So crazy. This whole Mayan doomsday prophecy stuff all amounts to nothing more than an ancient form of the y2k bug.
I've often imagined getting together a crew to do a remake of Office Space , only where everyone would be wearing Mayan outfits, carrying chisels, and complaining about having to rework all these bloody great stone calendar wheels.
If I only had the time, and the budget...
Cheers,
live DVD laying around.
Lying around. Lying
It may not be corruption of the language. It may simply be evolution of the language. Language changes over time. Speakers choose the most suitable word for their porpoises. If you suggest otherwise then you are laying.
I *wish* I were laying... with my wife!
Aww yeah, you know what I'm saying... I'm talking 'bout business time.
You know how I know?
Because it's Wednesday.
And Wednesday night is the night that we usually make love...
(Apologies to Flight of the Conchords.
You are not supposed to put both '0x' and 'h' to indicate a hex number.
That's not a hex number, that's his signing key in cleartext.
That's amazing! I've got the same combination on my luggage!
:-P
... the Nintendo model is to achieve the highest fun/$ ratio and to provide entertainment.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. Absolutely.
It sure looked to me like Sony and Microsoft were busy off in a pissing match about which system had better graphics. Meanwhile, Nintendo was busy making thingsfun.
I've watched friends play some of the most successful FPS games, and frankly the game play is monotonous and boring. They sit intent with their thumbs flying and not much else going on, largely isolated. If they're communicating it's with mostly unknowns on a headset (yes there have been a few WoW marriages, I know). The "Level too easy? Make everything darker" design mocks the past generations' attention to level complexity. They hire big-name actors to attach videos to the game when the story lines make Sierra games look like Hamlet. I really don't get this, since a well-constructed game ought to have quite a market advantage.
Conversely, I've watched other friends play, say, Wi Bowling, and they were legitimately having a fun time. The game was kind of stupid, but it was an enabler of social interaction, not a substitute for it. This becomes a much richer experience because the game is just a focal point, not the entirety of the experience. Not entirely unlike a dart-board in tavern in that way.
Mario Kart Wii, for instance, might be kinda simple, but it's an absolute blast to play with a bunch of friends and a few beers. And my wife and I have had a lot of fun playing co-op Donkey Kong Country Returns. And we've had good laughs watching neighbors and nephews and nieces playing Super Mario Wii, at one moment cooperatively where they help each other through hard parts, in the next moment competitively where they pick each other up and throw each other into lava pits. But we're all in the same room -- instead of spread out across the interwebs, communicating only via headsets, we're jostling each other as we round difficult corners, whomping each other with sofa cushions to distract attention as Bowser attacks. The social element is just a lot stronger with Nintendo games than pretty much any other I've played, and at least part of that is thanks to the console design.
Cheers,
As regards globalization and the redistribution of American wealth, Obama is mostly a sucker, and a chump. Mittens, on the other hand, is an active player, pushing hard to enrich all the rest of the world at America's and Europe's expense.
You've got it wrong here -- Mitt is working hard to enrich himself. Any other beneficiaries of his actions, such as China's economy, are purely accidental. If Romney thought he could get as rich as quickly by creating jobs in the US, you can rest assured that he'd do just that. But for now, the US is still relatively close to (if not at) the top of the global economic pile, so any arbitrage to be made from outsourcing will negatively affect the US.
Cheers,
Again, where's the money? I see a claim that this group scoops in $7 million a year, That's less than the US branch of Greenpeace ($10 million a year). There are some huge climate change advocacy groups out there. There's no similarly huge anti-AGW advocacy group out there. Contrary to these assertions, I see plenty of money for scientists and activists who shill for climate change and peanuts for their opponents.
Look under the table.
C'mon, khallow, you're smarter than this. Think it through:
1. Assuming that what you see in money terms is what's actually going on, where's this money coming from? What's to be gained monetarily by shilling for climate change? Who would want to fund this, and for what gain?
2. Assuming that what you see in money terms is not the whole picture, who's to gain by not being public about funding? What vested interests are there that might be harmed by any policy changes designed to halt or slow AGW? How much money do these vested interests have?
3. Think too about regulatory capture -- there's less need for advocacy if you've already bought yourself congressional representation. Who's more likely to hold sway in the legislature: Greenpeace, or the hydrocarbon industry?
Seriously, khallow, I think better of you than this particular line of argument -- what you see is not what you get, in many cases.
Cheers,
Seriously, you're being an ass. I've read through this page of threads, and you've made numerous posts including mistakes of judgment that come across as lies; and then you insult your potential audience. You may have good points, but they are lost or devalued by your tone and approach. Simply as a style of argumentation, your posts wind up more alienating than convincing. This is not the way to bring people over to your way of thinking.
For others, this video evidence that rs79 posted in the GP is a talk hosted by the Sydney Institute. The Sydney Institute itself may or may not be pushing a conservative anti-AGW agenda; at any rate, Gerard Henderson is Executive Director and his wife is the Deputy Director (staff roster), with some online commentators describing them as "neocon" in their views. Gerard Henderson was an adviser to former Australian PM John Howard, whose general political leanings were quite close to those of George W. Bush.
In short, the source is a bit suspect.
The talk itself is about an hour long. I haven't listened to the whole thing yet, but the speaker is Murry Salby, professor of environmental science at Macquarie University in Australia and the university's Climate Chair (university staff page). His basic argument is that global temperature controls CO2 levels, not the other way around. His views are somewhat controversial, perhaps unsurprisingly, and are discussed and refuted to some extent in numerous articles at Skeptical Science, among other places.
...
In all fairness, I could probably dissect most arguments similarly and dig up links to this or that refutation. However, my point here is not to try to claim that Salby is wrong -- I don't know that, and I don't have the educational background to make that judgment. My point, instead, is that Salby's views do not appear to be the authoritative end-all-and-be-all slam-dunk finishing end to the argument of whether humans are responsible for global warming.
Cheers,
MS has an intel based tab due for delivery in 2 month and apps for it can be side-loaded. Businesses will probably suck on these, unless winders 8 proves to be too much of a pain in the arse.
I don't know about you, but I certainly don't want to suck on *anything* that's a pain in the arse. That's just not hygienic.
No, not even if it's been removed, washed, and properly sanitized.
:-P
You forget it is also the home of the brave. Where 'brave' means so scared of the extremely remote chance you might be the victim of terrorism that they gladly give up their freedoms.
Land of the oppressed, home of the cowards.
Fun fact:
"Brave" comes from roots meaning something more like "bravado", i.e. "bragging, boasting, showing off, posturing". Even in English usage since the 15th century, the core meanings for much of that time had to do with being "showy", and where courageousness was intended, the word meant "showing courage", rather than "being courageous" or "having courage" -- so one could be 'brave' by pretending to be a bad-ass, yet still ultimately acting like a chicken-shit.
Sadly, that seems rather apt when applied to the behavior on display in the US of late...
please use correct grammar when calling someone a moron or else its less credible - its "you're" a moron
Please use correct grammar, including correct apostrophe placement, when correcting someone else's grammar.
I guess this is evidence of karma of a sort.
Muphry's Law. (No, that's not a typo.
Cheers,
We are clearly starting to see the dark underside of humanity. The Internet has allowed a huge amount of anonymous and pseudo-anonymous activity and this has pretty much turned over the rock so everyone can see the squishy, many-legged stuff that is buried in the human psyche.
"Starting to see"? No offense, cdrguru, but you sound like someone who has never read any history. All of that squishy, many-legged stuff has been happily striding across the breadth and scope of human experience for some time now. Arguably, since we've been human. (And by some accounts, much longer than that even -- pretty much all of humanity's ugly behaviours have clear predecessors / analogs in other primate species.)
Cheers,
No, seriously, it sounds like he isn't getting any, in which case he might want to try clomipramine / Anafranil.
Apparently around 5% of users report spontaneous orgasm when yawning.
I wish more things in life had side effects like that. Of course, that would necessitate certain changes to one's wardrobe, but I think the minor additional hassle would be well worth it...
:-P
Holy fucking Christ. What else is out there waiting to be compromised and exploited?
Your sanity?
Sheesh, I thought that's what the presidential debates were for
:-P
You can program pacemakers to shoot lawyers in the face?!!!
Ooo, now there's an idea!
Beaker, get in here, I have something I want to show you...
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." - Bert Lantz
