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Kalasin

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  1. Kalasin

    Thanks Admin!

    By Kalasin,

    I just wanted to say, I appreciate the time you put into this game. It must be quite tiresome continuing to keep it running for so long. People sometimes moan about the mods for various reasons (I've been guilty of that myself from time to time ) but I've had a lot of fun in this game and killed a lot of time over the years. I still can't find any better games out there, and this is a billion times better than NS. So cheers.
  2. Kalasin
    Just an hour or two ago two earthquakes hit the city where I live. It was really scary but fortunately they weren't too big and nobody was killed or anything. I was playing with my dog at the time and she curled into a ball with fright (obviously curling into a ball solves everything and makes the earthquake go away. XD When I had recovered a bit, I found it pretty adorable.)
    Unfortunately we're on an active volcanic field (although there haven't been eruptions in centuries) and people are freaking out a bit. Has anyone been in a natural disaster before? Can you recommend emergency equipment etc? Or any tips on how to get through it?
  3. Kalasin
    I was thinking: I believe that we should love our neighbour, but what does that actually mean? Are my beliefs detached from day to day life? It's really easy to preach unconditional love at people, or to make statements like 'you should love everyone', but do I just have my head in the clouds? There are dramatic things like that now-famous picture of Christians standing and protecting Muslims while at prayer in the recent Egyptian revolutions, but that’s not an opportunity we’re likely to get every day.
    So I've been thinking about practical ways to love and be kind to other people on a down-to-earth and everyday basis. Please post your own ideas too. I’m particularly trying to think of ways to be kind to my fellow students at university, in tutorials or lectures, because university is quite an impersonal environment, so if you can think of anything speak up!
    Oh yeah, and just a random observation: while it’s pretty cool to be kind to people you don’t know, it’s even nicer to be kind to people you don’t like or who don’t deserve it.
    Anyway, my list:
    1) Compliment a waiter or waitress to his or her manager.
    2) Buy a coffee for one of those people selling newspapers in the city on your way to work or university.
    3) Give up your seat for someone in the bus, not just elderly or disabled people.
    4) Randomly bake cupcakes for a neighbour and take them round to their place as a random act of kindness.
    5) Smile at people.
    6) In a McDonalds drivethrough, pay for the person behind you.
    7) Say please and thank you.
    8) Make a prepared dinner for a sick or pregnant person (there’s a woman at my church who is due to give birth shortly and could really do with having a bit of the stress taken off her.)
    9) Hold doors open for people.
    10) Thank your bus driver.
    11) Write a note on a piece of bright coloured paper to your spouse or child or parents to tell them that you love them and leave it somewhere unexpected (for example, in a lunchbox or briefcase)
    12) Be courteous to telemarketers.. they have to deal with hundreds of grumpy responses in just one day.
    13) Don’t drive aggressively but let people in on the highway.
    14) Leave your change in a vending machine.
    15) When your dog does a turd, pick it up in a plastic bag and don’t leave it on someone’s lawn.
    16) Give directions to someone who is lost or a foreigner who doesn’t know where to go.
    17) Leave a generous tip.
    18) When you go on a trip, bring back a souvenir for someone who doesn’t expect it.
    19) Invite the new kid or exchange student at school to come and sit with your group.
    20) Pay someone a thoughtful compliment (i.e. one which they will recognise is actually true.)
  4. Kalasin
    Some of you may know that I’m an evangelical Christian, and that I therefore believe that the Bible is infallible. Traditionally, evangelical Christians condemned homosexuality as a sin. Thus, I have wrestled with the issue of homosexuality for some time, because I’m a part of both the Christian sub-culture of New Zealand and the wider New Zealand culture, which often conflict over this issue.
    Essentially, although I still haven’t ultimately made up my mind about this, I have been slowly coming to the conclusion that the act of homosexual sex is indeed wrong. This is for several reasons. I believe that men and women are equal yet complementary partners, and that this partnership is best suited to raising children. The problem is, we live in a fallen world, and thus there are many distortions in nature, which include homosexual attraction. However, this, in my view, is not the way that the Creator intended us to live. This is reflected by the rise in AIDS and other sexual diseases which came about because of the sexual revolution of the twentieth century, and the disproportionate rate of sexual diseases among homosexuals in comparison with heterosexuals. This, in itself, is reason enough to have serious questions about whether or not homosexuality is right or wrong.
    The primary purpose of this little article is not actually to debate about whether or not homosexuality is sinful, however. It’s rather to make the point that there is a spectrum of people who hold that homosexuality is sinful. On the far end of the spectrum you have the Westboro Baptist Church, who apparently walk around in the southern United States with placards reading ‘God hates fags’ and the like (I don’t live in the US, so I don’t know how big they actually are.) In my opinion this is absolutely obscene. It’s so incredibly insensitive and unloving, and it’s totally contradictory to what Christ commanded. And here we reach the other end of the spectrum.
    My own position is that every human being is ultimately equal, and equally loved by God, regardless of what their sexual orientation is or what they have done. Even if homosexuality is a sin, it doesn’t really make much difference, because ultimately everyone is equally filthy in God’s sight, and in equal need of forgiveness. Thus, the homosexual is no worse to anyone else. God’s love is unconditional. It’s not dependent on a person’s sexual orientation or anything else. This sort of love has nothing to do with liking anyone, it’s merely a deep care about a person and a desire for their welfare. Christ calls us to love everyone in this way, which admittedly I really struggle with, being a fallen human being myself. Being perfect is really hard lol! To take an example from CN, I found and continue to find it really difficult to love Cortath after the way he treated me, and I often slip up. This doesn’t disprove the validity of what I’m saying, though.
    So essentially, I believe that we should love homosexuals, and treat them with gentleness and respect, while not accepting homosexual activity as right. It’s a difficult line to walk and inevitably there will be times when Christians will be insensitive and hurt people’s feelings, and that is cause for an apology. I don’t believe that my position is bigoted or homophobic, though. Those adjectives are bandied around far too widely. Use the term strictly for those who merit it.
    And as one final aside, we need to love the Westboro Baptist Church lot too, even though they may be hateful and angry. Think about it.
  5. Kalasin
    At first, I wasn’t actually too impressed with ODN’s actions lately, in the UPN incident. I was extremely vocal about this, which in retrospect I wish I hadn’t been, because my viewpoint is now very different from before.
    There were numerous motivations behind OsRavan’s recent actions. Firstly, and there isn’t any particular order to this, Os did not believe that the #stratego coalition had a chance versus GOONS, PB and the rest of PB’s assorted allies. ODN really cared about UPN, who were at the time our MDoAP partner. Os didn’t want to see UPN (or Polar, for that matter, who we’ve become more close to recently) commit to a suicidal war which could easily be resolved by diplomatic means. The #stratego coalition acted in the hope that MK would remain neutral in the event that one of its former allies was attacked, and even speculated that C&G itself would remain neutral. This lead to their belief that they could somehow win the war, and in turn led to resentment towards ODN when Os stepped in and intervened, because they didn’t realise that he’d actually just saved their alliances. This is just my personal opinion, but it seems unlikely to me that MK would just stand by while one of its former allies was attacked. MK and GOONS are very close. Anyway, I’ll draw the discussion on who would’ve won to a close, and state that it’s unimportant when one assesses whether Os should’ve acted as he did, because he *believed* that the #stratego coalition didn’t have a chance.
    Secondly, OsRavan really believed that UPN had a poor casus belli, and didn’t want to see a war over such a minor issue (in his eyes) when it could easily be averted by diplomatic means (as it was.) This was particularly important when you realise that the #stratego coalition would’ve been rolled had they attacked GOONS, as I described above. It would’ve been a retarded war, and it did not need to happen. Historically, the Coalition came under heavy fire in the No-CB war for what I’ll term frankly as a pathetic excuse for a casus belli. Surely we should remain consistent in our standards? I’ll note here, too, that whether or not the casus belli was valid, OsRavan believed it was not, and therefore his actions were justified.
    It’s a pity that OsRavan had to put so much pressure on Peggy to avert the war, and I understand the hurt and frustration which resulted in her cancellation of the treaty. However, Os had the best of intentions. While I don’t believe that the ends always justify the means – personally, I believe that depends on both the ends and the means involved – in this case, his methods were justified by his motivations.
    It is my hope that UPN, and the rest of the people who are currently pissed off with us, will come to understand that we actually did them a massive favour.
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