Hurlshort

Is Hoegaarden an Abbey beer?

I'm just glad Pronger is out of the Western Conference. Guy was always a killer against the Sharks. It will be pretty sad if Colorado misses the playoffs. They were expected to be the bottom of the whole division, and they have been a fun surprise this year.

I have been in Yosemite all week with my school, and I just now got a chance to stop at a wifi hotspot and check my emails. The world is pretty much the same. We did have a fright a couple days ago. We were hiking up a steep trail called yosemite falls. It was raining, and we were about 3 miles up. There was a rockfall, and two students were hit by softball sized rocks. Search and rescue came up and helped us get them back down. Luckily they were just scraped up and got back outside the next day with a few bruises.

Did you look at the list of units? I just plain run out of time. They will also get much more exposure to the Enlightenment in High School, whereas areas like West Africa, Japan, and the Middle East get very little attention after 7th grade according the the California state education standards.

The Men Who Stare at Goats - Very amusing. In fact I found most of the movie to be a pleasant surprise. I thought the ending was a bit of a letdown, but I can see that there wasn't really much room to go anywhere with it.

Picked up Just Cause 2. So far it's decent, I'm still learning the ropes of the grappling hook though.

Actually I teach religion in Social Science (which is a fancy term for History.) If you don't mind my asking Hurl, how closely do you have to teach to your text? Not closely at all, really. I have a co-worker who has pretty much written off our most recent textbooks as rubbish and uses the older sets as well more specialized supplemental material. We have to address certain standards. We are basically given a framework, for example I cover 11 different units in a year, starting with the Fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of Feudalism in Europe, the Rise of Islam, West Africa, 4 major Chinese dynasties, Feudal Japan, Meso-America, then back to Europe for the Renaissance, Reformation, Scientific Revolution, Age of Exploration, and if time permits (which it never does) I cover the Enlightenment. Now my textbook is designed to follow that path, but it is a very simplified version of the events. So I go through and expand on certain parts of the content. I know a lot of teachers, and very few do not do this. That is why I think this whole Texas school board stuff is a bit of a non-issue. A good teacher will cover the whole spectrum no matter what is in the text. I am more worried when school boards try to tell me what not to teach.

Probably not, since it is now a Disney property I believe.

Wait, your wife bears your child, cooks you meals, and brings in a paycheck? Yeah, you need to get over the lack of sex. Marriage is a long road, you will get plenty of opportunities to shag.

Actually I teach religion in Social Science (which is a fancy term for History.)

I'm not sure what this really has to do with the creationism argument, this is history curriculum. I don't know any history teachers that stick strictly to the textbook. History is about looking at as many sources of information as you can gather and then thinking critically about them. To be honest, this is the type of stuff we deal with in every state when it comes to textbook creation. That is why all decent teachers supplement lessons heavily with different sources. Textbooks are mediocre compendiums of curriculum, they help create a skeleton for a teacher to follow, but the teacher has to flesh it out themselves.

I don't want to give anyone the impression it is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it is well worth the $15 I dropped on it.

This means very little to quality teachers.

I didn't realize Turbine was such a favorite over there. That's great. Also, DDO is not exactly there strongest property. Asheron's Call was a major player back in the day, and LotR Online is probably their cash cow.

Welcome back, it's good to hear you are still plugging away at school. There are a few new crazies here, but it's pretty much status quo.

That would produce pretty much zero response. Cartoonists lampoon presidents all the time.

Very nice slug

Wierd, I can't vote, even logged in.

No, small business owners are rightfully worried that it is going to be a cost that they can't take in an already fragile economy.

It's like the old expression "You don't have to attend meetings to be an alcoholic."

Engage your brain. It much easier to pay for something for 30 million people who have the highest taxes in the world then it is to pay for 300 million people with one of the lowest taxes in the free world. I mentioned earlier that my financial guy said taxes were at a 30 year low, which surprised me. I'm guessing the taxes will go up a decent clip and everything will turn out a-ok.

That is pretty gushy. Nobody cares about your esoteric numbering system.

The character creation is vastly different in Two Worlds than it is in Oblivion. I like it, there is a lot of detail and different skills you can work up. The alchemy and magic systems are neat. The world itself shares some similarities with Oblivion, lots of stuff to explore and run across. It's not quite as sharp graphically, but it has a fairly amazing draw distance on my PC. There seem to be more NPC's around than in Bethesda titles, which make sit seem like you really are in a village. It's not perfect, it has some pretty big flaws. Again, the voice acting and the translation itself is atrocious. But I'm getting past that easily enough because it is fun just exploring.

Surprisingly dense and quite large. There are really too many unique NPC's, they are hard to keep track of. It's a solid sandbox game. I'm not quite as gushy about it as Volourn, but I've enjoyed it quite a bit so far. Granted I am late to the party and playing with the benefit of the uber 1.2 gig patch.

I don't remember the Two Worlds reviews being outright horrible. It was given pretty average scores, in the 6-7 out of 10 range in most places. It's not a blockbuster, but it is a very playable game with quite a bit of depth. Although I'm going to murder the next NPC that says forsooth or verily. Actually whoever did the translations just needs to be shot, it was like they hired someone who has never had an actual conversation in English to translate the game.