BlueLancer

Whoops, sorry. I != American. If we take it even further, I != Western. I've lived here for about four years and I don't consider myself 'westernized' because I'm proud of my heritage. English is my fourth language and I still hold my initial citizenship. And to tell you the truth, I can't be any happier that I am not born in a Western country. The lack of culture of the people I have met is disturbing to me. If we go even further, you disturb me. You assume that I want to get married to 'sing praises to the lord.' Did you even read the story I posted in the beginning of this thread? My parents got married initially to a judge - twice, not a church. They went through that twice before they even went for the church. Me? I want to go through marriage to show how much I love the woman I'm with. I want to go through the vows, not the songs, to show my true feelings. Besides, why would I want to go through a wedding to just sing praises to the Lord? I already do that during Sundays :wink: My totally legitimate reply to you was deleted, so I can't be bothered to write it again. I'll just say the post wasn't directed at you in particular, but the average forum user who will most likely get divorced once or more in his/her life. English isn't my first language either. I always thought you're from Czech though, which is a westernized country today, but I could be wrong and you're from some other country. I've been living in an asian country for a year (Japan) and I can say it's sometimes even better than the western society and the people have better attitudes in general. I didn't mention anything about the 'supremacy' of western societies though, so I don't know where you got that from.

That's true and the United States army will reign supreme for at least a decade or so. But once countries like India and China get wealthier (they already have billions of surplus money unlike the US which is $8 trillion in debt) they will have access to superior technology and training methods as well. That and the sheer insane amount of population in their respective countries, I'm quite sure China still could afford risking 1000 moderately trained soldiers to take out 100 special-op forces, and USA would still be the first one to lose all their good troops. Heck, even the Taleban can kill elite NATO soldiers to a ratio of about 15:1 (meaning they lose the 15 obviously...), and some of them are literally peasants who just went to a bootcamp for 3 months in a hot desert.

Whoops, sorry. I != American. If we take it even further, I != Western. I've lived here for about four years and I don't consider myself 'westernized' because I'm proud of my heritage. English is my fourth language and I still hold my initial citizenship. And to tell you the truth, I can't be any happier that I am not born in a Western country. The lack of culture of the people I have met is disturbing to me. Heck, feel grateful. I never said living in a western country is "good" or "cultural". English is my 3rd language as well. I don't know which country you're from but I've lived in Japan for 2002-2003 and I can tell you the people were much more respectful down there. I didn't post my reply to you but to the average user on this forum, who admittedly may not be american but is likely to get divorced. I read your post fully and your story sounded interesting, I'd had quoted you if I directed it at you though. The praise reference was the religious part of the ceremony, even if you're not religious but want to get married. Nothing wrong with singing praises to anybody. 8-) IMO the only thing that matters is the vow, but if you'd feel like your bride has always wanted this grandiose wedding with tons of flowers and 1000 guests and a limousine, sure, go for it. I don't think it's worth it, but if my significant other thought it's worth it I'd do it.

Awesome pictures. :) Reminds me how spoiled western people really are, we shouldn't complain about stupid stuff like "I can't be bothered to empty the trash bin" when for lord's sake some guy has to lift 500kg worth of crap on his bicycle and drive it 100 miles away to get a payment of $5.

Marriage is just a word. It doesn't really bind anybody to anything. Just look at typical american divorce statistics. If you don't really know what it takes to live together with another person and share your life, you'll end up in the majority of the people that will divorce even after a remarriage. To me, I couldn't care less about getting married or not. If it'd mean something to my girlfriend, of course. After all, it's a ceremony. It's not a magical event that alters your brain chemistry or the laws of nature, it just exists in a registry where it says "Married" or "Not married". I wouldn't really ever divorce unless I had a very heavy reason, not over something idiotic like money. I'm not currently a bachelor anymore, but I couldn't disagree more with you. I still have the same friends I had back then and I'm still keen on making money and I go out frequently to have fun. Who wouldn't want to have as much money as possible to support your possible later offspring/wife? I actually find 'married' people more lonely because they suddenly feel an obligation to only spend time with their wife. That being said, marriage is simply a ritual. Sadly many people have psychological motives that have been built into their minds since childhood that to be happy in your life you must walk up to a priest who asks you a bunch of stuff and you sing praises to the lord even if you're not religious. No wonder most people divorce. You can still share tasks, enjoy life with your significant other, have kids, etc. even if you aren't religious or get "married".

Sounds like me. Except nobody has tried to assasinate me yet. You can take the "real" D&D alignment test here.

Not only that, but China actually does train female troops and the numbers can't be even compared to the US army where only a few percent are female. Guess who's taking over the economical hegemony of the world in the next 10 to 20 years? Pretty soon after asian countries start developing, the USA will start meaning less and less since no company will want to pick a country like USA to work in when you have to pay wages like $3000 a month to somebody when a guy in China could do the same job with better motivation for $1500 a month. And after wages start rising in China too, it's becoming the real superpower in the world. Good incentive to start learning the chinese language...? I've been thinking about it. In our lifetime it's going to be at least as important as English. Canada is going down with them (about 70% of the economy last time I checked) Um, no. Canada is far larger than the US, it's just very densely populated. It has about 30 million people, which is 10% of what USA has. It's economy is about $1 trillion, which is just a bit under 10% of what USA has. Comparing the two, Canada is just as self-sufficient and powerful on a comparable scale. Their military isn't too weak either.

Well, now that I think of it, it actually took me probably way more than that to learn English which is my third language, and that includes everything I've learned and seen from age 0 to 14, and even then I wasn't 100% fluent. At about age 16 I started to be able to speak and write it with no punctuational or grammatical errors. I think it's very possible to learn a language fluently in 4 years especially when you spend half the day studying it; I can't remember the guy in the Guinness book of records but he could even learn Icelandic in just a matter of days (though that just means conversational skills, not fluency). That study doesn't mention languages either, just "skills" like music, sports, chess, etc. I assume that perfecting your knowledge of a secondary language (which you have not been hearing since your birth) would take way more than 4 years and in some cases almost impossible. The sooner you start learning languages the better, I can imagine that an average person age 50+ wont be even capable of learning languages up to a level of total fluency.

Building a reputation would be nice; What you most likely don't want to be is a famous "celebrity". Some of their lives have been literally ruined by paparazzis and freaks that follow them around all day in hopes of cashing in on them. Money is probably what you should be thinking about in the first place, you can't even start a musical career unless you have the money or a job to support it. Many psychological studies support the fact that getting fluent at almost anything will take over 10,000 hours of practicing. That means you can't have the kind of attitude I remember you had in your former posts, the one minute you think about something 'cool' and the next you're bored by it (I remember you earlier said you wanna be a pro-football player) If you don't have commitment and disclipine, you will have a hard time building a reputation for being good at something, even more earning money with your skills. The other way around is getting to be mediocre just like most of the western people, which you don't want to be. Considering that I really suggest you build mental strength to commit yourself to something. Heck, I've practised playing the guitar for maybe a few thousand hours in my life and I still make dumb mistakes. You learn all the time, just keep focused. I play just for fun, though.

When I was 16, as a coach in a summer soccer school, 3 hours a day and 4 days a week. The pay was pretty good too (at least at that age), $15 an hour.

Yeah but holy ****, a kid who was raised in the jungle by the animals has enough common sense and compassion not to burn another human alive just because of his short stature or disability. Those kids need to get their heads checked, and quite frankly, so should their parents. They were ->laughing<- at a kid while he was about to burn to death in a shed. They had locked him in there and blocked the door with a stick. I can see what's becoming of them, though I really wish they weren't born in a neighbourhood like this. Sadly they are very common, and at least it's not the kids fault their parents can't/don't want to take care of them.

Try to beat my record score of -5468. :P :lol: Not even my macro could do that, I got to about 4200 (which the program calculates to be about 70 clicks per second). Which program did you use? I don't have a button-down mode, just repeat-click. Anyways, kind of pointless. Break my record without programs :P I doubt any living human could actually click even 50 times a second.

I seriously hope you didn't have the time to do this and just copied it off somewhere :notalk: But the same goes for any [very] mass produced product, just like M&M candy. A lot of them are cracked and stuff, but who cares as long as you can eat it. :P

They call them "majority coalition governments" and while they have their con's, they most definitely work. Yep, for example I read in Washington Post, in your country four of the most succesful parties made a coalition and they're in power now (though lots of ministers resigned for some stuff like illegally paying for their babysitters and odd stuff like that). Each party still gets to voice their opinion, and if the other 3 parties opinions vary too greatly, they're no longer a majority coalition because one party protests. So each party has to listen to each other since they got into power by co-operation.

Even Martti Ahtisaari (the most likely candidate for a Nobel) said he's impressed with the system, and it is pretty effective. The referral scheme is quite good, but there have been numerous cases of micro-credit fraud.. That kind of systems would never (sadly) work in places like the US due to lack of trust on behalf of the lender.

This. If it doesn't drive you crazy after you loop it over and over.

This thread suffers from the "diplomatic immunity" syndrome. Given that a thread starter usually makes credible arguments, and the fact that the thread title sounds meaningful, no mods will usually bother checking out the content out of interest. If it was just some random guy called 'gohan53809dragonball' this topic would be dead at post 1 and the guy's window would've been stoned by an angry nerd. That, dear Ghost, is what runs most semi-spammy forums. 8-) Without posts like this, the forum would be dead most of the time. But it's still fun posting here.

That's completely objective, millions of people believe/think all living things are equal (if counting religions like Buddhism that restrict all killing, billions). As a human, though, it's the most rational thing to value your own species above others. On a deeper level it's not justified. Controversially I still think the same way; If I had to choice between saving a human and an animal, I'd choose the first option. However, I agree with you. Those same people very likely, if they aren't vegetarians, eat meat which was taken from a (nonetheless) killed animal, and they might buy products that directly harmed the living environment of another animal species. And not all minks will die if not in captivity in a different ecosystem, many documentaries have been made about this subject. In this sense the owner is very biased, a great majority of minks that have been experimented with have been able to hunt their own food (though they'd eat even bird eggs and lessen the population of birds)

..Wow. And didn't Cheney shoot his hunting buddy in the leg when he was like 20 ft. behind him?

Lol, Persia isn't a country. Neither are Latin or Africa like Bush sometimes likes to think. But the place is indeed in Mongolia and it's spelled "MÃÆÃâÃâörÃÆÃâÃâön". In Spain they also have a town called "MorÃÆÃâÃâón", and Moron is also guy in the book of Mormon. Also many morons post on forums. This is an image from the MÃÆÃâÃâörÃÆÃâÃâön airport (click to enlarge), and you can hopefully make your own decision about it. A walmart in North Dakota is probably 20 times larger. It's not exactly the capital, which by the way is Ulan Bator (Ulanbataar). This town has just some 30k inhabitants but is the biggest place in the north of their country. You just made me feel like the internet is truly full of useless garbage... :lol:

Yeah, people are getting cunning these days. This summer I read about the chinese mafia smuggling cellphones by modifying sewer pipes and washing down tons of them down a toilet. They made good profit before getting caught. No, Latvia doesn't have laws against vodka. But like any other country they have extra taxes for importing large amounts of alcohol, and if you want to turn a good profit, you most likely don't want to pay it...

I'd really argue about their appreciativeness, they are appreciative only because that's the best they know about. Since birth they are taught other nations are pretty much crappy capitalistic pigs, and China is their good big brother along with Cuba. I do agree with you on the Mcdonalds part; I certainly hope to visit North Korea as soon as possible because I realize this nation as we know it might not last for long (we can't be sure if it will even exist from a few months from now on). This nation is politically even worse off than Myanmar, but there's still something interesting about it. Visiting NK would be a truly unique experience and I'd take it any day without hesitation over visiting Hawaii or some other tourist-ladden hotelfest with prices designed to rob the visitors. It's also a great memory for your children and grandchildren; You can be almost 100% sure that by the time they're adults North Korea wont exist (at least not as it exists now).

umm b4 u get the *money* u have to take ur 3 pieces and go on some mcd's site with a monopoly board. then u roll and lose... i think it is rigged because they can control thee dice. So they have some verification process? I remember I played a game similar to this, and won 5K. However, my serial number did not verify, and thus I didn't win anything. Why would they do that? All the money they get from people buying products more than makes up for the 4 million (2 million on prizes 2 million on production of the pieces (my guess)). That's stupid, what's 4-10 million to McDonalds?? Some of those are LIES. There is no such thing as some of those pieces. Not sure about that, but ESPECIALLY in poorer countries, it's a laugh to think you have a chance to win. The factory workers and managers see the opportunity of their life; They'll just tell their families where to buy ice-cream, when the shipment with the token arrives, etc. while the rest of the population gets just that.. Ice cream. Somebody earlier mentioned the question "so where are these winners?". That's so true, why don't we ever hear about these people who by whim of fate get 3 similar ice-cream sticks and win $10 million and a private island with seven yachts?

End of story. There's no moral dilemma attached to this one. Not that it will restrict those who really want to play, $10 says there will be even sites dedicated to proxying poker sites and changing your IP to that of a non-USA based one. Remember that also, many sites offer payment to PayPal, eGold, and other online payment processors. Just use that approach and your bank can never know the money came from poker. The law wont fix anything else than the fact that gambling corporations in tax havens will lose out on a few million bucks because average players will be getting the message "Sorry, but your country's legislation restricts you from logging in"

-Runescape. Level 108. Quit 2002. -Diablo 2. Level 99. Quit 2001-2002. -Lineage II. Level 75. Quit an undetermined time ago as I still log in a shared account about once a month -World of Warcraft, level 60. Quit last year. -MU Online, level 173. Quit 2004 -Lots of other games, but I quit playing ages ago (most recently I quit WoW, in 2005). However I'd say WoW was the most diverse one and most enjoyable, leveling wise MU Online was the most fun as there are tons of special attacks, good party system, and at least when I played it, it was 100% free with awesome graphics.