...Thank you for the mental image. Excuse me while I go take a shower.
On a different note, I have been called a "freak" (or something to that effect) about 3 times this week because I am a "south paw." My self-esteem is lower than it's been in months. It's really disheartening when gays and transgenders are fighting to be treated as equal, and yet people are still viewed as second class for being left-handed.
Apparently Reagan, Alexander the Great, Michaelangelo, Mark Twain and Jimi Hendrix were all left-handed. On the downside, so was Keanu Reeves.
You know; I just thought of something. NS, if your argument is that morals are basically made up ad hoc to justify things, how do you know that Democratic and/or Western nations aren't more moral, in fact, perfectly moral, as compared to say, Russia or China? I mean, you've essentially already ceded your moral barometer as being non-existent. By what criteria would you know whether the West was meeting it's own standards or not?
and as for pregnant teens getting abortions, well if they dont want the baby, why dont the people against abortions take care of those babies? well thats a simple answer isnt it
I'm also against forest fires, street crime, people exsanguinating in the streets, people dying of disease, limitations to human knowledge, third world illiteracy and pollution, but there's only so many ****ing hours in a day. It's not hypocrisy not to directly solve every problem that you think ought to be solved; it's acknowledging the limitations of space-time. Unless you're a part time firefighter, police officer paramedic inner city counseler in the peace corps that works at the local batter women's shelter and nurses wounded wildlife in their spare time, you might want to step off the high horse.
There's been reports of illegal medical experimentation in China for years, and enough of them that it's almost certainly based on something. I don't know if I've heard that the government itself has actually been behind anything quite as gruesome as murder and organ harvest in recent years, but it's not out of the question, and it's certainly probably on a black market level. For all that it's improved, let's not forget that China is still a very unfriendly place by Western standards, particularly for political and social undesirables. So, it's not baseless speculation, although it is still speculation, unless Keith knows something I don't.
Action T4 (German: Aktion T4) was a program in Nazi Germany spanning October 1939 until August 1941, during which physicians killed 70,273 people[1]specified in Hitler's secret memo of September 1, 1939 as suffering patients "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination,"[2] but described in a denunciation of the program by Cardinal Galen as long-term inmates of mental asylums "who may appear incurable."[3] The Nuremberg Trials found evidence that German physicians continued the extermination of patients after October 1941 and evidence that about 275,000 people were euthanized[4].
The codename T4 was an abbreviation of "Tiergartenstraße 4", the address of a villa in the Berlin borough of Tiergarten which was the headquarters of the General Foundation for Welfare and Institutional Care (Gemeinnützige Stiftung für Heil- und Anstaltspflege).[5] This body operated under the direction of Philipp Bouhler, the head of Hitler's private chancellery,[6] and Dr Karl Brandt, Hitler's personal physician. This villa no longer exists, but a plaque set in the pavement on Tiergartenstraße marks its location.
The euthanasia decree, written on Adolf Hitler's personal stationery and dated 1 September 1939, reads as follows:
Reich Leader Bouhler and Dr. Brandt are charged with the responsibility for expanding the authority of physicians, to be designated by name, to the end that patients considered incurable according to the best available human judgment [menschlichem Ermessen] of their state of health, can be granted a mercy death [Gnadentod].[7]
Read on to find out how well that ended up working.
(Paul) Eggert recalled pushing children's bodies around the hospital, and how Dr. Weiner Sengenhof, one of the hospital's senior doctors, would "select" children at mealtimes for an immunization injection. The children knew that those selected for "immunization" were never seen again. One child clung to Eggert outside the consultation room, screaming for help as a nurse pulled him into the room. Later in life, Eggert recalled how "These pictures would swim in front of my eyes when I went to bed at night, and they are still before my eyes today".
A large part of India's success depended on a loan from the IMF in the early 90's. (to be fair, a larger part was probably due to the reforms take in order to get said loan, so stick and carrot > carrot).
As far as world domination, I'm sure I have no idea what in the Hell you're talking about.
Chan all ready addressed this. Those responsible for the ill-advised and stupid campaign against Lebanon have faced consequences. What possible punishment will Putin and his puppets face, when free speech is chilled in Russia?
The future tense is inappropriate, but yeah.
While Israeli is certainly at times careless and callous, an understandable but not condonable effect of being surrounded by die-hard enemies for so many decades, it is not sinister; critics of the Israeli government do not, as they do in Russia, mysteriously keep dying, or have their businesses and assets seized for being "enemies of the state". In fact, if you follow the headlines, they even succeeded in ousting said reckless and incompetent government recently. While Israel is, like India or Brazil or even, yes, the United States and many European nations, imperfect in it's democracy, it's making a legitimate attempt. I would still rather be an Arab woman in Israel where I will be looked down on and discriminated against than one in Iran, where I may be killed for wearing "immodest" clothing in public or attempting to report a rape, without any hope of justice for my murder.
At any rate, in an ideal organization, it would be up to an international and hopefully objective panel, not American nor European politicians.
Can people please stop saying it's not democratic to exclude non-democratic governments? It's an organization for democratic goverments (including many in the Developing World; Brazil, India, South Africa, etc.), to promote and foster democracy. Saying that it's ironic/hypocritical for them to exclude authoritarian governments is like saying it would be ironic to exclude Saudi Arabia or Sudan from the Human Rights Council. It's nonsensical, and frankly makes you look stupid. Democracy is about empowering people, not governments. Christ on a pogo stick. Seriously.
Riddle of Ravens XUUU
Tribal Instant- Shaman
Counter target spell unless it’s controller pays X. If a spell is countered this way, put X 1/1 blue Bird tokens with flying into play under your control. “I don’t know. How IS a raven like a writing desk?”
I suppose there's something that needs addressing on a fundamental level before any meaningful discussion can take place about what form, if any, such an organization should take. It was asked earlier, in a sense, although I doubt the poster meant to seriously consider the question as much as harangue the West for... whatever.
What do we mean by "free"? By this I mean both, how do we define freedoms, and more importantly, in what light do we view it? I think the EU has, as noted, a very good system in place for determining freedom. The EU has the advantage of being balanced in itself by several large countries (UK, Spain, France, Italy, Germany) and a number of other, smaller ones, so that no one country has overwhelming influence and so the process remains fair. Contrary to how most Europeans, it would seem, believe any American-led initiative must turn, I would like to see a similar balance of powers, with the US, Latin America, the EU, India, and Africa (and there are certainly African nations viewed as democratic, if not prosperous or, perhaps, greatly stable) and the free nations of East Asia (Japan, Taiwan, Korea) acting to counterbalance each other, perhaps. Freedom does persist best where there are many competing interests- in this I agree with NS, if not with his interpretation of history or rabidly anti-Western sentiment. Stable majorities lead to stagnation and corruption; mere two party states are almost as bad in this.
However, more than defining what is free and deciding who defines it and how, the more fundamental question is;
Do we define freedom as a good thing?
If the answer is no, such a League seems meaningless. If it is yes, then it seems a worthwhile idea to pursue. This may seem like an obvious question, but I propose that is not, as evidenced by some of the posts in this thread. It is not at all clear that all people in this thread view freedom as being a sacred or even greatly important quality to possess. Should it not be said that Russia and China have worse governments than Germany or America or Japan? And if not, why not; as freedoms of speech, of movement, of empowerment economic or otherwise, simply not worth fighting for? Which is the elephant in the room; freedom requires not only constant vigilance but constant action to maintain. Freedom would mean standing up to Russia and Iran and China on some or all issues, with the possiblity of a slide into violence. It is easier to accept a slide towards autocratism, and it is safer. Freedom inherently creates the opportunity for more violence and costs stability. Do we then say that it is still worthwhile to pursue freedom? To me the answer seems obvious, but it seems that many people, having grown up in the West and always had freedom, do not view it this importantly. For them it is better to play games of equivocation and pretend that there's no difference, really, in the level of freedom (I suppose by this it is meant meaningful freedom) between Iran and Italy.
Freedom, to put it bluntly, requires work. There's a certain appeal to being freed of the burden of free will, to have someone else decide where you should go and what you should do, to let them take the responsibility for making the right decisions or not. In the West, do we really believe it's worth fighting for? Or would we like to see that burden eased?
I guess I haven't paid much attention to movies/tv for a while. I didn't notice that the Disney franchise turned into complete suck. All Hail Pixar, I guess?
My top 10 favorite cards;
10) Loxodon Warhammer: I like this card because I saw it's potential before other people, ran it at PT: Honolulu, and was thoroughly mocked for doing so. I faced one opponent who used three Putrefies on creatures carrying the Warhammer, including a Vitu-Ghazi token, because he couldn't stomach killing the Warhammer itself. And now, sweet vindication. Granted, this Type 2 season didn't have the option of going Jitte, but still...
Sidenote: By no means my favorite card at all, but Golgari Guildmage has a place on my list of cards with special meanings. I am, to my knowledge, the only person to ever play Golgari Guildmage in a Constructed Pro Tour. Everytime I see Golgari Guildmage, it reminds me why frantic last minute deckchanges in an attempt to be clever are bad.
9) Nightmare. When I was but a lad trading cards on the schoolyard, I traded my Nightmare for half of a cheeseburger, and suffered the worst case of buyer's remorse ever. Hereafter I sought out another copy and cherished it properly.
8) Wirewood Symbiote. I got back into Magic around Onslaught block, and this was one of the pivotal cards I discovered for Ritual-Elves, the first deck I built that I feel really marked a progression towards actual competitive game play. Granted, at first I thought it was an infinite combo since I couldn't read the last line for some reason.
7) Vengeful Dreams. My second deck on the road to competitive gameplay was called "Vengeful God", and it's where I discovered something about myself; I like breaking other people's decks. I like smashing their plans and stomping on their toys. This deck was terrible at anything but killing creatures, but it was pretty effective at that, roughly speaking. Granted, alongside DoJ and Eternal Dragon I was running Jareth and Dragon Scales for teh c0mbo, but it did beat all my friends' decks consistently. Vengeful Dreams also taught me about building synergy into control, although I still had to learn about priorities; there were so many cool cards to run with Vengeful Dreams (Life Burst, Eternal Dragon, Glory, Dragon Scales...) that I had to run 66 cards.
6) Helldozer. God, I love winning with bad cards. This card was Tap: Armageddon target player with Coffers.
5) Body Snatcher. You know, the Flash metagame was broken and silly and stupid, but for a month it was really fun as Hell, and I was completely riding the cutting edge. I know one other team developed the Body Snatcher/Benevolent Bodyguard tech cocurrently, but they didn't do what I did; broadcast every new development of the Flash archetype as loudly as possible in every forum possible, along with every dire warning about how ridiculously overpowered that deck is. I'm no good at modesty. I still think I should be awarded a medal or something for standing up to Ben Bleiweiss's ******** telling players to just proceed as normal and they wouldn't get hopelessly crushed by a degenerate combo-control deck with more counters than MUC. Body Snatcher reminds me what a truly awesome individual I am.
4) Ritual of Subdual. The other lynchpin in Ritual-Elves. I love this card because it was the very first time I used a card that no one else respected or even knew about, and used it to break peoples' dreams. I would sit behind Priest of Titania and Wirewood Channeler and a Wirewood Symbiote bouncing Sylvan Messenger and my opponents would never get to play anything. Granted, it was a scrubby 1.5 metagame, but still. I had a lot of fun. On a similar note: Book of Rass.
3) Decree of Justice/Eternal Dragon/Wing Shards. I wasn't really tapped into the Magic scene on a competitive level for a while (in fact, for a while I was so hardcore rogue I refused to actually learn anything about competitive play or read any articles). But I do know that at least where I lived, when Scourge came out, these cards were not regarded very highly. White, you have to remember, before Scourge, sucked. It sucked hard. It was vaguely remembered as being the White Weenie color, but it hadn't been the best or even second best aggro color for ages. White control was a distant memory of days when Scroll Rack and Land Tax were around; White control at that time meant splashing for Wrath in your Blue deck. Astral Slide had actually seen play in block, along with Akroma and her Vengeance and Renewed Faith, but this was a rarity, and that deck was played more for the Lightning Rift, with the white parts being an afterthought. Scourge made White a Control color again, and as far as I was concerned at least, I was on the cutting edge. Vengeful God was, at that time, still torn between efficient removal and being a bad Soldier deck, and I took these cards (and, to be fair, Rain of Blades and Dragon Scales, which were... less spectacular) and tweaked it out- this was when I was the guy who played a 70 card elf deck with Ritual of Subdual and Aggravated Assault, mind. I won my very first tournament, a Type 2 event, with this deck, beating people who were actually heavily into the actual Type 2 environment. One opponent had no idea why I floated eleven white mana in response to Upheaval. Another guy insisted, insisted to the store owner/judge that Storm should be countered when the original spell was countered. It was great. It was glorious. Eternal Dragon just wouldn't die.
2) Krosan Tusker. I loveded you, piggie. I loveded you.
There's nothing rational here. Krosan Tusker and I shall retire to a comfortable home in the Berkshires and raise children together. My very first love in Limited, and undying flame of Constructed.
1) Order of the Ebon Hand. This was the very first card I ever owned. Technically, I owned some dozen other cards in the same pack, but I remember not really caring much about them. It was the Centaur art, to be specific. I even remember my grandfather, a really awesome old Irish cop with a glass eye who always smelled of scotch and pipe-tobacco, listening patiently as I described the card to him long distance (I loved my grandfather. He also used to endure late night phone calls so I could ask him what different letters spelled; these were usually random assortments, so most of the time the answer was "That doesn't spell anything", although sometimes I got lucky). I'm sure he had no idea what I was talking about, but it was sweet of him to listen anyway.
Also, this card was way better when you thought colorless meant any color, and you and your twin each had a clutch of Urza's lands and no idea what a "4-of" rule was (to be fair, I'm not sure we really knew what Protection from White was, either. Or that you could limit the number of colors in a deck [although, hence the Urza's lands rule]).
I have some very limited sympathy with the complaint, since lots of people do make bad fancards and bad variant formats. But, people also write bad books and make bad music and cook bad food. I don't think that's a reason to spend my life in hermitage eating ants. Case in point, while I actually think Highlander is one of the least interesting variant formats as constructed, two of my very favorite alternate formats ever- scratch that, by far my two favoritest Magic formats ever, Cube and Pile- are both functionally Highlander.
So this is an idea that's been kicked around in recent months. The idea is to create an organization that fulfills a role served by none of the post-WWII international institutions; i.e., that actively and actually promotes and protects human rights and international security, with actual capability to act, around the world, with membership restricted to actually free nations.
Some of the opposing arguments suggest that such an organization would be provocative to nations like Russia or China, or that it would be a private club for the US and it's stooges, with America calling the shots and decided what nations are "free" based on it's own relationships. Certainly it would be absurd to invite in, say, Saudi Arabia and exclude Serbia, for instance. But it raises the point that, while some nations are very clearly free in an actual sense (most of Europe, America, Japan, Australia, Korea, large swarths of Latin America, etc.), and some are very clearly not, there are a large number of states where the issue is murkier than might be comfortable. What do do with borderline states, that are nominally democratic but for varying reasons are not seen as being truly free? Who would you like to see invited to such a club, who, if anyone, would be on the reserve list? What powers should such an institution really have? And how should it be run? If it's to be based on the ideals of democracy, should population be a determining factor in power within the organization? By this measure, India would certainly wield immense power within the organization; but would either the Indians or the rest of the World be comfortable with that? And how to reconcile if size does not matter? Should Ireland and Brazil be given equal clout?
Well, although I'm not big on hate crimes and such...This is America. This is a country where a Principal should be allowed to say its okay or not okay to be gay to whoever he wants via his constitutional rights. He did not sexually abuse her...he basically voiced his view on the matter. Not everybody is going to accept your life style. Its like accepting a sociopath for being a serial murderer even though he didn't CHOOSE to be a sociopath...its just the way he is.
What about abusing your power and confidentiality as a teacher to broadcast private information about a student's sex life, and then hunt down and punish students for being gay or voicing their support of those that are? Is that constitutionally protected?
Apparently Reagan, Alexander the Great, Michaelangelo, Mark Twain and Jimi Hendrix were all left-handed. On the downside, so was Keanu Reeves.
I'm also against forest fires, street crime, people exsanguinating in the streets, people dying of disease, limitations to human knowledge, third world illiteracy and pollution, but there's only so many ****ing hours in a day. It's not hypocrisy not to directly solve every problem that you think ought to be solved; it's acknowledging the limitations of space-time. Unless you're a part time firefighter, police officer paramedic inner city counseler in the peace corps that works at the local batter women's shelter and nurses wounded wildlife in their spare time, you might want to step off the high horse.
There's been reports of illegal medical experimentation in China for years, and enough of them that it's almost certainly based on something. I don't know if I've heard that the government itself has actually been behind anything quite as gruesome as murder and organ harvest in recent years, but it's not out of the question, and it's certainly probably on a black market level. For all that it's improved, let's not forget that China is still a very unfriendly place by Western standards, particularly for political and social undesirables. So, it's not baseless speculation, although it is still speculation, unless Keith knows something I don't.
Action T4
Read on to find out how well that ended up working.
Oh, I have to give a hint.
As far as world domination, I'm sure I have no idea what in the Hell you're talking about.
The future tense is inappropriate, but yeah.
While Israeli is certainly at times careless and callous, an understandable but not condonable effect of being surrounded by die-hard enemies for so many decades, it is not sinister; critics of the Israeli government do not, as they do in Russia, mysteriously keep dying, or have their businesses and assets seized for being "enemies of the state". In fact, if you follow the headlines, they even succeeded in ousting said reckless and incompetent government recently. While Israel is, like India or Brazil or even, yes, the United States and many European nations, imperfect in it's democracy, it's making a legitimate attempt. I would still rather be an Arab woman in Israel where I will be looked down on and discriminated against than one in Iran, where I may be killed for wearing "immodest" clothing in public or attempting to report a rape, without any hope of justice for my murder.
At any rate, in an ideal organization, it would be up to an international and hopefully objective panel, not American nor European politicians.
Riddle of Ravens
XUUU
Tribal Instant- Shaman
Counter target spell unless it’s controller pays X. If a spell is countered this way, put X 1/1 blue Bird tokens with flying into play under your control.
“I don’t know. How IS a raven like a writing desk?”
Swamp has only 19- or is that cheating?
What do we mean by "free"? By this I mean both, how do we define freedoms, and more importantly, in what light do we view it? I think the EU has, as noted, a very good system in place for determining freedom. The EU has the advantage of being balanced in itself by several large countries (UK, Spain, France, Italy, Germany) and a number of other, smaller ones, so that no one country has overwhelming influence and so the process remains fair. Contrary to how most Europeans, it would seem, believe any American-led initiative must turn, I would like to see a similar balance of powers, with the US, Latin America, the EU, India, and Africa (and there are certainly African nations viewed as democratic, if not prosperous or, perhaps, greatly stable) and the free nations of East Asia (Japan, Taiwan, Korea) acting to counterbalance each other, perhaps. Freedom does persist best where there are many competing interests- in this I agree with NS, if not with his interpretation of history or rabidly anti-Western sentiment. Stable majorities lead to stagnation and corruption; mere two party states are almost as bad in this.
However, more than defining what is free and deciding who defines it and how, the more fundamental question is;
Do we define freedom as a good thing?
If the answer is no, such a League seems meaningless. If it is yes, then it seems a worthwhile idea to pursue. This may seem like an obvious question, but I propose that is not, as evidenced by some of the posts in this thread. It is not at all clear that all people in this thread view freedom as being a sacred or even greatly important quality to possess. Should it not be said that Russia and China have worse governments than Germany or America or Japan? And if not, why not; as freedoms of speech, of movement, of empowerment economic or otherwise, simply not worth fighting for? Which is the elephant in the room; freedom requires not only constant vigilance but constant action to maintain. Freedom would mean standing up to Russia and Iran and China on some or all issues, with the possiblity of a slide into violence. It is easier to accept a slide towards autocratism, and it is safer. Freedom inherently creates the opportunity for more violence and costs stability. Do we then say that it is still worthwhile to pursue freedom? To me the answer seems obvious, but it seems that many people, having grown up in the West and always had freedom, do not view it this importantly. For them it is better to play games of equivocation and pretend that there's no difference, really, in the level of freedom (I suppose by this it is meant meaningful freedom) between Iran and Italy.
Freedom, to put it bluntly, requires work. There's a certain appeal to being freed of the burden of free will, to have someone else decide where you should go and what you should do, to let them take the responsibility for making the right decisions or not. In the West, do we really believe it's worth fighting for? Or would we like to see that burden eased?
My top 10 favorite cards;
10) Loxodon Warhammer: I like this card because I saw it's potential before other people, ran it at PT: Honolulu, and was thoroughly mocked for doing so. I faced one opponent who used three Putrefies on creatures carrying the Warhammer, including a Vitu-Ghazi token, because he couldn't stomach killing the Warhammer itself. And now, sweet vindication. Granted, this Type 2 season didn't have the option of going Jitte, but still...
Sidenote: By no means my favorite card at all, but Golgari Guildmage has a place on my list of cards with special meanings. I am, to my knowledge, the only person to ever play Golgari Guildmage in a Constructed Pro Tour. Everytime I see Golgari Guildmage, it reminds me why frantic last minute deckchanges in an attempt to be clever are bad.
9) Nightmare. When I was but a lad trading cards on the schoolyard, I traded my Nightmare for half of a cheeseburger, and suffered the worst case of buyer's remorse ever. Hereafter I sought out another copy and cherished it properly.
8) Wirewood Symbiote. I got back into Magic around Onslaught block, and this was one of the pivotal cards I discovered for Ritual-Elves, the first deck I built that I feel really marked a progression towards actual competitive game play. Granted, at first I thought it was an infinite combo since I couldn't read the last line for some reason.
7) Vengeful Dreams. My second deck on the road to competitive gameplay was called "Vengeful God", and it's where I discovered something about myself; I like breaking other people's decks. I like smashing their plans and stomping on their toys. This deck was terrible at anything but killing creatures, but it was pretty effective at that, roughly speaking. Granted, alongside DoJ and Eternal Dragon I was running Jareth and Dragon Scales for teh c0mbo, but it did beat all my friends' decks consistently. Vengeful Dreams also taught me about building synergy into control, although I still had to learn about priorities; there were so many cool cards to run with Vengeful Dreams (Life Burst, Eternal Dragon, Glory, Dragon Scales...) that I had to run 66 cards.
6) Helldozer. God, I love winning with bad cards. This card was Tap: Armageddon target player with Coffers.
5) Body Snatcher. You know, the Flash metagame was broken and silly and stupid, but for a month it was really fun as Hell, and I was completely riding the cutting edge. I know one other team developed the Body Snatcher/Benevolent Bodyguard tech cocurrently, but they didn't do what I did; broadcast every new development of the Flash archetype as loudly as possible in every forum possible, along with every dire warning about how ridiculously overpowered that deck is. I'm no good at modesty. I still think I should be awarded a medal or something for standing up to Ben Bleiweiss's ******** telling players to just proceed as normal and they wouldn't get hopelessly crushed by a degenerate combo-control deck with more counters than MUC. Body Snatcher reminds me what a truly awesome individual I am.
4) Ritual of Subdual. The other lynchpin in Ritual-Elves. I love this card because it was the very first time I used a card that no one else respected or even knew about, and used it to break peoples' dreams. I would sit behind Priest of Titania and Wirewood Channeler and a Wirewood Symbiote bouncing Sylvan Messenger and my opponents would never get to play anything. Granted, it was a scrubby 1.5 metagame, but still. I had a lot of fun. On a similar note: Book of Rass.
3) Decree of Justice/Eternal Dragon/Wing Shards. I wasn't really tapped into the Magic scene on a competitive level for a while (in fact, for a while I was so hardcore rogue I refused to actually learn anything about competitive play or read any articles). But I do know that at least where I lived, when Scourge came out, these cards were not regarded very highly. White, you have to remember, before Scourge, sucked. It sucked hard. It was vaguely remembered as being the White Weenie color, but it hadn't been the best or even second best aggro color for ages. White control was a distant memory of days when Scroll Rack and Land Tax were around; White control at that time meant splashing for Wrath in your Blue deck. Astral Slide had actually seen play in block, along with Akroma and her Vengeance and Renewed Faith, but this was a rarity, and that deck was played more for the Lightning Rift, with the white parts being an afterthought. Scourge made White a Control color again, and as far as I was concerned at least, I was on the cutting edge. Vengeful God was, at that time, still torn between efficient removal and being a bad Soldier deck, and I took these cards (and, to be fair, Rain of Blades and Dragon Scales, which were... less spectacular) and tweaked it out- this was when I was the guy who played a 70 card elf deck with Ritual of Subdual and Aggravated Assault, mind. I won my very first tournament, a Type 2 event, with this deck, beating people who were actually heavily into the actual Type 2 environment. One opponent had no idea why I floated eleven white mana in response to Upheaval. Another guy insisted, insisted to the store owner/judge that Storm should be countered when the original spell was countered. It was great. It was glorious. Eternal Dragon just wouldn't die.
2) Krosan Tusker. I loveded you, piggie. I loveded you.
There's nothing rational here. Krosan Tusker and I shall retire to a comfortable home in the Berkshires and raise children together. My very first love in Limited, and undying flame of Constructed.
1) Order of the Ebon Hand. This was the very first card I ever owned. Technically, I owned some dozen other cards in the same pack, but I remember not really caring much about them. It was the Centaur art, to be specific. I even remember my grandfather, a really awesome old Irish cop with a glass eye who always smelled of scotch and pipe-tobacco, listening patiently as I described the card to him long distance (I loved my grandfather. He also used to endure late night phone calls so I could ask him what different letters spelled; these were usually random assortments, so most of the time the answer was "That doesn't spell anything", although sometimes I got lucky). I'm sure he had no idea what I was talking about, but it was sweet of him to listen anyway.
Also, this card was way better when you thought colorless meant any color, and you and your twin each had a clutch of Urza's lands and no idea what a "4-of" rule was (to be fair, I'm not sure we really knew what Protection from White was, either. Or that you could limit the number of colors in a deck [although, hence the Urza's lands rule]).
#0.5) Didgeridoo. Duh. 'nuff said.
Some of the opposing arguments suggest that such an organization would be provocative to nations like Russia or China, or that it would be a private club for the US and it's stooges, with America calling the shots and decided what nations are "free" based on it's own relationships. Certainly it would be absurd to invite in, say, Saudi Arabia and exclude Serbia, for instance. But it raises the point that, while some nations are very clearly free in an actual sense (most of Europe, America, Japan, Australia, Korea, large swarths of Latin America, etc.), and some are very clearly not, there are a large number of states where the issue is murkier than might be comfortable. What do do with borderline states, that are nominally democratic but for varying reasons are not seen as being truly free? Who would you like to see invited to such a club, who, if anyone, would be on the reserve list? What powers should such an institution really have? And how should it be run? If it's to be based on the ideals of democracy, should population be a determining factor in power within the organization? By this measure, India would certainly wield immense power within the organization; but would either the Indians or the rest of the World be comfortable with that? And how to reconcile if size does not matter? Should Ireland and Brazil be given equal clout?
What about abusing your power and confidentiality as a teacher to broadcast private information about a student's sex life, and then hunt down and punish students for being gay or voicing their support of those that are? Is that constitutionally protected?