Agiel

And if you can name one incident in which an American naval vessel or aircraft has behaved as brashly towards the Russian AGIs that have been keeping busy off American coastlines since the end of the Cold War, I'm all ears.

I would hardly call a largely de-militarised Europe and at most 3 forward deployed brigade-sized American maneuver elements (and only one at the moment anywhere east of the Elbe, and to call them "maneuver" forces is a bit generous, they're Stryker BCTs for feth's sake) an "encirclement". If anything, with the Germans recent re-activation of 100 Leo 2A5s and the Dutch reversing their decision to retire their entire fleet of tanks, Russia's recent sabre-rattling is looking more like self-fulfilling prophecy by the day. Poland, the Baltics, et al came knocking on NATO's door because history has given them good reason to fear Russia. Perhaps if Putin had something to offer to them other than intimidation, gas dependency, and dashcam videos of horribly irresponsible driving they'd all cast a more favourable eye towards Russia.

OnLive shutting down. For good. I absolutely do not doubt for one second, whether we all like it or not (and I can't say I'm in the former camp), that the cloud is where the future of gaming will be. By that same token, when OnLive was first announced (and actually up to this day), I had grave doubts that that future was _here_.

You gotta figure at some point this is going to end in disaster if the Russians keep rolling the dice. There is a lethal precedent for Russian aircraft buzzing American assets (see the Tu-16 Badger that stalled and cartwheeled into the Norwegian Sea whilst making low passes on the USS Essex).

I had an Infinity Engine "'Eff you, the player" moment when I had my chanter summon a drake. Unfortunately, I had summoned it right on top of a mass-death trap, killing the drake and half of my entire party Still soldiered on and managed to clear that encounter (Chaos spells for the win!).

There are more unlikely places for the Russian troll army to prowl. I read once they invaded a Finnish forum for mothers exchanging child-rearing tips.

"That rubber chicken has a wife, you know? You know what she's called? She's called... 'Incontinentia'... Incontinentia Buttocks."

A distinction should also be made between "counterforce" targets (i.e. ICBM silo fields, ballistic missile submarine berths, bomber airfields, command bunkers, etc.) and "countervalue" targets (political and civilian targets). The latter was usually targeted by submarines since with airburst detonations accuracy wasn't much of a factor (on top of significant overkill allowances to offset the chances of malfunctions, interceptions, and "misses"; the very last SIOP of the Cold War era had called for more than 200 warheads in Moscow city limits alone). The former is (or was due to a combination of START and the advent of more accurate SLBMs like Trident and Bulava) targeted with land-based systems like the LGM-118 Peacekeeper and the SS-18 Satan since they were generally more accurate. And because those targets were "military" in nature, it was believed that the conflict could be kept "limited" based on the assumption the other side would sportingly play by the same rules (to the point that NATO had developed a doctrine for that purpose colloquially known as Bravo Romeo Delta; Blunt, Retard, Disrupt). Thus according to game theorists whereas MAD made the line between peace and war thick, counterforce targeting had the potential to make it far less opaque. We would be wise to remember that both the Luftwaffe and Bomber Command had trained for "military" targets in the run-up to the Second World War.

I wonder if averaged out on a per movie basis Chow Yun Fat would come out on top.

I suppose your lab partner was Lex Luthor, then?

Don't panic. You'll be able to go back in due course and finish all those quests.

Changing tracks, something I found quite moving: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/04/world/asia/retired-japanese-fighter-pilot-sees-an-old-danger-on-the-horizon.html?_r=0

If you took that claim at all seriously, please see Lucy Van Pelt, PhD. Psychiatric Help, $.05

In the first Baldur's Gate you ended the game at around level 8-10, depending on your class choice, which meant your spell selection was fairly... modest in respect to the whole repertoire of spells in the D&D ruleset. I think it possible that if Obsidian comes around to making a PoE II and gives it an expansion, at the end of that your wizard will be rocking spells that summons an 10 megaton SS-18 Satan ICBM onto your foes.

It's subtle, but it only just now occurred to me that Durance's portrait... ...has a little of Mr. DeMartino from Daria going on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Md0bGSrzlw Though that shouldn't come as too big of a surprise.

Idle observations of "Armata": -The Remote Weapons System and the crew re-located to the hull of the tank perhaps solves the biggest Achilles Heel of previous Russian/Soviet tanks, that of spontaneous human combustion. However, it remains to be seen if it will prove reliable enough to not simply add substantially to the per-unit cost and crippling its overall effectiveness. Indications seem to point to the tank's armaments being non-functional, and will continue to be until several months of additional overhaul and testing. -Tank-Net has done an overlay of the existing T-72 over the profile image of the "T-14" based on the size of the roadwheel for the T-72: We're talking about a tank that approaches the mass of contemporary MBTs like the M1A2 SEP (~65 tonnes) and the Type 99 (almost 60 tonnes) vs the almost 48 tonnes of the T-90A. Generally, the Russians have preferred lighter, smaller tanks because it required a less powerful, less complicated engine in order to match the power-to-weight ratios of larger western tank. and the engine is usually the biggest driver of costs for an individual tank. If there was any truth to the claim it uses a hybrid, multifuel engine, then it would seem almost as if that the Russians have chosen the most deliberately expensive way of building a tank, which doesn't bode well for a country that is the midst of a huge recession. The effects of it are already being seen; recently the Russian MOD has slashed its order of the PAK-FA from ~55 to 12. If any of Russia's programs of ultra-modern systems ever bear fruit, then it's likely the biggest beneficiary of these programs will continue to be India (as it has been the case for the past ~25 years).

The Void would get an honourable mention for my Top 20 PC Games for me. In fact, in college it had a part in helping me kick a creative rut and a bout of depression. Also I highly recommend at least watching Cargo! The Quest for Gravity! Freelance Astronauts did an LP of it:

I have to admit... I fell out of my chair. I was hollering. I dragged my roommates to see it. They were hollering too. Thanks for making my day. It only needed a TIE Defender to make it complete.

If by Somalia you mean the Battle of Mogadishu, that was primarily fought with air-mobile infantry dropped into the heart of enemy territory (JSOC commanders had their reservations conducting the operation in broad daylight when the Habr Gidr militiamen were hopped up on Khat, but believed the opportunity was too much to pass up). The only actual armoured incursion was by a joint force of 10th Mountain Division and Malaysian troops under the UN Mandate sent to retrieve the Rangers and Delta Operators, of which the actual convoy suffered only one casualty. An extremely impressive feat considering how disastrously the _other_ time armoured forces were deployed into an urban environment in the 90s went. And airpower has come a long way since Vietnam, in both technology and doctrine. Take for instance the B-2 raids over Belgrade where with the advent of GPS guided ordinance a sortie with a similar target set to Operation El Dorado Canyon comprising of nearly 50 aircraft (much more than that when counting support craft like tankers, AWACS, and EA-6 Prowler jamming support) was accomplished with a mere three bombers.

I'd wager sometime around '94 (the year the F-14D was introduced) to 2000 when a lot of Tomcat pilots were converting to multi-role pilots. Might I ask what you were laughing about in 2006?

The story behind this image:

Somewhat annoyed that there aren't any hi-res versions of the portraits Justin Sweet made for Icewind Dale II. I usually use this image (in conjunction with the HOW1 Female voice set) when playing the Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate games: Have half a mind to break out the oils and do my best to "wing it" for my personal use.