Callie

This ties into the class analysis thread, but I think it's interesting to see people's opinions summed up in a poll. Also, what are your favorite class skills? Edit: Grr...I made the polls in one order, and UBB puts them in the reverse.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: VCH</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Stunning Bash for some reason almost never stuns. What's up with that? Well, on Torment any way.</div></div> I noticed this even on normal difficulty. The only reason I use it is that it seems to consistently do more damage than a normal hit, at the cost of vitality. Also, a somewhat spoiler-y note about shamans:

My favorite game quote would probably be the description of pants in Exile III, and the description of Auroran Drop Bear Repellent in EV Nova, but I don't remember the exact wording.

I stared at this for ten minutes thinking it was a post-count thread. Congrats!

In Nevada, if that's what you mean. I neglected to mention the class is really called Ancient and Medieval Culture. The university includes it as part of its "core humanities" requirement for all bachelor's degrees (or something like that).

I remember being excited when I heard that NASA might send missions to Titan, but my interest has declined significantly. There was also talk of sending man to Mars, but the excitement just isn't there because there's already so many pictures of it and there was quite a bit of publicity about the Mars rover, and as Alorael noted, it's costly. This cartoon comes to mind when reading this thread:

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Drakefyre used to be an admin. Once there were 4 of them and now there are only 2, *i and Spidweb. Kriszann (spelling?) is no longer an admin? Did this change with the UBB change? <--- 's knowledge of the forum's history is severely lacking.

I find that I have picked up 1984 again because I love it so dearly. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen... I really like the texts I've read in my core humanities class recently: Oedipus Rex, Antigone, and the some of Plato's Socratic Dialogues (Euthyphro, Crito, and Apology).

I had a well-deserved two-star karma before the switch, so it isn't that much of a demotion.

Originally Posted By: Triumph Originally Posted By: Nikki. Oh, also, to that one guy who asked how to get a title: asking for a title ensures you never get one. Though, to be fair, in my opinion, having never had one, custom titles are a lot like newbiedom. The moment you're enough of a forum-celebrity to recieve/merit one, you're probably not really going to care a lot about it. The first rule of custom titles is you do not talk about custom titles? Mmm...much like karma. I changed my title to "Of Mournful Countenance" or something like that when the switch to the new UBB was made. It wasn't original anyway, so meh.

Huh, I think title have only changed twice the whole time I've been here. I'd imagine it'll be awhile until they change again.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, Genesis, Exodus, and The Odyssey for class and Jon Stewart's America: The Book and John Stossel's Give Me a Break for my own leisure. Edit: 3000 posts

*bump* CH 201 - Ancient and Medieval Culture CHE 102 - Introduction to Chemical Engineering II CHEM 202 - General Chemistry for Scientists and Engineers II MATH 283 - Calculus III PHYS 180 - Physics for Scientists and Engineers PHYS 180L - Physics Laboratory

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES Off topic: Excalibur, what does your avatar represent? I made myself an avatar out of boredom. It doesn't represent anything. Originally Posted By: Lilith ... dude, my entire argument was premised on the fact that directors don't care if their corporations succeed or fail in the first place. Whether the government bails out a corporation is irrelevant as far as curbing directorial malfeasance goes, because by then the directors responsible for the failure have already moved on. Your argument is like saying that giving medical treatment to people with malaria is responsible for the proliferation of mosquitoes. Maybe I wasn't very clear with what I was saying, but it's Christmas morning and I don't really feel like explaining myself at the moment.

Originally Posted By: Lilith A corporation doesn't have a will of its own. It has directors, who often don't care if their corporation goes under because they get paid either way and can move on to ruin some other corporation. You'd think people would stop hiring terrible directors at some point, but the people who are making decisions on who to appoint to the board are in practice generally the other directors, who don't care either and are supported by large institutional shareholders who are perfectly happy to see directors effectively running pump-and-dump schemes on their own company's stock, as long as they know when to dump. Managerial culture in the US is pretty much rotten to the core. Basically your fundamental mistake here is treating corporations as if they had agency independent of the people in charge of them, and ignoring the fact that the people in charge often actively benefit from running them into the ground. In other words: I don't think this would be too much of a problem if the government hadn't adopted a policy of corporate welfare. Directors have already run their corporations into the ground, but the government bails them out on the idea that they're "too big to fail." Quote: Originally Posted By: Excalibur Corporations and governments are both composed of self-interested people and both will use money for disagreeable purposes, but it's at least difficult for a corporation to violate my rights. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkertons a corporation with a staff of armed employees larger than the US Army at the time, hired primarily by other corporations that wanted to violate people's rights The U.S. government had used military force in the interest of business as well. There was rampant corruption, but this was a century ago. I highly doubt that the same kind of situation could occur today.

Originally Posted By: KrataLightblade A government and a corporation are similar in lots of ways. They're a way for a small number of people to collectively run a large organization that takes money and invests it into their own interests. The difference is, a corporation's interest is self-fulfilling (Get bigger, be more successful, make more money) and a (non-tyrannical) government's interest is it's people (Have a healthy, stable population of workers, thinkers, soldiers, and other useful human resources). A corporation has a strong incentive to satisfy its customers, because if the customers don't like their product, they'll go out of business (unless corporate welfare is going on). Governments have an incentive, but to a much lesser degree, as they are elected only periodically. They can dissatisfy their customers and still stay in business as a whole, unless they do something really bad and spark a revolution. Both governments and corporations are run by people acting on incentives, and both usually out of self-interest. I don't believe that most politicians (as with business owners) uphold the interests of the People more than their own. Quote: One exists to take your money and keep it. The other exists (obstensibly) to take your money and redirect it for the greater good. Frankly, if you're going to put irrational trust into either, why make it the one whose best interests ARE to screw you over? I find this misleading. Corporations don't take money: the money is given in exchange for a service. They don't hide all of that money in a bank account either. They employ people and expand their business, causing economic growth. Sure, a lot of people in the corporation get rich and could care less about charity, but isn't that the same with a government? Yes, I'm obviously quite cynical, and sometimes I even wish I was more optimistic. In the long run I would rather give my money to a corporation that will give me a product in exchange, than to a government that will use some of the money to fund foreign wars and arrest people for reasons I don't agree with. Corporations and governments are both composed of self-interested people and both will use money for disagreeable purposes, but it's at least difficult for a corporation to violate my rights.

Originally Posted By: Tirien What did we do to deserve this punishment?! . It happuns, sometimes.

I already did. It was with a gift card though, so yeah...

Originally Posted By: Tirien Thats why I usually wait a year or so before getting a game of any kind, same goes for books. I did...I bought it last May. It's my luck that when I buy something it will go on sale a short time later.

Originally Posted By: The Ratt Edit: It happened already. Civ IV complete for less than $10 I just couldn't resist. Oh wow...and to think I spent $50 on it at some point.

Bacon vodka sounds terrible. Then again, so do a lot of things.

The entire year has been cool here. It only got into the 100's a few times in the summer, and the temperature has rarely rose above freezing over the past month. There was even a blizzard this year, which doesn't happen too often in Nevada.

Originally Posted By: Dantius I think the single biggest problem with American politics is the fact that in order for a small focus group to get its voice heard, it needs to essentially allow itself to be absorbed by a party in order to gain widespread support, and the "all or nothing" mentality of politics means that you wind up with the crazy ridiculous party makeups that should honestly be spending more time fighting amongst themselves than the other guys. If there's one single part of the constitution that should be changed, it's the electoral college. In my opinion, that's why the U.S., for most of its history, has only had two major parties. A candidate must receive a majority of the electoral votes to be elected president, so it's pretty difficult for anyone to win if there are five or six good contenders.

Republicans and Democrats are not terribly different from each other in the long run. They both voted for measures such as the Patriot Act, the Defense of Marriage Act, and many other anti-liberty bills. They both create big government, they're both prohibitionist, they both seem to have favored our foreign wars, and they have both voted for corporate welfare. Republicans were opposed to the health care bill, but their version was not terribly different. There are only a handful of major issues in which their views are noticeably different, such as immigration policy and Don't Ask Don't Tell. Most of the opposition in Congress seems to originate from partisan bickering, not from a big difference in political ideology. Clinton got lucky with the .com boom that created a lot of extra tax revenue.

Thanksgiving was meh, but the day after was more exciting. The university I go to ended Boise State's 24-game winning streak!