BlueLancer

That's rubbish, without the proper amount of protein, it doesn't matter if you lift the whole building with your pinky finger, you wont gain any muscle mass. What do you think muscle consists of? Don't want to sound rude, but what you eat makes all the difference in the world. But if you want to follow that school of thought, you could always opt in for creatine. You will get temporary fluid-based mass without really having to think about what you eat. The downside is, as I said, creatine wont make you any stronger that you previously were (though you might look more intimidating :) )

Now, I'm not quite sure if it's common in non-metropolitan areas of Japan, but while I was staying in Japan for 3 weeks, I often traveled by subway. I constantly saw people, teens, businessmen, reading a newspaper and sometimes politely asking an elder man or woman to remind them about what a certain kanji symbol meant. So yes, they are mortals with a certain memory capacity too. :P First I thought it was slightly funny, but you can't compare it with the english language because in english everything is composed of letters. In kanji you have to remember thousands of symbols as if they were complex letters. And it's impossible for me to read a newspaper yet, I only understand a very small part of it if I pick up one (not to mention the problem that printed kanji look different from hand drawn ones which makes it even harder to read before you get used to it) Example: In english, it's easy to distinguish the words "man" and "woman", just add or take away 2 letters. Try this in japanese, the symbols are different like day and night. That's going to be a lot of stress if you want to learn japanese.

i gotta deal with french too, but id rather want spanish then german >.< but yeah, me = anime freaky, and i wanna learn japanese too.... but cant on my lousy school :evil: any site where you can just start with learning how kanji, and hiri-stuff and katakana work? (dunno the names... so might be wrong lol) Well, it's not really hard at all. :) Katakana is very basic and it contains 46 characters. There is no occassion in Japanese language where you couldn't use katakana, the characters are universal. Hiragana, too, has 46 basic characters but with a katakana counterpart. It is a bit more difficult to learn as some of the characters look very much alike. Hiragana is important because you can use any of the hiragana to express a sound when read aloud (such as the letter 'a' would be pronounced as the vowel o in the english word 'mom') Kanji is the most difficult one to learn, and you will probably never in your life get to know all the kanji symbols. Kanji has nothing to do with sounds, they are more like abstract things like "serenity, peace" etc. Not even native japanese adults know all of the kanji, so don't be disappointed if it takes you forever to learn the different symbols (it will take you at least a good 20 years before you can consider yourself at least somewhat 'knowledgeable'). I've studied the kanji for maybe 3 years now, and I can barely remember perhaps 150 to 200 symbols (not including place names like "Tokyo" which are a bit easier to remember if you see them often enough). This is the clearest image I was able to find on google image search for the kanji symbols for this city. http://phototravels.net/tokyo/tokyo-kanji.gif Romaji is very common in today's Japan, meaning the japanese language, only written in roman letters (the ones you are reading right now). I think it's safe to assume there isn't much more you need to know about it. If you want to learn about it, you really should take professional classes but there are a few good online sites too, free of charge. http://www.kanjisite.com will teach you at least some of the basics, such as the numbers (which are quite easy to remember). :) Have fun.

Haha, I spent like maybe 30 minutes in total doing homework (during my education years). :lol: I mean it. Didn't end up being a tramp though. But really, it depends on your motivation. If you spent over 4 hours on it, you were obviously focused on it. The only bad side to it is that even if you spend so much time on it, your teacher might not recognise this and you'll get the same grade as the guy who had his friend do it for him, getting an A (or in finnish a 10). But you'll still benefit, in the way that you'll know later on you're capable of working on stuff like that for a long time.

he made that thing up himself and u downloaded hundreds of trojans :P dont blindly accept :o but i agree it wont do much to MSN/AIM, im just stickin to MSN since thats wat we use here Lol, you kidding or what... 8) He's a tip it staff, why would he want to make a trojan? And accepting stuff from google is pretty safe, even if blindly. And if something happens, hold them responsible. And if you don't believe it, type in the address manually. Google doesn't care about your RS account, not to mention the legal trouble they would get into if it was found out they intended to include trojans with their downloads.

Sounds like a genuine christian community to me, they are obviously trying to emulate Jesus' teachings correctly unlike the "churches" of todays worlds. After all, Jesus didn't even own currency or barely anything at all. You don't need a huge church which costs hundreds of millions to spread the word of religion when you could feed a lot of starving people with that money. You don't even need clergy. Nope, it's all about brainwashing. I dislike all sorts of organised religion, but this community is something I'd like to visit some time and try to live as minimally as possible for a few weeks, or a month or 2. I have only briefly read about Brother Roger and seen a few pictures, but he seemed like a good guy. Did you ever meet him in person?

Well, good to hear you're still alive. 8) You can still feel free to email me or ask me about the finance stuff on msn, I believe it's been a long time since you were "short on funds" so things could be different now. Hehe :) Have fun on WoW. Sadly I wont be able to meet you there because I play on the U.S. servers though (Cenarion Circle and Doomhammer servers). I'm max level too BTW, though shared.

You have to eavesdrop on the conversation the pirates are having in the bomb shop, you will hear a hint of the password eventually. I can't tell what it is, obviously, since it changes every time you start a new save game and the chances are slim I'd have the same password as yours. Once you have the password, you can go back to that ship and enter the door with the password you obtained. 8) It should still be in the harbor.

You're right, you wont get obese if you only eat junk food and drink pop. 8) But if you don't excercise enough, those calories will be stored as fat in your body IF it exceeds your daily need of calories (the amount your body uses and burns) Such as in your case, you were obviously consuming all the calories you took in. It's not physically possible that you could burn even the calories you took in but were stored as fat if you just sat around all day, it would happen to every person on the planet. If you were eating even MORE of junk food and pop, I'm sure you would've became obese in no time. There are lots of american, totally healthy kids that have became over 200 pounds weight before 10 years old (mind you some are still under 5 feet tall). There is no 'magical' reason why it came to be so, they simply took in more calories than they consumed. They also didn't excercise enough to burn off the extra, obviously. For example, you might've *thought* you were eating 'alot' of junk food, but in fact you were merely filling up your stomach and it was indeed your daily intake of calories, give or take a few hundred since I think I remember you said you excercised. There can't be any other explanation if, according to you, you didn't put on any extra weight.

I know 8) It's fun to print out and read in the evenings when you have trouble falling asleep. Maybe you'll remember something when you wake up...

You're very correct, but the internet as a source of information (including languages) shouldn't be underestimated. There are many, even among the tip.it'ers, that have confessed these message boards have taught them over 80% of the english language they know. I can confirm it for at least a few people; I've seen the difference between how they wrote 3-4 years ago and how they write now. They literally switched from newbie to fluent. I've been studying the japanese language out of interest since about a few years ago, but I'm now taking a break. It would admittedly be much easier to learn it if you were say about age 8 to 12, because Snyper is right: Prepare for a lot of disappointments even if you've learned japanese for a long time, because what you've most likely learned, that's not how japanese communicate, they will think it's a bit weird. Some examples (I assume most users don't have kanji font installed so I'll just write it down plainly): That's cool with me, no problem -> Ii ja nai betsu ni Konichiwa (thanks) -> Koncha The best, coolest etc. -> Saiko shinakereba naranai (I must) -> Shinakucha Haha/Lol/funny -> Uketa Watashi (me) -> Washa That guy -> Yatsu (mild-semi-rude, but can be used casually, compare 'dude') Yeah/I agree -> Yuppa He's cheating/That's unfair etc. -> Zurui There are lots more but the point is that you will be probably never taught any of the above in a japanese class because it is deemed "inappropriate" because it is not the literal language, it is the way people talk in every day speech (abbreviating words, having entirely different words, etc). The japanese people can usually understand you if you speak clearly but it will seem a bit unnatural. You should get a friend who knows english and japanese, so that he/she can teach you the differences. :) Because even if you want to be able to know the language, you might also want to be able to speak it the way real japanese people talk like.

Sorry BMW, but that's not true. Carbohydrates provide 4 Calories per gram, and as you might know, 3600 calories equal 1 pound. Assuming you drink that much pepsi, you are gaining 680 calories a day alone from drinking (the recommended calorie value per day is about 2000), which means we're not even counting in the fact that you will most likely eat food during the day, worth at least 1-2k calories. I don't claim to know if Purcell excercises or works out, but when you eat more than you consume, it is stored as fat. It's that simple. In your case, you were obviously not taking in that many calories a day. Sure, you maybe ate some junk food, carbs, etc. but you consumed most of it during the day or while you were asleep thanks to your metabolism. By drinking water with every meal, you'd take in 680 less calories every day. If you continue drinking that much every year, you would gain calories worth 68 pounds (yearly, 248,200 calories). If you burn it off, that's great. But let's say you continued this for, 10 years? 20? Gaining that many extra calories a day, you would weigh over 1300 pounds 20 years later. No human can survive it. At 800 pounds you can not move out of the bed by yourself. I can't imagine how's it like when you're almost double that., you would probably have difficulty even breathing or swallowing.

Before I answer, I must say you are very much still developing and weightlifting could stop your growth entirely, and seeing that you're 5'1 I'm pretty sure you will grow a lot in the coming years. If my son was 14 and I'd see he has only just entered his growth spurt, I would never let him do this. Anyways, if you want to go for it anyways, here's what you will want to prepare for: [*:exsssvu6]1 gram of protein per pound daily (in your case about 120 grams) [*:exsssvu6]Preferably white meat instead of red one, such as chicken as a source of protein [*:exsssvu6]You must be ready to schedule your day so that your meals play a very big part, many people say "eat 3 big meals a day or 6 small ones". I learned years ago this does not matter. As long as you eat enough to fulfill your nutritional needs (gram per pound) and you're not hungry and you have a few hours between each meal, you will do fine. And don't neglect other parts of your diet. You don't want to gain fat, but if you don't eat any fat at all, you would literally die. [*:exsssvu6]You must commit yourself not to eat snacks between meals, such as chocolate bars even if your non-weighlifting friends do (remember disclipine) I would write you some excercises for triceps, biceps, pecs, abs, etc... But if you already know what to do, that's fine and even better if you have a gym trainer available at least some of the time. When I started at about 15 I learned a lot from the trainer, they are always professionals so don't hesitate to ask. They can easily tell you if you are overexcercising or not. Also, this is very important: Don't train every day. If you want to build muscle mass, train about every second day. Your muscle mass does not grow while you're at the gym, it grows while you are asleep. You must have at least a days rest in between the sessions.

According to Pepsi.com, a liter of pepsi has 27 grams of sugar (carbohydrate). You said you're drinking 5 of the 1.25 sized ones daily, which means you're drinking 6.25 liters of it daily, adding up to well over 170 grams of sugar a day, nearly a kilogram of sugar per 5 days. And that's not counting in the other stuff you're taking in, just a word of warning. 8) If you continue at this pace, you'll be almost guaranteed to have your weight in the 'morbidly obese' zone. So it's not a good idea. It is a good idea to drink it in moderation though.

Um, I laughed when Dumbledore died. But then again I expect a lot of teenagers to read this book, especially girls, who will start crying when they find out. Too bad, but remember he doesn't exist in reality. As much of a fantasy fan you might be, it's never too good to be too attached or obsessed with a story. I was first wondering that R.A.B. could be r. Albus Dumbledore but then again I don't recall one of his many names starting with an R. I think the letter said something like "by the time this reaches you, Voldemort, I will be dead already. I have the real horcrux in my possession and intend to destroy it as soon as possible", maybe he replaced the horcrux with the letter earlier but didn't get a chance to destroy it as he was already too weak when they exited that cave. :) By the looks of it, the 7th book will be unique. I'm not a great fan but I think these books are cool. The sixth one is not really kiddy stuff (warning to overprotective parents: vulgar words are used in the book, even the word dirty [bleep]) because Harry is not going to Hogwarts from what I remember. Not only did he say that but I think professor Gonagall said "who would want their children here anyways after what has happened"?

I wonder whatever happened to "turning the other cheek"? I guess that part of Jesus's sayings was deleted as 'inappropriate'. :lol: And if you think they will just 'leave', Iraq is the biggest business opportunity of the 21st century.

I quit this game a long time ago since I was continuously put in jail by the russian moderators for 'stealing mining resources' (mining for more than 2 hours at a time) and 'excessive use of training facilities' (staying in a monster pit for more than 1 hour), while the people from Russia got to do whatever the heck the wanted. I know the russian language pretty fluently, but it doesn't matter because they will just look at your IP. Ever heard of copyright infridgement? Yes, a lot of ripping off happens in the world but there is a fine line which shouldn't be crossed, if you do you will most likely be sued for millions in the modern world, that's how things work today. I'm actually amazed that Jagex has not sued this company, though I don't really care since I haven't played either game for years. While ripping off does occur in the world, you can't get away with making an exact Toyota replica, naming it 'Toyata' and marketing it with the original brand and logo. That's almost what AW is doing. (Not relating to the name or brand really but the content in the game)

On a side note, XiaoXiao was fun too. 8) The guy also made an awesomely animated Xiao stick fighting flash animation of about 3-4 minutes, but I forgot where you can view it (most likely eBaums or Newgrounds). Not really into that stuff but he did put some work into it.

To me it seems this same person is actually "his friend", I've seen this happen at a couple of MMORPG's where some people are such idiots they will fake their suicide to get empathy from the community to catch the scammers. Suspicious note: He said he went to hotmail and thanks to the cookies on his computer, he was logged in. Newsflash: Cookies on hotmail expire in about 10-20 minutes, there's no way one day his friend dies and the next day he can still log into his msn and read the emails. If you've read other forums, you would not be surprised at this as it's very unlikely he really did commit suicide over this (though in very extreme cases in games such as EverQuest, a few people have done it). Some kids will just say anything to retrieve their scammed items. I don't appreciate or like scammers, but even if this case was a scam, the person would need to have a lot of other problems in his life too if he would do this over some pixels on a computer screen.(though as a long time MMORPG player (12+ years) I understand the argument 'they're not just pixels, the person had to work hard for it). Nevertheless it doesn't change the fact that in the end, games are not that important. You can't win the argument life vs. video games and say video games are more important.

Hey Merc 8) Check out http://www.londonstockexchange.com/en-g ... kfunds.htm It has some basic info about funds in your country (it appears there are more than 1600), you should theoretically have access to all of them simply by logging into your internet banking facility if your bank offers one. Also, 12% might sound like a lot but you'd be surprised at how many funds in the london stock exchange have even paid (!) over 80% a year for almost a decade. Funds are different compared to stocks because your money is pooled with thousands of other investors which makes your risk a lot lower. I was playing around with the 12% annual figure because I estimate average people would take that risk level at most if investing. But even at 5 to 8% annual the sums get really big over the years. :) If you indeed have a few k's laying around, better put them to use. You never know, you forget about it... And in 15 years you go to the bank and ask them how's the fund doing, you could be facing a (positive) heart attack when the clerk tells you the account balance and asks you 'would you like to withdraw the balance', lol. BTW: I decided not to include the exceptional "middle to high-risk funds", particulary one... That has produced a 719,02% profit since it was launched in 2002. Just keep in mind these are exceptions and past performance isn't a guarantee for future performance. You might strike it lucky some day but it's better to rely on lower risk ones.

Lordhathor, those are some great thoughts. :) My views are very similar to yours. If all of your life you just 'want' to get better grades, work a low pay 9am-5pm job, watch a movie every Friday, drink beer, watch TV and sleep, go ahead. That's your choice. But you're wasting your life if you don't do the things you WANT to do. How many people actually want to spend 40 years working to get a pension in the end? What good does it do to have a pension of $4,000 a month when you're 65 years old and your bones start decaying and you get all sorts of health problems due to so much stress and working in your life? It seems like a scam to me... "Work for 40 years to live well for the last 10 ones". And if you're not lucky, (I hope not) you wont even live until the time you hit retirement. A lot of people say "But if I want to relax every day, start my day with a bungee jump out of a plane, watch movies on a 102" plasma, eat stuff I really want to eat instead of thinking 'what I can afford', travel the world, make friends, have fun at casinos, etc. then how can I achieve it?" There isn't really an answer. It depends on what you want to do in life, and that could mean you don't really want anything materialistic. If you do, you need to have the proper funding. So the earlier you start investing in your future, the faster you'll reach your goals. So does it all boil down to how much money you've got? Maybe. Let's say you're a parent and want a safe future for your child no matter what happens. So you decide to rather invest $50,000 for your child's fund instead of buying that new car you 'need'. Let's see: By the time the child is 20 years old, would it be a good time to tell him/her a long time ago you invested in his/her future? Assuming the fund (note fund, not bank *account*) paid 12% yield every year, the sum would be $544,627.68. You let your child choose what he/she wants to do with that lump sum. If he/she continues investing it for another 6 years, he/she will be a millionaire by the time he/she is 26 years old. (check out http://www.math.com/students/calculator ... mpound.htm and play around with the calculator to find out what could suit you) But even if you're not a child, it's never too late to start. Just find out the options. And remember not everybody might have materialistic dreams so you can't judge their decisions in life. But you must acknowledge that achieving freedom, be it financially, from your job, from restrictions, it is not impossible to do. All you need is patience and a good set of brains. :)

Remember it's just as easy to stage a propaganda photograph as it is to draw one. No doubt many iraqis would rather have Saddam 'uninstalled' but the pictures don't always give you the truth. During Stalin's time the use of propaganda photographs was not common, but that's not to imply images didn't have huge impact on what people thought about him and his wars: It's an image depicting him as a friendly family-man who thinks for the best of his people, poster released just before a major military campaign (but we all know now that Stalin really wasn't a... Friend of the people, unless killing 20 million of your own people counts) But naturally, I can relate to the iraqi's because they had a dictatorial regime removed and you can't really go but up after Saddam (people's lives during his regime was probably hell for the non-elite). However you must remember not many of them are well-educated about the situation and the real motives behind the war. But just because a few U.S. Soldiers sympathetise with the locals, it doesn't mean you've seen all of the 130,000+ soldiers. http://www.aztlan.net/iraqi_women_raped.htm You probably saw this on CBS news (warning: If you could be shocked by this kind of content, do not read the article. Mod can feel free to remove the link, it links to an article of U.S. soldiers raping a civilian). There are always two sides to a coin.

http://www.acoustica.com/mp3-audio-mixer/ Let's you convert from WMA to mp3, free 7 day fully functional trial. You don't have to pay for it to use it (for a week).

Higothrekk, sorry to say it but you're a joke. If you think it doesn't work, why don't you actually watch the videos? It clearly shows the same students years later telling us how much of an impact it had on their life and how it made them into more tolerable persons. If it works, why not do it? Why do you think people shifted from axes and swords to guns? It's more effective and it has more power. You are not making a point, you're unconsciously trying to tell "it's a bad method... We could just tell the kids how bad it is" while thinking it's actually ok that the children develop a sense of carelessness, that they grow up to hate people of other race or other skin color (or extremely of other eye color). "Just telling the kids" DOES NOT WORK. If it did, racism would've ended decades ago. They need a concrete example. Let me tell you a story: One day, a father and his little boy were sitting by a pond and fishing. The father had a very succesful life and he owned everything he dreamed of and he was rich. The boy looked up at his father and said "Dad, how did you get to be so succesful in life? What should I do to become like you? Suddenly, the father grabbed the boy and sank his head under the water. He continued to hold him there as the boy prayed for air. As the boy thought his life was over and started to take a breath while still submerged in the water, his father quickly pulled him up to fresh air and the boy took a sharp, deep breath. The father then looked at the boy and said to him "When you want success as bad as you wanted that breath of air you just got, it will come naturally". I wouldn't necessarily do that to my son, but don't you think this has at least a hundredfold power telling the child how to get ambition rather than just telling him "there are many ways to go about it"? Don't you think this children would be much much more ambitious later in his life than other people his age that were never given enough reason or a concrete example for motivation and ambition?

Because once we started this little argument one of us needed to be the fool. I needed to prove myself right in order for you to be the pleb of the day and not me :D muahaha *fluffles* I'll addmitt defeat and put "Pleb of the day 05-07-2005/06-07-2005" in my sig. :cry: us americans will get confused with your backwards listing of the month and day. :lol: But you've gotta admit it makes more sense. 05-07-2005 implies 5th day of Month #7, 5th of July. 07-05-2005 implies month #7, day 5. It just sounds too star trekky/irrational.