Enoch

It's got some promise. The game held my interest for about as long as it takes to watch a movie. (At which point I realized "now I remember why I don't enjoy shooters.")

Not really. The conversion of organic material into petroleum takes pressure, heat, and moisture. As opposed to the Earth with it's molten core, plate techtonics, and cycle of erosion and sedimentation, the moon is geologically dead. If we leave organic material on the surface of the moon, it's still going to be on the surface of the moon in 100 million years.

I know this officially makes me a communist, but why not just walk? Should only take you about an hour. Plus you'd get great exercise. There's a river in the way, and the most direct bridge to cross is not very pedestrian-friendly. (There are pedestrian/bike lanes, but they only connect to the trails that run along the river-- I'd have to run across highways to get to them.)

So does all this mean that I can be forgiven for dogging it a bit when I was playing basketball with some co-workers for about 90 minutes earlier this evening?

In the U.S., public education is administered at the state level, but the federal government does get involved mostly by giving large education grants to the states with conditions attached. In general, the Democrats tend to be in favor of more federal money and involvement. Republicans generally prefer less federal involvement, and when there is federal involvment, stricter standards that schools/teachers/etc. have to meet to keep the funds. As for this election in particular, in the Democratic primary, there is very, very little difference between the two candidates on any policy matter, including education. Yeah, their published healthcare plans have slightly different approaches, and Clinton has come out in support of the gas tax holiday idea, but apart from that, they agree on almost everything. That race has been almost entirely about personality, experience, public trust, etc. For the general election, I'll confess that I really don't know how the presumptive nominees stack up with each other in terms of education policy.

Florida might be counted, but Michigan certainly won't be. (It was essentially a Soviet election-- vote Hillary or "uncommitted." It would be insane to give it any credence.) And your theory that the remaining uncommitted superdelegates want to give the nomination to Hillary more than they want to have a viable Democratic party over the next decade is a whole lot of wishful thinking. They haven't "put this charade to bed" yet because no candidate has the delegates necessary to mathematically cinch the nomination, and there are still people who haven't voted. Superdelegates are politicians. Politicians like to back winners. Once the last primary is done, they'll issue press releases endorsing the delegate leader. Even some of the Supers currently pledged to Clinton will probably switch if she's not in the lead when the voting is done. (NJ Gov. Corzine has hinted as much.) People down there might be angry about the exclusion of their delegation now, but, when push comes to shove, I really really doubt it's going to influence any votes in November. Do people really take procedural bickering between the FL DNC and the national DNC more seriously than they do war, the recession, taxes, healthcare, etc.? Heck, the GOP is excluding half of the Florida delegates at their convention, too!

The media likes to play up the drama, but the race has long since been decided. Clinton salvaging a relatively narrow win in Indiana only means that she'll be quitting next month rather than this month. Can we please stop pretending she has a plausible chance to win the nomination?

Yeah, most barbecue sauces I've seen usually have a balance of hot, sweet, acid, and smoke flavors, plus some sort of substantive base/thickener (i.e., tomato paste). The tomatoes provide some acid, but it is pretty common to see a vinegar added (often a cider vinegar). For the smoke, I usually use a chipotle chile powder instead of cayenne. You can also buy a bottle of "liquid smoke." It's made by doing a slow burn of some flavorful damp wood chips, running the smoke past a chilled surface, and collecting what condenses on it.

That isn't just federal income taxes, though (which top-out at around a 39% marginal rate for the very rich). It includes state & local income taxes (where applicable), property taxes, state sales taxes, and special taxes (like the sales taxes on gasoline and tobacco). Comparatively, the total tax burden on Americans (as a % of GDP) is low, compared to the rest of the developed world. Link.

I can be tough to say, since lots of that stuff is funded by state and local taxes (which is usually a combination of sales tax, income tax, and property tax). Estimates I've seen put the total tax burden from all these sources on a median-income household somewhere around 35-40%. As for where it goes, on the federal level, the social programs we do have are pretty expensive. Taken together, Social Security (government payments to retirees and disabled workers), Medicare (free healthcare for people over 65), and Medicaid (free healthcare for the very poor) are over 40% of the federal budget. The next biggest item is the Pentagon: defense & security spending is just under 30% of the total, which I'm sure is significantly higher than it is in pretty much every other 1st-world country. Edit: Link on federal spending percentages and trends.

Wow. That's one pretty damn well developed city. Managed to snag a lot of wonders too. Industrious leader + Stone next to the Capitol + OCC = Wonderspam. I'm not normally much of a wonder builder (in non-OCCs, you're usually better off using the hammers on expansion), but I play the hand I'm dealt. The hard part of this game was surviving the ancient/classical/medieval ages with no copper or iron. OCCs really help to teach you the ins and outs of manipulating the AI in diplomacy.

From the latter stages of a Civ4:BTS "One City Challenge." It's amazing how productive one city can be when it has 9 settled great people in it. Playing as Frederick of the Germans on "Prince" level. I usually play Monarch, but OCCs are hard. I suppose I'll be going for a space race win in this one, if I decide that it's worth finishing.

I'm resurrecting this thread to make two comments: 1) Reheated homemade meatloaf sandwiches (on a toasted bun with a smear of dijon mustard and a nice thick slice of ripe tomato) are one of the greatest "leftover" foods ever. 2) Penzey's Bicentennial Rub makes a really really good roast chicken. I have an aunt who sends me a box of assorted spices from Penzey's every year for my birthday. This years' package included this rub. I brushed the bird with olive oil, rubbed it all over with the spice blend, stuffed the cavity with a fistful of fresh parsley and a lemon, and roasted it (first uncovered at a high temp to crisp the skin, then covered at a lower temp to cook it through). Instead of a roasting rack, I lined the bottom of the pan with old carrots, celery, and halved white onions. Best chicken I've ever made, and the pan juices were amazingly flavorful.

I agree with most of this. The only pary of K1 that compares favorably to Taris, IMO, is the solo mission on the Leviathan (but that's far too short to merit picking it as a favorite). Also, I actually like Peragus. Replaying it can be tiresome, but the sense of mystery on the first playthrough was quite well done. Generally, I prefer the early parts of games where everything is still mysterious and your character is a little bit lost and vulnerable.

True enough that we still generally have pretty cheap gas compared to other countries. But I think in any country, if anything has a fairly noticeable impact on your budget, where you can't easily adjust to accommodate it, you have a "right" to complain. This kind of rapid rise in price at the pump hurts a lot of people - even in the US. Especially in areas - in any country - where housing/rent/insurances etc. vs. income have so many people on very tight budgets already. That said, anyone obsessed with gas-hungry vanity vehicles when they don't actually need such a vehicle (SUV's etc....)... and could afford to get a more efficient vehicle (I know many can't right away...), I don't have much sympathy. Fair enough. I'd probably be complaining more loudly if it affected me more. But our (subcompact) car pretty much stays in the parking garage collecting soot all week, until I need to do a grocery run or somesuch. The subway might not be the fastest way to travel (my commute is about 5 miles as the crow flies, but it takes me 30-35 minutes each way), but it does insulate me from fluctuations in global energy markets to a certain extent.

It also phases out at high income levels. For singles, the amount starts to decrease at $75K of adjusted gross income (AGI), and disappears entirely at $87K of AGI. For married filers, the figures are $150K and $174K in combined AGI. It's technically an advance on a tax credit for 2008. For payers who already filed their 2007 taxes, are due a refund, and requested that refund via direct deposit, the payments have gone out already. For payers getting it by check, though, they're sending them out on a rolling basis, based on the last 2 digits of the taxpayer's social security number.

Oddly enough, the amount I'll be getting is just about the same size as the check I sent them a few weeks ago. So I'll toss it into the bank to offset that recent reduction in my balance. In general, I'm saving for a down payment on a house, so I suppose it will go towards that, eventually.

When some of the Europeans around here post the prices they see, do the currency & unit conversions. Heck, do the conversions on the Canadian prices that astr0 posted (doing it quickly in my head, it's over $5 US/gal.). Americans are pretty much the last people on the planet who should be complaining about fuel prices. P.S. -- Hooray for public transportation! P.P.S -- Arkan, if you want to express inflation as a %, it's usually done on an annual basis. Figure out the annual % increase that would get you from 15 to 50 over 5 years. (I won't guess on that one-- it's not exactly the kind of math that I can do quickly in my head.)

wiki.

Really? I always re-play games until, at the minimum, I have gotten every available ending - within reason of course (I'm talking about games like Bloodlines and KotoR I/II). I doubt that I will get all of the five-hundred-plus endings of Fallout Three for some time. Maybe it's just me, but I actually like doing that - and it's not like I do not play new games while I'm re-playing old ones either. I don't have stats, but I'm pretty confident that a majority of gamers who are past college age (although they're probably a minority of commenters on gaming-centered forums) just don't have the extra free time to play through a 40-50 hour story-based game more than once. 10 years ago I might have done repeat plays of my favorites. Now it's pretty rare that I even finish them the first time through.

A few monthss ago I spent a few hours chatting with a cousin of my fiancee's who's a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy. He's now on a Frigate off in the Phillipines somewhere. He showed us the photos on his computer of his ship & crew out and about in various Pacific locales (he's the ship's "photo officer"). It really looked like a fantastic experience, in terms of establishing close friendships, broadening one's horizons, and seeing parts of the world that you would not otherwise think to visit. As for myself, though, I come from a long line of draft-dodgers. (The last ancestor of mine who did any military service at all was a Great-Grandfather. Both of my Grandfathers were too young for WW2 and had various excuses for the postwar/Korea draft.) But I'm now a civilian employee of Uncle Sam's, and a significant portion of my work stems from audits of DOD spending. So I guess I'm doing my part.

Most players don't replay games (I've only recently started a second run-through, which I'll probably abandon and start over when the Restoration Project is released), so content that is missed on the first try tends not to get noticed at all. Plus, the game is almost 3 years old. I had forgotten piles of stuff in the game by the time I read Scorchy's LP.

Well, I generally don't get up with the alarm. Usually she gets up, goes about getting ready, and I start to rouse as she's almost ready to leave. I think that this morning she might have woken up before the alarm went off and turned it off. And the morning keeps getting better... I walk a half-mile through light rain to the subway station, walk down the escalator, pay, walk down to the platform, and then remember that I had brought my work computer home this weekend. So I had to walk all the way back to the apartment to get it. Nothing like starting your week with by walking around in the rain for an extra mile on Monday morning!

Best of luck. I also overslept this morning. The fiancee got up with the alarm, got ready and left without waking me. She usually at least stops by to say 'goodbye' (and 'you should really get up now') but either she didn't or I was oblivious to it. I was having one of those "back in school taking a test that I hadn't prepared for" dreams. I spend most of the dream wasting test time getting set up, moving my desk about, discovering that the booklet that I intended to write my answer in was already filled with notes from another class, etc.

Beatles -- Baby You're a Rich Man