Profile for Student of Trinity
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Displayed name | Student of Trinity |
| Member number | 3431 |
| Title | Electric Sheep One |
| Postcount | 3335 |
| Homepage | |
| Registered | Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
Recent posts
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| Author | Recent posts |
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| Democracy Off The Mark! or not selecting this year's cult slogan. in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, September 11 2005 23:09
Profile
Of course, we can have a second 'dummy' slogan, as a cover for our real slogan. I suggest, "RWG: come for the shareware, stay for the unspeakable dark secrets". But which slogan would be real, and which dummy, would of course be Need To Know. (For those who haven't read enough bad spy novels, this means that you only get to know if the order thinks you need to. Evidently it thinks we all need to know this.) [ Friday, September 16, 2005 02:21: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| My how far we can't get up in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, September 11 2005 23:04
Profile
The greatest ignominy that we might visit upon those who defy our order would surely be death by Comic Sans Serif. All these Piercing and Slashing attack creatures may be rendered obsolete by the advent of my swarming flocks of deadly electric sheep, which will electrocute all our live adversaries, and lull all the androids to sleep. As I have only just now learned of my responsibility for this project, however, it may be quite some time before even alpha versions of the weapon system will be available. So for the foreseeable future, needle/ferrets and scissor/chickens will continue to serve as our primary offensive vehicles. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| were did TM go? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, August 31 2005 05:08
Profile
quote:And would the tool, or troll, be sellable or not? -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| My how far we've fallen... in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, August 31 2005 05:00
Profile
Ka-ching! Ba-boom! You have just won the third annual slogan contest! -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| 3rd annual RWG slogan contest in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, August 30 2005 18:13
Profile
I remind the general readership that the first year's initially winning slogan, "Dig Dick or Die!", was ruled by the Inner Council to be too overtly aggressive for our secretive order, and replaced by the more innocuous entry mentioned above. Continuing this revisionistic tradition, the second year's best slogan had to be painstakingly eradicated from history, for reasons that were eradicated even more painstakingly. This year we have to do better, people. Let's get it right the first time, and avoid further slatherings of White-Out on the badly blotted fabric of spacetime. [ Wednesday, August 31, 2005 10:36: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| My how far we can't get up in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, August 30 2005 18:08
Profile
quote:Or an especially plausible instance of intelligent design. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| My how far we can't get up in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, August 30 2005 12:10
Profile
World of Galactic Core! Think about it! [I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.] -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| My how far we've fallen... in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Tuesday, August 30 2005 12:03
Profile
I expect Icshi was just being literally accurate, as usual, for no-one knows the canon of our order better than he. If he says it needs fodder, it needs fodder. Whether Icshi is highly placed in our enormous hierarchy, or just happens to live in a place where the implants get good reception, I can't tell. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What school group do you go to? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, August 29 2005 16:51
Profile
I'm in Canada right now visiting family. I won't be in country until next week. My brother in law has a convenient wireless network, so I'm checking out the Airport feature on my wife's new iBook. We'll probably have to go wireless. Pathetic, really, how you can have technology that Charlemagne would have considered miraculous, and then suddenly it's intolerably primitive to clutter your desktop with cables. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Your Favorite Source of Energy in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, August 28 2005 18:48
Profile
An international consortium is supposedly building a humungous fusion reactor in France over the next ten years. ITER, which stands for something like 'International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor', will not be an economical device: its highest goal is proof-of-principle. If it fulfills everyone's highest hopes, fusion plants might be supplying power grids in twenty or thirty years. The discouraging thing is that people have been saying that for nearly fifty years now already. The track record of fusion power experiments isn't good. My favorite power source is the Hawking furnace, which was invented right here, in this board, some months ago. Well, it was given that catchy name here. The concept probably occurs to half the people who ever hear of the Hawking effect. I'm still trying to check whether anyone has worked out enough details to squeeze a paper out of it, and if not, whether I can. [ Sunday, August 28, 2005 18:49: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| JV and Change in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, August 28 2005 16:31
Profile
quote:Perhaps you don't know Icshi. I'm pretty sure that what he really meant, when he said that Jeff ought to grow another head, was that Jeff ought to grow another head. EDIT: I'm sorry, I've done Icshi a gross injustice. In using the phrase 'grow another head', he was of course merely employing a figure of speech. His actual referent would be something impossible to picture in three dimensions. [ Sunday, August 28, 2005 16:39: Message edited by: Student of Trinity ] -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What school group do you go to? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, August 28 2005 16:27
Profile
I guess I have to say that I am approaching my 21st straight year of college. What is this 'real world' people keep mentioning? -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Avernum 4? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Sunday, August 28 2005 16:17
Profile
I am in the midst of an intercontinental family move -- as one of the parents -- so I haven't been here much lately, and won't be again for a few weeks at least. For the moment I am unemployed, of no fixed address, and all my stuff fits into two suitcases. As a temporary state, this is quite nice. I am delighted to see that the A4 screenshots look like GF (though I do hope the Guardian and Shaper figures are just placeholders), because that seems to be my personal threshold of interest. I have tried A1, A2 and BOA VoDT, and with some time and effort I was able to get past the discontinuous movement and get into the story; but it took more time and effort than I want to expend in an amusement. Whereas the GF graphics are enough that I don't have any trouble. I don't pretend this is any universal aesthetic canon, but I'm happy with it. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Our President in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, August 10 2005 08:53
Profile
My parents have owned a cottage on Lake Huron for over 30 years, but about ten years ago they bought a lot more land around it, after the previous owners finally lost faith in their bizarre scheme to build a lucrative trailer park far out in the bush. Now that the cottage has an internet connection, I want my folks to make a homepage that says, "All your bays are belong to us!" -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What's your most embarassing moment? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, August 10 2005 08:48
Profile
While I was in the army reserve in Canada, one night in the officers' mess I met a regular army captain whom I had last known some years before at a summer training camp. Talking of other people we had both worked with there, a memorably attractive female reserve officer was mentioned. It happened that I had had a feud with her at the time, over some stupid issue of protocol, and I was young enough that this still rankled. So I criticized her character in harsh terms forbidden by the CoC here, and quite possibly also by the customs of the service for that matter. My old colleague replied, appositely given the precise accusations I had made: "Not at all. I married her." Fortunately, this particular guy was easy going, and junior infantry officers are basically expected to be complete idiots, so the episode passed as par for the course. And since then I have been rather more careful not to criticize people behind their backs. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What's so bad about it anyway? in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, August 10 2005 06:33
Profile
You know, there really was a pen-and-paper RPG based on the Cthulhu stories of H.P. Lovecraft. I never played it, but I heard that no other character stats really mattered apart from Sanity -- which basically determined how long your character would go before inevitably ending up in an asylum. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What's your religion? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Wednesday, August 10 2005 05:11
Profile
So on the more elaborate test I get 100% for mainline-to-liberal protestant Christian, which I guess is true, and high percentages of a handful of other views that I recognize as fairly close to mine. In fact, the test seems pretty good for me down to about 40% or so. It gives me percentages in the 30s for a few religions I greatly dislike, like Scientology. I guess I might have some overlap with some of those beliefs, but the test doesn't seem to register how strongly I reject others. I happen to disagree particularly strongly with Jehovah's Witnesses, after once spending several polite but frustrating sessions talking to higher and higher ranking visitors. So it's reasonable that I get my lowest score, of 9%, for JW. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Our President in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, August 8 2005 14:14
Profile
I just missed the part where it was established that 'real' behaved differently when modifying 'God' or 'god' than when modifying, say, 'ostrich'. Since when does my belief in ostriches, or in any particular ostrich, affect their reality one way or the other? How much evidence you can amass for the reality of God is another matter entirely. Perhaps you are saying that it is so difficult to identify evidence for or against the existence of God, that the ordinary concept of reality lacks utility when applied to God, and is better replaced by a measure of believers' confidence. If so, I'd say that's a defensible position -- but one that could have been articulated more clearly :) . But otherwise, as a matter of principle, I don't see how the reality of anything, of God or of a pastrami sandwich, depends on anyone's belief. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| in latin please... in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, August 8 2005 13:26
Profile
Cicero locutus, causa finita. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Our President in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, August 8 2005 13:23
Profile
I'm with Ben on this one. The view that belief constitutes reality seems pretty silly to me, I'm afraid. It sure doesn't work for electrons, or Buicks, or unicorns. Why the heck should it work for Gods? Only if you've decided that in the context of 'God', 'reality' means something quite different from what it means for electrons and Buicks, perhaps something like what would otherwise be called 'vividness' or 'emotional significance'. That might be a viable terminological convention for atheists discussing religion, but it's hardly common usage. And it retains the common drawback of terminology that alters standard definitions without notice, of being confusing - perhaps not least to those who introduce it. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Our President in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, August 8 2005 11:17
Profile
Well, it can be argued both ways, of course. After a few centuries as a somewhat antisocial cult, Christianity definitely did get into the business of providing religious authority for power, and exercising power in order to maintain religious authority. And it stayed in this business for about as long as Islam has been in business at all. Arguably Christianity has not quite gotten out of that business yet, in the United States. It has pretty much everywhere else, though, state churches notwithstanding because the official status of bodies like the Church of England is essentially just an embarrassment to everyone concerned. It still seems to me that having founders whose relation to state authority differs so greatly, as between executed criminal and successful theocratic dictator, is bound to mean something. In both Christianity and Islam, it is the earliest history, and especially the career of the founder, that has always been invoked as fundamentally normative, with few later epochs lasting long before being widely denounced as corrupt deviations in some way. So the beginnings really matter to these religions. One reason why the beginnings still matter so much is that the easiest way for religions that began as revolutionary reform movements to reform themelves, without just abolishing themselves, is by going back to basics and back to their roots, to the days when the essential principles were fresh, and all the details were up for grabs. The problem I see is that the Islamic movement to extremist violence is itself such an effort at back-to-our-roots reform, and one that seems, to my understanding of Islamic history, to have a certain self-consistency, perhaps even legitimacy. Would-be liberalizers may call for an 'Islamic Reformation', but I think Al Qaeda sees itself as precisely that. Re the Holy Roman Empire: wasn't it Voltaire who first quipped that it was none of the three? -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| Our President in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, August 8 2005 08:02
Profile
Certainly terrorists are a minute minority among Muslims. Islam as a world religion has ample credentials as an enlightened and tolerant faith. But there is a but, I think. The Muslim tradition of holy violence, and of revering anyone who kills lots of infidels, is also a real one and an old one. It is very difficult for modern Muslims, who want to point to the confidently cosmopolitan empires of the early Caliphs and the Mughals and the Ottomans, as the true icons for Islamic civilization, to entirely dissociate themselves from the fact that these same tolerant empires were intitially founded by violent conquest of nations whose only crime was to be infidel. The success of Muslim arms, in wars of conquest, was one of the oldest cited evidences for the validity of the Muslim revelation. I have seen with my own eyes the sword and bow of the Prophet, and the swords of the first four Caliphs (the only ones to be considered 'rightly guided'). They are in the Topkapi museum in Istanbul, having been carefully preserved by a long succession of Muslim rulers for nearly 1400 years. There is little reason, in my view, to doubt the authenticity of these relics: the successors of Muhammed had both the capability and the motivation to preserve such things. There are a few other interesting relics of Muhammed, including a letter supposed to be written in his own hand (and again I don't really doubt this). But it is the weapons that have always been given pride of place. To be sure, other religions have fostered aggression in many times and places. But I think that other major religions can more easily classify those episodes as abhorrent aberrations from a faith fundamentally opposed to them. It is the great problem of Islam today, at least to non-Muslim eyes, that violence worked very well for Islam in its beginning. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What's your religion? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, August 8 2005 07:36
Profile
While we're talking about different religions, I'm very interested to hear from Stug that the Bhagavad Gita is considered the one major Hindu scripture by modern Hindus. I have the 1962 English translation by Juan Mascaro, and I am very impressed by the first two books. It's hard to beat the drama of Arjuna getting Krishna to drive him out into no man's land, between the two armies, and then becoming overwhelmed by the realization that he has friends and family on both sides, and refusing to fight. And as an allegory for spiritual struggle, I think that the Gita begins here with what is at least a strong candidate to be recognized as the essential starting point for spiritual awakening: the realization that the enemies against which we are supposed to fight are parts of ourselves. So, indeed, why must we fight them, and how can we? It would indeed be very nice to hear God answer these questions. As a Christian, with very little knowledge of Hindu thought, or of any Indian literature or culture, let alone of Sanskrit or the Mahabharata, I'm sure I lack the tools to get most out of the Gita. But from where I stand now, I'm afraid that for me the Bhagavad Gita seems to sort of bog down past book 2 or so. I'm awfully tempted to try to make a precis of the last 16 books. Any suggestions of where I could look for more insight into them? Or is a lot of their merit in their Sanskrit poetry, which just doesn't translate all that well? -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What's your religion? in General | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, August 8 2005 07:20
Profile
I like Zeviz's analogy with constitutional and statute law; I don't think it's exact, but it does seem to capture some of the flavor, as far as I understand the role of the Torah in Jewish and the Qu'ran in Islamic law. Of course the Torah, the five books of Moses, is only part of the Jewish Bible, which includes all of what Christians call the 'Old Testament' (because the early Christians, being Jews, considered the Jewish Bible to be their Scripture). And similarly the Qu'ran contains a lot of non-legal stuff. The practical importance of the extra-Biblical rabbinical commentary is hard to exaggerate, I think. For instance, the most famous Jewish law, against eating any meat and milk together, is based on the thrice-repeated Biblical injunction not to boil a young goat in its mother's milk. I think we have to call this a fairly long extrapolation. Similarly (in some ways), an enormous fraction of actual Muslim practice is based not on the Qu'ran, at least not directly, but on the 'Sunnah', or traditionally attributed sayings (hadiths) and precedent-setting actions of Muhammed. And in many cases these traditions tend to give rather liberal-sounding Qu'ranic principles a distinctly more conservative slant. For instance, the Qu'ran seems as though it might be compatible with a lot of changes in society, emphasizing as it does that it is forbidden to forbid what has not been explicitly forbidden. But Islam has been colored, to an extent that often alarms non-Muslims, by rather broad application of the famous hadith, "Every innovation is misguidance, and every misguidance is in the Hellfire". The laws of the Qu'ran having been framed in small Arabian cities of the early 7th century CE, subsequent application of them to very different societies required elaborate interpretation, mostly by principles of analogy. Four distinct schools of Islamic law developed, which to this day are taught in parallel; but by the early 10th century CE, it had become accepted among the Sunni that the era of interpretation was over, and that 'the gate of opinion was closed'. No new principles of interpretation have been admitted in Sunni Islam for over a thousand years. It is the 're-opening of the gates' of this extra-Qu'ranic interpretive framework that people sometimes call for now, as a Muslim analogue of the Christian Reformation. -------------------- It is not enough to discover how things seem to seem. We must discover how things really seem. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |
| What's so bad about it anyway? in Richard White Games | |
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Electric Sheep One
Member # 3431
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written Monday, August 8 2005 06:43
Profile
Honestly, Lost Souls is pretty good -- except that it keeps hanging under Classic on OS 10.4. It's just a bit limited, so hardly anyone feels interested in going beyond the demo. Ocean Bound was no doubt a great game in 1982 -- it's sort of half-way between Warcraft and Lemonade Stand. Galactic Core is promising in many ways and nicely executed in some ways, but just doesn't go far enough to be a really good game. It seems as though the designer lost interest about half-way through, and just finished it off quickly. -------------------- We're not doing cool. We're doing pretty. Posts: 3335 | Registered: Thursday, September 4 2003 07:00 |