Enoch

I really don't get why everybody gets their panties in a bunch over sports hall of fame selections. Here's everything I need to know about the Hall: 1) inductees are selected by sports journalists; 2) sports journalists, by and large, are idiots (this is especially true in football, where the gap between an expert's (read: coach or smart player) understanding of the game and a layman's understanding of the game ). Yeah, it's fun to talk about the stars of yesteryear and compare them in our minds, but the selections that these bozos make and the criteria on which they base them should by no means be taken seriously.

Ever try explaining THAC0 to one of the un-initiated?

Maybe he's now a zombie cyborg, too!

Based on their proliferation in the sequel, the answer to your question is clearly "yes."

The "free day-1 DLC character": http://masseffect.bioware.com/universe/squad/zaeed/ My copy is now "Out for Delivery," so unless something goes wrong I'll be installing when I get home from work today.

Agreed-- Looking at how Sega has been handling Alpha Protocol, having Bethesda as the publisher for F:NV is a big positive.

My order has shipped. (I was bored this weekend and decided to splurge on release-date shipping from Amazon.)

Don't forget all those gamers who either rented ME1 or bought it used. And the raw number of 360s and PCs that meet the minimum specs for the game is higher now than it was when ME1 came out. The non-xmas season and generally weaker economy will hurt, but this should still outsell ME1 pretty easily.

There is some... odd... methodology there, like considering only the highest marginal tax rates (as opposed something else that's more representative, like median rates), and defining "government freedom" as essentially the inverse of government expenditures. In the latter case, the U.S.'s defense budget is probably what holds it back more than anything-- American military spending essentially subsidizes defense for much of the rest of the developed world.

What, no Championship Game discussion? I'll start us off: Tracy Porter is the man.

This happens too, particularly with defense contractors. Major systems production (like, say, the Joint Strike Fighter) is deliberately planned out so that parts of the product are produced in the maximum number of states and congressional districts, so that they know they'll have the largest possible contingent of Congresspeople fighting against any cuts to the program. It makes the prices they can offer less competitive, but there isn't a whole lot of competition for many of the really really complex contracts, so budget cuts present a greater threat than losing the contract to a rival firm.

I think the main commonality is the idea of retro-future gone horribly wrong. Bioshock set it's sights a little differently (1920s in its artistic style, although the Randian philosophical stuff didn't really emerge until she formed her little cult later on), but the core is that a vision of the future that was trendy at one point in history came true and then went bad.

Oh, I doubt it. There is a very large crowd of gamers out there who own a 360 but generally stick with Madden and whatever the current Call of Duty is, and who don't necessarily pay much attention to upcoming releases outside those franchises. A well-done and well-placed trailer (I saw it, and it was both-- even my wife noticed the commercial, which was muted, and asked me what that's about) can get a lot of those guys (and they are all guys) to think about at least renting the game the next time they stop by the Blockbuster. And some will end up buying it outright. It's an aggressive ad campaign for a game, but ME from the beginning has been about Bio trying to hit the same notes that a big effects-driven blockbuster sci-fi film does, so it makes sense that they should start trying to hit the same audience.

I think they pretty much succeeded in mimicking the storyline and writing style of an effects-driven blockbuster sci-fi film. I just don't particularly enjoy that kind of movie. Still, I doubt I'll regret buying ME2. If the gameplay and interface improvements deliver as promised (yay for not spending 20 minutes after each mission distrubuting marginal equipment upgrades to my team and selling the rest off!), the game should be enjoyable enough to keep me playing. And, based on Bio's past success rate, 2 or 3 of the 10 companions should be interesting to chat with for awhile. I do fear that they've gone overboard on the fan-service, though. Besides the hawt baybz fighting over Shep's man-meat, from the dribs and drabs of spoilers that have surfaced on the BioBoards before mods can lock them, it seems like every minor ME1 character who the Bio-forumites have ever made lame jokes about gets to come back for a turn in the spotlight in the sequel.

You're forgetting that this is a forum sponsored by people who make toasters for a living.

You guys sure like giving the mods a workout.

There seems to be some confusion about what this decision does and doesn't do. A handy chart from the WSJ: @GD, I'm not nearly enough of a salesman to run for anything. I do occasionally get an opportunity to comment on legislation, but it is in a limited sense, usually for technical reasons rather than overall policy. It is also the general rule that careers in Washington generally go on one of 3 paths: partisan on the Left, partisan on the Right, or non-partisan. I've started out on the third path, which I like, but it means that a future job as an elected or appointed official is a lot less likely. (Actually, under the Hatch Act, I am prohibited from lots of political activity if I want to keep my job.)

... because voting for the former nude-male-model is always the intelligent and informed decision! (I kid. Honestly, I don't have much of a dog in the MA Senate fight-- from what I've read, they were both pretty lousy candidates for a variety of reasons, with the difference being that the right is generally a lot angrier and more motivated right now. Plus MA is probably the "blue" state least likely to care about the healthcare reform issue that dominates the headlines right now because they already have state-level healthcare laws that are more progressive than the ones being talked about in Washington.) I do agree that the whole 'money in politics' issue is one worth worrying about. But America has a First Amendment, and Buckley v. Valeo's holding that money spent supporting a political candidate counts as "speech" for the purposes of that Amendment is, I think, a good rule. Given all this, any legislative attempt to restrain said money is going to be like trying to catch rainwater in a cardboard box-- it's all going to seep through eventually. Even full-on public funding probably won't work all that well because you can't restrain self-funded candidates, nor can you restrain wealthy proxies from using their wealth to give full-throated voices of support for the candidate of their choice. The only solution that has any hope of working in this environment is rigorous public disclosure. And I mean rigorous. If there's a corporate donor, I want to know who is on the Board and who the major shareholders are. If there is a non-profit, I want to know who their big supporters are. If the donations are from individuals, I want to know if there are any trends in where they work and live. And I want the opposing candidates to know all this stuff, too, and to feature it in their campaigns when the stink of influence from a particular quarter gets too heavy.

This particular gentleman was from Kidderminster in Worcestershire, and alternated between his army career and employment in the carpet mills in his hometown. Sometime in the nineteen-aughts, he emigrated with a wife and a few kids to Canada. During WW1, he served with the Canadians in a training capacity, but moved down into the States in the '20s, to work at a carpet mill in NJ. This makes him rather unique in my family history-- the trend in my family has been escaping rather than volunteering for military service. One of my ancestors on my father's side left Denmark for the U.S. as a teenager to escape conscription in one of the mid-19th-century wars.

The 26th in North America, the 29th in Europe.

If anything can ever be labeled "judicial activism," I think this decision can-- it both overturned part of a reasonably long-standing act of Congress, and overruled past Supreme Court precedent. People like Schumer like to point this out because people on the Right have spilled a lot of ink over "activist" courts over the past few decades, and pointing out when your political rivals are benefiting from something that they have previously denounced is an easy way to score political points. (I also wouldn't consider this "leveling the field" between Corps and Unions-- aggregate corporate revenue in America is many, many, many times higher than aggregate union revenue.) And I didn't mean to imply that the decision will do nothing-- it will certainly have an effect, but it's hardly the catastrophic effect that some are predicting. The interplay between individual rights and corporate entities is an interesting one. Just skimming over the Bill of Rights, it's obvious that certain rights can clearly have no application to corporations (e.g., they can't vote, and they don't get a jury of their (presumably corporate) peers when they are sued). It is also obvious that certain rights must always apply to corporate entities-- I don't think anybody would argue that the government can take property without just compensation or conduct searches without probable cause simply because the owner is incorporated. Prior to this decision, reasonable limits on corporate speech weren't seen as objectionable by the Court because all of the people involved (the shareholders, officers, executives, etc.) retained their full first amendment rights. But it is interesting that where other Amendments talk about "the right of the People" (see #2 and #4, and the latter part of #1), the Speech clause of the First Amendment simply says "no law" and talks about "speech" rather than focusing on the who or what the "speakers" are.

I don't really believe the doomsayers on this one, for a few reasons. First, it's not like donors and candidates have had much trouble evading these rules over the past few election cycles. Corporations today just create non-profit advocacy groups to run ads and support candidates on their behalf. Is there that much harm in removing the one extra pair of hands the money passes through? McCain-Feingold was a noble effort, but did politics in America get any noticeably 'cleaner' when it was in-effect? Second, disclosure rules still stand (Justice Thomas is the only one arguing in favor of striking them). Politicians already make a lot of hay out of badmouthing the groups who support their rivals, and GiantCorp, Inc. makes a much more effective boogeyman that the advocacy groups with innocuous names ("Citizens for Happy Families and Puppies") that the public generally hasn't heard of. Third, limits on direct cash contributions to candidates still stand, too. Fourth, the shareholders are probably going to hold back a lot of the direct corporate donations. Large institutional shareholders (like, say, public pension funds) pull a lot of weight in shareholders' meetings for big companies, and a lot of them probably don't want money that could be reinvested in the company or paid out as dividends used to fund partisan politics. Also, many big public companies are now owned by foreign shareholders at least as much as they are by Americans. The campaign ads for their rivals pretty much write themselves there.

Even so, it's not good enough for some people on the BioBoards.

If you watch one spoiler youtube video from the game, you should see.

And then the zulus attack! Quite so! Did I ever tell you that a Great-Great-Grandfather of mine fought in the Boer War? Cornwall Light Infantry, if I recall.