Profile for Custer
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Displayed name | Custer |
| Member number | 3151 |
| Title | Bob's Big Date |
| Postcount | 2367 |
| Homepage | http://desperance.net |
| Registered | Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
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| Nonfiction Books You Are Reading in General | |
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Bob's Big Date
Member # 3151
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written Thursday, March 24 2005 20:55
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The KJV is translated imperfectly, but it's translated directly. It's a direct, almost faintly Babelfishish translation from the source. The NIV adds a lot of interpretation and 'correction' to the text. The editors of the KJV and other such versions did not particularly care if one verse said the Earth was made in one yom and in another said the Earth was made in seven, all they know is that 'yom' means 'day' and their job is to translate it, not interpret it. As opposed to the NIV, whose editors had plenty staked on the idea of the Bible being the inerrant Word, and considered inconsistencies removable. A study of the original Greek or Hebrew Genesis will turn up the same inconsistency as the KJV English Genesis; this inconsistency does not exist in the NIV precisely because the NIV people took it upon themselves to 'correct' it. EDIT: If I believed that Christianity conflicted directly with science, I would not be a Christian. The bible tells us to test everything, doesn't it? [ Thursday, March 24, 2005 20:59: Message edited by: Bad-Ass Mother Custer ] -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
| RPGs in General | |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Thursday, March 24 2005 17:03
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Ah, a typical countercritique of the Old Glory of the roleplaying world: that if you don't like it, you're just not enough of an artistic personality. You're not creative enough, your imagination isn't free or wide enough, and you don't have the mental capacity to deal with this wonderful world of fantasy. Bull, bull, a thousand times bull. D&D is perhaps the most stultifyingly oppressive RPG I've ever had the displeasure to play. It's a definite and marked anachronism. Rules for everything you could concievably do, determined by statistics and random chance, were fine things to waste tables and pages and books on in the 1970s and 1980s, but nowadays you have these things called computers for that. The only meaningful niche for tabletops in the future is going to be as a looser, more freeform and discretionary roleplaying system than the more calculated, gamelike computerized systems. Other rule systems try and give more leeway in creating a world and setting, whereas D&D shoves a horrible generic fantasy world down the throat and makes you gargle. It's honestly a few steps from Risk with elves. The rules are literally the most important and distinctive factor, and that's not right. I resent D&D because it's the first introduction most have to tabletop roleplaying, and it's completely unrepresentative of what tabletops ought to be; it's an overelaborate board game stretched over an incredibly truncated and generic fantasy world. Yes, it was vital to the development of modern CRPGs as we know them, but nowadays it is not only unnecessary but counterproductive. It's the single worst factor in suppressing creativity among RPers and attracting the exact wrong crowd into roleplaying. As an RPer and and RPGer, as a player and a DM, I loathe Dungeons and Dragons, and they ought to do one of three things to it: put it in a museum, force it to the periphery and put a more deserving system in the role of first tutor, or reclassify it as a Goddamn war game. Any which way, it shouldn't corrupt new RPGers any more. [ Thursday, March 24, 2005 17:05: Message edited by: Bad-Ass Mother Custer ] -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
| Nonfiction Books You Are Reading in General | |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Thursday, March 24 2005 15:26
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Genesis 2:4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens. Genesis 1:3 - 2:3: And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. ... And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. ... And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. So either 'day' means 'work period' on at least some level or the Bible is internally inconsistent. Your call. -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Thursday, March 24 2005 15:20
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quote:Only took you, what, six posts? -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Thursday, March 24 2005 14:46
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It's worthy of note that the Hebrew word used for 'day' was defined as more or less 'workday' - i.e. from the time someone starts working to the time someone stops. In the native culture this usually, but not always, conformed to sunrise and sunset, but it would not be seen as particularly strange for a man to describe a 'day' of 36 hours. It's not inconcievable that the 'days' of God would be millenia long, which is far more compatible with everything we know about the Earth than the idea that Genesis happened in one real week. It saddens me to see otherwise reasonable people bend over backwards, ignore the sum of human progress, and treat plain and obvious fact as a deceptive, cruel thing for no greater purpose than to prove their parents weren't lying to them like they were about the other jolly old man who would reward them for being good. There are plenty of parts of the Bible which are vital to a good life, and plenty which are factually and morally bankrupt. Taking both as equally infallible reeks of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. [ Thursday, March 24, 2005 14:52: Message edited by: Bad-Ass Mother Custer ] -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
| Two years to the day. in General | |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Wednesday, March 23 2005 00:21
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quote:The 'aggression' you're talking about is literally so old that the vast majority of people to live while it happened are now dead. So far as the current generation is concerned, the Israelis are freedom fighters trying to keep terrorism in check and the Palestinians are freedom fighters trying to stave off a merciless invading enemy. 'Don't do the crime if you can't do the time' is a good enough thing to say when you're raising a child, but this is different. You have two groups who want to kill each other and each have technically valid reasons to do so; it's time for us to realize that just because there's a reason to hurt someone like the Israelis and Palestinians have been doesn't mean inflicting that pain should be done. -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
| Sexual Orientation in General | |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Tuesday, March 22 2005 16:14
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Conscious food farming - 'organic', 'free range', and so on - is incredibly wasteful, almost insultingly so when you take into account areas where millions of people live without proper nutrition. That's part of why I've never been able to get on the environmental bandwagon. At some level, it's just the same kind of ritualized self-stroking that leads to conspicuous consumption. -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
| New Abortion Laws in General | |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Tuesday, March 22 2005 15:07
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quote:The Chinese policy is a whole other can of worms. The economy can't support even a small growth rate due to the fact that there's over a billion of them, to say nothing of the kind of birth rate that would result from larger families. And by 'the economy can't support...' I mean that people are going to starve, not that the Chinese economy is just going to suffer. Compare India, where the standard of life is plummeting in spite of modernization due to too-large families. I think when you get right down to it on the global scale, we have too many children already. And I find copy-pasting to be faintly insulting, really. If you have a genuine need to distort the facts, you might as well do it yourself. Xan: Half of the CoC is common sense. The 2002 debacle occurred because of a strict coherence to CoC rules without taking common sense into account, and look where that got us. Just because there are plenty of images from the Rotten Library that the CoC doesn't explicitly forbid doesn't mean they aren't clearly unacceptable for a general-audiences board. And really, what the hell purpose is there in it? It's the equivalent of butting into a more or less civilized debate by shrieking incoherently and throwing bags of piss on the other side. Shocking, yes, but it proves nothing. [ Tuesday, March 22, 2005 15:11: Message edited by: Bad-Ass Mother Custer ] -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
| World of Warcraft in General | |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Tuesday, March 22 2005 14:55
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Nope. -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
| New Abortion Laws in General | |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Monday, March 21 2005 23:02
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quote:Half of abortions are initiated by women who didn't do anything to stop getting pregnant. I said as much. That is a misinterpretation. It was deliberate that time. Stop doing that. quote:Didn't we just lock horns on a euthanasia topic? Does this weird you out as much as it does me?quote:So because our technology isn't good enought to keep it alive, it wasn't really alive in the first place? Terminal cancer patients must love you. Okay, the latter part is much more important than the former. Some day, it'll be technologically feasible to create a healthy baby with no human interaction at all. Will that make leaving an egg unfertilized murder? No, because eggs don't have any capacities that make us human. Same goes for second-trimester fetuses. It's a strictly moralistic issue, and we have something called separation of church and state for that. That makes legislation on it inappropriate in almost all circumstances, making it a matter of personal choice. quote:Did you actually look at that list of reasons? The majority of abortions aren't done because of medical or economic necessity. And even if they can't afford it, they could still put it up for adoption.[/QB][/quote]No, those are reasons for regular abortions, including first-trimester ones. PBAs are an entirely different kind, which are far more sensationally violent and usually occur at a later stage of pregnancy. That's another one of those lovely deliberate misinterpretations. Are you drunk or something? You're usually militantly wrong, but deliberately screwing up the facts is a new one from you, and I'm disappointed. [ Monday, March 21, 2005 23:04: Message edited by: Bad-Ass Mother Custer ] -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
| Sexual Orientation in General | |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Monday, March 21 2005 22:39
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I prefer the women and I'm planning a career out of the slurs. -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
| New Abortion Laws in General | |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Monday, March 21 2005 21:56
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"But what is really striking is that almost half of the unintended pregnancies, and almost half of all the abortions annually, occur to the three million women who do not use contraception." A little under 50% of abortions are initiated by women who do not use birth control. While it may perhaps seem to therefore mean that 50% of women who have abortions use it as their solitary form of birth control to, say, a five-year-old, the two are not obviously connected at all. I mean, if women do not use contraception, they are likely to have more abortions, having had more pregnancies. The bottom line is (1) this statistic relates to abortions, not abortors, and (2) it's not 50% anyway. When someone cannot make an argument without hashing their numbers, look for them to be trying to sell you something. Clinton vetoed the PBA ban because it gave no provision for necessary PBAs, e.g. cases in which normal childbirth would cause the death of the mother. Had such a proviso existed, it is almost certain the ban would have received President Clinton's support; in fact, it is the policy of the AMA, the sole licensed authority on the subject, to forbid PBAs in non-necessary cases. It is typical of anti-abortion zealots to omit that from the discussion, and treat it as just another case of the terrible, child-killing Democrats. I feel that the third trimester ought be off-limits unless there's a severe health concern because the fetus is rather viable, and the second trimester ought be a matter of personal choice. A second-trimester fetus is only 'life' in the vaguest, most mechanical sense; in all but a few isolated cases they are incapable of the rigors of survival even given extensive life support, they are literally devoid of any conscious experience, memory, or activity whatsoever - in other words, killing a grown dog is almost certainly a worse 'offense' and if there's a medical or economic necessity and all humane measures are taken, there oughtn't be a problem with it. If you want to feel there's a soul in there, that's fine; don't abort your fetuses, then. You can take this as far as considering contraceptives wicked, if you like, but don't expect the state to step in on your behalf. [ Monday, March 21, 2005 22:09: Message edited by: Bad-Ass Mother Custer ] -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
| Two years to the day. in General | |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Monday, March 21 2005 16:32
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quote:Chance someone became homeless as a result of that bulldozing: 100%. Chance that a terrorist might have been forced to move elsewhere: some indeterminate number above 0%. Inflicted casualties: 1. Gee, that makes all sorts of sense. -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
| New Abortion Laws in General | |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Monday, March 21 2005 16:24
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quote:Nothing. It's profoundly obvious to even the most dense person that the collected experiences and emotions of seventeen years weigh just as heavily as those collected by three insensate months in a lightless, airless cavern. I do not consider first-trimester abortion to even be an ethical issue. It's an embryo, for God's sake. It doesn't have eyes. It's not even close to viable life at a trans-cellular level. Removing someone's lung to stop a virulent cancer is literally closer to killing of a living creature in every sane way. [ Monday, March 21, 2005 16:27: Message edited by: Bad-Ass Mother Custer ] -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Monday, March 21 2005 12:28
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I'm very leery about the lack of respect either of the other branches have been showing for the judicary lately. I would have disagreed with a law being passed over euthanasia in general in that direction, because I know it would have the same kind of shadowy motives shared by every other Republican bill on moralistics, but an act of Congress overriding a judicial decision is patently ridiculous. It's unconstitutional on at least three levels and, as someone said earlier, seems to be the first step towards a more totalitarian system. Is it just me, or has the GOP gotten seriously drunk on power since 2004? They seem to believe they're working on a mandate, and whether that mandate is coming from below or above doesn't seem to matter to them. -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
| The Universe in General | |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Sunday, March 20 2005 12:51
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There are two things in the universe: matter and energy. They are made of the same particles, just in different configurations. Light is matter and energy; temperature is energy, and movement is a vector. And not all of Newton's laws were correct. Einstein's generally hold up in the laboratory. -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
| Wolfowitz to rule the World Bank? in General | |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Saturday, March 19 2005 19:34
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Paul Wolfowitz was a former member of the Democratic Socialists USA, who were anti-Soviet, imperialist hardliners who also happened to be socialists. A group of relatively important intellectuals who influenced the Democratic Party in bizzare ways, got appointed to all sorts of cabinet positions at various points, and have now mostly scattered to the winds. Of course, Wolfowitz isn't a socialist any more, and he was hardly democratic to begin with. The US is mostly throwing its weight around, and almost everyone outside of Bush's inner circle opposed nominations like Bolton's. Even Rice, known to be reasonably hawkish and standoffish, was leery about it, and tried to keep the man out of any power. Now he's second in US-UN policymaking, next to the President. Whee. -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
| Other Realms in Avernum in Blades of Avernum | |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Friday, March 18 2005 22:49
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Yeah, but that leads to silliness like the Vahnatai living on Empire, which is obviously false. :P And 'Ironclad' is the name of not one but (so far as I can tell) four monarchs who are generally taken as semi-canonical. -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
| Other Realms in Avernum in Blades of Avernum | |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Friday, March 18 2005 21:05
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Ermarian is convenient when disambiguating the planet from Earth or the Empire. And I find it ironic that you consider it unwieldy, and yet are willing to accept a monarch named Ironclad. -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
| Nonfiction Books You Are Reading in General | |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Friday, March 18 2005 20:12
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quote:They only mean it inasmuch as the Catholic Church was problematic to Gallileo. -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
| Wolfowitz to rule the World Bank? in General | |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Friday, March 18 2005 14:21
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It makes perfect sense to put an ex-member of the Democratic Socialists USA on a board position in one of the biggest leeches of third-world potential ever formulated by well-meaning people. -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
| whats better A3 or BoA in Blades of Avernum | |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Thursday, March 17 2005 18:01
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quote:Bad idea. Jeff's scenarios tend to be pretty awful once better ones come out (example: Bandit Busywork, on par with ZKR but easily the worst 'professional' scenario of its time). He's just not capable with the form. His games are good, but his scenarios, not so much. -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
| Geneforge 3 Questions in General | |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Thursday, March 17 2005 16:26
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Prostitution is not illegal in all 50 states. In fact, state laws outlawing prostitution are actually reasonably uncommon; the responsibility to enforce prostitution usually falls to the county or township. In 2004, for instance, a county in northern Nevada voted for Bush with 80% prevalence, and by a similar margin voted in favor of repealing local laws which forbid them from running a bordello. (If John Kerry had won the election that would feel far less like gallows humor to me.) Personally, I believe outlawing prostitution is immoral, both from a socialist-egalitarian point of view and a libertarian point of view. Socially, outlawing it is not going to fix anything, it's just going to make the lives of prostitutes (usually girls in utter destitution) much, much worse than they already are; legally, it's an infringement on personal liberties as lurid and illogical as outlawing bondage. What we need to do is twofold: first, attack the sources of prostitution. Eliminate the social mechanisms which create miserable poverty, and guarantee a living income to all residents of the U.S. (and, hopefully, the Earth). Then, socialize it. Those few who would still want to go into hookering would work for a state office, which would bug-and-background check johns beforehand. This would provide the government with extra revenues, ensure the prostitutes were treated humanely, and curb the spread of STDs pretty drastically. I, for one, would be pretty happy about never again having to hear about streetwalkers getting cut up by psychopaths, having seven kids before the age of 25, or dying of AIDS, or all three. Doesn't matter that I'd never solicit a prostitute myself and would discourage others from doing the same; they've had effective anti-soliciting laws on the books since the Enlightenment, sometimes much more forceful than ours today, and yet it remains as strong as ever. If we can't kill the issue, we might as well protect the people. [ Thursday, March 17, 2005 16:28: Message edited by: Bad-Ass Mother Custer ] -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
| Nonfiction Books You Are Reading in General | |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Wednesday, March 16 2005 07:16
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quote:*mumble* I don't read a lot of nonfiction. I can name three I have off the top of my head: the Life historical compendium from 1900-1994 called 'Our Times', the Lincoln book on the twilight of Czarist Russia 'In War's Dark Shadow', and Zinn's incomparable 'A People's History Of The United States'. I recommend all three heartily. Oh, if you broaden nonfiction a little to include normative stuff, I've also got 'Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them' (which I recommend) and 'The O'Reilly Factor' (which I do not). There's also 'What If? 2', a collection of ruminations on historical points of divergence. Interesting, but dull as all hell, so don't look into it unless that's your sort of thing. I've been reading 'They Came Before Columbus', about West African trade, colonization, and conquest of the Americas in the pre-Columbian era, and 'Dawn to the West', a book on the evolution of Japanese literature and poetry from Meiji to Showa, in my school's library, and they're both pretty good so far. [ Wednesday, March 16, 2005 07:17: Message edited by: Bad-Ass Mother Custer ] -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |
| RPGs in General | |
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Bob's Big Date
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written Wednesday, March 16 2005 07:06
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The first RPGs were war-games, first designed in the early half of the 19th century to simulate martial situations, ranging from simplistic board games to complex statistically-rich field simulations, and played by officers during peacetime - with at least one officer or group thereof playing the away side. I don't see why this doesn't qualify, unless you're one of those idiots who demands RPGs be about wonderful, magical, effeminate elves who all resemble Orlando Bloom, in which case more power to you. [ Wednesday, March 16, 2005 07:07: Message edited by: Bad-Ass Mother Custer ] -------------------- The biggest, the baddest, and the fattest. Posts: 2367 | Registered: Friday, June 27 2003 07:00 |