Ginger_Warrior

There's a logical jump between "There's something wrong in this relationship" and "The only solution is to the leave the relationship".

It's all downhill from here. Next you'll be hurting more and more in the morning after a night out, and noticing odd bits of grey. ;)

So only immature people have drug habits...?

"The cost of something is what you have to give up in order to obtain it" In your friend's case, Rpg, giving up a college education and the improved life opportunities that go with it is an incredibly high price. I hope he realises sooner rather than later that it's an excessive price too, all things considered.

Good for you. We're not all you though. If Noxx isn't that bothered about the drug taking itself, just so long as she doesn't do it around her, and she's alright with that arrangement, where's the need to break up with her?

Her response was essentially to dismiss your point of view as somehow not mattering to the point of being insignificant ("It's not a big deal"). She didn't really consider your perspective at any point or how it made you feel. It is an unreasonable position, yes, but that's her fault because she's refusing to listen to you. Not the other way round. I don't really see it as drama to tell your partner if something they're doing is making you uncomfortable. In fact I'd go as far to suggest that *not* talking about it creates the opportunity for drama down the line. You're not really dealing with the problem so much as kicking it into the long grass.

The EoC jokes are in danger of becoming the next "then I took an arrow to the knee hurr hurrr..."

Been out the past two nights when two people have started on me. I think I'm indestructible when I've got a few vodkas down me, but I'm only 5'0", and so this video is probably a good representation of what it looks like:

Who exactly am I trying to troll here? That's a very silly comment and I hope it's one you'll take back soon, out of common human decency if nothing else.

I'm atheist and always have been. Where religion comes into this discussion is just about anyone's guess.

I'm not interested in ad hominem, cheers for the offer though. My background is totally irrelevant, as it always is for everyone with every opinion.

I didn't even make a reference to any taboo around casual sex, or multiple partners, or Alpha male stereotyping. Where the hell is the relevance of all of that to the topic? I'm not entirely sure it's me who's stretching things here.

Seeking external thrills to compensate for a lack of internal satisfaction. Play semantics til the cows come home, it makes no difference to my life. Looks incredibly similar from my position though.

It seems plainly ridiculous that RPG is constantly accused of seeking drama, but this kind of comment passes by with no objection.

MFW I've only just discovered enchanting books on lower levels is about ten times easier than waiting for level 30, in the absence of a good XP farm. Pretty much wasted three diamond picks on crappy enchantments. I always assumed waiting for level 30 and wishing on luck was the most effective strategy. I didn't even know you could combine same-leveled books for the next rank. That'll teach me to think first.

The Moai statues aren't so much a measure of great construction; they were built around 1400 AD so it's not that impressive. The Vikings managed to sail across the Atlantic 500 years sooner, for comparison. They're more of an economic wonder. It would have taken an incredibly well-developed and prosperous economic model to sustain the workers on the project for such prolonged periods of time, one far more effective than the feudalistic model which was dominant across Europe at the time. Stonehenge truly is a mystery, although again, it's one that needs putting into historical context. Before construction on the version of Stonehenge we know had even commenced, the Egyptians had already completed the largest Great Pyramid of Giza.

Good to hear. I hope things continue that way.

He's got his whole life planned out with you in the centre. No suspense, no surprises, no excitement, no novelty factor. How could any girl possibly resist...? :?

If I remember rightly, and I'm going back a good eight years here, the whole "Earth is flat, edge of the world" theory stemmed from the Macedonian Empire, which had effectively become, geographically speaking, too large through military conquest to sustain itself economically, and they effectively made up a lie to convince people not to expand it further. Of course, it was pretty easy to spread propaganda back then. That said, Aristotle, even during Alexander III's reign, had started to talk openly about a round Earth. What is definitely true is that Columbus wasn't flying in the face of reality when he "discovered" America. He knew perfectly well that the Earth was round and, eventually, if he carried on in that direction he'd make it make to Eurasia, somewhere.

Quite a few of them are being removed since as they're actually premium rate text scams in disguise. #thethingsyouknow

Nintendo lawyers inbound in 3...2...1... (Real men play Ironpants)

It's unfair to compare medical progress to what was being practiced historically. Medicine is relatively new as a science, if not as a practice, and the vast majority of its developments took place in the few decades after the Second World War. Before then, doctors couldn't really do a whole lot, except offer very limited forms of anaethesia and surgery, which was often performed in less-than-aseptic conditions and which therefore lead to a cornucopious amount of post-operative complications. If you became infected, especially with septicemia, there wasn't much anyone could do for you except pray. As the old saying goes, the role of the doctor is to humour the patient while nature does the healing. That has changed into a more systematic attempt to diagnose conditions and provide adequate, evidence-based treatments, and where the medical world has lead the way, the allied health professions have also started to make their own attempts at enforcing evidence-based practice. For what it's worth, through quantitative research, we've discovered a great deal on information about the human body since then, and any drugs formulary in the world is testament to just how many pharmacological agents have been developed to interfere with its mechanisms. If anything, our understanding of pharmacology is beginning to exhaust. Where Big Pharma was once able to produce forty to fifty new agents per year, it's now down to around twenty, with some of those being weak (and cheaper) imitations of previous agents. There remains a massive issue about research funding, with pharmaceutical companies themselves fronting up the lion share of funding, performing all the research in house, refusing to publish results in academic journals, cherry-picking those which do, and often instead opting to keep results "On File", away from scientific scrutiny. Twice as much of the pharmaceutical industry's annual spending is wasted on marketing and PR (usually towards naive young doctors and nurses, as Furah said) than research and development. There is a huge issue about how the pharmaceutical industry, worth billions and billions of dollars per year, chooses to spend its cash, but as a new generation of doctors, nurses, paramedics, occupational therapists and physiotherapists are educated, their clever little tricks will become slowly less effective, hopefully. Make no mistake though; the medical and healthcare professions are not in their pocket. What we don't have a great deal of information on is the patient's own experience. In the past, where drugs have been proven to have an effect, we've been too quick to generalize that intervention to everyone experiencing that particular problem, without viewing patients holistically. Healthcare research is increasingly taking a qualitative approach to research and incorporating this attitude into its traditional focus on "intervention X causes effect Y" trials. The one consistent theme in all of this is the laughably absent sum of evidence which supports so-called "complimentary and alternative medicine". Alternative companies like to insinuate doctors don't want to test their products because they're being paid by Big Pharma. They also argue RCTs take up huge amounts of time, effort and money, so why would anyone bother running such trials? This accusation is totally laughable; CAM interventions are routinely tested and routinely demonstrated to be no more effective than placebo. Alternative companies are routinely asked to publish their positive results in peer-reviewed journals, and they repeatedly refuse to do so. There's even been some high-profile cases of individuals making puerile threats of legal action against other individuals who expose flaws in their methodology. All in all, the point I'm making is that, for all the flaws of the medical profession and of Big Pharma, it is incorrect to assume those two groups are conspiring together, and it is incorrect to assume that because an individual in the medical profession got something wrong, the correct alternative is to start taking magic pills which haven't yet been properly scrutinized.

Surely, a culture in which people are judged only for their on-field performance would be more conducive towards allowing homosexual players to talk openly about their personal lives, not less. If taboo really doesn't exist at all and players are only judged by objective statistics and big plays, why would coming out be such a barrier that they would only come out after their playing time was over? It's a nonsense to suggest that sport traditionally hasn't been uncomfortable with the concept of homosexuality sitting alongside masculinity. Stark reality hints at the total opposite; players, quite routinely, are not judged by performance alone. And it's not like the NFL has a track record of locker room bullying. Not at all. Furthermore, my understanding is he came out to his college team during an ice-breaker style "Tell us something interesting we don't already know about you" exercise (although it was largely suspected already since he was quite ordinarily seen with his boyfriend around campus). In other words, an exercise where everyone trades turns taking center stage. It's incredibly harsh to accuse him of using his homosexuality as a way of "putting himself ahead of his team", as you put it, when he revealed it in that context.

How is this an "accomplishment"? Lots of people say they are gay every day. He's just another person, just like everybody else.... And what does it have to do with this topic in general? It's a thread about relationships. I fail to see how the topic of "coming out" is irrelevant to the topic at hand. Furthermore, I don't remember using the word "accomplishment"; that word would be inappropriate in context. The word I used was testament, and I stand by it. I remember going through high school ten years ago where it was still perfectly acceptable to mock someone for being camp, let alone actually being gay. If you knocked around with the guys who received that kind of abuse, you were asking to receive it yourself. Those of us who are old enough to remember what it was like even as recently as the turn of the century, and those of us who follow sport, would never have believed an environment as harsh and as caustic as an NFL or a rugby locker room would become as accepting towards homosexuality as it has done. In the meantime, there's been high profile players in both codes of rugby come out, and now American Football too. If you're using it as a yardstick for society's attitudes towards homosexuality, it demonstrates incredibly rapid progress. Ideally, you're right. It shouldn't be an issue. It should be something where people can say it and people don't think it's funny, or strange, or remarkable. But unfortunately we do still live in a time where gay people, especially those in public limelight, are reticent to talk openly about sexuality through fear of a backlash. Is Michael Sam the only gay NFL player? Is Gareth Thomas the only gay rugby union player? Extremely, extremely unlikely. Until the day comes where that that doesn't happen, though, stories like these remain remarkable.

I've got huge respect for Michael Sam's decision to come out so soon when he had plenty on the line for doing so. If he finds himself accepted in an NFL locker room for his on-field performances, I think that would be an incredible testament to how far society has adapted to a more accepting approach to homosexuality. A gay player being accepted (at least by most players; inevitably not all players will) in one of the most physical popular sports on the planet is a very notable milestone, and might challenge our perceptions about masculinity in relation to sexuality. Just thought I'd share that opinion on here since it seems to be the most appropriate thread for it.