Enoch

OK, I can't top that. At the heat of the day, it was around 100F/38C with high relative humidity.

I wouldn't limit it to that. Both my character and 2 or 3 of the first NPCs I met had bizarre angular splotches on their face that went away when I turned dynamic shadows off.

The combination of the hottest day of the year (thus far) and a derailment in the subway line I normally ride home makes for a rather unpleasant afternoon.

O I C. Typo joke. Gottit. Occupational hazard of working with lots of accountants, I suppose-- my fingers are just way too used to slipping that "n" in between the "i" and the "a."

I couldn't decide, and the decision didn't require any in-depth gaming knowledge that she lacks, so I asked her. I have no idea what your second sentence means.

Heh. I just installed this last night, and made a female Infiltrator character. I asked my financee for advice as to whether I should play as a dude or a chick, and she emphatically preferred the latter. The VO has been acceptable so far.

By the way, I have now decided that I really hope that Barack Obama win the presidency, and that the first words of his acceptance speech are "'Scuse me while I whip this out..."

Feel free to ignore the 157 references, though. You could also check out his website where he has all of his stances on issues readily available. Also, I've got to imagine that presidential candidates have people monitoring changes to their guy's wiki entry (they'd be pretty dumb not to), and are quick to undo any misleading edits.

I refer you to Bethel School District v. Fraser, in which case the SCOTUS upheld disciplinary action to punish the following student speech (nominating a candidate for a student body position): I think that precedent make pr0n an easy case.

Yeah, there's a big difference between this and the Tinker case they cite in the article. Tinker involved a student wearing a simple black armband to protest the Vietnam War. It was understated and not meant to be the center of attention at all times. On the other hand, this shirt has huge lettering and pictures, and essentially accuses anyone who has undergone an abortion (which almost certainly includes some of the school's students and faculty) of committing murder. To walk into a classroom with this on is to say, "we're going to be talking about abortion today," which is almost certainly disruptive of whatever pedagogic plans the instructor may have had.

I have also never touched a C&C game. I played around with the early Warcrafts a bit (was given the WC1&2 combo pack), but they got deathly boring once I figured out how the games basically functioned (i.e., screw tactics, just keep building until you've got more than the other guy, then rush him). Since then, the closest I've gotten to an RTS is the Total War games.

Agreed. He's not exactly the first guy I think of when I want on-point analysis of RPG rules systems.

Not necessarily. Heck, the pizza I had for lunch (w/ portobella mushrooms, artichoke, and garlic) in a fairly classy downtown bistro today was $18 (about 12 Euros) for a pie big enough for 2. There are great little neighborhood restaurants all over most urban areas in America. (If you're talking great cheap eats, one area where the U.S. leaves Europe in the dust is the availability of high-quality authentic Mexican food.) The area where Europe really shines, relative to the U.S., outside the big cities, where the traditional rustic preparations in small European communities totally outclass America's bland chain restaurants.

Honestly, I don't think it's so much that Americans have no taste as that they no time. Take a look at vacation/holiday time, per capita GDP, avg. annual work hours per worker, and other similar measures-- Americans spend so much time at work that they don't have time to cook a whole lot (or to develop those cooking skills in the first place), and often end up purchasing their meals with speed at a higher premium than taste. For good or ill, this food is what has come to represent American cooking in the minds of the rest of the world. There's something to that-- culinary traditions in the Old World are defined mostly by what ingredients are cultivated locally,with techniques refined over centuries, while the story of America is the largely the story of immigrant populations who left the land and food sources that were the basis for their gustatory traditions, mostly within the last 150 years. But the immigrant-driven nature of American culture is also a strength in finding variety, and in the productive mixing of different cultures' foodways (a literal as well as figurative melting pot). I'm not the most well-traveled person around, but still, I'd stack the cuisine that can be had in a major American city up against what you can find in just about any other major city elsewhere on the globe. Sure, you'll find better pasta in Florence, better coq au vin in Paris, and better sashimi in Tokyo, but for the whole package, give me New York.

Speaking of pizza, I had lunch today at Matchbox. Good stuff.

Even if one disputes the American origins of the modern pizza pie, I give you its clearly American offspring: the Pizza Bagel. There's no way to refute that kind of culinary genius.

Johnny Cash -- The Man Comes Around This is one of those rare pieces of music that makes me wish I were a religious man (a little bit, anyway). That puts it in pretty select company-- Coltrane, Mingus, Bach...

I haven't read the entire thread, but at the risk of repeating what some extremely insightful poster has already said, I prefer unlimited ammo. Why? Because this game is supposed to be spy game, not a shoot game. Micromanaging ammo resources makes me spend gaming time debating with myself over how I'm going to go about shooting fozzles. That's what I do in pretty much every other game out there on the market. Screw that-- it's boring and doesn't fit particularly well with the whole superspy vibe they're going for. Really, how many missions in spy movies does the hero go out with the explicit intent to off some dude? Sure, there may be some incidental gunplay along the way, but strapping on bandoliers of shotgun shells isn't really part of the whole superspy idiom.

Probably Cab Calloway. (Big difference. Swing bandleader v. early rock/blues/R&B guitarist)

Thread needs more tributes. To the youtubes with you! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IWTqNboP8c http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs8FJergjas

I've always felt that it was her plan from the beginning to fight against the Exile, providing the conflict that would foster his growth and development (in keeping with her general Echani philosophy that true expression and growth comes only from conflict). In a way, she won-- the remaining Jedi Council and Sith Lords are dead, and the living contradiction that is the Exile is off to find Revan, the only other master of the ways of the Force that remains in the galaxy.

I've always been fond of Toothpaste for Dinner His recent stuff isn't fantastic, but there are some great laughs if you look through the archives from '04 or '05. (I think this has something to do with the author abandoning the crappy job/unemployment that inspired so much of his earlier work to become a professional cartoonist/t-shirt salesman.) Some highlights my spending the last 20 minutes clicking through the archive:

My favorite is Life's Rich Pageant. But I haven't really listened to Automatic a whole lot in years. When it was still fairly new, I heard it a lot because my little sister was big fan. I liked it, but after enough replays, my interest waned. (Although I did go with her to see them on tour in '95, which was pretty rockin'.) Beck -- The New Pollution

@ Jorian, Fair enough. Were I in your position, I'd probably be a bit peeved, and I'd probably hold off on buying until there was some consensus in the community as to how EA customer support was handling requests for additional re-authorizations. @ Xard, Well, that's really an argument against poorly written DRM programs, not the choice to use an online-activated DRM scheme in general. As with any other part of the program, yes, I'd be angry if lousy coding/testing is preventing me from enjoying the product. We shall see, I suppose-- if I have a similar issue, I might well have a change of heart. Ultimately, though, I still suspect that DRM issues get a lot more whining than they deserve. It's certainly less onerous to the player than, say, the way games used to quiz you on "what's the 3rd word of paragraph 2 on p. 17 of the game manual" every damn time you started them up.