The Battle Bar, Our Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy

Originally posted by Red Nemesis
Ven, I agree with everything you've written except for this one part. There are two main issues with this phrasing.

The first is that it is factually incorrect: sedentary (or totalitarian) agriculture is an extremely new invention; only in the last ten thousand years or so has it been an important lifestyle. There are about three million years of (biologically) modern humans that foraged that would object to your characterization of sedentary agriculture as an early invention.

The second is that you've made the mistake of thinking that humanity set about farming, while it is in fact only the members of a particular culture (one that can be identified by this very trait) that did so. This caters to the common assumption that humans farm instinctively (as beavers build instinctively). Such an idea is false. Farming is a socially heritable trait, not a genetic one.

This is important when considering the book Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. I suggest that you all read it immediately.

That's ok, I get my history of farming and agriculture from the first two Age of Empires games.

This is important when considering the book Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, which is about the cultural assumptions that are leading to the consumption and ultimate destruction of the biological world necessary to support human macro life.

Originally posted by Red Nemesis
This is important when considering the book Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, which is about the cultural assumptions that are leading to the consumption and ultimate destruction of the biological world necessary to support human macro life.

Can the priests in that book convert troops? Who has more hit points, the archers or the cavalry?

cavalry always has more hit points noob.

Originally posted by Ms.Marvel
cavalry always has more hit points noob.

This.

The Vikings are about to complete their Wonder! Hurry!

Originally posted by Ms.Marvel
cavalry always has more hit points noob.

Did anyone ever successfully use troop classes against each other? Mine always turned into melee death.

I never understood the bonus of the [Mongolians?] in AoEII. They had trample damage, but the only thing to run over is farms?

wut?

I always created like 100 priests and tried to convert other armies. It never worked out. I don't have the patience nor the patience for those games. AOE is amazingly fun until you have to attack someone.

Originally posted by Dr McBeefington
I believe I have with Hitler and Stalin. One party claimed that a group was responsible for their misfortune and they must be annihilated. The other party claimed that the people that went against him went against the good of the nation, and killed off 20+ million with that justification.

In politics, people will use just about anything as a justification to push forth their own agendas. This is true for any ideology, be it secular or religious. Just as a Christian would tell you that the Crusades were a perversion of Christian ideas, I would tell you that what Hitler and Stalin did are a perversion of secular ethics. This is the danger of dogmatism, acting without the use of rigorous reason. As a secular humanist, I would argue that logic and reason should be used as tools for achieving the goal of maximizing happiness and minimizing pain. When this method is abandoned in the name of a dogmatic political or religious goal then so have the very foundations with which secularism is founded on.

Originally posted by Dr McBeefington
Do you have a problem with America being a Judeo-Christian nation? I don't. I have the same issue you do when it comes to preaching. What social mores are you talking about specifically. What parts of sexual morality?

I object when sexual minorities (homosexuals, intersex individuals) suffer because America is a Judo-Christian nation. I believe that something marriage should, on a legal level, be nothing more than a civil union for the purposes of things like taxes and medical records. If a person wishes to add religious significance to the event based on what they believe, then they could do so.

Originally posted by Dr McBeefington
While I'm glad those people believe in the biblical account of creation, it's ignorant that they would take it literally. In which case you're right, it would be a problem if they took it literally then discriminated against those who think the universe is 15 billion years old. Btw, God didn't create the Earth in 6 days, he created the universe in 6 days according to Genesis. Earth was created on the 2nd or 3rd day I believe.

Aside from the fact that close to half of the American population believes that Creationism should be taught in schools, my worry is more based on the mindset of a person that believes in a literal creation. That requires one or both of two things: a literal/fundamentalist mindset and/or gross scientific ignorance in areas of geology, physics, biology, chemistry, and just about every other hard science. The latter doesn't bother me so much as the first one does. People with a literal mindset are dogmatic and therefore not possessed of the disposition to act rationally. These people influence social mores in such a way that minorities or people that deviate are discriminated against. To me, this is wrong.

Originally posted by Dr McBeefington
I'm not sure where you get your interpretations. If it's not from the Torah itself, then I suspect there are discrepancies. I don't think the Old Testament contains the 7 Laws of Noah.

I've never even heard of the seven Laws of Noah, so yes I suspect we were reading different texts.

Originally posted by Dr McBeefington
In terms of the distribution of wealth, that's an interesting subject. While I do want the rich and the poor to be less apart, I have a problem advocating it because I feel that hard working people that end up making a lot of money deserve to keep that money.
Now about socioeconomic conditiosn and such and looking for the source, do you believe crime causes poverty or poverty causes crime?

I don't oppose people working hard and being able to become rich, but you have to look at things from a bigger picture. I'm not some communist that believes we should all have equal levels of wealth, but I do believe that shrinking the wealth gap will improve socioeconomic factors for the poor, leading to: a decrease in violent crime, less overcrowded prisons, better public health, and better education levels.

In response to your second question, I believe that America is something of a unique case. We have a large number of immigrants that come from extremely poor nations. They started out extremely poor and such I believe that this is why you now have the ghettos of the bigger cities. These conditions created a crime subculture in which you have entirely too many young people falling into crime. This creates an ugly cycle where each generation is stuck in poverty because the youth fail to break free of their socioeconomic conditions and instead fall into crime. Then they have children and the cycle continues anew. While I believe that these criminals should still be punished, I don't believe harsher sentences would do anything to fix the root source of the problem.

And completely off topic - AOE is why I aced history in High School.

Originally posted by Dr McBeefington
I always created like 100 priests and tried to convert other armies. It never worked out. I don't have the patience nor the patience for those games. AOE is amazingly fun until you have to attack someone.

This is true: I always had cheat codes so i could put high tech units along the perimeter and do my own thing until i felt like moving on.

All of those games, without cheat codes, are NEXT TO IMPOSSIBLE though. They cheat. They always cheat. They will have a whole army at your door in minutes, and if you look at the map, they have like 2 settlers doing anything.

Always infuriated me. I would have needed armies of settlers to churn out what they were churning out.

wao lame

I learned not to turtle slowly, but I did learn. Then I played Starcraft and realized I knew nothing.

AoE is probably the closest you're going to come to a game that relies on strategy rather than rushing.

Originally posted by Red Nemesis
wao lame

I learned not to turtle slowly, but I did learn. Then I played Starcraft and realized I knew nothing.

AoE is probably the closest you're going to come to a game that relies on strategy rather than rushing.

You beat the computer on the harder levels in AoE? if so, I am truly impressed. Surviving, I could do. If I wanted to conquer everyone else, I had to cheat. Empire Earth was the main game I played though. Just a better version of AoE.

better version of AoE.

You beat the computer on the harder levels in AoE?

oh, that was AoE 2. Yes, i did the whole castle-assault as well. I did the same thing is Star Wars clone campaigns. Only way to win those games.

What about EE was fantasyish?

When you had robots shooting lasers at each other?

Also, it seems like that was the game where they introduced offensive powers (like opening up a volcano on your opponent) that were lame.

thats true. The prophets were pretty lame. I didn't use them. I also usually set the game to end in the modern ephoch, simply because there was a much smaller choice of units to use in the "future" epochs.

That would make the game much less lame.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llrT-2gN2lI

mmm

on the one hand, if i believed in god that would certainly seem like something resembling divine intervention.

on the other hand, i highly doubt god gives a shit a bout a window washer.

Did ya'll know obama said healthcare premiums could drop 3000%?

What could that possibly mean? I may not be the best with numbers, but i'm pretty sure any drop of more than 100% would actually make them better than free?