plasmid

When the streets are all safe and your kids play outside And the birds are all chirping away I'll just find a reclusive location to hide Unobtrusively spending the day But if darkness descends and the wolves start to howl And the going begins to get rough Then it's time to emerge and confront all that's foul Yes it's time to be big and be tough Now a salvo of bullets comes clattering in Is that cannon fire joining the fray? Still I'll foil their assault, through the thick and the thin Though they're trying to blow me away I'm afraid I've been hit, and I'm shaking so much I'll collapse at the end of the raid Now you soon must contend with a bloodthirsty bunch Don't expect me to come to your aid

Sci-fi ought to be right up my alley!

Good one, En Rui, me likey!

Hey Bran, you could definitely help give us some insight. In some of our earlier posts we were trying to figure out what people are looking for in a religion, but we didn't really have a good grasp of the factors that motivate people toward faith. As for the gay marriage topic, I disagree. Indeed, marriage could stand to be a much more sacred institution, at least that much we can agree on. That's why Hollywood marriages between celebrities ought to be outlawed. Those pure media stunts are absolutely disgraceful. Vegas drive-thru chapels have also got to go. Mail order brides would be next to be cut, how could anyone deny that that's utterly contemptful? Gay marriage would be a relatively low priority on the outlaw list if sanctity were your chief concern. And yes, only a man and a woman are able to reproduce. But if reproduction were all there was to it, then I'd imagine that marriage to a sterile or postmenopausal woman would be equally offensive. I hadn't heard about Miss America, but if it would have any bearing then go ahead and tell the story. Yeah, UU is still only the second best choice if we can't come up with a good way of ensuring that a more authoritarian church will develop in beneficial directions. Is your point that some people have such discordant beliefs that they would never coexist in a UU system? That's probably true with the various religions as they exist now, but if it's possible to convert people to an Uberfaith then it would seem like it should be even easier to adjust people's current beliefs enough to get them into a UU system. Or even better, convert everyone to Uberfaith and then allow it to evolve under UU rules. Then we would be rid of any vestigial undesirable attributes from the current religions. So getting people into a UU system shouldn't be any tougher than getting them into a first generation of Uberfaith. While UU would be relatively "weak", my biggest gripe about religion is its meddling in social and even scientific issues. It's precisely this weakness that would hopefully render impossible any concerted effort to do anything too deleterious. That would be a small victory compared to the current situation. Having a more authoritarian Uberfaith go further and play a positive role in its followers' lives would be a noble goal, and I'd like to achieve it too if possible, but I still can't think of a good way of driving Uberfaith's development long-term. There's just too much to be gained (from a denomination's self-perpetuation perspective) by telling people that all they have to do is believe and pay a reasonable tithe to gain salvation, and then you have no benefit over a UU but run the increased risks associated with a more united church that has more capability to do harm. So I'm still stuck 4 now. Are we doing free will vs determinism on this thread too instead of a new one? If it'll impact the discussion then that would be reasonable and I'll weigh in.

Please inform the new swine flu that it could not possibly have evolved and therefore does not exist. Perhaps it will listen to your reasoning and be convinced to stop killing people.

Of course! How'd ya think I got started?

LOL, looks like rIDdLEmynaME and Grayven have clobbered the punny looking lock! As for the other one

You're on the right track for one part of the answer. There was a reason for that one statement in the puzzle that looked just a little out of place: Edit: added spoiler

Unreality has me confoozed, are we talking about free will versus determinism now? If it will impact this topic, then I'll go ahead and dive into it. Otherwise we'll start getting into discussions about whether the intelligence operatives who tortured prisoners can be held accountable for their acts if they were ordered to do so, and if not, at what point do you draw the line and say that this will was free enough to be responsible for its actions under the circumstances but that one wasn't. That would be a whole other can of worms that I'd rather not get into right now if we don't need to... or if it's on a different thread somewhere then maybe I will as time allows. But for now, back to topic. Octopuppy's completely right about current religions, in that they are quite well adapted to persist in their current environment. And yes, I was judging them by very different criteria: not how well they persist, but how much good they do. As for UU, it sounds like both octopuppy & I would ideally like to have more control over our followers. But so far, we seem to be stuck on the problem of how to make something that would be able to adapt, yet not either become utterly corrupt (if it has a single centralized governance) or undergo denominational selection that ends up selecting for attributes that aren't the ones we really want (basically what's already going on right now). Given those limitations, UU might be the best option out there if it has some favorable attributes that others don't. Specifically, in a system where people build their own doctrine, it might be allowable and perhaps even encouraged to (gasp!) have experts come in and talk openly about the merits and limitations of things that although not strictly religious are nonetheless often considered in the domain of religion like {evolutionary theory, the practical consequences of outlawing vs allowing abortion, and the degree of sex education and access to contraceptives that kids should have} so people can make informed decisions on them. Seeksit, does such sort of discussion on those types of issues openly happen in UU, or is it more like your traditional church fare presented in such a way that people can appreciate it regardless of their own personal views? It was a little unclear just how much is set by the church and how much is set by each individual parishioner since you also mentioned things like some congregations being more Jesus-friendly than others. And do UU-ers get held accountable for the doctrine they build, or can they still believe whatever they want and expect to not have to defend it? If either of those answers are unfavorable then we might have to correct them with a takeover by Uberfaith or 0mnifaith corp. I may be going way out on a limb here since I have absolutely no evidence to support this hypothesis, but I suspect that individual people making their own such decisions and being held accountable to justify their views would produce far better results than churches that are able to claim that they carry the word of God and expect to go more-or-less unquestioned. Of course we reserve the right to change our minds and rewrite the future of humanity if we do come up with a better solution like a well-controlled authoritarian church. Which is a distinct possibility seeing as how octopuppy just pwned the x-or Randomcant puzzle.

Edit: Nevermind...

Oh, I would advise having a text editor like Notepad open with a fixed-width font. Copying the game board into Notepad, adding your line (and initials if you score), and then pasting it back into the message will make sure that everything is aligned. Otherwise I don't know of any way to keep everything aligned while it's in the editor's window. Also, there's a button on the top-middle part of the editor window that says "Wrap in code tags". I suggest that you copy the board into the editor, highlight the whole thing, and then click that button.

That's it! I'm not sure why the spoilers weren't working for you. Were you able to get a box to pop up when you clicked "Insert: Spoiler" on the box to the left in the editor? If not, maybe it's a browser issue. Afraid I can't help out much with that.

'fraid we've not got it yet.

Hey dude, surf's up! Go catch a few waves They're coming at you, gifts that I gave Contort around and maybe get spun You might look daft, but all in good fun I'll gaze upon you shrouded in veil And move with such exacting detail Confined inside a massive black bowl My heart beats strong to give you your soul So who am I, and where might I be? Don't bother looking under the sea Nor fly to space, I'm not over there Indeed, I am terrestrial fare

Whoops, I just re-read the OP and realized I don't have the choice of not taking either cup. In that case, since I don't have the option of leaving the contents of cup B for the Seer, I'll leave at least cup A. That might mean I end up taking the million bucks from him/her, but I guess I don't have any choice over that anyway.

Brilliant move, octopuppy! An implementation need not be too convoluted. So who wrote the riddle, prof?

The "hold your breath so E won't die" line is giving me fits, but maybe this is an explanation

The Seer would know that I'm a sweet and loving and caring person and that I realize that if I took a million bucks then that would mean the Seer would be out a million bucks. And since we somehow know that the Seer is an emissary of all that we hold dearest and sacredest (or whatever) then I would gladly give up the money (which would only corrupt me anyway) to see it in the hands of the Seer and put to the loftiest of uses.

You mean show the whole thing without a scrollbar? Yes, you'll just need to use a "code" tag instead of the "codebox" tag (that the Quick Access box on your left has) so it won't have scrollbars. Just make a Codebox and delete "box" from the bracketed tag. If that's not what you're talking about, I'm not sure what kind of deformity you mean. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Edit: Argh, rIDdLEmynaME had me beat by a second!

You mean it's pronounced frail-ty and not fra-il-ty? Oh noes! Regardless, Jazz man nailed the answer to the deformed mutant Haiku.

Light scorches my skin. Baptize me. Holy water, Fix my frailty. (With props to peaceBONE for developing concept of Haiku riddle)