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Religious toleration and religious syncretism are not at all the same thing. Japanese religious syncretism was certainly in effect during major periods of religious persecution in that country, after all. Japan has had several major religious conflicts and disagreements throughout its history...

Generally speaking, I think you are getting this backwards. Sure, in some ways Europe certainly changed more rapidly than major eastern powers, but citing this as being due to eastern stagnation is flawed. It is not that Europe changed more rapidly than eastern powers, it is more that Europe...

I don't think gunpowder has any direct correlation to the loss of heroes in a setting. For one thing, the romanticization of combat and the creation of heroes has very little to do with the actual processes of war. Anyways, the "leveling" effect of the introduction of gunpowder is often very...

I'll echo the sentiment that the common image people have of the middle ages is more based on fantasy and fiction than it is any historical truth. There are all kinds of falsehoods, half-truths, and faulty assumptions of day-to-day medieval life that are propagated in fantasy and fiction that...

You make a lot of good points, KidSnide, but I wanted to address this one in particular... Honestly, I think that mass combat should be something that is embraced by D&D for all of the tiers, just in different ways. In the heroic tier, a PC would be a normal soldier. An elite, awesome...

Unlike Minas Tirith, real life fortifications actually make sense. There is so much wrong with the basic design and placement of Minas Tirith in the movies that it makes my head spin... It is hardly defensible, it is oddly removed from the nearest source of water, it must have been horridly and...

I think you are getting things a bit backwards here. I don't think, at any point, the design of fortifications led to any change in their status as castles or not. The change in the physical design certainly did not directly cause the transition from the castle system to a capitol/fort system...

All told, there are just two things we need to done in order to put people anywhere in the solar system. First, we need a better way to put people and equipment into space than the traditional space shuttle system. Second, we need to put enough people and equipment into space in order to build a...

If you like the shooting genre at all, I would recommend Sin and Punishment: Star Successor. It is probably my favorite entry in that genre since Star Fox 64, and unlike that great game it even has a fun co-op mode. It makes me wonder what a co-op enabled Star Fox game from Treasure would be like...

Yeah, I'm surprised he caved that easily at the end of stage 3. He really did just give up towards the end there. He's obviously not in it for the green jersey this year. It really lessens my opinion of him that he isn't willing to give it his all even if it is clear that he isn't going to win...

As with every question regarding laws in the US, the answer is "depends on the state". I can give you the answers for California, but I don't have a clue how it works in other states. In California, you can get a learner's permit at the age of 15 1/2, and get a full license at the age of 16...

Yeah, the crashes definitely were pretty crazy today. The whole thing got a little weird towards the end with Fabian Cancelerra organizing a non-sprint finish, and supposedly there were a number of people who crashed multiple times across the length of the day, and supposedly the whole thing...

I've been following the Tour de France for several years now. It has always been fun. Well, I suppose it has hit a few low points here and there, but sprints, mountain stages, and breakaways with more than half-an-hour's advantage always make things fun and interesting. It's certainly more fun...

While I don't really want to comment on the first point, the second point is very true. For example, look at the trips my brother SkyOdin was referring to in his earlier post. The trip from Sacramento to San Francisco by train is probably the single most plausible rail trip in California, but it...

To be perfectly fair to Mr. Shyamalan, that is actually pretty true. For all kinds of reasons, anime characters tend to be drawn in ways that make racial identification a difficult task. For the most part, character designs in anime are not meant to make their race identifiable; they are meant...

How about "they live among us"? Similar to the idea in "frequent hidden contact", except the government isn't aware of it and there is no formal technology exchange, hidden or otherwise. Basically, aliens live on Earth in secret, but earthlings really have no way to regulate their presence or...

In my book, it is basically impossible to have something that is scientifically correct, so you might as well make it fun instead. After all, scientific accuracy is a moving target at the best of times, and we live in an era where scientists know that they are working with an incomplete theory...

Wow, an interesting thread has been revived from long ago. I was rather surprised to see an old post of mine that I vaguely remembered when I was reading through this thread. Its amazing how my thoughts upon reading through this thread this time were rather different than those from a few years...

People like me pitching in to say that "videogamey" doesn't mean anything is far from "threadcrapping". I am addressing the very point of the thread. The OP asked us what "videogamey" meant to us, and my response is "an elitist pejorative that says nothing". What that means is that every last...