Calax

It's lucasarts week on STeam, so I don't know exactly what the next one is going to be, but it should be up soon.

No Big Brother building infra structure. No Big Brother putting out the fire when your house is burning. No Big Brother trying to catch the criminal that just robbed you. No Big Brother to aid you when you want to have a child. No Big Brother to aid you when your child falls ill. No Big Brother to teach your child the valuables of life. No Big Brother telling that dude in the 18-wheeler that he can't just run over your Mini. No Big Brother interfering when your investments run off to a Caribbean island. No Big Brother trying to evacuate you after your excessive Humvee driving might have flooded your state. No, you need not go on. We all realize what an ignoramus you are. You throw around that Big Brother term without actually knowing what you're talking about. A society is simply people helping each other, but I'm guessing it suits your absurd self image as some sort of Captain America Freedom Fighter to keep calling it Big Brother. Mindless parrot. To GD's defence i never saw him berating the firedepartment, the police, school or simple rule of law. Btw, who is "We" in this argument? Well he did suggest that the government shouldn't be getting tax money. I'd love to know how he expects the government to prop up two wars, social services, treasury, intelligence, transportation, agriculture etc with significantly less taxes coming in. And by "prop up" I mean regulating/ensuring what needs to be done is done

If by effect you mean effect within the political party. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_mov..._election_cycle Looking at that list, most of it is primaries or victories over Republican candidates (except for the horribly run Mass. race in the wake of Ted Kennedy's death) rather than victories over their "standard" opponent of "Liberals".

Generally, (and unfortunatly for the movement) it's tied mostly to Fox News. Here's a good run from Daily show on Fox News about Tea Party http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TXsql7KVrg But, Glenn Beck and Shawn Hannity seem to be two of the largest supporters and vocal focus. But once you get beyond the idea of "don't spend much money" they all of a sudden split up idealistically. Basically dig into Fox news and tea party, and you'll find most of the idealogs and commentators that support the party.

But is it a waste? We were that capable precisely because of the R&D we did 40 years ago. You dont just pull the next generation platform out of thin are, it takes years of work. I hope we wont need the F-22 in 20 years. I hope we don't either, but some of the stuff they're doing just seems... unnecessary. Like a grenade launcher/shotgun that fires microgrenades that will go off after a preprogrammed time or when it hits something. Also there are debacles like the XM8 to look at. Also, my point about the new carrier is that we don't need a new one. Currently we are one of only 9 countries that even HAVE the suckers, and we outnumber the rest of the countries combined in terms of carriers used. The newer generation of carriers (Gerald R. Ford class) will probably cost about 12 billion to develop, and 12 billion to produce each particular ship, not counting aircraft. In fact, if ya look here (which is bias via interservice rivalry, I admit) it's suggested that the navy should drop below 11 carriers in general because they cost so much to maintain. Also, the suggestion is that by building new carriers constantly (1 every 4 years) the navy will not have enough money to update everything else. We dont have to arm for another war in Europe. The next big showdown will be with China. I wasn't saying the next fight would be in Europe. I was saying that Europe (who according to the chart I posted spend 1-3% of their gdp on military) was spending significantly less on the military than America (who are at 3-5%). And Europe's enemies are next door while the closest America has to a military opponent on its borders are massively outgunned. Great point. True, but you don't want the cost of a single bullet to cost so much that you bankrupt three families by firing a solitary clip.

Agreed. I dont know about that. The M-1 was developed in the 1970's (yep, its really that old) to fight the Soviet T-72/T-80. In the beginning of each Gulf War it was instrumental in crushing Iraqi ground forces and its absense would have dramatically increased the duration of that phase. Sure, NOW they seem a bit overkill when everything switches to house-to-house fighting but for destroying Iraq's standing army? It cant be beat. Literally. Luckily for us, we are willing to spend a huge percentage of GDP on our military so for the time being we dont have to trade one thing to accomplish another. I also think you may be underestimating the effect that being able to transport a carrier force that outguns most nations has on bad guys. AFAIK, there are currently no new fighters or tanks on the drawing boards, but I get your point. The question is why would we waste money on something we rarely use? You could probably get away shutting down production of M1's (which grossly out classes anything that it's come up against, to the point where iraqui tanks couldn't even get in range of american tanks before they were blown to shreds). And I can understand the need to project power and so on, but they recently just laid down hulls for a pair (I believe) of new aircraft carriers (One of which is named the Ronald Regan). The US is currently 48% of ALL military spending in the world (well in 2008). One would think that we could chop that down to... I don't know... the spending of the entire combined armed forces of Europe (particularly when enemies in that territory generally are a couple days drive while the US might as well be the 20 year old in a preschool)? As to the Quango side of thing, somebody want to lay out exactly what they are? Are they basically a catch all for any federal program (so basically anything that's not congress in america=quango?). Sorry to sound ignorant but I'm kinda confused as to exactly what people are referring to.

Meaning? They're not saying to toss it all and have (effectively) tiny deployment teams that will dive in, do a job, and leap out like politicians would LOVE To think is possible. Simply that warfare in general has changed since ww2 and that things should change with it. Honestly, I think a lot of the US Military budget is wasted. Sure it's fun to think about that airplane that operates in air like it should be in space, but the best planes most of our enemies field... are on a tech level as the F-15, we're working to obsolete the F-22 which REPLACED the F-15. I think that a lot of streamlining of the military would be helpful. I don't know how our brit friends military works, but in the US it's kinda... slow. Particularly if you force them to get out of the standard pathway. Monte's suggestions seem like a good idea overall, particularly given the closest thing to a conventional ground war we've seen was 50ish years ago (at least in my memory from my US based perspective). The us really needs to get a tank that doesn't take 5 gallons of jet gas to start.

well, that particular one isn't coming out in America, but Samurai Heroes is coming for the ps3.

he's got I think 4-6 more on Youtube btw.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits That's a series by a game design student often about story. Including an entire 8 minute diatribe about God of War as a series. He loved God of War 1, and hated 2/3 because 2/3's stories went to hell.

Played some Dawn of War 2 with a friend. Was kinda fun, although the game isn't really optimized for it. Had to spend some time helping him relearn the game but hey, we managed to wipe out a Tyranid hive cluster and knock out a few Eldar crews.

Eh, I don't have to worry about a crackdown if an 18 year old freshmen is caught completely drunk.

I'm in the upperclassmen dorm on the "you can openly drink here" floor. Figure I got the better end of the deal.

*grumble* I'd probably use my dining hall more if it was within 10 minutes walking distance

Nope, that's about when he started. The only other two he made were Fable the lost chronicles and the Darkness which he had on youtube before he was snapped up by Escapist

did the German Opposing Front campaign (god I love that series of missions...) and then started another Dawn of War 2 campaign.

What style would you be interested in? Probably saber, maybe a little bit of foil. I don't know if I'd go very competitive but who knows.

Today was club day (the reason I got the days mixed up was because I thought that club day was yesterday), and I'm gonna be trying to get into a Fencing club, just as something to do.

got my days mixed up, and had some fun with floor mates at dinner. Am having some trouble with a suite mate.. he's a smoker and due to living with my dad, I get headaches from the smoke (mostly sympathetic I think) and hate the smell. Technically smoking isn't allowed in this building so the CA (we don't have RA's we have CA's!) is going to talk to em.

Fox News is purchasing and publishing games from North Korea!

eh, if it goes down in the gulf of mexico it won't be bad... after all there isn't anything left there to harm :D

grrr, double post.

Woke up, did a bit of gaming, then had to get out of my building because the fire alarms went off. Turns out somebody burnt pancakes on the 4th floor. Basically we ended up just parking ourselves outside for about 30 minutes while the FD showed up to check it out. Met a blind girl while out there and we got to talking. Hopefully I can find her again and start a bit of a relationship, she seems fun.

In the first book it's not that prevalent, but later books have everyone taking on mormon ideals and having fantastic lives. If you wanna see him get REALLY preachy on the subject, read Folk of the Fringe or the Enders Shadow series.