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canicus
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Name: Canicus
State: Texas
Gender: Male
Interests: Religion, Ancient Texts, Computers, Video Games, Philosophy, Dead Languages, Comic Books
Occupation: Other
Industry: Other
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Member Since:
11/23/2005
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| I finally got off of Dragon Age: Origins and Street Fighter long enough to try Tekken 6. I know Charles was asking about it, and here's my impressions:
First, I suck. I feel like a total scrub. I'm not used to this. I didn't feel this way about Virtua Fighter, but Tekken feels completely unfamiliar. Of course, I'm used to 2D fighters, and I never did get into 3D fighters. SF, KoF, MK, and so on were always enough for me. I obsessed over them enough. I realize that some people may want to revoke my fighting game fan card, but I can keep my 2D card. I pretty much kept up on that over the years :p. That's a large part of it, and it makes me a complete novice at them. This inevitably means that my impressions are skewed; I don't properly understand the system.
Still, one thing makes me happy. I was able to pull off a 30-40% win rate against Chris. Part of this was that he wasn't using his main or second, but still, 30-40% for essentially my first games against a player who understands the system well made me feel good. Chris enjoyed dominating me in a fighting game as well, and that is not too strong a word.
The blocking and hit-detection system feels very strange to me. I can't explain all of it. Part of it was that I noticed I can block when the joystick is in neutral (Charles, I know you play mainly SC and VF; this game does not have a block button. Like SF and KoF, you hold back to block). There seems to be a lot of overheads, but I'm not sure they're really overheads. I think in fighters in terms of hitboxes, and I could translate that pretty well to VF and SC even though they don't really use the same system. Tekken feels weird. I can't explain it, but something is fundamentally different, and it doesn't make sense to me yet.
The graphics are nice, and my friend will enjoy his favorite type of characters (poor Xianghua in SC lol). It has a lot of options: a story mode, training mode, ghost mode, etc. One very important option not present is a dojo mode, that is a mode that incrementally teaches you the moves and BnB combos. I'm going to need the guide dangit. The story mode is different from other story modes. Initially I didn't like it much, but it gets better. Like most fighting games, the story is nothing to write home about (it isn't BlazBlue). There's a lot of options in practice mode that I haven't piddled with yet, though, so it may yet be there.
Multiplayer, though, was fun. I enjoyed losing to Chris. Losing makes me stronger, and I don't enjoy beating people most of the time (though I prefer close matches to losing lol). I haven't tried the online multiplayer.
Like Virtua Fighter, the game seems to emphasize "Your turn. My turn. Your turn. My turn" approaches to attacking. It seems to be a lot harder to get up an unrelenting offense.
Things that I need to learn:
Who will I main and second? That's an open question right now.
How the heck do the hitboxes work. Are there hitboxes or does it work differently?
I need to learn basic footsies for this game. I got plastered, because I tried jump-ins too much. I should've known better because of VF, but I didn't think about it.
Related to hitboxes, how are attacks done? In SF, there are startup, active, and recovery frames. I understand how it works. I'm not sure it works like that in Tekken. I don't know what the alternative would be, but it feels...weird.
There are a few other things, but I'm going to go get killed by the giant Egyptian monster again. I should have learned Tekken a long time ago. It's not enough to take me permanantly away from either DA or SF, but it's going to be a nice thing to intersperse with them. | | |
| I have seen two things in multiple sources lately. The first is a video purporting that Obama admitted that he is a Muslim". The second is "Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8". I don't support Obama, and I made that clear very early on. I still consider him a threat to our liberty; of course I thought the same thing about Bush very early. That said, these two phenomena are evil. They are not a misunderstandings. They are evil and antichristian, and they must be opposed.
Let's take the former. Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ. That is a fact not conjecture. I'm not into supporting or repeating that the world is flat, that vaccinations cause autism, or the like. These are irrational causes. The Scriptural standards are clear: "Do not bear false witness against your neighbor", "Love your neighbor as yourself", and so on. We are not allowed to lie about our neighbor to make them look bad. We are especially not allowed to do so for the purposes of corrupt, petty, secular political parties. Period. I don't care if they go by the name "Republican" or "God's Own Party". It is not acceptable.
Let's go straight to the meat of the video. In it, we have an excerpt from a video 0:58 where Obama says "McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith." It appears to be concrete. However, a transcript would more properly read "McCain has not talked about 'my Muslim faith.'" Why the single quotes? Because he is not a Muslim and is talking about it being imputed to him. There is a massive difference between the two. The quote, in its context says the exact opposite of what it seems to say in the "Obama admits he is a Muslim" video.
I had known this for some time. I remembered the interview, but I didn't have it, but I googled for it when I decided to write this post. Here is the context of the video that quote was taken from. I don't need to elaborate on this. The meaning is crystal clear. It also demonstrates that the author of this video had absolutely no interest in representing things factually. None. You can't trust a video like that.
Think about other things in the video: Obama supposedly prays with a "perfect Arabic accent". What is that, exactly? Arabic is a global language just like English. What is a perfect English accent? Is it spoken in London, Wales, Australia, Texas, New York, New Zealand, where? It's a silly concept. You have to specify specifically which English accent we are talking about. The same thing is true about any global language. The statement is a pure fabrication.
What's the big deal about Obama in Muslim dress? We all know that is his father's background. Of course there's going to be pictures of him in Muslim dress (which, by the way, is not exactly Muslim but common across faith groups in the ME and NA).
The rest of those were done by Bush as well: praise Islam? Yep. Talk about the "holy" Koran? Yep. Visit mosques? Yep. All those sorts of things were done by Bush, and he did them immediately after 9/11 and never stopped. So, is Bush a Muslim? What's good for the goose is good for the gander. The truth is that Obama is a politician, and Muslims are notoriously easy to offend. We also are dependent on foreign oil. Those two facts mean that virtually any politician (a few excepted) will do this sort of thing. It has nothing to do with his faith but more the fact that he's a pragmatic politician.
The video is propaganda. I have to be trying very hard not to call it a lie, and I don't think I can do so honestly. After all, that cut from the interview was deliberate. It is complete, unreliable garbage. It was done purely to malign a man whose politics the author disagreed with. Christians have no business spreading the video. Doing so is sin, because it is gossip and slander. I understand people make mistakes and don't always know the context. In that case, they must remedy the situation and never spread the video again. However once a person knows its nature, there is absolutely no excuse. It is a deliberate and willful desire to do what is evil for the sake of a corrupt, transient political affiliation.
The "Psalm 109:8" meme, though, is more disturbing. It reads "Let his days be few, and let another take his office." In its context, though, it is not referring to a new election. The follwing verses: "Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children continually be vagabonds and beg: Let them seek their bread also in the desolate places. Let the creditor seize all that he has and let strangers plunder his labor. Let there be none to extend mercy to him. Nor let there be any to favor his fatherless children. Let his posterity be cut off. And in the generation following let their name be blotted out."
First, this Psalm is a prophecy about Judas, as specified in Acts 1. Christian interpretation should focus on that.
Secondly, this is a prayer for the death of one's enemy. It is precisely the opposite of what Christ teaches.
"Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you, that you may be sons of your Fatehr in heaven; for He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love thsoe who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore you shall be perfect just as your Father in heaven is perfect." Mt 5.44-48. Praying for the death of people whose politics you don't like doesn't square with this command. If it did, Jesus would be commanding something that the nations did quite easily. Please note, also, that this is a command. It is not an option.
"Our Father, Who art in heaven. Hallowed be they Name. They Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily Bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil One." I don't need to explain that it indicates that our trespasses will be forgiven only as we forgive them. Is praying for his death forgiveness? In Matthew's account of this prayer (I used the liturgical form), Jesus says immediately following it "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses" (Mt. 6.14-15). The meaning is crystal clear.
Claiming the name of Christ is no defense for this either. In Matthew 18.21-35, Jesus tells the story of a debtor who asked to be forgiven a massive debt. The king granted it to him, but the debtor didn't want to forgive a paltry sum. The king then called him before him and said "You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant just as I had pitty on you?" and then "delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due him", which could never happen (Mt. 18.32-34). Basically, he was to be tortured forever, and he was forgiven. Jesus closes with this warning: "So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses" (18.35). The man had been forgiven, but was condemned for not forgiving. Jesus says this is a reliable illustration of the final judgment. Eternal security doesn't start until death.
In Luke 9.54, the disciples asked Jesus if they should call down fire from heaven to consume those who did not believe. Jesus rebuked them sternly, You do not know what manner of spirit you are of." In the case of this meme, Scripture is being taken to support a satanic sentiment. I do not flinch in saying that the meme is satanic. It is, for it preaches "Hate your enemies, do evil to those who hurt you, pray for their destruction." That reading of the Psalmist is unacceptable. What is the difference between these guys who bring guns to Obama's rallies and quote this verse against him and a jihadist? The only difference is that they haven't taken it to its logical conclusion yet, but the evil is already present in the heart. I cannot stress enough that this is a satanic phenomenon, and it only justifies every criticism leveled by non-christians.
I recommend instead praying for the man to make sound policies, because he certainly isn't now. I also recommend we remember that God appoints our rulers. Every authority in government is appointed by Christ no matter whether we like them or not (Rom. 13.1-7), and St. Paul wrote that about pagan emperors that were persecuting and marginalizing Christians in ways Obama never has. Paul himself had his head cut off by this government, and yet his admonition is still in place. It's safe to say it applies here. | | |
| It looks like B&H Publishing is putting the Bible up on the 360 (sans the Ecclesiastical Books, so not really the "entire" Bible as it claims to be). This was something of a surprise to me, though it shouldn't have been. People try to work the Bible into something trendy in numerous ways. There are "Christian" video games, after all. They typically lack quality, but Bible programs are a bit easier to pull off on electronics.
Still, this is a bad idea. First, the interface cannot help but be clunky. Say you want to search for the verses that say "Judas hanged himself" and "now you go and do likewise" so that you can get prooftext for some advice to a friend you don't like. What's entering that into the search going to be like? I hate putting anything into the danged 360 text editor, and that's usually a few initials and some words.
It really doesn't have much of a target audience either. Sure, the Bible crowd is going to eat it up, but not anyone else. Why pay $5 to whet your curiosity when you can get it for free online? Yeah, it's a new translation, but it's mostly only people who read the Bible know that or would pay it any mind. They already have a copy, though they might pick it up if they don't have this particular "version". Virtually everyone else has a web browser.
I'm a religious man as well as a gamer. I read the Bible in the original, I keep copies of the Church Fathers in my room, and I attend services weekly. I would more if I could. On a religious level, this is trendy and shallow. We do not need to turn Christianity into every form of entertainment for it to be "relevant". When I want a Bible reader, I turn to a tool suitable for it. The game console is not. It doesn't need religion shoehorned into it.
That brings me to my final point. Bible translation has not been about actual translation in English for quite some time, at least for the most part (exceptions include things like NETS). It's a mult-billion dollar industry which seeks ever new and creative ways to produce a copy, and a copyright to go with it, of an anthology whose last book was completed nearly two thousand years ago. "Ooh, look, they have the newest Bible version up there. They changed the wording on this verse just so, and they went for this textual variant there! Want!" That pretty much sums it up. Electronic media, likewise, is about making money. Perhaps I'm being too cynical, but I'm not above suspecting this has more than a modicum of a commercial feel to the site.
I'll stick to reading the Bible in other mediums and keep dedicating my 360 to elaborate digital explosions and beat downs. The latter is better at doing them by far :). | | |
| In I Sam/Rgn 25.22 King David vows that God should deal with him harshly if he "leaves any from the [house] of Nabal that pisses against the wall until morning" (LXX). King David relented at the words of Abigail, but God Himself later struck Nabal down.
You know, I thought about this, and I realized the same lesson applies to the big media groups. We pay for their entertainment, but well over 90% of people practice a form of file sharing. The people pay their salaries and allow for them to do what they do. The system of copyright is artificial, but it has uses. Big media, however, feels entitled and calls the common American a thief because they don't buy every song they listen to. This is despite the fact that the evidence of their "losses" is quite mixed, partially because it isn't really theft. Instead of reacting rationally, the industry has responded by using corrupt politicians to pass laws that erode our civil liberties and enforce draconian restrictions on fair use. The ways they can sue expand and give them more artificial avenues of income. It's becoming more international now that we have an all-Democrat government (Dems have typically been their favored party to corrupt); Obama is trying to push his measures in a global "anti-counterfeiting" treaty (really more about supporting the US entertainment industry than counterfeiting).
The world is changing. Their method of business is outdated, and no amount of government regulation can stop this (look at China and Iran). I suspect that they are outdated dinosaurs, and I hope they go extinct. Not only are they pissing against the wall by attacking the very people that pay them and give them their money, but they are pissing against the wind as well, because you can't stop the march of technology. Eventually they must go the way of Nabal because of their corruption, and I hope they take the careers of the petty politicians who have supported them with them. | | |
| I just ran across one of those organic food discussions. Of course, there were people parrotting the usual myths:
"It's better for you" -- No, it's not. There isn't a shred of undisputed evidence for this, and there is to the contrary. Any piece of evidence for the increased nutritional value of a genetically engineered wheat kernel is evidence to the contrary with only shadowy "It might cause cancer or something worse" evidence to counter-balance it. This is a fraud.
"It tastes better" -- All in your head. Double-blind taste tests have normally shown that people can't tell the difference, and often when they can, genetically engineered plants designed to taste better have an edge.
"It's natural, but look at all those unnatural things they put in the regular food" -- This is a big myth. We cannot do anything that is unnatural. The last I checked, we use only natural resources, natural processes, etc. to produce everything we make. We cannot step outside of nature. If we could, then it would undo most of the argument for things like environmentalism, because we would be ontologically superior to nature. God has seen fit that we are not. Organic food arguments, though, revolve around this false dichotomy. It ignores the fact that there is absolutely no physical product we produce that is unnatural. Period. It's more of a fact than we landed on the moon, because we don't need any information outside our own senses to verify it, but in the case of the former we need photos, witnesses, and documentation. We call people who don't believe in the former nut-jobs, but we often call people who believe in the latter forward-thinking. There's a problem with our critical thinking here.
Most of the arguments for it revolve around those two. In general, though, it strikes me as anti-science and anti-modern and seems to congregate around similar movements. In general, I find the same people who hold to it hold to things like astrology, anti-vaccination efforts, or actually do deny we went to the moon. This all belongs in the same category. Yes, there are problems our scientific technologies have created, but that's the nature of the world. Every time we solve a problem, we create one. Then we solve that problem, then we create a new one. Turning our back on modern technology doesn't solve this problem; it just resets the progress. In this instance, all the movement does is stick its head in the sand and comfort itself with myths. This does nobody and nothing any good.
Another thing that seems to go hand-in-hand with it is opposition to big business. This is actually something I can sympathize with. However, again, the movement hasn't thought things out clearly. Which can a smaller farmer handle more: cheap chemicals and slightly more expensive genetically engineered crops, or a host of workers to always inspect and chop the fields alongside without which they suffer massive loss? The answer, obviously, is the former. The organic movement favors big businesses because it is cheaper to produce the regular food, and yes I am deliberately implying organic food is not normal. Of course, there's an IP problem with genetically engineered food, and I loathe IP, but it's more amenable to the little guy than organic farming. There is a reason, after all, that it's more expensive.
I could go on, but in general I find this movement to be one in which people have failed to use their cranium. One can be green without it. One can be ethical without it. It doesn't have many sound arguments for it. It makes it more difficult for the little guy. It is less efficient. It hurts the pocket-book of the little guy who can't afford much, but it often dupes them into thinking they're doing themselves a favor. All of this combines to ask a counter-question to the organic food craze: "Is it ethical to support this industry, given how manipulative and dishonest it tends to be?" After all, we get next to nothing out of it, it costs us a lot (not just in monetary expense but efficiency of production), and it supports itself on lies and half-truths. | | |
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