>> ^Sarzy:

Haven't gotten around to Uncharted 3 yet -- any spoilers here?


Not really, he just mentions that the story's thematic framework shares a lot of similarity to Uncharted 1&2, only he says it in a much, much less diplomatic and more humorous way.

My own $0.02 on the game is that it's definitely not as good as Uncharted 2 was. I expected and wanted "more of the same" and got it, but I sorta feel like all the various elements (shooting, puzzles, set pieces, story, etc.) just didn't mesh together nearly as well as they did in Uncharted 2.

Still a great game, but this time around it's probably not going to win "Game of the Year" from anyone. My guess is Arkham City is gonna clean house though.

>> ^juliovega914:
One thing I am sure many of you didn't notice is that the gear on the far right is not touching the center drive gear at all, despite it only being slightly more distant from the drive gear. Indeed it is spinning in the opposite direction while still not interfering with the drive gear.


One thing I'm sure YOU haven't noticed is the right side gear IS touching and still being driven by the center gear.

Gear 1 and gear 2 are meshed normally, with the sides of each "tooth" touching each other at more or less the "normal" way. They rotate opposite to each other.

Gear 2 and gear 3 are meshed "paradoxically", with the "point" of gear 2's tooth pushing on a point half way down the side of gear 3's tooth. They rotate the same direction.

Where 1 and 2 mesh over their entire length, 2 and 3 come in contact only at one point, 2 sliding "down" 3.

My grandmother once had one of those nests in her yard... she covered it with a wire mesh and poured gasoline into the hole.

Not the most environmentally-friendly approach, but quite effective.

As noted in the description and by a couple of comments, "But, as TMZ notes, Perry wasn't actually half-naked -- her outfit featured a flesh-colored mesh top that went all the way up to her neck, like a figure-skating costume."

Honestly, if anything, I think the Children's Workshop must be glad for the hit of viral marketing they're getting out of this. Go *femme

I've got two perspectives on some of these comments and the video, and thought I'd chime in with some (hopefully not overly longwinded) history / anecdotes:

First, I grew up and attended public school K-12 in Kansas in the 80's and 90's. Overall I am very pleased with the quality of education I received and the teachers I had. From High School, I remember having 3-4 standout excellent teachers, a whole lot of adequate / no-complaints teachers, and 3-4 teachers that I thought were sub-par.

The excellent teachers stand out in my memory because they got me more interested in subjects that I already had some interest in, OR because they made me appreciate subjects that I was otherwise pretty ambivalent about. For example, my math teacher who I studied Geometry, Advanced Algebra, Trigonometry, and AP Calculus with was fantastic. When I was in his classes, I loved learning about math. When I went to University and studied Calc 2 in a lecture hall with 400 other students and teacher-student interaction only with TAs, suddenly math wasn't anywhere near as interesting.

Some of the adequate teachers that I had were probably the favorite teachers of students with other interests. Expecting every teacher to mesh perfectly with absolutely every last one of their hundreds of students per year is probably setting the bar a little unrealistically high. That being said, even though I wasn't completely enthralled with their classes, I think that I got good value from them.

The teachers that I remember as being poor fall into two categories. First are those that taught subjects that I wasn't at all interested in and who did nothing to prompt me to change my mind. I remember hating one of my English teachers because she wasn't impressed with my lack of effort on things like poetry assignments. Looking back, I think that says much more about what I was putting into the class than the quality of that teacher. The other category had teachers that seemed lazy and ineffective, or those whose classes were complete wastes of time -- similar to those that @blankfist described. Most of those teachers were teacher/coaches who, in my point of view, were just phoning-in their teaching duties and only actively interested in the coaching. I still have a bias against sports being included in public school activities due to that type of teacher.


And I also have a perspective from the teaching side of things. I've been living in Thailand for about 4.5 years now, teaching English as a second language. I got a bachelor's degree in Computer Science but struggled finding a job when I graduated (I think I was naively setting my sights too high and too narrow, but thats another story). So, I ended up working as a farmhand on my family farm. That was OK but not really something that I was very passionate about.

Eventually through a family connection, someone approached me about traveling abroad for a year and working as an ESL teacher. I thought that would be an interesting thing to do and a good way to challenge myself, so I flew to Thailand in 2007 and started teaching. The school I connected with put me in as the teacher for kindergarten, which was crazy but fun and rewarding and a good sink or swim introduction to teaching (which I had no prior experience with or education in).

I ended up liking it so much that what was originally just going to be a 1-year experience got extended. I taught kindergarten for 2 years and 1st grade for 1 year. Then there was a big shakeup / administrative disaster at my former school and I switched into teaching High School aged students. Another challenge and something different to get used to, but I am enjoying that as much or more as the younger students.

Being a foreign, native-English-speaking ESL teacher in Thailand is a bit weird. There are lots of really *terrible* foreign teachers that are here to purely to have ready access to cheap beer and prostitutes, and who have absolutely zero interest in the actual teaching; it is just a paycheck. The average salary of a native-English speaking teacher here is about $12,000 a year, which sounds terribly low but is actually a pretty upper-middle class income by Thai standards. For the shitty teachers, it translates into a lot of beer and hookers.

The schools here see foreigners are all fairly identical, easily replaceable cogs. Someone with a master's degree in Education and a real interest in being a good teacher can easily be replaced by a drunken loser that rarely shows up for classes if they don't fall in line with the Thai way of doing things or try to change up the status quo.

I hope that I do a decent job of teaching here. I am confident that I'm way better for my students than many of the drunken backpacker alternatives, but it is dangerous to set the bar that low and get complacent. I'm sure that to a lot of my roughly 800 students this year, I am merely adequate -- not all that memorable but at least not bad either. I know that some of them get a lot out of my classes and I can see them improving in English in leaps and bounds. And I know that there are some on the other side of the coin who are at best ambivalent about me and their English classes in general. My level of motivation prompts me to try my best, but I am too lazy and don't have enough time to throw a whole lot of extra effort at each and every one of my 800 students, most of whom I see for 1 hour a week total.

Anyway, my experiences here have made me appreciate all of my excellent former teachers that much more. Plus, I've learned that anyone that thinks that a teacher in the US is sub-par ought to be thankful that they probably aren't quite as bad as a sub-par "teacher" in Thailand...

I agree. I try to imagine some of the challenges though:

Xbox Live talking to the PSN talking to Tranq.

Attempt at seamless, smooth integration/launch (when does this happen in games any more?)

Not trying to start the system debate, but it is known that for FPS games, the mouse and keyboard are superior input devices. This would cause a large rift in what a player could do, that another could not. With the supposed point of trying to reach a different audience, or make Dust more approachable for consolers, it would not mesh well introducing PC players.

I hear that Logitech has some of the better KB/M that work with a PS3.
>> ^Enzoblue:

Wicked idea. PS3 only is a shocker though.

As mentioned above, marriage is a contract between two people AND the state. It is offered by the state to the people as a means to provide them some benefits (ie. tax breaks) with only nebulous returns (ie. community stability and offspring). It would be irresponsible to allow individuals the power to rewrite the contract to suit their personal needs, as those needs may not mesh with the community's. If every marriage had to be reconsidered case by case (such as marrying your mousepad) then it would become a sham.

However, it is clearly high time to reconsider the system, as there are very significant numbers of people that it simply does not suit. Before that can be done properly, their needs to be some consideration of what exactly the state gains from marriage. When it comes to gay marriage, the obvious discrepancy is children. Is that all? Does adoption cover this? Does this affect the children? There's a ton of considerations.

As for using the bible to decide how to behave, well that's somewhat laughable. Depending on the part of the bible you personally decide is more divinely inspired, you'll either stone them, cast them out, or support them (FYI I'm pulling that outta my ass, but I bet I could find support somewhere in the mess).

Well, it's not about just calling him a war criminal - he is a war criminal (or that's what the evidence I've seen so far leads me to believe, at least). I wouldn't want diplomatic relations with him, I would want to topple him by force. Like Hitler.

In answer to your question. No, you are not morally responsible for the misery in the world. No more so than your conscience dictates. I do think there's a difference between someone actively forcing someone as opposed to someone who have made some bad choices. At some point we, as a society, should say when enough is enough. If there is a benevolent dictatorship, if you can imagine such a thing, then we should not break that up for the hell of it, if the people don't care. If the people are actively rebelling against their dictator and he strikes back with full force, then I think that we should try to minimize the suffering from it

Do the least harm is basically what I want to live by, but I don't want it to be "I go out in the world to fix suffering where I see it", it's a balancing act, eh? When a certain threshold of suffering is passed, it seems prudent to me to take action.

For instance, if someone was homeless I would not necessarily give him money and stuff, but if someone fell over and hurt their leg, I would. It's all a cost/benefit analysis, the benefit being a limiting of suffering.

/ramble
>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

>> ^gwiz665:
The people are trying to stand up to him, and he's committing outright genocide. Of course, we must do what we can to help the people liberate themselves. Unlike Iraq, this is not just for the hell of it - we are helping the people free themselves, when they do not have the strength themselves, as opposed to Egypt, Tunesia and so on.
If we sit and watch as the civilians are butchered, we are no better (or at least very little better) than the butchers ourselves.

I don't exactly prescribe to your exact moral position on this, but it does seem like a "better" version of Iraq as open rebellion has been happening in the whole region. The tricky problem is, how do you support rebels without directly supporting rebels (look at how well cruise missiles helped stop the fighting in Iraq), while also having to maintain diplomatic relations with the ruler if the rebellion fails, even more so if you are saying he is a war criminal? I can't bring myself to vote for this video though, this lady seemed like she was harboring some irrational hatred for anything US, even though I think it is France (lol?) leading the charge on this one.
Just a little moral question for ya. If you buy a CD player that you don't need, are you morally responsible for the homeless person you didn't give lunch money? Not trying to be snarky, I just find problems with believing in that exact moral position. It would result in a complete stimy of action because you actions could never be probably meshed with all outcomes of maximum happiness. Technocratic morality boredom, signing out!

>> ^gwiz665:

The people are trying to stand up to him, and he's committing outright genocide. Of course, we must do what we can to help the people liberate themselves. Unlike Iraq, this is not just for the hell of it - we are helping the people free themselves, when they do not have the strength themselves, as opposed to Egypt, Tunesia and so on.
If we sit and watch as the civilians are butchered, we are no better (or at least very little better) than the butchers ourselves.


I don't exactly prescribe to your exact moral position on this, but it does seem like a "better" version of Iraq as open rebellion has been happening in the whole region. The tricky problem is, how do you support rebels without directly supporting rebels (look at how well cruise missiles helped stop the fighting in Iraq), while also having to maintain diplomatic relations with the ruler if the rebellion fails, even more so if you are saying he is a war criminal? I can't bring myself to vote for this video though, this lady seemed like she was harboring some irrational hatred for anything US, even though I think it is France (lol?) leading the charge on this one.

Just a little moral question for ya. If you buy a CD player that you don't need, are you morally responsible for the homeless person you didn't give lunch money? Not trying to be snarky, I just find problems with believing in that exact moral position. It would result in a complete stimy of action because you actions could never be probably meshed with all outcomes of maximum happiness. Technocratic morality boredom, signing out!

>> ^Trancecoach:

Yes, it's an open secret that Bill W. believed that LSD was a "shortcut" of sorts for the 12 steps he developed.
Here's a resource to get you started.
(By the bye, one of my jobs is as the exec. dir. for the peer-reviewed journal that published much of the early research on LSD's effects on the mind.)
>> ^Boise_Lib:
Wait, back up. Bill Wilson...Really?
This information meshes with some research of my own. Is there source material on Bill W.'s experience?




Very Cool, Thanks coach.

This ties up more than one thread for me into a nice package! I've been looking into the relationship between AA and other means of personal enlightenment for quite a while.

Yes, it's an open secret that Bill W. believed that LSD was a "shortcut" of sorts for the 12 steps he developed.

Here's a resource to get you started.

(By the bye, one of my jobs is as the exec. dir. for the peer-reviewed journal that published much of the early research on LSD's effects on the mind.)

>> ^Boise_Lib:

Wait, back up. Bill Wilson...Really?
This information meshes with some research of my own. Is there source material on Bill W.'s experience?

Wait, back up. Bill Wilson...Really?

This information meshes with some research of my own. Is there source material on Bill W.'s experience?

Eh it's interesting. But you can tell that the base head was built using a male mesh which skews the ability to make a proper female head.

Lol. It's alright, it is a good video to promote.
I am going to guess SiftBot will say I do not have sufficient privilege to
*isdupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Sixty-Symbols-on-the-Nobel-Prize-for-Physics-2010

>> ^BoneRemake:

fuckin christ sakes.
siftbot is a piece of broken shit with cogs of frozen piss meshing together to create the ultimate of a fuckup in a bot.
dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Sixty-Symbols-on-the-Nobel-Prize-for-Physics-2010
what a waste of a good mannered promote.
give me my money back ass-bot.

fuckin christ sakes.

siftbot is a piece of broken shit with cogs of frozen piss meshing together to create the ultimate of a fuckup in a bot.

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Sixty-Symbols-on-the-Nobel-Prize-for-Physics-2010

what a waste of a good mannered promote.

give me my money back ass-bot.