Michael Archer

Have you guys played Halo: Reach? It's not too hard, even on "Legendary difficulty". Try turning on EVERY SINGLE SKULL IN THE GAME. For those of you who don't know, a Halo "skull" are difficulty multipliers. For example, one skull makes dropped weapons have less ammo, another skull makes enemies have more health, another skull makes your shields not recharge normally (you have to melee enemies to get them back). The worst skull however makes you go back to the very beginning of the level should you die once. Not only have I beaten each level in one sitting on this campaign, I've beaten Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST with all skulls on as well. Don't believe me? The videos are in my file share.

This was hilarious; I can't remember the last time Freeman's Mind literally made me lol. I think it's all the yelling. I feel slightly ashamed about laughing at that; it just feels like "cheap" humor. I don't know what Freeman is talking about;

In Queen's Fat Bottomed Girls, was I the only one who heard, "I got bored of Jews and Hoes; I've got stiffness in my bones"? Most misheard lyric videos are really convoluted and you can only hear the resemblance if you really think about it. However, I haven't heard anything that sounds closer to the original video than .

I remember reading somewhere that the Norwegian shooter wrote some sort of "manifesto" where he said he wasn't really religious. I could be wrong about that.

Two teachers to be precise, one to teach evolution and one to teach creationism. I think Axeldeath meant that the amount of teachers needed to teach all arbitrary theories would be ridiculous. Evolution is only opposed by creation which is an arbitrary theory; it's equally as arbitrary as if I were to say, "our lives are predestined at birth and the planets have mystical powers that decide our fate." The only reason that people consider it is that it's the most popular arbitrary theory. The only reason that people don't consider teaching alchemy along with chemistry or phrenology along with neurology is that phrenology and alchemy are only believed by a very small number of people. Even the smartest people are susceptible to Argumentum ad Populum. (Damn I shouldn't of said that; some creationist will now take that assertion out of context and accuse me of using the same fallacy)

Calvin and Hobbes Rat, Pig, Zebra, Goat and the entire crocodile fraternity from Pearls Before Swine. Dagny Taggart, Hank Rearden and John Galt (from Atlas Shrugged) Heavy Weapons Guy Rainbow Dash (if I could meet one; otherwise, the entire pony cast)

From what I understand from Wikipedia, they just don't think we should have babies--they think that our moral imperative is not to have babies. WHERE CAN I SIGN UP? No, just kidding. There's a difference between not liking babies and thinking that people who have babies our immoral. I believe that you have no obligation to sacrifice yourself to the human race. It's true that for many people, having a baby would be self-sacrifice. For others, it would be self-sacrifice to not have a baby. The antinatalists are opposed to both parties having babies. I don't think a human should live for the collective--they should live for themselves; it seems that the antinatalists are thinking more about the collective than the individual. Thus, I guess I oppose them. Ugh, it's too late for philosophy. I'm going to go play Viva Piñata.

I was considering playing WoW, but .

I agree, with the latter about "killing a person who could've cured cancer." That doctrine is called altruism, which I repudiate all together. *facepalm* Potential is not the actual; it will never be, no matter how much you think it is. By the same logic, since people are "potential dead people", I can dissect them for the instruction of medical students. Your moral standards confuse me. First you say a person's right to her life and happiness does not give her the right to abort, but now you're saying it does? By what standard? There's a difference between being "pissed off" at someone course of action and thinking that action should be outlawed. The former is a moral judgement that's proper (even in this case) under some circumstances; the latter, in this case, is treating other people's lives like you own them (slavery)--I find this abhorrent. Which one are you? In the extremely literal sense of the word, life does begin at conception. I think the "life begins at birth" people mean that a fetus becomes a human being (and has the same rights as one) at birth; is this what you find evil and if so, why? Your context-dropping skills amazes me. In the first trimester, the fetus is clearly not a human being; this is an issue that we can't just ignore. It is a parasite living off its host. We may not have the right to take another's life, but there's also no such thing as the right to live as a parasite. In fact, I contest your assertion altogether. To kill someone that's threatening your life (self-defense) is a moral requirement. Many women see their unwanted fetus as threatening their life. I see a human being taking moral priority over a piece of protoplasm--only religious dogma equates the two.

Because there's no objective body to administer justice, "justice" would be administered based on what is popular or profitable. The key difference between anarchy/competing police forces and capitalism/single government is that the latter holds a monopoly on the use of physical force, is strictly bound by a constitution and its key principle is justice. The mafia is not bound by any measures; they do what is profitable, even if it means hurting others. In capitalism, the only body that can use force is the government. In anarchy, anyone can use force; I fail to see how anarchy would not lead to gang warfare.

Why do I like this show so much? I don't know; I wouldn't say it's on the same enjoyment level on Spongebob. Don't get me wrong, Spongebob is still hilarious (at times) to this day. I hold My Little Pony higher than Spongebob or the Fairly Odd Parents. I think it's the characters: they're well rounded and they're not archetypes. I think maybe they're TOO likeable. I think I got it; it makes me feel good to watch it. For season 2, I really hope they don't start pandering to their internet fans e.g. I don't want to see Rainbow Dash say something needs to be 20% cooler. What I wouldn't have a problem with is a single (no more) obscure internet reference e.g. Princess Celestia asks Twilight to do something--she's hesitant, so Celestia leans forward, grins (but not an out of character grin) and says: "Problem, Twilight?". That might be pushing it a bit too. Do not, for the love of god, have Rainbow Dash fly across the screen while their own rendition of the Nyan Cat song plays. EDIT: Alphabet, LOVE the new avatar. I wish I could Photoshop well--I also wish I could AFFORD Photoshop. I disagree; feel free to put down the show whenever it becomes unbearable. I don't award merit to a show based on how POTENTIALLY good it could have been. That's like giving a mark in school based on how will the student could have potentially done.

It's a cool idea, but really, how often do you have spare games you want to trade for in-game items? The big upside I could see to this is that you and your trading partner don't have to be online at the same time.

Couldn't get it to work on DOSBox (I think it's because DOS and Mac don't go together), but I got it to work on another emulator called Boxer. I remember this game being a little more difficult and a lot less repetitive. Ten years later, this game is a joke. Once you fully upgrade the machine gun, it's the most trivial game in existence; you simply mow everything down. I could clear the Tier 2 waves (after the wave 50 mini-boss) in about three seconds. I scored over half a million points and never died once. Only one time did my health get in the red area. To break up the monotony, the developers occasionally added asteroid belts and there are two bosses, but it doesn't help.

How about adding spoiler tags? If you've lurked on The Escapist forums, you'll know what I mean. Basically, text imbedded in a spoiler tag will only show in a user's post as a button with some text like, "show spoiler"; when the button is pressed, only then will the imbedded text appear. The main reason for this is to discuss spoilers without hurting other people, but it has other uses e.g. on a joke telling thread, hiding the joke's punchline until the it's ready to be seen by the reader.

Your point?

The Black Mesa team are also changing illogical level design; there goes half of Ross' jokes. I think Ross will finish Half-Life: Source before Black Mesa releases. No one really knows when the Black Mesa team will be finished.

No, I say he's Aquarius. All cool people are.

If you're serious, I'd suggest PMing him; he rarely responds on the forums.

I've only played Resident Evil 5 demo--it was awful. I can't remember last time I've played a game so bad.

Yes! Know Your Meme has an episode on ponies!

zakalak, you mean like agnosticism? In truth, I respect the creationists more than the agnostics; agnosticism is the most cowardly position one can take. The agnostic equates knowledge with arbitrary claims; he thinks that arbitrary claims have equal epistemological value to empirical evidence. Also, the agnostic puts the burden of proof on the negative i.e. he says "You can't prove God doesn't exist, so I guess we'll never know." Evolution is not opposed by any theory and there has been no empirical and objective piece of evidence to the contrary i.e. the evidence for evolution is conclusive. Therefore, evolution is valid and is knowledge: contextually. By context, I mean it supports all other knowledge without contradiction, in application and in the valid empirical method the evidence was obtained.

I agree that most people aren't assholes in waiting, but is it possible you're confusing correlation with causation? In other words, is it possible that the reason most people aren't assholes is that in our current system, is that the government subordinated society to moral law; and by corollary, "might" (force) is subordinated to "right" (justice)? I think it's that we more-or-less live in a society of competition with dollars rather than a society of competition with guns, that there aren't those assholes. On another note, I don't consider evil to be quantitative e.g. I don't think a murderer is morally superior to someone who commits mass genocide. Even though there are few, there are certainly at least of couple of "assholes"; to let their crimes go unpunished by any proper objective legal system is an injustice and therefore, unacceptable. Whenever there's an injustice (no matter how small) that goes uncorrected or there's not even an attempt to correct it, innocent people suffer for the crimes--and that's certainly what would happen in anarchy. For your assertion that it's hard to catch a half-intellegent crook, I would argue that's a problem with the current infrastructure and tactics of the law enforcers--not the government itself. Besides, just because a system isn't perfect doesn't mean you scrap the whole thing; I believe that argument is called the Nirvana Fallacy.

BLASPHEMY

It's a pretty close split between the two choices. I think it's because most people haven't listened to Defying Gravity. Excuse me while I go put on my noise cancelling headphones and listen to it while shutting out everything else in the world and enjoy six minutes of Wicked bliss.

The day that the reputation system is abdicated and replaced by another system that can't be influenced by the majority is the day when this forum becomes about twenty percent cooler.