Break Time

As you may have heard, a game called Halo 3 came out recently. I've been playing it a bit. In fact, I had to leave it behind this weekend so I could get my schoolwork done.

I've beaten it on Normal, and I'm more than halfway done on Legendary. It's pretty clear that Halo 2 is the hardest of the series.

Best Halo 3 moment:

I am following our flag carrier toward our base. He's killed, and I rush to grab it. I kill three enemies, kill a fourth with the flag, (getting an Overkill), and take the Jump toward base. On the other side, I accidentally take the Jump going back toward their base. I panic, throw the flag back towards home in mid-air, but it falls off the edge of the map. The flag returns and the enemies capture our flag for the win.

Good Game.

PS. Here's a link to that game, if you want to see the stats.

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Now playing: Bad Company - All Right Now - Free
via FoxyTunes

Halo 3 Update

I got Halo 3 at another Target. Hooray. Back to Halo 3.

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Now playing: Al Green - Simply Beautiful
via FoxyTunes

Halo 3 - Missing

I had to write this post three times. The first time, the post was so full of profanity, it was hard to read. Also it was very offensive.

The second version of the post was the same post, without any profanity. I don't think "Halo 3 --- it --- the --- and---!" would make a very good post

Anyway, the local Target is out of Halo 3, and I feel my head is going to explode.
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Now playing: Beck - Static
via FoxyTunes

Ultra-Summary: Family Guy Star Wars Special

How to make a Family Guy Star Wars special:

1. Remember the jokes you've heard about Star Wars before? Here's one.

2. Wouldn't it be funny if something out of the our modern day suddenly appeared in the Star Wars setting? No? Dang.

3. Repeat 800 times.

Halo 3 Release

Halo 3 comes out tonight. Since I'll be in the strange land of Minneapolis, I don't think I'll manage to get to a store at midnight. I don't really mind, though; when I was at the midnight release of Halo 2, I didn't feel a sense of community with the people around me, I felt that they were standing in my way. I'll get it soon, though. See you on Bungie.net!

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Now playing: Beck - Earthquake Weather
via FoxyTunes

Halo 3

Halo 3 comes out in 3 days! I am very excited, even though a couple of idiots accidentally spoiled the ending. To be honest, I'm not that concerned about the ending, but it's still a dick thing to do.

In the future, I've decided to play it safe and never talk about the ending of anything, or the concept of endings, or spoilers. That way, no one will inadvertently spoil it. I know it's a concern, because the very same duo accidentally spoiled the entire "Snape kills Dumbledore" thing. Again, not that I really care, but it's still irritating to have things spoiled.
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Now playing: The Doors - Light My Fire
via FoxyTunes

Bioshock Revisited

Oh, Bioshock, why must you make me hate you? If it weren't for your laggy glitch, I'd agree with people that gave you a perfect score. As it is, I don't think I can play anymore, I'm so angry.

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Now playing: Manfred Mann - Blinded By The Light
via FoxyTunes

Complete Tool

I'm enjoying Bioshock, but the protagonist is a complete tool. At least in this game, they point out that he just does whatever anyone tells him to, instead of acting like he's a complete hero like the Half-Life games.

The part where you hunt with a crossbow people on behalf of a psychotic, I'm just not sure why I did that, even now. Seems like an unethical thing to do, if you ask me.

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Now playing: Judas Priest - Angel
via FoxyTunes

Bioshock

I just borrowed Bioshock from a friend. I'm going to have to hurry, though, Halo 3 comes out in 8 days. I have a feeling I'm going to have a hard time getting my schoolwork done in the foreseeable future.

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Now playing: Bob Dylan - Pledging My Time
via FoxyTunes

Copernicus, Darwin, and the Human Psyche

I don't know if it's possible to imagine what it was like for people living around the year 1500. To believe that the Earth is literally the center of the Universe. That the Universe exists, clearly, to entertain we poor Earthlings, and that the stars provide an occasional look into the realm of God himself. Can you imagine what it was like to discover that the Earth was the center of nothing? That humans had absolutely no significance on the cosmic scale? I can't.

Today, we're used to the idea of being a random planet in a boring part of a middling galaxy, so a faith developed today casually accepts this unimportant role. At the time, I imagine that many people's faiths were threatened.

The only other revelation as powerful as that one is the Theory of Evolution. Although various evolutionary theories had been floating around before Darwin's, His was so elegant, so obviously true, that it left little necessity for any Divine figure in a creation story. All evolution needs is a single self-replicating chemical.

Today, people grow up with Evolution coloring all Biology. At the time of Darwin, a lot of the Bible was literal. Since then, Metaphor has replaced basically any part of the Bible that isn't purely theological. Without the knowledge that their sacred texts were "only kidding", it must have been traumatic to find that there was no basis for the idea that species had spontaneously arisen from the Universal Will.

I don't think it's possible to create a psychic shock like that again. Einstein's Theory of Relativity is extremely important to science, and redefines our world view, but few religions explicitly require travel at the speed of light to be possible. Quantum Theory says that a Quantum switch's results don't occur until they are checked. This can lead to some sticky theological issues, (does God wait until the waveform collapses to collect the soul of that poor cat?) but it hardly challenges our assumptions about Quantum switches. After all, we didn't have any assumptions about them. Hell, we still don't know what they are.

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Now playing: Edwin Starr - War [What is it good for]
via FoxyTunes

Blog Matters

Since I updated the blog's format, the tracker I've been using stop collecting data. This looked identical to a complete halt in visiting the site, something that I found completely believable. I've fixed the problem now.

In other blog news, I've set up the notice below, a little something that will record whatever song I'm listening to at the time of the post for all eternity.

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Now playing: Jimi Hendrix - Red House
via FoxyTunes

What Is Wrong With People?

Check this picture:



First of all, I'm not apologizing for my fondness of Ringo Starr.

Second of all, look at the most popular movies! The best movie on there is Zoolander!

Wild Hogs? Who likes that? What is wrong with you people?

Free Will

I think arguing about Free Will is a waste of time, so I'm going to make this brief. Free Will is purely an invention of people who don't understand the laws of cause and effect, or it is redefined into meaninglessness. Additionally, it adds no value to our conception of the world or of humans.

Just because the idea gets me mad, I'll ask this question to Free Will supporters: if you had a robot, a human, and a chimp, and they all did the same thing when exposed to the same stimuli, how could you tell which had Free Will?

If they all acted differently, would you be able to tell which one had Free Will?

In other words, how can you tell if something has Free Will? And if you can't tell, what value does the theory have?

Character Details

The following is a list of things to consider for characters in my Supers Role-Playing Game, but most of them apply to any character in any RPG, and, in a larger sense, to characters in fiction in general.

• Where did you get your Powers?
• What is your opinion of your own Powers?
• What is your relation to the state? (Criminal, Government Tool, etc.)
• What is your relationship to the "Super Community" and the "Normals Community"?
• What are your plans and goals?
• Do you have a Super-Identity? ("The Weasel", "Ape-Man, etc.")
  
• Do you have a Costume or a distinct Appearance?

PS.
Realistically, you should have some life skills that aren't skills relating to being a super or murdering people. Most jobs have some sort of skill involved; if you don't have any talents at all, you should have an appropriate history: convict laborer, slave, person locked in a trunk, Security Monitor, that sort of thing.

GURPS Martial Arts

I finally have GURPS Martial Arts. It is very good. Like all of the 4th edition GURPS books, it has a bunch of sometimes humorous, sometimes serious, quotes from other media. This one may have the single best quote in any book to date.

Anyway, PCs in any game I'm running should stay on the lookout for hook-sword wielding ninjas and clowns dealing out Flying Atomic Wedgies for the next few months.

PS.
Last post was no. 250! Only 3,132 to go until no. 3,382!