Terra Proxima, an Epic Choose Your Own Adventure Serial by Rommel

Episode I: First Strike

You are training as an elite soldier at the military academy Tel-Takir. You go by the callsign Sentinel. Soldiers are no longer so much cannon fodder, they are lethal weapons, especially these ones, part of the global peacekeeping force: The United Guns. You have almost graduated from the academy, and are looking forward to tomorrow, when you will be assigned a posting. You have a bad feeling about graduation night though, and you have been trained to trust your instincts. Something is up...

 This is the second version of First Strike.

Terra Proxima, an Epic Choose Your Own Adventure Serial by Rommel

Episode 2: The Lines are Drawn

Here it is! See the world through Sentinel's eyes as you fight the Taktat Empire's invasion to a standstill, and realise that this is just the beginning of what is to come...

Includes the epilogue, Terra Proxima: Hostile Contact, which is rather lengthly and non-branching, but I think it provides good closure.

I have not playtested this - I figure it's better to release now and fix it up later.

Make key decisions regarding the fate of WWII. If you gain ground or save troops, your score will go up. If you lose troops or pick a wrong strategy, your score will go down. If your score reaches 0 you lose, and if you get above 700 you have a high score. There are also WWI and WWIII bonus sections. This is my first game, and I upgrade it periodically.

Oh, I forgot. Best book I've read all year was Mogworld by Yahtzee Crosshaw. Its about some self-aware mmorpg characters in a beta test, when one of the programmers goes mad with power. It's pretty funny, got references to the absurdity of mmo features and some hilarious text messages between the real-world programmers.

Oh, and the protagonist is a zombie.

Ice Station by Matthew Reilly is pretty sweet. Not a dull moment. Still, haters gonna hate.

For a real timesink, try Ian Irvine's tales of three worlds. They're epic fantasy, usually involving magical artifacts with a dark, mysterious history. Eleven books so far, in three series, and a few centuries have elapsed.

You'll need a lot of time on your hands.

It coincides with my final exams, otherwise I'd be joining them. I've got a friend who's doing it; he's actually ahead of schedule. I give him feedback on stuff he sends over.

I find that at that point, it's expedient to just proceed to mockery.

But less so than, say, an empirical debate, or one involving fallacy calls. The thing is, by using the interlocutor's own beliefs against him it is far harder to avoid conclusions, since he would have to relinquish the belief you specify if he wants to maintain consistency.

Sorry, man. I goofed and didnt read the purpose properly. Although most of the time I find if you propose a reasonable definition it will get accepted, there are times (like when dealing with the wording of laws) that you can't get agreement. The way you described it in your previous post is similar to Reductio Ad Absurdum - you take your opponent's argument structure, substitute different premeses and get an obviously false conclusion. It's also a nice touch to take beliefs from the interlocutor to refute his claim, because then he has to give somewhere.

Although, if you are not using evidence in this type of debate, it's possible, however unlikely, that both the inquirer and the interlocuter are wrong.  I guess that's why it's intended to provide refutations rather than arguments in favour of something. If both are wrong, then the refutation holds, I guess.

I just realised only the first paragraph or so is a description of the method itself. I don't really like it myself - if someone can counter your claim, bending over backwards to redefine terms and chucking out ad-hoc hypotheses to support them just throws up a smokescreen of bullshit.

Terms should be clearly defined at the outset of a debate, and when a position is refuted the refutation must be refuted for the position to be held valid.

But that's the thing. In the eyes of fundies, 'unreligious' and 'bad' are one and the same. With this association, their definition of 'humane' is different, and their moral judgements will shift.

Thing is, I can't really see such a government enforce their laws without some kind of authoritarian opression going on; in a democratic nation those laws would be under attack 24/7. Even if it's entrenched in tradition, they will be challenged by secular and liberal social movements that they will need to use force to disband.

The most plausible scenario would be where most of the population is one religious denomination and instead of force, their bloc is maintained with propaganda mixed with strong public feeling and tradition.

Good move to keep the religion in question a made up one.

Watch V for Vendetta, it's relevant.