Call me when you have a Mentos and Coke powered drone.

Oh, by the way, the wind-powered drone has been around for very long time: https://youtu.be/5eAbMJuqHZA

I'll keep an eye out for you. Can you give me an idea of approximately what time (GMT) you play?

I'll look for you. What time, (GMT) do you normally play?

I'm a big fan of the GTA franchise, but I gotta say there was something about GTA V (story mode) that bothers me a little bit. And maybe it's part of what the developers were trying to do.

And that is, a life of crime can be pretty goddamn tedious. Now don't misunderstand me: parachuting off a building onto the back of a flatbed truck is great fun. Exploring the bottom of the ocean in a 1-man sub is hypnotizing. But the "drive over here, pick up that thing, now kill a bunch of guys and then drive over here" for what turns out to be slightly underwhelming rewards (and sometimes no rewards at all) is not all that much fun. Especially with the company. I like Franklin pretty well, and I found myself rooting for him (and making sure he invested his money wisely), but Michael is a self-pitying pain in the ass and Trevor's act starts to wear a bit thin (except for two particular moment that were kind of magical - more about that later).

So a life of crime is a tedious, low-reward endeavor. Maybe that's a good message now that I think about it, but it wasn't as much fun as turning Nico Bellic from a fresh-off-the-boat immigrant into a kingpin. GTA IV had an operatic, Scarface-like quality to the story that appealed to me. GTA V is like having to go to a retirement party for someone you don't really like all that much and having to hang with co-workers that you already get to see more than you want. But at least in GTA V the scenery is spectacular, which is more than I can say about the people at the retirement party.

I've just started the Online Mode and so far, it's a lot more fun, except I can see how having to do crimes with random people online who are mostly knuckleheads might also get tedious. I've had mostly good experiences with random online players so far. They seem to genuinely want to get the heist done instead of blowing themselves up. We'll see if I'm able to find some grownups to play online with. I'm betting it will make it a lot more entertaining.

OK, now for the two magical Trevor moments: #1 is when he's driving his older girlfriend, Patricia, back home to her husband, mob boss Martin, and Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now" comes on the radio and Trevor gets tearful. It was a little moving and hysterically funny at the same time. #2 magical Trevor moment is his encounter with fitness fanatic Mary Ann. "We belong together!"

So what happens when a tornado hits, rips off the 60 metre blades and throws them around?

You're right. This is why they don't allow cellular towers or satellite dishes in populated areas.

all the bird carcasses

It's really touching how concerned people proponents of fossil fuels suddenly become about wildlife when the discussion turns to wind energy..

http://www.theguardian.com/env...

You don't think artificially jacking wages up will have any impact on inflation?

That's correct. History has shown that increased wages have had a negligible impact on inflation.

If someone's labor is not worth the minimum wage they will just remain unemployed.

Don't think individually, think about the company's labor force as a whole.

If the company is profitable, isn't that proof that they're earning their wages?

Why is profitability always a factor in the salary increases of upper management but never a factor in the salaries of workers?

That's not true. In order to pay the McDonald's worker $15.00 an hour, they will have to basically double all of their prices

That canard has been debunked long ago.

We have seen big jumps in the minimum wage many times (many of them in my lifetime) and they have never resulted in equal jumps in prices. Because if those companies could increase those prices, they would have already, minimum wage increase or no.

so you are telling me businesses in seatle are opening in record numbers now right?? no one is leaving right???

Seattle is not only the fastest-growing city in the United States, but employment is growing there faster than the national average. Anywhere you go in Seattle, you see new commercial buildings going up. You think that's because businesses are leaving?

http://blogs.seattletimes.com/...

http://jobs.seattletimes.com/c...

Where I live one can survive on twelve dollars an hour.

Yeah, but some people want indoor plumbing. Go figure.

I think it will largely end up being a feel-good measure that well-off, well-meaning people can use to congratulate themselves about

And the LAST thing we want is for anyone to feel good about a few extra dollars in a worker's paycheck. Why, that's un-American!

I mean, if managements starts to see something good start to come from paying workers more, what's next? That's meddling with the primal forces of nature, is what.

This is also detrimental to businesses in the long term, since it means that increases to the minimum wage tend to be large and create a correspondingly large jumps in expenses.

It's interesting that you never hear this argument used in reference to extreme jumps in executive-class incomes.

Somehow, if a CEO's income goes from $40million to $60million, it's all, "Well, look how profitable the company has been." But for some reason, "Look how profitable the company has been." is never an acceptable argument for higher worker wages.

ALL of the cost of goods falls into only two categories: labor, and profit.

And one of those is nothing but a tax on productivity (profits).

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a 19th century philosopher who had a great debate with Karl Marx (Proudhon was opposed to centralized state ownership of anything), had some very interesting things to say on the subject of profits and their relation to labor. Even though some of his thought veered into anarchism territory, and later he went off the rails with some anti-semitic comments, his logical arguments about profits and capital are well worth considering.

A lot of what we take for granted about the relationship between capital, profits and labor are really just a construct of an economic philosophy embraced by the oligarchy benefited by it, and which is starting to show its limits in a global market in late-stage capitalism.

Does that go both ways- if the minimum wage went down then prices would deflate with it?

Almost certainly not as long as we have increased consolidation in the companies producing goods and services and in the labor market.