Profile for Or else o'erleap.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Displayed name | Or else o'erleap. |
| Member number | 335 |
| Title | Law Bringer |
| Postcount | 14579 |
| Homepage | http://www.polarisboard.net |
| Registered | Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
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| Human cloning in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Saturday, August 6 2005 16:32
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If anyone would recommend getting rid of the "natural clones," it's Thuryl. Extensive anecdotal evidence has documented that identical twins often do tend to have similar (though of course not identical) tastes, personalities, and so on. I'm not sure if there has been any formal study on it, but let's assume it's true and would remain true for clones. How is that a problem? There's probably someone a lot like that already without the benefits of cloning, and nobody is murdering anyone else. What about clones who feel inferior because they aren't the same person as the original? Unless the parents, guardians, or whatever are enforcing that idea, which should come under the heading of abuse, it's not a problem. Almost every single person reading this post, with a few very notable exceptions, is a random assortment of genes from two parents. Would a nonrandom copy of genes from one parent completely change your life? Not unless it's jammed down your throat. I simply don't see the reason for reproductive cloning. You get a person who may be similar but won't be a copy of the original. It's expensive, difficult, and low-yield, at least for now. What, exactly, do you get that the old-fashioned kind of child production doesn't do for you? For those who still don't understand therapeutic cloning, you don't get an unconscious or unintelligent person. You don't get anything resembling a person at all. You get cells that can be turned into specific organs if needed. While this does run into the problems of those who insist that a blastocyst is a human being, I can see no problems with it. It doesn't even look disgusting or questionable, unlike current organ collection procedures. —Alorael, who would rather not be cloned on the moral grounds that the money wasted on that pointless endeavor could be put to better use, like feeding the starving or euthanizing undesirables. Take your pick. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Do you trust people? in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Friday, July 29 2005 19:45
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quote:You have more faith in humanity than I do, Thuryl, which is why I go out prepared for intense personal combat at all times. You also have more faith in weather forecasts. Just because they say no meteors today doesn't mean there won't be any. They say sunny and clear all the time and, oops, it may be sunny but all the interposing snow makes it hard to see. —Alorael, who trusts his friends to keep secrets only if he already has the blackmail material lined up and knows that they know it. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Web "anonymity" vs. real life identity in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Friday, July 29 2005 19:40
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I enjoy tormenting those who try to figure out who I am, and I also enjoy leading them in circles. I'm a bad person and make no apologies for it. Otherwise, I have no real reasons for hiding my identity. Like Thuryl, I'd rather not have my online persona attached to myself in my daily living, but I wouldn't be crushed if it were. I also have a personal belief that anonymity is good for both the anonymous and those who deal with him or her, but my faith in that is ever more shaken as I come to grips with it in light of my cynicism. —Alorael, whose name is known, though not commonly, on Spiderweb already. You can figure it out if you put some work into it. From there it's a bit more work to find his address, phone number, and social security number. He would appreciate advance warning before lynch mobs show up at his door. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| RICHARD WHITE LEGAL TEAM in Richard White Games | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Friday, July 29 2005 13:02
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To take this sideways a bit, I'm thinking of starting up a new recording company. Do you think the Necronomicon on tape would sell well? How about encrypting it backwards in really bad pop songs? —Alorael, who is thinking about calling his new company something impossible to pronounce with human anatomy that is best approximated with hawking, spitting, and yipping like a rabid N/F plugged into a defibrillator Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Just say no in Richard White Games | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Friday, July 29 2005 12:58
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No. We've remembered how to remember the future, if I remember correctly. —Alorael, who is having a little trouble recalling the details of yesterday now, although tomorrow is, unfortunately, crystal clear. It wasn't/won't be a very good day. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| RP List in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Friday, July 29 2005 12:43
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Desperance has claimed to have Misc, as has Polaris. Both were worthier attempts, and neither were particularly worthy. Calling boards Miscellaneous doesn't make the Miscellaneous. They often lack Alcritas. —Alorael, who would rather have Misc live on forever as a memory that he can use to claim total superiority to all newcomers. Nothing wrong with superiority, is there? Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| RICHARD WHITE LEGAL TEAM in Richard White Games | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Thursday, July 28 2005 20:27
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(There is something wrong with this thread. It's become semi-serious. It's about Richard White and it's in RWG! Someone do something!) I should perhaps distinguish between cultural survival and archival survival. As a case in point: the music of Thomas Tallis, while not exactly common today, is still played. You can buy CDs with his music without too much effort or energy. The music of countless of Tallis' contemporaries can be found only in the various universities and conservatories of Europe. Nobody plays it, nobody thinks about it, and even the aficionados of 16th century music probably have to look them up to remember who they were. Half a millenium filters garbage out of culture nicely. Mind you, Tallis himself isn't topping any charts. Almost 500 years will leave everyone in a little bit of a cultural dusty corner. Still, find a good classical station and you'll hear Tallis every so often. Go forward less than two hundred years and you reach Vivaldi, who is a big man in the classical world. Again, the schlock is, for the most part, gone, certain Bach offspring and critical opinions thereof notwithstanding. Compare this with music written only this century and it's no wonder we're still suffering through the occasional pang of bubblegum. Never fear, the worst will be gone. We won't be alive to appreciate it, but at least our grandchildren and great grandchildren will be free of the musical scourges of our era. I'm sure this is equally true of literature, although the ivory tower experts conceive the strangest passions for unremarkable works, and in science it may be even more prevalent. Aristotle's works have survived in some part for over two thousand years. —Alorael, who will point out that while everything is mass produced and massively distributed today, even two hunded years ago the destruction of a single library, for example, could mean permanently destroyed knowledge and records. Go back even farther and there are only a handful of copies of anything written, so it's no wonder that they vanished so easily. Popularity at least ensured more copies, which in a sort of physical Darwinism leads to increased survival. Now that an eBook or mp3 can be sent to everyone with a computer, the chance of obliterating anything is very low. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Hintbooks... in The Avernum Trilogy | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Thursday, July 28 2005 20:12
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If I am using a hintbook, I like to play through a section, then check a guide or hintbook to see what I missed and, if possible, go back and not miss it. The Avernum hintbooks happen to be very well laid out for that purpose: being able to see just what the quests are in a town, and usually who gives them to you, is exactly what I want. I used to try very hard to avoid overusing walkthroughs the first time I played through a game, but now I no longer avoid it and I can't say it has negatively impacted my enjoyment. —Alorael, who feels no hintbook remorse. This is either a moral defect or a sign of pragmatism. Either way, it bodes well for any spontaneous desire he may feel to break into politics. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| RICHARD WHITE LEGAL TEAM in Richard White Games | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Thursday, July 28 2005 18:00
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90% of everything is crap, but every year filters out more of the crap of yesteryear so that we end up with a distilled 9% non-crap, 1% crap that somehow survives from nostalgia or some other inexplicable human foible, and 1% of the valuable non-crap slips through the cracks? I'll propose that as the limit of content of most fields as time approaches infinity. —Alorael, who will now have to get to work figuring out the specific equation that governs the approach. There also has to be a correction for content lost over time, which is both crap-dependent (memorable works are less likely to vanish) and crap-independent (an unexpected fire destroys the only remaining copy of Insignificant Ted's single notable work). Truly difficult but culturally significant mathematics that would perhaps best be left to the qualified. Zeviz? Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Avernum 4 Complete Wish List in The Avernum Trilogy | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Thursday, July 28 2005 17:45
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"Shall I drop an excessively large spell and kill my fighters too?" and "Shall I place a bunch of damaging walls on or in front of him?" are also good ones. —Alorael, who personally likes surrounding with Force Barriers and leaving to rot. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| RICHARD WHITE LEGAL TEAM in Richard White Games | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Thursday, July 28 2005 14:13
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Just about any other forum you care to name, actually. —Alorael, who can't guarantee relevant rain. Quite often it will be an outpouring (and a pun!) of "stf n00b" or "lol yeah," but you do get that pouring. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Scent of new-mown hay in Richard White Games | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Thursday, July 28 2005 13:36
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No, that makes Bush a politician. "Good" has two possible meanings. One is the subjective "I agree with is policies" sense, in which you clearly do think that Bush is a good politician and I clearly do not. The other is the "good" of getting things done. Bush certainly has gotten things done, although perhaps he has finished or successfully accomplished far fewer. That's drifting back into subjectivity. I don't think Bush is nearly as stupid as he is accused of being, I don't think he is as good-naturedly bumbling as he portrays himselfe, and I don't think he's actually an intellectual powerhouse. He's probably average or a bit above average in the smarts department. That probably places him low on the scale for a politician, but not remarkably so. He makes up for it in base cunning (no, this isn't bias showing at all...). He certainly has the charisma and social savvy to be a highly skilled manipulator of facts in the public opinion. —Alorael, who is somewhat baffled by how Bush is so much more successful in the States than abroad. Is the American group psyche so different, or are outsiders predisposed to turn a more critical eye to foreign leaders? Are other countries' news sources more reliable? Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| RPGs in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Thursday, July 28 2005 13:24
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Judging by my limited playing experience and somewhat less limited reading experience of Chrono Cross, it is neither similar to nor heavily based on Chrono Trigger. Chrono Trigger is much closer to the Final Fantasies before 7, and tends to get rated quite highly. —Alorael, who likes it himself. It's not huge, deeply complex, or thought-provoking, but it's good fun. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Do you trust people? in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Thursday, July 28 2005 13:19
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I know that everyone is out to get me. I keep my own counsel, sirs! No, I'm not really the trusting type. Partly this is because I am cynical, and partly this is because I am a terrible micromanager who must be involved in everything. Trust requires letting someone else handle, know, or influence something, and that's really not something I'm good at. I trust people I know better more, of course, unless in the course of getting to know them I discover that they really aren't trustworthy at all. All this has led me to shut myself up on a second story and emerge only to retrieve the wallets of "mysteriously smitten" pedestrians. I don't think people trust me that much, either, and if they do they shouldn't. I'm not intentionally malicious (I swear!), but I am notoriously unreliable and easily distracted. And there's that whole pedestrian thing, too. —Alorael, who can add only that he knows most Spiderwebbers only minimally. So not all of the above is true. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Avernum 4 Complete Wish List in The Avernum Trilogy | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Thursday, July 28 2005 13:11
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If you have dead weight characters, you're shooting yourself in the foot. They'll still suck experience, take up a slot that could be filled with a useful party member, and generally be worthless. Even deleting and creating new ones at need isn't very efficient, because you're still wasting experience and by the end of the game they'll have a life expectancy of seconds. A siphon spell could work just fine in a regular party, though. Get some use out of the minimal spell point reservoirs your meat shields accumulate and spread the health equally. Actually, a damaging health-stealing spell would be fun as well, especially in a Mindduel setup. A way to excise your enemies' spell points would be equally useful. —Alorael, who will summarize all this by saying that Mindduel was a very fun spell and should be brought back, expanded, and resold in a gold edition. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| THE ABOMINABLE PHOTO THREAD: THE THIRD COMING! in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Thursday, July 28 2005 13:04
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"I am by far the most attractive Spidwebber. You can take my word for it!" Somehow that seems like a dubious proposition in most cases. —Alorael, who strongly resembles a malformed troglodyte (in the dictionary sense of the word, not the Exile kind) with questionable personal hygiene and remarkably off-putting skin diseases. He isn't one, though. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Favorite game... in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Wednesday, July 27 2005 20:50
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I've left out two very important entertainments, actually. Chess is great for when you have some time to devote to crushing the ego of your foe (or maybe having your ego crushed), and Nine Men's Morris is good for when you have only a short time in which to perform a similar feat. —Alorael, who even enjoys the occasional game of Settlers of Catan or Apples to Apples, both for similar reasons. Shouting frantically at other players is very therapeutic. The former has the benefit of being a dignified, codified, and official game, however, while Apples to Apples is distinguished mainly by its absurdity and the necessary element of unabashed favoritism. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Huzzah in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Wednesday, July 27 2005 18:03
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quote:Slow? Human? I'm so chemically augmented and hopped up on skribbane that I have a higher frequency than middle C, and it is entirely voluntary! I can vibrate in several scales, including diatonic, pentatonic, and heptatonic. —Alorael, who isn't sure how this will protect him from ferrets unless they are music lovers. But it does make him feel special, and it might give ferrets some trouble when they try to sink their teeth in. At least it will probably knock a few loose. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Favorite game... in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Wednesday, July 27 2005 17:56
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I have heard of and played through Tales of Phantasia. I can't say it ranked among my favorites, but I did enjoy it enough to finish. I will admit to loving Myth II enormously. I have never played Myth I, but from what I know it has the same things to make it wonderful. Hearing "casualties" after taking your eye off of your own dwarves is priceless. Now that I have a computer that can run it, I should look into getting Myth III. Ultimate is a great game, but Frisbee is a trademark. Nobody recognizes "Ultimate Disk," thoughAvoid teams that seem to believe that the absence of a referee is a license to cheat as much as possible. Enjoy playing in high winds, where it's much like an extended and physically taxing coin flip. Civilization 2 has had permanent squatting rights on my hard disk even when it took up a sizeable portion of my disk space. Sparkz and Angband are my (very different) versions of time-wasting Tetris. I am a proud (cheating) winner of Angband. Winning without cheating still eludes me. —Alorael, who cycles through playing all of these games and others. He also has a little habit of games by a company called Spiderweb. You've probably heard of it. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| What magazines do you subscribe to? in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Wednesday, July 27 2005 17:45
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I pick up copies of Science and The Scientist, which really are two different magazines, regularly. I also admit to subscribing to MacAddict and borrowing others' copies of the Funny Times, which isn't really a magazine but which fits in. —Alorael, who reads other magazines when he runs into them. As long as the only celebrities involved have credentials that involve more time off TV than on, it's probably a good magazine. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Just say no in Richard White Games | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Wednesday, July 27 2005 13:40
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We already have our heavy forces in place. The <lead pipe~dik-dik> is a truly fearsome beast-monster-critter. Lest they be accused of lack of subtlety and unnecessary expense (you'd be surprised at how much those angles enclosing them cost!), the snorkel?naked mole-rat is due to start rolling out of the assembly vat any day now. —Alorael, who personally thinks ordinary naked mole-rats are quite bad enough. Combining them with snorkels may not make them more dangerous, technically speaking, but the effect is well worth the effort. Lovecraft would salute them if he weren't languishing unhappily in a universe far removed from this one. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| look what i found in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Wednesday, July 27 2005 13:32
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And underlining, which is standard on many boards. [Edit: Better points to make. Or points. Maybe?] —Alorael, who supposes that fake links work as underlining and color changing, but they're ugly. [ Wednesday, July 27, 2005 13:33: Message edited by: Exploding Head ] Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| Nethergate Update Poll in Nethergate | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Wednesday, July 27 2005 13:29
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I'm a little bit worried about what will become of all the older Spiderweb games when Apple ties the knot with Intel and starts burning bridges. —Alorael, who likes to dream big. Why settle for Carbon when you could have Intel native? Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| A4 in The Avernum Trilogy | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Wednesday, July 27 2005 13:23
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Because there have been demons all the way through, and because they are a staple of many mythologies and all generic fantasy, whereas angels tend to bring up a very specific mythology. The engine is getting more than "a few changes." We're getting a new engine, for good or for ill. We have been promised some "sparkly," though until there is further evidence it may be considered pure advertising lies. —Alorael, who would like to see an exploration of draconic sexuality with regards to their rather uncertain and changeable genders. That would make a good topic for A4 by itself! Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |
| What's your favorite cereal? in General | |
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
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written Wednesday, July 27 2005 13:20
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I'm actually not a huge Grape Nut lover. I meant to say that they're more than Oatmeal Squares in that they resemble rocks, not in that they are delicious. They're good, and I liked them a lot more a few years ago, but when I need to refill my crop now I just swallow pebbles. Sorry to let you down. Cereal bars' "milk" is better described as icing, and they most definitely go stale. Some of them are horrendous, some of them are good, but none of them are as good as plain old cereal except for convenience. —Alorael, who has yet to find a cereal with the necessary innate adhesive properties. Okay, he actually has found such cereals, but they weren't anything he cared to eat. Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00 |