Edgwyn

I was never much into short stories, but I did read Bradbury's Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451. He was very supportive of the schools and libraries in LA, and came and spoke at my High School. From what I remember (it was a long time ago), he walked the four miles to our school, because he did not drive.

To me, internet access for the world is a nice to nave, not a right. Lets solve clean water and indoor plumbing first (which would save a whole bunch of lives) and worry about weather internet access is a "right" later. Even in a developed nation with water and indoor plumbing, I am willing to give you all of the internet access that you are willing to pay for and am willing to protect your freedom of speech (within the logical restrictions on free speech already in law such as libel, etc) but am not willing to pay for your access to the internet at a point of your choosing.

Randomizer, the appeals process is supposed to take care of that situation, and of course Sheppard was not sentenced to death, and the appeals process did work in his case as his conviction was thrown out on appeal. So, had his case been referred to the death penalty (which it was not), he would not have been executed. Alorael, the theory is that threat of execution is a more effective deterrent. I do not believe that theory can be proven either way right now. Part of the basis of that theory is that when there is life, there is hope and life in prison if often not staying in prison for the rest of your life. For example, consider how much time and effort is spent every few years keeping Charles Manson in prison.

1. The worse the consequence of getting caught, the less palatable this argument becomes for the rational criminal (not much you can do about the irrational ones). 2. Most states in the US only use the death penalty for Pre-meditated murder 3. Even the reality of prison life is hard to imagine, some scared straight type programs have been effective though. Some cable TV dramas though have had the opposite effect. 4. The death penalty has been so poorly and inconstantly applied, and in such a small number of cases, that I do not consider statistical data on its effectiveness or lack of effectiveness particularly valid. Or at least not for the last 50 years.

Theoretically, the death penalty is supposed to serve as a deterrent to crime/murder. Most of the people who are willing to kill are not that interested in putting their own lives at risk. The ones who are willing to put their lives at risk or to lose their lives in the process are impossible to stop. The other aspect is that the death penalty identifies certain actions that are "beyond the pale" and prevents the taxpayers for spending a lot of money each year to keep an individual in prison who has theoretically lost their right to life.

Vexivero, in my experience, I definitely forgot a lot of concepts from all of my college classes after a semester or two (sometimes even less). However, it seems to be a lot easier to re-teach myself the concepts and classes that I had in college a long time ago then the ones that I didn't have. Over the last two years I have been preparing for some certification tests and even though there are things that I was taught, but do not remember how to do, they come back a whole bunch faster than all of the things that I was never taught. I find the same thing in helping my daughter with her math and programming homework. I do have to re-familiarize myself with the techniques and concepts, but it comes back pretty quickly. Barney Frank is definitely an interesting person. The fact that he had a completely secure district allowed him to have a freedom of action for his policies that most politicians do not. He would definitely make an interesting instructor.

I think that there are multiple reasons that the death penalty is broken. 1. Too much money to be made in long drawn out appeals. (That said, executions must be reserved to the highest standards of evidence, and appeals are necessary) 2. The rarity. It has become a spiral argument. It takes too long to execute a criminal, so lets refer fewer cases to the death penalty but look at each one of them harder, making it take even longer, etc. I do not accept an argument that the death penalty is or is not an effective deterrent based on any evidence in the last 50 years because they have been so poorly managed. 3. An amazing expansion of the definition of "Cruel and Unusual Punishment". Torture is wrong and has no place in a justice system. Dying hurts. So does living in prison and missing out on your life. Most methods of execution that we have rejected would have been perfectly fine when our constitution was being crafted. A method of execution should be chosen to minimize suffering, but there is no way to eliminate it. Drawing and Quartering is cruel and unusual. Hanging, Firing Squad, Lethal Injection and the Gas Chamber can all be very painful, but none of them (if done correctly) are designed to prolong suffering. What we are currently doing as a society is not working. Our prison population is way too high. More needs to be done to keep people from breaking the law, both positive and negative reinforcement.

Unfortunately since logistics was a neglected component of the military arts, the two armies would pillage the country side for food on their way to that out of the way field. Since there was not a lot of agricultural surplus at the time, this often meant peasants starving to death no matter which side won. That ignores the peasants who were killed trying to protect their crops from being stollen or their women folk from being raped. War has never been a clean, sanitary business. There have been various treaties to try and limit the suffering in the last 150+ years, but they have been only marginally effective.

The Imperial Japanese Army and Navy's tendency to follow Bushido also had a psychological effect on the decision makers in the US and British Empires. The rules of war as codified in Europe (and followed fairly well between Germany, France, Italy, GB and USA ((though not between Germany and its own population, USSR and its own population or Germany and USSR and each other or anyone in the way))) emphasized attempting to reduce the suffering of war. To that end, surrendering when you no longer had the means to resist was an honorable choice and POWs were to be treated well. With the limitations above, that actually mostly happened. Surrender was not seen as honorable by Imperial Japan which led to the commitment of "war crimes" (Japan had not agreed to follow the rules), but also to the US and GB's perception that Imperial Japan was not going to surrender at a "rational" point in time. We can sit here with hindsight and pick many dates after the Battle of Midway and say that it should have been obvious to Japan that they had lost the war and that they should have tried to negotiate a peace, but that did not happen in reality and there is not any reason to be confident that it would have happened by 1 Nov. The large scale bombing of the home islands did not start until Nov of 1944 and was somewhat limited by weather and especially logistics until Spring 45. It is certainly likely (though impossible to prove) that three more months of bombings at the intensity level achieved from Mar 45 on would have killed a couple hundred thousand civilians. In addition to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there were a couple of other cities that had been left largely untouched that could have been targeted for conventional bombing as well. The payloads for the raids was going up as well as the bombers were leaving more and more of their defensive armament behind. Even if not quite as many civilians would have been killed in the bombings, the invasions would have killed far more civilians and far more people on both sides. Nuclear testing by the five security council members certainly displaced many people, destroyed their way of life and increased cancer rates, but I believe that to describe nuclear testing as nuclear warfare is a bit extreme and underplays how awful an actual nuclear war would be. As the negative environmental impacts of nuclear weapons were better understood, above ground nuclear testing stopped as did the atoms for peace program. There are also some military intelligence benefits to doing your testing underground as well. Generally countries have stopped their underground testing as they nuclear weapons industrial complex has gotten to the point of fully understanding their design and manufacturing. Computer sims are great, but developing them requires test data. Currently Israel is the only nation that is thought to have nuclear weapons that might not have done live testing, all of the others have done real tests. If Iran is going to be the next member of the nuclear weapons club, it would be to their benefit to announce their membership via a successful underground full scale test as well, not through a sim. Goldengirl, you are essentially making a second amendment argument that if guns exist, everyone should have one. Interestingly enough, I am coming in on the other side (despite my pro second amendment stance) and saying that the only reasons that we have not had more deaths due to nuclear weapons is that so few nations have them. We have seen poorly controlled chemical weapons used in places like Iraq and Syria where the government may very well have not been involved in deciding to use them. I have a good degree of confidence in the security of the US, GB and French nuclear weapons and how difficult it would be to capture a modern nuclear weapon and use it in an unauthorized manor. I have a bit less confidence in the USSR, Israel and the PRC's arsenals. I have some degree of confidence in North Koreas and India's protections against unauthorized use (but not in their rationality when it comes to authorized use), and not nearly as much confidence as I would like in Pakistans protections. If you start giving them out to Iran, Lybia, Iraq, East Timor, etc, you start getting into countries that do not have the resources/will to protect the weapons from unauthorized use even if you trust their definition of authorized use.

Unless you have been buying a lot of consumables, you are going to finish the game with a lot of money so the training certainly does not hurt.

Most of the quotes from Emperor Hirohito cite that the Atomic Bombing gave him the excuse to surrender when he did. I do not disagree with the USSBS excerpt that you quoted, but it is based on what US leaders knew after Japan surrendered, not what they knew when the decisions to use the atomic bombs were made. What was obvious to Japanese leaders on 1 Dec 45 (that the war was lost and that they need to surrender to avoid total destruction) was not necessarily obvious to them on 31 Jul 45 because of a variety of emotional and military intelligence issues, plus the actual use of the bombs. The US could certainly have continued bombing raids, and had the atomic bombs not compelled Japan to surrender would have continued to do so until the launch of Operation Olympic or the surrender of Japan which ever came first. Between 1 Aug 45 and 1 Nov 45 (or what ever arbitrary date you select for Japan's surrender), far more Japanese civilians would have been killed by bombing raids than were actually killed by the atomic bombs. Personally I do not think that the USSR's declaration of war had much to do with the Japanese decision making process. I do realize that Emperor Hirohito did cite it in a letter to the military, but in all of the rest of his documents about surrendering, he did not mention them at all. I do not think that any real elements of the Japanese government were maintaining the fantasy that the USSR would join them against the US, the way that part of the German government was hoping that we would team up with them against the USSR. Therefore I do not think that any hopes were dashed by the USSR's declaration of war. Economically it had no effect since the home islands were essentially completely blockaded by that point anyway. From a pure military standpoint, the USSR's declaration of war did not add any immediate capability to the Allies ability to threaten the home islands. In the middle term, being able to replace some US (and British Empire) troops in the invasion would have been nice, but 100% of the logistics of the invasion (ships, landing craft, etc) would still have been US (since the USSR essentially did not have an amphibious warfare capability) and so the size of the actual invasion force would not have changed appreciably. Long term, I believe it was a serious mistake for the US to have invited the USSR to participate in the war against Japan at all.

The term war crime is thrown around a lot. The WWII allies made the situation worse in terms of definitions of war crimes with some of the prosecutions against Germany and Japan after WWII. While I do not want to see Nuclear Weapons used, their use in WWII was proportional and effective, irrespective of what you choose to believe. The WWIII scenario of nuking cities irrespective of any other considerations would most likely be a war crime. Add a declaration of war (which many WWIII scenarios never got to), show that the cities are tied into their respective nations military-industrial complex, and there is still a problem with proportionality. The problem from a law of war perspective comes down to the fact that it is very hard (but not necessarily impossible) to use a nuclear weapon in a way that does not cause disproportional civilian casualties to the military objective achieved. Neb, your bit about "essentially doomed" is very first world of you. The most economically disadvantaged child in our Western nations (where abortion is legal) has far more economic opportunities than the vast majority of children in many African and some Asian countries.

Abortion is for more nuanced then most of the arguments for or against it choose to be. Adding a few items: While only females can host, baring some serious lab work, a fetus is a result of the decision of two people (as long as there was consent), not one. Juan Carlo's point on viability is very important to me. It has been used at least a few times in the states in order to prosecute individuals who have attacked pregnant women and killed their fetus for unlawful killing. Without these protections, an attack that only harms the mother, but kills the fetus would be "just" assault. I find it interesting that a fair amount of the world is willing to consider a fetus an inconvenience that the mother can destroy at will past the point of viability, but is totally against executing murderers. The fetus (while a drain on resources initially) is likely to grow up and become a net benefit to society, the murderer has harmed society and is going to be a drain on society. I am perfectly willing to execute murders, rapists and child molesters, but am not willing to destroy a fetus that can be viable outside of the womb, but has not happened to be born yet (with some very small exceptions). Moving on to nuclear weapons, Goldengirl, the one way to ensure that nuclear weapons would be used is for everyone to have them. There are leaders of certain countries today (and have been since 1945) that I have no doubt would use them if they had them. Also, the more nuclear weapons out there, the easier for them to get into the hands of a non-state actor (ISIS for example) who is far less likely to show restraint against using them than a nation-state is. Using a nuclear weapon against a target raises the issue of proportionality which is an important legal concern in war making. It never has been possible to wage war without civilian casualties and collateral damage to civilian infrastructure. Proportionality attempts to ensure that the civilian casualties and collateral damage are not disproportionate to the military effect achieved. Based on what the decision makers knew at the time, the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagisaki caused 120,000 fatalities and prevented over a million fatalities by compelling Japan to surrender. With the benefit of hindsight and knowledge of internal debates in the Japanese government, that President Truman was unaware of at the time, some have argued that the use of the bombs was not necessary. I disagree based on Emperor Hirohito specifically citing the bombs as the reason for his decision to surrender. In World War II, the fire bombings of Tokyo and Dresden and almost all of Germany's bombings of England are a lot harder to justify based on the military effect achieved versus the civilian casualties inflicted.

Other should have been my answer for 1, 2 and 4, but I do not think that is what I put. Besides that comment, I am refraining from commenting for the same reasons as Tevildo.

In an earlier version of the game, couldn't you learn spells from them?

Extraversion 19 Agreeableness 45 (should have scored higher) Conscientiousness 46 Neuroticism 28 Openness 13 Most of the scores seem reasonable to me, except the second.

Randomizer has me beat, despite my fairly large age advantage/disadvantage over Macdude22 and the others. There are some others who can chime in.

I have been re-reading the Honor Harrington series. I only buy paperbacks, not hardbacks or e-books, so I am in kind of a lull. There is one book out that I need to stop by the book store and get in another series, but right now, I am looking at a book every other month, which is not enough. I guess that I am going to have to find a new series or two to read. Of course with A:CS coming out in Dec, that should take some time.

Once you have access to a portal in Avadon, you can use it at any time to return to an area.

Lock picks do not replenish, but as long as you have a reasonable amount of lock pick skill there are enough of them. You can buy them in Goldcrag at Goldcrag fine provisions (tanner) and from Mamara. In Strategy Central there is a list of all of the lock pick locations.

Also, remember that you can always change the difficulty level. While you may pick a wrong path on the skill tree, that is not as critical on the first two difficulty levels as the second two. I am and advocate for enjoying the game the way that you make your characters, not necessarily building the identical min-max party as everyone else.

It would be interesting to try the lottery system, though in many ways it reminds me of Jury Duty in the US where anyone competent to serve on a Jury finds a way out and you end up awarding millions of dollars to someone who stuck a cup of hot coffee between her legs. If I were to go down the lottery system bunny trail, I would have some qualifications which would get us a little closer to the technocracy. You would end up having to have advisors for the temporary politicians, just like Congress has staffs now, with the concern that the unelected (any in many cases un-regulated) staffers would gain even more power than they have today. There would of course be a lot of concern over the qualifications (age, education level, success in chosen profession?). Would you open it to all professions? 18 and over like voting age or keep the constitutional age requirements? If someone is unsuccessful, do you really want them governing you, but how do you define success?

Excalibur, in question 9 if you are trying to differentiate between Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, etc, the correct phrasing would be "Have you ever served in the military? If so, what branch?" In most Armies, some Air Forces, and the USMC, a division is an organization of 10-20K people

1. What is your age? (Be approximate, if you'd like) Close to twice most respondents 2. What part of the world do you live in? In which part of the world were you born? What countries have you lived in? East Coast US currently, born in West Coast US, lived in 7 US states, lived for two years in one European country, have visited 49 US states, one US territory, 8-10 Mexican states, a couple of Canadian Provinces, 8 European countries, 3 African Countries, 9 Asian Countries, 3 Caribbean Countries. 3. What is your native language? In what languages are you proficient? English, can read a little Spanish and Portuguese 4. Describe your ancestry. British Isles 5. Describe your gender identity and sexual orientation. Hetero Male 6. Do you have any religious or spiritual beliefs? If so, describe them. In what religious tradition(s) were you raised, if any? Christian 7. What is your relationship status? Do you have any children? Married with Kids 8. Describe your social class. Have you always been in this class? Middle Class, yes 9. Have you ever served in the military? If so, what division? Yes 10. What is your occupation (or former occupation)? What is your highest level of education (and your degree, if applicable)? Engineer, BS in Engineering, MS in Management

"Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Sir Winston Churchill, Speech in the Commons, 1947 I would argue that he was referring to a Republican form of government versus a Democratic form of government, since there really have not been any reasonably sized implementations of a Democratic form of government. In the real world I prefer a Republican form of government. In the ideal world, a true Democracy that would not vote itself bread and circuses, or a Dictatorship that allowed individual human rights would be better. In the real world, the differences between a Dictatorship, Theocracy, absolute Monarchy, Communist State, Anarchist State and Technocracy tend to disappear. Also in the real world, most Monarchies have become essentially republics and many republics (like the US) have moved closer to Democracies than what their constitutions (for those of us who have them) originally envisioned.