Hurlshort

I booked my Vegas vacation for February. Technically I booked it for the 4th time, but I think this one will stick. The first time I booked it at a relatively cheap hotel called The Linq, that had recently been remodeled. I checked the rates a few weeks later and saw that some of the nicer hotels were at a good price, so I booked a boutique hotel called The Cromwell. They have a great rooftop pool and a bunch of hot tubs. Then I found out the pool and hot tubs were closed in February (Vegas is 70 degrees in the winter, not exactly cold!) So I got a room at Caesar's Palace for $110 a night. I checked two days later on the rates, and found the rates had dropped another $30 at Caesar's, so I re-booked and I have a feeling this one will stick. $80 a night is fantastic. I booked dinner at Nobu and a couple other nice places, so it should be a very good trip.

I'm enjoying the game tremendously, but I'm hoping to spend time in other threads and complain about games I don't play when I get some spare time.

The biggest problem I see here is that we had a huge amount of negative attention on the NSA awhile back, and the result was this backdoor spying ban which passed in June. So it's a terrible precedent to set that you just wait until the attention dies down and then reverse things. Sadly it shows what a bunch of douches we have in congress.

Speaking of which, I am ready for cars to start driving themselves on the freeways. People are terrible at it.

I blame Jack Bauer for all of this. But really, no form of torture is acceptable. We need to take the higher ground, not lower ourselves to the levels of violent extremists. We clearly have not been doing that, and I will be hoping and voting for change as we move forward.

There are no riots in New York. There have been protests that have been remarkably peaceful.

I was more worried about the wind, but that died down fast.

I'll tell Hurlwife and have her ground you. I totally did get in trouble. I usually go around making sure the kids are going to bed the way they should be, but I was too busy playing, so the kids got away with staying up late. My daughter ratted me out this morning when we went to get everyone moving.

I really don't know what gives you that kind of confidence, but from out here it seem anything but certain. Is out here not in the US? Because within the US there are some areas that are struggling, but as a whole the country is stable. Sure, there is economic concerns, but the amount of hyperbole about them is pretty crazy. It's way overstated. Of course, news stories about how the economy is making miniscule steps forward is really not sexy, so you have to blow stuff up to get attention.

I stayed up way too late on a school night playing this. I really had no idea I was an hour past my bedtime. I haven't done that in ages.

I was not one of the lucky schools that closed for the storm. My wife did stay home, which is nice.

It would be extremely bad for both Russia and China is the US fell apart. They've got way too much invested in it.

I'm sure there is a joke in there somewhere, but I doubt it would be appropriate.

Yep.... It definitely needs to go. Easier said than done though. J.F.K. was seriously talking about doing so, and look what happened to him. He got shot by a random American commie. There's quite a bit more to it than that. Sorry, I've been indoctrinated by factual evidence. Baaa.

It is? That's disappointing, then, since the party banter is still nonexistent for me and a dialogue cutscene hung up when I was talking to Cassandra back at Haven. Two things that were supposed to be addressed in the patch. I believe the party banter is slated for the next patch.

I killed the Hinterlands one around level 13 and it didn't take too long.

Qistana, It's kind of unhealthy how much time you spend wrapped up in Dragon Age Inquisition stuff. I really recommend you spend more time working on your game creation dreams. RPGMaker is a great place to start, as others have suggested.

I have this terrible scenario playing in my head where a guy is holding his dog and officers tell him to drop the gun, but if he does his dog will probably get shot for running loose.

We should just pretend that Breaking Bad is actually the Prequels, and Walter White becomes Darth Vader.

I wouldn't say that, I would say at the age of 12 very few students have the experience or perspective to really analyze and synthesize the world around them. They lack context. As you get older, it is much easier to do. Unfortunately it is also more difficult to overcome the biases you have picked up. Every year, out of about 170 students, I have a handful that have the potential to really question the world around them. I try to nurture that. But by the end of High School, there should be a much larger number of critical thinkers.

I'm genuinely intrigued. Do you get drunk before these posts, or do they get you high in their own right? Eric Garner was killed for not paying his protection money. He simply wasn't paying his dues. NYC government considers itself head of the cigarette cartel in the city, and killed this man while enforcing that cartel's position. One has to be intoxicated on koolaide to not see that for what it is. I'd call it indoctrinated brainwashing rather than koolaid intoxication, as they're just thinking what they've been trained to think sine they were little kids if they don't see it for what it is, but you're 100% right on. Very few of us grow up in an environment where we are taught to question everything, including authority. On the contrary, one of the major purposes of public education is to teach people to mindlessly subject themselves to authority. The validity of the police and many other established institutions are not to be questioned. The fact of the matter is, that if you don't question everything at some point, you're not truly thinking or truly aware of the world around you, you're in a box. Oddly enough it is actually in my curriculum, which is provided by the state of California to every public school teacher of Social Science, to teach critical thinking skills. We are supposed to have students take look at texts and other sources with a critical eye and compare, contrast, and weigh against other evidence. That is a staple of any good Social Science curriculum. Here is Bloom's Taxonomy, which is what we are supposed to be applying in all facets of the classroom: Now the problem here is it is very difficult to get students to do the bottom half of this chart. Getting a group of 12-year olds to really reflect on law enforcement in the US, which is a journal prompt I did last week after we analyzed legal systems from Feudal Europe and Middle Eastern Shari'ah, as well as watched a few news clips, is not an easy thing to do. It is like pulling teeth. But yes, conspiracy! Indoctrination!

Knights of Badassdom - It was not great. There were some funny parts, but overall I was hoping for something more. Kind of a waste of some good comedic actors.

It kind of seems like a bad precedent to set for the dog. Ooooh a gun, it must be time for a walk!

It's pretty rare to see Obsidian ban someone, but I'm guessing there is a hammer incoming. What a bizarre string of posts.