Gromnir

The US has already admitted it acted too slowly to the outbreak, and the WHO has voiced similar concerns. Really? Do you have a link for that, please? don't need a link or proof. it is a Given that the vast majority o' the world's tragedies in the post WWII era is the result o' American incompetence or greed. some folks start with the assumption that the US flubbed the swine flu thing and then work backwards... look for proof after the fact. why you gotta rock the boat? Gromnir is old fashioned-- we blame the Pope for all the world's ills. not any more valid than American hate, but at least our stoopidity gots pedigree and tradition. n00bs. HA! Good Fun!

btw, the Brown piffle weren't for enoch as he no doubt already knows such stuff... HA! Good Fun!

the Iowa guys ain't stoopid. there has been a number o' appellate fed cts that has looked at Loving re: gay marriage. Loving were a race case ("invidious racial discriminations") AND the Ct. specific focused on marriage being fundamental precisely 'cause o' its relation to Procreation. is maybe an antiquated notion, but substantive due process is, from a Con Law pov, far less flexible than ep. Griswold penumbral kinda cases makes for great drama and is wonderful to discuss in class, but they is invariably contentious. with the current composition o' the Court, you gots a virtual 0 chance o' creating a new fundamental right that clearly is working against history and precedent. with current ep you not gotta ask what were the framer's notions regarding gays & gay marriage specific... is still a hurdle for sdp. in any event, it made more sense for Iowa Ct. to use a solely Iowan rationale. even so, Justices is people and the Law is a human creation. the most famous case in American jurisprudence is probable Brown v. Board, and at the time you had clear weight o' history (Congressional record shows that the notion o' 14th amendment being relevant to school desegregation were specific debated and rejected) and precedent (Plessy) in favor o' continued school segregation. was separate but equal a big-fat lie? sure it was, but it were pretty difficult for the Justices to find solid legal justification for striking down the abhorrent practice. J. Jackson pretty much had to get off his deathbed to be present when unanimous decision were handed down. get the right Justices on the bench and anything is possible. 'course, keep in mind that by the time o' Brown, something like 21 states had already desegregated on their own... and Massachusetts had desegregated way back in 1855 (maybe 1854), so if gays is waiting for similar kinda numbers for the Ct. to take action... too preachy? oh well. HA! Good Fun!

one thing that all the Larry Tribe wannabees seems to be ignoring is the fact that the Iowa Ct struck down the ban on gay marriages based 'pon the equal protection clause in the IOWA constitution. read the decision and you see that while very similar, Iowa's ep and 14th amendment ep ain't the same. you want heightened scrutiny with Fed? the four factors for US "new" ep classes history of discrimination political powerlessness immutability/no relation to ability to perform

is not necessarily true... but in this case it is sorta true. got banned 'cause chris priestly took over as head bioware board monkey. didn't want us talking 'bout dialogue wheel so he locked some threads wherein we criticized wheel and its characterization as innovative. priestly reason for locking threads: the POTENTIAL for spoilers. is not that people were spoiling mass effect in the threads, but the Potential o' Possible spoilers were enough to censor? what game feature can be discussed without a Potential for spoilers? ridiculous. *chuckle* somehow the dialogue wheel comes up as a topic on the DA board... a fan claims that dialogue wheel is super-groovy-kewl and wants it added to DA. thread goes on for a few pages without being locked so Gromnir joins in with some observations. hadn't posted for a while at the DA boards, so the locals were unfamiliar with us and they started getting all nasty 'cause we suggested that bio had pulled a serious con job on the gaming public. the natives rallied to the defense o' the biowarians. we did insult a few o' the arguments that were directed our way, but we didn't actually resort to personal insults, 'cause we knew priestly were looking for an excuse. didn't matter in the end as we got banned for some undisclosed reason... presumably for being too disruptive. 'course, the Truth o' the matter is that priestly not like our posting style... or maybe he not like us personal. dunno. in any case, board style and Gromnir himself not changed much since late 90s. no biggie. so yeah, in actuality is our posting style that got us banned. mods can, and probably should, delete our post, but as we has been asked a number o' times we figure might as well explain... simple solution for Gromnir is to never again mention our bio banning so that it not come up again... is only genuine tough to avoid mentioning when we gets labeled as a bio fanboi here or at the codex... the irony always makes us laugh. HA! Good Fun!

you know, there is a goodly number o' excellent educational institutions that not seem to have much o' a national reputation. the only drawback to attending such a school is that your initial job search post graduation will probably be limited to a relative small geographical area. east coast folks seems to be much more impressed with university lineage. is strange that we gets far more respect from folks back east for our Cal degrees than we does from the natives. go figure. HA! Good Fun!

I can only assume you were trying to say something but your mouth was clogged with undiscovered deposits of oil. maybe it is seal blubber 'stead o' oil. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1639801.stm oddly enough, it would seem that in 2004/2005 norway went ahead with their dubious plans, and now all o' you aspiring seal clubbers can goes to norway for holiday. huzzah! have always been fascinated by the generalizations 'bout America and Americans we sees bandied 'bout by european and asians. Americans is fat, lazy and stoopid... and America is some kinda evil world tyrant-wannabe out to protect its oil interests. such notions is very simple and convenient, and is resilient beyond all imagining. having spent time teaching and studying in europe, we were surprised to find that the euro college students we met weren't any smarter than their counterparts across the pond. what really amazed us were the fact that our euro students and colleagues, after some considerable time, were able to disabuse themselves of the notion that Gromnir were fat, lazy and stoopid, but they never seemed to be able to take next step and shake off the preconception that Americans in general was fat, lazy and stoopid. our existence somehow became for them the exception that proved the rule. for folks who not know and don't wish to learn, it is far more comfortable to embrace a simplistic pov. perhaps a cultural anthropologist could explain better-- some primitive blames floods and changes of seasons and plagues on God/Gods 'cause such an explanation is convenient and ultimately unassailable. 'course the modern primitive is too sophisticated to believe in God, so he instead blames evils on America and its lust for oil. will be amusing if junai gets offended by our hasty generalizations. HA! Good Fun!

"This could be a young adult novel. It's not sophisticated, but it's also not bloated like a great deal of fantasy." If that ain't a strong implication that young adult novels is unsophisticated... *shrug* but considering what you ain't appearing to say 'bout young adult fiction, the description becomes meaningless. ain't say is dark? ain't saying is unsophisticated? if not really saying anything, then why say anything? regardless, Gaider's book might be worth the read... but if we read, then we feels compelled to review. having already been banned from bioware, we may end up being banned from Kanada. HA! Good Fun!

I was planning on picking that up soon, is it any good? Yes, if you know what to expect. It doesn't have deep characters, a complex plot, rich wordcraft, or a vibrant setting. It

Good question. Do you start having armed military or police force on merchant ships? it would seem that the cheapest & most effective solution would be to hire crews comprised of naught but American sailors. HA! Good Fun!

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/04/08...cked/index.html apparently the American crew didn't get the memo: crews is 'posed to simply give up and wait to be ransomed. as hard as it is to believe, crew resistance in such situations is virtual unprecedented, and a successful modern re-taking of a merchant vessel IS unprecedented. now there is an American warship on the scene? damned Americans is always being different. HA! Good Fun!

vol's latin sucks... or his logic sucks. *shrug* am not sure how the internet screwed up the ad hominem logic fallacy for so many people. ad hominem, w/o the "argumentum" prefix, simply means "to the person/man". ad hominem does not = insult. an argumentum ad hominem Logic Fallacy ain't = insult neither. Gromnir can call vol a yutz and a schnook every day and twice on sunday and we ain't necessarily ever gonna be making an argumentum ad hominem logic fallacy. is only an argumentum ad hominem if you is claiming that an argument fails BECAUSE of some defect in the arguer. if Gromnir could track down the clown who pied-piper-of-Hamlin'd you peoples into following his infernal tune, we would beat him to death with our copy o' Der Wille zur Macht. (nietsche had a kinda genius for insulting his detractors w/o ever resorting to argumentum ad hominem... is kinda our role-model.) regardless, don't be using stuff if you not know what it is meaning. HA! Good Fun! btw, vol is the guy we is responding to, but is more a matter o' coincidence than anything else. am seeing "ad hominem" used wrong so ubiquitous that am guessing that more folks use wrong than does right.

""She's off her nut" certainly wasn't what they were going for." am not so sure about that. clearly the writers was going for shock value. shock value is necessarily extreme. reasonableness and plausibility and dramatic value were clear secondary to the "omg" or "wtf" value o' the scene. shocking behavior is much analogous to nutty behavior, no? do something crazy not make you crazy, but clearly Dee's suicide were out o' character with the Dee they had developed over the course o' multiple seasons. btw, Gromnir almost never reads actor/director/writer interviews. with few exceptions they is, at best, disappointing. at worst the "artist" manages to rob us o' what enjoyment we did find in their work. HA! Good Fun!

What makes you think that? She saw no hope for the future so she decided to end her life on a high. I thought they made that pretty obvious on the show. how does that contradict the "weak and/or off her nut" observation? seeing 0 hope in such a situation, given all the crap they had already been through, seems weak or nutty to Gromnir. were a damn terrible way to kill her regardless. HA! Good Fun!

You are one unhappy dude Gorgon! I can't remeber the last positive thing you posted about this show. I can't imagine there would have been any conclusion you would have been happy with. That said I do think it was an odd choice. However, as someone who has made a career out of engineering and optimizing technology I must admit the concept of leaving it all behind does appeal to me on several levels. am gonna admit that our enjoyment of the series waned a few seasons ago. "and they have a plan..." bs. am recalling times back when cylons were scary and mysterious. that ended some time ago. cylons not have some mysterious plan and they really ain't no different than people... which kinda makes 'em less intriguing. dunno. bsg embraced lots o' what we hate 'bout anime. lots o' babe-bots and existential angst. throw in some crappy amnesia explanation for the final 5. add a healthy dose o' deus ex machina. maybe has a character like baltar throw in an explanation or two that everybody instantly accepts for no obvious reason? sure sounds like anime conventions. you know, if starbuck had wielded a katana during the final confrontations/battles, we woulda' had complete anime stoopidity... dress her as a nun, wh0re or miko and we woulda' had perfect anime wackiness to finish off bsg. however, the end, right up to the end, were pretty okie dokie as far as such stuff goes. the big battle stuff looked nifty and we thinks they did an okie dokie job o' wrapping up loose ends without descending ito camp levels o' silliness typical o' sci-fi and fantasy. that being said, the abandon-evil-tech stuff were moronic. get +30,000 tech users to turn their backs on tech? rrriiiigggghhhttt. is easy 'nuff to spout such idealistic nonsense, but am wondering how tough it would be to stand firm when your child or wife or husband gets some easily treatable disease or a seemingly minor infection... tell child/wife/husband that their death is for the greater good. modern man has been 'round for between 140,000 to 170,000 years. for all but the last 100 years or so, women has been largely second-class citizens. sure, there is some cultural exceptions, but not many... and the reason is simple biology. in a culture without reliable birth control, what is you thinking is gonna become the typical role o' women? pre-agrarian and you is complete hopeless of breaking out of role as baby factories and child nurturers. not much of an improvement right up until industrial revolution. if you ever get a chance, takes a look at an old family bible from pre-industrial. children lost at birth and children dying before age o' 5 were common. people not live particularly long in pre-industrial... assume that women between age o' 16 and 36 is gonna spend half their time pregnant and you probable ain't too far off mark. if Gromnir were a female character in bsg, we woulda' put a bullet in apollo's brain for suggesting such a thing as abandoning tech. and btw, am guessing that the explanation o' Dee offing herself were simply that she were weak and /or off her nut. huh? not a bad end in spite o' our loathing o' the actual end o' the end. HA! Good Fun!

am kinda/sorta on same page as harlequin with this kinda stuff. is Gromnir's belief that Bangladesh has more massacres, tragedies and natural disasters per capita than any country in the world not currently involved in a war. seems like almost a sure bet that Gromnir will see at least one story per week from cnn or bbc that describes an industrial accident or flood or fire in Bangladesh that accounted for multiple deaths. am not sure why. am sure that is our imagination. regardless, when death toll in Bangladesh from tornadoes rises to 15,000 we feel... little. sure, objective-like we recognize the tragedy of 15,000 strangers dying seemingly meaningless deaths, but am not having no emotional connection to those folks so we ain't able to generate much genuine emotion on their behalf. so if Gromnir not able to eek out a tear for 15,000 dead, why on earth would we be moved by the passing of one dead actress? 'cause we seen her in a handful o' movies? ... Gromnir has sympathy for the dead actress' family... on an intellectual level. is no genuine emotion, and we not feel any particular guilt 'bout that. truth to tell, we would be worried if the plight o' all those folks in Bangladesh touched us less than the death o' a single actress. btw, am not criticizing folks for getting choked up 'bout the dead lady in question. if you feels genuine sorrow at the passing of ms. richardson, then Gromnir ain't gonna mock your grief... we simply cannot share your pain. heck, we get all misty-eyed every time we sees How Green Was My Valley, and is just fictional characters dying in that flick. HA! Good Fun!

am having played a few hours o' system shock 2, and the only frightening stuff we got were "Gotcha!" is particularly hard to maintain "dread, helplessness and dim hope" in a game environment, 'cause there were hardly much narrative and after a few hours o' "Gotcha!" it all kinda loses impact... 'least for Gromnir it did. spooky music and sound? yeah, that helps, but can only take so far. *shrug* system shock 2 tried to be scary, but all we genuine got were "Gotcha!" HA! Good Fun!

ain't never played a game that frightened us for reals. played a couple o' games that had "Gotcha!" moments wherein we were startled, but am not gonna concede that such stuff were genuine frightening. "Gotcha!" crap is the lowest common denominator o' horror and it has Zero appeal as far as Gromnir is concerned. Binky, the fluffy bunny, can dart out in front o' our car as we is driving home late at night... startle us and kill Binky. Binky ain't scary, but even Binky can startle us if we ain't expecting a bunny suicide on highway sixteen at 10:00pm on Tuesday... which is what games does to be scary, no? yeah, Binky is typical a dessicated zombie or alien creature, but such stuff is no more scary than Binky, 'cause only genuine fear results from "Gotcha!" next time you want a scary game, thinks o' Binky. HA! Good Fun!

did warlock crafting get fixed in the new patch? warlocks get imbue item, but in nw2 you can't craft w/o appropriate metamagic feat.. and when soz were released warlocks were still unable to gets crafting feats. made crafting for warlocks kinda useless. HA! Good Fun!

fo was pure camp. super mutants and giant insects and all the other b-movie crap were tossed in to create a cartoony kinda post-apocalyptic world. alternatively, fo were deadly serious... which made it all the more funny. the Most humor came from fo fans who typical seems to forget the camp quality o' fo and gets all earnest when game is discussed. HA! Good Fun!

am gonna agree with you, save to note that there is some serious story reasons for ignoring iron-clad plausibility for npc joinability. consider josh's alien/aliens examples and then considers how to work as a crpg story. handful stuck on a ship? a small band o' humans confronted by a planet filled with monsters? unless you got an Us v. Them situation, where the "us" is overwhelming outnumbered, then you gots problem with assuming/presuming comradeship, no? not a particular deep well from which to draw ideas, and tends to be making for a relative stark and bleak crpg landscape. in 100 pages of text Gromnir can come up with reasonable stories 'bout how an unlikely collection o' personalities became companions, but in a crpg... stuck on a ship? this party plausibility thing is not a particularly noteworthy concern for Gromnir. HA! Good Fun!

1) is impossible to reasonably claim a game is over-hyped until After game is released and you has actually played game. 2) have not heard any biowarian hype for me2 as yet. 3) bioware shares info relative freely with fans, which makes 'em more vulnerable to the over-hype claims. point 1 should be self-evident. bioware hasn't really said much o' anything 'bout me2 as far as Gromnir can tell... is one reason why the teaser has created some uproar. absence o' biowarian input 'bout a game in development is actually pretty rare. biowarians gets themselves in trouble frequently 'cause they share with fans. in bg2 there weren't no large-scale battles like biowarians said there would be. bastards. sure, stuff always gets cut and/or altered during development, but fans such as Gromnir has very long memories, and we will remind biowarians of every failed promise. how many things that we thought were gonna be in DA has already been cut? numerous origin options and the necromancer-taking-over-the-world feature? should go up to kanada and lynch us some lying biowarians. typical publisher /developer puffery not bother Gromnir any more than does laundry detergent adverts that claim "New and Improved!" the only genuine marketing stuff from bio that has bothered Gromnir is the ridiculous claims 'bout that inane dialogue wheel "innovation." and even then, ain't so much the biowarian claims that bothered us so much as it were the critics and fans that simply accepted the "innovation" hokum. is maybe a slight different approach to dialogues, but is nothing 'bout it that offered genuine innovative gameplay. am also bothered by how some o' the current bio board monkeys wanna rewrite history, but am not sure if we considers that to be misleading advertising. HA! Good Fun!

the transformers move sold how many tickets? Gromnir already recognized that chrisA were writing for kotor2, but am not sure we would hold out as an indicator o' writing excellence... and if you wanna use units sold as measure o' good writing, you is gonna find self standing on a very slippery slope. HA! Good Fun!

chrisA has gotten 10 year's worth of credit for ps:t. isn't it about time he followed it up with something else? chrisA's contributions to iwd2 were arguably noteworthy, if limited, but he was complete hit & miss for kotor2. nwn2:motb was a wonderful example of chrisA recycling ps:t... but the new stuff were often craptacular. gotta do something more than come up with wacky concepts to gets a "top writer" label. has anybody since salinger gotten so much mileage out of 1 effort? keep in mind that ps:t is Gromnir's favorite crpg, but we thinks that chrisA is perhaps the most overrated crpg writer... evar. chrisA is still better than most crpg "writers" but he ain't near the super-groovy-keen master o' writing that bis/obsidian fans suggest that he is. chrisA lugubrious introspection and kooky concept stuff worked perfect for ps:t, but not every game is ps:t. HA! Good Fun!

at same time, is an rpg story we is talking 'bout, no? balance player choices and wants with needs of making story compelling. is ironic that if you give players everything they want, they will hate you for it... 'cause is nothing genuine "interesting or unique" if you simply give players what they ask for. and keep in mind that even though the orphan-seeking-vengeance shtick is hardly new, bioware ain't precluded from implementing in a "unique and interesting" way... can still be creative. HA! Good Fun!