213374U

Uh huh. If you really believe there is no controversy within the scientific community, I think it's pretty pointless to continue discussing this issue. Controversy is essential to science, as it's the engine driving its continuous self-renewal, be it to reinforce existing theories, expand, or discard them. I was taught about things like spontaneous generation and the luminiferous aether in my science classes, when I was like 14, btw. Where would you suggest these things be taught, "Stuff That Is Not Science 101"? I'm not going to suggest that pseudoscientific crap should be taught as a valid alternative, but being able to examine alternatives that may lie outside the scope of science where science itself still can't provide a reasonably complete answer isn't going to turn kids into mindless zealots. Simply because the scientific curriculum is usually focused on the mathematical aspect, it doesn't mean that's all there is to it, or even that it ends there. A lack of imagination is one of the worst things a scientist can suffer from -- being a number wiz isn't equivalent to being a good scientist. We have supercomputers, but see how far they advance science, left to their own devices.

Frankly, I find your insinuation that it takes a Ph.D for a person to start having a semblance of a critical attitude, stupid beyond words. You CANNOT begin changing the way a person's mind processes information and makes decisions based on that when they are 18. Fostering a critical approach to information is something that needs to be integrated as a central tenet of the curriculum, not as a "bonus skill" to be taught for 10 credits in college. Science is fundamentally and in essence, a critical spirit applied to preliminary hypothesis and observational data. If you go and teach "abiogenesis Good, ID Bad, ok?", you aren't doing a very good job at teaching science. And the thing is, at grade 10, you can't go much deeper than that. Of course, the root of your arguments lies with some rather blatant strawmanning, materialised in absurd examples involving post-doctorate level debate of the merits and flaws of current abiogenesis theories in a grade 10 classroom. It's funny that you are so bent on showing how these nutjobs don't tolerate free speech, when you don't tolerate anything else but what you accept to be The TRUTH being taught. I fully agree with Wals -- education isn't about truth or facts or data as much as it is about providing people with a basic toolset of skills for them to use in their academic or professional field of choice, and life in general. Whatever they end up doing with those skills afterwards is fully up to them. Freedom of choice is a bitch, huh? re Dresden: yay hindsight!

Discuss. Personally I'm a big fan of the EU. But the Eurozone seems like an economically ludicrous idea, especially for such a big and diverse array of nations. I guess that guy hasn't heard about the Structural Funds? That's precisely how Germany intended to share its growth and wealth with its neighbours, without making them economic slaves. Those were meant to be used as investments into infrastructure and restructuring/conversion of economic sectors that were rendered uncompetitive by integration. Instead, and aided by political and administrative ineffectiveness and corruption, people just took the money and spent it to continue financing businesses that were unprofitable in their current forms, defeating the whole point and failing to make the recipient economies cope with the changes. And now Germans are pissed. Shocking, I know. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Not even ol' Adolf intended for Grossdeutschland to comprise the vast amounts of people and land the EU holds today, and he was quite mad. Functional multinational states are a fantasy. Especially when the people in them have a say, and EU bureaucrats know this all too well.

I have no idea, tbh. I get all my gaming news from, well, here.

This sounds awesome, I hope it's not too obvious, though. The "info is your weapon" bit, too. Thanks. Can someone tell us if the reviewer at least seems to know what he's playing? You know, unlike that first spanish review? Nope, sorry. He also seems to believe that AP is first and foremost an action game. He even regrets the lack of a MP/DM option. I'm starting to wonder if the marketing campaign is to blame for the misconception, in fact. The review itself is a bit more even-handed than the last one, and acknowledges the importance of choice in the game, but it's pretty meager as far as actual details are concerned.

Bah. I'd think watching some guy show off his mad skills at some game while he tells us about it would be more enticing to people that a moron failing miserably and making lame jokes as the icing on the cake. Because, you see, good players push the game to its limits, so you're getting a much better idea of what the game is about and what it's capable of, gameplay wise. I mean, last example that comes to mind is me watching some youtubes of a guy charging around like crazy with his Vanguard in ME2 Insanity, and I didn't stop playing that until I was able to at least do the same... just because it's fun to learn and get better at things, in general. What's the point of, uh, watching a frustrated comedian "review" a game... when it's actually the game one is interested in? Comedy Central is now a banned channel, so people need to get their fix elsewhere? I simply can't understand this thinking.

Yes. YES. It was awesome fun to kick reborn in the face and send them plumetting to their death in JK2... a Q3A-powered game from 2002. It's ridiculous that this isn't a viable strategy in action games anymore.

Yep, we've only had to wait for ten years. Still, better than nothing huh?

Yes, and no. You aren't part of the general public in that you generally pay more attention than the average joe to games, and you probably devote more time to that as well. At any rate, you may be part of the general public but are not THE general public. So are your gaming skills representative of the gaming public's at large? How are they, compared to the reviewer's? Why is there a sudden apparent increase in acute haemorrhoids cases in the boards' user base? The answers to these and other questions... when I ****ing feel like it.

Nah, I'd rather speak for everyone else here.

That actually begs the question... how representative is he of the general public's gaming skills at large? =/

Antibiotics misuse may very well prompt that, sooner than we'd like to believe. However, we don't really know of any prior industrial societies that succumbed to their own weight, resource depletion or nature's control mechanisms for overpopulation. Once the acquisition and implementation of knowledge is systematised, all bets are off. Colonisation of other worlds may be one way to minimise the risk of one black swan wiping out the human race. Chances are it could be made to be profitable too, eventually.

It's like heroine. You know it's bad for you, you know you can't get caught admitting you do it, you know it'll eventually turn you into a wretch of a human being... but you can't help it.

OP can you post the link to the source? It's actually linked off the front page, so I dare say we're allowed to link these scans. Just click on the pics http://www.segabits.com/?p=1617 It's all in spanish though. The reviewer complains mainly about the technical aspect of the game, and for him it's what had the most impact on the score. On the other hand, things like bad AI and what are potentially serious game balance issues (punching > shooting) are mentioned in passing only. He also seems to be utterly convinced that AP is essentially an action game "with a few touches of roleplaying" (what would Bloodlines be?) -- which may explain why C&C isn't understood to be the central game concept and doesn't seem to have been fully explored in the reviewing process. It's also worth noting that the writing isn't mentioned once in the whole article... which leads me to believe that either the author is a total douche, or he just didn't play much further than the tutorial. I mean... is the writing good, bad, average? Can it carry the weight of the game? Are characters credible? Are the premises absurd? How clever are Mike's lines? No idea. But oh, look! I can blow up a tank with a rocket launcher! This is why I never read mags.

It's all quite neatly summed up in the old commie saying: "no war but class war" -- by blindly following Marx's mad ideas on "class struggle", anything is justified.

I just remembered that case a few years ago which also had "scientists baffled". It involved a Lebanese girl crying diamonds or some other stupid ****. She also claimed to be receiving divine messages. She stopped shortly after becoming famous. I wonder if we'll see this guy parking at McD's in a few months, too? No, but he needs to rely on chemical energy (photosynthesis or Krebs) OR electrical energy (photovoltaic). Those are the only possibilities available to him by just standing in the sun. Or maybe he just doesn't believe in the laws of thermodynamics.

So only the Gov't or Congress can actually violate constitutional rights? An interesting view, but I don't think that's correct. You'd think wrong, then, because it is. The purpose of the bill of rights is to protect individual rights from the government. You cannot sue an individual for violating your constitutional rights, it just doesn't work that way. Nobody said anything about suing individuals. However you can very well sue the school as an organism, the NYPD, etc. Those aren't "the government" per se, they are services provided by the state, but not part of the executive branch of the administration. You're going to give constitutional law lessons too, now? This thread sure is going places.

For reference: an actual "biological transformation"

So only the Gov't or Congress can actually violate constitutional rights? An interesting view, but I don't think that's correct.

Unless he's some sort of biological heat pump (now that would be something worth studying), I don't think so. It would have to be one hell of a "biological transformation" for him to go from being Krebs cycle-powered to photovoltaic, involving changes as insignificant as growing electric motors and/or electrochemical reactors. Plus, he doesn't look green to me, so that kinda rules out photosynthesis. I wrote all of that from divine inspiration, I have never opened a science book in my life. True story.

I have no plans of getting into teaching. I also believe (and this is also pretty clear from my previous posts, I think) that teachers generally encouraging "niceness" and stepping in before fights break out is the way to go. This, however, has no relation with the original argument that "you have an obligation to be nice". I don't see how you can jump from what I said, to your broken dam analogy. Maybe you're confusing me with somebody else (Volourn? I wouldn't know, I have him on ignore)? And your particular professional modus operandi is a universal law how? I'm not arguing it's not the most effective way to go about your work, I'm not arguing it's not a fairly healthy attitude (for you and others), I'm not arguing you should stop it and let kids grow into little barbarians. The code says it pretty clearly: "5) follow each teacher's classroom standards". That's great. None of that means that there's no room for non-nice folk in our happy little world. I may have been condescending, but it's obvious that you cannot or just don't want to understand what I meant by that. I recommend you re-read both threads, if you feel it's the same.

Yeah, wasn't the Mitsoda/Carlson AP writing basically scrapped when the game was reinvented from "Syriana" to B

No, I'm just attacking the idea that an obligation exists to "be nice to other people". Actions should be taken in order to avert the possible violence... not because there is a "right not to be baited".

*BUZZ!* Almost, but no. (1) It wasn't an outburst or an aggression or anything that could have been averted with enough self-control, because they didn't feel they were doing anything wrong, nor have they been shown to afterwards. The VP being overruled later on further supports this. (2) LOL! I can accept that the kids intended to bait... but how does that constitute a breach of anyone's rights? Is there a "right not to be baited", now? (4) "Appropriate" social behavior is terribly vague. The fact that you can find many people in this very thread (and the school, etc) that seem to believe the kids did nothing wrong completely buries your argument that the kids were behaving in a "socially unappropriate manner", as by definition, it's a matter of opinion. I wish people didn't have such a hard time telling the difference between their own mindsets and categorical imperatives.