Cutlass's page

In another thread we were discussing Islamic doctrines. In order to make my point I cited some passages from the Quran. One of the other people active in the thread replied that they were afraid of me, apparently because I had quoted the Quran and had therefore been "radicalized" somehow and was some sort of "threat" to the LGBTQ community.

Really? And they honestly expected to be taken seriously?? One wonders how they can get through the day without piddling themselves constantly. Somebody needs to lay off the Kool Aid and get a life. It should also be pointed out that attempting to play the "victim" card in a situation where no one has been victimized makes one's position even more farcical than it would be otherwise.

The first thing to point out is that while lawyers can drone on for hours about the laws that relate to the use of force by civilians, the actual principles involved are quite simple. Ultimately they are derived from Biblical law which is why I, as a conservative Christian, am bound to obey them. In a nutshell I can only use physical force to defend myself from an actual attack by somebody else, or in order to aid a relatively defenseless person who is being attacked. That’s it. It doesn’t matter how much I dislike somebody or disagree with what they’re saying. If they’re not actually attacking somebody I don’t get to use physical force against them. So, if you don’t want to be afraid of me, then don’t go around assaulting people. You won’t have anything to worry about.

It should also be pointed out that I have made abundantly clear in my postings on the subject that LGBTQs have the same rights that everybody else does. That necessarily includes the right to life. This means that neither I nor anybody else has the legitimate authority to hunt down LGBTQs in order to harm/maim/injure/kill them “just because”.

However, it should also be pointed out that as a conservative Christian I am called to stand for God’s moral law. In standing for God’s moral law I can only use persuasion and argumentation. I do not have the legitimate authority to attempt to force anybody to do anything (except to stop physically attacking other people). Thus after having made my point by saying that people should not engage in homosexual acts because such behavior is sinful, then there really isn’t too much more I can do. Trying to convert hard core (dis)believers on the other side is usually an exercise in futility. I am also not a fan of beating dead horses any more than actually necessary. However, if for whatever reason somebody finds that simple moral argument more than they can bear, I have two alternative suggestions for them. The first is that they change their behavior as necessary such that they can live their lives with a relatively clear conscience. The second alternative is that they figure out how to grow a spine. While in context I would prefer that people chose the first alternative, either one would be a substantial improvement.

I should also comment that trying to draw some sort of “moral equivalence” between conservative Christians who are attempting to use persuasion and argument in order to support God’s moral law and what the Islamic fundamentalists are doing by executing homosexuals in job lots only serves to show that the person making that argument doesn’t know what “moral equivalence” is. There are incredibly significant differences between simply stating a position that some people find disagreeable and slaughtering people.

Last but not least attempting to control a debate by shutting down the other side, using the mechanism of falsely accusing them of inciting people to violence, only serves to indicate that the person making that argument is even more biased/prejudiced than the person they are trying to shut down. In spite of my various disagreements with LGBTQs, I have never argued that they should be silenced.

My two cents.

Third parties will be at a continuing disadvantage as long as we keep the number of Representatives frozen at 435. If I could wave my magic wand to change the system I would set things so that there would be no fewer than 1 Representative for every 300,000 people. This would increase the number of Representatives to about 1,000, shrink the size of legislative districts and give people more input into the system.

While it is true that "race" is not anywhere near as tightly defined as one would like it, nevertheless it is not a totally invalid concept either. Stainless steel artificial hip joints designed for use on "caucasoid" people can be worse than useless for those of "mongoloid" ancestry because of differences in various bone angles and curvatures between the two "races".

People of American Indian ancestry are usually at a disadvantage when it comes to metabolizing alcohol with a concurrently greatly increased chance of becoming alcoholics. It was one of the reasons why back in the day unscrupulous traders would get Indians drunk in order to better take advantage of them. It's also why Indian reservations today are almost invariably "dry", in an attempt to keep alcoholism down to a dull roar.

The connection between race and sickle cell anemia has already been touched on. However, given that blacks and whites in America have not been isolated breeding populations then the fact that somebody looks "white" does not necessarily mean that it is impossible for them to have sickle cell anemia. A couple of decades ago there was a scandal in the KKK when it turned out that one of their leaders had sickle cell anemia and thus some African ancestry in spite of the fact that one couldn't tell that simply by looking at him.

IMHO "race" is a concept that one has to be careful with. It is all too easy to read either too much or too little into what one means by it. But given that it can be a useful concept for such things as crime scene identification of remains, various medical procedures, and construction of artificial joints then I think that dismissing the concept altogether is probably not the best idea. One simply has to bear in mind the limitations of the concept and confine its use only to those areas where it can be demonstrated that it makes sense to use it.

It's been a long time since I've done any work in the field. But back in the day when I was studying Physical Anthropology and taking courses in human osteology from a Medical Examiner we used a 3 fold breakdown into "caucasoid", mongoloid" and "negroid" for trying to determine what racial group a skeleton had come from. This was determined by both certain visual cues based on the shape/morphology of some of the bones and by running measurements taken from the bones through a formula that was based on a linear regression analysis of "known" skeletons.

However, the main purpose of that was simply to try to identify whose remains we were dealing with. If the analyses we performed indicated that we had the skeleton of an approximately 30 year old "mongoloid" male then the remains were most likely not those of the 20 year old caucasian female who had been reported missing 2 years ago. It should be noted in this context that "mongoloid" referring to a racial group and "mongoloid" referring to somebody suffering from Down's syndrome are two totally different things.

I know that there have been a lot of advances made in the field since I left, and I assume it is now much easier to get DNA samples and run analyses on them these days than it was in the early 1990's. That could make things a lot easier.

As far as other things go, attempting to separate humans into various racial groups is fraught with a variety of difficulties. The "differences" between the various racial groups are such that when you start trying to analyze the data obtained from studying large numbers of people you realize that you are in fact dealing with data arranged in a continuum and there aren't any real clear dividing lines. Hence part of the reason for the 3 fold breakdown discussed earlier was an attempt to try to simplify things when one was simply considering skeletal morphology. To the extent that we can actually "read" DNA these days then that does give us a lot more information, but the increase in information does not necessarily "clarify" the picture. Instead it demonstrates just how truly complex things are.

In short, people like to sleep with each other too much for humanity as a whole to be much more than one gigantic, occasionally clumpy, mix of a myriad different varieties of Heinz 57's. While it is possible to break things down into certain smaller categories for the purposes of certain types of discussion and analysis, that doesn't necessarily mean that what one has achieved is actually significant.

I had to take my nitroglycerin pills. I actually found myself agreeing with I'm Hiding In Your Closet ;-) .

While there are decent people who are working as police/law enforcement, the problem is that the system itself has become both corrupt and corrupting of those who work in it. One has only to look at the relatively minor things such as police departments factoring revenue generated by issuing traffic tickets in their official budgets, and unofficially coming down hard on officers who don't meet their quotas for issuing traffic citations. Then there are bigger things such as the problem with Civil Asset Forfeiture Laws which effectively give police the power to "legally" rob people who for some reason or other have too much cash on them.

At one point in time I got to know some of the inspectors who work for the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries reasonably well. One of them said that if they were to take the massive list of codes they were responsible for enforcing and throw out everything that wasn't legitimately tied to actual work place safety and reasonable business practice ... that the regulations would be reduced by about 2/3. He also commented that if pressed to testify in a court of law that he would cheerfully state that he did not have a quota system that controlled the number of citations he issued. Then he went on to say that regardless of that, God help him if he didn't get his "numbers" for the month. Last but not least, there was one of the counties in the area which had building codes that were not in agreement with the state building codes. So if a builder working on a house set things up such that he was in compliance with the county level codes he would be penalized by the state if one of their inspectors caught him, and vice versa as well. Thus builders were under the gun to try to complete their projects as rapidly as possible as well as play guessing games with which inspector was going to drop by.

The other potentially big problem is that other considerations aside, the police are necessarily forced into making the simplifying assumption that the one "who done it" is the person they can build the strongest case against in the shortest amount of time. While more often than not this is true, it can and does generate situations where innocent people have been metaphorically ground to hamburger by the justice system simply because they didn't have a strong enough alibi.

Given that you will never know until too late whether or not you are dealing with Officer Friendly or Officer Himmler, the only safe recourse is to have the minimal interaction with the police that is possible. Don't be rude, be reasonably polite, and try to exit the situation as soon as you can without causing perturbations. If you are being arrested the best recourse is simply to submit and plan on doing all your "fighting" in the courts with a good attorney helping you. Realize that even passive resistance to arrest will open you up to the charge of "resisting arrest", and you can still be hammered for that even if all the other charges against you get thrown out.

The only other alternative is to go all out using as much force as possible, essentially exercising the "World War III" option. The problem with that is even if you "win" the initial engagement, you are now most definitely on the police radar and will likely have to spend the rest of your life on the run. Unless you know exactly how to handle such a turn of events and have a large off the books cash reserve, don't expect to be able to run successfully either very far or for very long.

Now you can really get someone's goat. :-)

Enjoy!

Rippongi is the party spot in Tokyo, you might want to check it out.

Have a small notebook with you. The restaurants will usually have a display window that has plastic sculptures of their menu items for people to look at. Just copy the name of what you want into your notebook and show it to the waiter when they come to take your order.

Some of the sushi places have conveyor belts that they place their items on that move the sushi past where the customers are sitting. The color of the plate the item is on indicates what the price is. Keep the empty plates by you so they can figure out your bill when you leave. I found that the octopus was good.

The problem I have is that the log on boxes are now in a pop up which is almost impossible to access using my smartphone. The pop up "drifts" as I attempt to adjust screen size.

All ya need to handle flamingos is a lil' salt! Just spread it around yer lawn, and they won't sprout!

Yep, but then neither will your grass, your ornamental shrubs, your flowers, your herb garden, any shade trees you might have, etc., etc..

But on the other hand if you just nuke the entire city then no one will care about how bad your lawn looks compared to everybody else's. :-)

Ceaser Slaad wrote:

Kobold Cleaver wrote:

What do trolls need a real-world capital for? Isn't Twitter good enough for 'em?

Well, if they have a real world physical existence then they have to live somewhere.

Not if we get enough acid flasks together.

Well, if we're going to be throwing acid (as in sulfuric) at the trolls then we're going to need lots and lots of it. Greenpeace will get really upset about the hazardous waste dump we'll end up creating as a result.

If you mean we should end up doing acid (as in LSD) to convince ourselves the trolls are not that much of a problem, then we won't need quite so much. :-)

I don't know of any cure for lawn flamingos though. Nuking them from orbit perhaps? ;-)

The biggest problems with play by post games are:

1) They can end up taking a very long time to do what could be done in a face to face table top setting in a matter of hours. A large combat scene could take weeks to play out in play by post format. So you have to make sure that you're going to be comfortable with the relatively slow pace.

2) At least partly related to reason 1, people will end up dropping out of games with no notice after they have been going for a while. Sometimes that even happens with the GM. While this is frustrating when it happens, you simply have to be ready to find other games to try to join, or do the work to GM one yourself.

However, if one is fortunate enough to be able to get into a good group, one can have quite a bit of fun. And it is possible to do some things in posting on the boards that can't easily be done in face to face settings such as getting into detail about what the characters is thinking or feeling. Just make sure you go along with the conventions used to differentiate what a character says from what a character thinks. For example:

As Mundarion dodged behind a pillar to take cover from the opposing archers he said, "We've got to take these guys down!". He thought to himself, "This is not going well at all"

Though different groups might have slightly use slightly different methods to sort that kind of thing out.

What do trolls need a real-world capital for? Isn't Twitter good enough for 'em?

Well, if they have a real world physical existence then they have to live somewhere.

In another post on another thread a gentleman who described himself as a "staunch Democrat" took me to task for (among other things) being a "fake Libertarian" because of my stance on "Homosexual rights". At that time my response was simply that we would have to agree to disagree. There were several reasons for that.

The first reason is that I doubt that Mr. Staunch Democrat and I will ever be able to convince each other of anything. However, that is not the reason I am now responding. There are other people on this board who may be unfamiliar with what it actually means to be a Libertarian, and hopefully by giving a serious reply to Mr. Staunch Democrat they will be suitably enlightened.

The second reason is that I did not want to derail that particular thread with what was a sidebar issue.

Last but not least, I felt I owed it to the moderators (who do not always see eye to eye with me and vice versa), not to start something that could devolve into a flame war when they were not present to deal with the situation as they saw fit. However, the moderators are either now on duty or will be shortly, and I don't have to worry about derailing the thread that I just started.

Let me begin with tongue firmly in cheek suggesting that there is an extent to which turning to a "staunch Democrat" for instruction in Libertarianism is sort of analogous to asking a Jihadi Imam for advice on how to hold a Bar Mitzvah. Even assuming that the Imam tries to give you the best answer that he can based on what he knows, there are some things he is going to get wrong simply because there are important nuances he was never instructed in or does not properly understand.

I realize that there are people on this board who would take me to task and or disbelieve what I was saying if I were to suggest that the sun was going to rise in the east tomorrow morning. Nevertheless, having been a member of the Executive Committee for the Libertarian Party of Alachua County Florida for several years I have this feeling that I might just know something about what it means to be a Libertarian. Even though I am no longer formally associated with the Libertarian party I also feel I have something of a duty to try to make sure that what they stand for is properly presented.

Libertarians, as is true of any political party, have several different groups within their ranks. One of these groups I will refer to as the "old school" Libertarians. These people are by and large die hard followers of Ayn Rand, take their objectivist philosophy seriously, and are essentially atheistic in outlook. Though I would be tempted to argue that in some cases their objectivist philosophy is their religion. Regardless, given a situation in which various people are doing various things on their own property that don't harm other people and don't damage anybody else's property then the old school Libertarians couldn't care less what was actually going on. From that perspective then Mr. Staunch Democrat might appear to have a point. Old school Libertarians could be interpreted as being supportive of "homosexual rights". Given that I have made posts that argue against certain interpretations of "homosexual rights" then I would appear to be in conflict with that.

However, like the Jihadi Imam trying to figure out what this Bar Mitzvah thing is all about, there are some things that Mr. Staunch Democrat was either never told about or doesn't understand. I will keep it simple and boil it down to three main points.

First, in order to become a Libertarian you have to pledge that you will never initiate the use of force. They are dead serious about this and it forms the core of their beliefs and the policies that they attempt to get implemented. Note that this is most definitely not the same thing as being a pacifist. A pacifist would never use force under any circumstances. But from a Libertarian perspective, once somebody has initiated the use of force against you, you are not only free to but actually encouraged to use that level of counter force you need to solve the problem.

Second, all government action is viewed as being based on force. Don't believe me? Just stop doing something that the government mandates you do (like pay your taxes for instance). Eventually the government will get around to sending people with guns to force you to comply or else. Which is an initiation of force that Libertarians are sworn not to undertake.

Lastly, old school Libertarians are good philosophical debaters (and I mean that in multiple senses of that term). Among other things it meant that they were actually more interested in having an objectivist philosophical debating society than they were in forming a viable political party. For another, they would never accept the argument that the ends justify the means especially when the means is the implementation of government programs and by extension, initiating force. Hence it is literally true, and I am dead serious about this, that old school Libertarians would not create government programs to save their own lives.

Now, what does all that have to do with "homosexual rights"? Quite simply a lot of what the current "homosexual rights" movement is all about has nothing to do with being left alone to cavort as they want to on their own property. This is especially true in light of the Supreme Court's Obergefell decision and subsequent actions that have been taken by various different homosexual groups. What the Supreme Court has essentially done is legislate from the bench (something they are Constitutionally prohibited from doing) in order to effectively establish a new "religion" (which the Federal government is prohibited from doing) in which homosexual marriage must be permitted or else.

Old school Libertarians would go into borderline frothing at the mouth hysterics over the government forcing people to do things that they didn't want to, especially where issues of conscience were concerned. While they might on some level agree with "homosexual rights" and or "homosexual marriage" they would never countenance the use of government force to implement anything, even something that they might potentially agree with. Given that Mr. Staunch Democrat's government policies that he might like to see implemented literally can't happen without the initiation of force by the government at some level, then Mr. Staunch Democrat would never get the support from old school Libertarians that he thinks he might.

The newer Libertarians are slightly different in outlook. A lot of them are former Republicans who wanted to become part of a political party that took minimizing government as a serious goal. They aren't anywhere near as hard core objectivists as the old school Libertarians are, and they are usually more socially conservative in outlook. They too would oppose a lot of what is taking place under the rubric of "homosexual rights".

So, if you want to talk about people being left alone to do things on their own property that don't hurt other people or damage anybody else's property, then yes, Libertarians would be in with that. If you want to talk about using the force of government to compel people do things that they wouldn't otherwise normally do, Libertarians (both types) would fight you tooth and nail. But as a democrat in general can't take a dump without creating government programs to regulate the amount of water the toilet uses per flush or the specific type of treatment that the sewage has to undergo then there isn't a whole heck of a lot of support that he can expect from Libertarians.

I will simply note for the record that had I bashed any liberal icon to anywhere near the extent that you guys are flaming Trump I would have moderators down on me for being "noninclusive" and other such assorted "bad" behavior. So, given that none of you will ever be seriously challenged in your Paizo created "safe place", flame on.

For the record, Trump would be neither my first choice nor my last one.

Is visible pacemaker parabellum.

<sigh> Autocorrect and Latin do not mix well. Let's try it again.

Si vis pacem parabellum.

Make way! Make way! Preparations for Fimbulwinter and the coming ice age are in progress. We need to park the snow plows over here and put several metric tons of road salt in a great big pile over there. We should also ensure that we've got enough wood, charcoal, stove pellets, natural gas and propane supplies on hand that we can take care of people who might run out after the blizzards hit.

Oh! We also need a whole bunch of different styles and types of chains for people to put on their car tires. As well as bags of sand or cat litter so people can have some extra weight for traction in their vehicles. Not to mention all the ice scrapers that will be needed, and cans of pressurized alcohol to use for unfreezing door locks.

Darn! Almost forgot all the spare wool blankets that we need to have on hand just in case. Go ahead and pile them over there next to that guy sitting in the barca lounger not doing anything.

lucky7 wrote:

I like rocking chairs, man. I wish I had one.

There might be one in our basement.

Or I could be thinking of someone else's basement.

Or I could be thinking of a rocking chair that's not only not ours but not actually in a basement at all.

My memory sucks.

I am in no position to throw rocks. While I can claim to have a photographic memory, trying to find the film can be a problem. :-)

The ancient book of wisdom states, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach become guidance counselors and administrators."

Ceaser Slaad wrote:

thegreenteagamer wrote:

Sequels from other authors don't count. That's professional fanfic.

I'm going to have to agree with you there. The author they brought in to finish Jordan's Wheel of Time series did a good job. But he wasn't Jordan. There were some things missing in the writing style and the way the story was told that I had come to enjoy. Jordan was almost a little too good at leaving you hanging as to how things were going to turn out and what was going to happen. Sanderson either wasn't as good at that or didn't see the need to be quite so cagey about things. Now don't get me wrong, I'm all about the good guys winning, but as Sanderson told it that was foreshadowed just a little too much.

I'm on the other side of this argument. Sanderson being brought in almost got me back to reading WoT.

Almost. But not quite.

Obviously to each their own. One of the other problems given a work of that size is maintaining continuity and keeping it interesting throughout. That it dragged in spots was impossible to avoid and I can understand why people would be put off by that.

The idea that I had for the modern Valkyrie didn't have her as a psychopath. If you met her on the street you would see her as an old woman, possibly as much as 100 years old. Wearing a gold ring on her left ring finger that had Norse runes on it. If you chatted with her she would introduce herself as Mrs. Deutsch; and occasionally go on about her poor husband, Siegfried, who had passed away some time ago. If you could read the runes on her ring you would get "IEBEL" and the impression that there was more to the inscription that you couldn't see simply due to the way the ring sat on her finger.

The kicker, she ends up getting involved in combat for one reason or another with some suitably vicious bad guys. At first one would expect things to end very quickly with the poor old woman getting killed. But that doesn't happen. Instead the bad guys either miss a lot or can't seem to land more than a glancing blow. The old woman spends a lot of her time staggering around apparently barely in control of her body. But those who were knowledgeable in the martial arts would eventually recognize that they were watching the old woman employing a blend of aikido and drunken monkey style kung fu. They would also notice something else. As the combat dragged on, the woman was getting younger. The younger she got, the more control she had over herself, and the more speed and power she was putting into her various moves. Things eventually end with her victorious over the bad guys and appearing to be in her early 20's with a body that would make a Playboy Centerfold model tear her hair out in envy. :-)

Sequels from other authors don't count. That's professional fanfic.

I'm going to have to agree with you there. The author they brought in to finish Jordan's Wheel of Time series did a good job. But he wasn't Jordan. There were some things missing in the writing style and the way the story was told that I had come to enjoy. Jordan was almost a little too good at leaving you hanging as to how things were going to turn out and what was going to happen. Sanderson either wasn't as good at that or didn't see the need to be quite so cagey about things. Now don't get me wrong, I'm all about the good guys winning, but as Sanderson told it that was foreshadowed just a little too much.

Through time I have, more by accident than design, done a little bit of a bunch of different things.

B.A. in Anthropology with a heavy emphasis on Archaeology. Also took courses in statistics (ended up making money tutoring one of the courses), air photo interpretation, computer programming (FORTRAN on punch cards) and other interesting stuff. While I didn't take courses in it per se, you can't do archaeology without picking up some paleoclimatology.

GRE scores not only got me into the grad school I wanted, but also into Mensa.

M.A. Physical Anthropology. My interests changed somewhat in grad school so I went from an archaeology major/physical anthropology minor to the other way around.

Got engaged, needed an income, ended up enlisting in the Navy. Wound up working on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. In the meantime the fiancee got pregnant with somebody else's kid and married him.

Transferred into the Navy's nuclear power program and qualified as a mechanical operator, naval nuclear power plants. Got picked up for OCS and obtained a commission as surface line officer. Got all the initial qualifications I needed as a junior officer. Combat information Center watch officer, officer of the deck, underway and surface warfare officer. Got out after 8 years in the service for a variety of reasons. Final rank was LTJG.

Have done a whole bunch of other stuff, though mostly security. Picked up an A.A.S. in diesel and heavy equipment technology.

I keep telling myself that one of these days I'm going to break down and start writing science fiction. I've got a variety of different story ideas that have been on the back burner for years. Usually mixing a little.bit of fantasy into it. Thus the original questions I had on Valkyries.

One story idea involves a "real" Valkyrie passing as a normal human in.a modern setting. Another involves something else entirely pretending to be a Valkyrie in a modern setting. :-)

I've also got some space opera ideas. In the far future, the idea that humanity originated on one planet is treated as sort of a myth. I mean, they recognize that must have happened, but the galactic civilization has existed for so long that all knowledge of whatever the home world was has been lost.

A girl is just becoming an adult in a family that has for as many generations as they have records for been pilots. The "wings" that they use as insignia resemble something like a dragonfly. When a pilot completes their initial training in atmospheric craft they get the fly with the forward pair of wings on it. When they complete their training in space craft they get the rear set of wings for the dragonfly.

Just before the girl (having complete her atmospheric training) leaves to go start her career as a pilot and get her space qualification the older family members take her aside. They tell her of the tradition that they have, which they acknowledge is probably full of sh&t, that they have a set of wings that dates back to the early days when man had just learned how to fly. So they pull this set of wings out of a safe where they keep it. These are some strange wings. It's not a "dragonfly". There's only one pair of wings, not two, and they look like a bird's wings. The letters USAAF are displayed on.the wings. Nobody knows what, if anything, the letters mean. They then proceed to put the wings on her chest and pound them into her as hard as they can. Ceremony over, the wings go back in the safe.

Later in her career all hell breaks loose. And the girl realizes that there truly is something special about those old wings her family had. She has the ability to draw on the skill and experience of all the older, now deceased pilots who had ever gone through that ceremony. If it is humanly possible to do something as a pilot in either an atmospheric craft or a "fighter" type space craft, she can do it.

Alas, my knowledge of quantum mechanics is very limited. I know that Feynman claimed that, "No one understands quantum mechanics." However, one can still use it to do a whole bunch of stuff.

In terms of one's theology influencing their perspectives on science, that has been well documented. Einstein famously objected to quantum mechanics because, "God does not play dice with the universe." Through time though the equations that are used for quantum mechanics have been experimentally verified over and over again, even if nobody knows exactly what they mean.

However, Einstein may yet have the last laugh. I have heard of a small group of scientists who have been recreating some of the classic experiments dealing with the nature of light (sometimes it acts as a particle, sometimes as a wave) and have found that this can be explained by a fluid dynamics model in which the photons are traveling along/in a fluid. In which case a lot of the uncertainties associated with quantum mechanics go away and one is pretty much looking at a "billiard ball" version of reality where things can be easily predicted given the necessary data.

But my main training was in Anthropology, so I can't delve too far into physics without betraying massive ignorance, especially as far as modern theoretical physics is concerned.

Ceaser Slaad wrote:

Interesting. So if fate is not fixed, then the outcome of Ragnarok isn't set in stone, and the "good guys" could win? That would be a blast. :-)

An important thing to remember is that mythic time is cyclical, it is non-linear and it is always current.

For example, Baldr is born, and he is alive, and he is wounded, and he is dead. Ymir breathes, and the world is made, and the world is sinking into the sea. Odin is hanged and he is not hanged, Fenrir is born, and he is captured by Tyr, and he is in chains, and he has broken free, so on and so forth.

If Voluspá is to be believed (and remember that even the poetic edda must be taken with a grain of salt, and also that different accounts of the lore contradict each other) then when the völva in voluspá looked at the wyrd, what is described in voluspá is what she saw. And this is also part of mythic time.

A funny thing: you cannot even look at the wyrd without affecting it through that action! So the uncertainty principle is in effect.

So the Vikings had quantum mechanics? :-)

I had this mental picture of a whole bunch of Vikings standing around in the aftermath of a "murthering great battle", dirty, exhausted, battered, bloody, but nevertheless jubilantly happy yelling, "We kicked their butts!"

Star Wars mad groom flanked by Stormtroopers at wedding as bride delivers out-of-this-world surprise

One wonders if it was a variant of a "shotgun wedding". :-)

You are no one, and, at the same time, everyone, for the wyrd-fibers of all who lived and shall live are spun through your being.

Almost sounds like something you would need to take a laxative or an antibiotic for. :-)

Well, yeah. It would be problematic to fall off the boat wearing a set of plate...No matter what Pathfinder says, five ranks in swim will NOT compensate for that. You're going DOWN.

(Actually, in PF, 1 rank, 12 strength, and the +3 class bonus negates the -5 penalty to swim from MW full plate...which is ridiculous. Since it's a DC 10 to swim in calm water, and taking 10 is something you can do when there's no pressure...This means a slightly-above-average strength man who is trained in the basics of swimming could tread water around the deep end of a pool with no waves, etc, without really trying that hard while wearing a set of full plate. I call BS.)

I agree with you 100%. The problem is that if you make the rules realistic the characters tend to die rather easily and thus the game ends up not selling that well. As a general rule people don't seem to want too much reality in their fantasy role playing games. Given that Pathfinder survives by selling their games to people willing to shell out money for them then I see no easy solution to this problem. Unless you want to house rule. But then you may find you have a hard time attracting players.

I think that in an emergency getting out of the chain mail is more important than getting out of the gambeson. But it would be more likely to get out of them both at the same time. Effectively both the chain mail and the gambeson are large tunics. Assuming that the person isn't wearing serious leg armor all they have to do is ditch the weapon belt/harness and shrug the chain mail and the gambeson off at the same time. Potentially made easier in water if the person "dives" while they're doing it so the weight of the items helps pull them off.

It was my understanding that Roman armor would have been some sort of lamellar breastplate with greaves, helmet and vanbraces. True plate armor was almost exclusively used by medieval heavy cavalry. Didn't matter how heavy it was because the horse was carrying the weight.

How exactly does one worship Thor? Do y'all have any equivalents to a Jehovah's Witness?

One wonders if they would get to knock on people's doors with their warhammers. :-)

I've picked up the bad habit of borderline yelling at people when I'm frustrated and I hate it so much. I don't go so far as to put people down and overly criticize but it's still bad.

It's an awful habit in my opinion and it's not a habit I want to have. Maybe I'm a horrible person because I lack a consistent and reliable executive function, but I will at least be a better person than someone who yells at others and puts them down, and says things that make them feel awful about themselves.

As somebody who occasionally goes against the local grain by taking controversial stands, I will do so here. While I agree that as a general rule of thumb yelling at people is usually a poor way to do things and generates more heat than light, there is a small percentage of the time when it may be the most effective/only way to get things done.

As I don't really know you and your situation I will take it as a given that you're probably doing the right thing. But if, as an example, you need to get somebody's attention before they walk over the spot where the manhole cover used to be (they're probably texting) then yelling strikes me as excellent idea. Thus my advice is not to let what may be a worthwhile intention on your part not to yell so much overly inhibit you if you run into a situation where yelling is actually needed. You claim to be a friend of Thor. Thus you must acknowledge that there are times when lightning is called for. :-)

In a setting where magic is real and clerics, wizards, sorcerers, etc. are almost a dime a dozen, why wouldn't a young adventurer expect to eventually meet up with a cleric? :-)

Preposterous. Kobold Cleaver is a Miracle Whip type of kobold. :-)

Ceaser Slaad wrote:

Kobold Cleaver wrote:

Ceaser Slaad wrote:

I was under the impression that the use of emoticons would have provided a clue.

A smile isn't a clue either way. Maybe something more playful. ;P

I suppose we could always try:

** spoiler omitted **

But that strikes me as requiring a little too much time and effort for a short post. :P

Wait, are you being serious here?

Maybe I simply delight in your confusion. It ia, after all, a contribution to chaos. :-)

I've got some trivia questions for you. I know that there were 9 Valkyries and one of them was named Brunhilda. Would you perchance know the names of the other 8 Valkyries, or where I could find that information? Also, if a Valkyrie were to use a last/family name, what would it be? Based on my limited knowledge of such things I am tempted to think it might be Wotansdotter or Odinsdotter, but those violate the naming conventions as I understand them.

*Provides Sunomono Slaad with antacid.*

Ceaser Slaad wrote:

I was under the impression that the use of emoticons would have provided a clue.

A smile isn't a clue either way. Maybe something more playful. ;P

I suppose we could always try:

But that strikes me as requiring a little too much time and effort for a short post. :P

Life would be so much easier if we all had eidetic memories. :-)

I was under the impression that the use of emoticons would have provided a clue. But then an "analysis" by Kobold Cleaver is in view. :-)

However, if I were to adopt Anius' definition of language attrition then I am still a fellow sufferer. I studied German back when I was in high school, but after not having used it for decades I couldn't do anything with it now.

You mentioned "language attrition". By which I assume that the older members of your family didn't teach you Polish, and possibly don't speak English too well.

I name you a wimp and a crybaby. :-) Let me tell you about language attrition. I am 50% Italian, 25% Ukranian, and the remaining 25% somehow split between English and French, all of that by blood. I can also claim Hungarian as a result of my mother having been adopted. English is the only language that was used in my home as I grew up. Though I had it easy as a second generation (mostly) immigrant in that by the time I came on the scene my parents and those of my grandparents who were still around spoke English well. So, if you want to talk about language attrition I would claim that having lost out on Italian, Ukranian, French and Hungarian I had it worse. ;-)

On my Dad's side of the family, his mother got off the boat from the Ukraine sometime after WWI. Dad's Mom married an American citizen (English and French by blood) whose family had been in America for several generations. Unfortunately my paternal grandfather was a louse who deserted the family when my Dad was a young boy. So my Dad was mostly raised by his mother and other members of her extended family. To bring a long story to a close, the family decided that they were American now so they did not teach Dad Ukranian even though they used it among themselves. Dad didn't mind that too much, but one of the things he complained about was that if he happened to come into or near an area where they happened to be conversing in Ukranian they would start whispering. Dad would complain, "You know I can't speak the language, why are you whispering?"

Well, if nothing else it beats the alternative. And being able to read a good rant or two here would help to distract from so-called political debates that either degenerate into shouting matches or are governed by "moderators" who are more concerned with impressing the audience than in doing something worthwhile. Lincoln and Douglas did it right, these modern "debates" are travesties.

Fnord

Ceaser Slaad wrote:

Posted previously. Totally ignored by those who do not want to believe*,

I think probably it was ignored because what you're alleging is the same unevidenced conspiracy theory nonsense we've seen from dozens of other climate change deniers. Except that you also have the stones to throw cognitive dissonance in there as though you aren't helplessly beholden to it yourself.

The problem of course being that the links actually do provide *evidence* that back up the claims made. Some of them actually compare and contrast the evidence and analysis of both sides of the debate.

Which you would have realized if you had seriously looked at the material instead of simply dismissing it out of hand. While it is a truism that cognitive dissonance could potentially affect everybody, I'm not arbitrarily throwing data out without darn good reasons to. Unlike some people who seem to believe that all they have to do is label something a "conspiracy theory" and then they don't have to deal with it.

Two more links for good measure.

Link

Link

Posted previously. Totally ignored by those who do not want to believe*, but no less valid for all of that. Multiple source documentation indicating among other things:

(1) A desire on the part of some of people to cook the data in favor of global warming.

(2) Evidence from several different sources covering different instances where the data has actually been cooked. Comparisons provided of legitimate raw data with the fudged data actually being presented by those favoring global warming.

(3) Multiple source documentation including one first hand account of legitimate scientific debate actually being stifled by those in favor of global warming.

So one can actually look at the data available at the various different linked sites and analyze the arguments for themselves based on their merits. Or one can simply accept the bland assertions of some posters that the whole mess is totally invalid. Given that we know how “science” is supposed to deal with bland assertions as to the validity or non validity of anything I would suspect that the choice would be obvious, but other people’s mileage may vary.

*On the subject of “belief”, what I am referring to here is not some sort of pseudo religious phenomenon. Rather, there is a psychological phenomenon known as “cognitive dissonance”. In a nutshell, people through time develop a set of beliefs. Later, when they are presented with data which would contradict those beliefs one of the responses is to simply reject the data out of hand because they would rather reject the data than their belief system.

Link on cognitive dissonance

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Link

Link

Link

Link

Link

Link

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Link

Why am I being asked if a new mass extinction event is underway?

There are scientists whose job it is to figure this out. I'd imagine they'd be more correct than any lay person, especially as they have no reason for bias.

We have a problem today. The vast majority of science is funded either directly or indirectly by grants from governments and large corporations. This can and has introduced various biases in scientific research because people in positions of power have a vested interest in seeing that scientific theories are advanced which can be used as a justification for power grabs. Anthropogenic Global Warming is the poster child for this sort of thing. Scientists who do not toe the party line are not funded and may find that their careers are effectively over. So, IMHO, to say that scientists have no reason to be biased is arguably naive.

As an interesting thought experiment, how many of the people who would be willing to support the Pope's recent encyclical on global warming (something he has no background or training in) would also support the Pope's stand on traditional sexual morality (something which legitimately falls within his purview as a religious leader)?

But I digress. The only thing that climate does do through time is change. Given that climatological data going back hundreds of thousands of years suggests that the most likely major climatic change to occur next will be another ice age I can't give "global warming" any credence. Granted that the exact timing of the next ice age is up for grabs, the fact that the sun's output of energy is dropping through the floor suggests that it could be sooner rather than later.

First of all I need to start off with a mea culpa. Yesterday was Father's day and I should have made this post then. Unfortunately I didn't think about it until after the global warming debate started up in the other thread. But if I were to have made the post there it would have gotten lost in the noise. Here it has a slightly better chance of staying findable. So, prepare to be subjected to <gasp> historical family trivia.

My Father, may he rest in peace, actually accrued a minor amount of fame in his lifetime. During the International Geophysical Year (1957 - 1958) he took part in Operation Deep Freeze. He was on the first wintering over expedition at the geographic South Pole.

Dad was in the Navy. At the time he was a UT2. For those unfamiliar with Naval ratings that means he was a Utilities Technician Second Class (E5). That also means that he was a "Seabee". A member of one of the United States Navy's Mobile Construction Battalions which, with all due respect to similar units in other services, is one of the premier combat engineering units in the world.

Arriving before some of the other members of the expedition Dad played a significant role in building what became the first Amundsen Scott South Pole station. He wintered over tending to various electrical generators, heaters, vehicles, and other assorted odds and ends that needed maintenence. He even ended up getting a mountain pass in Antarctica named after him.

All well and good. Would you like to see the station that my Father built? Sorry but you can't. It is buried so deep in snow and ice that it isn't safe to go there. IIRC they closed off all access to it sometime in the 1970's. The current Amundsen Scott South Pole station rests on jacks so it can be continually raised as needed to keep it above the level of the falling snow.

I will simply note that it does little good to attempt to argue that the Bible is the inerrant word of God with people who are not inclined to believe that. Having made that observation I will now bow out of this debate as we are starting to generate more heat than light.