Callie

...I'm not even sure how it ended up blank. It appears fixed from my end now. Also, Diprosopus. I remember clearly thinking he wasn't some sort of troll. Heh Originally Posted By: Kelandon We had some fun arguments in late 2007 and early 2008. Whatever happened to those, anyway? Alec went away and I settled down...

Originally Posted By: Slarty Is it the one about laying eggs? That was my favourite. The one about lolcats. I asked if Scorpius ever made straightforward posts and he promptly replied with a link to pillow-y mounds of mashed potatoes. Yeah...

Yay! *is reading a thread started by Scorpius...*

I love how one has to travel through Canada to get to New York.

I don't remember Nevada looking so green! Edit: Eek! Zoom in and use street view! Edit 2: "Your system may not meet the minimum requirements for 8-bit computations."

Not to spoil the fun here, but I was wondering if anyone besides Alorael had their own faction ideas.

I don't remember if *i called it Northern Waters initially, but all of the games played were titled Northern Isles.

China is oh-so lacking in the political freedom department. I would tend to call that a major downside. <---Is an engineering major.

You never mentioned any of your downsides.

Originally Posted By: Jewels in Black Why'd you want to live in Chicago anyway? There are nice parts of Chicago.

Strategy games often feature a variety of different factions which exhibit a number of advantages and disadvantages. If you were a leader of a faction in a strategy game, what do you think your advantageous and disadvantageous traits would be? This can be a broad description that encompasses most games, or a more specific list tailored to one specific game. Try to keep yourself balanced, but don't forget to include unique strengths! For example, this is what kind of traits I'd assign myself in SMAC (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri). It's similar to one of the in-game factions, although they're my favorite anyway. Click to reveal.. +1 Economy - Capitalist initiatives +1 Research - Highly mathematical +1 Industry - Engineering emphasis +1 Efficiency - Bureaucracies highly scrutinized Free Trade - Increased income from treaties and non-military pacts. -2 Probe - Skeptical of intelligence agencies -2 Support - Neglected defense budgets -3 Morale - Inherently pacifist -3 Police - Resists authority, drone riots may lead to destruction of base facilities Non-Interventionist - May not pronounce Vendetta, may not form military pacts, may not commit atrocities, may not participate in planetary elections, does not participate in sanctions, may not provide or receive loans, and may not violate diplomatic agreements of any kind. Military units may not leave borders during peacetime. Agenda: Democratic, Free Market Aversions: Police State, Power Priorities: Build, Discover Tech: Biogenetics

I remember Iffy briefly making a satellite board called the Roost. It was utterly spammy and soon disappeared. CRF came into being a short time later.

It's been snowing where I live, so my beloved tulips, grape hyacinths, and lilac blossoms have failed to peek their heads out, although they generally don't bloom here for another month or so. This reminds me of how much I've been neglecting the photo thread!

You are vastly underestimating Slarty's powers of procrastination.

Don't tell that to Paul Simon.

I got Exile II off of a Mac Cubed disk when I was eight or nine. That disk kept me entertained for a long time.

Toby-Linn is still a mod as far as I know, but she hasn't been active in a while.

For some reason I think that guy strangely resembles a dog.

Both of his accounts were banned, and he was also banned from communicating on these forums by proxy.

I was under the impression that Postaroni, Pizzabella was still one million posts. I guess *i chose to be merciful.

Originally Posted By: Actaeon I would assert that it's impractical to talk about the economy WITHOUT at least some anecdotal evidence. Statistics are abstract; experience is concrete. Certainly, nationwide trends are important, but to most people, things are as good as they seem to be. It's about how hard it is to find a job, and how far your paycheck goes if you have one. That can still be measured. If you can find an appropriate sample that's representative of the whole population then it ceases to be anecdotal and is instead a statistic.

He also lives in Michigan, IIRC. Originally Posted By: Alorael —Alorael, who also has trouble swallowing the idea that the Bush and Obama administrations' financial policies are so similar. Bush presided over a fairly strong economy, except for the small recession at the beginning of his term and the global financial crisis at the end. Obama has been grappling with the crisis all along, trying to rein in war spending, and facing complete deadlock on budgetary problems. The Bush years were years of bad finances; Obama followed a few years largely of inaction with years of being stymied. To most people, no, to issues I care most about, yes. My economic views are very right-wing--mostly laissez-faire, so in my eyes both administrations advanced a corporatist policy combined with an excessive regulatory climate and inflation, all the while accruing massive amounts of debt. This applies to other aspects as well: their foreign policies might as well be identical, they both support the drug war, they both favor large-scale deportations of immigrants, they both allow civil rights violations (no judicial process, support of DOMA, etc.), they both abuse executive power, and they're both altogether statist. Edit: Oh, and the whole faith-based initiative stuff.

Obama had a significant democratic majority in both houses of congress at one point. There was some significant division in his own party when it came to certain legislation, but many presidents have had to work with a lot less. I don't personally place emphasis on what's generally referred to as "leadership skills," but I'd imagine that if I was a Democrat I'd be somewhat disappointed. Originally Posted By: The Mystic Yeah, overnight results would be nice, but only a fool can believe such a thing is possible (and believe me, I know a lot of fools--not here, of course). It's just that it would be nice to get out of the twelve-plus-year "recession" I've been subjected to here in the U.S. Pardon me for being bitter, but I have a right to it after three presidential terms filled with the same old rhetoric and little to no visible action. It's not practical to make economic observations based on anecdotal evidence, because said observations really need to take the whole population into account in order to be accurate. No government can equally satisfy all of its citizens, and accordingly, no government can reasonably ensure increased prosperity for every single one of its citizens during his or her lifespan. I agree that the current administration has had little practical difference from the previous one, but that's not an opinion based on my own experiences (to be fair I was only eight years old at the beginning of the Bush administration).

Originally Posted By: Sylae ...a lot of people enjoy being critical because they think being president gives you magical superpowers or something. Uh-huh...

Originally Posted By: Verily we roll along Your symbols come out as gibberish We non-modly denizens do not have access to shiny HTML characters.