BlueLancer

I gave this a lot ot thought; If I had a kid/kids (no matter if male or female), would I really want to raise them in the western culture I was brought up in? Granted, I didn't get "corrupted" by it, I see how crappy the teenage/school world can be when girls think they have to be thin as a nylon thread to be 'popular', and boys have to do sports, not wear certain clothes, or face social 'expulsion'. Is the media to blame? Absolutely. If you see all "real" and "hot" girls are thin ever since you're 2 year old and see cartoons, of course it's going to affect your thinking. I'd carefully select what cartoons, programs etc. to show my kids, not some overly kiddy stupid, naÃÆÃâÃâïve programs, but something constructive and natural which gives humanity value regardless of your physical attributes. I'd definitely raise my kid/kids in Europe, hopefully in some quiet, relatively small and peaceful nation with lots of freedom and gender equality like Austria, Finland, Sweden, etc. I especially like nordic societies and their immense freedom/general lack of judgement, extensive social services, great daycare programming, learning equality & justice since an early age... Definitely that over the american, overly-competitive environment. Not saying the US is a bad place for a kid to grow up, maybe it wasn't in the past, but frankly I wouldn't raise a kid in that environment right now in the year 2007. Well, women aren't some magical unicorns. :P They are human beings just like men. Of course some of them will curse, not shower, get overly drunk, shout and do other repulsive things. Maybe not in conservative southern-state or middle-eastern countries, but in societies with vast equality, they can be your friends just as a male person would. I wouldn't raise my daughter to be "innocent". She's a person just like my son would be. I don't expect her to take any gender roles or appear to be something she's not. Decency is not the same as putting your hand on your mouth every time you say 'darn' or hear the "f" word.

You can post game threads in the "Video game" subsection next time, but since there's already a post there about CoD4, post here: http://forum.tip.it/viewtopic.php?t=714283

Rome: Total War is easily one of the best strategy games ever made, I'm amazed only 1 person mentioned it so far. The campaign, the real time battle, character attributes... You should try this game if you're a fan of real time strategy. :)

Wooah there, so apparently because I refuse to use an illegal drug people "don't like me"?? Pardon me, but what are you smoking today? I have friends, I have a life, and you need to respect my decision not to use your drugs, just like I respect your decision to use them. Who knows? If I try marijuana, I might just contract serious side effects or something.. Drugs are unpredictable. I don't want to gamble my health just to "get high" for a few hours. I don't do any drugs either, but just thought to point out the "illegality" of it isn't really an argument. It's illegal out of ignorance. How come alcohol is legal, resulting to hundreds of thousands of annual deaths in the US alone, breaks families, causes violence, yet something like cannabis which doesn't even kill, is ruled "illegal"? They might just as well rule orange juice 'illegal' for 'safety' reasons while letting Coke&Pepsi stay on the market because they generate more tax revenue, and see how many people get scared out of drinking the healthier drink because it's not 'legal'.

Depends on what kind of 100-hour gameplay you like though. Some quests and the walking-around-dungeons in Oblivion just get boring. AC is a shorter game but it has a somewhat cool plot, extremely free character movement... Your decision :)

Are you kidding?! I watched a LARP game, it was held in a wet marshland, they used big colorful fireworks as the wizard's spells, shot arrows, had real metal armor, some swords & axes, it was cool as heck. Like watching real LOTR. The word 'nerdy' didn't even cross my mind during the game. ..But yeah, without the costumes the participants were a bit disappointing. And the plot was sort of lame. Nevertheless I figure they weren't nerdy at all. It was like watching a theatre play.

OD pretty much either means you get seriously hospitalized, or more often, die from it. People don't die from cannabis, it's even used as a medical herb in some countries. I've seen far more people turn into untalkative zombies under the influence of alcohol, or their speech after too much drinking sounds like gibberish. Haha, that's so true. My parents are very anti-drugs (I don't like them either, but I don't condemn people who use them, especially the lighter ones), yet nearly every piece of CD music they have has been produced by people they know were under heavy influence of heroin, cocaine and other hard drugs. Some of those artists even died of drug OD.

It's just a lame analogy, nobody takes it seriously. It's just sad that religious people can't prove why "their" imaginary buddy is more real than the FSM, instead appealing on numbers, longevity, etc. (logical fallacies which don't prove the existence of anything) That's why those threads get tiresome pretty quickly. You just can't argue against the type of person who has the conclusions, before even seeing the facts. They insist on 'faith' being something irreversible, and deep in their mind, they think they 'must' be right even with all their evidence coming from personal 'faith'. I quit posting on the last one for that reason. You don't have to write it all at once. :) Even succesful, commercial writers can take weeks or months worth of 'pause' if they run out of 'inspiration'. If you feel like you're forcing yourself to write, don't bother. The outcome will be crappy then. Write only when you're in the mood to do so.

They never did... It's just that the large mosquitos that carry Malaria and other insect-borne diseases don't really live in cooler climates like Europe. The problem has been limited to Sicily/Greece/extreme southern parts of Europe, since the mosquitos can fly over the ocean. I don't think USA has ever even had a malaria outbreak, mosquitoes can't fly over the Atlantic. It can theoretically only enter the country by tourists carrying it (or somehow having infected mosquitos/mosquito eggs in their luggage) Not just that, but malaria medicine is dirt cheap, it's sad how people die to an easily preventable disease: That's just some british retailer too; You can get stronger anti-malaria medicine as well produced in China/India with the same chemical makeup & ingredients for a fraction of that price, some $0.20 for 20 pills. AIDS may not be curable yet, but world government's should be ashamed they aren't donating a relatively small sum for the distribution of malaria medicine to every poor person in the world who needs it. Travel, transport, medicine & other costs combined, curing the whole world of malaria would still cost less than a % of the money USA spends on wars and weapons every year.

Which is why I put emphasis on the fact that he quit after the second turn, when moves take under ten seconds :P . Dammit, didn't see that. :oops: After the second turn, it really can't take that long for the bot to respond, because the possible outcomes after just two moves are very limited and easily calculated if the bot is anything half-decent.

As said before numerous times... It frankly doesn't matter "which" language is being used the most. It's just a matter of picking whichever is the most profitable and useful language to know at the time. Currently, English is easily the first foreign language of choice to learn in any country. Spanish, Arabic and Chinese would come close as 2nd in terms of usefulness and profitability. And now that you mentioned it, Chinese learning is on the rise especially in business colleges and other commerce related industries/universities/etc. I've been learning chinese/japanese for some 6 years now, not just because it will be massively profitable to know esp. Chinese, but you will also benefit by gaining respect by the native people of those countries if you can speak their own language fluently. Chinese is being a pain in the ... at the moment though :lol: But at least I'm trying. Seriously considering giving up learning to write though, it's just too darn complicated, I thought understanding the language and being able to speak it (and read some basics) could be useful too.

Mostly... But even people with the driest possible sense of humor must admit some of those were pretty funny :) Yeah, that's one of the lame CN jokes. That wasn't even funny. :lol: But yeah I can understand his stance, since so many racist and other jokes were made about him, it wasn't any longer funny. People are profiting off his name, from what was supposed to be just a quick laugh. Unless they pay a share of the profits to him and cut off the lame stuff, they should just back off.

There's an extensive discussion of Ron Paul posted here just a week ago: http://forum.tip.it/viewtopic.php?p=5488534 Post there :)

Nah, I'd have to side with Strowez on this one. I've played chess bots equal to the 'god-mode' level bots like Deep Blue, and like over 1 hour into the game, it can take 20+ seconds for the computer to make a single move, maybe even more. Didn't check out the AI of that site's bot yet, but if it's anything decent, yes it can take like half a min to calculate a move. And that's just against a typical player like me; I'm not even a chess fan or chess geek. Against a player like Garri Kasparov, the bots could take multiple minutes for moves that disable his winning/checkmating capability, even if the bot can calculate thousands of outcomes per second.

Not finding pranks to suicide hotlines/police funny doesn't mean you don't have a sense of humor or you're dull. Pranking people who can be responsible for other people's lives, and you clogging up their phone lines, just isn't funny. Pranking escort services or pizza outlets? Sure, those people do a job as well, but they aren't exactly in a position to save a human life. It could be amusing. Random people, that can work pretty well too. 8-)

Now that you brought that up, should had worded it differently... Forced marriage should be illegal. Unfortunately, in western countries, a lot of 'arranged' marriages are forced on the child and is planned before he/she is even 10 years old. If you refuse to obey the family, you can be cast out of it. That's just grossly wrong, and thank heavens that kind of freedom limiting culture has nearly died out in western countries (where just a few hundred years ago it wasn't that abnormal for families to force marriage on their daughters/sons). In your case, I wouldn't even see it as 'arranged'. Your family is just hooking you up with someone in case you don't get married within 7-8 years, and even then, you aren't bound by some agreement. I think that's very fair of your family.

Yes, I believe it's required of a "good" muslim to travel to Mecca at least once in his/her lifetime, if it's by any financial means possible. But I think he used it as an example, like an overly religious christian partner demanding you visit pilgrimage sites, churches, the Vatican, etc. constantly even if you're not interested in that religion in a blind, committing way. Sure it'd be great to visit any historically significant religious sites, but if my wife started requiring me to have some spiritual faith in her god/goddesses/floating things/chocolate lightsabers/whatever, and perform excess rituals just because she does, that's going a bit too far. I don't think she would be the right person for me then. One example could be some hindu traditions, which prohibit the killing of absolutely any living thing, even mosquitoes sucking your blood. Or requiring me to pray 5 times a day, 7 days a week regardless of circumstances, just because she is a devout muslim. Just not going to do it.

Because of my original viewpoint, that each culture has its own identity, it's biased and unfair to promote a culture as a worldwide standard. English is the language of the USA and British Commonwealth, French is the language of France, French Guyana, and Quebec, Chinese is the language of the People's Republic of China, and so on and so fourth. Yeah, but that's a viewpoint. I know a lot of people who don't actually have a national allegiance. I don't either. I don't define my identity based on my country (or in my case, countries) or it's history, that's extremely narrow minded and lame. Adapting something beneficial from every culture gets you much further. Every person adapts something from other cultures, or uses items produced by other cultures, speaks words loaned from other cultures, eats foods originally made by other cultures, etc., whether they realize it or not. Heck, an average american drinks German beer, watches a Korean TV and drives a car manufactured in Japan or France, and speaks into a Finnish cellphone, while buying Saudi produced gasoline for their car, buys a diamond engagement ring, stones mined in Russia or an African country... Cultures are dependent on each other, and especially economically, cultural barriers have died out. Western commercialism and general culture also appeals to people of other cultures (fortunately or not, you decide).

Nice article Zonorhc. And yes, the world is better off with a language or two that are nearly universally (and, at least partially) understood by the majority of the world's people. Sure, there are countries where barely any of the population knows English, but there's bound to be always a few people who understand vital words, like if you get in trouble, you can almost rest assured someone in the local community knows the word "hospital". Heck, knowing multiple languages is even better. If you could speak English, Arabic, Russian, Chinese and Spanish, you could survive damn near anywhere in the world (since there are also a lot of countries where at least one of those languages is spoken as a secondary language). Throw in French and you can survive everywhere, even ex. african colonies where it's the 2nd language. There are thousands of other languages, but those are the most vital since a lot of those native populations (on the exception of English) are not likely to know other languages than their own. You could go far with those.

Naw, the threads that exist purely for Elder Scrolls IV require some serious necromancing, being 2 to 5+ month old.. Post here :) On topic... I found the customising options and quests very good in this game, graphics were OK too (though with lower settings, looked like a grainy version of Doom). Plot wasn't very amazing though. :shock: There's plenty of ES fans around here, I think one guy was indyfan. He signatures the games and stuff.

The law, just as a marriage, are both only theoretic. People break laws daily, and over 50% of the american population that gets married will divorce within 4 to 8 years or less on average. It can be looked at from a theoretical standpoint, but it doesn't do justice to the reality that most marriages do end, at least in many western countries including the US. Saying "marriages can't end" is like saying "nobody breaks laws". Humans are flawed and they'll break agreements and trusts even if they are in an emotional state while forming them. Extremely few people stay married as promised in the agreement, "for the rest of their lives". The vast majority of married people break the contract. The event itself can be a positive & happy ceremony. 8-) Which distinguishes it from other relationships. No real change happens though; A man and a woman are still a couple if they love each other and have children regardless of performing that ceremony.

If you want the cold hard truth, it feels nice if you do it with the right person, but it also feels like a REALLY slimy snail crawling into your mouth. At a younger age I found the feeling humorous for some reason.

I conjecture that growing up in a loving and committed household would have a positive effect on a child psychologically. A child can quite easily grow up in a loving and committed household positively with no marriage, psychologically speaking. Yep, all I'm saying is that it might be damaging knowing that there's absolutely nothing "official" to keep your parent walking out. There's no security there. My parents were married, and 'walked out' (divorced) when I was 7. They got their separate apartments as well. It's not like marriage actually makes a relationship more binding; If it did, so many people wouldn't divorce in the first place. The two people involved make it more binding, not a ceremony or a religion Yes it should... What right do the parents have to impose their will on the child's entire life? Maybe this was necessary in ancient times when it'd be necessary to unite families due to financial struggling, debts/other reasons, I don't see why it should be allowed nowadays. Everyone has the right to decide about their own life, you aren't your parents' slave.

Wasn't even born in the States, + English is my 3rd language, but thought that was pretty funny :lol: Don't become those you mock... But he has a point though, why do America and the UK have so much racism compared to other western countries, such as most European nations? (Which coincidentally always score above the US and UK in learning excercises, sciences, mathematics and languages?)

Since all other types of hate-inciting posts are banned on tip.it as well, you might want to PM a mod/admin, request unlocking and explain why calling a certain group of people satanists and murderers is acceptable, even under the guise of "freedom of speech". Your text significantly resembles the works of Hitler, except you've substituted the center of hate from "jews" to "atheists/emos". And just a note, unless you want to ruin your grades, it probably would be a good idea to reconsider submitting that essay to a real teacher.