Enoch

It's a poor solution to a difficult problem. A lot of money gets poured into education, mostly from the state level, but frequently supplemented with federal grants, and there is an admirable instinct that said money should come with some accountability structure. The problem is that an accurate assessment of educational efficacy is an extraordinarily difficult, nuanced, and multifaceted endeavor. Simply put, it's not a feasbile thing to do on a national level. Probably not even on a state-wide level. So that leaves us with two options: no broad-based accountability, or broad-based accountability using imperfect methodology. NCLB is one flavor of the latter, and by all reports it isn't working particularly well.

I usually prefer ales, stouts, and porters. There are some good lagers, but most of them are just kinda bland. I like a nice strong hoppy and/or malty flavor. I tend to dislike beers that have any of these words on the label: "wheat" "white" "barleywine" "Belgian"

I know I'm risking offending Guard Dog's newfound sobriety (and, in all seriousness, best of luck with that, GD-- if you know you've been having too much, then having the self-discipline to cut it out entirely is both admirable and wise), but Rittenhouse Rye is really quite fabulous. And only $16 for 750mL in my particular jurisdiction!

It's a fair point to call it a civil war. A large group of people descended mostly from British settlers who thought of themselves as British citizens revolted because they weren't given the rights and respect that they felt were owed to them by the Crown (e.g., the sorts of things that England itself had had a civil war about a century earlier). It wasn't a native people kicking a colonial power out-- the colonists were too effective in killing and/or displacing the natives for that to happen. It wasn't even much of a "revolution," in that the people who in fact ran things in the States were pretty much the same people who had done so in the Colonies before the war. I don't quite know what you mean by "sense of identity," though. I certainly wouldn't load it up with the sorts of baggage that comes with the term "American" in the early 21st Century, but a lot of the elements that would develop into what we call the American character, polity, and whatnot drew influence and inspiration from the Revolution and its leaders. A good part of American identity comes from it being the first effective large-scale republican governmental system built on the intellectual principles of the Enlightenment. Foundational myths (and truths) can be powerful things. Brits who didn't want to live in Britain anymore.

As far as I know, if you can run the game, the modded game shouldn't behave any differently.

Oh my, are people taking me seriously? I guess people get touchy about the wacky sovereigns-in-name-only that their governments have been allowing to loaf about for the past few generations. Fair enough. Anyhow, my original "Screw You" was meant more in the spirit of 1776, as the American Revolution and the government that followed it was, to a large degree, an attempt to bring into reality the Enlightenment ideals regarding how lousy government by hereditary hierarchies really was.

You know it makes sense. You're just jealous. Um, yeah... Jealous... I do like the Brits. And while sticking with certain traditions long past the point of sense is certainly part of their charm, I'm thankful that my ancestors traveled to a place where folks don't take this sort of hereditary silliness quite so seriously.

I know a woman named India. On-topic, I'm still playing Icewind Dale. Plowing through the lower levels of the Severed Hand. I keep triggering the "Shadowed enemies pop up out of nowhere" ambushes with a hidden Thief, which, depending on where my other 4 are standing, sometimes puts my party in an even worse position vis-a-vis the coming encounter than if the whole group had walked right into ambush zone.

Screw you, Monarchy!!

Agreed. Although you need the picture to really do it justice: Epaulettes!

If anybody hasn't played Torchlight for some reason, it's pretty much a must-buy at $3.

USA's got it on lock down. Our men's team can blow a 2 goal lead in back to back years, but our woman's team can hang on. what a joke. I wouldn't call that a joke-- it's an understandable consequence of cultural phenomena. With civil rights laws mandating gender equality in the offering of extracurricular sports teams by educational institutions, the US is generally more encouraging towards women playing team sports than a lot of other countries are. We have a competitive disadvantage in our cultural support for soccer,* generally, but we have a pretty huge competitive advantage in our cultural support for women's rights in general and women's participation in competitive team sports in particular. * Indeed, elements of American culture dislike soccer partly because they perceive it as a "girly" sport.

(Or, perhaps learning from their experiences with other publishers not to rely wholly on publisher PR.)

This evening, I baked a key lime pie. And did dishes while it baked/cooled, while singing loudly and badly, along with Bowie's Hunky Dory. Particularly Oh! You Pretty Things. (Yes, of course there was alcohol involved.)

AC is the best-written 4X game ever. The leaders have actual character. The datalinks entries that correspond with the technologies, Secret Projects, buildings, and such, often illuminate those characters and the gameworld they inhabit. And they're reasonably well grounded in existing theoretical science, psychology, and philosophy, if you're interested in any of those areas. I wouldn't let the "lore" from other sci-fi strategy games deter you-- this is miles beyond "Fight the Space Orcs!" It has its weaknesses as a game (in particular, don't play with any of the factions in the expansion pack-- some are incredibly overpowered), but as far as weaving narrative content into an open-ended strategy game, it is unmatched.

ITS ALL ABOUT FIREBALLS! Gods I had so much fun with it! Well, if it's all about fireballs, then I will have to go back and rest after each major fight. My Mage only has 2 3rd-level spell slots (and one of those is typically a Haste). Actually, I suspect that the Web/Entangle is more important for surviving those fights. The Wights come in big numbers, and the level doesn't offer any good choke-points where your front-liners can fight them 2 or 3 at a time. First and foremost, you need to slow the rush. Doing damage is secondary.

Oh, Cold Wights can **** right off. This is generally the level where my interest in replaying Icewind Dale terminates. I'm thinking of just going back to the previous level and resting before each and every major Wight battle, just so that I can give those ****ers both barrels every time I see them. And, yeah, I really should've spent the money to buy a magical weapon that my Druid can use.

Yes, Russia did in 1998 and Argentina in 2001. As to what happens as I understand it - nothing good to those involved. It's not rocket science-- the people who have bought your government bonds get less than 100% of the payout they were guaranteed. As a consequence, the entire international and financial community knows that you have already screwed one batch of investors over, and are going to need a lot of convincing (read: very high interest rates and evidence to suggest that the political climate is fixed enough that you won't do it again) before they lend you any more money. That said, markets are already pricing an immense risk premium on Greek debt. A default would not be pleasant, but if it's set at the right levels (i.e., not a complete "we owe nothing," but an "outstanding obligations paid at XX% of face value") it may be the least-bad outcome for the Greek people and political institutions.

Well, the issue in Greece isn't so much that some people shirk taxes-- it's that it's widely accepted as a social norm that nobody pays taxes apart from the ones that are withheld from payrolls automatically. The other stuff you're talking about fits into what I was saying about "good governance." In the long term, yes, the reduction of waste, fraud, corruption, cronyism, and dishonesty is quite important in the function of the civil society and of the economy. The question I was addressing was more short-term: How is the Greek government, as presently supported by the Greek economy, going to make the debt-service payments that it owes over the next few years?

Fear? I certainly hope the stability improvements address the problems that Honest Hearts (and/or the contemporaneous patch) brought. My CTD frequency went from once every week or two to almost twice an hour with that expansion.

I was speaking in the aggregate, and Zoraptor's comment is on-point. Honest tax enforcement means that, when all the transactions that make up an economy are aggregated up, the government would be taking a much larger percentage of the money changing hands. That reflects a reduction in the amount of money that citizens in general have to spend, shrinking the size of the private economy. As an aside, I really thought that WoD would be one of the last people around here to argue that spending by governments is more efficient at generating an economic return than spending by private parties. More on-point, whatever the private beneficiaries of government waste are spending money on, the government spending being discussed here ain't building road-- it's making debt-service payments to foreign bankers. That forestalls the negative consequences that would come with default, but it produces no positive return-on-investment for the Greek economy at large.

Uh oh. Please tell me that I'm wrong in interpreting that screenshot as a sign of the return of the dreaded FO2 electrified floor puzzle?

Ironically, IWD+HoW is one of the few games where a bard is actually feels useful. Besides, if you don't bring a bard along, who is going to record the tale of your heroic deeds?!? Duh-- David Ogden Stiers will!

All this is pretty spot-on. (I can't verify the degree to which the big players have gotten out of the Greek debt business, but it absolutely makes sense that they would be doing so.) Greece was let into the eurozone because: 1) Germany and France wanted to expand their system of continental mercantilism, getting more markets for their exports within the currency control of the ECB (i.e., their finance ministers); 2) the big banks could make a lot of money on dealing with the Greek government and Greek banks; 3) the Greek government got access to incredibly cheap borrowing via the ECB. With all the parties well-greased, nobody had much incentive to look for reasons to upset the deal with honest reporting. There are really only the slimmest of chances of an outcome that doesn't include some level of Greek default at some time. (And leaving the Euro to devalue the Drachma would simply be a default by a different name.) The Greek government owes more than it can pay without a write-down or a shift to well-below-market interest rates. The latter is coming, courtesy of the kind folks at the IMF (read: the major European finance ministers, with quiet support from the US). But it would take an economic and political near-miracle for this to do more than simply delay the coming default. All the focus on the waste and inefficiency in Greek government is somewhat besides the point. All that waste is profit for somebody-- taking it away would be good for the cause of good governance, but it approaches a zero-sum game with regard to an economy's ability to pay it's debts. Doubling the efficacy of tax collection is effectively identical to doubling tax rates, and there are thousands of businesses that are viable today but would have to go under if the tax collectors started getting honest. And thousands more would be shuttering their doors alongside those if/when the civil servants that make up their customer base suffer significant layoffs or pay cuts. Things are going to get worse before they get better, and the "getting better" part, if it comes at all, is going to be a long and slow process. What are the chances that the politicians are able to maintain support for the ECB/IMF plan over the long haul? Devaluation or default will continue to be tempting options for the angry masses.

Pffft. Such a typical Dane.