Epaminondas

Wife and I watched Dirty Harry 2. I think it was Magnum Enforcer or something. I think it's interesting. The first movie, for all it's use of racial epithets, Harry had a Hispanic partner with a white wife. In the second movie, he had a black partner and his 'girl-friend' was Asian. The actual police work seems goofy to me personally (having been around cops for most of my life), but the show is kind of like Hurlshot sees Star Wars. It's just fun. At the end of the day, that's all that matters. Wrote a long diatribe (which used to mean simply a pastime in days loooooong past) about Star Wars. Decided to censor myself and not face you all with a wall of text.

You should start a results thread, but if there's an issue with that, contact the moderators. I've never run afoul of them, but I hear they're solid folks.

Rogue One was close to the best movie in the series. Yeah, strange plot manipulation, but it actually has a message other than good guys need to fight bad guys.

Star Wars took a huge hit in my estimation with Pod Racing. Well, the first hit was probably ewoks. Vicious hateful little beasts. One of my extended in laws complained about vegetarianism with the wookie and inter-racial relationships. Apparently, something "almost" made him want to see a idiot stick. I swear I have Satan's own phone. Damned spell correct.

I still don't get it. Are those all just the ones that are #94?

I'm in my least favorite part of Dishonored 2, the clockwork mansion. Good ol' Emily managed to subdue Jindosh and get him down to the elevator and then get one of the clockwork soldiers to destroy the other without being seen. Time Stop ftw! So, now I have to go find the old coot and get him down to safety also. I would go directly there and be done with the place, but I want to completionist the runes and bone charms, so I have a little more work to do. Emily with powers is waaaay easier than Corvo with powers for stealth games. At least in my reckoning. Unlike the equally confusing time travel level, I just couldn't get into the clockwork thing.

The wife and I watched Dirty Harry last night. I hadn't seen it and she thought it was a western because it was a 70s Eastwood flick. The police stuff is unrealistic, of course, but it was actually a pretty good film. I'd have to think some of the scenes might have put it dangerously close to x-rated in the 70s, but who knows? The police stuff was crap, but the view of society and racial and social interactions were interesting. It was almost prescient in depicting the wave of violence that was building in the 70s and crested in the late 80s and early 90s. All my young friends tell me about how much worse it is now than it was when I was younger and then I tell them how many people I knew by the time I was their age who'd died violently. I've never seen any of the films, but some scenes are classics and so I'd seen a lot of the film without seeing the whole thing. My wife's cousin gave us a bunch of old films and all four Dirty Harry films are in it. We'll probably watch the next one tonight or tomorrow.

Sonic, you're killing me, man. It's the holidays. No one is out to get you. Hell, Bartimaeus even admitted solidarity. Now I need to go look at your list to see if we have anything in common, although I know you're a fellow Sunless Sea fan. At least I think so. I'm a little slow in my thinking (and reflexes) right now. Edit: Heh, I haven't played most on your list, but Bioshock Infinite was *this close* to making it on my list. One thing I did wrong in my list was not being able to pick that one single title from various series. So I chose a couple Fallouts. I chose a couple Might and Magic. I chose a couple Bioshock. Edged out other titles, though.

I honestly don't understand you, my acoustical wizard friend. Perhaps it's the extra holiday cheer of the evening that impedes my mental processes, but I'll be damned glad if a gem as fine as Sunless Sea doesn't make it on the list. It means I clearly have better tastes than the rest of you sods! hehehe The good thing about seeing what other people posted is to get a chance to hear about cool games. Might not get to play them all. That would take more than my lifetime, no doubt, but still gives me a chance to hear about new games or find solidarity with others in games we've enjoyed in common. Also, it lets me see games that I seriously considered, such as Mordheim, that didn't make it into my list but I know at least got some love from others. I never saw this as a contest. If I had, I probably wouldn't have bothered to post in this thread. We're gamers. Drinking and fighting over games is what we do. It's not a contest. It's a war. Better bring game. Now sit down before I have Morte bite ya.

Aw, Hurlshot, there will *always* be a Monkey Island. ...Or Grim Fandango. ...Or Half Life 2. I think it's good that some of us have a little regret over our lists. If you can name off your top twenty-five games without having to rethink, you aren't fit to be in the company of true gamers. Now, like some other bloke said above, I can name off my top five pretty damned easy, but the brilliance of Algroth's list is that it's big enough to catch a broad spectrum but small enough that you have to narrow it down with hard choices.

If not, I've heard that the moderators can do that sometimes in message boards like this, so it should be able to get in there. Good question, though, injuria.

I give the nod to Lethal Weapon, but it's a Die Hard choice. I think you get more of the Christmas angle from Die Hard, but Riggs and Murtaugh can't be beat.

Hey, when you know you can't win the top spot, you start fighting for the scraps. Still, out of the sheer number of games in our accumulated years, I think 94 isn't chopped liver.

I'm more looking at it from a large state power projection point of view. Population growth can only be in equilibrium if it's universal. The countries that are seeing a decline in population weren't suffering from deprivation in the first place and now some of those countries are seeing their own cultures declining as well. Some values are under attack from within those cultures and an influx of immigrants who harbor competing views. Perhaps values will change under the weight of new popular views about freedom of speech, due process, and presumption of innocence to name just a few. The problem is the left often seems to see the very idea of culture and values as a reason for ridicule or attack. However, Every group of people has shared values and something that we might as well call a culture. The difference is in western society, there's been enough room to sustain a common culture while having space for a number of powerful counter-cultures. Perhaps we're no longer so strong as once we were. See, I have no doubt that our species has plenty of room to stick around and can probably sustain tremendous population growth as long as technology keeps pace. That's been the way of things for a long time, although there's the ever present danger of assuming things that have always been will always be. It's not our species that concerns me, it's our culture. It's our values. It's our ways. Sure, if those decline all is well. Almost impossible to kill ideas, maybe even completely impossible in the grand scheme of things and enough people, but one does like to see one's own side on the winning side of the battle. The wheel of time turns slowly and the pendulum can go a long way before it begins its backswing. So, native population growth would be greatly beneficial for the United States, as well as assimilating immigrants, but the things that have made us great have made us fat. Our failings won't be our demise. Our successes have resulted in incontinence and complacency that might be enough. Then again, all earthly things fail eventually.

Sorry, you were talking earlier about someone who failed to fill out the questionnaire properly. I was suggesting that you would normally disqualify it, but I think you can actually just play around with the data and still use it for the purpose of this project.

I can definitely see sorting it out because putting out the whole hundred at once might be too much to digest and some great titles will end up getting short shrift. After all, #100 of the top hundred games is still a respectable showing. Also, usually you dump a subject who doesn't fulfill the requirements you're trying to assess, but for our little corner of internet heaven, I don't think you need be so rigorous. It's your call, bud. Plus, take my suggestions with a grain of salt and I won't be offended if you don't take them at all.

Having good population growth is good for economic and geopolitical reasons. Inevitably, if populations continue to grow, our technology will have to get to the point where we can harvest resources from other places in the solar system. That's a pipe dream because I don't think anyone is seriously contemplating *real* moves. I mean, mission to Mars? I'll believe that when I see them doing something. I disagree with the idea that our population declining is a good thing. It might not be bad if everyone else's were declining at the same time. I think immigration is good, but only inasmuch as the immigrants buy into societal values. However, I do agree that the population growing will be bad unless we develop technology to overcome obstacles like overcrowding, illness, and malnutrition that will arise. Right now, those are by and large regional or local conditions, but they'll become the norm unless we can figure out new ways to secure more resources.

Yeah, I have at least one friend who's going to be hit hard by the SALT changes. I have another friend who insists there's a new cap on capital gains, which I don't believe to be true. Capital gains are pretty much the same except that, since the marginal rate determines the Capital Gains rate, that might end up changing it. Maybe an actual accountant can speak to that. There will be some people who will pay more in taxes. I'm irritated at the carried interest loophole. I understand the idea is to encourage investment, which is the idea behind capital gains, but I think it's abused. Mostly, I prefer the government not use taxation as a means to encourage one sector or another. If a business model, service, or product provides something good, it will manage to thrive. There are cases where the government sped along an industry greatly, but, contrary to popular views, I don't think those industries would have failed, merely taken longer to get off the ground. Meanwhile, the taxes in the aggregate have gotten so confusing and so ridden with special interest loopholes that any one industry taking longer to get off the ground doesn't make up for the stupidity that is our bureaucracy. The only except, and this is because it's such a multiplier, would be if the child credit actually encouraged more people to have children. I actually doubt it does, but if we could improve our birthrate in this country, we could do something that's pie in the sky right now, which is grow our way out of deficits. Seriously, the West is in the process of killing itself off by the slow suicide of low, no, or negative birthrates.

I finished the first full level of Dishonoted 2. Then I went to the prison and I just decided to go a different route. I subdued everyone. I saved the civilian being hassled by the guards and then subdued her and the guards. No detection and hopefully no bodies found. I just figured no one can find a body if everyone is sleeping at the same time. There is literally no one left who isn't choked out, darted, or mine zapped into slumber. I just cured ol' short, slight, and sinister and now it's time to go back to my contact and beat feet. EDIT: ...And No! Every single mook was asleep when I left the place and so I didn't worry about hiding them. Still, 6 bodies detected. however, since I wasn't detected I got ghost anyhow.

Too much Xmas cheer yesterday? Damn, there's no halo smiley.

Trial and error. Endurance has always been a gamer's greatest strength!

Good God, that was funny, man! bwahahahaha I almost want to riff on the pun, but why mess with perfection? Right now I'm playing the forum game in the few minutes between getting home and then heading right back out. Dinner at the out-laws house. If you don't from me soon, I didn't go on any long trips and I have no intention of harming myself. If I survive dinner, I'm going to finish off the level with Emily. I've learned to check my stats just in case some unfortunate mishap. Best to know right away than finish the level and have one poor bastard killed off.

Volunteered for six hours at Lifestream driving blood to hospitals. At least this time I didn't end up with the big van. On the other hand, I've been stuck with the big van enough that I think I prefer it over the smaller SUVs. You can see over everything except semis in the damned thing.

Didn't have much time to play today for obvious reasons, but I plan on plugging away at my Emily non-lethal/no detection run of Dishonored 2 this week. Should finish it.

Had my traditional Christmas Eve steak, most often the only one I have all year because the truth is I don't really fancy steak all that much. I prefer a roast or bulgogi if I'm to eat beef. For over 40 years, for various reasons, I've kept up a tradition that started in my childhood. Another tradition: we went to see my beautiful niece play a shepherd angel in the Christmas pageant. At fourteen, this is probably her last one. Thanks for all the well wishes. I was especially touched by Guard Dog's sentiments, but I'm a big softy. If I were to find a permanent place in the maelstrom we call the 'internets,' this would be the place. Yeah, it's like Chalmun's Cantina, but that's what gives it character.