Mebert

I'll be honest, I can't see this as being quite as serious as most of you portray it to be. Yes, it's wrong, and yes, it's a violation of freedom of speech, to some extent - but it's hardly totalitarianism or the like. Let me put it this way. We survived with free speech long before the internet was even thought of. Just because the government wants to censor pornography doesn't mean that they'll start creating an index of banned books.

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize that jokes were against the forum rules.

Philadelphia gave us Rocky. Pittsburgh gave us Flashdance. End of discussion.

I disagree with everything Lily Tomlin said. My wife has recently become pregnant with our first kids, and while they appear to be twins, we're not going to stop there. Large families I find are more functional; after all, so much of a persons education comes from real life, and in a large family, children teach each other. They understand how to interact with people, and how to fend for themselves, for the parents will be too busy to deal with each child. So basically, you're teaching the kids the skills they need to learn in life. Also, letting your kids get into a big fistfight once in a while is a good thing. We've been trying to work out how we want to raise our kids, and we've decided on this: very few rules, but those rules we do have, we enforce strictly with beatings.

It's Jersey. What do you expect?

I don't have a favorite, but there is nothing like the GW in the mist ... Which, sadly, the internet has no good pictures of. Oh well, this shall have to suffice.

Russia's only border with Poland lies along East Prussia. It is true that East Prussia contains the highest amount of military equipment per square mile in the world, but the troops there could not capitulate Russia. That, and the fact that there is still full American divisions in Germany would prevent Russia from making a move. American troops are along the border from Ansbach to Berlin, and they could be transferred to Poland quickly. Another point should be examined: America's army is not built for fighting insurgents. The vast bulk of our army, top to bottom, has been constructed, more or less, for one purpose: to defeat the Russian army. You can't base the performance of America against countries like Vietnam or Iraq as how we will do against Russia, should a war happen, because that's not what our army was built for. Russia, on the other hand, has an army that, while recovering, is still in dire straights. Russia is not stupid. The only superiority they have to us lies in their number of nuclear weapons. We should all understand by now that a nuclear weapon is not something you can bargain with, and if Russia has forgotten that fact, they soon will be reminded of it. Frankly, I'm not gonna hold my breath.

As a currency trader, let me give you all some advice. Dump. The. Euro. Now. And while you're at it, stay away from the Pound, Dollar, and Yen. Good currencies at the moment are the Russian Ruble, and the Czech Crown. Although, if you guys really want to keep your currency safe, there is one that has a very good record: the Ducat.

Cool. Two legitimate countries at war, and for once, we're not a part of it. I'm almost looking forward to this, except for that whole "innocent people dying for somebody else's political ambitions" thing.

Nothing like New York.

Outsourcing will continue to happen until western nations are so poor that they are outsourced to, and stop outsourcing. In fact, that's already starting with steel.

Interesting. The only thing is, only one of the planets have water-to-land ratios comparable to Earth; is that what you were looking for?

Really? Oil isn't ever going to "run out," so to speak. That's not a geological and economic possibility. You see, there is lots of oil in closed wells; it's just that the concentration is so low, it's very expensive to pump out. As oil prices rise, older wells will be opened, and more oil extracted, but efficiency will fall. However, before every drop of oil is used, it will be come so expensive that demand will decrease. If, somehow, natural oil did disappear, there are several methods of producing synthetic oils, that, while prohibitively expensive for normal consumption, would work in a crunch (South Africa was forced to use them for years, due to trade embargos). As for lower pollution levels and be more caring for ecosystems ... why? I think pollution is just fine at where it is now. In fact, I could stand it being a bit worse, air-pollution wise.

Why, so we can go there? There's nothing on mars. It's a barren thin-atmosphered ball of red rock a couple months away. It's not like any of us are going to go there, or, for that matter, have a reason to go there. We could totally trash Earth, burn every single scrap of coal, guzzle all the gas, hell, nuke the planet several times over, and it will still be more hospitable than Mars.

I thought this was about the guy getting nearly beheaded when his open-air double decker bus went under a highway underpass. Either way, it's kind of screwy. But that's the kind of people we have in this world; not much you can do about it. You're not gonna get rid of all the nutjobs.