Lord J

I basically just mentioned it in passing when I was talking about how I got into Dune and started playing Dune 2000. I didn't mention all of the fan fic and screaming matches in politics, haha!

So... I'm going to be giving a Toastmasters presentation tomorrow about Dune, and I'm planning on mentioning this forum. Anything I should be sure to mention?

Hey folks, there's a discussion on the Dune subreddit regarding rewriting Dune 7, like Anderson/B. Herbert's book didn't exist. Check it out! http://www.reddit.com/r/dune/comments/11j0co/lets_rewrite_dune_7/

Heh, I just figured it was part of a SOPA protest.

Hi folks, I'm reading the original Dune again, for the first time in (believe it or not) several years. I know the world, the basic plot, and a few of the main ideas fairly well, but I just finished the first chapter and there are certain ideas that feel brand new. For example, Paul's sense of rightness, and how that interacts with the Bene Gesserit ideal; the gom jobbar test, and its implications; is Paul a kind of gom jobbar? And then there are some of the larger themes of the book itself. Anyway, I don't know if it's been done before, but there's a monthly community analysis of Butcher's Dresden Files series on the Dresden subreddit, and I thought it would be fun to try that here. Importantly, even if there has been a community analysis of themes in the book before (which, obviously, is kind of what we do on this board ;) ) this thread will allow for a more recent analysis and may be fun for everyone.

I feel split regarding the Occupy Wall Street movement. On the one hand, I really don't care. It's miles and miles away, and I feel like the people "occupying" Wall Street are essentially a bunch of hippy bums. On the other hand, there's clearly something wrong with our society for people to do this. Yes, it's clearly overacted in a lot of ways (I mean, really, you're prostituting yourself to pay student loans? Really?), but the people aren't being properly controlled. The workers aren't working, and capital isn't moving properly. Whatever's wrong, I don't completely think it's something in the power of any politician to solve. Part of me feels like this is a response to the Tea Party nonsense, but that doesn't really explain everything.

Well, Endermen are certainly not as frightening as they were publicized. Really, the addition of critical hits, sprinting, and the hunger system have completely changed the way I play minecraft. It's almost a completely different game, aside from, you know... the mining and crafting. The ability of Endermen to remove blocks hasn't bothered me so far, mostly because I don't really build. I also don't tend to stay on the same map for more than a month or so. I will say that the way trees are made is somewhat obnoxious. I haven't thought that Terraria looked the least bit interesting since I started seeing videos on YouTube, but I'll admit that the way wood falls from harvested trees is much more visually appealing than a floating half-tree; something that Endermen make much more likely. I will also say that I am somewhat surprised that Notch is going forward with experience and NPCs. I seem to remember him saying earlier that he was not interested in making an RPG style game. Now, that said, I'm curious to see what experience does. I feel similarly with NPCs. overall, I just feel that the game is becoming more and more scripted: there's a story coming together that you don't make for yourself, and I'm not sure that I like that. Over all of that though, I'm looking forward to seeing what Notch et al. implement for 1.9. In the mean time, I'm saving versions in zip files to play offline if need be.

So... this might sound complainy: it's not, exactly, really it's mostly an observation. With 1.8 the game has gotten ridiculously easy. I used to wander around caverns shaking in my proverbial iron greaves. Now I've got iron running out of my ears, I have a (growing) base in a ravine, and I haven't died yet. I just experienced three creeper explosions, but because I've got a little wheat farm going, I'm fine. I regularly go out hunting (for mobs and more iron), and I'm probably going to need to replace my plate armor sometime soon, but that won't be a problem because I have something like 20 iron blocks to work with. Given this huge change, I think I'm going to start focusing on construction more than survival. I have done primarily survival up until this point (interestingly, I'm not as huge of a fan of building an epic glass house as some), but I'm amassing great piles o iron and not as much cobble (due to ravines and natural cave systems). I'm really looking forward to the rest of the adventure update, particularly npcs (I haven't found an npc village yet in the map that I just started) and a use for experience.

This performance always sends chills down my spine. Maturity is a remarkable event.

So, I haven't been playing minecraft for a little while, primarily for two main reasons: 1. I've become hopelessly obsessed with Dwarf Fortress. 2. The framerate issues became too much to bear. I would start with a fairly decent framerate that would drop to something like 4fps in ten minutes or so. Even little modifications to the video settings only brought it up for a little while, and storms crippled it. For 1, I'm still fairly addicted to DF, though I'm taking a little break because I've seemingly solved #2. I know, I know, I should have downloaded optifine a long time ago, but the adf.ly thing confused the crap out of me. So I basically just figured out how it works and installed it, and, holy crap. I'm loving minecraft again. Also, I'm using the yogbox mod package, so that makes things very interesting.

It's probably the most difficult game I've ever tried to learn; in terms of rules and scope, it's comparable to dungeons and dragons, and the interface doesn't make it easier. That said, it's probably also one of the most rewarding games I've ever put forth the effort to learn. If you decide to give it another go, I would suggest checking out a few video tutorials and downloading the Lazy Newb Pack. Turninng down the population number, reducing the size of your embark, and reducing graphical fps are all helpful for increasing CPU access.

Got that fortress back up and running, but framerate was obnoxious, and the guys wanted to run out and pick up everything in the goblin-infested outdoors. I decided to try again with fewer dorfs. I started a map with max population 0, but for some reason that means 10. Framerate stayed really nice, and I've managed to produce a lot of steel equipment. I haven't played in the last few days though. Last night I wrote a few df haiku. So is there any interest in this game other than me?

Wow, that Harkonnen is really quite nice! Well an Ordos one, clearly! ;) Seriously though, I'd love to see your take on an Imperial crest, BG, or the Guild.

I'm used to MC Lars being more of a comedy nerdcore rapper, but this song just grabbed me.

Managed to survive a tantrum spiral after the death of several dwarfs who were mining out a section containing a Forgotten Beastie. The Beastie in question had three tails and was made of black diamond. Anyway, I went from 50+ dorfs to approximately 5 before people started feeling a little better and actually started to work. Shortly afterwards I had a migrant wave of nearly 20 dorfs, and I've since been letting them pick up all of the mess outside that traders have brought and lost (thanks to goblin ambushes). Hopefully we can clean up the remaining bodies, make a few memorial slabs to deal with ghosts, and work on getting society back into order.

So a while back I mentioned that I have been playing a lot of Dwarf Fortress. That hasn't really changed. Day before yesterday, I lost a fortress to HFS (spoiler, kinda) and, I have to say, it felt really, really good. It was the first time that I allowed a fortress to really mature before just getting fed up with framerate issues or seeming design flaws and restarting. I managed to keep going even though there was no iron on the map (so I made all of my weaponry from copper, at least, at first). Then I found adamantine, and... well.... Anyway, I started a new game yesterday and I'm getting into the second phase of the fortress. I'm thinking about writing about my progress and possibly helping you all see the light (or, technically, the dark, moist tunnel). There's a Dune mod (Fremen Sietch) that I've thought about trying, but not anytime soon. Right now I'm pretty happy with my current dwarfing level.

Looks like I jumped the gun by saying that Fox News claims he is Muslim. Some definition of Christianity, however is a necessary one for determining his religious affiliation and whether it is relevant to his actions. The man apparently identified himself as a modern-day Christian Templar, which is evidence enough, to me, of his religious beliefs. His intended long term target was, apparently, followers of Islam. This suggests, to me, that his religious affiliation was at the lease, correlated with his aims. Now, that being said, I think it is very silly to claim that he was not a Christian because he killed people. Throughout history murderers have clamed membership or belief in any number of philosophies and yet engaged in behavior completely opposed to any logical assessment of the meaning behind those philosophies. Hitler was a Christian, Bin Laden was Muslim, and Stalin was a Communist. Murder is not justified by any of those philosophies. Perhaps this should be split off or moved entirely to PRP?

That probably has more to do with the psychology of the terrorist than the tenets of Freemasonry. I've known several masons in my time, and, generally, they're normal, upstanding people. It's a social club with possibly occult undertones, and, and... secrets (oooooooh, gasp, egads, etc.). Apparently Fox News is convinced that Mr. Breivik is not a right-wing Christian extremist nutjob, but is really a Muslim. Terrorists cannot be Christian, says O'Reilly.

Happy birthday Khan! Yeah, it's a little scary when you realize that you've been on the forum for so long. It's like you have some alternative personality that's obsessed with Dune. I remember 56k (I actually lived in a fairly rural area, so my average connection was closer to 28-32). Happy days, when everything took waaaaay too long.

Anathema: I don't think psychoanalysis is very popular in the US anymore, though you have Melfi on The Sopranos who, from what I've seen, was a traditional Freudian in every way. It's actually quite funny to me that she was in the process of referring Tony to a "behaviorist" at some point, because clearly she was good at helping Tony "open up" and "make breakthroughs" but actually changing the behavior that he was paying her for... well.... I believe that Carl Rogers' approach, and various offshoots, is probably the most popular among modern therapists, though an alternative seems to be gaining acceptance within the field. It would be interesting to me to see whether psychopaths could be treated by some form of neurological surgery. On the other hand, the application of behavior modification could be interesting. It would be like the approach for children with Autism, but it would have to be constructed in a way that generalizes over the rest of the client's life. It reminds me of Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, actually. If we could implant a chip that detects intention (?) to engage in socially maladaptive behavior, and produces pain, it could be a long term fix. Of course, as far as I know, there's no systematic research showing that "intention" exists, so that's a minor hurtle ;) EDIT: Added a few qualifiers.

Hmm... Does this belong in here or PRP Issues? Either way, I was reading some 1-star reviews of Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World on Amazon, and I thought that the reasoning of most of the comments closely resembled that of eras and Ath. Anti-intellectualism is one thing, but claiming to be an intellectual "for the masses" is just sad.

Minecraft IRL This guy is crazy and awesome. And my minecraft hero. The awesomeness starts at about 1/2 through, though I would suggest seeing the original episode of American Pickers: Mole Man, as Ron discusses how the mine started.

Andrew: Interesting. I should note that I'm not making the argument that Saudis cannot protect foreign nationals; only that this rumor-mongering implies such a reality. Either way, your description is very intriguing. As someone who (as far as I know) has never seen a fully-automatic assault rifle in person, the idea of an armed escort seems quite intimidating. Eras, there are a lot of jobs available to Jews and icon-prone Christians that won't involve potential murder. All in all, I suspect that racism/religious bigotry is a symptom of a more wide-spread problem in the Middle East. Unfortunately, the area is one of the richest areas in the world, and therefore we are all dependent upon understanding and conforming to their cultural and/or political norms to maintain stability. The spice, after all, must flow.

So... just playing devil's advocate (mostly) here, but Saudi Arabia is a sovereign nation. That means they have the right to make their own rules for the good of their ruling party. Sure, it's gauche (to say the least), and yes, if it offends you, take to the streets! But really, if they want to keep Jews and Catholics out of their country, who are we to judge them? More importantly, if this is true (which, apparently, it is not) it means one simple thing: the Saudi government cannot control their populace well enough to keep foreign nationals safe. Now think about that for a second. Do you want to go to a country that cannot even control itself? Think about this: do you want to go somewhere you're not wanted? Ok, now on to Denis' question: Unfortunately, Islam as a religion is nothing like its government counterparts. The abuses that many Middle Eastern governments perpetuate upon their people are in no way supported by the Qur'an, nor any meaningful study of the religion. This is a fascinating paper on the topic, which may be propaganda, but it's pretty cool. I personally think that religion in government produces abuse as a matter of course. I'm not saying that all abuse in government is due to religion per se (remember Stalin?), but I think it's a nicely rounded hypothesis with which to begin a debate. Interestingly, if you look at the form of "Communism" under Stalin, you see a pattern in behavior not unlike religious fervor. I wonder if religion is not the problem, specifically, but a general inability/unwillingness to engage in critical thinking.