Gromnir

run away is different than leaving the field after a win. you had beaten yourself into insensibility for pages (deja vu) and when it became clear you weren't gonna add anything new, we stopped wasting efforts on what were clearly becoming excessive. "Yep, basic economics, just about the most basic of economics." basic economics that we showed a considerable number o' economists disagreed with you. those yellow journalists were quoting economists. world monetary fund, kurdin, harvard. *shrug* but you can't read a graph, so is to to help you. your attempts to distinguish quotes ain't helping you. am not sure why you keep it up. you first laugh off articles suggesting that russian economy were in dire straits by pointing to the huge currency reserve they gots, a currency reserve that were over $550 billion mid 2013, $500 billion in january o' 2014, and had dropped over $70 billion in the last 4 months o' 2014. Gromnir didn't mention anything 'bout time frames for fail, not until after You misquoted us. you sure as hell couldn't prove context stripping 'cause as our previous link revealed, the two posts we made before your asinine and bass ackwards ejaculation about the quickly vanishing russian currency reserve were little more than links to articles quoting world bank and harvard economists. we did point out that the articles we linked said the fail could come as quick as 6-12 months, in spite o' your claim we said 6 months. again, weren't a Gromnir guess. you then think that by posting an article suggesting that russians' reserve would hold for 18 months were somehow... am not sure what you thought with that. the extra 6 months were what you were thinking showed that russsia weren't facing a dire financial crisis? HA! http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/69691-ukraine-discussion/?p=1570497 context stripping. really? say you proved don't make it so. just as denying any western print source as yellow journalism ain't proof. is... pathetic actually. also, you misquote the kurdin quote, even though you miss the point... again. the ft articles says "up to 40%" but in the context o' explaining that the kurdin believed that sanctions were hurting the ruble more than putin's claims o' 25-30%. naughty. we noted numerous times that western sanctions had had a significant impact on the devaluation o' the ruble. you disagreed. *shrug* we then linked a considerable number o' respected economists such as Kurdin and faayman and wmf and harvard professors. not good enough? your paranoia and suspicion being what it is (more on-topic) we focused on kurdin as he were russian and arguably risking his life by crossing putin. "We mustn't downplay the impact of sanctions … It's a very big blow every year to the Russian economy," you wanna fight over 40% as 'posed to 31%-40%. *chuckle* even putin's evaluation makes western sanctions as having had a greater impact than what you were admitting 'cause o' your inability to read a graph and your clear flawed notion o' "basic economics." if you genuine believe you has done anything in this or the other thread to extricate yourself from your clear buffoonery regarding the russian financial crisis, then you can't be helped. is a given amongst even those folks you has link to (such as bloomberg) that russia's situation is dire. 6-18 months o' reserve depletion when such depletion has been going on for years? not good. and your obstinate denial o' the impact o' western sanctions has now become hinged on the quote o' a russian economist who specific said, "We mustn't downplay the impact of sanctions … It's a very big blow every year to the Russian economy," am not sure what it is with you and the russia stuff. satellite evidence regarding malaysia air = suspicion literal dozens o' sources, including some o' zors, that show how dire and imminent a russian financial collapse appears = suspicion Not suspicious o' the growing pile o' corpses? Not suspicious o' the recent arrest? you are transparent. you are becoming a joke. your best bet would have been to run away or at least pretend your ostrich routine regarding the russian economy had never occurred... wouldn't be a first for you. HA! Good Fun!

I'm reminded of a passage from The War that Never Was that explains why this didn't happen, according to a character who was a former KGB analyst: Because it hadn't gone "hot," no one really considered the idea that the result of the political and economic collapse of the Soviet Union had about the same effect had it lost a conventional shooting war with the First World and its coalition partners. many mistakes made. the myth that the ussr was a military and economic superpower died with the collapse o' the berlin wall. even so, the russian economy and its over-dependence on oil has changed little from the soviet era days. western governments and business were quite happy to take advantage o' russian business following the collapse o' the soviet union, but they ignored the rampant corruption and the dangerous fragility o' the russian economy. ... there is this pervasive paranoia that the west is out to "get" russia. we had to disabuse zor o' this a couple times as we kept repeating that No Western Nation Would Be Pleased to See the Russian Economy Fail... again. we don't want russia to fail. a russia fail is not a good thing. When russia fails, as it inevitably will given current economic conditions, every western nation will suffer, and more than a couple major western business is gonna be shattered. but anybody with a couple firing neurons coulda' seen this coming, because it has happened before. since mid 80s, the US invested far more in china modernization for chrissakes. freaking bass akwards... HA! Good Fun!

http://www.oyez.org/cases/1990-1999/1991/1991_90_7675 the Court is not appreciative o' such nonsense. the flag scenario is a bit different, but note we gots a 9-0 hate speech ordinance decision involving freaking cross burning for chrissakes. a university counts as a State actor, so... is a good learning experience. makes'em look silly and stoopid, but they is University students, so they is almost by definition, silly and stupid. HA! Good Fun! ps we don't wanna diminish what we see as a terribly dangerous notion o' free speech. however, we is talking about flags on a university campus. we would prefer that these kinda battles would be fought over such minutiae with students doing the front-line fighting. edit: our linky vanished

The art installations there and at MCA La Jolla are a bigger draw for me. I'm not a card-carrying member of the museum anymore, but that's because I need beer money nowadays. decades ago we gave a speech down at point loma nazarene college. little flea speck o' a place, but talk about a pretty location. sadly, most o' the buildings were needing renovation/modernization. still, we woulda' loved to have stayed another couple days. HA! Good Fun!

yeah, we get that they is bugnuts, but you see that this is a student-directed resolution on a college campus. so... so what? let them fight it out, and if they somehow win, they can then see how the Court smashes their resolution. is a good learning experience. honestly, we is talking about freaking flags. so the worst-case scenario is the butt-weasel with his peculiar notions o' free speech wins... and ten seconds later somebody such as Gromnir shows up with an injunction that prevents any actual change to the flag policy. HA! Good Fun!

it's University students... and frankly, sometimes we need those largely ignorant idealists to challenge conventional notions. just because a kid is dumb doesn't mean he is wrong. hey, perhaps in the 21st century we need a more euro-centric notion o' freedom o' speech where articles, speeches and symbolic speech that offends a recognized cultural group should be censored and the speaker should be criminalized. we hope that ain't the case and we completely disagree that offensive speech should be illegal (the only speech that needs protection is speech that offends) but we do think it is good that the next generation is challenging our beliefs at a time in their life when they can do so without any lasting harm to their reputation being done. HA! Good Fun! ps back in the early 90s at least, UC santa cruz had an incredibly beautiful campus, and the way they organized their dorms and on-campus housing were kinda unique for a west coast school. pepperdine might have had a marginally more attractive campus than uc santa cruz... maybe. if we had a kid studying astronomy/physics or international finance or a host o' other subjects for which UC santa criuz had national recognition, we would not have hesitated allowing 'em to be a banana slug. undergrad as an aardvark, on the other hand, would have required some convincing.

ran off? HA! we stopped responding to your insanity. sure, there is considerable debate about how long russia can last. because, shucks, future prognostications is always tough. what isn't near as difficult is recognizing that western sanctions has hurt the russian economy and has contributed significant to the devaluation o' the ruble. "Nope, I said that economic sanctions would not severely impact Russia. The oil price is independent of the sanctions and unrelated to them, it's Saudi taking a dump on frackers." "I'll throw in a complementary extra illustration: Bloomberg chart of rouble to oil prices- sanctions and counter sanctions applied March and August. As anyone can see sanctions had sweet asterisk all effect, the exchange rate almost perfectly matches oil prices- which is independent of sanctions." "Oh ffs, if you insist and since this is at least relevant to something I have said instead of your imagination. Your figure, 30% price increase. My figure 100% increase due to exchange rate." etc. and yeah, http://www.ft.com/in...144feabdc0.html, kurdin did use 40% in addition to the other articles observing that,""We mustn't downplay the impact of sanctions … It's a very big blow every year to the Russian economy," Kudrin said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the Prime news agency reported." we can post more quotes from kurdin expressing how impactful western sanctions has been. you really need more? "At his annual press conference, Putin blamed the usual suspects for Russia's mess. However, it is his policies or the lack of it, and using oil and gas as a weapon to further Russia's geopolitical interest that has been responsible for the latest currency crisis. Alexi Kurdin, a former finance minister and also an ally of Putin, told Financial Times on Monday that the sanctions have been responsible for 40% of the drip in the Russian currency." again, there were no running away. your attempts to pretend that western sanctions were an insignificant contributor to the devaluation o' the ruble were making you so laughable that we saw no need to continue; why argue with somebody that will have agreement from nobody but the voices talking to them in their head? we didn't realize that it were a Last Post Wins situation. *snort* https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/69691-ukraine-discussion/?p=1570457 this were also a reason we quit the thread as you had complete gone off the deep end. you accused us o' content stripping and other such nonsense when clearly you were fighting the imaginary people in your head. Gromnir had made zero mentions o' time-frames in our posts, but you inexplicably saw such. so yeah, you were doing an ostrich regarding impact o' western sanctions on the Russian economy and trying to makes such sanctions o' negligible impact compared to oil regardless o' folks such as wsj, reuters, bloomberg and Kurdin saying otherwise. go back and look at how many times you used "yellow journalism" to refute a source we provided. that ain't making an argument. you had also turned Gromnir into a boogeyman and you were seeing imaginary stuff from us. so, what were our motivation to continue arguing. all o' which ignores the current topic which is about your comically selective suspicion. HA! Good Fun!

am s'posing it would be more appropriate to say we is part white. our maternal grandmother were half 1/4 polish and 1/4 lithuanian. HA! Good Fun! ps over the years, we has tried not to use our whiteness as an excuse. sure, it is a handicap we must overcome daily, but we persevere even so.

hmmm. it seems we gave up too much. we mean the 3rd fairway, yeah. 3rd. HA! Good Fun!

would be kinda a funny joke on the universe if the only genuine God were the god o' hummus. HA! Good Fun!

you would be correct. 'course we typical just say "bar'war" so you shouldn't listen to us in pronunciation or spelling. as to cant's query, technically we live 45 Long minutes outside ____________ . we got a highway commute, so we is traveling 65 mph (perhaps a smidgen more) most o' the way. however, it ain't like we is a country mouse... not anymore. gated community. we live on the 15th fairway. heck, we evn got that fancy indoor plumbing. not a country mouse. however, we grew up in the armpit o' america: the dakota badlands. spent the first 12.5 years o' our life on a ranch at pine ridge, and every summer thereafter til we went away to University. were reminding us o' our humble beginnings... to build character. apparently shoveling horse $#@% builds character. even now, we is chock full o' character. HA! Good Fun!

hmmm, our barbwire fences could repel sheep, goats, cattle and horses... most o' the time. deer, sadly, had what we estimate as a 5%-10% fail rate. is not that our fencing would stop them, but something a bit greater than ~1 in 20 chance, the deer would almost make it over the fence. "almost" is bad with barbwire. at least once a month we would need repair fencing and remove the carcass o' a deer that mostly made it over the barbwire. found more than a couple coyotes tangled in the wire over the years. we suspect they were chasing something that were small enough to get through the 3 or 5-strand fencing we used. the coyote obviously weren't small enough... but that were just guesses. so, as long as the invaders were limited to near mindless livestock, we believe we had a good chance with our barbwire. unless we is talking of cattle driven to stampede. well, we figure the maginot line didn't fare all that well either. HA! Good Fun!

england built an economic world empire with fences. the enclosure acts were essential for the english industrial revolution. 'course those were typical labor intensive stone walls. hedgerows would be our choice o' fencing, but they take a wee bit more time to erect and they obviously ain't ideal for the dakota badlands. oh well. HA! Good Fun!

Nah. I'm not tired of 'conspiracy theories'. I actually find the term extremely lazy and to be used primarily by people who cannot argue properly as a cheap win, it's as bad as 'well your just wrong!' as an argument. Pretty much the only time I'll use the term is against someone who is oh so fond of it using it themselves, hence the :smug: Indeed, the only 'arguments' I find more lazy than 'conspiracy theory' are outright abuse, and "you must be paid to say that". I far prefer 'narrative following' or similar, it's more neutral since basically everyone does it, it doesn't imply that they're automatically wrong or paranoid delusional, just that they're human and as all humans do, like stories. You get people working back from conclusions and either ignoring evidence or having some sort of cognitive dissonance about things, but 'conspiracy theory' is just a lazy, unimaginative and really rather feeble label for a narrative that someone wants to discredit and cannot think of a better way of doing so. (Now waiting to be told how I was actually entirely serious and the :smug: meant... god only knows what. Given I'm complaining about working back from conclusions that would be most highly ironic) your revisionism, not Gromnir's. your sources is clear minority regarding wsj pov. is why we offered links to reuteurs and bbc, and a host o' others. the notion that western sanctions is not hurting russia's economy, and that the pain the russian economy is only tied to oil is such a minority pov that it is not even worth mentioning. again, why the suspicion o' Alexei Kudrin? hell, you even misread graphs that hurt your position showing the disproportionate plummeting o' the ruble compared to other oil-dependent currencies. and round we go. regardless, is funny how little suspicion zor has for some stories. HA! Good Fun! ps one wonders how many times we can double "and" in a post. sheesh.

sure, we discount sources... individually. mindlessly discount an entire group because o' imagined allegiance to an idea or some kinda plot to make russia look bad? HA! Good Fun!

discounting all such sources as yellow journalism? dismissing such sources as the wsj 'cause Rupert Murdoch owns rather than giving specifics? yeah, conspiracy explains better. western journalists is purposefully trying to make russia look bad. western journalists is conspiring to make russia look bad. starve on the difference, eh? HA! Good Fun!

disbelief o' western journalism because it is western journalism? sorry, but that sounds like conspiracy to us. suspicion o' US satellite imagery that convinced western leaders to impose sanctions in spite o' the billions o' dollars such sanctions would cost germany and france and others? ok, just a suspicious guy. we can respect that. suspicious o' the former head o' russian treasury regarding the impact o' western sanctions on the ruble and russian economy? well, that makes tougher. sure, he gots the conspiracy theory that makes all western new sources suspect (convenient), but suspicious o' Alexei Kudrin and other russians? such suspicion is particularly odd in light o' the number o' putin critics that has died violently since 1998. Not suspicious o' the growing pile o' corpses? Not suspicious o' the recent arrest? doesn't seem like zor is a natural suspicious guy after all. HA! Good Fun!

The whole situation is, of course, perfectly set up for anti Russian bigotry, fanned by the usual suspects in the press. Arrests not made: well now, that's convenient! Arrests made: well now, that's also convenient! Anything and everything is indicative of conspiracy, working back from the premise that Putin controls everything that happens in Russia. for a guy s'posed tired of the conspiracy theories, you sure do like to indulge. muslims, oligarchs, and o' 'course, the yellow journalists... oh my. is funny. HA! Good Fun! ps we thought it were obvious that the criticism were that the russians were either not investigating genuine or that they were incompetent. simple observing the making of arrests doesn't change the validity o' the criticisms... or it shouldn't.

Burning the Swedish flag would be considered oddball, but probably preferable to displaying it too much (in which case you would be identified as a dirty inbred neo-Nazi from the countryside). hate to burst your bubble, but fear o' offending folks with flags and speech is more a european issue than american. don't let one article mislead you. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-11254419 *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

gonna stick with the flag stuff for the nonce... there is few people dumber than first and second year University students. kids is exposed to new ideas and they is (hopefully) challenged to look at those ideas critically. is a new experience. is also ok to be a dumb college student; being dumb in college might actually be a good thing. sure, you frequent don't know enough to realize that you is dumb, but University is one o' the few places you can be dumb without lasting long-term suffering for saying or believing something stoopid. thinks flags is, by their very nature, an abrogation o' free speech? *chuckle* is funny. nevertheless, is ok to stoopidly tilt windmills while in college. the arrogant undergrad who thinks that he gots the Answers 'cause he read trotsky AND the federalist papers in a lower-division poli-sci class is amusing, but we wouldn't wanna discourage such silliness. "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."-George Bernard Shaw subvert the dominant paradigm... dude. HA! Good Fun! ps am certain that if somebody had written down or otherwise recorded every silly ack-jass notion or theory we spouted off about in class or at local watering holes during our University student or teaching years, we would be mortified when confronted with some o' our own past nonsense... and we wouldn't have traded those years for anything.

*shrug* regardless o' the way you want things to be, the game will be balanced for the critical path player. the side-quests are Side-Quests precisely because they is optional and not part of The Critical Path. the side-quests is described by obsidian folks as being optional. "side-quests" that need be completed is, by definition, part o' the critical path and whatever balancing calculus that entails. am not certain how to make this more clear. HA! Good Fun!

police states is fragile. HA! Good Fun!

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/03/01/world/list-grows-of-putin-critics-who-met-violent-deaths/#.VPsvIPnF9j4 sadly, the same reasoning can be used for virtual all folks on the linked list. one need only study the methodology o' other police states to understand why such regimes is so concerned with controlling the dialog. HA! Good Fun!

you pose an imaginary dilemma. the "critical path" is not only a fixed and known quantity (unlike the considerable degrees and variations o' completionists) but it is likely to require less powha than alternatives. the crit path is, by definition, the minimum. am certain that if you think about it, you will see why the critical path o' the game needs be balanced for the crit path player. HA! Good Fun!

yes, it is "as if on cue," isn't it? HA! Good Fun!