gunnergoz

I'll happily bitch about life in the US as long as there are individuals in this country who are dedicated to enriching themselves at the expense of the American middle class, all the while dismantling the framework of democracy to suit their whims.

Yep - we Yanks have the best government that money can buy...sort of.

All I know is that, if the health system is set up to make a profit, it only profits if the patients use it as little as possible. There is an incentive to spend some on preventive work but also to spend as little as possible on curative work. Profits drive the system, not patient health. America's is a curious system set up generate money, not to insure health of the population, many of whom cannot afford health insurance anyway.

As usual, the bulk of the award went to the attorneys for "legal expenses." The entire legal system is by now just a cash cow for attorneys. Encourage people to sue and then keep 2/3 of what they get. Nice deal if you can swing it. And yes, this was an atrocious example of breach of privacy, but still it sickens to see how much the legal buzzards can chew off the corpse of the case.

Like pesky neighbors?

I don't take much stock in the reviews since most of them are beholden to the producer one way or the other...especially a big house like 2K and Sid being a household name. Having played over 100 hours on it so far, I still find it annoyingly unstable, buggy and the AI is still pretty dumb. I do think it can be improved though so I am hanging in there. It's simpler, smoother playing style does make it more of a beer and pretzels kind of civ, but that's hardly surprising given the attention span of today's game buyers.

It may look a bit like a humvee but I'm sure that the product, if it ever sees hardware, will be something real lightweight and entirely unrelated - maybe carbon fiber, ceramics, plastics, etc. But behind the concept seems to be the presumption that we will be engaged in these damn asymmetrical wars with strange back country 'furriners for ever. I mean, this is hardly a system that could survive in a war with a first line country - say China. Heck, any country with a half-assed AA system at the troop level could wreak havoc on something like this if caught in its radar or sights. In the end it seems like another boondoggle. Like others have said, in effect it will end up like the zebra - which was a horse designed by a committee.

I did not want to buy it initially because of Steam (ugh!), but I bought it in the end, anyway. It is quite unstable and crashes about once in every 3 launches. I can run huge maps but sometimes reloading saves is problematic. It is quirky. I run it best under DirectX 9, though I have Vista and had to d/l the runtime version of 9. It does demand a lot of your video GPU for some reason. Is it the buggiest Civ ever? Maybe. As for gameplay, it is elegant, but in a dumbed-down, formulaic way. The key seems to be the luxury resources, for without enough of them your empire gets unhappy pretty quick and all growth stalls. And if you can't locate iron or horses (each resource hex has a quantity of units it can support, either 2 or 6) then the mid game gets pretty dicey. But I find cities can be breached if you bring along enough units to wear them down. The AI is sort of dumb. It is not very aggressive building wonders and I can usually build two or three before other civs get into the game. The key one I find is Stonehenge, for it awards a whopping 8 culture points while other wonders only do a paltry 1 or perhaps boost culture by some percentage. Get stonehenge early and you can run for all those policies that help you quite a bit by speeding production, improving combat, making money, etc. I miss the complexity of Civ IV, with religions, spying, expanding cultural frontiers - especially the latter - in Civ V, once two culture's borders meet, they stay there. There is no pushing back a less cultured civ's border any more it seems (at least I've never seen it, other than the artist culture bomb, which I've yet to experience.) But my main complaint is having to worry about these nasty total crashes that require a system reboot. That's damn annoying. At lest with DirectX 9 I can run windowed and most of the time only the window crashes. But it is a nuisance. Some other things I miss from earlier Civ versions is the data displays. For instance, there is no way to see all of the luxury resources that you own, though you can use the diplomacy screen to see what extras you have. The UI is nice, but a bit too simple for my tastes. The only thing I like about Steam so far is the modding part of it. It is easy to peruse new mods and download and install is a no brainer now that they fixed the initial bugs in it. It's a pretty game, but you need a beefy system to see the tinsel and even then there are people with high end systems reporting problems. 2K has lots of resources, though, and I expect the issues will be dealt with. They've already come out with three patches since release on the 21st so that's commendable. But it ain't quite stable yet, at least not for many. Do I recommend it? If you are a Civ grog, sure, but be ready for a bit of a letdown compared to Civ IV. If you are new to the genre, give it a whirl, but be sure your system can handle it and your drivers are up to date.

Mord - thanks for the tip. If it shows up here (it is a Canadian HBO production, not sure when/if they come down to us) I'll check it out.

OK, thanks all. I read up a bit. I thought at first it was historical drama but it ain't. Not my cuppa' but enjoy if it's yours...

Eh? Come again? Care to tell us what its about, given that some of us haven't a clue but you did spark some interest?

From a somewhat similar experience of my own, all I can say is that if you get involved, you will forever be on one side or the other, with all that implies. If your wife is on board with you and sympathetic to this woman who seeks the divorce, it will be easier for you to ride through the sh!tstorm that is bound to follow. As for the secrecy, it is never pleasant to compartmentalize your life (you have to start remembering whom you told what to, or not) but sometimes that is necessary to protect the property (or even safety) of someone, particularly when their partner might go rogue on them. Women can be very vulnerable at such times and can use all the help they can get. But it has to be wholehearted, We're On Your Side type of support, not just Fix and Run for cover. Perhaps that's the most important thing I want to say - if you are going to help this woman, do so all the way, and not just part way. She doesn't need the latter kind of help.

Very sorry to hear of the damage and injuries. We too have our EQ issues here in San Diego but so far have been lucky compared to NZ. Best wishes to all.

What of all the "flakes" I find all over the internets these days? And TV? What is the element of origin of all these "flakes?" Could they be related to the legendary Higgs Bozo particle?

The war in the Pacific was fought in an uncivilized manner - as was the whole of WW2. Fight fire with fire? Worked back then. Revisionism is alive and well. Its always nice to look back and point fingers at how it could have been done a bit neater and less nasty. Fewer vets around than ever to refute the claims being made. Yes, the Allies did their share of atrocious things. It was a time when humanity went mad. Then just think about the Marshall Plan and what would have happened in its place if the Allies had not prevailed over the Axis. When the time for madness went away, we again began listening to our better angels. Modern Europe and Japan are testimonials to that. Overall, the Allies have little to apologize for, and much to be thanked for. We'll do it different next time? If you're in a knife fight in a corner, I doubt that much kindness and consideration is going to be shown. Of course, there is such a thing as picking the right fights...

Its kind of a love-hate relationship with the US military and organized religion. While religiosity may be wonderful in foxholes, the rest of the time it is a pain for the troops who really don't want it shoved down their throats. After all, most of them are savvy to the fact that they are supposed to be fighting for freedom of religion (or freedom from religion).

Welcome to the Borg, brother.

Yep, a diet to die for.

One more interesting article related to the topic of redistribution of wealth by creation of an oligarchy at the expense of the middle class: http://www.thenation.com/article/37889/no-oligarchy

A very nice find indeed, John, thank you. I'll peruse it with interest in coming days.

S.O.- Any "blindness" I may suffer is in part due to being battered for the past 30 years while watching my nation's economy being systematically pillaged for the benefit of the very few at the top...resulting in the first American middle class generation since the '30's Depression that probably can't offer its children better economic conditions than the parents had.

This phenomenon, friend: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2908 Made possible by years of politicians' tinkering with economic policy, tax policy, corporate favoritism and special congressional bills to allow the top 1% to have any number of means to increase their wealth, while simultaneously exporting jobs, selling off businesses and similar tactics to remove earning power from the middle class.

One wonders at those who squirm about "deliberate redistribution of wealth" from the wealthy 1% back into the rest of the population...where were they when these same wealthy folks engineered the transfer of wealth from the middle class to them over the past 30 years? Somehow it is OK in one direction, but not the other? Just curious.

If each voter has but one vote and the issues were decided by rational discourse and by election of the politicians who best represent a particular position on an issue, then we have a basically democratic system. My problem is when the influence of large sums of money pumped into political campaigns starts to skew the campaign towards issues that are favorable to those with the money, and politicians are offered up for election that will be favorably inclined towards those who provided all that campaign cash. If the system works well, political parties should be able to raise cash for campaigns from individual voters and things should even out pretty well. But if the system permits corporate and other wealthy entities to literally throw any amount of money into a campaign, it skews everything away from the individual voters and towards the providers of all this campaign cash. So, the argument goes, the voters will still decide the outcome. OK, that may be true if only one political party is indebted to the corporations and wealthy lobbies. The other political party can do more fund raising among voters to attempt to equal or exceed the campaign funding of the other side. But what if both political parties are more or less completely in the pockets of the corporations and wealthy? What if all the candidates running for office from both parties are front men for the wealthy and corporations? This is what I think has happened over the course of the past 30 years. Americans assume that the parties are differentiated somehow and represent different political philosophies, but it is increasingly evident that Democrats are just as heavily influenced by all those campaign contributions they receive from Corporations and the wealthy as are the Republicans. Neither party can be said to host politicians whose primary priority is to look after the vested interests of voters - instead, they focus upon what is good for their corporate sponsors, and couch it in terms that sounds like it is good for the nation and good for their constituents. It is so much Kabuki and means nothing. Most people keep going to the polls that are run in this system, they vote and then they think they will get different results...and are surprised when they get more of the same only with a different last name on the desk.

Do you know how incredibly naive that sounds? That no matter how much money influences election processes, it is all good because the voters still vote. But what if the issues the voters get to consider and the candidates they get to choose from are totally framed by the ultra wealthy elements of society. It is like telling voters, "you get to vote for my guy here, or my guy there...choose." It is no better than Communism, Fascism or Nazism. It's our candidates or none. And that is what we are moving towards in this country. If you have money, you can swing elections your way. Over time, you can totally control what the voters choose from to suit you. What you guys do not see is that when extreme wealth corrupts democratic processes, you are left with only one party to choose from - the party of money, because that is the only arbiter of victory in the end.