Bush and Uranium

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Chris often explains his conclusions, but I often disagree with not only his conclusions but his explanations of them. I really think he often does not draw truly logical conclusions. As for this latest specific post of his, I am withholding judgment on the latter parts including Powell's statements until I have a chance to read it thoroughly and think about it carefully. That means it will have to wait at least until I finish playing DiabloII/Lord Of Destruction this afternoon, then go to the spa, followed by poker. So we're probably looking at sometime tomorrow;-) You see, I really need to find or shop a Ward Bow since those will be the only fast bows capable of rolling the highest damage modifiers in the soon-to-come version 1.10 of DiabloII/LOD. Since I play Amazons a lot, high-end bows are an essential commodity to me, and Chris' post is too lengthy to really examine carefully in the brief windows of time I have to visit this forum before the game I am in drops due to inactivity;-)

[andyfox]

You said only liberal democracies should be allowed to have WMDs. I'm wondering a) who should do the "allowing"?; and b) why should this be the criterion for such allowing?

The record of Great Britain and the United States in treating others who they have not approved of is less than admirable. These two countries became world powers in part because of that ill-treatment and the gains derived therefrom. The modern, western, non-"backward" countries made the 20th century the bloodiest in history. I see no reason why these countries should be trusted with WMDs over any others. And I see no reason for the U.S. to be the world's policeman and decide who can and who cannot have weapons. After all, we're the most prolific arms providers. The arms we sold to the Shah ended up in the hands of the Ayatollahs. The arms we gave to Bin Laden ended up, well, with Bin Laden.

Of course nobody wants to see North Korea with WMDs. But I am far less trusting of George Bush having WMDs than you are. We want to make all the rules and have them apply to everyone. It's precisely this arrogance and hubris that others see in us.

[Vehn]

As your post seems to indicate you play on battle.net, you are of course aware that many of the interesting new features are only available to the new ladder characters, which means you must start from scratch without item transfers. In other words you're wasting your time [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] And I would be surprised if anything ever replaces a Windforce.

Have you downloaded the (single player/TCPIP only) 1.10 beta yet?

- Currently playing:
85 HC barb (Guardian)
79 HC sorc (Guardian)

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"The modern, western, non-"backward" countries made the 20th century the bloodiest in history."

Sorry andy, but this is simply wrong. The countries that made the 20th century the bloodiest in history were the USSR and China, followed by Germany. And I doubt you'll argue that all three were not backward ideologically. Chnia too was clearly non-Western, and the USSR was not completely western.

It isn't hubris or arrogance to declare that theocracies and dictatorships are worse, and have less moral right to exist, than governments which derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. It is incumbent upon the free nations to restrain such regimes.

I can't help it if much of the rest of the world has less logical and moral clarity in such matters. Totalitarian governments = bad and that's all there is to it.

[MMMMMM]

I don't play HC due to the fact that I lag die sometimes in SC. It is only very recently that I got DSL.

Ladder will be merged with the standard realms at the end of each ladder season. So ladder-only items will then revert to the standard realms along with the characters which possess them. I've invested too much time to be worried about the ladder or starting from scratch so I'll just wait until the few items merge which can't be otherwise acquired.

WF is of course very nice but rather passe I think. I have 2 legit WF's and a number of cruel bows; my favorite is one I cubed which is a Cruel Shadow Bow of Alacrity, 50% IAS and 374% ED (on my 98 zon). I think really the best matriarchal bows beat WF's in a duel, and I know my level 94 Burizon (54% life leech, 1940 life, 75% DR and all legit items) ripped apart WF zons in duels. However the best matri zons could beat her still.


Now with all the hacked and bugged crap on the realms I am looking forward to the patch, as ITHs will lose their runeword properties and the best runeword bows may be better than zephyrs are now. Also with the new cube formulae it will be possible to cube cruel bows with more than 2 sockets, but according to what I've recently read the only base 0 speed bow which will be able to to this is the Ward.

I haven't DL'ed 1.10 but I've talked to a friend who has, and I've read some posts by players who have extracted various parts of the code, from which some technical specs and limitations can be derived.

It's a great game but truly I should have spent most of the time I spent on it the last 2.5 years playing poker instead. For the record I attribute most of the time thus wasted to a mid-life crisis and to escapism. 99 Zon (MF, migrated from Classic), 98 Zon (coolest one, most original, my fav;-)), 94 Zon (dueler), 92 Zon (ex-dueler), 90 Zon (jav), 90 Sorc (waiting on patch for skill and stat assignments), 87 Barbarian (Iron Skin), 85 Barbarian (Speed Barb for running down zons, etc... I had over 200% faster run on him plus level 14 speed--they often never knew what hit them;-))--all you'd hear would be "WTF???", 86 Necromancer mostly waiting on patch, 82 Sorc (Orb/Static from Classic...when she got to 1.07 she couldn't kill a zombie, now muling), 82 Necromancer (ex-dueler from Classic)....I'm really a nut.

[Vehn]

I've been playing off and on for the past 3 years as well, all HC. If you now have a stable connection I strongly strongly recommend it, it makes for an entirely different challenging game. I play (but haven't much recently) through the abasin games and therefore don't see all of the hacked crap I know is out there. I'd like to hope it all get solved in 1.10 but I doubt it knowing Blizzard's past. Will be interesting though at least, hopefully will make the HC ladder mean something again.