Meshugger

Trust me, i found Bush to be a very interesting character. There were many times when his bodylanguage or choice of words didn't really match from what i would expect from a high-ranking, governmental officer. I just never really agreed with him on anything If i had the time and resources, i would like to read more. Right now, Youtube served as my main source

an MA from yale (skull and bones society, as was john kerry, btw) in either something business related or political science, as i recall. he didn't rock, for sure, with a C+ average (don't quote me on this, however). his SAT scores were available at one time, somewhere around 1200 or so, which put him at least in the 125-130 IQ range.* taks * the SATs at the time bush took them were strongly correlated with IQ. however, as with any knowledge-based IQ test, they suffer immensely on the downside, i.e., if you don't have the knowledge required for the test, you cannot score well, even if you do have a high IQ. somewhere in the 1980s the SATs stopped being a good IQ indicator. of course, the whole IQ thing is still hotly contested and will likely always remain that way. but i digress... Awww great. I got a 'C' in my major subject, 'C' in my minor and a 'B' on my Master's of Science(Technology) thesis, thus making it a C+ overall. If I am as smart as Bush, then i don't know how to react to this

Strange how those who actually live there differ from your opinion. Turkey's not perfect. It's behind most Western European countries. But Morgoth's blanket vilification of Turks (rather than, say, the Turkish government, specifically the current Islamist party) is offensive. It's disturbing that he sees nothing wrong with that, either. At times he raises some valid points about integration of immigrant cultures but then he blows it by acting like a bit of racist jerk. I don't know, maybe Morgoth's language in this thread is fine with everybody else, but it makes my skin crawl. That's because he still wishes for the Turks to be integrated into society and not creating a society within the already existing one. I see nothing offensive about that. About his personal opinions, he would be a leftwing, crying liberal in the eyes of the everyday layman, not those that you see on TV. Personally, i do not care really, i hear worse things every day. cronicler: Those imams that Morgoth mentions are not the same as they have in Turkey, which usually is the old guy who has lived in the neighbourhood for all his life, who knows everyone and understand the social barriers of the everyday Turk. In the UK, Germany and alike, the mosques are not publicly funded and they are usually seeking funds from other sources/countries, and guess which country donates the most money ? Saudi-Arabia. Guess where the Imams get their training? Saudi-Arabia. Guess from where the Imams invite thier fellow other imams for guest-sermons? Saudi-Arabia. And finally, guess from where Wahabism a la Bin Laden comes from? You guessed it, Saudi-Arabia. Thus, we see a radicalization of a muslim generation. Channel 4 in GB had an interesting documentary on the subject. While the mosques got more radicalized, the local politicians turned blind eye in the name of political correctness. Bear in mind, i am against islam and other Abrahamian religions personally, but lets reserve that for another thread.

Ok, i'll try to continue this time. - Intelligence: This one is tricky, didn't the guy get a MD in economics at Yale?(or was it Harward? no matter). I haven't heard him taking any IQ-test or anything similar, but can one find his SAT-scores anywhere? In the end, people who are borderline savantic in behaviour (see the real Rainman for example) can have exceptional qualities in terms of intelligence. But since this is the game of politics, i think that it draws back on their character's wisdom on how to act on their intellectual capacity. - Judgement: A newborn christian, with a strong set of principles. Goes well with his target audience, but bad in the game of politics and diplomacy, where compromises are the norm. This is manifested with his choice of cabinet-members, advisers and his administration. Why did he use pappys old pals? I can guess that these were the people he met earlier in his career, who also shared the same traits as him. Very strong in their principles and he felt comfortable in their presence. When judgement leans more onto principles than pragmatism, diplomatic blunders ensue. I use his administrations handling of the aftermath of the 9/11-attacks as a base for this idea of mine. Hurricane Catrina also shows the weaknesses of his judgement, he simply chose people in his administration that he agreed with more than people who were actually competent in handling the matter. Bad move. - Speech: Looking at older speeches when he was running for congress or as governor, he did have a pretty good ability to channel his thoughts into words. I could atleast see that there was thought and belief behind the speeches of his. These speeches were more direct and more local of course, something that he could closely relate to. When entering presidential politics, debates become more abstract in nature. It become more about concepts and less about issues that are of a practical nature. Taking into his character that was already mentioned; whenever he spoke as president, he didn't necessarily believe what he said, since the speech was written to widen an already broad audience. This showed due to his characteristics, he didn't like it for some reasons or the other, and wanted to tell it in his way, but couldn't or was adviced not to. You could literally see the conflict in his eyes, no determination, no stern voice, no inspiration. He wasn't fumbling because of stupidity, he was fumbling because of he was a bad at lying. - Insight: As a man of strong principles, rebellious by nature, and rely heavily on lojalty of others, his insight took the road of the world being more simpler than it really was. No grey areas, black & white and a strong sense of duty to follow through once you started something. Insight was probably his weakest area. - Wisdom: He strongly believed in what he percieved to be good in man. I for instance, disagreed with many of his social policies that he thought was 'good'. The Iraqi war, and what happened before it, showed how instincticly he thought that he was doing the right thing for everyone. This guy was certainly no moral relativist, and that was his greatest foe. To summarize, he wasn't evil, but he was a far cry from being a devout intellectual or inspirational president.

Ok, now i have some free time: - Characteristics and mannerisms: Reminds me about a carsalesman, a nice smile, no trace autharianism nor is he intimidating, he might actually make you feel really comfortable being in his presence. But in the end, you are reminded that he is looking towards his own interests. When a person of this character tries to intimidate or try to sound like a voice of authority, he usually fails utterly and thus it makes him look foolish; because deep inside, he's rebellious and very anti-autharian. - Intelligence....too tired, i figure out something later.

Don't the majority of swedes and immigrants live in southern Sweden? I draw the line at Stockholm as the northest part of southern Sweden. I mean, a lot of people usually inflate any type of conflict.

To simplify what Morgoth is trying to say, is that when you move to Austria, you're becoming an Austrian, no matter your heritage. I mean, is it a rational and sound conduct for norwegians to move to Bhutan but still consider themselves norwegians at heart several generations later without adopting the local customs? Is that a policy that should be adopted globally? Don't people move to the US to achieve the American dream, do they not? Gorth is admirable in his individualism, and i am not even disagree with the basic idea of his. But i do not see this idea to become widely adopted within my lifetime; people tend to associate themselves to different groups. Unless of course something happens a kin to what Ozymandias was trying to do.

+ the whole cyprus debacle, armenian genocide. //EDIT: in terms of the armenian genocide, i am not talking about reparations and whatnot. I am more talking about recognising the event.

Strange how those who actually live there differ from your opinion.

They aren't mutually exclusive either. They tend to affect one another a smart politician can makes smart choices Maybe forsight is the word that i am looking for.

No damsel in distress has ever been interesting or inspiring, Ashley or Bastila included. Bastila did have an awesome british accent, which i really liked, but Ashley did not. I do not even remember the girls from JE. Jolee however, is the best character Bioware has ever written.

Maybe i need to adress this more correctly: Based on what is Bush the fool? Characteristics? Scholar skills? Speech? Policy deciding? Judgement? Insight? Wisdom? IQ? If you want to compare to other presidents, please use sources or base it the traits mentioned above. I want none of that "Nu-huh, look at that president, he was much worse!", without a detailed description on why.

I can see where you are coming from. A friend of mine fled his beloved Istanbul because it had been taken over by "backwards, conservative islamists" during the last decades or so (five to ten million new people IIRC). Progress in his westernized Istanbul has been severly weakened by debates on whether wearing a islamic veil or not. Maybe he overreacted, but i haven't lived there or been there for that matter, so i leave that judjement to him.

Finland has little to no immigration when it comes to humanitarian reasons. In the private sector however, it is not unusual to take in people from abroad, which i personally encourage as well. I think that this is a sound solution, helping people abroad to help themselves through different huminatarian organizations, and let the market take whatever people they need from abroad if that is the case. What i do not agree upon, is massimmigration because of the happy feeling of being multi-cultural. My problem with multi-culture lies in the very abstract idea on what it tries to achieve. Multi-culture means the absence of any culture, in my case at least. Take Sweden for example, there is Lebanese culture, and Syrian, Iranian, Iraqi, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Balkanese, Somali culture and so on. When you ask someone the basic question: "Well that's nice. But what is Swedish culture then?", the answer is "it is multi-culture!". This example is grossly simplified, but the point still stands. In the future no one will know how to categorize a swede anymore. One can ask: "What is a typical swede?". Is it a question based on culture? a nation-state? a race? or a combination of all? With multiculture, it will be none of the before mentioned. Bear in mind, in the we are all individuals. But individuals tend to form groups, societies, languages and culture. Culture is the framework where the individual can thrive according to the standards to that particular culture. Or if he or she happens to be an exceptional individual, they might reshape the culture as we know it. What follows of course is how to define "culture". It is language, art, music, law and ethics, formed by the people before you and before that. You notice it with your bodylanguage, how you express your self and how you meet your fellow man. We have the EU, North America, Australia and New Zeeland as the classical western culture, a residue from the enlightment in terms of law, rights and individual freedom. We have the latinamerican culture, which resembles the western one. The same goes with the Oriental ones, such as South Korea and Japan. Just look at their laws and codes of conduct to see the resemblence. Now people claim that Australia and the US are multicultural societies, since these countries have influence of other cultures (some more than the other), but they have enough to define it as their own. The US is an ideal; a nation of free men, that is the US culture. Australia was also once a colony, but still managed to create a culture of its own. I dear even say that they aren't really multicultural as people claim them to be. For example, by following the standards of multiculture: Where are some courts not based on Bengali culture? Why haven't there been more presidents that have had a platform based on nigerian, gypsy or saudi-arabian culture? Why do the US have the same democratic process of electing presidents? Why not a presidential process that is a blend of chinese-indian culture? Why is the main language of popular culture english? Same goes for Australia for that matter. I do not see a multicultural society, rather a western one that have individuals from other cultural backgrounds, but still adhering to the western one. I would call it assimilation to an already existing culture. For example: the christmas tree comes from Germany. Originally it was not decorated as much, and hung from the roof. Still, it was adopted, changed and added to the western culture and becoming an annual ritual in most western socities. Back to immigration. Of all immigration groups, the ones with youthgangs hanging out and harassing the population usually comes from cultures that are most foreign the western one: Namely Subsaharan and middle-eastern. Freedom of expression, social hierarchy and code of conduct is completely different and most of all counterproductive to a stable western society. I can't say i haven't heard about Sikh-gangs or japanese-gangs hanging out and burning thousands of cars like they have done is France. Finally, take a typical Frenchman, a typical Japanese, a typical Namibian, and a typical Turk. How to do you classify them as such? A bit difficult if you ponder long enough. Enough of my rambling. I think i can get a better grasp of it all later in the future.

Well?

Enough about how much of a fool Bush is, leave that to a separate thread. We went to see the new Star Trek this weekend, the girlfriend and I, and she was one of two females in the audience. The movie was ok, not bad, but nothing spectacular either. The characters were clearly the strongest asset.

So, anything about fixing the horrendous inventory yet?

"We're going to have weapons that are going kill a thousand times over" 30-year olds talking like 12-year olds. *sigh*

Friend of mine knew a fella named 'Taika Protagonist', where Taika means Magic in finnish. Of course the friend wanted to call him out on his strange name and asked where he was originally from, or where his parents live and so on. He simply answered that it his origins could not be named since it would be impossible to define the undefineable. He was probably one with the cosmos or something.

That's about the weirdest thing I've ever read on these fora. I would have to agree. I take deliberate intepretations on how words should be spelt in order to make them sound and look cooler. Enema is much cooler than 'Enemy' or 'Foe'.

Soon there will be a law that mandates recordcompanies and moviestudios to directly shut down the internet service of any suspected user. The user can of course complain, but that is reserved for later in the courts, not before the suspect's connection has been shut down. That is the first step. The second step will be broaden these kinds of practices to other industrial sectors, such as the media and newsbroadcasting in general. The governments will not complain since they have been high positions in these companies, have relatives or friends in those positions, or are entering them after leaving office. Suffice to say, they are looking to control the means of broadcasting within the 'Net since that gives them a huge potential revenue and marketshare. The third step is to slowly phase out the current architecture of the Internet and replace it with a 'safer', 'robust' and 'sound' Internet that closely resembles the channels that we watch on TV, removing the power of the enduser to decide on what is on the Internet or not. I will try to keep updated about similar draconian laws in the future.

Uh, I can figure out where my grenades are going to hit before they get there. One of the things the human brain is pretty good at is guesstimating trajectories. I don't see why my enemies couldn't look at my grenade and figure out where it's headed. *sigh* I was using extreme examples in order to get the point through that they should thread carefully when doing A.I.

God.......dammit, you got me

I recommend that you guys thread those waters very cautiously. No one wants to play a game where the baddies AI are in the vein of this: "Ooooh, a round object just appeared during the fire-fight. It sure does looks nice, maybe i can pick it up? Oooh, maybe i can even eat it?" It tends to break the immersion. Likewise, it would break immersion with enemas having ears of a thousand owls, eyes of a thousand spiders and a reactiontime that breaks the time-space dimension (E.g. they know where the grenade will land before you even throw it).

Meh, i thought that the "strenghts" of Bioshock was the art design, theme and story. If the second installment fails on those accords, then it is a pass for me.