julianw

Well, you should watch Taiwan politics. Group fights actually break out during floor sessions. It's like watching a football (or soccer if you live in US) game gone bad. As for the shoe incident, Iraq is a war zone after all. The man who threw the shoes could have been shot if the secret service suspected the worst. I am still not sure it's such a good idea to let him in. It would be a surprise if he didn't at least haggle the president. Not that I think Bush doesn't deserve haggling. Just a dumb move by the organizers of that press conference. My sentence might be simple but I don't see what's so extreme about it. I do wholeheartedly believe nationalism is evil and humanity will be better off without it. It's not like I am saying "nationalism is the root of all evil and people who believe in it need to die right now". If it takes 1000 years (assuming no alien invasion), so be it. Ok, i will (assuming it does take 1000 years and we both live that long).

Nationalism is evil. US-bashing or Europe-bashing should become pointless soon enough anyway. The world is eventually going to merge into one global community. The election of a half-white and half-black guy name Barrack Hussein Obama (whether you agree with his policies or not) might just have been the turning point in human history when nationalism and racism begin to die out. On the shoes incident, I will cut the guy some slack since apparently he had lost relatives in the Iraqi War. He should have never been allowed in the press conference in the first place.

What game is that? Looks like Oblivion.

I doubt there is more corruption or outdated-ness than in christian circles - simply because the religion is newer, and corruption is a normal state of being for any human. Also, do you have a link or something more substantial on the claim in the last sentence? It's pretty well documented in Iran much like the child-molesting priests case here in US. Both cases are shocking but neither had any revolutionary influence over the Churches or the faithful; and after a while, people get numb to those stories and they are no longer front page material. Brdavs - your point about Iraq is interesting. Whatever problems Iraq had before the US takeover, it certainly wasn't caused by radical Islam. I wonder where all these radical Islam stuff come from after all...

This thread reminds me of my argument with my college roommate over the word "disterested" and "uninterested". We looked into it a little bit. Turns out the words have quite an interesting history. usage Disinterested and uninterested have a tangled history. Uninterested originally meant impartial, but this sense fell into disuse during the 18th century. About the same time the original sense of disinterested also disappeared, with uninterested developing a new sense

Isn't Vampire Knights the anime version of Twilight? The only manga I read now are Claymore and Berserk; I also look into some of the old fun stuff like Angel Densetsu from time to time.

Islam is a beautiful religion but many of its ideologies are outdated; and the Islamic priesthood is probably more corrupt than the Catholic Church. This is just one instance, but some of the Mosques in Iran actually raise money with prostitution practices which leaves their mullahs with very little credibility in my eyes.

Some of the ads for prop 8 here in California are really shameless and much of them are financed by the Morman Church from Utah nonetheless. Personally, I am not a big supporter of gay marriage and more in favor of civil unions but I would hate the fact that somehow the Morman Church would affect the laws passed here in California.

On a sad note, Obama's grandma who went through the Great Depression and WWII wasn't fortunate enough to see the first Black candidate winning the US presidential election. She passed away the day before the election.

Well, I haven't touched Wow for a while but here is my hawt blood elven maiden: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.x...&n=Evoldoer. Still not sure if I want to get the expansion. Has Wow become almost a brand new game or simply more of the same?

People need to stop making alts then alts of alts. It gets very confusing for me very fast. I say we call for the return of all original usernames! Let's reveal the mysteries of all those new members who were defintely once old members! I am looking at you random_noob.

The perceived offense to the Muslim group was that the scripture of Qu'ran is not allowed to be used for music. Obviously, the Muslim musician himself does not believe in this so this is probably not something even all Muslims stick to.

Bioshock. I am rediscovering how bad I am at shooter games and remembering why I was always my friends' meat shield in CS.

Ok, I finally found the article I was looking for after 20 minutes of online surfing. http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3155486 This one has some more content, so you guys can judge for yourselves. I am late for work now.

I seem to recall teh guy at Bioware gave some rough example on how they plan to implement their mmo. While googling information on the Kotor mmo again, I came across this that might be of interest to Hurlshot: http://kotaku.com/359133/bioware-talks-mmo. "We joke that we're happy to accept half to two-thirds of the WOW market." I am not sure that counts as trashtalk in the gaming industry...

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Bioware-MMO...ate-84458.shtml I read a similar article a while back, which sadly I couldn't find through google. Apparently, bringing great storytelling to the MMO community is a big goal for Bioware. I recall two key points being mentioned: 1) epic quests and not just stuff like go there, kill those; 2) players' actions having an impact on the world they play in. I am not sure if Kotor MMO can reach Wow like numbers though. Since nowadays everybody wants a piece of Blizzard's fat pocket, the competition will only get more fierce. In the end, it will be the consumers who benefit as companies attempt to draw more players with more enticing games.

Swashbuckler is a rogue and can't wear helmets. I know my D&D rules... Just finished a Mass Effect run as super paragon. Went and got Bioshock now since ME got me hooked onto shooter games again (even though I always sucked at it; I get pwned in Halo by 90% of the general population). Hopefully, it's as fun as everybody make it out to be.

I'm voting for Bill Clinton. I can trust the economy with him from my gut feeling.

Thx to my new 9600GT, I am enjoying good graphics with smooth gameplay...

Watched Eagle Eye. Halfway through the movie however, the screen suddenly shut off and the fire alarms started; and I got a little freaked out when a female announcer's voice (eerily similar to the voice of the Eagle Eye) came out and sprouted something about a bomb threat to the building. I was guessing it was a hoax that is part of the movie experience or something. Turns out it's just a false alarm and everybody got free tickets valid till November for that little bomb scare.

The first computer game I ever played was one of those fighter plane shooting games based on DOS. I was a middle schooler in China at the time and we get cleaning duty every Saturday afternoon. I loved cleaning either the library or the computer lab which means I could read manga or play computer games... good times. First RPGs I ever played was Baldur's Gate II and Dungeon Siege. When I realized how much more enjoyable BG2 was comparing to DS, I became an official Bioware and Obsidian fanboy and have at least tried every single one of their games since. I also played several Taiwanese cRPGs. They had great story. I used to play them with a neighbor girl together since she was just as addicted to them as I was. We would take turns and switch whenever we got our character killed. I remember she was crying during one of the ending scenes cuz it was so sad...

Eldar and 21377u (aka numbersman); they used to post good stuff. As for mothman, he stopped posting once he went to college. My guess is that he's either busy with the Campus Crusaders or partying it up right about now.

^It's termed as registration fees and not tuition. Technically, UCs don't charge tuitions for CA residents. They just pay a ridiculously high $2500 fee every quarter (and that was a couple years ago). My teacher was telling me how it was only a couple hundred bucks during his days...

This is totally random but Goku, the lead guy from Dragonball Z is loosely based on the Monkey King from 'Journey to the West'. The Monkey King is a Chinese cultural icon on par with the Panda by all means. Also, theslug you have clearly never been to any of the UC campuses here in California. Asian girls are all chasing white guys here... and no I am not bitter...

Is that a British saying or just Walsingham saying? I mean you guys fought two world wars together as buddy-buddies... or is France still equal to Joan of Arc + Bonaparte?