Roderick

Haha, precious =)

2008 was a great year for superheroes. Iron Man was fantastic, The Dark Knight a great movie, a semi-masterpiece, and even The Hulk was... Wait, The Hulk was amazingly throwaway. Hellboy 2 was pretty neat as well. So, the colourful things, while maybe not of the calibre of a There Will Be Blood, were definitely represented. 2009 starts very interestingly with things like Milk, Doubt, Frost/Nixon and some other things I want to see. Valkyrie among them, though I expect it to be shit, with a shallow Von Stauffenberg by that insufferable fanatic Cruise. Unfortunately, he is also a damn fine actor, so it may still be good. Err, also, the insanely charming Dutch actress Carice van Houten is in it as well, and she kicks major ass.

Can't have enough of that ole skulduggery! Right next to the dirty pool. Chicanery!

Guys, this was just absolutely hilarious, between the Kaz Hirai stuff, and the ad libs and the works. Great work, this podcast is totally faithful and committed to being supreme. I listen to it while drawing, by the way. It's great stuff during work. I don't work naked. Though I could, if I wanted to. Would freak out my coworkers, but there you have it.

Aye, but a particularly in-character and subtle lampshade! Nice episode by the way. Good to see Tom Zarek again (I met him in real life!), though I kinda had hoped him to be one of the 'good guys' now. Pity that Baltar is in preachin-mode again. And a shocker of an ending!

I'd say, convert your possibly useless money into actual, valuable goods real soon, then Once I get a little bit of cash in the next ten years, I'm going to buy a nice apple garden somewhere, so that can at least provide for some food in the event of the apocalypse, you know

Things are bad, and I'm no economist by a long run, but these things always go in waves. We've had a good period, now we're in the down, an in a few years it'll be good again. All we have to do is weather the storm, and it'll be good again, and maybe next time we'll be a little smarter and prepare a little better for the inevitable next fall.

You mean quadro-spazzed on a life-glug.

Haha, that crazy magician =) Kingz! How've you been?

Meh, whatever it is it does look pretty spiffy, so my point stands

That is a man of repellent aspect! It's horrible that such good setdressing and camera work gets wasted on shit like this. Though it does give us a good laugh.

Finally came round to listening to the podcast, and it's really good! Congrats, guys. It strikes a great balance between those three distinct chats, none of which are too long or unentertaining. I'd like to see you pursue this format some more. And Rusalka's presence is excellent, more Pokémon talks!

They released a '10 things you have to know about BSG' special that kind of rephrases the most important things, for new people to get into the show, or faithfuls to pick up the biggest lines again. I mostly agree with Jake on this. It's become a narrative mess, but it's still highly enjoyable. I'm most saddened by Baltar's diminshed, weird arc as of late. Hopefully this last arc of 10 episodes will make everything alright. The promise is there, so... let's do this thing!

You know, I'm not really that interested in predicting stuff or trying to guess what it really is. I'd much rather just watch and see what unfolds, and be surprised and everything. The episode was great. To see all that devastation among the crew, and all those deaths and desillusioned...

If Microsoft were to release a Blu-ray player on their machine, I'd buy the upgrade immediately and be done with the whole struggle of whether to buy a PS3 altogether.

I'm having the same uncertainty on how to approach religion, with the same feelings after seeing Religulous, Bill Maher's documentary/comedy. On the one hand, polarising the groups is a bad idea, that never works. On the other hand, bending over backwards is a horrible idea as well. A safe road is to always have proper scientific arguments and logical common sense ones, and don't fight them, but discuss and argue in an instructional way. Whatever 'we're' doing, it's for future generations, not for this one. Hardcore religious people won't be persuaded, ever, no matter how clear your case is.

Atheism may be or become a community, which is perfectly fine and harmless, but it'll never be a religion, unless they start adding rituals and an element of faith to it. Atheism isn't about faith; you don't have 'faith' in the non-existence of god. It's a conclusion you draw out of the absolute lack of scientific evidence and an apparently uncommon amount of common sense within you. But your problem with grouping, Elmuerte, you'll find everywhere, with any sort of aspect of life where a community might form. Just because I'm a gamer, doesn't mean I associate with the sort of attitude wide-spread over the internet. Yet I wouldn't let a few preconceptions rob the term gamer away from me. And Atheism, especially in the Netherlands, is quite the neutral term nowadays. Only old people fuss over it.

The webisodes (and honestly, I had to write webepisodes, webodes and webosodes before I arrived at the correct term there) can be viewed on Youtube without much difficulty. Yes! Next week the final final season starts! OMFG! After that the wait begins for whatever miniseries or movie they'll make of it. I really hope at some point there'll be the 'ultimate BSG collection' on Blu-Ray or whatever, just like they did with Babylon 5. The Babylon 5 collector's box is just amazingly complete, with all 5 seasons, Crusade, the pilot and three movies. That's the sort of stuff I wanna see! Also, Where's my wooden ship?

The amazing thing is that one of the stand-out titles of this generation, to me, still remains Assassin's Creed. Despite all its flaws (fuck, I don't even OWN it, I've just played a shitload on other people's consoles), it's the atmosphere and the visuel next-gen polish that really does it for me. It seemed like such a novel type of game, with the subtle control scheme, masses of people on the street, lush atmosphere in a setting that wasn't explored really well yet... superb. On the topic of buying consoles; I fear that at one point I still may buy a PS3, even though that'd be more for the Blu-Ray player than anything else. There's still dismally little I really want to play on the PS3, besides LBP. Everything else that's interesting is usually available on the 360 as well, which defeats the purpose of buying any other console. Note that I'm not giving preference to one over the other in any fanboyish way. The 360 is to me the more interesting console because of the array of games that have been brought out on it, but even it doesn't see a lot of play anymore nowadays. The DS, however, continues to shine.

Yes, in the past year there've been more than one instance where it was all uncertain where things would go, and R&R are always expected to have something else up their sleeve, but it would seem Consolevania, for now, is gone. The Second wave saw some heavy delays, and in truth it never managed to capture the raw awesomeness of CV back in the day of John Gacy, Hitler and El Zomba. It does sadden me a bit to see them leave on what appears to be a burnout, since they were pretty negative about their past accomplishments; lamenting the perceived view on them from the public as 'people who're good at destroying games' in their reviews. While that was never what, I assume, most of us thought of them. They were always witty, charming, sharp but fair. Their biggest boon was their unique take on things, a perspective that saw them going against the general current on lots of games. And whenever they were ruthless, they had a good point. Fuck off, Batman! It was their thing, and they did it well, and it's a shame they seem embarrassed about it. That said, they've had a huge run if you look at the stuff they produced. As it stands, I'm incredibly glad they were able to make so many beautiful things. Especially Videogaiden series 2 was beyond excellent and stands as the best gaming tv ever made. I hope to see them again some day, doing something they love, without compromise or restraint.

The in-browser spell-check is your confidant. Also, language can be beautiful in its own right. I shudder at the idea of using language only as a tool to communicate ideas. Case in point: http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=hHQ2756cyD8

Wait, that's not a real spider... It only has seven legs. I feel that spiders wouldn't make such an elementary mistake.

Of course bacteria are alive. They are made up of cells just like we are. I do agree that the level of consciousness is a good measuring tool, if we must have one. But to decide what? Why not measure the suffering you cause at the hand of how developed the nervous system of the animal is, which ultimately dictates their capacity to feel pain? Consciousness is a tricky point of discussion. It's a by-product of our evolved brain, but does that make us better? Cheetahs are a hell of a lot faster than humans. Elephants have longer noses. They are better in that respect. In the 'nose' department. So classifications are a bit old-fashioned class-based thinking. Also, the karma police is out the get me!

Well, that's already a song. But this one (minus the opening song, which I notice is unfortunately in the way)... would be awesome. http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=y7jVnrfoZD8

James, some good answers there. I agree with basically everything you said =) I also think that people can get accustomed to just about everything, which is precisely why it might be such a luxury to not have to kill, either animals or each other. The killing instinct isn't in us very much, we've left that to an increasingly tinier group of people who will take that burden for us. I have no problem killing a mosquito of course. And there's a real gradient of animals lined up that we empathise less and less with. Monkeys and mammals are, to our feelings, very familiar. After that come fish and birds, then insects and anything from Attenborough's undergrowth. What Yufster explains is the philosophical ideal: we are no better or worse than any other creature. But that doesn't hold true for our feelings, which do uphold a hierarchy. Every creature has one, and it starts with himself.