trapical

Powell Backs Obama Watch the linked video if you get a chance, very powerful comments from Colin Powell. For those of you who don't know, Powell was the Secretary of State for Bush's first term, he tried to convince everyone else on Bush's team to not invade Iraq. He's highly, highly respected among most republicans. Sorry for the spoiler on the election guys, I mean I'm a republican and even I concede defeat here. Obama has done brilliantly these past few months and would have won the election easily, but I'm now thinking its going to be a landslide.

It's really not that fair of a competition. Japan has 50% of the U.S. population in an area 3% the size of the United States. If you took the population of the entire eastern half of the United States and them in one dense area, I'm willing to bet they would get a good connection. Fast connections are related the the quality and quantity of the underground cables, and you can't just have one good area. Either the entire network is advanced or the entire network isn't. In Japan one company could easily lay high performance cable for the entire island. Do you think it's easy or cheap to lay 100mbps cables across the entire United States? Who's going to pay for it? I'm not saying Japan isn't advanced, I'm just sick of hearing meaningless statistics from people obsessed with Asia, like "99% of Taiwan has cell phone coverage and the United States only has 68% coverage, wow the United States is so behind in technology!" Oh yea, because getting coverage to an tiny island is just like trying to get coverage to almost four million square miles included of terrain that includes 2 major mountain ranges, barren deserts, and vast uninhabited tundra. I'm also fairly sick of hearing how everything new and high tech is made in Japan. Yes Japan is amazingly advanced and intuitive, and yes Japan sells many consumer electronics, but the United States is by far the largest exporter of technology in the world. Yea, Japan sells the world headphones, TVs, speakers, and game systems; but its the United States that makes the world's CPUs, software, servers, and chipsets. Everything from flash memory, to the hard drive, to the internet itself was made by Americans (mostly). Trust me, I'm not saying "USA! USA! USA!", I just think some credit is due when credit is due.

That's not true for all parts of Africa. But even in the more poor regions, I would think it's better to starve at the age of 20 than to die of malaria at the age of 3. (More than 90% of malaria victims are kids < 4 years old)

Hey guys, I would like to share with you some good news regarding the global battle against malaria. I hope some of you guys still donate or are active on the issue. For years I have been doing what I could to fight against this forgotten disease that kills almost as many as AIDS yet gets no public attention or funding. My proudest moment on these forums by far the time we raised $2,853.57 for relief, this very forum saved about 2,500 lives of the 1.5 million who die annually. Anyway, ten days ago the UN convened and the issue was finally brought to hand after years of international neglect. I am now proud to report that a Global Malaria Action Plan has been put into place with the plan aims to erradicate the disease in Africa in less than 7 years. This is a HUGE commitment that will save untold millions of lives. Its the most ambitious international healthcare project ever since the global eradication of smallpox in the 60's, and it should work. Well, just wanted to share the good news, and if you were one of the ones that told friends and family about the Malaria epidemic or helped donate to public charities, you can take part of the credit for this new plan being signed into law. Good job everyone, you should be proud. http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/2008-10-01-voa3.cfm

Well I searched everywhere and I'm sure many of you tried as well. Looks like the only preserved copy is the 10th day thread, saved by Nick_6464 and posted in another thread a while ago. Sorry the other 9 were lost, but oh well, they would have been lost eventually. Also please refrain from bumping this thread up, I really don't want people to continue to look for these, lets just accept that they are lost. If you wish to to bring up points on the 10th day thread you can PM me so we can let this thread get off the front page -.- .

Good question for a topic, and man have I been lingering around here and this forum's predecessor way too long But as other's have said, there are two reasons we stick around. Firstly, this is a truly great forum. Large enough to get some real diverse ideas and fresh blood, yet small enough that you learn to recognize people and the views they represent. This sounds sarcastic, but in all honesty it's great having cynics, commies, hippies, skaters, and Christians all in one place. Great age range to, as young as 10 and as old as the late 20s. People from Europe, Canada, Australia, and America. In other forums there isn't as much diversity because forums are usually made for people with a common interest in something (like a BMW forum or one for goths). On this forum our only common thread is a game that appealed to a huge spectrum of people, and most of us don't even play that game anymore. Like I said, small enough to have friends, large enough to get hear every viewpoint out there. Perfect. The other reason we stick around is just because we get so much history here it feels awkward to leave. We feel always welcome here, and we can't find any other place on the internet quite like it :

You don't even bother to read the words that he wrote, yet you criticize him because you didn't see any numbers in the text? Wow, don't even bother replying if you don't know what other people are talking about. Please tell me why my point (that the assertions in this post are without evidence backing them up) is incorrect. I know a bit about research into happiness (having done some myself), and I know that lots of studies have been done which give us some good insight into it. It is a shame to ignore the evidence and instead rely on philosophical wanderings in a post which obviously had a lot of time and thought put into it. Dusqi, its been awhile :) You have a very good point, and yes there are plenty of statistics and studies done on happiness. But even being a biologist and a chemist, and having a ratio of science classes taken to philosophy classes taken being about a thousand to one... I don't know know, I just feel that philosophy is better suited at explaining something like happiness. Its just such a intangible concept. How can you really measure with statistics such an abstract thing, especially when happiness can mean so many things to people? Is happiness from friendship and good fortunes measured the same as the satisfaction of building a fence? Do people feel more happiness from love than from their best friend? These are such qualitative concepts that even a science minded guy like myself turns to philosophy to get the truth here. Though I admit, I should have at least mentioned the quantitative studies somewhere in my post -.-

Good point, when my sophomore year English teacher told the class that quote I'm pretty sure she was seeing a lot of fluff and not much substance. Ah the things we all did to make our paper meet the page requirement :lol:

It can be a long read sometimes. The very nature of the subject matter makes it impossible for me to shorten it down and still have meaning. I could have shortened my post down to "The secret of happiness is having friends, working hard, and doing things that you love." But that would have been pointless, we all know that already. The purpose of the post was for the reader to figure that out on their own. I gave examples and stories as a way to connect with everyone somehow and to give them time to really figure the concept out for themselves before I pulled their mind away to the next paragraph. But the critics of my writing style do have a point (as the saying goes "If you make a paper 20% shorter, it will be 20% better"), I am still one who likes to provide examples and little stories in the midst of my paragraphs.

What? Might as well explain this now, not let us math geeks have all the fun \ The times the red line spends below the horizontal axis shows times when you are unhappy in life, and when the red line is above the horizontal line you are happy. He was just saying we all spend time being both happy and unhappy... well except Rebdragon, very clever :thumbup:

Thats a pretty good point, I never thought of the sine curve of happiness before. And when we look back we shallow out all the dips, making us think the past was so much better than the present. Thanks for that insight : Marx actually. The early stuff, before he got all radical. Ah, my happiness. Happiness is a 6am kayak ride to an small, uninhabited, forested island 20 minutes from my house. You dock the kayak, sit on the rocks, and watch the morning mist slowly rise as the bird's songs are the only things that break the silence. Bonus points if the sticks are dry enough for me to make a small fire and brew some tea, then I can enjoy a hot beverage to sip on as the ~60 degree weather is just cool enough to not be uncomfortable. picture That is my special happiness, and I will miss it dearly when I move away.

Hello everyone, it's been awhile since I posted here in earnest. I admit I didn't plan on returning to these forums (heck I'm 22 now) but I discovered something when I was away. When I was on these forums I had an outlet for my ideas and questions. Suddenly leaving that all behind was awkward. I found myself in real life stumbling across ideas in the middle of nowhere and saying to myself "Wow, what a great forum topic!" At first I just chucked and dismissed them, but lately I have been writing them down in a journal. Some of my sketches had potential, others felt great, but the basics for this thread felt different. This was the thread I had to post. Anyway, I don't want to bore you guys with a long introduction, I just want to point out one more thing. This isn't a thread to be read in haste, this is a thread that requires mental feedback and contemplation as you read, I would recommend taking a short pause in between paragraphs and think over what was just stated. If you don't think you can do this, you might as well leave the thread now as you won't get much from this post. Okay, no more delays, on with the show~ The secret to happiness. It's like the holy grail, we always hear of it but never do we hear the answer to the question. Do we as a society not know the answer? One would think it would be a priority, happiness is the one think in life we should all seek isn't it? What is happiness? Everyone knows basically what it is or knows a proverb that talks about it, but do we really know what it is? Such a simple question, yet one we don't know how to answer. We can only define it by using examples. Happiness is the feeling we get around true friends or the feeling we get when we are rewarded for hard work. So what really constitutes happiness? Well the official definition is emotions experiences when in a state of well being. Hmm, interesting, the feeling we get when we are well. Well that's worthless, what does being well or good even mean? Ah, at last, a question we can answer with logic. What makes something good. Well, by example a good pen is one that writes well. A good bag can carry a lot of stuff. A good set of speakers can produce sounds very well and a good blanket keeps you warm. Ah yes, to be good to do your function well. Anything can be defined using this logic, what makes a good telescope? A camera? A meal? That was easier than it seemed. Hmm, lets recap, by definition we are happy human beings if we are 'good' human beings. Okay, and if we want to be 'good' humans we must perform our function well... and crap, another snag. What is the function of a human? Some say our function is to eat, sleep, and have sex (reproduce). I disagree with this train of thought, these aren't core human functions, they are basic animal functions. We are animals however, so doing the above things will bring a sort a pleasure/happiness to a person. They will not get true happiness though, while we are animals we are much more than that; thus if we discover what it means to be human we can obtain a more more direct and real happiness than the kind we get from the archaic concepts of sex and pleasure. So what is the unique function of a human? Let's brainstorm here, humans are advanced social creatures that use logic and reason, they all have a unique conscious and are able to think to solve problems. I believe each of these aspects holds a key to our understanding of happiness, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here, there is still much work to do. We need to chisel at this rough list of ideas and polish it to a common understanding. Let's start with an easy one, our social aspect. Everyone knows friends bring happiness, this is such a universal rule that I hardly feel the need to write about it. We are social creatures and long for human interaction. Our best memories are with friends and while we all like some alone time, we cannot live our lives like that. Think of the most hardcore of gamers, the ones that never leave their "mother's basement". What type of game do we hear about when we think of these people? MMORPGs. Before the internet no man could live a sane life living in his basement for months playing a single player game. I'm sure some people did, but not near the numbers that play games like WoW with a serious addiction. People can live in physical solitude while playing these games because there is human interaction everywhere. Ask someone who is seriously addicted to WoW or EQ2 what they do when they log on, and answer is always the same: Guilds. They have a vast social network online of people who respect them and talk and laugh with them. Friendship is half the social game, on the quest for bliss humans must also venture into the domain of love. Love is a bit of a more advanced, more human social tendency, while even animals can befriend each other (think wolves) humans alone can express true love. Yes, I know many of you are thinking animals can love each other too, but I honestly don't think its the same. Animals befriend a mate and will protect him/her and their young to the death. I feel though that this is a instinctive response and not the same as a conscious unwaivering love, if you disagree please post as such. Anyway, since I believe love is a more human-specific function, it brings us even more happiness than simple friendship. The purest form of happiness is derived from a true loving relationship. Nothing will ever surpass it. It is no wonder over half of today suicides are derived from relationship problems. You can also see this in elderly couples that have been married for 50+ years, the vast majority of the time if the husband or wife dies, the other spouse passes away within three months. You draw your own conclusions on that one. Human interaction and friendship is perhaps our most basal form of happiness, but it is also the most crucial. Date and marry for love, not sex. We're getting there. I believe there are three rules of happiness to be discovered and we most certainly just found one of them. Lets continue to chisel away at the Byzantine aspects of humans. Actually, speaking of chisels, lets discover the happiness behind hard labor. We must be careful here, there is such a fine line between happiness and hate when it comes to physical labor, lets tease them apart starting at the most basic level. When humans first walked this earth they were different from animals because they used this intellect to create tools. They started out simple, such as using a large stick to defend yourself, but they soon advanced. You get great pride from building something useful and beautiful. Every time you use it or see it you are reminded of the hard work you put into it. Have any of you ever built a birdhouse out of wood, built castles out of sand, or spent hours toiling over something to create something that was simply amazing? You get pure, unfiltered happiness from making things with your hands. Why do you think so many of us love woodworking, fixing cars, gardening, or playing with Lego's? Heck we even do this when we play games, how many of you have played an RTS game like Starcraft or Command and Conquer, and often decide to ignore the enemy and instead build the "Ultimate Base" with 5 layers of defense and 10 of each building all perfectly organized. It's all inherent to us, we are designed to build creative things with our hands and with our minds. But we must make a very clear distinction here, there is a difference between making a birdhouse in your free time and making one in a factory. Capitalism has twisted the way we work, instead of a shoemaker living in his workshop and making shoes by hand for those in his community, he has been placed in a factory to improve production efficiency. In a factory he no longer has any creative input, he no longer sees the product from start to finish, and he no longer sees the joy on his customer's faces. Making things just to sell them doesn't bring happiness anymore than clipping your toenails does. I think many of us have experienced this first hand, even if only in Runescape. Personally I recall spending entire mornings making chocolate cakes in the old Runescape; oh man, you had to run to the grain fields and back to the chef's guild, grind 5 grain as you pick up the pot respawn, get some cake tins, burn half of them, collect all the chocolate bars, and bring back those 10 cakes to your bank. Those ten delicious chocolate cakes would be added to my pile in my bank and I would see them whenever I went to the bank. In battle when I used them I remembered the hard work I put it to make them... it was fun. But one day I sell my cakes, they go for a pathetic 80 gold a piece, and my hours of labor turn into 640 gold. Whoopie, I'll add it to the pile. Man, if this was the only way to make money I would leave the game in a heartbeat. But I digress, I think we understand the point, being forced to make something for monetary compensation is not fun at all, it's work. However putting blood sweat and tears into making something just for you (or a loved one) is a great feeling. But there's the problem, since we are forced to work for 8 hours a day and our conscious mind now thinks labor is a drag. What do we do when work/school is done and we get home? Nothing. We sit down and stare at TV or play video games. We as so confused as a people when it comes to happiness, that in our only free time we do things that bring us no real joy. Don't believe me? Look at retired people or people that won the lottery. Sure they are happy for a year or three but what do most of them do, they get new jobs or volunteer. Look at the results of world happiness surveys, are the richest and strongest countries at the top? No, smaller countries like Denmark are at the top, large enough to have a modern police force and political freedoms, but small enough that local shops and farmers that can still live their own simpler lives. Teenagers that inherit great sums of money live easy, yet hallow lives, often turning to drugs to try and find a source of joy; yet farmers and shoemakers lead hard lives for which are rewarded greatly in personal satisfaction and happiness. True happiness comes from production, not consumption. Phew, two down, one to go. This is a lot to read all at once. It's okay if you take or break or just sit there and think for a minute. Once you are ready, let us continue to the third and final thought. Self. It is something extremely unique to humans. Do you know how much more productive a wolf pack would be if the wolves sat down and said "okay Rufas, can your practice your sprints and be the wolf that start the chase, Tommy here will be our long distance runner, Sara is currently practicing the best way to remove the skin..." It doesn't happen, all the animals of pack try and do everything. We aren't like that and we shouldn't force it. Everyone has heard the saying "Do what you love and you will never work a day in your life" and it's amazing how each of us specialize so early on in our life. I have some family friends that recently adopted two foreign babies, Lilly and Terra. They are both around 24 months but act totally differently. Lilly loves her dolls, she will cradle her dolls and tuck them into their little beds; she also loves the family dog, sometimes kissing him right on his muzzle. Then you have Terra. Terra is a curious sort in the true sense of the word, almost as if she is an alien spy here to figure out how earth works. She will get away when you don't expect it and you will find her in the kitchen with a spoon in her hand, banging and tapping at all sorts of things and you can almost read her mind. What sounds does this make? What about if I hit it on this soft thing? Is that soft too? Does this shiny thing taste like the shiny thing I found yesterday? What does this object feel like? Will it survive a fall? I hear family laughter and I turn around and see Lilly hugging the dog and he tries to walk away. I feel like Will Smith in iRobot, I suddenly understand everything and no one else even notices a thing. My mind is practically screaming "Does no one else see this?! A flawless example of human specificity! One child is clearly set to become a determined scientist and the other will have the purest heart imaginable" Then I laugh and tell myself that for once I need to just enjoy a family outing without thinking of developmental psychology. As I was saying, no two humans are even close to being the same. Happiness is such a hard term to define because it's not the same for any two people, it means its own special thing to all of us. We can all reach happiness in the same way though, do things that you are meant to do. And no, playing video games doesn't really count. Yes I know we all feel like that is our calling but it is simply and well designed distraction meant to bring temporary pleasure. Find something in the vast array of fields to study and jobs to occupy that you truly enjoy. Oftentimes you will know your true calling and be unable to get there, such as becoming an astronaut or fighter pilot. This is unfortunate but you should be able to find an analogous job that is within reach. Remember, humans have lived for millennia with the most basic of jobs and lifestyles available, yet I don't think Romans or ancient Egyptians were any more depressed that we are today. Keep things simple, and keep things in context. Do what comes naturally to you, and your personal satisfaction will be unmatched. Love, hobbies, friends, and being yourself. I think we all knew the secret to happiness this entire time, but we don't realize it until we discover it firsthand. I discovered it in this way, and if you followed along, questioning and contemplating the paragraphs as I have, I hope you have discovered happiness for yourself as well. Thank you for taking the time to read this long thread. Oh and Tip.it? It's good to be back. :

Money, cars, and social status don't bring happiness to your life. Neither do hot women, power, or PS3s.

Pkmasta, that post was 3 things to me. It was one of the best compliments I have ever received, it was one of the few times I actually shed a tear while reading a post, and it reminded me on why I write on these forums. Thank you.

Heh, all I gotta say is welcome to college. "never studying for a high school test in my life" really isn't that impressive considering high schools these days. I'm a 4th year in college and I have a friend who STILL says that to me and refuses to study for a test until the night before. I say "Hey Ryan, did you make flashcards for the Immunology final on 730 pages of text and 50 hours of lecture?" he replies "Lol, dude I never study that early for tests, never have never will". My advice? In all honesty mentally forget about what high school tests were like. Having the false mindset that one day of studying can get you something besides an F can be very damaging. Oh, and if you think your test was hard... just wait until finals! \

Don't worry about it guys, I'll see what I can do from here, I never meant for you guys to go out and do all the dirty work : ...and on another note this Saturday at noon central I will post a topic that I have been working on for about a month now. I daresay it may be the best thread I have ever written Hope you guys enjoy it~

I read through the posts on a couple of the articles, and I found that trihylians said he was going to. I sent them a pm to ask them if he could post them, but the last visited date was in July of 08, so hopefully he'll log on for some reason. Cross your fingers. :pray: Wow, that was good thinking, thanks for your work : I'll search my old computer one more time to see if I saved them under something different. Anyway, thanks everyone, it's nice to see you all again!

Hey guys, it's been awhile. How have you all been holding up? Personally, I have been keeping pretty busy. Sorry I haven't been posting much these days. This is my last real semester of university and my med school apps are all in the air right now. I have been in contact with quite a few of you over the years through email and PMs. I seems that regardless of my other accomplishments on TIF, the series I wrote fifteen months ago (now referred to on these forums as "Trapical's Ten") seemed to have stuck with quite a few people. It brings joy every time I hear a mention of how much someone enjoyed reading them or how much they changed someone's world view. It does sadden me however that I no longer have a copy of these very threads that I wrote, especially when I get emails from people who want to read them again. It is a bit depressing to turn away people who come for something that I wrote for them those many moons ago. If anyone would happen to have a copy of the original 10 threads (before the TIF move to the new phpBB that messed up the formatting) could you please email them to me at [email protected]? It is a request of friends, and I shall repay your efforts doing what I do best: I shall do my best to start posting on these hallowed forums once more. I thank you in advance. EDIT: Huge thanks to mistywerty, who found a copy of them on her iPod. She posted at the end of the 2nd page

Phil - Welcome back man, I love Oz, and those pictures made me want to go back some day. I was interested that you didn't like Perth I haven't been to that side of Australia but was planning to study abroad in Perth (but it never went though). I hear the endless beaches there are like nothing else you have ever seen, and the standard of living is quite high. Oh and speaking of Australia, did you have any meat pies there? The ones I had in Cairns were amount the most succulent things I have ever had the pleasure of consuming. Hong Kong is also a great city to see. I could spend all day just walking those streets passing the mercantile capital of the world. New York and London are the true centers of world trade of course, but there its all just digital and paper wealth. In Hong Kong you can see stores and buyers that just stretch on for miles upon miles in every direction. Anyway, nice to have you back, those global trips can really change a man for the better and allow him to see situations in a more global light. Good luck with everything~

You can't force yourself to sleep if you body doesn't require it. You may be one of those people who only needs 5h of sleep a night, and trying to get more will throw your body out of wack. My father is a psychiatrist, and the method I heard from him is the same I have read about in many guides to insomnia or just general feelings of lethargy. Its just two rules, one involves the time you get up, one is the time you go to bed. Step one: Set a fixed wake up time. Make it 8am, 9am, 7:38am, whatever you want. Just follow the two rules - Keep to the schedule. You can not sleep in some days and wake up early other days. Once every other week is okay for an appointment or something, but don't sleep in on weekends for the heck of it. This will screw up the whole thing. - When you're alarm rings, get out of bed. Don't use snooze. It's a bad habit and shouldn't be done by anyone really, but it should be especially avoided by someone in your situation Step Two: Go to bed when you get tired Sounds stupid I know, but trust me on this one. Start today, pick your desired permanent wake up time and then don't go to bed until you start yawning. Do you plan to get up at 6am and therefore feel you should go to bed at 10pm? Bah, screw that. Set your alarm for 6am and go to bed when you are tired. Is it midnight and your still not tired? Good, keep going. You're planning to teach your body a lesson, treat it like a child that needs to be disciplined. If it doesn't want to be tired until 2am, thats fine, it will be punished by your 6am wake up call. Remember, you're the boss of your body, if you then wake up at 6am and your body is saying it wants more sleep, tough luck body, its 6am and you are now getting up at this time so your body better get used to the idea. And it will. Your body isn't stupid, it will learn the 6am wake up very, very fast. Two days it all it usually takes. After that, your body will know that it is in fact, no matter what, getting up at 6am the next morning. It will then know exactly when to tell you (the brain) when it is tired and wants you to go to bed. Listen to it at this point, once your body knows of the fixed wake up time, listen to it and you're sleep will be flawless. You feel tired, go to bed and when you wake up you will feel like you had a cup of coffee already, you just slept for the perfect amount of sleep that your body needed. This technique will cure the most serious, life threatening forms of insomnia. Your sleep problem is no match for it :

The program is stupid because it was made by senators half of which have probably never used the stuff and the half who don't really think its all that bad. They were sitting in a room and someone said "something needs to be done to stop these drugs". So to make their constituents happy they do what the government always does: they throw money at the situation. That does nothing to solve anything. On a related note are the groups that say "Lets stand up to cancer!!" We can stop lung cancer by running in a marathon for it and donating money! News Flash: Cancer cells don't give a crap if you're wearing a yellow bracelet. And they don't care if $30 billion dollars were just raised. You want to stop cancer? Get a degree and get in a freakan laboratory with organic chemists and biophysicists. These labs have hundreds of billions of dollars of federal funding, you can just raise money and say you are helping the cure. Likewise, you won't get kids to stop using pot by just throwing money and ads at them. Though that one Truth ad with unicorns and the song (magical amount) was amusing. Make more of those, they are fun to watch.

Not to sound elitist but it always amuses me when lower middle class families complain about taxes. Oh no, they taxed $1500 of your $40,000 income. Lawyers and physicians are taxed 30-40%, its not uncommon to pay $100,000 in taxes. Yes, I know they have more money in the end even after the taxation, but its still ridiculous to pay the cost of a house every single year. And wow, its crazy for large businesses. Exxon Mobile pays like 40 billion dollars in tax every year. Again, I know you're all thinking "Yea, they deserve it, they make a ton of money!" But still, imagine running a large successful company and then being essentially punished for you success, having to give away sometimes 90% of your profit. Anyway but taxes are here to stay. I don't mind paying them really, I just get find it annoying when tax breaks come around and people who pay <$1000 in taxes are in uproar that the guy that paid 5 million in taxes is getting a bigger "Tax cut". The poor want more tax rebates? Well, they need to start paying taxes first -.-

For those saying being Governor of Alaska is "easy" and "doesn't give executive experience"... Alaska has 45% of the nation's coast lines and is three times as large as California's land mass. It has thousands of military bases and is scant 50 miles from the not-so-friendly country of Russia. It has hundreds of ethnic groups, and a massive natural resources industry. Countless decisions need to be made as to where to build roads, how to project order to towns in far flung wilderness, and how to preserve the wildlife while supplying the mainland United States with a million barrels of oil a day. Alaska is actually a pretty hard state to rule compared to something like Vermont or Wisconsin. And its certainly harder than one year in the Senate -.- . Oh and she's pretty hot for her age:

Dear Trapical, Thank you for your interest in the test at IQTest.com. Your general IQ score is: 12,270.886 You may login at http://www.iqtest.com/login.html at any time to view your score, purchase your Complete Personal Intelligence Profile or The Consciousness Exercises, or edit your account settings: Login email: [REMOVED] Password: [REMOVED] Regards, The Team at IQTest.com Please do not reply to this email. You can email us at [email protected]. That's for all the people on these forums who think i'm stupid. On a more serious note, do you guys really believe these tests? Hmm, lets see. There's a website that sells Certificates and plaques that say your name and your IQ. Are they going to tell that your IQ is 85, and then try and sell you that on a certificate for 20 bucks? :lol: Can't you see the motive behind giving everyone a high score on these "IQ tests"? To anyone who still believes in these tests, go back and answer every question wrong. I answered all "B's" on one and it said I had an IQ of 135 (and then offered to sell me a plaque with the score on it for $15. Lol

No nation state will start a nuclear war. Countries like the U.S. have nuclear submarines that lie dormant in far flung areas of the ocean. Even if you obliterate every inch of land and stop the U.S. from launching any ICBMs or bombers, these subs carry >40 nukes and can utterly destroy any country by themselves. -No nation state will start a nuclear war, unless they want everyone they ever loved to be burnt to a crisp. Terrorists on the other hand. They don't care if they die from their actions and they have no real nation to be targeted by a counter strike. It is only a matter of time before a terrorist uses a nuclear bomb. Seriously, they have everything to gain from using one, and eventually one will fall into terrorist hands. Its just a matter of time really.