I've come to the conclusion that the anti-single message in American society (and I say this as someone with a fiance) is part of the enforcement of hamster consumerism (where you jump on a treadmill for the rest of your miserable life to pay for the debts you created spending on useless consumer trinkets).
Men are encouraged to spend money on stuff (cars, for instance) to impress females, and women are encouraged to spend money on fashion, jewelry and makeovers to attract men.
The advertising industry is aware of this, and thus goes to full court press to crush you if you are single. Not because they care whether you are single and they are adding to your misery or not, but because increasing your misery and insecurity gets you to spend more money. Thus the wheels of commerce turn.
Now, of course when you are young, your hormones are doing half the job for them. You are looking for any advantage to satisfy this pressing physical lust that's haunting your days and nights. (Yes, women too, though not as obviously as the men.)
Honestly, people would have happier relationships if they had some self-discipline and didn't buy into the idea that single people were pieces human garbage to be mocked and derided by their peers and the media.
Eros.com, Bigdoggie.net, the Erotic Review, there are a lot of happy campers out there this day....
Re:Because its hard to preserve narrative momentum
on
How Do Games Grow Up?
·
· Score: 1
V: TM: Bloodlines was 9.99 on Steam last time I checked (Halloween sale). You might have to hunt around to make it work on a modern PC (or not, here you go: http://iain.cx/articles/bloodlines/ ).
I remember there was this one book out when SSII came out that was just all the different types of characters you could become using the SSII system, everything from stealthy ninja to a wormkin (making your character as much like the Annelid creatures as possible). I play it over and over again, and I wish I could get it running properly under Ubuntu.
Re:Because its hard to preserve narrative momentum
on
How Do Games Grow Up?
·
· Score: 1
Hmm, I tried to play Deus Ex not too long after it came out, and I regret that I couldn't get into it. This is not saying anything bad about the game, it probably has more to do with my mood at the time. Unfortunately, that means I can't specifically point to another game and say, if you like Deus Ex you'll love this. However, I can talk about some games and what I call the theory of player, plot interaction:
1. The Shock Series (including System Shock and Bioshock): The theory here is that actually talking to other characters in a conversation tree structure (i.e. multiple choice, A, B, C, or D) breaks the fourth wall and makes you feel that you are playing a game rather than exploring a world.
Interaction with other in universe characters tends to happen in one of two ways: Recordings that dead characters left that help give you an unfolding sense of what happened or Being bossed around or threatened by characters over a one way radio link.
Also walking around and seeing graphitti and environmental effects or even the way a dead body is posed helps tell someone what happened without it having to be explained through animated cutscenes which are minimal or absent.
2. Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines: In this game, there is no concern about conversation trees, and they are used extensively. The focus here is using the tech of the day (Half-Life 2 engine, dated now) to give the characters realistic looking faces and expressions, and top notch voice acting to make them sound interesting and as if they believe what they are saying and feel what they are supposed feeling. As with the Shock series, the story is told by the environment and not by animated cut scenes as well as by conversing with people.
I felt that there was a good sense of exploration in this game, and I liked things like going into a serial killers lair and figuring out that he was a scary guy not because of some cut scene but by seeing his collection of tools and body parts or finding an interesting monster to talk to (or fight, if I chose to) in an abandoned building that nothing in the plot or my progress said I even had to visit.
'Girl number twenty,' said the gentleman, smiling in the calm strength of knowledge.
Sissy blushed, and stood up.
'So you would carpet your room - or your husband's room, if you were a grown woman, and had a husband - with representations of flowers, would you?' said the gentleman. 'Why would you?'
'If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers,' returned the girl.
'And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have people walking over them with heavy boots?'
'It wouldn't hurt them, sir. They wouldn't crush and wither, if you please, sir. They would be the pictures of what was very pretty and pleasant, and I would fancy - '
'Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn't fancy,' cried the gentleman, quite elated by coming so happily to his point. 'That's it! You are never to fancy.'
'You are not, Cecilia Jupe,' Thomas Gradgrind solemnly repeated, 'to do anything of that kind.'
'Fact, fact, fact!' said the gentleman. And 'Fact, fact, fact!' repeated Thomas Gradgrind.
'You are to be in all things regulated and governed,' said the gentleman, 'by fact. We hope to have, before long, a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact, and of nothing but fact. You must discard the word Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You are not to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact. You don't walk upon flowers in fact; you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don't find that foreign birds and butterflies come and perch upon your crockery; you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your crockery. You never meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds represented upon walls. You must use,' said the gentleman, 'for all these purposes, combinations and modifications (in primary colours) of mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste.'
Kurt Vonnegut was wrong in his A Clockwork Orange that an overdose of violence makes non-aggressive.
In the words of Hank Venture, "I defy you to make less sense."
Let's parse this, Kurt Vonnegut isn't Anthony Burgess, the person who actually wrote A Clockwork Orange.
The plot of A Clockwork Orange has nothing to do with the idea that you've expressed here, "an overdose of violence makes non-aggressive." That's just completely wrong. I have to believe that you are completely ignorant of the subject matter here.
I actually think there is an anti-male bias in this kind of thing. They don't want boys to be boys. I think they think if they can turn boys into passive, non-aggressive beings they'll create the ideal human race. (If you ever saw the movie Serenity, you might remember where the Reavers came from.)
Me, I'd prefer any children I have of either gender (my fiance has one little girl, who I've gotten to know well over the years and bought her many a video game) to be able to assess the tactical difficulties in defending any structure they are in from a zombie or alien attack.
Hmm, mangled that quote, it should be, "About 90% of Americans ages 816 play video games, and they spend about 13 hours a week doing soeven more if theyre boys."
Also, there seems to be two versions of the same article up, I pulled that quote from here:
I think it's interesting that the article doesn't mention that the man behind the research, Dr. Craig. A. Anderson, Ph.D., was part of a "summit" conducted by the pressure group National Institute on Media and the Family:
Could it be that a politically motivated study by a political activist psychologist would come up with a conclusion that he had already decided on?
Remember, this is an organization that declared violent video games to be "Killographic Entertainment" and which claimed that Stubbs the Zombie was promoting cannibalism in our nations youth.
Sadly, the soccer-mom (or is that hockey-mom now?) audience for this anti-boy (notice the anti-male-children comment in the article "About 90% of Americans ages 816 play video games, and they spend about 13 hours a week doing soeven more if theyre boys." Even more, now that's precise, isn't it?) will read it uncritically happy that it confirms their biases.
I'm pretty sure that it was later retconned into a forced regeneration, but I remember it differently. Of course, I was an exitable child back then, so I can't entirely trust my memories of the event.
Hmmm... ok, that was before the concept of Regeneration was introduced, and in fact they said that the Timelords "changed his appearance" as a sort of punishment. (They also exiled him to the Earth, his Tardis wouldn't work.)
What if that was true? It wasn't a Regeneration, and so he has an extra one.
Or, and I think this is also perfectly valid Dr. Who canon, they could just have the magic blue Regeneration fairy show up and tap him with her interspacial quantum time energy wand (otherwise known as the magic Regeneration reset wand).
He could just do what the Master did on Trakken. I loved it when, in the 5 Doctors, John Pertwee's Doctor said, "Another regeneration?" and the Master said, "Not exactly."
Some people will say, "But the Doctor isn't that Evil," and I'll reply, "Now who's being naive?"
Hmm, actually, I just assumed it didn't make money because it disappeared from stores after a while. I'm actually happy if it made money, I thought it was a neat idea.
You could buy barcode cards to work with GBA connectivity to open things in Animal Crossing, among other things. It was about as successful as the Que Cat.
"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it,"
-- George Orwell, 1946, four years before his death in 1950
Slashdot Mirror
I've come to the conclusion that the anti-single message in American society (and I say this as someone with a fiance) is part of the enforcement of hamster consumerism (where you jump on a treadmill for the rest of your miserable life to pay for the debts you created spending on useless consumer trinkets).
Men are encouraged to spend money on stuff (cars, for instance) to impress females, and women are encouraged to spend money on fashion, jewelry and makeovers to attract men.
The advertising industry is aware of this, and thus goes to full court press to crush you if you are single. Not because they care whether you are single and they are adding to your misery or not, but because increasing your misery and insecurity gets you to spend more money. Thus the wheels of commerce turn.
Now, of course when you are young, your hormones are doing half the job for them. You are looking for any advantage to satisfy this pressing physical lust that's haunting your days and nights. (Yes, women too, though not as obviously as the men.)
Honestly, people would have happier relationships if they had some self-discipline and didn't buy into the idea that single people were pieces human garbage to be mocked and derided by their peers and the media.
This is made extremely obvious by laws like IMBRA:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Marriage_Broker_Regulation_Act
Which exists purely for the purpose of keeping men from marrying non-American women.
Eros.com, Bigdoggie.net, the Erotic Review, there are a lot of happy campers out there this day....
V: TM: Bloodlines was 9.99 on Steam last time I checked (Halloween sale). You might have to hunt around to make it work on a modern PC (or not, here you go: http://iain.cx/articles/bloodlines/ ).
I remember there was this one book out when SSII came out that was just all the different types of characters you could become using the SSII system, everything from stealthy ninja to a wormkin (making your character as much like the Annelid creatures as possible). I play it over and over again, and I wish I could get it running properly under Ubuntu.
Hmm, I tried to play Deus Ex not too long after it came out, and I regret that I couldn't get into it. This is not saying anything bad about the game, it probably has more to do with my mood at the time. Unfortunately, that means I can't specifically point to another game and say, if you like Deus Ex you'll love this. However, I can talk about some games and what I call the theory of player, plot interaction:
1. The Shock Series (including System Shock and Bioshock): The theory here is that actually talking to other characters in a conversation tree structure (i.e. multiple choice, A, B, C, or D) breaks the fourth wall and makes you feel that you are playing a game rather than exploring a world.
Interaction with other in universe characters tends to happen in one of two ways: Recordings that dead characters left that help give you an unfolding sense of what happened or Being bossed around or threatened by characters over a one way radio link.
Also walking around and seeing graphitti and environmental effects or even the way a dead body is posed helps tell someone what happened without it having to be explained through animated cutscenes which are minimal or absent.
2. Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines: In this game, there is no concern about conversation trees, and they are used extensively. The focus here is using the tech of the day (Half-Life 2 engine, dated now) to give the characters realistic looking faces and expressions, and top notch voice acting to make them sound interesting and as if they believe what they are saying and feel what they are supposed feeling. As with the Shock series, the story is told by the environment and not by animated cut scenes as well as by conversing with people.
I felt that there was a good sense of exploration in this game, and I liked things like going into a serial killers lair and figuring out that he was a scary guy not because of some cut scene but by seeing his collection of tools and body parts or finding an interesting monster to talk to (or fight, if I chose to) in an abandoned building that nothing in the plot or my progress said I even had to visit.
'Girl number twenty,' said the gentleman, smiling in the calm
strength of knowledge.
Sissy blushed, and stood up.
'So you would carpet your room - or your husband's room, if you
were a grown woman, and had a husband - with representations of
flowers, would you?' said the gentleman. 'Why would you?'
'If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers,' returned the girl.
'And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and
have people walking over them with heavy boots?'
'It wouldn't hurt them, sir. They wouldn't crush and wither, if
you please, sir. They would be the pictures of what was very
pretty and pleasant, and I would fancy - '
'Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn't fancy,' cried the gentleman, quite
elated by coming so happily to his point. 'That's it! You are
never to fancy.'
'You are not, Cecilia Jupe,' Thomas Gradgrind solemnly repeated,
'to do anything of that kind.'
'Fact, fact, fact!' said the gentleman. And 'Fact, fact, fact!'
repeated Thomas Gradgrind.
'You are to be in all things regulated and governed,' said the
gentleman, 'by fact. We hope to have, before long, a board of
fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people
to be a people of fact, and of nothing but fact. You must discard
the word Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You
are not to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a
contradiction in fact. You don't walk upon flowers in fact; you
cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don't find
that foreign birds and butterflies come and perch upon your
crockery; you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds and
butterflies upon your crockery. You never meet with quadrupeds
going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds represented
upon walls. You must use,' said the gentleman, 'for all these
purposes, combinations and modifications (in primary colours) of
mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and
demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is
taste.'
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/hardt10.txt
In the case of Predator that was probably the equivalent of a human going bow hunting.
Of course, often people who are exposed to fatal risk as children also don't grow into a fully adult human being...
.
The_Prisoner_(computer_game)
A Mind Forever Voyaging
Bureaucracy
Trinity
Also, the System Shock series, Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, Bioshock, Fallout series....
Oh, and a lot more.... Of course, if you are looking for CNN the game, I can't help you...
In the words of Hank Venture, "I defy you to make less sense."
Let's parse this, Kurt Vonnegut isn't Anthony Burgess, the person who actually wrote A Clockwork Orange.
The plot of A Clockwork Orange has nothing to do with the idea that you've expressed here, "an overdose of violence makes non-aggressive." That's just completely wrong. I have to believe that you are completely ignorant of the subject matter here.
As to the rest of the post, my reaction is "Huh?"
I actually think there is an anti-male bias in this kind of thing. They don't want boys to be boys. I think they think if they can turn boys into passive, non-aggressive beings they'll create the ideal human race. (If you ever saw the movie Serenity, you might remember where the Reavers came from.)
Me, I'd prefer any children I have of either gender (my fiance has one little girl, who I've gotten to know well over the years and bought her many a video game) to be able to assess the tactical difficulties in defending any structure they are in from a zombie or alien attack.
Hmm, mangled that quote, it should be, "About 90% of Americans ages 816 play video games, and they spend about 13 hours a week doing soeven more if theyre boys."
Also, there seems to be two versions of the same article up, I pulled that quote from here:
http://news.health.com/2008/11/03/violent-video-games-linked-to-aggression-in-children-teens/
But thats actually the article linked to from this one:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/family/11/03/healthmag.violent.video.kids/index.html
(Click on Health from the CNN article to get to the other version.)
:
A SUMMIT CONVENED BY THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON MEDIA AND THE FAMILY AND IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY
Could it be that a politically motivated study by a political activist psychologist would come up with a conclusion that he had already decided on?
Remember, this is an organization that declared violent video games to be "Killographic Entertainment" and which claimed that Stubbs the Zombie was promoting cannibalism in our nations youth.
Sadly, the soccer-mom (or is that hockey-mom now?) audience for this anti-boy (notice the anti-male-children comment in the article "About 90% of Americans ages 816 play video games, and they spend about 13 hours a week doing soeven more if theyre boys." Even more, now that's precise, isn't it?) will read it uncritically happy that it confirms their biases.
Yes.
I'm pretty sure that it was later retconned into a forced regeneration, but I remember it differently. Of course, I was an exitable child back then, so I can't entirely trust my memories of the event.
I'm going to have the Flash Gordon theme in my head for the rest of the day now.... Happy Halloween.
Hmmm... ok, that was before the concept of Regeneration was introduced, and in fact they said that the Timelords "changed his appearance" as a sort of punishment. (They also exiled him to the Earth, his Tardis wouldn't work.)
What if that was true? It wasn't a Regeneration, and so he has an extra one.
Or, and I think this is also perfectly valid Dr. Who canon, they could just have the magic blue Regeneration fairy show up and tap him with her interspacial quantum time energy wand (otherwise known as the magic Regeneration reset wand).
He could use his "evil Peacekeeper captain" accent for the whole series, which I know isn't British... but hey, I'd watch.
I wouldn't worry about that, they deliberately included that scene with his ring being taken at the end so they can bring him back if they want.
Of course, I can remember the Master being burned away in a fire till he was completely gone with nothing left, and coming back in a later episode.
He responded to the Doctor's "WTF?" (echoing those of us in the audience) with, "Come now Doctor, you know I'm indestructible."
He could just do what the Master did on Trakken. I loved it when, in the 5 Doctors, John Pertwee's Doctor said, "Another regeneration?" and the Master said, "Not exactly."
Some people will say, "But the Doctor isn't that Evil," and I'll reply, "Now who's being naive?"
Hmm, actually, I just assumed it didn't make money because it disappeared from stores after a while. I'm actually happy if it made money, I thought it was a neat idea.
You know, that makes me think of the barcode reader Nintendo made for the Gameboy advance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_e-Reader
You could buy barcode cards to work with GBA connectivity to open things in Animal Crossing, among other things. It was about as successful as the Que Cat.
Considering he loved manipulating the economy by increasing the fiat money supply, apparently neither did he.
o/~ I wish I was in Tijuana, eating bar-b-qued Iguana o/~