Me thoughts exactly. I also like the little red button on each comic that delivers a second punchline, too.

I'm casting my vote for the Dennis Ritchie logo in memory of a great man and in celebration of an excellent website.

Alan Turing, for one. I'm pretty sure this is mentioned in the book The Mechanical Mind in History in the essay "Alan Turing’s Mind Machines" by Donald Michie (unless I'm mistaken; it could have been in the biographical film Codebreaker, too. I recently read/watched both). Turing knew of Babbage, but may not have been aware of the particular details of either the Difference Engine or the Analytical Machine. Though, I really wish I had more sources to back this up.

It's clear to anyone who's seen your work that you have a strong passion for biological science. Like anyone who has an affection for something, you want to be able to share it with other people, but religion has been a major roadblock for this. What I have been wondering is, if religion wasn't such a large force in driving people away from science, do you think that you would have been such a strong proponent against organized faith?

Shouldn't the option be "Galactic Empire (distant past)" rather than future?

Me too, and it's great. I haven't experienced any serious malware infections on my computers in a long time.

I also use the Comodo Dragon browser, which is basically just Google Chrome that uses Comodo's DNS server to make sure that you're not being directed to dangerous websites.

Before I got halfway into the summary, I started to think that this was some kind of self-referential post-modern art book.

That's how I played, too. I hoarded gems for most of the game, trying to get them as refined as possible. It wasn't until the end where I started spending all of my money on enchanting my equipment to try to make as many sockets for them as possible so that I could actually use them. But it also wouldn't have been so bad if you could swap gems to get them back rather than destroying a valuable piece of equipment in order to salvage them. I'm really happy to hear that there's a new gem system for the next game.

I've been playing Torchlight a lot lately since I got it on the Steam Summer Sale not too long ago. It was fun for a while, but then got to be really repetitive. Playing through as the mage, I ended up getting spells that healed me, pushed enemies backwards, and dropped massive fireballs on their heads. Because many of the enemies only had melee attacks, I could just put my cursor over them and hold down "3" until they died. Or I would get to a section of the map where enemies were physically obstructed by a geographical feature and drop fireballs on them until they died; they couldn't avoid the attacks because they wanted to attack me, but once the enemies are out of your viewport, they vanish, which means that they don't move until you run over to where they last were seen.

The gem system was a bit tedious for no seriously noticeable gain, too. You can get gems that give you different abilities once you slot them into a piece of your equipment, such as the Fire Ember, which will make you hit enemies with fire damage if you slot it into a weapon, or will grant you some degree of fire resistance if you put it into your armor or an accessory item. These items can be refined if you have two or more matching types. For example, if you have two Cracked Fire Embers, you can have someone in town make those into a stronger Dull Ember. Two of those make a Discolored Ember. Two of those make a Fire Ember, and those make a Cut Fire Ember, and so on. One problem is that these aren't easy to come across. You can buy weak gems from two merchants in the game, one of which appears randomly in the dungeons. These merchants always have randomized inventories, too, so there's no guarantee that you'll get something you're looking for. You can also find gems in dungeons, but those are often limited to secret areas of the map, and again, those are uncommon there as well.

Finally, the boss battles were all ridiculously easy. Even the final boss, which could summon hordes of fire-breathing dragons and fast skeletons to attack you, was really easy. It's not because they had simple attack patterns, either (which they did). It was that they were often physically weak with really strong defenses. Most of the battles with these bosses consist of holding down the left mouse button until they die (unless they had a really strong melee attack and you're better off using magic, in which case you can hold down the right mouse button until they die).

Maybe it's my fault for playing on a Medium difficulty setting, but really, there were only a few enemies that ever posed a serious threat throughout the whole dungeon crawl experience.

That said, I did enjoy the game. The levels were visually detailed and very interesting. The environmental interactivity was better than in a lot of games I've played (you can blow horns in the molten fire prison levels to make bridges spin to uncover secret areas, go fishing in ponds for fish that grant you special powers, run over booby traps that you can time to hurt your enemies instead, and so on). The enemies were imaginative and had their own personalities; rarely would you see two enemies with the same special powers, and unless they were the same type of monster, they do not look alike. It was also very helpful to be able to give your inventory items to your pet and have them run to town, selling them for you, so you don't have to stop fighting through the dungeon.

After looking at the video linked in the article, it's hard to tell for sure if anything I didn't enjoy was fixed. However, it looks a lot like the first one with an increased level of detail; the player in the video has a light around him to more clearly indicate his field of view, the HUD is simplified and easier to understand, and the gameplay tips are off to the side rather than popping up right in the middle of the screen. Meanwhile, the gameplay itself looks identical to the first. Even some of the sound effects are the same. This seems like a good indication that they just took what they already had and refined the entire experience.

Torchlight II may not be on the top of my To-Buy list, but it's in there. I'm interested to see just what else the developers can offer with this dungeon crawler.

Bill Nye made a simple and important point about why people should encourage their children to learn about evolution. How did you interpret that as a tyrant bossing you around?

You might be interested in this clip from Richard Dawkins' video "The Blind Watchmaker". It shows how an evolutionary algorithm was used to develop a structure for a gas line to supply sixteen different points without any back pressure and while using the least amount of tubing possible.

I tested this out for myself after reading your comment. After the bot telling me its birthday, I asked, "Are you 24 years old?" Its response:

No, I am not 24 years full of years! What a weird thing you ask! No, I am not 24 years full of years! What a weird thing you ask!

Some of the responses from the bot after that repeat. I kept accusing him of being 24:

Do you know any other words except these? :-) Do you know any other words except these? :-)

Awful lot of czarcasm in that post!

...

I'll just let myself out now.

This, exactly. As long as the prequels/sequels are attached to a successful movie, there really isn't much incentive to spend a whole lot of time developing those sorts of things because those films don't have to stand on their own; they'll already attract an audience, so the directors and producers don't have to make a high quality production. Well, past a certain point; if there are some fancy visuals, then the characters can afford to be lackluster. They'll just use that for promotion, saying, "Here is the Star Wars/Matrix/Whatever universe, but with high-resolution, sparkly special effects! Clearly, this is better than before. You can't not spend your cash now."