CrimsonWeltall

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 10, 2012 -> 08:11 PM) So 47% of filers have no income? Who said that? I was just showing you that a system where rich people pay a huge percentage of the taxes isn't necessarily progressive at all, much less strongly progressive.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 10, 2012 -> 08:07 PM) The top 10% are paying 45% of taxes. 47% pay nothing at all. The system is not progressive. That makes absolute sense to me. Two-person country has flat tax rate of 10%. Homeless Joe pays 10% of his $0 income, for $0. Mr. Rich pays 10% of his $10,000,000 income for $1,000,000. Mr. Rich pays 100% of the country's taxes. SUPER PROGRESSIVE FLAT TAX

QUOTE (Tuna @ Oct 8, 2012 -> 05:42 PM) Let's say a 12-year-old saw the gang and yelled cuss words at you all. Would you beat him or is 12 too young and you guys would just laugh? Unfortunately, that 12 year old would get beat. I'm curious what 'honor' rules your gang may have had. Were there any people understood to be off-limits, both in terms of random people (eg no old ladies) or other gangs (eg don't go after their kids)?

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Oct 5, 2012 -> 06:28 PM) No, I don't really know where Burpee originated. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the exercise was named in the 1930s for American physiologist Royal H. Burpee, who developed the Burpee test. He earned a PhD in Applied Physiology from Columbia University in 1940 and created the "Burpee" exercise as part of his PhD thesis as a quick and simple way to assess fitness.[2] The exercise was popularized when the United States Armed Services adopted it as a way to assess the fitness level of recruits when the US entered WWII. Consisting of a series of the exercises performed in rapid succession, the test was meant to be a quick measure of agility, coordination and strength ROYAL H BURPEE

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Oct 4, 2012 -> 05:17 PM) Welcome to politics...you appear to be new here since you stated the obvious. I still think it shows that they're ok with changing their minds, it's not like people aren't taking notice and these flip-flopped positions aren't well documented and mentioned in the media 500 million times a day. So how is it a positive quality if you admit that it's purely for appearances and political game-playing and not a change based on substance?

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Oct 4, 2012 -> 04:45 PM) While true, I personally don't see a problem with flip-flopping...as a matter of fact, I think it's a good trait for a candidate to have, and every politician SHOULD have this trait. It shows that they can/will change their minds if they feel they're wrong, instead of staying the course ala GW Bush and many others. Flip-flopping almost never refers to a candidate changing their mind because evidence or good arguments led them to a new conclusion. It's a candidate "changing their mind" because the new position is more politically advantageous than the old one.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 4, 2012 -> 01:03 PM) Both of them walked all over lehrer, who was terrible. "Explain your differences on 'government,' go." Lehrer every time one of the candidates basically told him SHUT IT, I'M NOT FINISHED

For anyone playing Borderlands 2, On the second playthrough, ONLY do the main story quests. Avoid the sidequests until you've beaten the game again. The sidequests will all go up to level 50+ and you'll get better rewards.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Sep 28, 2012 -> 04:43 PM) I'm going to link this again because it damn near brought me to tears several times. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/interrupters/ My organization at UIC shared office space (same floor) as this group and made software for them that they used to track their 'interrupters' and incidents of gang activity. I saw a lot of those people (Tio Hardiman, Gary Slutkin) on a daily basis. Nice people, seemed very into their work.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Sep 28, 2012 -> 12:20 AM) Knee surgery, my friend. $6k for surgicenter, total time in the place 6 hours with 4 of it knocked out in recovery.. $6k for the surgeon, for an hour surgery. $1k for the anestesia guy, however you spell that. $1.8k for a surgical 'assistant'. 4 doc visits prior to the surgery, all 4 totaling less than 10 minutes actual time (like you, seriously not kidding on the time) with the doc, $220 EACH visit. MRI at $700. PT, 9 visits at $95 per visit. Had follow up visit this morning, longest visit so far, 4 minutes, I timed it. $220. But insurance is the bad guy here? At least you were paying for a highly skilled service. Surgeons and anesthesiologists don't grow on trees. A couple years ago I was having some unexplained pain in my groin and went to a general practitioner and a urinologist. Both told me "I dunno". My insurance paid $1600 (and $400 from me out of pocket) for those expert answers. Luckily the problem went away after a while.

QUOTE (ZoomSlowik @ Sep 26, 2012 -> 10:31 PM) What level are you at? I've seen other people get crazy s*** like that, but probably the most powerful I've seen are 60x10 shotguns and 2,500 launchers. I'm only at level 37. The junk launchers I find are around 10,000. I've seen level 50 launchers that do over 300,000 damage.

QUOTE (ZoomSlowik @ Sep 26, 2012 -> 09:27 PM) For normal guns, I rotate them out pretty heavily. I really liked the stuff I got from the vault. One of them was a shotgun that did 122 (one shot) plus fire damage, which was solid until I got a few blue ones that do like 60x10 (one of which adds explosive). The assault rifle was like 78 plus explosive, so it came out to 150 a shot. I've found a few similar to that, but it also had a 33 shot clip, which was really nice. I do think my drops have kinda sucked though. I've seen very few purple guns (10-ish? some of which were lower level. I seem to find a lot of purple grenade mods) and I don't think I've ever seen an orange. I've been playing a lot of co-op too, so there's probably some loot-ninja stuff hurting my inventory. It's difficult to have any perspective on weapons of people who are not at a similar level to you. I'm currently using sniper rifles that do 2500 damage (+shock, +fire) and launchers that do 25000, but I'm sure my friend who's a little further than me thinks I have all trash. I don't think I've seen any Orange weapons yet; only grenades and shields.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Sep 26, 2012 -> 09:34 PM) The game doesnt list what other people in your party loot? I assume the loot is restricted to the party that kills the mob. At least this is pretty standard practice in MMORPG. It's a free-for-all. GRAB GRAB GRAB. I've only played with one person though, and we share.

QUOTE (ZoomSlowik @ Sep 26, 2012 -> 07:57 PM) I was still using the level 10 stuff I grabbed at level 20 Sounds like you've had either very bad luck (very few good drops) or amazingly good luck (some very OP weapons that lasted a long time). I've never kept a weapon for more than a 5 levels.

QUOTE (ZoomSlowik @ Sep 26, 2012 -> 12:29 AM) It's always purple, but as you said, there's a big difference between a purple level 10 and a purple level 35. If you do it early, the stuff becomes obsolete. I opened mine at like level 12, and I was already rotating one of them out by level 17 (a 122 damage shotgun with fire damage after I picked up a 61x11 one). I still use the assault rifle I picked up (level 19 now), but if you open it at like lvl 35 it's more likely to be useful towards the end of the game. If you open it at level 35, then it's going to be useful for maybe 35,36,37,38. Then you'll sell it. I'm waiting until level 50.

Huh? He's not bouncing around because he's wrapped around Jennings' right arm. How is that evidence he has control of the ball?

QUOTE (JoeCoolMan24 @ Sep 23, 2012 -> 09:04 PM) I'm not sure if statistics have been kept for it yet, but they really need to track how often icing the kicker actually works, and how often it screws over teams, and how often it results in the same. They have. The freeze is pointless.

QUOTE (ZoomSlowik @ Sep 20, 2012 -> 08:16 PM) Well, I'm a 10 right now and I only have the basic, s***ty SMG's. You also seem to get better stuff in co-op if no one beats you to it, which I've done a few times. At the point you're at, any good gun you get is going to be obsolete in a couple levels anyway. Just use whatever good stuff you come across (sniper, assault rifles, smgs, etc).

QUOTE (ZoomSlowik @ Sep 20, 2012 -> 07:32 PM) If anyone on PS3 picks up a sweet SMG in Borderlands and wants to trade, message me (same ID as here). I've got an abundance of pretty solid assault rifles. It totally depends on your level.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Sep 19, 2012 -> 08:31 PM) I've never heard of this game but I am interested, did anyone give a rundown yet? It's Diablo as a first person shooter. There's a loose story plus a ton of sidequests. Enemies drop money and loot (various guns, shields, class tokens, relics). You pick one of 4 character classes and level up, choosing skills as you advance. 4-player coop. Also, the game has a very good sense of human and makes a lot of gaming/pop culture references. For example (very minor spoiler):

The troll set up a rally. A bunch of PSU fans (and Franco Harris) showed up. Then the troll changed the rally page he made on Facebook to say "HAW HAW actually JoePa and PSU suck". shrug

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Sep 15, 2012 -> 05:31 PM) the most comprehensive study of charter schools (backed by pro-charter foundations), concluded that charters are about twice as likely to underperform regular public schools as to outperform them In that study, the Chicago charter schools outperformed the traditional public schools.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Sep 13, 2012 -> 05:16 PM) I got a perfect score in reading comprehension :smug: Math was my worst section. I guess you didn't read your math book, because if you did, you would have comprehended all of it! HAW HAW

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Sep 13, 2012 -> 05:04 PM) I think the national average of teachers they hired was 21...not everyone. When I was in high school, the national average of everyone taking the test was 18...so if it's 21 now, that means education improved...when we know it didn't. Edit: Looked this up...I'm just not buying this as fact. Either they made the test easier, people are cheating, or students have gotten smarter...which I refuse to believe. If anything, I think education in this country has gotten worse...not better, especially to the point that the national average is up 3 points. Looks like the test changed around 1990. The average was about 19 before then and has been around 21 since then. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d98/d98t135.asp

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Sep 13, 2012 -> 02:44 PM) So one guy was aware...that's still a small fraction of an entire administration that's being blamed here. I'm not saying GW made the right moves here... I'm ONLY saying that given the timeline, I think you're being a bit unreasonably unfair. It's not unfair to point out that the administration was irrationally focused on invading Iraq from the get-go. It'd be unfair if he said 9/11 would have been stopped otherwise.