Oerwinde

New game I'm looking forward to: Magna Mundi. The guys who made the Magna Mundi mod for EU3 formed their own development studio and are making a new game for Paradox based on the mod. Apparently completely overhauling most of EU3's systems in order to do what they want easier, faster, and in more depth.

The developer has one of the worst track records I have seen in recent years. This could actually be worse than the movie-based game. It better not suck. Transformers needs a decent game, and this one at least looks promising.

Mass Effect 2 Dragon Age: Awakenings Transformers: War for Cybertron Witcher 2 Alpha Protocol

I had to give this some consideration... the 'fear' part. I don't think we have a culture of fear, at least we haven't until recent times. And not because we think everyone is out to kill us. Instead, I think the fear stems more from all this political correctness bs that is running rampant. It is everywhere. Watch what we say and watch what we do because someone might be offended. Parents can't correct their kids in public for fear some righteous nosy-body will report them as child abusers. We supposed to make sure we don't offend fat people, crippled people, people of different religions, races, color, height, width, intellect, whatever! We have learn fancy words because saying the word 'fat' for instance might hurt a fat persons feelings, even if we're referring to a slab of bacon.... Political correctness is the downfall of society. I consider myself a liberal and I can't stand political correctness. We need to start reinforcing the old "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" doctrine, rather than "don't say that you might hurt someone's feelings". Free speech is much more important than some fat chick's feelings.

They can't force you to pay gratuity. They can add it to the bill automatically, but you can refuse to pay it.

And then he'd be dead. Instead of both of you being alive. Good thing you didn't have a gun, otherwise you'd be a murderer. technically there are self defense clauses in the murder statute, but I don't think fighting back when you've got a gun in your face is going to do any good unless you're well trained because often you'll end up getting yourself shot. As to the attitude thing, You're right. Everyone is so worried about saving themselves from each other that they get to be of the mindest shoot first as questions later. Discussing after the fact, he pulled a gun, no one got hurt. He's claiming if he had a gun, he would have killed him before the guy had a chance to pull his. Basing this on events that happened, he's basically talking about killing someone because he threatened him. Thats murder, not self defence. At the point of the incident, it would likely be interpreted as self defence, but knowing the outcome, we know now that it wouldn't have been the case.

I'm in the camp that thinks its more the culture than the guns. The US has a culture of fear. People who are afraid that everyone is out to kill you and your family are more likely to unload into someone threatening. Hence why the societies where the mindset is more peaceful tend to have high gun ownership rates and low incidents of gun crime. Canada for instance has a higher gun ownership rate than the US, but gun crime rate is much lower. And then he'd be dead. Instead of both of you being alive. Good thing you didn't have a gun, otherwise you'd be a murderer.

Well without religion its quite likely the Dark Ages wouldn't have happened, and technology possibly would be much more advanced. Or it could have turned out exactly the same.

http://althistory.wikia.com/wiki/Aztec_Empire

That's ridiculous. If Franz Ferdinand doesn't die, WW1 will just start a couple years later. Everybody was building up for The Big One from 1908 onward. The only way to avoid the Great War is to prevent the series of alliances that birthed it, perhaps by avoiding German unification or the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. Furthermore, the probability that Britain would ever attempt to mount a invasion of the United States is absurdly low. Additionally, without the political destabilization of the Great War, fascism would probably be strangled in its cradle. History is a complex tapestry and you're ****ting all over it with your absurdities. A much better, more plausible timeline is one that's not done yet, titled "Reds: A Revolutionary Timeline," where McKinley isn't assassinated, the Progressive movement doesn't succeed in the two big parties, the Socialists absorb the Progressives and maintain control over northern class conflict, the left wing of the Socialists maintains control over party leadership and the Great War seriously radicalizes a good chunk of American soldiers due to earlier entry. It all culminates when the now mainstream Worker's Party (a rebranded Socialist Party and member of the Comintern) succeeds at overthrowing the United States government with the Red Army (a rebranded Bonus Army) under Patton. Theres a ton of awful timelines. One of the biggest, most detailed has an independent winning the 2000 presidential election and eventually leads to the US with crazy space mining leading to a collapse of all world economies except the US so Mexico and Canada seek annexation by the US. The guy fails at economics forever, not only would the costs of space mining outweigh the benefits, even if the costs weren't an issue, having a limitless supply of resources would only devalue those resources to the point where it wouldn't be financially viable to maintain production. If production was maintained it would result in lower manufacturing costs due to drasticly lowered prices on raw materials, which in turn would lead to both a lower price on the finished product, and an increase in consumer consumption due to higher availability and lower prices leading to a stronger economy rather than a collapsed one. But seriously: Space mining because Bush wasn't elected in 2000. Its a combination of the fascinating and the absurd that makes me love alternate history.

It doesn't state which arms you have the right to bear. So if the government decides to ban everything but single shot bolt action rifles its entirely constitutional.

What I like about alternate history is how a single point of diversion can lead to a nearly infinite number of results. For instance, theres one timeline on there where Franz Ferdinand wasn't assassinated, and WW1 didn't happen. So Britain became some sort of crazy fascist warmongering nation and invaded the US in the 60s.

So I've been pretty much obsessed for the last few months with this: Alternate History Wiki Mostly been working on the 1983: Doomsday timeline, which has expanded nicely, but there are quite a few good timelines and more than a few terrible ones(such as the Vegetarian World, in which the world is all awesome and peaceful and theres no bad TV because everyone is vegan or vegetarian). Anyway, I figured some people here might find it interesting. Alternate history is a genre that is lacking love ever since the end of season 2 of Sliders.

District 9 and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince District 9 was fantastic, but the main character was a douche. Harry Potter was definitely better than the previous one. Its good to have the original writer back.

Holy crap! Volourn disagrees. SHOCKING! Overall, the last 6 episodes have been some of the best TV in a while.

The story is cliche and very predictable, but is presented and acted well enough than it doesn't really matter.

nah, he was shot four times in the stomach by his girlfriend who was carrying his kid at the time under mind control So they ditched the Civil War stuff? not quite, he was shot while going up the court steps to be tried for his role in the civil war thing. Honestly, the stories that Brubaker writes are AWESOME (they actually showed his body right after he died, the super soldier serum basically disappeared from his system, which I'm guessing is what's bringing him back, it reactivates and brings him back to life, but I'm not an avid monthly reader of that, I do the TPB's) From what I gathered from Wikipedia, the whole thing was some elaborate plan by Red Skull and AIM. When Steve was shot, he was actually trapped in time and Red Skull pulls his body out of time but takes control of it. It sounds really terrible.

I hope Bucky keeps it and Steve takes over as director of SHIELD once Norman Osborn gets beat down.

Checking out Avatar on friday at IMAX. Hopefully my experience will be more like Nick's than Devin's (CHUD.com reviewers, Nick gave it a 9.2 out of 10, Devin a 6.9)

Tim Burton didn't direct this...

Not as ridiculous as he did in the comics: (only pic I could find)

Fixed.

It says something about Pixar when the worst you can say about their worst film is that its merely "pretty good" (not Up, which was one of their better flicks, Cars I thought was their worst, and was still very enjoyable)

Well when you think of what some directors like Guillermo Del Toro or Joss Whedon can do with a 30 million dollar budget, then you see what people are doing with 200 million it just baffles the mind why they feel the need to dish out that kind of money. I mean Hellboy 2 was made for 60 million, Serenity for 30, and they're gorgeous. Then you see Superman Returns. Put those 3 together and ask which one cost 200 million and without any background knowledge I'd put my money on Hellboy.

Ah. I think it made quite a bit more globally, but I guess if it can't even recoup costs via US sales than it's a bust. 200 million to make a movie. It still boggles my mind. Edit: I watched 'Men of a Certain Age' last night. I loved it. Ray Ramano is always a bit whiny but overall the 1st episode was awesome. 125 million domestic, 246 overseas. So it tanked domestically but did well overseas, but studios don't really pay much attention to overseas since a large chunk of that goes to overseas distributors. For example: The Golden Compass made 70 million domestic and 300 million overseas, but New Line got something like 10% of the overseas gross due to foreign distribution agreements. This was one of the reasons for Warner Bros absorbing New Line, in order to invalidate overseas distribution agreements for the possible sequels. And if 200 million boggles your mind, Avatar is reportedly costing nearly 500 once the cost of R&D and constructing the new cameras and such in included. (its using a lot of cameras and other equipment that was developed specifically for Avatar.) http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/11/08/avatar...-make-a-profit/