Gorth

A good starting point would be to examine the "legality" of the nation state of Ukraine, the ways in which the borders between it and its neighbours were drawn etc. (hint: they were established as rather insignificant administrative lines, at a time when ethnicity was irrelevant and independent Soviet republics were unimaginable) If the lines had been drawn with the benefit of hindsight, a lot of bloodshed could probably have been avoided. As for annexing territories and spheres of influence, Israels (never recognised) annexation of the Golan heights, the rather unsubtle western interference in Libyia, the forced change (and following anarchy) of regime in Iraq, the meddling in Serbia, the meddling (in the end, without any results) in the affairs of Georgia and where the minorities there were never consulted about which country they suddenly wanted to belong to... it's a long list. Nobody is entitled to wear a halo in the world of "realpolitik"

I was sooo tempted to edit your post and add spoiler tags...

The Ig Nobel price is turning 25 this year. Happy Birthday It's part satire, parts recognition of less glorious scientific subjects getting studied in all seriousness. "Assembling a team of balding physicists, Goldstein set out to tackle the subject, publishing their research in a peer review journal. It detailed the fluid mechanics of hair, drawing on a rich seam of scientific observation stretching back to Da Vinci. They even coined a new term: hairodynamics." "The Ig Nobels skewered the U.S. Government in 2012, awarding them the Prize for Literature 'for issuing a report about reports about reports that recommends the preparation of a report about the report about reports about reports.'" "Past recipients include a man who dressed up as a polar bear to scare reindeer and a study of homosexual necrophilia among mallard ducks" Science doesn't always have to be boring particle particle physics

Watch those Romanian dancers at your own risk. Its work safe, but my mind took permanent damage from the sound.

I guess you could say my job is to make people unemployed. Not directly, but by streamlining and automating a lot of processes, there is less need for "menial" tasks. Not talking about blue collar menial tasks, but white collar menial tasks. The current system in the western world is self defeating, because the constant quest for cost reduction always end up with the same conclusion, humans are the greatest cost and needs to be removed from the process. Reiterate it enough time and you end up in a perfect world that runs itself and has no room for humans.

the kinda guy that uses a label maker device to make a label for his label maker... says "label maker"? HA! Good Fun! Thanks, now I have to wipe coffee stains off my keyboard.

Yeah, those nasty lizard people. A google search showed that 12 million Americans believe lizard people are secretly running their country. Maybe they are descendants of the civil servants of the old pre-war regime?

In case anyone wonders what the above is a reply to, it's Mieu's post a bit further up. They got seperated a bit by merging the threads

If you look a bit outside the box, you may noticed that white males have been victimised and marginalised just as much as any other group on earth. Possibly not for that particular reason, but then all white males aren't the same. That's stereotyping. This "white males" group have been persecuted for being Gauls, for being Romans, for being living in a province belonging to a particular liege, for being Christians, for being non-Christians, for being the wrong kind of Christians, for being the wrong sexual orientation, for having the wrong last name on their birth certificate (ethnic cleansing, hello?), killed in their millions at the frontlines of various wars and so on. Simply saying people have been better of through history for being "white males" is a gross over simplification imho. Edit: Yay me, that wasn't actually the specific line I wanted to quote, but you get the idea Edit2: Being a real cynic, you could say, just like in nature, (white) males are usually considered expendable once they've served their purpose.

Its really irrespective what words use to mean, its what they symbolize now that matters What does it symbolyze? Is it related to the Atlantic slave trade? It has a long history, but generally got regarded as an "offensive" term second half of last century. Before that, it was considered a perfectly good word, the same way as slavery and racism was considered perfectly good practises. When the latter changed, the use of the word did too.

**** is part of the human anatomy. Calling somebody an **** is sometimes still considered being offensive. Sometimes context and intent matter. Edit: The censored word referred to the rear orifice through which human waste gets disposed of

She does have a point, you know? Bruce once asked me to do a comparison between the people and countries I've lived in. I think I've lived here long enough to add Germany to the list. Not in any way a comprehensive analysis, but one thing that struck me as a difference between Australians and Germans is, Germans are a *lot* more passionate people. In Autralia you've got two groups of people. The vast majority living in the 5 cities and the remaining few percentages living in the rest of the country. The city dwellers are sort of reserved and guarded, not sure why. Maybe the mix of people from very different cultures from Asia and Europe just causes it? The few people living in the country side are nice enough, but probably don't mingle much with other people. In Germany on the other hand, people seems a lot more "extrovert" and they appear a lot more passionate about more than just the beer drinking (one of the few things Aussies also seemed enthusiastic about). Whether it being in sport, art, politics, they just seem to actually care about what they do. The Kiwis are still my favourite people though. Nice, gentle and completely laid back (not sure about Auckland, but that was my impression from the rest of the country). I would trust a Maori any time of day to hold my wallet for me. Proud and honest (and very friendly) people.

I know your word. Working with South Africans for more than a decade, it's hard not to learn a bit about some aspects of South Africa, even if not visiting the country itself. It is indeed considered more offensive than the 'n' word by an order of magnitude. South Africa not only had white/black racism in the past, asian immigrants and day labourers were considered third rate human beings, despised by both whtie and black people. Not sure what their status is today in modern South Africa. Phillipinos are considered slaves and personal property in many Arab countries. Newly rich Chinese are some of the worst bigots you can run into today. Feel free to add to the list. It is indeed not limited to a particular group of people.

Had the most awful week in a long, long time. It started with me being told I was being shipped off to Sweden the day after, so little time to organise travel and hotels. Flying with Air Berlin the first part of the way to Stockholm, I got an email reminding me that I needed to get my baggage and check in again with the other airline. That was Ok. When I got to Tegel airport, the girl at the Air Berlin counter told me I should not pick up my baggage in Stockholm, it would be transferred to the other plane automatically. Ok... I told her that it was unlikely, being two different companies unaffiliated with each other and one being an international and the other a domestic Swedish flight. Yes, you can't pick up your baggage in Stockholm. Ok, but I got an email from your company reminding me that I had to pick it up? Yes, that email was wrong, just ignore it (3 denials in a row). Of course, when I arrived at my destination my baggage was still in Stockholm. After 3 days wearing the same clothes, I probably started smelling pretty stale. At least the hotel had "survival kits" with toothbrushes and shaving gear. The fun really started on the return trip though, where the travel had been booked with Norwegian Air. Yes, those guys who went on strike the day I was supposed to travel home. I showed up in the airport in Malmö (which is like 30 km outside the city) and found a section of the airport without power or light, no people other than other confused passenges, no signs, no contact no. no people offereing any explanation. Being in the dark (literally), we asked around and found out that people had left and gone on strike. Gee, thanks for the great customer support, not even a phone line offered to call for help. Had to buy new tickets from SAS and got to Stockholm, just to see the gates close for last flight to Berlin. Bought another ticket for the day after and then booked a hotel room for the night. At least the hotel was nice. Getting home finally on a Saturday early afternoon (and having picked up my baggage on the return trip), I got home to an icy cold appartment where the heating had broken down. No service to get over the weekend, so no heat, no hot water and me getting increasingly pissed off. The morning showers in 3 degrees C "warm" water didn't help ...and now I'm back in Sweden. I already hate the place

I wouldn't mind if they remastered the horrible UI to work better with PC's. A bit off topic, but speaking of remastering, did they ever get rid of GWFL in Fallout 3 (I know of the mod, but would rather be able to use an "official" patch on my old physical GotY edition).

Thread pruned. Next up is individual censorship I suppose... lets see if we can continue without the excessive sniping at persons.

Somebody posted this video she had subtitled on the swtor forums. I thought it was hilarious. I'm still chuckling a bit an hour after watching it. Warning, lots of profanity in the last part of the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHfwuNblBpk

Moved to general gaming forum...

I guess I belong to the minority group who didn't love HK-47, nor hated Carth. I rarely used either. Iirc, Jolee Bindo was the only regular in my team. Rest was a toss up between Canderous, Mission or (sometimes) Juhani for varietys sake. I guess both Kotor 1&2 would be games where a remake on a more modern engine wouldn't hurt? (which reminds me, I never ever got around to do the swoop racing in kotor2, on the other hand I loved the changes to the pazaak game)

Gree event is really only fun in a group. I think most people go there for the free for all pvp, where everyone outside your own 4 man group is flagged as a viable target for ganking I know the guild one of my pub toons is in often have 12-16 man in 3-4 groups in the center of the battle field and coordinate things over guild chat and team speak. Xenoanalyst is always fun to fight, although I still need to do him in 8 man HM (done it plenty of times in 16M HM) for full achievement. Otherwise, people mostly do it to build up Gree reputation and get the Grey Helixes so you can buy some of those awesome looking Legacy Bound weapons and Sphere mounts (having stockpiled those snow covered parcels from the xmas event, I can afford quite a few of the Cyan Spheres this time around). So far, between 5 alts, I've killed 5 Xenoalysts, done 3 heroics and 2 Gree world bosses (you really need 16-24 man teams to take down those). Edit: Added quote because of page break.

Part of the problem is, the "west" suffers from a bad case of tunnel vision and expect the rest of the world to have the same vision when it comes to the concept of "Nation States". Guess what, the rest of the world doesn't care about nation states. They care about ideologies, cultures, tribal and family relationships etc. Those completely artificial and abstract ideas like "nations" and "nationalism" is as alien to much of the world as Cricket is to the world of sports. Declaring an area on a map for "Country X" does not in any way endear the population caught within those arbitrary lines to the idea of being Citizen X. Once the "west" gets its head out of its proverbial rear and stop thinking in seventeenth century concept, they might get around to actually try to understand what make people tick and maybe try to create administrative units around that.

I think I mostly ignored the romance in that game. 3 things really pissed me off and it took me a long time to "forgive" Bioware for those. Forcing the class change on me (I *wanted* to play a scoundrel dammit), the fight with Malak where you beat him to a bloody pulp, wiping the floor with his lifeless carcass, kicking him when he is lying dead on the floor for good measure and then the game decides you have to run away because he is too powerful (Hello?...) and thirdly because of some bad bugs, the game killing Leviathan bug in particular. Apart from those gripes, I did enjoy most of the rest. In particular Taris was one of my favourite areas. ... Iirc, it was possible to stay at level 2 and complete Taris before going to Dantooine.

Good luck mate!

It always boggled my mind how you can take a rational number and keep dividing it by two inifinitely. It will get smaller and smaller forever and the universe hasn't exploded yet (or maybe that is why it's expananding at a faster and faster pace)? Alternatively, from a very old post of mine: Maybe Coffee is the mysterious dark matter that glues the universe together???