Enoch

There are more if you follow the links back to the source blog. Hell(sack)Boy: Kratos:

Isn't the CGI trailer they released a few days ago intended to address exactly this issue? It focuses quite clearly on the opportunities the game presents to make interesting choices.

You need to master the art of napping in your chair with something productive-looking up on the computer screen and with your back towards the office door. Also, best of luck with regard to mom's health and your collective finances. I played some basketball after work yesterday, and I'm beginning to think that my ankles aren't going to keep taking this much abuse for long. (In short, I need to lose 20+ pounds, which would probably reduce substantially the amount of complaining that my joints do.) I also really need to improve my ballhandling skills.

Salvia? You mean these? I have some of them growing in the front yard!

Not surprisingly, federal agencies in general are not good at communicating with one another. Information was pulled together from DOE, DOD, NRC, etc., and transmitted to Congress in accordance with a statutory requirement, but the agencies collectively didn't tell GPO (which generally posts Congressional documents like this online as a matter of course) to restrict access to it. GPO, in turn, didn't pay attention to the report's contents when they threw it up onto the net.

I demand playable Jawas!

I like. The level seems nice and big. The magic stealth ability is a bit gamey, but as long as (1) the duration is kept relatively short and (2) it doesn't work on enemies who already know where you are, I don't find it objectionable. The biggest thing that bugged me (aside from demo-dude's silly facial hair): Is the AI seriously dumb enough to walk in front of a speeding train because they thought they heard something?

I actually think that sounds great. I agree. It jives with my general conception of hit points not as actual health, but as a representation of your action-hero mojo.

Interesting that the "Forums" link on the new official site links to SEGA's forum rather than here.

I've long suspected that hair textures/animations is one area that Obsidz doesn't yet have up to snuff. Pretty much every screenshot and video prior to that one has featured characters sporting either buzzcuts or hats.

Listen to Wals. I was going to suggest a red sauce cooked with ****loads of wild mushrooms and fresh thyme, but after reading Wals' suggestion, I want that instead. (And I don't even like those soft cheeses-- semi-solid dairy products that remind me at all in taste or texture of spoiled milk are one of my few food hangups.) EDIT: My lasagna tip is this: even if the pasta advises pre-cooking, you can get away with not doing so (handling cooked sheet pasta is a real pain) if you make the whole shebang a day in advance and let the assembled lasagna sit in the fridge until you're ready to bake it. The dry pasta will absorb enough of the moisture from the sauces to approximate pre-cooking.

I'm actually messing around with Mass Effect for the first time since it was new to PC. This is my first try at a biotic-heavy character. Lifting opponents is fun, but in general I found my old Infiltrator's tech powers to be more useful.

It's been a long time since I played M, but off the top of my head, I'd cite O's stealth mechanic and its journal as things that were huge improvements over their M counterparts.

This thread is reason enough for Obsidian to make the story in AP based on personal motivations rather than geopolitical ones. More individual antagonists motivated by greed/love/lust/hate/revenge/etc. and fewer organizational antagonists motivated by politics, please!

Tig nailed it. ES games in general are really impressive for the first few hours after you bust out of prison. Underlying flaws and general shallow-ness take more time to figure out, and reviewers tend to rush and focus on first impressions.

On a site called "capitalism.org"??! I'm shocked! (Note: The better question to ask is what kind of government isn't statist by taks' definition, as the whole idea of civilization involves the decision by our ancestors to subject some individual freedoms and some of the collective group's resources to control by authority figures so that, on the whole, the welfare of the clan/tribe/village/city/nation is improved.)

It depends on what you want to do with it. First off, for law degrees, most states will only allow graduates of ABA-accredited law schools to take their bar exam. So that puts a floor on it right there. (Note to Ari: CA is an exception in that they do allow an alternate procedure for students at non-accredited law schools to take the Bar. This is one of the reasons why CA has one of the lower Bar passage rates in the country.) Second, lawyers are generally status-junkies, and may lawyers are very reluctant to hire people who just graduated from a school they've never heard of. While the top-20 or so law schools (definitely the top-14, which collectively remain the same 14 schools in various orders for every single year since USNAWR started their rankings decades ago) are known nationwide, with smaller schools, you probably want to practice within the area where that school is reasonably well known. For example, graduates of lower-tier law schools here in DC like American U., Howard U., and Catholic U. still do pretty well in finding jobs in DC. They may not get a sniff up in New York, but most DC lawyers know a few grads from theses schools whose work they respect, which tends to open minds a lot in spite of what the newsmagazines might say. I suspect that this is more true in the relatively subjective fields than it is in more scientific ones. Multi-variable calculus classes probably follow very similar curricula all over the country regardless of who is teaching it and where, while the varying quality of instructors for, say, First Amendment law, would tend to make a more significant difference. And, the caveat here is that, once you have 5 or so years of experience, nobody cares where you got your degree from-- they just want to know what you've been doing since then. (Alternately, once you get a post-graduate degree, nobody cares where you got your undergraduate.) One other side note: my dad is a Rutgers alum!

Youtube version without the German subtitles:

Upon watching the latest dev diary again, I have two other concerns: 1) The "suave" option used in the video is a groaningly awful "Hey, check out my schlong!" line. That doesn't seem particularly suave in my book. (Closer to "aggressive," really.) Am I wrong for expecting more "champagne, caviar, and Barry White" suave and less "is that a mirror in your pocket?" suave? 2) The dev diary included a notification that the player had gained a perk called "Suave." My assumption is that this is a perk gained upon repeated successful use of suave dialogue options, along the lines of the reputation perks that Sawyer outlined for the Black Hound project ages ago. My fear is that this will lead to too much metagaming (I'm thinking of the speech-skill benefits one gets from going strong towards Paragon/Renegade in Mass Effect), with the "optimal effectiveness" route being to game your dialogue choices to gain these specialization bonuses as early as possible as opposed to playing the game in a more natural fashion. Anybody in the know care to comment?

Well, don't panic on the timing for the logic game questions like that. Usually, the test will set out a scenario, then ask about a half-dozen questions based on it. So, the time you spend diagramming the setup will put you over the recommended allotment for Q5, but will save you time on Qs 6-10. I will say that UCLA and UCI are both very selective, high-quality programs. (Well, UCI is new, so it's tough to judge it just yet, but it's certainly starting out on the right foot in terms of selectiveness!) If you can get into either of those schools, you should feel pretty good about your chances of getting decent work after you're done.

I have taken the LSAT. Scored somewhere in the 162-ish range in late 2002, on way too little prepartation. (Literally, I checked out a review book from the public library and spent about 4 hours reading it the night before the exam. I do NOT recommend this course of action. I was happy at the top-30ish law school where I ended up, but I feel like I could've done significantly better on the test.) First off, don't do this at all unless you have a plan. Law school is expensive, and while taking on six figures of debt based on the assumption that "lawyers make a lot of money" might have generally worked out OK during the boom years, the reality is much different now. Currently, the legal job market sucks-- major law firms are laying off associates by the dozen, and all these newly canned associates are crowding out recent graduates in the search for jobs at smaller firms and government agencies. It's even tough to get public interest work. Lots of top firms have deferred their incoming new associates for a year, essentially paying them a fraction of what would be their salary to not come into work, provided that they go get a public interest job to gain some experience in the interim. Because the public interest organizations can get top-flight new lawyers to work for free, their incentive to hire new grads for pay has diminished considerably. The current oversupply of lawyers might turn around in the next 4 years before you would be graduationg, but there's no guarantee of that. So my first bit of advice is to think long and hard about what you're going to get out of law school and what it's going to cost you. Also, even in the boom years, paying for full-price tuition at a third-tier law school is rarely worthwhile. In that vein, scholarships are good, as is in-state tuition at public law schools. (Even if you're out of state, you can usually qualify as a state resident after the first year.) If you're not at a top-14 law school, there really isn't any reason why you should be paying full price and expecting to get a decent return on your investment. Working while in law school can be done, and can certainly help defray costs. But if you do, be aware that: 1) it will hurt your grades, and 2) it will probably exclude you from extracurriculars like law review and moot courts. Both of these factors (grades and especially law review participation) are pretty major influences on the job offers you can get right out of law school. Also, the ideal law school job is one that is flexible enough that you can drop it entirely for a week or two of crunch time at the end of the semester. Anyhow, the LSAT. Go to a public library and skim over whatever study guides they have there. Then buy a copy of the one you like best. The good ones give strong explanations of why certain things are on the test, how the test writers come up with the "wrong" answers intended to deceive you, etc. They should also come with a number of practice tests. (EDIT: they write new editions of them every year, which is stupid because the test doesn't change much. You can save some money if you can find an older edition that hasn't been written on excessively.) After you feel like you understand the basic structure of the thing, do a practice test. The LSAT has more time pressure than any other standardized test I have taken (the GREs were an absolute breeze by comparison), so be sure you get used to doing the test sections in the timeframes described. Review your practice tests and try to understand why your answers weren't always what the test writer was looking for. Repeat this process as appropriate until the exam date is close. Now, this is all assuming that you have the self-discipline necessary to set aside the required time and do the preparation, even if you have a new videogame or there's something good on TV. If this is not the case, I would reluctantly recommend signing up for one of those expensive instructor-led classes. On the day of the test, speak to nobody at the test site. Be well rested, well fed, and as calm as you can reasonably manage, but don't be social with the other test takers. Invariably, 80% of the people there will be either acting way too overconfidently (which can get you freaked out) or exuding pure panic (which can get you freaked out). Ignore them entirely. Other than that, I really don't have much insight on how law schools make admissions decisions, other than that their thinking is way too dependent on "numbers" factors (LSAT, undergraduate grades, other post-graduate degrees, demographics, and prestige of schools you've attended) that they use to game the US News rankings.

Hmmm... I'm going to assume you were talking to Tig there...

Ich las die W

A couple of the status updated in the lower-left corner of the screen were new. They indicated that the player earned the "Due Process" perk and the "Suave" perk. I don't believe that either of those have been discussed.

I'm trying to figure out how long it will take to drive to Dulles Airport in rush-hour traffic tomorrow. 7:45 flight, plus time to get there, park, clear security, etc., probably has us leaving home around 5. Which means leaving work around 4. Which means working until around 6:30 tonight (or getting up rather early tomorrow), if I want to conserve my leave balances as much as possible.