mad4u689

I think that for a lot of people, religion can be a cultural thing as well as a merely spiritual thing. So I can see how your dad would be sad that his Muslim tradition might be "dying out" within the family. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't just go with what you believe, or what you just kind of self-identify. Do you feel Muslim? Do you feel Catholic? Then go with it :D Do you not feel either? Do you not know enough about each religion to really say? Try going to services and praying with members of each religion - immerse yourself in their cultures a bit - and then see how you feel :D I am completely atheist, but I also just "feel" very Jewish, having been raised in a Jewish family, and I still go to weekly Shabbat services and celebrate holidays. Do what feels right to you :D

I'd like to add that I wish I were more like BlueTear. Witty AND intelligent AND often right-on =D> :D

Don't overestimate the ease of finding nonvegetarian food. Hunting is quite difficult, and you need to be able to cook it afterwards, too. Or you could eat grubs - some of which may be poisonous. First of all, I know very few vegetarians who wouldn't give up their vegetarianness in order to survive, so this is pretty much a stupid argument to be having in the first place. Also, most berries aren't poisonous. That is a misconception. Hunter gatherers live largely entirely off of vegetarian options between hunts - there's a lot of edible vegetarian goodies, but you just have to know what's edible and what's not, and that comes with either practice or a guidebook. Ever played Oregon Trail 3? :D

I was going to respond to some of the other more recent stuff, but BlueTear already kinda owned y'all.

Coming to a university where there are people from all over geographically, I have the following to say: the phrase "hooking up" has different meanings EVERYWHERE. And in all different contexts. "I hooked up with him last night and it was hot" means something very different from "We weren't sitting together at the play, but after the performance ended we hooked up and got dessert together" means something very different from "Yeah, did you know the two of them are hooked up now? Ridic!!"

I don't really have a goal in life; I haven't really given it meaning. Hmm. I think that's a large part of why I feel depressed and lost and nihilist so often :D

I don't think anyone paid that much attention, the things just get noticed when they happen. I remember I joined pretty early on on the first board incarnation, I was buying an adamantite square shield from Fook. And Ezarc (or however it was spalled) had a signature which was the size of the RS screen, yet he was allowed to use it. Aww :D Wonder when fook will turn up again. He tends to do so periodically. :D

Been there, done that 8-) *whistles*

I don't :D No one in my family does, either. Quite a few of my friends do. But I don't, and never will :D

Actually, Viktor told me he lives in my home state of CT. Hey, where in CT? :D I go to school in Middletown :D Though I'm driving home tomorrow to New Jersey (near NYC) :D

Oh gosh - what a complicated question. I say complicated, because I don't even agree with myself half the time. However, I do think the tone of tip.it's off topic is largely conservative, and I feel like I provide a necessary more radically liberal voice to help balance it out. :D I definitely think that Kayla represents VERY WELL me-from-a-couple-of-years-ago. Her opinions are intelligent and largely optimistic. :D Perhaps at times, slightly naive - I don't mean this in a rude or mean way - just a cynical way. Having become more cynical, I actually find myself agreeing with Anesthesia and Pete_the_Viscous quite a bit. I respect very much the opinions (but also often respectfully disagree with) of Ghost, Insane, and MPC. Edit: And Adam, I think we agree very much on a lot of philosophical, religious, and ethical issues. However, I think that on legal issues, and perhaps also issues of social justice, we tend to diverge a bit :D Edit again: And dusqi. I don't think I've ever read a post he's made and been like "No, that's just stupid." He's just a very intelligent person, and tends to think about issues in a very reasonable way :D

Aww, I love my little cousins :D I like being the "big older cousin" they look up to and respect. It's a little weird that they think of me as an adult, though! :D

Some people are proud of their identity. Why deny them that? I'm proud of being Jewish, and I like being around Jewish culture. Pretending other identities don't exist and that we are all the same doesn't seem like the best solution to me... Ah, but that's the difference between culture and race. Culture you can choose, but race you can't. Race can lead to cultural identity. In fact, I'm sure that it often does. But you have to be careful about that: In my dorm, we were having a holiday party, and the guy who was leading it is Jamaican. He asked if anyone knew anyone knew about any of the various holidays going on, and if they wanted to share a little bit about Chanuka, or Kwanza, or Christmas, etc :D One of the other students said, "Heh, I think you're the only one who can tell us about Kwanza." Because he's a good-natured guy, he just laughed and explained that he was Jamaican - even though he is black, he doesn't celebrate Kwanza, which is a largely cultural holiday of African-Americans.

Some people are proud of their identity. Why deny them that? I'm proud of being Jewish, and I like being around Jewish culture. Pretending other identities don't exist and that we are all the same doesn't seem like the best solution to me...

I'm so sorry for your loss :( *hugs!!*

Yeah -- assuming that by "forget about it" you mean "have those people who are racist forget about their being racist, and stop being racist", but that's not really any better than saying "stop racism by stopping racism". Get me not wrong: I'm not in favour of a lot of the (needless) political correctness or cultural sensitivity, but a lot of people are actively racist instead of simply not making too much of an issue of race. umm no.. you interpreted that way wrong. "forget about it" is only a metaphor as you know people die, and as you know people forget with time. if you keep spreading the history of racism, rasicst thoughts will still exist, however if you do not spread or even imply that racist thoughts ever existed, they will cease to exist in in todays society That would work, if racism were only a transient thing - but as it is, it is deeply embedded into the institutions that already exist. And so even if everyone who is currently "racist" died, there would still be racism going on and carried through to the next generation :( This is why we have to actively work to break out of the cycle, instead of just waiting for it to "go away" :D

I have the best time when I'm cuddling up with someone I care about and having one of those really amazing one-on-one intimate deep conversations that jump from the meaning of life to intimate details to politics, and leave you feeling cleansed and enlightened :D

sutff. I don't think he was comparing current methods of 'combating racism' to thought police. Like he said in the post, unless you control people's thinking, you'll never stop racism. Ah, yeah. I responded to his post before he edited in that second line, and thus misunderstood his intentions a bit :D However, I still think it's not quite true. Yes, people think stupid stuff out there, and it's hard to get rid of "stupid thought" entirely - but education certainly helps. Yaay education :D

Oh, shush up. (no irony intended :P) Political correctness and social justice are not the thought police. While to a certain extent they both try to encourage individuals to critically evaluate and possibly restructure their thoughts and actions, they do so to allow you more freedom from the societal pressures you have felt all your life, and not realized that you felt. By realizing that you have felt these pressures, you are more free to come up with your own opinions, not under the influence anymore. Yes, there is a sense of trying to educate you, perhaps against your will - but isn't that what public school education is in the first place? Educating you to the ideal minimum values of society, whether it be in science or English or gym or what? It's not like Big Brother, because its impetus is societal, not governmental. There is no law telling you to be considerate of races other than your own. There are no cameras watching you, waiting to catch you messing up. No; it is from a sense of "there is something wrong with society; let's try to fix it, from our society to our society." People who think that if we just ignored racism and didn't discuss it to death, it would go away - these are the people for whom I think social justice training would be most valuable. Because we all want to be good people, are striving to be better people - many of us just haven't been educated about how to do it. This sounds condescending, I know, but I didn't go through social justice training until this year, and I can't begin to tell you how much it has helped me and made me more aware of so many issues.

Wow, Jean Seberg looks gorgeous in that picture :D Like, really :shock:

1) There was a famous program done by 3rd grade teacher Jane Elliott in response to Martin Luther King's assassination, where children were separated according to eye color. First all the blue eyed kids were labelled as inferior for a day, and the teasing began. Test scores of brown eyed kids rose that day, and test scores of blue eyed kids dropped. The next day, they switched it up, and all the brown-eyed kids were labelled as inferor. The same results happened with the test scores! Scores of brown-eyed kids dropped. They no longer felt confident about their abilities. The students who participated in this exercise still think about it and how much it affected them today. I would argue that this exercise should be mandatory in all elementary schools. Jane Elliott now does a workshop for adults based on this exercise. Read about it here: http://www.janeelliott.com/ 2) For older individuals, have social justice workshops. This helped me a LOT. Discuss the differences between racism, oppression, and discrimination. Discuss institutional racism versus individual racism. Discuss overt racism versus embedded racism. Talk about how it is important to actively break out of the cycle of racism. By discussing these things, individuals who think "Hey, I'm not part of the problem. I'm even pretty good about this! I think there's nothing wrong with black people / Latinos / etc!" will realize that they ARE part of the problem (most people in society are; that's why it's still a problem. I'm still part of the problem. But I'm working on it!) 3) Make sure that minorities are represented in positions of power. If everyone on, say, the town Board of Ed is white, of course they won't be as responsive to the specific needs of the school's black students. 4) Change the education curriculum so that history classes don't have such a "Western rich white men" focus. Include educational material about individuals at all levels of their society - their struggles and their accomplishments. Do case studies of individual people who were important, because this really brings it home. I hope those help you start thinking about other ways to stop racism :D

"Founded by STEEL Corporation Inc. Dmonik, BlueRose13x, Lightning, Starlude, Xentia, Kibble, Rodrigo, DOC IRON 9, Sir Beachy, Stud6900, Hitman X and Silverion" Could be considered as somewhat of a clan I guess. In the original stages of the game there was no equipment beyond steel, I believe the steel plate was once set at 99 smithing... Since they combined a few top miners and smithers in the same 'clan' they just kept the name I guess. bluerose13x would indeed be one of the top smiths, so was dmonik at one point, kimble/hitman x were high level miners, .. From a quick look at the list Id even say thats what eventually turned into Wanderers? As for the .it discussion: http://www.tip.it is registered to Silverion, who lives in Trieste, Italy. The domain is also used to host other websites such as an online store, and used to have fan pages for Dark ago of camelot and so (3 games in total) Yeah - smithing steel was a super big deal back then. You had to be an extremely high level to smith steel anything. It was also more difficult to raise your smithing level, as well. When they redid the smithing tables, the entire game and its strategy changed significantly! So back then, the STEEL coalition or whatever was highly regarded and kind of feared. Also, since there were no item banks back then, and you could PK anywhere (unless you were NPK) (there was no Wilderness), there was much more of an intimidation and awe of high level players, I'd say. Also, when tip.it was created, the game was small enough that word spread around fairly easily. The game came out in January, and tip.it came out in February or March, right? I'm not sure, I didn't start playing until that March, but I feel like tip.it was already around when I did. And when I started playing, there were only a few hundred people online and playing at any given time.

The ones you didn't probably forgot about her (SHAME ON THEM) or are girls. Hey!! I'm a girl and I mentioned her :( I also have been watching The L Word lately, and some of the girls in it are... quite hot :D

Girls: Alyssa Milano *drool* Jessica Alba Christina Ricci Miranda July Guys: Johnny Depp ... yeah :D Johnny Depp :D Sendhil Ramamurthy (plays Mohinder on Heroes - and while we're at it, the guy who plays Isaac too!) Hugh Laurie (probably deeply colored by his character on House :P)

WOOOO congrats landon and all!!! :D My brother got deferred from Yale :( It wasn't unexpected though.