Thorn's Rants
Attempting to make an at least daily blog thing of my random ideas and what is going on.
Since I have no idea what I might end up saying I have flagged this blog NSFW. It really could contain anything from explicit, to tame, to boring, to sheer genius.
It might be games, it might be what my friends are up to, it might be politics, religion, or porn. Whatever I get the feeling to write about is going up here.
May 26, 2012
Spot that Fallacy with Mike Adams (Its a long one)

What ‘skeptics’ really believe about vaccines, medicine, consciousness and the universe

Mike Adams
Natural News
January 24, 2010

I know I’m late to this article, unfortunately I’m a couple years behind on Skeptics Guide to the Universe, and I’m just now getting to sink my teeth into this one. Lets dig in.

“skeptics” claim to be the sole protectors of intellectual truth. Everyone who disagrees with them is just a quack, they insist.

Lie, we make no such claim as a movement. If an individual skeptic is taking such a hardline stance then I take issue with them as well.

Briefly stated, “skeptics” are in favor of vaccines, mammograms, pharmaceuticals and chemotherapy.

Because the tests show that when used properly the benefits outweigh the risks.

They are opponents of nutritional supplements, herbal medicine, chiropractic care, massage therapy, energy medicine, homeopathy, prayer and therapeutic touch.

Again, because ALL of these fail to pass even simple tests of effectiveness.

Interesting, so far no Logical Fallacies, and only one lie, though, could the lie be counted as a straw man?.

they themselves admit they have no consciousness and that there is no such thing as a soul, a spirit or a higher power. There is no life after death. In fact, there’s not much life in life when you’re a skeptic.

While many skeptics do believe there is no soul, spirit, higher power, or life after death none of these are actually required to be a skeptic. And that last bit is quite uncalled for, we skeptics are full of life, enjoyment, and awe and wonder. I refer to these as ‘life’ as I doubt he is referring to life in the sense of ‘being alive’. I don’t think even Adams thinks skeptics are zombies or some other form of undead.

• Skeptics believe that ALL vaccines are safe and effective (even if they’ve never been tested), that ALL people should be vaccinated, even against their will, and that there is NO LIMIT to the number of vaccines a person can be safely given. So injecting all children with, for example, 900 vaccines all at the same time is believed to be perfectly safe and “good for your health.”

WOW, gross oversimplification/generalization, compounded with an absolute lie. First off, while it is true that each vaccine cannot always be thoroughly tested these are not brand new vaccines, but sub-divisions of the same vaccine. The base vaccine has been thoroughly tested and sub0divisions are tested when time permits, but the mechanics of those sub-divisions are extremely well known. Its not like they are guessing the new version will still be safe, they know beyond all reasonable doubt that it will be safe.

NO LIMIT? This is such a strawman. There are good reasons vaccine shots are spaced out in the scheduled. One of them is to ensure that none of them have negative interactions with each other.  Another, I would think, is so that if you are one of the few who has an allergic reaction to a vaccine you are not given an unmanageable amount of the agitant.

• Skeptics believe that fluoride chemicals derived from the scrubbers of coal-fired power plants are really good for human health. They’re so good, in fact, that they should be dumped into the water supply so that everyone is forced to drink those chemicals, regardless of their current level of exposure to fluoride from other sources.

I have to hand it to him on this one. He is almost correct. I would only add that it comes down to the amount. A little is good for you, a lot is problematic. The levels in the water are so small that it would be your ‘current level of exposure’ that is at fault if you are having fluoride problems. It is not even large enough to be a probable cause of any ‘tipping point’ for becoming harmful.

• Skeptics believe that many six-month-old infants need antidepressant drugs. In fact, they believe that people of all ages can be safely given an unlimited number of drugs all at the same time: Antidepressants, cholesterol drugs, blood pressure drugs, diabetes drugs, anti-anxiety drugs, sleeping drugs and more — simultaneously!

Again, where does this idea of no limits come from?

• Skeptics believe that the human body has no ability to defend itself against invading microorganism and that the only things that can save people from viral infections are vaccines.

It is the human bodies ability to defend itself that is being utilized by vaccines. We vaccinate to prep those defenses for assault by specific known viri so that we don’t have to be infected before we start building the strong defense.

• Skeptics believe that pregnancy is a disease and childbirth is a medical crisis. (They are opponents of natural childbirth.)

???? WHAT?  Ok, I’ve calmed down and looked at where this idea might have come from. We advocate hospital birth. Childbirth can be quite dangerous, having trained medical personnel and equipment on hand will allow for speedy intervention should anything go wrong. If you have been found to be in good health and the pregnancy has been going smoothly it is quite likely you will have a safe and smooth delivery, but there can still be unforeseen complications.

• Skeptics do not believe in hypnosis. This is especially hilarious since they are all prime examples of people who are easily hypnotized by mainstream influences.

Correction, we debate the mechanisms and extent of hypnosis. Some skeptics believe it is simply a form of social play-acting. Regardless, its use as a legal tool has been soundly discredited, and its use as a psychiatric tool is highly suspect.

• Skeptics believe that there is no such thing as human consciousness. They do not believe in the mind; only in the physical brain. In fact, skeptics believe that they themselves are mindless automatons who have no free will, no soul and no consciousness whatsoever.

Again, not all skeptics. And ‘mindless automatons’ is also a loaded phrase that we would generally not agree with. Free Will and consciousness are tricky phrases as they can mean so many things. Many skeptics do reject the dualistic concept of a mind separate from the brain, that ‘choice’ is, to a degree, an illusion (though there are those who would argue my use of that word).

• Skeptics believe that DEAD foods have exactly the same nutritional properties as LIVING foods (hilarious!).

Hilarious indeed that such concepts as Dead foods and Living foods have so permeated popular thought. They have the same nutritional properties because they are the SAME things. There is no ‘living essence’ in any food, or anything, let alone this essence granting nutritional benefits.

• Skeptics believe that pesticides on the crops are safe, genetically modified foods are safe, and that any chemical food additive approved by the FDA is also safe. There is no advantage to buying organic food, they claim.

Hmm, almost right again. Pesticides are safe when used properly, GM foods are safe, and have been for the last several thousand years we’ve been making them (I love modern bananas), the FDA is fairly good at regulating these except when nature-food activists get congress to shackle them. ‘Organic food’, indeed, has no advantage. Most are identical to other crops, most of the rest are worse.

• Skeptics believe that water has no role in human health other than basic hydration. Water is inert, they say, and the water your toilet is identical to water from a natural spring (assuming the chemical composition is the same, anyway).

Hit that one on the head actually. Flawless. Well, almost. If I wanted to be pedantic I could go into your use of the terms ‘basic hydration’ and ‘inert’. But I’ll let that slide.

• Skeptics believe that all the phytochemicals and nutrients found in ALL plants are inert, having absolutely no benefit whatsoever for human health. (The ignorance of this intellectual position is breathtaking…)

Ok, this time he’s gone way off. I’m not sure how he’s trying to use the word inert here, but it sounds like he’s conflating it to mean two very different things in the same sentence. Plants are the foundational building block in the solar energy conversion into caloric energy. Plants are a VITAL part of human diet. But plants do not transfer any kind of ‘life essence’ as I mentioned before.

• Skeptics believe that the moon has no influence over life on Earth. Farming in sync with moon cycles is just superstition, they say. (So why are the cycles of life for insects, animals and humans tied to the moon, then?)

Typical pattern seeking behavior leading to superstition. Some things do have an indirect effect caused by the moon. Tides are caused largely by the moons gravity. A couple of insects behave differently (by small degrees) depending on how much moonlight (or light of similar intensity and composition) they receive. Humans have NO cyclical link to the moon itself that we did not create ourselves, and neither do the crops.

• Skeptics believe that the SUN has no role in human health other than to cause skin cancer. They completely deny any healing abilities of light.

Healing abilities of light? Yeah we deny that. But the sun does a lot more that cause skin cancer. Humans need about 15 minutes of sunlight each day to properly generate and process various vitamins. It also has an impact on our mental health.

• Skeptics believe that Mother Nature is incapable of synthesizing medicines. Only drug companies can synthesize medicines, they claim. (So why do they copy molecules from nature, then?)

I could argue his use of synthesize, but leaving that aside, this is untrue to a dangerous degree. Drug companies create many medicines by identifying the active ingredients in various plants and other sources, isolating, purifying, and quantifying them. With these controls we can preform tests to determine the drugs effectiveness without noise from other plant components. We can also determine what levels of the drug are safe and ensure equal distribution in each dose. When herbalists give their herbs they are providing actual drugs without a license (and training), in a diluted, polluted form, and in unknown quantities.

• Skeptics do not believe in intuition. They believe that mothers cannot “feel” the emotions of their infants at a distance. They write off all such “psychic” events as mere coincidence.

Right on, no caveats.

• Skeptics believe that all healing happens from the outside, from doctors and technical interventions. They do not believe that patients have any ability to heal themselves. Thus, they do not ascribe any responsibility for health to patients. Rather, they believe that doctors and technicians are responsible for your health. Anyone who dismisses doctors and takes charge of their own health is therefore acting “irresponsibly,” they claim.

Acting irresponsibly, yes, but NOT for these reasons. MY GOODNESS! All outside healing is to make up for what the body either can’t do on its own, or what doing on its own would take too long or be too painful. The common cold is a good example; there are medicines which can get rid of it faster, but their risks are higher than the benefit of a shortened cold (sub example, the Zinc in Zicam caused several cases of Anosmia (loosing the ability to smell) for only a one or two day reduction in the length of the cold), so instead we let the body fight it. And NO, massive doses of vitamin C does not help.

• Skeptics believe that cell phone radiation poses absolutely no danger to human health. A person can be exposed to unlimited cell phone radiation without any damage whatsoever.

Cellphones simply lack the output strength to pose any reasonable danger.

• Skeptics believe that aspartame and artificial chemical sweeteners can be consumed in unlimited quantities with no ill effects.

Nothing can be consumed in ‘unlimited quantities’ with or without ill effects. It is just a strawman to throw these to such extremes, and not even a good strawman.

• Skeptics believe that human beings were born deficient in synthetic chemicals and that the role of pharmaceutical companies is to “restore” those deficiencies in humans by convincing them to swallow patented pills.

TOTAL HOGWASH! First off, there is no such thing as a synthetic chemical to be deficient in. Its all just chemicals, plants, people, animals, my computer, they are all collections of chemicals. Secondly, we do not view pharmaceutical companies as the saints and saviors of humanity just because we don’t hate them like he does. Their purpose is to make money, same as Mike Adams is. Most of the time the things they are making are fine, great, and correct, when used correctly. They still make mistakes, and there is greed and corruption.

• Skeptics believe that you can take unlimited pharmaceuticals, be injected with an unlimited number of vaccines, expose yourself to unlimited medical imaging radiation, consume an unlimited quantity of chemicals in processed foods and expose yourself to an unlimited quantity of environmental chemical toxins with absolutely no health effects whatsoever!

Mike sure does like that word unlimited. Luckily, we don’t make those claims.

All the beliefs listed above were compiled from “skeptics” websites. (I’m not going to list those websites here because they don’t deserve the search engine rankings, but you can find them yourself through Google, if you wish.)

Actually, you can’t. He hasn’t given us nearly enough information to find them, assuming they even exist. This is a concept we ‘skeptics’ call siting your sources. If you don’t do it your entire argument can easily fall apart.

Skeptics aren’t consistently skeptical

• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about the corruption and dishonesty in the pharmaceutical industry. They believe whatever the drug companies say, without asking a single intelligent question.

FALSE I have already stated that corruption and dishonesty can exist in the pharmaceutical industry. Their goal is to make money. The product they sell to that end is typically well researched and helpful. To do otherwise can destroy such a company.

• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about medical journals. They believe whatever they read in those journals, even when much of it turns out to be complete science fraud.

FALSE The entire system of the science journal is to weed out fraud and mistake by opening their findings to the scientific community at large for repeat experiment and dissection of claims. These arguments are how science comes to consensus.

• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about the profit motive of the pharmaceutical industry. They believe that drug companies are motivated by goodwill, not by profits.

FALSE See two above

• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about the motivations and loyalties of the FDA. They will swallow, inject or use any product that’s FDA approved, without a single reasonable thought about the actual safety of those products.

FALSE The FDA has a good track record. But even then watch dog groups still preform independent studies. There might also be some levels or corruption, some small potentially shady dealings have been seen, but nothing to the levels others like Adams have stated in the past. We are vigilant in watching them as well.

• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about the safety of synthetic chemicals used in the food supply. They just swallow whatever poisons the food companies dump into the foods.

FALSE (Again with synthetic chemicals?) We are skeptical and keep watch of the levels of various chemicals within the food and water supply. “The poison is in the dose.”

• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about the enormous dangers of ionizing radiation from mammograms and CT scans. They have somehow convinced themselves that “early detection saves live” when, in reality, “early radiation causes cancer.”

FALSE FALSE and FALSE The studies have been done, and they are negative. Furthermore, the recommendations have been changed for how often and when women without other risk factors should have mammograms. These changes have nothing to do with the unfounded claims of radiation danger, but the chances of false positives.

• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about the mass-drugging agenda of the psychiatric industry which wants to diagnose everyone with some sort of “mental” disorder. The skeptics just go right along with it without asking a single commonsense question about whether the human brain really needs to be “treated” with a barrage of mind-altering chemicals.

Mass-drugging agenda? There is no such agenda. As for asking questions about what we put in our bodies, yeah, we do. These are fundamental questions we ask.

• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about mercury fillings. What harm could mercury possibly do anyway? If the ADA says they’re safe, they must be!

Multiple studies show them to be safe. Additionally looking at the composition of the filling and what happens in the mouth there is no mechanism by which they would not be safe. Why do we know this? Because we already asked the questions.

• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about the demolition-style collapse of the World Trade Center 7 building on September 11, 2001 — a building that was never hit by airplanes. This beautifully-orchestrated collapse of a hardened structure could only have been accomplished with precision explosives. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwSc…) Astonishingly, “skeptics” have little understanding of the laws of physics. Concrete-and-steel buildings don’t magically collapse in a perfect vertical demolition just because of a fire on one floor…

OMG has he gone off the deep end? It only looks beautifully orchestrated if you look at the collapse from a specific angle. These conspiracy theorists fail to realize that we also have footage from other angles showing the haphazard nature of the collapse. Lacking knowledge of physics, honesty? WOW, I had managed to maintain a smidgen of respect for Mike Adams until this.

• Skeptics aren’t skeptical about the safety of non-stick cookware, or the dangers of cleaning chemicals in the home, or the contamination of indoor air with chemical fumes from carpets, paints and particle board furniture. To the skeptics, the more chemicals, the better!

After the point he made above this one, Im starting to believe he actually thinks we think this. This is yet another in a LONG list of strawmen.

Nature is bad, chemicals are good

Summing up the position of the “skeptics” is quite simple: Nature is bad, chemicals are good!

This is getting repetative. FALSE@

If we only had more chemicals injected into more babies, the world would be a better place, they say. If we could only ban all plants, herbs, vitamins and supplements, we’d all be so much healthier because then we’d take more pharmaceuticals!

Seriously. This is what they believe. They openly admit this is their position.

And all you people drinking green smoothies, and growing your own food, and getting natural sunlight, and taking care of your own health, and drinking herbal tea… well you’re all just fools, say the skeptics. You’re all just too stupid to understand “real” science. Because if you understood real science, you’d give up all those useless herbs and superfoods and healing vegetables and you’d be taking twenty different prescription medications instead.

Then you’d be really smart, see. Because all those chemicals make you healthy and smart. A few extra vaccine injections will make you even smarter. Then you can join the skeptics because you’re smart enough at that point to understand that chemicals are the answer to all of life’s problems: Depression, anxiety, digestion, sexual performance, sleep, even test-taking abilities… there’s a chemical “solution” to every problem you might experience.

And here I thought he couldn’t get any more wrong with his strawmen, let alone stating in such strong terms that this is what we believe. Vaccines making you smarter? Banning plants, herbs, vitamins, and supplements? Some people actually do need supplements. However, chemicals are the answer, as EVERYTHING is made of chemicals. Seriously, does Mike even know what a chemical is?

What skeptics really are

I hope it’s fairly obvious to you by now that skeptics are the most misinformed people on the planet.

Actual skeptics are characterized by staying informed and using reason and logic to determine when a source of information is credible.

They are the easiest people to fool. They’re the easiest to hypnotize, too, because they lack independent thinking skills. Rather than thinking for themselves, they have joined a “club of skeptics” where they can be told what to think and then label themselves “intelligent” for following others in the group.

We are skeptical even of other skeptics. Furthermore, easy to hypnotize? Honestly? Most skeptics I know wish we could experience what people claim they experience in hypnosis, but we can’t.

These are the people who line up to be injected with useless H1N1 vaccines. (The joke is on them, of course. Those vaccines were a complete fraud…) These are the people who stand in line at the pharmacy to buy a dozen different prescriptions (costing sometimes thousands of dollars) that their doctors told them to take. These are the people who eat processed, dead junk food laced with chemicals that make them sick — and then they wonder why they’re sick. These are the people who sit at home watching television and think to themselves how smart they are because they follow the medical advice they learned in drug company advertisements.

??? First off, the H1N1 vaccine was not useless. Secondly, has Mike ever even known any skeptics? This is not what a skeptics life looks like. I almost never get drugs unless I have a serious problem. All food is dead. Food is not laced with chemicals, food IS chemicals, so are YOU. And we tend to hate those advertisements.

These are the real “skeptics.” They are so incredibly isolated from reality that they don’t even believe in their body’s own ability to heal itself.

Some skeptics get too isolated from other people and deal too much in theory than in practice. But how does that come to the conclusion that we don’t heal?

Skeptics don’t believe in a higher power of any kind: No God, no spirit, no angels, no guides, no creative force in the universe… nada. They think the universe is a cold, empty, lonely, stupid place full of soulless, mindless, zombie biological bodies who have no free will and no consciousness.

Again, not a requirement, but most of us don’t believe in the supernatural. That does not mean is it cold, empty, lonely, or stupid.

Gee, no wonder these skeptics are so misguided. They have the most pessimistic view possible. No wonder they seek to destroy themselves with chemicals — they don’t even think they’re alive to begin with! Skeptics are bent on self destruction. And they believe that when you die, the lights just go out and you cease to exist. Nothing happens after that. You’re just a mindless biological robot whose life has no meaning, no purpose, no higher self.

This is exactly what the skeptics believe. They’ll even tell you so themselves!

Most skeptics love life, the world is a place of wonders yet to be discovered. We do not seek destruction, we want to make the most out of our life, for this life is all we have. We do not need a ‘meaning’ or purpose imposed on us, we make our own. As for ‘mindless biological robot’ that is a terrible extrapolation, but one I can understand coming from someone who doesn’t understand what we mean by there being no mind/body dualism.

Never argue with drones

Realizing this, it makes it so much easier to debate with skeptics on any topic. Whatever they say, you just answer, “WHO is saying that? Are YOU, a conscious, free-thinking person with a mind and soul saying that, or are those words simply being automatically and robotically uttered from the mouth of a bag of bones and skin that has no mind and no soul?”

If they answer you honestly, they will have to admit that they believe they are nothing more than a robotic bag of bones and skin that is mindlessly uttering whatever nonsense happens to escape their mechanical lips. At that point, you’ve already won the debate because YOU have a soul, and THEY don’t. You’re arguing with a mindless robot.

Ha, ha, ha. Oh, my goodness. That was funny. Ok, he clearly has NO CLUE what he’s even talking about here. Not only is that not at all how it works, but you don’t have a soul either. Oh, I needed that laugh after all this drivel I’ve been reading.

Seriously. Think about this deeply. If you believe what the skeptics want you to believe (because they are always right, of course), then you must accept the fact that THEY have no consciousness. They are not really “alive.” They are just robotic biological machines. They are drones, in other words. And drones are not equal to a being of energy with a consciousness and a soul, inhabiting a human body with purpose and awareness.

Never argue with drones. You only waste your time and annoy the drone.

Skeptics… zombies… drones… different words for the same thing. Soulless, mindless, lacking consciousness and free will, having no awareness of the value of life… these are the skeptics arguing for vaccines, mammograms and chemotherapy today. They are agents of death who can only find solace in an industry of death — the industry of modern medicine.

Drones? No. The fully biological perspective on the brain does not call for us being drones. The brain accounts for the entirety of the complexities of our emotions and our expanding awareness, growth of knowledge, and experience. When presented with any given point in our life all of this stored in the brain generates the illusion of what we chose in that moment. Were time to rewind and you to do it over with no additional knowledge you could not choose differently.

To support his point about the drones he had an image of a Borg from Star Trek, under which was a repeat of the line about drones being no match for energy beings. I would love to meet one of the energy beings and do some test some day. Oh, he means the believers souls? Souls that have no method of interaction with the physical world, no testability, and in effect, no reality.

The other points in this section I have covered before.

Well, now that I’ve read the whole thing I see that most of the points here are strawmen mixed with poisoning the well, false dichotomies, and I think I saw a mix of a strawman with the no true Scotsman (a No True Strawman?).

Overall, this was a literally laughable article with far to much influence in its target audience. For that reason, it moves from a target of ridicule to a target of concern as its contents then become dangerous.

May 25, 2012

chotpot:

People are butts about gender sometimes! So here is a comic talking about how it really isn’t a big deal!

When I was with James this week I wrote a little poem about gender
and decided to draw a comic for said poem.

Hope you guys enjoy!

Thank you for making this. Trans* are often forgotten, and those of us who want to be both or neither seem to be completely ignored. Growing up the false dichotomy of having to be one or the other confused me. Mainstream told me I am male because that’s what my body is. The gay community said I was gay. parts of the Trans* community told me I was Trans. It took a long time to realize I am an unstable mix of both genders.

(via fuckyeatranscharacters)

flyingscotsman: Must…not…giggle (via) I read so much astronomy news I lost touch with why this was funny. Thanks for the reminder.

flyingscotsman:

Must…not…giggle (via)

I read so much astronomy news I lost touch with why this was funny. Thanks for the reminder.

warrennotg: The Guardian has a break-down of gay rights by state: see where your state stands. Truly stunning display of statistics. I would like to point out that while No Law or Unclear sounds benign here in UT there are places (Provo for one) where if your land lord finds out that you are having same-sex relations within the apartment they can legally evict you using that as their Just Cause. Also, if the housing commission (or board, or whatever) finds out that a same-sex couple is renting together they can go over the heads of the apartment owner and get them evicted.

warrennotg:

The Guardian has a break-down of gay rights by state: see where your state stands.

Truly stunning display of statistics. I would like to point out that while No Law or Unclear sounds benign here in UT there are places (Provo for one) where if your land lord finds out that you are having same-sex relations within the apartment they can legally evict you using that as their Just Cause. Also, if the housing commission (or board, or whatever) finds out that a same-sex couple is renting together they can go over the heads of the apartment owner and get them evicted.

May 16, 2012
toriapardoe: thenewavengers: The US release of The Avengers gets a second after credits scene. I am very mad. What?! No fair!! Well, I suppose we did get to see it first, so it is somewhat fair. It’s just that I want to see it! Not that great a scene, but I thought it was worth waiting for as the rest of the crowed left the theater. Took a while to explain to my friend though. And I love how everyone is so exhausted, and Banner is the only one who can even muster enough energy to chuckle at how funny the scenario is. Think about this; Tony Stark (who just put up a HUGE freaking tower with his name on it down the street, and who is known to be Iron Man), Captain America (if they watched the news and the retrospectives on his old career that likely followed his reappearance), the armored dude with a hammer who was just flying around smashing aliens and throwing lightning, and three unknown strangers (two in odd armor, probably one naked) walk into your busted up place as your wondering if the aliens are all done tearing things up or if you should run for it during the calm, and they order food. WHAT THE HELL is going through your mind? Whatever it was they got organized enough to make 6 meals and start cleaning up the place. Hope it was worth it Tony, hope it was worth it.

toriapardoe:

thenewavengers:

The US release of The Avengers gets a second after credits scene.

I am very mad.

What?! No fair!!

Well, I suppose we did get to see it first, so it is somewhat fair. It’s just that I want to see it!

Not that great a scene, but I thought it was worth waiting for as the rest of the crowed left the theater. Took a while to explain to my friend though. And I love how everyone is so exhausted, and Banner is the only one who can even muster enough energy to chuckle at how funny the scenario is.

Think about this; Tony Stark (who just put up a HUGE freaking tower with his name on it down the street, and who is known to be Iron Man), Captain America (if they watched the news and the retrospectives on his old career that likely followed his reappearance), the armored dude with a hammer who was just flying around smashing aliens and throwing lightning, and three unknown strangers (two in odd armor, probably one naked) walk into your busted up place as your wondering if the aliens are all done tearing things up or if you should run for it during the calm, and they order food. WHAT THE HELL is going through your mind?

Whatever it was they got organized enough to make 6 meals and start cleaning up the place. Hope it was worth it Tony, hope it was worth it.

May 15, 2012
Add headphones with my Pandora dubstep channels and I’d be golden.

Add headphones with my Pandora dubstep channels and I’d be golden.

(Source: andren)

May 14, 2012
toriapardoe: touchfuzzy-getdizzy: England, as portrayed by Japanese textbooks. More accurate than how America portrays us. Wow… I’d be offended, if it weren’t remarkably accurate-ish. Okay maybe only a little close to the truth sometimes, but there really are people like this. Seriously, they like to hurl insults at me that make no sense. Fortunately, this is shopped.

toriapardoe:

touchfuzzy-getdizzy:

England, as portrayed by Japanese textbooks.

More accurate than how America portrays us.

Wow… I’d be offended, if it weren’t remarkably accurate-ish. Okay maybe only a little close to the truth sometimes, but there really are people like this. Seriously, they like to hurl insults at me that make no sense.

Fortunately, this is shopped.

(Source: derpygrooves)

May 13, 2012

(Source: teeenage-barbies, via thescienceofreality)

April 12, 2012
Re: Pirate Ethics

Some time ago I listed my ethical code of piracy.  Primarily I wanted to talk on Rules 1, 3, and 8. Recently I came into some amount of discretionary income. This presented the first test of my ethical code of piracy for some time. So, since I have the money and code 1 & 3 says I should not be pirating if I can buy it, what do I do?

Well, what I did do was compensate Bioware and EA for their amazing games. In once case I got a SWTOR account, as I have commented on before (My original account is still going and I got an extension card, so I’m still playing MMO’s for now), and will likely be buying ME3 soonish. For EA, well, I no longer play any of their games myself (though I did purchase Spore and Galaxy Adventures twice, once with creepy/cute pack), but I helped my relative, now with the means to do so, to obtain a legal copy of Sims 3.

And I haven’t pirated anything in this time and don’t plan to until/unless I fall below that ability to purchase games again (or if its to test a game before deciding to buy it or not).

Oh, and I might even get a MineCraft account. I don’t play now, but I might later and I have in the past, and its a project worth supporting.

Damn capitalism, the slow race to the lowest common denominator, and ever accelerating. So sad that due to greed a pure socialism wouldn’t work with the size of population we have either. MineCraft and other projects like it are trying to make something great in a system designed to work against them (or at least they were last I checked).

April 1, 2012
Alternate MMO? Part 1: The Problems

Thinking about the problems I have with MMO’s has had me thinking. I’ve had ideas for an MMO since WoW Beta never realized the ‘dead interactions’ they talked about before it came out. I was imagining dungeons where crossing from dead to living would be a fairly regular necessity, sometimes even having your party split up for parts of the fight, some fighting in the living realm, some fighting in the dead, each effecting the others fight directly. Sometimes levers in the dead would open doors for the living, and visa versa. Killing a target on the living would create a target on the dead that had to be dealt with.

This lead to my idea for an MMO built primarily around the concept of crossing between these two worlds (realms) on a regular basis.

Since I’ve been seeing so many problems in the typical MMO system I’ve been thinking of how to modify my idea to something I think would be quite cool.

Let me start by listing some of the typical problems I see in MMO’s, in no particular order (Note: just because the problem appears does not mean I think I have a solution).

Agro Radius/Target Rich Environment: Playing TOR recently its been bugging me how I walk through a factory or cave and I see about 20 enemies, all grouped in backs of 3 to 5. They should all see me as well. I start hacking at one group and the others blithely stand by until I finish off their friends, heal up, and come after them. We see this similarly in North Barrens, animals so unnaturally scattered all over the place in specific areas, in clear and easy view, just waiting for some holy cow to hit them with a mallet.

Range: As I mentioned with Agro Radius you can see a LOT of targets all over, but your attack range is always so limited. Honestly, a high powered blaster can’t shoot farther than 30 meters? 45 yards for a magical bow?

Targeting: I’ve never been a huge FPS fan, but I’m starting to think that selecting your target and having your hit or miss totally based on your stats is a little… off.

Enemy Respawn: You go through an area and kill everything, then when you come back through you have to kill it all again, same targets. You kill a boss character, and their back pretty soon, and then you end up killing Van Cleef while you have his head in your bag, and not only do you have his head, everyone in your party has his head in their bags too.

Reading Quests: Different players read at different speeds. Sometimes you have to wait for one player who is reading the entire quest and actually wants the story (like me), but most players seem to ignore all that and just skip right to the quest objectives, or even ignore that and just follow their quest helper. Unfortunately, I succumbed to doing just that eventually because I was slowing down the party.

Solo/Party: Many times already tedious gathering quests become even worse when you have to gather the limited re-spawn/drop items for each member of a party. Direct kill quests almost never suffer this problem. Other areas are absolutely impossible unless you have at least 4 to 40 people with you. Some people want to play alone, some only like to play with friends, but either way vastly limits or impedes access to much of the content.

Lethality: Almost every quest in every MMO is to kill a lot. These characters are all mass murderers. Not counting undead, elementals, robots, and critters, I think I’ve personally killed at least 8 times the population of Azeroth. There are almost never non-lethal options for anything. TOR lets you spare targets sometimes, but only after you massacred small armies getting to them. Even stealth characters still need to kill a lot for the quest to be satisfied.

PvP/PvE: A huge balancing factor in games tends to come from people complaining about PvP, then the change screw PvE, so you get complaints, the fix screws PvP, and on and on. Note: WoW and TOR both try to handle this in different ways.

Keyboard/Controller: Most MMO’s are built exclusively for the Keyboard and Mouse. A couple have tried to incorporate controller support, but this often isn’t all that smooth and tends to feel rather clunky. DCU and Champions online, thank you for trying.

PC/Consul: As above, all MMO’s I know of are built for PC. DCU is the only one I know of that even has a consul side, and that’s only for PS3. If I understand correctly PC and PS3 players can’t play on the same servers.

Servers: By separating it into servers it becomes difficult to find other people who already play who you can play with. Why? Because if I find someone in my town who plays a particular MMO and we think we want to play together the first question is “what server are you on?” If its not one you already play on then to play together will mean starting over from scratch. Whats real sad, I have literally seen a couple break up over this. Both had 85s on different servers, neither was willing to start over. So I say it discourages playing with friends.

Side Quests/Leveling Alts: Side quests are great, the first time you do them. The second time, they are a little annoying. The third time, you feel like killing the quest giver, if your doing any more alts they become the bane of your existence. Even TOR only succeeded in making each class’s main story re-playable a second or third time, but to do so you still have to do all of the side quests just to be high enough to keep going with the story. Sure, you can PvP or dungeon/flashpoint/fly missions to get the additional XP, but those are even more repetitive.

HP: “And Orc with 1 HP fights just as well as an Orc with full HP.” Ok, I understand how HP became the standard system used for most RPGs, but in computer games your not limited as much by how long it would take the players to figure out what different types of wounds would cause what limitations. Traditionally we have incorporated this into some attacks having timed debuffs, but I think with computers we could do better than that. We could include things like missing limbs, having your armor impacted into your gut, or having a spike sticking through your leg.

“Uncanny Valley”: Many MMO’s try to go for an ultra realism effect, I think that is a mistake. Games like TOR, WoW, TF2, and Brawl Busters are the ones I like because they abandoned the super-realism for a slightly cartoonish appearance. If its too realistic your mind more directly compares it to reality and finds it lacking. This tends to be more jarring than the cartoonish mistakes.

Race: Ok, this one I will admit is nit-picky, its SPECIES, not RACE. In Skyrim when you pick between a High Elf and a Wood Elf or a Dark Elf, that’s picking a RACE of Elf.  Picking between the Nord, the Bretton, and the … Imperial? Thats picking a RACE of human. But picking a Human or an Elf is picking a Species. And before people start trying to call me racist, there isn’t a BLACK RACE of humans, there are literally hundreds of black races, and hundreds of white races. Here in North America we tend to lump them all together and get Whites vs Blacks, that is WRONG on so many levels. Ironically, most black people in America are more closely related to President Obama through his white mother than through his black Kenyan father.

SWTOR Woes or ‘Am I done with MMOs?’

Easiest way to sum up my problem with SWTOR is that its too much like WoW (and I have played every WoW version since BETA). The story is more engaging, the personal choices is awesome, the setting I like better, the Companions rock, the skill system not taking massive time out of your adventure is sweet (even if way to quick to finish up), and the full voice thing for the quests is awesome, but it still feels like the endless questing of WoW, and at the top level its the same gear grind.

I’m thinking a lot of the complaints people make about TOR is more because they are getting burned out on the genre as a whole than it is about problems with TOR specifically (not just my opinion, I have seen that on forums all over).

The legacy system is disappointing as well, I had put so much hope on it, but the designers have clearly stated that they feel everything I was wanting out of it would be unbalancing.

As it seems with all MMO’s TOR is falling to the least common denominator, trying to appeal to the largest market possible and get as much of the players money out of their pockets as they can for as long as possible. Anything which would potentially reduce how long a player takes to level up the character and enter the End Game Grind is frowned upon.

This is yet another place where I feel that the Free Market lets people down. This game isn’t the worst out there, by a long shot, and as MMO’s go its actually pretty good. But its not the great new innovation they were advertising, and I think it may have killed MMO’s for me entirely.

I don’t know, we’ll see.

Oh, to give a bit of background on the sudden change of tune. I’ve been feeling this way for a bit, but I thought it was just WoW. So I played several others. Finally I came to SWTOR, the trial period rocked, solid story stuff, I was engaged (still love the story even now), but then I had my non-gamer cousin play a bit to see things from the perspective of a non-gamer (I had her play WoW as well).

I was going to have her finish the starter story and then write up a post here about it in a couple days. But something she said as we quit for the evening (morning? 3:02 AM?) really struck me. We got talking about how much it cost, the recurring subscription, and the shear repetition. I was saying that was how MMO’s work, you pay monthly subscriptions for access to the game to play on their servers. 

Elly: “So, how long do the servers stay up?”

Thorn: “I could easily see this game staying around for at least 10 years.”

Elly: “So, in ten years I’ll still be able to play Sims 3, but you won’t still be able to play this?”

It really struck me then, everything my WoW addicted friend said about why he doesn’t want to play other games “I have so much invested in the one”, and the annoyance of the endless grind.

So, yeah, I think I might be leaving MMO’s until there’s a major change in how they function. Oh, and Free To Play doesn’t cut it for me either. Its still the endless grind for every additional bit of story and fun.

Then again, this could all just be coming up because I just had a B-day and feel annoyed with a lack of accomplishment in the real world and any virtual achievements feel hollow.

March 28, 2012
GAAAAAHHHHH

I just had a LOT of stuff typed up for this post on Star Wars: The Old Republic, but my comp crashed and ate it all. I am quite upset and will have to wait till some other time to write it up again. Instead, I’m going to go blow off some steam killing things with my Sith Warrior and his snarky Twillek companion, maybe go blow stuff up with his AWESOME Fury class Starship.

The Rise of SWTOR and the Fall of WoW

I recently got into playing Star Wars: The Old Republic, and I must say, I am loving it even more than I expected. We will get into some of its great strengths later, perhaps in a different post, but for now I want to address the people who compare SWTOR and WoW, those who refuse such comparisons, and the general bitching I hear about any little change.

With the release of the 1.2 patch notes we are hearing people cry out “This is the end of SWTOR!” “They are destroying it already!” “Its going the way of Cataclysm!”

Well, lets head that off right now. As many on the forums have said, people made these same out cries with every single patch notes blizzard ever released for WoW. But deeper, lets look at Cataclysm and why/if it failed.

For years WoW was the big boy, but why? It wasn’t the best graphics, it wasn’t the most realistic, it wasn’t the least buggy, and it wasn’t the most user accessible. But it was quite appealing to a wide range of players and it has an EPIC back-story and continued story development. WoW could be played and enjoyed by any casual gamer, but took extreme dedication to master. The add-on system made its interface almost infinitely customizable. The dedication and the customization drew many power gamers to its end game content, knowing that they were some of the select few who were good enough to see it, and spurring competitions to be the first with each new release.

But Power Gamers are a difficult bunch to keep happy. You need to provide new content on a regular basis, you need to address issues fixing every little problem and annoyance they face, and yet, you need to leave their shit alone or they will cry about it for months. With every patch Power Gamers were the ones yelling about how they got nerfed again or how someone else wasn’t nerfed enough.

Why all this talk about the insecure Power Gamers? Because they are the ones that left in droves after Cataclysm. Cataclysm opened up end game content from being only for the most dedicated to being for anyone above casual player. This left Power Gamers feeling cheated out of what they had fought long and hard to earn. Others felt like they had lost their home away from home, the one place in the world they could leave behind their constantly changing life for a stable fantasy world. For others the change in class structure was just too much for them to handle, because Cataclysm did completely re-wright several classes (the only change that annoys me is the Druid Eclipse system, other than that its all been good).

So, with all these Power Gamers leaving how has that effected Blizzard? Near as I can tell, not a whole lot. I think they may have under calculated how many of the new casual players they got each month were driven to the game by Power Gamers, but over all it looks like overhead is going down and sales are going up. Yes, new subscriptions are not nearly as high as the number of subscriptions leaving, but the online store seems to have been gaining in sales and the convention bookings were much larger than expected. Projections for Mists of Pandaria are also looking quite good.

But over all, more than Cataclysm, I think what is reducing WoW’s prominence is a combination of its age and newer games coming on the market. Unfortunately, the base coding of WoW is so old that it can’t keep up with the new developments the programers would love to add. As such, newer games are able to take those concepts and build them into their base coding from the beginning, sometimes its a success, sometimes not so much.

Rift had some great ideas that unfortunately didn’t test well to the general public, so they scaled them back.

Each new game looks to their predecessors successes and failures. And I think so far the best to blend these elements has been Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic. Since this post is getting long I will address the great strides of this game in another post.

March 24, 2012

toriapardoe:

supjeffreydahmer:

livewithoutregretxx:

cammcamm:

WATCH THIS REBLOG THIS SHARE THE STORY!

I know it’s a long video but it’s worth it.

this guy is the #1 criminal in the world. and we don’t know him. get to know him, get to know the story.

and make it possible to stop him!

Alot of you will look at this video, and just scroll past if because hey its 25 minutes long and well i don’t have time for it & it doesn’t seem interesting…

You are wrong, the 25 minutes you watch of this video, will maybe make you cry, make you angry, make you sad but most of all it should make you believe.

What you are about to watch is the most influential movement of the recent years, bring humans together to bring down a force so powerful.

Kony has been committing crimes for 20+ years now, unseen and unheard and mainly uncared to millions of people, until now… change.

I’ve joined giving donations to “TRI”, anything you can give is going to a good cause, don’t just sit back and let it all happen, act.

I’m just going to reblog this again cause it needs to be seen.

I do not usually tell my followers to “watch this” or take action, but I am begging you to do just that. We have to change the world and we have to stop this man.

Please watch this, and share it.

I don’t think the US should be the Worlds Police, but if we are going to (and I don’t see us stopping any time soon) we need to focus on the worlds number one criminals not just the bank rolls of the rich. This should be priority number one, share the message and bring our world closer to being one humanity.

(Source: kimpoyfeliciano)

March 15, 2012
Carnivor vs Herbivor

The previous topic brought up my moral imperatives about thinking capability and suffering. This leads to another topic which did not fit appropriately with the others; Human Diets.

First, lets lay some foundations of Evolutionary history. All primates evolved from strictly herbivorous creatures. Many primates evolved some small carnivorous tendencies, some eating occasional insects, others developed hunting and eating meat with leaves since their stomachs could not fully digest meat alone. Some of those early omnivores split from the other primates and became apes.

Let me point out, unlike creationist statements, apes and monkeys are not the same thing. Three well known varieties of ape are the Great Apes, Chimpanzees (our closest relatives), and Orangutans. Some of these apes came down from the trees more and more and began hunting more and more meat for their diet. This allowed more energy to be dedicated to the development of larger brains. Several evolutionary steps later modern humans have dominated the world with their vast intellect and tools. We humans are, in fact, apes, not monkeys. We live on the planet of the apes already.

So it is due to our carnivorous past that we are what we are today. But now that we are such a dominant and intelligent species we can see the harm we are doing and have the intelligence to do something about it. Now, I’m not some animal rights nut, I prefer biotic rights.  In the US we have truly barbaric farming practices, not as bad as the videos some would try to show for shock an awe, but quite bad non-the-less. And its barbaric not only on how we treat these animals but also in the waste of energy, so lets address these issues separately.

The treatment of farm animals: to provide all that meat for the millions of people in the cities the old farms and ranches where cows could openly graze living relatively peaceful lives until slaughter day don’t work anymore. Our meat is raised in close quarters, packed into tight groups, rarely allowed exorcise and fresh air. These are such unsanitary conditions that the animals have to be pumped full of anti-biotic cocktails to keep the meat healthy for human consumption. And that’s not saying anything about the mental state this puts the animals in.

Animals do have emotions and complex psychology. The social stresses we force upon them by cramming them into close quarters is psychologically devastating. This is suffering on a grand scale.

Wasted Energy: With our crops we collect only a small fraction of the solar potential energy striking the earth every day. Of that small fraction humans directly consume an even smaller fraction. Most of the crops go to feeding animals to grow into our meat. Most of what is left goes to production processes (bio-fuel, pill casings, semi-plastics, near-food-stuffs). It takes 6 times as much energy from props to feed animals for their meat as it would if we just ate the crops.

Land Waste: Modern farming practices are terrible to the land. Sure, there a lot better than they were immediately preceding the Great Depression, but it is still quite atrocious. We have developed better techniques and practices, but many of them are not financially viable in our market structure, so the farmers keep farming in a way that keeps making them money. Honestly, I can’t blame them for that.

But as Omnivores humans do need meat, right? Yes, and no. We are finding more and more plants that provide the proteins our bodies need which are normally provided by meat. However, these plants tend to have very specific growing conditions which do not make them suitable for the vast population of the world. For your average human adult male one pound of meat each weak is actually a little more than would be optimal if they were eating a balanced diet of the other easily grow-able plants. For most of humanity this would be easily supplied by fish (who have a much simpler nervous system, and therefor arguably less harm is caused). For the more land locked populations of the world proper management of grazing species would make the land healthier for growing plants and provide the more meat. The last meat source, good old fashioned hunting (I’ll make another post about that some other time).

For all of this to happen a drastic shift in the world conscious and economic structure will need to take place. In the mean time, I am trying to reduce my meat intake and shift more of it over to fish. An endeavor which, I must admit as I leave for another processed meat log, has not been going so well.