Rosbjerg

Great interview.. Really interesting, but what is his story (and the tv-stations)? It seems a little too pro-UHC for me to believe they are telling the entire truth.

Have you tried Battle For Wesnoth? It's a little pearl of a game that look much like that one..

LOL Do you really think that if we didn't require driving licences for people to drive there wouldn't be immensely more accidents than there are now? Licences are meant to accredit people as having a basic set of skills required for the task they want to perform, they do not accredit infallibility. Of course not, I mean that even with the system in place there are still accidents, as I said.. But as I implied it's a pretty far leap from a drivers licence to a birth licence even if both are rights. Yeah. One mistake that means bringing to life a new human being. No big deal huh? You see, that's the typical example of how we have become so dependent on the Nanny State to wipe our asses for us that the notion of even taking remote responsibility for our actions is alien to us. So you think it's less of a nanny state when the government decides whether or not you can have kids, opposed to you deciding for yourself? .. really? Stephen Hawking may be awesome at creating a theoretical model of the universe, but there's no way in hell I'd let him drive a truck. Tough luck. Well at least we have a great system in place to make sure he never gets a drivers licence.. but are you just as sure that he'll be a horrible parent? Uh, when my pursuit of happiness entails stepping on someone else's toes, it's usually ILLEGAL for me to "pursue happiness". You know, what with judges frowning upon rape and all. Same as when it burdens the rest of society because of my lack of foresight or maturity. We live in society, which means this ain't "free for all". I think you have failed to consider this from the worst VICTIM's standpoint: the child. Laziness ("it would be too much work for the govt") is no excuse not to do the right thing. You can do better than that.. Having kids isn't illegal, raping is.. I'm not impeding on your rights when I have kids. If my kids break the law then I get punished and if they are old enough, they get punished. You want to punish me for the off-chance that my kids might one day impede on your rights? Where do we stop if we take this road.. ?

You know, I made that comparison once too.. Then I realized how utterly fallible the argument is.. When you think about it, does the driver licence really prevent accidents? It's still the most unsafe mode of transportation, even with this system in place. And with a birth licence you pretty much assume that it's going to be a good system and that it will filter out the bad seeds. Problem is a lot of potential great parents are gonna get hit by it.. What should the critirias be? Who should determine them? How do we enforce them? It's gonna be legislate nightmare as well and any law that impedes so seriously on such a fundamental human thing as having a child is, in my honest opinion, going to fail so hard that you'll hear the cries of injustice three lightyears away. A great example is a law that was just passed here in Denmark that made in almost completely illegal to carry weapons of almost any design at any time.. Now we have 2 cases of two random law-abiding citizens who had 1-2 boxcutters in their car as they were driving from work, the knives were needed at their job, and now stand to go to prison for 60 days because of it.. One of whom had a boyhood dream of becoming a police officer, but now that's impossible because he forgot to take the boxcutter out of his car as he was driving home.. Are these the kind of laws you want? One mistake and the goverment takes away your right to have kids. Because you do realize that it's impossible to do something on that scale case by case, there are gonna be some inflexible laws which the social workers has to follow and if you don't live up to enough of them then the hammer falls.. Regardless of how great you are in the other areas.. Why? How many offspring do individuals have a "right" to have? What about the rights of those who cannot reproduce (by normal means), either by disease (low motility or barrenness) or by gender (homosexuality)? How do these "rights" equate universally? How can it be a right if it isn't available to everyone, equally? If you think about it, you are already (passively) setting arbitrary restrictions on people whose only crime was to be less fortunate in their birth, situationally speaking. (Now THERE'S some irony.) Wouldn't it be fairer to consider these restrictions logically, and implement a fair system based on ethical standards, rather than just accept the lottery of babies born to the significant proportion of parents that do not want them, don't have the first idea how to care for them, and are not motivated to find out? Don't these potential people have equal rights to acceptable parents? Wouldn't it make sense to vet the parents instead of penalizing the children of them, considering they are completely innocent victims (as innocent as anyone can be, ethically speaking, in any situation: they did not ask to be born!) and society can, if it chooses, interdict before the abuse takes place. Abuse that will lead ineluctably to further societal evils. In other words, we cannot (as a group) fix the mess afterwards, but we can intervene beforehand to reduce the likelihood of harm. I just thought your remark deserved some comment. So by your logic we shouldn't bother with free speech then, because there are some amongst us that can't communicate? I think Benjamin Franklin said it pretty well "You have the right to pursue happiness, but you have to catch it for yourself." .. Having a right to do something doesn't imply in itself that everyone must be capable of doing it. You have the right to own property, but maybe you are too poor to do so, should the government then confiscate all lands because of you? You see where this is going? And in regards to you wanting to help children as they are innocent victims of bad parents.. Again I'm sorry, but that's just not possible without some really serious government invasion into your privacy from you hit puberty till you die (I mean people can get kids when they are 50 today so we need to keep check on you until you hit meta-pause!). I consider myself a pretty big socialist Democrat, but even I think this would be waaay out of line. This is a more acceptable solution actually, making in mandatory for coming parents to attend some classes on basic parenting.. In this way there's a chance social workers can also see a problem arise before it gets out of hands.. Having worked with neglected kids I can tell you that most will do quite well (albeit a little later than their peers) as long their parents realizes that they need to take some responsibility before the kids hit to their teens and that usually happens actually.. It became your responsibility when you became a citizen of your country.. it's a package deal, you get a lot of benefits, but also some bad deals. That's part of the arrangement, luckily for you, you live in a democracy, so you have to opportunity to fix what you think is wrong with the system..

There a cafe here in Copenhagen called Cafe Guggenheim, but they've spelled it phonetically (see picture). I think that's a pretty neat idea.. maybe something to that extent?

I would rate the Total War series as follows 1. Rome as the best of the series (it was revolutionary in many ways and set the standard for the genre afterwards) 2. Shogun as the most charming (the map, the videos and the style are miles ahead of the other games) 3. Medieval II as the most complete (in incorporates all the best features of Rome and I find the setting more interesting) 4. Empire as the most experimenting (it tries to do things very different and usually succeeds, but all in all it's not as good as the other games the AI is a bit messy and the factions are very unbalanced.. if you like Rome and Medival very much you'll most likely enjoy it, but try waiting for the Napoleon expansion coming in Q1 2010 and see what that brings to the game) Mod wise: RTW: Europa Barbarorum (EB) as Mus mentioned Total Realism as MC mentioned MTW2: Kingdoms Grand Campaign Mod - this is the only mod I really play with.. it brings all the units and factions from the expansion into the vanilla campaign and expands the map extensively. It also brings back some cool featurs from MTW1, like land titles (prince of Antioch, Duke of Normandy etc) for Generals. Other than that it remains very true to the original game. Third Age - Total War - Lord of the Rings.. nuff said Broken Crescent - If you enjoy the Middle Eastern setting. Empire: Imperial Splendour - is the mod I play with in Empie TW.. It makes the game a littler more difficuelt like The Rights of Man, but I think it's more balanced.. I also highly recommend the AUM (or Additonal Units Mod) which works for IS, TRM and Darth's mod.. For anyone playing Empire.

It's funny you should say that, because I just playing with that idea as a counter argument to Europeans about UHC in America. I'm convinced that the vast majority of Europeans wouldn't want anything important to be handled by EU, be it taxes or healthcare. And in many ways I'm sure you feel much the same about your federal government as we do about the EU.. It's there for a reason, but they shouldn't be given too much power. Most of us are pretty sceptical about anything EU proposes that impedes on any of our rights, like the Lisbon treaty.. While we are a lot more acceptive about what our national governments legislates.

Yeah I think I'm different from a quite a few people in that regard. I've seen new mothers, that I would under no circumstances, under any condition, ever want to be associated with. But as I said everyone will find the best available partner and you need to be either very shy or very deformed not to get a girl/guy in the end. Ask yourself, have you ever been with someone you didn't really find attractive at all just because she was sweet or you were a little desperate? I'm sure most will say yes, because the drive in all of us to be with someone is quite strong and if nothing better is available we tend to compromise with our tastes..

I give at least 10% of my income.. Couldn't really call myself a diehard socialist democrat if I didn't!

I've seen both and the American one is pretty much a carbon copy, which could be used as an argument to say it sucks - but they are basically equally good.

True, I was merely trying to show the fault of Taks' logic, when he assumed his system was better than all public healthcare system, based on doctors pay. Thanks for taking the time to research though, it was a pretty interesting read!

I can respect that, over the years on these forums I've come to accept that it just seems America doesn't want UHC.. and that's cool, I mean we just love the system, that's why we preach it and you love yours so that's why you preach it.. Besides I don't think our system would really work for you.. America is too big and the system is too complicated as it is.. I read on salary.com that a surgeon in America on average makes about 350.000$-570.000$, with the majority at around 400.000$, a year in America. In Denmark the minimum is around 550.000$, so by your logic our doctors are more motivated and therefore better? And that's just in our public hospitals, our private healthcare sector they make around 1.5x that.. Please check your sources before making generalizations please...

And the Hong Kong flu from the 70's or something .. basically everyone 40+ who had that virus, or got a vaccine, is safe from this one.. at least that's what a doctor told me. But all in all, it seems the Swine Flu won't be a big problem unless it mutates further.. right now it's just a pretty bad influenza (which is pretty nasty in itself, but not life-threatening for the majority)

Well the female or male will under all circumstances choose the best available mate.. If the stupid person is your best bet then that's who you go for. If no one is available, as is the case for many animals, then you don't get to pass on your genes. For humans this a bit different as we don't have to compete for very limited resources, in the same way animals do, which again allows for a greater diversity in the quality of possible mates.

Well the story unfolds over roughly 20 chapters so far, each going to be about 3-4 hours in length.. This is because we don't really have another RP game going at the moment so I'm kinda supplying them with their only PnP fix.. The story starts in 2000 and as the game will probably take a few years to complete in real time, I'm taking in real events, as the story going to progress towards our current time, and add some spice (like why did 9/11 take place in a vampire world etc). The story will be an exploration of some of the major events that has made up the 21st century and how the Vampire lore affects them. In essence that means they'll travel to London, Madrid, Paris, Berlin, Strasbourg, Brussels, Amsterdam, some cities in North Africa, India, China and Japan and some of the major cities in America (NY, LA, Washington D.C etc) as they unravel the mysteries I've set up for them. Luckily, between the other GM and myself, we pretty much been all the places that we are letting them visit, which will hopefully flesh out the locations.

The biggest dilemma in Mass Effect (for me) was choosing which annoying douche to kill off.. I couldn't really stand either of them.. Luckily everyone in the game seemed to think that my long hesitation was due to the fact that I cared.

That was.. actually quite refreshing, I don't think I've ever seen a limerick review before, made it easier to follow as well.

ah thanks.. hadn't really considered those.. My game is alot more about the politics in the Vampire world, but I will read about it .. so I can answer any eventual questions the player might have in-game. Oh btw, since people seem to be interested in this old thread again.. I held the initial playing round about 2 months ago, to familiarize the players to my setting. I went very well and in large parts thanks to the great suggestions in this thread! so feel free to add any thoughts or random info on the Vampire lore/setting etc as I'll most likely use it in some extent. I'm currently in the process of writing the main story, which will probably take another 2 months to complete.. it's gonna be huge! I mostly use Requiem and Second edition.. and pick and choose what elements I like from them, but I've completely rewritten the entire world history from scratch to make a more imho interesting setting.

I think it is a right.. it's not the government's job to determine if you can become a parent, but it is their job to prevent you from staying one, if you can't cope with it and no other relatives can pitch in. Well in the case I brought forward, where the genes give the recipient advanced social skills, I think it's rather reasonable to assume that this would also make it easier to convince someone to carry your child.. or give you the right ingredients if you are female..

^ eh? how would that solve anything.. they could burn, scratch or get dirty and disgusting in no time.. actually paper would probably be the worst material for a set of dice Wonderful idea for a thread btw Jae!

Yes they are present, but in very limited numbers.. no Weres in London though, they only really life in the old forests etc.. The Mages and Techs are there, but not in any great presence, because my stories won't really revolve around them in any way. Fallen? I don't remember those..

That sounds pretty horrible.. After getting into an RP guild in AoC I haven't actually done any quests ingame, now I only play for the RP and it's pretty great actually.. The story makes sense, because it's constantly being expanded on by actual players and not static NPCs, you don't feel like Chosen One number 12035, but instead like a character in an actual world. I don't think anyone plays MMOs just for the quests.. they usually suck!

Are these studies available online? I would very much like to read them.. But yes, that's generally what I was worried about, being labelled elitist etc.. I do agree however that intelligence is rather subjective. I can't help but think though, that the difference between me and Einstein, Hawkins etc is alot bigger than the difference between me and an ape. And I wonder why this kind of intelligence is so rare and what constitutes it. There doesn't seem to be a pattern of very intelligent parents = extremely intelligent children, which means it's more than genes.. But at the same time we see geniuses arising from rather poor areas, which indicates that genes might be a bigger factor than environment. Still, I often see very intelligent people coming from families that have encouraged creative thinking.. I don't know where I'm going with this to be honest, I just think it's an interesting subject. I personally believe that the overall intelligence of humanity would spike dramatically if we had better education systems around the world, because I think it's in the upbringing of kids that these gifts develop, with the help of lucky genes, and well educated parents are usually better equipped at helping intelligent kids develop their skills. At least according to my own experience from working with children from various backgrounds.

Something new is always happening, the "problem" (depending on how you look at it) is that we don't have natural selection. People are currently having babies even with rather serious mutations (like bad eyesight and weak hearts), so the "superior" (again depending on how you look at it) mutations don't really have a chance to compete .. unless they affect social skills in a very positive way (think ultra alpha male/female), in which case they offer their recipient a lot of bonuses when it comes to mating. One thing is happening though, uneducated and generally less intelligent people are having a lot more children than their counterparts.. Without trying to sound like a fascist, our genome is shifting somewhat towards stupid..Hopefully we'll see a natural increase in our culture's desire towards intellect also being attractive instead of just young, pretty and stupid.. But there's always been an ebb and flow in what culture deems attractive, so I'm not overly worried..

Yes... I think we've come to the end of the road for this thread..