Calax

I wouldn't say that it's all the governments fault. Part of it is the parents, and the fact that even though our economy and lifestyle has moved on, our school system is stuck with the agrarian timescale which significantly hampers a childs ability to retain information. Add to that the fact that parents will march into the school and demand the resignation of everyone there (or just sue the place) if something mildly contrary to their beliefs is taught, and you have a recepie for curriculum never moving beyond the 1950's. We test the lowest in Science because there is a constant fight to prevent the teaching of Evolutionary biology (which is the basis for any biological science). And the sheer level of democratization of our educational system means that everyone thinks that what they know from their church, bible study, or right wing upbringing, will trump anything that science can bring to the table, because "It's only a theory" and "There are holes in it!" If you want a school system to teach your kids and put them at the top of the lists of smartest kids.... you can't leave the curriculum to the parents.

Just out of quesiton, but isn't the outcome based learning that the republicans now staunchly opposing, and attempting to quietly kill, a result of their own party's push during the Bush years to better the educational system with the No Child Left Behind trainwreck?

Well, if they can't find a buyer, they might decide to try to spin it off as it's own entity. So Bobby Kotick answers only to his own share holders rather than those at Vivendi too. Of course, having somebody like Time Warner, News Corp, or Walt Disney come in and take over might wind up in interesting positions.

a Nissan GT-R. It's just an amazing vehicle with a good pedigree... if you wanted a multi-million car I'd probably dig a Lamborghini Aventador. The Ghini because it looks tasty and goes quite quick.

It's Mcdonalds... Right now you'll probably earn more per hour just writing that book than I ever would.

At work, part of me is eyeing the box cutters her, another part is wondering why, and the first is just responding that it's better to feel nothing than to hurt every time you take a step

Looking For Raid is how most people will see the content. But there is no reason to ever be nice to anyone there because your running with people from other servers (my servers grouping is notorius for having a few brazilian/spanish language guilds on it that make everything into a horrible slog). So you have everyone who can, rolling on everything in existance so that they might be able to collect themselves some gear to trade for what they actually need. As to Oblarg's issue, part of that's the fact you rolled a paladin boyo. Melee classes like the paladin are going to be overpowered at lower levels, and only really start getting dragged into line once Mastery and other high level abilities come into play. Wow, for a long time had been geared around having two different "end points" for their characters leveling, 70 and 80, and after the world revamp in Cata and the retooling of ALL the basic mechanics, basically the only time everyone is going to be equal will be at 85 (in theory). Thus at 85 everyone goes around in dungeons not saying a word and trying to gear themselves out to run the raids... and the new person is ridiculed for having low damage because nobody bothered to explain things like "Hit cap" and "expetise cap" and "your primary stats", along with a spec that can be pretty significantly debilitating in comparison to the versions constructed by the math kings at various sites.

I think it's more that the Republicans have all signed that delightful deal that they won't EVER raise taxes (only lower them). And so calling this a tax, that they voted for, would be them raising taxes and breaking that promise.

No, The constant standing and having terrible shoes has led to me wrecking my ankles. It can get better or worse depending on how long I've been off it, but either way, walking and feeling like I've got razors being jammed into my ankles isn't a pleasant feeling.

He's just a monumental idiot. I've been riding him pretty hard because he does stuff like "Oh, my starter is dead on my car, and my ride also works here, so I'm going to use his schedule as my own!" and take off 4 hrs early (without asking) and shows up 4 hrs late. And it's NEVER EVER his fault when **** happens. Yesterday I yelled at him because he was supposed to be in grill, but was in back talking it up with his buddy, and he automatically assumed I was putting him in a new position (when I was moving the other guy) and then I heard him bitching about the entire thing to another co-worker. I was just pissed off in general at that point and he provided an easy focus.

... mine was more pissed off at coworker And now depressed because I cannot walk without pain.

First I was irrationally angry, now I am just depressed........... Sigh

Hahahahaha, what? Everyone I know who is jumping ship from WoW (myself included, a fair while ago) is doing so because it's becoming too dumbed-down and new-player oriented. Mechanics based it might be, sure, but in terms of community and actual content, awww HEEELLLL NAW. I mean you're probably one of those guys who'd show up on a server and when a new person popped up to ask a basic question... because they had absolutely no idea.... and respond with "STFU NOOB! YOU KNOW NOTHING AND SHOULD DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT! ROFLROFLROFLROFL!" and discuss finding Mankriks wife.... as an alliance character.

LFR only covers the end game raid. It's just that the fights are much easier (having mechanics changed, and life pools/damage dealt lower), and the loot you receive is weaker than you'd find in the actual raid itself. And, anymore, with the LFG/LFR tools in place, you end up only having two "pick up" raids running a week, because of population issues and the general feeling of elitism. At this point WoW is in it's decline as it becomes harder and harder to access by newer players (and far more hostile to newbies) and everyone is sort of scrambling to figure out which game is going to take over it's spot as reigning king of MMO's, with TOR being lined up as one of the top contenders despite it's issues.

apparently I'm the "tsundere" option for the Fallout Dating Sim being made. And my hair is a "bowl cut" not what I had/have... with very short hair.

I think "Frightened" has just taken over

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/oliver-swanick I don't know if I should be frightened or flattered

I think the point with that was that in the DLC that was a prelude, the Mass Relay in a Batarian system was destroyed, with enough of a shockwave to wipe out the entire system. So all the Relays being destroyed means that every system with a relay in it would be wiped off the map, which means "goodbye earth" even though Shepard "won".

Rome was the least complicated one that also had several different unit types/styles. Medieval 2 took things to a crazy extent where every faction had half of the tech tree of all the others, but even the most minor of factions had their own unit types. Empire, Napoleon and Shogun all had the same problem of everyone with similar tech, thus one battle matched all battles no matter the person you were fighting (worse in Shogun2 than anything).

GD, I'm what, half your age? And I've got a friend who teases me about having grey hairs on my HEAD.

I think part of it is also the fact that the politicians are doing their best to stay electable, and thus are trying to appease the hyper vocal minorities. Thus politicians will vote for a bill simply becuase it has pork in it for their district so they can go back to their voters and declare "This is what I got your county! Vote for ME!" Also insert the standard "money in politics" garbage. I do think that GD's got the right idea with taxation of goods more heavy than taxation of income, but income should still be a part of it.

Note that it's 2 gigabytes of data that's being moved.

Eh, I dont know about that. While I agree that there is much less "community" and you do run into a huge pile of tards in LFG I think LFG/LFR is an adequate tool to prevent people from hitting that wall. I mean, I dont have to be your buddy to down bosses. Although I do wish raid finder didnt stick you in those lower difficulty raids. If SWTOR had this tool from the beginning I would probably still be playing. LFR obviously wasn't around back when I did the experiment I described, but I don't see it doing anything at all socially - it merely advances the effectively solo play experience one more step before encountering the same wall. By that note though I'll have to admit my experience with LFR is minimal - I did it for the first two to three weeks of its release but left it because it was neither fun (partly because of the anonymous nature of LFR and partly because Dragon Soul is a terribly designed raid) nor necessary to fuel normal (and subsequently heroic) raid progression. I did not use the tool at all for my last three or so months of WoW. Admittedly my last month was literally just logging on for a raid twice a week, bang my head against questionably designed hardmode bosses and logging out straight after, and doing absolutely nothing else. Was good to get heroic Spine on literally the last day of my subscription though. I just popped in to take a look around and noticed this. I haven't played World of Warcraft for about a year now, but LFG was in place for some months before I closed my account. I don't think it had much of an impact one way or the other in terms of group cohesion for most folks. The reality is, if you want to stay in the running for current end game raiding, you had to grind out more dailies at the start of each expansion than most guilds could provide in members. Hell, half the time you were LFG with other guildies. As a healer, I was in demand with guildies, so that might have impacted how I experienced it, but it didn't make any difference, you had to grind grind grind anyhow and lfg just made it that much easier. The detrimental effects of LFG have been on the servers themselves. Instead of having to have a list of people you knew were fairly good at the game to run through a dungeon that was assigned by a quest giver... you just sat there and waited. Social interactions on the servers slowed to a crawl and slowly became a troll fest because there was no reason to maintain a "reputation" within the servers community beyond those you played with directly, This allowed the community to become more toxic (while before, it was kept in check by the need of a player to find and work with a team of people for their dungeons). At this point, servers are little more than "sit around and grind mob" zones, while LFG and LFR make everything homogenous and without consequence. You were a **** to another player? Oh well, there's nearly a million people on this battlegroup, no reason you will ever see him again! Although most groups will end up just being five people silently zooming through an instance, only stopping to yell because the tank pulled to much, or the dps didn't realize the rest of the group was 800 yds the other way.

One of the things my economic history professor (who was terrible at his job... he knew his stuff but couldn't make it interesting and flipped out on my class... yadda yadda) made sure to pound into our heads was that in order for an economy to continue to grow and be successful, money needs to keep moving and being used. The issue with the UK system you're discussing (and to a degree, the system here in the US) is that the money isn't really being used. It's in storage and thus it cannot increase the size of the economy or benefit the government of the person holding it. The graduated tax system is put in place so that somebody who earns 10 bucks a week isn't loosing a dinner to the tax man while the guy who earns 10 million looses (effectively) nothing. Sure he'd moan and groan about the 2 million bucks, but he still has the other 8 to do with as he likes, and 8 mil is far and away above what is necessary for a person to live. As to the taxation for things that you want? There'd be no way to REALLY do that. At best what you could probably set up is something like American Idle for each government program.... "For your tax dollars to go to military, Press One.... Para instructions en espanol, marque numero nueve.... For your tax dollars to go to Planned Parenthood, Press 2 For education, Press four For social services Press five ... " you get the idea. Beyond that all you can do is try to change things in your elections, but the elections have gotten so far out of the control of the population that it's not even silly.