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To be fair, though, there's also the matter of geography. Assuming that these age-suitable women are spread evenly over the land area of the Earth, that leaves only ~12 potential mates per square mile, or ~95,300 lucky(?) ladies within 50 miles. And of course, since people generally aren't evenly distributed over the Earth for some bizarre reason (nor do they tend to be perfect cylinders, frustratingly enough), these numbers may be better or worse depending on location. Still a lot, but not a full 700 mil. All that being said, though, the real limiting factor that I've always found is that, at least in terms of where I always end up, most folks are already in relationships, which takes a lot of folks out of the running. For instance, when I went to college, it was at an engineering school, so the demographics weren't exactly in my favour. Or like now, I'm living in the south (because engineering job, believe it or not), and everybody my age is already married for some miserable reason, so yeah.... I don't know if I was trying to make a point here. I think I mostly just wanted to make a silly mathematical analysis...

Thank you Ross for finally telling it like it is. I agree completely. I also love that you referenced Star Trek: Generations in regards to wanting to be in good VR. I've only tried VR once on the DK1 a few years back, and I've made the exact comparison to the Nexus in regards to wanting to go back to it. I just hope they don't screw it up. On the plus side, Bethesda announced that Fallout 4 and the new Doom are going to be made VR compatable, so that's good, right? Now for something like Bioshock: Infinite or Portal, assuming that I don't just constantly cry from my fear of heights why playing those in VR. Also, what are your thoughts on the Omni? Does it work with a lot of games? Because if so, if I get one of those, too, I may just be a skinny man before the end of the year.

Why even include guns in a game when you have to devote 10 levels to just to be able to use them against the lowest level critters? I will agree with this sentiment that there should be at least some minimal level of competency assumed in any RPG system, regardless of stats. This problem hit me worst in Morrowind, where it would often take a good couple of minutes just to kill a friggen swamp slug with my sword when you first start out. I mean for goodness sake, a paraplegic toddler would have a better chance at fighting the thing than my character did, which just makes the whole thing feel really silly (and even worse, not fun). I'm not asking for the whole game to become super dumbed down or anything, but the bar shouldn't be that friggen low at the start.

Oh, for goodness sakes, ISIS has about as much to do with Islam as the West Burrough Baptist Church has with Christianity. Granted, the Islamic faith has been tragically prone to radicalization as of late, but much of that is due to instability in the Middle East, as well as the rise of fundamentalism in the last few decades. Besides, blaming large groups of people on this won't fix anything, just make more extreemists who feel like they're being ganged up on. Besides, the weirdest thing about this whole thing is that apparently the perpetrator was a regular at the club, so I can't imagine he was especially religious.

I would hardly consider making the smallest of efforts to vote to be equivalent to dying for your principles. The risk vs. reward system for this is pretty minuscule, after all. Thus why I said it doesn't hurt to try. It literally doesn't. Also, you're making a very ridiculous assumption in thinking I would otherwise be doing something important with my time.

The same could be said for those who do vote as well due to the spoiler effect. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. What does it matter at that point? Do you think your single solitary statement will set some sort of precedent for the future or something? It's just a statement. Individualism dies within any democracy and this is a corrupt democracy at that. Not that I have any better suggestions for systems of government. Then I'm afraid we've reached an impasse. No offense but where you see a possibility for a better future I see only a comforting illusion. IMO we're overly concerned for the future. We've fucked up in numerous ways and there's no going back. We need to be for the here and now in terms of survival instead of focusing on an overly optimistic future. I think you're misusing the spoiler effect in this context. While yes, the spoiler effect is a legitimate problem with ever getting more than 2 active parties (in a 1 person, 1 vote system, at least), it's not really much of an excuse not to vote. Again, if you weren't going to vote for anyone in the first place, then at the end of the day, you voting for a third party won't spoil anything. You can use it to argue that a third party run is pointless, but it's hardly an excuse not to vote. Your obstinance against voting due to democracy undermining individualism is just contributing to the tragedy of the commons, which is, ironically, something relegated to individualism. Don't get me wrong, I have no real aspirations of fixing anything, but I still can't sit idly by and just let things happen, even if it's futile. Because at the end of the day, if it's all so truly meaningless, trying has no consequence, so why the hell not try? It can't hurt any more than just giving up and letting the insanity wash over you.

Except voting third party is pointless due to the spoiler effect. At that point you're abiding purely by principle and I'm not a person who abides by that. IMO it's not worth wasting my time over. The only difference between you voting for a third party and me not voting is that you have faith whereas I don't. I'm central in regards to politics so I'm statistically screwed. I'm not willing to pretend that I hold all the answers to fix what is an ancient and entrenched political system so I've chosen to opt-out. Call it cowardly, I call it sane. You can either scream at everything wrong with the world or you could simply move on, not bothering to giving it a passing glance. Odds are you don't have any power to begin with so what's even the point? Or who knows, I could vote for Trump and rub salt into the wound that is his inevitable presidency. At this point I could honestly care less if the world burns. Or not, the world didn't end when George W. Bush became president despite all the flak he got now did it? Now I'm not saying he was a great president but we're still here aren't we? In this shitstain of a world. It's only a spoiler if you were gunna vote for someone else to begin with. Otherwise, you're just sitting there and taking it. Every time any group in history said "I just won't vote, that'll show 'em", they usually ended up getting screwed because the people they most disagreed with won as a result. It's a much stronger statement to vote against the so-called inevitable. And for the record, I'm a centrist as well. At this point, though, I'd just want to see a third party get somewhere to break up the political constipation of the current two parties.

Nope, it's completely legal to not vote in the US. I've also heard it's illegal to not vote in Canada too so it's not just Australia. I don't really get the sentiment behind making it illegal to not vote. My not vote is basically saying " Our political system is fucked, get it fixed or I'll have no part in what is ostensibly a game known as "The Democratic Process"" and from what I understand my opinion is part of the silent majority's in this regard. I apologize if I sound pretty sour on this issue but it's how I honestly feel. And that's why it keeps being crappy. If you're not going to vote, at least vote for a third party. Or write in someone. It won't work, but it certainly won't work if you don't vote at all. Your silence just sounds like tacit acceptance to the folks in charge.

He was listed as an independent last I checked... He may or may not be listed as a Dem on the ballot, and there is a lot of controversy concerning his listing. Helios is correct that I listed him as the closest to his political affiliation as possible, considering the nebulous nature of his listing on the ballot. I only included those candidates that had a snowball's chance in hell of winning. So? We can still vote for him. He's gunna be on all 50 ballots, and is already polling at 10%. If the whole point of this exercise is to see the political alignment of the forum, you should include him, since he will factor in to the anti-Trump vote. Or at least include a "none of the above" option, because honestly, in this election, we could use it.

But only in a true vacuum... Which doesn't exist. There is always some external force being exerted, (friction, etc.) which means that in this context it is impossible. I'll make a thread with a poll asking what president people would most want, and not provide anything else... Even asking that nobody discuss the candidates or their positions... I'll bet that with full participation, there will be less than 10% that would vote for Trump, and he's the only candidate that isn't on the left. (and very obviously so) Now that's not really fair. I know lot's of Republicans who hate Trump because he's a loose cannon who doesn't play by the rules, and would rather vote for say, Clinton, because at least you know what she will do. Most folks would not vote for Trump because he's terrible, not because he's (nominally) Republican. Plus, for the sake of the argument, I will agree that most internet forums lean left, but that's more because people on the internet tend to be younger, and younger people tend to historically be left leaning (thus the phrase, "People who aren't Liberal in their 20s don't have a heart, and people who aren't Conservative in their 30s don't have a brain.". It's a joke, though, so don't worry about it if you (the reader) is offended by it.). That being said, I'd say there are more Conservative folks on here than, say, average. Although, honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of folks here were Moderate, more than anything (myself included).

You forgot Gary Johnson (Libertarian). It's not really a fair fight for right vs. left when Trump is the only one on the right.

That shouldn't be a problem here. They removed unit stacks in Civ 5. Now it's just one unit per tile. Although it's very slightly returning in Civ 6, where you can combine certain units on a single tile. But still, it's not really gunna be a stack at all, just like maybe two units that give each other bonuses of some kind.

In regards to people all seeming stupid, I blame the internet. Or rather, I blame the Dunning-Kruger effect being amplified by the internet. That is, actual stupid people tend to be deafeningly loud, and due to how the internet works, it makes them look like the majority, while the actual majority of people just kinda sit around and don't speak up because they feel out-numbered, or otherwise don't feel qualified to actually correct anyone. Combine that with a money-hungry media pointing the cameras at these very entertaining idiots (notice a trend in this discussion?) and you get a very stupid looking society. But then, if that were true, we probably wouldn't have gotten as far as we have. I just hope we can keep it going at this point, but man, these elections, right?

I don't have a question, but I do have a statement. I thought you would like to know that a local bar arcade that opened here actually has the arcade version of Carn Evil. It's alright, but it's a real pain on the wrists. Also kinda cheap, in terms of taking your tokens. Makes the final boss make sense, though. Also, hot darn does that game have a long credits sequence for an arcade game.

Guys, for those worried about this basically being just an iteration, check out these pre-release gameplay videos: It looks like the biggest new thing is the civics and governments system, which sounds really cool. That and the new Districts system, as well as city control in general. Also, the civilization motivations. Above all, it seems like they are focusing on making individual playthroughs a lot more unique, which is definitely a good thing, since honestly, Civ 5 got kinda same-y after a while for me. I mean, to be fair, this seems like a lot of small changes, but the nature of these small changes when taken together seem like they will make a big difference. Seeing these videos, I'm a fair bit more excited now. Also, I gotta love all the people crapping on it on the graphics alone. Because yeah, that's why I play Civ. For dem cutting edge grafix!

I will second this. The story is pretty excellent, as is the question. Lots of options and even some skill checks! Plus, the island itself is pretty gorgeous, too.

You're thinking of the transistor, which is a semi-conductor generally used for fast electrical switching, and is generally associated with computing, but has significant applications in most electronics. Also, technically, it was invented in the Fallout universe, it just took longer. As for the Fallout universe being more advanced than us, keep in mind that they still have 60 years up on us, and honestly, we've surpassed them for the most part already. Outside of certain aspects of nuclear research and robotics (although both are due to the low considerations of safety in the Fallout universe, more than anything). At any rate, by the time we reach 2077 (if we do), we will probably be terrifyingly more advanced than the Fallout universe. To be fair, there's still a lot of uncertainty as to how dormant cultural change was in that period of time. The fact is, we basically know nothing of the hundred years between the end of WW2 and the mid-twenty-first century. Just a few snippets, like the U.S. becoming 13 Commonwealths and still doing the moon landing and stuff. This has lead to some speculation that there was still cultural shifts in that time, but people reverted back to a 50's mentality out of nostalgia in the decades before the war. Afterall, most of Fallout America appears to be a pretty egalitarian place, so something must have happened in terms of civil rights. That being said, there can be arguments made for cultural stasis. Namely, going back to the delayed invention of the transistor, the miniaturization of electronics never happened, meaning that mass communication and democratization of culture didn't happen. Most of the 60's and 70's culture came from the fact that young folks were more easily able to influence cultural tastes due to the greater accessibility of things like transistor radios and instruments and other creative tools. Before then, the parents tended to control media, but ever since, the main audience of media has gotten younger and younger (even to the pre-teens of today). Without this, though, the revolutionary attitudes of youth had more trouble taking hold. Combine all of this with a likely more oppressive government (such as what might have happened had, say, Joseph McCarthy become President), and it becomes a lot easier to control the culture. That being said, most of this is still largely speculation, since again, the last few decades are kinda a Dark Age in terms of Fallout lore (probably on purpose), so it's hard to say what's up. I do have to wonder if things like Classic Rock still existed in other parts of the world (namely, England), and was just banned in the U.S. I can't help but imagine that the government in Fallout would want to squash any sort of "British Invasion" as soon as it could.

You could always try to sell it to the military. They tend to be less skeptical about speculative technology. I mean, from what I've seen, they'll buy just about anything demonstrable, and they have the money to burn.

I'd imagine it's because most people don't associate any sort of high technology with the medieval era (not to say there wasn't any, but I mean public perception of idealized eras). That being said, there is something close to that era called Clock-Punk. Full list here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PunkPunk And hey, no reason new genres can't still be created, right?

I think you have that backwards. American right is far on the right side of the grid. https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2016 Heck, even Clinton is mid right. The only one actually on the left is Sanders (no surprise).

Hey, now wait, no, Kasich is still running. So there's still, like, you know, kinda some sorta hope like thing, right? ... .. . Right? And hey, if Trump gets elected, I could always go work on my doctorate in Australia. So that's always an option.

So I found a very fascinating article about the whole Trump thing that raises a lot of interesting historical contexts. Check it out: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-trump.html

I had to take a personality quiz at work and got 10 turtle, 5 monkey, 4 camel, and a lion. So that's good, right?

My engineering degree disagrees with you. I mean, granted, we generally use programming to handle the computational half of it, but you still need to know the underlying theory to be useful in the more research-oriented fields. That being said, having programming along with it can be useful for allowing students to test math concepts out themselves, although they will be somewhat limited to more discrete mathematics. I think a better analogy would be regarding car drivers and people who know how to fix a car. Because knowing how paper is made can't really affect how you read, but knowing how a car works can be incredibly important for when you're driving and your car breaks. And either way, it does imply that there is a greater need for programming knowledge. I'd imagine that the best method would be through highly visual game-based systems to help build the foundational understanding, rather than just throwing them straight into scripting. That being said, I've heard of young kids actually taking to programming surprisingly well. Heck, one of my coworkers has a kid that programs enough to be able to compare and contrast the feature sets of MATLAB and Python. But of course, that's not entirely typical. However, the question then is if that is due to innate intelligence vs. good teaching programs, but it at least indicates that it's possible.

Fun episode, I kinda like to see Moon Gaming be brought back in some capacity. I really enjoy the vaguely ominous hints at a broader thing going on. It's like a really dark and creepy MST3K, and that alone makes the series appealing to me. I think ultimately the problem with the first attempt was that it was just too long, so if you had this shorter format but still with guests offering their opinions, it would be a pretty cool setup. Do you have any other guests in mind, or was this just a one off?