Humodour

I went into the music store today to buy a CD I'd previously downloaded. I went up to the counter to ask one of the staff if they had The Cardigans and their response was: "Did I just hear you right? Did you just say The Cardigans?" Me: *stares blankly and deliberately before answering* "Yes." The guy: "Oh what is this, 1993?" the girls nods and laughs sarcastically. Me: *continuing to stare, beginning to form a large frown* Them: "Uh, anyway, no we don't have that. Would you like us to order it?" Me: "No thanks, I'll go somewhere else." ****. It's not even like The Cardigans is a preppy pop band or anything. They're a reasonably alternative Swedish rock band. And 1993? Their latest album came out 2005 you elitist ****.

What kind of advice is that dude? I'm a gamer. In fact my degree at university is game design. Gaming is my thing. I will be playing games for decades to come. If a game is available and I have the money, it makes sense to buy it, regardless of when I plan to play it. Thanks anyway. Besides, the Australian dollar is extremely high against the USD right now. And while it will probably even hit parity soon, it's high enough right now that I'd rather buy now than risk forgetting to buy them and only remembering again when the USD is worth 2 AUD. As for everyone else, cheers guys, I'll take a look at them all. I'll definitely add Giants to my list. Didn't know it was on there. It will also be good to have digital copies of Fallout.

Gallup has it at 40% or so. Rasmussen always has a Republican lean. Either way, it's no big deal. Reagan and Bush and pretty much every president has dropped before 50% support during there terms and been re-elected. I'd be extremely surprised if Obama didn't serve 2 terms. The problem is that America doesn't have a fiscally conservative party, just a socially conservative party and a socially liberal party.

You're sort of right except you're mainly wrong. No, the chart is correct - it is national debt. Adding up the deficits will get you a roughly similar graph, but there are certain things that would be missing (such as Social Security surplus tax receipts - and to be clear this is debt, not surplus, because you seem to think that it's a good thing heh). For example, the deficit 2008 under Bush was $455 billion, but he actually increased the national debt by $1 trillion after all debt was considered.

No.

Wrath of Dagon, your utterly queer arguments about how it's OK for Republicans to run up deficits but not Democrats (and your further queer attempts to play down Democrat financial prudence) aside, do you actually understand the difference between public deficits and public debt?

Eh, Stargate SG-1 was about as mainstream as you could get.

**** prices for Australians that are not in line with international exchange rates?

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.