Profile for Talent in a Previous Life
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| Displayed name | Talent in a Previous Life |
| Member number | 3098 |
| Title | This Side Towards Enemy |
| Postcount | 961 |
| Homepage | |
| Registered | Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Saturday, October 30 2004 04:29
Profile
Karma is weighted anyway so that the first rating you get is by far the most important. For instance, I started with a 4, and despite have 22 ratings (most of which I'm fairly sure were 1s) I'm still only down to 2.66. Politics is not normally the reason why people get low karma scores, although it can have an impact. For example, it had a slight impact with Ben, but in the main it's just a way for him to avoid having to realise that plenty of people dislike him for who he is, not what he believes in. Normally, what gets low karma is bad spelling and grammar, deliberately picking arguments, whining, interrupting valid threads with long strings of non-sequiturs and just about everything else that makes these boards worthwhile. -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| Where is BSC? in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Wednesday, October 27 2004 03:40
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Longer than that. I'm not sure I've seen him at all in 2004. -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| Good-bye in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Wednesday, October 27 2004 03:38
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What would be your stance on people believing that Jesus is coming back and that when he arrives the king of kings will beat Jerry Falwell to death with his own liver (that's Falwell's liver, it's theologically contentious whether or not Jesus has internal organs,) Ben? -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| Ghost Stories in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Wednesday, October 27 2004 03:35
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You might try the chain story at Pointless Waste of Time. I don't find it scary, because when reading description my eyes tend to lose focus halfway through and I skip to the next bit of dialogue, but certain bits owe a lot to Lovecraft. Also it's quite funny http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/jdate/intro.html -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| What makes a good quest? in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Wednesday, October 27 2004 03:26
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Why are quests necessary? Sure, you may need an overarching one, but the best RPGs are those that immerse you in their world. That doesn't have to mean a constant succession of quests. -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| Cyber Culture/ What is real? in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Sunday, October 24 2004 05:46
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Sadly, I find myself sympathising with FBM. You can't behave quite as shabbily towards others in real life as on the internet and not merely because of cowardice. Your social sphere in real life is not as large as your potential social sphere on the internet. Yes, it's fun being a complete heel in real life, but if you do it too repetitively, you end up with no friends, nobody who'll have a conversation with you. And let's be honest, it's not as fun being a bastard when you do it all the time. Whereas on the internet, you have a degree of anonymity and you are a few clicks away from all manner of communities. Granted, trolling is less satisfying because the trolled is to you just some writing on the monitor and they can find it easier to ignore you. And if you do overstep the mark, you can just move on to the next community. In cyberspace, there is no obligation to be pleasant. -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| Next Spiderweb Game in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Friday, October 22 2004 05:14
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A number of those complaining probably haven't bought anything since A2 or before. -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| Team America: World Police in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Friday, October 22 2004 05:09
Profile
Balance in this context should not mean two viewpoints of equal extremity. It should mean examining both sides of the arguments, admitting the flaws in your points and the strengths of the other sides and still justifying how exactly you are right. Trouble is that whilst that's good practice in academia, TV producers want to see their guests act like performing monkeys. -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| Work Experience in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Friday, October 22 2004 04:58
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My work experience was terrible. I somehow allowed my father to convince me it made more sense for me to do my work experience at the company he worked at rather than go through the procedure of applying for various work experience postings. I got there and the area I was in wasn't really expecting me and didn't have anything for me to do, so I spent two weeks filing. I did find a £150m error in their finances, but nothing else remotely notable happened. -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| Halloween, High School and, of course, REVOLUTION!!! HUZZAH!!! in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Friday, October 22 2004 04:51
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Halloween seems to be relatively popular in England, although not as much as in America. Regardless, I have no interest in it and since I live in cul-de-sac in a village, I don't tend to get trick-or-treaters knocking on the door. That said, I will be cross-dressing next week, but it's for a friend's themed party and thus doesn't really count. As concerns school spirit, I've never seen much on those lines here. Partly because we're in no way in the one school in a town paradigm. We look down on most of the other schools because we're smarter than them, we tend to belong to different social groupings to them, we get sworn at by them a fair bit (often with some cause, I'm proud to say,) but there's no real feeling that the whole school is together. We're here solely because of our intelligence and we're here to get good results. Nobody's really bothered about the rugby team except those at training sessions and there is a Christmas ball but there are large numbers who don't bother. There isn't really that much grouping amongst the pupils either. The whole school comes to about 700 people and my year to about 100. Everybody knows almost everybody else and since we wear uniforms (suits in my year, but it's still a uniform) there isn't the differentiation by appearance. If you dislike someone, you usually dislike him as a person rather than for what he represents and the people included in this dislike will at most be his closest friends. -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| Stem Cell Research in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Sunday, October 17 2004 10:53
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Most likely they confused it with foetus, a bad smell. -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| Stem Cell Research in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Saturday, October 16 2004 13:05
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I think the Latin singular is foetus. That's certainly the spelling used in England and I see no reason why the extra o might have arisen. At least, I think that's the Classical Latin spelling. I'm sure there are umpteen examples of some scribe using fetus instead. -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| After all these years, WTF in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Saturday, October 16 2004 12:38
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Incidentally, you can go to the first unread post, just not from the forum page. You have to enter the thread then there's a little button above the bit saying 'Hello <your name here>.' This button is called 'Jumpt to new posts.' This button makes the boards significantly less irritating to navigate. -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| Books! What're you reading? in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Saturday, October 9 2004 14:32
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Walked past a second hand bookshop today with £20 in my pocket. Left half an hour later £17.50 poorer with: An Aethiopian History of Heliodorus (apparently the first full sized romance-novel, or possibly complete romance-novel. Something similarly esoteric.) The Story of Burnt Njal (essentially a translation of Burnt Njal's Saga. Looks fairly literal to me. Old book, with the words on the spine rather faded. Really does look lovely.) Plutarch's Makers of Rome (a selection of nine of his Lives. The title is something of a misnomer, since six of the nine characters included died as enemies of the Roman state.) Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain (not normally my cup of tea, but I'm given to understand that a few bits aren't lies, it was only £3 and at least he's less loony than his Welsh influences.) England Under the Tudors by G.R. Elton (my history course requires historiography. Bookshops and libraries are shamefully short of quality history books as a pose to the naff stuff accompanying TV shows or focusing on one obscure and uninteresting character. Secondhand bookshops are rather better, unless you're looking for something published after decimalisation.) -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| Ethics? in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Saturday, October 9 2004 14:22
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quote:I'm vigorously trying to avoid reading Plato right now. But if you think Xenophon makes more sense, you've obviously never read Oeconomicus. Nothing but an exercise in anal retentiveness with a hefty dose of misogyny chucked in. Personally, I would take the view that objectively speaking, there is no absolute right or wrong. Therefore, objectively, the terrorist's viewpoint is as acceptable as mine. Subjectively, people trying to kill me is wrong. Subjectivity wins. -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| How to raise money? in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Saturday, October 9 2004 14:00
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FBM is functionally right in most areas, whilst giving out a generally misleading impression. There are about 100 universities in the UK now. Oxford and Cambridge still have the best reputations and are certainly very near the top in every subject they do. However, the Russell group of wealthier universities pushes them close and occasionally tops them (particularly Oxford.) Generally speaking, when they compile tables Cambridge comes top and Oxford is about fifth, but the tables are useless for all practical purposes. Going to Oxbridge brings a lot of prestige, but your workload is heavier. Getting into Durham, or York, or Bristol or one of the many other universities with good reputations and places that are easier to get than at Oxbridge is not looked down upon. The term polytechnic is no longer used and many former polytechnics are now very highly thought of. Others, such as APU (Anglia Polytechnic University) aren't. I don't know why FBM gave it as an example, because it's mostly known for semi-vocational courses and with entry requirements on the level of two Es, it's no surprise that neither its results nor reputation are particularly good. Essex is a better example of a former polytechnic which is now a perfectly respectable university. I'd say APU is more like North Herts (which I haven't heard of, and I'm 50 miles away from that area. Is it even entitled to give out degrees?) -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| Books! What're you reading? in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Tuesday, October 5 2004 11:27
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I think the fourth Earthsea book has been out for some time, although I've never read it. A friend of mine is reading the fifth one, which has just come out. If I borrow it any time soon, I'll give you my report. I've translated the first half of book VI of the Odyssey. I actually found it quite fun, far more so than trying to translate Sophocles, for example. Oh, and Homer didn't write in iambic pentameter, Shakespeare did. The Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid and every other ancient epic written in the Greco-Roman culture were written in hexameters. EDIT: Also, I picked up Microserfs by Douglas Coupland and Dark Light by Ken Macleod. I never learn. [ Tuesday, October 05, 2004 11:29: Message edited by: I Would Pay Your Wergild ] -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| How to raise money? in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Tuesday, October 5 2004 11:19
Profile
The British one is rather different, in no small part because your last two years at a school or sixth form college are much more specialised than previous years, most students only studying 3 or 4 subjects (I'm doing 5 and know people doing 6, but one of those is general studies, which is in the main a pretty worthless subject.) You apply at the beginning of your last year and give your GCSE (the exams you did at 16 at the end of compulsory schooling) and AS (the exams you did at the end of your lower sixth year) results. You also put in the A levels you are now studying for (and any AS levels you'll be retaking or taking up - an AS equates to half an A level.) You also attach a personal statement which has to fit in a space on the form. If you type it, you can get about 600 words. It's to give you a chance to show why you're suited for the course you wish to take, what your interests are and generally why you should be picked. The form also has references from teachers and the like on it. This form is sent off to UCAS, who deal with university applications. They will pass on the details to the university, only hiding what other universities you are applying to. Through them you will then receive offers from universities conditional on achieving good enough A levels in the next summer examinations. Most students have to have the form sent in for December (I think.) Applicants for medicine, veterinary medicine, dentistry or courses at Oxford or Cambridge have to apply be 15th October. In addition, applicants to Oxford and Cambridge have to fill in separate applications for those universities. You have to apply earlier because these courses and universities interview in or around November time. The school is currently adding references to my UCAS form. It's a horrible thing to fill in, but at least my part in the process is over, for now. Oh, and you should also note that rather than having a major, in Britain you apply beforehand to study a specific course. -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| Books! What're you reading? in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Monday, October 4 2004 12:20
Profile
I've got a lot of reading on my plate, with this being university application time and my usual habit of having several books on the go. The full list (although I may have forgotten some) is: Laxdaela Saga - it's an Icelandic Saga. 'Nuff said. A Guide to Old English 6th Edition - teaching yourself a language from a book can be painful. Line of Polity by Neal Asher - fairly disorienting sci-fi. The Peasants' Revolt by Alastair Dunn - If I walk into a bookshop with money, I'm almost certain to walk out with a book. Fleshmarket Close by Ian Rankin - this one I can finish off in a few days. From the Gracchi to Nero by H.H. Scullard - more historical stuff. Asser's Life of King Alfred - ditto. Aristophanes' plays - it's obscene and fond of puns, but it's 2500 year old drama. So is it low or high culture? Who cares. It's readable. Once I work my way through that, I'm going to be moving onto the new Terry Pratchett, Bede's Ecclesiastical History, Gildas' De Excidio Britanniae, Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum, Vernadsky's Kievan Russia and The Beginnings of Rome by Tim Cornell. The latter ones will probably wound my wallet and then allowing for reading a few novels in between, I should eventually get round to finishing Paradise Lost and making a start on The Republic. As you can tell, I'm a bibliophile in a family of bibliophiles. Problem is that there really is nowhere else to put bookshelves and if I don't watch myself I can be reading in bed until 1AM. -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| Politics in Exile? in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Monday, October 4 2004 12:02
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The causes of the rebellion were entirely different. The American War of Independence was about taxes and whether those not represented in a parliament should have to pay them, whilst Exile was a penal colony rebelling. It's also worth noting that most of the Puritans in America were not actually deported. The majority left because they faced various degrees of disapproval and persecution, but they weren't actually shoved out into the Atlantic. Personally, I see little to no parallel between the two or between Exile and other event. Aside from the revolution and the distance between the two, there's no real link. -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| Europe car-free day in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Sunday, September 26 2004 09:00
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FBM, give me specifics as to what posts in the bureaucracy exactly are not needed. Otherwise I have to assume you're working off conviction rather than fact. In point of fact, the EU is horribly corrupt. However, the solution is to fix it, not ignore it. Multilateral solutions are less prone to corruption than bilateral ones. The argument that Switzerland is a less corrupt tax haven than other tax havens is not a good one. As well as dictators, we also have to consider corporate money put in tax havens solely for the purpose of tax avoidance. The money corporations have for just this reason in tax havens would be enough to give the entire world primary education and health care twice over. -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| Why does Jeff have a bad rep? in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Saturday, September 25 2004 06:50
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quote:Makes sense. After all, when one is a moderator on a company's board, you are obviously going to stamp down hard on anybody praising the good work said company is doing. -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| Europe car-free day in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Saturday, September 25 2004 06:37
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There are two things that urgently need to be addressed here. One is ADoS's rampaging sagotry. The second is FBM's idealistic but essentially unfounded optimism. In the meantime, I'll point out that Switzerland isn't entirely wonderful. There's its famously arcane banking laws whereby revealing practically anything about an account is tantamount to treason and the fact that it has been complicit in helping very many dictators and corrupt rulers over the years to build up vast fortunes stolen from their peoples. We'll start with FBM. Or as I refer to him both for reasons of awfulness and because he looks good in a dress, Dorothy. Look around you. I don't think we're in 6th century Athens anymore. Cleisthenes is not going to appear and make everything better. Direct democracy isn't plausible on a nationwide level. You have to have elected representatives or you can't get anything done. Even an anarchist would accept that one can't have an community of 60 million people in which everybody makes the decision on everything. Ergo, we have to have elected representatives. Entirely likely, you weren't disputing that, you just wanted them to be more accountable. So do we all. You can't have a revolution on that. The tax burden is low, plague is not endemic, nobody is opening fire on peaceful protesters. Chances of angry mobs are minimal. I wouldn't march for that and I'm young and left-wing. People with anything to lose wouldn't touch you with a bargepole. And a revolution needs wide reaching aims. Revolution aims to overthrow the system. I'll leave aside the problems that then follow, because you ought to be able to work it out yourself and nobody but ADoS really appears to believe that revolution in this sense is the obvious solution anyway. And given his fondness for tying piano wire around his scrotum, I think we can discount his views. If we assume that you meant not so much revolution as enforced reform then still a problem exists. What reforms do you want? Removal of corporate interest? I'd like that but if the upheaval was limited to one state, they'd just annihilate your economy by boycott. Ability to remove a representative at any time? Good one. Most wouldn't go for something along the lines of the Workers' and Soldiers' Soviets of Petrograd but something more moderate might pass. I realise this is unclear but sadly I found your post to also be unclear. Specifics would help. Revolutions tend to require either intense anger or well thought out ideology. ADoS, as previously stated you are a sagot with an unhealthy (for you, not the human race) liking for genital self-mutilation. You are also impossibly ignorant. Being ruled by fascists? Drop the straw man rubbish. Calling a conservative a Fascist is not a good way to make your arguments sound cogent. Yes, Bush is prepared to restrict civil liberties. Yes, there are suggestions of electoral dishonesty and gamesmanship (although that kind of thing is nothing new, it's just that the Democrats don't have anybody as efficiently amoral as Rove, and as to actual corruption, any funny business there is is as nothing compared to say, Chicago 1960.) But he's not a Fascist. Fascist!=very right wing. It might help if you actually learnt a little bit about what Fascism does mean. Bush just has an aggressive and seemingly ineffective foreign policy, a terrible economic record due to laissez faire policies and a 'jobs for the boys' attitude and a rather distasteful disdain for actual thinking. I therefore declare ADoS to be Lucretia Borgia.  -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| Non-SW game recommendations in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Saturday, September 25 2004 06:02
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There is a Fallout Collection in English with all 3 games. I've seen it retailing at £20.00 new, which seems expensive to me given FO1 + FO2 came to £10.00 about 18 months ago. Of course, if you want really old-school gaming, you go for Ascendancy. You need the patch to make the AI even close to challenging and even then the 4 Logic bombs exploit is still pretty much unbeatable, but I'm still nostalgic about it. -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |
| Europe car-free day in General | |
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This Side Towards Enemy
Member # 3098
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written Friday, September 24 2004 08:01
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FBM, women under 30 couldn't vote until 1928. Fact checking is good. I agree that the demonstration, whilst it might make you feel you're doing something for the environment, is not a particularly effective action and might indeed be counter-productive. I also should point out that for some people, use of cars is the only option. My village has both a train and a bus station and is thus relatively well served. Nevertheless, my mother could not get to her school in time to teach if she did not go by car and there are many villages that are served much worse. If you have two services a day, you more or less have to use a car. So unless you're lobbying your government for a (probably very expensive) bus service serving every village in your country twice an hour from dawn until well into the evening, you're merely trying to hector people away from one solution without providing another. FBM, from my standpoint neither the FFJ or pro-hunt demonstrators really achieved much. FFJ still appear to be misogynistic zealots and the the revelation that the man climbing has been left by the mother of his most recent son because of his obsession with the cause wasn't really positive publicity. The pro-hunt thing was worse. I've heard umpteen people not opposed to fox-hunting in principle or not caring who are now of the opinion that the zealots on this issue are a bunch of muppets. Whilst the Countryside Alliance is arrogant enough, those more extreme are just angering people by claiming that it is "not democracy" to ban something that by all appearances the majority of people do not support. It is democracy, you can tell that because the commons keep voting for it. The issue is whether it's right or not. Another thing which alienates the moderate supporters of hunting is the threat of direct action if hunting is banned. It's not a big enough issue. It's not an issue over which you should threaten to bring the M25 to a standstill. -------------------- Voice of Reasonable Morality Posts: 961 | Registered: Thursday, June 12 2003 07:00 |