DarthTofu

This might be an "I'm-too-dumb-to-enable-cookies" issue, but I always have to log in again whenever I come to this site on my compy with Firefox- no issues for the Internet Explorer one, though. Odd... Umm, if it is an issue on my end, how do I enable cookies?

Unbreakable and The Sixth Sense were the best movies I'd seen in a while when I saw them. They're still great, if only for those sudden "WOAH!" moments at the end, the sort that Secret Garden tried for and only sort-of succeeded at. I never saw Lady in the Water, and I ruined Signs for myself through a combination of accidentally watching the end first and watching Scary Movie III (Dumbest comedy ever. It's not so stupid that it's funny, it's just so stupid that it's stupid).

Hahaha! I love the Plaque one! That's so spectacular! I can actually feel the Win moving inside of me!

In the spirit of Scath's return, I'm going to go ahead and BEAK you on, among other things, the spelling of Mitth's name. Two "T"s, one "I", not the other way around. What's that you say? I'm promoting spam? Alright, fine, I'll write a "productive" post, now. Mitth is still around on Facebook, but he isn't very active- at least, not with me. I don't know if he talks with SOCL or Rob very often. GAT... We have indeed seen almost none of him. Trej was only just leaving when I showed up, and Admiral Antilles had apparently left a few months ago when I first arrived. It's odd what we see in two years on a forum. I always kinda wonder why people stop posting and then coming back. Did the real world pile up on them, like it did with Scath? Did they have something tremendously personal strike them in the gut, like SOCL? Did a tragedy strike our forums, like with Paul? Have they just forgotten their password for the hundred and thirty-third time, as it is with Tex and his hiatuses (hiati?)?

It's odd- as soon as I decided that I liked Romney more than McCain, he dropped out of the race. McCain is too much of War-mongerer in retrospect, but some of the people I've talked to say that they think we need a war-mongerer to get ourselves out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Somehow I don't really think a war-mongerer will do much more than escalate the situation. We're in a very similar spot to Vietnam right now- we don't fully get why we're there and we can't really leave without losing face.

I'd say that a nation is a lot like what everyone else has defined it to be- common culture, people that are willing to work toward a common goal, a clear leader, and a settlement upon an area. In most simplistic sense, I'd say that a small village in the middle of nowhere can be considered its own nation if it isn't subordinate to anyone or anything. As time went on nations became more complex, included more people, and expanded. I think that they started as alliances between hunter-gatherer groups, but eventually through childbirth and the like they became more tied together and expanded outward from one point to other points that could sustain life. They kept up good trade relations and eventually cared enough to have military alliances to help each other compete for food and the like. I'd say that the first nations came along before France or Rome, all the way back in the pre-historic times.

Heh- that "Love" one didn't work for me before, now it does. Pure awesome!

Truth-be-told I'd love to see the British-style system for election- a number of funds are set aside by the government for use in those campaigns, and each candidate is only allowed so long on the air. It discourages candidate-bashing, and it limits the candidates to equal speech on the matter. We actually already do have a system in place where some of that money can be drawn, it's just that it's so much less than the Bicameral Reform Act's limits that most candidates choose not to grab at it. Call me nuts, but I sometimes think that the Europeans have a pretty darn good system going over there... Then again, I strongly dislike America

HOLY FREAKING CRAP! We have a whole new side bar tab of colors! When did that get here? And the old smilies have two new friends, now! HOLY CRAP! I am freaking out! (BTW: Couldn't we underline stuff before?) This is certainly new... If GAT were still a regular he'd flip over all of his new choices in blue text color.... I'm a traditionalist, so I'll gripe and moan for a little while over these changes, just like I did when we swapped out the old SD in the upper left for the Noghri Forge drew up... Hey, you got rid of some of Forge's alt text! Er, right, this isn't about everything that's changed, this is about what I want to see fixed. Umm... Those little dots up on the tabs in Firefox disturb me. That's the best I can do. I like the new stuff alright.

I noticed that we'd lost our other Texan as well. Where do those crazy kids run off to?

First: Only one post is necessary to reply to multiple comments. Second: Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. McCain-Feingold keeps the playing field even. Want an example? You have two people lauding two different ideas. They both talk for five minutes on their competing views, and you're interested in both. You want to hear more. Candidate A gets to talk for ten minutes about his idea. Candidate B gets to talk for three hours about his idea. Candidate B is far more likely to convince you of his idea due to his massive unfair advantage due to his extra campaign money. But then, that's "Freedom of Speech" to get to influence the voters more in a manner that the opponent can't hope to effect. Freedom of speech is the freedom to express views on the government and on the world without someone striking you down and sending you off to prison for it. It's expanded over the years to include a number of things, but it doesn't include nudity in public locations. If it is found to be a disgusting or rude by the people of the community, it must be taken down according to the Supreme Court Decision (I'll have to find that case, but I believe it refers to "Lude and lascivious (sp?) acts") Now, then, we've established that there are limits on the freedom of speech, though clearly a statue of a nude man and a campaign flier are from two separate schools of thought and are two separate manners entirely. The only thing connecting them is the principle of "free speech." However, we have proven the limitation of free speech when it breaks from that which is socially acceptable. Is underhanded campaigning socially acceptable to you? Let's face it, the world as it is doesn't pay any attention to politics. Name recognition is at least as helpful as a strong voting record. Leaving the system untouched allows a candidate to tap-dance into office on a floor covered in greenbacks while the other fellow is left behind. BTW: Those Lincoln-Douglass style debates do still exist. Meet the Press occasionally features them when they're on particularly contested seats in the Senate (During the Midterm election last year I recall seeing at least six scheduled, though I'll admit that I didn't watch them due to the fact that none of the Senators were from my State), and local broadcasting stations including branches of C-Span generally feature candidate debates in many States. Lastly:The fact that someone expresses differing political views from you does not mean that they hate the United States. It means that they're exercising that Freedom of Speech I talked about earlier. No one here is looking at the election with the idea of "Hmm, who can I vote for to hurt the country the worst?" They look at it with a different outlook from yours and ask who they feel is the best man (or woman) for the job.

Woah- McCain-Feingold was hardly a limiting of the first amendment, mate! It evened the playing field out in order to make Congress a meritocracy as opposed to a pecuniaucracy (Rule by money. Not a real word according to Firefox, but it's part Latin, so you're not allowed to dispute it). McCain-Feingold cuts back dramatically on the corruption of politicians with special interests upon entering the office and further reduces the Senate from the "millionaires club" it was in the early nineteen hundreds. You can argue that, in limiting the amount of campaign money a candidate can spend, his freedom of speech is attacked, but let's be perfectly honest: the candidate is just using that money for television ads, automated phone calls, automated E-mails, and automated regular mail. It's not so much "speech" as "spam." When you compare the amount of money an incumbent member of Congress has to spend on their seat to the woefully tiny amount of money the challenger has, you see just how difficult it is to break in, even if the challenger is a better candidate for the position. In removing that overhanging advantage of money it becomes easier for the more effective legislator to enter Congress.

AI! Welcome back, sir! It's been a while! First Wormie, then Scath, now you- the forum members of old are slowly trickling back in! ... Come on, Admiral Antilles, Trej.... Return to the forums!

Ye gods! Scathane is back! It's been quite a while since your last visit, sir. Are you going to bump your post count up those last few notches to five thousand? It seemed an awful shame for you to leave when you were so close to being actual competition for Mad's renegade post count. We're glad to have you back, Scathane. We're all going to run away and hide from the B.E.A.K. Police, now.

Your five pense? Come, now, Jahled, your European money already outweighs ours- is it really necessary to go pouring in an extra three pense on our discussions as well? The thing with Obama is that apparently he hasn't been taking lump cash donations- rather, it's a large, working-class base that's been giving small donations (By "Small" I mean anywhere from five to fifty dollars per person). I certainly see what you mean, though, Jahled- the money that our politicians fuel their campaigns with unbalances the election based on matters of economics and encourages money to take the office as opposed to the most skilled person in most cases. I believe you fellows across the Atlantic have a system where not only can a campaign only spend a certain amount of money, but it can also only campaign for so many hours- it keeps the voters focusing on who the greater good is as opposed to who is the lesser evil. Granted, this is just me regurgitating what I remember from last year's AP US Government class (We didn't always stick to the subject matter), so I may have some details wrong. McCain has a history of going for election reform, though, which is nice- the McCain-Feingold (sp?) bill called for election reform in one of the houses, though I don't think both. It limited spending on campaigns to what is, unfortunately, still a rather exorbitant amount, but it certainly kept a couple of thousand dollars out of the races and prevented large donations of "soft money." If he becomes President he no longer has the legislative power of his vote, but he has the ability to toss a call toward the Congress and pressure them to pass that reform bill. Has anyone noticed that the election is conspicuously silent about the economic ties we have with China right now? We don't seem to have a lot of discussion on how to break those ties so that we can (hopefully) intervene in Africa eventually. Those poor Darfur (sp?) citizens could certainly use some US or, better yet, UN intervention to keep the Chinese from supplying militant groups with weaponry. (I was reading an article another student had written on the situation today, thus my sudden caring about the genocide.)

So apparently Birmingham has its own Wiki.... For those who are not from the US: Birmingham is a city in Alabama known for being a prominent thorn in the side of the Civil Rights movement in America. The greatest failure of America lay in the fair treatment of African Americans, and Birmingham was known for some of the most brutal hate crimes in the history of the Civil Rights movement- hate crimes such as bombing churches full of children. It was also one of the sites where Martin Luther King Jr. worked hard, through non-violent methods, to force integration upon the citizens and to convey the simple truth that we are all human beings, regardless of our skin color.

Told you so. Great flick to see in theaters- when it comes out on DVD it might not be as good, though. A lot of the awesome comes from the fact that you're in a dark theater with the sound cranked up so high that the walls literally vibrate around you. Unfortunately I don't think that most people's TVs can replicate that- it's probably doomed to ignominy as soon as the theaters stop showing it.

If I'm against the PC I don't even bother to garrison my primo contruction/shipyard/training facility planets with troops or a fleet- the AI is too stupid to take 'em. I just fill 'em up full of buildings. Were I to play online it might be quite different; I'd likely still put almost all shipyards and the like on the planet, but I'd include one or two KDY II batteries and a number of Sullustan and Mon Cal troops (Or Dark Troopers if I'm the Empire) to prevent them from being sabotaged. I'd keep a decent-strength fleet (Two Star Destroyer-strength ships, several fighter and bomber squadrons, three or four lancer-style ships) for protection from a random invasion by a space force, but I'd likely flee if confronted with too huge of a fleet. The planet can still get smashed, don't get me wrong, but my garrison means that if it's smashed it'll be with losses to troops/ships as they assault/bombard- the KDY batteries will take out ground troops in the event of an assault and ships in the event of a bombardment respectively, and I'd likely aim for the ships that carry the most troops with my fleet during the invasion if I thought it prudent. If nothing else I can cost the guy in taking my nice planet. I'll usually also have some other powerful planets in the same system if it's a rimward one, so that I can send sabotage units to help me out from another planet if I lose one. Fleets rarely show up with enough troops to subdue more than two or three planets (One of the reasons mine tend to be so massive- I usually plan to conquer every planet in a sector and not worry about diplomacy. Lots of bulk cruisers.)

I put McCain down, but I still want Barack Obama to go for the Democratic ticket. Once he's got the experience he'll make a good president, IMO, but right now I think he'd be too controlled by the rest of the Executive Branch to make the sort of decisions that need making. Hillary has taken too much by way of campaign contributions; she's just going to go and open Washington up to corruption moreso than it already is. Ron Paul... I don't like Libertarians. I guess I'm just too liberal at heart. Huckabee: I know that he's said that he won't force his views on the country, but it takes a lot of refution of the evidense to keep claiming that Evolution is a hoax and that the world is really only 6,000 years old when tons of evidense says otherwise. I think he'd get us into some Bush-like situations. Mitt Romney is actually alright, I don't have much of a beef with him- I just know that McCain is willing to work with Democrats and to come close to center, a skill that is always good to see in the White House.

Mad ought to appreciate the techno...ness of it.

You look very Ashen faced in that picture, Krytos.

I know your last name, Rob. There is no escaping me! It also doesn't help that your YouTube account consists of your entire name, nor that you G-mail account gives it to your G-mail buddies. Then again, my E-mail address is my name, just slightly redundant...

My cure-all is always a system restore- I heard that can be bad for one's compy, though.

Tisk, tisk, tisk- At those adult websites again, Krytos?

New trailer for Iron Man just came out on the Super Bowl. It was awesome. Go watch it wherever you can.