I voted at my usual place at 6:30 pm and waited maybe 10 minutes.

I never understood why we even allow those too dumb to operate something you vote with to vote. If they can’t even figure that out, they obviously lack the intellect to know one candidate from the other and probably don’t even know what the heck they’re voting for. Sometimes I wonder that we don’t have some sort of test of competence for people to vote, but I guess it’s too much trouble and would take too much time and money to ensure those voting actually know they’re voting, and what they’re voting for.

Well Smith?

I’m still waiting for the quoting of my stance on tech, as you so arbitrarily claimed existed.

Remind me, o immortal Smith… when was I the one to try to make the techs equal and get into a lengthy conversation with you about it? Keep in mind during your quoting, I would like the posting’s topic, the placement of every reply I made within the topic, and quotations of every remark I made during said conversation. I am not and never have been for the equalization of techs… I simply made a small number of postings (I can’t even recall posting more than one) on theories about how they could be made that way IF people wanted them to be, for use in THEIR games (not mine). I wasn’t the one to kickstart that idea, nor to even perpetuate it, nor to argue with you concerning it, mainly because in the games of A&A I do play, I never use tech anyway, and often call no tech before the game! So if you’re going to talk about what any one of us here has argued, do your research on who said what beforehand.

“Have I ever been right about anything?” Obviously, I must have been right about many things if I’m the person that even my professors turn to when they have questions about things, and whether they’re making errors within some lesson. To be honest, I question whether you have ever been right about anything. Frankly, you’re the only person here who thinks your ideas have any value whatsoever. Is that surprising? It shouldn’t be.

As you haven’t played me in A&A, you have no right or capacity for judging my ability or how I allow emotion to interact with it. In fact, I haven’t played a game on this site or ANY site on the net, or with any other people in any form other than on a board, in person. So you can’t even claim to have witnessed my playing the game, and therefore have no information on which you can draw any form of conclusion about skill level, knowledge, playing style, emotional interaction, etc… Furthermore, your comparing A&A playing ability to opinions of intellect is startlingly incoherent, frivolous, and downright silly for somebody of your “intellect.”

Calling yourself “enlightened” because you’ve read things, and referring to people who haven’t as “unenlightened,” reminds me of somebody. That “somebody” is myself when I was 14 years old, except that I had some modicum of logical, individual thought to back up my comments (rather than incoherent and simple quotations of others’ opinions that often do not apply to the lesson at hand). You haven’t even got that, and I presume that is why you resort to comparing “skill” at a board game that is based largely on dice-rolling as a method of argumentation (and yes, I do believe luck in battles is more important than luck in tech; I never said anything to the contrary, as, if you paid any attention to my statements, you would know).

You, sir, are a hypocrite as well: you claim that we are “ignorant” for being unable to consider opinions other than our own, and that you are “enlightened” for having read others’ opinions. Would you then tell me sir, how, using this belief system, can you claim that only those who follow your opinion of “enlightenment” are truly enlightened, and those who do not are automatically “ignorant”? Doesn’t this contradict your assumption that intelligence depends on consideration of others’ contributions to knowledge?

You fall into a class of people I refer to commonly as “Pseudo-Intellectuals.” This class contains people who have very little intellect and few ideas of their own, so to make themselves seem more intellectual and impressive (most often as an ego thing, but sometimes to impress a woman they couldn’t get any other way), they demean others and refer to them as “ignorant” to make themselves seem more “enlightened”. They have a tendency to analyze other people’s statements with an ability on par with the average 8 year old and then create a wordy response to their own poor analysis, to misquote people or only partially quote them in a manner that cuts out something giving further or opposing meaning to the statement, and will often quote the wrong person as having said something somebody else said. I believe there is a term in psychology for people like this, but I haven’t studied psychology deeply enough to know the name for whatever this condition is. All I know is that others who belong to this class include a guy from a previous school I attended who believes the USA itself is run by “free masons” who plotted the assassination of JFK and who dominates the globe, and that “Novus Ordo Seclorum,” which according to him translates from Latin into “New World Order” (by the way, I KNOW Latin, and it doesn’t), is a symbol of the USA’s dominance. He said - big surprise - that people who didn’t know this already were “unenlightened” and should learn more about conspiracy theory by - you guessed it - reading some book. There was also a “genius” named Bill in my high school who was much like you: life being nothing beyond strategy games and Star Trek, intellect nothing beyond having read some other people’s works and being able to quote them as if they were his only ideas, and ego inflated constantly by his demeaning of others. He arrogantly thought of himself as the only “enlightened” person among a zombie crowd… just like yourself! And one more, just because space limits me: myself 6 years ago, back when I used to be like you. I would quote authors whose works I didn’t even truly analyze, but that I thought sounded pretty, apply them to lessons I didn’t know anything about, and then refer to everyone else’s opinions as “ignorant” to make mine seem brighter (while I was in this sad and unfortunate state, I once stated that Plato probably had Down’s Syndrome because his statements disagreed with those of Locke). An ad hominem, am I using with this posting here? Perhaps, but I relish in it; for it is no more than you deserve, having spewed the granddaddy of ad hominems just now.

“All knowledge comes from previous knowledge?” All I have to say to that is “Guhhh… Burrr… Duh-hurr!” Would you please tell me then, Mr. Smith… where did the first piece of knowledge of the first man come from? Being the first, it could not have been based on existing ideas. Where did the first mathematical idea come from? Obviously not previous knowledge. How about the first alphabet man created? Not based on previous knowledge. Where did the first notion of God come from? How about the first idea to keep track of time and events, before man began recording history? The first time man had a philosophical thought that had nothing to do with survival? The first of ANYTHING, for that matter! To state they were based on previous knowledge causes a contradiction within their very statements as being the first of their kind, proving via said contradiction that all knowledge is NOT based on previous establishments thereof - unlike your rather unusual example of “proof by example,” something even the most elementary of mathematicians, philosophers, or simply logical people would make a great mockery of before telling you to simply “shove off.” “I just read something today were Isiah Berlin critiques the notion of Ulitiarianism. So obviously all knowledge comes from previous knowledge and is merely like layers on a cake.” That’s like saying “All numbers are prime. Take 23. 23 is a number and it’s prime. So all numbers are prime.” Obviously, this is not true.

“Thinking is a euphemism for prejudice”? I have never read a statement that was so blatantly formed by somebody who knew less of what he was talking than my 3 year old cousin Kate, so decided to use large words in his sentence that any 10th grader could see through. I did not even specify what I was referring to as individual thought, and therefore, you cannot judge whether I am being prejudiced against anything as my idea was not even specified! However, I can say YOUR opinion is strongly prejudiced, as you automatically presume that people who form original ideas rather than taking those from your favorite authors are ignorant. Or remind me… were you just using that word to make everyone else seem smaller so you would seem bigger, as a symptom of your Pseudo-Intellect? If so, I guess that might be forgivable.

You’re a sad man, Smith. It’s depressing for me to see someone with such intellectual potential as yourself prove himself unable to mature beyond his teenage years, and thereby prevent his intellect from maturing as well.

Methinks you’re the unenlightened one, sir. Basing every philosophy you have on a book you’ve read by an external source, and in particular claiming everyone else is unenlightened for not following this MAN’s work (and yes, that is all he is), how can you dare to call ANYONE unintellectual? An intellectual is one who takes established knowledge and uses it to form his own conclusions, thereby forming a personal opinion, not one who’s read a lot of opinions by other men and is able to regurgitate them at will. That’s the sign of a person who’s done lots of reading but very little thinking.

Brilliance takes both reading AND thinking. And to claim that somebody who hasn’t read a certain work of a certain mortal man, just as full of flaws as anyone else, shouldn’t voice an opinion, be it shallow or genius, is more than just a shallow philosophy; it’s an actively dangerous one that discourages intellectual improvement. It’s like my saying that you shouldn’t have a right to vote because you haven’t read Locke, or your claiming I shouldn’t because I haven’t seen “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Is this also what you believe?

And I’d say that’s a pretty hypocritical remark in yourself.

Come on man, wake up! You’re accusing this kid of not having any insight to the matter because his only opinions are based on what he learned in school. Yet you’re doing the same: you’re basing every point you have on an external source. His opinions may or may not be based on what he learned in school; they might be based on what he personally has reasoned out through established knowledge into new conclusions (the definition of intellect). Your opinions are based on reading books written by men who, while famous, might not necessarily have any more correct insight than his sources. As long as you base your opinions on outside sources, even if they are published works, you have no valid complaint about whether his are based on outside sources. Face it: your opinions, if they are based on those of a book, are no more original than his are. And Thoreau? The only thing that makes him more “correct” in anyone’s eyes is that he was lucky enough to get published after writing his stuff. If he were stuck in a school and Janus’ teachers were published, would you then consider a person learned in the subject only if you’d read his teacher’s work instead of Thoreau’s? Consider it. A man is no more than a man, no matter how established he is. To claim reading someone’s work qualifies you any more than learning from someone else’s is less than insightful.

He was probably saying that battleships attacking land without there being a land attack via transports is silly. I have to agree.

I say Polaris, the North Star. And yes, it’s where I got my penname from.

Lions are lazy - when it comes to hunting. But they’ve naturally been built to fight other male lions in competition, and therefore tend to be better suited for purely fighting with other predators, although whether one would take initiative against a tiger is doubtful in my mind.

Here is another interesting site: http://www.lairweb.org.nz/tiger/conflict.html
I think this one gives pretty good analysis, as do others. But they’ve often conflicted in comparing the sizes of the two cats. Some say lions stand taller and are more muscular, but less lengthy, while others say tigers are bigger in every way. This confuses me so I don’t know what to think. I do know grizzlies are bigger than both and not as fierce as either.

You already know my leanings so I’ll spare the lecture.

As for a side note about female presidents: I heard a funny rumor from my Modern Russia professor. He said the lesbian pop singers “Tatu” are planning jointly to run for president of Russia! This was confirmed by the St. Petersburg Times! Their ages combine to exceed the necessary age requirement, but I somehow doubt they will be allowed to run anyway. Even if they did, it would be reminiscent of Howard Stern running for governor. Still, it would be fun to watch. :)