MightierPen

I had to read that poem in my English 12 class. My teacher was absolutely gaga over it, calling it the best poem ever written and if we didn't like it then we weren't smart people. Now I was probably the best person in the class at understanding poems, and I had no idea what it was about until she told us. To me that just reaffirmed my theory that the best way to write a "good" poem is to make it so nobody can understand it.

New systems is as much as an engineering decision as a marketing one. Designers just can't wait to try making games on something new.

Of course graphics aren't everything. That's why I loved Wind Waker: the graphics were simple enough to bring out the amazing gameplay.

I've already got it reserved and I think about it every day. I honestly don't know if the realistic look is going to be that great though. Not that the Gamecube can't dish out some nice eye-candy, but it will probably be a step back from the graphical perfection of Wind Waker. With cel-shaded graphics you never get any pixel-fuzz, overlapping polygons and the like. Not to mention that with the cartoony look you were never surprised to just find a few symmetrical bushes lined up in a row and the like because it fitted the cartoon motif. It fit with Zelda and the atmosphere of the game was unparalled. But I am looking forward to a much larger world in Twilight Princess. The world map in Wind Waker was utterly gigantic and now that I know the gamecube can support a world that big I can't wait to see it all filled with land, with at least 3 towns this time.

Arrested Developement and Whose Line is it Anyway?

According to Xeper reading Ayn Rand's fiction is irrational because the events depicted never existed.

I really don't think a situation like that is an issue of morality, but rather just being a good friend. I myself am very generous with my things and share a lot, but I have one friend who is just a jerk about that sort of thing. Frankly, it would then be immoral to keep giving him things, because he's just being a bad friend.

"Winter Evening" is also my favorite. Go figure, eh? My second favorite is this one I saw in a shop once and never again. It was a large mountain valley set somewhere in the Canadian Rockies, and it had a single train running down it. To me that just screamed "Look what we can do".

Okay, I've had enough with these responses. Thank you to those who helped. And Febod, just so you know: she didn't 'flake' me for 2 weeks. We had scheduling conflicts with both our jobs.

No need to worry about reapplying, I'm at about 6500 points right now. I have in total 6 planets. Net Fleet: - 50+ small fighters - 40 or so Heavy Fighters - 5 Small cargo and 15 Large - 14 Cruisers - 3 Battleships

Okay, first of all she loved the flowers. Second, I wasn't implying that the comsumption of alcohol itself was bad (though clearly she is evading something/i]). It was that it's really painful to watch someone you care about kill themselves like that. She understood this, and calling it off was completely mutual.

I am good friends with her, I think it's best.

To start off, I'm 17 and just finishing my last year of high school before college. I'm not much of a social person; I have only one real friend and several many acquaintences. I never took an active interest in having a lot of friends, mostly because there aren't many of my peers at an intellectual level high enough for me to converse with. :S As such, I've never had a girlfriend and have only been on 2 dates before. My experience with girls has always been long periods of nothing where I have crushes but don't act on them, follwed by a break-down where I get so lonely I ask out someone I'm physically attracted to. Then I get ashamed of myself and never follow it up. There is this one girl who was always better than average. I'm able to talk to her without holding myself back. She's very pleseant and has no real flaws (except one, I'll get to that), yet I've never been very attracted to her. Eventually, around Christmas this year I told myself I had no reason not to like her, and it must be the result of some crippling emotional problems from my childhood. I also knew she liked me in the past. So I asked her out, pulled out the stops, fancy words, flowers, etc. She agreed and we set a date. What ended up happening was about 2 weeks and 4 postponements later we still hadn't gone out. We also didn't spend any time together seeing as we both had this understanding that it would mean more if we weren't open about it. We were talking one night and I happened to bring up the one thing I tried to ignore about her: despite being a great person, practically every weekend she goes out with her stupid friends and gets plastered. I've witnessed it before and it's one of the saddest things I've ever seen. Now I don't have a problem with drinking itself, but what scared me was her reason for drinking: I couldn't see one. And when I asked what the reason was she refused to tell me. Then - and I credit this to her being special at least - she knew that we had to call it all off. Now my dilemma: It's been 3-4 months since then and I'm having second thoughts. Was something like that so important as to not see her? At the time I weighed my values and decided it would be too painful being with her and knowing she's killing herself for some hidden reason. Now I'm wondering if the joy of being with her would've out-weighed it. There's almost no chance she'd try it again, she hasn't changed; if anything, she's gotten worse. But I can't rest now that I don't know if it was a mistake or not. Secondly, though I know a relationship at my age cannot really go anywhere, I'm scared that when I do find a girl I love later in my life I'd be too inexperienced to get her. As it is, I only just had my first kiss in October; it was also my last. :S I'd really appreciate it if somebody helped me with this. I can't think of anybody more suited to give me advice than fellow Objectivists. [Moderator's note: This led to some discussion on alcohol, which can be found here.]

We're fighting the pirates now too? Man all these wars mean to me is a billion messages every time I log on.

It wasn't as great as it looked, they just allowed private insurance if a court deems it an emergency. And again, just in Quebec. The official stance amoung most people here is that paying for things is immoral. But I'm really surprised about this law; I never thought that kind of stuff could happen. I guess I had this idea of the constitution protecting people.

This may be a naive comment seeing as how I'm Canadian, but doesn't that bill go against the constitution? How are they allowed to pass it?

Luckily for me I learned to read with phonics before I entered Kindergarden (and got in trouble for being able to read while others couldn't; apparently it's not fair ). I never noticed it at the time, but the school used a whole-language approach. What they would do is give everybody a story and then read it aloud. After time they would get kids into small groups and get them to basically recite the story. And to this day I am far ahead of most of my pears in terms of reading skill and comprehension. I even have a very intelligent friend that can barely read because he was brought up on whole-language. It's sad.

Hell, I've seen them collapse. Has anybody looked at the latest conspiracy video about 9/11? It's called "Loose Change" and can be found on google videos. It's doing a good job of leaving me to be the only person in my school who still believes that the buildings collapsed from being hit by planes.

I think you misunderstood me; I'm not the one who doesn't understand the nature of love. I'd write the essay myself, but only if I can't find a better one.

I keep pounding a guy who named his planet Oceania. I happen to hate 1984, so he's a nice source of resources.

I'm pretty sure this falls under Epistemology. I'm looking for a good essay on the conditionality of love. I'm tired to going through the whole reasoning process when I'm arguing with people, and I'm prefer to just have an essay to link to. I've found a lot on the selfishness of love, but none on the conditional nature of it (eg, a refutation to the view that love is unconditional). I'm not asking anybody to look for me, but if anyone knows of one off the top of their head I'd be very grateful if you linked me.

I'm going pound him long before that happens.

Mrock, what are your coordinates? I need to dump some deuterium, it's piling up too fast for me to use and I'm afraid of becoming a target.

Thanks . Got my first espionage probes, used them on the closest people I could. Sent a fleet against a guy called Winston Smith (Guess what his planet was called, just guess) purely out of spite (His gigantic amount of resources and one missile launcher helped). One thing that bothers me though: The FAQ keeps stressing that any play can destroy any other player no matter how much defense they have or how many ships they have in orbit. What point is there to the game then?

Ditto about the plants. Are Solar satelites worth it? I put one up already.