Enoch

Huh? I'm pretty certain I heard something about Obama planning to build some 20 new NPPs to deal with "energy dependence" in the US? I'll try to look it up and get back to you. Since I'm 100% drug and alcohol free, I expect to find at least something... or I'll be very worried. Title 17 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 provides for federal loan guarantees for innovative energy technology, and a fair portion of the funds that have since been appropriated for the program in annual appropriations acts have been earmarked for nuclear projects. (The Obama admin gets to claim some credit because they have highlighted this as something that should get more funding in their first few annual budget requests, and because the first actual loan guarantees are being made under their watch.) The only major program to be approved for funding so far is a nuclear plant in Georgia. Congress has appropriated the money to make a lot more loan guarantees, but DOE hasn't gone through the selection and approval process yet on the others. Of course, the loan guarantee program has its critics, and it isn't being run particularly well at the adminstrative level.

At least in the Coast Guard (probably the other services, too), if you enter the enlisted services having been an Eagle Scout, you do get bumped up a pay grade. I don't know if it help when you're coming in as an officer. Although I'm sure it's a big leg up on getting admittance to one of the service academies. I was in the scouts for a few years (I quit around 7th grade, mostly because all of my friends already had, and I didn't get along with many of the other members of my troop) and the religious stuff was really downplayed. Yeah, the mottos and oaths and stuff mentioned God, but it never had anything to do with the activities we actually did. This was in southern NJ. From talking to people I met in college, though, I did get the impression that in other parts of the country, the Scouts worked very closely with (and received a lot of support from) local churches.

FTFY. (Seriously, for all the often-justified criticism the Carter Admin gets, their push for efficiency at the consumption end is the only really effective major energy policy that has been enacted in the States over the last 50 years. It's because of the efficiencies that their policies helped create that the scary projections we're looking at today didn't happen 20 years ago. Other Admins (and Congresses) have done little or nothing to address the problem.)

This is also a goal of mine.

Thought experiment: Lockstep Moodswing Thorton-- A strict rotation of stance choices. Pick one to start with, and, at each subsequent decision point, use the next one around the circle from the option most recently used. Repeat until endgame. Seriously, though, on a first playthrough, my main goal is going to be to get as much information as possible before making decisions. Get tight with the info brokers, buy dossiers, and generally keep people alive to keep options open until I have a fuller understanding of where everybody stands. This probably pairs best with a stealth-based inconspicuous approach to mission tactics.

Deepwater oil rigs are some of the most amazingly complicated feats of engineering on the planet-- the Deepwater Horizon platform whose explosion/sinking caused this had previously drilled the deepest oil/gas well in history. Something clearly went wrong, but it might take a while before we understand exactly what it was. The initial theory is simply "blowout," but the rig's safety mechanisms should have prevented that, so some other additional failure seems likely to have happened as well.

From the man you brought you the TGI Friday's Menu Swap, I give you the Costco Prank. Edit: Dammit, the forum profanity filter is killing my links! You've got to change the "****" into the four letters that commonly precede "a-doodle-doo."

If run well and kept independent, credit agencies (both for securities and for individuals) serve a useful role. When you're considering contracting with a party, you need information about their assets, liabilities, trustworthiness, etc. That's a transaction cost. A rating agency presents a more efficient way to do elements of that research than having separate investigations by each and every party that might be associated with an entity. The transaction costs are reduced, which is a good thing for all involved. One of the big problems with financial markets during the boom years is that the major ratings agencies were also working as consultants for most of the firms that underwrote the now-toxic securities. So the people who were doing the ratings were under institutional pressure to not anger the issuers, and thus used models that generally understated the risks. Work needs to be done to prevent this kind of conflict of interest, but we don't want to toss out the efficiency gains that ratings agencies can provide, either.

I've considered joining up and playing along a couple of times (particularly when they did Alpha Centuari), but never got around to it. The next game in the hopper is now Another World, which I have not played. I'll give it a try if I find the time.

Heavily male viewership? Although I may be confusing cause with effect here...

I never meant to imply that he started it. (Indeed, the tradition of nativism in America is centuries old.) But he was surely the name most prominently associated with it at the time. It was the pet issue that he emphasized in nearly every show when that particular debate was going on. My search-fu is weak, and I can't seem to find where I've read about Fox's reaction to Dobbs and CNN staking out the anti-immigration position, but they were clearly troubled by it, and it pushed the bulk of their commetary in opposition to the Bush WH for pretty much the first time.

See this thread. The eventual conclusion was that the proper Latin for what they were trying to say was "Quo nemo sequi potest." Maybe that didn't fit well enough on the logo...

The audience for cable news is weird. The lesson of Fox and MSNBC pulling ahead of CNN, ratings-wise, is that opinion journalism is both more popular and much much cheaper to produce than is solid reporting. Now, all 3 networks have some good reporters and some opinion-spouting talking heads, but CNN's investment in the reporting area (particularly in overseas bureaus) is much heavier than the other two. It's still the place to go for updates on a developing breaking-news situation for that reason. But that doesn't create much in the way of ratings-- people who watch for the news reporting generally watch for 20 minutes and then go do something else, unless there's an invasion or something going on. People who watch opinion-based journalism do so to have their worldview challenged or (more likely) validated by the opinions of an 'expert,' and many of them will watch for hours. Watching news to them is more like watching a sporting event-- they have emotional attachment to one of the "teams" and get satisfaction out of seeing that "team" score rhetorical points. This group is what puts Fox (and, for liberals, MSNBC, although the liberal audience for opinion-based journalism is a good deal smaller than the conservative one) ahead in the ratings-- people like watching competitions that their teams always win. Now, during the early Bush 43 years, Fox News was pretty close to being an extra branch of the White House press office. But a key turning point was the Bush Admin's support for immigration reform. For the first couple of weeks, many of the talkingheads on Fox were supportive, as they had been for most things coming out of that White House. But then CNN's Lou Dobbs started speaking out forcefully against the proposed reform, and huge sections of the American right agreed with him. Fox found itself outflanked on the Right by CNN on a major issue, which they feared would undermine its credibility with its core demographic. So they quickly backpedaled and started denouncing the Administration's bill. Bartlett, who is quoted in the article Wals linked, is more of an "old guard" pragmatic Republican. It's natural for people like him to be uncomfortable with how extreme his party has become-- moderate positions and advocates of compromise get shouted down. Of course, every "big-tent" political party is constantly dealing with the internal struggle between its extremists and its more moderate supporters. And there is certainly risk in going too far to the ideological extreme that you lose the middle (see: McGovern, George). But sometimes going far to one extreme moves where the middle is at (I'd argue that the Reagan admin did this on a number of issues), so it can be helpful in furthering the a group's long-term ideological goals.

Ugh. Check at 0:08-- "Nullus Can Insisto" is back. Hopefully that's older footage and the Latin has been corrected by now.

And, furthermore, in societies lacking in effective rule-of-law, the power tends to rest with whoever is most ruthless. A psychopath who is able to round up a sufficient army of sociopaths tends to get whatever he wants. (See, e.g., a substantial majority of post-colonial African governments.) The Conrad Marburg video was the best one. Facial animations for Mina in particular still look real choppy.

The character bits aren't doing much for me, but I thought that one was pretty well done.

I suspect he means that the ridiculousness in Fallout is already part of the franchise's appeal. Part of the reason that Fallout is fun is that we like the silly mutants, the implausible ghouls, the crazy weapons, the campy '50s sci-fi technology, etc. Of course, you do have to balance the entertainingly batty stuff with more plausible elements, or else the player will spend all his time laughing and won't emotionally buy in to the characters and storylines. But even so, simply citing "it's ridiculous" as an objection is insufficient in a setting with so much ridiculousness as part of its core appeal. And without further information on how some of the previewed F:NV elements will work, we really can't do any serious analysis of the "Wacky futurism" to "Grim Wasteland" ratio in the game.

I figure that it's about time to kick this one off. The first round of the NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting starts tonight, and we've had quite an entertaining offseason so far-- surprising trades, rape allegations, looming labor troubles, liquored up owners, and the regular season is still over 4 months away! Have at it.

Hope not. Well, it's a not a publicly traded company, so they'd have to get a majority (or possibly more, depending on the incorporating documents) of the existing owners to agree to sell.

Somewhat ironically, the American 2nd Amendment was largely a response to British history-- the Stuart monarchs' various attempts to disarm the local militias in regions that didn't support their rule.

I have to wonder if I've made my case clear. I'm saying that it costs to have them loose in the system, but that the consequences of removing them would be far worse. You could argue that the mlitary cause all sorts of costs and problems - because they do - but a nation without them is worse off. I think we just disagree on the weighting of the benefits and costs. Viewed in the abstract, I would prefer the end result with less gun ownership. But given that America is already a state with very high gun ownership, and that the transition from a highly-armed society to one with more restricted gun rights would be rather disastrous if attempted at a speed measured in units of time shorter than human lifespans, as a "what to do now" policy proposal, it's a non-starter to me. Can we think of historical analogues? When has an armed populace served as an effective preventative check against the rise of totalitarianism? There are certainly examples of the overthrow of existing totalitarian and colonial regimes, but I think of that as a different animal. Most attempts I can think of either fail (the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War) or simply lead to a different kind of totalitarianism (Cromwell replacing Charles I; the Bolsheviks).

We know that you can buy equipment from him after the initial bar meeting. No future face-to-face meetings have been mentioned that I know of, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Why are the NWN2 expansions the only x-packs listed? And, I'm no fan of them, but surely JRPGs should count for something, no?

I think this is the first time we've seen a number put on her age, but prior materials have referred to her as a Stasi-trained agent, which most likely means that she was at least in her early 20s by the time the Stasi was dissolved in 1989.

If we were starting over from scratch, I'd prefer a country with fewer guns in it. The costs of having lotsa guns are simply higher than the benefits. But we're not starting from scratch, and attempting to shift to being a society with less gun ownership within our lifetimes would almost certainly be a complete disaster. The most practical path is to support the more marginal restrictions that are currently on the table (tougher rules in urban areas, licensing and such for handguns, limits on the heavier-firepower stuff), teach the next generation not to romanticize devices with no purpose but to make holes in human beings, and continue to laugh at the paranoid fantasies of wackos who expect George III to show up and start oppressing us the moment they flip the safety on their BFG9000 into the "on" position.