If you've been in the gaming hobby for long enough (I'm talking at least a couple of decades, here), you probably remember at least hearing about the fantasy RPG with "no elves", Talislanta. Now, it's available for free. (What? Yes, legally.)

http://talislanta.com/]Talislanta | Still No Elves!

Oh, and there's an interview with the game's creator, Stephan Michael Sechi, http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=68722]over on the SJGames forums...
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

So I was doing a little Recluse's Victory PVP with Cyberman 8. (Mainly going for the final Heavy Badge that C8 doesn't have yet.) And Shrike wanders in with Skyfox (Empathy/Energy Defender).
So I get buffed with Fortitude and other nice things big time. Go out and dismantle a VEAT, with the Stalker playing backup for him TOTALLY unable to land anything on me (IIRC my DEF was around 60-70 at that point with the buffs) and me able to ignore him until I'd taken down the VEAT.
I go back for another set of buffs (thanks Shrike!) and go back out again, this time popping Elude, just to make things even more unbalanced. This time there's that same stalker - named "Killa Ninja" - out there that I can see plain as day thanks to perception buffs. Go over there and pop Cobra Strike on him for the stun, follow up with Eagle's Claw to stun him some more, and from there just CURB STOMP him in about 10-12 secs flat.
Oh - the subject line? I'd just seen Speed Racer on cable a few hours before, and the line from Pops Racer came to mind, and I hit "broadcast" and said (quoted),
"More like a NONJa. Terrible what passes for a Ninja these days!"
(Hee - yes, I'm a bad bad monkey sometimes. )

...and we may have discovered it by accident.  An article from New Scientist that just might blow your mind.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

An odd little webtoy/grafitti wall kind of thing.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

The advertisement for "Aciphex", as far as I could tell once I stopped giggling a medicine for acid reflux, had me composing this mental memo:

Marketing Dept.,


You're all fired.  And whoever the genius was who green-lit the trade name "aciphex" is double-fired, and I'll be telling everyone in the industry that he's the moron who came up with "Ass Effects".


Sincerely,
The Boss

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs

Who thought that *Vivid* would be the first manga to wind up labeled NSFW among the Nanoha family?
Misato: More fanservice!
---
"Oh, silver blade, forged in the depths of the beyond. Heed my summons and purge those who stand in my way. Lay
waste."

Wakfu!
Why didn't anyone tell me about this before now?
Seriously.
This stuff is awesome!
--------------
Epsilon

The second of my thoughts this week:

How well do the Charity organisations do in a World with the 'Wave? What with Medical Ultratech, the various medical research funds would be in a tissy. Disaster relief would probably be much easier, with portable and powerful rescue equipment and sensors.

The ones I'm most uncertain about are the various 'Wish granting' groups for disabled and terminally ill people. Surely the benifits of 'Wavetech would cause something of a schism in public thinking. On the one hand, 'Wavetech and biomoding could eliminate the need for them (if, of course, the 'Danes get over the knee jerk 'Wave scare). On the other hand, some of the requests could get really outlandish (Visit the South Pole? Easy! Have a tropical holiday there... Slightly more tricky.)

Thoughts?

This is one of two thoughts I've had recently (the other is in another thread):

Do the Fen compete in 'Dane international competition? I ask because I was reminded that Montenegro competed in the Miss World competition only 6 months after gaining independance from Serbia. (Note: As my example shows, I'm not just considering sports.)

I mean, sure I can see being Biomoded being classed as a performance enhancing condition (and to say nothing of cyborgs and ultra-tech) depending on how the mod stacks the deck for those circumstances. But surely there's some Fen (modded or not) competing 'Dane style.

Any ideas?

Well.  It looks like someone wants to deflect the blame for the molestation/pedophilia scandal rocking the Roman Catholic Church from the pope and, well, everyone under him.  Retired Bishop Giacomo Babini, who is, if I'm not mistaken, the loose cannon who is the unofficial speaker of things the Vatican wants said but doesn't want to say officially, has come out with the final word on the real cause of the scandal -- it's a Zionist plot against the Church.

Of course.  How could I be so blind?

He then went on -- and I am not joking about this -- to suggest that Hitler had a good reason for staging the Holocaust.

Once the global media started repeating his words, and a global outcry starting going up from Jews and non-Jews alike, Babini immediately started denying he'd ever said anything of the sort.  But Babini is in his eighties, and apparently doesn't realize that in today's hypermedia world, once you've said something, it stays said.  And there's proof that you said it everywhere.  Denying it just makes you look like a five-year-old next to a broken bag of flour and covered in white dust claiming he's never been in the kitchen.

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.