The chief researcher -- a (now-former) professor at Columbia University, with PhD's in para-psychology and psychology -- was paying volunteers $5, and informed them he was studying the effect of negative re-enforcement on ESP ability.

...but to qualify for benefits in the first place, you have to lose your job through no fault of your own. People who get fired for cause have no claim to benefits...

Untrue.

To be precise, in order to disqualify yourself from receiving benefits, the employer must be able to give sufficient evidence of "willfull misconduct" while performing your job, and evidence that said misconduct was harmful to the business.

The definition of "misconduct" is very clear in the eyes of the law: if you usually arrive late for work, and are warned about it prior to being fired, that often constitutes misconduct. If you're fired because your employer was dissatisfied with your job performance, however, you are normally still elligible for benefits.

This is the case in both CA and IL, and while YMMV, I doubt it's much different elsewhere. IANAL, but I've had to deal with all of this recently.

http://www.illinoislegalaid.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.dsp_content&contentID=100

Some predators' vision (or, more accurately, both its visual filtering/sorting mechanisms and mental-visual acuity) is based on movement, rather than on categorization of a shape a shape as "yummy" or "scary" (aka, how a human's vision works).

Thus, the "freeze-tag" maneuver is a fairly decent way to evade some predators. If it fails, it's not so costly of a decision that it precludes the prey from deploying any counter-measures or running like hell.

There's a really well-written and interesting article elsewhere on Gamasutra that describes how Thief's "sensory" system worked. Great read.

The original link seems to be having trouble with broken images, so here's the Wayback-Machine version.

The original, if you are interested.

This is an excellent idea.

the crew would be turned into "chunky salsa"

Ahh, a fellow proud owner of the ST:TNG Technical Manual, I see! I would read that book before I went to bed every night (when I was supposed to be reading To Kill a Mockingbird or something equally useless).

Tell that to all the jerks who pad their CV's and make honest job-seekers like me look like chumps.

I dunno, there's a scene near the end of the game that let your character act deliciously cruel, to the point of shivers.

SPOILERS COMING
---
I'd played the light-side path the entire game, paragon of virtue, etc. Just for fun, right before I had to decide either to continue do-gooding or to embrace my destiny, I saved. "Let's see what this dark side gig has to offer," I thought.

With my saber, now crimson (natch), humming away, I approached my party who, until that moment, thought I was more virtuous than Jesus and Superman combined. Mission, the runt, wouldn't accept I was who I claimed I was. I gave her a choice: embrace the path of hatred, or suffer by it. She chose.. poorly.

That, in itself, isn't the evil part. Anybody can kill an annoying blue girl. What was fun was how I did it. You see, I posed the "by my side or by my saber" choice to everybody, including the wookie Zaalbar -- Mission's life-long infinity-bestest friend in the universe -- who, as payment for saving his life, had sworn a wookie life-debt pledging himself to me until his death.

Oh, this is too perfect, you guys.

I looked Mission square in the eye, and ordered my Wookie to honor his sacred vow. I ordered him to murder his best friend in the world. And he did it. He bludgeoned the turncoat into a blue pudding with her own dainty little arms.

He hated me for it, naturally. More than anything in the world, he hated me. I loved him for it. His primal fury. His unfathomable sorrow. I drank from him, as if he were a fountain. It satiated me.

I thanked him.
---

Now that's some good evil!