I'm down in Berkeley but I have a few very good friends up around there and I go to Bridges Rock Gym quite frequently.

Leap in the dark here, but are those pictures from a restaurant near El Cerrito BART? It looks damn familiar.

Requiem for a Dream left me a near-catatonic shivering wreck when I was done. Maybe it was because I was drunk off my ass and watching it in total darkness at 3 in the morning, but either way it was a damn powerful movie.
Also running:
Doubt
The Wind Will Carry Us

I'd like to preface this by saying that I am not a 6s player, I am not in any 6s circlejerk or "illuminati." I am a brand new Highlander player, trying to make a change from pubs into a more competitive format. I am your target audience.
I'm a pretty laid back person. I don't rage, get angry, or get frustrated easily. But I've been following this forum for a decent period of time now, and your actions and comments are starting to wear on my patience.

I'd point out that correlation does not equal causation and all that, but I'll cut through the bullshit. You know that. You know that the reason UGC is prospering is not because of your attitude. You're just being intentionally obtuse to score cheap points in an internet argument with people who have legitimate qualms with your style and actions as a leader. How do you think that reflects on you?

Grammar corrections don't address any substantive issues and are, indeed, a way to score cheap points. But your response sounds pretty damn arrogant itself. Fix the mistake and move on. Don't make a big deal out of it and don't turn it into a general principle of arrogance.

Read your posts before you make them, as if you were someone whose only knowledge of highlander is that you're an admin for the main league. Be honest. Ask yourself if your statements, attitude, and actions are likely to make them more or less interested in your league.

I'll be honest. I'm still going to play highlander. But if I were to draw up a chart of pros and cons for playing UGC highlander, you would definitely be on the cons side. If you are considered a barrier or obstacle for spreading interest and recruitment, then you need to reconsider something.

So please, for your own sake, show some small modicum of respect for this community and towards others. And if that's too much to ask, do it for the organization that you represent. It's not just yourself that you're making look like a prick.

People trust experts. And they need to. A complete amateur may not be able to pick up on the differences between a Telecaster with rosewood frets and a Gibson Les Paul, but that doesn't mean there are no differences. When you go to buy a guitar, you should talk to people who know guitars. When you choose an internet browser, you should talk to people who know computers.

Frankly though, I find these discussions boring. Far more interesting to me is why do people care about voter apathy?
If people don't care to vote, that makes the votes of the people who do care about the election even more important. In theory, everyone wins. Alternatively, the argument could be made that the higher the voter turnout, the better the governance. But empirically, that's simply not true. Voter turnout in the post-Reconstruction era up until the turn of the century was higher than anything we've ever had, but no one know is going to say those presidents did a good job. That's clearly not how people see it. Voter apathy is seen as a sign that Americans don't care about politics, and are more content sitting at home watching television than "changing the fate of this great American nation." This, to me, gets to the core of civic religion. Voting is seen as more than just pulling a level for one candidate or another, it's a tradition. It's a tradition that commemorates the American Revolution, the U.S. Constitution, a history of American activism, a tradition celebrates some form of egalitarianism and inclusion. Its "perfectly rational" functions really aren't the ones that matter to people. And this seems obvious. People vote with their heart, not with their minds.

I'd just like to finish off by stating that I'm not necessarily dismissive or supportive of any of these arguments. I don't mean to condescend towards the people who see an emotional value in voting, nor those who see emotional value in not voting. And neither did I intend to attack those who view the entire process "rationally," whatever that may mean here.
(Pt. 2/2)

There are actually a couple more reasons I've heard for people not voting.
If the point of voting is to "make your voice heard," then it's reasonable to believe that for some people, unless their vote is one of the deciding factors in a competitive election, then it's not heard. It's like people voting for Romney in California. Because we have single member districts (winner takes all), voting for a candidate assured of losing will not make any difference in the electoral results. Now, this is countered by the fact that most people don't vote on those sheerly rational, unemotional grounds. The people who do vote take enjoyment out of the process of voting itself, seeing it as a civic duty, regardless of whether or not the election is close or what have you. The people who don't vote don't have such an attitude, whereas the people who do believe that the feeling of doing their civic duty outweighs the (not negligible) cost of voting.
The second most common reason I hear is morality. This one has been voiced frequently during the current election cycle. People will refuse to vote for a candidate even if the candidate is more closely politically aligned with the voter than any other, if the candidate disagrees with the voters on certain issues that the voters view as paramount. This is single issue voters taken to the extreme. Interestingly, this view is often taken by those people who feel the first reason for not voting I gave is utterly incorrect. People who refuse to vote based on single issues define their expression (and specifically their vote) as meaning more than its actual impact on the results. Hence the reason some voters refuse to vote for Obama based on his drone strike policy, or the continuation of the wars. It's highly unlikely that Romney (or McCain) would have had significantly different policies on those two issues, but that's not enough for the non-voter. The non-voter refuses to make a trade-off between certain key (moral) issues and all other issues, and so does nothing at all.
There's a subset of this argument as well. The reasons I gave above are sufficient to dissuade certain people from voting for either of the two main candidates, but some people refuse to vote entirely. Voting grants legitimacy to the election. Even voting for the losing candidate says, for some people, "I want my candidate to win, but I accept that he may not win. If the other candidate wins, then I believe that he deserved to win and should become the next president/congressman/senator/water board member." For them, they see voter turnout as providing a mandate, regardless of how many of those votes actually went to the winner. And they're right, in this regard. It's likely Obama would have governed differently had the 2008 election not seen such a large increase in voter turnout.

The first problem is simple to solve, multi-member districts or proportional representation systems literally do make every vote count the same. Other solutions include reducing the cost of voting by making voter registration easier or having less stringent identity requirements at the polls, like the UK.
The second is an intractable issues. These people hold certain concepts inviolable, and that's not really something a democracy does. There's a clash (in theory) between democracy the idea of universal and eternal moral laws.
(Pt. 1/2)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8X-0PtMMvg

North Berkeley. Lovely neighbourhood, world class food, less crime than the south side. Probably my favourite part of Berkeley.

It was 70s and sunny here all day in the East Bay. California really is quite wonderful.

There was a professor doing "research" on prostitution in the Boston area a while back. He got picked up in a prostitution bust, but since he filmed everything for his research it didn't count as prostitution and he walked free.

Although now that I tell that story, it sounds awfully apocryphal. Doesn't mean there isn't any truth to it though.

I played my first match in 6s format during the Newbie Mix. First off, I want to thank all of the coaches and Vick especially for putting this on. It's a great opportunity, and just what the community needs.
Here's my feedback.
I was only able to play one match, so I don't know how valuable this will be. Computer issues and all that. Anyways, we were rolled 5-0. We lost every mid within a couple of seconds, and every single match they just rolled on to our last. Some matches we didn't even get a single kill. Now, I understand that there's not a whole lot you can do about that. By its very nature, the Newbie Mixes are filled with players of unknown calibre, making forming balanced teams almost impossible. I wasn't particularly offput by it, I know I'm terrible and my computer wasn't helping anyways, but people who don't have very much knowledge of 6s, people who don't have as much of an investment in the community as I do, might be discouraged by something like that. It's not the fault of the coaches, obviously. We didn't get much feedback on our play, although with the way our game went, the only criticisms that could be made were "Learn your rollouts, have better DM." As a scout, I would show up to mid and find myself the only one there. The entire other team would be on the point shortly after I arrived, and then for whatever reason no one from my team would come out to contest. This wasn't a planned strat, either. But like I said, not a whole lot you can do about the wildly varying skill differentials.

Overall, it was a fun and positive learning experience and I really hope to see more of these in the future when I get my computer fixed and will be able to participate more. Thanks again!

If you're going to wear a tie you really out to wear a suit jacket. Ties without jackets can occasionally work in some situations, but not in job interviews.

I hesitate to make a new thread for this suggestion, but what do you think of making a sub-forum for casting schedules? It seems like a lot of people have been posting threads in the general forum about how they're casting a match. It might be easier for people to notice and decide to watch the cast if they have all of the different options for casts and streams laid out side by side in their own little sub-forum. I know if I have some time on my hands (not as often as I'd like) I'll look to see if there are any games worth watching that night. It'd be neat to have one dedicated area to look at instead of trying to sift through different websites and threads. On the other hand, I don't know if there are enough of these threads to warrant its own section. And perhaps it's just me who has a problem seeing the casting threads in time.

Would have been interesting to see the difference in his statements on foreign policy/social issues, if there are some. Nearly identical ambiguous statements about the state of the economy have been spewed out by all candidates since the beginning of modern elections (last 60 years, at least), but they rarely mean anything of substance. It's nice to see that being pointed out, but this case isn't particularly exceptional. It's generally harder (although not by much) to make such ambiguous and meaningless statements about foreign policy, hence my first statement. Either way, life goes on.