The Young Turks

I don't suppose these videos have much in common, except that they're examples of what I like about TYT - The Young Turks - and what I hate about the right-wing (typified by Fox 'News').

OK, these are all hosted by John Iadarola, and I find him particularly impressive. But I don't always agree with anyone, and that certainly includes The Young Turks. Still, they're far more often right than wrong, and even when I disagree in some respect, they're always worth hearing.

For example, it can't be said often enough that Republican efforts 'to end voter fraud' are simply about voter suppression - about trying to hang on to power even when only 20% of Americans self-identify as Republicans.

Remember, there's a record of everyone who votes, so nothing would be simpler than to identify voter fraud,... if it really happened. It's a secret how you vote, but certainly not that you do vote. So if voter fraud really occurred in significant numbers, nothing would be easier than to prove that.



This video is about the recent bipartisan Senate report on the tragedy in Benghazi, where four Americans died. Republicans - especially those at Fox 'News' - have been beating a dead horse here, as that report has made abundantly clear.

But that's not going to stop them. That's certainly not going to stop Bill O'Reilly. Anyway, both John Iadarola and Ben Mankiewicz make some superb points here. Again, this is why I like TYT.



Finally, abortion. Is there be a crazier issue in America? (Well, OK, guns.) But naturally, you've got a bunch of men trying to dictate to women about their own bodies, their own health.

And a lot of women go along with it. A lot of women - not most, admittedly, but a lot - vote Republican. And a lot of those women seem to want men to make the decisions. Well, look at the Catholic Church, too.

These aren't people who are going to stop with abortion. They want to eliminate birth control, too. And who knows what after that? This is about controlling women, it really is. And, of course, none of this is going to affect the wealthy in the slightest.

All three of these issues are important, but there are lots of important issues, aren't there? Anyway, I thought I'd combine these into one post.

Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny

Thorwal in the daytime: tunnel vision

According to Steam, Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny, which was released in July of last year, "is a faithful remake of the 1992 original, adored by a generation of Role Players and one of the most successful RPG’s of the 1990’s."

Well, that last part is true, I suppose. I did enjoy the original game by Attic Entertainment (published by Sir-Tech, the English version was released in 1993), and its two sequels, too. I don't recall being wild about them, but I've always enjoyed party-based, turn-based RPGs - and those kinds of games are few and far between these days.

Which is why I decided to give this one a try, despite what everyone said about it. (Wikipedia notes: "On account of the many bugs that make it unplayable as of August 2013, the game is widely considered to be the worst alpha release ever sold as a finished game.")

I'm not sure I'd ever seen a game which didn't have any supporters,... before this one, I mean. I swear, this remake was universally reviled. But they've been patching it for five months (indeed, I only had it crash once in the admittedly brief time I played it), the price of it had been slashed, and I found it on sale, to boot.

And I was curious, since I'd played the original. Besides, I wanted to support the idea of party-based, turn-based games, at least. As I say, they're hard to find these days. And how bad could this one be? Long story short, save your money for Wasteland 2. (Um, please note that Wasteland 2 is still in beta, so I haven't played it, and I don't actually know how it will turn out, though I'm certainly hopeful.)

OK, you start Realms of Arkania in a temple - it doesn't seem to matter which temple - where you can keep the game's six pre-generated starting characters, switch them for other pre-generated characters (in both cases, you can change their names and images, if you wish), or create your own.

Being an old-school RPG fan, I started to create my own, but I ended up using a few of the existing characters, too. It's not that the process was time-consuming - although, yes, it's really time-consuming - but more that it was just awkward and frustrating. (That's pretty much the story of this game in a nutshell. They should have called it Realms of Arkania: Awkward and Frustrating.)

OK, character creation wasn't all that bad, I suppose, not by itself (though not good). After all, you only go through it once. And given how anal we RPG fans can be, creating a character has often been nearly a game in itself. (Have you ever played a game for three hours without actually starting the game? I have. Between reading the manual and creating your characters, that wasn't even unusual. Not here, though. There's hardly a manual at all.)

In Realms of Arkania, you start out rolling for stats - positive attributes like Strength, Courage, etc. Depending on what class you want, there are certain minimum requirements. (A warrior needs a certain minimum of Strength, for example.) However, when you roll for stats in this game, you don't get to see the results immediately. Instead, you just see one number at a time and have to decide in which attribute to put it.

Thus, you can get to the end of the process and not be able to create the character you want, because you don't meet the minimum requirements. More often, you get to the end of the process with a character who's just not going to be very good at his assigned role. So you do the same thing all over again. And again, and again.

Oh, did I say "the end of the process"? Hardly. Because after you do this with the positive attributes, you have to do the same thing with negative attributes (like Claustrophobia, Agoraphobia, etc.). This time, of course, low numbers are best. And again, certain classes have particular requirements, so you can get to the end and find that you simply can't create the character you wanted, or just that you don't like the results. So you have to start all over from the beginning.

This isn't much fun, but none of it would be a big deal in itself. I had a bigger problem afterwards, when designing spell-casters, because you had to decide ahead of time how many points to put into physical skills and how many into spell abilities (which is where you go next in this character-creation process).

These are just two tabs on the same character sheet, so why can't you just switch back and forth as needed, until all of your allotted points are used up? But no, you have to do one and then the other, for no real reason that I could see. Again, this is just awkward and frustrating, because it was hard to tell ahead of time where I wanted to invest those points.

And this is something that happens not just at character creation, but every time you level up - not to mention that you only have a chance to succeed at raising an attribute or a skill. Sometimes, you just waste a point, because it fails to do anything at all. Again, it's not a big deal, but it certainly isn't fun.

When we left the temple (which was, like nearly every other place in town, just a static screen, not an actual building we could investigate), we were on a street in Thorwal (see the first screenshot). It's a big town, but we couldn't explore it for long, because we started in the late afternoon/early evening, and it quickly got dark.

What kind of design decision was that? Why not start us off in the morning, so we could at least look around a bit? Well, we couldn't explore in the dark, and since it was strongly hinted that we needed to enter a tavern to get information, that's what we did.

This is just a static screen, not an actual room

Note that there are taverns everywhere in town, but they're all virtually identical. None of them are actual buildings which you can enter and look around. You just get a screen where you can choose a few very actions - notably, in this case, the option to talk to the bartender.

You have three choices: you can choose to order a beer, you can try to ask questions without ordering a beer, or you can buy a round for the house. That's it - always those three options. I never tried the third option, because my party didn't have much money, and there was no indication of how much beer would even cost us.

If you try the second option, sometimes the bartender will just give you beer (which you drink automatically) and sometimes, after a bit more discussion, he'll kick you out of the tavern. So, in effect, you must drink at least one beer to get any benefit to entering the tavern at all.

Inevitably, someone else comes along right afterwards and offers to buy you another beer. He'll then talk with you a bit and give you some information. Well, that's why you're there, right?

However, two beers are way too much for your party of rough, tough adventurers. After two beers each, my whole group was drunk and puking in the street afterwards. (Did I say two beers? When I jumped into the game to get a screenshot just now, my whole party ended up puking in the street after one beer. And these are the heroes expected to save civilization!)

The first tavern you enter - whichever one it is - will give you the information you need: first, that the Hetman is looking for heroes, and second, that there's a quest at the Old Bailey. As far as I can tell, that's it. You can stick around and get more information, but none of it seems useful or even interesting.

OK, maybe now is the time to talk about the horrible voice acting in the game, since this is where it gets completely ridiculous. The way it works is this: You might hear the same piece of very poor voice acting whatever the information you're being told at the time. The voice just pauses when it gets to the one line of actual information - presumably so you can read it for yourself - then continues on with the rest of the paragraph. It's just nuts.

Who in the world thought that was a good idea? Why have voice acting at all, then? The first thing I did in this game was to turn off the music (just because I always turn off the music in games, so that's not a criticism of the music in this one), but the second thing I did was to turn off the audio for the voice acting. Trust me, the game is far better without hearing it.

Anyway, we left the tavern, drunk and puking - which is apparently how you always leave the tavern - and it was dark by then, so we found an inn. Again, this was just a screenshot, not a real building you can enter.

Nice choices at the inn - all completely useless

You can talk to the innkeeper, too, but there's absolutely nothing to be gained by that. You've got three choices, all of which lead to... well, nothing at all, really - even your second option, which is to say, "Make up the dorm, then send in your daughter, your wife, and your son - naked and in that order!"

Come on, did someone actually think that was funny? Was the game developed by particularly immature 13-year-olds? Well, I tried that option once, just for this review, and it didn't have any more effect than the other two choices. So the whole thing turns out to be meaningless and stupid!

No, you might as well ignore talking to the innkeeper. Instead, just rent a room for the night. The dormitory is cheapest, and we spent the night just fine. The next day was sunny (that's when I took that first screenshot, at the start of this post), and we were able to look around the town, eventually finding both the Hetman and the Old Bailey.

See that guy walking around in the screenshot? There are several people walking around the town, but you can't interact with any of them. You can't talk to them; you can't even fight them. They exist because towns are supposed to have people, I guess. I suppose it's like all the buildings that don't have interiors, huh? What a waste!

Also, note how limited your view is. It's tunnel vision, like wearing blinders. You've got absolutely no peripheral vision. The best way to explore the town, I found, is just to run around rapidly and then see what was filled in on your map. There really isn't anything to find, anyway. If you could navigate using just the map, skipping the scenery, you wouldn't miss anything.

I saved the game at this point, although there was also an automatic save when we spent the night at the inn. Would you believe that, after saving the game, you have to close three separate windows before continuing with the game again? Three! Why? No idea.

When you talk to the Hetman, he'll start you on the main quest of the game, just by telling you what it's about. Well, and he'll give you a document which will get you into the armory - so you can equip the party for free, supposedly. After that, you're on your own.

The Old Bailey, which isn't far away, is your introductory dungeon, basically. It's a side-quest. You talk to a guy who gives you some starting cash - again, for equipment - and you're supposed to come back when you're ready.

So, OK, we went to the armory to get some better equipment. When we showed our authorization from the Hetman, the attendant told us that everything under 10 ducats (the largest coin in the game) would be free. Later, after reloading my saved game and trying this again (for reasons I'll get to in a moment), he said that everything under 30 ducats was free.

But, in both cases, he lied. We had to pay for even the cheapest items, and we could have gotten everything for the same price at the weapon shops in town. Maybe this was supposed to do something, but it didn't.

We didn't have much money, but I bought a set of the cheapest leather armor for everyone,... and then discovered that one of my characters wasn't allowed to wear it (a class restriction which the game didn't bother to tell me about), so I had to sell it back for pennies on the dollar. Lovely, huh?

But I did the best I could with the money I had available, then returned to the Old Bailey, where we were taken down to the cellars. Then I was told that it would be dark, so we'd need either torches or a lantern and oil, plus a tinderbox to light them. I also encountered a locked door, for which we needed a lockpick.

So I reloaded my saved game and went to buy that stuff, instead of armor. We had to look around to find everything, and the lockpick was horrendously expensive (equivalent to nearly five suits of armor). Well, I figured that it must be a fine set of burglar tools - something which would last us a long time.

Nope. On our first attempt to unlock that door, the lockpick broke (without opening the door). So I had two of my characters just bash it down. No problem. It smashed open on the first try, and there didn't seem to be any downside to doing that.

But I'd just spent nearly all of my money on something completely useless! Now, sure, many games have flimsy lockpicks which are always breaking. But in those cases, lockpicks are the cheapest item in the game. You just buy dozens of them (when you can't find enough just lying around in every dungeon).

Sure, I have played games where you need expensive burglar tools to unlock doors and chests, but they don't break. So what's up with this in Realms of Arkania. Did no one beta test this game?

Well, at least the lantern, oil, and tinderbox worked OK, once I figured out that I had to light the lantern and then equip it. (I could light it just fine when it was equipped, but it wouldn't give off any light.) So we set off to explore.

One of the first rooms was a supply room which included, among other rather useless stuff, a bunch of rations. Apparently, you need to eat regularly in this game. (I didn't play long enough to find out.) But all of the stuff in the room popped up on the screen when we just walked inside. Looking around the room afterwards was just a complete waste of time.

Again, what were the developers thinking? Unlike the buildings in town, this area actually had rooms. And they'd put at least some effort into the graphics, so there were cabinets and such in the room. But you couldn't open them. You couldn't interact with anything in the room. And you couldn't look around to find items which might have been hidden or overlooked or just stored there.

Was Realms of Arkania developed by people who'd never actually played a game - or, at least, an RPG - themselves? We RPG fans like to explore, and we like to find treasure. If you're going to the trouble to build a dungeon for us (and by "dungeon," I mean any dangerous area to explore and loot), why wouldn't you try to make it at least minimally interesting, at least minimally entertaining?

At any rate, we left the room and headed down the corridor, through the smashed door, and finally had our first combat encounter. And that's when I decided that life was too short to waste on games like this.

Turn-based combat is always relatively slow, of course, but it can be very tactical. And it can be showy enough, too - visually and acoustically. It can be exciting. It can be fun. But this was none of these things.

Nice combat formation, huh?

First, you can't see your enemies coming in Realms of Arkania. The first you know, you get a "To battle" message (which you have to close manually, for some reason) and you're switched to a separate battle screen that looks like a small chessboard. Note how claustrophobic it is.

There are no formations. In tactical combat, you normally put your heavily-armored characters - your tanks - in front. Archers and other lightly armored troops are behind them, with your magic-users at the back, where they can be somewhat protected from direct attack. Here you start in one big, randomized clump, your characters in no particular order and even looking in different directions.

Each character gets a turn (I don't know if that's entirely random or not) and a certain number of action points. You can move and attack, if you don't move too far, but I'm not sure how far that is. (I never bothered to figure it out.)

Disappointingly, there are no attacks of opportunity, no backstabbing, and no flanking, so there's nothing tactical in moving, either. In my first combat, against two robbers (remember, I had six characters, myself), I put my warrior and my axe-wielding dwarf on opposite sides of one of them. That seemed to have no effect at all, as my dwarf missed almost every single attack with his axe at the back of the enemy faced away from him.

And yes, the vast majority of my attacks of every kind were misses. Do you know how boring that is? True, these were only Level 1 characters, but how about just doing low damage? The sound effects were poor, too. I was particularly disappointed at the sound of shooting a bow. Games had better sound effects than this two decades ago!

(Note that I had one character armed with a sling, so she could carry the lantern in her left hand. But in combat, there was no sign of the lantern, and she appeared to be carrying, and shooting, a bow, not a sling. Just one more indication of how slap-dash this game really is.)

But worst, by far, were the spell-casters. Now, there are a lot of things I don't like about the magic system in this game, starting with the nonsense words for spell names, so you can't remember what each spell does, and the poor spell selection. But that might not be so bad if they could actually cast spells.

Instead, the spells of my casters just fizzled, over and over again. That's not fun. The spells themselves were extremely short-ranged. Well, it's a tiny little battlefield, anyway, I guess. But combine that with no attacks of opportunity, and enemies could just walk up to my unarmored spellcasters and hack away. Not that they were smart enough to do that.

On the rare occasion that a spell succeeded, the result was underwhelming in the extreme. There's a spell called Lightning - one of the few with a descriptive name - which is supposed to blind enemies. Wouldn't you think that a Lightning spell would be showy? Heck, if a lightning bolt was too much trouble, even a simple blast of light would have worked.

But no, this spell resulted - on the rare occasions that it worked - in a very understated, very generic kind of magical effect that could have been used for anything (and might have been, given how seldom my magical spells worked at all). And what was the result? Nothing, as far as I could tell. This was supposed to blind enemies, but that enemy bowman still seemed to have no trouble with his ranged attacks.

And there was no indication of how long the effect was supposed to last, either. Given that it seemed to do nothing anyway, I didn't worry about that much.

Eventually, we killed one robber and the other ran away (i.e. he took four steps to the edge of the battle screen and disappeared - despite being flanked by both of my warrior characters). All in all, this might be the most underwhelming combat I've ever seen in a game. Heck, Pool of Radiance, clear back in 1988, was far better than this!

Apparently, this remake of Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny was completely unplayable when it was released last summer. Well, I can't say that now. You can play it. I just don't know why you'd want to.

___
Note: My computer game reviews, tips, and other posts are here.

The Bible, verse by verse: Rape the Slave

This guy is doing the same thing I'm doing with my Bible series, apparently. Only he's commenting in a series of videos.

I haven't watched the previous videos in the series, but if this is an example, they're probably quite entertaining. I'll make sure I stay ahead of him with my Bible posts, though. I want to form my own opinions, before I hear others.

But if you don't like reading long-winded explanations, then what are you dong here? Er, no, I meant, then you might prefer the video format. I thought I'd provide the link, anyway.

Don't say it, Chris!

(Tim Eagan)

Shot dead for texting

For chrissake, what are we doing to our country?

Cenk Uygur is right. Anger is a natural human emotion. But if you don't have a gun immediately to hand, it's unlikely to end up with someone's death.

But you've just got to have your steel penis substitute, huh? I mean, what would you do without your steel courage? How could you manage with just your natural courage, puny as it is?

And so, of course, George Zimmerman stalked and killed an unarmed black teenager, only because he had his steel courage with him.

Awhile back, two concealed-carry morons each disliked how the other was driving, and since they both had their steel courage with them, they stopped to fight it out - and killed each other.

This time, some idiot gets mad at texting in a theater, for chrissake, so he shoots and kills an innocent man (and injures the man's wife in the process).

How did we get to be such a nation of cowards, anyway? Do these gun nuts just watch too much television, or what? Hey, stroke your Precious at home, if you must, but please don't carry it around us sane people.

The Bible, Pt. 22: Exodus, Chapter 32 - 40

Continuing my Bible commentary from Part 21. Note that the whole series can be found here, and that all quotes are from the King James Bible.

Chapter 32:

1 And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.

...

4 And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

So, Moses has been on the mountain, getting the many-more-than-ten commandments - and lots of interior decorating tips - from God. But after a few days, the Israelites say, "To hell with waiting around. Let's find us a new god."

Remember that these are supposed to be the best people God could find on the whole planet. Now, they've just witnessed their god bring ten horrendous plagues to the Egyptians, plagues which magically avoided the Hebrew people.

Then they watched their God part the Red Sea, turning the seabed to dry land on which they could walk, then turn it back into ocean behind them to destroy the Pharaoh and all his troops. Not just that, but God is still providing manna from heaven every day - except the sabbath - so they can just pick their food up off the ground each morning. Oh, and he's miraculously provided water in the desert, too - twice.

But now, they get impatient after only a month or so? Even though they're still getting magical food every day? And Aaron - Moses' brother and the guy handpicked by God to serve as Moses' spokesman - goes along with it? Heck, he doesn't just go along with it, he creates their new god himself!

I'm not sure what's more surprising, God's incredibly bad ability to recognize the character of ordinary human beings (remember the 'perfect' Noah, Abraham, and Lot?), or the unbelievably poor short-term memory and/or patience of his 'chosen people.' Either way, it's downright laughable, isn't it?

7 And the LORD said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves:

8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

9 And the LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people:

10 Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation.

Remember, the only characteristic God actually values in human beings is obedience, so he's royally pissed now. He's going to spare Moses, but he plans to wipe out the rest of the Israelites. Well, he's done this before - even worse than this - with Noah, and he clearly doesn't mind starting over yet again.

11 And Moses besought the LORD his God, and said, LORD, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power, and with a mighty hand?

12 Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against thy people.

...

14 And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.

Moses knows just what to say: What will the Egyptians think about this? Remember, God kept hardening the Pharaoh's heart so God could demonstrate to the Egyptians, over and over again, how powerful he was. But now, if he kills all those people he's just rescued, what will the Egyptians say about that?

Well, this argument does the trick. Moses sure knows how to manipulate the Lord, doesn't he? So God "repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people."

Um, say what? God was going to do evil? But then he changed his mind? Hmm,... neither of these things really fits the omniscient, omnipotent, omni-benevolent god Christians imagine, does it?

Admittedly, God repented of creating human beings in the first place in Genesis, Chapter 6, so this isn't the first time his omniscience has let him down (not that there's been any hint of omniscience in this god - not yet, certainly). And by almost any definition imaginable, God has certainly done plenty of evil in the Old Testament, too.

18 And he said, It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome: but the noise of them that sing do I hear.

19 And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount.

20 And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strawed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.

OMG, there's singing and dancing! Well, Moses will certainly put an end to that,... by making them drink water with ground up flecks of gold in it?

But I guess there was more to it than that:

25 And when Moses saw that the people were naked; (for Aaron had made them naked unto their shame among their enemies:)

26 Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORD'S side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.

27 And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.

28 And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.

Whoa! There wasn't just singing and dancing, there was naked singing and dancing! And they didn't invite him? No wonder Moses is so pissed!

But Moses has just the solution for people who worship a different god: Kill the heretics! That probably wasn't too difficult, since his side had swords and their opponents were naked. And his side outnumbered the heretics 200 to 1. (Remember, there were supposed to be more than 600,000 men in total.)

And this is on the direct command of God: "slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbor." Well, you certainly can't have freedom of religion, huh? How crazy would that be? Can you imagine just letting each person decide for himself which god to worship (or not)?

35 And the LORD plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made.

Hmm,... I wonder what he did to Aaron? Remember, Aaron and his sons were to be God's priests, so what's he doing making a false idol? And really, why didn't God see that coming? God seems to be just a horrible judge of character, doesn't he?

Chapter 33:

1 And the LORD said unto Moses, Depart, and go up hence, thou and the people which thou hast brought up out of the land of Egypt, unto the land which I sware unto Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, Unto thy seed will I give it:

2 And I will send an angel before thee; and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite:

3 Unto a land flowing with milk and honey: for I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou art a stiffnecked people: lest I consume thee in the way.

Remember, God is giving the Israelites a land which is already home to many other tribes. They're coming as invaders, but not to worry, they've got God on their side.

Only, God is still pissed at them, so he's going to send an angel along, instead of joining them himself ("lest I consume thee in the way"). Very quickly, though, God is persuaded to change his mind (again).

11 And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. ...

12 And Moses said unto the LORD, See, thou sayest unto me, Bring up this people: and thou hast not let me know whom thou wilt send with me. Yet thou hast said, I know thee by name, and thou hast also found grace in my sight.

...

16 For wherein shall it be known here that I and thy people have found grace in thy sight? is it not in that thou goest with us? so shall we be separated, I and thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth.

17 And the LORD said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken: for thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know thee by name.

Remember when Moses tried to get out of all this by assuring God that he wasn't eloquent, claiming that he was "slow of speech, and of slow tongue" (Chapter 4)? Clearly, that wasn't the truth, as he's now talked God into changing his mind twice in the last two chapters.

This time, God agrees to go with them after all, instead of just sending an angel.

20 And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.

21 And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock:

22 And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by:

23 And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.

Wait,... what? God is going to show Moses his "back parts"? That sounds rather kinky, doesn't it? And note that Moses and God were just talking "face to face." I mean, it was just a few verses previously! I know the Bible isn't consistent, but this is ridiculous!

Furthermore, God showed himself to Abraham many times in Genesis. Similarly, in Chapter 32 of Genesis, Jacob says, "for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." But all of a sudden, "shall no man see me, and live"?

Chapter 34:

1 And the LORD said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest.

...

5 And the LORD descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD.

6 And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,

And modest, too. Let's not forget modest.

7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.

Hmm,... I don't think I'd brag about that last part. Why should my great-grandchildren be punished for something I did? That's neither justice nor good morals.

11 Observe thou that which I command thee this day: behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite.

12 Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee:

13 But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves:

14 For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:

15 Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice;

16 And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods.

Again, God promises to drive out of the Promised Land the people who already make their homes there. Nice guy, huh? Furthermore, he insists that the Israelites make no peace treaties with those people - and certainly not that they practice freedom of religion. Just the reverse, in fact.

So how often was this cited when Christians burned heretics alive, I wonder? How often during the Inquisition? How often during the centuries of European war, when Catholics and Protestants both tried to force their own particular religious beliefs on everyone?

Just consider how anti-Bible the United States Constitution really was - and is. Can you imagine getting the concepts of freedom of speech and religion from this book?

19 All that openeth the matrix is mine; and every firstling among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male.

20 But the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou redeem him not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before me empty.

Here, again, God insists on the blood sacrifice of every first born male animal and person. The firstborn of an ass you can redeem with a lamb, if you don't want to sacrifice the ass. However, if you can't afford a lamb, you must break its neck. The same also appears to be the case for "the firstborn of thy sons."

28 And he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.

This is the first we hear of "ten" commandments. The first time Moses was on the mountain - also for forty days and forty nights - there were a lot more than just ten commandments listed (and that's not even counting the interior decorating arrangements). But Moses broke those tablets, so he's back on the mountain again now, so God can write on the blank stone tablets Moses has made as replacements.

Again, it takes forty days and forty nights. Is God just a slow writer or something? After all, he's already told Moses exactly what he wants (in excruciating detail). But this time, it's just ten commandments. Unfortunately, we're not told what those ten commandments are. Not here, at least.

But we do get a repeat of all that interior decorating stuff. (For my sins, I suppose.)

Chapter 35:

1 And Moses gathered all the congregation of the children of Israel together, and said unto them, These are the words which the LORD hath commanded, that ye should do them.

2 Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, a sabbath of rest to the LORD: whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death.

3 Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the sabbath day.

OK, here's one commandment, I guess. Put to death anyone who works - or even heats his home - on the sabbath. You know, I'll bet there'd be a lot fewer Christians here in Nebraska if this one was still observed!

4 And Moses spake unto all the congregation of the children of Israel, saying, This is the thing which the LORD commanded, saying,

5 Take ye from among you an offering unto the LORD: whosoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it, an offering of the LORD; gold, and silver, and brass,

6 And blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair,

7 And rams' skins dyed red, and badgers' skins, and shittim wood,

8 And oil for the light, and spices for anointing oil, and for the sweet incense,

The rest of this, though - and the rest of the chapters of Exodus - is just Moses telling the Israelites about the interior decorating ideas of their God. And then all of them work to build to God's precise specifications.

Chapter 36:

8 And every wise hearted man among them that wrought the work of the tabernacle made ten curtains of fine twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet: with cherubims of cunning work made he them.

9 The length of one curtain was twenty and eight cubits, and the breadth of one curtain four cubits: the curtains were all of one size.

10 And he coupled the five curtains one unto another: and the other five curtains he coupled one unto another.

And on and on. Are there any discrepancies between the two accounts? Beats me. If you want to compare the two, be my guest. I could barely stay awake reading this stuff the first time.

Chapter 37:

1 And Bezaleel made the ark of shittim wood: two cubits and a half was the length of it, and a cubit and a half the breadth of it, and a cubit and a half the height of it:

2 And he overlaid it with pure gold within and without, and made a crown of gold to it round about.

3 And he cast for it four rings of gold, to be set by the four corners of it; even two rings upon the one side of it, and two rings upon the other side of it.

Again, my apologies, but I'm skipping most of this stuff. Trust me, you wouldn't want to read it, anyway. 38 verses in the previous chapter, 28 in this one, 31 in the next,... and we've read it all before, just a little bit earlier in Exodus.

It was excessive the first time. To repeat it all really goes beyond the bounds of reason and polite society!

Chapter 38:

1 And he made the altar of burnt offering of shittim wood: five cubits was the length thereof, and five cubits the breadth thereof; it was foursquare; and three cubits the height thereof.

2 And he made the horns thereof on the four corners of it; the horns thereof were of the same: and he overlaid it with brass.

3 And he made all the vessels of the altar, the pots, and the shovels, and the basons, and the fleshhooks, and the firepans: all the vessels thereof made he of brass.

Well, of course! What good is an altar without fleshhooks, firepans, and shovels?

Yeah, I said that before, didn't I? My apologies for repeating myself. :)

Chapter 39:

1 And of the blue, and purple, and scarlet, they made cloths of service, to do service in the holy place, and made the holy garments for Aaron; as the LORD commanded Moses.

2 And he made the ephod of gold, blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen.

...

27 And they made coats of fine linen of woven work for Aaron, and for his sons,

Note that Aaron doesn't seem to have lost his position as head priest for the minor peccadillo of creating a new god - that golden calf - for the Israelites to worship when they got tired of waiting for Moses. No big deal, then?

42 According to all that the LORD commanded Moses, so the children of Israel made all the work.

43 And Moses did look upon all the work, and, behold, they had done it as the LORD had commanded, even so had they done it: and Moses blessed them.

Only five chapters this time and they're done. God's new house is ready for him.

Chapter 40:

1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

2 On the first day of the first month shalt thou set up the tabernacle of the tent of the congregation.

3 And thou shalt put therein the ark of the testimony, and cover the ark with the vail.

4 And thou shalt bring in the table, and set in order the things that are to be set in order upon it; and thou shalt bring in the candlestick, and light the lamps thereof.

...

16 Thus did Moses: according to all that the LORD commanded him, so did he.

Well, OK, it's not quite ready. There are 15 more verses of God's instructions, and then another 16 verses or so of Moses carrying out those instructions. But now we're done.

33 ... So Moses finished the work.

34 Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.

35 And Moses was not able to enter into the tent of the congregation, because the cloud abode thereon, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.

36 And when the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the children of Israel went onward in all their journeys:

37 But if the cloud were not taken up, then they journeyed not till the day that it was taken up.

38 For the cloud of the LORD was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys.

And God moves in. This is now God's home on Earth, apparently. It's a temporary home - a mobile home - until they get to Jerusalem and build a more permanent temple, but remember that it's going to take them another 40 years of wandering the desert just to get there.

I really hope when they do get there that we don't get yet another repeat of all this interior decorating stuff! But I'll worry about that when, and if, the time comes. For now, we're done with Exodus.

Next time, we'll start Leviticus, and I must admit that I haven't read one word of that chapter, not yet. So I have no idea what to expect. Maybe we'll find out together? See you then!

___
Note: This entire series can be found here.

Inciting violence on Fox Business Network

Double-standard is right! Can you imagine the screaming from Fox if someone had said, "They should be able to put the statue up, and then they should be shot right next to it" on any other network about some Christian group?

So what's the difference? Are Satanists "evil"? I doubt if they'd say so. They're foolish, if they believe that Satan - or any other god - actually exists, but plenty of people do. And in a nation with freedom of religion, that's not a crime.

But this shows the double-standard in our media - and in politics, too. Right-wingers can say whatever they want, and if it causes a controversy, it's nothing they need pay much attention to. Liberals would have been fired by now, and the Democratic Party would be in a collective panic, wringing its hands about anything even close to this bad.

Satanists certainly aren't progressives, since they're as faith-based as any Republican, but when you believe in freedom of religion, you can't just support the rights of people you agree with.

No free lunch, Congressman?

Funny, isn't it? Or maybe it's just depressing, I don't know.

Note that the "free lunch" part of this video is only about five minutes long. Someone screwed up, because there's a blank screen for awhile, then a different video clip (about how many Americans self-identify as liberals, and what that means).

Questions for Christians: Fight Club

This is a new YouTube channel for me, but it's pretty good.

NumberOneSon has a whole series on these Questions for Christians, but what really got me to subscribe was his Losing God video, which describes his deconversion from Christianity. Good stuff!

Distant Worlds: Shadows - beginner's tips, pt. 2

Empire Summary screen (F6)

In Part 1, we covered pirates and resources in Distant Worlds: Shadows. Now, we're moving on to money. There's a lot to it, and it doesn't work like you might expect.

Distant Worlds seems to have a right-wing, trickle-down economic model, where lower taxes actually do produce enormous growth with very little downside. Think of it as if Bushanomics had actually worked.

In this game, pretty much the only thing your government needs money for is the military, and even then, you can continue to pay your soldiers and maintain your ships without actually taxing the citizens. Scientific research does just fine, too, without money. Furthermore, you can bankrupt your government - drown it in a bathtub, if you want - and not only do your interest rates not go up, you never pay any interest at all.

The only thing you really need cash for is to buy a new ship or base, or to upgrade to a new design. Otherwise, you can go along just fine deeply in the red. Taxes aren't completely unnecessary, but this game really does seem to be a Tea Party wet dream.

Forget about how realistic this is. It's just a game, after all. But managing your economy is a critical part of it, so you really have to know how this works.

In Part 1, the first thing I suggested was to pause the game and set your tax rate to zero. Partly, that was so the pirates would see how poor you were, and not charge as much in their protection racket. But setting your taxes to zero also causes a huge boom in population growth and GDP growth. (Amazing how that actually works in a game, isn't it?)

You can experiment with this, if you want. It doesn't cause any problems at all to rapidly change your taxes to zero, then up to 40 or 50%, then back down again, and you can quickly see the results in the growth rate of your planet. If you set your taxes too high, your people will become unhappy, and you don't want that (keep them "satisfied," at least). But you can play with this to see what happens.

At the start, you've only got one planet - your homeworld. For a long time, that will be your empire's powerhouse, so you want the population and economy to become as large as possible. Well, if you keep your taxes at zero - or as low as possible - your planet's population and economy will grow very rapidly.

Later, you can raise taxes and make some real money. You'll need the money, because you'll be colonizing other planets, and while they're young, you'll need to keep their taxes at zero for the same reason. (Practically speaking, when they're young, you won't get much tax money from them anyway, even if you raise the rate sky high. So tax your homeworld then, and let the colonies grow.)

Derelict ships from long ago, great loot for bold explorers

So, how can you run an empire with no taxes? You can't, not entirely. But you can go a surprisingly long way, at least in Distant Worlds: Shadows. (I wouldn't try this in the real world.)

Take a look at your Empire Summary screen (F6). I've posted a screenshot from my own game, at the start of this post. Click on it to enlarge the picture, if necessary, because this is pretty important to understand.

Note that there's a state economy and a private economy. You have little direct control over the private economy, but it's very important, nonetheless. Your private economy needs to remain healthy - rich, even. If they've got cash on hand, they'll buy ships (and you'll get the money from building them, plus useful resources will move to your spaceport on civilian ships).

Note their expenses. The taxes they pay are calculated from the tax rate on each of your colonies and the size of the economy there. (You can see that same amount as revenue on the state side of the ledger, too.) They also pay maintenance on civilian ships and bases - note that this includes the mining bases that you build, since the private sector pays the maintenance on them - and their fuel costs.

Obviously, taxes are a big part of their expenses, but the number of mining bases you build and the cost of resources also factor in to their maintenance costs. Earlier, I suggested hiring pirates to smuggle resources to your colonies, if a colony was short of a strategic resource it couldn't get elsewhere. That's a valid and quite necessary tactic.

However, note that any such resources smuggled into your planets are quite expensive. If you go overboard with this, especially if you have them smuggle multiple resources to multiple planets, you can bankrupt your private sector by increasing their costs. Keep an eye on your private economy here. You want it to be as healthy as possible.

Now, on the state side, your "cash on hand" can be negative without any big problems. You won't pay interest on that, and you'll still pay your troops and maintain your ships. (Your research won't be affected, either.) The only thing you can't do is to buy new ships and bases, or update the ones you have to more modern designs.

I wouldn't let your cash on hand get too far in the red, just because you might need a new ship in a hurry, sometime. But you can stay in the red for a long time with no problem, then greatly increase the tax rate when you need cash to buy something, lowering it again afterwards. (As I say, I'd keep the happiness on your planets at least at "satisfied" when you do raise taxes. You don't want them to revolt.)

Still, don't you need taxes, even in a right-wing paradise? Well, sure, but there are other ways to get money. And the benefits to low taxes are so great in Distant Worlds: Shadows that you really want to think long and hard before spending any money at all.

Passenger ships, braving empty space and pirates for an exotic vacation

Let's look at expenses first. At the start of the game, you'll be paying pirates protection money, and that will likely be a big expense. But it's a necessary one, at first. Later, you'll be laughing at pirate demands, but not now.

Ship and base maintenance will be a big expense for the whole game. You can look at the details at the bottom of that screen. Note that you pay to build mining bases, but it's the private sector that pays to maintain them. That's important.

On the state side, too, the cost of resources makes a difference. If resource costs increase, the initial cost of ships and bases will increase and so will the maintenance cost of existing ships. Just something to keep in mind.

At the beginning of the game, you'll be paying pirate protection, but if that keeps you from needing to build more ships, you'll save on both the initial cost and the upkeep. Again, just something to keep in mind. Remember, you're trying to keep your costs as low as possible, especially in the beginning, so think about what you're building.

Troop maintenance is another big expense. Now, I would love to let the AI handle troop numbers for each planet, but it's been my experience that I end up with far more troops than I can afford. So I would recommend handling that yourself.

On the one hand, you don't want to lose colonies to invasion. On the other hand, invasion doesn't seem to be a big danger at the start of the game, when you haven't yet encountered another civilization. (Pirates will invade, but usually not in large numbers.) And later on, an enemy can simply bombard your planet, destroying everything, in which case your troops can do nothing, anyway.

Besides, troops are expensive, and it's critical that you save money. I can't say this often enough. You'll have to decide these things for yourself, though. It's all part of the game.

Then there's the revenue side. Note that your cash flow can be negative, but you can still make money most years when the "bonus income" is added in. Space port income is a big part of that. Remember that, if the private sector is flush with cash and has reason to need ships (mining ships, transport ships, passenger ships), they'll order them at your spaceports, and you'll make money from that.

This varies a lot. You'll get a rush of building sometimes, when a new opportunity opens up (like a new colony planet, for example), but then there will be times when your spaceport is pretty much idle. Still, think right-wing economic fantasies: if the rich get richer, they'll invest that money in new ships and factories and everyone will benefit.

Foreign trade bonuses will become important, once you encounter other empires (and especially when you make free trade agreements with them). Note that you have to keep piracy down, though. If pirates are everywhere, hassling your civilian ships, they won't be able to make much money (or bring you needed resources, either).

Finally, there's resort income. You won't have any resorts at first - they're expensive, and you need mining bases first. But resort bases are a great way to earn money. After all, you've got all those rich people, eager to go on exotic vacations.

You'll want to build resorts reasonably close to your biggest planets, and you'll want to look for spectacular scenery, which will give you a bonus. Note that any planet with a ruin can be a suitable location for a resort base (even though other locations might give a bigger bonus), and you'll start with two of them in your initial solar system. That's great, because your homeworld will be nearby.

Um, one caution: note that it's dangerous for construction ships to build resorts at some locations, at least before you have good technology. If you try, your ship might just disappear, never to be heard from again. :)

Obviously, you want to protect your resort bases and your passenger ships from pirates, too. In the screenshot above, you can see a string of civilian ships heading several sectors away from my home space. It turned out that they were mostly passenger ships, visiting an independent planet quite far from my homeworld.

I'm not sure what the draw was, although there was a pretty big population of aliens on that planet. Unfortunately, the whole area was infested with pirates. I had to send a fleet clear up there, just to defend all the passenger ships which were being attacked. And now I'm building a colony ship, hoping to add this planet to my empire (before some other empire gets to it first).

A small part of the technology tree

So, to review, you want to keep the tax rate on your homeworld as low as you possibly can, even when it shows you a negative cash flow. Try to make up the difference in other ways, if you can. When you need cash to buy something, increase the rate for awhile, until you've got as much as you need. Then drop it again.

When you start to settle colonies, keep their taxes at zero and rely on taxing your homeworld, which by then should have a huge economy and population. When your early colonies grow up, you can start taxing them, too.

Oh, one other tip. Long-range sensors are really, really useful, but it's expensive to build monitoring stations everywhere. However, if you manually edit the design of your gas mining bases (not your regular mining bases), you can add a long-range sensor to them.

This will add to the initial cost of your gas mining bases, true. And it will add to the maintenance cost of them, too. But note that it's the private sector which pays the maintenance cost on mining bases, and your private economy should have plenty of money, if you've been keeping tax rates low.

Don't do this on regular mining bases, because you'll have way too many of them. Sure, you'll have some overlap with gas mining bases, too, but not quite that bad. And if there's part of the galaxy where you need a long-range sensor, just build a gas mining base there. Not only will you get sensor coverage, you'll also gain a useful refueling station.

Now, enjoy the game! :)

___
Note: Most of my posts about computer games can be found here.

Rich vs poor - moral hazards and money immunity

The Daily Show
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The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

I know I've been posting a lot of these, but Jon Stewart has really been on a roll this week.

Can you believe that 99% of these moochers have a refrigerator? What's next, running water? Must be nice, huh?

And if you've got a refrigerator, where's the incentive to work? Of course, rich kids can handle their trust funds. That's different, right? I mean, if you inherit money, that doesn't sap your ambition at all.  They've got "money immunity," built up from a lifetime of having everything they want.

That's why we need to eliminate welfare, unemployment benefits, and health care for the poor, yet we also need to eliminate estate taxes. Because the rich can handle getting money for nothing. The poor can't. Right? Right?

These unemployment benefits were always supposed to be temporary, just like the Bush tax cuts for the rich. The difference is that these benefits are still going to be temporary. It's just that, with Republicans dragging their feet every step of the way, it's been slow climbing out of the economic collapse they gave us.

We bailed out the banks - we used tax money to rescue the rich from the results of their own folly - so the investment class is doing great. (Trust me. I'm not rich, but I do live on my investments. The investment class is doing great.) Yes, that was the right thing to do, but it was still rescuing the rich from the disasters they themselves created. But rescuing the poor? Oh, we wouldn't want to do that, would we?

Finally, as Stewart points out, welfare fraud means that we need to eliminate social safety nets for everyone, but bank fraud is just a few bad apples making honest bankers look bad. Double standard, anyone?

But I've got to say, as angry as I get at all of this stuff, what really burns my butt is to watch that smug asshole Stuart Varney talk about how people with little education don't deserve more money,... while right-wingers like him fight to make education as difficult, as ineffective, and as expensive as possible for the poor and even the middle class.

I'm glad that Stewart shows just brief clips from these people, because two seconds of them is about all I can stand!

Distant Worlds: Shadows - beginner's tips

My human (mostly) civilization in space, 2124

These are tips for beginners of Distant Worlds: Shadows and from a beginner. If you think I'm not qualified to give tips in this game, since I'm just a beginner myself, you might be right. But I think of it as being closer to the problem. :)

I've made two previous posts about the game, both from early last summer, and I'll try not to repeat myself. These are tips for beginners - people who've never played the Distant Worlds series and people, like me, who might have disregarded the advice to play a classic game first, preferring to start as an empire in the Age of Shadows.

Note that there are many options when beginning a new game, and you can decide for yourself if you want to change the default settings. For example, you can start in a somewhat richer solar system than average, if you want. (I did.) And I set space creatures to few, since I don't particularly enjoy that feature. With the most recent update, there's a setting for pirate strength, too, I see.

Whatever else you change, don't move Expansion away from PreWarp. If you do, you'll be playing a classic game, not the Age of Shadows start. After all, the whole point of this start is that you begin with no knowledge of hyperdrive, without even knowing what's in your own solar system. (That was hugely appealing to me, right from the beginning.)

Pirates, however, begin with hyperdrive and other advanced technology. They begin with military ships, when you won't have ships of any kind - or bases, either. Pirates retain some of the ancient technology planets have lost, and empires can't hope to defend against them at the start of the game. (Note that you can play as a pirate, but I haven't tried that, not yet.)

Anyway, when you start the game, pause it (press the spacebar) immediately and look around. There's not much to see, is there? Yes, you can see the planets in your own solar system, and you can see distant stars, but you won't know anything about them, not yet.

Before you unpause the game, go to your Colonies screen (F2) and set the tax rate on your homeworld - your only planet, right now - to zero. There are two reasons for that, and I'll explain one of them in a minute (the other will have to wait for Part 2 of this).

Then, order your planet to build a small spaceport. I normally use the Construction Yards screen (F10) to do that. Note that you build spaceports, and other orbital bases, from the planet itself. You build construction ships and, eventually, colony ships there, too. But you need a spaceport in order to build most other kinds of ships, both military and civilian.

You'll need a larger spaceport eventually, but speed is critical here, so start small. Then queue up some other orders, too. I'd build an Energy research station next, then a High Tech research station and probably a Weapons research station. I usually build a defensive base after that, and you might also build a construction ship or two (note my tips about changing the design of these, later in this post).

My homeworld

Some of this will depend on how much starting money you have. Note that you're setting up most of this before you unpause the game, and the point - one of the points - is to use up much of your starting money. You probably don't want to run out completely, but you want to be as poor as possible before the pirates arrive, and they'll arrive almost immediately.

The thing is, your local pirates will demand protection money, and you'll pay it. You've really got no choice about that. But if your tax rate is zero and you don't have a big pile of money sitting in the treasury, they won't ask for nearly as much money. That's important, because you'll be paying for awhile.

I got this tip, and another, here. It's not as gimmicky as it seems, either, because there's another good reason for lowering the tax rate to zero. But I'll get to that later (not till Part 2 of this, I'm afraid).

Pirates will be your main threat - nearly your only threat - in the early part of the game, and the AI will recommend that you cancel that protection agreement long before you're able to withstand an attack. I'd rather keep the payments low and continue to pay extortion for awhile, myself.

Even after you can build ships, you won't be able to match pirate ships, not for a long time. You can try to outnumber them, but fleets are expensive, and they can't be everywhere. This post isn't really about combating pirates (I talked about that here, though I've learned some things since then), but that needs to be a big part of your thinking in the early game.

Pirates will raid your planets, destroy your bases, and hassle your privately-owned ships, the lifeblood of your economy. And although they start strong enough, they can often find really powerful ships, derelicts from the past, since they get to explore space before you do.

If you expand too far, too fast, you won't be able to defend what you own, even after you do get capable ships. Note that I like to use frigates armed with rail guns in the early years, because those weapons bypass shields. You might have no hope of destroying a pirate ship, but if you can damage it, it might withdraw for repairs.

In this game, I've also used small, fast escorts, armed with a few missiles, just to distract enemies and give me a little time to respond. (I add a few to each fleet, but I let the AI handle the rest. I don't know how effective they are, but they make my civilization seem more realistic.) And fighters are really nice, too - especially when you can finally build carriers.

But for the most part, you just have to keep pirates in mind before you build... well, anything, really. If you build it, can you defend it? In general, bases can't defend themselves - certainly not for long. You've got to have ships which can get there in time and which can withstand the pirates when they do. (One priority, a little later, is long-range scanners, so you can see the pirates coming. I've got a tip for them, too, but not in this post.)

Anyway, as I say, that's not the focus of this post, and I don't want pirates to hijack this. There's just too much to say about that problem. Here, I want to focus on resources and money, because with enough of both, pirates will be dead meat.

When I played Distant Worlds last summer, resources were the big problem. I kept getting stuck, so short of critical resources that I couldn't build mining bases to get more of the resources I was lacking. There have been game updates since then, and I think this was toned down a bit. Resources are still critical, but I've had no real problem staying supplied in this game - so far, at least. Still, you have to keep a close eye on this, both at individual colonies and overall (at the Expansion Planner screen, F3).

An overview of my starting solar system

OK, you've started the game, those pirates are being paid off, and you've just built your first small spaceport. Now that you can build ships, you need to explore your local solar system. Note that you won't have hyperdrive for some time, so this is going to be painfully slow. To help with that, I'd manually edit the design for your exploration ships and add more engines - ion thrusters - and maybe some more directional thrusters for quicker maneuvering, too.

Yeah, that will add to their cost, but this will just be temporary, and you really want your first two exploration ships to be as fast as possible. If you're building any constructions ships (I wouldn't build more than two), you want to do the same thing. Manually edit the design to make them faster, much faster.

There are probably two derelict ships somewhere in your starting solar system (at least, there have been every time I've started a new game). I'd look around for them and send your exploration ships their way as fast as possible. Neither ship has hyperdrive capability, but they'll still be extremely valuable.

One of them will be damaged, and you'll need to send a construction ship to repair it. But while it's working on the ship, you'll get a research bonus. And when you finish, you'll get a useful ship, at least for a little while (after that, you can retire it at your shipyard for another research bonus).

The other ship can be boarded and used immediately. Unfortunately, I've never managed to get to that ship before the pirates do. But it's still worth trying, and you need to explore the whole solar system, anyway.

You'll discover some secrets, including clues to researching Warp Field Precursors, which will give you your first jump ship. Get to work on that immediately. It takes a long time to research, and Warp Bubble Generators will still be too slow to explore the stars, but they'll make a huge difference in travel times within your own solar system.

(Note that, when you finish exploring your initial solar system, you can scrap those first two exploration ships. There's no sense in paying maintenance on them any longer than necessary.)

You'll also discover valuable resources on the other moons and planets of your solar system, and you'll want to build mining bases on them,... eventually. At the very beginning, though, think it through. Without hyperdrive, you won't be able to defend them (even if you could afford to build a fleet of capable ships, which you probably can't).

Of course, you'll still be paying protection money to one pirate faction, and that might be the only one in your neighborhood. There might be dangerous space creatures near a planet, or there might not. There's a lot that goes into this. Is it worth the risk - and the expense - or not? Think about every mine, every planet.

Either way, you'll still get some resources, because your private sector will start ordering mining ships (and they'll pay you to build them, which is especially nice). Note how your spaceport will start building those ships automatically, if the civilian economy is doing well. Then watch them move around your solar system, mining resources and bringing them back to the homeworld.

All of that is automated, and they'll go where they're needed. You don't control the civilian economy directly, but it's very important to you. Once you build mining bases, they'll order freighters, too, and you'll get even more resources. But you have to decide what you really need and when. This is all a balancing act, and it's one of the great things about the game.

Strategic resources are critical, so you have to build mining bases. But you need to be able to protect them, too. Bases within your starting solar system are generally the easiest to protect, though not if you haven't even discovered hyperdrive yet. But then, if you're still paying off the pirates - as you should be - you should be safe from that particular faction, at least.

But bases also cost resources and money to build. We'll get to the money part later, but let me just say that there's a very good reason to go slow on spending money. On the other hand, if you go too slow, you'll run short of resources. And you can really get into a bind if that happens. Decisions, decisions, huh? But that's what makes this fun.

To begin with, note which resources are available on your home planet. You don't need to build mining bases at colonies, since you'll get those resources anyway. You need strategic resources at first, and it's more efficient for your freighters (not to mention easier to defend) if they're close to your homeworld.

You might not need any mining bases at first, but keep a close eye on the Expansion Planner screen (F3). Throughout the game, you'll want to watch for any unfulfilled demand from your empire (fourth column from the right) and take care of that before it gets out of hand. And keep an eye on civilian ships, too. If they're hauling resources from far away, it might make sense to build another mine closer to your colony.

At the very start, as I say, you might be OK with the trickle of resources you'll get from civilian mining ships. After all, you won't be needing much, at first. For your first mining bases, look for multiple strategic resources on the same planet - steel, lead, gold, iridium - a nearby planet, ideally. You'll also need a gas mining base in order to get caslon for fuel. Again, try to set up one mining base which will supply multiple resources.

Then focus on getting other strategic resources. Chromium and silicon seem to be very important at first, too, though you're going to need all of them eventually (and multiple mining bases, at that). Luxury resources are useful as well, since they keep your people happy and help your population and your economy grow. But strategic resources are critical; they're your priority.

If you don't have access to a strategic resource you need, feel free to offer a bounty to pirate smugglers to deliver that resource. This does give money to pirates, and it also makes everything more expensive for your private sector (keep an eye on how they're doing at your Empire Summary screen, F6), but it's far, far better than running into a production bottleneck.

To review:

1. Don't build more than necessary, especially when you're first starting. Money is likely to be a bigger bind than resources. Be as efficient as possible in placing mining bases.
2. Location matters. Nearby bases will be easier to defend, and the faster freighters can get to your mine and back to a spaceport again, the better.
3. Can you defend what you build? At first, the answer will be no, but that's why you're paying protection money to the pirates. Later, you'll want to cancel that (as soon as you can, but almost certainly not as soon as your advisers keep suggesting), so think about how you'll defend your outlying bases.

OK, I'm going to leave the money side of this for another post, since I've got a lot to say about that.

___
Note: You can find more posts on individual computer games here.

Did Jesus ever exist?

I suppose I've always assumed that there was a historical Jesus, if not a supernatural one. (The evidence isn't nearly good enough to accept the latter.)

I mean, I'd heard that some people think he was entirely fictional, but I wasn't sure if they could be taken seriously. You know how it is. Anyone can claim anything. But what did serious historians and bible scholars think?

Well, I was just listening to Robert M. Price on The Human Bible podcast (an older episode, from November, 2012) talking about Thomas L. Brodie's book, Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus.

Brodie is not just a Catholic priest, author, and well-known bible scholar, but the director of the Dominican Bible Centre in Limerick, Ireland, and his book describes how he came to the conclusion that Jesus never really existed, but was always just a fictional character.

Oddly, Brodie still believes in the Christian God. According to the blurb at Amazon.com, "In a deeply personal coda, Brodie begins to develop a new vision of Jesus as an icon of God's presence in the world and in human history." Nice trick, that!

So I was even more surprised to learn that Robert M. Price agrees with him. (I shouldn't have been - and wouldn't have been, if I'd known more about his own books.) Price has doctorates in both theology and the New Testament, and he teaches philosophy and theology at the Johnnie Coleman Theological Seminary. I've been listening to his Human Bible podcasts, and they've been absolutely fascinating.

Now, I know that Bart D. Ehrman disagrees with both of them. I recently read his book, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, and I'm currently reading Forged: Writing in the Name of God - Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. Both are riveting.

But he has another book, Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, which argues for a historical Jesus. I haven't read that, or Brodie's book, so I really can't say, myself.

But, clearly, the Jesus myth idea has the backing of some serious, knowledgeable scholars. They're still a minority, apparently, and there are certainly serious, knowledgeable scholars on the other side, too. Well, when it comes to the events of two thousand years in the past, intelligent people can disagree.

Did a historical Jesus really exist? I have no idea. Apparently, I have some reading to do, though I'm really not expecting that to settle the matter, one way or the other.

The evils of weed and texting

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OK, I just had to post these, mostly because of Bill O'Reilly's hilarious combination of weed and texting ("combine the drug aspect with the internet" ... "the texting epidemic"), not to mention his warnings about "intoxicating agents" (except for alcohol, of course, which is just good, clean fun to Fox 'News').

But yes, America really needs to be more like Red China, huh, right-wingers? Heh, heh. Forget the fact that the Chinese apparently text more than anyone else in the world. (After all, we expect such misrepresentation from Fox, don't we?) Are you really suggesting that the People's Republic of China is a good role model for America? Really?

When did Europe become the example of everything right-wing Americans hate, while Red China became their beloved ideal? That's just mind-blowing, isn't it?

But then there's this response, which is almost as ignorant:

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"Most of us age-out of marijuana use,..." No kidding! (Note that David Brooks hasn't "aged-out" of alcohol use, though. Beer parties, maybe. But certainly not wine and bourbon, which he thinks are wonderful.)

Yes, most of us "age-out" of such stuff. But what does that tell you? David Brooks used to smoke pot. Jon Stewart used to smoke pot. I,... ahem, I might even have smoked pot, myself. Were we harmed by it? We definitely would have been harmed if we'd been arrested and thrown in jail, as happens to other young people when we keep marijuana illegal.

So, tell me, Brooks, should the states also discourage the use of alcohol "on both moral grounds and health grounds" the way most states "discourage" the use of marijuana? Didn't we try that in the 1920's?

But no, this is how you think of alcohol, isn't it?

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Obviously, there is nothing stupider than beer commercials, and if you've fallen for that socially-accepted message you clearly don't have any brain cells to spare. No doubt we'll get such idiocy from pot when the big corporations start making money from it (at which time the opinion of Fox 'News' will change drastically).

That's not a good thing. And abusing pot - because some people will abuse it - is also not a good thing. But recreational use is another story, especially if you contrast it with the current state of affairs where we're simultaneously filling our prisons with drug users and the pockets of drug cartels with lots and lots and lots of money.

Coors and Budweiser are, after all, at least a small step up from the Sinaloa Cartel, don't you think?