Is anyone on my friends list playing?

I've done three free-play matches so far. The first went really well. The second two, I ended up being the second highest level person in each group. (My HUmarl character is level 12 now, level 10-11 at the time.) In one, two of us ended up doing all the work while the other two would hide and not do SHIT. In the one I just played, there was a guy mage at level 20-ish, then my level 11 HUmarl, then a level 7-9 ish human fighter and a level 15 mage girl.

The mage girl did absolutely nothing. She hung back at least three areas behind the rest of us. When we got to a gate where all four of us had to be there to go through, she wouldn't come! The 20ish guy bailed, but the other guy and I went back to convince her to come back. So she comes with us to the gate. We get throught. We were in the water/marsh area, and there were two big, strong bird enemies - one with a white shadow meaning it was stronger. The other guy fighter tried to help, but they were really too strong for him. (I had to resurrect him even.) We kept saying, "Help" but that other character would only go "Ha ha ha" and ran back a couple areas. FINALLY I beat it, but there's another one of those gates you have to all be at the same time to go through. So I ditched.

So, I've decided to pretty much screw free play - I want to go with friends only play.

Here's my info - add me if you want to play and post your info too!
Mariye
2965-8709-6556

Right now I just have the HUmarl fighter character. She knows heal and a few magic spells, but mainly I just rely on potions. I typically have her fight with daggers, a claw or those twin gun things.

I have a level 1 HUnewearl, but I think I'm going to erase it and make a mage or gunner character.

Bad science from the FDA: threatening to ban caffeinated alcoholic drinks.

"F.D.A. is not aware of any basis that manufacturers have to conclude that the use of caffeine added to alcoholic beverages is generally recognized as safe," [spokesperson] Dr. Sharfstein said.

Really? Kahlua. Chocolate liqueurs. Irish Coffee. Rum & Coke, Whiskey & Coke, anything and Coke. Not to mention the DIY version of the alcoholic energy drink, Red Bull & vodka. Ethanol has been paired with caffeine as long as tall drinks have been popular.

The two chemicals are not reactive; the FDA's official fear is a synergystic effect in the body, "associated with increased risk of serious injury, drunken driving, sexual assault and other dangerous behavior." In other words, eactly the same list of risks already linked causally to consumption of alcohol alone. The theory is that the stimulant and diuretic effects of caffeine artificially prop up the drinker's estimation of his tolerance and abilities; I am very skeptical of this conclusion. (I would love to see the double-blind test that even comes close to proving this.) The real increased risk comes from these products' appealling to inexperienced and binge drinkers--a factor much more difficult for the FDA to ban.

In theory, the FDA could regulate the proportion of the two chemicals, though I wonder if that would run into a Separation challenge, given that laws on alcohol concentration are all state/local. There is frankly no way the law can prevent the consumption of caffeine and ethanol in tandem (without changing caffeine's GRAS status), and it's doubtful they could prohibit them from appearing in the same glass. Banning the two from appearing in the same can is just stupid.

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PETA vs. the Furries.

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...are the zombies.

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Go check this out over on allah_sulu's LJ.

I've had it saved in my memories for awhile and go back and run the cursor around on it from time to time. It's not quite bubble wrap, but I find it oddly soothing.

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Saw a story on the news this morning about business leaders in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua asking for UN Peacekeepers to help restore and maintain order.

Juarez is across the border from El Paso.

UN Peacekeepers on the U.S. border.

If it has gotten that bad...how...why aren't/isn't the United States helping more?

Are we doing enough? Are we so worried about people halfway around the world that we're not helping a neighbor who obviously needs more help...and more of the right kind of help, not the "we'll come in and take over" kind of help but the "we'll logistically, morally, and when necessary add our strong arm to yours" kind of help.

A safe Mexico is good for Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California and for the United States.

Why in the hell is the state of affairs in northern Mexico so under reported?

Geez.

Every couple of months there will be one story...usually buried and half ass reported, almost like it is intended to stay hidden. Where did I see the UN request story...on a Texas cable channel that reruns local news programs...not on Network News or even Cable Network News.

I'm not crying conspiracy of silence, but C'MON!

If order is becoming so dissolute that commerce leaders are calling for help from the UN, I'd say that that is a story that should be front and center in US media outlets.

Course, it isn't like we have National Guard units that could help out since they have been deployed and bled in Iraq and Afghanistan like they have. I don't know what we could do...but it sure as hell seems like we should be doing something.

With just short of a 2,000 mile long, porous border between the United States and Mexico, how is this not a national security issue?

If your neighbor's house was on fire, you'd do what you could to make sure that he and his family were out of there and you'd spray your water hose on the flames until the fire department showed up...wouldn't you?

Our neighbor's house is on fire...and it doesn't look like we're doing much except ignoring the flames and the smoke.

:/

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Originally published at Cheryl Katz. Please leave any comments there.

This is a shot I took into the room next door while housekeeping was in there. I couldn’t resist the perfectly framed “Welcome!” chalkboard message.

This and a series of others are taken at The Kennedy School, a converted schoolhouse that is now a hotel containing a movie theatre, restaurant and a handful of bars. Each guest room is a converted classroom – we are staying in ‘Mrs. Francis Room’, which is one half of the classroom. The other half is that neighbor’s room, the ‘Cherry Tree Room,’ named for the art inside (not pictured.)

Other pictures include light fixtures, a phone, water fountain, and art from all around. I’ll try to take a picture of the front of the building before we check out tomorrow.

In other news, this morning we had waffles at the Waffle Window, the much-acclaimed tiny waffle vendor we found on Yelp. We were not disappointed by my Farm Fusion waffle – sauteed mushrooms, spinach and a lemon-thyme marinated chevre cheese over a sweet belgian waffle – nor by Sami’s pumpkin pie waffle (imagine a slice of pie on top of a waffle and you begin to get the drift. Yum), nor Ben’s bacon, brie and basil waffle, which looked great but I did not try.

Here’s a picture!

Yelp has been a phenomenal tour guide so far on this trip, thanks in no small part to my iPhone app. We highly recommend walking on the wild side and using the “nearby” function to scope out what’s good wherever you are.

Cheers!

Just for the fun of it, allow me to introduce you to what is possibly my favorite thing in this entire library:



For those of you who may have images disabled or whatever, this is a paper sign that is stuck to the emergency exit in the hallway next to the elevator in my wing. The sign reads as follows:

"(EMRERGENCY "EGRESS".
PLEASE
UNLESS IT^'S A
fiRE THiS
DOOR is ARMEd
PLEASE do NOT USE
("EMERGENCY EGRE"SS)THANK YOU

And then, right next to the "PLEASE"? There is a red stamp that says "FAIL".

Do you realize what this means, guys? It means there is someone (pa?)trolling the city of Boston with a red FAIL stamp at the ready, waiting to come across faily things so they can stamp them and make the real world into a three-dimensional FailBlog.

This is the sort of thing that gives me hope for humanity.

"We had to destroy the neighborhood in order to benefit it."

In 2005, the Supreme Court decision Kelo v. New London upheld use of eminent domain to take private property and give it to a private interest as part of an economic redevelopment plan. The court's decision said the city's claim of an integrated plan and general benefit met the minimum scrutiny involved.

It reflected an expanding definition of public purpose - from taking land for purely public projects to using it to eliminate "blight" to seizing land for more potentially profitable use.

The local and state government spent more than 80 million to acquire and raze the land for a private developer trying to capitalize on a new research facility by Pfizer. Now the tax breaks have run out and Pfizer has announced it's leaving and taking all the jobs to another sucker town. Kelo's neighborhood is a mass of vacant lots.

The New York Times collected some interesting views on the topic. Here's some excerpts.

Dana Berliner, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice and one of those who represented the homeowners in the Kelo case:

No one should be surprised by the aftermath of the Kelo case — neither the fact that absolutely nothing has been built on the land nor the fact that Pfizer is now pulling out of New London altogether...evidence at trial showed that nothing would be built on that land. The developer (who has now left the project) did a study showing there was no market for the biotech office buildings the city claimed would replace the homes. But the courts didn’t want to look at that evidence. If they had, Susette Kelo would still be in her home and the rest of us would be safe from eminent domain abuse.

( ... )

Paul Bass, editor of the online New Haven Independent:

Forty-seven miles south on I-95, in another Democratic city, that same lesson has been on display since the 1960s at another stretch of vacant land.

That land just west of downtown New Haven used to be the site of a vibrant, multiethnic working-class neighborhood along Legion Avenue and Oak Street. Liberal Democrats seized it all — and much more in New Haven — through eminent domain, with the idea of bringing in investors to build a better neighborhood. The neighborhood never got built. Four decades later, the 26-acre stretch of land remains largely abandoned or used for surface parking, a testament to the failure of economic development-driven eminent domain.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was living in New Haven when that lesson became apparent. He wrote the most insightful opinion, a dissenting opinion, in the case of Kelo v. New London. He noted that eminent domain-fueled urban renewal became a synonym for “negro removal.” He saw that in New Haven. In New London, that observation could be broadened to include the removal of working-class families of different backgrounds, the kind of urban liberal constituency critical to the New Deal coalition that enabled Democrats convincingly to claim the populist mantle in this country’s political debate for four decades...( Read more... )

It should be noted since Kelo many states have revised their takings laws, but the idea remains that a private interest which might add to general prosperity qualifies as "public use". For example the controversial Hudson Yards project in New York overcame some legal hurdles and questions by citing Kelo.

Passed on November 5, the repeal of Glass-Steagall went into effect ten years ago today:

''Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,'' Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said. ''This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.''

The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday wreak havoc on the nation's financial system.( ... )

''The world changes, and we have to change with it,'' said Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, who wrote the law that will bear his name along with the two other main Republican sponsors, Representative Jim Leach of Iowa and Representative Thomas J. Bliley Jr. of Virginia. ''We have a new century coming, and we have an opportunity to dominate that century the same way we dominated this century. Glass-Steagall, in the midst of the Great Depression, came at a time when the thinking was that the government was the answer. In this era of economic prosperity, we have decided that freedom is the answer.''

( ... )

''I think we will look back in 10 years' time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930's is true in 2010,'' said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. ''I wasn't around during the 1930's or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980's when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.''

Senator Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota, said that Congress had ''seemed determined to unlearn the lessons from our past mistakes.''

''Scores of banks failed in the Great Depression as a result of unsound banking practices, and their failure only deepened the crisis,'' Mr. Wellstone said. ''Glass-Steagall was intended to protect our financial system by insulating commercial banking from other forms of risk. It was one of several stabilizers designed to keep a similar tragedy from recurring. Now Congress is about to repeal that economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place.''

( ... ) Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, said during the House debate that the legislation was ''mean-spirited in the way it had tried to undermine the Community Reinvestment Act.'' And Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, said it was ironic that while the legislation was deregulating financial services, it had begun a new system of onerous regulation on community advocates.

( ... )

...One Republican Senator, Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, voted against the legislation. He was joined by seven Democrats: Barbara Boxer of California, Richard H. Bryan of Nevada, Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland, Mr. Dorgan and Mr. Wellstone.

In the House, 155 Democrats and 207 Republicans voted for the measure, while 51 Democrats, 5 Republicans and 1 independent opposed it. Fifteen members did not vote.

Tucked away in the legislation is a provision that some experts today warned could cost insurance policyholders as much as $50 billion. The provision would allow mutual insurance companies to move to other states to avoid payments they would otherwise owe policyholders as they reorganize their corporate structure. ( ... ) It attracted little opposition because it was attached to a provision that forbids insurers from discriminating against domestic-violence victims.

Extra special punchline guess what one alleged benefit of the bill still isn't fully in effect ten years later?

Also: Man, the Clinton years were awesome were they not?

just a tourist in your to-ownnn


Thursdays are my favorite.
I hope I know him forever.

No, really. Hereditarily, even.

See, her mother's mother was Princess Donna Marina Torlonia di Civitelli-Cesi ("Prince of Civitelli-Cesi" was a title given to the head of the Torlonia family and conveys, in addition to nobility, the responsibilities of being one of the two Prince Assistants to the Papal Throne. However, I digress). And Princess Donna was, according at least to this genealogical analysis, the 21st descendant of Francesco I Gattilusio, Lord of the Isle of Lesbos, d. 1384.

Incidentally, this also makes her a cousin of the infamous Marquis de Sade. Um, a... twenty first cousin, nine times removed, if I've got the numbers sorted.

ETA: She apparently can claim Lucrezia Borgia as an ancestress as well. Yeesh.

Tom Coburn has voted for supplemental war bills (and lies he says he voted for one) and is a general supporter of the wars.

He's a tax cut hawk in favor of making the Bush cuts permanent, calls the estate tax "the death tax", wants to end of capital gains tax. It's okay to give away money as long as it's a revenue loss and mostly for the wealthy.

He's a real piece of work: Voted against Lilly Ledbetter. Voted against minimum wage. Voted for tougher bankruptcy laws. Voted for a constitutional amendment against flag desecration. Voted against a torture ban. Voted against DC Voting Rights. Voted against veteran's health care before. Voted for the "Secure Fence Act of 2006" (the border wall which is a massive program was not offest in the budget).

In short Coburn is a right wing asshole Republican, but apparently enjoys screwing the poor so much he goes beyond other right wing nuts to block veteran health care in the name of fiscal responsibility.

That's the appearance. It's obviously his stance involves a larger strategy. It's about spreading the "everyone sacrifice for the most deserving" fallacy - holding our "noble" troops hostage in order to gut social programs in general (which commoners haven't earned anyway).

Fuck that. This is about workers getting proper benefits for a tough job in which supervisor can kill them. It's about just compensation within a larger labor context, while he's trying to justify screwing everyone else to give what he defines as "special" treatment to the military.

America shouldn't be Sparta, even if it's sliding that way. Underneath his bullshit about budgets, Tom Coburn supports a feudal system of barons, knights and peasants. The latter two groups are equally despised, but the useful ones get a few perks in exchange for their lives.

I was forwarded this "inspiring" email and I'm trying to figure out whether it's true or not. It seems... really racist with a nice dose of "get off welfare, lazy!" and I'm having a hard time believing it's true. So far all Google's turned up is a ton of "right on!" statements.

( Chief Clarence Louie Osoyoos BC )

I always feel awkward when people send me this stuff. Yeah, I think a lot of people make excuses, but I have a hard time believing that a Native Chief put down other Natives in a public setting considering the prejudice against them here.

G lobal
R eaction
A gency for
M ysterious
P aranormal
A ctivity

Greatness.

When G.R.A.M.P.A. strikes, he stands up and leaves the room abruptly...allowing his attack to slowly overtake the room via the air currents. ;)

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Her lips are only that pink because she just ate the photographer's spleen while the rest of the crew ate his brains.

BRAINS!!!

Hmmm...I wonder if there is much zombie photoshopping of celebrities out there?

:/

Hmmm?

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Hey New York...don't you feel a little jittery?

Wow...just look at those Amphetamine levels.

Double wow...those aren't parts per million...those numbers are divided based on population so those are levels per person.

I bet in the 80s there would have been a whole lot more Cocaine. Surprised me that there isn't more Ecstasy and Methadone in the water supply.

I wonder if anyone has done a comparison between cities. Would be interesting to find out which city is the most medicated.

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...going all Godzillian on a sailing ship and a lighthouse over at Epilogue.

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