earned American jobs in order to tear apart the earth in the Third World and enslave its local populations as, well, people. 11. People can show you their birth certificates
Given that the Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined and given the sordid history of the federal government and health care scandals (Walter Reed, the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, MK Ultra, radiation experiments on US Soldiers, medical experiments on the mentally ill/mentally handicapped, the list goes on and on and on), shouldn't that be a red flag against putting this administration in control of what happens to our bodies?
I've been thinking about writing a big book of religion. It wouldn't be setting specific, rather it would be an attempt at a tool to help GMs include religion in more detail in their games. It'd cover the basics of course forms of religion (animatism vs. animism vs. polytheim vs. pantheism vs. deism vs. monotheism vs. atheism etc. even cargo cults) the difference between religion and superstition invisible forms of religion (ie. religion so tied into how a people live their lives that they don't even see it as religion) politics and religion (high religion vs. fringe religion vs. folk religion) and what happens when they clash different alignment systems cults and the benefits and responsibilities of belonging to them do gods exist in your world and does it matter whether they exist? faith magic - the sacred and the profane priests vs clerics (ie. making your Bard an evangelist or your Ranger a church ordained undead hunter without taking a Prestige Class) symbols and occult languages and religious mysteries (e.g. giving your Rogue follower of Mask some minor access to divine magic). etc. is there any interest in a book like this? Is there any particular topic you'd like to see covered?
Starbucks stood up for gay rights, and now the Nat'l Organization for Marriage is threatening them with a right-wing boycott in 55 countries. Can we get a ton more people to thank Starbucks than NOM is getting to boycott them? Sign our 'Thank You' card now. http://sumofus.org/campaigns/thank-starbucks/?sub=fb
Did anyone else note that it took forever for the media to acknowledge that Zimmerman is no more white than Obama is?
Regardless of who is guilty (and we won't know that until the trial, the fact is that none of us knows all the available evidence), it seems to me that the media was trying to slant the story in one direction (albeit covertly) from day one.
If you ever played Alpha Centauri (from Firaxis), do you remember the Data Pirates? These were a group of anarchist cyber hackers whose access to information could make or break kings. Translating that idea to a magical world, we're probably looking at a CN (maybe including TN, CG, and CE) global underground society of Diviners (and maybe Bards) who learn everyone's secrets and sell them to the highest bidder (or use them for other purposes). Could something like that exist in Golorian?
I want a book that is full of great art and myths about Golarian. It would basically be a book of plot hooks and pictures that I can point to (ie. "the temple facing you looks like this"). If this isn't possible (I know that art can be expensive to publish), then I'd like Paizo to maintain a list of books that its game designers recommend for art inspiration. A book of myths should be fairly easy to publish.
I've seen an awful lot of people who DON'T make their living off of intellectual content they create who oppose the concept of intellectual property. They AREN'T song writers, novelists, self employed software engineers, etc. But, what I don't hear too much of are people who DO make their living off of intellectual content they create and who oppose the concept of intellectual property. That's always made me very suspicious of people who are against intellectual property. They remind me of a pair of wolves trying to get a lamb (the information worker) to agree to a vote on what's for dinner. Thus, the question for this thread. Who here is an information worker (eg. a novelist, songwriter, self employed software engineer, or some other person whose primary means of financial support comes from their intellectual property) AND opposes the concept of intellectual property?
I'd like this thread to focus on its topic. Every time it is used as an opportunity to call someone names, the focus is shifted away from the topic - which I feel is very serious and deserves your attention. This is not an opportunity to bash religion and I do not want it to spend any time on anyone who disagrees with the topic. Now that I've got that out of the way, I want to share something with you. As I mentioned before, I grew up in a house where my mom was blind and deaf and, for fear of loneliness, she followed the lead of a church which taught that being gay was a sin. My childhood was one spent in fear. Once, I was caught holding hands with another boy and spent about a year being mercilessly teased. My brother told me that if anyone in his family was gay, he'd kill that person. My other brother told me that if his son was gay, he'd kick him out of the house to be homeless. Not only was I surrounded by this church, but it ran a school which I was forced to attend. A student at that school ended up killing a gay guy who made a pass at him and is now serving time in prison. The overwhelming majority of my waking life was spent surrounded by these people. The fear was so intense that I told no one when I was sexually molested by an older person because I thought people would think I was gay.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-12-03/asian-students-coll ege-applications/51620236/1 To be honest, I always declare myself a random race or "other" every time I get asked this stupid question on forms. I consider that question just about the most offensive and dumbest sign of racism the government still clings to.
There are voters today who have spent their entire educational lives with the Internet available.
I'm not saying that it spells doom for the future of politics, but I do think it spells significant change. I'm curious what the full effect of it will be.
All this talk about Schrodingers' Wizards got me remembering about the old 2e Wild Mage. So, I thought I'd take a shot at trying to recreate it. Here is the 2e Wild Mage as a bloodline Among the tribes which dwell along the Mana Wastes, there is a ritual of staking future Shamans to the ground out in the Wastes for a week as a test of endurance. Sometimes, they don’t come back the same. Class Skill: Disable Device and Trapfinding Bonus Spells: Bungle, Codespeak, Blink, Confusion, Covetous Aura, Unwilling Shield, Hostile Juxtaposition (Greater), Maze, Time Stop Bonus Feats: Arcane Blast, Arcane Shield, Combat Casting, Uncanny Concentration, Deft Hands, Hero’s Fortune, Well-Prepared (the character can ignore the racial restrictions), Bouncing Spell Bloodline Arcana: Spell Bluff (as the feat) Bloodline Powers:
I'm working on a new spin on the Sorcerer class and could use some help on an item. When a child first discovers their sorcerous potential, it can be quite scary. Suddenly, they've started a new phase of their lives when fires can start spontaneously and objects can hurl across the room under their own power and with no warning. Their families seldom have the skills to help them come to terms with these powers. Their village priest seldom has the skills to help them and may attempt violent and dangerous exorcisms. Even wizards, should the family be blessed enough to have access to them, may be unable to help, for the way in which a sorcerer manifests their power seldom works by learned arcane theory.
To create a fetish, the sorcerer requires the Craft(fetish) skill. Each fetish works for one and only one spell the sorcerer has learned, though it can be used for multiple castings of that spell. To create the fetish, a Craft(fetish) skill is required with the DC equal to ten plus the level of the associated spell squared then divided by two. The cost of the fetish is equal to the DC times ten gold.
I saw a video just now in which a woman was asking what appeared to me to be Occupy Wall Street people "how much is too much?"
To me, it has always made sense that how much a person makes isn't worth bothering about, rather the question is does that person make the world a better place? For example, a person can make a bazillion dollars a week and if he's creating jobs which increase the economic opportunity of other people, I'm cool with that. But some of the people responding to her question really felt that there was some specific dollar amount of income or of wealth beyond which the person receiving it or owning it may be immoral. So, what do you think? How much is too much?
A woman is claiming that her three month old child is Justin Beiber's. Beiber would have been 16 at the time of the tryst.
Regardless of how much an underage male may think he wants sex, the fact is that he is not able to give legal consent. Anyone able to give consent who takes advantage of this (that is, any one having sex with a person under the age of 18 with at least three years difference in their ages) is ethically and morally guilty of rape. They should be legally guilty of it as well. Yet, that has not and is not always how the courts treat it. In the unfortunate case that Beiber is the father, he will be in a very good position to be a representative to push for social change in the courts and in social awareness so that sex with underage boys is treated and thought about in the same way as sex with underage girls.
Okay, to my knowledge Paizo has no plans to create this book, but, if they did, what would you like to see? I can think of three things 1.) A better Heal skill so that the party isn't forced to include a divine caster. UMD isn't a work around for obvious reasons. 2.) The ability for one PC with a skill to better aid other characters without tne skill so that you can have entire adventures involving stealth or social stuff. 3.) lots a d lots of skill tricks which can't be duplicated with magic |