I can't tell you the number of times I've walked from point A to point B in my city, (about 100,000) and gotten hassled by people in cars being dickheads. I'm not obese, I'm not missing a limb, and I'll dare say I'm about as average looking as they make lower-middle class white American males, and yet, when I'm out on foot, I usually feel so isolated from the rest of the world, because there is fucking no one else walking, and 300 cars blowing by me a minute.

My city is by no means big geographically; any physically fit person could ideally walk or bike anywhere they needed to go. But the thing is, people like cars. They like feeling invulnerable to the things around them. They like honking, and yelling out the window, and driving 1/24th of a mile to go get some Grilled Salmon flavored ice cream.

It's not a stretch to say that the majority of American cities that have between 30,000 and 100,000 people are too big to navigate by bus, bike, or foot.

Yet in my city of 100,000 people, if you see an adult walking down the street, you think they're homeless, crazy, a rapist or all 3.

We could very easily get by, and generally be a lot better off if people gave up relying on cars for every place they need to go, no matter the distance. But as long as people look at cars as status symbols and mobile suburban fortresses of doom, (tm) that will never happen.

I personally hope that the impending oil and gas crisis will help people to get back to walking, riding bikes, and public transportation. It's nice to see other people out getting fresh air and just conducting their business.

People will be a lot nicer and more considerate when they don't have the luxury of hiding behind fortified steel and 20" tires. I just know it. 

Grahf, really good stuff here; I have long been a skeptic of the Times, given how they allow their paper to be used for political agendas (see the last eight years of Judith Miller's alarmist coverage on Iraqis non existent WMD's), but this article is quite substantial in its arguments and rebuttals and fleshing out the different point of views. It certainly caught my attention that a CFR guy (Simmons, who is profiled in the article) is at the heart of the peakist debate.

Thanks for this heads up. 

CFR guy Council of Foreign Relations -- not implying conspiracy, I know how popular those are around here -- right, Phait;) CFR is pretty open and transparent about its motivations, and they publish a journal Foreign Affairs that outlines there ideology and what the goals they have for anyone who is curious. That they would work towards undermining a Monarchy like the Saudis is not suprising (nor is it necessarily a bad thing). 

yeah read grafh's stuff. For a more alarmist viewpoint, check www.survivingpeakoil.com

Was it Hubbert or Campbell who predicted back then that the US oil production would fall into decline in 1972. And it did.

Indonesia used to be an oil exporter. Now they have to import it, and the government has to inject subsidies to avoid riots.

The north sea oil fields have turned to decline in 2000. Russia and the Caucasus region can still keep up about ten years. Knowledgeable people are just waiting for the big word to drop: when Saudi Arabia's production turns down.

Sadly, or to some people, happily, there aren't any good alternatives to oil. Hydrogen sucks for a multitude of reasons, mainly because it takes a lot of energy to create it and because it's very hard to store.

Oil is still currently practically free energy pouring out of the ground. Some have said that when the price reaches 200$/Barrel, real economic implications will happen.

Might just be that if you want to live, learn to grow cabbage and work with horses. It might just turn out that this period of urban development and science and technology and whatnot was just an odd historical bubble made possible by a certain nonrenewable resource - oil makes life such as if you had 50 slaves in your personal service. From a warm shower in the morning to your clothes, transportation, and food. 

I was on vacation for two weeks... but i'm back now! Still messing around with those texs (you know...).

Your map is r4wk btw! It was fun to see it gradually bit by bit getting better and more polished. I still think you rushed the release a bit, but oh well.

Come to irc and we'll talk, you homosexual! 

/me reads his post from last night again...

Doh, I'm not an economics major, I might have fumbled my arguments a little bit. Ray, the point I think I was trying to make was that if oil becomes extremely expensive, alternative energies that weren't competitive in the past will become so, and the market will naturally transition to the cheapest technology. That's theoretically speaking at least, I worry that it may be too late if we sit around and wait for "the market" to iron things out for us. About "oil prices never coming back down," that will be the case only as long as the present demand for oil keeps up. If some other energy replaces oil's dominance, or we become vastly more efficient at using oil, then yes, the price would drop again. 

[17:00:11] <bambuz> yea
[17:00:26] <bambuz> and of course, probably do a bit harder tricks in the first few maps
[17:00:33] <bambuz> since you can restart if you fuck up

I really hope you don't think that entire-game runs are really done in 1 sitting. Speedrunners do dozens and dozens of runs per map and then merge the best runs together. You even see the runner credits at the end of QDQ and other similar full-blown runs, which runner did which map. 

Recently came across some thread about death metal and I remembered I had the Quake Map Name Generator:

http://www.phait-accompli.com/crap/php/quake_map_generator.php

So here's the Death Metal Band Name Generator:
http://www.phait-accompli.com/crap/php/death_metal_generator.php 

Grahf, nice article.

Blitz, I know what you mean. In a lot of newer areas of Savannah the infrastructure was so dependent on cars they just didn't bother to put in sidewalks at all. It was just malls and apartment complexes connected by six-lane roads. :(

I'm fortunate enough now to live in a city that puts bike lanes on every road it can, and I plan on biking to/from work as often as possible. 

http://www.kolumbus.fi/anttih/lumoboing.gif 

I got, Evacuated Xenapistia; I think I had one of those by a realy kinky doctor once. 

We also get nutters who do whole game runs in one sitting -- check the latest SDA update! (for the lazy: Nightmare 100% of all of quake in 78:01).

The easy and nightmare runs have both been improved recently too. 

some speed runs are of the special type that an episode or even many are done in one sitting. (like all of id1 or just e1 or all the terra maps) The qdq runs were not, they were of the other type - just parsed together single level runs, maybe with some continuity twists (i.e. rl from some previous map, don't remember).

That is precisely the difference I'm talking about - if you have a map that has a trick that has 50% chance of working, you can pretty much rely on it on a single map run. If you fumble, just retry the run.

If you run ten maps in a row, and every map would have to have that 50% trick to work, the chances of completing them all is one in 1024. In other words, the expected number of runs to do before succeeding all the tricks would be over a thousand. Of course, it sucks if you complete all the other tricks and then fuck up the last one since you lost so much playing time and effort.

Therefore it's wiser to try harder / the hardest tricks first and if you don't succeed, just restart since you didn't lose much time or effort trying anyway. 

1.heresp4: beyond the black sun.
2.heresp3: castle of pain.
3.tris: The Rest is Silence.

http://www.planetquake.com/underworld/index.html 

What's up with your screenshots? Those TRIS shots almost make the map look fullbright in areas... =\ 

I think it all depends on the individuals monitors settings, but ill take your note into account. 

 

I'm coming home for a night, so if anyone would like to play me on my map, I would be quite pleased! ...I'll be on irc probably around 6-7pm EST (which is GMT -5). 

OK I'll be there yo 

The next time anyone wants to organize one of those "pack of maps that require the name to be taken from the complete works of author X" type things, perhaps for Halloween, please use the obvious Mr. Lovecraft. Just a thought, thx. 

Someone else! 

Because of the title SoE:Indian Summer, I thought Tronyn was going to go with Morrison for the titles on this pack. I have found a decent phrase from The Fellowship to work with but still I'm looking for something more evil themed.

When I do one of these packs, I'll use Steely Dan
lyrics (Kid Charlemagne alone has at least a dozen worthy quotes) 

"What's 'taters, precious?" 

I fulfilled my end of the bargain, you cad! 

Good one. Quoting from the True hero (as opposed to that whining, 'woe is me' Frodo) of the saga will always win points with me, Kinn. One quote I found from a song in The Fellowship kind of sounds like a line from Shelly's To Autumn, so it fit's Tronyn's theme in a pretentious enough fashion to satisfy me.