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Several exist, actually, but they are all very flawed, and conversation about them among psychologists and psychiatrists makes my head hurt and generally goes nowhere. Interestingly, Gross National Happiness (7 compiled indices for a nation/state) seems to be a better, stronger measure than any...

Of course not. But every time there's a human being making a decision, there's a possible problem. Usually in academics, the stakes are pretty darn low, but that's less the case nowadays. In some fields of biology, there have been several suspected cases where conflict of interest may have...

What is the unit of measure for balance? Not picking on you specifically, RC. I'm just amused by the ongoing conversations about this, and think it would be interesting to divine the first principles.

The exact same sentence could be applied to Quenya and LotR. Heck, both LotR and Avatar are also similar in that they are both re-packaging older source material for a new audience. LotR has better source material, granted, but the parallel is there.

Most scientists aren't like that. Judging all scientists by that handful is no different than judging all Muslims by Al Qaeda. The media plays a role here. They seek out extreme opinions and give them a mouthpiece. Or they take a very complicated subject and reduce it to a hyper-simple...

This, for me, makes combat way more fun. Developing reliable tactics with your teammates like the proverbial Fast-ball Special or making some combination up on the fly feels good. It is also evocative of a well-oiled team of combat veterans. This is fine when everyone at the table is on...

Of course. Scientists are part of the culture. They are just as likely as anyone else to catch the illness. Depends. The hotter the issue, the more personal feelings and beliefs get involved, the less weight people give data and evidence. So, on small issues, only a minority ignore...

I will concede Earthdawn. Simply forgot about it. Never heard of Bezhell. Dragon Age did have the decency to make Dwarves interesting, but they do tend to be insular.

Didn't we have a gazillion page thread on this just a couple months ago? "Game balance" means different things to different people. Straw men of the concept are used in both sides of the edition wars to stoke the flames. Until someone creates an operational definition of game balance that...

At least here in the States, there's a very strong anti-expert bias. The general opinion seems to be that scientists are bad people because they think they're smarter than you or that their opinions matter more. We have a cultural sickness that insists all opinions are equal. Training is...

Dwarves continue to get the short end of the stick. Yeah, they're always included, but they're never important. Every Tolkien rip-off world and every "look at me up-ending Tolkien" world is all about the ancient majesty and legacy of the Elves and the upstart humans or an inverse, while the...

I'm actually disappointed it didn't really check in on O-Chul. O-Chul needs a spin-off comic of his own and a theme song heavily reminiscent of "Theme from Shaft." But cooler. ... Yes, I am an unabashed member of the O-Chul Fan Club.

Alas, nothing concrete. The guys reporting on it sounded excited, but that's not exactly a shock. That's what they get paid for. Also, sorry I popped my cork about anthropologists. Just had a run-in with an old psych colleague that bent my brain a little, so it was kicking around in my mind...

The player gets more options. That does not mean the character gets more power. The character gets healing surges.... but also takes more damage. Power is relative, and therefore many design elements play into this. As such, this whole argument is pretty silly. The NPCs and critters you...

The first few levels for the Fighter in 2e were all HUGE increases in power, based on survivability alone. Yes, that petered out somewhat later... but that only proves that the power curve (while not perfectly linear) is certainly more linear in 4e (and starts much further from the origin, but...

Not an anthropologist myself, and I no longer have any interest in following the primary sources in that field. The skulls I'm referencing I heard about in a report that showed up in mass media. Specifically, some BBC science podcasts maybe a month or two ago. On a personal note, I continue...

Couple of skulls in Europe with jaws and teeth that have a very intermediate sort of structure, from around the time modern humans moved into the area, and associated with known sites. Jury is still out on them. But knowing humans and breeding... if we have 2 fossils.... there were probably...

If you do not love O-Chul at least as much as any of the original characters, you are no longer invited to my birthday party.

I doubt these Eurasian fossils will be exactly the same species as the hobbits, though they could be on the same branch of the family tree. There were lots of hominids kicking around at the same time for a while. Also, there's solid evidence now of interbreeding between modern humans and...

The smell-o-vision is rumored to add enormous subtext.... most of it having to do with the fiddly bits of Na'avi reproduction. Alas, nothing socially groundbreaking there.