Dantius

I still think my favorite disgusting state fair food would have to be... deep fried Coca-Cola. I don't even know how they do it- it's a miracle of modern science. I still think magnets must be involved somehow though!

Originally Posted By: The Mystic There's one bad thing about mobs, though: I can never find an angry torchlit mob when I need one. The trick is to capitalize on a hatred of [insert minority here]. If you're looking to start an angry mob, I'd recommend going with witches- we haven't seen any angry mobs after them for a while, and they can still rile up hatred in the right places (cf. the controversy over Harry Potter a decade ago).

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES I agree with everything you said, except for the part where you said "these days." Gerrymandering has been an essential tool in various parties political arsenal since the mid-to-late 18th century, at the very latest. I'm sure it probably dates back to ancient democracy in Greece, too.

Originally Posted By: Enraged Slith Limbaugh is poison because some people actually believe what he says. I wish people were smart enough to avoid listening to that kind of garbage, but I guess thoughtful discussions aren't sexy enough for widespread appeal. Hey, that may be the first time in history the term "sexy" was used to describe anything pertaining to Limbaugh, at all!

Winning at radio is quite simple- just follow the example of Rush Limbaugh. All you need to do is keep up a constant stream of hate-filled bile against everything unlike you (also, abuse prescription medication) and you'll have millions of people at your beck and call. It just that easy!

Originally Posted By: Tirien Thats why I usually wait a year or so before getting a game of any kind, same goes for books. See, I agree with the part of that comment on books, but if you're on the Internet you just know that sooner or later someone's going to go all [Edit: Knights of the Old Republic spoiler] Click to reveal.. "OMG THE PC WAS ACTUALLY DARTH REVAN ALL ALONG!!!" on you and you won't see it coming, and then you won't want to play the game now.

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba Dikiyoba doesn't see a reason to ruin perfectly good eggnog by adding alcohol. I know, right? If you try to add alcohol in a sufficent quantity to even be able to taste it, all that results is that you water down the thick and creamy deliciousness of eggnog until you get some sort of thin milky alcoholic slush that's not good at all. I keep my alcohol drinking totally separate from my eggnog consumption, yessir.

I think we're all missing the point here. If Jeff puts his games on Steam, then there's a chance that they'll be a dark horse smash hit that takes the video game world by storm. If that happens, then someone IRL might ask us if we knew about this cool new Avadon series, and we'd be forced to reply that we liked Jeff's games better when they were still underground, and that he's a sellout for making them so popular with Steam. And then we'd all look like such hipsters.

Originally Posted By: Lilith in my defence pizza is pretty awesome Your pizza is for philistines! Deep-dish pizza FTW!

Originally Posted By: jecowa I just had to share this cool stuff from the beta. http://i.imgur.com/ltwJM.png ...I saw what you did there

Originally Posted By: Lilith Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel Originally Posted By: Sage of Numenor Hand drawn cover art by our dear author in person. That enough for you? ...wait, did you seriously imply here that Tolkien drew his own cover art? Almost never does an author design their own cover art (unless it's a graphic novel). almost never is an author J.R.R. Tolkien Yeah, Tolkien was a (closeted) fan of gesamtkunstwerk; I'm not surprised he drew his own cover art.

It's a copy of the Golden Age Hollywood classic, but we switch out all the actors for ones that suck, dumb down the plot, and throw in a bunch of special effects to confuse people. Then we hype it up a bit in commercials that try to cash in on the popularity of the original, and BAM instant classic.

I am amazed that this thread has made it to two pages. Go for three!

Originally Posted By: Rowen Its thesis named like this that make me feel inferior with my Spanish degree. If it makes you feel superior, laugh at how much more you're making/will make/have made than somebody with a degree in precambrian abiogeneic bacterial genetics. If not, then laugh at how much smaller your student loans were .

I think that Bloodmarsh's mascot was the spell Detect Undead...

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan And if he wasn't a dictator, I'd vote for him Don't worry, I feel the same thing about Vetinari!

Just tossing it out there, Arcturus was really the only interesting character in the series. Well, him and maybe Zeratul, but Mengsk is far and away the better of the two. And yes, the emotion I am feeling now is somewhat what I felt walking out of the theater after TPM and AOTC. EDIT: Big shoutout to Autodesk Maya, too. Wooo!

Originally Posted By: The Ratt I miss the good old days where, at the beginning of america, where congressmen, even if they were affiliated with a party, voted for whatever they thought was best. Too bad now if someone tries that they lose the support of their party and a majority of their funding. That never ever happened. We've had political infighting ever since the moment Washington left office. If anything, things were worse back then- would you image what would happen today if Joe Biden straight up murdered G.W. Bush? At least we've gotten past murder nowadays...

Originally Posted By: Excalibur 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. Nah, if there's no majority you just have to trust the Constitution and entrust the democratic process to the House of Representatives and hope that they make an informed and bipartisan decision based on the viability of the candidates and the necessary course for America instead of voting along party lin- ahahahaha I almost typed that with a straight face. I agree, although I think that should be number two priority, behind very short term limits (2 tops) for everybody except SCOTUS judges.

Originally Posted By: Until Morale Improves —Alorael, who has no idea how any company producing non-commercial software would ever stay in business if personal use weren't covered. I'd be willing to bet Autodesk could probably do it if they could find some way of insuring that companies still bought it and paid full price, but that's only because I'd be willing to be that there are only about a half-dozen private individuals in the world willing to shell out thousand(s) of dollars to obtain a software that they would otherwise not have access to, so they'd only be losing out on a tiny segment of their total revenue stream at any rate.

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity You guys couldn't even ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, though. That's like not being able to revise the part of your constitution that denies gravity. Because when I think of stable, tolerant, and egalitarian regimes, I think of Europe. Let's break this down by major powers (Warning, extreme sarcasm ahead!): Click to reveal.. (ENGLAND) Nothing says "equal rights" like oppressing a billion people for a hundred years in India, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East! Bonus points for still giving a non elected monarch legislative power in the Commonwealth, too- that's wonderfully democratic! Click to reveal.. (FRANCE) Hoo boy. By my count, since the US ratified one Constitution, France has had eleven different governments (Kingdom, First Republic, First Empire, Restoration, Second Republic, Second Empire, Third Republic, Free France, Vichy France, Fourth Republic, Fifth Republic, off the top of my head.) And even in the modern day (past 2000!), they have racial riots and are currently trying their hardest to suppress Islamic culture and immigration for ex-colonies. Click to reveal.. (GERMANY) Really? I would think this would be obvious. Um, well, see, there was this one democracy, and then there was this one dude who got elected to the vice-chancellorship, and then there was this fire, and then he appointed himself dictator, and, ummm... you know how it ends. Click to reveal.. It starts with the symbolic representation of a irrational number very close to 2.717 and ends with "-thnic cleansing" Click to reveal.. (RUSSIA) Mmm, Russia. The Motherland that we couldn't wait to get away from. Let's see, start with hundreds of years of total autocracy + religious pogroms against various non-Orthodox groups (Muslims, Jews), and then follow that up with the deadliest regime in human history, and now you've got a President Prime Minister self-appointed Dictator who murders journalists, authorizes killings on US soil, cracks down on free speech, and brutally suppresses any criticism of his policies or regime. Ah, the long Russian tradition of democracy! Now, maybe I'm being a little bit harsh here. So lest I be accused of bias or of spouting of a Sean Hannityesque "Best, freest, most greatest God's county" rant, here's what I can think of for the US: Institutionalized the trade of human beings for two hundred years, lagged behind Europe in abolishing it by a few decades Suspended habius corpus for about a year and arrested dissenters without charge a century and a half ago. Sanctioned essentially a war of extermination against an indigenous population, resulting in ~800,000 casualties. Debatable level of premeditation. Bout of isolationism and anti-Immigrant sentiment, ie banning of Chinese immigration for 61 years Nasty habit of supporting right-wing dictators during the Cold War (and even a few now. Hi Karzai!) Suppression of rights of ethnic minorities for about a century after Reconstruction. Largely remedied, though economic factors still hamper full integration (why is nobody doing anything about this?) Several (albeit very few and often small) examples of discrimination continue today, ex. gays and Muslims and Latin Americans, though nowhere near as large or as organized as it historically was. For every example on this list, Europe did something worse by an order of magnitude or two, so I think that it's just about "case closed" on the opinion that America is somehow way, way out of line and hypocritical compared to other countries, indeed, despite its (many, and sometimes grave) faults, our record on civil liberties and rights still remains head and shoulders above any comparable nation.

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. Two example off the top of my head: 1. The Democratic party manages to contain the animal-rights group, which also includes, interestingly enough, various anti-science fringes (no animal testing, for example). However, the Democratic party is also by far the bigger supporter of science, so you wind up with a party that half-hates science and half loves it. 2. The Republican party somehow manages to include both libertarians and crazy theocratic authoritarians pushing for strict biblical law. Again, why are these two groups not at each others throats? I just don't get it. And, of course, this poses large problems for people like me, who hold certain conservative views (I like aggressive foreign policies and am somewhat socially conservative), I'm also a big fan of lots of liberal views (i.e. almost all of the Democratic economic policy, despite the fact that I would personally benefit from Republican fiscal policy ). Do I vote Democrat and betray my opinions on foreign policy? Or vote Republican and, IMO, contribute to the destruction of the economy? And if I pick any third party, then they simply won't get elected, and I'll feel like I wasted my vote. Of course, this being America, any attempt to fragment one party into subgroups would simply result in the other becoming the de facto ruler of the country for years, and if they both split, all it would do is vastly magnify the current level of political bickering and division.

Originally Posted By: brumagem Soooo, does anyone know of a clean copy of XP or 95/8 for download anywhere? Well, there's no legal places to find it on the Internet- Microsoft certainly doesn't release them. And I probably wouldn't trust any sort of torrent or illegal download site, either- too many things that could be wrong, plus I doubt install files for decades-old OS-es aren't exactly in demand. You might want to try hunting an original install cd/floppy on Ebay or something, or seeing if a friend kept his original discs. Beyond that, I have no idea.

My bad, I thought I had sent my ranks to the contest email a while ago, but apparently the sheet with my ranking was just sitting on my hard drive. It's been sent it now, and I apologize for any delay.

Originally Posted By: Lilith what's an ETiSD does it phone home while holding a DSi upside-down Break it down into component parts. ETiSD ---> ET i SD ---> ET SD And the rest follows.