hkmaly

That's because similarly to darkness, stupidity is negative quantity. Turning off the light bulb doesn't allow darkness to spread from corner, nor does it create it and emit from the bulb ; the darkness is only absence of light. (We will now ignore the magical Darkness from some universes, which is obviously something more). Similarly, turning on the television doesn't start actually spreading some physically measurable quantity of stupidity, it just too often fails to spread any information ; problem is that if you focus your brain on something, it assumes there is some information which needs to be processed, and if you focus it on something which totally lacks useful information too often, it is then surprised when you try to focus it on something different and may take it some time to actually start working. Also, brain has some similar traits to muscles ; and some people fail to train it so much if they use their muscles the same way they would get bedsores. The equivalent of magical Darkness is misinformation ; entertainment rarely produces that, while news do that often. Misinformation can truly spread in way similar to information and can go from one media to other.

But very manpower intensitive. I think the modern method is overall faster when you need to perform a cerebrectomy on an entire population. I would object based on the manpower required in preparing all those shows, if not for the existence of reruns. Although the objection still holds in case of news. Those are rarely rerun.

I don't think shrugging up could change the pattern that way, but I'm not completely certain of it ...

To be fair, that's the part that comes closest to recreating the effect of watching modern entertainment TV and news. I agree that the principle is similar, but Egyptian way is way quicker.

Freefall last week. FF by 2 comics as well (it's today's so no permalink till Wednesday) The list of cross species consent in comics would be very long. But note that both of them are sentient in this case (although the possibility of direct order would complicate matters a lot). The main lesson of Kinsey scale missing from this discussion is that there are more options than just having on not having some trait (kink). Unless you can prove causal connection or at least very strong correlation, you should consider all traits independent. Meaning that it's not surprising if someone who has high score in kink and low score in gender preference would consider the king more important, while someone with similar score in both would insist that gender matters as well. Are you similarly squicked by missing consent from non-live forms (things)? Like dildos? What about plants? Those are technically alive, and yet you can't expect much consent from banana or cucumber. Sure, you can force many animals to do things they don't like, but I fail to see why having sex with them will be worse than anything else. It's not like you can make them pregnant. Also, I don't really believe the animal isn't able to show it doesn't like something - at least until you deliberately train it out of it. (I also fail to see them as attractive in reality ... anthropomorphized animals may be different case, but they are often sentient as well.)

Well Edward apparently chatted with Mr. Dunkel a fair bit during his time off work. If Mr. Dunkel mentioned having Elliot pick up a TV stand as well, Edward could have been like "Here, you'll need these to explain it to him." Nah, Edward isn't likely to offer stuff like this without asking. If Mr. Dunkel asked for help, however ... (And they really didn't needed the big plan. Small plan would suffice.)

Also his shirt changed. Why? In game tournaments, everyone is already supposed to know cheating is forbidden. They don't need to remind them, anyone caught cheating is removed from game.

Personally I consider the part where they pull the brain through the nose most troublesome. Exactly the problem I was talking about. And it can be even worse if the personal decides to use drugs to keep them from complaining. (I would add details but I don't remember enough ...)

... seriously? Elliot already has Ashley and Susan in queue. Also, I think he would mention Justin ... ... so far, we have Noah and Tedd as examples and those are pretty androgynous, Justin very much isn't. Meanwhile, Justin has Luke now. I think leaving it to interpretation would be dangerous if he already figured out ...

That must be a nice place to be treated. If I should ever happen to get into a situation like that again, I'll have to get into one of these. Ok, I'm admitting that I don't have personal experience with mental institution. (I don't even have personal experience with nursing home, but my grandmother knows some people there.)

You have it the other way. I was commenting that people in nursing homes need reason to live - because them LACKING it is the worst problem they have. People in mental institution usually have other, more serious problems (sometimes actually solvable by medications). While there are surely exceptions, in most cases they already HAVE reason to live, therefore they don't need another one. (Another exceptions I guess will be some psychopaths, which already have reason to live but they definitely need another which would be less damaging to the people around them.)

I thought that light was just to highlight the angelic halo Grace is wearing because she is so innocent, pure, and modest. Obviously.

So why is seafood so expensive? That's how good they are at distraction.

Only one (snerk). Who isn't hiding something from someone? If Mr. Dunkel has spell for summoning diagrams, it must be more than just visiting the same school. But maybe they really had it printed at a print shop.

Grew them or married them. I'm pretty sure the females in Nanase family rarely married someone with magic boobs. Nanase will be first one in this regard. That's why her mother is so nervous about it. Interesting. Maybe Mr. Verres and Mr. Dunkel have a common grandparent they have inherited an affinity for maps and charts from? Would explain why Dunkels are that much used to magic. But it could also be earlier relative (grand-grand-parent for example).

So, instead of seeing it as evidence about her fitting a particular orientation, you're taking it as evidence that she fits a particular trope. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. You're still assuming an awful lot based on one peck on the cheek goodbye. I agree that this would be very bad approach for real person. But Elliot's alter egos are SUPPOSED to be trope (or cliché). Also, word of god. Well, ok, Dan said that he's not sure himself, but he also confirmed that what Lisa said matches already established facts. Also, unlike real people, the limited span of comics means that in general we speculate based on data which would be grossly inadequate if it would be about reality. And the Chekhov's gun means that we have bigger chance to be right anyway: there is a lot more red herrings in real life than in any story.

I see connection. Considering even psychiatrists often have problem diagnosing, I'm not surprised psychiatry didn't get far. In Denmark we have mental 'health' institutions where patients will be kept immobilised and/or heavily drugged for weeks or months on end because it makes them easier to deal with. The patients' actual health, mental or physical, is at best a tertiary consideration if it even rates at all. Part of the problem is lack of funding. In my personal opinion the principal difference between these places and a medieval bedlam is that in the more 'modern' version, the floors are kept cleaner. There are people for which this is best option. But it's definitely not true for everyone who is there (likely not even 10%), and regarding people freaking out on ER, what if they have REASON to freak out? How are you supposed to examine person whose state was both physically and psychically altered? ... on the other hand, there are worse things like keeping patients in mental health institution drugged to not bother. Like doing the same to people in nursing homes. Lot of people there need reason to live and to keep trying, not drugs, especially sedative ones.

... to be exact, between second and third panels the "books" are mirrored again. Isn't this classical healing animation? No idea from which game, but I think I saw it parodied multiple times. Unless it was just similar. She has additional senses in her antennae, but she doesn't have now. Don't remember anything about hearing.

Well she was already making an effort to be different, I think the second life experience showed her that some things needed to stay the same. Although the extra memories did let her look at situations differently. Like "Elliot would have done this, and my second life experience says I could do that, what if I tried a bit of each?" It's true there was one thing she might've decided to stay same based on second life, on the other hand I think she wouldn't miss the chance of dating Nanase anyway. What I meant was that her second life experience would cause some difference even if she didn't wanted to.

I feel like Elliot wouldn't have objected if Ellen didn't try to differentiate herself from him, I don't know how well that would have gone though, it might have made things confusing for everyone involved. Ellen knew early on that she couldn't be Elliot anymore, and knew that it would be easiest on both of them if she was the one that changed. The parts she couldn't change aren't a big deal and yes, it helps with the whole "we are twins" bit. Note that even if she didn't decided to differentiate herself already, she then got her second life. I'm sure that would provide at least some difference.

It might also mean she's quest giver! ... ok, probably saw them. Or, possibly saw Duck getting close.

I think that in last two or three threads, the sample size was already 3 ... except they didn't agree. The speculations on Heidi's sexual orientation are based on the trope she's representing, the kiss is just confirmation. Tedd OR Uryuoms programming the basic forms MIGHT not have complete understanding of human sexuality. Not that they needed it. The gun obviously adds attraction to the now-opposite sex, which is all they needed for the repopulation purpose, and they don't really CARE what sexuality person had before transformation. So what if "true hetero" will be transformed to heterosexual - bisexuality as result of TF gun was not guaranteed.

Mr. Verres and main eight are likely only one actually calling it this. Although I wouldn't be surprised if it ACTUALLY had DGB acronym (but with different meaning ; possibly top secret meaning). Makes sense. They definitely have some outside funding. Although they might also be funded by patents on Uryuom technology. Creating currency would definitely be conflict with Department of the Treasury. Gold, on the other hand ... especially if noone KNOWS about it and it's not TOO much ...

Do they seriously give people who are freaking out something which can make them forget how they get where they are? Sounds shortsighted.

Damien was dumber than a sack of rocks and solved all his problems with his power and his near indestructibility. He killed Guyur without even knowing that he that way also killed a source of eggs for his hoped-for seyunolu army. It is also obvious that he did not even bother to properly read the lab records on Grace and her cousins. If he would, it would not have come as a surprise to him YEARS LATER that oops, maybe he should have left Guyur alive. That's why I said "probably". He might've skimmed something without bothering to read details, but the point would be that Dr Sciuridae (and possibly others) would be afraid to lie to him because he would definitely hurt them if he would find in the papers they lied. I think Dan intended to model DGB like the X-Files, which would probably mean the FBI may have more involvement. Yeah, we have Arthur as a "consultant", he was even introduced as being the "former consultant for the FBI" on TV, and if that was a false statement, the FBI would have had reason to investigate, so I think that's confirmation that the Paranormal Division is a branch of the FBI. Yeah ... not only agent Cranium and agent Wolf, but even Edward Verres had some inspiration ... on the other hand, the similarities might not go too deep. Note that I actually consider DGB being division of FBI most likely, I was just commenting that it's not completely sure. Well, "rest of FBI" doesn't even need to know about magic and aliens. This is "need to know" stuff and most agents wouldn't need it. Obviously the directors would know basic stuff like this, but it's not necessary true that higher level people know more than lower level ... I would also be interested if they tell president. Until the two sit down and clear the air Tedd is going to feel exactly the same way regardless. I think the most important indicator of Ed Verres' character is not how he goes into the talk but how he comes out. Definitely. There seem to be lot of things which didn't occurred to Verres and we shouldn't presume how he would react when someone points them to him.