Humodour

I think "Soviets discover how to X-ray you with sticky tape" would be more appropriate.

Premise sounds interesting. Is it violent? Of course it's violent, but is it like disturbing torture violence or Desperado violence? I want a happy ending. Does it have a happy ending?

Her favourite subject is mathematics. Natalie Portman is awesome.

Ghosts don't exist. God doesn't exist. Aliens do exist - but the ones near us (near/in our galaxy, which really isn't 'near') may or may not be sentient or sapient. The end. Did you know that peeling scotch tape produces x-rays? The Soviets discovered it at the end of WW2, but everyone thought they were crazy.

Will there be throwing knives? I want throwing knives.

Healthcare and the economy were each far higher on the list of "things that matter to you this election" according to polling agencies. So no, I'd say it's not sane behaviour to still freak out about terrorism, and that's one of the reasons Obama won: people recognise this.

Hillary Clinton will be the next Secretary of State. Haha. It looks like McCain might get a position, too. Whether its an official one or not is probably the biggest unknown. More info on his cabinet here: http://cbs2chicago.com/politics/valerie.ja...a.2.864868.html

I doubt it. More than likely it was simply a 'good story' so they ran it. This happens to both sides of politics, FWIW. The 'media conspiracies' explanations and their analogues rarely turn out to be true. I don't know why the Republicans are trying to discredit her now, but unfortunately, this doesn't change the nature of her vapidness; spending hundreds of thousands of campaign donations on clothes, her interviews, not answering questions during the debate and flirting with the audience, etc. let me repeat: I DID NOT SAY IT WAS SMALL. i said, quite plainly, that it was smaller than it could have been. not that you would understand mathematics (no numbers larger than 2^12 and all), but even with 8.3 million it is only a swing of 4.15 million, when it could easily have been 10 or more, which was my point. Whoa nellie! No need to get so worked up mate. Anyway, why on earth would you expect a swing of 10 million instead of 4 million? There's not much history, certainly in modern times, for a swing of over 12% (i.e. a 24% margin). yeah, maybe when he's done the US will see the switch to libertarianism or similar. taks Maybe, but I doubt it. There's certainly little to no precedent for it elsewhere in the world (because it's not economically stable for the middle and lower classes who make up the bulk of voters) and it doesn't go down very well with the growing minority groups: Hispanics and African-Americans.

Didn't they say their latest AI was too smart and they might have to dumb it a bit for balance? Shame. I prefer hard to easy. You can learn on hard. Easy gets boring.

That's something we can all get behind! On the subject of troops I've just been reading the BBC's debate on this, and the only person who argued for an immediate pullout was Simon Jenkins! The fatuous cretin simply said that it was expensive, and the only reason we were there was to punish the Taliban! Punish the Taliban! As if that would make all the deaths and disruption, and betrayal OK. Not to mention the fact that if we pulled out now the Taliban would be stronger than when we started. I'm fully in favour of pulling out combat troops asap. I just regard asap as being when the countries themselves can keep it together when we go. However one feels about the start of the war, I don't see how anyone can pretend to be moral while supporting immediate pullout. ...Unless they're one of these people who claims the only thing causing violence is out troops. Which is about as plausible as swapping the combined educated opinion of every professional soldier, diplomat, and academic I've ever talked to on the subject... for a magic bean which will grow into a stalk of love to a magical future Afghanistan run with harmony and candy. Afghanistan? I thought we were talking about Iraq? Because they're pretty different in most senses - especially strategic military considerations.

Martial arts is boring unless the player is a chick. Booo!

It is about a 6.6% margin so far, and Obama won by about 8.3 million votes. Which is fairly large, even when you're trying to obfuscate it with mathematics like that. But numbers themselves don't make a political realignment. You'll see that happen through Obama's performance, taks. In other news: Begich just beat Stevens in Alaska, and Berkley won Oregon a while ago, so the Democrats now have 58 Senate seats. The Senate race in Georgia is a toss-up but Martin will probably lose, while the Minnesota seat is a toss-up but Franken will probably win, leaving the Democrats with 59 senate seats. If all Dems voted along party lines that would mean they'd need only one Republican to vote with them to invoke Cloture. The Dems have an 83 seat majority in the House, at 256 seats to the GOP's 173, but there's a few unsettled races there as well. You can probably expect a 50/50 split so the 83 seat majority for Dems won't change. And I think I mentioned it here before, but Obama ended up winning some of Nebraska's electoral votes.

A lot of that is pressure from Iran. But there's a significant subset of Iraqis who desperately want the West to stay and help build infrastructure and enforce democracy. I'd say that subset is at least big as 30% to 40% of Iraqis. Moreover, of the 60% or so who want us to leave, many of them want that because they think things have stabilised - hence their opinion will likely turn out to be highly volatile. Hopefully Obama leaves a peacekeeper force behind after he withdraws fully in 18 months. Anything less would be a victory for Iran and the insurgents they back.

The problem with Iraq isn't that we're leaving, it's that we're leaving and Iran is moving in.

Damn, funcroc, can you run my life? You're like a frigging data mining machine. You've got RSS feeds to places that don't even support RSS!

If you live in Sweden, shouldn't you being using kilogrammes instead of pounds? Ye Imperial bastard. Anyway, a weight for weight basis like you suggest is pretty useless. If two things are equally radioactive, but one weighs twice as much, does that make it any less dangerous? Certainly not, especially if the more 'dilute' product is produced in much larger quantities.

LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS!! INTELECTUAL ELITES TRYING TO STEAL MAH TAXPAYER DOLLARS! Guns!

Did you know coal waste is often more radioactive than nuclear waste? Anyway, last I checked there's a heck of a lot of research and development going on regarding waste disposal. Wikipedia has some stuff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_w...atment_of_waste

Um, it costs $25 million. So it's a thing you use to power a town/suburb of a few thousand people. And lol @ the knee-jerk reactions. I must be one of the few Greenies out there who is pro-nuclear. Then again, a lot of the nitwits against clean and safe nuclear are religious freaks.

I'm not excited about it, but I have faith that it'll be an excellent game. I think it suffers the same way Planescape: Torment and Deus Ex did. They were quirky. There wasn't anything immediately appealing about them (and in PS:T's case the marketing really didn't help), even though they were epic games once you got into them. I hope Sega has noticed this, because it does seem an obvious deficit.

Racism isn't just 'different', it's plain wrong. But words are words. Somebody isn't a racist for making Jew jokes or using the word '****', and they certainly aren't murderous for using hyperbole about killing racists. In most cases I'd say neither use of language is particularly appropriate, but it's just that: language. Stop seeing the world in black and white (heh heh), Volourn.

But wait, how would Mass Effect with spies not be fun? Bioware>Obsidian!!!!! I'm sorry sir, but the set to which the elements 'Bioware' and 'Obsidian' belong is not totally ordered.

Here's why the GOP is in big trouble regardless of what ideology they try to jump ship to next: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/v...indman1109.html More here: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday...0,7258593.story Edit: And here's Arnie calling for the GOP to start listening to the people and not get stuck on ideology: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ar...0,3746979.story So I wonder, in the GOP's planned purge of moderates, will they get rid of Arnie as well?

I wouldn't mind a Michaela.

I'm playing Quake 2 now (just cause it runs on Ubuntu), but I don't have the original CD, hence no in-game music.