Roguelike Dungeons of Dredmor, if you haven't played it yet, is worth the price of admission. Play it on hardcore mode for a very old-school Nethack experience. (You die, you die. Start over.)
It's a bit biased in favor of wizards, but it has an overall very interesting class generation system and challenging gameplay.
Plus, it's funny. Actually funny. But with good core mechanics beneath it all.
>>Here's the kicker - they ran the laptop with the wifi switched off, but only measured the RF output of the laptop in that state. They didn't perform - or performed, but didn't publish - the obvious control experiment.
Yeah, I noticed that, too.
Seems very suspicious how they conducted their control.
Things 4E does right or improves on: basic class progression, skills, character creation, feats (barring bad ones like Expertise), hit points. Minions. Emphasis on making the DM's life easier. Emphasis on position and movement in combat, and the ability to actually tank enemies. Working to make sure PCs get treasure they want rather than using random tables. Better healing system. Better balance between classes. The character generator was absolutely amazing. Overall I consider 4E to be a very good first edition of a new RPG system. I haven't kept up with the more recent books which introduce different class styles as my play group had abandoned 4E by the time it came out. We played it for a year and were tired of two encounter nights.
Agreed mostly on: Fighters finally being able to tank monsters (though the way they did it wasn't especially elegant - there's both opportunity attacks and immediate interrupts that a fighter can trigger, and they're not the same) Minions (though they're kind of broken in a bad way - far too easy to sweep off a battlefield) The character generator. (though they pitched it into the bin and released a horrendous online version - thank goodness for CBLoader) Making the DM's life easier (premade monsters is good, but having monsters be completely different from PCs, rule mechanics-wise, is bad)
Disagree on: Class progression (some higher levels have powers that are worse than ALL of the lower levels' powers, and some levels are just dead levels) Treasure (the wishlist is awkward, magic item creation is awkward, and random treasure generation is wonky in 4e) Healing system (healing surges are a pathetic mechanic for a variety of reasons, but if you completely ignore them, yeah healing works better in 4e) Recent books (there aren't any - they're down to just a couple books a year now. =)
Problems with 3.5, on the other hand, are IMO far more severe and fair more inherent to the system. Class balance is and always will be a huge problem as long as Vancian casters are present.
I fixed the balance problems in 3.5 in Living Planar. Essentially, there's two major problems with spellcasters in 3e/3.5: 1) Broken spells 2) Metamagic
Things like Divine Power, Gate, Polymorph/Shapechange, etc., are broken spells. They blow the power curve so far out of the water, that it didn't make any sense in 3e (from a powergaming perspective) to ever play a fighter, since you could just be a cleric and run around with a persistent Divine Power up all day and be like a fighter, but with 9th level spells.
I'm a pretty good powergamer, and in Living Greyhawk I ended up making a pretty powerful fighter-type, but he still needed a spellcasting buddy to give him his Greater Magic Weapons and Magic Vestments to take him into the extreme zone. Off the top of my head, he was a fighter/barbarian/ex-monk/ranger/tribal protector/holy liberator/templar/exotic weapons master that got a huge number of attacks per round (10? Maybe? Something like that.) took no damage from spells (his saves were really high, and he had both evasion and mettle), and was immune to all mind-affecting magic. But that took a LOT of work to put together, and while he was better than most spellcasters, as I said, he still really needed a buddy to GMW his spiked chain, feet, and armor spikes.
So in Living Planar we removed or drastically toned down all the broken spells in the system. Shapechange provided a size bonus to physical stats instead of replacing them, for example, so you couldn't be a spellcaster with an 8 Str and run around as a 40 Str monster all day long.
Free and Reduced Metamagic was the other reason spellcasters were so broken... free metamagic meant tossing an Empower or Maximize onto a spell for free, and reduced meant you could empower spells for 1 spell level instead of 2, for example. So when stacked together, they created a quadratic e
4th Edition has a lot of powers, as you say. It also has a lot of feats and magic items.
"Fortunately", most of them are utterly terrible. Of the 3000 feats in the game, there's maybe 300 that are good. So that's 90% dross that's utterly wasting the time of the players and space in the source books (which they hardly print any more anyway). A similar ratio exists for powers and magic items.
The reason for this was that, unlike with 3e, the 4e PHB1 set the power bar very very low, and they've been (admirably or not) trying to do a good job keeping the power curve fairly flat. So if you have a "+1 to damage" feat at 1st level, and they're not going to release anything better than that, then it leaves you with a pretty boring field of options. They've even done a second pass over most of the overpowered options, to bludgeon the power curve back down.
While this is a refreshing change over the power creep model most RPGs use (Rifts, I'm looking at you), because they set the power bar very low to begin with, most people who get into the system realize how, well, boring it is. You end up filling up all your feat slots with the "feat tax" feats which fix the broken math that's been part of 4e since the beginning (they took out stat boosting items at the last minute, which leads to a scaling decrease in power between PCs and the monster defenses they try to hit), so it's not like you don't have some competition for your feat slots, but the original criticism still remains: 4e is boring.
I'm an active member of the 4e character optimization forums, which spend their time trying to find twinkish things to exploit in the game system, and, better or worse, there's just a lot less to work with in 4e than 3e. Which is both good and bad. It's good in that it takes a lot less to balance 4e vs. 3e (though it WAS possible, unlike what you claim - I did it in the Living Planar campaign), but the downside is that, again, 4e is boring. Character building is one of the most fun parts of a roleplaying game for a lot of players, and 4e takes the power away from the players they had in 3e, and just hands them a premade character sheet, essentially. And it's getting worse - 4e Essentials is just a bunch of premade classes that you get to slap a character name on.
As you say, Skill Challenges are an abomination, and should be taken out back behind the barn and shot like Old Yeller.
>>The elite class you fear already exists, and writes many of the laws.
Right, I understand that. You and I both agree that it's problematic.
My point is, putting people with no knowledge of the subject areas in power would lead to subject area "specialists" (i.e. lobbyists) taking even MORE power than now.
I've studied Medicare and SSN for quite a while, and I still wouldn't want to write legislation about it without consulting some subject area specialist on the subject.
>>No. One can't hate something that he does not believe to exist.
One can, if one is irrational. That's my point.
>>Actually I find doctrine of natural rights to be stupid and dangerous.
Well, remind me to not live in whatever banana dictatorship you set up. I'd much rather live in a country where everyone ascribes to the idea that certain rights are inalienable, namely: life, liberty and property.
Just as an example.
>>Atheists absolutely do not subscribe to the idea that suffering is a virtue, the idea at the core of most Christians' (Catholics) world view.
Catholics, maybe. Certainly not "most Christians" world view.
>>Speaking of this, how does one exactly break into this hobby?
If you're in a major city, look up your local RPGA club or gaming convention. If you're into 4th Edition, D&D, that is, which grognards like me sort of poo-poo, but it's easy to get into. The D&D website has a tool to look up local game stores that are running D&D Encounters, which are short, 1-hour adventures that run once per week at local game stores.
If you want to play 3rd Edition D&D, which this product is a variation on, Paizo has been carrying the torch on this with it's Pathfinder system. The Pathfinder Society (http://paizo.com/pathfinderSociety) is their organized play branch, which means that you don't need to have an established game group to play... just show up at a Pathfinder Society game day, say you're new, and they'll help you out.
FWIW, Pathfinder (and quite possibly Legend, too, though I've only started digging into the meat of it) and 3.5 in general are better systems than 4th Edition D&D, but it's probably easier to find a friendly local game store running D&D Encounters every Wednesday night.
>>It would be literally *impossible* for them to rely more heavily on industry sources of information than the current house.
I disagree. I think putting a bunch of random people in congress would create an unelected "elite" class in Washington of lobbyists and policy wonks that would dictate policy to the new congressmen - and that would be impossible to get rid of. On the positive side, I guess, congress would quickly respond to whatever is happening in the news with knee-jerk legislation (let's outlaw student molestation in colleges!) without having a good understanding of what it takes to write a law with precision or think through the longer consequences of the laws. The Law of Unintended Consequences has bit the US so many times in the past, I guess I just don't have much faith in random people doing any better.
In part I guess it's because I lecture around the country, and know that most people are woefully uninformed about what is going on in America, and when they do, only repeat talking points from their political party of choice.
>>And if you think the bills you mention are how laws should be written, we have a major point of disagreement.
No. I do think we'd even see more of the same.
Do you know how to write a law? No? Then your best friend, Mr. Smith here, from the RIAA, will assist you in drafting it up...
>>Reminds me a little of our library. I would be able to see it from my window if they had built it above ground, but they chose to go down instead. >>The legend of this decision lives on through a song about the Morrow Plots. As the song goes, "You Can't Throw Shade on The Corn!"
Here in California, we just built the farm underground.
>>Ground water will cause a lot of buoyancy for this building - how will they prevent it from 'floating' upward?
Oh, lord. While I know that's probably a serious question, I just had a very entertaining minute imagining an "earthscraper" bobbing up out of the ground and knocking around like a top. =)
>>There is a fundamental difference between rationality and lunacy that masquerades as rationality. Religion is firmly in the latter category.
Sometimes. And sometimes atheism can can fall into that category, though not always. I've met atheists that hate God, and as a result refuse to believe in him. (See if you can pick out the lunacy masquerading as rationality in the previous statement.)
There's actually gooad, rational arguments for religion. You can *debate* things like the first cause argument, the Kalam Cosmological Argument, and so forth, but they're not irrational. At a certain point, someone has to look at the arguments both for and against the existence of God and decide for herself.
At a more abstract level, there's a pragmatic value to religion, even if you set aside the problem of the existence of God. Most of us don't see the benefits of living in a Christian country, as it's a fish-in-the-water sort of thing. "Of course all countries should respect natural rights!" people will claim, without knowing why they believe that, or where the doctrine of natural rights comes from. (Hint: Enlightenment philosophy based on Christianity.)
The telling point is that atheists generally agree with the moral code of Christianity, for pretty much everything except when it comes to money and sex, and most Christians get the sex bits wrong. (The Bible doesn't prohibit premarital sex, for example, which drove Calvin crazy when founding his theocratic version of Geneva.)
>>That says more about the chickens (who somehow let the foxes get in power and run the place) than the foxes themselves.
Here in California, we had a problem with this. The foxes were voting themselves increased salaries and tax raises to pay for them at about 8% over inflation every year. So we passed a proposition that limited their ability to increase taxes (tying property taxes to inflation, sorta, and requiring a 2/3rds majority for everything else).
The result was that they continued to increase spending without the tax raises, and we went broke.
>>It's up to management to out-negotiate the union, just as it's up to the union to out-negotiate management. Don't blame the union because management can't negotiate a good contract.
In government unions, it's like the foxes negotiating with themselves about what to do with the chickens...
>>I don't intend to pick on a Muslim, your weirdly rational writing struck a profound cognitive dissonance within my head in contrast to the actual content of your writing.
If you haven't met rational religious people before, you really need to get out of the house more often...
>>Let me get this straight: you're saying Eastern Europe cheated Kyoto by having their own industry destroyed by a crisis? I say we copy this brilliant strategy and sink lower than they ever could. Ha, that'll teach these fools.
No, I'm saying 1990 was a terrible start date as it was chosen, post-collapse, as the year immediately prior to the collapse of the USSR.
In all seriousness, though, destroying the economy does seem to be the one guaranteed way to reduce CO2 output. It's not a very good solution, though. =)
>>Because Eastern European countries have such great international bargaining clout?
That's why I said, "intentional or not"... 1990 was a terrible year to pick. The worse bit is, even the wikipedia page for Kyoto has a graph labelled "what they promised and how they are doing" with all of the countries with, quote, large percentages achieved in CO2 reduction all Eastern Bloc Countries.
In order: Latvia Lithuania Estonia Bulgaria Ukraine Romania Poland Hungary Slovakia Russia Czech Rep before getting to non-Eastern Bloc countries.
It's not much of a surprise. Kyoto was designed (intentionally or not) as a subsidy that would allow business as usual while just writing a check to Eastern Europe. The baseline CO2 levels were set at 1990 levels, which was right before the collapse of the USSR and the resultant massive decrease in their CO2 output levels. (Likewise, our CO2 production has decreased since 2007 since our economy has tanked.)
The various carbon markets and carbon trading schemes have likewise been plagued with fraud. It comes as absolutely no surprise that Alberta's emissions trading scheme has run into identical problems.
While carbon trading schemes are admirable in their attempt to internalize external costs, in practice they're just not a very good idea.
>>If you select 535 people at random, you have a pretty good chance that when they vote they won't make crazy choices
You have a lot more faith in random chance than I do. Most Americans have never heard of SOPA, PROTECT-IP, etc., and have absolutely no knowedge of how to write laws.
So they'd have to rely heavily on "expert" testimony (MPAA, RIAA) to advise and write the laws for them. It'd be even worse because if one congress wasn't amenable, they could just wait two years and then push through their law, or constitutional amendment banning gays or internet access, or whatever.
>>Declining not allowed. You've got 6 months to put your affairs in order, after that you are financially independent of all private organizations
Awesome. So by the time I get back, my corporation has failed, I've got no investments, and have no source of income.
>>P.S.: It's not power that corrupts, it's immunity to consequences
What could be more immune to consequences than a legislature that is not unelected and held unaccountable to anyone?
>>Short of slave labor, how do you enforce that when the costs are going to regularly exceed every contractors' assets?
You can have them take out a bond against cost overruns, or you can structure payments in such a way that the overruns will lead to them losing the job, or having them simply build a margin in to the bid to begin with. Either way, it sets the incentives the right way to get things done on time and under cost. If the *state* is responsible for the overrun, and wants to change the contract, then the builder negotiates with them for the increase in price.
>>California does have Caltrain that goes between San Jose and San Fransisco.
CALTRAIN and BART, both, which is just one of those things that makes you roll your eyes, as well as metros in both cities, as well as bus routes, none of which tie in to each other. When I lived in Daly City, to get to San Jose Int'l (Southwest didn't fly out of SFO), I had to sit outside of my house for 1-45 minutes (the bus never followed its own schedule), followed by a 15 minute bus ride to the bus transfer point, another 1 to 30 minute wait, then a 10 minute bus ride to the BART station, followed by a BART ride to the CALTRAIN transfer station, a transfer to CALTRAIN, then the slow-as-shit CALTRAIN down to San Jose, followed by a wait and a transfer via a San Jose bus to the airport.
All told, it was about a 3 to 4-hour long public transportation nightmare, when it would have taken me only 45 minutes to drive. So I drove most of the time, unless the long term parking fees made it unattractive to do so.
If you don't live near a metro, BART or CALTRAIN station, the Bay Area's vaunted public transportation system is total shit. It's only competitive with driving because driving is so much more shit in the region.
>>Yeah, I saw the 2033 and thought WTF. Couldn't see why it would take that long, then I remembered that everyone will be getting paid by the hour.
Which is why we need: 1) Contract reform. If a budget over cost, then the contractor has to eat up the cost difference. (This doesn't apply if the state changes things around, of course.) That makes the union issues sort themselves out, too. 2) NIMBY reform. As long as zoning laws are being followed (they're not running a train through the playground of an elementary school) throw out all NIMBY lawsuits. 3) Environmental reform. Conduct the environmental assessments in conjunction with whoever is interested (Sierra Club, etc.) and once an environmentally optimal route is established, throw out all lawsuits after that point.
These are done to various degrees in other countries, to great effect. The fact that we don't is the reason we can't do anything meaningful any more in our country.
>>Yes, because of course the government hasn't subsidized the airline industry and airport infrastructure for 75 years...
And we pay 50c/gallon for gas and $20 per airline ticket, too, in usage fees, which cover a great deal of the costs of these types of infrastructure. Don't try to pretend otherwise.
>>High speed trains are electric, and electricity can come from renewable resources or nuclear.
Here in California? We already have an overburdened electrical grid, and a moratorium on new nuclear plants. (With plans to shut down our existing plants, because our legislature is fucking nuts.)
>>It could have a little something with Californians voting on propositions to put caps on their taxes.
We have caps on property tax, but not income tax. And these caps move up with inflation (slowly).
I am generally against tax increases, but I think eliminating the tax breaks for commercial properties would probably be a good idea. But it's essential for residential properties to keep old people from being evicted from their homes.
>>Seriously, it's like telling people who are filling out their tax returns, "Just pay whatever you want".
We do not have caps on either income tax or sales tax, and our sales tax rate has been going up and up over time. We do require either a proposition or a 2/3rds majority to raise taxes, though. Which is a *good* thing. Before this was implemented, taxes were being raised 8% faster than inflation for a decade.
Slashdot Mirror
Roguelike Dungeons of Dredmor, if you haven't played it yet, is worth the price of admission. Play it on hardcore mode for a very old-school Nethack experience. (You die, you die. Start over.)
It's a bit biased in favor of wizards, but it has an overall very interesting class generation system and challenging gameplay.
Plus, it's funny. Actually funny. But with good core mechanics beneath it all.
>>Here's the kicker - they ran the laptop with the wifi switched off, but only measured the RF output of the laptop in that state. They didn't perform - or performed, but didn't publish - the obvious control experiment.
Yeah, I noticed that, too.
Seems very suspicious how they conducted their control.
Sorry, I didn't answer everything I realized.
Agreed mostly on:
Fighters finally being able to tank monsters (though the way they did it wasn't especially elegant - there's both opportunity attacks and immediate interrupts that a fighter can trigger, and they're not the same)
Minions (though they're kind of broken in a bad way - far too easy to sweep off a battlefield)
The character generator. (though they pitched it into the bin and released a horrendous online version - thank goodness for CBLoader)
Making the DM's life easier (premade monsters is good, but having monsters be completely different from PCs, rule mechanics-wise, is bad)
Disagree on:
Class progression (some higher levels have powers that are worse than ALL of the lower levels' powers, and some levels are just dead levels)
Treasure (the wishlist is awkward, magic item creation is awkward, and random treasure generation is wonky in 4e)
Healing system (healing surges are a pathetic mechanic for a variety of reasons, but if you completely ignore them, yeah healing works better in 4e)
Recent books (there aren't any - they're down to just a couple books a year now. =)
4th Edition has a lot of powers, as you say. It also has a lot of feats and magic items.
"Fortunately", most of them are utterly terrible. Of the 3000 feats in the game, there's maybe 300 that are good. So that's 90% dross that's utterly wasting the time of the players and space in the source books (which they hardly print any more anyway). A similar ratio exists for powers and magic items.
The reason for this was that, unlike with 3e, the 4e PHB1 set the power bar very very low, and they've been (admirably or not) trying to do a good job keeping the power curve fairly flat. So if you have a "+1 to damage" feat at 1st level, and they're not going to release anything better than that, then it leaves you with a pretty boring field of options. They've even done a second pass over most of the overpowered options, to bludgeon the power curve back down.
While this is a refreshing change over the power creep model most RPGs use (Rifts, I'm looking at you), because they set the power bar very low to begin with, most people who get into the system realize how, well, boring it is. You end up filling up all your feat slots with the "feat tax" feats which fix the broken math that's been part of 4e since the beginning (they took out stat boosting items at the last minute, which leads to a scaling decrease in power between PCs and the monster defenses they try to hit), so it's not like you don't have some competition for your feat slots, but the original criticism still remains: 4e is boring.
I'm an active member of the 4e character optimization forums, which spend their time trying to find twinkish things to exploit in the game system, and, better or worse, there's just a lot less to work with in 4e than 3e. Which is both good and bad. It's good in that it takes a lot less to balance 4e vs. 3e (though it WAS possible, unlike what you claim - I did it in the Living Planar campaign), but the downside is that, again, 4e is boring. Character building is one of the most fun parts of a roleplaying game for a lot of players, and 4e takes the power away from the players they had in 3e, and just hands them a premade character sheet, essentially. And it's getting worse - 4e Essentials is just a bunch of premade classes that you get to slap a character name on.
As you say, Skill Challenges are an abomination, and should be taken out back behind the barn and shot like Old Yeller.
>>The elite class you fear already exists, and writes many of the laws.
Right, I understand that. You and I both agree that it's problematic.
My point is, putting people with no knowledge of the subject areas in power would lead to subject area "specialists" (i.e. lobbyists) taking even MORE power than now.
I've studied Medicare and SSN for quite a while, and I still wouldn't want to write legislation about it without consulting some subject area specialist on the subject.
>>No. One can't hate something that he does not believe to exist.
One can, if one is irrational. That's my point.
>>Actually I find doctrine of natural rights to be stupid and dangerous.
Well, remind me to not live in whatever banana dictatorship you set up. I'd much rather live in a country where everyone ascribes to the idea that certain rights are inalienable, namely: life, liberty and property.
Just as an example.
>>Atheists absolutely do not subscribe to the idea that suffering is a virtue, the idea at the core of most Christians' (Catholics) world view.
Catholics, maybe. Certainly not "most Christians" world view.
>>Speaking of this, how does one exactly break into this hobby?
If you're in a major city, look up your local RPGA club or gaming convention. If you're into 4th Edition, D&D, that is, which grognards like me sort of poo-poo, but it's easy to get into. The D&D website has a tool to look up local game stores that are running D&D Encounters, which are short, 1-hour adventures that run once per week at local game stores.
If you want to play 3rd Edition D&D, which this product is a variation on, Paizo has been carrying the torch on this with it's Pathfinder system. The Pathfinder Society (http://paizo.com/pathfinderSociety) is their organized play branch, which means that you don't need to have an established game group to play... just show up at a Pathfinder Society game day, say you're new, and they'll help you out.
FWIW, Pathfinder (and quite possibly Legend, too, though I've only started digging into the meat of it) and 3.5 in general are better systems than 4th Edition D&D, but it's probably easier to find a friendly local game store running D&D Encounters every Wednesday night.
>>It would be literally *impossible* for them to rely more heavily on industry sources of information than the current house.
I disagree. I think putting a bunch of random people in congress would create an unelected "elite" class in Washington of lobbyists and policy wonks that would dictate policy to the new congressmen - and that would be impossible to get rid of. On the positive side, I guess, congress would quickly respond to whatever is happening in the news with knee-jerk legislation (let's outlaw student molestation in colleges!) without having a good understanding of what it takes to write a law with precision or think through the longer consequences of the laws. The Law of Unintended Consequences has bit the US so many times in the past, I guess I just don't have much faith in random people doing any better.
In part I guess it's because I lecture around the country, and know that most people are woefully uninformed about what is going on in America, and when they do, only repeat talking points from their political party of choice.
>>And if you think the bills you mention are how laws should be written, we have a major point of disagreement.
No. I do think we'd even see more of the same.
Do you know how to write a law? No? Then your best friend, Mr. Smith here, from the RIAA, will assist you in drafting it up...
>>Reminds me a little of our library. I would be able to see it from my window if they had built it above ground, but they chose to go down instead.
>>The legend of this decision lives on through a song about the Morrow Plots. As the song goes, "You Can't Throw Shade on The Corn!"
Here in California, we just built the farm underground.
http://www.forestiere-historicalcenter.com/
>>Ground water will cause a lot of buoyancy for this building - how will they prevent it from 'floating' upward?
Oh, lord. While I know that's probably a serious question, I just had a very entertaining minute imagining an "earthscraper" bobbing up out of the ground and knocking around like a top. =)
^gooad^good^
>>There is a fundamental difference between rationality and lunacy that masquerades as rationality. Religion is firmly in the latter category.
Sometimes. And sometimes atheism can can fall into that category, though not always. I've met atheists that hate God, and as a result refuse to believe in him. (See if you can pick out the lunacy masquerading as rationality in the previous statement.)
There's actually gooad, rational arguments for religion. You can *debate* things like the first cause argument, the Kalam Cosmological Argument, and so forth, but they're not irrational. At a certain point, someone has to look at the arguments both for and against the existence of God and decide for herself.
At a more abstract level, there's a pragmatic value to religion, even if you set aside the problem of the existence of God. Most of us don't see the benefits of living in a Christian country, as it's a fish-in-the-water sort of thing. "Of course all countries should respect natural rights!" people will claim, without knowing why they believe that, or where the doctrine of natural rights comes from. (Hint: Enlightenment philosophy based on Christianity.)
The telling point is that atheists generally agree with the moral code of Christianity, for pretty much everything except when it comes to money and sex, and most Christians get the sex bits wrong. (The Bible doesn't prohibit premarital sex, for example, which drove Calvin crazy when founding his theocratic version of Geneva.)
>>That says more about the chickens (who somehow let the foxes get in power and run the place) than the foxes themselves.
Here in California, we had a problem with this. The foxes were voting themselves increased salaries and tax raises to pay for them at about 8% over inflation every year. So we passed a proposition that limited their ability to increase taxes (tying property taxes to inflation, sorta, and requiring a 2/3rds majority for everything else).
The result was that they continued to increase spending without the tax raises, and we went broke.
I'm not sure whether that's a good or bad thing.
>>It's up to management to out-negotiate the union, just as it's up to the union to out-negotiate management. Don't blame the union because management can't negotiate a good contract.
In government unions, it's like the foxes negotiating with themselves about what to do with the chickens...
While you're absolutely right, in my own business I hire people to do 1 and 2, because I hate dealing with them.
>>I don't intend to pick on a Muslim, your weirdly rational writing struck a profound cognitive dissonance within my head in contrast to the actual content of your writing.
If you haven't met rational religious people before, you really need to get out of the house more often...
>>Let me get this straight: you're saying Eastern Europe cheated Kyoto by having their own industry destroyed by a crisis? I say we copy this brilliant strategy and sink lower than they ever could. Ha, that'll teach these fools.
No, I'm saying 1990 was a terrible start date as it was chosen, post-collapse, as the year immediately prior to the collapse of the USSR.
In all seriousness, though, destroying the economy does seem to be the one guaranteed way to reduce CO2 output. It's not a very good solution, though. =)
>>Because Eastern European countries have such great international bargaining clout?
That's why I said, "intentional or not"... 1990 was a terrible year to pick. The worse bit is, even the wikipedia page for Kyoto has a graph labelled "what they promised and how they are doing" with all of the countries with, quote, large percentages achieved in CO2 reduction all Eastern Bloc Countries.
In order:
Latvia
Lithuania
Estonia
Bulgaria
Ukraine
Romania
Poland
Hungary
Slovakia
Russia
Czech Rep
before getting to non-Eastern Bloc countries.
It's not much of a surprise. Kyoto was designed (intentionally or not) as a subsidy that would allow business as usual while just writing a check to Eastern Europe. The baseline CO2 levels were set at 1990 levels, which was right before the collapse of the USSR and the resultant massive decrease in their CO2 output levels. (Likewise, our CO2 production has decreased since 2007 since our economy has tanked.)
The various carbon markets and carbon trading schemes have likewise been plagued with fraud. It comes as absolutely no surprise that Alberta's emissions trading scheme has run into identical problems.
While carbon trading schemes are admirable in their attempt to internalize external costs, in practice they're just not a very good idea.
>>If you select 535 people at random, you have a pretty good chance that when they vote they won't make crazy choices
You have a lot more faith in random chance than I do. Most Americans have never heard of SOPA, PROTECT-IP, etc., and have absolutely no knowedge of how to write laws.
So they'd have to rely heavily on "expert" testimony (MPAA, RIAA) to advise and write the laws for them. It'd be even worse because if one congress wasn't amenable, they could just wait two years and then push through their law, or constitutional amendment banning gays or internet access, or whatever.
>>Declining not allowed. You've got 6 months to put your affairs in order, after that you are financially independent of all private organizations
Awesome. So by the time I get back, my corporation has failed, I've got no investments, and have no source of income.
>>P.S.: It's not power that corrupts, it's immunity to consequences
What could be more immune to consequences than a legislature that is not unelected and held unaccountable to anyone?
>>Short of slave labor, how do you enforce that when the costs are going to regularly exceed every contractors' assets?
You can have them take out a bond against cost overruns, or you can structure payments in such a way that the overruns will lead to them losing the job, or having them simply build a margin in to the bid to begin with. Either way, it sets the incentives the right way to get things done on time and under cost. If the *state* is responsible for the overrun, and wants to change the contract, then the builder negotiates with them for the increase in price.
>>California does have Caltrain that goes between San Jose and San Fransisco.
CALTRAIN and BART, both, which is just one of those things that makes you roll your eyes, as well as metros in both cities, as well as bus routes, none of which tie in to each other. When I lived in Daly City, to get to San Jose Int'l (Southwest didn't fly out of SFO), I had to sit outside of my house for 1-45 minutes (the bus never followed its own schedule), followed by a 15 minute bus ride to the bus transfer point, another 1 to 30 minute wait, then a 10 minute bus ride to the BART station, followed by a BART ride to the CALTRAIN transfer station, a transfer to CALTRAIN, then the slow-as-shit CALTRAIN down to San Jose, followed by a wait and a transfer via a San Jose bus to the airport.
All told, it was about a 3 to 4-hour long public transportation nightmare, when it would have taken me only 45 minutes to drive. So I drove most of the time, unless the long term parking fees made it unattractive to do so.
If you don't live near a metro, BART or CALTRAIN station, the Bay Area's vaunted public transportation system is total shit. It's only competitive with driving because driving is so much more shit in the region.
>>Yeah, I saw the 2033 and thought WTF. Couldn't see why it would take that long, then I remembered that everyone will be getting paid by the hour.
Which is why we need:
1) Contract reform. If a budget over cost, then the contractor has to eat up the cost difference. (This doesn't apply if the state changes things around, of course.) That makes the union issues sort themselves out, too.
2) NIMBY reform. As long as zoning laws are being followed (they're not running a train through the playground of an elementary school) throw out all NIMBY lawsuits.
3) Environmental reform. Conduct the environmental assessments in conjunction with whoever is interested (Sierra Club, etc.) and once an environmentally optimal route is established, throw out all lawsuits after that point.
These are done to various degrees in other countries, to great effect. The fact that we don't is the reason we can't do anything meaningful any more in our country.
>>Yes, because of course the government hasn't subsidized the airline industry and airport infrastructure for 75 years...
And we pay 50c/gallon for gas and $20 per airline ticket, too, in usage fees, which cover a great deal of the costs of these types of infrastructure. Don't try to pretend otherwise.
>>High speed trains are electric, and electricity can come from renewable resources or nuclear.
Here in California? We already have an overburdened electrical grid, and a moratorium on new nuclear plants. (With plans to shut down our existing plants, because our legislature is fucking nuts.)
About half our production is from Natural Gas (53% http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/total_system_power.html) a couple points are from coal, the rest from green sources (16% nuclear, 16% hydro being the main two).
>>Turns out we affected the weather pattern when all air traffic was halted:
Sure, but it's possible linear contrails actually add a net cooling effect (it's disputed).
>>It could have a little something with Californians voting on propositions to put caps on their taxes.
We have caps on property tax, but not income tax. And these caps move up with inflation (slowly).
I am generally against tax increases, but I think eliminating the tax breaks for commercial properties would probably be a good idea. But it's essential for residential properties to keep old people from being evicted from their homes.
>>Seriously, it's like telling people who are filling out their tax returns, "Just pay whatever you want".
We do not have caps on either income tax or sales tax, and our sales tax rate has been going up and up over time. We do require either a proposition or a 2/3rds majority to raise taxes, though. Which is a *good* thing. Before this was implemented, taxes were being raised 8% faster than inflation for a decade.