BlueTear

Hmz... Liberal use of http://www.thottbot.com perhaps? Usually I only use it whenever I get sick and tired of particular quest or I have no clue where to go, but you could read up on various quests you want to do well in advance so that when you do have time to play, there's less mucking about, more getting exp. Otherwise it's just a matter of using the double-experience to it's limit, and making sure you always end a session inside an inn.

1. Varies from server to server, and side to side. The difference in alliance and horde characters can be quite noticeable. 2. Depends on what you're doing. Yes, you could just log on and run a few battlegrounds til you log off and get bored. Or cash in a few quests. But "effective playing" pretty much requires you to sit down and multi-task a bunch of quests while you leveling, and when you feel like doing the end-game, that's going to take even larger chunks of time. 3. I think it took me 18 days of /played on my first character, and 12 on my second. There's some obvious gawking time in there, and the second one would probably have been a lot faster if it hadn't been made on the alliance side (first one was horde). 4. Next week.

... an example of which would be? How many Iraqi civilians were found dead and tortured this week. Anyone?

I am yet to meet a hamster that appears to have what I'd call a "personality". My cat, who's probably somewhere around 8 years old by now, has a very distinct personality and set behaviours. Heck, we even managed to teach him to raise his right paw in exchange for candy, which has become a sort of general communication for "oooo, yummy, can I have some? I'm cute!". 1) I wouldn't own a rodent or a hamster anyway. They don't live long enough, nor do I think they have enough of a personality to make them worthwhile as pets. Might as well get a furry houseplant. 2) From the surgical bills spent on our cat - a nasty ear infection and a fight with what we're presuming was a fox - just how did the bill reach $2100?! It's removing an eraser from a digestive tract, not a bloody brain transplant! (3) ... the only chance he's going to get to eat an eraser is human negligence. I'd like to think I'd avoid that, but hey, our cat jumped into the toilet three times before he realized he had better look before leaping) So no, if I for some reason found myself in possession of a hamster dying due to human negligence I would not spend all that money to save it.

And when was the last time they arranged a suicide bombing in, I don't know, Iraq maybe? Hizbollah is hardly a typical example of the various organizations and loose coalities who run around Iraq waging holy war on just about anyone - strictly speaking, are they involved in Iraq in any way? May have? What, bar organizations that we'd label as terrorists, places a car bomb at a market full of civilians? And you don't find dividing a nation of what, 20ish million people into two factions a bit simplistic, even if we were to ignore the various factions that are run from the outside? That aside; Who would you identify as possible people to negotiate from either of these "factions"? Political leaders? Religious leaders? How are you going to find enough people who are able to agree with eachother, and at the same time, have some actual authority?

Aha, that explains it, thanks.

So... What's a multi-touch screen, anyway?

Assuming he's American, that's seriously good advice. If memory serves me, they even made a documentary picking apart the "facts" he used for the Da Vinci code. As an added bonus, if you've read one of his books, you'll have figured who the bad guy in any of his other books in no-time. It's like reading several books at once!

I learn things. I don't really give a flying [cabbage] about what you think. You can repeat it over and over again til your face turns blue, I don't care. What I want to know is what you base your thoughts and opinions on, your sources, your background your reasoning. Because I can use those to evaluate my own opinions, my own thoughts, and alter accordingly. And in the process I learn things about subjects I'd never spend time researching otherwise. Someone makes what appears to be an outrageous claim, I look it up - or get the source from whoever made the claim - and all of a sudden, I know something new. It's what keeps me coming back here at regular intervalls. (... not only do I learn things, I learn useful things. Remember the middle east debattes we used to have a few years ago? I wrote one essay and did one project on subjects involving the middle east, something I'd never have had the background knowledge to even consider without this place)

Not quite following how it means exclusion of any other source (and you still didn't actually name one). Trial and error? Century upon century where other methods have proven to yield results that aren't nearly as accurate?

Who exactly makes that claim, and how exactly would you go about aquiring knowledge otherwise? I'd say we don't have any quantifiable proof, beyond what can be infered by logic. By launching satelites, i.e. developing technology, we were able to see the background radiation permeating the universe, and modify our theories accordingly. Einstein's theory of relativity does not refute Newton's work, it expands upon it by dealing with things that - technologically - Newton had no way of knowing of, much less proving. It is not without precedent to say that in the future, as the scientific devices we use to study the universe become more advanced, we'll be able to to use those tools to further our knowledge. Simple mathematic's require you to accept a few fundamental axioms. I don't really consider the belief of natural numbers religious, even though it's based on axioms. I don't think that's the reason why religious discussion was banned. I think it had more to do with the fact that if someone walks in and says "I don't believe in the *theory* of evolution" or "we did not evolve from apes!" no one takes offense. Statements along the lines of "there is no God" on the other hand, appears to offend a fair few people. That being said, I don't think the rule is particularly useful. Either it's a gag order for everyone who's opinion on one matter or the other is influenced by religion - an important part in all our respective cultures and everyday lives - or it's a freecard where something said with a religious basis is not open to debate. Neither of which is conductive for a discussion.

First of all, in my opinion, the originial post in a thread, or sometimes even the topic, aren't that relevant. As a general rule, a thread is what people make of it. Now, I'm not saying it's possible nor likely that you can turn every single crap-thread into something worthwhile, but I think it's worth noting that some of the best discussions we've had here over the years did not rise out of a well formulated first post with an exemplary topic title. I'd say a quality topic is a topic that people have an actual vested interest in seeing what other people have to say, and presenting their own opinions (though if you feel you don't know enough to present an opinion, asking questions about the subject isn't detrimental). And IMHO, a topic with no room for disagreement and discussion about why people disagree can never quite reach an overall quality, even though a few people might find them interesting. I'd like to ask you a question; Do you read every single reply to a thread along the lines of "what's your favourite colour" and do you find every reply - if written in the 'appropriate' manner - interesting, or does it depend on who posted it?

There's no data backing up what exactly? That El Nino and La Nina are affected by global warming? There is no single accurate model that can predict how they are affected by global warming, but that certainly isn't the same thing as no data saying that such an effect is possible. Pure logic should dictate that a *global* weather phenomenon would have effects felt, I don't know, globally? So I'll ask you the same question; Do you think it's a static weather phenomena that is unaffected by global warming? Counting from when, compared to what?

So, in your opinion, El Nino and La Nina are static weather phenomenon that are not affected in frequency or amplitude by global warming?

Nah, s'true. The usual what'sthiswhitestuffandwhoatrafficjustcollapsed a few days on November - not even late November - and then nothing. Went for a drive past a termometer just the other day and it showed +6C. In January? Uhmz?

A completely static weather phenomenon that would never ever be afflictied in amplitude nor frequency by something as trivial as global warming. Too subtle?

First step would probably be to found a suitable place for the foundation, which would baically have to be solid bedrock. Drill a few big holes into it to anchor the building properly. The wind needs to be conquered. For the finished building, you can use a colossal freefloating object suspended a few meters of your foundation, attached to the top of your building. Properly made, it'll absorb any wind observation. Wind tunnels could be used to augment this effect if you stumble on a jetstream or somesuch, and despite the loss in usuable space, with a few properly placed windows it would plain look cool. For construction, well, you'd obviously have to build a seriously solid frame to work on, and the central shaft where you're going to hang your anti-wind-ball will most likely have to be filled with construction gear like extra big elevators. Materials... Steel works to a point, but you'd want cables akin to what someone mentioned above. Never heard of a titanium based one, but nano-manipulated carbon made ones are thought to be able to build a space elevator. Go figure how they'd hold out in a plain building. For security, well, if terrorist attacks worries you so much, install a few SAM sites here and there. It's worth mentioning however, that even the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center was built to survive a plane crash. They collapsed because the ensuing fire deformed the carrying steel bulkheads. We fix that with a considerably improved automatic fire suppression system (I'm thinking cannisters of foam made for detonation placed here and there suitable places around the building) and the use of the aforementioned nanocables. Making the entire thing a pressurised environment is probably the best option to make the top floors workable and ease the transition from the individual floors.

... when I read that, some cynical part of me immediately went "Blissfull ignorance".

I don't know either, I'm just reasoning from the little bits and pieces of information I've got, and with that a basis I reckon it's perfectly possible to change the pH levels by what you consume - if for no other reason than because you manage to trick the stomach into producing more acid - and if you have a stressed lifestyle and bad eating habits that change could very well be the change that corrodes your intestines so you start vomitting blood. According to Wikipedia, 3/4 of all ulcors are caused by bacteria, and even in these cases, stress is a factor in how fast they heal. edit: Actually, come to think of it, I think I'm mixing things up a bit. Coffee, which is acidic, has an effect on ulcors, but I have vague memories of that coming from the fact that coffee stimulates the production of stomach acid chemically - unrelated to the pH levels. That, and I realized that given enough incentative I could probably calculate exactly how much of a change in pH you could produce with something along the acidicy of soft drink, at once I got that thought I started wondering how you could a lower pH value by effectively diluting something anyway...

While I doubt that a healthy consumption of coca cola or any other soft drink is going to affect your stomach - though come to think about it, "healthy consumption" and "soft drinks" is today's newest oxymoron - it's worth pointing out that you're not likely to ever be found drinking something of an acididy close to stomach acids, and people still manage to get ulcors (uh... not sure I got that english word right? Anyone?). Yeah, sure, your stomach walls are built to handle a more acidic substance than found in a can of coke or whatever, but it still stacks up. Comparing pH as a means to say "this will never hurt you!" doesn't work, because depending on your lifestyle and whatever else you might be consuming, that acidic level might still be sufficient to hurt.

'course, when it comes to aspartame, 'anything' happends to have the anectodal set of sideeffects if you're unfortunate enough to lack a certain enzyme, so you can't properly metabolize some oddly-named byproduct of APM, the by product travels to your brain. Assuming I recall my chemistry lessons correct, the possible side effects of this range from depression, agression, moodswings and - in extreme cases - [developmentally delayed]ation. And that's besides the fact that you can taste aspartame like slick oiled [cabbage] at the back of your mouth after drinking anything with it. Maybe you get used to it, but personally, anyone who pours down can after can of that rather than settling for a lot fewer cans of the real-tasting-deal has consumption issues. And Viktor, edit or no edit, lactate is still a verb, lactose is the name of the substance in question =P

Why would they make enough new servers to support a mass migration, not to mention the fact that any non-targeted migrations can only be done after the gates of Ahn'Qiraj has been opened or after 180 days? (And the playerbase is just plain to big for "most" people to migrate to a set of new servers anyway). Horde on Chromaggus, Alliance on Boulderfist. Account's cancelled now though, got military service coming up.

Disc is lying no more than 45cm from my face right now. Good times, good times.

World of Warcraft. When I found RS back in 2001 I quickly realized that MMORPG was going to be the genre of choice when it came to gaming for me. Since then, I've played a few, fascinated by their complexities and the fact that they manage to provide fun continiously over days, weeks, months, even years. Sure, Ultima Online created the genre in the first place. Sure, there's other MMORPG's that handle individual systems better - until Raph Koster is hired as creative director I doubt I'll ever see a craftic system as good as the one in SWG, and I still have a weak spot for the basic idea behind "guilds" in Asheron's Call. But when Blizzard made WoW they still manage to combine most of the interesting pieces of MMORPG gaming, packaging it in a way that I'd describe as unusually balanced and continiously presenting it in a surprisingly bug-free format. Some of their unique handles on various problems are rapdidly becoming industry-wide standard. In my opinion, it is a game that is - for next five-ten years - going to define the genre, for better or worse.

He headed the Ba'ath party, a secular socialist party. Unlike the ruling system of the Islamic Republic of Iran (full name added for emphasis) and the Kingdom of Saudi-Arabia, the islamic priesthood had... well... a not quite as prominent position within the government. He oppressed, among others, the Shia muslims in Iraq - that'd be the largest branch of islam present in Iraq - and he fought a war that lasted 8 years against the Islamic Republic of Iran - a country by then led by a man who talked about exporting the Islamic revolution to places like secular Iraq. The events leading up to the first gulf war include Saddam Hussein expecting several arab states, including Kuwait, to write of wartime debts because he "protected" their respective countries from the aforementioned export of the Islamic Revolution. Define "devout".