Edgwyn

I don't really know what to do about that. I could give a head's up the day before, I guess, but some people will still get to it before others. I am definitely not switching to a "first round of guesses via PM" system. And I don't want to discourage anyone who is having fun with it. Perhaps I'll post a heads up in this topic the day before posting the next set, whenever that is. That way, you can subscribe to this topic after it's over and you'll get an email notification (well, if you have those turned on) when the next one is about to start. How does that sound?

I wouldn't do anything. Trying to adjust to the schedules of a bunch of different people who live in a multitude of time zones is nearly impossible as the various attempts to have games on the forums have shown. In general, I am only on in the evening, and I skipped yesterday because I was traveling so even had you given notice, I still would of missed it.

369 Vindicative Raccoon -- A reference to long departed cartoonists

Rocket the Raccoon from Guardians of the Galaxy as Keith Giffen has not had a high profile in a long time

I seem to find these topics late, so here is my first try

400. Finger of Avadon -- Another attempt to live up to that first "psychosexual" proclamation, maybe

There were some posts about the psychosexual nature of Avadon including RedBeard and his wives. Adding to that is the body part imagery of Avadon with the "Hands", "Hearts", "Eyes" or in this case "Finger" which with the addition of -ing is slang for a sexual act, expanding even more on the psychosexual imagery of Avadon.

In A:CS telling Elspeth that Nance is alive and the various healing side quests are ones that I enjoyed because of the opportunity to do some things that really made a difference for an individual against the backdrop of making things better for society as a whole.

You might want to take a look at Jerakeen's Avadon maps. There are three hidden switches in that tunnel.

That one looks like it got rather personal in a few cases, of course I am reading it without Synergy's posts, just everyone else's. Also, since I was not there at the time, I have no idea how accurate the personal attacks were. It was also interesting seeing how much higher the level of activity was.

Also, isn't Avadon 3 the debut of a new engine, achieved without kickstarter or did I misinterpret something?

Slartibus, I forgot about the reference in Douglas Adams works, it was fun to see the link, Thanks

1. Name one song that makes you feel really, really happy.

Edge of Seventeen (Stevie Nicks)

2. Name one song that helped you get through a difficult period of your life, or still does.

There is a variety

3. Name one song that makes you feel calm and serene.

The Rose (Bette Midler)

4. Name one song that you associate strongly with a good memory.

In your eyes (Peter Gabriel)

5. Name one song which resonates with a character trait you want to encourage in yourself.

I will stand by you (Pretenders)

6. Name one song that you find really interesting on a compositional level. (Lyrics, chord structure, sound effects, timbre of instruments, etc.)

Beethoven's ninth symphony

7. Name one song that you didn't like at first, that you eventually came to really enjoy.

Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin)

Then, as a bonus,

*. Say something positive that happened in your life today.

I had a productive day that was also relaxing and non-stressful with my immediate family

I would think that it would be no more than $30 on release so that should be safe, yes. Late summer is the best guess that I have seen on these boards.

To be honest its beyond me how people feel so comfortable ignoring bad situations. It happens really not that rarelly that people indeed should have nightmares about it.

It is a very effective coping mechanism for many people. Ignoring problems (medical, social, societal, etc) is how many people maintain a happy or at least content life.

In terms of unjustified involuntary commitments, Saint Elizabeths in DC is always the example that comes to my mind.

In many ways it reminds me of many other Federal programs such as Federal Highway funds which during the 1973 oil crisis became tied into enforcement of the speed limit. While the interstate commerce clause has been stretch to cover many things, it can only stretch so far and so the carrot and stick approach of if you want funding you must follow policy "x" or answer data call "y". FATCA appears to do essentially the same thing but to people instead of states. Provide us data to prove that you are paying your income taxes or we will really tax you.

You are of course right Lilith this should be spun off.

Okay, the US FY2015 Federal Budget was $3.8 Trillion. In June of 2014 (three months prior to the start of FY15), the Fed estimated that households and non-profits combined had a total worth of $81.5 Trillion. Media reports are stating that the Top 1% owns 40% of the wealth (it is quite hard to find good back up for that figure) so approximately $33 Trillion. In less than 10 years of Federal spending we could completely exhaust the resources of the Top 1%. Obviously there are some gross simplifications there, as unless all of their money was taken at once, the Top 1% would continue to accumulate wealth and so it would take longer than 10 years to completely bankrupt them. On the other hand, even without an expansion of mandatory federal spending (most social programs fall under that category) the Federal Budget grows each year reducing the amount of time to destroy all of that wealth.

I do think that income inequality is a problem, my issue with Sanders and Trump (since as far as I am concerned there is very little practical difference between the two) is that they push very divisive simple sounding fixes that will not actually work. Free college for everyone is as bad a campaign promise as saying that Mexico is going to pay for a wall along their Northern (our Southern) border.

Senator Sanders plans to tax the very wealthy will not generate anything approaching the level of revenue that is required to pay for all of the social programs that he wants unless you consider "very wealthy" to be everyone with an income above the poverty line. Every country has their group of people who hoard money, America is no different in that regard. The "top 1%" does not have any wealth to pay for all of his programs even if you just simply took all of their money. Most of his ideas sound somewhere between great and an episode of the Oprah Winfrey show (free college for you and you and you) but will not work in the real world.

Simply increasing the number of people with college degrees will not help the economy when there are plenty of people will college degrees who are already "underemployed". The only way to generate the necessary revenue would be greatly increase the taxes on the middle class who are the ones who already pay the most for college. Any thing given for free becomes valued less which will create all sorts of un-intended consequences.

I agree that the "nuclear" option of posting on the web can bring on a lot of liability. An alternate approach to the "nuclear" option (and I would still consider it a last resort) is to contact the press (local paper or TV station). They have the ability to achieve more than most people typically can with a web posting while maintaining a degree of legal immunity that you as an individual do not have.

I have eaten some African game mammals, but I am not sure that they qualify as weird. Sashimi is considered weird by some, normal by others. Same thing with various sea food items like squid and octopus.

I know that I am within one year of Jeff's age. That is old enough to be aware of one's mortality and also old enough to easily be anywhere on the spectrum from healthy to unhealthy based on a combination of genetics, attitude, personal health history and life style choices. I seem to remember Jeff referring to some major health problems in his past. As to attitude and life style choices, I will leave it to Slartibus and Randomizer to debate that one:

Randomizer, you are like the opposite of a PR person. According to what you've written recently, Jeff is aging, frail, alcoholic, and lazy

I am sure that the Avadon 3 play testers appreciate your donation of the sanity as they will certainly be needing it in the next few weeks.

I stayed loyal to the pact because the rebels did not offer any improvement over the pact. In the interests of seeing what would happen, I did complete things with Silkie and kill Red Beard, but my personal story line is that my PC stayed loyal to the pact.

I would agree that one of the Monroe Doctrine's goals was an attempt to limit the spill over of European conflicts to the Americas. I don't think that any of our politicians in the day spent any thought at all on Asian conflicts.

The isolationist groups in American politics were more effective in general policy terms, but less in individual action terms. They kept us from having possessions outside of continental North America until 1898 and they kept us from having the type of mutual defense treaties that served as the formal trigger for WWI until 1947, and they (and our weakness at the time) kept us almost completely out of the Napoleonic wars, but they did not keep us from fighting the Barbary pirates, taking a big chunk of Mexico, "opening" Japan, acquiring Hawaii, or entering World War I. I suppose they were part of the reason why we didn't take Cuba in the 1840s-1850s, but there were other factors there beyond isolationism.

The Monroe doctrine probably did generate some anti-imperialism sentiment. Throughout American history, there has been an ideological battle between the manifest destiny/world's policeman approach and isolationists. For the manifest destiny crowd, the Monroe doctrine served as the stay out of our backyard message, for the isolationists it served as a stay away from us message.

A bunch of posts ago this started with a statement of America hates Empires but is okay with Kingdoms which is why we tend to have evil Empires in video games. My opinion is that Americans have traditionally hated all forms of monarchy with no distinction between Kingdoms and Empires, and that Americans traditionally do not like imperialism from anyone but Americans. I think that the tendency to have evil Empires in video games is more of a case of why have an evil Barony when you can have an evil Duchy. Empires to most are just bigger, badder Kingdoms and the bigger the enemy is, the better antagonist that it is for our intrepid adventurers who are fighting for truth, justice and the (fill in the blank) way.

I'm willing to bet there's a certain American zeal behind anti-imperialism, however ironic. The country was founded in revolution against the biggest empire, in terms of area, that ever existed (though at that time it was just a really big empire, not the biggest). American historical culture glorifies the Founding Fathers fighting the evil, irrationally oppressive empire - we just wanted to dodge taxes! Federalism balances the despotism of empire by making all states ostensibly equal. So, America's founding mythos is very anti-imperial, ignoring the plight of Native Americans, Mexicans, Filipinos...

 

And Jeff is American.

I believe that our (I am american) founding myth is anti-monarchal and that any especially anti-imperial feeling has come from other sources. During the time of the founding fathers, George III did not have the title Emperor (that did not happen until 1876 with Queen Victoria adding the title of Queen of India, by which point our relations with England had improved). Likewise the first French Empire had not yet been declared until the founding fathers were towards the end of their careers and we were somewhat pro France at that time(Napoleon I 1804). The Holy Roman Empire was close to dissolution (1806) and fell during the Napoleonic wars. The empire of Japan was not seen as a threat until the 1920s, the Russian Empire was never a threat (unlike the USSR and Russia). I am not sure how many americans ever noted the existence of the Emperor of Ethiopia or the Ottoman Empire. I do not think that Empire became a particularly bad word any earlier than WWII and quite possibly later.

I suspect that Star Wars had a bit of influence on the identification of empires as evil since the original trilogy of movies had a pretty big impact on much of the gaming community.

Historically, I am not sure that empires are much worse than kingdoms. Plenty of kingdoms were just as expansive as empires. Many of the empires started out as something else (Republic in the case of Rome, Sultanate for the Ottomans or Kingdoms in most other cases) before deciding that they had conquered enough places to be considered empires.

There does seem to be a pear looking fruit which would certainly produce a better tasting alcoholic beverage then mushrooms would. I guess that is what Almarian wine is made from with mushroom based products being cheaper due to the greater abundance.

I believe Randomizer was providing a way for the OP to continually gauge their progress where I was going for a more immediate answer.