It's unlikely that Palin will get the nomination unless they're truly desperate for someone. Her gubernatorial stint didn't impress the people of Alaska, and afterwards she's been the focus of a perpetual media circus.
What's more likely is she's using her announcement to focus media coverage on herself and boost ratings, not unlike Donald Trump's presidential bid.
If we didn't have coinage (ancient Egypt), we would rely on a barter economy, which is difficult to participate in. Interestingly enough, gold was not highly valued in the time of the Pharaohs. The fascination with the metal originated later, among the Greeks.
Among the first coins were those minted by Croesus of Lydia, who was conquered by Cyrus the Great IIRC. The Spartans had money in the form of iron bars of varying length, iron being in and of itself a thing of great value. Some Pacific islanders whose names elude me used large circular beads as money, with the largest being boulders with holes bored into them.
The entire value of money - and most dollars don't exist as paper currency, they exist as blips in binary (that's what your cash in the bank is [and before the digital age they were just numbers in a ledger]) - is that money is a universal commodity. It is a good that is accepted anywhere. That is why money is useful. Technically in any transaction you are both buying and selling - you are offering to sell your money for the others commodity, and vice versa. Currency allows more complex forms of transaction to occur, and for transactions to occur without the vagaries of the barter system. Chickens, after a period of time, have a habit of dying or going bad. Paying your rent in hay is all well and good, but requires the hay recipient to go out and either use said hay themselves or find someone who wants it. Money eliminates this onerous step (landlord doesn't need hay, so trade hay for $$$ and $$$ for rent).
Money exists because of faith in it. The entire financial market is set up similarly to the market for magic cards, where value is based upon usability, availability, and reliability. These values are determined by market forces, not dissimilar to how the auction houses in Diablo 3 and World of WarCraft work if you play those. The USDollar has a high value because people know that the US government has a sustainable debt load, is responsible, and has a ginormous economy. It also served as the worlds reserve currency after Bretton Woods (that's an important conference about the economy post WW2, but outside the reach of this discussion). Dollars, like every other currency, are traded in global money markets like shares of stock and any other commodity (money = commodity). The dollar is held in high regard because it's the best currency for it because of the reserve status, ubiquity, colossal economy, and stable politics of the US.
True fiat currency first emerged in China, when one of the Mongol Emperors declared that paper money was exchangeable at certain rates, but this was reverted after his death. Practically it emerged first as pegged to the value of specie (gold and silver in the bank, later only gold) to overcome the limitations of the metallic standard (heavy, easy to disfigure and clip, hard to tell true value without expensive instruments). This allowed large transactions to occur without lugging 30 kilos of metal that said "Rob Me" around. During the twentieth century the first steps away from the metallic currency were taken by FDR during the depression, who declared that dollars were no longer exchangeable for gold. This probably would have caused a panic in better times, but nobody had any money left anyway. Later, Richard Nixon declared the value of the dollar would no longer be linked to gold, thus creating the first (sustained) floating currency.
Whether or not one floating currencies existed beforehand practically is worthy of discussion (even if the answer is a qualified no), as most of the money in the financial system is in the forms of loans by banks, who loan out assets on the promise of them being repaid. So a bank will loan people the same money on credit (theirs and the banks) multiple times - this is important, it's why banks work, large economies and sophisticated finances work, and why banks making bad decisions sucks so very badly for everyone. Various currency crises occurred in the pre world war 1 era, but a fraternity among central bankers caused specie to be swapped between central banks of various nations to support each other in order to ward them off (seriously, they gave each other the gold they used to back their own currencies). During this time currencies jostled with each other, but the corrections needed to be gold standard only were so painful they were warded off by this transference of specie, as a currency based on gold can only back a certain amount of money in its system at any given time, which can ultimately be less than the value needed to maintain usable cash flows in the economy - ie., the price of gold needs to skyrocket or the value of money needs to disintegrate to accommodate economic growth on a gold standard.
The problem with Avengers vs. X-men is that there's no baseline power level for them. You can't compare them next to each other like you can Pokemon with fixed stats in a game. They've gone up and down in power over the years - both teams, with various reboots when they get too strong, etc.
Yes, the X-men could trash the Avengers if you use the right continuity bit of them. Likewise, the Avengers would thrash the X-men if you get them at the right time.
Pikachu, however, is an objectively bad Pokemon. It is slow, fragile, and weak. Its offense is 55 atk, 50 SpA, and 90 spd. Its defense is 35 HP, 30 Def, 40 SpDef. This puts it extremely low on any sort of matchup versus anything.
Wolverine would beat Pikachu, b/c of his insane bulk and resistance to paralysis. He would just keep spamming Metal Claw, and even though Pikachu's electric type resists it, he would still eventually wear it down.
Cyclops would lose, b/c Cyclops loses at everything. Loses at leadership. Loses at girlfriend. Loses at losing.
All the rest would win, as they're either faster than Pikachu (storm, jean grey), have priority moves capable of OHKO (Shadowcat pretty obviously knows Shadow Sneak and Nightcrawler has Sucker Punch, with enough Atk to OHKO Pikachu), or are tough enough to trade hits with the rodent (even Jubilee).
I'm not entirely sure whether some of my views on government can be considered "conservative" or "liberal" in the modern sense of the terms. I have a philosophy all of my own, stemming predominately from the principles upon which America was founded, making them right-wing in nature. The fact of the matter is that the United States Constitution, while being the greatest form of government yet introduced, is deeply flawed. Unlike the liberals, I do not hate the Constitution, in fact, I have the utmost respect for it. My problem lies with how it started down the right path, but never quite reached it's destination.
Actually your politics probably reach the point to where you're a Neo Fascist. This isn't an insult - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism for reference.
The Constitution wasn't strong enough and over time, it allowed degenerates to stagnate and pervert our country. The Constitution did not embody protections to ensure that the ideology it represents would remain forever dominant. I view a constitution as a document that is set in stone, one that shall last indefinitely.
The Constitution was considered too strong by many who wrote it. It was a compromise between various political factions on both the right and left, rather than a single monolithic document describing a unified viewpoint. Jefferson, Madison, and Adams had very different ideas about how to run the new country. You would be hard pressed to call them "not founding fathers".
It is often said that the role of the state is the ultimate question in political philosophy. Many disagree on what this role should be, some argue that government should play as little of a role as possible and respect the fundamental rights of the people. Others view government as an entity which needs to constantly intervene in and control the lives of it's citizens. Which of these is correct? Is there a middle-ground? This is the question we have been struggling to answer since our beginnings.
This is a series of changing debates, altered by circumstance and communication.
As I previously mentioned, I believe the American Founding Fathers had started down the right path. However, they did not complete the journey, possibly because they underestimated just how corrupt and perverted we would become. This could have been prevented through provisions ensuring ideological purity.
To ensure ideological purity, we would need to educate the people. The Founders did this in the short-term through the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers. However, the Founders did not plan for the long game, they did not enact constitutional provisions to educate future generations. Perhaps they operated under the assumption that America's values and ideas would be passed down throughout the generations, but clearly this did not happen; due to the corruption of man.
This is neo-Fascism. You aren't a fascist, but this is neo-Fascism.
Quote from Wikipedia »
Paxton sees fascism as "a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."[29]
The first steps towards ideological purity would be the utilization of educational institutions. These institutions would not only teach sciences and arithmetic, but the principles of the nation as well. In order to become a citizen, individuals would have to serve in the military and swear loyalty to the Constitution and principles of the nation. In addition to performing their military duties, all who serve would be required to regularly study the Constitution and principles of the nation. After earning citizenship, citizens would be free to vote and run for public office. All citizens would be required to keep arms for both defense of the state and defense from the state, should it ever become necessary. Foreigners wishing to immigrate to the nation would have to undergo service and study of both the Constitution and the principles of the nation.
The founding fathers were not a monolithic entity and many of them were vastly suspicious of the increased role of the state the Constitution played. The drafters were told to strengthen the articles of confederation to stave off the British annexing the colonies again. The federalist and anti federalist papers were the equivalent of C-Span of the day - they weren't there to educate, they were there to flog positions in a political scuffle and to let people know what the drafters were thinking. The Constitution was created by compromise and debate, its vagueness granting government suppleness to respond to the myriad troubles of its day.
What should happen to those who refuse to serve the state? I imagine that would be a matter of some debate, at first. Though it may sound "harsh," it may very well be necessary to re-educate such individuals. There would be no reason to not become a citizen, however, as the principles of the nation would be non-partisan. They would the universally agreed upon facets of society, ideas such as freedom, republican government, an armed citizenry, (con)federalism and the separation of powers. Citizens would be free to hold any views that they may like and the state would not discriminate against those for voicing such views, be they socialistic or libertarian.
I'm not entirely sure what to think of all that I have typed out above at this point, but I would like to know what you think.
Swazi, I think you don't understand how the constitution was created, the fact that many of its founders had deep seated disagreements and a deep loathing of each other (Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel, for gods sake), had significant reservations about what to do with slavery - which was in its twilight in the rest of the western world, hence the vague references to it in the constitution pre Civil War, and a deep suspicion of entrenched power structures. The idea of a monolithic, singular US was an utter impossibility then as now. The differences between urban and rural, federal and confederate, and state vs. federal were not resolved then and are not resolved now. You speak of the founding fathers limiting the power of the state, but what is required to result in your vision requires a colossal growth in federal power.
The RINO's aren't attacking the Republican party, they're being purged by the long hunt of anyone to the left the far right wing of the GOP. They would flock back to the GOP if they relaxed a bit on social issues and didn't call them things like RINO just because they had a relatively minor difference of opinion. The media by and large aren't inherently liberal so much as people have cocooned themselves in a biased news shell and shun anything outside of that.
Which sucks, but as far as I'm aware political discrimination isn't actionable beyond being bad for the company and making you the centerpiece of some very unpleasant news articles.
I don't agree with it, but at the same time politics at work has gotten incredibly toxic with how polarized everybody is. I'm a democrat - I intend to vote for Obama because I think that some structural reform is needed on taxes and regulation at multiple levels (some too low, some too high) - and I don't believe that Governor Romney would be an effective conduit for reform. Which isn't to say I have much confidence in Obama doing all that, but rather I believe the policies the Democrats espouse have a better likelihood of being responsible legislation given their time in the capital compared to the previous guy, the current guy, and his political allies.
Talking about politics has gotten caustic and this isn't even the ultimate logical conclusion (oi vey, logical conclusion). There is room for reasonable people to disagree. Republicans aren't truth hating morons and Democrats aren't snobbish autocratic scions of the anti Christ. There are people like that on both sides (too many, IMO) and it's getting pretty damn tiresome with just regular folks going tooth and nail because of the influence of some hack marketing electoral bull**** because it makes a better attack ad.
Guards and attendants in an emperors palace lived lives of relative ease and luxury. They lived long since they weren't doing manual labor with its attendant risks all day or going to war, and their position as retainers meant they weren't going to starve in times of famine.
Lately, while going to different stores, the decks that I've seen are almost always Green based ramp, and then classify themselves as something else such as "combo/ramp" or "control/ramp" by how they finish or take control of the game.
There aren't as many purely synergistic decks anymore, where everything fits together smoothly.. unless that archetype is ramp. How often do you see Rebel Tribal anymore? It used to be one of the better decks to play, because everything combined with the rest to have a rube goldberg type deck. It was fun to play, powerful, and relatively cheap. But then wizards went on a ramp happy spree. Suddenly the cheap decks were those who could spew out insane amounts of mana early on. It wasn't any longer an expensive archetype. Sol Rings dropped. Titans ruled standard, then dropped. Ramp spells got cheaper and more cost effective. There was little reason to run anything but green based ramp or blue/black based combo.
This isn't a fun environment.
Primeval Titan was the backbone of almost all ramp decks. Your job was to tutor for and play titan, then get as many swings in with it as you could. It wasn't "what can I get to best interact with the board and get ahead?"
I partially blame the "social only" aspect of EDH. By claiming it as such, you're implying that non-interactivity is good, because you wouldn't want to upset the other players, would you? Titan is the ultimate "I don't really care what you're doing" card in the sense you can play it, ramp, and play bigger spells without bothering to look at what other people have except for theft effects.
The banning of titan kills off my Dredgric deck in terms of the speed it had, but it also forces the deck to do something different with its Natural Order other than NO-> Titan -> Bazaar/Cradle or Cradle/Minamo.
Surprise! The format had some life breathed into it.
I'm glad I am not playing PrimeTime because I'm playing green. I'm playing green because that's what suits my deck's strategy.
I'm not angered by the banning of Primeval, but I would say that the reason stuff like rebel tribal sees zero play is for the same reason Clique isn't a tier 1 1v1 general anymore. Decks got better, and Rube Goldberg machines disintegrate when facing disruption.
Primeval Titan was a thing in the ramp decks, but it ultimately wasn't the reason that G/X ramp is good. Decks got tuned. Primeval went into that, sure, but it's hardly a tremendous loss for ramp. Its banning isn't going to make other decks viable; it's just going to make ramp somewhat worse.
Chip speed isn't a big deal with these products. You can have a processor bank clocking in at 20 gHz in a phone and it wouldn't change anything since nobody would notice unless they were really ****ing weird.
The only people who really care about large amounts of computing power are 1) IT people who use it and 2) PC gamers. For everybody else, fast, reliable internet and programs are what is important. That's the genius behind items like the netbook and why crappy specs aren't a big deal - they don't need lots of processing power. A 2.5 gHz processor and a video card built into the mobo are more than enough everybody who isn't going to be doing PC gaming or hardware intensive business applications. Most users aren't these people.
I have to disagree with you on this point spending mana on others peoplesturn is the hallmark of blue you mean I can spen 6 mana and keep Boomerang in hand and mantain more cards in hand than you yes please.
He died (as did a little piece of my soul) when they took damage of the stack. While we are talking aboutit, and because I am still a little bitter about it, GIVE ME BACK MANA BURN. You should be able to count to play Magic.
In competitive magic, Morphling was officially pronounced DOA when Odyssey came out, and Psychatog with it. Tog was part of competitive decks after that which were capable of dealing with the goblin menace (Read: GAT) that Onslaught block introduced. Gobs will kick the **** out of any U/B deck that isn't dedicated combo or lacks main deck goblin hate.
Blue, as a color, has always coasted off the back of the other colors having a ***** of a time trying to interact with it combined dramatically better card quality and color mechanics. Morphling just isn't dramatically better card quality anymore, and spending 6 on combat tricks when you could just play better creatures with better abilities than him isn't something that the mana hungry color of power and efficiency cares for.
Morphling is really cool, just not really good. Good 5/5 creatures bash into him and result in blank stares and scrambles for mana, while triggered abilities generate CA that morphling is powerless to stop or fight back against. Aggro decks rely on several creatures getting there, and are packed to the gills with equipments that will automatically make their bearers better than Morphling, no matter how awful a creature they are beforehand.
1
What's more likely is she's using her announcement to focus media coverage on herself and boost ratings, not unlike Donald Trump's presidential bid.
3
Among the first coins were those minted by Croesus of Lydia, who was conquered by Cyrus the Great IIRC. The Spartans had money in the form of iron bars of varying length, iron being in and of itself a thing of great value. Some Pacific islanders whose names elude me used large circular beads as money, with the largest being boulders with holes bored into them.
The entire value of money - and most dollars don't exist as paper currency, they exist as blips in binary (that's what your cash in the bank is [and before the digital age they were just numbers in a ledger]) - is that money is a universal commodity. It is a good that is accepted anywhere. That is why money is useful. Technically in any transaction you are both buying and selling - you are offering to sell your money for the others commodity, and vice versa. Currency allows more complex forms of transaction to occur, and for transactions to occur without the vagaries of the barter system. Chickens, after a period of time, have a habit of dying or going bad. Paying your rent in hay is all well and good, but requires the hay recipient to go out and either use said hay themselves or find someone who wants it. Money eliminates this onerous step (landlord doesn't need hay, so trade hay for $$$ and $$$ for rent).
Money exists because of faith in it. The entire financial market is set up similarly to the market for magic cards, where value is based upon usability, availability, and reliability. These values are determined by market forces, not dissimilar to how the auction houses in Diablo 3 and World of WarCraft work if you play those. The USDollar has a high value because people know that the US government has a sustainable debt load, is responsible, and has a ginormous economy. It also served as the worlds reserve currency after Bretton Woods (that's an important conference about the economy post WW2, but outside the reach of this discussion). Dollars, like every other currency, are traded in global money markets like shares of stock and any other commodity (money = commodity). The dollar is held in high regard because it's the best currency for it because of the reserve status, ubiquity, colossal economy, and stable politics of the US.
True fiat currency first emerged in China, when one of the Mongol Emperors declared that paper money was exchangeable at certain rates, but this was reverted after his death. Practically it emerged first as pegged to the value of specie (gold and silver in the bank, later only gold) to overcome the limitations of the metallic standard (heavy, easy to disfigure and clip, hard to tell true value without expensive instruments). This allowed large transactions to occur without lugging 30 kilos of metal that said "Rob Me" around. During the twentieth century the first steps away from the metallic currency were taken by FDR during the depression, who declared that dollars were no longer exchangeable for gold. This probably would have caused a panic in better times, but nobody had any money left anyway. Later, Richard Nixon declared the value of the dollar would no longer be linked to gold, thus creating the first (sustained) floating currency.
Whether or not one floating currencies existed beforehand practically is worthy of discussion (even if the answer is a qualified no), as most of the money in the financial system is in the forms of loans by banks, who loan out assets on the promise of them being repaid. So a bank will loan people the same money on credit (theirs and the banks) multiple times - this is important, it's why banks work, large economies and sophisticated finances work, and why banks making bad decisions sucks so very badly for everyone. Various currency crises occurred in the pre world war 1 era, but a fraternity among central bankers caused specie to be swapped between central banks of various nations to support each other in order to ward them off (seriously, they gave each other the gold they used to back their own currencies). During this time currencies jostled with each other, but the corrections needed to be gold standard only were so painful they were warded off by this transference of specie, as a currency based on gold can only back a certain amount of money in its system at any given time, which can ultimately be less than the value needed to maintain usable cash flows in the economy - ie., the price of gold needs to skyrocket or the value of money needs to disintegrate to accommodate economic growth on a gold standard.
1
Yes, the X-men could trash the Avengers if you use the right continuity bit of them. Likewise, the Avengers would thrash the X-men if you get them at the right time.
Pikachu, however, is an objectively bad Pokemon. It is slow, fragile, and weak. Its offense is 55 atk, 50 SpA, and 90 spd. Its defense is 35 HP, 30 Def, 40 SpDef. This puts it extremely low on any sort of matchup versus anything.
Wolverine would beat Pikachu, b/c of his insane bulk and resistance to paralysis. He would just keep spamming Metal Claw, and even though Pikachu's electric type resists it, he would still eventually wear it down.
Cyclops would lose, b/c Cyclops loses at everything. Loses at leadership. Loses at girlfriend. Loses at losing.
All the rest would win, as they're either faster than Pikachu (storm, jean grey), have priority moves capable of OHKO (Shadowcat pretty obviously knows Shadow Sneak and Nightcrawler has Sucker Punch, with enough Atk to OHKO Pikachu), or are tough enough to trade hits with the rodent (even Jubilee).
2
Actually your politics probably reach the point to where you're a Neo Fascist. This isn't an insult - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism for reference.
The Constitution was considered too strong by many who wrote it. It was a compromise between various political factions on both the right and left, rather than a single monolithic document describing a unified viewpoint. Jefferson, Madison, and Adams had very different ideas about how to run the new country. You would be hard pressed to call them "not founding fathers".
This is a series of changing debates, altered by circumstance and communication.
This is neo-Fascism. You aren't a fascist, but this is neo-Fascism.
The founding fathers were not a monolithic entity and many of them were vastly suspicious of the increased role of the state the Constitution played. The drafters were told to strengthen the articles of confederation to stave off the British annexing the colonies again. The federalist and anti federalist papers were the equivalent of C-Span of the day - they weren't there to educate, they were there to flog positions in a political scuffle and to let people know what the drafters were thinking. The Constitution was created by compromise and debate, its vagueness granting government suppleness to respond to the myriad troubles of its day.
Swazi, I think you don't understand how the constitution was created, the fact that many of its founders had deep seated disagreements and a deep loathing of each other (Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel, for gods sake), had significant reservations about what to do with slavery - which was in its twilight in the rest of the western world, hence the vague references to it in the constitution pre Civil War, and a deep suspicion of entrenched power structures. The idea of a monolithic, singular US was an utter impossibility then as now. The differences between urban and rural, federal and confederate, and state vs. federal were not resolved then and are not resolved now. You speak of the founding fathers limiting the power of the state, but what is required to result in your vision requires a colossal growth in federal power.
1
1
I don't agree with it, but at the same time politics at work has gotten incredibly toxic with how polarized everybody is. I'm a democrat - I intend to vote for Obama because I think that some structural reform is needed on taxes and regulation at multiple levels (some too low, some too high) - and I don't believe that Governor Romney would be an effective conduit for reform. Which isn't to say I have much confidence in Obama doing all that, but rather I believe the policies the Democrats espouse have a better likelihood of being responsible legislation given their time in the capital compared to the previous guy, the current guy, and his political allies.
Talking about politics has gotten caustic and this isn't even the ultimate logical conclusion (oi vey, logical conclusion). There is room for reasonable people to disagree. Republicans aren't truth hating morons and Democrats aren't snobbish autocratic scions of the anti Christ. There are people like that on both sides (too many, IMO) and it's getting pretty damn tiresome with just regular folks going tooth and nail because of the influence of some hack marketing electoral bull**** because it makes a better attack ad.
1
1
I'm not angered by the banning of Primeval, but I would say that the reason stuff like rebel tribal sees zero play is for the same reason Clique isn't a tier 1 1v1 general anymore. Decks got better, and Rube Goldberg machines disintegrate when facing disruption.
Primeval Titan was a thing in the ramp decks, but it ultimately wasn't the reason that G/X ramp is good. Decks got tuned. Primeval went into that, sure, but it's hardly a tremendous loss for ramp. Its banning isn't going to make other decks viable; it's just going to make ramp somewhat worse.
1
The only people who really care about large amounts of computing power are 1) IT people who use it and 2) PC gamers. For everybody else, fast, reliable internet and programs are what is important. That's the genius behind items like the netbook and why crappy specs aren't a big deal - they don't need lots of processing power. A 2.5 gHz processor and a video card built into the mobo are more than enough everybody who isn't going to be doing PC gaming or hardware intensive business applications. Most users aren't these people.
1
In competitive magic, Morphling was officially pronounced DOA when Odyssey came out, and Psychatog with it. Tog was part of competitive decks after that which were capable of dealing with the goblin menace (Read: GAT) that Onslaught block introduced. Gobs will kick the **** out of any U/B deck that isn't dedicated combo or lacks main deck goblin hate.
Blue, as a color, has always coasted off the back of the other colors having a ***** of a time trying to interact with it combined dramatically better card quality and color mechanics. Morphling just isn't dramatically better card quality anymore, and spending 6 on combat tricks when you could just play better creatures with better abilities than him isn't something that the mana hungry color of power and efficiency cares for.
Morphling is really cool, just not really good. Good 5/5 creatures bash into him and result in blank stares and scrambles for mana, while triggered abilities generate CA that morphling is powerless to stop or fight back against. Aggro decks rely on several creatures getting there, and are packed to the gills with equipments that will automatically make their bearers better than Morphling, no matter how awful a creature they are beforehand.