alanschu

There's a large difference between being internally consistent and scientific accuracy.

Except you gloss over the rest of his post. You're closer to the all time historic low than you are to the historic average of tax revenue as a percentage of GDP, and assume that the entitlements cannot be restructured. It's what's going to have to be done, Democratic or republican.

Things change. In 1984 America was an ocean of Red with a couple blips of blue. Despite the democrats still getting 40% of the popular vote. I wouldn't at all be surprised for Republicans to do well if people feel the situation warrants it. The ocean of red carried on into Bush Sr. but things went blue in the 90s (with a recession to boot).

Is that really the case? Or does it just look that way because the Republicans lost the previous two elections? What changed from Bush's era to now?

Playing "Test these new conversation systems!"

I'm going to assume you're talking about a type of vote split that occurs upon selecting candidates, implying that some people that may vote Republican opt not to because in order to win the Republican nomination, there will be some that don't like that candidate and as such decide to vote Democrat instead?

Fair, I suppose Math is less essential depending on what you're doing with the programming. It's exceptionally handy around here though. Even if you aren't a game programmer (i.e. a tools programmer instead) Either that or your programs were crap and unoptimized but your clients were so desperate they were willing to give anything!

Many were (thank goodness)

As someone that enjoyed Fallout 3, I think that it being set in the Fallout Universe is ultimately a net positive. I enjoy the setting, and little things like bumping into my first BoS patrol was the type of thing that made me smile. While I don't disagree with your point that it's a lot like previous Elder Scroll games, I do find it interesting that I am not a fan of Elder Scrolls, but I greatly enjoyed Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas (I greatly prefer New Vegas).

I'm surprised the Republicans feel it is so necessary to appeal to some of the extremes. I guess they want to make sure the voter comes out (rather than abstain), but I am having a hard time convincing myself that the Conservative Right would vote Democrat if the Republicans went on a more pragmatic platform.

Does the president (or at least the bureaucracy that he can change) have any impact on interest (not exchange) rates or anything like that? FTR I pretty much agree with you. Though I suspect Clinton's administration had its spike because it opened up doors to China (though admittedly it's not something I'm nearly as caught up on since it was before I was remotely interested in politics)

No, I think you rather obfuscated your own point. If you wish to talk about the uneven distribution of wealth (which is fine), don't go on unrelated tangents related to inflation and use it as an argument to demonstrate that the Dow Jones index is meaningless because of inflation. I'll agree that it's likely not a very good measurement of the economy as a whole, especially in isolation of everything else. As for the rest of your post: This is true, adjusted for inflation, the median household income is down about $4000 (7.5% of $54000) from 2007. Whether or not this is a serious concern I am not sure about. What I do consider a serious concern is that people continue to live beyond their means and accrue significant amounts of debt. Though I suspect this would likely be the case regardless of who is president, I could understand that some might feel that social safety nets encourage this behaviour. Though that's just a logical deduction, I don't know if this is actually the case in practice.

This makes the assumption that Obama is entirely and completely not representative of the voters that didn't vote for him, and prevents any situation of "I think Obama would be fine, but I think Romney would be better" from factoring into voter decisions in any capacity. It means that voters could not have voted for Romney because of 1 (of many) specific issue that they highly value, but rather that someone that voted for Romney must be 100% opposed to everything Obama will do (and that Romney himself would take the exact opposite decision that Obama makes). Given that the country also sees national representation with Congress, and that your statement would still be validated for any group of voters that didn't vote for the winning election, it's a bit of a trivial and inaccurate statement.

I'm going to assume this is a typo. Precious metals are valued because humanity as placed an arbitrary trading value on them. They are no different than any other thing we arbitrarily assign value to. Second, are you seriously linking the Dow's growth rates with inflation? Do you think the inflation rate of the US during Clinton's years are anywhere close to 200%?

Eh, the only one that is noteworthy is Clinton, although while I know that that is the Dow Jones, I don't know what the relationship would be with something like the dot-com bubble (which burst on Clinton's watch too. Clinton's numbers are so high that I'd need to investigate why (I'm guessing China probably plays a large part, but that's just a guess) The Dow has recovered under Obama, but I'm curious how differently it would have been had McCain been president. There's also other issues like whether or not measuring the Dow (and only the Dow) is a sufficient enough measure of the economy.

The Human Revolution team was pretty up front that while they were intending for the game to be a precursor to the original game, they weren't interested in handicapping themselves by forcing their technology to be less advanced than the original's given that in many cases actual reality far outstripped the original (they don't use 4:3 monitors in Human Revolution, but they do in the original)

Ah, but obviously there's some influence since I instinctively refer to them as tipis! (I'm being silly) The United States was pushed forward with a lot of British and French settlers, just like Canada. I think innately, due to the fact that the US had an armed revolution (and those that weren't so keen on rebelling against the King so much had the option to not stick around) and Canada didn't does lend itself to some level of fundamental difference in mentalities passed down to today, however. So yes, there's a lot of overlap, but if you were to ask me which country I more strongly identify with it's definitely Canada, not the United States. And I am even from Alberta, another place often coined the "51st state."

Fair. Developing your logical skills will definitely help with programming, and problem solving is a great way to do that (computer programs are usually just problems that someone put forth to be solved).

Silent Storm strikes me as one of the biggest WTF moments. Really awesome WW2 squad TBS game that suddenly has germans walking around in mechs. Or in general the twist that many games take to becoming decidedly supernatural (I'm looking at you FarCry) for seemingly inexplicable reasons aside from maybe "We felt shooting humans all game would be boring!"

While I'm certainly confused by the naming decisions the past year or so, it almost makes me wonder if the initiative was something really pushed by Ray (who was the VP of RPGs or some similar title). The "going there and back" is mostly just "Okay?" from people here though.

Really? Because I see a lot of people that claim how important realism is to their gaming experiences then substantiate it with decidedly unrealistic impressions they get (often from games that people believe are realistic, or their representation in other forms of media). People already seem pretty willing to suspend disbelief (or even further, assume that the material presented to them is factual for seemingly little reason aside from being cool if it was). Unless the goal of your game is to specifically educate (which is fine), then I find realism is less critical. My question was presented in the way that it was to solicit the same question for others. If you'd prefer, I could have been more general with the question to make that clear I most definitely am interested in the sciences. To the point where I would still find myself satiated if video gaming didn't exist at all. I'm all for it being present in a game, but I'm curious if it justifies the cost of using a consulting service, especially for a sequel to a game that seemed to pride itself of being silly. Although I'm sure arachnophobes will be happy knowing that giant spiders are pretty much an impossibility (for example). I think I see eye to eye with Sawyer in that realism is nice and all, but arguing stuff (and implementing it) purely for realism's sake may not have the benefits people think they will have. (I actually tried to find the one where Sawyer talks about the "realism" of getting shot and other gunplay mechanics, but that one serves the point better IMO).

I'm curious how much do people really care? Sure the stuff in Deus Ex was effectively magic, but the game was awesome. Would I have even noticed if there was a stricter adherence to plausible science? More importantly, would it have actually made for a better game?

This is true to an extent. But a couple centimeters of snow doesn't really need plowing and I've seen some southern places still hole up and wait for it to pass. Now admittedly, I use "all season" tires, so maybe there's something about the tires in those southern places, but I do chuckle when light snow chokes out some towns.

I'm of the mind that the maths, linear algebra, calculus, and especially computing science were pretty vital to me "learning how to program" but then I guess for myself I consider programming to be more than just typing in code.

This does describe Edmonton the past two days :S