Humodour

So to celebrate my first pay check of my new job finally coming in, I finally bought some games on GOG (the DRM-free, download as many times as you want factor was really enticing). Some of them I've played before, most of them are new. I bought: Spellforce The Longest Journey Beyond Good and Evil Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Incoming + Incoming Forces (hmm I should probably pick up Descent) Far Cry Jagged Alliance 2 Sacrifice What else do you suggest I buy off there? What the are epics you'd buy from there?

My home internet. We're upgrading to 1.5 mbps soon (currently 512kbps).

It's not uncommon to find waste disposal points and crematories drawing power from the waste and corspes they burn.

Adjusting for inflation makes the chart have actual meaning in present day dollars. Otherwise it's just arbitrary numbers. But if you insist... Sure, here's public debt without adjusting for inflation. This is even worse for the Republicans mate.

Uh, so? That's a macroeconomic indicator. It says nothing about living standards. No. We aren't accepting invented or imaginary statistics as evidence, m'kay? Oh, wait. Those that have greater growth rates than the US aren't "developed", right? How shrewd. So? That's for 2008, the year of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. You need to look over a longer period of time. Most of the growth in US took place from between about 1983 and 2007. Another indicator, I'm pretty sure we consume more resources per capita than any other country by far. Just how ignorant are you mate? Pretty much any Asian country has had higher average economic growth than America over the past 30 or so years, as well as a bunch of other countries around the world. How much longer do you plan to make up figures on the spot to support your bogus claims? As for incessant resource consumption - you're bragging about that? You're honest to god bragging that your country is more wasteful than anywhere else?

You can't win an argument when you're wrong. Go visit US and Finland, then we'll talk. Nothing lies like statistics. *sticks fingers in ears* Lalalala! Maths is a lie! America is the greatest! Everywhere else sucks and I know I'm right because I live in America, and America is the greatest unless you're a kid trying to get an education (education is for pansy socialist Europeans!) or you're a dirty homeless or you're unemployed and can't afford critical surgery (it's because you're a commie!).

I'm 21. I dislike tours. I love physically getting out there and exploring, especially off the beaten track. I regularly go hiking in the Blue Mountains rainforests here where tourists to Australia sometimes get lost and die because they are horrible individuals. I'm kind of realising I want to things: 1) To meet new people and experience new cultures and languages and beers 2) To explore new worlds, landscapes, rainforests, caves, volcanoes and glaciers - potentially by myself, and certainly at my own pace. Kinda mutually exclusive, huh? I guess I should get with number 2 for this trip. It's easier, cheaper, and doesn't require a foreign language.

I'm sure they're not doing better than US, you don't know much about US. What I meant was that they'd be part of the Soviet Union, not whether they're socialist or not. Lol, another obviously well substantiated opinion, fully supported by facts. Yes. Most certainly. Those studies and indexes are idiotic. Also any average will bring US down because of our underclass, but I wasn't talking about them. Edit: Per capita GDP is skewed because of the value of the US dollar. There's no question US has the most prosperous middle class in the world (i.e. people who aren't completely stupid and willing to work) unless compared to a small country with tons of oil. This is worse than talking to a brick wall. At least a brick wall doesn't pretend to know economics.

The graph only goes to 2005, Amentep. So Bush's increase was about $4 trillion. Not a bad rough compilation, though. Obama isn't doing too well at balancing the budget so far. Let's hope he can be like Clinton and at least get it back to where he started from by the end of his second term. There is a way for America and Britain to solve this problem (along with good financial management). But it's one a lot of people in both countries won't like, and that's rising taxes. It's the kind of thing that will have to happen under the Republicans/Conservatives, in much the same way that only Nixon could go to China.

I'm sure they're not doing better than US, you don't know much about US. Whereas you don't know much about anything? Finland does better than the US on every single measure I can think of. Let's see... Environmental performance: Finland: 4th America: 39th Education: Finland: 1st and 2nd in everything - if there was a brightest country in the world, this would be it America: Below the OECD average in most (possibly all?) categories. Certainly not in the top 20 countries for anything. Press freedom: Finland: 4th America: 36th Corruption: Finland: 5th America: 18th Human Development: Finland: 12th America: 13th (so close!) Income disparity (lower is better, exponential scale): Finland: 27.0 America: 45.0 Government debt: Finland: 35% of GDP America: 60.8% of GDP (actually it's higher now, but whatever) Unemployment: Finland: 7.6% America: 9.5% Life expectancy at birth: Finland: 78.97 America: 78.11 GDP per capita: Finland: $52,000 USD America: $47,000 If there's a point where I should stop, this is probably it. Heck, Finland is even part of the EU - a superstate with a military, economy and political clout which all rival or exceed America's. Finland just keeps on going, don't it? They're just numbers, but they tell a darn sight more of the real story than your big mouth does.

Um, no? I suppose you'd be correct in a round about way. One of the current reasons is zero cost of borrowing which is likely to last for a long time, meanwhile other currencies like the AUD, CAD, and NZD have high interest yields. Do remember that America's currency is freely floated; its value is market-determined. Another reason for America's falling dollar is that creditors are starting to lose faith en masse in the ability of America to meet future interest payments and sustain its debt levels. If you take a look at what the world's central banks are buying these days it's all Yen and Euros. The public dubt in America started blooming out of control under Reagan and Bush Senior such that between the time Reagan first took power and Bush Senior handed the reigns to Clinton, American public debt had DOUBLED. It started increasing under Clinton but by the end of his second term, he'd gotten it back down the same level it was at when he took control. He was a good economic manager. Under Bush Junior it DOUBLED AGAIN. The 9/11 security measures, many of which were an unconstitutional breach of civil rights, did not cost hundreds of billions of dollars. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan themselves "only" cost about hundred billion each over their entire life-time, from memory. The Iraq war shouldn't have even happened! The recession was not caused by 9/11, it was caused by absolutely **** financial and banking regulation under successive US governments, both Democrat and Republican, but certainly culminating under Bush, leading to a massive housing bubble. And what was it for 2008? What was it for each year 2000 through to 2008? The public budget debt under Bush consistently and conspicuously increased. Bush's administration cared so little about balancing the books that Cheney argued that deficits don't matter. To quote the site I link to below: "Politicians love to crow 'The deficit is down! The deficit is down!' like it's a great accomplishment. Don't be fooled. Reducing the deficit just means we're adding less to the Debt this year than we did last year. Big deal -- we're still adding to the Debt. When are we going to start seeing the Debt actually go down?" Spending like there's no tomorrow? As opposed to, say, the Republican party? Would you like to see a graph of public debt in America up to 2005, index to 2000 dollars (to account for inflation)? I'll leave you to figure out what years belong to which president, but that shouldn't be hard - just look for the spike after a flat area and you'll know that's a Republican taking office. http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/faq.html I'll concede it's not my currency, it's not my country, it's not my debt - but your naive arrogance on this matter is irksome. If you're going to play the blame game make sure you've at least got a convincing argument to lie through your teeth with.

Meta didn't leave because he was fired from being a mod. Fine. HE WAS FIRED AS THE MODERATOR OF MY HEART.

One day I'm going to go a month, perhaps even a year, without using a computer. That also means no TV (though I don't watch it anyway, I'm not allowed to start). Just books, people, and real life. I think it'll be eye-opening and fun. In fact, I was thinking of combining it with going overseas and doing aid work or something one day.

Yes. It's graph theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eulerian_path

Metadigital was fired as a moderator and quit the forums forever (probably under an alt now), Hades was one of Visceris's many alts - he's currently Killian something, Eldar still pops round occasionally, dunno about Endar.

Correct. I forgot myself for a moment. Don't bother with K-lite when you can just grab VLC.

Steam downloads don't take up bandwidth quota here, because my ISP hosts the Steam servers for Australia. Score.

I have some assignment on spanning trees and Euler paths to do but I'm going to drink a couple of Crown Lagers and try and calculate the price of milk in Iceland in current Australian dollars instead.

Quite a beautiful country. Shame about the accent. Don't forget the horrible internet and didn't they have the highest suicide rate or something? I think you're confusing New Zealand with Russia. Easy mistake.

Quite a beautiful country. Shame about the accent. I've actually been entertaining the thought of moving there. They've got a lively underground metal scene so finding a band to play in should be no problem. They also seem not to have been hit as hard by the financial crisis as europe so there might actually be some work. I know the language and hate cold weather. Maoris also fascinate me. Personally, I'd heartily recommend Australia over New Zealand, because we've got everything that New Zealand offers and more (such as higher income levels and over 17 years without an economic recession). New Zealand is also slightly more rural and right-wing than Australia. I am not at all biased.

Hahahaha. Frankly, the problem I see is that without America, you'd see a sharp rise in Chinese, Russian and Iranian imperialism. And that'd be a whole lot more difficult to stomach because that means, variously, communism, fascism, and Islamism. Not to mention that the EU is there to play good cop to America's bad cop, but you can hardly do that when you take away the bad cop. Still, bad cop doesn't mean stupid dumb**** cop like Bush & Cheney seemed to think. ****, did you know that Cheney tried to argue that America's deficits don't matter? I bet he planned to just bomb any country that tried to collect on its debt.

Yeah that's what I meant. It's got a visible shield on it during FTL and Destiny doesn't, so make of that what you will.

Quite a beautiful country. Shame about the accent.

But gold prices are at record highs. That seems like a **** time to buy unless the market is fundamentally reshaping itself for decades to come. Why? 'Cause the gains on gold from here on will be small. Also if gold is at record highs, then it has got a long way to fall. I'm not economist, though. If there's something I'm missing, let me in on the secret.

So Wals's thread got me thinking about the Australian dollar and how for the next year or so it'll be appreciating against most currencies. Well, I've never been overseas, and by about December or so this year I'll have over $10,000 saved. I have few debts or monetary obligations (besides owing my mother a netbook - long story), and I'm going totally bat**** cooped up in this town. I say it is time to go on a holiday! Any ideas? I think I'd like to go for at least 2 weeks. I'm not sure what I'd do overseas, though. I'm a huge fan of exploring, bushwalking, climbing, etc. Love rainforests, caves, and ruins. Maybe now would be a good time to explore Iceland's glaciers like I've been planning since my senior years of high school. I put it off because it was so expensive there. Their currency tanked though, right? Oh wow, it's still tanking! One year ago 1 AUD was worth 60 krona, now it's worth 120 and rising. Hah! I even know basic Icelandic. So, yeah, hit me with places to visit but also activities and things to do overseas.