qeltar

Don't care. That's the price of a free society. Prohibition doesn't work. It didn't work with alcohol, and it doesn't work with illegal drugs. And it's not like Big Pharma isn't finding ways to hook millions on legal drugs anyway.

Different issue. I was only pointing out that there is no inconsistency in making it legal for you to do something to yourself while making it illegal for someone else to do it to you, not whether or not it should be legal to do it to yourself. Those things should not be illegal in a free society. They are illegal because of busybodies, control freaks and religious nuts.

That's a rather strange post. You complain about people picking and choosing from the Bible, in the same breath that you talk about "modern concepts of hell" being "post-canon", when the latter really means "stuff that men made up later because they didn't like what earlier men made up based on what was in the bible itself". Picking and choosing and interpretation is part of ALL belief systems, because all holy books are old, often mistranslated and usually quite vague. This has nothing to do with misquoting the OT. Every respectable RC reference makes it very clear that hell is part of the RC belief system. If you want to convince me otherwise, please provide some evidence. As just one example, the Catholic Encyclopedia: ..and much more, at this link: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07207a.htm

If a driver were to hit a pregnant woman and kill both her and her child that would be two counts of manslaughter. Consistency would be nice, is it a human life or not? I've seen people make this point a few times. It's really rather spurious. The issue, as I said before, is not whether or not a fetus is alive, but whether or not a woman has the right to self-determination. The woman has the right to abort because it is her body. Someone else does not because it is not. If I decide to get a nose piercing, that's my choice. If you decide to give me one against my will, that's assault and battery. There's nothing inconsistent about allowing abortion and also making it a crime to kill a fetus.

There's a simple reason why the abortion debate is never-ending. It represents one of the few situations in our lives where two fundamental rights are in direct conflict. These are the right of the fetus to live and the right of the woman to self-determination. People line up as "pro-choice" or "pro-life" based on which of these rights they feel take precedence. I believe it is undeniable that a developing fetus is a life, and you cannot honestly claim to value all life equally if you support abortion. I belive it is also undeniable that denying abortion rights to women means denying them the right to manage their own bodies, and you cannot honestly claim to value liberty and freedom if you oppose abortion. Compromise solutions inevitably end up favoring the woman's right to a certain degree or up to a certain stage of development, and the fetus's right after that. This is my personal position. There's one potential technological solution to the problem, which is inventing the ability to remove a developing fetus from the mother's body and incubating it externally. We're quite a ways off from that so far, but there's no medical hurdles I'm aware of that should preclude it.

In Kuradal's dungeon, using Turmoil and extreme potions, you can do an entire task of steels in under an hour, turning a tidy profit. That's faster than many other tasks.

Actually, Karil's is a pretty good weapon -- it's just insanely expensive. In a quick test I did, it was better than using addy bolts on a rune crossbow.

It's very common for past presidents to lead charity efforts, and to work with other past presidents even if they have political disagreements. Bush 41 and Clinton also did charity work together.

Arguing about super weapon poisons is pointless -- whether it is a good method or not depends entirely on your priorities. It comes down to whether you have something else to do during the downtime; if so, it's a decent method, if not, it's a waste of time. Either way, it's a very slow method for getting Herblore XP. Herb cleaning is a very unreliable technique, because even small swings in the prices of clean and grimy herbs can turn it from proiftable to unprofitable. It's also very tedious.

Okay, I reported it. I'm just saying that I think there is far too much of it around here, even from people who have been here for years. That can only happen if the people who do it feel that they can get away with it. And when one person does it, others then get emboldened. If you disagree and think things are fine as they are, then fine; I'm not trying to upset anyone, so just lock this if you feel I am off base.

I did report the "flied lice" comment. The other one is part of a large flame war and I didn't want to try to figure out who started it. Look, it's just one man's opinion. Do with it what you will. But I think there's a pretty clear distinction between people who break a rule either out of ignorance or because they get into a discussion that gets overheated, and those who are deliberately posting racist or otherwise pointlessly inflammatory remarks. The more you tolerate users trolling and acting like toddlers, the more you get of it. YMMV, but on the forums I run, a "flied lice" comment would get the person one warning, and if that sort of thing was repeated, they'd be gone. And as a consequence, I have not once had to deal with that sort of thing, because people know it won't be tolerated.

Lots of ways: cracking safes, cave goblin wire, pickpocketing, etc. You can find descriptions of some of these here!

There was a thread a week or two ago asking for feedback on forum moderation, but I can't seem to find it. So I'm posting this here separately. I posted on the feedback thread saying that in general I thought there was a bit too much moderation here. But there's one place where I think the Tip.it forum staff are *too* tolerant, and that is in dealing with immature, obnoxious posters. Just this morning I personally witnessed one genius respond to a thread about Asian cooking with a notwisecrack about "flied lice", and someone in a different thread refer to another poster getting a "reacharound". There's absolutely no justification for this sort of garbage. And there should be no tolerance for it, either. There aren't a lot of these folks here, but they are a very visible minority. Some of them have hundreds or even thousands of posts. I've also seen regulars who deliberately troll threads and then act proud of it, and others who egg them on. The people who post like this shouldn't just get their post removed and a slap on the wrist. They should get at MOST one warning, and then be turfed permanently. Doing so would improve the quality of this board dramatically.

Well, this seems like a decent place to start. The Catholic church itself is a pretty darned good observational study. It has *massive* pedophile problems, and other Christian churches do not. This doesn't prove that celibacy causes the problems, but given common sense and what we can observe, it's enough for the issue to start being raised even by the few brave people in the Catholic clergy who are willing to admit there is a problem. Again, this is a logical fallacy. I never said ALL celibate people engage in pedophilia.

The bible itself is quite clear about hell and who ends up there. Do you REALLY want me to start quoting chapter and verse to you? The sect that you are a part of seems to be a side shoot of Catholicism to some extent. When people talk about the Roman Catholic church, they are not usually talking about the Eastern Catholic churches. Whatever. This is getting way far afield. I never intended to get into a huge detailed discussion of Catholicism, that's something you brought up. You're close. I object to the RC church's prohibition against birth control. Unimpeded population growth is the #1 problem in impoverished nations, and ignorant religious pronouncements against it are unconscionable. Give me a break, dude. It's not like I just made this all up. The rampant abuse among RCC priests is not exactly news. This sort of nonsense doesn't impress anyone. If you think I just made up the link between celibacy and abuse, perhaps you should take that up with the people within the church itself who have raised that very same issue. And yes, sorry to have to point out some inconvenient facts, but the Roman Catholic Church did engage in a deliberate coverup of the widespread sexual abuse problem in the church, secretly paying off dozens of victims. They were much more concerned with their "public image" than with the children who were abused -- and lucky that they have lots and lots of money at their disposal. Before the predictable flaming begins, my issue is not with all Catholics. And I fully acknowledge that the Catholic church does a lot of good. My problem is with the people in charge of the church and their priorities. Their handling of the abuse issues has been shameful and is indefensible. And yes, there's plenty of reason to believe that the celibacy requirement is part of it.

I did not say that being celibate necesarily turns people into pedophiles. I said that it *could*. I also said that the way the RC church is set up makes the priesthood a nearly perfect vocation for a pedophile, whether he has malicious intentions or not. Malicious ones see it as a perfect way to get put into a position of authority and nearly blind trust with lots of involvement with children. Non-malicious pedophiles might try becoming a priest hoping that a vow of celibacy would force away their desires. How exactly would you suggest we acquire "scientific evidence" for this? It's not something you can test in a laboratory.

Of course it is. I don't understand what you are saying here, as you seem to be equating rape with homosexuality, but I doubt you mean that. Yes, but pediatricians aren't sworn to a life of celibacy. That's the point. Do we have massive pedophilia scandals in other churches where there is no celibacy? Not that I've ever heard of. I doubt that's a coincidence.

That's a fallacious argument -- like saying smoking can't cause cancer because thousands of smokers don't get it. Celibacy doesn't necessarily cause child molestation, but it could. What it definitely *does* is create a very attractive haven for those who already have that disposition -- it would be hard to describe a more perfect position for someone with pedophilic tendencies. And suggesting that forcing a man to sublimate his natural sexual desires could not cause those to be expressed in a warped manner is simply naive. What's more, it is nearly entirely unscriptural, invented hundreds of years after the death of Jesus.

Well I live in a place where getting the ingredients is not a simple affair. This is the stuff I use.

Uh, wrong. Sorry. The church was complicit in covering up and whitewashing the entire affair. The cardinal responsible for oversight of the priests at the center of the controversy was never punished. After years of stonewalling he finally gave a limp apology and resigned as archbishop, but retained his rank and then was given a plum job at the Vatican. That's how the Catholic church handles things, and that's why they don't have my respect. It appears so because it is so. We're talking about a church with countless billions of dollars of assets that continues to maintain policies specifically designed to keep the poor impoverished forever. A church with myriad rules and regulations that it invented of whole cloth simply for its own purposes, regardless of their negative impacts (celibacy for priests being one obvious example). A church that allies itself with governments based on expediency. Uh.. hundreds of years of senseles violence, oppression, anti-Semitism, forced conversions, suppression of science and murder. Yes.. 350 years after he died! Very impressive. :) The apologies are nice, but meaningless. Regardless, the point stands. And worse, the church still today stands against science and against important technological advancements. Maybe in 350 years we'll get apologies for those too? I have to wonder how much information you get about your religion from sources other than your instructors. Every single source I have found indicates quite clearly the Catholic belief that hell exists and that non-believers go there. They are more credible than someone who is trying to prop up the church.

I've killed thousands of irons, steels, mithrils, blacks, KBD, wyverns.. never had a visage. That includes well over 1,000 mithrils and over 1,000 wyverns. It's a rare drop. Deal with it.

Put 25m or whatever into the GE and then you can "drop" it into your inventory. That's about it. :)

Not sure about wearing it the whole time or just for the drop. There is at least one monster where the ROW makes a noticeable difference, so this could be tested. In 99% of cases, though, the ring is fairly pointless.

I wrote up a comprehensive Fishing guide recently and my tested numbers were 265 monkfish per hour at level 62, 285/hr at level 80 and 290 at level 90. That assumes use of standard fishing familiars (which do help). That works out to around 370 hours.

Obsolete? Not really. Based on fairly recent prices, around 400k/hr plus Ranged XP at high levels... numbers and technique here: http://runescoop.com/html/rs_MMCombatAviansieH.htm Bear in mind that bar prices are depressed right now because of the "aftershock" from the bonus XP weekend. Just hang on to the bars and use them or sell them later. And be sure you also collect other items that are worth money. Sure, there are ways that make more, but it's still a decent method.