Dantius

1. Alorael. As he carries his rifle everywhere with him, it is highly likely that it will a.) be on his person at the time, and b.) that his body will have ample ammunition on it. This gives me a weapon, ammo, and a barrier with which to stop the horde's onslaught. 2. Randomizer. Clearly, his position as one of the two exhaustive catalogers of all items everywhere in every Spiderweb games will make him a natural at categorizing and admitting new members of Exilvernum. Plus, I bet the robes and stone daggers he'd be handing out would be perfectly ordered. 3. Jeff will be the one to punish me, most likely by making another Avernum remake that I won't play, but will buy anyways in some sort of futile roundabout way of getting him to remake Geneforge I.

Originally Posted By: Master1 The trick with French is that masculine can be used inoffensively. ...That's true in English, too. "The student dropped his books" is perfectly correct if the gender of the student is unknown.

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S Originally Posted By: Spires and Tunnels —Alorael, who also doesn't think anyone really wants the job of curating the recommendations in a way that makes them helpful, accurate, and good advertising copy. Apparently, you aren't familiar with the things I spend my time avoiding doing when I am trying to avoid my life. FYT

Originally Posted By: Sylae DANTIUS, please get out of my iPod.

Such... such cuteness...

"Critical thinking and writing skills" are learned by pretty much every college major, when you think about it. It's hardly something you need an English major to prove you can do, the way you would need an accounting or engineering degree.

Originally Posted By: Nioca Originally Posted By: Dantius I made an offer to organize and arbitrate a Spiderweb Software chess tournament at CalRef (the offer, the tournament would be held elsewhere). Just thought I'd copy that over here in case anybody else was interested. Interested, but where would the tournament be held, in what medium, and with what time constraints? Well, standard FIDE tournament controls (that's 90 min/40 moves +30 min iff time expires for you laymen) would kind of suck, so I was thinking maybe thirty minutes each, no delay? The format I was thinking would be over an AIM room, where the players would post your moves, and I'd keep time and record the games at my end. That way, spectators could watch the games in progress.

Originally Posted By: Excalibur Originally Posted By: Illegal Furniture I think we can pretty much all agree that a robust media with high professional standards is an important component of a healthy democracy. Professional standards in the media? What kind of chicanery is this? The Economist, The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The BBC, The Wall Street Journal*...

I made an offer to organize and arbitrate a Spiderweb Software chess tournament at CalRef (the offer, the tournament would be held elsewhere). Just thought I'd copy that over here in case anybody else was interested.

Originally Posted By: Master1 I think you'd also have a hard time convincing the government that those majors would be worth the money. Yes, STEM degrees are important and will help develop the nation and all that jazz. No one is arguing against that point. We have to keep in mind, though, that those aren't the only important things. No, but there's a fairly good argument that those are the only degrees that should be subsidized by the government, as that would incentivize more people to take them, whereas if every degree were subsidized, more people would flock to Art History than Materials Science simply because it would be substantially easier, and so the government gets stuck with the tab for someone who will, in all likelihood, have a low ROI for society.

Holy crap you people are intense. Not building a specialist character is a moral failure on the part of the participant? Designing a generalist character is equivalent to an assault on your fellow players? Claiming that a character who stabs other players in the back is better for the party than one who happens to be bad at combat? Wow, I'm starting to be glad I have no time to play anymore. AIMHack got craaaazy since I left.

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S Zyngavernum: Exile With Friends. Jeff wouldn't dare... Wait, would he?

Geneforge 1 was first, and Geneforge 1 is also the best. Not just my favorite. The best.

Originally Posted By: Enraged Slith Originally Posted By: Master1 The 63,000 was total cost, including estimated books and travel expenses. It's a bit ridiculous, and I'm comparing it to liberal arts colleges with total costs over 50,000. A BIT!? How can you justify spending that much money on an education? I mean, if you're getting a finance or economics degree from UC, then your starting salary is probably going to be six figures at some hedge fund or investment bank, so it's not as ridiculous an investment as it looks.

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S I challenge you to show me a single debate topic (one that was actually shaping up to be a debate - and "debates" about Blades of Geneforge don't count) that has been locked in three posts, or even ten or fifteen posts. We've had a few long-running debates recently about controversial topics like racism and bullying. They tend to attract warnings from mods to keep things civil, which I know ruffles some feathers, but I don't remember any of those actually being locked in a long time. I think I started one on Israel a year or so ago that was locked after four posts, but I don't really feel like trawling through General for other examples. I am fairly sure it's happened a couple of times since I've arrived, at least.

Originally Posted By: Aʀᴀɴ (I guess what you refer to is on page four there. Yeah, Overwhelming wasn't a nice person.) I'd bet fifty bucks that an identical topic wouldn't make it three posts, tops before a lock today. Pity. All the fun topics of discussion are also the ones people get "hurt feelings" over.

Originally Posted By: Harehunter Whatever ever happened with Lyndon Lerouche? Lyndon LaRouche is still photoshopping Hitler-staches onto pictures of the current President and having them handed out at various political rallies by college students, at least as far as I'm aware. Dude's even crazier than Paul. Good thing he never got the same level of recognition.

Originally Posted By: Lilith and if y'all don't knock it off you'll find out exactly why ziggurats may be harmful to your health You've made that pun before. Lilith, I am disappoint. Surely you can do better!

Originally Posted By: Harehunter I have Johann Sebastian, but I left him Bach at the house. Originally Posted By: Harehunter I watched a romantic movie about a classical musician, but it baroque my heart. Don't make me destroy you.

Originally Posted By: Excalibur (In fact, the Political Compass site ranks him as only slightly more left-wing than Romney. President Obama is significantly more right-wing than Candidate Obama. ) You know, I used to think that site was somewhat more credible than, say, the Nolan chart. Then I read this passage: Quote: It's therefore understandable that many of them speak warmly about the most right wing of all the Republican contenders, Ron Paul. Paul is an extraordinary figure in this most extraordinary election. At 76, the sprightly, softly-spoken Congressman commands enormous youth enthusiasm and support across the spectrum - from Ralph Nader to the John Birch Society. Nader, who has spent decades campaigning for greater regulation of corporations, has somehow put his lot in with the most deregulatory of all the candidates. Many liberals appreciate Paul for his promise to bring the troops home, slash the defence budget and, among other things, his principled opposition to the NDAA. The harsh social Darwinism of Paul's core beliefs, however, appear to be of relatively little importance to such progressives. Similarly. his opposition to abortion and his support for creationism, which have endeared him to the Christian Coalition. Paul, the only conviction politician among them, no doubt enjoys a wider support base than the primary results suggest As the front-running three continue to bruise each other shadow boxing, he might yet emerge as the last man standing at the Convention. As president, Paul could be expected to reach widely beyond the Republicans in his appointments, further blurring party distinctions. While the liberal aspects of Paul’s social policies are anathema to neo-cons, he remains the Republicans' best hope of achieving the presidency I think I just threw up a little.

Originally Posted By: Trenton the Crazed Twilight Teen Hey! Why are we more dangerous than grown adults? Even the average 17 year old? Well, society has had many times longer to install a sense of social expectation into adults. Teenagers, on the other hand, have underdeveloped or impaired reasoning abilities, a sense of personal invulnerability, the physical strength to match or exceed older adults, and often no sources of comparable income to an adult. If I override my nausea and hop into a paranoid suburban mindset for a moment, I can see why I would be scared of teenagers.

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba Originally Posted By: Goldenking Writing has a relatively low necessary skill for production - with basic literacy, one can write a story. Hahahahaha. Dikiyoba. Well, nobody said it had to be a good story. But I wouldn't say it controversial to claim that it's fairly easy to write a (bad) story in and of itself. The ability to write isn't some ability that you magically posses that the rest of us lack, Diki. You might be able to write better and longer and more involved stories, but every single person on these boards is easily capable of fleshing out a page or two with a plot in a few hours.

Entirely a function of the thing I'm walking for. A Groupon deal for half off a sushi restaurant? Maybe a half-mile, mile tops. A hundred million dollars in diamonds? I'd walk to Tierra del Fuego for that.

Red Hare is my favorite Pony.

Wait, what? 91% of the options under "music" cover the junk current tastes of musical genres that haven't even been around for a century, and the every single prior Western musical composition that was ever made anywhere before ~1900 gets subsumed into a single category? I mean, at least break it up into "baroque/classical/romantic" if you're going to do that, instead of forcing those of us with taste to all huddle in a single category filled with subgenres of stuff many of us don't even like in the first place!