Zoraptor

Thinking pyramids were granaries is demonstrably wrong for two reasons- they indeed only have small empty spaces, and they can only have small empty places. As the 'bent' pyramid shows they didn't have much engineering wiggle room for the empty, massive chambers a granary would necessitate. The other bizarre assertion was that Joseph built them. I can only imagine how he'd respond if anyone suggested the (actually quite plausible) theory that Judaism and hence Christianity were descended from Egyptian Atenism, albeit around a thousand years after the pyramids were built. The odd bizarre belief doesn't really mean you wouldn't be a good president, though sticking with a bizarre belief in the light of proof to the contrary might. And at least it's a harmless belief.

It's actually ironic that for all the fear about Caliphates when they did exist the areas they ruled were ruled far more moderately than now, and for most of their time far more moderate than christians were at the same times. Historically, Caliphs of the 'Ibrahim'/ al-Baghdadi type have been a rare aberration. It's also rather ironic that while islam had both temporal and spiritual power, unlike christianity, the largest sect largely lacks any actual power structures similar to Patriarchies or Popes within itself. At least with shia islam you have somewhat more of a hierarchy, with sunni islam when lacking a Caliph it's pretty much open season on interpretation and seniority with a very few exceptions. So yeah, Islam could actually do with a Caliph or a 'Pope' so long as it were the right person, as it is it is far too easy for some nutbar to persuade others that their view is right, especially since so much of the Koran was written during what was a particularly vicious war and thus open to (il)liberal interpretation.

Woah, what? Did they really say that? To be fair, it's a lot better on page 2 which I didn't initially read because p1 is mostly Alec Meer (who hates Twitchers for some reason, b00bies in the prologue of TW2 maybe?) waxing lyrical about F4 and producing gems like: It would probably be more accurate to say that Meer made me lol rather than Adam Smith especially or even John Walker/ RPS in general in this particular case since Smith calls Meer on the above and Walker calls him on the dialogue/ story. I read RPS still mostly for Tim Stone, who is indisputably great.

I've noticed a trend towards at least mentioning the problems, they just dismiss them as not being important or not detracting from the experience- "everyone knows that Bethesda plots are a bit dumb, but you don't buy it for that, do you?" type statements. I had to lol (literally, for once) when RPS managed to make F4 sound like it had better graphics, worldbuilding and simulation than Twitcher3 because somehow F4 was 'convincing' or somesuch while TW3 somehow wasn't.

This will probably be a bit disorganised, but meh. When it comes to refugees there are two main facets- the refugees themselves, and the (European) response to them. The specific problem is not with the refugees themselves, unless you're as empathetic as a slab of concrete everyone can understand why a refugee would want to come to Europe and accept that the civil war in Syria is a legitimate reason to flee the country. The problem is the disorganisation of the response, leaving the problem with Syria's neighbours for so long, the sheer number of refugees and especially the number of non refugees tagging along. Most of that is on the truly horrible formal response and Germany's idiotic open invitation which encouraged people smugglers and generated potentially millions of fake Syrian IDs- money for which goes either to the people smugglers or those who have captured Syrian administrative equipment, like ISIS- while functionally penalising those who went through proper channels by staying in Jordan/ Lebanon/ Turkey. Ironically, Germany and Merkel have done more to damage the EU with their open invitation than anything else, even their vassalisation of Greece. She'll be largely free of the consequences because it is Germany, not Greece, but the seriousness of the problem is largely her fault, indisputably. Having said that, it's doubtful that ISIS would have to resort to refugee infiltration, they have plenty of foreign nationals who can just go home, and especially they have plenty of support from disaffected locals, the people who go off to fight in Syria in the first place. On blaming muslims, it is about as fair as blaming christianity for David Koresh or Jim Jones. There's some beliefs there in common, but it's at very best simplistic to blame the overall group. The big irony is that ISIS themselves wouldn't even regard most muslims as actually being muslim. Not just the shia/ alawi/ ibadi and such, but also those (theoretically) very close to them in the sunni branch, if they aren't radical enough and frankly nobody is radical enough except them and their salafi/ wahhabi ex-buddies in the Gulf (who'd still be supplying them on the quiet if 'Ibrahim' hadn't gone Caliph). That's why they bring in their ludicrous laws to enforce 'sharia', because even most muslims don't follow it to their liking. In any case, all blanket labelling of all muslims does is alienate moderates, which is largely the aim of such attacks. The ISIS narrative requires oppression to generate traction amongst those oppressed and to set the scene for radicalisation. If you're making idiotic 'kill/ deport all muslim' like statements then congrats, Jihadi John and al-Baghdadi would like to pat you on the back and thank you for giving the desired response, and to quote the great philosopher Mark Henry from his retirement speech "You're all a bunch of puppets". As for what can be done to fix the problems, well, it's hard given political realities. (1) Accept that your 'friends' in the Gulf are 'friends' rather than friends (2) accept that the brand of salafi/ wahhabi thought liberally exported by KSA is anathema to western values and utterly toxic (3) rationalise the refugee process (4) stop asterisking around with regime change, you haven't got an asterisking clue what you're doing; plus see pt 1 (5) just deal with it; stop wringing your hands and wailing when people get killed by terrorism, stop jerking your knee and learn to live with it; people die every day, and in the west far more die from practically anything else than terrorism- if that's the price for freedom then be willing to pay it. Practically (1&4) won't happen because there's too much money involved and politicians are morons with delusions of competency, and (5) won't because politicians are opportunists who want excuses to accumulate power and people get irrationally scared of boogeymen more than more realistic threats.

Yep. Though the catastrophic way in which they've been handled means that it would be very easy for extremists to infiltrate Europe I'd suspect that it will be primarily or solely 2nd gen French rather than refugees, much as it was last time. There's plenty of degrees of blame to be thrown around but nobody else caused this other than those who perpetrated it. I wouldn't be surprised if some people were actually more angry at Breivik for not being muslim than for killing dozens of people. This sort of event always sends some people sociopathic, at least if you take them at their word.

Bioware Austin -> TOR, not DAI. It also fits with Lucas (Film/ Arts; the rights holders) not liking teh gayz in Star Wars at all, say what you want about EA but they certainly can't be (sensibly natch) accused of homophobia and hence the rather hacky removal of the Juhani romance a decade+ ago from kotor as well. It is a pretty stupid attitude, though it's certainly LA/ Disney's right to stipulate what they want. Though of course Bioware has indeed had transgender characters, such as the memorable Edwina Odesseiron and of course %charname% even earlier with a certain girdle.

Isn't Carson the forerunner now? Though that may be ill informed rumour, like all those Egyptologists who foolishly thought that the Pyramids were giant tombs instead of massive grain silos built by Joseph.

That is insane, what a terribly written article. Ethics in journalism indeed. Why don't you read some real articles on the issue? Print Gawker for ossified reactionaries who think every problem can be blamed on immigration and the loss of True (British) Values from True (British) People. If the Fail told me the sky was blue I'd know it was night or raining. Utter unmitigated rubbish from cover to cover. Possibly excluding the free CD/ DVDs that they have with their weekend editions, they're usually outside the covers after all. (Amazingly, The Scum is actually worse)

Either are acceptable. Posting [..] is not tolerated in these forums // [..] nonsensical posts are not tolerated in these forums. It's a grammatical oddity where there is both a collective singular term for doing multiple acts (posting) and the multiple act itself (posts) used in the same sentence. As such either the plural or singular 3rd person form of to be is fine grammatically. More on topic, you've never heard of Variety? It's pretty big in the general entertainment area, though I'm not aware of them covering games much before. Still, ignorance of no less than four previous Fallout titles- indeed, every single non Bethesda entry- that allowed character sex determination is a fairly big omission that could have been solved by, well, thirty seconds on obscure and arcane research tools like 'google' or 'wikipedia'. (Having said that it's less triggering than the use of 'Paint It Black' for CoD: Iteration++'s ads. That's Tour of Duty's music, you philistines.)

The rebels have fired a scud (not technically a scud but I can't remember what it actually was; long range though so not a grad or similar) at Latakia airport already, it just missed by a lot. Both Pantsirs and S300s can theoretically shoot scuds and other ballistic missiles down if they did come close. The Yemeni situation is a bit different since most of the formal military there is fighting the Saudi/ GCC invasion rather than supporting it, so they started out with a lot of missiles.

I believe the appropriate quote is "Do or do not, there is no try". There's stakes and goals. Catch the assassin to find out who ordered the hit, protect Padme/ find Jango, find Dooku, alert the Republic, catch Dooku. Then kill Dooku/ defend Coruscant, kill Grievous, find Sidious, save Padme and the conflicting bits at the end- Obiwan's mission is to kill the lesser Sith Lord, Yoda's to kill the master which would, theoretically at least wipe out the Sith. At that stage they had certainly already lost, but that is kind of the point. While only outright stated in the novelisation the Jedi had been fighting the wrong war against an enemy who had adapted and used their own tactics and inflexibility against them, they'd been a step behind all along and paid the price. They'd already lost because they'd already lost. TPM is the only movie in which the good guys 'win', so in that sense the stakes and goals are achieved but do that and then ESB has to be classed as a bad movie as well. The problem for all of aotc/ rots/esb in that respect is that the antagonists are the ones actually achieving their goals, not the protagonists. The protagonists are stuck responding to what the antagonists are doing, and (practically) failing in that. I didn't even like the pod race. Basically, I disliked anything that looked like it was designed solely to be used in a video game sequence. Mostly though, like the Darth Maul fight they're OK so long as you don't expect them to be logical. I'd have to watch the movies again to be sure but I thought the arena fight and most of the other Geonosis stuff was OK in aotc, the first sequence in RotS, the Windu v Sidious and Yoda v Sidious fights (especially) were good as well. That's rather difficult to answer to someone who didn't like anything about it, because there's clearly little common ground. I'd still argue that so long as you accept that Anakin was a monumentally selfish manchild rather than an actual hero it stands on its own feet as a story, but you have to accept that to enjoy it. I'd still change a lot of it, personally, but it has a coherent theme, a hero (just that it's Obiwan, not Anakin), a tragic figure (though it doesn't work as well as it should given that Anakin is an abject moron) and a well worked antagonist in Sidious/ Palpatine. In the end it doesn't duck the consequences either. Again, hard to argue when there's so little common ground. AotC would need more retooling than RotS in my mind but even there the basic strands are in place, there's a plot progression from finding the assassin to the clones to Dooku and the Trade Fed army. As prior, the dialogue desperately needed editing to something approaching what an actual human would say (also a problem in RotS, though less so) but I think you could make a good movie out of the structure/ plot of the movie. That's not something I can say about TPM, it's an illogical mess pretty much from start to stop. Meh, McDiarmid was the best actor in all three movies, hands down. Star Wars isn't Shakespeare and he embraced that fully. I've said it before but he fully realises that Sid/ Palp is a panto villain for 90% of the prequel series and plays it exactly like that. I'm loathe to criticise the actual acting in any of the movies though, anybody would struggle with Lucas dialogue and Lucas direction (faster, more intense!). It's more overt in TPM due to Jake Lloyd and frankly Neeson who I otherwise like is more wooden than my kitchen table most of the time but really, very hard to make a silk purse from a sow's ear. I doubt that's the case, except initially. I've watched all three since release and I'd go near to actively avoiding TPM but neither of the others, and it isn't just for Jar Jar. Initially I think you'd be right, and in particular I think TPM suffered also from coming after The Matrix which was a similar concept but so much better executed and so much fresher feeling. If I had to summarise why I'd say that TPM is illogical and not in a fun way, in fact I'd say it is almost entirely devoid of fun and watching it is almost entirely a chore. It's infantile, and again it's not just Jar Jar stepping in poodoo and Gungans or similar that makes it so. The dialogue is stilted, the direction uninspired to say the least, the action sequences more a showcase of CGI than anything else and Anakin is both appallingly acted/ written and relies on a ludicrous plot line to 'win'. Why is Naboo important? Why is a blockade only one ship? Why blockade at all? How can a fighter fly into a ship and blow it up like that? Midichlorians? Angels? Gack, just thinking about it makes me want to give myself a memory enema to remove the stink and suck.

Heh, S-300s apparently. If the rebels/ ISIS had an air force they'd severely crimp their style and they cannot be ignored by anyone. Next step is US deploying F-22s and S-400s turning up. (They have already had S-300s there in some of their warships)

Have to disagree there. Both aotc and rots were good movies potentially and would have been so with some moderate retooling, TPM on the other hand had so many bad ideas and implementations that you'd have to start from scratch. The problems of the latter two movies were that almost always whenever people talked and particularly whenever emotion was required- especially Anakin and Padme- it was stultifying garbage of the highest order. Lucas desperately needed a script and story editor who he would listen too and who wasn't a yes man. The general stories of both were more or less OK, but the general story of TPM was illogical and incomprehensible requiring fundamental revision as well as having the same dialogue problems. RotS I'd actually defend as being a good movie overall, despite its faults and I'd happily watch AotC again so long as I can fast forward picnicking on Naboo and suchlike. TPM... I guess there is the Maul duel, although even that is a convoluted illogical mess if you think about it.

It's definitely the official text, that website is the official NZ government ministry of foreign affairs and trade one. Might be a question as to whether it's the genuinely full text though or if there are secret clauses/ understandings still but it is meant to be the full text. Good luck with reading the whole thing.

To be fair, the Russians do already have (albeit multirole) fighters there plus SAMs around their airbase. I can't see them responding overly much to a few F15s- which is provocative but everyone does similar- in a shooting war their Syrian deployment is already outmatched by Turkey/ Israel and at least theoretically by any Jordan/ GCC combo and it would take a very large increase to change that. Which might come if ISIS really did bomb the airliner but then it wouldn't be in response to anything the US did.

Graphics only have to be functional, but part of 'functional' is not to be obviously inconsistent and to promote verisimilitude. I'm perfectly happy with low fidelity/ dated/ low poly graphics if they're consistently applied and part of the overall aesthetic. Bethesda's problem has always been that they half arse the consistency of their approach in pretty much everything. Their motions make their models look like their joints are rubberised- I half expected waifu to do the Rick Grimes meme head telescope it was so elastic- and they have some of the worst uncanny valley effect and have ever since Oblivion- look at the bloke in the background of the chargen sequence virumor posted, fine for a 2006 era game or a retro/ small budget game but a literal lol for a 100 mill AAA title. Their AI ends with people raking their carpets and staring at walls for hours or putting pots on their heads and their RPG systems are either laughably exploitable, laughably imbalanced or (lately) laughably simplified so much so that they are barely RPG any more. And the story itself... to be fair they are at least very good at general world building so people can larp their own more meaningful story. Now, I say that as someone who hasn't played a post F3 Bethesda game and has no intent to buy F4 except in a hypothetical future where it's steam free and very, very cheap- or 2nd hand for console- but those problems are the reason why I have so little interest in buying their games. More than anything it's that they don't seem to be interested in actually fixing those problems but just treat them as part of the charm/ modders will fix it. F4 probably has more budget than TWitcher 3 and the scopes are similar, it's to that that F4 has to be fairly compared. Of course comparing the two on pre release screenshots and videos which aren't from PC is potentially a can of worms but I'd be pretty confident that TW3 will be better than F4 on pretty much every single one of the above criteria.

'Captain Worf' has been a proposal for a long time, unsurprisingly Michael Dorn is the main person pushing it. It would make sense though, since he was in both TNG and DS9 plus movies he's theoretically got a lot more draw/ hook than any other practical possibility. They aren't going to get Patrick Stewart, after all.

I'd say that's a case of the other teams improving rather than the US team going backwards, at least. What teams like the US really need are regular play and a good national administration, ironically because the US is so big both are pretty difficult to implement on a low budget in contrast to somewhere smaller like Georgia and there isn't the 'national will' for want of a better term to just throw money at improvement as there is in Japan.

There are several different possibilities (and others, such as plain metal fatigue or a door failure causing explosive decompression). Of the two linked the China 611 is perhaps the most likely since the Airbus321 involved here had also had a significant tail strike incident. This analysis brought to you by multiple hours watching Air Crash Investigation/ Mayday. Analysis of the black boxes is required to actually tell. And yeah, they would say that since it exonerates them of blame.

Yeah, a good send off for all the retiring players, the Aussies tried hard but it was quite one sided except for the brief period when Ben Smith got himself sinbinned. We'll probably get Sir Richard McCaw on 1/1/16, if he accepts it. An excellent tournament overall too, the Japan vs RSA game and performance of some of the less fancied teams (Georgia, Scotland as well as Japan) brought a good deal of interest and most games were entertaining.

But there isn't a single PoC there, and a distinct lack of rainbow hair. That doesn't look inclusive at all. And I bet the poor old supermutants are actively discriminated against, as are ghouls radiologically advantaged persons. Bethesda, Bethesda never changes. But seriously, are the F4 graphics the best graphics they're capable of? No wonder they're desperate for paid mods to work.

Not convinced. Shooting down is definitely out of question unless they got specialized surface to air missile systems, which would mean that Sauds or USA delivered them to rebels. I doubt that any of that happened. The Saudis or US would not be arming rebels in Egypt. There were rumours that the ISIS chapter in Egypt may have got hold of a high altitude capable SAM via capture off the Egyptian army, but I don't think anyone seriously believes it given that the whole rebel force in Syria has captured one functional non manpad SAM system despite being far more organised and having captured far more equipment and territory. On the other hand, an airliner that had to reduce altitude due to cabin pressure loss or similar would be in the danger zone for man portable air SAMs which it is very credible that they would have a limited number of. Overall though it is highly unlikely to be a SAM even given that, and I think 'Sinai State' have actually denied it as well.

Erdogan's main aim at the moment is to get the pro Kurd party below the 10% (!) threshold for getting into parliament as that is the only way his AKP can get a majority. That 10% being designed specifically so that Armenians/ Kurds/ Greeks would never get representation especially after the expulsions/ genocides in the 20th century. That strategy isn't working, fortunately, and most polls put them into the low teens support wise. The refugees are excellent leverage against Europe but leverage against Europe requires Erdogan to be in the Executive Presidency of his dreams, so everything is secondary to getting a majority for the AKP. If that doesn't happen the knives will be out, and that is what he's really worried about. Having said that, a million plus refugees in your country is most definitely a legitimate concern, and if Europe wants them to stay in Turkey they certainly have a part to play in that as well as Turkey.

Which episode of Buffy/ Angel is that from? I did rather like Legend of the Seeker TV, and not just because seeing local actors hamming it up at the Hunua Falls or Piha is always amusing.