Trinkets, Odds and Ends, That Sort of Thing

Skyrim quote. What? Repeating the random, obvious thing the general-goods vendors say does too count as a quote!

Random thoughts, of course.

• Mea culpa. Or, perhaps more appropriately, "Unahzaal krosis." Turns out, Arngeir never really quits telling you where to find Word Walls; I had just got hung up finding one of the words (it was hard, okay?) and so he stopped telling me where to find them, because they only tell you where to find one Word at a time. It is just possible that, after you defeat Alduin (which I have), they start telling you new word-walls again, but I think the first explanation is more likely.
  
  I take back wishing that the Jarls all become Protestants and loot your monastery, Arnie, it was a heated moment. But seriously, did Borri, Einorth, and Wulfgar take vows of silence-except-in-Dovah? 'Cause I don't think it'd kill 'em to talk to me in Tamrielic (yes, yes, "English"—but there's no England on Nirn, the lucky bastards, though the Thalmor do their damnedest to take up the "incredibly evil island nation" slack; so obviously what sounds like English is Translation Convention). Wulfgar actually, at least, seems to have taken it a step further; he only talks to Shout.


• Shifting gears, the obvious parallel to the HHS mandate's contraception requirements, is the tax imposed by the Roman Empire after the Bar Kokhba rebellion. You know, when they forced the defeated Jews to fund the building of a temple to Jupiter?
  
  Some mouthbreathing halfwit named Terry, commenting on Creative Minority Report, claimed not only
  1. that being required to cover contraceptives in the insurance one provides is not the same thing as having to pay for them (?!), but also
  2. that the Church wanting to be exempt from funding commodities it disapproves of is because it wants to police the bedrooms of all its employees.
  
  Which is like saying the Jews only objected to being forced to build a temple to Jupiter because they wanted to force all the Romans to convert to Judaism.
  
  Quite honestly, Terry, I'll say about you something I'd previously only said about Richard Dawkins: you could double the cognitive capacity of your biomass by eating undercooked pork.


• It's interesting how each of the four elf races in Elder Scrolls differs from the others partly in their approach to ancestor-worship. High elves (other than Psijics) elevate prominent ancestors to godhood, while the dark elves worship their ancestors as minor genii loci alongside the demon lords who make up their pantheon, and the deep elves (i.e. dwarves) didn't worship anything but themselves (and the robot god they tried to build—with predictable results, i.e. "Poof, no dwarves!"). But the wood elves...I sorta get the impression wood-elves' cannibalism—which is essentially just funerary cannibalism, the least creepy kind—stems from the same source. Ancestor-worship and funerary cannibalism are often, if not almost always, related, after all, and elf-religions all assume ancestor worship, whatever embellishments they add on (just ancestor-worship is the religion of the Psijics, remember).
  
  I wonder, that cannibal Namira-cultist in Markarth, shouldn't it be impossible for her to recruit a Bosmer? When you think of that as normal, it shouldn't be particularly pleasing to a demon lord—especially since it's a part of the Green Pact with the wood elves' non-demon god, Yffre. Navajos believe witches get their power from incest, but if you're an Inca king married to his sister, witchery-poison would be in short supply.
  
  Uh, just realized something unsettling. Given that elf religions, like those of East Asia, all share elements of ancestor-worship, and the Thalmor are jerk nationalists from an island chain, does that make the Second Altmeri Dominion something like the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere?


• The Graybeards are an interesting idea, though generally speaking non-Christian monasticism (apart from the extinct Jewish Nazirites and Essenes, and some currently-disfavored movements in Turkish Islam) doesn't have much to do with the worship of the gods. Indeed, the two major non-"Abrahamic" monastic traditions—Buddhism and Taoism—are, respectively, about freeing yourself from the miserable trap-cosmos where gods matter, and about becoming one yourself. Then again I suppose one might call certain Hindu ascetics "monks", and they often engage in bhakti ("worship of the gods").
  
  Just in general, the gods in Elder Scrolls, and indeed in fantasy generally, suffer from people attempting to have a culture like that of c. 1350 western Christendom, but with polytheism. Leiber and Howard, very wisely, said "screw that" and based their settings' religions, and indeed societies, on the ancient world, just with some post-Charlemagne tech and terminology. Personally that's something I tend to like about Japanese fantasy, since—living in a polytheist society themselves—they have more understanding of what that's like (they make the opposite mistake regarding Western religions, like how Soul Calibur seems not to know what religion they are in modern Greece).


• Why do Transhumanists think there will ever be societies that have abolished "involuntary death"? Especially since so many transhuman settings have space travel—your medical knowledge is very cute, but a fusion rocket doesn't give two shits about it, it will eff you up on the atomic level anyway. Especially if you don't treat it like the unholy death machine it is. Liberaltarian hippie utopia, space travel that doesn't kill more people per voyage than the Golden Triangle slave-trade: pick one.
  
  Interestingly, on the subject of SF lifespans, there is a whale, the bowhead whale, that is the longest-lived mammal, with a record of 211 years; a Southern Resident orca (orcas have clans, and that's one of 'em) was 99 in 2010. Parrots have metabolisms in the small-to-medium mammal range, but at least one macaw has lived for over 100 years. The oldest human ever was a Frenchwoman who died at 122 in 1997. Much is made of how "there's no limit to human longevity", but actually, in practice, we probably can't extend your life much beyond 150-170 years.


• You know how I said Inception's not really all that complex, but is in fact a high-concept movie? Albeit a well-done one? Turns out, it's also basically a ripoff of a Scrooge McDuck comic.
  
  I'm guessing Flintheart Glomgold should be getting a "special thanks to" credit. Also, the fact Christopher Nolan reads Scrooge McDuck comics (but not, apparently, Batman comics other than "Year One") sure explains a lot about certain other movies of his.


• I find it highly amusing when people specify that the handgun used in a crime is "semi-automatic". You don't say? Well it's either that or a revolver, single-shot dueling pistols are used in even fewer crimes than rifles are. But just admit it: you think the "automatic" part means they were lettin' fly with sprays of machinegun fire. Or, if you're a journalist (on the remote offchance you do actually know better), you hope your audience will think that.
  
  Again: semi-automatic is also known as "autoloading". All it means is that—unlike with bolt action, pump action, or lever-action—chambering the next round from the magazine happens on its own, generally because the slide's been driven back by the recoil of the shot (sometimes, as on the Desert Eagle and a great many semi-auto rifles, by the redirected propellant gases). The chief difference, by the way, between semi-autos and revolvers is revolvers have multiple chambers and they switch between them, rather than one chamber that's loaded from a magazine.


• You know, "sexy female bodyguards as status symbol for male power-player" is all well and good, as a concept, but I would imagine that most female bodyguards would actually be for protecting female VIPs. You don't want to have to leave your security team behind while you're in the changing room at the gym, but you probably also don't want some out-of-work Green Beret to see you in the altogether, either.
  
  And yeah, I can say "out-of work Green Beret" here, because US Spec Ops doesn't have any women in it. Hollywood's not known for its accurate portrayal of the military, did you know?


• I'm pretty sure "The Most Dangerous Game" is the stupidest story ever, because when you have a gun—or are in any other way not an unarmed human—an unarmed human is the least dangerous game.
  
  No, to make it interesting, you'd have to give your prospective 'prey' weapons roughly equal to yours, and then you're not "hunting a human for sport", you're playing paintball with live rounds. Totally different sport. Of course, that undercuts the story's message, which is, uh, anti-hunting? Anti-Russian? Anti-aristocrat? Oh, no, wait, I know: it's "I yanked a throwaway line from 'Brothers Karamazov' completely out of context, and tried to expand it into a plot that wouldn't even work as a third-rate Twilight Zone episode." Which seems like a weird statement for a story to make.