Brutal Legend summed up in 2 letters and 1 word.

Stfu fagwin.

Liar, yu aren't a vegetarian and you don't have a girlfriend.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

If that was a subtle hint about your XBL game and Flytrap, you'll have to bear with me :p I've been working past midnight all week. Been to the frontpage recently?

Edwin


If that was a subtle hint about your XBL game and Flytrap, you'll have to bear with me :p I've been working past midnight all week. Been to the frontpage recently?

yep

Edwin

Hope my girlfriend isn't reading this. She's vegan. She out-ranks me, in other words.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

Nice to see kikizo got a new name, one that makes sense and might stick in peoples heads. Also I like the fpsgamer spin-off site, too. Adam, you did good, old bean. And edwin, your new picture makes my heart race:

I dont want to celebrate, I want to sell you hate.

why are the forums still called kikizo

Before anybody asks Adam did that picture - I'm not quite as narcissistic as that... ;)

Glad you like the new network, dan. The forums are still being updated as per Adam's last post in the "Kikizo future" thread. All feedback welcome. Thanks for hanging with us over the past few months.

Fear not, loco - I'll blog LOLRunner next week.

Adam likes run-of-the-mill monochromatic games with Space Marines?

Edwin


Before anybody asks Adam did that picture - I'm not quite as narcissistic as that... ;)

Glad you like the new network, dan. The forums are still being updated as per Adam's last post in the "Kikizo future" thread. All feedback welcome. Thanks for hanging with us over the past few months.

Fear not, loco - I'll blog LOLRunner next week.

Are you really a vegetarian?

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

Yes. And my girlfriend's vegan. Not everything I write on Flytrap is complete cobblers :p

Do you watch movies or look at pictures that were taken on film?  Film = gelatin emulsion which = animal byproducts.  If you watch movies or look at pictures you are MURDERING poor, defenseless animals who only want to be loved.  :(

And by brushing my teeth last night I murdered millions upon millions of poor, defenseless bacteria. By waking up this morning, having breakfast and getting on with my life rather than starving myself to death I'm diverting land, oxygen, water and food from hundreds of living creatures. :(

I'm not sure it's possible to exist without killing something, directly or indirectly, especially in these globalised times when any given product is likely to consist of parts from several sources in several countries, each with their own ethical code or lack thereof. The best you can do (not that I'm doing my "best", I admit) is minimise the damage you inflict.
Thanks for the heads-up on gelatin and film-making. Just had a quick look on Wikipedia and there don't seem to be any effective substitutes. DVD cam all the way?

The new look is great and the name should be more marketable.

"This is sad. There's no other word for it. The person who invents a way to punch someone in the face over the Internet will make millions from the demand generated by people like this." Youtube comments

Edwin, what if the movie was shot on film?  You will be enjoying a movie that caused many animal deaths, thereby directly supporting and encouraging animal murder.  Animals only want to be our friends and to be hugged, not murdered.

Cheers, Ghost. Will any of you people be making your comments thread debuts soon, or are you too l33t to mingle with the frequent fliers on the frontpage? :p

Joe - is it me, or did you just repeat your previous post with a few words switched around?

No, I responded to your assessment that you'll have to download/pirate the movies, but that won't stop the movies themselves from having been originated on film.  So the ONLY way to make the animals happy is to avoid 85% of new movies and ALL old movies.

But I didn't say anything about downloading or pirating movies getting round the gelatin issue totally - I accept the point that in watching most movies I'm bringing about animal deaths, however indirectly. Hopefully DVD cam will become the industry standard sooner rather than later.

Again, "pure" vegetarianism - living without causing any harm to animals whatsoever - seems to me an unworkable ideal. In choosing not to eat meat, however, I *am* sparing a number of living creatures from what is arguably a needless death. It's not an unshakeable ethical position, but what is?

I guess I don't know what you mean by "DVD cam".  "Cam" is a word for how the movie was pirated, by a camcorder.  Then I assume you burned it to DVD.  Real theaters to not use DVD players to present movies, and movies are not shot on camcorders direct-to-DVD even when shot digitally.

As for being vegetarian to spare animal lives, WGAF?  They're just animals.  If you are doing it because it makes you feel healthier, then more power to ya!

Is killing animals wrong in the first place?  We could argue about the ethics (not to be confused with morality) all day, my feelings has always been that i don't give a fuck about animals.  But I can recognize that if there are such a thing as objective ethics then they would have nothing to do with my emotions.  I always say emotions are fallible, they never describe truth.  In the back of my mind I've been trying to justify my position ethically. 

I've never felt as though humanity had any sort of intrinsic responsibility towards preserving life, not that its even possible anyways.  Preserving life, more like delaying death.  With humans I get it.  Killing people is accepted as being wrong out of self interest.  We don't want to be killed so we've agreed that killing is wrong.  Some of us also care about other humans.  So if someone kills my friend I'm a victim.

If I kill someone that no one knows, and no one knew about the murder.  Is there a victim?  Can someone be dead and still be a victim?  Think about it. 

When we kill animals, they don't know they're on the chopping blocks until a few seconds before we axe them.  No human should feel threatened when we kill other animals for food.  Once they're dead they are no longer victims.  Death relieves you of the victim status.  Otherwise we'd have an endless list of victims.  The word would lose meaning.

That being said it goes without saying that a person has every right to be a vegetarian if they wish.  I just think the animal right argument is very weak.  You won't convince many people with that one.  The better argument against meat is the health reasons.  When you look at the hormones and shit they pump into the meat it can make your stomach turn.  Another thing is the environmental conserns.  People are talking about cutting vehicle emissions but the methane cows fart into the air is just as bad.

http://animals.howstuffworks.com/mammals/methane-cow.htm

The other big consideration is economics.  If we didn't subsidize meat, we would have no meat.  When you back up and look at how we have huge crops just to feed our food, its pretty laughable. The inefficiency is insulting when a billion people are starving.

But I'm a selfish bastard so I'll still eat my steak.

"This is sad. There's no other word for it. The person who invents a way to punch someone in the face over the Internet will make millions from the demand generated by people like this." Youtube comments

While I fully support eating meat, I don't support animal cruelty, and I don't consider killing an animal to eat it as cruelty unless its a drawn out painful. I can't really explain it, but dead people or watching people suffer doesn't bother me, but hurt a kitten and I go into rage mode.

I dont want to celebrate, I want to sell you hate.

Killing animals to eat them isn't unethical, we are apex predators, it's what we do.

It's like bitching about a wolf pack or lion killing a person or eachother for trespassing in their territory, that's how they function, get over it, stfu.

Our role in nature isn't to be pretty butterflies spreading happiness and sunshine, we're supposed to kill shit.

Joe: By DVD cam I mean shooting films on DVD, as in 28 Days Later. Am quite possibly using the wrong term :p

Agent: Sorry, but I don't agree with some of that. Arguing the perception point is a neat way of dismissing the whole issue, but take it to the furthest extreme and you no longer have solid ground to stand on, ethically and epistemologically speaking. Unless you're psychologically damaged, I don't think it's possible to live according to the dictum that what is out of mind, be it a dying animal, person or whatever, no longer exists and is thus no longer relevant to ethics.

"When we kill animals, they don't know they're on the chopping blocks until a few seconds before we axe them."

Unless of course they've had their claws, wattles and beaks burned off without anaesthetic, crammed a dozen at a time into cages barely large enough to admit a single bird, forcefed in darkness and the stench of their own shit for six months before being finally disposed of in electric baths. Try reading up on factory farming once in a while :) Whether animals can recall and analyse past experiences in relation to future ones is open to debate, and thus so is the issue of their "victimhood" (if we agree with your suggestion that "victimhood" is a quality thinking creatures assign others, not independent from the observer's predilections) but it's safe to assume chickens subjected to such experiences are aware we don't intend them much good.

Useful points about the economy, subsidies and climate concerns.

"It's like bitching about a wolf pack or lion killing a person or eachother for trespassing in their territory, that's how they function, get over it, stfu."

Wolves and lions aren't mindless killing machines, and nor are we. If we have certain instincts or simply enjoy the taste of meat, we can overcome these urges. Arguing otherwise is like saying that brunettes should never dye their hair blonde, or that you shouldn't wear clothes, because it isn't "natural".

Clothes are natural, they are tools, any tool is natural for humans, we are designed to use them, hence our mental and physical dexterity that allows us to use them.  A blonde dying her hair is driven by instinct to be attractive, it is also natural, they are using a tool to achieve this as we do for absolutely everything we do, you can't take a shit without using a tool.

Using a tool is only human, perhaps, but which tools we use and how we use them is a question of choice. Making yourself attractive might be considered a "natural" urge, dying your hair blonde can be attributed to personal preference.

Can you, emofag, choose not to eat meat? Right.

I can choose to kill you, what's your point?

Of course we can choose to not eat meat.  Would the world be a better place if everyone made that choice?  Not likely.

emofag


I can choose to kill you, what's your point?

The point is you need to eat, but you don't need to eat meat.

There are several reasons why the world would be a better place if people didn't eat meat, Joe - for starters, the US wouldn't be blowing (as of 2002) over 300 million hectares on feed crops and pasturing for slaughterhouse animals - but it's not really a question of general social benefit, economic consequence, etc with me. I just don't like needless suffering.

Just remember that animals aren't humans.  They don't suffer the same way.  Chicken who grow up in cages don't know any different.  I doubt they are suffering or longing to go outside and "roam free".  I don't like animal cruelty, though, such as kicking or punching them, etc.  Cows don't know that they are about to die until they are already dead.  Once they are dead they don't even go to cow heaven because there is no cow God or cow Jesus.

Edwin are you suggesting that ethics are not purely subjective? 

"This is sad. There's no other word for it. The person who invents a way to punch someone in the face over the Internet will make millions from the demand generated by people like this." Youtube comments

Vegans are like wannabe humanitarian activists, they're like "fuck it, helping people is too hard, I can just sit on my ass eating rice and act like I'm doing good"

Emo: Ridiculous. The vegans and vegetarians I know are equally if not more disposed to campaign on humanitarian issues than their carnivorous peers.

Agent: the idea that ethics is purely subjective may be accurate - not that we're in a position to comment conclusively here, as total subjectivity somewhat paradoxically precludes the identification of "totalities" - but I'm not sure it's all that helpful or constructive. Human beings tend towards generalities, towards the notion of common truths, principles, behavioural norms, etc. I don't think we're "built" to believe in the utter uniqueness of our perceptions and judgements, and as such meta-ethical arguments against objectivity exist, like the concept of objectivity itself, in a theoretical bubble. I prefer to work *within* ethics, to assume that there *are* moral constants, perhaps borne from a mixture of sensibility, self-interest and natural cooperative instinct, and to devote my intellectual time to identifying and assessing them.

Much of the above is off the top of my head, so there are doubtless problems with my reasoning :p

Joe: We can't speak of what animals (or for that matter other humans) think with complete confidence, but the diverse and complex behaviours of cows and chickens suggest that they're more than automatons. The fact that humanity is descended from one "sort" (need to find the correct jargon here) of animal and is capable of forming relationships with many others is further evidence to the effect that animals share traits - and thus "natural" rights - with human beings.

Are you one of those freaky people who doesn't even believe in pet ownership?  That's PETA's stance.  PETA is just a bunch of terrorists, though.

I don't know enough about PETA to comment, really, but I'm not against pet ownership. That's a whole other issue though, and I've just had a few glasses of wine. :s

Edwin

Joe: We can't speak of what animals (or for that matter other humans) think with complete confidence, but the diverse and complex behaviours of cows and chickens suggest that they're more than automatons. The fact that humanity is descended from one "sort" (need to find the correct jargon here) of animal and is capable of forming relationships with many others is further evidence to the effect that animals share traits - and thus "natural" rights - with human beings.

That's just BS, we already don't eat most of the smarter species capable of these "relationships" dolphins, apes, canines, etc.  stfu.  And no chickens aren't capable of any complex behaviors, you moron.

Spoken by a man who evidently hasn't kept chickens and hasn't been to China or Japan ;)

Anyway: games. I'm reviewing Assassin's Creed 2 next (no I don't get to review MW2 because GRHGGHGGRGGH). Which areas would you chaps like me to address in particular, if any?

Actually I travel to China on a monthly basis for work and my grand mother used to raise chickens, you don't know what you're talking about.

not that we're in a position to comment conclusively here, as total subjectivity somewhat paradoxically precludes the identification of "totalities"...

fuck off   lol


When we're talking about absolutes and objective morality.  The first thing that comes to my mind is the ideas of determinism.  If the conditions in which we base our decisions exits before we make and the variables which our decision making is based on are also deterministic.  Where does choice fit in?  If everything we do is determinable, do we even make choices? 

Ethics are based on values.  Those are based on experience, chemical makeup of the brain, intelligence etc.  If ethics exist purely inside the human brain... Its like the old saying "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound"?

What happens to the Universe when we're extinct?  A Universe without ethics.  I don't think the Universe would give a fuck.

I'll agree that there are ideals.  Its ideal to not have suffering.  Because we feel pain, and we've marked it as not ideal.  Some people are compassionate and can relate to lesser animals.  You can't really say that animals not suffering is absolutely ideal though.  I happen to value a good steak.  Not having steak causes me more pain that knowing a cow got her skull bashed in for it.  So that's one value in which my food ethics are based on.

But if you don't value a good steak or even a burger more than the value of avoiding causing suffering then its easy to say you're being more ethical by eating a salad.  You could say the burden of ethics are placed on the people with emotional and intellectual sensitivities towards certain values.

If you went into a room full of developmentally challenged kids and they're throwing chairs all over the place and smearing shit and the walls.  You can't really expect more from them, they're fucking retarded.  Of course they won't have the same behavioral standard that we place on ourselves.  Things that we consider unethical, they wouldn't even perceive.  This has been addressed already but it paints a picture of a continuum that has objective lines.  We place the lines wherever we're comfortable placing them.  Ethics are nothing more than a security blanket in my eyes. 

I do believe in an objective right and wrong but we have no ability to know what that is.  I'm sure Hitlers parents thought they were doing the world a favor by raising their son.  But if they knew he'd be a real bastard maybe they would have thought twice.  A perceived negative action can have positive results, and a positive action can have negative results.  Things we do affect the whole world, and the effects last for years and years.  The action itself is really insignificant.  Its the consequences that hold the weight of what we do. 

We can't even predict tomorrows weather.  How do we know if we're causing good or harm in the long term?

 

"This is sad. There's no other word for it. The person who invents a way to punch someone in the face over the Internet will make millions from the demand generated by people like this." Youtube comments

Indeed, I'm not sure that we can. The words I type today may be the byproduct of my mother's indigestion 25 years ago, which in turn may indirectly result from some long-dead Irishman's decision to eat hare rather than lamb on Sundays because his grandmother told him lamb was the devil's food, which could itself stem from the way light touched a certain rock on a certain day in the Jurassic era. And all this may be very much of a muchness to the man with cerebral palsy sitting opposite me in the library, and very, very much of a muchness once my synapses go black, this domain space is retired and everything I've ever thought or done disintegrates.

And yet somehow I fail to give a fuck for such speculations when confronted with the idea that something living might die in considerable pain so that I can gratify my own tastebuds... :) - much, it seems, as you're prepared to let your scepticism lapse when it comes to the "ideal" of minimised suffering. As I wrote earlier, I don't think human beings are configured to be "subjectivists" -what you call a "security blanket" is fundamental to the way we perceive and reflect on reality. We can't "remove" it any more than we can see out the back of our own heads.

emo:

Have you tried dog on your travels? I hear dolphin's very good too. And you obviously didn't pay much attention to your grandmother's chickens.

I doubt you feel that much when your head is lopped off.  Maybe some very brief dizziness as everything begins to fade, and even that only takes a few seconds at most.  Have you ever gotten cut or hit really bad?  It takes at least a few seconds if not more before you start to feel the pain.  Sometimes you don't really feel the pain until you know you've been cut.  My point is that I doubt those delicious animals feel or even realize anything as they are being slaughtered.  And boy are they delicious!