Enoch

Clearly, a PR disaster. Which is probably exactly what the kids (or perhaps their parents) intended. In a racially divided school, a group of kids agreeing to show up decked out in American flag regalia on a day that is designated to acknowledge Mexican culture is definitely antagonistic behavior. They went trolling for an aggressive response and they found one.

1994 is also a little early for there to be much of the then-current news reportage freely availalbe on teh internets. When you get to the period before news services started posting everything online as a matter of course, most of the 'archives' are usually behind paywalls or only available through 3rd party services like Nexis.

Better examples of why government debt is useful: Government revenues are very sensitive to economic conditions. Debt enables continued operation of important government activities and programs even when the economy tanks and tax revenues fall. The price of government debt is set by auction. As the closest thing to being free of default risk in an economy, gov't debt auctions provide the wider economy with the best information available on the currently expected future inflation risk. This enables people to more easily scruitinize other debt offerings by separating out the inflation risk premium for the currency in general from the default risk premium that is unique to that offering. Intra-governmental debt. In the U.S., whenever elements of government are given long-term custody of money (e.g., management of an ongoing fund, like the FDIC's Deposit Insurance Fund, or the Federal Highways Trust Fund) instead of being appropriated what they need to operate on an annual basis, they're required, to the extend practical, to hold those funds invested in Treasury securities. This protects these funds from being eroded by inflation. If the Treasury wasn't borrowing, those securities would either be unavailable, or they wouldn't be as accurately priced according to the best guess in the private marketplace. Governments can borrow more cheaply than anyone else in an economy. Thus, if a nation is a net debtor (adding up the gov't, consumer, and business debt, net of lending provided to entities outside that economy), the higher the portion of that debt that represents government debt, the lower the interest cost being drained from that economy to the rest of the world.

How is debt an essential part of that setup? Surely the expensive delays could be prevented by purchasing the spare tanks with funds provided from current revenues, no?

My compliments to the Mod. I wouldn't have expected ya'll to edit and (presumably) re-host the image to clear out the profanity while preserving the core message contained therein (a message which I heartily endorse, by the way) when the easier route of simply deleting the post was well within your power.

I'm just going to drop this here without comment and run away very quickly:

In case the legal principles need any further explanation, click here.

Whenever I catch myself thinking like this, I try to remember of all the "fun" I've had chasing down fleeing enemies in past games that included AI morale checks. Although, if you're talking about the raiders not picking a fight with clearly well armed and dangerous Player Characters in the first place, I'm with you 100%.

If only there were some way to not spend money on a game without breaking the law...

1) He was a murderously effective melee combatant. 2) People like dogs. 3) He was sufficiently vague that people were able to mentally ascribe to him characteristics of actual dogs they knew and loved.

My wife sometime jokingly refers to herself as Mexican, because her family moved to California back when it was still part of Mexico.

So I suppose you would also agree that Bethesda's decision to develop the "explosions" aspect of FO3 fully and develop the "reactivity to player choice" element lightly is just a choice, not a weakness in the game? Does it add value to the gameplay? Then yes. Fallout's JNPC system added value to the game. That's... a shockingly optimistic outlook. Rather than criticize how an element of a game was poorly-implemented, we're supposed to just say "well, they clearly didn't try very hard at this part, but it's better than nothing"? "The NPCs in Oblivion were all bland cardboard-cutouts with ugly faces, but I shouldn't criticize that aspect of the game because design of the game wasn't really focused on simulating realistic conversations and interpersonal relations, and because having half-assed NPCs is better than having all the towns be empty of people to talk to!"

So I suppose you would also agree that Bethesda's decision to develop the "explosions" aspect of FO3 fully and develop the "reactivity to player choice" element lightly is just a choice, not a weakness in the game?

So, it's the only part that's any good?

Gunfire is noisy. And even if your weapon is silenced, your opponent's may not be. If one guard spots you, CQC lets you eliminate him without bringing all his buddies to your location. (I'm assuming that CQC attacks can prevent opponents from getting their firearms into shooting position.)

The "Bethesda" in my location is, in fact, Bethesda, Maryland, in the U.S. of A. (Not the sacred pools in Jerusalem.) Originally, I'm from southern New Jersey. Edit: About 5 or 6 generations back, a few of my ancestors emigrated to the States (Pennsylvania, to be specific) from Denmark. I think they were fleeing conscription into one of them mid-19th century wars.

If you figure out the permutations involved, taking previous stance decisions into account would basically triple the amount of VO they would have to do, which would probably be cost-prohibitive. Also, it's "Thorton." Only one "n."

A historical analogy: Bangladesh. The name means "Bengali Country," although the area of Bengali cultural influence is broader than the borders of Bangladesh, including the neighboring Indian state of West Bengal. (Prior to the India-Pakistan split, the two were a unfied state of Bengal.) Does anybody know if citizens of India objected to Bangladesh's name when the country split from Pakistan in 1971?

http://kotaku.com/5530359/fallout-new-vega...mods//gallery/4 Awesome.

Decided to take a second pass at Deus Ex. The first time I played it (about 2 years ago) stalled around the beginning of the Paris hub.

By the way, the cover of the current issue of The Economist is hilarious:

I'm not ruling out an alt here, but I think it's more likely that he's just a noob who came here in advance of Alpha Protocol's release. Witness his two newbish threads in the AP forum. Edit: I is slo.

It's not in Energy's jurisdiction. Federal involvment in resource extraction stuff is under the Dept. of the Interior.

The Eastwood film was not particularly good. There were a few neat scenes, but it was otherwise slow as hell. And it really bugged me that Forest just seemed to be wiggling his fingers randomly in the scenes when he was playing. Would it have killed him to take a enough lessons to at least make it look like some of those sounds could credibly be coming out of his horn??

Isn't all that true of the US also? Not really. There's only one government issuing bonds in the U.S.-- the problem in the Eurozone is that the banks can access the ECB lending window with government bonds issued from any member government. So it benefits the riskiest (i.e., most indebted) most. Also, during the boom years, the private commercial banks who were in the middle of these transactions weren't paying much attention to the indebtedness and risk being piled up by these governments. The market for pricing U.S. Treasury issues, on the other hand, is scrutinized more than any other, and by the most sophisticated financial players around.