Bay 12 Games Forum

Eh, I went with cornac for vanilla experience. Overabundance of clerics managed to take off a life (well, the first try got completely murdered by that mentioned quasit), but it's otherwise been going fairly well, so far. I've... actually skipped over the sandworm pit and daikara, at the moment. Walked into dreadfell at 17, trying to get an elder vampire to spawn. Borfast was a bastard. Mostly due to retch stripping off my active infusions and whatnot. Took forever to kill, bleh. Also you seriously have to disable incinerating blows when fighting luminous horrors. Most everything else is just casually keeling over, even the randunique greater acid demon that spawned in one of those switch vaults.

I'm finding that staff is definitely the doombringer's ideal weapon (if you're sticking with two-handers, anyway), which is vaguely annoying due to the initial gold outlay, but... eh. Lucked out on a rare elven-wood one... somewhere in OF, I think? Base damage isn't as high as I'd like, but there's no complaints in regards to a +23 SP, +20% fire damage deathstick at this point in the game. I'd post th'char link, but something wonky seems to be happening with the server or... something... and it's not updating.

Only thing I'm really regretting so far is those points in eternal suffering. Unfortunately, it just kinda' drains vim way too fast to be terrible useful as an always-on thing. And I'm kinda' too lazy to toggle it when it might be useful. I'm seriously digging the incinerating blows + inferno nexus combo, though. The latter is currently jacking up burn damage by a full 75 points/turn for me, heh.

Not really intending to play doombringer past the point of unlocking demonologist, though, whenever that comes around. Not even sure if I'll last till then before succumbing to the temptation of just manually unlocking it, heh.

... so what's up with the Sabbath? I think I've seen at least three different interpretations of which ruddy day it's on, so anyone have a rundown as to what's going on there? Wikipedia page is actually oddly unilluminating.

No, no, there's also waiting for a few more years, clawing together financial independence, and then moving out and telling all of them what they can shove up their collective orifices.

I do explain what I mean and definitely don't just drop a quote and rest my case, but the answer is rejected by nature of it not adhering to Western philosophy. The teacher actually states that as the reason, and refuses to debate about it. It's probably just plain racism, but that indeed was my daily WTF.

Yeah, that's... a bit odd. Unless, as others noted, it's a class specifically related to western philosophy. If you're really concerned, you might consider talking to whoever the next person up in the chain of academic command is -- head of the philosophy department or whoever's below them, etc. If nothing else, you might be able to at least get an explanation as to the teacher's reasoning.

... and serg, that's kinda' freakishly inaccurate. There's tremendous historical influence in the sciences from eastern philosophies, particularly middle-eastern.

My current philosophy teacher doesn't accept koans as proper answers to her questions. Apparently only Western philosophy is ever allowed.

I... would probably posit that it's not the origin of your answer so much as the, y'know, form. Koans are usually... specifically intended to be somewhat impenetrable. They're often not really answers to anything, last I checked. Most of them are very definitely going to violate one of the two primary virtues of philosophic writing (clarity and conciseness, especially the former).

If you wanted to explain their meaning through a more clear method, you'd probably be fine. You should be able to use koans as part of your answer, but if you're just dropping one and then not saying anything else on the subject or explaining your intent behind using one (what the koan means, why you are using it in this situation, etc.), then. Yeah, that's going to get rejected.

It's not exactly free speech if (some) speech is prosecutable.

Free speech in the US is a fairly specific legal construct, citribrethren. Puff's blurb covers the broad strokes fairly well.

As to the why, because shit like trying to drum up a mob to go murder people is something the law should prosecute. Similarly, outright slander and character assassination is something that should be prosecutable under -- at least -- civil law. And things like screaming fire or bomb in a crowded room, when nothing of the sort is there, is a clear and present attempt to cause straight up physical harm to people. In most ways, in most places, speech is and should be unlimited, but there's some stuff that just doesn't ruddy fly under any circumstance.

And that's a principle recognized by US civil and criminal law, which in regards to this particular tangent was what mattered

E: Though, if you want a more in-depth discussion, give GD a search. The topic's come up more than once over the years, and has been fairly thoroughly treated a handful of times.

I'm simply bothered by the fact that they are doing that to a church
Even if they are teaching incorrectly they have the right to do so
I'm not supporting the wrongful teachings or anything
Just that they have the right to say whatever they want
Ya know right to free speech

... free speech is not, actually, the right to say whatever you want. Being behind a pulpit doesn't actually protect you from what acts of speech violate the law. You cannot slander, certain forms of hate speech are, indeed, prosecutable, even if given during a sermon, etc., etc. If a preacher said to their congregation, "Get up, get your guns, and go kill muslims", they could readily get thrown in jail for it. Last I checked, anyway. A mitre isn't a blank check to break the law, et al.

As to the leeway, not really. Insofar as I'm aware, every single state in the union has an -- at the least -- majority of professed christian adherents. Church attendance actually gets pretty low in some places (but still, y'know, ~a fifth of the population at the lowest), but that's about the furthest it gets. As I noted, the chances of actual persecution, especially systematic or wide spread persecution, of christian adherents are vanishingly small. I'd say it would take at least another 60-80 years before that has much of a chance to change. At the absolute least, both my generation and the one succeeding it will have to die off, first.

As said, though, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if religious institutions stop getting away with so much bullshit over the next couple decades. Both their actual attempts to subvert law and political institutions, and the attempts of certain more politically inclined groups to use them for such, appears to be grating on the public a bit more than it used to.