Adam007

Aww, I was so about to pull out the Franklin quote too. My belief is that security is temporary and fluctuates. Liberty on the other hand isn't. Once you give up a personal freedom you don't get it back as easily as you gave it up. I doubt we'll get the freedoms we've given up under Bush's reign any time during our lifetime. I just can't stand how fear can lead people to give up their freedoms so easily.

Bible college. ;) But yeah, that worry over censorship is just terrible. There's always going to be people like that. It's kind of funny that she's trying to get a book censored that's basic message is against censorship.

It seems with every quest they have the possibility open for a sequel. There are always little crevices that hint at something to be released later. Whether or not they get a sequel any time soon doesn't matter - it keeps members who are really interested enough in the sequel paying month after month.

Wow, wow. I'm not worried about that. I even disagree with it. Just talking about the extreme view that some people are having on it. What do you disagree with though? What I said, or the view people have?

Grade inflation. It never used to be like this. My parents and also teachers I've had always talk about how that's going on - A's used to mean something back then. Nowadays tons of classes are 50% homework, which of course you just get credit for turning in or not. Then some tests/quizes where you have to pick the right vocab word out of four choices. My freshman year things were that bad. Once teachers stop giving you grades for turning in homework and force you to actually learn outside of the narrow field they teach in class, you see grades spread out more. That's not good university preparation - going from that to university is bound to fail you. I was only talking about my freshman year, and that was the only nonadvanced class I took that year. But a ton of classes are like that. Personally though I'm being prepped pretty well. I see my current grades dropping from the usual A's across the board as a sign that they're toughening me up for college (not senioritis - YET). :P

Nobody's going to drink that drink and then go out to the streets and buy cocaine. I don't see why you're worried about people making that link. If you watch scarface you're not likely to go buy any either. Same thing applies to a lot of things - video games for example. I'm hearing the same kinds of freaked out cries like when video games starting being violent with realistic graphics. And nobody's really killed anyone because of GTA. In the end it's just a name. They're getting press because of it - so it's smart. It's not bad press either. I'm going to go out and buy one because I kept hearing about it. If it had an ordinary name I wouldn't have seen it on the news or on this forum. Now I'm reading how great it is in those articles - whether or not it is, I'm going to give it a try, as are tons of other people. Now I call that a good name decision.

Grade inflation. It never used to be like this. My parents and also teachers I've had always talk about how that's going on - A's used to mean something back then. Nowadays tons of classes are 50% homework, which of course you just get credit for turning in or not. Then some tests/quizes where you have to pick the right vocab word out of four choices. My freshman year things were that bad. Once teachers stop giving you grades for turning in homework and force you to actually learn outside of the narrow field they teach in class, you see grades spread out more.

So last week we weren't safe? It's not a black and white issue like that. Nobody's saying we don't need certain measures of security or whatever. We do. Just only to an extent. The fact that Bush gets away with all of this stuff without any governmental challenges is what scares me. This isn't the straw that breaks the camel's back or anything, but he just keeps pushing things too far without any checks/balances.

Ugh, I hate how Bush has so much control. Especially his emotional rhetoric everyone falls for: If there was a breaking point showing that Bush definitely has too much control, I'd say it's here. I'd say I'd hope for a democratic senate when it comes to election time, but I don't think even that can change things enough. The guy's permanently destroying our nation's ideals. People are willing to sacrifice so much in terms of liberties just for temporary peace of mind and artificial security - and Mr. Bush just feeds on that fear.

you seem to remember alot of stuff that others dont :oops: i think its quite a good idea..but picking them could cause alot of people to get sad hoping that it would get picked :cry:. it would possibly turn into like a competition.... I doubt anyone would get sad. But competitiveness for making the best thread would be a great thing. To what someone else said, I think tying the topic of the week to each new tip it times would be a great thing. A little forum advertisement in each tip it times to draw in more users, reading an interesting title and delving into it.

I think the rants board had something like "rant of the week" for awhile. Anyone remember that?

I didn't use a perfect word then. I accidentally laid out that guaranteed trap, and you took it. While the generalization that ignoring a problem won't fix it is true in many cases, in this case, 'ignoring' probably isn't the best word. What I really mean to say is to look past race to the point where it isn't an issue. A long time ago something like what your father's job was was an important thing to people - over time something like that was just realized to be unimportant and people stopped caring. I don't mean to 'ignore a problem' - I mostly mean to look past it, because its existence itself is stupid. I didn't really want to get much into affirmative action (oxymoron much?), but since you guys are talking about it I'll say how it's affected me so far. I was talking to a black kid who said he gets tons of things in the mail from the college I want to go to. I asked him about his academics, ACT scores, all that. I was significantly ahead him in all categories, but not once got anything in the mail from the college. And I know they know I exist. I had already sent in my ACT scores months before. The school is very heavy on affirmative action, more than most in the nation. The worst is seeing pro-affirmative action commercials, how they twist the issue to make people think they're voting for a future where everything's more fair. Obviously this reverse discrimination is the opposite of making things fair.

One issue at a time, we'll get there. ;) Looking at the world negatively like that gets you nowhere.

This year there isn't much to think about. Just get good grades, maybe near the end of the year start studying for ACT's or SAT's. For the colleges themselves, don't focus too much on them yet.

When you have something people have such an attachment to, they tend to act that way. They believe their religion is right - and they're betting all their energies they put into it that it's the right one to get them into heaven. And everyone thinks they're right, so basically the only thing they'll believe that their religion is the only path to salvation or whatever. Just another example of the harm associated with religion that's caused. It has it's good sides but when people are tied to such extremes to a religion, you can bet they'll get overly passionate about it and do stupid irrational emotionally charged things.

No real problems, just somewhat long waits. My license picture actually turned out really good though. :P

I was thinking about affirmative action and diversity and how much it's valued today. Basically I came up with a theory surrounding that and racism. This'll sound obvious, but I'll explain it. Until the idea of race is ignored, racism will always exist. Of course there might be automatic innate preference over your own kind, but I'm talking about bigger issues with race. My main idea is that attempts on putting so much focus on diversity and affirmative action - supposive positive connotated words - just drag issues of race further into the ground. Nobody should have their identity molded by their race. As long as we still have official forms asking what your race is, and categorizing someone simply by a race, problems will continue. Nobody should get a better chance at getting into a college because they happen to be a less common race. In no way do I want to turn this into an affirmative action debate, so I won't go much more into it, but my main problem is that they categorize someone by a race, and just to fill a diverse necessary quotia, rearrange a puzzle to fit in pieces that shouldn't necessarily fit, just to make it colorful to please someone for whatever means. Back to my point. As much as the word 'diversity' is an attempt to encourage understanding, in so many ways it itself causes barriers. Diversity itself is a great thing - but forcing it isn't. It just creates a fake atmosphere in attempts to try to counter too many people being one race in an area or to unnaturally mix up a group of people. By acknowledging race, we're still creating a problem. I don't think assimilation is by any means good - cultural identity is a great thing. But there's a difference between culture and skin color. I don't think we can take the necessary steps forward in the world until we just drop the issue in entirety. Just forget skin color - don't acknowledge it. Be like Stephen Colbert and be color-blind to race. ;) This politically correct society is just backwards and indirectly is inneffective. All of this cautiousness and attempts to make equal races of everyone everywhere just causes problems. The term "African-American" is just a stupid term brought on by politically correctness to the extreme. If one wants to describe the tone of someone's skin, call it black. As long as whites are called whites, blacks can be called blacks. No - I'm not addressing race. I'm addressing the color of one's skin. We can still acknowledge a skin color for the sake of easy reference. My issue is that we categorize people by their skin color. We give them a name. Lump them into a group. A statistic. Give them a set of stereotypes that they inadvertently fall into only because they already existed. Out of the billions of genes an individual has, society lumps them into one of five or ten categories, ignoring everything else, and setting them up to be subject to what they're classified by other 'classified groups.' The only way society can truly progress beyond this politically correct and overly unneccessarily sensitive world is to just drop the issue of race. Humans are a species - we're not breeds. In a few hundred or thousand years when we've become so globalized and everyone's basically the same color, they'll laugh at how society focused on race - much like we laugh about how women were looked at differently than men, issues of slavery, etc. I really think our issue that seems so normal in today's world will just be laughable in the future. (I know parts of this post are really unfocused, and if there's any comprehension problem based on replies, I'll edit it later)

I heard it works on maximum like 7 people. People have already came up with that idea and it hasn't worked as well as they thought it would.

That's what the rpg element is about. It seems equally ridiculous to me - but they get into it and the game's set up for that kind of immersion. They're just exploring their psyche. Role playing can be fun if you get into it. They have the energy and interest - you and I don't. But just because we don't doesn't mean we can't objectively understand that they do, and not think they're weird for it.

I got a kick out of it because I've always thought that they could have easily done the whole ring deal that way. Of course there wouldn't be a story, but come on. All they really had to do was fly over it and drop the ring down there.

I like the traditional trainer and capture type game. I haven't played any in awhile, and I probably should give the new one a try, but I don't really like how much I'd miss out by not having anyone to play/trade with. Feb 2007 for the diamond/pearl version. I just never feel too old for those games. :P

They're just penguins. People like penguins. There's no hidden corporate plugging involved.

There's two issues. One being whether or not graffiti is an art. To that, I say yes. The other is the whole placement deal. Obviously it should only be done legally. If you mean stylistically it's argued whether or not the spraying of letters is an art, I understand. But if you're just wondering if it's a waste because it trashes walls, those are two different issues, and don't really relate.

I'd say the worst are the lions. They have good players but somehow always manage to just ruin everything. Year after year after year. :(

So are you guys sure no adjustments are being made for lefties? (Add that to my list of disadvantages, stuff like miniature golf, ugh :( )