25 FEB 2015 by ideonexus
Art of Dungeon Mastery
Being a good Dungeon Master involves a lot more than knowing the rules. It calls for quick wit, theatrical flair, and a good sense of dramatic timing—among other things. Most of us can claim these attributes to some degree, but there's always room for improvement.
Fortunately, skills like these can be learned and improved with practice. There are hundreds of tricks, shortcuts, and simple principles that can make you a better, more dramatic, and more creative game master.
Folksonomies: rpg role-playing game
Folksonomies: rpg role-playing game
1 24 FEB 2015 by ideonexus
To Be a Good DM 2nd Edition
Being a good Dungeon Master involves a lot more than knowing the rules. It calls for quick wit, theatrical flair, and a good sense of dramatic timing—among other things. Most of us can claim these attributes to some degree, but there's always room for improvement.
Fortunately, skills like these can be learned and improved with practice. There are hundreds of tricks, shortcuts, and simple principles that can make you a better, more dramatic, and more creative game master.
Folksonomies: rpg role-playing games
Folksonomies: rpg role-playing games
24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Our Relationship to Our Thinking
I invite you to pay attention to anything—the sight of this text, the sensation of breathing, the feeling of your body resting against your chair—for a mere sixty seconds without getting distracted by discursive thought. It sounds simple enough: Just pay attention. The truth, however, is that you will find the task impossible. If the lives of your children depended on it, you could not focus on anything—even the feeling of a knife at your throat—for more than a few seconds, before your awaren...Folksonomies: thinking mindfulness meditation
Folksonomies: thinking mindfulness meditation
Sam Harris on mindfulness in the many religious traditions.
10 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
The Scientific Worldview
The term “scientism” is anything but clear, more of a boo-word than a label for any coherent doctrine. Sometimes it is equated with lunatic positions, such as that “science is all that matters” or that “scientists should be entrusted to solve all problems.” Sometimes it is clarified with adjectives like “simplistic,” “naïve,” and “vulgar.” The definitional vacuum allows me to replicate gay activists’ flaunting of “queer” and appropriate the pejorative for a position I am prepared to defend.
... 1 
notes
notesSteven Pinker defends the "scientism" against critics in the humanities.
19 APR 2013 by ideonexus
How the American Revolution Sparked the Enlightenment
The simple dictates of good sense had taught the inhabitants of the British colonies, that men born on the American side of the Atlantic ocean had received from nature the same rights as others born under the meridian of Greenwich, and that a difference of sixty-six degrees of longitude could have no power of changing them. They understood, more perfectly perhaps than Europeans, what were the rights common to all the individuals of the human race; and among these they included the right of no...Folksonomies: enlightenment revolution
Folksonomies: enlightenment revolution
1 notes
notesThe war between two enlightened nations spread to France.
31 JAN 2013 by ideonexus
The Importance of Reducing Mundane Risks
Life expectancy for a healthy American man of my age is about 90. (That’s not to be confused with American male life expectancy at birth, only about 78.) If I’m to achieve my statistical quota of 15 more years of life, that means about 15 times 365, or 5,475, more showers. But if I were so careless that my risk of slipping in the shower each time were as high as 1 in 1,000, I’d die or become crippled about five times before reaching my life expectancy. I have to reduce my risk of shower accid...Folksonomies: statistics risk
Folksonomies: statistics risk
1 If the risk of dying by falling in the shower is only 1 in a 1,000, then a shower would kill someone in just a few years. We concern ourselves with risks that are out of our control, but we should be vigilantly mindful of the mundane daily risks we take on a regular basis, like driving our cars, standing on a stepladder, or taking a shower.
20 MAY 2011 by ideonexus
The Idiotic Design of the Eye
Hermann von Helmholtz, the great nineteenthcentury
German scientist (you could call him a physicist, but his contributions to biology and
psychology were greater), said, of the eye: 'If an optician wanted to sell me an instrument which had
all these defects, I should think myself quite justified in blaming his carelessness in the strongest
terms, and giving him back his instrument.' One reason why the eye seems better than Helmholtz,
the physicist, judged it to be is that the brain does an am...Folksonomies: evolution intelligent design
Folksonomies: evolution intelligent design
Wired backwards with a blind spot.
