Lesson In Political Systems

I didn't write this, but I think god did. Its amazing (now new, with edits by norm dyer!)

Lesson In Political Systems


DEMOCRACY

You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
Barbra Streisand sings for you.

REPUBLICANISM

You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?

SOCIALISM

You have two cows.
The government buys one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

COMMUNISM


You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.

ENTREPRENEURIALISM

You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and breed a herd of cows.


BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE

You have two cows.
Under the farm subsidy program the government pays you to shoot one,
milk the other, then pour the milk down the drain.


AMERICAN INVESTMENT BANKER


You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one.
You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows.
You are surprised when one cow drops dead.
You spin an announcement to the analysts stating
you have downsized and are reducing expenses.
Your stock goes up.

FRENCH CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow
and produce twenty times the milk.
They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded, unbelievably fast, trains.
Both are at the top of their class at cow tutorial school,
but one commits karoshi.
You accept this as fate because you only had room for one cow anyway.


GERMAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are blond, drink only beer,
give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of paid vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
But you don't know where they are.
Someone spray-paints grafitti on your cows.
Your neighbor thinks these are insults meant for him.
He pays a hit-man to take you out.
While leaving town, you see a beautiful woman.

You break for lunch.
Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows.
You drink some vodka.
You count them and see you have five cows.

You drink some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
The Russian Mafia hears about this, and takes all your cows.

NEW YORK CORPORATION

You have two cows.
Cows are not allowed in the city.
You are fined more than the cows are worth.
Before you can dispose of them, the cow manure smell so upsets your neighbors,
you are sued for property devaluation: 3.2 million.
Central Park artists create sculptures of the cows and become instantly wealthy
after appearing on the David Letterman show.

CALIFORNIA CORPORATION

You have 100 cows.

They make real California cheese.
Only five speak English.
All but two are illegal.

Arnold likes the ones with the big udders.

Chicago Anti-War protest

This Saturday night I decided to go with my family to the anti-war protests that were arranged in Chicago. We took the red line up to Division St, from which point we had heard the march was going to be starting. We got out of the train, and after a bit of confusion on my parents part about which way we were supposed to go, I pointed them in the right direction East down Division toward State St. Crossing state, there were a large number of police wagons, also a police helicopter overhead, and in true Daley fashion, many street cleaners going after the protest to clean up the mess. After being yelled at quite rudely to get out of the way of the St cleaners, we headed down to the starting point of the protest, and found no one there because the procession was already on Michigan avenue, the main rout for the protest. Pretty soon we found them: a solid mass of people streaching across the intersection, sounds of chanting, and vague sounds of drums. As we joined in we passed a group of "Billionairs for Bush" doing a cute little act. There were some cute signs such as "bush is a category 5 disaster" scrawled in marker on a board, other ones such as "bring the troops home" or "restore not war." It was silent when we joined, but pretty soon people got a chant going "hey! Ho! George Bush has got to go!" which gave the march an invigorating feeling. As we continued marching, I noticed the police in full riot gear who were lining the rout, each armed with a billy club and a helmet, some with guns. There were a few Republican anti-protesters here and there; one group was holding a large sign which said "support our troops." The guy next to me started hollering "support our troops, bring them home!" I joined in and we got about 10 people to chant that as we passed. In complete contrast, we passed a large sign which drew applause which said "Bring the troops home. Send Bush and congress instead" in black block letters on a white background. At the Michigan Avenue bridge, we were turned onto Wacker Drive by 20 mounted police standing in a semicircle. As we crossed the river, I was interested to notice that they even had a police boat in the river, for what purpose I cannot imagine. Some point along here we got stopped, and the current chant was "peace! Now!" I distinctly remember a woman a little over to my left trying to get a call and response started, and saying "what do we want?" "peace" "when do we want it?" "now!" She didn't have too loud a voice so I took up the call for her, and after a while had a good rhythm going with a nice call and response. After a few times my voice broke, and I quit. A few minutes later, I took up the call with again, and got into the army sergeant roll...It took about a minute for my voice to break again, but this time, when I stopped, so did everyone else. When I got it going a third time, I started pumping my fist and really got people going. I think at one point I must have had between 75 and 100 people doing the "what do we want?" "peace!" "when do we want it?" "Now!" when my voice broke again, I was pleased that I got a round of applause. At some point a different woman behind me did the same thing with another cheer, and got another call and response going "Tell me what democracy looks like!" "This is what democracy looks like!" it didn't catch on as well as the "peace" one, but it was still fun. We also tried to get a call going
"where should the monkey go?" "out with the monkey!" but it didn't catch, probably because it was so silly. It was nice, however, to hear my cheers being passed up and down the line with other leaders taking their hand at the call response thing. By this time we had reached Daily Plaza, where there was a small rally. I was pleased to here that people were still doing my cheer while they gathered around the rally speaker who unfortunately had only a small megaphone. After hanging around for awhile, we took heed of the police order to disburse by 9:00, and left the way we came on the L. Official numbers for the protest were 7,000, but I would say It was more like 8,000 to 10,000. It was a good evening, and a great way to get your voice heard by lots of people, even if you couldn't speak for the rest of the evening.

Fayt ownz Lloyd

Okay, I've seen some pretty silly crap on the Internet. But it seems that hell has no fury, like a Namco fanboy scorned, and there is apparently an entire forum dedicated to trashing the Square-Enix RPG Star Ocean 3: Till the End of Time.

http://s8.invisionfree.com/Lloyd_Owns_Fayt/index.php?showforum=18

I consider myself a pretty avid amateur gamer. I love nothing better than a good RPG, my favourites being the classics Chrono Trigger and Seiken Densetsu 3 (聖劍傳說3, known as Secret of Mana 2 here in the States). I will as readily sit down to play a Bioware game as a Black Isle as a Square-Enix as a Nintendo, with no preconceptions. Given that, consider this a non-biased, non-partisan gamer's opinion.

A good RPG is driven not by its battle engine and not by its world designs. A good RPG is driven by its story. A great RPG will also have a well-designed world (or multiple of them) and an intuitive battle engine - even better (though this is icing on the cake), it will have a kick-ass soundtrack. But it won't matter one bit if it's got the greatest battle engine since Tri-Ace and all the beautiful world designs of Chrono Trigger. If the story is poorly written, the game will be boring.

Say what you like about Fayt Leingod's name being silly; say what you like about the Star Ocean universe ripping off Star Trek's Prime Directive and Guardian of Forever. Star Ocean 3's story was engaging. When it wasn't concerned with Fayt's separation from his family and friends or with his rescue by the shadowy QUARK, it was dealing with a side-quest which was just as interesting. The politics of Elicoor II were convincing (though there were some moments in the negotiations that made me cringe) and the characters were realistic, well-developed and sympathetic.

Also, add to this the fact that there is a shortage of good science-fiction RPG's out there: KotOR tops my list, and there's also Fallout (I haven't had the fortune to play any of the Front Mission games yet), but I haven't heard of any other big names on the sci-fi RPG docket. This game definitely tickles my Trekkie tastes without being too blatant about it. Then there's the soundtrack - I'm begging your pardon, Bruce McCulloch, but I just love the jazz. I'm still listening to 'Fly Away in the Violet Sky' and 'Pert Girl on the Sandy Beach', not to mention the more rockish numbers 'The Divine Spirit of Language' and 'Expiration'. Thirdly, there's the plot twist - but you'll have to play the game to get that one. Suffice it to say, it's almost as good a plot-twist as KotOR's, and that's no mean praise. I was liking the character designs as I saw them (Nel Zelpher's in particular; I am obligated to concur with Cliff Fittir's elegant, if rather brusque, assessment of her maidenly pulchritude), and the voice-acting wasn't half-bad for a Squenix RPG, Michelle Ruff's Sophia notwithstanding.

And seriously, folks, comparing the merits of Star Ocean 3 and Tales of Symphonia (the much-touted Namco game for NGC developed by the same team, Tri-Ace) should be no contest. I wasn't an hour into the game before I was cracking 'Lloyd... I am your father' jokes about Kratos and singing 'Your own personal Jesus' whenever Colette opened her demure little messianic mouth. Tree of Mana connecting the worlds... my God, where could I have heard that one before? And of course, I could see it coming a mile away that our heroes' quest was going to piss someone off in some other world down the line. Angels = evil; yes, I saw that one coming also - I have watched a certain Hideaki Anno anime, you know. (To be fair, they did the evil angels thing in Star Ocean 3, too, but when it came to foreshadowing Squenix did have to their writing a marvelous little thing called subtlety.) And then the player interface rubbed me the wrong way (what the hell was with that font?), the voice acting was annoying (except for Jennifer Hale's contribution to Shiina Fujibayashi, naturally), and the sound and music were a rather underwhelming experience.

A little advice, Namco, if I may be so bold: stick to what you do best. I love the Soul series, though I'm not a fighting-game man myself. Soul Calibur III was polished and colourful, the battle system was shiny, the characters were well-balanced, hell, you even put gave the game some decent music, sound-effects and voice acting! You had the gravity-defying, incomparable good looks of Taki gracing the franchise since the arcade days. But Sales of Tymphonia left a lot to be desired, in character development, in plot development, even in concept. Leave the RPG development to Bioware.

And as to Lloyd 'owning' Fayt, this is an interesting match, so let's walk through this one. Fayt Leingod has height, weight, reach, age and training on his side, meaning that in a straight-up fencing match, he's probably more likely to win. Lloyd does have two katanas on his side whereas Fayt's only got his zweihänder. As any D20 player knows, however, unless the little dude's got the Master Two-Weapon Fighting feat, he might get more attacks per round, but with his to-hit penalties he'd be lucky to land Fayt even one. Aside from all that, Lloyd's got no supernatural or paranormal abilities whereas Fayt's got the Destruction Gene. Sorry, Mr. Irving, but the writing on the wall reads 'Mene mene tekel u-Faytin'.

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.

more fox BS

Another story furthering thier agenda of keeping liberal politics out of schools.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,187126,00.html