I hate to say this, but given the past, this is a good possibility. In Philadelphia, a police officer punched a woman in broad daylight, on a crowded street. There were scores of witnesses. All charges were dropped, and the judge ruled that "she fell into his fist." 1 month ago, NYPD officers killed a man using a chokehold which has been ruled illegal since the 1980's. Old Dominion police in June trespassed on a man's property, assaulted him, maced his entire family, all because he was standing on his porch recording them with a video camera. In Chicago, Skokie police refused to discipline an officer who was caught on film throwing a woman face first into a concrete holding cell bench, crushing the front of her skull. It wasn't until the DA stepped in that he saw charges. The police department refuses to admit wrongdoing.

This is exactly it. If the police had A) chosen not to selectively enforce their state's sunshine laws in an attempt to protect the cop over protecting the community, B) shown up to facilitate peaceful protest instead of showing up armed to the gills, the protests would have gone on relatively calmly. The issue of rioting sprang up when the police did neither, and instead chose to dedicate not only all of their local resources, but resources from several other police departments solely on the protesters. That left a lot of opportunity for rioters to take advantage of dips in enforcement elsewhere.

Too many. 2 work phones, 2 personal phones, 1 ipad, 1 mac mini, 3 macbooks, 1 pc laptop, 1 dd-wrt router acting as a wireless bridge, 1 ps3, 1 wii, 1 smart TV. I'm sure more will be coming in the future.

GOODBYE

Honestly, I thought they had proven that light diffuses too quickly for this to happen without a lens to concentrate it. Not that it's real science, but they tried to build the ancient "death ray" multiple times on Mythbusters and while they were able to get smoke, they weren't able to ignite anything. Maybe they're not so much "setting the birds on fire" as they are cooking them?

So, the majority of the articles I've read about this eruption, have potential dangers all along the scale. From "some ash" to effects similar to the eruption of Tabora (which caused crazy weather fluctuations as far west as north america, where it seeded clouds, was able to drop temps from 85 degrees to below freezing in hours, etc). It's getting hard to find real facts from FUD. If it's as big as Tabora, I would understand governments trying to mute the possibility because it would cause widespread panic. Any geo-geeks out there who can provide some hard facts?

I agree, but reddit has a big issue with stalking downvoters. If you post an unpopular opinion on one sub, it's not uncommon to see days of downvotes afterwards on completely beneficial, completely unrelated, helpful posts on entirely different subs. It's an acknowledged issue with the system. Basically, there needs to be a limitation on the number of downvotes a user can receive from a particular source. The hard part is doing this in a way that lets people rebuke someone who is being a genuine jackhole, but also prevents people from harassment.

It's a shame you posted that as AC, because "Humans are not rational creatures - they are rationalising creatures." is an EXCELLENT sig-worthy quote.

This is a pretty normal sociological phenomenon. Outside of tribal culture, people usually find some group that they best fit in with based on any number of demographic/sociological attitudes. I'm pretty sure there is a doctoral thesis in here somewhere for someone who's feeling squirrely. It's pretty fascinating.

I was a closed beta player. I think a big part of my loss-of-interest is that they've vanilla-ized each of the classes so much. The original players manual stated, for instance, that the mage was the highest damage dealing class, but in exchange, could likely be 1-or-2-shotted by some other classes. They were the epitome of the glass cannon. It defined the playstyle of the class. They had cool spells like invisability to enable a mage to attack while hidden (just once). They had khadgars unlocking. Hunters on the other hand, could do tons of damage, but also got to wear better armor, but as an expense, had to worry about sacrificing inventory space to store expendable ammo. I played vanilla, and then the first expansion. The classes were still unique, fun, and had that sort of a feeling. But making everything generic and getting rid of real defining abilities for each class has killed a lot of the fun. I want to trade the risk of being 1-2 shotted for being able to 1-2 shot other people. No class really feels like it stands out from the others so far as damage.

Obligatory: http://img.photobucket.com/alb...

I was really into PS2, and had been an avid PS player since the beginning. However, PS2 got a bit annoying after awhile. I didn't like how they limited you (unlike the original PS). The problem we had is every side on every server seemed to develop at least 1 "massive" guild that would just steamroll whatever they wanted with numbers. If you weren't in that guild, you basically scratched by. It made it un-fun.

They actually didn't do anything new and different. They basically put a few changes on FFXI and rebranded it as a new game. The locales weren't that different, the timer things were annoying, the races were the same (with a couple different letters different in the names)... it really didn't feel different. I'm saying that as a long time FFXI player.

My biggest issue is the huge push they put on players to pay extra cash.

You may enjoy guild wars/guild wars 2? The only big issue is that they really are heavy on the pay2play crap. Constantly getting drops and "chests" you can only open by buying "keys" that cost real world money.