Walsingham

Question, and I don't know why I've never asked it before: what the feth does one redeem brownie points in exchange for? Brownies? If so, are we talking the cakes or the girl scouts? Because if the latter you'd more likely get arrested than anything else.

Annoying, isn't it? Its because they know its wrong and unacceptable but if more people accept it they can feel better about themselves. My solution: junkies in work camps, dealers and anyone in league with them on the gallows. You shoot enough people and you can push drugs from a semi-mainstream thing to a fringe thing, where it ought to be. @Krezack You're also not telling him that psychedelics can trigger a latent psychosis and permanently damage a certain number of predisposed but previously healthy individuals and that its effects are unpredictable and heavily dependent on external factors and can be a several hour long psychological nightmare for the user - which may also leave permanent scars. If you're going to do junkie agit-prop you're going to have to do better than that. Two points here. 1. The Mafia, and various terrorist/freedom fighter <sic> movements have tried to ban drug use. They apply the harshest punishments. You still get drug use. 2. Shooting everyone concerned with getting high would mean a lot of dead bodies, and a fair degree of hypocrisy. Unless you intend to shoot everyone who gets drunk also. In which case, good luck recruiting for your teetotal buzzkill brigade. You're certainly not going to get many professional soldiers or coppers.

I noticed we're getting back the voiceless lady in the new DLC. Or at least she's shown in some trailers.

Games can be a sink, in that they aren't recreational after a point. I'm only just starting to appreciate this, and playing more fun games than games like Civilization, which just stress me out. nor do they educate or train much, besides some teamworking online. With the possible exception of X2, which - and I'm perfectly serious - made me appreciate the importance of good book-keeping.

I'm now thoroughly sick of the ridiculous military system in Civ5. It's utterly ludicrous. Units are clearly strategic/operational, yet you have the produce an ARMY consisting entirely of AT guns? Give me a ****ing break! I've been thinking about this and I think the solution would have been to make your own units in much the same way as you make spaceships in Masters of Orion 2. So you invent components and subcomponents, and different sizes of field army. Then you design your own mixes of same. So yeah, you can build an army with just AT guns as a kind of heavy infantry, but you'be better getting an army with mixed heavy infantry and perhaps some recce and artillery etc etc.

Love it.

But it's fun. Sort of. It's alarming, is what it is. especially in light of the Germans trying to sell Europe to Russia so they can skip through meadows singing bloody songs about mountains.

Going entirely on scuttlebutt I've heard... IBM have completely no idea of where they want to be in the market, or how to get there. It's pretty much just momentum keeping them going. 10k sounds like a lot to wager on one 'horse', anyway. Unless you've considerably more capital than I thought.

Um... you can't just say that because people are investing in it, that it's coming. People can invest in the flying car, but the economic utility of both systems are pretty much unbending. certainly in the short to medium term which is when the green doomsayers are saying change has to happen.

Please keep the discussion to marijuana, then. Nobody has ever died from marijuana. Prohibition of it is an abject failure from all perspectives. The evils of prohibition are worse, though. Mexico's prohibition-fuelled civil war (40,000 dead so far), America's prison system (half the incarcerated population is in it for drug use), HIV from using dirty needles, etc. It's a bit like suicide. Horrible problem. We can never really eliminate it. But we can change as a society to minimise it. While I can respect your point about limiting this to marijuana, surely this should apply to your point about the violence arising from prohibition. The drug wars are not about dope smuggling rights. They're about heroin and cocaine.

No way am I getting involved in this argument.

I may have a rather narrow view of Indonesia thanks to my slightly slanted reading matter, but for 'vibrant' I'd say 'riven with violent ethnic and social tensions, manifested by outbreaks of what can only be described as small wars'. Although I admit your version sounds snappier.

In defence of Enoch I don't think he'd ever be sad enough to actually subscribe to a school of economics.

You know what's even more low maintenance? Imaginary friends. Except the advantage of an imaginary friend is that you can pretend it cares about whether you live or die. Unlike a cat.

While you know I support full legalisation, and indeed issing prescription 'free' hard drugs to addicts, I thought I'd share this article by way of a counter-argument. In brief, the figures show a massive rise in abuse of over the counter prescription drugs in Kentucky. Deaths are up from these substances. Crimes are up from people wanting these substances. If I were on the opposition bench, I'd argue this demonstrates that we must legalise at our peril.

Since this is obviously so popular, could we have episode divided threads? Just a thought?

I love how this is essentially about how we are witnessing what was impossible for 200 years due to the sacrifice of staggering blood and treasure - the unification of Europe under a single Imperial power. Yet you asshats are talking medeival history!

From a dispatch by stratfor.com

I know that I'd be all over MMOs like stink on a goat, being the OCD megalomaniac that I am. But having seen two colleagues who are far cleverer than me waste years of their lives on MMOs I'm refusing to get involved. Until I get too old and fat to care. So probably next Tuesday. *bdum tish*

OK then, what do you want me to sing?

Not at all, Nightshape. I can remember being an 11 year old boy, and am quite certain that 11 year old girls are still just as evil.

Just when you thought organisms like ebola couldn't get any worse, scientists give them frakking lasers.

Insta-concrete shelters. http://www.concretecanvas.co.uk/index.html Apologies if this has been posted already. I think it's amazing stuff. Actually, now I think about it, I did post this already. But it's bloody awesome.

Antsy all damn day.

In My Day... MMO meant muddy multiplayer outside. The production values came down to whatever you could imagine a stick was. EDIT: It was boring as hell, but at least there was no level grinding.