[TheBritishInvasion]

Today I am feeling a little better, not great but better.

Today I asked for an extension on one of my assignments, it's the non-assessed one but it's something I don't have to think about for a while.

Today I shamelessly plug my sister's charity. (Well, it's not her charity, she works for it.) The charity is called Retrak and they help children in Ethopia and Uganda. My sister is running a marathon to raise money so if anyone would like to sponsor her you can do so here: Retrak
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Britland as dubbed by AsA

Keeper of Tengu's electricity and Willow's 'what did you just say' eyes.

[Tinu.]

Glad you're feeling better brit! =)

Yesterday I saw Alice in Wonderland. I didn't really like it. No matter how much I want to like Alice in Wonderland, I can't stand any representation of it I've seen/read. Pooh.

Today I think I'm going to become a vegetarian. Thanks to the combined efforts of Tam, Tenshi, and my own vivid imagination, meat has become rather disgusting to me, and I can't stand the thought of eating it. This is probably a good thing. I think.
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Keeper of Gaia and all the books on Earthsong

"If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid."
~Einstein

[Tenshi]

@Tinu: But I wasn't actively trying to change you... I just stopped eating meat. I don't even recall talking about it that often! >_> I'm like you though, I get to thinking about where meat comes from and I... just can't eat it. I can't. I used to be a butcher, so it's maybe a bit more visceral for me. ^^;

Today I ran around with my brother for a few hours, talking over some of the things he's working over in his head. I believe I managed to help him, which is good. He has a lot on his plate right now.

Today I talked to my newest friend on the phone for the first time. Her voice, save for a few intonations when she's not speaking normally, sounds nearly identical to my ex-wife. Wow, how totally awkward a conversation. She even accused me of being too quiet. Hah... oops?

Today I was hit on in a not-very-subtle manner by another girl I know, who was "celebrating Saint Patty's Day", let's say. Heh. She asked me what it would take to get to me, and I told her "Years of friendship, a healthy foundation of trust, and a deep and mutual respect for the intelligence of one another?" Heh. I have yet to hear back. ^^;

Today I remind myself that I have been reformed from my previous physical need for a certain type of beverage, because just one tastes like not nearly enough. I haven't had that sensation in a long time, and I'm not looking to go back to it. I'm going to bed, instead.

Today I made fake chicken parmesan, with red sauce, on a bed of long-grain wheat rice. It was FABULOUS!

Seriously, Tyris, thank you for the Quorn suggestion. This stuff is awesome. ^_^

... The stars are beautiful tonight. Goodnight, Earthsong.
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~. Dubbed "Usagi" by AsA .~

Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. - Harold Whitman

Les êtailes dgident
{\,Keeper of the Siderean Swords,/}
For love

[Asa]

I don't know, I don't have that kind of problem with meat... It's just too much bother. Maybe because I know we kill it humanely. *shrug*

Anyway! *bounce*bounce*bounce* I have a job interview! Actually it's a paid summer internship, but it's a job wherein they plan on using me, rather than leaving me at home day after day with nothing to do. If I get it, of course. That's not garuanteed quite yet. But still, it's exciting! ^_____^
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Self-styled Forum Grandmother, because I hand out nicknames and hugs whether you want them or not. ^_^


Keeper of the Library and the Gateway to Haven

Nem: "It's the sort of face you just know is getting ready to poke you with something sharp."
BS: "...then insist you eat a brownie."
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If we shadows have offended,
Think but this and all is mended...
Give me your hands if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

[Tamir]

[Tinu.]

Congrats, Asa! I hope you get the job! ^___^

Today we dissected worms in lab. Thankfully, it wasn't too bad, and you could hardly smell the formaldehyde. I'm glad, because if had smelled much stronger I might have been sick.

Today I get to start my weekend early! Yay! ^_______________^
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Keeper of Gaia and all the books on Earthsong

"If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid."
~Einstein

[Tenshi]

Today I spent a lot of time out of the house, and then some time roleplaying with friends when I got home. Sadly, I accomplished very little else. ^^;

NOTE: From here on, it gets kind of spiritual-like, so if you don't want to hear anything regarding such things, skip to the next bold text line. ^_^

Today I had a very enlightening, uplifting, and even spiritually satisfying conversation with a very close friend of mine. As may surprise you, it had nothing to do with religion. Our conversation revolved around characters we had both had, who... it's hard to explain. I suppose I should start from the beginning.

A friend at WVU invited me to this online roleplaying group she was a part of. It was full of dark angels, devils, and vampires. The "good" people were all victims or cattle, and pretty much everyone was in a power struggle to do the most damage, to abuse the most people. It was suggested to me that I create a powerful character, so that I could establish my place among them.

My character, by the name of Thomas, was a simple human. He had no royal lineage, no great strength, no special powers. He was plain, with simple features and brown eyes and hair. He was not even a knight, only a squire. In fact, in every imaginable way, he was average, save one thing. He had faith, something that I (at the time) believed I lacked.

His faith drove him to act selflessly, kindly, and generously. He forgave those who attacked him, and welcomed his enemies with kind words and warm smiles. He embraced those who would take up arms against him, and he taught them his strength and his power without need for their threats and demands. It was simple, for he taught them that his power came from his faith, and his faith came from his power, and both were inseparably tied to his actions.

The thing that most defined Thomas, however, was that he would defend those who could not defend themselves. He would defend the child from the greatest monster in the land, so long as he knew the child would be spared harm. He would defend the traveler who happened through from those who would steal their lives away in the night. He would do these things by words, or by actions, or even by self-sacrifice. The only times he drew his weapon were the times that a weapon was to be used against him.

One by one, the dark creatures began to believe in him, to a degree. The first was the most powerful of them all, the self proclaimed "Destroyer of universes". The dark angel enshrouded Thomas in his great, coal black wings, and then offered the human a choice. Thomas could either accept the dark one's offer of putting down his "holy quest", or he could die. Thomas politely explained that if death was what was required, then he would gladly give his life in the service of others. And yet, when the dark one sought to end the man's life, he could not bring himself to do it.

By varying degrees, most of them were affected. Some disappeared, seeking to internalize what they did not understand. Others sought to emulate Thomas, to become like him in action (a task many found difficult). Thomas, with only a steel sword and leather armor in a world of flaming crystal blades and meteorite shields, had become the stuff of legends.

The semester ended, I was away for three months, having no real time to sign on and continue Thomas' quest. Every night had been exhausting, physically draining me from Thomas' inability to surrender his values. To know he would die, and to face that head on without question of compromising his role of protecting strangers (and the weak, and the innocent, and anyone else who was under assault for seemingly any reason!), his habit of refusing to back down unless the harm to others was ceased? It took just a wee bit out of me, on top of two jobs and full time college courses. On the other hand? It was possibly the most rewarding thing I had felt in a very long time.

I came back the next semester. I first arrived back, and found that there was another Thomas. A paladin, who hailed from the mighty kingdom of the west (somewhere...? hehe). His cause was to smite evil, and he wore shining plate mail to go along with his holy sword. Thomas smiled at the man, and went about rebuilding the city from the war that the paladin had begun to wage against the same creatures my Thomas once forgave.

Within a month's time, my Thomas was no longer spoken of, sometimes he was even forgotten. This paladin had gathered supporters, and an earnest war had begun between forces of light and the forces of darkness. They had ceased assaulting the weak and helpless, and had instead chosen to fight one another. Thomas was no longer needed, as when these new "holy defenders" would see the downtrodden, they would vigorously defend them.

As fortune would have it, that happened just as September came around, and due to events the real world, I very totally lost my sense of place and balance. ^^;

In the end I realized, I had faith all along. It took the actions of one very average human fighting very insurmountable odds in a very make-believe story to show me that. After all, a writer must have some piece of what he or she writes inside of them. One can hardly describe what one does not know, right?

Spiritual/Preachy stuff is over. You may all now resume your normally scheduled forum readings!

...on the other hand, now I have another question with rather grave concern. (Two people here will get that reference)

Why am I so very, very good at creating villains? By every measure that Thomas was able to inspire action against such creatures, I have created villains that crush the spirit and inspire hopelessness in their opposition.

To defeat something, truly and completely, is to know it, I suppose. I will let that help me sleep at night. ^^;

Today, despite not being incredibly productive, was a very good day. I enjoy philosophical talks with good friends.

New life goal: Have tea, coffee, or drinks with Nem. Discuss philosophy until one of our brains melts. ^_^

Edit: Following the example of a friend of mine, I set up a site where people can ask me any questions they like! I look forward to hearing some interesting questions!

Link: http://formspring.me/mjmullins
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~. Dubbed "Usagi" by AsA .~

Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. - Harold Whitman

Les êtailes dgident
{\,Keeper of the Siderean Swords,/}
For love

[TheBritishInvasion]

Today I sent my letters to Tenshi and Miho.

Today I write essays and do little else.

/Edit, and my penpal letter from Tenshi just arrived, yay.
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Britland as dubbed by AsA

Keeper of Tengu's electricity and Willow's 'what did you just say' eyes.

[Nem]

@Tenshi: The older I get the less I think of people as good and evil. A lot of the last few years, well other than being lazy and occasionally turning in essays, were spent trying to discover something that matched up with what I thought those concepts were, but I no longer believe it can be done. Every hero is someone else’s villain. Over time the search was replaced with a different question: Why is a belief in good and evil necessary; can't I just have a world I prefer and a world I dislike?

It seems that in talking of nice and nasty, as culturally bound relationships, you retain all the useful aspects of moral language anyway without having to justify the more weighty ontological commitments. Indeed it may be only because of cultural relativism that we could have ‘moral’ debates to begin with. If our ethics were grounded in moral realism I’d say that I thought a moral fact was X, you’d say you thought it was Y - and then we’d go and building increasingly impressive weapons to eliminate the heretics on the other side of the debate. With relativism, because they’re relative to each other along with the emotional conditioning of the individual, you can trade some values against others; which seems to be how most value-based debate has worked all along.

There’s this strange love of dichotomies in Western society that I think grows out of having a binary moral system; responsibility and innocence, good and evil, true and false. Once you separate the people you're talking about from those ethical considerations they become, necessarily, less caricatured - a mass of emotions and abilities. The question of character no longer has simple, intellectually violent answers. ‘He did it because he’s a nasty man.’ Sounds like a childish oversimplification, and perhaps it should.

The conflict between one set of emotions and another as they concern a course of action – between our urges to exploit or aid for example; the choices we make as the outcome of that; create, in aggregate, a unique perspective on a potential set of options. That perspective separates us from any other potential person; even if they were in the same place looking at the same physical situation with the same set of choices, they would not be us.

In that light heroic and villainous archetypes are united in being people of high agency, but separated by perspective. Maybe we have the pieces of our characters inside of us, the heroes and the villains, but we choose how and whether to build something from those pieces.

You're good, I would imagine, at generating plausible theories of mind; but ... to steal from Prachett:

‘It was a strange, chilling thought, dancing across his head like a white thread against the terrible red background. It went: He can think like you. You must think like him.
But if I think like him, he wins, he thought back.
And his new thought replied: Why? To think like him is not to be him! The hunter learns the ways of the hog, but he is not bacon. He learns the way of the weather, but he is not a cloud. And when the venomous beast charges at him, he remembers who is the hunter, and who is the hunted.’

*Choices just defined as the outcome of a conflict of emotions – not as the traditional ‘free will’ thing; which is horrifically messy to support.

---

Today I did not a whole lot. Kinda twitchy; too much coffee not enough food.
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'Play with a furry animal for a half an hour.' - AsA

Horatio Jackson: I'm afraid, sir, that you have a rather weak grasp of reality.
Baron Munchausen: Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash, and I am delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever!
- The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

XD

[Claen'tor]

@Nem
As the self-appointed DA of the matter, I see there being a clear-cut good and evil point, but the matters of perspective you see are the far more prevalent shades of gray.

Sometimes what is evil doesn't see itself as evil, and the same goes for what is good (however less likely than the former). In addition, both good and evil causes use propaganda to paint the foe in a light that draws support from the shades of gray.

You are right in that the concepts of good and evil are grounded in moral relativism, but would you say that taking a person's life on limited or no ethical grounds is a good thing? I'd go into further detail, but I have character sheets to put together for PAX East. I'll finish my counter point with the simple statement that some acts are seen as good/positive or evil/negative across all cultures, regardless of the moral relativity.
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Today, I worked on labs for school, since I'm going to miss two weeks or so due to my rather extensive trip (going to Boston from March 23 - 30, and then in Seattle/Olympia March 31 - April 7). I'm also putting together an extensive number of character sheets for the skirmish game(s) of 3.5 D&D I'll be hosting for my Enforcer pals at PAX East (I don't feel like wasting nights of free time putting together characters with the guys and gals while I'm there, much better to be prepped to jump right in).

If anyone has any suggestions for skirmish enemies for 11th level characters (as I'm going to set up some characters with classes that have level adjustments), feel free to PM me, or message me over AIM/MSN/X-Fire. I'll be here all night.

This be Claen'tor, signing off.
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Red is my colour. I live for it. Though it wears horribly on me. D;

I like to post my music. It's a habit. Be nice. ;_;

'People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.'
-Soren Kierkegaard

[Nem]

In a sense I'm not sure what I'm talking about qualifies as morality, relative or otherwise. Just happens to be where I started thinking last night. It contains some very general concepts so even if you do embrace moral realism there are things you can take from it.

The question of morality seems to be largely, 'What ought a person to do.' Things are 'bad' because they contradict what ought to be done; 'good,' because they further it. Whereas for the position I'm arguing from things are seen in a certain way because they contradict a certain set of subjective values... and while you can rewrite it in terms of ought it's no longer clear you're talking about the same thing.

[Tinalles]

Today I would just like to report that I'm not dead (yay!).

Still no Internet at home, and I've been too busy during most work days to actually check the forum.

Highlights of the new job so far:

Day 1: "The server has been compromised and has a rootkit."

...

Yeah, there's other stuff that's happened, but that one pretty much takes the cake. "Server" and "rootkit" are NOT words you want to hear in the same sentence on your first day as the new geek, take my word for it. -_-;;

About the only thing that really compares is this:

Week 3: "Oh my god, the home page weighs 352 kilobytes all by itself? The HTML alone is 44 KB? And the CSS file is BIGGER THAN THAT??"

The horror ... the horror ...

No, I lie. The bit in week two where I found a way to get access to the web-based billing system without a password was right up there too ...
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Keeper of The Remnant Minuon (cognomen Lucy, the Eaten One) and the Emissary Caeli

[Tinu.]

Most of today was spent running in circles in a 10X10 space trying to get everything done at once. All day.

Today there was drama. Yay. -_-;
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Keeper of Gaia and all the books on Earthsong

"If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid."
~Einstein

[spellingmistax]

Was sick on Friday, was feeling better yesterday, I am fine today and now I am hungry. I hope to be able to eat a proper meal soon.

One of these days I am going to post something that is not horribly boring and bland. It will shock you all.
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“They keep talking about how big a problem the recession is over here, but I have never seen so many color TVs in my life”
Unknown, Cuban native in Spain.
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dubbed Anthrax by Asa
Spellingmistax = mistax = ax = anthrax

[Tamir]

Today I'm glad Tin is still alive and well (well, kind of well).