Recent content by Terrapin

A couple tips for culture wins: First you have to understand the Cultural Achievement meter works. Each time you flip a city, build a Wonder or acquire a Great Person you move on to the next achievement. Great People appear when you accumulate enough culture to obtain the next achievement...

True up to a point. I find that somewhere around 15 cities, you have actually overproduced if your goal is earliest possible win.* For any non-conquest win, you want to get out of Republic, into Democracy and start building up the cities you have. For instance, if you are going for an Econ...

Culture- Don't build any culture buildings, There will not be any to start with because they get destroyed when a city changes hands. The only way there would be culture is if the city contains a Wonder. This is rare as the city has to be built near your cap to get flipped and AI usually...

Ok, you guys are having pretty big problems with this game if it is timing out on you. Let me just throw a few pointers out there which will allow you to get any victory type on Deity. (other experienced players: these are tips for slow but certain victory, not ultimate early win techniques)...

I like American movies. Some people will say that I am biased because I am an American and have seen relatively few movies made elsewhere. They would be correct. :smug:

The Grateful dead solved that problem. They had a poet named Robert Hunter write the lyrics for most of their songs. Later on, I fellow named John Barlow wrote lyrics for Bob Wier, the Dead's other guitarist. It is a bit of an unfortunate conceit that a musician must write his own lyrics...

Season 1, Ep 2 of masters of Horror, called "Dreams in Witch House" is based on a short story of the same name by HP Lovecraft. It is easily the scariest thing I ever read. Stunning psychological thriller using the "keyhole" technique which Poe started, Lovecraft perfected and King copped...

The problem with Many Worlds is that it is simply unnecessary. In fact, many world violates the real nature of a quantum probability function. Why? Because probability waves represent the chance of this OR that happening. Many World asserts that this AND that happen, one in this universe and...

The Quentin Tarantino flick, "Jackie Brown" is an updated homage to blacksploitation.

If you like some bluegrass flavoring in your music, try "Old and in the Way" by Jerry Garcia and David Grisman. Also, check out the Yonder Mountain String Band for a more up-to-date "jam grass" sound. For fully traditional BG, try Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder.

Even if you allow that everything in this paper is a fact, it proves nothing. Two airliners and several large buildings were destroyed. These materials, if they were explosives, could have been anywhere. Finding a few chips of thermite does not show that thermite was used to destroy the WTC...

I change my vote. Now Copenhagen. Just read a really good blog post which brings these issues into focus. The blog is from Lubos Motl, a Czech physicist.

I am not sure that it addresses the How can gravitons get out of a black hole question, but I highly recommend Leonard Susskind's "Black Hole Wars" for learning more about quantum physics, general relativity, string theory and the holographic principle. Susskind is the only physicist I have...

Correct as far as it goes. But really, the notion of "offering compromises" does not apply here. Israel and various groups purporting to represent the Palestinians have entered into several agreements, most notably the Oslo accords. Each time, the Palestinian side claims to be able to speak...

I went "Don't think, calculate." The reason here is that in QM, science may or may not be missing something. Certainly, the alternate theories all point at something as yet unobserved to explain quantum weirdness. Even Copenhagen is like this, except that rather than giving some name to...