MTG Salvation

This is a historic moment. Russia is invading Ukraine. Thoughts?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-01/ukraine-tells-russia-troop-entry-means-war-after-putin-approval.html

Quote from brasswire

Quote from resonance

I don't identify a number of the questions asked in your survey with "patriotism".

For example:
“I would rather be a citizen of my country than any other country in the world”

Yes, I would agree with this statement; but, it has nothing to do with unrequited love for my country. The United States is an affluent nation. Naturally, individuals prefer a more comfortable lifestyle over a harsher one. But, you can live in an affluent nation and prefer to live there and never wave a miniature flag or pledge allegiance. Where's the "patriotism" in that scenario?

But there are plenty of "affluent" countries in the world, so it can't be just that. There must be some small amount of "patriotism", or at least resistance to change, to say that you would still choose your own country given the freedom to choose any other country in the entire world. Unless you think there is actually an *objectively* "best" country in the world, and that it just so happens to be the one you already live in?

Resistance to change does not equal "patriotism".

I'd also like to note that the question poised does not ask whether if you live in the "best" country in the world but merely live in the country you as an individual most prefer. While it is difficult attaining an objectively "best" country for every person, it is a rather easy process for the individual.

I don't love the entire United States; but, I have deep admiration for my home state of California for being the technological trendsetter in the world (in terms of software and computing hardware).

How California have all the high tech companies I don't understand... and it does it manages to maintain its place tech revolution after tech revolution from PCs to the Internet and now in the smartphone/mobile era. Compare this to Japan, which is losing its competitiveness relative to South Korea and, in some aspects, even China.

Quote from Amadi

Quote from Blinking Spirit

Also:

I'm going to challenge your source of a branding institute with a university. See: NORC report. World Values Survey also polled people based on who was proud of their nationality, and the Ireland and US were tied for first place in 2005.

I don't identify a number of the questions asked in your survey with "patriotism".

For example:
“I would rather be a citizen of my country than any other country in the world”

Yes, I would agree with this statement; but, it has nothing to do with unrequited love for my country. The United States is an affluent nation. Naturally, individuals prefer a more comfortable lifestyle over a harsher one. But, you can live in an affluent nation and prefer to live there and never wave a miniature flag or pledge allegiance. Where's the "patriotism" in that scenario?

This is one of the most hilarious Twitter feeds ever.

Dallas Robinson @DRobUSA · Feb 8

My teammate got stuck in the bathroom. Barefoot, naked and alone he called his inner strength. @JohnnyQuinnUSA pic.twitter.com/xvlKtYpaaT

Who knew that they made doors out of cardboard?

Quote from Feathas

none of that is hard rock (although all of it is in one subgenre of rock or another, counting metal and punk as subgenres of it)

Shinedown is hard rock.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinedown

Of course, I have no idea what post you're responding to.

This song reminds me of this thread.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuNTO31FlY8

Quote from akmage

Yeah, the folk thing has been pretty big for a while. It can be very irritating just like the million jam bands that have sprung up. Trampled By Turtles fall into that category and they absolutely rip but it's that annoying jam/folk/rock hybrid.

I know Folk has had a devout following for a while; but it's only been like one or two years any of its songs begun charting on the Billboard Hot 100 and making it to top 40 Radio. (And for a while it was just Munford and Sons.) This isn't just subculture big, folk is becoming mainstream pop music Beyonce big. Folk is like playing in the JCPenney in your shopping mall big.

Rock is fine. A lot of pop is rock anyway.

Some mainstream rock bands playing on our top 40 radio stations:
- OneRepublic
- Imagine Dragons
- Mumford and Sons
- Passenger
- all that other folk stuff I don't care for (Of Monsters and Men, etc.)

Folk music is quite popular right now and a lot of folk bands happen to also be indie rock. I believe that folk will be one of the next big sounds of Gen Z as much as I dislike it. (That and electronic.)

If you're a rock purist who refuses to accept that pop music can be rock as well, however, then, yes, rock is certainly very dead.

Quote from TheEndIsNear

Yeah most of these are very confusing to me, like the US of A tendency to not differentiate between university and college.

The definition of university and college are clearly distinguished between in the United States.

university = master's/doctorate granting institution
college = bachelor's granting institution

OR

university = entire academic institution
college = one portion of the university (i.e. College of Letters and Science)

Quote from Sepiriel

Also this kid's whole schtik revolves around making himself a 'tough guy' and pushing authority around if i recall correctly, so it wouldn't surprise me if this was intended or just par for the course of keeping the image.

Nope, Bieber had this effeminate, good, clean "boy next door" kind of vibe when he first became popular. See his single "Baby".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kffacxfA7G4

Then he went into one of those child star "I've grown up" phases. He still has the build of a 13 year old, though. Bieber needs to eat more and work those shoulders.

Wow, the people on this forum are old. I've been on MTGS for 7 years now and it feels like the users around here don't change much at all. When I started out, most of us were high schoolers! And now? Not a single high schooler amongst us.

Quote from Kryptnyt

In our present day situation, a hipster is a person that tries to blend in with the nerd crowd, but clearly isn't a nerd. He or she may wear glasses they don't need or wear a T-shirt with a video game icon on it when they haven't actually played the game.

I think that goes too far. Hipsters don't try to blend in with actual nerds. The hipster culture strives to revive some aspects of decade old nerd culture while modern, mainstream nerd culture is frowned upon.

Also, the "nerdiness" of hipsters are so over-the-top and conspicuous that they aren't reminiscent of any actual nerds from any era. Who wears a t-shirt about a videogame?

It is rather easy to distinguish between "nerd" and "hipster". An actual "nerd" won't accidentally dress up like a hipster and end up liking things hipsters like.

Bitcoin is guaranteed to be worthless in a decade. The primary problem is not so much the inherent value; but, the highly deflationary nature of the currency. (Yes, Bitcoin is more deflationary than gold, silver, etc.) This deflationary model conflicts with the ever increasing net value of the world's assets. Furthermore, Bitcoins are already valued in the hundreds of dollars. With such a high value and an arbitrarily limited supply, Bitcoin can never be used by a wide audience as a medium of exchange.

This is not a shot at cryptocurrencies because some currency may make it work; but, the Bitcoin algorithm, in particular, will fail be design. An elementary understanding of economics would have served the inventors of Bitcoin well. Of course, others critics continue to accuse Bitcoin of being a simple Ponzi scheme and, if that is the case, then the inventors of Bitcoins have indeed succeeded in their endeavor and are probably very wealthy at this point.

There's no specific reason. Far leftists is just the type of demographic an English, fantasy based, trading card game, internet forum garners.

Some reasons why this would attract individuals who sway to the left:
- younger
- many Europeans

My approach, after not having programmed Java in 6 years, was simply cracking open my old Dietel textbook and reading the first X chapters (up to the GUI stuff). I never did any examples; but, I picked up on the language pretty fast when I actually needed to complete a project for class.

Quote from Jay13x

Yeah, this is probably something we could have made more clear, but to us it's such 'obvious' information that we didn't even think to mention it .

Well, I think it should be obvious to most foreigners that doorbusters are only brick and mortar even if they've never experienced Bpack Friday. It's not really possible to have doorbusters online. Even semi-doorbusterish online deals don't work. All it does is crash the website.