The Old Hack

You are not getting it. This is not about science. If this were a scientific journal, you would be absolutely correct. But it is not. It is a discussion forum about a comic where people come to relax and have fun. And it is just about as far away from fun as it is possible to suddenly find oneself in the middle of a discussion where people casually take something very traumatic for one and then turn it into idle entertainment or statistics. Especially when it turns into something that either ignores or denies one's actual lived experience. It is my job as a moderator to keep this space as safe as possible for the people who post here. From the responses I have seen earlier, I suspect that more than one other than me have had experiences with an alcoholic family member that impacted or harmed their lives. I do not wish to hear a defence of alcohol after what it has done to mine. And I very definitely do not wish to be told that the years of pain and confusion I went through are 'a misleading anecdotal statistic', for that is most certainly outright telling me that what I have experienced and suffered does not matter. You may not have intended that. It is still what you did. So therefore I ask you to please stop your 'scientific' treatment of this and take it elsewhere. If you do not, I shall be compelled to act as moderator. And I do not want to do that.

Don't. Just... don't. When people have had a very bad experience with something, the last thing they need is someone telling them that it isn't all bad just because they had their lives badly damaged or ruined. Trust me on this.

James Bond had a car that would turn on its automatic defense system, kick the ass of several bad guy henchmen while standing peacefully parked, and when Bond clicked a button it would start itself and drive to where he waited for it and outmaneuvering two hostile cars while doing so, does that count?

Indeed. In my case, it was my mother. She drank enough to ruin four lives.

Personally I favour the notion of a distraction. They set up their deaths, then discover or are told that someone important to them is in dire trouble. Do nothing or die improperly... the Devil and the deep blue sea...

This is one of my strong personal dislikes: when alcohol is somehow made out to be something funny or positive without bad effects. I am not commenting on Dan here -- he is merely portraying an element of the game -- but it is a trope that never fails to irritate me.

I absolutely love it. Also, it is now confirmed: Elliot has a HUD. It should therefore be possible for him to play Angry Birds while in superhero shape.

If the snowfall gets too heavy, look for a nice blue phone booth to take cover in!

Good to hear, and we'll be glad to have you back!

That is really sad news, Prof. I hope things will take a turn for the better soon. Please give my regards to Mrs. Prof.

Oh my God yes. I still remember an infamous annual report from the Danish nuclear test station at Risoe. At the time it was led by a physicist named Dr. Hiller. Due to incautious use of the spell checker, his name was spelled 'Hitler' throughout the entire report. I am morally certain that the poor man did not deserve that.

Thank you. You couldn't have known, mind you, but the sentiment is truly appreciated.

Did it die?

Thank you. I may have come across too harshly, and if so, I sincerely apologise myself. Unfortunately, I have poor experiences that make me take a dim view of April Fools pranks. Moreover, as moderator it is my duty to read all posts made simply to keep track of what is going on, and that can be a bit overwhelming at times. If some of these posts suddenly appear in gibberish, it makes my job harder, humorous intent or not. *sigh* And just today, I wasn't in the best shape to handle that. Once again, I am sorry, too.

No no no no no. Wasteland justice is, "We've all done wrong, but the special effects team and the director is on my side, so I am gonna kick your behinds."

Canada can have it. I'm scared of moose.

The Moderator: Humorous though the intent here may have been, there will be no further postings in Uryumoco, Klingon, Bocce or any other made up languages here. These forums are made for posts in English. Further such 'pranks' as these will be treated as spam and will be deleted without notice and the user warned. ~tOH.

I can't see what is wrong with that. I didn't want to be a moderator anyway. I wanted to be a lumberjack.

I have always had an odd love-hate relationship with Karma meters. I like the idea and it does add variation to the games, but sometimes the choices are so STUPID. For example, in classic KotOR where you play a force sensitive character you keep getting choices between Light and Dark Side. In one situation you meet a man being mugged by gangsters. You can elect to save the man (Light Side), ignore the event (Dark Side) or kill the muggers because they irritate you (Dark Side.) Okay, no problem. But afterwards you can either help the man a bit more (Light Side) or extort all his money from him (Dark Side.) Er, what? Let's say you were trying for a Darth Vader style character feel. I can totally see him kill some muggers because they irritated him. But can I see him taking the victim's money afterwards? No. Why not? Because it is TOO SODDING PETTY. It is so much beneath Vader's dignity that it is ridiculous. And that is the problem with Karma meters. They all too often oversimplify, or worse yet, do evil for evil's own sake, purely for the muhahahaaa of it. If I play a villain, I'd like my evil to at least make sense. This can also be a problem with Good, but in my experience Evil tends to be the more egregious of the two. (Or Light and Dark Side, or in the case of Mass Effect, Blue and Red.) Sigh.

Sadly, Aliens: Colonial Marines had a Pacifist mode. Now, you may reasonably ask what a Pacifist mode is doing in a sodding FIRST PERSON SHOOTER. I would like to know, too. The sad fact is that if you set the game to lowest difficulty you could just run through all the levels. The aliens and other enemies would all be so sluggish that they didn't react to you unless you actually shot them.

Yeah, they make them look like hipsters. ... ...what?

Trust me, they had lots of rules regarding grammar or their language just wouldn't work. The problem is that formal grammatical rules are an attempt to describe how a given language works, not actual rules for how it works -- and too many people put the cart in front of the horse and think that they are the latter. Since language is constantly and extensively mutable, it follows that grammar must be as well. The trouble arises when people treat grammatical rules as ironclad, which they really aren't. The best metaphor I can think of is to compare grammar to a map of a language. But the 'landscape' the map depicts is one subject to constant change and prominent features keep appearing, vanishing or shifting about. And if there is conflict between map and reality, grammaticians who insist that it is reality that is wrong will all too often find themselves walking off metaphorical cliffs.

They are the tiniest and most adorable little things. I am sorry to hear that two didn't make it.

"All true wealth is biological." Aral Vorkosigan, in Lois McMaster Bujold's Mirror Dance.

That is precisely my point. If there is no formal Immortal judicial system and most Immortals can only be arsed to act when there is a clear violation of the rules, what, then, is there to stop Pandora? Certainly no judge, prosecutor or jury.