(Link courtesy of CNN.com -- new OK Go videos are http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/28/showbiz/m ... hpt=hp_bn9 there.)
 
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

The Internet is 45 years old, today. October 29th, 2014.

________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

...Dr. Strange.  To be played by http://deadline.com/2014/10/benedict-cu ... st-862815/]#]Benedict Cumberbatch!
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

So ask researchers http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/mon ... -election/:

Quote:Could control of the Senate in 2014 be decided by illegal votes cast by non-citizens? Some argue that incidents of voting by non-citizens are so rare as to be http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-f ... oter-fraud, with efforts to block fraud a screen for an agenda to prevent poor and minority voters from exercising the franchise, while others define such incidents as a threat to itself. Both sides depend more heavily on anecdotes than data.

In a http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 9414000973 in the journal Electoral Studies, we bring real data from big social science survey datasets to bear on the question of whether, to what extent, and for whom non-citizens vote in U.S. elections. Most non-citizens do not register, let alone vote. But enough do that their participation can change the outcome of close races.

Quote:How many non-citizens participate in U.S. elections? More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010.

Because non-citizens tended to favor Democrats (Obama won more than 80 percent of the votes of non-citizens in the 2008 CCES sample), we find that this participation was large enough to plausibly account for Democratic victories in a few close elections.

Quote:The progressive think tank http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/ ... n-today-3/ puts the number of noncitizens in the U.S. at 22.1 million in 2012. Of these, “13.3 million were legal permanent residents, 11.3 million were unauthorized migrants, and 1.9 million were on temporary visas.” These numbers are roughly consistent with numbers offered by the http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/sta ... e_2011.pdf (.pdf) and http://kaiserhealthnews.org/news/health ... mmigrants/. So let’s take 22 million as our number of noncitizens.

Richman and Earnest estimate that 6.4% of noncitizens voted in 2008. 6.4% of 22 million is 1,408,000.

That’s 1.4 million illegal votes likely cast in the presidential election of 2008.

Richman and Earnest also estimate that 2.2% of noncitizens voted in 2010. (In off-year elections, such as 2010 and the approaching election in 2014, turnout is obviously lower.) 2.2% of 22 million is 484,000. That’s nearly half a million illegal votes likely cast in the election of 2010 (and the same number could be cast in the upcoming election).

Quote:We also find that one of the favorite policies advocated by conservatives to prevent voter fraud appears strikingly ineffective. Nearly three quarters of the non-citizens who indicated they were asked to provide photo identification at the polls claimed to have subsequently voted.

Happy United Nations Day to all Macrossians and Haloites.
Edit:
Also, Today:1648 – The Peace of Westphalia is signed, marking the end of the Thirty Years' War. {Mentioned for all of Flint's folks out there.}1901 – Annie Edson Taylor becomes the first person to go over Niagara Falls, in a barrel.1926 – Harry Houdini's last performance, which is at the Garrick Theater in Detroit.1929 – "Black Thursday" stock market crash on the New York Stock Exchange.1947 – Walt Disney testifies before the House Un-American Activities Committee, naming Disney employees he believes to be communists.1973 – Yom Kippur War ends.2003 – Concorde makes its last commercial flight.1930 – Born: The Big Bopper (Jiles Perry "J. P." Richardson, Jr.), American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1959).1952 – Born: David Weber, American author. {Heirs of the Empire fans SALUTE!}1601 – Died: Tycho Brahe, Danish astronomer and alchemist (b. 1546)1972 – Died: Jackie Robinson, American baseball player (b. 1919)1991 – Died: Gene Roddenberry, American captain, screenwriter, and producer, created Star Trek (b. 1921) {All Trekkies laktra and say oyori... that's "grieve" and "good-bye" in Vulcan... anywho...}
And looking toward tomorrow:
1760 – George III becomes King of Great Britain. {And pretty much guaranteeing the American Revolution, the moron.}1917 – Traditionally understood date of the October Revolution, involving the capture of the Winter Palace, Petrograd, Russia. The date refers to the Julian Calendar date, and corresponds with November 7 in the Gregorian calendar. {Here's lookin' at you, Mal.}1920 – After 74 days on hunger strike in Brixton Prison, England, the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney dies.1940 – Benjamin O. Davis, Sr. is named the first African American general in the United States Army.1944 – World War II: Battle of Leyte Gulf — the largest naval battle in history, takes place in and around the Philippines between the Imperial Japanese Navy and the U.S. Third and U.S. Seventh Fleets. Afterward is the first Kamikaze attack of the war.1962 – Nelson Mandela is sentenced to five years in prison.1971 – The United Nations seats the People's Republic of China and expels the Republic of China {Reaaaaal smart, people. -_-;}1888 – Born: Richard E. Byrd, American admiral (d. 1957)1912 – Born: Minnie Pearl, American actress and singer (d. 1996)1921 – Died: Bat Masterson, American journalist and police officer (b. 1853)

Actually a result of me trying to practice something from a training course in the job. Small businesses.... multiple hats

-----------------------------------------------------------------

To: "Jet Jaguar"
From: "Andy Okemba"
SUBJ: Final Draft of Asagiri campaign

Hi Jet,

I've got the final draft of the campaign together. We'd just like to sort out a few things before we go ahead and pull the trigger.

Anyway, first thing's first. Like we discussed with the Three Rings, what yous're doing wrong is that yous're focusing in too much on what it does, rather than who does it. People don't buy the product, they buy the people, and the image of the people who make it. They buy why you do things first, then how you do them, then what you do. So we Start with Why and let your passions show.

I think our copy text captures this nicely.

Quote:We are Asagiri

We believe in speed.

We believe that every great advance in history has been built on the advancement of speed.
We don't believe in just pushing the envelope, we believe in shredding it.

We are the ones for whom it is never fast enough.

So we make things that go faster.

JF-21 light racer - The distillation of speed.
Mz-23 Judy Heavy Motoroid – the fastest 2 wheeled motoroid in Fenspace.
RF-047 Kulbit - Winner of the 2024 ARR Warbird's Championship.
RF-155E - Fenspace' fastest computer system.

Order Here.

... and following The Games We Play for last couple weeks, I've gotten to wondering...  does anyone know if there's been a Harry Potter/The Gamer crossover written yet?
Oh, and I have a great idea for a Ranma/The Gamer crossover -- that canon Ranma already is a Ranma/The Gamer crossover.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

I haven't seen this topic described on these forums, and since it's had a lot of political under- and overtones, I figured that the Politics subsection would be the best place to put it. I also wanted to get it off my chest to an extent. Anyway:

The #GamerGate saga is a rather messy affair. Know Your Meme has more details, and there's still more elsewhere (for example, "A People's History of GamerGate" and this timeline).

The following links are required viewing (and I can't stress this enough):

Here is a series of editorials published on TechRaptor.Net that explains what the controversy is about and why it's so important:
"Good Morning, Orthodoxy! #1"
"Good Morning, Orthodoxy! #2"
"Good Morning, Orthodoxy! #3"
"Good Morning, Orthodoxy! #4"
"Good Morning, Orthodoxy! #5"
"Good Morning, Orthodoxy! #6: Reflections"

As well, please look through the images in the following collection:
http://knowyourmeme.com/search?context= ... we+fight")

But if you still need a TL;DR rundown, then here it is:

Basically, a few months ago an ex-husband of a game developer named Zoe Quinn wrote up a bunch of posts claiming that quinn had been sleeping with several people, including at least one game journalist. Said journalist was one of those who later gave the developer's game a high ranking. The claims smacked of corruption in game journalism.

Now, "games journalism" and "corruption" had pretty much gone hand in hand, and previous incidents saw some outcry but not much in the way of lasting effects. The "Quinnspiracy," as this latest incident came to be called, could've gone the same way had certain people in certain positions not done certain things that in fact ended up happening.

The trouble started in mid to late August when certain large forums (either related or unrelated to gaming) started banning "Quinnspiracy" discussions; for quite a few people this understandably smacked of censorship and possibly even outright coverup. Word began to spread regarding this behavior, the hashtag "#GamerGate" was born, an obvious allusion to the infamous coverup that led to the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon.

Then, on August 28, a series of articles appeared on a number of games journalism sites, all of them claiming that "gamers" were pretty much every negative nerd stereotype that you could think of, and that that "demographic" was being "killed" by increasing diversity among people who play games. This riled up a LOT of gamers, many of whom are indeed diverse, as they were pretty much being slimed unfairly by the media. This led to the hashtag "#NotYourShield" in an effort to prove that the media was actually attacking a stereotype that had long been incorrect.

The timing of the articles (which appeared within several hours or so of each other) also felt strange. Digging uncovered a "journalist list" where discussions between games journalists took place, and among their messages was quite a lot of evidence of collusion in regards to the "gamers are dead" stories.

Meanwhile (and this is where the political angle starts rear its ugly head), the saga began to evolve into yet another battle in the culture wars, with large numbers of claims by the anti-GG side that the pro-GG side was still mainly filled with white male bigots (as for the evidence to the contrary offered by NYS, they were dismissed as merely images, with those who posted them being told that they were really white male bigots. See a problem here yet?).

Then you start to add in the rape and death threats that have been thrown out by lunatics on both sides. Interestingly, many on the pro-GG side have actually been policing this kind of stuff more effectively than those on the anti-GG side.

In the meantime, despite all the stuff tossed at GG, it's made some strides. They managed to convince a number of companies to pull their advertisements from Gawker Media, which owns the publications that ran the original batch of "gamers are dead" articles. And yet, the fight doesn't seem to be over, not by a long shot.

On the pro-GG side, you have a very diverse people (of all races, sexes, creeds, political/religious beliefs, etc.), most all of whom are simply wanting some accountability and ethics to be returned to games journalism, unfortunately mixed in with certain elements who really are bigoted people in some ways (although the former group has been putting in laudable efforts to keep the latter group in check for the most part).

On the anti-GG side, you have those who are genuinely concerned about diversity in the games industry, unfortunately lumped in with people who are determined to cram their own political beliefs down people's throats at all costs.

In between, you have those who just want to stay neutral, and try to get both sides to have some kind of civilized dialogue between them. Unfortunately, a lot of stuff has been preventing such dialogue from taking place (typically the levels of vitriol that stuff like Twitter unintentionally support due to their very nature).

So, what are your thoughts on all this?

All his stories have been taken off TTH, and the profile page just says

"He jumped, he was not pushed.

RIP - 10/22/2014"

which seems... altogether rather ominous.

Edit: link
http://www.tthfanfic.org/Author-375/JoeHundredaire.htm
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

So I know a few people here brew...

But I'm curious as to what people actually like to drink.

Recently, I've been slipping into Whiskey out of a need to cut back on my beer drinking because that was getting expensive, but I've still got time for some particularly delicious beers. And while I tend to prefer Lagers, my favourite still has to be Guinness. But a very specific Guinness. The standard Draught Pint available in many pubs and bars around the world is just watery, burnt, bogwater compared to the true Guinness, the thick roast treacle that is Foreign Extra Stout. It's everything that Guinness should be, with far more sweetness to it than the base Guinness draft, even if the hop-level has been cut up. There's just a monster amount of flavour in there, so tat even a numb-tongue like myself can tell the difference. Mouthfeel is like a thin treacle, clinging to the tongue and lingering when the basic draught just washes off and is gone.

The thing is, all Guinness starts out like this. It's all brewed at a high gravity. It's just normally watered down for consumption before being kegged and shipped. If they made more

Diageo have been caught on the back foot by the emergence of the craft beer brewers, and they've responded by releasing a few new variants of the standard Guinness - supposedly based on 'rediscovered' recipes. But they've had the answer all along, hidden behind a golden yellow label. That nobody seems to know about. Do yourself a favour, try a bottle of FEX and see what Guinness is supposed to be before it becomes a watered-down mass-market commodity product. It's genuinely one of the best things I've ever had to drink. And prisingly few people know it exists - and those who do, normally associate it with the watered-down nitrogenised variant and just pass it over.

Just don't try too much. At 7.5% in the bottle, it packs a small punch. I just finished a pint of it. And you'll struggle to enjoy the standard brew again. My pint glass emptied, I have no more left. And the standard draught guinness is just a pale shadow of the real deal.

(And some full disclosure... I do have a source at the source..... ahem.)
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?