The Civilization IV: Warlords expansion pack adds quite a bit more action. If I want a military victory, I usually play on epic or marathon speed. Building takes proportionally as long, but you have far more turns to maneuver your armies. I think units are produced slightly quicker as well, so you can have bigger armies. Warlords adds to the 'great people' idea with great generals. Some scenarios are virtually all fighting. For instance, in one, a normal game world is generated, the computer players take 20-60 turns, and then YOU play as the barbarians, bent on destroying civilization.
"Michael Gaizutis" for example, who wrote the blurb above. I've never heard of him. In fact, I had to read his name closely to make sure it wasn't some gag name like "Michael Hunt" or "Dick Gazinya". "Michael Gaizutis" isn't that bad. From the article, "I'm not going to get into all the issues (PC World's Harry McCracken provides a fine summary of them here." "Harry McCracken?!?" Come on!
Also, considering that these were tombs for God-Kings it would be rather an admission of being less than well loved to have to force people to work on them. Rather, I imagine working on the pyramids was something of an honer to be fought over by the common Egyptian.
What? What maintenance and time requirements? Setting up in house email and IM took me all of a day. I look at the servers all of five minutes a day. We're talking a simple in-house-only jabber IM server, and a postfix based store and forward only mail server for when the state screws up our statewide servers, but it is neither hard nor time consuming, and for some of us it's fun.
Let's do an experiment. I believe that the Slashdot meta-moderation system converged on a set of moderators who think anyone who says anything bad about ANYTHING is a troll by default. I am saying something is BAD, and I may be hurting the feelings of all the poor kitten torturers out there. Won't someone think of the kitten molesters?!?
How long before this gets modded troll, do you think?
I consider myself lucky that religion has not harmed me directly in my life. No bad childhood experiences: parents were agnostic, and encouraged me to make up my own mind. No sad stories like yours of friends drawn into its creepy grasp. So I guess I can keep a more open mind about it, though it still all seems fairly ridiculous and a bit harmful to me.
Well, I read about it in, I think it was SciAm. All I could find on google was some research on epileptics in the 90s, when they first isolated the part of the brain that lights up during religious experiences. Google 'god module' and ignore the hits for the freaky vampire-techno band of the same name.
Evolution happened, see the post next to this. What didn't happen was speciation. But that has been observed in the laboratory as well, in fruit fly populations. Also, before the invention of nylon, there were no bacteria capable of eating it. Years after its invention, a species evolved that could.
All I have to do is stimulate the right part of your brain with the right electromagnetic field. It was an interesting experiment, as everyone knew that something was being done to their brain, yet most people still felt that the experience indicated the actual presence of the divine.
One argument I love to refute from personal experience is the "If you ask with an open heart He will show you the way," argument. Well, I have and I got nothing. I'm still an agnostic, but I can only believe based on my experience that any God that might exist must not give a damn whether I believe in Him or not.
Please tell me that God at least greased up said Yoda doll before inserting it into your rectum! And yes, it was too intelligently designed. Just not for shoving up your ass. Lastly, are you sure it was God? Because sometimes people like to play with their own asses, but are too embarrassed to admit it, so they make up stories, like how they just slipped and fell onto that cucumber, or they heard that peanut butter was a good hemorrhoid cream, and they don't know HOW that dog got there. It's okay if you did it, really it is. Just ask Bob Goatse, ass-play can be fun! Not for me though, not with my hemorrhoids.
You may be interested in reading Jean Liedloff's book, The Continuum Concept. She's a fascinating character who befriended a very isolated rain forest tribe while on a diamond prospecting expedition, lived with them for a year, and wrote a book about it.
More scientists, thankfully. But damn, what a sad state of affairs. All the humorous trolls have vacated the premises. All we have left are the boring trolls who actually believe the crap they spew. Sparring with them isn't fun, it's just depressing.
That's nice but what does the Big Bang theory have to do with evolution?
Both theories are repugnant to those who have a deep seated need for something, anything which is in control. The idea of a chaotic, unplanned and meaningless universe scares the crap out of them. For me, that just means that nothing bad is certain either, that my plans are potentially as good as anyone else's, and I can give the universe whatever meaning I like.
That is how I have always argued it. The argument seems so simple, and so obvious. Yet not only do people not think of it themselves, they twist their minds into pretzels trying to figure a way to deny its validity. It is absolutely frightening what religion does to people's brains.
The mass of the Oort cloud is several times that of Earth. That's not even counting the Kuiper belt. I doubt even ten comets a year would put much of a dent in that.
Mods like Contact? WTF? Are you ALL on crack? IT SUCKED ASS! It wasn't just bad, it was dreadful. The kind of people that liked it are the kind of Sci-Fi dilettantes that liked The Matrix or Cocoon. Posers.
Waste your damn mod points modding this troll, it's my honest opinion. I don't give a rat's ass what someone dumb enough to like Contact thinks anyway.
You know, I hear people quote that "live till 35" thing all the time, and it is just plain wrong. If you lived past ten, chances were pretty good that barring some kind of accident, you would make it at least into your sixties. The thing is, most people died of childhood diseases below the age of ten, and it doesn't take much of that to skew the average way down. An average life expectancy of 35 doesn't mean you live to 35 and drop dead.
Apocalypto? Wha? You would recommend THAT movie as an accurate picture of anything but Mel Gibson's tormented subconscious? Certainly life was bad sometimes, but it would be more accurate to say there was less certainty and stability. Modern day measurements of human happiness (admittedly an inexact science) seem to show that, barring deadly, starvation level of poverty, wealth and ease do not make people happy. Good genes, community, and religion make people happy. To me, religion falls under the "community" heading, but they separate it out as a factor in the studies.
In hunter-gather days, the average person "worked" around four hours per day. I use quotes, because anthropological studies show those cultures make no distinction between work, play, love, and religion. it's all just human life. The average person also starved to death far more frequently than they do today when things went wrong. I would say that modern life has not brought us happiness but it has brought us stability.
And if you said that speeding causes cancer, we'd all laugh at you. The only reason we aren't laughing now is that what you are actually saying is fucking frightening. It's bug-fuck crazy, and not funny at all.
No it is people like you who are full of hate and an illusory sense of heroics that make the world less safe. Violence leads to more violence, not to peace. You believe your myth because you want to believe it, because it makes you feel special. You are a lone sane crusader in a vapid sea of ignorant cowards, at least in your own head, aren't you? It's pathetic. Sick, sad, egotistical, self serving, and morally bankrupt. You are the kind of small minded, hard hearted, violent man that has kept humanity from achieving its true potential for thousands of years. You and your kind are the root of what is wrong with the world. It's not the big, scary evils that you preach violence against that are the problem. It's the myriad of small, evil men like you.
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I know him. He has a boyfriend, you know. You know what his name is? Ben Dover.
The Civilization IV: Warlords expansion pack adds quite a bit more action. If I want a military victory, I usually play on epic or marathon speed. Building takes proportionally as long, but you have far more turns to maneuver your armies. I think units are produced slightly quicker as well, so you can have bigger armies. Warlords adds to the 'great people' idea with great generals. Some scenarios are virtually all fighting. For instance, in one, a normal game world is generated, the computer players take 20-60 turns, and then YOU play as the barbarians, bent on destroying civilization.
Also, considering that these were tombs for God-Kings it would be rather an admission of being less than well loved to have to force people to work on them. Rather, I imagine working on the pyramids was something of an honer to be fought over by the common Egyptian.
What? What maintenance and time requirements? Setting up in house email and IM took me all of a day. I look at the servers all of five minutes a day. We're talking a simple in-house-only jabber IM server, and a postfix based store and forward only mail server for when the state screws up our statewide servers, but it is neither hard nor time consuming, and for some of us it's fun.
Probably someone modded it underrated. That will bump a comment up without giving a reason.
Let's do an experiment. I believe that the Slashdot meta-moderation system converged on a set of moderators who think anyone who says anything bad about ANYTHING is a troll by default. I am saying something is BAD, and I may be hurting the feelings of all the poor kitten torturers out there. Won't someone think of the kitten molesters?!?
How long before this gets modded troll, do you think?
I consider myself lucky that religion has not harmed me directly in my life. No bad childhood experiences: parents were agnostic, and encouraged me to make up my own mind. No sad stories like yours of friends drawn into its creepy grasp. So I guess I can keep a more open mind about it, though it still all seems fairly ridiculous and a bit harmful to me.
Well, I read about it in, I think it was SciAm. All I could find on google was some research on epileptics in the 90s, when they first isolated the part of the brain that lights up during religious experiences. Google 'god module' and ignore the hits for the freaky vampire-techno band of the same name.
Evolution happened, see the post next to this. What didn't happen was speciation. But that has been observed in the laboratory as well, in fruit fly populations. Also, before the invention of nylon, there were no bacteria capable of eating it. Years after its invention, a species evolved that could.
Oooh, someone needs to lay of the serious pills. That was a joke, Falcon. ;-)
Ah yes. God of the Gaps. The sneakiest God of them all, if you ask me.
All I have to do is stimulate the right part of your brain with the right electromagnetic field. It was an interesting experiment, as everyone knew that something was being done to their brain, yet most people still felt that the experience indicated the actual presence of the divine.
One argument I love to refute from personal experience is the "If you ask with an open heart He will show you the way," argument. Well, I have and I got nothing. I'm still an agnostic, but I can only believe based on my experience that any God that might exist must not give a damn whether I believe in Him or not.
Please tell me that God at least greased up said Yoda doll before inserting it into your rectum! And yes, it was too intelligently designed. Just not for shoving up your ass. Lastly, are you sure it was God? Because sometimes people like to play with their own asses, but are too embarrassed to admit it, so they make up stories, like how they just slipped and fell onto that cucumber, or they heard that peanut butter was a good hemorrhoid cream, and they don't know HOW that dog got there. It's okay if you did it, really it is. Just ask Bob Goatse, ass-play can be fun! Not for me though, not with my hemorrhoids.
You may be interested in reading Jean Liedloff's book, The Continuum Concept. She's a fascinating character who befriended a very isolated rain forest tribe while on a diamond prospecting expedition, lived with them for a year, and wrote a book about it.
More scientists, thankfully. But damn, what a sad state of affairs. All the humorous trolls have vacated the premises. All we have left are the boring trolls who actually believe the crap they spew. Sparring with them isn't fun, it's just depressing.
That's nice but what does the Big Bang theory have to do with evolution?
Both theories are repugnant to those who have a deep seated need for something, anything which is in control. The idea of a chaotic, unplanned and meaningless universe scares the crap out of them. For me, that just means that nothing bad is certain either, that my plans are potentially as good as anyone else's, and I can give the universe whatever meaning I like.
That is how I have always argued it. The argument seems so simple, and so obvious. Yet not only do people not think of it themselves, they twist their minds into pretzels trying to figure a way to deny its validity. It is absolutely frightening what religion does to people's brains.
The mass of the Oort cloud is several times that of Earth. That's not even counting the Kuiper belt. I doubt even ten comets a year would put much of a dent in that.
Mods like Contact? WTF? Are you ALL on crack? IT SUCKED ASS! It wasn't just bad, it was dreadful. The kind of people that liked it are the kind of Sci-Fi dilettantes that liked The Matrix or Cocoon. Posers.
Waste your damn mod points modding this troll, it's my honest opinion. I don't give a rat's ass what someone dumb enough to like Contact thinks anyway.
You know, I hear people quote that "live till 35" thing all the time, and it is just plain wrong. If you lived past ten, chances were pretty good that barring some kind of accident, you would make it at least into your sixties. The thing is, most people died of childhood diseases below the age of ten, and it doesn't take much of that to skew the average way down. An average life expectancy of 35 doesn't mean you live to 35 and drop dead.
Apocalypto? Wha? You would recommend THAT movie as an accurate picture of anything but Mel Gibson's tormented subconscious? Certainly life was bad sometimes, but it would be more accurate to say there was less certainty and stability. Modern day measurements of human happiness (admittedly an inexact science) seem to show that, barring deadly, starvation level of poverty, wealth and ease do not make people happy. Good genes, community, and religion make people happy. To me, religion falls under the "community" heading, but they separate it out as a factor in the studies.
In hunter-gather days, the average person "worked" around four hours per day. I use quotes, because anthropological studies show those cultures make no distinction between work, play, love, and religion. it's all just human life. The average person also starved to death far more frequently than they do today when things went wrong. I would say that modern life has not brought us happiness but it has brought us stability.
Dude, you know how they love to blow shit up. So they exploded a story across four pages? Par for the course, don't you think?
I don't know, I put it in my top three. For me, it ranks with Forbidden Planet and The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Uhhhh, Contact? Good lord. Okay book, awful movie, IMHO.
And if you said that speeding causes cancer, we'd all laugh at you. The only reason we aren't laughing now is that what you are actually saying is fucking frightening. It's bug-fuck crazy, and not funny at all.
No it is people like you who are full of hate and an illusory sense of heroics that make the world less safe. Violence leads to more violence, not to peace. You believe your myth because you want to believe it, because it makes you feel special. You are a lone sane crusader in a vapid sea of ignorant cowards, at least in your own head, aren't you? It's pathetic. Sick, sad, egotistical, self serving, and morally bankrupt. You are the kind of small minded, hard hearted, violent man that has kept humanity from achieving its true potential for thousands of years. You and your kind are the root of what is wrong with the world. It's not the big, scary evils that you preach violence against that are the problem. It's the myriad of small, evil men like you.