Agiel

"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.

Keep in mind that he said this back when the conventional balance in Europe was decidedly in the Warsaw Pact's favour and when the NATO powers had "strategic superiority" over the Soviet Union. And Herman Kahn's "Ladder of Escalation": The last rung was the origin of the term "Wargasm". All I know is if the news has verifiable reports of shots fired between any superpower and Russia, I'm picking up my parents and taking them for a "short vacation" to Ukiah ("Yes, mom, that's a real place.") Re: Land Invasion of Russia There was an old joke in the Soviet Union in the time of the Sino-Soviet Split: Q: What are the two languages citizens of the Soviet Union should learn? A: Hebrew and Chinese. Hebrew for those who are leaving, and Chinese for those who are staying. In other words, an invasion of Russia is far more likely to come from the _other direction_, as only China has the economic fortitude matching the US on top of the logistical acumen to wage a war between great powers (as opposed to the US, China is _right there_). The theater is sparsely populated (with some ethnicities probably being more amiable to a Chinese presence), so they don't have to invest nearly as much into subjecting the local populace to their will, and as a result of technology transfers with the West and the other Asian powers, are set to gain qualitative superiority on top of their quantitative superiority over the Russians.

A friend of mine made this gif of something that happened in Skylines:

If you're willing to put the human race at stake on the assumption that either a.) The other superpowers would play by the same rules, especially so if fallout happens to fall on countries that have nothing to do with whatever quarrel Russia happens to find itself involved in b.) Russia could keep a nuclear war "limited" once a coalition force arrayed against them begins taking out "counterforce" (military) targets necessary to wage it, leaving Russia with only more survivable and less accurate weapons (thus are only good for one thing, "countervalue targets") at their disposal Then I'm afraid that your head, in the words of General William Smith, "left the world of reality." "The only winning move is not to play."

Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition to tide me over till PoE comes. I think I'd rather that Beamdog compressed the audio files for the new characters so they don't sound so out of place.

Kind of the beauty of remote piloted vehicles is that the military that employs them will hardly care if they are shot down. No pilot was killed, they primarily use OTS equipment so no particularly sensitive technologies can be retrieved from them, and most of all, they're very cheap. The loss of a $4 million UAV (which mind you since it has an engine from a lawnmower and no ECM or LO properties is only slightly harder to shoot down than a blimp) is a drop in the bucket for the USAF, which is more than you could say about the ~$25 million Syrian Su-24 shot down by that IDF MIM-104 Patriot a few months back. As for SS-26es in Kaliningrad, I believe Pavel Podvig's quote is worth repeating:

Yeah, and "American money" also pays for your F-35s, MIM-104 Patriot PAC-3, THAAD, and a whole host of other military hardware, Bibi.

https://youtu.be/vefhZp-d_uw Like the real CnC Generals sequel.