There were also a lot of people who lost their right to vote because they were wrongly labelled as felons by a private company Kathryn Harris hired to scrub the voters lists.
And then there were all those illegal absentee ballots, some postdated as much as a week after the election, that did get counted. The only way Bush could have won is if all these scams were pulled off successfully. Amazingly, they were.
Maybe you can explain further how ignoring the subversion of our democracy equates to "growing up"? I just can't see the connection.
He was not elected by the rules of election. The rules of election would have seen all the votes counted. We were still three weeks before the real deadline.
He was installed because the Supreme Court made new law that day, something conservatives claim to abhor. They interpreted the 14th amendment in a way that no other court has ever done. Then, because they knew their guilt, they added a clause to Bush vs. Gore saying that their decision could never be used as a precedent in any other case.
This isn't political opinion, folks, this is history. You do yourselves a disservice by trying to burying it. Obviously it's a question that will have to be put on the back burner for a while, but it will be revisited.
Interesting. Merely noting the historical reality that Bush was installed by the Supreme Court after they stopped the counting of votes is enough reason for you to close your ears to everything a person says?
Seems to me that you really want to close your ears, then. That you're looking for any excuse to do so. I can see where that would be a useful attribute for a Bush supporter. It would help you when dealing with things like his military desertion, insider trading, denouncing manual recounts in Florida while requesting them in New Mexico and signing them into law in Texas, and so on. I guess whatever works for you.
I think Congress should do a formal declaration of War, just like in WWII. This will make it clear that there is a different set of rules in place temporarily and that these new rules will no longer apply once the war ends.
If you don't formally declare, then you wind up eroding peacetime liberties, which won't be restored when war is over.
Who said anything about killing all Moslems? The topic on hand is the killing of terrorists. Start with those who have "claimed responsibility" for fatal bombings -- in other words, confessed to murder. Continue with those heads of states, and their cabinets, that support terrorism. Yeah, it's war. But it's necessary, unless you want to see a mushroom cloud over an American city one day.
This is a great opportunity for advancement of Moslem societies, as they'll have a little help in the removal of their most ignorant, medieval elements. Maybe they'll now be able to catch up to the level of democracy, freedom, and prosperity of, say, sub-Saharan Africa. Maybe you should ask Germany and Japan if eliminating their evil leaders was a good thing or not for their countries.
No, the way to put it to rest is to kill the people that did it and everyone who lent them aid, as should have been done a long time ago.
We could have got real with Bin Laden after he took out those military barracks a few years ago. Instead, we postured and blew some holes in the sand with a few cruise missiles. Now we see the price of half-hearted strategy and wishful thinking when it comes to implacable enemies.
Next time it will be a lot worse. Think missing Russian nukes, or Anthrax. This isn't a fight we can avoid, as much as we wish to. It's time to finish it now before the price is even more than we can bear. And it's time for Moslems everywhere to decide which world they want to belong to.
Outside access for pilots only
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More On Tragedy
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· Score: 2
You miss the point. If there's no way for the terrorists to get to the pilots, the pilots will retain control of the plane, thus removing the larger threat of the plane being used as a missile.
The plane might land with a cabin load of dead passengers, or it might simply be blown up by the terrorists, but it's still removes at one stroke the possibility of this tactic being used again. I think it's a great idea.
I don't believe Palestine had anything to do with this. People who still haven't advanced beyond the rock-throwing stage of technology are not likely suspects for this sort of thing.
There's lots of countries with beefs with America, some of them legitimate, but I didn't see them celebrating the deaths of American civilians, like it was a fucking wedding.
And I utterly reject your implication that Americans brought this mass murder on themselves and that we should back off because of it. If Palestinians really want war with the USA, they can have it. All the Palestinian hopes and dreams could be crushed in a single afternoon, if that's the way they want to play.
A lot of third world fuckheads think Americans are soft, that they don't have the will to use force. The truth is that it's just been a long time since any of them have done anything significant enough to truly, deeply anger the American people. That anger has been awakened. Trifle with it at your most extreme peril.
I agree with the larger principle, but in this case, it's hard to buy it. I saw people of all ages and genders with genuine joy on their faces at the prospect of thousands of American civilian dead, including a good number of their own people. Anyone who has spent time in New York knows that it isn't exactly Arab-free, and a lot of Arabs must have died yesterday.
I thought to myself, what kind of thing could even make Americans so happy they'd literally dance in the streets? I decided to wash my hands of these barbarians forever. Fuck them. I'm not advocating violence towards Palestinians, but I am saying that if someone else did extreme violence to them, it wouldn't be met with a protest from me. Palestinians have been removed from the list of people I give a shit about.
No, the really skilled terrorists are the ones trained by the CIA to fight the Soviets. Osama Bin Laden is one of them. Maybe arming Moslem fanatics with the best weaponry and teaching them advanced espionage techniques to avoid detection by superpowers wasn't a good idea.
They will pay a price, have no worries about that.
The Palestinians had built up a fair bit of good will before the peace process. People were starting to see them as victims of Israel.
Then they rejected the best deal they're ever going to get, and they returned to the practice of sending their children forth to do battle with armed soldiers. Public opinion shifted soon afterward back to Israel.
Now, though, laughing and celebrating, alone in the world, while even Afghanistan is condemning the attack...they've blown it, once and for all. No Palestinian cause will ever be taken seriously by Americans again.
I have taken their side in several online debates in the past, but I never will again. As far as I'm concerned, piss on Palestine. Sharon can send in the tanks and take them all out and you won't hear a peep about it from me.
I used to live in New York. I've spent a few afternoons in the World Trade Center. My wife used to work in an office building directly across the street from it. Sometimes I'd accompany her and bum around in the immediate vicinity while she worked.
It's hard to get across how large they are, and how many people are in them. You see the twin towers in pictures surrounded by what looks like half-pint buildings, but those buildings are actually skyscrapers the equal of any found elsewhere. It is Manhattan, after all, the capital of the planet in many ways. But the World Trade Center was so much huger it made those other skyscrapers look puny. It was like a sci-fi concept, a city in a tower. So many dead people I can hardly bear thinking about it.
A few disjointed points:
1) Who did this? It's very peculiar. They would have needed inside help to pilot the planes and get weapons on board. These were domestic American flights after all, and they hijacked four at once. This seems beyond the ability of a "death to infidels" yahoo, even Bin Laden. Look at how clumsy the first bombing was, with the rental van. It could be Bin Laden, but if it is, this elevates him to the status of a true supervillain. Like a comic book or action movie character, he'd have the ability to bypass any security system with ease.
Supporting this theory is the fact that only religous lunatics do suicide bombing attacks. You didn't see Timothy McVeigh sticking around to enter paradise. Also, Bin Laden did attack the World Trade Center before. But still, this seems so much beyond anything he's previously done, or anyone has previously done, I have large doubts.
If not a terrorist, then a government. But what government would do such a thing, knowing it's a declaration of war? The US will certainly retaliate lethally against any nation that is behind this, count on it. So I really don't know what to think.
2) What was the destination of the fourth plane? Why does everyone keep saying Camp David? Look it up on a map, that plane was heading straight for Washington. Yes, the target could have been Camp David, but why are they ruling out other targets? I would have aimed straight for the Capitol myself, just like in that Tom Clancy novel.
3) Speaking of Tom Clancy, the one book I've read by him, and probably the only book of his I'll ever read, is indeed the relevant book. Can't remember it's name, but it's the one where Japan goes to war with the US. After Japan's defeat, a frustrated Japanese-American pilot flies his fully fueled commercial jet airliner straight into the Capitol during Inauguration Night, killing the newly elected President and virtually all of Congress. The only surivor is the new vice-President, former National Security Advisor Jack Ryan...
It's a cheesier than hell cliffhanger ending, a crude "buy my next book and find out what happens" ploy that would be embarassing even for a pulp serial, but it is an interesting concept. I remember reading it and thinking, "Wow, why doesn't somebody ever do that? What a great idea for a terrorist". Still, even Clancy didn't conceive of four hijackings at once. This day is so strange, it really does make action movies seem plausible. Never had that feeling before.
My wife read the next book, where Jack Ryan assumes the Presidency. She said the first thing he did is immediately repeal Ford's executive order prohibiting assassinations by the American government. He dismissed it as a piece of paper signed by a guy who was never elected and set out to kill everyone involved with the attack. I have to admit, I hope Bush does the same.
I think my favorite non-violent game ever was Bubble Bobble. I wasted many hours playing that with friends in university. It's really an excellent game with two players, since they both play at once and must co-operate to clear a screen.
Seems to me there were a lot of games like that before the PC became standard with it's single joystick port. A real shame that good 2 player games are only to be found on consoles these days. I miss my old Atari 800 with it's four joystick ports. Now there was a great game-playing machine.
Did you make up that lie yourself or did a right wing foundation make it up for you?
Rates in California in 1996 were 40% above the national average. It was causing businesses to leave California and was what prompted the deregulation scheme in the first place. Once that happened, speculators (mainly Dubya's buddies in the Texas energy industry) bought up all the Californian power producers they could and ratcheted up the wholesale rates because they had California at their mercy. Large corporations make record profits while the citizens of California pay the tab -- a typical outcome of the deregulation craze.
Luckily for Republicans, they never have to question whether or not their policies work because they have the purity of ideological conviction. Just like how the Bush family's "loot the treasury and give it to the rich" program first resulted in breaking the budgets of Texas, Florida, and now the nation as a whole.
Funny how the two parties have totally flipped on the issue of fiscal responsibility, isn't it?
Yes, some people consider killing a fertilized egg cell to be equivalent to murdering an actual human being. No one disputed that. The question is whether or not such a view point is "ignorant". There was nothing in your post to suggest that it isn't, despite your tone of condescension.
Religous conservatives are ignorant of science, history, and usually even their own scripture. For example, in Exodus 21:22 it's explicitly stated that killing a fetus is in no way equivalent to killing a person. The penalty for the first is a fine, the penalty for the second is death.
Fundamentalists reject the accumulated knowledge of the human race because they think all questions are answered in a single book (pick one, any one) written thousands of years ago in our barbaric past. This, my friend, is the very definition of ignorance. Fundamentalists might not like being called on it, but it doesn't make the charge any less true.
They're the same group of people that have opposed every technological change throughout history. They'll have as much success with this crusade as they have with all their others. And they won't hesitate to enjoy the fruits of this research in their old age.
In another generation we'll be shocked that foolish people ever objected to regenerating new livers and such and be glad that we've moved beyond the ignorance of our ancestors.
Who said anything about children's books being "bad"?
The House at Pooh Corner and the Wind in the Willows are two of the best books I've ever read, and I'd throughly enjoy reading them again even though I'm 33. As you say, they're "good, timeless stories" and they don't have "adult" themes. But they're still children's books. Just like Harry Potter. There's no stigma to it.
Gibson? I thought that was from Cryptonomicon by Stephenson.
Kohan is one of the better games from this year
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Kohan for Linux Ships
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· Score: 1
Kohan is a real time fantasy strategy game with a lot of design enhancements that solve problems that have plagued RTS games. Note: I've only played the Windows version.
It deals with forces on the company level, not individual troops. Most similar games like Warcraft, Age of Empires, etc. would require you to give orders to each individual in a troop, which results in annoying clickfests. In this game, you form companies of seven individual units each (one leader, four front line troops, two specialists) and simply give orders to the companies as a whole. Most of the time you're only dealing with half a dozen companies or so, so unit management is infinitely easier than it has been with any game of this type before.
Also, companies replace their losses on their own over time, including specialists, which takes a lot of the micromanagement out of combat. It also makes the computers tendency to kill your special units a lot less annoying. You won't have to do a minute of furious clicking to replace your losses, you'll just to direct your surviving companies to a safe place to heal.
Finally, they've done away with the most of the annoyance of upgrading bases. You don't have to place individual buildings, you just direct your towns to build whatever improvements you can afford. Again, most micromanagement is removed.
All that being said, Kohan feels a little flat. Most missions aren't really that difficult, and upgrade paths are obvious and rarely diverted from. Visually, the game is lacking, too. For instance, your companies troops form up in hexagons, a formation rarely found on the battle field:)
From a game design viewpoint, though, it's an amazing piece of software. I bet the next true classic of the genre will be the one that shamelessly rips off the good ideas in Kohan and weds it with a more visually appealing combat engine like the one in Age of Empires.
They can elect politicians that won't wipe their ass with their Consitution. As soon as any appear.
That's about it, I'm afraid. The Supreme Court will, in theory, correct abuses of the Constitution. But the problem is they don't initiate actions on their own, they only respond to challenges launched by others. There really should be a mechanism for automatically reviewing new legislation for Constitutional affronts, but there isn't. The closest thing we have is citizen's groups like the ACLU or NRA, and they don't offer anything close to 100% coverage of new legislation.
So the Constitution is broken over time in various ways until you get the situation like you have today, where some parts of the constution (like the tenth amendment) might as well not even exist.
No, patents == possibility to put billions in pharmaceutical bank accounts while spending additional billions on advertising and bribing politicians.
Drug companies set new records in profit every year while telling us that they just can't survive unless the US government stamps out anyone else in the world who would dare to (gasp!) produce medicine for the sick. Don't believe me? Check this out.
Imagine if the current situation had existed when penicillin was discovered. How many millions of people would be dead just so American drug companies can have unprecented profits and pay their CEO's 40 million dollar salaries?
Brazil should be commended for being the first country to extend the finger to American pharmaceutical companies. Brazilian leaders have said that the lives of their own citizens matter more to them than the profits of foreign executives. Only now, and only here, would this be considered a radical position. Hopefully the rest of the world will eventually follow suit.
Yes, Drepper has no evidence that Stallman is a control freak, except that Stallman tried to steal the whole project out from under him. Whether or not it's true, Drepper did detail the incident at length. Did you miss all that?
Christ, read the article before you pontificate next time.
Kohan is a real time fantasy strategy game with a lot of design enhancements that solve problems that have plagued RTS games.
It deals with forces on the company level, not individual troops. Most similar games like Warcraft, Age of Empires, etc. would require you to give orders to each individual in a troop, which results in annoying clickfests. In this game, you form companies of seven individual units each (one leader, four front line troops, two specialists) and simply give orders to the companies as a whole. Most of the time you're only dealing with half a dozen companies or so, so unit management is infinitely easier than it has been with any game of this type before.
Also, companies replace their losses on their own over time, including specialists, which takes a lot of the micromanagement out of combat. It also makes the computers tendency to kill your special units a lot less annoying. You won't have to do a minute of furious clicking to replace your losses, you'll just to direct your surviving companies to a safe place to heal.
Finally, they've done away with the most of the annoyance of upgrading bases. You don't have to place individual buildings, you just direct your towns to build whatever improvements you can afford. Again, most micromanagement is removed.
All that being said, Kohan feels a little flat. Most missions aren't really that difficult, and upgrade paths are obvious and rarely diverted from. Visually, the game is lacking, too. For instance, your companies troops form up in hexagons, a formation rarely found on the battle field:)
From a game design viewpoint, though, it's an amazing piece of software. I bet the next true classic of the genre will be the one that shamelessly rips off the good ideas in Kohan and weds it with a more visually appealing combat engine like the one in Age of Empires.
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Not true. 1.58 million votes were never recounted even once. You're just repeating one of the many, many lies the Bush campaign told that month.
There were also a lot of people who lost their right to vote because they were wrongly labelled as felons by a private company Kathryn Harris hired to scrub the voters lists.
And then there were all those illegal absentee ballots, some postdated as much as a week after the election, that did get counted. The only way Bush could have won is if all these scams were pulled off successfully. Amazingly, they were.
Maybe you can explain further how ignoring the subversion of our democracy equates to "growing up"? I just can't see the connection.
He was not elected by the rules of election. The rules of election would have seen all the votes counted. We were still three weeks before the real deadline.
He was installed because the Supreme Court made new law that day, something conservatives claim to abhor. They interpreted the 14th amendment in a way that no other court has ever done. Then, because they knew their guilt, they added a clause to Bush vs. Gore saying that their decision could never be used as a precedent in any other case.
This isn't political opinion, folks, this is history. You do yourselves a disservice by trying to burying it. Obviously it's a question that will have to be put on the back burner for a while, but it will be revisited.
Sadly, no. Approximately 1.58 million votes were never recounted even once . Not even through the legally mandated automatic recount.
The Bushies did every manoevre they could to prevent the counting of votes. I think we all know why.
Interesting. Merely noting the historical reality that Bush was installed by the Supreme Court after they stopped the counting of votes is enough reason for you to close your ears to everything a person says?
Seems to me that you really want to close your ears, then. That you're looking for any excuse to do so. I can see where that would be a useful attribute for a Bush supporter. It would help you when dealing with things like his military desertion, insider trading, denouncing manual recounts in Florida while requesting them in New Mexico and signing them into law in Texas, and so on. I guess whatever works for you.
I think Congress should do a formal declaration of War, just like in WWII. This will make it clear that there is a different set of rules in place temporarily and that these new rules will no longer apply once the war ends.
If you don't formally declare, then you wind up eroding peacetime liberties, which won't be restored when war is over.
Who said anything about killing all Moslems? The topic on hand is the killing of terrorists. Start with those who have "claimed responsibility" for fatal bombings -- in other words, confessed to murder. Continue with those heads of states, and their cabinets, that support terrorism. Yeah, it's war. But it's necessary, unless you want to see a mushroom cloud over an American city one day.
This is a great opportunity for advancement of Moslem societies, as they'll have a little help in the removal of their most ignorant, medieval elements. Maybe they'll now be able to catch up to the level of democracy, freedom, and prosperity of, say, sub-Saharan Africa. Maybe you should ask Germany and Japan if eliminating their evil leaders was a good thing or not for their countries.
No, the way to put it to rest is to kill the people that did it and everyone who lent them aid, as should have been done a long time ago.
We could have got real with Bin Laden after he took out those military barracks a few years ago. Instead, we postured and blew some holes in the sand with a few cruise missiles. Now we see the price of half-hearted strategy and wishful thinking when it comes to implacable enemies.
Next time it will be a lot worse. Think missing Russian nukes, or Anthrax. This isn't a fight we can avoid, as much as we wish to. It's time to finish it now before the price is even more than we can bear. And it's time for Moslems everywhere to decide which world they want to belong to.
You miss the point. If there's no way for the terrorists to get to the pilots, the pilots will retain control of the plane, thus removing the larger threat of the plane being used as a missile.
The plane might land with a cabin load of dead passengers, or it might simply be blown up by the terrorists, but it's still removes at one stroke the possibility of this tactic being used again. I think it's a great idea.
I don't believe Palestine had anything to do with this. People who still haven't advanced beyond the rock-throwing stage of technology are not likely suspects for this sort of thing.
There's lots of countries with beefs with America, some of them legitimate, but I didn't see them celebrating the deaths of American civilians, like it was a fucking wedding.
And I utterly reject your implication that Americans brought this mass murder on themselves and that we should back off because of it. If Palestinians really want war with the USA, they can have it. All the Palestinian hopes and dreams could be crushed in a single afternoon, if that's the way they want to play.
A lot of third world fuckheads think Americans are soft, that they don't have the will to use force. The truth is that it's just been a long time since any of them have done anything significant enough to truly, deeply anger the American people. That anger has been awakened. Trifle with it at your most extreme peril.
I agree with the larger principle, but in this case, it's hard to buy it. I saw people of all ages and genders with genuine joy on their faces at the prospect of thousands of American civilian dead, including a good number of their own people. Anyone who has spent time in New York knows that it isn't exactly Arab-free, and a lot of Arabs must have died yesterday.
I thought to myself, what kind of thing could even make Americans so happy they'd literally dance in the streets? I decided to wash my hands of these barbarians forever. Fuck them. I'm not advocating violence towards Palestinians, but I am saying that if someone else did extreme violence to them, it wouldn't be met with a protest from me. Palestinians have been removed from the list of people I give a shit about.
No, the really skilled terrorists are the ones trained by the CIA to fight the Soviets. Osama Bin Laden is one of them. Maybe arming Moslem fanatics with the best weaponry and teaching them advanced espionage techniques to avoid detection by superpowers wasn't a good idea.
We made him, now it's time to recall him.
They will pay a price, have no worries about that.
The Palestinians had built up a fair bit of good will before the peace process. People were starting to see them as victims of Israel.
Then they rejected the best deal they're ever going to get, and they returned to the practice of sending their children forth to do battle with armed soldiers. Public opinion shifted soon afterward back to Israel.
Now, though, laughing and celebrating, alone in the world, while even Afghanistan is condemning the attack...they've blown it, once and for all. No Palestinian cause will ever be taken seriously by Americans again.
I have taken their side in several online debates in the past, but I never will again. As far as I'm concerned, piss on Palestine. Sharon can send in the tanks and take them all out and you won't hear a peep about it from me.
Revenge is not always terrible. Often it's both sweet and just.
And next time you choose to lecture us on ethics, grow a pair and post with your account, will you?
I used to live in New York. I've spent a few afternoons in the World Trade Center. My wife used to work in an office building directly across the street from it. Sometimes I'd accompany her and bum around in the immediate vicinity while she worked.
It's hard to get across how large they are, and how many people are in them. You see the twin towers in pictures surrounded by what looks like half-pint buildings, but those buildings are actually skyscrapers the equal of any found elsewhere. It is Manhattan, after all, the capital of the planet in many ways. But the World Trade Center was so much huger it made those other skyscrapers look puny. It was like a sci-fi concept, a city in a tower. So many dead people I can hardly bear thinking about it.
A few disjointed points:
1) Who did this? It's very peculiar. They would have needed inside help to pilot the planes and get weapons on board. These were domestic American flights after all, and they hijacked four at once. This seems beyond the ability of a "death to infidels" yahoo, even Bin Laden. Look at how clumsy the first bombing was, with the rental van. It could be Bin Laden, but if it is, this elevates him to the status of a true supervillain. Like a comic book or action movie character, he'd have the ability to bypass any security system with ease.
Supporting this theory is the fact that only religous lunatics do suicide bombing attacks. You didn't see Timothy McVeigh sticking around to enter paradise. Also, Bin Laden did attack the World Trade Center before. But still, this seems so much beyond anything he's previously done, or anyone has previously done, I have large doubts.
If not a terrorist, then a government. But what government would do such a thing, knowing it's a declaration of war? The US will certainly retaliate lethally against any nation that is behind this, count on it. So I really don't know what to think.
2) What was the destination of the fourth plane? Why does everyone keep saying Camp David? Look it up on a map, that plane was heading straight for Washington. Yes, the target could have been Camp David, but why are they ruling out other targets? I would have aimed straight for the Capitol myself, just like in that Tom Clancy novel.
3) Speaking of Tom Clancy, the one book I've read by him, and probably the only book of his I'll ever read, is indeed the relevant book. Can't remember it's name, but it's the one where Japan goes to war with the US. After Japan's defeat, a frustrated Japanese-American pilot flies his fully fueled commercial jet airliner straight into the Capitol during Inauguration Night, killing the newly elected President and virtually all of Congress. The only surivor is the new vice-President, former National Security Advisor Jack Ryan...
It's a cheesier than hell cliffhanger ending, a crude "buy my next book and find out what happens" ploy that would be embarassing even for a pulp serial, but it is an interesting concept. I remember reading it and thinking, "Wow, why doesn't somebody ever do that? What a great idea for a terrorist". Still, even Clancy didn't conceive of four hijackings at once. This day is so strange, it really does make action movies seem plausible. Never had that feeling before.
My wife read the next book, where Jack Ryan assumes the Presidency. She said the first thing he did is immediately repeal Ford's executive order prohibiting assassinations by the American government. He dismissed it as a piece of paper signed by a guy who was never elected and set out to kill everyone involved with the attack. I have to admit, I hope Bush does the same.
I think my favorite non-violent game ever was Bubble Bobble. I wasted many hours playing that with friends in university. It's really an excellent game with two players, since they both play at once and must co-operate to clear a screen.
Seems to me there were a lot of games like that before the PC became standard with it's single joystick port. A real shame that good 2 player games are only to be found on consoles these days. I miss my old Atari 800 with it's four joystick ports. Now there was a great game-playing machine.
Did you make up that lie yourself or did a right wing foundation make it up for you?
Rates in California in 1996 were 40% above the national average. It was causing businesses to leave California and was what prompted the deregulation scheme in the first place. Once that happened, speculators (mainly Dubya's buddies in the Texas energy industry) bought up all the Californian power producers they could and ratcheted up the wholesale rates because they had California at their mercy. Large corporations make record profits while the citizens of California pay the tab -- a typical outcome of the deregulation craze.
Luckily for Republicans, they never have to question whether or not their policies work because they have the purity of ideological conviction. Just like how the Bush family's "loot the treasury and give it to the rich" program first resulted in breaking the budgets of Texas, Florida, and now the nation as a whole.
Funny how the two parties have totally flipped on the issue of fiscal responsibility, isn't it?
Yes, some people consider killing a fertilized egg cell to be equivalent to murdering an actual human being. No one disputed that. The question is whether or not such a view point is "ignorant". There was nothing in your post to suggest that it isn't, despite your tone of condescension.
Religous conservatives are ignorant of science, history, and usually even their own scripture. For example, in Exodus 21:22 it's explicitly stated that killing a fetus is in no way equivalent to killing a person. The penalty for the first is a fine, the penalty for the second is death.
Fundamentalists reject the accumulated knowledge of the human race because they think all questions are answered in a single book (pick one, any one) written thousands of years ago in our barbaric past. This, my friend, is the very definition of ignorance. Fundamentalists might not like being called on it, but it doesn't make the charge any less true.
They're the same group of people that have opposed every technological change throughout history. They'll have as much success with this crusade as they have with all their others. And they won't hesitate to enjoy the fruits of this research in their old age.
In another generation we'll be shocked that foolish people ever objected to regenerating new livers and such and be glad that we've moved beyond the ignorance of our ancestors.
Who said anything about children's books being "bad"?
The House at Pooh Corner and the Wind in the Willows are two of the best books I've ever read, and I'd throughly enjoy reading them again even though I'm 33. As you say, they're "good, timeless stories" and they don't have "adult" themes. But they're still children's books. Just like Harry Potter. There's no stigma to it.
Gibson? I thought that was from Cryptonomicon by Stephenson.
Kohan is a real time fantasy strategy game with a lot of design enhancements that solve problems that have plagued RTS games. Note: I've only played the Windows version.
It deals with forces on the company level, not individual troops. Most similar games like Warcraft, Age of Empires, etc. would require you to give orders to each individual in a troop, which results in annoying clickfests. In this game, you form companies of seven individual units each (one leader, four front line troops, two specialists) and simply give orders to the companies as a whole. Most of the time you're only dealing with half a dozen companies or so, so unit management is infinitely easier than it has been with any game of this type before.
Also, companies replace their losses on their own over time, including specialists, which takes a lot of the micromanagement out of combat. It also makes the computers tendency to kill your special units a lot less annoying. You won't have to do a minute of furious clicking to replace your losses, you'll just to direct your surviving companies to a safe place to heal.
Finally, they've done away with the most of the annoyance of upgrading bases. You don't have to place individual buildings, you just direct your towns to build whatever improvements you can afford. Again, most micromanagement is removed.
All that being said, Kohan feels a little flat. Most missions aren't really that difficult, and upgrade paths are obvious and rarely diverted from. Visually, the game is lacking, too. For instance, your companies troops form up in hexagons, a formation rarely found on the battle field :)
From a game design viewpoint, though, it's an amazing piece of software. I bet the next true classic of the genre will be the one that shamelessly rips off the good ideas in Kohan and weds it with a more visually appealing combat engine like the one in Age of Empires.
They can elect politicians that won't wipe their ass with their Consitution. As soon as any appear.
That's about it, I'm afraid. The Supreme Court will, in theory, correct abuses of the Constitution. But the problem is they don't initiate actions on their own, they only respond to challenges launched by others. There really should be a mechanism for automatically reviewing new legislation for Constitutional affronts, but there isn't. The closest thing we have is citizen's groups like the ACLU or NRA, and they don't offer anything close to 100% coverage of new legislation.
So the Constitution is broken over time in various ways until you get the situation like you have today, where some parts of the constution (like the tenth amendment) might as well not even exist.
No, patents == possibility to put billions in pharmaceutical bank accounts while spending additional billions on advertising and bribing politicians.
Drug companies set new records in profit every year while telling us that they just can't survive unless the US government stamps out anyone else in the world who would dare to (gasp!) produce medicine for the sick. Don't believe me? Check this out.
Imagine if the current situation had existed when penicillin was discovered. How many millions of people would be dead just so American drug companies can have unprecented profits and pay their CEO's 40 million dollar salaries?
Brazil should be commended for being the first country to extend the finger to American pharmaceutical companies. Brazilian leaders have said that the lives of their own citizens matter more to them than the profits of foreign executives. Only now, and only here, would this be considered a radical position. Hopefully the rest of the world will eventually follow suit.
Christ, read the article before you pontificate next time.
Truth
Kohan is a real time fantasy strategy game with a lot of design enhancements that solve problems that have plagued RTS games.
It deals with forces on the company level, not individual troops. Most similar games like Warcraft, Age of Empires, etc. would require you to give orders to each individual in a troop, which results in annoying clickfests. In this game, you form companies of seven individual units each (one leader, four front line troops, two specialists) and simply give orders to the companies as a whole. Most of the time you're only dealing with half a dozen companies or so, so unit management is infinitely easier than it has been with any game of this type before.
Also, companies replace their losses on their own over time, including specialists, which takes a lot of the micromanagement out of combat. It also makes the computers tendency to kill your special units a lot less annoying. You won't have to do a minute of furious clicking to replace your losses, you'll just to direct your surviving companies to a safe place to heal.
Finally, they've done away with the most of the annoyance of upgrading bases. You don't have to place individual buildings, you just direct your towns to build whatever improvements you can afford. Again, most micromanagement is removed.
All that being said, Kohan feels a little flat. Most missions aren't really that difficult, and upgrade paths are obvious and rarely diverted from. Visually, the game is lacking, too. For instance, your companies troops form up in hexagons, a formation rarely found on the battle field :)
From a game design viewpoint, though, it's an amazing piece of software. I bet the next true classic of the genre will be the one that shamelessly rips off the good ideas in Kohan and weds it with a more visually appealing combat engine like the one in Age of Empires.