via mefi -- name the presidents!

And more...

http://www.sporcle.com/games/

32 out of 43 presidents...
38 out of 46 European countries
49 out of 50 U.S. States
7 of 12 Roman Gods
4 of 12 Greek Gods
26 out of 27 Books of the New Testament
23 out of 39 Books of the Old Testament
11 out of 12 Star Trek: TNG crew members
42 out of 48 countries of Asia
26 out of 53 African countries

I know sophy will kick my ass on the geography. Some of the presidents I should have known. I won't say which, in case you all decide to play (and post your scores... *cough* hint hint *cough*).

I cheated with Start Trek... I knew the first commander, I know his face, I knew the fucking actors name for christ sake, but all I could think of was "number one" so I cheated and looked it up. Sue me. I also forgot what Whoopi's characters name was so looked it up. So if you want to be pedantic about it, knock 2 off the Start Trek.

The Asia included Middle East. There were a few I should've gotten, but didn't. I missed one of the 'stan's Europe, I missed a couple obvious ones (well, not necessarily obvious, but moderate difficulty, IMO)

Africa, well, you know that's hard, and there were a few I knew I was missing, and of course, when I saw them was like "fuck, that's it" (and I forgot what they were, already)... Let's say the word "blood diamonds" and "child soldier" are words that kept running through my head when I tried thinking of one in particular, but never got.

I'd expect most of you to be on par or exceed me on Presidents, European Countries, and Star Trek and possibly Asia.

Africa, well, that might be tougher... Books of the Bible, I don't expect you to do much unless you were all in church and shit...

And a lot of you can beat me on the gods, since you have more mythology eduction or perhaps pagan inclinations...

So.........

Let's see your scores! :D

revoluthionary thuithide counthil

archive.org has the Jonestown final moments audio...

Wow...

O Rly?

Scientology critic found dead in apparent suicide.

I believe this is the same guy in the british documentary I posted a while back. Shame.

So, suicide or something more sinister?

(no subject)

Banks "quietly" borrowing 50 billion from the Fed.

Remember that post I did a while back showing the non-borrowed reserves? Well, they are having to borrow more it seems...

MMORPG design: Raid levels

What if, in a game, there was no set raid size, but rather an instance was rated a certain minimum level which generally indicated the total level of all players. Obviously this would entail a lot of fine-tuning. And some things just don't scale, but within a general given range, you could do something like this so, say, you could 5 man a lvl 350 at level 70 or 10 mean it at level 35. Of course, this would assume a linear progression of strength which isn't the case at all (in WoW at least).

But I think the idea merits further reflection in some designer's mind.

(no subject)

I want this book.

(no subject)

interesting artist

Zdzislaw Beksinski

(no subject)

What the fuck is this shit?

Fell down the stairs, my ass! Seriously?

(no subject)

"Grand Ayatollah Mazaheri Issues Fatwa Allowing Abortion for Unwed Mothers

Change for Equality (23 January 2008): According to Parsine News Agency, Grand Ayatollah Mazaheri, one of the more renowned religious scholars based in Isfahan, has issued a Fatwa allowing unwed mothers to obtain abortions.

According to the report published on the site of Parsine a religious question was posed for the Grand Ayatollah as follows: "given the fact that pregnancy out of wedlock is extremely difficult for an unwed mother and will in all likelihood bring shame to her and her family, would she under these circumstances be allowed to obtain an abortion?" To this question, the Grand Ayatollah replied as follows: "given these circumstances, [an abortion] is permissible.""
http://www.payvand.com/news/08/feb/1170.html

(no subject)

I'm fascinated by the back of the 1896 5 silver dollar certificate:

hexbgon.6

OK, I pimped it before, got no responses, and am curious now for some more feedback (I've added a timer/countdown mechanism since then, as well)...

http://symbioid.com/hexbgon/hexbgon6.zip

hexbgon. the game I'm working on. if you have the time, please try to run it and let me know if it works on your system or not, and how it works.

to run, just download the zip file, extract it... It will turn into a folder called hexmotest (trust me, I'll fix it eventually ;))

just click on "hexbgon.exe" inside that folder.

Right now it's not a game. You'll see a grid, and a hexagon with different colored piece. Ignore the info on the upper left, that's my debug info. You'll see a timer countdown from 6 to 1. If it runs out, a new piece is created and the timer restarts.

If you left click you'll place a hexagon piece onto the screen. right now it places it wherever you click, but eventually it will force it into the nearest hexagon you clicked. It will then create a new hexagon.

The scroll wheel on the mouse rotates the piece left or right (down for right, up for left).

Please give me some feedback on this. I'd really, really, really appreciate it. If it doesn't run, let me know. If it's slow, works fine, any weird bugs, etc... Don't have to do a crazy bug test or anything, just general feedback like that is helpful.

If it acts weird (slow, doesn't work, etc...) please let me know what kind of system you're running on (speed of processor, how much memory, etc...) if you don't know that stuff, and want help figuring it out, just ask I can help.

Once again, thanks very much for taking the time to do it, if you choose to do so. It means a lot to me... :D