Contact with the Greeks

  Found the Greek capital.  They are a pretty strong early army, got to make sure I don’t get rushed.

  Discovered Calendar – cool, now it is time for me to start keeling the barbarians to buy a worker.  Actually, I am behind.  The Continent is pretty big and I lost track of time.  Ah well, so it is written - so it is done.

  In addition to Calendar, I have the opportunity to found a religion.  I am the first.  Yippee!  The map shows I will have a fair number of plantations – so I’ll take that bonus.

  Even though I haven’t been building many military units, I am still in 5^th place.  Not to bad.  I have a shrine up and running, working on a monument, and after that is complete – I will start another Pathfinder.

  I can adopt a policy – I went with Liberty.  I want the worker and settler.  And the Great Person will be nice eventually.

  My civ just discovered Horse riding.  I think I should go ahead with Archery to beef up the military.  If you don’t stay at least reasonably strong, the AI will start to go after your civ.

  It is RAMPAGING BARBARIANS time – goodness gracious.  Finally cleared out enough of the barbarians to make it worth buying a worker.  Off he goes to the Banana Plantation!  Oh wait, I can’t clear the jungle yet – sigh.  Time to build a farm I guess.

   Cap City completed an Archer.  I think there is a need for a bit more gold (there are only so many barbarian camps and I have lost one unit already.)  So, Cap City will build a caravan.

Obamacare, Hitler, hilarity is the result

You knew it was only a matter of time:

H/T Patterico's Pontifications

The Coming Ice Age

Via Instapundit:

So, how many people remember the Times cover about the coming Ice Age?

  What are the odds that some professor will claim the declining world temperatures are the result of pollution?  Oh. wait. that's been done.

Pollution blocks the warming rays of the sun.

Craptacular

The ability of Prezzy O to talk about the exact opposite of what he doing.

Remember:  If you like your coverage, you can keep it.  'cause.

Another Day, Another Civ Found

  I met the first of the other Civs – the Byzantines.  Hopefully, we aren’t together on a small continent where her special naval units have the advantage.

  Pottery!  As soon as I complete the warrior, time for a shrine.

  First natural wonder discovered.  Unfortunately, it may not be close enough to get inside my countries borders.  We will see which way I start pushing out the new settlements.

  Second warrior is on the map.  Now I can really start exploring.  Started a Shrine instead of a Monument – my native bonus is more land acquired upon establishing a settlement than any other civ.  I need the religion first as I want to maximum latitude in select belief bonuses.

  I am indeed fortunate.  I have met 3 spiritual city states on the continent.  I was ‘first’ at two of them, and not ‘first’ at one.  I have 20 points toward a religion.  Only need 10 more.   I hope.

  Just met my second Civ foe, they are the Egyptians.  Fortunately, there is a fair amount of jungle between them and me.  Their horse archers should be less of a threat.

  Greeks identified.  I guess I barely beat them to Jerusalem.  

That's it for today!

My Civ V Game

  Started a new Civ V game - Initial set up:  no ruins, max number of city states, max number of civilizations and the map is huge.  Yes, I am a glutton for punishment, and yes, it takes a while.

  And so, the madness begins. 

   I took a chance and moved NE along the river and nearer a pasture.  Founded my capital city – we shall call it (in an incredible amount of originality) “Capital City”.  

  Whoo hoo!  Cotton and sugar!!!  I am going for Pottery so I can leap to calendar and start using the luxury items.  Plus, I should get a jump towards founding a religion.  This is especially important as there are no ‘ruins’ in this game.

I'll up date more as I progress in the game.

USA and KSA (Kingdom of Saudia Arabia) aka Saudi Arabia

Well, the U.S. seems to have hit a bit of a rough patch:

“They [the Americans] are going to be upset—and we can live with that,” said Mustafa Alani, a Saudi foreign policy analyst. "We are learning from our enemies now how to treat the United States.”

Smart.  Diplomacy.  'cause.

Armed Citizens to help prevent terrorism, in EUROPE????

Really, this is awesome: Interpol Chief - Armed Citizens

Not really related, but I think the Man from UNCLE was part of Interpol.

This will end well - I hope:  Pivot to the Pacific

As stated scientifically by the previous post (and you don't want to be a denier ya know) - Tea Parties are at least as 'scientific' as any other group.

Now, on to political realities - Tea Party - America's Life Line

Let me add an international twist:

I am a Brazilian self-taught Software Engineer. I also taught myself English, to the point where I managed to hold a Cambridge CPE, despite the fact that I've never stepped on anglophonic soil and zero formal training. So my analytic and reasoning faculties seem to be in working order.

. . . . . 

Brazil is also a country where:

- the utter government control of the private sector trough bureaucracy managed to destroy entrepreneurship. To the point that it exists, it has to deal with the accepted fact of life that the bribes which feed the corrupt bureaucrats demand to allow business to exist have to be factored in business plans.


- a crushing tax burden that sustain a permanent dependent underclass of favelados in welfare ensures the populists remain eternally in power and that any semblance upward mobility is quickly "corrected". For an employer to put 10.000 in the pocket of an employee, with will costs him nearly 18.000, so jobs market are always tepid at best so informal work and tax dodging schemes are commonplace.

More, much more, at the link.

H/T Ace of Spades HQ

Yale Professor Amazed at Study Finding.

Yale Study - Self Described Tea Party Member and Science

"It turns out that there is about as strong a correlation between scores on the science comprehension scale and identifying with the Tea Party as there is between scores on the science comprehension scale and Conservrepub.  

Except that it has the opposite sign: that is, identifying with the Tea Party correlates positively(r = 0.05, p = 0.05) with scores on the science comprehension measure:

Again, the relationship is trivially small, and can't possibly be contributing in any way to the ferocious conflicts over decision-relevant science that we are experiencing.

I've got to confess, though, I found this result surprising. As I pushed the button to run the analysis on my computer, I fully expected I'd be shown a modest negative correlation between identifying with the Tea Party and science comprehension.

But then again, I don't know a single person who identifies with the Tea Party.  All my impressions come from watching cable tv -- & I don't watch Fox News very often -- and reading the "paper" (New York Times daily, plus a variety of politics-focused internet sites like Huffington Post & Politico).  

I'm a little embarrassed, but mainly I'm just glad that I no longer hold this particular mistaken view."

H/T Ace of Spades HQ

Tea Party vrs Rep. Establishment

This:

http://minx.cc/?post=344211

Ummmm, did I mention Firefly?

Well, ya.  Duh.

A song of love and betrayal.

Dude - this is like saying, "Hold my beer, watch this sh@t"  I hope it works.

Nov 1st, Two Words - Ender's Game.

The only movie I have actually wanted to go to a movie theater to see in years:

Ender's Game.  Great book - actually, great series of books.  Go read, see this.

Renewal

Hey all,

  Gonna try and start this up again.  I will expand it beyond just BBQ/Smoken.  While that is great and all, there are only so many ways you can talk about 'putten flesh on the fire'.

Laters,