C3PX

Yeah, ZIZ is right, both shows are very American in nature. I usually joke about how shallow we are in that the rest of the world can import our television and movies and enjoy them just fine, but we have to remake anything we decide to import (The Office, Life on Mars, long ago there was even a pilot for a US Red Dwarf that thankfully crashed and burned). But I guess when it comes to something like Family Guy (which I don't like) and Robot Chicken (which I love), we have finally found something culturally ours. Hopefully we continue to develop along this path and come up with better stuff in the future.

As for Family Guy not being as good after it was revived, I was never really into it before or after, but I feel that way about Futurama. I was very disappointed when it was canceled, and I was extremely excited when years later I heard it would be revived. Watched the first two new "movies", and found myself not the least bit interested in ever seeing another new episode of Futurama again. Still love the original season though.

Wow, now that they have Steam for Mac, maybe I ought to dig out my old PC copy of Half-Life and enter the serial and see what it gives me access too. Not sure how many of any of those game have Mac counterparts, probably none, I know HL doesn't. I guess the serial of my PC version of Half-Life 2 would give me HL2 for Mac, but since I have it on the 360 I'd rather just play it there.

Wow, if they made an HD port of the first Half-Life complete with expansions for Xbox Arcade, I'd wet my pants right now. That would be so awesome... same for System Shock 2.

Warbler said:

The Borne Identity.   It was my first time watching any of the Borne movies. not bad.  How are the sequels?

I actually thoroughly disliked 1 & 2, and never bothered with 3. I often get frowned at for having this view. I used to get frowned at for feeling the same way about The Matrix, but I think as time has gone on, hating The Matrix has become as cool as being obsessed with it used to be.

Nicely said.

TheBoost said:

I think any talk of 'common sense' is fairly out of place in a talk about religion.

I'd go so far as to say 'common sense' as an expression is fairly useless in any discussion, but even moreso with religion.

I too think common sense is a myth, I was simply responding to:

A B C said:

"God has no religion"

- Common sense

xhonzi said:

 

1. I can't believe they're pushing this game so hard already with a 2012 sometime release date.

I know, I really can't be bothered to care about it this early. Would rather them save their advertising money and give out some really great promotional swag like the BS2 advertising team did. That was even more fun than the actual game. I shall forever treasure my Rapture Records vinyl and my membership card to the International Order of the Pawns, and I will never forget how creeped out I was both times when I unexpectedly received a sketchily labeled piece of mail with no return address on it. I was really freaked out by the membership card with my name on it, and it took me a good 10 minutes or so to begin to suspect it was another piece of BS2 promo. I regret not sending a letter to Mark Meltzer earlier in order to received the Little Sister's drawing and paper dolls. The was the coolest video game advertising campaign I have ever seen.

And C3PX, which Game Informer cover did you get?  The one with the little boy or with the young girl on it?

Neither. I got the murder of crows cover. The one with the creepy man wearing a bowler hat, sitting on a park bench, leaning on his cane, surrounded by crows. It took me a while to realize that it was my new issue of Game Informer, rather than just some random junk mail Halloween store catalog. 

Warbler said:

xhonzi said:

  And are you saying that you equate animal and human life?

no.   When we say "my pets are my kids" we mean it figuratively, not literally. 

I was about to say that, but Warb beat me to it. I am sure that if you asked 005 if he imagined the loss of one of his pets would impact him in the same way the loss of a child would, he wouldn't hesitate to say that it wouldn't. I don't think there is anything wrong with people saying they consider their pets their children.

Sorry if I bummed some of you out with this thread. I just woke up this morning realizing that this situation could sneak up on me any day now, and I'd hate to do the wrong thing.

Bingo's advice to treat it like any other kind of death in the family was my first inclination (human death is something I am used to dealing with), but in reality, I don't think I can really do that or react that drastically.

Warb, one of your comments really struck me. You mentioned not getting closure from the death of your pet like you get from the death of a human loved one. If it doesn't feel like I am probing into painful memories for you, may I ask what might have provided you closure? Would an animal funeral, or at least some gesture of memorial (framed blown up photo of the animal, for example) been appropriate or some how made you feel your beloved animal was being paid the tribute it deserved? Or would that have just made things worse and more painful? Or simply seem to be going overboard and trying too hard?

Another important question, how soon is too soon to bring over a replacement pet?

 "I remember when my first NES stopped working.  I cried for days." or something like that.

Oh man! Now that IS a painful memory!!! Why must you bring up such painful subject matter!... only my NES never died (see, that is why I am a console owner and not a pet owner, ha! I win!), instead it was sold to my best friend by my very own back stabbing sister! Okay, well, it was technically her console... but it still hurt ;) Few years later I found one at a thrift store with a remarkably low price tag for the time and brought it home and have loved it ever since. Refitted it with some new pins a few years back and now it works like new. Even sleeps at the foot of my bed every night... it doesn't get along too well with my Famicom though.

Okay, so this is going to sound a bit like a Sean Wookie thread. ;)

I am sure there are plenty of better ways to get the information I am seeking, but I know there are plenty of pet owners here, which means I am sure plenty of you have lost pets.

My problem is I have never been extremely attached to an animal and had to suffer losing it. I've lost pets, and it has made me sad, but that isn't the same as loosing that pet that you have had from childhood into adulthood, has been there with you through all your life's hardest moments and greatest challenges, and at times felt like your only friend in the world. I have never had this kind of attachment to an animal, I can try to imagine what it would be like, but having never gone through it myself, there is really no way.

My problem is that someone I am very close to is likely going to be going through that very thing quite soon, and I really need to know what I can do or say or not say and not do after it happens, in order to be as supportive and as understanding as possible. Their cat is very elderly, and had been very healthy up until things started to rapidly decline a few weeks ago, I don't think it has long now. They are very attached to the cat and have had it since they were a teenager.

Any serious advice would be nice?

How is that common sense? To me that is actually the lack of common sense, and the thing that irks me about religion. If there is an all powerful being who created mankind, his lack of presence in his creation is kind of lame. And if he is revealing himself to only a select few, and telling them to either go annoy the crap out of people by pounding on their doors while they are trying to eat dinner or by blowing people up, in the name of spreading his kingdom, then that is pretty lame too.

Common sense to me says that if there was a God who created the universe, he wouldn't have just created it and left his creation to be confused and go about hating each other in his name, he would be involved in it (a religion), and that instead of just revealing himself to crazies and those who are lucky enough to be blessed with believing parents to start them on the straight path, he would be slightly more equal opportunity and reveal himself to the rational skeptical sort every now and then, thereby making himself known and preventing people from slitting throats/interrupting dinner in his name.

I don't think a "hit-and-run" God would be a very commonsensical one.

Whoa! Such heavy knee-jerks, I am surprised you manage to stay in your chair, Bingo.

Not surprised, Sean. A lot of Christians get really offended at the suggestion that their God may not exist, yet they roll their eyes when people of the exact opposite view get offended for being wished a "Merry Christmas" or told "God bless".

I think both sides are quite ridiculous. Having the blessing of a God you don't believe in wished on you is not going to do you any harm. And hearing alternative points of view on the origin of the universe is something no Christian should fear. If they are sound in their faith in God, then familiarity with the opposing views will only stand to make them more informed. If they are not sound in their views and hearing Atheist thought makes them doubt, then maybe they ought to take measures to strengthen their faith, rather than follow it ignorantly and blindly. If after taking a serious look into both sides of the spectrum they cannot justify their faith in light of these other views, then maybe they need to seriously rethink their views.

You are not contradicting anything I have said with that pic. The fulfillment of the law, according to the New Testament, was moving from the old covenant which was the law of Moses, to the new covenant.

So it sounds like this is a lot harder than Halo 3 was on Legendary?

TheBoost said:

 How else does one define which laws about killing, hating people, menstrating or tattooing, should still be followed? Or when a Christian cites Levitical law, is it not "cherry picking" based on their own opinions?

None of the Levitical laws are binding to Christians. No index needed. Nothing to keep track of. No cherry picking involved. None of them. No laws forbidden Christians from having tattoos or requiring them to go through ridiculous procedures during menstruation, no laws requiring male genital mutilation. If a Christian cites Levitical law and says that Christians should be following it, then feel free to call him a cherry picker, unless he himself follows EVERY Levitical law. Otherwise, Christians have all the excuse in the world for not following Levitical law, it simply is not required of them.

^ That sounds incredibly awesome!

It isn't really fair to say "most", I know tons of Christians who are big Harry Potter fans, and I have only met two Christians who were really adamantly anti-Harry Potter.

And it isn't ignoring Levitical law, New Testament doctrine clearly teaches that Christians are under a new law, and not the old Levitical laws. I hear far too many people cite that as "cherry picking" by Christians, but it would actually be misunderstanding of Christian doctrine on the part of the one making that claim.

Nanner Split said:

Just out of curiosity, what was it that made his scholarship shitty? I seem to remember him being pretty detailed as far as citing his references and what-not.

Since I have noticed an increase in complaints about the length of my posts in recent weeks, I will try to keep it as brief as I can. Let's just focus on his claim that there are more variants in the text of the New Testament manuscripts than there are words in the entire New Testament. Out of somewhere just under 6,000 NT manuscripts that have been found, he claims there are close to 400,000 places in which they differ while there are less than 150,000 words in the entire NT.

That is a pretty shocking claim. And it is absolutely true... if you are willing to stretch numbers a bit.

When textual critics like Bart Erhman talk about "the autographs" they mean the original papyri that was written by the author. So in regards to the Gospel of Luke, the autograph would be the original version supposedly written by a man named Luke (probably through an amanuensis) to the addressee Theophilus. Erhman makes a big deal about the fact that we do not have the original autographs of the Gospels (or any other NT book). All we have are copies. His argument here is that since we do not have the originals, and that when among the copies 400,000 discrepancies can be found, there is no way for what we have today to be the inspired word of God. Pretty convincing, right?

Just for the sake of expediency, let's take Warb's often used quote, "Well, I guess we're just going to have to agree to disagree." and let's treat it like a fragment of scripture from some ancient text.

Warb writes those words on a piece of notebook paper, much like Luke's amanuensis would have written the original words of Luke's Gospel on papyrus. And much like the scribes who made hand written copies of Luke's Gospel for use in other churches in the first centuries of Christianity, Nanner, Sean Wookie, Gaffer, Fink, and I all make hand written copies of Warb's words.

Nanner comes up with: "Well, I guess we're just going to have to agree to disagree."

Sean comes up with: "Well I guess were just going to have to agree to disagree."

Gaffer comes up with: "Well, I guess, we are just going to have to agree to disagree."

Fink come up with: "Well, I guess we're just going to have to agree to disagree."

I come up with: "Well I guess, were just going to have to agree to disagree."

If we lost Warb's original piece of notebook paper (the autograph), and we decided to look at the hand written copies of his quote made by the five of us (the manuscripts) in order to figure out what Warb had originally said, we would realize that we all wrote something slightly different. If we use the same method of counting discrepancies on the above quotes that Erhman uses on the NT manuscripts to come up with his 400,000 figure, then our number would be 15.

We could argue that we would never be able to figure out what Warb originally wrote, after all, among our five pieces of notebook paper there are fifteen discrepancies. That is a higher number of discrepancies than the number of words in Warb's entire sentence!

Now imagine if Xhonzi comes along the day after we copied the quote off of Warb's notebook paper onto our own notebook paper, and he asks me if he can look at my hand written copy of Warb's words so that he can make his own hand written copy. He reads the words, "Well I guess, were just going to have to agree to disagree." And realizes that silly C3PX made at least one obvious mistakes, so he corrects it in his own copy. "Well I guess, we're just going to have to agree to disagree."

Throw Xhonzi's manuscript in with the rest of ours, and now our number of discrepancies is up to eighteen. Get numerous other members deciding they want to copies our copies as well, and you get the same sort of thing going on with all five of our copies. The number of discrepancies is going to keep climbing with an added or missing comma here, a left out letter there, and an occasional misspelling, but has the meaning of what Warb originally wrote been changed?

That is why we have textual critics, like Ehrman, scholars of all different belief systems who examine the manuscripts and fragments, looking for minor and major discrepancies.

In our scenario with Warb's quote, let's say we ultimately end up with 100 pieces of notebook paper containing his words. If we were to put these pieces of notebook paper through the same process textual critics put the NT manuscripts through, we would examine them all, divide them up into families (i.e. these 7 pieces contain the exact same spelling error, or the same grammatical mistake, so it is likely they all share a common source like my copy that Xhonzi copied that other people copied from him), note the type of errors or discrepancies found (grammatical, spelling, reversed wording, paraphrase, accidental inclusion of scribal note, etc.), and compare them to try to discover the original meaning, we would quickly realize that the vast majority of the pieces of notebook paper would agree in meaning, even if they do have commas in different places, and if some of them use contractions while others do not.

After all is said and done, we could probably feel safe assuming that through consensus of the majority of our pieces of notebook paper, we can pretty accurately tell what Warb originally wrote on that piece of notebook paper, even if we don't have the original any longer. Though once one of us writes a post claiming that among those 100 pieces of notebook paper 300 discrepancies can be found, no doubt many of us would find that very enlightening and find it valid grounds for completely doubting that Warb ever wrote anything close to what we have him recorded to have written.

So much for being short...

Fink, are you using my likeness to peddle the Torah?

He's alive!

A B C said:

Does it concern only English translations, or other langages too ? Very interesting.

Since Ehrman writes about the original manuscripts, it could be applied to any language.

But regardless, shitty scholarship is shitty scholarship.

I've read some of Ehrman's stuff before, he is a pretty sketchy scholar. I wouldn't carry what you read from him too far. He is a good starting point for looking into things deeper, I suppose. But he is far more a salesmen than he is a serious academic.

Which is a shame, I think such half assed scholarship of the ilk of Ehrman hurts his cause far more than helps it (though in Ehrman's case, I sincerely think his cause is simply to sell books).

Warbler said:

C3PX said:

 

I have a few questions:

1. What's up with the Kings James only movement?
2. Why would people need Bible plans? I don't find it hard to read a few chapters everyday. Maybe they're too busy.

1. Fear of change. The KJV is a very old and very outdated text. There is really no reason to be using it today. Sure, it was very accurate in its day, but we have more accurate English translations today.

old? yes.   outdated?  I don't know.

It is definitely outdated. It is outdated in that it uses an archaic form of English, and it is outdated in that it predates the Dead Sea Scrolls and it is translated from a flawed manuscript.

Calling other translations special editions would be to suggest the KJV was the original, but just like all the other versions, the KJV is a translation (or more accurately an "interpretation"). The Bible as a whole was originally written in three different languages, and none of those were English. I know a lot of people talk about how it sounds more poetic than other versions, but I think that has a lot to do with it sounding much like Shakespeare. I bet you could make people consider your grocery list poetic, if you simply add a couple of "thee"s and a few "thou"s to it. 

The whole notion of the KJV being the only one inerrant word of God is a very Anglo-centric way of thinking.

Bingowings said:

I rather liked killing of Newt and Hicks at the beginning of Alien 3 it set up the bleakness of the situation (how long could Ripley realistically get away with being around those things anyway?).

I am not sure I think killing off Newt and Hicks was a horrible idea either, but it did really negate the second movie on many levels. And it was obvious that it was done as a matter of convenience. We've run out of story telling space for the little kid and Hicks, so we'll just write them out before the story even starts.

I am actually one of the only people I know who likes Alien 3. I saw it before Aliens, right after I watched Alien for the first time and I always kind of liked the atmosphere of it. Both Alien and Alien 3 had a sort of lonely oppressive atmosphere about them, but it was pulled off in different ways in each film. I kind of liked that. Aliens, which I didn't see until many years after my first viewing of Alien and Alien 3, lacks that oppressive, claustrophobic, lonely feeling which defined the franchise to me during the years between being introduced to it and finally seeing Aliens for the first time.

Ultimately, Aliens is just a style over substance sequel to what was a really awesome stand alone sci-fi film, which is why I am surprised so many people claim to like it better than the first film.

sean wookie said:

I purchased that Kindle Bible you recommended C3PX along with a copy of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion (I had a copy but I can't find it).

I just bought a copy of The Greatest Show on Earth the other day, looking forward to getting the time to sit down and read it.

 

I have a few questions:

1. What's up with the Kings James only movement?
2. Why would people need Bible plans? I don't find it hard to read a few chapters everyday. Maybe they're too busy.

1. Fear of change. The KJV is a very old and very outdated text. There is really no reason to be using it today. Sure, it was very accurate in its day, but we have more accurate English translations today.

2. You are probably right about the too busy thing. Like I said in my other post, it seems most Christians really don't even bother to read their Bibles. A year seems like an excessively long time to read a book even as thick as the Bible (seems most reading plans I see are one year plans), but I guess a lot of people who don't read a lot can't really be bothered with more than a few verses a day. Seems silly to me. Can't imagine reading a book just a few paragraphs at a time.

As much as many people hate Blue Shift and Opposing Force, I absolutely love them! I thought Gear Box had a brilliant idea in letting us experience the games events through the eyes of more than one individual. And it was always fun to catch a glimpse of Gordon Freemen go running by on the other side of the screen and think "Hey! I remember doing that!"

Wait, I am confused... why are those spoilers?

You're asking for other video game recommendations?

Well, you can't go wrong with BioShock and System Shock 2, so it is good to see them on your list. Along those lines I'd recommend every incarnation of Half-Life you can get your hands on, but I am willing to bet you've already done that long ago.

Fallout 3 is really good. Playing that was probably the most fun I have had playing a video game since the turn of the century. Can't wait to waste $80 bucks on CE of Fallout Vegas, can't believe it is coming out next month. I am going to need to get my hands on a TV between then and now...

In related news... just ordered Halo: Reach off of amazon, came with a promotion for $20 off next video game purchase, figured since I was going to nab Fallout Vegas in a month anyway, might as well buy Reach now and get $20 off to use on Vegas. Halo games take millennia to come down in price anyway, so probably the best I am going to do on it for a while.

And another thing... Anyone else get Game Informer? I never actually read the things, but I love this months Bioshock Infinite/Saturday Evening Post inspired cover. Awesome idea. But I wish they'd cut it out... 2012 is way too far away to be cruelly trying to throw me into "can't wait!" mode.