Lothic

Yeah like I predicted the Doctor didn't survive the episode. I didn't know exactly how he was going to die, but I knew the whole point of this episode was going to be just as a quick rest stop for the campers and a means to get a little bit of info about what caused the zombie apocalypse. On that level this episode delivered exactly what I figured it would.

I also figured TS-19 was going to be emotionally related to Dr. J. I didn't see the wife angle, but still I somehow figured there was going to be some element of tragic suicide/sacrifice related to why he stayed there by himself.

My guess is that most people watching this show don't know anything about real life grenades. Basically it was a plot device to have a cool connection back to an earlier episode and to serve as a means to get out of the building in a dramatic way. Good enough for me.

I'm really glad they gave us that little flashback scene. It really helped to clarify the whole Shane/Rick/Lori triangle. We know that Shane told Lori he thought Rick was dead, but until now we didn't know whether he was actively being deceptive about that or not. It's cool to see he truly wanted to save Rick even though he couldn't.

I think what we'll find is that Shane really does consider Rick a good friend and doesn't want to kill him. But I'm guessing there's a whole multi-year back story between these three people. I'll bet they all went to high school together and I'm guessing Shane has had feelings for Lori for a long time, even long before she married Rick. I think this is why Shane "moved in" on Lori so quickly after they both figured Rick was dead. Again I don't think Shane wanted Rick to be killed in the hospital, but after Shane realistically assumed he was dead he suddenly realized that his dream of being with Lori (which he had to suppress for so long) could instantly become a reality.

Shane is having (understandable) problems putting his desire for Lori back on hold now that Rick has returned. He has jealous feelings because he sees that his long repressed dream of being with her got a teasing chance to happen but then ungratefully denied. That kind of thing can drive a person loopy.

So while Shane's attempted r-ape of Lori was very bad move on his part I can still have a bit of sympathy for him because he is being driven by emotions that are almost out of his control. Shane simultaneously cares for Rick as a close friend but hates him for indirectly denying the life and family he really wants. Clearly there will be some kind of confrontation between Shane and Rick in the next season. If Shane can't control his jumbled emotions I can see the possibility where either Rick, Shane or both of them will come to a violent end over this.

I didn't mind the ending all that much. Sure the special effects of the explosion were a bit silly, but I'm honestly not watching this show to see cutting-edge visuals. I'll let the multi-hundred million dollar blockbuster movies handle that. Like I mentioned before I knew this CDC building was going to be destroyed one way of the other. I halfway assumed the zombies were going to find a way in, but an explosion served the purpose well enough and gave them a chance to have some dramatic moments between the life and death choices people made.

This season finale kept me interested in this show just enough that I'll probably give the second season a chance.
Ultimately that's all it really could expect to hope for from me.

I actually think you and I agree on this topic in principle. I just really can't agree with (or barely understand) the way you tried to explain it. Sorry about that - it could be as much my fault as it is yours. *shrugs*

Your use of the words Fact and Theory and how those terms relate to whether things Exist or how much we Know about them are very jumbled. You've mixed so many non-scientific uses of these words and concepts together that it makes my head hurt a little.

Just to this push a tad farther it would obviously be nice if Dark Matter/Energy could be considered a proven "fact". But even if it never gets to that point it can (and does) still serve a very valuable purpose for theoretical science. The fact that it's not a "fact" in the way you'd want it to be really doesn't matter all that much in the grand scheme of things.

*raises glass to Dark Matter/Energy*

I've played the game for 78 months and have started (and finished) hundreds, if not thousands of story arcs in that time. Pretty much everything you said has "occurred" to me. And as far the Devs "changing the rules midways" goes the only recent change they actually (and ironically) made was that they RAISED the number of arcs players can have open back in Issue 17.

Exactly how much more are the Devs expected to do here? Like I said I wouldn't hate it if the Devs gave us a "drop arc" feature. I'm just suggesting there are ample ways to avoid that situation and because the Devs already expanded the number of arcs we can have open fairly recently it's not very likely they are going to do any more in this area anytime soon regardless. *shrugs*

It might not seem intuitive (for something that's supposed to make relogging quicker) but this feature might need to have like a 3 second delay timer applied to it just so it has enough time to finish logging us out first.

I'm not asking to see MORE detail about other players than we used to be able to.
I didn't say anything about wanting numbers.

I'm asking that we not LOSE features we've had for years.
I want KEEP the ability to see what we've be able to see for 10+ issues.
I think there IS a point to wanting to keep something we've pretty much had all along. *shrugs*

I wish I could say I haven't seen Highlander 2.
But I think they invented that phrase "You can't un-see what you've already seen" just for that movie.

You have to realize that there's a difference between the strict scientific use of the word "theory" as opposed to the more general layman's definition of it.

For instance even though we all can agree that there's this force called gravity keeping us from floating off into space it's still considered the "theory" of gravity in the strictest scientific sense because it's not really something we can prove with absolute certainty. We simply just have a very large amount of circumstantial evidence to support its "existence". Same when you correctly refer to the theory of evolution. We've got a lot of evidence to be fairly sure it "exists" but since it's not something a scientist can actually test in a lab to PROVE its existence we have to be willing accept its circumstantial existence based on the evidence at hand.

There's also a significant difference between "theoretical" physics and "experimental" physics. Until we can build starships and go flying off around the universe to put bits of it under a microscope and PROVE it we will always have to rely on the work of theoretical scientists who help provide working concepts and frameworks to make sense of the physical evidence we do have. There is absolutely nothing wrong with "believing" in the theories of Dark Matter/Energy because based on the work of both theoretical and experimental physicist it best explains (right now) what we see in the universe.

Now do I think the current theories of Dark Matter/Energy are the definitive answer to the nature of the universe? No, it's quite likely that our understanding will improve and the theories will change. But you can't dismiss the current "best fit" theory just because you don't like it. You have to show real evidence for why it doesn't work. If you're only really certain about the NEXT theory (because you're sure the current one is bad) how are you ever going to be able to build on the current understanding and progress to the next step? At the end of the day you have to believe in something, and as far as I'm concerned I'd rather believe in the current working theories as a starting point than what, theories that haven't even been dreamt up yet that clearly refute Dark Matter/Energy?

Again I have no problem with the idea of someone coming up with theories that are better than Dark Matter/Energy.
But until someone does that I'm willing to stick with the best we have at the moment.

That's a good point that I forgot about. Not only are "heroes-turned-villain" missing out on potential respec badges but we are also potentially locked out from doing other content because we can't unlock a contact.

That simply adds more weight to the case that this situation needs to be fixed in a reasonably timely manner.

Somehow the idea of the game managing AFK players via "moving" them around with slippery terrains is funny to me.
I'm not totally sure it would be practical, but it is a clever idea.

I'm not strictly against your suggestion because I tend to favor the idea of giving players more control over things like this. But to be perfectly fair one could ask why you left so many arcs unfinished in the first place. I agree it's too bad the game has a hard limit on the number of arcs you can have open at any one time. But I suspect the reason that limit doesn't affect most people like it did you is that most people regularly work through their arcs and clear them out before they start new ones.

Maybe this situation is really more a "lesson learned" for you than it is a need for the Devs to give us a feature relatively few people would ever need to use.

Yeah I might be interested in a film about the Threes Stooges if it was done like a "behind the scenes" drama about their real lives while they were making their movies. But if they seriously just try to "reboot" the characters and effectively remake a modern-day version of a Three Stooges movie then I think that would be pretty sad. It's not that I didn't like their humor (in small doses) but I just don't think it's going to translate well to modern audiences unless they morph it into some variation of the Jackass movies.

Healthy debate and skepticism about the current fundamental theories of a scientific field is one thing.

But if as you say you are working on a physics/astronomy degree and you flatly disagree (and even outright assume) that the currently widely accepted theories of Dark Matter/Energy must be wrong because they don't "seem" right to you because they don't match up to your everyday experiences then frankly I worry about your ability to apply that degree in any reasonable fashion. Yours is almost like a fireman in training who doesn't believe in the existence of fire.

You mention the idea that over time different scientific theories have come and gone as our level of understanding about things has improved. Do you really think that whatever they eventually come up with to replace Dark Matter/Energy is going to make any MORE sense to you? I suspect it'll be, if anything, that much more fantastic as far as you're concerned.

Also you claim "every scientist I've ever known wants concrete evidence of something before they accept it, which is why this wide-spread acceptance of dark matter by the scientific community baffles me". Apply that reasoning to something like the theory of evolution. It's taken well over 100 years of pain staking work of thousands of scientists to slowly amass the evidence to effectively prove that theory. Thankfully even though Darwin barely had any concrete evidence (compared to what we have now) to support his theory he still decided to work on it because it was the best thing he had to work with at the time. The collective theories of Dark Matter/Energy have only been around for several decades - I'm quite willing to let the experts continue to collect the evidence to prove (or disprove) it and I have no delusions that they'll have it solved by next week, if ever.

Feel free to come up with something better to explain what we see in the universe today.
Hurry up now, I can't wait all day...

Two quick points:

A) According to the expectations of those Dark Matter experiments you mentioned the scientists involved actually expected they'd only get 2 or 3 detections given the amount of time they were taking samples, and the ones they got fell within the expected thresholds that would rule them out as any other known type of matter.

B) Many respected physicists around the world either accept or at least don't strongly refute the theories of Dark Matter/Energy based on several decades of worth of work. Now obviously at some point in the future new theories might be devised that better reflect the nature of the observed universe, but until that happens it's hard to dismiss out of hand the combined knowledge and acceptance of the world's top cosmologists. I don't know what YOUR background is to be more credible in your beliefs than they are, but I'm willing to give the experts the benefit of the doubt here.

Now if they'll just admit the answer is 42...

Uhmm, did you actually read what I said before you responded to my post?

I said Dark Matter and Dark Energy are pretty much accepted. Still somewhat theoretical, but at least the theory behind them is much more widely accepted than the possibility of practical warp drives. How many warp drives do we have stored in warehouses waiting to be fitted to starships right now?

Ironically based on our current understandings things like Dark Matter and Dark Energy are closer to being generally accepted by the scientific community as real things than the idea of a warp drive. Of course we would probably have real warp drive long before we have any technology that could make use of Dark Energy/Matter - thus the humor of my statement.

Weren't Star Trek Tholians supposed to be silicon based? After all Star Trek is a SCIENCE-fiction show... Doesn't that have enough SCIENCE in it to be taken as established certainity?