Amentep

Today, I work on my computer. Because my muscles are sore as the last two days I've done nothing but try to clean my office out. The previous occupiers had accumulated a rather copious amount of paperwork (so much so at some point they stopped filing it and just created stacks and stacks). When I was first moved to this location and taking over this area, I went through and eliminated everything that was unimportant (like copies of recipes printed from the internet or 15 copies of the same draft memo or notes taken from a conference a decade ago). Now however I have time to actually go through and organize the remaining stuff, like getting the personnel files in order rather than having a stack of files covering the last decade using the paper equivalent of an archeologist looking at rock layers and determining what stuff in the layer corresponds to some fixed point in time to find something I wanted. Unfortunately I also brought a fair bit of files with me so I've been eliminating some of that stuff too. Big re-organization required of one of my important files though, which will take some time to do. But summer is shaping up to be low key (a relief after last summer). I've just answered the door with a kitchen knife between my teeth and an annoyed look, actually made a little girl recoil. The Jehovah's witnesses are undeterred by that though. As I think I may have mentioned before I just told them that I couldn't rule out needing to kill someone for Queen, Country etc. When they objected that many LDS are in the Armed Forces I put it to them that I had no intention of joining a group which failed to take its own commandments seriously. LDS =/ Jehovah's Witnesses. The latter might HAVE been put out by being told you would kill for country, as some of the groups I've encountered are against getting too chummy with the secular world, particularly the governmental institutions.

Like the new picture! I would actually really like this. I mean if they're all pre-lit I'm okay with that, but it's a neat idea. I'm not crazy about having to carry a bunch of torches around for lighting and stuff like that (because it turns out too often to just be a busywork idea), but aesthetically I like the idea of being able to turn on/put out lights in a space as a whole like this. You...might want to have someone see about that. I don't think that's a typical sensation you should be having in your eyes.

I liked DS3. I only kind of liked DS1. Didn't like DS1 enough to try DS2. YMMV.

Reminds me of when the heating element in my oven broke and was sparking and melting despite the oven being turned off; my initial reaction was standing there thinking "Well It shouldn't be doing that...!" instead of doing something sensible like turning the power off at the breaker. Felt pretty stupid later when it hit me that's what I should have done first, not last. Thankfully nothing burned, just had to replace the heating element and clean the oven out.

My first character1 was a (kinda dumb) human CG fighter who started up in the Keep on the Borderlands2. There was a fight with a shop keeper and we were booted from the city. This became an ongoing grudge with the shopkeeper and one player that ended up with said party-member murdering the shopkeeper and getting away with it3. This same player then kept murdering the various successor shop owners (all relatives of the original, brother, cousin, kids, wife) every time we returned until he did it while my character was actually there to witness it instead of waiting as he usually did and then we got into a fight that ran through the streets of the keep, up the walls and ended with the other player killing my character before passing a check and doing a spider climb down the keep walls to escape the city guard.4 The end.5 1this is actually a bit more complicated then I let on, my first 20 or something characters were all pretty much the same guy. We died a lot and sometimes lost our character sheets and re-rolled and ran with it. 2the 1981 revision D&D basic set, IIRC 3technically, there were actually two players who ended up playing more or less the same character so I may be confusing who did what to whom. 4the other player also liked killing the other PC's in their sleep and looting their bodies; to be honest I'm not sure if the monsters or the other players racked up more TPKs... 5I ended my human fighter streak by convincing the DM to let me play a Lizard Man fighter. He rocked. Well except that he couldn't actually go into the damn Keep on the Borderlands...

One big question is "Did the poll allow multiple votes" in case we have to wonder if there was intentional vote stuffing by PC fans to try to favor the PC (perhaps with the idea that if EA/DICE see the PC as a big market the PC version will make better use of high-end rigs?) If ballot stuffing is a possibility, then that could also lead to the numbers without any disinterest in the player "groups". How many people voted in the poll? Looks like their twitter followers on the official account is 602,695, was the respondents even a fraction of that? What percentage of the population mobilized for the poll?

Maybe console players didn't feel the need to vote. Maybe they missed the poll. Maybe they're more likely to wait to see which system gets the best reviews and buy the game for that system. Problem is there's no real way to extrapolate any meaning or validity from the poll. Just because a poll can't be used to prove something because its validity is in question doesn't make the conclusion from its results wrong, it just makes it unprovable by the poll. The "truth" is out there regardless of the poll.

Shouldn't that be qualified as something like "the Swastika is a sign of bigotry amid nations who fought WWII, were formed out of WWII, are highly populated by ethnic or religious groups targeted for extermination by the Nazi party and/or don't have strong Buddhist or Hindi traditions"? Cause I seriously doubt that a devout Hindu living in rural India thinks of the Swastika as a sign of bigotry (could be wrong though). Okay "the Swastika is a sign of bigotry amid nations who fought WWII, were formed out of WWII, are highly populated by ethnic or religious groups targeted for extermination by the Nazi party and/or don't have strong Buddhist or Hindi traditions"? Better? Yes.

So... A self-selecting poll (skew) on the developer's (skew) web site (skew) with no indication how it was run* (possible skew) or if the question included the possibility of not buying (possible skew) indicates a favor for the PC. I'm shocked. Truly and absolutely. *most web based polls allow multiple votes, rendering them as meaningless as the winner of American Idol...

Shouldn't that be qualified as something like "the Swastika is a sign of bigotry amid nations who fought WWII, were formed out of WWII, are highly populated by ethnic or religious groups targeted for extermination by the Nazi party and/or don't have strong Buddhist or Hindi traditions"? Cause I seriously doubt that a devout Hindu living in rural India thinks of the Swastika as a sign of bigotry (could be wrong though).

I'm not sure at the time you'd have been able to sell them on it even with the insight; IIRC they tried to outlaw slavery at the time but the decision ultimately boiled down to make a union and kick the can down the road or not have a union of all the colonies. But if you had been able to convince them, it certainly would have made a different world.

But why do you still pay him to throw water on you if you're still in bed now that you don't have any finals?

So...essentially your alarm clock is your sister?

I'm afraid that it is you who are wrong here.Despite all the atrocities that happen during crusades and afterwards complete city razing was not one of them. Well Saladin destroyed the towers of Ascalon IIRC. That's about all I got.

Which confederate flag? I can't help but imagine the 1st Flag of the Confederacy would be mistaken for an early US flag (in fact I'm pretty sure I remember some people in real life doing that). The 2nd Flag of the Confederacy would probably be mistaken for a post-50s defiant state flag that incorporated what most people think of as the "confederate flag" in defiance of Federal edicts (for example, like the 1956-2001 Georgia flag). Probably the same for the 3rd Flag of the Confederacy with an added bonus "what the hell is up with the red stripe down the side?" for good measure. Actually the war led to a complete economic collapse, so yeah they basically fought against the north fearing a possible economic collapse ensuring that in the end they got an economic collapse. Oops.

My alarm clock awakes me by flashing a light rather than using sound. I find it actually doesn't jar me awake like a rattling alarm, buzz or sudden pop tune.

I thought the organization used the Red Crescent symbol in Muslim majority countries instead of the cross (officially being The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies).

Hahaha, I wish we had more students like you. The ones I meet are all convinced it is the college's fault they missed important information given to them, important dates and deadlines posted on the academic calendar... important tests... their entire class schedule for three months... ...worse is when their parents are convinced of same...

I liked it - laughed a lot during it actually (so much I hurt, to be honest).

Well I'll watch it and see how it develops and make a decision before it ends. I've not played any of the Double Fine games, but I like the idea of this.

I think eventually it will "go away". Not in our lifetimes - heck there are far too many people alive now who were alive during WWII - or whose parents were - for the symbols of that era to be considered a bygone age. Three of four centuries from now...a millennium*, my guess is that if its recognized at all by anyone outside of major history buffs its for its use in Buddhism or Hinduism.** *assuming we haven't had societal collapse or something. **not necessarily that the history itself would be forgotten, but the power of the symbolism won't last if current history tells us anything.

I took Spock being emotional in the new movies as a reflection of where he was in "The Cage" (which isn't really fair, given that the Cage had a differrent conception of Spock, however it establishes the idea of a younger Spock being quite emotional prior to the original timeline Kirk-lead Enterprise). Sadly, most aesexual characters will never be translated to media without change. The Downey Holmes films did, several earlier Holmes films did. It makes the characters more typical male leads, but makes them less interesting in many respects. And realistically you're right, there's no reason why Elementary couldn't be new characters modled after Holmes et al other than trying to trade on the Holmes name (but House did it successfully, so its not impossible even if I didn't ultimately like the show).

Hitler is long dead. It's time to reclaim the symbols that his regime perverted instead of engaging in Politically Correct self-flagellation. Go, Finland! No. Just no. Hitler was a gigantic monster, and the swastika is a symbol of that. It should continue to remind us of how important it is to be vigilant against evil. You also still have extremist groups using it to spread their hateful messages. Political correctness has nothing to do with it. If there was some big Buddhist movement to reclaim the symbol, I might get behind that. But I doubt you are Buddhist. Its also used in Hinduism, IIRC. And of course was a symbol of good luck in the west up to the adoption by the Nazi party, first use documented in Greece IIRC in the 8th century . Amazing how easily a symbol can be perverted in many ways.

dislocated knee cap?

The whole point of things going in the public domain is for creators to, essentially, riff on the concepts created by previous generations. With that in mind, I don't see anything done in ELEMENTARY that actually divorces it from Holmes anymore than other productions that aren't direct adaptions of a Holmes story. Certainly its no less far afield than say, SHERLOCK HOLMES IN THE 22ND CENTURY or any of the Holmes-Cthulu stories that are out there...