Posts made by frood

I’m willing to provide the source code to anyone who wants to take over…

@Imperious:

this was just an excuse to make a clean break

What then would hold somebody to such a commitment that they needed an excuse to have a reason to leave. Why cant leaving just be just as fine and good?

Its not like a priest that wants to become a communist looking for the opportunity to leave the church.

“Excuse” was the wrong word. Final push, or motivation, or whatever. Maybe he just wanted to go out in a huff with some drama.

I’m guessing the real reason is that he realized he was spending his entire life on this forum and maybe that was a bit of a waste so this was just an excuse to make a clean break.

Whatever the cause, it’s probably good for switch to have a life outside of this forum. I took about a 6-month break and am now back just to play a single game. Not really interested in the discussion or even strategy threads anymore, I’m just here to play.

@Cmdr:

he is presenting us with a sample size of 46, showing them pictures and the ones who say they are scared of the picture he is saying are also conservative in nature.

I’m pretty sure that people would have declared their own political beliefs beforehand. Otherwise it’s just him making things up, and I don’t think he’d get published with that approach!

I agree - the sample size is small. And, obviously there are many other factors that influence your political beliefs.

In discussing this with family, the point was raised that perhaps the heightened response to threats is a result of a conservative mindset, and not the other way around.

Back to the topic of background, however, it is possible to move beyond simply believing what your parents believe. I grew up in a household that was religious, generally pro-women’s equality, and very social-justice-oriented and very pacifist.

Today at age 32 I am still politically very left (I believe in government involvement in the economy and in social programs). However, I would also now say that I am an atheist, and believe that the state may legitimately use force to defend itself or enforce its laws. I also differ from my religious parents on the issues of abortion and homosexuality. So your background does not have to be your destiny, at least if you are able/willing to think for yourself.

Just a little more clarification: so my non-gut approach to crime in my neighbourhood is that violent crime in 90% of cases is between people who know each other, so even in a “dangerous” neighbourhood, as long as my friends and family are not violent people. I’ve had a bike or two stolen, but I consider that a small price to pay for living a 15-min. walk from my downtown office. So I may get gunned down someday as I’m obliviously mowing my lawn, but my life will have been relatively free of fear. And my mortgage is ridiculously low because I’m willing to live where others with money are afraid to.

Incidentally, my new job involves reviewing crime statistics.

The other thing I wanted to add is that the study only looked at 46 people, so it may not be the final word either.

This may get locked PDQ, but I found this article on Wired.com really interesting:

From http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/fearmongering-h.html:

Deep-seated political differences aren’t simply moral and intellectual: They’re also biological.

In reflex tests of 46 political partisans, psychologists found that conservatives were more likely than liberals to be shocked by sudden threats.

Accompanying the physiological differences were deep differences on hot-button political issues: military expansion, the Iraq war, gun control, capital punishment, the Patriot act, warrantless searches, foreign aid, abortion rights, gay marriage, premarital sex and pornography.

“People are experiencing the world, experiencing threat, differently,” said University of Nebraska political scientist John Hibbing. “We have very different physiological orientations.”

That’s very interesting to me. I live in a supposedly high crime neighbourhood, but the fact that there was a police shooting half a block from my house this winter doesn’t really disturb me. So maybe my liberal politics are really the result of my basic physiological make-up.

I’m not saying that’s better. Often fear is a very healthy response, and perhaps I should feel it more than I do. But I’ve just always been more into an intellectual analysis of the problem than responding from gut emotion.

So let’s keep this about human nature, not Blue v. Red. Heck, it may even lead to a little bit of understanding across the chasm of political divide running through the U.S.

From what I can see, my site is running just fine.

There won’t be any new features though. I don’t have time. Plus, when people hated my new input form (which I thought was pretty ingenious) it sort of killed the joy of further development.

I’ve actually provided the code to djensen for possible incorporation on this site, but I don’t know if he’s making any progress on that.

Is it too late to add some comments about procrastination?

I believe they go to whoever captures them. That’s what I recall TripleA doing. This would certainly apply to an IC built in EEU by the UK, liberated by Germany and then taken by the US.

If however the AA is in a friendly territory that you are liberating, maybe then the AA would go back to to your ally.

So maybe the answer is that it depends on who is awarded control of the territory.

Don’t be no fool, stay in skool.

Seriously though, if you don’t feel like school is your thing, take a year or two to work, see the world, learn about yourself and what you like to do. Too many people go straight to college or university, do an arts degree because science is too hard, get almost nothing out of it, graduate and then wonder why they can’t find a job that they like and that pays them what they think they are worth with a “college degree”.

But don’t just spend the year or two playing video games in your parents’ basement and being a leech on them and on society. If your life is that easy now, you’ll be not well prepared for what life brings later on when the apron strings are finally cut, or (worse) the strings will never be cut and you’ll still be mooching off your parents when you are 45, and you’ll find that as you’ve never been much use to anybody else, no one else has much use for you.

Wow I sound so harsh and conservative!

You may be the kind of person who’s needs are simple and you can live by yourself off of a minimum wage salary, and you are contented in life hanging out and playing guitar and that’s what makes you happy. I’m a lawyer and I sometimes wish I just had a “simple” job where I didn’t have to worry about clients losing thousands of dollars if I screw up.

Or you may be the kind of person who develops themselves on their own, has that independent ambition and ability, and you start out as a low-level employee and eventually take over the business, without any formal advanced education.

Personally, I think it’s not about whether you get a formal education or not. It’s about whether you have a curious, active mind and will learn about the world and develop yourself as a person. There’s a lot of people in university whose grey matter is not worth more than the chair they are sitting in.

The other thing though about college is that this is where you make the friends that you will probably know for the next major chunk of your life, and possibly your spouse. Because believe me, your high school friends will be 80% gone in the next few years. The people you meet in college tend to be more long-term friends.

College is way better than high school. It may seem scary, but once you get the hang of it, and realize that everyone else is a bit afraid too, it’s a big rush.

Well, I hope some of that made sense anyway.

Oh and the Lower East Side is notorious for prostitutes and drug addicts. I rode the bus through there once and saw this woman spazzing out on the bus bench as we drove by. Clearly high, clearly ugly, and clearly not wearing any underpants. Not a highpoint of the tour. So that would be the un-kid-friendly part.

You should hit Stanley Park, and there’s some kind of market at the docks, forget what it’s called, but that’s cool too.

@Gamer:

Are you tired of Revised, Dan?  If so, you should check out our miniatures forum.  Mot has done an awesome job adapting his Mapview program to play AAM by forum.  Miniatures play relies more on tactical considerations such as line-of-sight, maneuverability, range, etc. rather than raw strategic/economic factors as tends to be the case with Revised.  It is great fun trying out different army builds and pulvering your enemies’ Panzers (or Shermans or T-70s or whatever . . .). :lol:

I still like the game. It’s just that when I PBEM, I get obsessed and it takes over my life. Plus I kept getting my ass kicked by Gargantua and his wacky tactics, it just took some of the fun out of it.

But it’s not the game, it’s the time… esp. with a baby on the way and me having to keep my job to support a family now.

Otay. But only if you give me good karma :wink:

I’m not going to be back significantly, I was just checking in because I was notified of a glitch in AACalc that I’ve now fixed.

Anyone here play Battle for Wesnoth?

@Gamer:

Ender, you’re back! :mrgreen:  How you been, my Canadian Communist friend? :wink: :-D

Been pretty good, just not playing much AAR anymore. Not much time for games now, though I do sneak in the odd Battle for Wesnoth session. My baby’s scheduled to arrive in about four weeks, zoinkers.

On topic, I have to say the questions were pretty dumb. It shouldn’t have been “how American are you” but rather “how closely do you match the right-wing red-neck gun-nut stereotype of Americans”. If I were American I’d be pretty offended at the implication that that’s what it meant to be “American”.

I would think that in the spirit of equality and democracy, you would consider everyone with American citizenship 100% American. This idea of being a “better” American than others smacks of the idea of 1st and 2nd class citizens, which in turn smacks of the class system in Britain that the U.S. declared it’s independence from.

If you believe in democracy, you can’t rank people’s right to call themselves American based on their political and other preferences.

Some of the questions I had to answer with the extreme “unamerican” answer just because I couldn’t go with the “American” one. For example, to join the U.S. military, is this “Heroic”, “Desperate” or “Dumb”?

Well, I don’t particularly judge anyone for joining any military, it’s a decision you make. So I wouldn’t call it dumb. However, I also wouldn’t call it “heroic”. People do it for millions of reasons. I knew that often lower-income people join because it’s a guaranteed career, so I think I went with “desperate”.

The questions were dumb. nuff said.

IE6: The only good thing I can say about it is that it’s not Netscape 4.x. Closest thing to it though in terms of crappy browserdom.

I have the record:

You Are 13% American
You’re as American as Key Lime Tofu Pie
Otherwise known as un-American!
You belong in Cairo or Paris…
Get out fast - before you end up in Gitmo!

All righty, I have fixed a glitch were e-mails were not displaying properly.