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Nethergate II in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, January 27 2007 16:22 Profile Homepage #10
Hear hear!

—Alorael, who always avoided the food in Annwn because eating in the land of the dead is a bad idea. Maybe Annwn isn't supposed to be a long, gruelling starvation and healing marathon.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Custom titles in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, January 27 2007 09:09 Profile Homepage #50
Try to harm Aran and the killbots will come down on your head like a ton of various metals and assorted plastics.

—Alorael, who has a new and useful suggestion. If you want to be a mod, you need to demonstrate responsibility. What better way to do that then to show you are capable of running a board? So don't delay, start satellite forums now!
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Nethergate II in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Saturday, January 27 2007 09:04 Profile Homepage #5
It's a combination of memories. Avernum has food you can eat but don't have to. Nethergate has food you are obligated to consume automatically. Put together it could be terrible, but it wasn't.

—Alorael, who always starts with enough Woodscraft that his food supply tends to go up instead of down over time. You don't even need to purchase food. And if you hate it that much there's always the editor.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Mitochondria and Cancer in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, January 26 2007 11:28 Profile Homepage #18
quote:
Originally written by 7Synergy7:

Semantics are suggestive, and perhaps carefully chosen. Side effects are effects just as much as the intended "primary" effect(s).
They're not meaningless semantics. You're not given chemotherapy so that your hair false out and you feel terrible, although those happen. You're given chemotherapy so that you can recover from cancer. There is an intended effect and there are other effects, often toxic, that are documented and acknowledged.

—Alorael, who actually was completely unaware of any link between cancer and mitochondrial dysfunction. Classifying cancer as a metabolic disease would be a big paradigm shift.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
wikipedia forever? in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, January 26 2007 11:17 Profile Homepage #66
My spelling appears suspect, but at least I prevented myself from attempting to convert five mL to some number of kilogram meters.

—Alorael, who believes that the only useful intersections of volume and anything else is that a pint is 16 fluid ounces and a pound is 16 ounces. That means that a pint of water is (probably) a pound of weight and that the two ounces are equivalent for water. That's not true for most substances, though, and not even true for all definitions of pint or ounce. Length doesn't enter the picture. Imperial units are silly.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Custom titles in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, January 26 2007 11:05 Profile Homepage #33
IMAGE(http://www.agraria.org/coltivazioniarboree/mango.JPG)

—Alorael, who needs to clarify a misconception again. Unless you are SMoE or an admin, you do not get to pick a title. On Spiderweb, title picks you! Actually, sometimes an admin picks a title for you, but that's not as catchy.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
problem getting into formello in Avernum 4
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, January 26 2007 11:01 Profile Homepage #7
quote:
Originally written by Cryptozoology:

be prepared for an icy reception.
I groan at thee, sir!

—Alorael, who thinks it's only fair to warn you that the first half of A4 is very linear and the rest is fairly linear too. You will do the major quests in order or you will not be able to move forward.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
bestiary in The Avernum Trilogy
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, January 26 2007 10:55 Profile Homepage #18
If big felines exist on Earth, why aren't they all over the place?

—Alorael, who certainly thinks lions and tigers and bears count as big. Bears aren't felines for most values of feline, but the other two are.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Chromite!! CHROMITE, baby!! in Richard White Games
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, January 26 2007 10:54 Profile Homepage #9
You may also need some Babelfish help.

—Alorael, who specifically recommends Babelfish. Do not use a dictionary. Do not use Kelandon. Use Babelfish and you will not be disappointed.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
A New Series in Geneforge 4: Rebellion
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, January 26 2007 10:53 Profile Homepage #31
I've come to the conclusion that aliens are largely unhelpful in stories. They can and should be replaced with humans, possibly slightly different humans, when another group is called for. If you just need a MacGuffin, or at most some kind of reasonable impetus for human action, fine, but the story is about humans.

—Alorael, who most of the time finds that alienness is a replacement for or excuse for the lack of plot and motivation. If aliens are too different to understand they make decent plot devices but terrible characters. If they're antagonists, the story falls into the category of man vs. nature, not man vs. creature.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Custom titles in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Friday, January 26 2007 00:00 Profile Homepage #20
Don't let Kel fool you. Mods have several powers beyond those. We just generally don't exercise them because they aren't necessary except in certain special or extreme circumstances.

—Alorael, who is absolutely serious. He's also wiling to bet you didn't know the boards came with a panic button.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
wikipedia forever? in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, January 25 2007 23:56 Profile Homepage #61
Of course you're better with the units that are more familiar. Work with metric enough and suddenly it's all perfectly clear. The only real differences are in convenient spacings of units, which doesn't seem like a major issue to me, and conversion, which seems like a reasonable criterion for selecting a system of measurement.

—Alorael, who would like to ask all the people who have grown up using metric whether they were ever tested in school on their ability to convert kilomters into millimeters and milligrams into kilograms. In America, turning quarts into teaspoons, and miles into inches is not all that unusual and unnecessarily difficult.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Mitochondria and Cancer in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, January 25 2007 23:46 Profile Homepage #11
I'm aware of the fate of medicines that draw no money, but I'm interested in hearing the opinions of Spiderweb's learned. It's a very heavily capitalist system, and it works, but I don't think I've ever heard of anyone liking it. I'd like to know who has a plan for doing it better.

—Alorael, who overlooked an even bigger mystery of advertising. Drug companies talking about how they help sick people get better are improving their images for unclear reasons. But what about the companies advertising specific prescription drugs? How many people successfully march into the doctor's office and demand X? Obviously enough to make advertising lucrative, but what does that say about doctors and ad viewers?
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Mitochondria and Cancer in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, January 25 2007 20:44 Profile Homepage #9
Despite several recent advertising blitzes by pharmaceutical companies, I don't really understand what good public opinion does for pharma. The public doesn't get to choose to be consumers. That decision largely rests in the hands of doctors, and those doctors are making medical, not moral, decisions when they determine which therapies are most likely to be successful.

While R&D is a big part of the cost of producing new drugs, the testing and clinical trials are also long, expensive, and especially heavy on administrative overhead. Even treating patients with sugar pills is expensive. Drug companies have no interest in assuming that cost. Fortunately, that's what public research is for: the government is happy to fund and even carry out the research for potentially useful and potentially cheap medicine.

—Alorael, who is more worried about the fates of drugs that are developed and approved but then not manufactured because the demand is so low that the company can't expect to profit. What should be done? Is the government obligated to purchase the patent, make the drug, and take the loss from taxpayers for the benefit of a few victims of rare diseases?
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Custom titles in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, January 25 2007 20:33 Profile Homepage #16
quote:
Originally written by Randomizer:

Considering the last mod compiled a massive database about these forums, it really helps to have something on the other mods. Not that I'm implying that Aran did anything underhanded since he may have just used old fashioned bribery to gain his position.

So just send me model number, color and delivery information so you can get yours.
Actually, you've just brought up the Satanic rituals. See, there is this semi-regular rite known as an "election" that happens when the stars are properly aligned. Your chances are much better if you basicaly meet the criteria that the other mods and admins have. Actually, you'd better have some of them, because no matter how many votes a spambot gets it will receive no delegation of power.

—Alorael, who is personally of the opinion that Alcritas should have been made Misc. mod no matter how many votes he didn't receive or how much presence he did not have here. In fact, it would be wholly fitting to create a new Misc. forum on which nobody could post just to make Alcritas a mod.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
The SpiderWebWorld in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, January 25 2007 13:12 Profile Homepage #145
Really illegible.

—Alorael, who thinks it could be deciphered given enough time and dedication. He doesn't really want to look at it for more than a few seconds, though, so the humor is lost.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Mitochondria and Cancer in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, January 25 2007 13:09 Profile Homepage #1
It's exactly what it sounds like. If a company can't patent it, they're not going to bother researching it because no matter how well it works there's no way to make a profit. If it does work that well I'd be surprised if there weren't studies either planned for the near future or already underway in research labs. In fact, since it's known, the latter sounds a lot more likely.

—Alorael, who would guess that clinical trials will wait until the mechanism is understood better, it's shown to be relatively harmless and very effective in vitro, or someone gets permission to have a clinical trial based on low potential for harm in patients who are already dying of cancer.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Chromite!! CHROMITE, baby!! in Richard White Games
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, January 25 2007 10:39 Profile Homepage #7
No, it's quite clearly 70% Absolute Truth and 50% Absolute Belief. The two are not to be mixed in advanced or there are Dire Consequences, some of which include Many Capital Letters.

—Alorael, who is sure you Don't want to meSS with Capital LetterS.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
bestiary in The Avernum Trilogy
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, January 25 2007 10:38 Profile Homepage #11
I'm all for lions and tigers in future Avernum games as long as they serve tea and scones and do lime damage.

—Alorael, who supports creative use of wildlife. Incidentally, what would the worg/ursag equivalent of those two be?
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
wikipedia forever? in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Thursday, January 25 2007 01:00 Profile Homepage #48
Um, yes. I very carefully thought that one through because I just had an occasion to use a deciliter and didn't want to make that mistake. In this case I planned carefully and then Freudian slipped.

—Alorael, who is all for decameters as well as decimeters. And, as long as astronomy is coming up, gigameters and picoliters.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
The Halo Suit of the Modern World - Fraud? in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Wednesday, January 24 2007 22:06 Profile Homepage #59
I still don't see what's so wrong about the original point. Canada is, I believe, largely not a desert. Large parts of where the US military is likely to remain bogged down indefinitely are deserts, and they are hot deserts. Overheating is a problem.

Then again, overheating is a problem in any armor, current armor included.

—Alorael, who has another reason not to be a soldier. Sensitivity to temperature can go after moral objections, asthma, and a criminal history.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Chromite!! CHROMITE, baby!! in Richard White Games
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Wednesday, January 24 2007 22:02 Profile Homepage #5
They are made of an alloy of 70% truth and 50% belief.

—Alorael, who believes the ratio was carefully tested. Less than 20% extra belief and there's not enough belief in there to maintain the impossible ratio stably.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
Killing innocent people in Avernum 4
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Wednesday, January 24 2007 22:00 Profile Homepage #17
Capitalism is based on selfishness and greed (and you can't have the latter without the former). It's ugly, but it works. Communism is either on noble seflessness or iron-fisted control from the top. The former doesn't happen and the latter is even uglier than capitalism... and it doesn't work.

—Alorael, who as always advocates socialism only up to the point at which most people still don't realize that their selfishness isn't very productive for them personally and that laziness is a viable alternative. That's probably the point at which laziness isn't a viable alternative.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
wikipedia forever? in General
Or else o'erleap.
Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Wednesday, January 24 2007 21:57 Profile Homepage #45
Actually, NASA only declared the moon metric this month. Progress marches slowly on.

The problem isn't that centimeters are difficult. It's that picturing thirty of them (or anything) is difficult. Say about a third of a meter and I have no trouble coming up with the size. Really, your objection to the metric system seems to be based on the lack of an intermediate between centimeters and meters, and not anything important.

—Alorael, who has always wanted a chance to use decameters. They're still not quite a third of a foot, but they're better.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00
The Halo Suit of the Modern World - Fraud? in General
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Law Bringer
Member # 335
 written Wednesday, January 24 2007 13:07 Profile Homepage #39
The government is not, as a rule, good at tight control of anything. But seriously, from factory to shipping to warehouse to more shipping to some supply depot to yet more shipping to the point I am trying to make, you don't think there would be a few suits siphoned off or just plain misplaced here and there?

—Alorael, who could also see the suits being made for private use. The inventor has no real vested interest in making them available exclusively to military personnel. Unless the contract stipulates government use only, he's got nothing to lose by making and selling impressive armored suits to perfectly legitimate buyers.
Posts: 14579 | Registered: Saturday, December 1 2001 08:00

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