@Sobek: The link posted by Highroller is a response to the one you posted.
Regardless of what the Clinton campaign may say, though, to appear in the race, to me it seems like there's no way she'll last through the end of the week. The number of superdelegates he needs to clinch the nomination is such a smaller fraction than she needs that any effort of hers to get the superdelegates on her side (which has led with the statement 'let's see what happens when this is all over' - and it's very, very close to over) needs to operate at close to 100% success.
And with this most recent tide of pro-Obama superdelegates, the chances are incredibly slim.
I'm not really enjoying the idea of Mythic Rare. If they need another selling point to get newer players into this game as opposed to other modern card games, they could have spun the 3-rarity system the other way:
We have X commons, 3 uncommons, and 1 rare in every pack! No more pack-cracking for the best cards, you'll get a rare card (insert false association between rarity and goodness here) without waiting for the super-rares! You'll feel the power every time you open a pack!
How's that for a marketing push? Sadly, this didn't happen.
Fundamentally, they do make set-collecting tougher while providing little merit of their own, since they're not actually more powerful (which would bust the secondary market even more). In a comparison between the value of the secondary market to the game, which Wizards actually seems to find important, and the need for additional profits/additional players, I'm surprised that Wizards would okay the creation of another rarity, which would, despite the quality inherent to mythic rares (or lack thereof), drive up the cost on the secondary market. If any mythics become tournament staples, the prices will go over the top. $20 singles are a bad enough barrier to tournament entry as it is.
Their solution to offset this change - making the set itself smaller - is a decent one for a few reasons (one being card volume, one being power creep, another being design space), but doesn't seem to counteract the need to buy more packs to open mythics. I can accept the fuzzy math that each individual mythic is only about twice as rare, since there are fewer, but its effect on collection is major.
Mythic rares also seem to be a noob trap, in that newer players will find them far more interesting than 'just rares', regardless of quality. There will be many abusive trades and disappointed faces at 'aww, i only got a rare' that could have been avoided.
At the same time, I can get used to it once I start playing Magic again; it's not like they added a sixth color or anything... *knocks wood*
Interesting news: The barred delegates from Michigan and Florida have all been restored; each has a 1/2 vote to cast at the convention in Denver (presumably, this includes the superdelegates too). All 'Uncommitted' delegates have been given to Obama in light of his absence on the ballot.
I was reading the third Harry Potter book, and I noticed that Cho Chang is a year older than Harry. But in the seventh book, she tries to help him get into the Ravenclaw common room. At this time, she is 18 and should be out of Hogwarts. Did anyone else notice this?
Then again, Fred, George, Percy, Oliver Wood, and Colin Creevey weren't going to Hogwarts - this was literally the last stand against Voldemort, so they all needed to take their stand by going back to Hogwarts or die later on.
Also, the nature of the Ravenclaw common room - the question/answer mechanism - doesn't change from year to year, so Cho would be able to aid him there.
[quote=Zith;/comments/11373627]
And please, nobody blame anything like this on global warming. The average temperature increase is just 0.6C, so nothing more than a degree /quote]
I'm not going to be a global warming nut here, but I'll just say that those four words undo the rest of your post.
Yeah, DC has been pretty heated too, but it's always like this.
I've been pre-sarnath'd on Watchmen and V for Vendetta, so I'll recommend 1602, by Neil Gaiman. If you know anything about Marvel comics or European history, you'll at least appreciate it.
Instead of reiterating the "that was a mess" opinion, I'll just offer one comment:
It's glad to know someone else was as disappointed that the Kraken was taken out of the story in such a low-key manner. I'm hoping that its destruction can at least be a deleted scene when the DVD comes out.
I don't know much about pre-Civil War presidents, but I'll nominate Herbert Hoover as the worst president from the Civil War to WWII and George W. Bush as the worst president since then.
Hoover's crime pretty much goes without saying: he let the Great Depression happen on his watch, and let it continue while doing basically nothing to stop it. (Keep in mind that the effects of the Depression led to both his own ousting by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany.)
That's a reasonable stance, so please don't Godwin's Law it.
Since WWII: George W. Bush. Let me just make a list of all the vile and abominable things he's done, most of which the public has forgotten or glossed over:
-Ignoring some of the best intelligence in the world, the FBI and the CIA, entirely when their knowledge went against his personal agenda
-Successfully ousting the Taliban in Afghanistan, after which he COMPLETELY IGNORED Osama bin Laden and quickly removes the US from the region, leading to six years since then of Taliban resurgence and crime rates through the roof,
-Let me reiterate: Failing to catch bin Laden when he was literally steps away from US troops,
-Abandoning a successful operation in Afghanistan to settle business in Iraq,
-Alienating several top allies by failing to listen or be persuasive,
-Fomenting a massive wave of anti-Americanism and, yes, terrorism by being so horribly inept and failing the nation,
-Refusing to deal with global warming when we had a much greater chance of reversing its effects, instead opting to support big businesses that really wouldn't be affected by environmental precautions,
-Corollary: Scaling back environmental precautions nationwide,
-Failing to pull out of Iraq in early 2004, after Hussein was caught and before the insurgency began due to our occupation,
-Establishing a torture center at Guantanamo Bay and several secret prisons in other nations, where innocent and guilty people alike can be tortured without fair trial,
-Allowing Iraq to fall into civil war, and really not giving a damn about peace in the Middle East,
-Ignoring completely the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and letting conflict after conflict happen without intervening in any way,
-Removing from office or shutting out anyone who disagrees, rather than using wiser opinions to strengthen his own weak goals,
-Wiretapping millions of Americans in search of "unlawful combatants",
-Allowing BILLIONS of dollars to be spent on "earmarks" and "private projects" that do nothing for our nation,
-Allowing and even endorsing corruption within our legislative branch,
-Leading a Republican party that claims to be the "moral" party, yet hides self-hating pedophiles (Mark Foley) and vile racists (Trent Lott) in order to maintain that front
-Plundering the treasury and spending so many loans that our nation owes hundreds of billions of dollars in debt,
-Allowing Hurricane Katrina to strike New Orleans and flood the poor black portion of the city entirely, with a sluggish response that shows he really isn't interested in dealing with threats to our people's security at all,
-Jumpstarting a "surge" in troops which has led to double the US soldier death rate there was before (how can 150000 US troops die twice as often as 125000?)
-Overusing and abusing government contractors and privatized military contractors without the competitive process that should occur in their selection,
-Appointing partisan and opinionated Supreme Court judges based on tipping the votes for key court decisions rather than capable judges,
-Being utterly unable to admit fault or mistake,
-Claiming to care about human rights and freedoms in Iraq while innocent people are being tortured in secret prisons and the rights to abortion and same-sex marriage are being stripped away.
No wonder we're already talking about the 2008 presidential election, even though it's 17 months away.
I'm going to cast my vote for Yes, but only because America's fall will most likely be complex and be caused by several interdependent factors, much like Rome's actually was (while barbarian invasions usurped the Emperor of the West in 476 AD, they had been attacking for two centuries and several provinces kept the name "Rome" for decades after the last emperor had died.)
We're already seeing signs of the people losing power, mounting financial debt, corruption, environmental destruction, and unrest at home and abroad. While I doubt a long foreign assault is going to weaken us at home (unless someone's counting a wave of illegal immigrants who want to work with us as "assault"), I'm also beginning to lose hope. If I was placing bets I'd say we have about 100 years left.
A slight aside: Many empires and large states have fallen since Rome. How come nobody draws parallels to the Ottoman Empire, or to, say, the USSR?
As cliched as it sounds, I'd like to put forward "Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd. After 34 years, this album still sounds perfect in basically every way it can be qualified. The tracks flow together and add up to a whole that's greater than just each individual song.
EDIT: Now that people have mentioned it, I have to put "Wish You Were Here", also by Pink Floyd as a very close second. The album feels much more like one long piece than "Dark Side", but it's emotionally resonant in ways that even "Dark Side" isn't.
"RHCP stuff" isn't bad, either, & I'd recommend it myself...
Allright, well, i wrote an article for my school paper about the effects of global warming and the difference between what we are causing and what has happened in the past. Personally, i dug up some evidence that shows what is actually happening to the Earth. As you probably know, earth goes in climate cycles. The last ice age happened about 10,000 years ago (right?). From this graph (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png) you can see the effects of CO2 in ppm and the effect on the climate. This is a graph put together from samples taken from the Vostok Ice core, a glacier, if you will, that has trapped these conditions for thousands of years. As you can see, CO2 has been higher in the past than it is now. This always resulted in a climate shift, not so sudden though. What we are saying is that we are causing this global warming. But, according to the graph, we have little effect. Also, we are in what is called an interglacial period, a time when the temperatures will rise, in some cases to tropical levels. So, in conclusion, it is safe to say that we are not completely causing global warming. Whatever we do, stop or not, the ice age will come.
In response to this:
There is, actually, conclusive evidence to denouce that graph, oddly enough, also from Wikipedia. If you take a look at: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e9/Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr-2.png
the graph is basically an extension/compression of the one you posted earlier. However, the natural ice-age cycle of atmospheric carbon dioxide has been taken to at least twice the level that has existed since at least 400,000 years ago, and the majority of such an increase has been during the last two centuries.
What has been increasing the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide and pollutant gases exponentially with its growth over the last 200 years? The Industrial Revolution (read: us). Global warming is real. We are the cause. In fact, we're already seeing a few of the effects. Besides, even if it's not real, what do we have to lose by increasing environmentalism and saving energy?
I really like the "gold counter" mechanic - I could see a small set or even a block come out of that. It would be interesting to see more "Remove a gold counter from ~:" effects that reflect upon spending money, etc.
Among those of you reading the graphic novel, does the most recent chapter also convince anyone else that Hana Gittelman never should have existed? Hana's character was meant to intersect with the show and connect the online experience with the TV broadcasting, and she did - in ONE episode. Her total screen time lasted about three minutes. The Heroes 360 ARG (bleah, not even close. Just a series of pseudo-webpages and minigames) had her break Linderman's election codes...only for Micah to rig the machines again. Not to mention she flip-flops almost immediately from hating Bennet to following his orders....which involve going into SPACE? From CHINA? Seriously, WTF. Astronauts take weeks and months of training for a reason. And the IM with Micah? More WTFery. Pointless, pointless character. I'm at least glad that they killed her here instead of letting her pointlessly amble through cyberspace.
Regardless of what the Clinton campaign may say, though, to appear in the race, to me it seems like there's no way she'll last through the end of the week. The number of superdelegates he needs to clinch the nomination is such a smaller fraction than she needs that any effort of hers to get the superdelegates on her side (which has led with the statement 'let's see what happens when this is all over' - and it's very, very close to over) needs to operate at close to 100% success.
And with this most recent tide of pro-Obama superdelegates, the chances are incredibly slim.
We have X commons, 3 uncommons, and 1 rare in every pack! No more pack-cracking for the best cards, you'll get a rare card (insert false association between rarity and goodness here) without waiting for the super-rares! You'll feel the power every time you open a pack!
How's that for a marketing push? Sadly, this didn't happen.
Fundamentally, they do make set-collecting tougher while providing little merit of their own, since they're not actually more powerful (which would bust the secondary market even more). In a comparison between the value of the secondary market to the game, which Wizards actually seems to find important, and the need for additional profits/additional players, I'm surprised that Wizards would okay the creation of another rarity, which would, despite the quality inherent to mythic rares (or lack thereof), drive up the cost on the secondary market. If any mythics become tournament staples, the prices will go over the top. $20 singles are a bad enough barrier to tournament entry as it is.
Their solution to offset this change - making the set itself smaller - is a decent one for a few reasons (one being card volume, one being power creep, another being design space), but doesn't seem to counteract the need to buy more packs to open mythics. I can accept the fuzzy math that each individual mythic is only about twice as rare, since there are fewer, but its effect on collection is major.
Mythic rares also seem to be a noob trap, in that newer players will find them far more interesting than 'just rares', regardless of quality. There will be many abusive trades and disappointed faces at 'aww, i only got a rare' that could have been avoided.
At the same time, I can get used to it once I start playing Magic again; it's not like they added a sixth color or anything... *knocks wood*
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/05/31/dems.delegates/index.html
The new number of delegates to have for nomination is 2118, and Obama maintains a clear lead.
Also, the nature of the Ravenclaw common room - the question/answer mechanism - doesn't change from year to year, so Cho would be able to aid him there.
And please, nobody blame anything like this on global warming. The average temperature increase is just 0.6C, so nothing more than a degree /quote]
I'm not going to be a global warming nut here, but I'll just say that those four words undo the rest of your post.
Yeah, DC has been pretty heated too, but it's always like this.
El Nino & La Nina...hm...
Hoover's crime pretty much goes without saying: he let the Great Depression happen on his watch, and let it continue while doing basically nothing to stop it. (Keep in mind that the effects of the Depression led to both his own ousting by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany.)
That's a reasonable stance, so please don't Godwin's Law it.
Since WWII: George W. Bush. Let me just make a list of all the vile and abominable things he's done, most of which the public has forgotten or glossed over:
-Ignoring some of the best intelligence in the world, the FBI and the CIA, entirely when their knowledge went against his personal agenda
-Successfully ousting the Taliban in Afghanistan, after which he COMPLETELY IGNORED Osama bin Laden and quickly removes the US from the region, leading to six years since then of Taliban resurgence and crime rates through the roof,
-Let me reiterate: Failing to catch bin Laden when he was literally steps away from US troops,
-Abandoning a successful operation in Afghanistan to settle business in Iraq,
-Alienating several top allies by failing to listen or be persuasive,
-Fomenting a massive wave of anti-Americanism and, yes, terrorism by being so horribly inept and failing the nation,
-Refusing to deal with global warming when we had a much greater chance of reversing its effects, instead opting to support big businesses that really wouldn't be affected by environmental precautions,
-Corollary: Scaling back environmental precautions nationwide,
-Failing to pull out of Iraq in early 2004, after Hussein was caught and before the insurgency began due to our occupation,
-Establishing a torture center at Guantanamo Bay and several secret prisons in other nations, where innocent and guilty people alike can be tortured without fair trial,
-Allowing Iraq to fall into civil war, and really not giving a damn about peace in the Middle East,
-Ignoring completely the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and letting conflict after conflict happen without intervening in any way,
-Removing from office or shutting out anyone who disagrees, rather than using wiser opinions to strengthen his own weak goals,
-Wiretapping millions of Americans in search of "unlawful combatants",
-Allowing BILLIONS of dollars to be spent on "earmarks" and "private projects" that do nothing for our nation,
-Allowing and even endorsing corruption within our legislative branch,
-Leading a Republican party that claims to be the "moral" party, yet hides self-hating pedophiles (Mark Foley) and vile racists (Trent Lott) in order to maintain that front
-Plundering the treasury and spending so many loans that our nation owes hundreds of billions of dollars in debt,
-Allowing Hurricane Katrina to strike New Orleans and flood the poor black portion of the city entirely, with a sluggish response that shows he really isn't interested in dealing with threats to our people's security at all,
-Jumpstarting a "surge" in troops which has led to double the US soldier death rate there was before (how can 150000 US troops die twice as often as 125000?)
-Overusing and abusing government contractors and privatized military contractors without the competitive process that should occur in their selection,
-Appointing partisan and opinionated Supreme Court judges based on tipping the votes for key court decisions rather than capable judges,
-Being utterly unable to admit fault or mistake,
-Claiming to care about human rights and freedoms in Iraq while innocent people are being tortured in secret prisons and the rights to abortion and same-sex marriage are being stripped away.
No wonder we're already talking about the 2008 presidential election, even though it's 17 months away.
We're already seeing signs of the people losing power, mounting financial debt, corruption, environmental destruction, and unrest at home and abroad. While I doubt a long foreign assault is going to weaken us at home (unless someone's counting a wave of illegal immigrants who want to work with us as "assault"), I'm also beginning to lose hope. If I was placing bets I'd say we have about 100 years left.
A slight aside: Many empires and large states have fallen since Rome. How come nobody draws parallels to the Ottoman Empire, or to, say, the USSR?
EDIT: Now that people have mentioned it, I have to put "Wish You Were Here", also by Pink Floyd as a very close second. The album feels much more like one long piece than "Dark Side", but it's emotionally resonant in ways that even "Dark Side" isn't.
"RHCP stuff" isn't bad, either, & I'd recommend it myself...
In response to this:
There is, actually, conclusive evidence to denouce that graph, oddly enough, also from Wikipedia. If you take a look at:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e9/Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr-2.png
the graph is basically an extension/compression of the one you posted earlier. However, the natural ice-age cycle of atmospheric carbon dioxide has been taken to at least twice the level that has existed since at least 400,000 years ago, and the majority of such an increase has been during the last two centuries.
What has been increasing the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide and pollutant gases exponentially with its growth over the last 200 years? The Industrial Revolution (read: us). Global warming is real. We are the cause. In fact, we're already seeing a few of the effects. Besides, even if it's not real, what do we have to lose by increasing environmentalism and saving energy?
Ignite Flesh should be worded "Ignite Flesh deals 5 damage to target creature...". Players can't deal damage, and all damage must have sources.
I also own Baten Kaitos, but I found it redundant, slow, and unengaging compared to Tales, so I'd suggest you not get it.