TheMightyEthan

Oh, I see what you mean. It would kind of make sense though if Jon's mother were killed or something, and if he were the first one. And Ned could say this one kid is actually my bastard, happened while we were at war, but he can't do that for a never-ending stream of kids from King's Landing, especially since he's not even in King's Landing to be fathering them. And he does have the "hair of black" that was so signature of Robert's line. The other theory you posted above I don't think works as well due to the hair color.

Robert's dead, who cares how he treated them?

I realized today that my addiction is back in full force, when I played it over my lunch break.

Prediction! Though that seems a little too neat-and-tidy for this show. Also, it assumes Jon's parentage could be proved convincingly, which might be an issue.

This is the first argument I've heard against it that doesn't strike me as arbitrary. Race, as a cultural construct, is largely based on your background, and because it's based on all this stuff that happened historically to your ancestors, not just your actual genetic makeup or the way you're treated now, it can't be changed. Interesting development.

Basically some of the Sneetches have stars on their stomach, and some don't. The ones with the stars are "better" than the ones without. Then this guy comes with a machine that will add stars to their stomach (for a fee), so all the non-star Sneetches do it. Then the original star Sneetches say "we're still better", and use another machine made by the same guy to remove the stars from their stomachs (also for a fee), then claiming that Sneetches without stars are better. Things escalate, Sneetches keep getting stars removed and added, until eventually no one can remember who originally had stars and who didn't, and they realize it doesn't matter. Happy ending! Yay! Also the dude with the machines makes a killing on the whole fiasco.

It makes me think of that Dr. Seuss story, the Sneetches.

I just feel like this is the kind of thing that in 50 years will sound like "Of course black people should be able to vote, but I still don't want my daughter dating one."

Mirror's Edge: Catalyst will have no gunplay. Fuck yeah! Sounds badass.

I did watch the one from last year, which was significantly more impressive. I'm not trying to claim there won't be any open areas, I'm just saying I anticipate most of the combat will be a boring corridor with waves of guys.

Okay, yeah, it's like a competitive form of intervals, where you just run back and forth as fast as you can for training purposes, usually with some kind of goal time but no "getting out" for being too slow.

Was there actually more in that than they showed during the press conference?

So what exactly is the bleep test? Because it just looks like intervals to me, but those aren't competitive in any way (other than the way every physical activity is inherently competitive).

Well, and that's why I've specifically tried to get away from talking about this lady specifically. This lady apparently routinely lies about all sorts of weird things, claiming to have been born in South Africa (not true, born in the US), and hunted with bows and arrows for food growing up (not true, she grew up in the US), and that her adopted brother (who actually is genetically black) is her biological son, even though even he knows it's not true, etc etc. She clearly has some kind of personality disorder. @TN: at that point you're just speculating about how someone really feels about something. And I think the "dice roll" thing is arbitrary too: both characteristics are something determined by your genes, which you have no control over. The fact that one is predetermined by your parents' genes and the other is fairly randomly determined I don't think is a meaningful difference.

The driving part certainly looked like more fun and excitement than mowing down waves of dudes in another corridor, but I'm confident there will still be plenty of that. You call the marketplace, a large open space with lots of scalable buildings and guys at every angle, with almost every surface destructible, a crazy APC chasing you, with being grabbed by a guy and beaten up before Sully dynamically intervenes, with scaling buildings on-the-fly to escape a choke point, and punching a dude with a giant drop-strike... 'Mowing down waves of dudes in another corridor'? What large open space? All the combat occurred in a narrow, linear area. "Straight down this street 30-foot-wide, up these stairs, through this door." And a corridor is still a corridor, even if you can climb on top of some of the furniture (which I also remember doing in previous Uncharted games). I know I'm in the minority here, but I think the combat in Uncharted games is just a boring obstruction to get through for the fun parts.

But what I mean is that deciding it based on whether it's necessary to continue the species seems arbitrary to me. To me the more important thing would be the psychological importance to the person. *Edit - I guess what I'm getting at is that the reason to respect any kind of trans status is empathy for the trans person, and respect for their feelings, and so the biological basis of those feelings is irrelevant.

I agree that sexuality is one of the very most core driving sources of most biological organisms, humans included, but we're also hardwired to internalize cultural things extremely strongly as well, and someone's cultural identity can be incredibly important to their sense of self. I can see your point, but it still seems kind of arbitrary to me, to try and determine how core the idea is to someone's self perception and whether it's basic enough.

Idiots being idiots isn't a difference between being transracial and transsexual.

That was my gut reaction, but when I actually started thinking about it I can't come up with a single non-arbitrary-seeming distinction between being transsexual and transracial. I mean, I do feel like what she was doing was dishonest, but if you stop looking at her specifically I can't find a real reason why it's different.

The sixteen games are for the preview program next month. Supposedly they'll have over 100 for the actual public launch this fall.

I always did think having a bastard seemed out of character for Ned.

I actually prefer the Titan's shield over its arc.

Ah, right, that guy, I remember that now. And yeah, I remembered Didn't she say something about king's blood then? Oh my god!

Oh my god I would stab someone.