Hurlshort

Eh, English isn't really running the risk of becoming a dead language. The majority of people who come to the US, whether legal or illegally, want their children to learn English. That's one of the reasons they come here, to ensure that their children recieve an education and a chance at a good quality of life. People trash the educational system in the US, but it can be amazing to watch children whose parents only know their native language, thrive and become bilingual in public schools. People will keep learning English because it's a dominant language, and that isn't changing. It doesn't need to be enforced or official to make that claim. We have people on this board from all over the world, and yet we are using English to communicate. I'm not claiming English is better than other languages, but that's just the state of the world. On the other hand, I don't think that you need to speak only English to be an American. I think it's important to maintain that link to your cultural roots. My father-in-law was born in Mexico. He's proud of his Mexican heritage, but he's also extremely proud to be an American. In fact, I'd say he has more patriotism than I do, and I can trace my roots back to the Mayflower. Mexicans aren't going to swallow the US, but the more people try and resist Mexican Amricn culture, the larger the rift between the two sides will be.

Prince put on the best half-time show I've ever seen...in the rain.

I don't know if it's been stated yet, but the US actually doesn't have an official language.

Ah, found my other really good book. This one is very readable, whereas some of the others I mentioned read like textbooks. It's a national bestseller, so hopefully a few people have heard of it. It's called "Distant Neighbors" by Alan Riding. Again, it focuses more on the problems of Mexico, but that is the root of the border issue.

Sure, I've also taken classes on the subject as a History major and a teacher in California. I had an excellent professor at San Jose State who used to work as a diplomat in the Middle East and in Mexico (which seems like an odd mix, but it is the government.) He had us read the following books, although my guess is there is more recent literature that reflects the changes within both the US and Mexican government. This book is an excellent one just on the Mexican political system, and it explains a lot about why people head to the US for work in the first place. I've heard good things about this book. I haven't read it yet myself, but I have it sitting on a shelf for the summer, or the next CA history class I end up in. This book is actually about the Dust Bowl migration, but I think it parallels well with the subject, and it was a great read. It shows that this is not a new problem, and that resisting entire cultural groups never pans out in the end. This textbook is on CA history, really, but there is great information on labor and minorities. I have another good book in my classroom, but I'll have to add it later as I can't for the life of me remember the title. You'll notice most of these focus on California. That's because I live there, but it's also at the forefront of this whole issue, and I think it's a great place to begin any education on cultural diversity and immigration in the US.

It's funny how this thread is basically people saying the same thing over and over again. THE US RELIES ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION. BUILDING A WALL WILL NOT FIX THE PROBLEM. Seriously, go read a book on Mexican immigration before you act like you have an informed opinion. The best bet is working with Mexico. We don't have a problem with the Canadian border, do we? So maybe the US should worry less about protecting its comfortable place in the world and worry more about helping others reach the same place. Also, I live in a predominantly hispanic community. I teach in a predominantly minority school. I probably have a few illegal immigrants living in my condo. complex. It's pretty funny to hear people from Canada and England talking about Mexican immigration like its really an issue for them. This is not the Roman Empire. The US is a culture of many cultures, and anybody who thinks that Mexicans are going to destroy American identity is forgetting their own history.

If your 'emblem' feels like it's on fire, drink water until the sacred stones pass through your system.

Space Quest - You can easily fit a mop down your pants. You will, however, be happy to see everyone.

I gave up on my PSP a few weeks ago and traded it in for store credit. I got $80 for it, and I consider that a blessing. I used it maybe 10 hours over the last year.

Today, when I was driving to work, I went over the speed limit. I spit in the face of the law! Woohoo. Seriously Volourn, you do realize that the American economy would collapse overnight if all illegal immigrants suddenly disappeared, don't you?

Hey, physical activity is physical activity. This is great.

That brings up a good point, as clearly with minimum wage being so high, most businesses would not be able to survive paying high wages for this type of labor. As is, small farmers are a dying breed as major agricultural corporations have more capital to handle rising costs. I'm no economist, but it seems like the best way to keep the bleeding hearts out of this is to work closely with the Mexican government to ensure this program is effctive for all parties involved. Of course, that creates a whole skew of diplomatic issues, and US-Mexico relations have never been perfect.

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. It's like the best stuff from Everquest I, Asheron's Call, and Horizons rolled into one huge world.

Here's an idea, why don't we take the millions wasted on border projects like this and create effecive work-visa programs? Since industries like agriculture and construction rely on these immigrants, shouldn't we be fostering a positive relationship that will benefit the economy of both the US and Mexico? Imagine Mexican workers being able to travel to the US to work out the harvest season, and then being able to take their earnings back to Mexico and having a decent quality of life. Programs like this do exist, and they've been proven to be succesful, but they get nowhere near the funding that militant border patrolling gets.

Despite the fact carpentry is a bit buggy, I still am pretty satisfied with my progress. I can make kick butt arrows for my archer and a decent club, and eventually I'll get crafting on boats and houses. Roasting on an open fire

People who complain about NWN2's performance and then say they can run Oblivion great need to understand that they are vastly different in their performance needs. FPS style games run completely different. I'm not technically savvy enough to explain it well, but rest assured, it's your PC and not the game. NWN2 looks brilliant on my PC.

I can't explain my faith in a higher power any better than I can explain love. I look at the world and I don't see how it could possibly be a random chain of events that brought us to this place. But that's my belief, you can argue science all day and it won't change unless you can figure out how to reproduce our universe scientifically. I can see arguing over organized religion, but it should be noted that all religions are just a means to an end. They are there so that humans can feel connected to a higher power. It's your perogative not to feel that is necessary, but humans have been doing it since the dawn of time, so it shouldn't be trivialized.

Did I mention Vanguard? I spent the last few nights completing an 8 hour diplomacy quest, but I was handsomely rewarded at the end with a horse, and fancy bag, and the title of Knight.

Laying around

I agree with Shanahan. Referees often have a different ruleset for different players. A player who is dominating a game is often ignored when it comes to minor holding and slashing. I can see the problem, because the fact is a great player can draw a penalty on almost every shift. I mean, how do you stop a guy who is big, fast, and can control the puck? Hockey is a fast game and you aren't always gong to be in perfect position, and a great player will take advantage of that every time.

I played about 8 hours of Vanguard yesterday. It's the best MMO I've played in a long while, and it has definitely made me forget about WoW. The variety of things to do makes me feel like I'm not going to be complaining about the grind anytime soon. You can really focus on four different things. There's the standard adventuring and questing that you see in every game. The writing is good, but I wouldn't say the quests are revolutionary. You can also focus on harvesting, which is pretty similiar to every other game, except you actually get to chop down trees. Crafting is the first thing that is very different. It's reminiscent of the game Horizons, which failed horribly but still had a neat crafting system. You take your harvested resources (or you can take work orders and get resources for free) and start a fairly complex crafting system. For example, my artificer/carpenter can make arrows, but if I want to make a boat, I'll need a blacksmith to do the metal parts and a weaver to do the sails. Also their is a minigame involved with the actual crafting. As you do a recipe, you use tools and techniques to complete it. You need to deal with emergencies and there are different grades, depending on how succesfull you are. It's very strategic, as you also have limited action points. The last minigame, diplomacy, is practically an entire game in itself. It works as a card game like Magic, where you have different response and comment cards in order to win an argument. The dialogue is also extremely well written and surprisingly clever. If you played early in the beta and had technical troubles, I recommend trying it again. The performance has increased tremendously over just the last few weeks.

I read a suggestion somewhere that instead of a Younstars game, they should play all the top prospects from the minors against each other. That way you'd have an actual competition, as those guys are competing for scouting looks. I also think the Legends game was more entertaining, as it's good to see some retired players out on the ice. I don't think they should wear helmets though, but I guess that's not safe. There are some serious flaws with the skills competition, but I guess that's because no one seems to take them all that seriously. Instead of just counting every goal in the shootout, they should have judges rate the difficulty and such. Crosby just shot 5 hole the whole time *yawn*

Can you give your impressions of the game? I heard it was pretty bad, but I haven't kept track of any patches they've done. I was a big Silent Storm fan, so I love the game engine in general.

Wow, Tarna explained exactly what I did, but in much better terms. I'm going to appoint you as my technical representative for now on And yes, I was able to do the entire transfer in windows, without a boot disk. The only oddity was that I had to validate XP and Office once again due to the hardware change, but that didn't require any special codes or anything.

It was a Western Digital 160 gb. SATA drive. My old one was a Western Digital 80 gb., but it wasn't SATA - or at least it wasn't connected to the SATA ports on my motherboard. That's probably because I didn't hook it up correctly way back when I built the computer. It seems to have made quite a performance difference.