Tabonga

As was I - suspect that I have a darker sense of humor than you though.........

I basically said that if one believes the party line on this it is pretty inescapable that population reduction is necessary. Since I don't believe the party line how could I be calling for genocide? And I never made any suggestions on how that reduction should be achieved - you apparently have come up with your own solution since you went there. It was actually a case of argumention by taking something to its logical extremes*........ *A good suggested reading is "A Modest Proposal" (1729) by Jonathan Swift - accompanied by a brief explanatory guide placing it in its time. And I actually have a user name........

Glad you caught my petite bon mot. ^___^ I am partial to baccardi cocktails myself - it is hard to get a good one since most bartenders seem ignorant of their existence.

Do those bits come with a screwdriver?

Yeah I don't care about it unless someone asks me about my opinion of a particular recipient. You didn't offend me - I just found the statement more than a bit odd. And there is no sense in having an arcane stash of knowledge (such as who Stockdale was, his statement and why it was so hilarious at the time) and not use it. A little light levity never hurts in these threads

"What are you doing here?" Who am I - Admiral Stockdale? Or is there a secret handshake or decoder ring to qualify for "true" members that I haven't received? OP asked a general question about opinions on something for the VGS membership to respond to and I heeded the call. It really doesn't matter if any any of us either agree or disagree outside of our narrow little corner of the internet. On most forums people talk about lots of things - mostly irrelevant to anything beyond the narrow confines of that particular little corner of the twilight zone.

I am saying that in reality (for a variety of reasons) neither award(s) mean(s) jack to a good chunk of the population. Whether they give them out or not is irrelevant IMHO** - I am not going to be swayed by them regardless of who wins them. As an irrelevant aside I wonder how many people can name the last five presidents in comparison to how many can name the first five*? *Starting with G. Washington since technically there were 10 before him - I am not setting up a trick question. **As a really irrelevant aside I once had the opportunity to tell off a reigning Miss America - that was pretty fun. It certainly impressed some of my friends.

I don't want those entities squandering those resources (and more importantly the ability to produce those resources) on a chimera of a solution which is essentially unattainable under the best of circumstances (which don't presently exist anyway). If one really believes the present hypothesis the only real long term solution is a fairly drastic (and fairly immediate) reduction in global population in order to truly lower energy usage and to negate the limitations on almost all forms of renewable energy due to a finite capacity to provide rare earth metals. I suppose we can trash the environment in order to save it. Wouldn't be the first time we destroyed a village in order to save it.

No I can't say that I can - mostly because I don't care what the film industry thinks of itself - and my taste in movies precludes most of what I am interested in being considered for an award. If I am interested in a movie I will go see it whether it is likely to be in line for an award or not, If it is something I don't want to see any awards (or popular opinion) is not going to convince me to see it. My ideal movie watching conditions:

A good example of an ad hominem attack there. There is nothing in the owners manual for the planet that says what the "ideal" temperature should be. We (humanity) have been lucky in that we have lived in a bubble of relative stability for the 300 years or so and have come to believe that is the norm. The question is what is driving whatever changes are occurring - if it is part of a natural cycle the preparations needed for that (if it continues) are far different than the current models being implemented (well sorta anyway). Guess wrong and you have pretty much shot your bolt since we are talking a lot of resources either way. The UN prognostications of doom and gloom are actually made of averaging a whole bunch of climate models (last count I saw was 29 different models) together to create a "real" picture - which is in reality the worst way to do it unless you are dumb f**k lucky. The most accurate of the models in a lotta of ways have been the Russian models INM-CN4 (and its successor INM-CN5) which have been the most reliable in hind casting -and also happen to predict much less change than the others. And this assumes that the UN is acting with the best of intentions (ie no agenda) - something the UN has never really done on anything . We also have a historical record that can't really be explained away with our current understanding of things - things like the RWP, the MWP and the little ice age (to name but 3) are generally deat with by proponents feigning ignorance or basically resorting to the old Jackie Gleason "Homina Homina" routine.

The first console I had was a SNES in early 1992 - with it I got two games - Tetris and Final Fantasy II.

Greatest is (IMHO) far different than best. (Although they can be the same.) And you are never going to be able to get everyone to agree on either unless you can get agreement on what genre is best - never going to happen. I am going to suggest that the greatness is a function of outreach to the larger popular culture that a game had in comparison to other games of the period. Since the NES and SNES occurred with little large scale competition (aside from the Sega Genesis - but Sega never had the resources (or maybe desire) to devote to PR the nintendo platforms became the home entertainment system as far as most people believed (whether they owned one or not). The two platforms also represented fairly large leaps in terms of the complexity and variety of games available (not to mention technical advances) that ensured their place in popular culture. Given that I suspect one of the games from the following series deserves the title: Donkey Kong Legend of Zelda Mario Brothers Which one is just a guess. I would go with Zelda since I heard the most about those in popular culture references long before I started gaming. I would go with Link to the Past since it is much more sophisticated than the NES ones and was also much closer to a cross genre game (people still argue whether it is an RPG or not!).

We are veering off from the original question - the US (and most of western Europe) has made great strides - but that is meaningless if for every cubic ton of emissions reduced someone else replaces it with a much larger magnitude of emissions. The floodwaters (as it were) are rising are they not? And the knight in shining armor of renewable energy is at its limits. Rare earth metals (which go into wind turbines, solar panels, batteries and catalytic converters) are being used as fast as they are produced. Which means that there are no global stocks of these processed metals (you will see mentions of global reserves - but that is of ore still in the ground). You can increase production but the environmental cost is horrendous - China has swaths of land destroyed by that mining and processing. And the demand will be increased not only by new production but by the need to replace the current equipment as it ages - some of that material can be recyled but not all of it is recoverable and the recycling process is also harsh on the environment. Yeah - you can gut the western economies - emulating Don Quixote charging at a windmill - but remember that those same economies are the ones who have the ability (and more importantly the willingness (historically)) to help mitigate whatever changes might be down the road.

I don't hate her or the award. I personally think she is likely a puppet - but that was not the question the OP asked. I think she was a poor choice based more on a perceived "neglected pitiful waif" sort of appeal by a group of editors (or whoever decided) who went into the process with a set of engrained biases and likely a set agenda. IMHO there were better choices. In any event the award has become increasingly meaningless (not that I am sure it ever was meaningful) since it is really nothing more than an opinion(s) largely based on popular media (which is increasingly fragmented and increasingly less influential in any event). Time itself has long been eclipsed as an influential weekly news source (along with the similarly formatted (at one time anyway) Newsweek and US News and World Report. So I don't hate the award, I simply think it is basically a moot exercise - doesn't really matter who wins it. How many people can name the last 5 winners off the top of their heads? Yeah - one can look that up but that is not the same at all.

Here is the next type of cat I would like to get:

The early scenarios are pretty straight forward strategy ones. The layout of the game is that there are factories where units are staged (the factories can't produce new units - only repair damaged ones) - yours, the enemies and after the initial stages neutral ones. Whoever gets to the neutral ones first with infantry gets those units - so a lot of times that is what eventually decides the battle. The puzzle part comes in that you often have to figure out how to get to some of the neutral bases first. And sometimes which neutral factories to go for - it (oddly enough) is sometimes not the the strongest appearing forces that are what you need. Also if you haven't tried any of them you might like the Sokoban style games.

I favor SRPG (or just plain strategy games) a bit more than regular RPGs - mostly because they are more interesing for replays because you can try different things. My top 5 strategy games. Dark Wizard (Sega CD) Nectaris (PS1) Brigandine (PS1) Shining Force II (Genesis) Master of Monsters (Genesis) RPGS Final Fantasy II (SNES) Landstalker (Genesis) Lunar the Silver Star (Sega CD) Golden Axe Warrior (SMS) Equinox (SNES) For what it is worth I liked 7th Saga and to a lesser degree Paladin's Quest.

Not to quibble but (from my post) "To be fair, they pick those who they feel have made the most impact rather than any necessarily endearing qualities."

You might want to give Nectaris (PS1) a try - ostensibly a military strategy game, the mechanics of the game means that a lot of the scenarios are puzzles as well as strategy ones. , Some of my favorite games for replays are: Dark Wizard (Sega CD) - Awesome is the only word for this hex grid based SRPG - four different rulers, four races, three alignments for the hired units, 9 basic classes of hired units, tons of summoned monsters - and lots of secrets, hidden weapons, special warriors and various quests. Nectaris (PS1) - Loaded with scenarios (108 total) it is one of the best bargains on the PS1. Another hex grid game with some unique mechanics -the only strategy game where line tactics (if applicable) will not work - the AI rips lines into swiss cheese. It also a neat game in that once you finish the basic scenarios you can go back and play any of all the scenarios - so you can replay and try different strategies. Brigandine - PS1 - Yet another hex grid game with six countries to play as. Lots of monsters to play with and grow. The first two advance wars - fun but hampered by the fact you can't go in and replay individual battles in the campaign modes. The Sokoban style games (Boxxle, Boxy Boy, Shove It!, etc.) Wherein you are a hapless warehouse worker doomed toshove boxes in the most poorly designed rooms known to man... Good for some fairly witless but diverting gameplay.

One item I have always found really useful was the Nintendo Power Index. (I realize that you need a lot of Nintendo Power issues for this to be of much use - fortunately I have a complete run until the demise of the SNES.) to)

I recently ordered these (they have not arrived yet). https://www.fangamer.com/products/game-boy-works-volume-i https://www.fangamer.com/products/game-boy-works-volume-ii I have ordered books from Fangamer before and they do a great job in terms of quality of both the physical book and the content.