Recent content by Umbran

If you don't want to read about sadness, maybe take a pass on this one folks. Today was... not a good day. One of my cats has clearly not been feeling well, as she hasn't been eating much. While my wife is a veterinarian, she's in hospice and palliative care, and generally doesn't need or...

I think that Spider-Man: Homecoming was a good mix of serious and comedy, though - anyone who can make the Vulture into a serious villain earns a little leeway. So, Trek that contains comedy, but isn't just comedy, is a goodly possibility.

I finished J.S. Bailey's Dalton Kane and the Greens, which was okay. Then read the second in Dinniman's "Dungeon Crawler Carl" series, Carl's Doomsday Scenario. Awesome book, loads of fun. An example of exactly how easily you can forget the book's title while you are reading it.

Says the guy... named Danny....

The Laws of Thermodynamics boil down to: You can't win. You can't break even. You can't quite the game.

What's the example that proves your assertion correct? 1) Yes, but we are looking for both readability (for which prose paragraphs are best) and playability (standard templates being useful here) - you look to be prioritizing the latter, which isn't meeting the brief. 2) We are talking about...

I was Rome some years ago, and watched someone have a nigh existential crisis over an obelisk. The obelisk was over 1800 years old, from Egypt. It had been moved by the Romans, and installed in Rome. Then, in an earthquake, it had fallen over, and buried in rubble, and not stood back up...

That's your prerogative.

So, this is what I mean... Your focus on "truly alien mind" is, itself, not a peer-journal worthy consideration. You're dropping nuance. While I've got issues with Orson Scott Card for other reasons, in the Ender's Game series, he introduced us to a Hierarchy of Foreignness. We can consider...

Funny. I just said, "Buddy, you don't know what you're talking about," entirely anonymously!

I feel like if that was posted anywhere but in this thread, folks would have(correctly) asked me to whip out the red text. Even as dissociated blowing off steam back in this thread, it is a weak, stereotyping position to take. As I said, if you are going to dismiss someone, do it for their...

Yeah, but you know what? That you don't think anyone would perform to to your lofty standards... should mean precisely jack-squat to anyone who isn't at your table. This isn't about exactly how great a job is done. This is PLAY, a hobby, a place to exercise the mind. That we are perhaps...

You're trying to be ironically funny, right?

This... kinds sounds like appeal to authority. Only those who have read enough ought to speak? Gatekeep much? People who haven't read as much as you can still have good points to make, Whizbang. Indeed, they may have fewer preconceived notions than you do, and may have fresh perspectives you...

So, stepping away from the hot argument, I'd like to add some nuance here. Because... maybe you're wrong, there. We, in our real world, within our one sapient species in which race is a social construct with no biological basis, have had a horrible history with "separate, but equal", because...