"Screw you market forces!" says US Gov

Checking meat for disease is the government's job only, so don't try and do you yourself.

Road Rage Venom

More here.

Re: Hammerhead Jesus

Then Nick, you should know...life finds a way. It's chaos....but scientific chaos!

Hammerhead Jesus?!

Believe it. My skills of a scientist are confused, though. If asexual reproduction decreases genetic variability (very bad), why would these creatures, or any creatures, have developed it in the first place? The only explanation I can think of is that its a temporary stop-gap solution to keeping a population on the brink of extinction going... but is evolution that smart?

Btw, my knowledge of science is entirely based on reading Jurassic Park in 1992.

Re: My daemon

Arphenia the crow!!!

OMFG!!!

I R HAS ERECKSHUN!!!!! WR BRS R FTW!!!!!!

Re: My Daemon....

is Mayra the Raccoon...

My daemon is an ocelot

Whats yours?

Holy mother of God

I submit this as the new scariest thing in the ocean. To hell with sharks and squids. Sweet Zombie Jesus!

Careful, John.

Well eff me

Just as I was consigning video games to a dreary monthly-fee grave...
Starcraft 2 is announced!

Hellgate and the Unavoidable Future of Video Games

Subscription and fee-based is the direction games are trending. At its core, I suppose there are some benefits to paying a team of designers a monthly fee to generate content for me rather than buying a game, giving it 50-80 hours and moving on, but that does not mean I endorse the change without reservations.

And the lines are getting blurrier. Hellgate London (made by the Diablo 2 team) was supposed to be the herald who would proclaim that good games (with online support and communities) need not be subscription/monthly fee-based. And then this. The lure of the cash cow is just too great. Generating content for an already existing game is probably a more lucrative business model than taking a chance on making new games. There's this thing called innovation that will surely suffer. Or the disparity will make the game unplayable for those who don't give in to the monthly fee.

I'm not sure I'm going to buy Hellgate now. Which puts my hope for the future of video games pretty solidly on Spore.

ZOMG!

Supertramp is on VH1 classic now and there are THREE keyboard players. Amazing!

Arnold-less Terminators?

I had read the rumors about the Terminator TV series, but I had some....not really problems, maybe concerns? The reason we (at least I) love these movies/mythology has a LOT to do with Arnold. I mean Michael Behn was pretty cool and Linda Hamilton was totally badass but what will be interesting/entertaining about a without any of the original stars? Will there be more bad cyborgs? That really is the critical question. But maybe it will be an entertaining mix of action/drama and worth watching.

Additionally, I'm even more skeptical about new Terminator movies without Arnold. That sounds like a bad idea.

fantastic!

The science of getting drunk.

SPSW... &T?

You may think I criticize things a great deal, but I'm pretty excited about this. T2 is one of my all-time favorite movies. Sarah Connor deserved better than the "I'm-dead-so-here's-a-coffin-full-of-guns" treatment that she got in T3, and I'm hopeful the show will stay true to her on-the-brink-of-insanity toughchick character.

Re: Hitchens

Every now and then he just seems to go crazy on someone. He's done it on Maher's show as well (I'm too lazy to link the YouTube clip.) His latest tour around the media horn is probably going to be the same stand-offish/crazy mix that has become his norm, in part due to the questions he's bound to recieve on account of his poorly titled book.

WTB anyone who will give their book an honest, non-inflammatory title.

Re: Debate

I watched it this morning, and thought the most telling point was when Rudy turned on Ron Paul and jack-hammered non-interventionism right out of the conservative lexicon. "You think we deserved to be hit on 9/11?" This is juvenile, schoolyard stuff. I admit I favor Paul more than the rest of the field, but its pretty sad that there's no room for an honest non-interventionist point of view on the Republican side.

TLDR

I removed last night's drunk debate posts and moved them here. TLDR (too long, didn't read). And wel-come, Sifo-Dyas, Jedi Master.

Also, Hitchens went batshit on Anderson Cooper. He sounds almost as crazy as the people he's criticizing.

I like the fact that Ron Paul got people talking, for good or ill.

Last night

I was pretty polished off last night, because I don't even know what I meant half the time. Here is a summary reaction to the debate with a pounding headache:

1. Tommy Thompson will never be be Pres. or VP. He doesn't look or sound even close to Presidential. Also he has no neck, which is creepy.
2. I can't tell Duncan Hunter/Sam Brownback/Mike Huckabee apart. They were saying the same crap as the others, they just looked alike too.
3. Tancredo sounded embarassingly not bad.
4. I don't know what it is about Mitt Romney. I don't like him, and I don't have a reason. He reminds of "That Guy" from Futurama. Blastfax kudos all around, America!
5. The best question of the night was Tommy THompson's "name three gov't programs you'd cut". He blabbed in typical politician fashion using up all his time not naming one. When pressed to name one, he talks about CDC stockpiles? NO ONE knew what the hell he was talking about. I think the dude asking knew he'd get an actual response from Paul which is why he moved on.
6. Guiliani won, scoring cheap points off Paul. My big problem with that was Guiliani's claim that "I survived 9/11". Hey bud, everybody still here "survived". You're not special.

Paul got people talking last night, but that may not be a good thing. Looks like I'm going to throw my vote away again!

For some reason...

... I'm Sifo now, which is actually my WoW handle. W/E.

Zomg. Wife aggro.

--Nick

Hitchens v. Sharpton

A fun background listen. No real comment, other than to say I think that Hitchens' position lines up pretty closely with the position of Philip Pullman in the Golden Compass trilogy.

Ron Paul

Does this mean Paul is the Kucinich of the right? I hope that is not your comparison. If you simply meant Paul should be getting as much media attention as Kucinich, I'd say you are right, but that Paul should be getting more than the whack job from Cleveland. I don't know that Kucinich really deserves any attention.

To paraphrase...

..."They call me Dr. Law."

Strutter was a good Guitar Hero song BTW.

This is mostly for Nick

But if any one else enjoys Guitar Hero, here are 7 of the 30 songs on the new Guitar Hero: R0ck the 80s.

• "I Wanna Rock" - Twisted Sister (Master Track)
• "I Ran (So Far Away)" - A Flock of Seagulls (Master Track)
• "Round and Round" - Ratt
• "I Want Candy" - Bow Wow Wow
• "Metal Health" - Quiet Riot
• "Holy Diver" - Dio
• "Heat of the Moment" - Asia

I'm so excited I think I just wasted some baby making material in my pants. And I'm saying that I called 3 of these songs (Ratt, Dio, Quiet Riot). Asia and Flock of Seagulls are the icing on the cake. I'm also calling Beastie Boys (no sleep till brooklyn) and Ozzy (crazy train) as the final encore song. Also more megadeth, I just don't know which one. Any predictions?

If you haven't played Guitar Hero, do so. It is the best game ever.

Yes, but this headline is very real

Vegas run by gays and Jews, says magician

Why the media silence on Ron Paul?

So, as most of you know I'm pretty libertarian and have always been a big Ron Paul supporter. If I see one of those stupid online polls I'll only vote if he's on it. And I know Paul has a huge following within the internet community (which is biased towards libertarian nerds). Following this, it makes sense that he's leading many of the online polls (even without the potential sabotage). My problem comes from the fact that we heard SO much in the 2004 primaries about Howard Dean (who also had a big online following). Why do we hear NOTHING about Paul? At the very least, he's saying something different than the other Republican candidates, similar to Kucinich on the Dem's side.

Here a pro-Paul article dealing with this topic.

Congrats

to Bert Matthew George, J.D.

Hope to see yo this summer!

Graduation...

...is Saturday! Woo hoo!!!

FTW!

This is for John:

Dallas Mavs owner Mark Cuban talking about performance enhancing drugs. Doesn't bother me, so long as basketball players start looking like that fella on the right.

You

But I like killing pixelated hookers!

Wild man Julian Sanchez on the coming regulation of video game content:

It's been a good week for the digital descendants of Thomas Bowdler. As we all know, the best sweeping public policy is guided by our reactions to manifestly insane people who commit acts of violence as extreme in their rarity as their brutality. So as the bones of the Virginia Tech victims are picked thoroughly clean for political red meat, it's no surprise to find violent video games joining an ever-expanding list of whipping boys, from obvious candidates like deinstitutionalization and the gun culture to (yes, really) feminism and atheism. Killer Cho Seung-Hui may have played Counter-Strike in high school, you see. National Review's Peter Suderman predicts the flurry of cursor-pointing will prompt renewed focus on the Video Game Decency Act, a spectacularly redundant law whose main function would be to entangle the federal government with the software industry's highly effective private ratings board.

Whole thing here

RATM

I must admit that I enjoy the Rage from time to time despite it being painfully overwrought and repetitive like most communist propaganda. You have to appreciate leftists that don't shun violence these days though.

I did have to chuckle at the hubbub over their reunion. Sadly, many people take them seriously.

I can't belive

Slaps didn't post this, so I will. Cuz it's pretty catchy and has a feel-good message.

A list that doesn't suck

So, there's no good listing of albums, guitar players, etc., but I think everyone can agree that if there ever were an accuratly quantifiable topic from which to create lists, this is it. You can't argue with facts.

Boy, they showed that joke!

I had thought that this was one of those great Onion jokes, but I guess RATM proved them.

I know what an erection feels like, Michael.

All I could think about was GOB when I read this.