Old Man

Just assign ten times as much homework and explain that you'll only grade 5% of it, determined at random.

Is that a rhetorical question?

It does sound interesting, not that I have the time for games.

Is that a rhetorical question?

Do you have change for a $1000 bill?

...You mind if I read that sometime?

When it comes to uprooting trees, I tend to think less in terms of STR and more in terms of black powder or dynamite. Is that wrong?

The extent of my experience with Battletech boils down to the computer games, and leafing through a mech manual or two. Still, I understand the background has a lot of depth, to the extent of having had many novels set in the Battletech milieu.

"He can't have both powers! It's impossible!" Rare mutants such as this could become the subject of intrigue between the guilds as each tries to lure him away from the other, or kidnap him outright. Or better yet, he could serve as a spy for one guild while serving in another...

Until very recently, stagnation or very slow progress were pretty much the norm for human societies. Feudal Japan, ancient China, the Middle Ages in Europe--centuries would pass with little or no technological development whatsoever. There are a number of reasons for that: humans are reflexively suspicious of change, the humans in charge are actively hostile to change, and it takes a long period of political stability, economic abundance, and societal tolerance in order to sustain ongoing technological development. Look at the technology that mankind has already lost, or nearly lost, and had to reinvent over the years. The Greeks had geared mechanisms, enormous land and sea vehicles, and metal-framed structures, and that knowledge is pretty much gone. The Chinese had Admiral Zheng's fleet of preposterously large ships and basically decided that they weren't even worth the effort to record in detail (which is weird for the Chinese, who pretty much invented bureaucracy). We're still trying to figure out how the Vikings rigged and navigated their ships. And so on. There are any number of reasons why the inventor/engineer class of people might become so few in number as to be barely able to maintain existing technology let alone invent new things.

It'd be more interesting if noble offspring with psionics had to be executed to maintain the status quo with the guilds. Then once in a while when a noble kid manifests psionic powers, the family tries to hide him or flee to the colonies...

Whatever you say, deranged human.

The rest of us played it as though the character was a deranged human. Because we were already playing as though the player was a deranged human.

More like "Whatever lets me justify any outrageous combination of stats, skills, and powers."

Where the hell are my peril sensitive sunglasses when I need them?

Can someone please get the naked person a towel, or robe, or something? How do I unsee this?

You laugh, but I once played with a guy who insisted on running a half-elf-half-storm-giant.

Ninja elves? Drow-rhymes-with-cow elves? Drow-rhymes-with-low elves?

Did you just call Cancer an astrophysical freak?

Is that not the price we pay for being so much more intelligent than the humans?

What's worse, Klingon Elves or Vulcan Elves?

That bullpup design looks to be an improvement over both the AK and QBZ. The AK has always suffered from a poor sight radius and horrific ergonomics. The QBZ is obviously much more modern but like most bullpups is tail heavy. This design fixes most of the AK flaws, and the exaggerated forward rails should help with the overall balance. It certainly looks better than the QBZ, which is an incredibly ugly gun.

Wow, kids really are stupid nowadays if they don't even vet the instructors before they register. Unless it's one of those cases like I ran into on occasion, where you have to take a particular class to stay on schedule, and your instructor choices are the cranky old hard-@$$ or the unintelligible ESL professor from Guangdong. So the moral of the story is, learn Mandarin, and teach in it.

-... . -.-. .- ..- ... . / - .... . -.-- / -.. --- -. .----. - / -.- -. --- .-- / .- -... --- ..- - / - .... . / --- -. .-.. .. -. . / - .-. .- -. ... .-.. .- - --- .-. ..--.. ?

I can relate. I suppose the inhumanity of it all hasn't affected me as much since I'm just not surprised that humans can be like that. Overall I think the net is a good thing, but there are huge implications for mass surveillance and other cybercrime.