taks

interesting... i just noticed, btw, that the #1 dude has over 50,000 pupils, but only 14 victories. he doesn't even play his character and he moves up because of all the idiot followers he has. heck, his master plays more than he does and he's only level 12. FYI, i'm now level 10 with 85 victories. taks

it's your job to prove he didn't, i.e., you (and every other person that makes the claim) need to provide evidence that supports your claim - the burden of proof is on you, not me. there's never been anything that indicates he lied other than ideologues running their mouths. because that's what people do? taks

you don't have any kids yet, do you? that changes everything. totally and forever. of course, we live in an area that fosters some rather intense extracurricular activities that the child can participate in, namely, skiing and camping. skiing can be an extreme sport, particularly when you're doing it at 40. my son will likely be jumping off cliffs by the time he's a teenager. camping by itself isn't all that bad, but backpacking into the wilderness for a week can be. 4-wheeling up a rock wall then hiking 2 miles into no-man's land by yourself just to drop a line in a mountain stream is pretty intense, too, particularly when you regularly see mountain lion and/or bear tracks along the way. not sure what i'd do if i ever ran across the owner of said tracks. cry and poop my pants, probably, followed by some gurgling and eventually, death. other than that, simply being awake is often fascinating to me. taks

my excitement for the day was the realization that grades were due yesterday. i read the first part of the email (our office admin) that said "90 hours after the final" and failed to notice the "or by the deadline on the sheet in the top right corner." presumably whichever came first. our scheduled "final" was monday, so i figured i had till tomorrow morning. nope. yesterday. in my defense, one of my students did not turn in his final lab till yesterday evening (we didn't actually have an exam) and i don't grade till i have them all in (there were only 5 students in the class). anyway, nobody seemed to care. got me out of the office for an hour. soooo, now i'm done with school till next february. i think we're going to redesign the lab this summer since our setup is a bit out of date. at the very least, i need to take ownership since none of the experiments were designed by me. even the lab manual was written by the guy i report to. we've got decent enough equipment for doing the tests, we just have old circuits to test (which causes problems). taks

as aristes noted, albeit indirectly, it's not even about misrepresenting the truth. bush represented the story exactly as he believed it to be. he pushed the evidence that he saw as the most likely truth. that's not just a semantic difference with lying. since the topic is bush's mind, i think this goes to the heart of his doing things as he believed, rather than what the polls say. clearly this is not the work of a bumbling idiot or a liar, but someone that is highly principled. whether or not you agree with his principles is another story (and many, if not most, i do not, for that matter). taks

congratulations. i'd say the first one is the best, though i don't think that's necessarily true. we were asked not to for my latest (2008), though i did for both high school (1986) and my undergraduate degree (1990). i didn't walk for my MS (1995) since i had moved to florida by the time the ceremony was held. ^walsh: for me the evil path just seems wrong in most games. it doesn't fit what i see as the goal of most games, particularly "the chosen one" settings. taks

further evidence of my hypothesis that we are simply boring. you and lady crimson are like exhibit B and C on my list. i'm exhibit A (though i was not always). taks

excuse me? you said: this is silly and i explained why immediately after calling it silly when i said: the deterrence argument has NOTHING to do with the criminal himself, but the effect it has on OTHERS, as i clearly stated. in other words, does threat of the death penalty prevent people from committing capital crimes for fear of the death penalty? no, it does not (which is immaterial to what the argument actually is). so, not only does your comment not address the actual argument i was referring to, the fact that you refused to understand what the argument actually consists of after i made it clear what i was referring to reflects either ignorance or being obtuse for the sake of argument. which is it, kelverin? did you simply fail to understand (ignorance) or were you being obtuse? i'm not the ass here, kelverin, you are. taks

true. those same criminal syndicates, walsh, realize that their own people are criminals, and hence, can't really be trusted anyway. ultimately, their goal is to simply eliminate those that do betray what little trust they've been given. people that commit capital crimes don't care about the consequences. obviously they don't rationalize behavior or its consequences the same way normal people do (else they wouldn't be committing such crimes in the first place). taks

quit being obtuse. the argument regarding deterrence has nothing to do with whether or not the person executed will commit any further crimes. furthermore, i clearly stated what the deterrence argument is in the sentence immediately following. this reply is moronic, at best. taks

the effect it had on your driving, the effect you think it had on your driving, and the effect your parents think it had on your driving are 3 different things. taks

oh god. it's actually a biopic on jesus' life, as i recall, and scores rather well at IMDB. it is, to put it plainly, retarded. even moreso when you consider the actual story, not the metaphorical one. the "palace" btw, is an outhouse. taks

um, no. that's silly. the "deterrence argument" is the argument that the death penalty deters others from committing capital crimes. it does not, or at least, there has never been any data suggesting that it does. people think it does, and thus believe it to be true, but nobody can ever pin down why other than "it just seems logical" (forgetting, of course, that the argument involves an emotional response - fear of being executed, which is contrary to logic anyway). taks

apparently you haven't seen greaser's palace. taks

these are rare cases, but from what it seems, this would fit my definition of "beyond and and all doubt" to be an appropriate application of the death penalty. yup. i tend to stay away from equivalence arguments. they often get applied in the two wrongs make a right situations. i didn't always believe this way, btw. i used to be a pretty staunch defender of the death penalty as a form of justice (though i never agreed with the deterrence argument). after years of listening to borked criminal proceedings, not that there is a large percentage, just that they happen often enough to be noticed, i finally decided that only an ideal justice system is capable of unilaterally implementing something as final as the death penalty. put a man in jail and there is a chance he'll be vindicated if he's innocent (or, not guilty enough). put a needle in his arm and there is no chance. even if it is only one in a million, i find such odds unfathomable. only an ideal system can have zero odds of making a mistake. taks

i was on the beltway once at 11:30 is bumper to bumper traffic. this was, of course, before they got all the construction done. but still... i can't imagine rush hour. well, yes, i can. i did a trip to dulles during rush hour once, coming down from gaithersburg (left at 6:30 a.m. as i recall). that sucked. i envy you not. ^killian: me too. i can never play games down the "evil" path. i just started an NWN2 game at true neutral and i managed to have a 95 good rating shortly into act 1. i can't side with moire. just can't do it. taks

hardly a surprise that you can't figure it out. taks

ultimately, the problem with the death penalty is really that it is impossible to implement fairly (as if there is a "fair" way to decide to kill someone). there's always a chance that someone innocent, or at least, not guilty enough, will get executed with most systems. biases always creep in with human juries, which are never the "peers" we hope them to be*. the standard, in the US at least, is clearly way farther than simply "beyond a reasonable doubt," but i don't think it is far enough. i think the only standard should be "beyond any and all doubt," which is likely impossible for all but a few cases. taks *think about it: who gets stuck on death penalty juries? d'ya think you'd want those people deciding your fate? not me. i'd have to kill 'em all, too!

perhaps. this is something i research a bit of. more of a curiosity than anything. as i noted, btw, i only gleaned a little information from one of the reviews, which stated the author had included some facts and related analysis that i know (personally) to be flawed or highly subject to biased interpretation. at least, that's what i remember. the subject, in general, is actually rather taboo in many circles because it brings up concepts of eugenics (disastrous) and racial/cultural issues (legitimate, but politically disastrous) as well, which tends to turn discussions regarding the subject into emotional battles. ^lucian: bush did not lie, no matter how you want to spin it. you people really need to get off that broken hobby horse. taks

i doubt many people cared about bush's grades, either. he'd have had maybe 10 more votes in both elections - cumulative - if he was a straight-A student. probably would have pissed off a few others, too, for being a smarty pants, perhaps resulting in a net loss of votes. taks

grades are the only thing companies have to go on with incoming new-grads, so that determines whether or not you get the interview. an advanced degree makes it a moot point, however. every interview i had as an undergrad required i put down my GPA. not one after i got my MS had the same requirement. now that i have a phd, they don't even ask if my degree is in a relevant field. taks

are you sure that's the title? while i know the subject of IQ is... hmmm, controversial, at best, i recall you linking to a book once on the subject and i recall reading the reviews (not the book itself). as i recall, if the reviews were true, the author committed some egregious errors, both with the use of dubious facts and improper statistical analyses. not that his errors provide a confirmation of the concept of IQ/intelligence, but that book certainly couldn't be used as a refutation, either. i don't remember the details, so i'm only pointing out what i remember in general. ^meshugger: an MS is, in general, much more difficult to achieve than an MA (master of arts). in any event, who cares what your grades were... all that matters is that you get to do what you like to do and, hopefully, get paid to do it. taks

an MA from yale (skull and bones society, as was john kerry, btw) in either something business related or political science, as i recall. he didn't rock, for sure, with a C+ average (don't quote me on this, however). his SAT scores were available at one time, somewhere around 1200 or so, which put him at least in the 125-130 IQ range.* taks * the SATs at the time bush took them were strongly correlated with IQ. however, as with any knowledge-based IQ test, they suffer immensely on the downside, i.e., if you don't have the knowledge required for the test, you cannot score well, even if you do have a high IQ. somewhere in the 1980s the SATs stopped being a good IQ indicator. of course, the whole IQ thing is still hotly contested and will likely always remain that way. but i digress...

i am quite convinced that the people advising presidents do understand economics, in spite of continually implementing policies that damage our economy. they fully realize that to control the flow of money is to control the lives of those that spend it. the only difference from one to the next is how that control is explained to the sheep. hmm, maybe. i don't buy the energy independence thing, however. if it is a global economy, it is a global economy. special pleading for certain sectors does not impress me as something that is intellectually honest. taks

he addressed the biggest, IMO: economics. he was actually the bravest of them all to stand up to keynsian orthodoxy, that which has crippled us for 100 years or so, at least in his first term. in the end, he never did anything about the flawed monetary policy of the fed and he ultimately caved to congressional pressure to raise taxes (though not directly). indeed, he did more for "long term" than any, he just didn't stick to it for the ride. sigh... quite frankly, that isn't even a blip on my radar. good, yes, for the USSR and freedom in general (long term). however, nobody cared about big ole bad USA while the communists were around, so realistically, his actions ended up turning the world's attention to us. yay. taks