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At 9/16/14 10:23 PM, Voltage wrote:
THEN DONATES CAMPBELL SOUP TO CHARITY. YOU MONSTER!!

I heard a rumor that Voltage really, REALLY likes the color green.

At least according to MSU. Apparently peak tornado activity is arriving up to two weeks earlier in the US Great Plains then it used to 60 years ago. This could help states with particularly severe Tornado Seasons, like Oklahome, Kansas, and Nebraska better prepare for tornadoes in the future. So, do you live in the Great Plains and have you observed this trend toward earlier peaks to the Tornado Season?

Well here's my knife of choice, the Leatherman Super Tool 300. The way I figure it, why carry around a knife when you can carry around a souped up multitool. I've used this much more often then I ever would have used a straight pocket knife.

So this thing is supposed to be retailing at $350. Seriously, how many people where any watch at all these days? It seems like Smartphones took a lot of the thunder out of the watch industry. Anyway, here's watch a $350 regular watch looks like. I can't say I'd buy either of them, but I know that some will.

At 9/16/14 11:39 PM, Phobotech wrote:
I wish that every human being had a replenishable pool of mana within them that can be spent to create and manipulate actual magic, including a wide array of kinesis that grows to be more complex and more varied as humanity ages.

Granted, but more advanced human beings are constantly screwing it around with the young'uns. Walk out of your house? Paralyzed by your neighbor. Grab something from the market? Hypnotized into doing something degrading. Taking a ride to work? Your car no longer obeys your command. The world is paralyzed by highly advanced magical trolls.

I wish I got a $100 Australian for every time someone lied to me.

So the Gallup-Healthways Global Well-Being Index is out again and the happiest countries might not be what you'd expect. Here is a full list of the countries, so you can see how your own country stacks up against the world.

According to the survey my country, Australia is the 23rd happiest country, just behind Saudi Arabia. I don't know about you guys, but there is no way that Saudi Arabians are happier than Australians.

Here are the 5 factors that the survey based their numbers are:

Purpose: liking what you do each day and being motivated to achieve your goals
Social: having supportive relationships and love in your life
Financial: managing your economic life to reduce stress and increase security
Community: liking where you live, feeling safe, and having pride in your community
Physical: having good health and enough energy to get things done daily

Anyway, how does your country stack up and how accurate do you think the survey is at gaging happiness?

At 9/17/14 02:38 AM, VJF wrote:

At 9/16/14 10:24 PM, JmdMagic wrote:

At 9/16/14 10:21 PM, SentForMe wrote:

Shouldn't I believe that magic is just something we haven't been able to explain with logic and science yet?

Why can't you just understand that magic is real?

What if he just can't handle the truth?

Isn't "the truth" a concept that most human beings can't really define anyway?

I tend to shave with the grain as its easier on my face and a good way to avoid ingrown hairs. It doesn't result in quite as close a shave, but its really close enough for me. My facial hair grows pretty fast, so no matter how well I shave in the morning I still wind up with a 5 o'clock shadow around that time. I might be able to delay it an hour or two with a really close shave, but it always seemed like a waste of time to me, considering the limited benefit.

So, a not so funny update to this story. Here's the important quote:

"It was her understanding that Grossman went to an out-of-state hospital to admit himself for mental health treatment but was unable to due to his healthcare coverage. When he asked about it further, he was told that was how the healthcare system is set up and he should talk with the president about it. He then traveled to Washington, D.C."

Sounds like a mentally ill person just trying to get help any way he can. That's just sad.

Since you don't seem super super passionate about this idea I think it makes a whole lot more sense to stay in college. There is a very limited amount of spots for professional wrestlers or professional athletes of any sort. There are far more jobs for white collar professionals. If you aren't really passionate about it now, it's unlikely you will be able to win jobs against people who are far more committed to wrestling than you are. You could also seriously damage your body and health in the process. The cost vs. benefit analysis simply isn't in your favor on this one.

So we all kind of knew this was coming, but today NASA finally made it official. Boeing and SpaceX will be tapped to build the future Space taxis for their astronauts. While the actual vehicles won't start flying astronauts to the ISS until at least 2018 it marks the end of Russian dominance over ISS crew transport. Who knows, maybe China will even be able to transport its own astronauts up to the ISS by then.

Anyway, the big part of the news, for me anyway, was the dollar amount on the contracts awarded. Boeing was awarded $4.2 billion and SpaceX was awarded $2.6 billion. That is 61.8% and 38.2% respectively. The general consensus was that Boeing was awarded the larger amount because it is a veteran player and considered less risky than the relatively new company SpaceX. Some extra lobbying dollars from the much larger company couldn't have hurt either.

Here's the thing though, SpaceX is much farther along in the construction of its vehicle and it makes it own engine. It is also cheaper to operate than the Boeing vehicle. On the other hand Boeing has a vehicle father behind in development aboard a rocket current powered by Russian engines. It is working with Blue Origin to replace those engines with the BE-3 American made engine. This engine is farther behind in its development than the SpaceX engine as well.

I don't know about you guys, but it seems to me that the SpaceX contract would be the less risky one. Assuming these contracts were based on actual risk I would think the larger amount should have been awarded to SpaceX. Then again, maybe I'm missing something.

I know a lot of you guys are going to say politics. Boeing and its CEO has generally played nice with the US federal and state governments. Elon Musk and his companies, not so much. Solarcity has been relatively unaffected, for now.

Besides the political capital is their anything I'm missing on this deal? Is Boeing's vehicle more superior in some important way that I haven't considered? How will this news affect you and your country; since the astronauts of many nations besides the US will be flying in these vehicles in the coming years?

I haven't been following this as well as I should, since being in Australia it all seems rather far away. Whichever way it goes the English and the Scots are smart people and I'm sure they will figure out a way to devolve or secede in a mostly orderly manner. Despite the increasingly dire claims that both sides have made concerning the other position, most of this work will be done by the bureaucrats and public service who are no more or less effective than they have been in the past.

It is not as though nations haven't left the United Kingdom or the previous British Empire in the past. I mean, just look at this map. The British have been adding and subtracting nations for most of their history and have been able to do it with pretty minimum fuss. While this situation is slightly different, it really isn't that different from Irish Independence in 1922 or the gradual devolution of powers and property to Canada and Australia.

Anyway, I saw this funny little video from John Oliver and I wanted to know what you Scots, Welsh, Englishmen, and Northern Irish thought of it. To me it is just an elementary political problem, but for you guys it affects you very directly. Passion and emotions do matter is a situation like this after all.

At 9/16/14 05:24 PM, Phobotech wrote:

At 9/16/14 02:02 PM, NewgroundsMike wrote:
Which language is best for cursing?

German, because it really works well with being yelled angrily and there'll be lots of spit which is great at punctuating rage.

What's something you've always wanted to do on your birthday, but haven't yet?

I've always wanted to go sky diving, but an aversion to possibly not having the parachute deploy and going splat on the ground at terminal velocity prevents me from doing it.

Do you believe the Crusades were justified?

At 9/16/14 04:36 PM, JmdMagic wrote: That dumb American shitbag deserved to die.

How dare you call me an American. I am an AUSTRALIAN you bastard!

If JmdMagic died I would be mildly perturbed, since he does live in my anal cavity and I imagine his body would start to stink pretty quickly.

At 9/16/14 05:17 PM, Phobotech wrote:
I wish we were all a bunch of Voldemort mouth breathers now.

Granted, but we are all so pale that any exposure to sun gives us immediate skin cancer...which is fine until someone....not saying who....had the bright idea to take a beach vacation. Now we are all slowly dying of skin cancer. Thanks a lot Phobotech!

I wish all of humanity had six fingers.

At 9/16/14 06:23 PM, VJF wrote:
Do you believe in magic?

Shouldn't I believe that magic is just something we haven't been able to explain with logic and science yet?

When I used to do sports in Grade School we would all shower after the game. it was one big shower for everyone, there weren't any stalls.

Beyond that I'll never tell.

Here is one of my favorite quotes:

"Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny."
—Lao-Tze

Brenda's Got a Baby by Tupac was a pretty sad song.

I would be very sad that xXSp1cyN1njaXx has died. He lived hard, died young, and never reached his full potential. What a tragedy. I would attend his funeral and cry openly.

Isn't prooving religion is false through facts and logic kind of like proving Calculus works through faith?

At 9/13/14 04:21 PM, CiviLies wrote: Oh, are we all making fun of reddit again?
Well, okay.

Come on now. We don't have to make fun of reddit. Reddit does that well enough all by itself.

As for the strict parent thing, well people tend to parent based on their personality and how their own parents or guardians treated them. There are probably some other factors at play too. The point is most parents or people in general don't think too hard about why they do things, otherwise they would probably act in a completely different way.

There's an Obama quote that really fits with this story:

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

At 9/16/14 12:29 PM, omega88x wrote:
I bet you'd love going apeshit on that

I bet I would, but the question is....would you like to grope for trout in a peculiar river?

Doesn't everyone put on a little bit of an act to get through the day? I can count on one hand the number of people I know who act in a completely honest on unaffected way in their daily life. Can you imagine what the world would be like if no one ever lied or put on an act to fit in. Oh right, Ricky Gervais made a movie about that.

I wonder how long it will take until they change the name of their airline. This just has bad investment painted all over it, however the stock does appear to have gained some of its value back lately.

Forrest Gump + Bruce Almighty = Forest Almighty: A harrowing tale about how a forest rebels against loggers by becoming sentient and killing them all; kind of like an environmentalist's wet dream.

Think again! According to this former employee Giganews is a honeypot controlled by the FBI and various other foreign intelligence agencies. While it is ignorant to assume these days that anything is safe from peering on the internet this is still surprising to many people.

Are you convinced that this story is truthful? Does this affect you in any way? Will you think again about using Usenet ever again or starting to use it at some future point?

I'm so badass when I stare at statues they blink first!

I have one tab open for Newgrounds, about 6 tabs open to various news sites, 3 tabs open for various blogs for my industry, 2 tabs open to science articles, and 1 tab open to an econ paper. So that's a total of 13 tabs.