Binyam

At level 99 cooking, I can burn up to half of a load of blue crabs on lower level wood...even t7 or t8. If I have Grave Crawler (t10), I usually burn between 1 and 4 blue crab per load. Imo, that is a HUGE difference. As far as your second comment, perhaps when you stop dunging solo or with low level players, you will notice the value, and availability, of higher tiered resources. If you can't cut/fletch/burn t10 wood, you won't see much (or any) of it. When you (or a teammate) have the levels required, you will see resources at that level.

Some quests are not directed at the "average quester". There are many of us that like the challenge of rising to meet the requirements of a new quest. Many of my least favorite skills are at their current level for only this reason. Instead of complaining about it, just go do the work and get the level. Level 90 really isn't that hard, if you apply yourself. I, for one, will be working on level 90 myself in the days ahead so that I am ready for the quest. It has a couple uses. It is very nice in Dungeoneering when trying to cook high level fish (salve eels and above) and, apparently, there is a quest coming that it will be useful for ;)

Apparently, not everyone has your breadth of revelatory knowledge. I thought it was well written and presented some things in a way that I had never thought of. Just because something did not appeal to you or reveal something to you does not mean it is unmerited. Perhaps you were not a part of the target audience, in which case, you are welcome to continue reading in future issues.

You're pretty lucky to have survived that, you know? Yea, that's what I thought. Isn't that suposed to be leathal? Yea.. the survival rate for having your appendix burst is almost non-existant.. Due to neuropathy caused by diabetes, my dad survived 4 months with a ruptured appendix. Thought he had a case of stomach flu when it happened and finally went to the doctor 4 months later when he started passing air when he urinated and had blood in his stools. The doctors ended up doing an exploratory when they couldnt figure out what was wrong with him. Long story short he ended up losing half of his colon and part of his small intestine and had to have some other reconstructive work done on his renal system. Got very lucky, really. His doctors said most people go into septic shock and dont survive days, much less months. The neuropathy is what saved him. Havong lost much of his feeling, his brain didnt even realize it was supposed to go into shock.

I'm not saying it's not. The electoral system does, to a great extent, represent the wishes of the people. My argument is that the popular vote does it even better. I don't quite understand. How does pointing out that states cast their electoral votes for whomever wins the popular vote in their particular state qualify as a "conspiracy theory?" Looks like Wikipedia's in on it, too: The election of the President of the United States and the Vice President of the United States is indirect. Presidential electors are selected on a state by state basis as determined by the laws of each state. Currently each state uses the popular vote on Election Day to elect electors. Although ballots list the names of the presidential candidates, voters within the 50 states and the District of Columbia are actually choosing Electors from their state when they vote for President and Vice President. These Presidential Electors in turn cast the official (electoral) votes for those two offices. Huh?? I made by conspiracy thoery remark based on your comments: where you were alluding that states have no sovereignty at all and likened it to oppressed people of a genocidal dictatorship, then went on to site a Supreme Court case, that, near as I can tell (I am not a lawyer and will never be one...too old) UPHELD the 10th Amendment. Like I said, conspiracy theory BS

/sigh If we are going to get into a bunch of conspiracy theory BS, then i'm out of this conversation. You conspiracy theroists are all a bunch of nut-jobs that need to get sent to your own little island where you can theorize until the end of time about how you got there.

Vermont gets 3 votes and California get 55 because Vermont has a population of 630,000 and California has a population of 36,000,000 The yare not under-represented, they are equally represented, based on their population. It is not irrelevent, it will never happen because it should never happen. The United States is a republic, not a democracy. The people that come from the rural areas of the country would never pressure their state governments to support such an amendment, because fundamentally, culturally, morally and politically, people that live in rural areas tend to be far different than people in urban areas. Those people would certainly not support a system where only the urban areas are needed to decide the future of their country. This is, once again, where you seem to have no understanding of the United States government. So, once again The Unites States of America is not a democracy. It has never been a democracy and it never should be a democracy. The popular vote means absoutely nothing and has no bearing whatsoever on the election process. The process is very simply. Each state's citizens elects its own state government to govern and legislate. Each state's citizens elects its representatives to represent it in Congress. Each state's citizens elects its president. The states get a certain amount of votes, based on their population, to vote for the candidate that state has voted to be president. With the exception of Maine and Nebraska, the candidate that each state elects as president gets all of that states votes. Abolishing the Electoral College would seriously compromise the sovereignty of the states in their ability to elect a president. Since the United States is a federal republic, the states maintain all political sovereignty that they do not yield to the federation. The ability of the state to decide, as a state, who it elects as president is is one of the fundamental principals of the state's sovereignty. Taking away that ability would seriously compromise our entire system of government.

It's actually a bit more complicated than that. Article I of the US Constitution sets up the Legislative branch of government. The Senate has 2 members elected per state and is the house of congress that provides representatives for the states. Since there are 2 Senators per state, all states are equal in the Senate. The House of Representatives is the house of congress that represents the people. Each state has a number of representatives proportionate to their population. (the current average is approximately 1 representative per 650,000 citizens) Article II of the US Constitution sets up the Executive branch. This is where the Electoral College is laid out. The amount of electoral votes each state receives is the sum of their senators (2 per state) and their representatives (based on population). This way each state gets equal representation and each state gets additional representation based on their population. The more populous states get more electoral votes (California getting the most at 55), but every state (and the District of Columbia) and its citizens are equally represented. How each state dispenses its electoral votes is up to them, Currently there are two methods. The most widely used method is: whichever candidate receives the majority vote for that state receives all the state's electoral votes, so when Kerry received 54% of the vote in California to Bush's 45%, Kerry won the state's votes and received all 55 Electoral votes. Maine and Nebraska are the only 2 states currently that use a proportionate system of dividing its votes. With this method, a candidate will receive 1 electoral vote for each Congressional district it wins and the candidate that wins the most votes overall for that state would receive the additional 2 votes. If we were to use the proportionate method on California, Kerry, who won in 31 of the 53 districts would have received 33 Electoral votes from California (31 for the districts and 2 for winning the state, overall) and Bush would have received 22 Electoral votes. Personally, I would like to see the proprtionate system used everywhere, as it allows for more equal representation and would prevent a candidate from winning the election merely by sweeping the 11 largest states.

1. 2nd degree sunburn covering my chest and back. After a couple of days the area was covered in hundreds of tiny blisters that would rip apart with any movement, making larger blisters. After about a week of this, merely touching my skin would would cause large chunks of skin to fall off leaving the raw festering flesh underneath exposed. This was so painful that I ended up going through about 2 dozen T-shirts because I had to cut them of with scissors, as it was far to painful to remove them normally. 2. While deployed to Iraq, I got a very bad case of heat rash, once again covering my chest and back (basically, the area that was covered by my bulletproof vest). Due to poor sanitary conditions and wearing my vest in the sun and 130+ degree heat for at least 12 hours a day, it was impossible to control the rash and my skin became very red, hard and swollen. To compound matters, the well our showers used was going dry and our shower water was very hard salt water (to the point where soap would not lather). Bathing felt like I was showering in sulferic acid. 3. Acute appendicitis 4. Lidocaine shot over my tailbone (damn near cried like a baby :P) 5. Dislocating my hip 6. Dislocating 2 fingers in a vehicle accident (doctor popped both back in with no pain killer...pretty painful) 7. While on rotation at the National Training Center in Ft Irwin, CA, I was driving a PLS at night in full blackout using NVGs. My PLS hit a 3 foot deep wadi and the impact caused my spring ride seat to shoot me into the roof of the PLS, head first. Nice little concussion. There was also some significant neck and upper back pain. 8. While conducting convoy security in Iraq, the truck behind me was hit by an IED and slammed into my gun truck, causing me to collide with the truck in front of me. This chain of events caused my head to hit the roof of my armored HMMWV at about 40 MPH. Once again, hello concussion, and now 3 compressed vertibrae in my C-spine and 4 in my T-spine. 9. Hyper-extending my knee 10. Getting kicked in the face by a 2 yo stallion, while training it. Busted my nose and bruised up my face pretty bad.