The Arcean Empire is an ancient civilization. A planet that united at the end of the "Great conquest" that nearly destroyed their world at a time when humans were still living in the jungle. Arcean society and technology stagnated shortly after the uniting of the world. Change and "progress" were looked upon with suspicion and the world slowly developed space travel in the subsequent tens of thousands of years. It was only when they encountered the humans, in the 22nd century (Earth Time)...
Exit polls are wonderful. They cut through all the speculation and inuendo and simply ask the actual people who voted what their opinions are on a variety of issues. The exit polls for the 2004 election are available here . Here, without commentary, are some of the results: Overall : Bush won 51% to Kerry's 49%. Bear this number in mind. Men: Bush: 55% to Kerry's 44%. Women: Kerry 51% to Bush's 48%. Income is less than $15,000: Kerry 63% to Bush's 36%. Income is gre...
Over the years I've gotten to see first hand how people make decisions that make them financially successful or financial basket cases. The sad thing is, it's not very hard to be financially successful. It takes no luck. It takes no particular skill. All it requires is a sense of DELAYED GRATIFICATION. A sense that, sadly, most people don't have. Becoming financially successful is the simple matter of building assets that appreciate in value over time at a greater rate than inflation...
Hi all! Those of you who have a MySpace account, post here if you'd like and maybe we can add some friends to our networks. My account is www.myspace.com/draginol What's yours?
Former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, Robert Reich, has written his view on how taxes should be done . It really puts in very stark terms how American liberals really view the concept of property. To liberals, you have no property. It all belongs to the government. Therefore, it's just a matter of deciding how much of what you earn they should let you keep. So how much do Democrats think "the rich" should be taxed? What's fair? I'd say a 50 percent marginal tax rat...
Me on a Sunday night. And what am I doing? I'm going through and cleaning up my mistakes in the XML. And it's been frustrating. The technology tree setup is very complicated because you have base technologies and inherited technologies. That is, a given race can have their own spin on a particular technology. So for instance, Warp Drive might be cheaper for humans and have a different description. This is very cool from a game point of view but can be a bit of a headache...
Often in debates you see Demcorats argue that we need to raise taxes in order to help society. Hillary Clinton said it best: “We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.” This is the kind of thinking one would expect from people who don't have the foggiest understanding of real-world economics. First, some facts to begin with: The wealthiest income earners 10% pay the vast majority of the taxes (nearly 3/4ths of it). The wealthiest income earners work...
Democrats, in general, are extremely ignorant about economics. It's difficult to even find a Democrat with any serious experience in running a business or having actually produced anything at all. Elected Democrats tend to be lawyers. At best, lawyers help honest business men and individuals settle a dispute. At worst, lawyers are parasites on society. It is usually without irony that Democrats decry how much doctors make and how health care costs need to be controlled while ignoring that it ...
In the United States, liberals represent the American left. And liberals tend to be Democrats. It has been my observation that generally speaking, liberals despise democracy. They either make use of obscure procedural tricks or the courts to get their way. Rarely do you get to have such a great example of quintessential characteristics of a modern American liberal. This week, David Obey, a Democrat from Wisconsin is single handedly holding up a supplemental military funding bill t...
One of the things that I find maddening about the American left is its penchant for saying something is bad or that something should be done and then sitting back and doing nothing themselves about it. Whether the case be health care (where they simply expect other people to pay for their "compassion") or more notoriously, global warming. The United States produces (for now) the most CO2 on the planet . Eventually China will catch up (who isn't govered by Kyoto incidentally - and pe...
Most people I've noticed don't do reviews on the prescription drugs they take. Which is a shame because most adults at some point are on some sort of prescription drug and sharing their experiences with others could be very helpful. This is particularly true with regards to drugs that are used to treat the myriad of mental disorders out there. Before I was 21, I had never had any substance more heavy duty than an antibiotic. I hadn't even consumed alcohol. I have never...
This past week I took 2 days (Thursday and Friday) and combined them with a working weekend to go up north to work on some critical projects. Most notably, I needed to work on the technology trees for Galactic Civilizations II: Twilight of the Arnor. Going to a vacation spot to do work is always a tricky proposition. The temptation to...well...vacation is very high. To see if working from the cottage was a viable activity from me in the future I tracked my time meticulously. ...
As I type this, I'm outside. It's October 7th and yet the weather in northern Michigan is quite warm (70 degres right now at 11:30pm). I'm not just outside though. I'm outside at the cottage at the lake. Above me it is totally clear. I can see the milky way (the literal cloud of stars) which I can't see from home due to light pollution. The waves are gently reaching shore about 10 meters in front of me. There's no bugs,it's just quite (other than the waves) and peacefu...
I have a new cell phone and I absolutely love it. LG's new Env is an amazing phone that I prefer considerably to the iPhone. The phone has two keypads. The one you see to the right also opens up into a pretty decent sized QERTY keyoard. For me, the highlights of the phone are: The keyboard. I can use this to send meaningful text messages, IMs, email, etc. Navigation. It is the best GPS navigator I have ever used. Thanks to its seamless Internet integration with navigati...
Whether you have a damp basement or crawl space or a house that has a lot of wood in it, there are times you may need a dehumidifier. A dehumidifier is similar to a refrigerator in many respects except that it takes the condensed water it collects and puts it into a tray or out a hose. A typical house starts to feel rather muggy if the humidity gets over 65%. In my case, I have a cottage that has wood floors, wood walls, and a crawl space. I will ultimately end up getting ...