It's not a dichotomy as I was arguing that the duel photograph is justified under criminological purposes, not religious indulgence. If were adoption of Sharia Law, no photographs would be allowed at all. It isn't the state making women wear the hijab or the police force giving the woman a veil. I would photograph a Sikh with and without his turban on.

If you are unfamiliar with a line-up, they give you a selection of similar traited people. In this case, 5 women dressed alike, if you look no further than fabric they are wearing over a particular part of their body, you'll never recognize the individual.

I wonder if this is at all like how the women in flapper dresses disapproved of the conservative ankle-coverers.

Trumper, you are correct their is not one national or international code or regulation of signal phase lengths. However, there are industry-wide accepted calculations that are used with a limited degree of variability. A car stopped at a red light, must accelerate and clear the intersection. Depending on the number of lanes per traffic and the expected turning volume, the range will vary from location to location and sometimes even by time of day. Singal engineers are more concerned with network flow and congestion than earning revenue, so the light will be optimized for the lowest theoretical delay to each direction of traffic.

When you are speaking of speed limit cameras, spot cameras are of little use and average speed cameras actual modify driver behaviour. If they have 3 spot cameras within a mile, it sounds like they'd have been better installing an Average Speed Camera system. As such, it would only send out 1 ticket for driving too fast along the path. In your specific area, there is at least a slight history of serious injury with a collision in March 2011. I wasn't able to find a collision database for Maryland off hand, but from the placement, I might suggest they are more politically motivated than safety justified.

Vic, that webpage is too biased to credited. The only references it cites are itself. Vehicles travelling faster than average have the lowest gross rate of accidents, yet the highest severity index. You can have 100 fender-benders at 5-10 mph in stop and go traffic, but it's not as bad as 1 head-on collision at 120 mph net. Engineers are constantly trying to provide a world where we don't kill ourselves by accident, yet we continually push the limits of safety beyond the breaking points.

In traffic engineering findings the vehicles traveling faster than average have the lowest accident rates, yet they are the primary targets of speed enforcement. To this we can now add, with speed limits there was no positive correlation between speed enforcement and accident rates on rural free flowing highways, if anything, the highways became less safe.

Ineffective speed enforcement on rural free-flowing highways has no positive correlation to accident rates, as effective speed enforcement is required to reduce collision fequencies. I don't have references to hand, but the UK has had a number of sucessful trials of average speed cameras for construction sites, reducing the number of tickets issued by a factor of ~80 and collision rate by ~10 from 7-year historic averages.

Also, we are starting to learn sometimes we need to slow down to speed up. Variable Speed Limits on the M25 and M6 around London and Birmingham allow traffic engineers to manage the growth rate of a tailback after a collision, as such they clear the traffic jam faster, and average speeds rise even as people have to drive slower for 10-20km.

That said, with proper regulation of vehicles and drivers, there is no need for a maximum speed limit of segregated 6-lane highways built to a sufficient standard.

The Republican Party is caught up in reactionism. Until the teaparty surge dies down, they won't be able to make any sort of logical or reasonable steps to the political center.

There is a definate moderate body on both sides of the debate that what to protect when necessary and get out the way elsewhere, and thereby provide effective governance at the lowest price point. However, they are split into minority positions in both parties, and parisan politic reign as the best opposition candidate is elected.

We need to pass a world-wide referendum on a one-world democratic government that strips out all the regional pandering and applies logic and reason as its basis. Otherwise, we'll just get their piecemeal as the WTO and such standardize our affairs and open holdouts over the decades.

I think you are overlooking the concept of a national identity. China, India, Indonesia, USA, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia, and Japan all have strong identitic histories of a specific group of people and customs. If the deterious effects of current governance tip the scales, the people of a common identity will rise up and reform along ideas currently envogue.

1) China - Has massive foreign currency reserves, a population of 1.34m projected to peak in 2030 at 1.40m with over 50% now living in urban areas. They are raising state paid education from 9 years to 12, allowing One-Child Couples to have 2 children, and raising minimum wages. The common Chinese language and 92-98% Han population represent a commonality that has survived one conquest after another. I don't approve of all their policies, to put it nicely, but they are stable enough for another 100 years.

2) India - Is another ancient society, but a multicultural one. There are 31 Indian national languages, but only English and Hindi nation wide. The empire was forged by the Monguls, not the British though. There is so much poverty in India that there is a common spirit and it is a true religious melting pot with more Christians than England and more Jains than Iran. Democracy is flurishing, although struggling with the enormity of their situation. Over the last decade, it's pulled it's Corruption Index up from 2.7 to 3.3, a long way to go still, but a solid voice in government.

3) USA - The US tried to break up once, and was brought back at the point of a gun. What would stop Washington from declaring Marshall Law and sending the military against a state in sucession? If you aren't talking about a dissolution of the United States, China and Europe are too heavily invested to let the nation walk away. The American Dream for the last 50 years is that they government can spend more money than taxes are collected. I expect decades more of languishing for the US 'recovery', but the devaluation of America will be the rise of world income. The US has a history of coming up with a game-changer, though. Any new industry based in America could give the US economic hope beyond 2030. The US will continue to push other nations to spend on joint military as it scales back it's own. We continue the slow march to unified world governance.

4) Indonesia - Undergone governmental reform in the last 7 years, increasing direct accountability. They might be prone to fractionalization, but money from the central government keep the districts willing to stay in union, after seeing the neglect and mismanagement of Nauru. As of 2010, an estimated 13.3% of the population was living below poverty line, and the unemployment rate was 7.1%. A multi-ethic mostly segregated society the local governance has taken over from 350 years of Dutch supervision.

5) Brazil - The Portuegese half of South America didn't fracture into regional states like the Spainish half, so why would it now? Brazil is done will in the first decade of this century. They've been purging corruption and prohibitive trade practices. The economy is expanding with some 200k hectacres of American farmland now replaced by Brazilian farmers. Gone of the days of TV Shows with janitorial jobs as prizes. The language connection gives strong roots with Portugal and the EU, as well as unity against the Spainish surrounding. Any state that might breakaway would like to claim the rainforests. It'd be a bloody mess, but no worse that what's ongoing in Columbia or Nicaragua.

6) Pakistan - aka Muslim India. They are united by culture and religion. One of the few major non-Arab Islamic countries, it has a spirit of unity and persecution at the hands of Mongols, British and Hindus in turn. The military rule should not outlast 50-80 years, but maybe an 'Arab Spring' might come sooner than expected. Again, no sense of the group disintergating, only the current specific governance.

7) Nigeria - Debt free and people rich. The first country in Africa to clear its national debt, Nigeria is now investing heavy on infrastructure penetration. Again, democracy tendencies have sprung up in the last 12 years. They had elections this year after an encumbant died in office, and a Dr. Goodluck Jonathan filled the gap and stepped aside for the elected president. The are funding the rehabilitation of Lake Chad and building a large hydro-electric dam to bring both fresh/desalinated water and electricity from the shore inland. Corruption is bad, but most of Africa is, but the potential and desire for change is there.

8) Bangladesh - A case that shows the strength of cultural identity, Bangladesh has little effective government and massive poverty. Smaller governance groups would not elevate that poverty without the same investment of knowledge and resources. The people of Bangladesh endure, they could become 12 countries, but to what purpose?

9) Russia - A country of patchwork nations with a uniting language base. The USSR already broke up, and while a few parts of Russia might not want to stay in the union, they are by no means allowed to consider leaving. Russia has the nukes and other weapons to make it happen and the nutballs willing to scrotch their own people to make a point. They also have the natural resources to continue playing at the game of states. The mixture of political structure, criminal structure, and economic prosperity means corruption there is just another form of success.

10) Japan - The most monolithic culture in the world, and a wacky one at that. Japan is a nation that has undergone tremendous change over the last 202 years since the Americas opened their ports at gun point. The Japanese are a mature and aging culture, who have seen the benefit of industrialization and worked with a commonality through building a nation, then rebuilding it after the war and dreams of empire.

None of these 10 population masses is going to seriously decline or fragment due to their overriding commonalities. It's the same reason Quebec stayed in Canada dispite all the frustrations and differences: because it's worth it.

Effective group size is affected by group linkages, and modern communication styles apply to a much more diverse pattern of usage making stats from the 1990s or early outmoded. I am mostly hoping to live to see a democratic revolution to replace the ineffective represtative model which is predisposed to power seekers, short-sighted planning, and political pandering.

You should just hire the Canadians or Austrilians to run the INS for you - skills based immigration.

Not disguise, everyday appearance. If you are going to commit to wearing a Santa Suit for the rest of your life, I'm going to take a mugshot of you in said suit when you commit a crime.

We go as far as common sense, and not non-existant extermes. This in the modern age, so it's not like a second mug shot costs material fees for film, it's all digital. It's 2 minutes of tax payer money that'll save thousands in prosecution charges later.

Christmas Trees are a waste of taxpayer money. Like the 10 Commandments and Creationism, it has no part in the state's function. The seperation of church and state is paramount, regardless of which church. We should look for economic efficiencies, not ideological pampering.

If you didn't have a photograph, could you pick a woman in a hijab out of a line up?

And next week after SOL vs MD/LCN is done pushing up demand? The 10-20% margin won't last as people undercut and demand smooths out. There are 56 Fascists out of ~800 countries in Alliance, that's 1 country per 2 in war and 1 LGing. A Fascist/Farmer can produce oil in these circumstances instead of building farms. If oil is over $200 in September, I will be surprised, unless there is another big war or two.

More land = more production sure, but to compare similar countries you have to compare equal land, so production per acre somes into play. It doesn't matter if you have a 5k, 20k, or 50k country, but you it isn't fair saying a 20k oiler outperforms a 5k casher, so an oiler is better than a casher.

The incremental cost of oil on LGing vs the production gained isn't much. Say a 1m jet PS, you'd need 40k barrels at $100-200 = $4-8m. For 100a over 1000t (2 weeks), it's $40/acre. Most strategies produce $400-600 per acre, so it's a 10-20% cost. Oiler prices over $200 are not sustainable, as it dampens demand as it peaks, or draws supplimental production to take advantage of the better production per acre.

If they are drinking coffee outside during winter where it's cold enough to need a ski mask, they aren't very sucessful bank robbers.

If they weren't taking a regular mug shot as well, I'd have an issue with this, but this is a cross-reference of what an individual looks like in and out of religious garb. If someone's walking around as Bobofet, I'd take a picture of him in the gettup as well as out.

It's not a caving to interest groups, it's suplimental information and documentation. A person is only unidentifiable if you don't know what they look like, and this second photo means we'll know what they look like in more circumstances.

BTW, you're prejudgist in this case, not racist. It's a cultural issue, not a skin tone issue.

Bank robbers don't often go for coffee in ski masks, otherwise you might have a point.

highrock, if you read my initial post, I suggested nerfing oil production in combination with adding oil tech to increase demand by reducing the ability of famers and indies to profit off it as a secondary product. Without tech, there is no penalty for them to throw up a few rigs to cash in on peaks.

A potential for greater profit from oil offset by a greater expense to reach that level, and more exclusive production at peak rates, reducing supply from marginal oilers.

Are you so bigoted that you disapprove of taking two mug shots? If that's what the person will be wearing in public, doesn't it make sense to know what that individual looks like in a hiqab? To me it's good police work, not culutural sensitivity.

There is no such thing as "right". It's completely a matter of perspective. We need to stop infering values on decisions and judge them by their value to society. This makes it harder for Muslim repeat offenders to hide behind the veil of anonymity.

You can't build more without more land, and more land doesn't improve your production per acre.

A 20k farmer needs 544k tech to get 227% production. Let's say tech is expensive at $5k, that's $2.72b more in stock an oiler might have by not buying tech. However, that farmer would produce 228k bushels a turn (19k farms) compared to 66.5k barrels. That's 65% extra income using private market values, $2.6m per turn, or two weeks of turns in Alliance.

The only advantage of an oiler to spend money on buildings instead of tech is to switch strategies and rebuild as a MBR. While not having technology is the strength of the weak oiler strategy we now have, the only time it can compete or outperform is during exceptional circumstances.

Why would oil tech only make oiler worse? Every other building type and strategy can improve efficiency as the round goes on. Without technology, you can make up the difference with extra land, but any strategy with extra land is better than the same with less.

There is a price floor in Express, but at $60 barrel vs $29 bushel, it only takes 137% Agri tech to out perform it or 119% as a Fasc/Farmer. At a higher floor, $77 per barrel (less if you assume decay), it's more profitable for non-Fascists to do an oiler start-up instead of a farmer start. At which point, an actual oiler has 0 market for the first week.

Oil use to market would be good to balance MBRs.

At the worst you get reading material for another time, and help out those higher on the bell curve. ;)

Aye, fair enough, I was thinking land masses when I said "the Earth".

That's not what qz said on this other thread.

http://forums.earthempires.com/...is-o-ally-strength-calc-d

Unfortunately, in Ontario the majority of cigarettes now sold come from Native reserves, tax-free. I don't know what a carton goes for nowadays, but the tax is 12.35¢ per cigarette or $24.70 per carton of 200 cigarettes, 40% of $61.75.

Any carcinogen exposure builds up after the level of the body's ability to self-repair is exceeded. Char, smoke, benzene - it doesn't matter if it's from tobacco, gasoline, or marijuana - all have a deterious effect on the body over the long term.

If you are serious about tobacco use, have you tried an e-cigarette or vaporizer? They allow the tobacco to subliminate instead of burning, reducing the negative side effects while delivering flavour and nicoteen.

Intro to AI - 89529 have signed up!

You might argue that, but where is your basis? By the mere fact that there are vastly more people earning under $100K a year than over $1M per year, it means that there will be significantly more volume of "poor crime" even if there is a higher percentage of "rich crime".

I'm not saying that poor people are more criminal than rich people, I'm saying more criminals are poor than rich. As you say, rich criminals have more resources to cover over their doings, and the statistics only count the ones who are caught.

Some references if you're interested: http://cjr.sagepub.com/...ort?rss=1&ssource=mfc

I don't have an issue with having a handful of nukes in the world, but we have more than necessary for a deterant. It's a waste of money and resources.

The largest nuclear bombs have an explosive energy of several tens of megatons, or about 10^17 Joules, whereas the Earth's rotational energy is around 10^29 Joules. The amount of fault-moving ("Earth-slimming") energy from the 2004 Tsunami earthquake (magnitude 9.3) was estimated at more than 10&^22 Joules, or roughly 100,000 times that of the biggest nuclear bombs. Russia and the United States have the potential capacity to release 2.6^22 Joules — or approximate 25% of the energy of the 2004 tsunami-causing earthquake.

That's just shear energy without looking at tactical strikes it is more than enough to sterlize the Earth.

The report on a genetic connection to intelligence is true, but Watertowers attempted to manipulate the facts of the report.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/.../2011/08/110811215420.htm

There is no factual basis for a genetic link to criminalty after accounting for economic circumstances. Meaning poor people are more likely to commit crimes than the rich. As the US has a high correlation between Latino and Black populations and poverty, there are linkages if left unexamined.

I believe Terror hit it on the head. When you treat someone consistantly like a criminal, at some point they'll stop fighting against it. When you treat everyone consistantly with respect, they'll respect you back until you fail them.

You can't make something idiot proof, but you can make it retard resistant.

Not every execution in the US costs $250 million, but at least some porportion of them do. The number might have come from someone's ass, but not mine. It's from the "Report of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice (2008)" http://www.ccfaj.org/...ORT%20DEATH%20PENALTY.pdf

I'm not as naive as you might think. I believe no one really wants to be a herion addict. There is always a reason or story behind their fall from grace. So we can either ignore the issue as we currently do, until the grow too brazen and we smack them down, or we can try to reduce the scope of the problem by thinning the herd. Similar to Insite in vancouver, which offers free needles and a medically-supervised safe-injection site, I would attach the condition of counselling and harm-awareness to a purchase with an offer of rehab. Yes, most people will roll their eyes and ignore it, but each one that listens is one less herion addict in the world. I would use price and quality to undercut the crime syndicates, and put that money is public coffers to fund the program, instead of into Hell's Angel's bank accounts.

Looking at the Swiss system, users offered unlimited quantities would, on average, max out at between 300 and 500 mg per day. A stable dose was achieved after 6 months at most; beyond this point, almost no further increases in dose were required. If a heroin addict could consume this dosage for $30-50, they would be able to pay for their habit legally. When they are spending $150+ a day, a minimum wage job isn't going to cut it.

People won't hire drug addicts and other criminals because they are known to break the law. If they weren't criminalized or incentivized to crime, there would be less objection to their rejoining mainstream society. The rejection of this segment is another social issue that needs to be overcome, but I'd try to do that through other means.

Vic, where is your mountain of evidence? I'd settle even for a scrap. Traffic Laws like Polution laws give us a common basis for interaction. Did you want that drunk driver charged with a crime for killing your family members? Did you think that your family deserved to die because they wanted to use a public road?

That's what you are saying when you opine "Traffic laws are a detriment to society at large". Go try driving in India or Azerbaijan and see how well it works or doesn't.

When traffic laws (or any other) are used for political or ideological purposes, they aren't as effective, but to say they are a detriment is beyond the pale.

Trumper, the speed reductions are most often because collisions are happening at too high a rate and the severity index skyrockets. A pedestrian has a 70% chance of survive a hit at 30mph and a 30% chance at 40mph. The yellow phase is generally set at a minimum by law, but occational is extended if their is a high volume of 'left-turn sneakers'.

Really? Why would people not use a freely available tool that would increase their income? It'd be like people not using a country search to find LG targets. It's your opinion though, and you are entitled to it.

Yep, there is a risk reselling on the tech market, but there is risk in LGing as well. Without some measure of risk you won't finish at the top.

If you didn't run red lights, you wouldn't get a ticket. If people know they will get a ticket at a particular intersection, they will break on the yellow rather than accelerate, as most of us do. With less people going through the intersection on yellow or all-red, there is a reduction in conflict movements where a T-bone might occur.

Head-on collisions cause more deaths and injuries than T-bones, but T-bones are much more common.

The reduction in accidents can be show to be statistically valve by using distributed model of historic collision rates and severity over a 7-year period.

If you are in the intersection prior to the light turning red, you will not receive a ticket, as it's legal to clear the intersection. If you have any other concerns about their operation or effectiveness, hit me up in a PM, I design transit and transportation infrastruction for a living.

You should be happy about the revenue all those ticket generate, as they pay for road improvements instead of using general tax dollars.

to bad? Did you even proof read this?

*Grabs the popcorn and settles down*

Weak war dec, Mak. Unchaining? Provoking or arousing would have been much more fitting. Lack of heart and effort.

I hope the LCN dec is less dry.

Express uses a compressed day. 6 hours is definately enough for DR to expire (experience from last round), I would suspect 4 hours is still enough.

There were approximately 3,254 people on the US death row as of May 7, 2011. Between 30-60 people are executed each year. In the 1990s, 200-300 people per year were placed on Death Row. In the 2000s, it's dropped to 112-160. Since 1973, 138 Death Row inmates have been exonerated, with 3.1 per year from 1973 to 1999 and 5 per year from 2000 onwards. With 4.5% of convictions being overturned per year, it'd be a bit rash to kill someone inside a month. 88% of criminologists believe executions do not lower crime rates. America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, keeping 1% of your populatin behind bars. The system as appled doesn't work. A "Hard on crime" approach removes the immediate issue while avoiding the causes underneath.

Do you think OJ Simpson got the right verdict? Why whould you expect a higher compentence level in other capital cases?

It costs California $114 million per year to keep convicts locked up for life. A single execution can cost more than $250 million. The cost of capital punishment is 70% more expensive as comparable to non-capital punishment.

Finally, Canada has very successfully decriminalized over the last two decades, having more guns per capita and less gun crime than the US, by removing minimum sentencing requirements and allowing judges to apply discression.

You know what a herion addict with do when they can purchase impure herion illegally at very high prices. What would a herion addict do if they could purchase uncontaminated herion legally at a cost conscious price from a legally licensed store in controlled quantities with proof of employment? Would they go out and break into a car, or would they get a minimum wage job flipping burgers, so they could get that next fix? As their prefered hobby isn't already excluded from legitimate society, they have more reason not to transgress against society to fulfill that hobby.

I don't have a single stroke solution to the full ball of inherited social issues, but what we've tried for the last hundred years hasn't worked, as your experiences highlight.

This strategium might have worked in the old days, but there is sufficient market news tools now that people can see the max and min for the last 24 hours and individual purchases over the last hour or four.

A small number of techers might be lazy and sell at this temporary low point, but there should be a greater number of active cashers and resellers to consume any reduced price goods. Personally as a non-Demo techer, if I see tech more than 13% below the current market ceiling, I'll buy it and resell it at a higher price.

However, if you were a clan of cashers with a couple techers, you could sell max bus/res tech at a reduced rate depress the market and the techer's income while the cashers increase income disproportionately.

That's market commission, not income tax, koon.

Tax is definately a "set it, and forget it" option that needs only be looked at once or twice.

An option might be to have the tax rate affect the frequence of printing money/tax rebate events. 35% may be optimal for income, but it might not be optimal for political unrest. A lower tax rate then would trigger the random event less often, but it would be a statistical trade off that you were taking a chance rather than setting a single value for a single parameter.

If you reduced the amount of oil needed without other adjustments, it would further reduce the use of an oiler as there is already. Probably as some point even a rainbow would have better income per acre.

What is wrong with having two similar, but different strategies, rather than one effective strategy and one ineffective building composition?

Without technology, an oil prices surge is limited to 150% of the income per acre of indies and farmers. Whereas oilers cannot take equal advantage of military or bushel surges due to the cost of entry needing millions in technology, at which point you aren't an oiler any more.

A split strategy of Fasc/Oiler+Farmer is effectively a farmer strategy with some oil rigs when profitable.

The only time an oiler outperforms is when 99% of the people have given up on it. It'd be like playing the only techer in tourney.

A cross-post from Express Talk, as this was my suggested modifications to make an oiler more competitive as compared to a farmer.

1) Nerf production to 1 barrel per rig per turn.
2) Add oil tech (100-250%).
3) Add oil decay.
4) Increase base oil price from $60 to $100.
5) Optionally, make consumption 1 barrel per unit, cost $4 per barrel, production of 25 barrels per rig.

This would allow a max tech Fascist (+50% oil) to produce 3.75 barrels per rig or 3.6 barrels per rig after full days turns.

However, this make a farmer start-up more profitable 70% per acre. At max tech though, a farmer would make 11.66 bushels per acre and an oiler 3.75 barrels per acre, 3.1x the output.

At $100 per barrel, without tech, the rate per acre is $153.7 per farm or $150 per rig; with max tech, it's $338.14 per farm vs. $375 per rig.

Finally, the volatility of oil could be reduced by reducing the consumption and price rates while increasing production (the opposite as Mehul did when he nerfed food by increasing prices by 10x and production and consumption by 1/10x to allow for greater market variation).

Changing the oil usage would not affect the ability of occational attackers playing a non-discriminate strategy (farmer/indy/oiler) to keep a few rigs for self use whenever the profitability of oil exceeded military or bushels. Only cashers and techers might still buy oil to attack, as MBR should be done with that.

Having an oil tech graduates oiler from a specialty to a strategy, because non-oilers cannot have comparible output without significant investment. When there is a shortage of oilers, oil tech would be cheaper and increase efficiency of the strategy. When there is an oversupply of oilers, oil tech would be expensive and constrain supply.

Overall, I don't think anyone is complaining about the addition of oil to the private market, but you still need to switch to an mid-game/end-game strategy and the 14% government change penalty halves the gains as compared to a farm start-up when playing with a government switch.



1) Nerf production to 1 barrel per rig per turn.
2) Add oil tech (100-250%).
3) Add oil decay.
4) Increase base oil price from $60 to $100.
5) Optionally, make consumption 1 barrel per unit, cost $4 per barrel, production of 25 barrels per rig.

This would allow a max tech Fascist (+50% oil) to produce 3.75 barrels per rig or 3.6 barrels per rig after full days turns.

However, this make a farmer start-up more profitable 70% per acre. At max tech though, a farmer would make 11.66 bushels per acre and an oiler 3.75 barrels per acre, 3.1x the output.

At $100 per barrel, without tech, the rate per acre is $153.7 per farm or $150 per rig; with max tech, it's $338.14 per farm vs. $375 per rig.

Finally, the volatility of oil could be reduced by reducing the consumption and price rates, the opposite as Mehul did when he nerfed food by increasing prices by 10x and production and consumption by 1/10x to allow for greater market variation.

The dynamics of this suggestion are all wrong. The last time Mehul adjusted Networths, everything was changed and that's necessary to keep the game balanced.

Hitting up in networth, a 20k acre country can expect 1-2k land back plus 0.5-1k buildings. At the suggested NW values, that's 340k NW to 680k NW. Meaning any LG where less than 1.13m jets were lost would result in gaining NW. For a 60k acre country near the end of the reset in Alliance, they would be sucessfully topfeed where losses were under 3.4m jets.

Also, this would generate many more ghost acres due to diminished relative damage. Assuming a pair of land traders starting at 10k land, country A at $5m NW ($900k non-land NW) and country B at $6m NW ($1.9m non-land NW).

B hits A for 1000 (1000). A - 9083a, 4.61m; B - 12000a, 6.68m (91.66% damage)
B hits A for 908 (900). A - 8317a, 4.28m; B - 13808a, 7.29m (84.50% damage)
B hits A for 831 (732). A - 7658a, 3.99m; B - 15371a, 7.29m (79.36% damage)

Under current conditions, the second and third hits would have near the same reduced damage as the first, meaning this change would generate 6.5% more land per hit on average.

Increasing the relative NW of buildings/land will incenticize LGing, but the values of 6x land and 4x buildings are too high relative to the value of Military+Technology.

As I see it, bonus points are needlessly inflated. Everything has been done in increments of 2, thereby limiting the effecting units.

Instead of having 2 PCI Booms for 6 points, have 1 PCI for 3 points.

Instead of an 8 point bonus to raise Resource Decay by -2.1%, why not have 1 point bonus to raise it by -0.26%?

By reducing each catagory to it's lowest divisor, it increases flexibility and usage.

A demo/farmer is better than a fasc/farmer, but that's just because Fascists are still useless. Starting as a demo farmer, you need not convert to demo until you have a decent amount of tech.

I played an Fascist Oiler in Express this round to get a feel for the differences in Earth Empires and Earth:2025. Without technology, the strategy is not competitive for the top ranks.

The market for oil was highly limited and I've sold the majority of my oil privately. As for attacking, there were several periods where there was no oil on the market, so I took the opertunity to sell it at $180. Tried oil at $250, but was consistantly undercut before selling any.

Attacking/Grabbing extensively this round, I enjoyed the exclusion of oil from LGs, as it protected my stockpile from hits, while conversely I could hit the cash/food/tech stockpiles of cashers/farmers/techers.

The changes are positive, IMO, but they don't go far enough to diversify the game.

Only 1 barrel sold though.

Rockman, the solution is fairly obvious. As you can't rely on the uncountability of rational numbers, you must prove an both an infinite number of power sets and an infinite number of dedekind cuts. However, that doesn't show uncountability.

That comes in where you use (A, B) and (C, D), where subset (A, B) is lower than subset (C,D) and B is lower than C. As A is lower than C, you have an a power set of cuts generated with every subsequent set beyond D.

Pang, determine your level of significance, then calculate F as (between group variability)/(witin group variability). If that F exceeds the F-critical, then it is statistical significant.

Zygotic, go to the West Midlands outside of Birmingham and Manchester, and you'll hear the neutral British accent. I find it funny when people talk about a "BBC Accent" because the different regional news all have different regional accents.

English is a bastard language, so new idioms can't really add to the bastardization of it. Just like Roman split into the Romance Language Family, English is splintering into regional and national tongues that only have the most common elements in common.

You want other American bastardizations: Like totally? Can I go to the bathroom? Turning 30? It's all good? My bad? Tax hike? Where's it at? I could care less?

Tirol did live in Canada, but he moved to Taiwan with two other Arrow heads around 2005, a bit before they went off to pay to play space pirates.

The cost savings in eliminating the Death Penalty comes with the need to provide legal aid to each inmate. The average Death Row inmate spends over 10 years on appeals. In 2008, they killed a man waiting 33 years and there is another who's been on Death Row for 38 years. If they actually killed the offending American within a year or two it would save money, but we're talking decades here.

Making drugs illegal doesn't stop people using them. Making drugs illegal doesn't stop criminals producing them. Making drugs illegal means the purity cannot be maintained, like food or alcohol, the labour production doesn't contribute to the economy, and the drugs produced aren't taxed.

People that want to abuse their bodies will, so why should we foot the bill completely when their health and family life goes to hell?

Pain, how do you know any particular break & enter is related to drug-need over alcohol-need? You don't hear about it because we can't tell them apart and alcohol gets lumped back in with all the other drugs.

People need to stop deciding that their way of doing things is the ultimate and other people are "backwards". People need to stop lumping individuals into a label and then attacking the label rather than addressing the issue directly.

Conservative Christians often have more in common with Conservative Muslims than Liberal Christians.

5) The problems of the world today are a result of the actions of the past. We face overpopulation in 2011 because we 'solved' global hunger for the most part in the 1970s.

4) Supporting children is proven to have a net possitive revenue for the state. Where a homeless, illiterate child is just a drain on society, enough people want a better life to cover the cost of those willing to dwell in squallor. Crime is as much a result of circumstances as it is a result of contempt for society's rules.

3) Support the rights of all, while realising anyone can use any motivation as a mask for their true actions and desires. Extremism, whether Christian (crusades), Muslim (9/11), or Atheist (Hitler/Stalin/Mao), should be frowned upon.

2) Marriage is a religous and economic observance. It has no merit except the special privledges we still reserve for this minority group.

1) Most people say racist when they mean prejudgist.

AE is just a money pit.