@purofilion Well, that’s me paying it forward, for help given to me in the past.  I’ve been lucky, and am lucky enough still to be able to be in a position to do that.

Beware anyone, *anyone*, who claims to “be spiritual”.  Those usually turn out to be egomaniacs with a taste for gathering a personal cult of — admirers?  Followers?  W…[Read more]

@mrpastaguy — funny, a cousin of mine just sent me this link in an email — maybe you know the clip?

@mrpastaguy —  I like your upbeat energy, and it’s got a catchy structure — good for you!

@  godsakes, no need to apologize — you’re supposed to jump in!  I’d agree that in Earth terms, he could be seen as a super-hero for having those abilities, but the avoidance of violence marks him as a wholly different kind of hero, to me; also because his deeds he’s maybe more a hero for what he does and what he’s done (the whole Trenzalore s…[Read more]

@mrpastaguy  Clara is my favorite companion (did I post about this already?  Apologies if I did, cuz here goes).  She grew out of being a plot device and became a willful and passionate individual with her own goals, however imperfect they were (no way could she have settled down with Danny — that ship had sailed already).  She’ll die thi…[Read more]

@purofilion  Um, the “f**ker” in question is the shooter, not the shot, as you can see (if you can stand to watch) right bloody damn here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/07/officer-michael-slager-shoots-man-in-back-video_n_7021134.html?utm_hp_ref=crime

And yes, in my view the cop owes the dead guy big time: eight shots in the back of an…[Read more]

@purofilion  About good works: nothing, IMO, “saves” you, because there’s nothing to be saved from.  I see the whole process as the education of each individual soul, including souls not embodied in the human species but in others as well, on this planet and other planets.  All we are doing is progressing gradually through an enormous pageant of…[Read more]

@bluesqueakpip  Of course it’s not a new objection.  This here is the great big “problem of evil” thing, and I’m not setting up for a big argument about it — what for?  Nobody’s been able to reconcile the “good” God with the suffering of everything but rocks (and who really knows about that), and I don’t expect to here.  Just explaining mys…[Read more]

Naw, it’s pretty far-fetched, this “he’s the Devil” thing, but somebody had some fun making the case!  It’s amazing what gets projected onto what started as a goofy little show about a crazy alien gramps in a junkyard 50 yrs ago — though now it’s a big show, polished and, below obvious surface levels, quite sophisticated,  although still a bit g…[Read more]

@lisa  The Doctor tries to do good, although sometimes he falls off the wagon into a vengefulness that can be pretty harsh for a show with a “family” viewership (Family of Blood, etc.).  I came across a very odd discussion on reddit about how the scripts hide clues that the Doctor was — the Devil, or at least demonically evil, in the past, but h…[Read more]

@bluesqueakpip  Fine, glad to hear it!  One universe at a time is all I can handle, and probably all there *can* be — doesn’t “universe” mean it’s a unique thing, only one of it?  Jeez.  Seems as if some people want to ride a dozen horses at once instead of one . . . “multiverse” seems like fanciful overreach to me; but then so much of sci…[Read more]

@JimTheFish — I have no patience for boring, one-note zombies either, with their comical “Brains!” refrain and absolutely baseless (as usually written) brutish aggression.  That’s why iZombie seems so fresh — this girl is a dead *person*, with personal concerns only with a twist to the lens; and briefly taking on characteristics of dead people…[Read more]

@purofilion  Oh, believe me, I do not look forward to more lives here.  I’m nearly dumbstruck when religious people respond with, “Oh, you’re just taking the easy way out, trying to avoid judgment etc.”  Easy way out, my elbow.  Anybody here want to be an adolescent again?  I’ve met reincarnationists who think there are “shortcuts” to avoid more…[Read more]

@purofilion  I do get the idea that we’re meant to grow our own consciences and capabilities and virtue, and in fact that is what I think reincarnation, as I’ve come to see the idea, is about, only more effectively because learning occurs throughout many lifetimes and eventually leads to all of those developments.  Then you either graduate back t…[Read more]

Oh, and I don’t *have* any maths, so my ideas are just that, ideas and I can only get so far with them, so I prefer the notion of a field of potential near-futures and increasingly broad and indistinct farther futures potentially growing from them, so when you choose A rather than H, instead of creating two separate time streams, ad infnitum, A is…[Read more]

@bluesqueakpip  Yep, I agree, the show assumes a fixed-but-only-sometimes river of time, with fixed points as a sort of patch that kinda works.

So given the show’s assumptions about fixed past and fixed future, agree with your points on that problem — there’s got to be an awful lot of gray area to cover all that otherwise-knowledge about both…[Read more]

@Craig  Yep, with you on the Zombie show — I quite like it!  It’s so up-beat, without being utterly goofy, that it’s very pleasing — comic book fiction transcribed to the screen without the usual blow-hard shenanigans the put me right off.

@bluesqueakpip  — Can’t agree, because our action now isn’t “fixed” in the past until the future ha…[Read more]

Bringing a reply here, to a post by @bluesqueakpip back on Open Thread TV shows, because this is speculation about time travel in general as well as DW specifically, so I think maybe this is a better venue?

The topic was the problem of The Doctor in a universe in which past and future are already fixed, by “fixed points” in time, throughout the…[Read more]

@bluesqueakpip  Well, what dingbat heretic I am!  Well, probably not — can a person with a Jewish mother and a lapsed (probably) Catholic dad even be a heretic, or do you have to be a Christian before you can become a heretic?  Yes, I was thinking of funding the building of churches and leper houses qualified as “doing a good deed” that would he…[Read more]

@bluesqueakpip   Ah, they’re the ones with everybody already assigned their rewards at birth or later on by some arbitrary granting of “Grace”?  If so, I find that such an absurd notion that I clean forgot about them.  What @Mudlark says about goodness as its own reward adds a lot more spinners, I’m afraid.  I was thinking more about things lik…[Read more]