Ambassadar

I am curious to hear news of what this new course is like. High lvl or lower lvl? Good experience? If it is higher level how does it seem to rate when compared to Ape Atoll and the Wilderness courses? Any info is appreciated.

I agree with whoever said don't use average. We need exact data. If both resulted in 16-20 nests per day that is a huge difference over time between the two numbers. 20 is 125% of 16. That is VERY significant over leveling up to 99 in woodcutting. That is why I would be curious to see the exact data before I decide a strung rabbit foot isn't worth it.

I'm lvl 86 and I have crafted probably 5k nats with only 1 or 2 attacks. I am purposefully keeping my combat level down for now because most of the PKes I see are 95-105ish. Another thing I do is I always rune craft on lightly populated worlds and late at night if I can when server populations are lower. Seems to help a lot.

Interesting initial first post. I read about two pages before it got annoying. Here is my take for what it is worth... I am a Christian. I have seen poor conduct on both sides in my brief time on these forums. It appears to me in terms of "How are Christian's treated" that the initial post is a complicated subject when you try to break it down and analyze what is happening. Take this thread for example... It starts off well and then someone says they aren't a Christian and then you have a person come in condemning people to hell for that. In response you get a barrage of lots of people cracking on Christians and making fun of this guy. I completely understand this response. Of course it goes overboard because you have immaturity on both sides but if I wasn't a Christian I would have been ticked off also. Then on the flip side you get the same kind of ignorant off the cuff comments directed at Christians which provokes impassioned responses that can go to the extreme as well. To me I feel this doesn't affect how I personally am treated as a Christian because you have to be able to distinguish between people frustrated at one person and people that hate a religion. Most of the time I think people are just venting frustrations over a particular response so I don't take it personal. I am actually a moderator for a gaming guild that happens to have a love for debating when we have gaming downtime. We have some simple rules on our forum that actually keeps everyone in line and debates on topic. Basically when we invite someone onto our boards to debate with us we just tell them "Only attack the idea, not the person. Don't debate using feelings. If you offer an idea be able to back it with facts to the best of your ability." For us that works pretty well. I also feel like that limits personal attacks on people for beliefs. Always keep in mind that there are idiot Christians as well as idiot Atheists. Also keep in mind there are people that are brilliant that hold both views. Blanket statements like "Everyone that believes x is a moron" merely shows the person who made the statement to be immature. Regardless of your views ignore these people. Don't form your opinion of either one of these views based off your experience with a few morons. What is important is the issue, not the person talking.

Make sure to work out 2 or 3 times a week. No excuses. Make sure to always get your schoolwork done. If someone invites you to do something and you are playing the game turn the game off every time. Never let a game keep you from hanging out with people in real life. That's what I do and it works for me.

hehe, Samford is a great guy/girl ratio if you are a guy.

So what happens if I say Sour Cheese? :twisted:

I completely 100% agree.

Actually that isn't true.

Spanking is not the same as hitting a child. A hit is meant to hurt someone. A spank is just meant to sting a bit. Hitting a child is wrong. Spanking a child is ok if the child disobeyed. I also "guarantee" you that I had great parents and I was horribly behaved when I was little. Anything short of a spanking I would scoff at. I even got an F in conduct in first grade hehe. My mom dutifully kept disciplining me even though I about drove her to exhaustion when I was little but by 3rd grade I was well behaved and self controlled and haven't had a problem since. Spanking definitely works. I am living proof. PS. I have great parents and I love them and I don't have emotional scars or anything like some people like to act like kids get if they get spanked. I can also guarantee that most children were never spanked as much as I was. It completely works if done in love to discipline a child.

Explain to me how your skin pigment affects your GPA and SAT/ACT score. To my knowledge those two things are the only thing my college knew about me. I also find your comment interesting because the black people I know that work hard and focus on educating themselves are usually pretty darn successful(and I live in a state that the media tries to portray as racist). I have a good friend from western Africa that came over and within 2 years of graduating college with an IT degree he was CIO of a corporation and had also started his own software business. I have other black friends that I was in engineering with and they are are doing just fine. And you have no idea what my situation was like growing up. So what? To act like white people just have it so easy and we get everything handed to us in life on a silver platter is ridiculous and you need to lose that attitude or you are never going to get anywhere in life because people don't like being around that attitude. It is irritating. Your brain CAN take you most places if you use it enough, educate it, and condition it the right way. Explain to me how it can't. 3) Refer to above comment about your attitude. So in other words you want me to be thinking "I'm white so I'm completely different than you?" Isn't that encouraging me to have a racist line of thought? Do you honestly want me to start thinking of you as so completely different than me? Are you saying I should define you in my mind by your skin color? While we are on the topic of being presumptuous.... You need to just chill out. You have so much built up anger that it is going to affect you negatively wherever you go in life and have to deal with other races. Quit with the excuses. Quit with the whole victim mentality. Everyone has tough times in life regardless of their color. No two people's experiences are the same but so what? Don't blow up at them just because they offer an opinion and their skin pigment isn't the same color as yours. That being said I want to remind you of your own statement. "The only thing worse than an intentional racist is a well-meaning unintentional racist." You might want to keep this statement in mind and review some of the things you yourself have said this thread. Abraham Lincoln taught himself the legal profession by reading law textbooks at night by the light of a candle and his fireplace in a log cabin with no heat and power and no teacher. If he can do that no one in the US has an excuse why they can't teach themselves as long as they can read in the first place. If a person can read then that person can learn. It's their choice.

Cool, didn't know about that. As to the Chinese navy I never said it is a US caliber navy. I never said all their systems are top of the line. What I am pointing out is a trend towards offensively based doctrine and equipment. Combined with their aggressive and active pursuit of US technology through any means possible including espionage then what this is telling us is as soon as they can design (or steal) something like an AEGIS system they will. A kick butt navy isn't built overnight. Their first carrier won't be great. The key is to look at the overall scheme of things. What are they doing? Where are they putting the focus on their development? Why are they developing all these things? How does this focus fit into possible strategic situations? They are taking the steps to become an offensively based military. How does what they are doing reflect with what they are saying? They want Taiwan. They threaten about Taiwan. They threaten nukes against the US if we interfere with their taking Taiwan. With all these new military developments in such a short time what are they up to? It sure doesn't appear like they are spending all this money just to cruise the South China Sea and get a tan.

Excellent post Gonpost. As to the person that said this earlier: It's all you have? What about your brain? Compete with everyone else mentally by getting better grades and scoring better on standardized tests to get into college and win your spot fairly. That is what the rest of the country and world has to do. Affirmitive action is like playing a basketball game and spotting the other team 10 points before the game even starts. If the team that was spotted the points wins you have to wonder... do you actually consider that a win? If I was black I would hate affirmitive action because I could succeed on my own without it and I would hate everyone second guessing me wondering if I had only gotten in to fill some racial quota. Earning their respect would be much harder because of this.

I agree with you on many of the things you have said Locke although I have to disagree with you on this. I believe the US was completely justified in going into Iraq and deposing Saddam. I just think Bush screwed up in how he went about it and what to do after the dictator was overthrown. I am like you in that I believe the US should not be involved in anything that doesn't have anything to do with their national security. Iraq did have ramifications on the security of the US. Earlier you made the point that weakness invites further aggression on a country and that a country has to retaliate or face further attacks. I completely agree with this statement. To me Iraq falls into this category. Why? The first Gulf War by my understanding never officially ended. A cease fire treaty was signed under terms of surrender for Iraq to comply by so that the war could stop. Iraq broke the terms of the cease fire treaty repeatedly which gave the US the right and the obligation to demand the terms be complied with even if it meant forcing them to at the end of a cannon. Failure to force Iraq to maintain the peace treaty showed weakness. Again this was Clinton not backing up US policy and making the Arab World think of us as having no backbone which invited things like 9/11, the US embassy bombings, the USS Cole being attacked, etc. If I was a country that had the US declare war on me I would sign a peace treaty in a heartbeat with them and then wait for them to take their army home... wait a few years and then break the treaty if they aren't going to retaliate. If Iraq could get away with it why couldn't I? This directly undermines the security of the US and the world as a whole. Bush should have gone into Iraq to depose Saddam for breaking the peace treaty and used his reasons like possible WMD's and other things that he used as his primary reason instead as side topics that would just be a bonus if it really was found Saddam had developed WMD's. Doing this would guaranteed there wouldn't have been any political embarrassment when no major WMD's were found. (Who knows... maybe they are there and Saddam had them hidden away amazingly well and had the people burying them shot to keep the secrecy... we may never know the full truth... If he hadn't had any WMD's I don't see why he would kick the UN weapon's inspectors out of the country. Either way it wouldn't have mattered in this scenario.) This way US peace treaties would be assured of being complied with in the future. The US doesn't appear weak willed. Legally the US has every right to invade. The US could have appealed to it's allies from the first Gulf War explaining how this wasn't a new war but merely a continuation of the first Gulf War because the terms of cease fire had been broken. Politically the US would have had the upper hand and been right to act this way. To sum it up the war in Iraq is the right war for the wrong reasons in my opinion.

One other thing is a Chinese General about a year ago said China would nuke the US if the US honored our alliance with Taiwan and helped defend Taiwan if China attacked it. http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0 ... 54,00.html

This is important because the US military and commercial infrastructure rely very heavily on satellites. Our tanks, certain guided bombs, aircraft, etc all rely on GPS systems to navigate. Blow the GPS satellites out of the air and suddenly those guided bombs don't work. Then we are back to Gulf War 1 technology in guided bombs where you have to use a laser to paint the target that can be interfered with by smoke or clouds. Blow the communication satellites out of the air and it messes up a lot of stuff at home as well as military communications. Along with this they have been using lasers to try to temporarily(too difficult to get a powerful enough laser beam yet for permanently frying one) disable satellites by blinding them and are also constructing a high frequency radar array in Antarctica that can disable satellites. As to people treating China like a third rate country that poses no threat and isn't really developing themselves to try to take control as a superpower check out these developments they have developed recently. New Fighter Jet http://www.washtimes.com/upi/20070106-011857-2606r.htm New Aircraft Carrier http://www.kommersant.com/p715509/China ... rs_export/ Expanding Submarine Fleet This includes stalking US ships http://www.washingtontimes.com/national ... -3317r.htm Expanding Blue Water Fleet http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7243349/site/newsweek/ Nuclear Bomb drills and massive underground bunkers that hold 200,000+ people... (Why would they do this unless they were planning on a war one day where they expected to be nuked? I know no western countries would be wanting to start a nuclear war with China since it would be pointless for us so this implies they could see themselves starting a nuclear war one day. This also falls in line with my next post about the Chinese General threatening to preemptively attack the US with nukes if we defended Tawain ) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5230778.stm Then we have the whole matter of their spies continually stealing US military secrets. That is a highly aggressive act. http://www.popularmechanics.com/technol ... 19656.html This is another interesting site I stumbled across while looking for some sources to link to when referring to new Chinese capabilities. It's contributers include input from MIT and Los Alamos National Labratory. http://www.missilethreat.com/archives/i ... detail.asp Too many questionable things going on for me to just blow them off. I seriously question their motives. Feels like the beginning of an arms race like there was between the European powers before World War 1. Hopefully that isn't the case but I do feel uneasy with how the situation is progressing. Especially with the way China isn't reigning in North Korea and keeps making rumblings about Taiwan.

If you had read my post you would see how I used science to analyze the situation. :wink:

Thank you Ard_Choille for unlocking this. I would like to remind everyone this is not a debate on evolution. It is using science to analyze the ideas of Atheism vs. Is there a God? What we are trying to figure out is where did everything come from? What are the true beginnings of the Universe?

*note: This is not a debate about evolution on the planet Earth. This is a discussion on is there or is there not a higher being(God) and using science what can we define if anything in regards to this. Everyone seems to have a lot of strong feelings about God vs. Athiesm and things of that nature. These feelings in the posts I have seen just digress into a pointless little flame war that gets no where. People just spout of opinions like "Anyone that believes in God believes in fairy tales." "Well anyone that believes in Athiesm has their head up their butt." Let's have a thread where everyone keeps their cool and we just discuss thoughts on the topic. There is no reason for anyone to dislike another person in here. If we disagree then we disagree. No harm done right? Attack ideas in here with facts, not with feelings. Never attack the person, always the idea. Words like stupid, moron, etc have no part in any response. Instead say "I disagree because *insert idea or fact.*" That being said I will begin. At the very core of the whole is there a God vs Atheism debate I think we have another issue that gets overlooked. People always focus on the Earth and how life was made in these debates. Let's forget the Earth for now. I am going to list out what I feel would be things that would have to be true for each theory. I would appreciate input from people with what they think about the matter and my ideas. If you think I made a mistake on an assumption let me know and we can try to figure things out. If Atheism was true All matter and energy(which would include the Universe) would be infinitely old because it would never have had a beginning(a creation). The big bang wouldn't be a beginning because according to the theory the matter and energy for the whole universe was already in existence prior to the bang but just in a super compressed black hole sorta way and possibly in some other form before that. In effect the energy in the universe has always been a fixed definable constant. The energy in the universe now is the same as the amount in the universe 10 trillion years ago(or as far back as you want to go with it). If a God that created the universe was true All matter and energy would have had a beginning because there would have been a God that created it. If Atheism was true then there is a finite amount of matter and energy in existence(including alternate universes or different dimensions if they exist because there is a set amount of energy in those as well). If a God that created the universe there doesn't have to be a set amount of energy because some type of higher being (that is outside the realm of defining scientifically because he created science and the laws that govern it) could create energy from nothing. Since the God and Creationism argument relies on a being that creates the rules it would be impossible to apply the scientific method to this creator. It would also be impossible to define this creator. In other words there is no way to ever prove scientifically there is a creator. The theories that rely on the absence of a God in the development of how the Universe as we know it came about relies on nature taking it's course over billions and billions of years. If the universe was never created from scratch then what this really means is that all matter in existence is infinitely old. It never had a beginning. It was always there in some form or fashion. Of course how the universe came to be as we know it is impossible to duplicate with the scientific method as well because we can't recreate it. This is why this is such a heated debate. Neither side can ever absolutely prove their side is right. That is why it is the THEORY of creationism(The idea of a higher power) and the other theories that try to define the origins of the universe without a higher power. If neither side can prove they are right then maybe it is possible to prove one side is wrong. To do this we need to use something that can be proven to be right 100% of the time. What we need is some scientific laws to use as a framework So now we add the Laws of Thermodynamics to the example. Newton's first law says energy is neither created nor destroyed. The second law summed up basically states that in a closed system without additional energy added energy can only move from a higher quality to a lower quality over time. This is also called entropy. This is a MIT website that goes into greater detail of the second law if anyone is interested. http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Aeronau ... part1b.pdf This is why stuff degrades over time or why a new car will always get a dent in it eventually or why you burn a piece of wood and make ashes, heat and byproducts but you can't take the heat, byproducts and ashes released from that log and turn them back into a log without adding more energy to it. Hopefully that explains it in basic enough terms. Lemme know if anyone wants me to explain it in further detail. When I look at the world around me it is vibrant with life. When I look at the night sky I can see thousands of stars burning brightly. I see all kinds of things that are in a high form of energy. Now using this observation I think back on how it was defined what would have to be true for Atheism vs God and Creationism to take place. When I start putting all the pieces of the puzzle together that are on the table it makes me realize one of these theories cannot be true. If a God didn't create the Universe then all energy has had to be in existence for eternity. That means the energy surrounding us today has been around for an infinite number of years already. It also means no new energy has been created to be added to the existing definable closed system. When I look at the second law of thermodynamics I see a glaring problem arise. If this energy has been around for that long and it can only go to a lower energy state with time in a closed system then why can I see stars? Why am I even here? Shouldn't the whole universe have already digressed into some kind of dead burned out shell of itself ? If all energy is infinitely old then it should be impossible that I am here today or that the sun is still burning. Since that isn't the case then it would appear that at some point the Universe had to be created. This means there has to be a God or Creator. The only way I can get around this in my mind without admitting to myself there is a creator or God of some sort is to say maybe our Universe isn't the only one. Maybe there are other dimensions that somehow transferred their energy to ours. If that was the case and those dimensions or universes weren't created by a God then we run into the same problem again. What created those Universes? And thus we run into a circular argument with no way out. This Universe created this one which created that one on and on and on. The only conclusions that can be reached going this route are either: 1. There must be an infinite number of universes that bumped into each other because if there is a set number of universes even if it is billions of them eventually all that energy in all those universes would stabilize at it's lowest form and because of that our universe couldn't exist as it does now. 2. The scientific Laws of Thermodynamics that can be reproduced 100% of the time in any situation aren't true and we should ditch them in favor of a mere theory that cannot be proven. 3. Somewhere, somehow, sometime, there was a God or creator that created everything. Thus we get down to the crux of the issue. Every viewpoint requires a leap of faith. I have three choices that could all seem ridiculous depending on the person you asked. For me personally the answer that seems to make the most sense is that there must be a God out there. If you made it this far thanks for taking the time to read my post. Hopefully this will be a productive and educational thread where we can all learn from each other. I would appreciate hearing any comments, questions, or arguments raised by this. Also let me know if I missed any points or observances in my line of logic. Just keep it civil. If it gets out of hand I'm just going to ignore it. Remember, we are all on the same team... we all want a party hat... and we all want to beat TzTok-Jad :wink: *edit* Holy crud... This post is a lot longer than I expected it to be when I started typing it lol

Time to get this thread back on track... How do you solve terrorism? What is the cause of most terrorism in the world today? A culture that embraces, exalts, and rejoices when one of it's members commits an act. How can this be solved? The culture must be changed. How can a culture be changed? Option 1)By changing so many people's hearts and minds at their core basic level that inevitably the culture as we knew it changes into something else. Option 2)Eliminate the culture by eliminating the source of the opinions that rejoice in terrorist acts. This means death on a huge scale. It's ugly but it's the truth. I don't really know an option that would actually solve the problem rather than just treat(bribes and concessions for peace) some symptoms temporarily.

This is Monica Bellucci... She is better looking than Jessica Alba in my opinion and I think Jessica Alba is incredible looking.

History is an amazingly useful topic that schools absolutely butcher and make useless. I despised history in school yet I absolutely love reading history on my own. In school they want you to know a name and a date. When I learn it on my own I get to figure out who the people were, what made them tick, why things happened the way they did, what would I have done differently if I had been in the situation. What went wrong? What went right? Then the follow up question of why did things go right or wrong? This doesn't even have to be applied to nations or some random guy... If we want to apply it to how do we make money and street smarts then a great guy to listen to is Peter Lynch. He ran the most successful mutual fund on wall street during the 80's and early 90's. He averaged about 25% return a year if you invested with him. If you don't know about compounding interest yet I'll just say that is some SICK money!! When you read his books where he explains how he invests you get a ton of history. He loves walking through the history of companies that failed and explaining why they failed so when you are looking what to invest in you know what warning signs to look for. He also shows why companies do well and how to spot things that way also. You have to be able to understand how things fit into the grand scheme of things as well. Stocks like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are highly dependent on the government. If you don't understand basic concepts of how it works and why it works that way(the history of it) it can hurt you financially because you can't recognize things as well. Basically I agree with the original poster. A lot of classes are complete junk. I wouldn't necessarily say the topic is junk, I would just say the way they are taught is junk.

Actually it should read "He killed hundreds of thousands of people and the Iraqi government executed him for his crime so somehow that makes us as bad as him." Suddenly this statement isn't sounding quite so good.

I made her tell me exactly where it hit and made sure not to kiss that cheek for a few days. I couldn't get the mental picture of dead person juice on that cheek out of my mind.

I will never smoke. Aside from how bad it is for you it is sooo expensive. I was talking to a friend that smoked two packs a day and trying to get him to see how much it would cost him over the course of his life. If you saved the money spent on cigarrettes, put it in the stock market or something for a 10% a year return and saved it for 50 years you would have $2,598,658. That is the difference between retiring well off and retiring poor. Here is a link to a site that breaks down the costs $$$ of smoking even further. http://www.chemheritage.org/EducationalServices/pharm/chemo/activity/pakday.htm