Isn't the point of a P&P RPG in the end to simply act as a ruleset everyone agrees upon to make sure everyone's prepared for what can and will happen?
I was under the impression that the point was to have a good time. But, you know, whatever.
Surely if my friends and I decided to write a book we could pretty easily come up with some kind of system by which no protagonist suddenly sprouts impervious plate armor. Writers were avoiding the deus ex machina, somehow, long before anybody thought of rolling dice to do it.
I just wish they incorporated more interesting choices for low levels, or even an optional playing style.
I think they're very much doing this. Late in the 3.5 product cycle they released "Book of the Nine Swords", which detailed an add-on system of "maneuvers" that provided the same kind of options that wizards and clerics had through spells. Apparently they're working from that to develop a system that provides more options for martial types in 4th edition.
I heard on a podcast one of the developers say that most 3e players came to feel that levels 7-13 or so were the most fun, in terms of having a lot of options and not feeling gimped but also not having so many different complicated effects that the game drags down. It's their hope in 4th to "expand" that balance of play through the whole range of levels. We'll see, I guess.
From the few comments and reviews I have read, it appears that they are spending more time incorporating ideas from MMORPG, such as having tanks that draw aggro, and talent points to customize each class.
They already have this stuff, don't you think? Aggro in MMO games is just a way to represent the monster's intelligence and ability to be goaded or bluffed into hitting the tough guys and leaving the softies alone. DMs do the same thing when they run monsters; they reward good player tactics and good roleplaying by having monsters hit those who are best prepared to take it. It wouldn't be realistic for every Ogre with an Int of 6 to realize that the guy with the staff and robes is a much bigger threat than the guy in the shining plate armor with the huge greatsword, right?
It'll be impossible, I assure you, for Wizards to somehow take the DM's intelligence out of the equation. Monsters at the tabletop aren't being run by computer algorithms, they're being run by a person taking on that role.
Talent points? Tell me, honestly, what's the difference between getting a feat or a class feature (or a choice of features) every level and getting a "talent point" every level to redeem for one of a couple choices? The concept is already in the game, it always has been. MMO's represent that game feature in one way; D&D 4th will surely represent it in some way, it's just a way of scaling advancement of characters.
Seems most people just want points, powers, and trinkets.
Well, it is Dungeons and Dragons. If 4th Edition turns out to be "Dungeon: The Dragoning" where nearly all rewards are story-based and not mechanic based, I'll be super-disappointed. If I wanted only role-playing, my friends and I could write a book together. The game you don't like is actually one that a lot of people do. Nothing against you, of course, but might I suggest that you either continue to do what you've been doing - adapting the rules to serve your needs - or investigate a different game altogether rather than hope that the game I've been enjoying as-is becomes something totally different?
If a home owner does not have a reasonable expectation that a no-knock warrant may be served (e.g. not doing illegal things that might result in a SWAT raid), they may not be held legally responsible for shooting or killing an officer.
Having taught evolution in my science classroom less than 2 years ago, with not a single comment, letter, or intervention of any kind, I can say with 100% certainty that you are talking out of your ass.
You're right. Your single point of data has convinced me that, at no point in American history has any church, religious group, or ID advocacy organization initiated any sort of public protest against the teaching of evolution, whatsoever.
Why do you think we should teach history from any personal viewpoint?
Because that's how it happened. History isn't just the things that happened, it's the people it happened to. History isn't just America fighting the British in the War of 1812; it's also John Paul Jones saying "I have not yet begun to fight," and winning.
I don't remember where I read it, but once I saw an instructive comparison of various high school history texts, excerpting that story about John Paul Jones and the degree to which it had been watered down from a rousing tale of naval victory and heroism in the face of overwhelming odds to just a passing remark about something some captain said during the war, once. There's some great, engaging history writing out there, whether it be modern historical scholarship or contemporary accounts from the time. It's just that, we don't seem to teach any of that in high school.
Part --- not all, but part --- of the reason for more kids sucking in school is that when they go home, they've got all these gadgets that put them on a continuous reinforcement schedule.
Well, what the hell else are they going to do? You can't play on the lawn where there are no lawns; and the vast proliferation of cars has made the street too dangerous to play in. What are kids supposed to do? Play with the chemistry set? Nowadays chem sets don't even come with chemicals. Build things? God forbid somebody get hurt using a tool. Nobody plays baseball with their buddies because no parent wants their kid wasting their time with stickball when they could be lettering the varsity baseball team, so every kid learns not to even dabble in any physical activity lest they be roped into full-blown extracurriculars and then bitched at for being "quitters" when they decide they don't like it.
Kids are being bored to death. We're boring them right into video games, the poor ones, we're boring right into drugs. Yeah, yeah. I know school isn't supposed to be "entertainment", but aren't teachers supposed to stimulate passion for their subjects? A love of learning? Intellectual engagement? They're simply not doing nearly enough in that regard.
No surprise school is boring; the rise of social conservatives have ensured that everything that made any subject interesting have been scrubbed from the curriculum. Can't teach about sex; have to force a religious minority's views that sexual knowledge leads to lunchroom orgies. Can't teach evolution; churches might write angry letters! Can't teach history from any kind of personal viewpoint, and we certainly can't dwell on stories of heroism and conflict; we might offend the other side or give the impression that violence is ok.
Given how little of a student's time is actually engaged in any learning of any subject, I'm hard-pressed to even remember what I spent 6 years (7th-12th) doing, exactly. (Of course, it was somewhat rich when, after my Knowledge Bowl team came from behind to win our school's first state championship in anything in a decade, the teachers lined up to pat themselves on the back, as though we had used anything they had taught us.)
I'm not sure that school's mission has ever been to teach. I think the purpose is to act as a warehouse for children, lest they learn about the world around them too soon for the grown-ups to handle. It's abundantly obvious that the thick-necked goons that run those places see them, fundamentally, as prisons, and themselves as wardens.
Why are you arguing with me? My ID is way lower than yours. How many digits fewer does it have to be before you'll genuflect to me like you did the other guy?
Ideally it would be accomplished with some sort of external jack that allowed for more of a bus type system.
That's still one or two dangerous, invasive brain surgeries more than the "pipe it through dev/vision" technique. Sure, if we were designing brains from the ground up, we'd design them with expansion ports. But they don't come that way, and after-market modifications are a lot riskier than what this article is talking about.
I just don't see the advantage that justifies the risks of surgery yet.
The real progress will come when they can do a direct neural hookup without having to come up with some way of translating incoming data into some format that can be expressed using an existing sense.
Seriously, why bother? Brain surgery is expensive and potentially deadly.
Any reasonable person would see sense-to-sense external translation as the next step up from direct brain surgery. Even better, we've skipped the brain modifications altogether.
It's like you're saying "PCI video cards are all very well and good, but the real progress will come when you have to solder the GPU right onto the motherboard." There's actually a considerable advantage in not having to saw open your own skull every time you want to make a change to some of your extra hardware.
I don't think you can draw any conclusion from the Amnesty data.
Given the choice between a sprained elbow and having 20,000 volts arcing across my torso, I draw the conclusion that I would prefer the former. You can put an icepack on a torn ligament. Icepacks don't do much for cardiac arrhythmia.
It is very easy to severely damage someone when using joint locks, pain compliance or whatever if they struggle.
On the other hand, the taser can stop your heart. Let's not pretend like it's super-safe to run high-voltage current across someone's chest, ok? Especially after 200 people so far have died after taser use.
Cops should be as reticent to fire a taser at someone as your post suggests that they should be in using direct physical force. The problem isn't what violence the cops were using. The problem is when violence is the first resort of the police.
Re:Biggest myths of all have been around for ages.
on
Why Myths Persist
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· Score: 1
You don't help yourselves much either.
Oh, that's right. All those centuries of religious persecution - all self-inflicted.
You're an idiot. Or perhaps I'm the idiot, for forgetting the Cardinal Rule of atheists living in a religious society - "religion must never be questioned, with no exceptions." Wouldn't want someone to think I was one of those "militant atheists" (who never seem to do anything more "militant" than write books, as opposed to militant believers, who kill people.)
Re:Biggest myths of all have been around for ages.
on
Why Myths Persist
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Not everyone who professes to be religious believes in a white robed deity sitting on a cloud chucking thunderbolts.
No, but let's be honest; the God most religious people believe in is indistinguishable from Santa Claus. Otherwise, why are people always asking God for stuff?
The problem is, what the hell language do you use to describe such a thing? You can call it "energy", or the "Force", but that gets you lumped in with the crystal wavers that are often more flaky than your traditional religious types. So you say God, knowing full well that 99% of the people who hear you don't have a clue what you really mean.
So, what you're saying is, the really reasonable religious believers are actually the ones who are lying-by-ommission about what they believe just to look cooler than the dirty hippies?
Yeah, how very reasonable and intelligent of them. I can't imagine why on Earth people think religion is for the small-minded.
Don't be so quick to dismiss those who profess to be religious. Damn near all of the greatest scientific minds of the last thousand years fall into that category.
Spinoza's God doesn't exactly count as a religion. It's more like a bumper-sticker people who are atheists at heart put up so that they don't get burned at the stake. It's more like necessary camouflage in a religious society - because, frankly, us atheists don't get a lot of help from you so-called reasonable moderates.
We all have faith. For example, I have absolute faith that if I jump up I will fall back to earth.
That's not faith, though. That's trust.
You've seen people jump and fall, you've probably even jumped yourself. Every time you've jumped in the past, you fell back down to Earth. You've never even heard of anyone who jumped up and never came back down.
Belief at that point is simply a matter of good reasoning from the evidence. And you have trust in your conclusion because of the weight of evidence that supports it.
On the other hand, God has never been observed. No miracles have ever been known to happen. Nobody's ever come back from either Heaven or Hell to report on conditions there, and while plenty have tried to speak to God, God has never spoken back. (Though many have claimed to speak on his behalf.) Belief in spite of all the evidence? That's faith.
Please don't say things like "we all have faith." Many of us do not have faith. Many of us see "faith" as an inherently unreasonable way to approach the world, because it means believing in that for which there is no evidence - indeed, in that which the evidence contradicts. The abundant evidence of reason is that there is no such thing as God. The belief in God nonetheless, is faith. What you're talking about is simply "trust."
He was 78 years old and his cancer was not radiation induced.
I didn't say it was, of course there's no way to know for sure. Nonetheless he did die of cancer. See parent.
Oh, it's hard so say but there is evidence that's more convincing than cell phone towers.
Parasites, like the varroa, are the more likely candidate. Your article doesn't really support any kind of connection with Bt crops; indeed, it asserts a decline in bee populations as bad in Germany as in the US, and then turns around and claims that Bt crops are rarely if ever planted in Germany.
I kind of wonder if you read the article, even.
They pollen for proteins, especially while "milking" to feed the queen, so any modified proteins will get into the population and effect the colony.
Right, but the Bt proteins aren't found to any significant degree in pollen.
You don't need GM to kill bees anyway. Pesticides do the job too.
GM crops mean less use of pesticides. Personally I think that's a net gain. The Bt protein is deactivated in our stomachs by the acid; on the other hand, many pesticides can persist for weeks or even years inside the body.
If this is truly the case, come work for me for no paycheck. We'll see how long you truly desire the effort with no reward.
Yeah, you sure told that guy! What an idiot, to think that there's people out there who would do work for no money at all! Why, I can't believe that any thinking person would ever volunteer such a foolish idea!
Unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not die of cancer.
You should have looked that up before you said it. Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen, the discoverer of X-rays, died of carcinoma of the colon in 1923.
Also you're wrong about the bees thing. There's been no established connection between GM crops and bee populations. Indeed, it would be somewhat surprising if there were - bees eat pollen, and GM crops express nearly none of the GM proteins (usually one or another of the Bt complex proteins) in their pollen.
Don't want to be responsible for a murder? Then don't be a getaway driver for a gang of doped up armed robbers. It's not difficult.
Not driving a guy away from a murder nobody had any idea he was going to commit doesn't make anybody less dead. Of course it might make you dead - a guy who just killed someone a second ago isn't somebody I'd say "sorry, you're on your own" to.
So explain to me again how that guy is responsible? Like, responsible enough to be killed by the state for it?
Incidentally, I just wanted to add that the example of George Taylor inventing a state climatology position that didn't actually exist in order to falsely claim to have been fired from it is an example of what I've been talking about all this time - climate change denialists construing being disagreed with as some kind of persecution, even inventing persecution where none exists, all to buoy some kind of martyr complex.
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Isn't the point of a P&P RPG in the end to simply act as a ruleset everyone agrees upon to make sure everyone's prepared for what can and will happen?
I was under the impression that the point was to have a good time. But, you know, whatever.
Surely if my friends and I decided to write a book we could pretty easily come up with some kind of system by which no protagonist suddenly sprouts impervious plate armor. Writers were avoiding the deus ex machina, somehow, long before anybody thought of rolling dice to do it.
I just wish they incorporated more interesting choices for low levels, or even an optional playing style.
I think they're very much doing this. Late in the 3.5 product cycle they released "Book of the Nine Swords", which detailed an add-on system of "maneuvers" that provided the same kind of options that wizards and clerics had through spells. Apparently they're working from that to develop a system that provides more options for martial types in 4th edition.
I heard on a podcast one of the developers say that most 3e players came to feel that levels 7-13 or so were the most fun, in terms of having a lot of options and not feeling gimped but also not having so many different complicated effects that the game drags down. It's their hope in 4th to "expand" that balance of play through the whole range of levels. We'll see, I guess.
From the few comments and reviews I have read, it appears that they are spending more time incorporating ideas from MMORPG, such as having tanks that draw aggro, and talent points to customize each class.
They already have this stuff, don't you think? Aggro in MMO games is just a way to represent the monster's intelligence and ability to be goaded or bluffed into hitting the tough guys and leaving the softies alone. DMs do the same thing when they run monsters; they reward good player tactics and good roleplaying by having monsters hit those who are best prepared to take it. It wouldn't be realistic for every Ogre with an Int of 6 to realize that the guy with the staff and robes is a much bigger threat than the guy in the shining plate armor with the huge greatsword, right?
It'll be impossible, I assure you, for Wizards to somehow take the DM's intelligence out of the equation. Monsters at the tabletop aren't being run by computer algorithms, they're being run by a person taking on that role.
Talent points? Tell me, honestly, what's the difference between getting a feat or a class feature (or a choice of features) every level and getting a "talent point" every level to redeem for one of a couple choices? The concept is already in the game, it always has been. MMO's represent that game feature in one way; D&D 4th will surely represent it in some way, it's just a way of scaling advancement of characters.
Seems most people just want points, powers, and trinkets.
Well, it is Dungeons and Dragons. If 4th Edition turns out to be "Dungeon: The Dragoning" where nearly all rewards are story-based and not mechanic based, I'll be super-disappointed. If I wanted only role-playing, my friends and I could write a book together. The game you don't like is actually one that a lot of people do. Nothing against you, of course, but might I suggest that you either continue to do what you've been doing - adapting the rules to serve your needs - or investigate a different game altogether rather than hope that the game I've been enjoying as-is becomes something totally different?
If a home owner does not have a reasonable expectation that a no-knock warrant may be served (e.g. not doing illegal things that might result in a SWAT raid), they may not be held legally responsible for shooting or killing an officer.
Unless they're black. Funny how that works.
Having taught evolution in my science classroom less than 2 years ago, with not a single comment, letter, or intervention of any kind, I can say with 100% certainty that you are talking out of your ass.
You're right. Your single point of data has convinced me that, at no point in American history has any church, religious group, or ID advocacy organization initiated any sort of public protest against the teaching of evolution, whatsoever.
You teach science, you say? I pity your students.
Why do you think we should teach history from any personal viewpoint?
Because that's how it happened. History isn't just the things that happened, it's the people it happened to. History isn't just America fighting the British in the War of 1812; it's also John Paul Jones saying "I have not yet begun to fight," and winning.
I don't remember where I read it, but once I saw an instructive comparison of various high school history texts, excerpting that story about John Paul Jones and the degree to which it had been watered down from a rousing tale of naval victory and heroism in the face of overwhelming odds to just a passing remark about something some captain said during the war, once. There's some great, engaging history writing out there, whether it be modern historical scholarship or contemporary accounts from the time. It's just that, we don't seem to teach any of that in high school.
Part --- not all, but part --- of the reason for more kids sucking in school is that when they go home, they've got all these gadgets that put them on a continuous reinforcement schedule.
Well, what the hell else are they going to do? You can't play on the lawn where there are no lawns; and the vast proliferation of cars has made the street too dangerous to play in. What are kids supposed to do? Play with the chemistry set? Nowadays chem sets don't even come with chemicals. Build things? God forbid somebody get hurt using a tool. Nobody plays baseball with their buddies because no parent wants their kid wasting their time with stickball when they could be lettering the varsity baseball team, so every kid learns not to even dabble in any physical activity lest they be roped into full-blown extracurriculars and then bitched at for being "quitters" when they decide they don't like it.
Kids are being bored to death. We're boring them right into video games, the poor ones, we're boring right into drugs. Yeah, yeah. I know school isn't supposed to be "entertainment", but aren't teachers supposed to stimulate passion for their subjects? A love of learning? Intellectual engagement? They're simply not doing nearly enough in that regard.
No surprise school is boring; the rise of social conservatives have ensured that everything that made any subject interesting have been scrubbed from the curriculum. Can't teach about sex; have to force a religious minority's views that sexual knowledge leads to lunchroom orgies. Can't teach evolution; churches might write angry letters! Can't teach history from any kind of personal viewpoint, and we certainly can't dwell on stories of heroism and conflict; we might offend the other side or give the impression that violence is ok.
Given how little of a student's time is actually engaged in any learning of any subject, I'm hard-pressed to even remember what I spent 6 years (7th-12th) doing, exactly. (Of course, it was somewhat rich when, after my Knowledge Bowl team came from behind to win our school's first state championship in anything in a decade, the teachers lined up to pat themselves on the back, as though we had used anything they had taught us.)
I'm not sure that school's mission has ever been to teach. I think the purpose is to act as a warehouse for children, lest they learn about the world around them too soon for the grown-ups to handle. It's abundantly obvious that the thick-necked goons that run those places see them, fundamentally, as prisons, and themselves as wardens.
Why are you arguing with me? My ID is way lower than yours. How many digits fewer does it have to be before you'll genuflect to me like you did the other guy?
Oh wait, it was pretty much "so much for you" when you tried to spar with a 4-digit account.
Your little nerd badges aren't nearly as important as you seem to think they are.
Ideally it would be accomplished with some sort of external jack that allowed for more of a bus type system.
That's still one or two dangerous, invasive brain surgeries more than the "pipe it through dev/vision" technique. Sure, if we were designing brains from the ground up, we'd design them with expansion ports. But they don't come that way, and after-market modifications are a lot riskier than what this article is talking about.
I just don't see the advantage that justifies the risks of surgery yet.
Not very menacing when they look like tall chickens.
That's what I used to think, until I saw someone pecked to death by an angry emu...
The real progress will come when they can do a direct neural hookup without having to come up with some way of translating incoming data into some format that can be expressed using an existing sense.
Seriously, why bother? Brain surgery is expensive and potentially deadly.
Any reasonable person would see sense-to-sense external translation as the next step up from direct brain surgery. Even better, we've skipped the brain modifications altogether.
It's like you're saying "PCI video cards are all very well and good, but the real progress will come when you have to solder the GPU right onto the motherboard." There's actually a considerable advantage in not having to saw open your own skull every time you want to make a change to some of your extra hardware.
I don't think you can draw any conclusion from the Amnesty data.
Given the choice between a sprained elbow and having 20,000 volts arcing across my torso, I draw the conclusion that I would prefer the former. You can put an icepack on a torn ligament. Icepacks don't do much for cardiac arrhythmia.
I would like to see a source for that number if you don't mind.
Upon checking my sources I see that it's not quite 200, it's more like 150, but here's the source:
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR510302006
If I was in bezerk mode I would rather have the police tase me than risking my joints and ligaments.
Berzerk mode, particularly if it's caused by drugs, appears to be precisely when taser use is potentially most dangerous to your life.
It is very easy to severely damage someone when using joint locks, pain compliance or whatever if they struggle.
On the other hand, the taser can stop your heart. Let's not pretend like it's super-safe to run high-voltage current across someone's chest, ok? Especially after 200 people so far have died after taser use.
Cops should be as reticent to fire a taser at someone as your post suggests that they should be in using direct physical force. The problem isn't what violence the cops were using. The problem is when violence is the first resort of the police.
You don't help yourselves much either.
Oh, that's right. All those centuries of religious persecution - all self-inflicted.
You're an idiot. Or perhaps I'm the idiot, for forgetting the Cardinal Rule of atheists living in a religious society - "religion must never be questioned, with no exceptions." Wouldn't want someone to think I was one of those "militant atheists" (who never seem to do anything more "militant" than write books, as opposed to militant believers, who kill people.)
Not everyone who professes to be religious believes in a white robed deity sitting on a cloud chucking thunderbolts.
No, but let's be honest; the God most religious people believe in is indistinguishable from Santa Claus. Otherwise, why are people always asking God for stuff?
The problem is, what the hell language do you use to describe such a thing? You can call it "energy", or the "Force", but that gets you lumped in with the crystal wavers that are often more flaky than your traditional religious types. So you say God, knowing full well that 99% of the people who hear you don't have a clue what you really mean.
So, what you're saying is, the really reasonable religious believers are actually the ones who are lying-by-ommission about what they believe just to look cooler than the dirty hippies?
Yeah, how very reasonable and intelligent of them. I can't imagine why on Earth people think religion is for the small-minded.
Don't be so quick to dismiss those who profess to be religious. Damn near all of the greatest scientific minds of the last thousand years fall into that category.
Spinoza's God doesn't exactly count as a religion. It's more like a bumper-sticker people who are atheists at heart put up so that they don't get burned at the stake. It's more like necessary camouflage in a religious society - because, frankly, us atheists don't get a lot of help from you so-called reasonable moderates.
We all have faith. For example, I have absolute faith that if I jump up I will fall back to earth.
That's not faith, though. That's trust.
You've seen people jump and fall, you've probably even jumped yourself. Every time you've jumped in the past, you fell back down to Earth. You've never even heard of anyone who jumped up and never came back down.
Belief at that point is simply a matter of good reasoning from the evidence. And you have trust in your conclusion because of the weight of evidence that supports it.
On the other hand, God has never been observed. No miracles have ever been known to happen. Nobody's ever come back from either Heaven or Hell to report on conditions there, and while plenty have tried to speak to God, God has never spoken back. (Though many have claimed to speak on his behalf.) Belief in spite of all the evidence? That's faith.
Please don't say things like "we all have faith." Many of us do not have faith. Many of us see "faith" as an inherently unreasonable way to approach the world, because it means believing in that for which there is no evidence - indeed, in that which the evidence contradicts. The abundant evidence of reason is that there is no such thing as God. The belief in God nonetheless, is faith. What you're talking about is simply "trust."
He was 78 years old and his cancer was not radiation induced.
I didn't say it was, of course there's no way to know for sure. Nonetheless he did die of cancer. See parent.
Oh, it's hard so say but there is evidence that's more convincing than cell phone towers.
Parasites, like the varroa, are the more likely candidate. Your article doesn't really support any kind of connection with Bt crops; indeed, it asserts a decline in bee populations as bad in Germany as in the US, and then turns around and claims that Bt crops are rarely if ever planted in Germany.
I kind of wonder if you read the article, even.
They pollen for proteins, especially while "milking" to feed the queen, so any modified proteins will get into the population and effect the colony.
Right, but the Bt proteins aren't found to any significant degree in pollen.
You don't need GM to kill bees anyway. Pesticides do the job too.
GM crops mean less use of pesticides. Personally I think that's a net gain. The Bt protein is deactivated in our stomachs by the acid; on the other hand, many pesticides can persist for weeks or even years inside the body.
If this is truly the case, come work for me for no paycheck. We'll see how long you truly desire the effort with no reward.
Yeah, you sure told that guy! What an idiot, to think that there's people out there who would do work for no money at all! Why, I can't believe that any thinking person would ever volunteer such a foolish idea!
Now where the hell is that intern with my coffee?
Unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not die of cancer.
You should have looked that up before you said it. Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen, the discoverer of X-rays, died of carcinoma of the colon in 1923.
Also you're wrong about the bees thing. There's been no established connection between GM crops and bee populations. Indeed, it would be somewhat surprising if there were - bees eat pollen, and GM crops express nearly none of the GM proteins (usually one or another of the Bt complex proteins) in their pollen.
He was providing assistance to the person who did it.
And, in your opinion, that merits a death sentence? I still don't see how it does.
Don't want to be responsible for a murder? Then don't be a getaway driver for a gang of doped up armed robbers. It's not difficult.
Not driving a guy away from a murder nobody had any idea he was going to commit doesn't make anybody less dead. Of course it might make you dead - a guy who just killed someone a second ago isn't somebody I'd say "sorry, you're on your own" to.
So explain to me again how that guy is responsible? Like, responsible enough to be killed by the state for it?
Or what, tough guy? Now I'm genuinely curious.
Incidentally, I just wanted to add that the example of George Taylor inventing a state climatology position that didn't actually exist in order to falsely claim to have been fired from it is an example of what I've been talking about all this time - climate change denialists construing being disagreed with as some kind of persecution, even inventing persecution where none exists, all to buoy some kind of martyr complex.