Lurker > red sox 777

Here's a fun mental experiment for you to toy with in the meantime. Suppose that the nature of our universe, properly understood, demanded a choice between truth and scientific advancement (i.e. material wealth, power, greater control over nature; all the principles Bacon originally laid out). Which side would you fall on, and what does that say about you?

I'd go with truth.

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90s games > 00s games

Why is it that now adays both parents have to be working jobs to make ends meet?

Because work is worth less and less these days. Capital is where it's at.

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90s games > 00s games

Anyways, ideally we should be moving toward a country where 1% of the population is productive, 49% are kind of productive, and 50% are unemployed and cashing out on the insurance they bought when they were in college, when there was a chance they would make it into that magical top 1%.

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My point is equally valid whether China alone did that or all Communist countries did that, so your objection to an extra 's' is just nitpicking of language.

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It could be plural for all I know. I'd guess the Soviet Union did something similar. What's your point exactly?

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China. I don't know about other countries.

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In Communist countries, you were guaranteed a job by the government if you graduated from a good college. No need to worry about finding one, they'd just assign one to you. Some people would intentionally get worse grades to avoid being assigned to become doctors if they didn't want to do that.

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90s games > 00s games

Well, it's hard to vote in this contest. There are so many matches to vote on each day, and it takes considerable effort to delete that many lines after having copy-pasted.

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The NCAA is probably the best non-contest related board contest of recent years.

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Well that depends on what you expect from this place......contest discussion and SmartMuffin topics make me pretty content.

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Board 8 just needs more (site) contests.

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Well for the record what he wanted me to do had nothing to do with my decision. I carefully weighed the necessity of supporting CT against the odiousness of voting for P4 and came to my usual position that CT trumps all on this site.

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Batman: Arkham Asylum (Metroid Eater Conference)
#17 Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Metroid Eater Conference)
Halo 2 (Metroid Eater Conference)
MVP Baseball 2005 (Metroid Eater Conference)
#25 Metroid Prime (Metroid Eater Conference)
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (Metroid Eater Conference)
Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War (Smackdown Hotel Conference)
#8 Final Fantasy IX (Smackdown Hotel Conference)
WWF No Mercy (Smackdown Hotel Conference)
The Secret of Monkey Island (Smackdown Hotel Conference)
Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (Smackdown Hotel Conference)
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 (Smackdown Hotel Conference)
#16 Final Fantasy X (Tanooki Blitzball Conference)
Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King (Tanooki Blitzball Conference)

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90s games > 00s games

If announcing that RE4 is in a match in the contest's discussion topic counts as rallying, then yes, this is rallying. But then this entire topic is rallying. As for collaboration, there hasn't been any collaboration whatsoever.

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90s games > 00s games

You're right, CT is so much more important than everything else that I will have to vote for Persona 4 despite my distaste for it. Seeing that game's cover in the mall just bothered me. But it's a small sacrifice to make CT look as good as possible, just like voting for Sonic against Snake in 2006 and voting for Missingno in 2010.

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90s games > 00s games

Anyway, if any media is saying that Tea Party people are apt to be violent and dangerous at protests, that's just completely not credible and they're just making themselves into a joke. Who would believe that?

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I'm conflicted now. Do I vote for RE4 to anti-vote Persona 4 as I would normally do, or do I vote for Persona 4 to try to protect CT's place in the RPI? Decisions, decisions.....

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90s games > 00s games

Once again, the narrative trotted out by the media is that tea party protestors are violent and a danger to society, but occupy wall-street is a non-violent peaceful movement.

What media is that? I've never seen this story......

If there is a media narrative against the Tea Party, it's that the people in it are uneducated and stupid. Whereas the narrative against OWS is that these people are just pathetic.

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90s games > 00s games

Once again though, this is happening in LOTS of independent police departments throughout the country. Also, Bloomberg is a HUGE progressive, so yeah.

Bloomberg is a billionaire who cares very much about protecting the top 1%. He's as progressive as all those Wall Street people who donated to the Obama campaign are (not at all).

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90s games > 00s games

Also, the Tea Party is anti-government, but in a different way. I'd be very confident that there are more tax evaders among Tea Partiers than the OWS people. Now granted, I'm sure a much higher percentage of them owe taxes at all, but even accounting for that, there should still be a sizable margin.

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90s games > 00s games

The police are directed by higher-up government officials, like Mayor Bloomberg, for example. I'm not saying that OWS is actually being unfairly picked on, but it's just bad reasoning to say that all these arrests prove that they are a bad movement. For another thing, an arrest is not a conviction. Look at the acts themselves; if there's no evidence from that, then there's no evidence.

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That hurts. Looks like the margin was just cut to a third of what it was.

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The tea party protests were also characterized as "anti-government"

Guess how many arrests there were at those?

That doesn't prove anything. It could just as easily be that the government is more against OWS than the TP. I'm sure pro-Putin demonstrators are just fine in Russia. Not that I think that's what's going on in America, but the arrests/lack thereof is really weak evidence here for the argument that the OWS is bad.

Better just to analyze their conduct itself, rather than whether they got arrested for it.

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90s games > 00s games

I have to disagree with you on this one, Smuffin. Lots of people got arrested at Tiananmen in 1989 too, but it doesn't mean it was justified.

You know what I'd like to see though? I want to see a major bank start declaring OWS bonuses- $1 million to be divided among its employees for each day the protests continue.

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90s games > 00s games

I'm pretty sure they never posted a loss more than $50 million for a year in the Gamecube era. Though I know the vast majority of their profit usually comes from the 2nd half of the year, so their loss for this year may not end up being so high.

In fact, I'm pretty sure they never had a losing year at all in the Gamecube era. A losing half-year, yes, but they turned a profit every single year through the Gamecube period.

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90s games > 00s games

Yikes, when's the last time Nintendo had major losses? The 80s?

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90s games > 00s games

Though perhaps Communism is not a danger in the United States today. The conditions Marx envisioned are simply not present anymore. There are no proletariats in the United States today! Perhaps the goal should be a shift to two classes: capitalists, and unemployed noncapitalists. The working class can be completely eliminated, and with it the last embers of Marxism snuffed out.

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90s games > 00s games

The Reign of Terror was horrible, but I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Do people deny that The French Revolution was, overall, a source of good for the country?

Possibly. England never went through all that turmoil and still ended up in the same place with regard to democracy and liberty. 25 years of the French Revolution (the majority of which was under an emperor) ended up with a lost war and the Bourbon Monarchy restored.

What I'm getting at is that the revolutionaries in 1789 were moderates by 1791 standards and downright aristocratic reactionary conservatives by 1793/4 standards. The number of ultra left-wing radicals in 1789 was very low, but the Revolution steadily became more and more and more radical as it progressed. So it's not entirely hyperbole when Smuffin accuses people of being Communists. Maybe most of them are not really Communists, but history shows that it's easy enough for Communists to hijack a liberty/equality movement.

Note: While it may not technically be correct to call the Reign of Terror people Communists (it was half a century before Marx, after all), I think we may safely put them under the broad umbrella of Communism.

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Though personally Smuffin, I have a dream......to one day launch a hostile take over of Goldman Sachs through stock market operations like cornering (dunno if it's still legal, but if not it should be). Then I'll fire everyone and ruin the company. Maybe I'll appoint a high school dropout as CEO. If I ever had that kind of capital, I would lose a ton of it, and it would cause collateral damage to the economy too, maybe a recession. But wouldn't that be such an awesome play?

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They want all those things?

Well I guess the French protestors in 1789 didn't want anarchy, mob rule, high inflation, and public execution of anyone deemed a threat to the government either, but they got 'em all by 1793.

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General consensus is probably that while there's a message in there that needs to be expressed, the movement is silly and doesn't understand what it is asking for.

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90s games > 00s games

Sorry that I haven't been voting, I've been busy lately and conference play is boring.

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90s games > 00s games

Gunstar Heroes (Cult RPG Galaxy Conference)
Ogre Battle 64 (Cult RPG Galaxy Conference)
#9 Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Cult RPG Galaxy Conference)
Shadow Hearts (Cult RPG Galaxy Conference)
Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (Nintendo Objections Conference)
Elite Beat Agents (Nintendo Objections Conference)
#21 Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (Nintendo Objections Conference)
#6 Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow (Nintendo Objections Conference)
Super Metroid (Nintendo Objections Conference)
#5 Super Mario 64 (Nintendo Objections Conference)
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (Thousand-Year World of Sunshine Conference)
Fallout 3 (Thousand-Year World of Sunshine Conference)
Grim Fandango (Thousand-Year World of Sunshine Conference)
Legend of Legaia (Thousand-Year World of Sunshine Conference)

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90s games > 00s games

There was already a WarGames sequel a while back. It was truly awful.

And the other reason a remake won't work besides people understanding more about technology now is that the Soviet Union no longer exists.

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90s games > 00s games

I agree, I thought $8 was incredibly low for unlimited streaming.......except that most of what I want to watch isn't available. I think their biggest problem now is competition- when they were the only company doing this, studios had no choice but to offer them good rates which were passed on to consumers, or else miss out on the market. With competitors, it puts the copyright holders back in power.

It's a weird market where a monopoly actually favors the consumer.

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90s games > 00s games

Glad I sold at $265. Granted, I didn't make any money because I bought around there, but it could have been a lot worse. I mean, it's been obvious for at least a year that Netflix the company wasn't really worth as much as the stock, but that's why the 1000% rise was so great- it was a beautiful bubble in an economy that is too disheartened for bubbles.

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90s games > 00s games

Ouch, the stock fell by another $41 today (35%!). Now it's down to $77, where it was in April 2010.

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You do realize you are getting a huge benefit from being able to drive, right? Which would you take, a million dollars or the ability to drive for the rest of your life?

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No, I presume you've been in a car much more than 100 times in your life, and will many more thousands of times. Your chance from dying from a car accident may reach 1% after a few decades or at least years, but it's far far lower than that for 1 car trip.

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90s games > 00s games

From an expected value point of view, yeah, at 1% taking it is probably a positive expected value decision unless you already have a lot of capital or earnings. You do have to worry about inflation, but you can more or less beat inflation by investing in stocks.

But there are other considerations, namely that your life is worth a lot even if you were going to have 0 earnings the rest of your life. I wouldn't fault someone for taking it at the 1% level, but 10% is probably short selling oneself substantially, for someone who's gone to college or is in college.

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90s games > 00s games

You can't buy that much for a million these days. It's not what it used to be. It's not enough to retire on, much less start buying friends. And remember, if you're just saving that money, you start off losing about 40k per year to inflation.

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90s games > 00s games

For 25%, you are probably seriously undervaluing your own life. Even if you care nothing for your relationships, enjoyment of life, etc. and valued your life solely for your earnings potential, to take this at 25% means you must value your earnings potential at less than 3 million.

If you make 100k for 40 years, that's 4 million right there, a lot more with good investments. With 3% annual real GDP growth and 3% inflation, in 40 years someone who makes 100k now will be making 1 million. Or, someone making 10k now will be making 100k. Now, granted, the nice thing about taking the million is that you've got the money now instead of later so you can start investing it immediately, but even so, I think you are seriously selling yourself short at 25%.

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90s games > 00s games

No, 1 million isn't enough. Though with more I still might not do it despite thinking that it'd probably be rational.

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90s games > 00s games

I feel bad for Netflix. The stock lost 2/3 of its value in 3 months, after being THE stock of the past 2 years.

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90s games > 00s games

Also, occupy Maine? What do the "evil top 1%" control in Maine to occupy? Oceanfront vacation homes?

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You can't be an upper middle class white person if you're unemployed.

Of course you can. If you grew up in an upper middle class family, you are upper middle class. It's just like how if a super rich person loses it all in the stock market and declares bankruptcy, he's still part of the rich class and not poor.

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Also, I'm not sure why this isn't done more by companies, but if you have the power to do so, maybe offer to let him stay on at a lower salary?

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Why are you firing him?

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Would you agree that all false statements are impossible to prove? Jaffar is roughly saying that all empirical statements are impossible to prove, though with a lot more nuance. What is so strange about that, even at face value? It's nowhere near saying that all statements are impossible to prove.

As for empirical evidence about God, let's imagine what the universe would look like with and without God. For with God, I'm imagining a large set of possible universes that includes ours. For without God, I'm imagining a large set of possible universes that includes ours, though with a lower probability. So probabilistic analysis of our empirical data indicates that it is likely that God exists. Obviously nothing was proven either way. And we cannot found a faith in God or against God based on such data as we have!

You probably have different views on what a universe with God would look like and what one without him would look like. But even by coming up with these expectations you are already stepping way outside empiricism. How would you know what God would make the universe like?

The farthest you can go is to say that belief in God is not useful here on earth. Even that requires a bunch of assumptions, but they're not very big assumptions to make at least for me. But guess what? The Bible openly states exactly this!

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90s games > 00s games

Then what is your objection to Jaffar's statement? Clearly there is a meaningful difference between possible and impossible.

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