metadigital

I am less and less amazed at your single-minded determination to turn EVERY topic into a diatribe about the same subject. I sometimes pause to consider whether it is even worth the effort to write a response (that can take tens of minutes and requires a lot of research) when you just reply with such insipid, trite and empty filibustering. We get it. EVERYONE GETS IT. You don't like the war in Iraq. Talking about it endlessly, like some demented child reading the same Grimm fairytale OVER AND OVER AGAIN, doesn't make for a discussion.

That won't help your batting.

I don't understand the point you are trying to make. If you are suggesting that demonstrating bigotry is a good way to prevent it in the future, I would tell you to be careful of exploding in a self-contradictory ball of hypocrisy.

That is the crux of the issue, yes. If the Force has a will, then it follows that it is manipulating the world (to a lesser or greater extent, depending on its potency). I'm not sure I follow this logic. Why wouldn't Vader want to kill the killer of his lover? Why wouldn't Vader want to usurp Sidious? That doesn't fit with the plot of KotOR: TSL. Kreia wanted to destroy the Force, as in extirpate it from the universe. Killing the Jedi and Sith doesn't destroy the Force anymore than erasing Newtonian equations off a blackboard would make all the rocks on the surface on the planet fly up into the air ...

It doesn't have to be easy and quick, but why does it have to be frustrating and tedious? I do enough level grinding in real-life for real-time gold

I remember "flying" in NwN ... my familiar could "fly" ... well, it could float above the ground, but not traverse chasms like those found in the first dungeon of HotU. So it couldn't attack the goblins until my PC had triggered the gate.

Gee it sounds like so much fun ... for a masochist.

... Almost as much as Orcs.

Can we launch them from your backyard ... y'know, in case they blow up on the launchpad?

How would changing the election process for the executive branch effect the legislative branch, which is already majority ruled, in such a way that they would seek to radically alter the Constitution? No state has more than 2 senators and the House is already based on population of the state in question. Looking back to Mill, his concern was social conformity. He foresaw that a popular government could not but enact public prejudice into law; further, employees might find themselves sacked when employers who disliked their views (and noted that individuals had a difficult time in court when judges and juries discounted evidence not given under an oath sworn on the Bible and discriminated against by legislation prohibiting the public expression of anti-religious views, for example, in his Victorian England). You could substitute sexual, racial or ethnic prejudice for more contemporary examples, too.

The latest generation of plants are almost (human) labour-free. (Yes, I know that sounds like "unsinkable", but I'm assuming you aren't going to sensationalize what I wrote, like the newspaper reporters did to the Titanic, when they were told that it was "virtually unsinkable". :D )

Reverse bigot, much? Regarding the untenable farce of politicians having to be "of faith": It's odd that the country built on the US Constitution has such a warped conception of religion and state.

They could charge the ECB for visitation permission ...

So how do you prevent a majority discriminating against a minority?

But your statement that a Christian politician would have nothing for you to vote for is void.

Wait -- aren't you (partially) blind? :confused:

Here is the SciAm page.

I think someone can't count. And number seventy is definitely worth memorizing.

Your PC looks like she has a pair of pince-nez on. :D

Manchurian Bot!

Aye, and STILL one of them Roman Catholics got in! Where are you getting your "facts"? That is not the case: there are (practising) homosexual BISHOPS in the Christian Church.

Actually, it's called tyranny of the majority. If Bush was wanted to save face, he could have arranged a small nuclear weapon to go off when we first dropped "bombs" on Baghdad. "Well looky there people, looks like one of our "bombs" set off one of Saddam's "nuclear weapons". See, I, the Great President Bush was right all along." Haven't you seen The Sum of All Fears? It is straightforward to determine which nuclear plant created the fissile material in a bomb. In other words, that cheap parlour trick would need to be backed up with some heavy-duty lying from the US, and not just the President ... you'd need the media state of Russia to get away with it ... " When Joh Bjelke-Petersen gained power, he asked the Queensland Upper House (the state Senate), which was also controlled by the National Party, to be a suicide squad; they all voted to abolish the Queensland Senate! (There are three levels of government: Federal, State and local, and the first two have both upper and lower houses.) :D

While I would encourage all community building, I don't see this latest turn as part of such. Actually, I think it's enough to just post after a hiatus for those who notice to make a comment ... it would only be necessary to use "Way Off-Topic" if the number of well-wishers (and how many can there be, without the intention being watered down into meaninglessness) created a problem for the original topic. It's more suited to a PM, surely. I never liked birthday threads, personally, either; I normally don't let people know when the anniversary of my birth is, probably due to one-too-many clumsy attempts by middle-managers to use it as a team building exercise, during my earlier career. (Contractors are exempt from such lameness, as they are regarded as evil aliens who are tolerated only because they can be executed without any preparatory salutation.)

what about nuclear waste? there's still no way of disposing it, they just put it in underground vaults and hope it'll go away. out of sight out of mind indeed. nuclear power is just stupid, sure it's cheap but the drawbacks are huge. maybe not for us, but to future generations. We (the human race) are about 10-20 years away from commercially-viable fusion power. Nope. What we need to do is create a cost effect transit for the nuclear waste and hurl it into the sun. Transport nuclear waste materials to an orbital platform thensend it into a trajectory that will make it impact into our sun where it will be burned away. It's a LOT less risky to put it in a subduction zone and let the Earth swallow it back down to(wards) the Mantle, where all the Earth's radioactive materials are, in situ. Or, as has been elucidated before, the Australian continent (for one zone) has been stable -- for the past, oh, 400 million years or so -- and is a perfect place to build containment. Just build the price of containment into the cost of production, and the process will pay for itself.