03-01-2007
And the review goes to…
…Crackdown, for the XBOX 360. Thanks to The Man Who Hates Ohio for his submission (as well as 5 others).  Look for the full review sometime next week. Until then, I’m off to Blockbuster!  Â
Posted by Jordan in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
02-22-2007
AGiR - Decision ‘07
Alright, here’s the deal. Lately it seems that I may be grab-bagging at the games that I review here at A Game in Review. I want to shake things up a bit, and at the same time possibly get myself outside of my own comfort zone. So I want you guys to help me out. I would like each person to submit a title that they would like to see me pick apart. At the end of the submission period (1 week or 15 suggestions, whichever comes first…Okay, make that 1 week) I’ll randomly draw a title, rent the game and try to create my most comprehensive review to date. There is only one rule: Due to the fact that I’m not an actual reviewer for any type of gaming company or publication, the titles will unfortunately have to be limited to 3 systems: PS2, XBOX 360 and Nintendo DS. Remember; you don’t need to have played the game yourself. If you saw a commercial for a game, or heard about it from a friend and want to see if it lives up to it’s hype - throw it at me. Oh yeah, there’s a second rule: No Final Fantasy XII. That would just be mean.
Please leave your suggestions in the form of a comment. It’ll keep the list organized, and then you’ll all know that I didn’t cheat by picking a game that was not on the list.
Posted by Jordan in Video Game Reviews | 4 Comments »
02-16-2007
AGiR: Guitar Hero II
Posted by Jordan in Video Game Reviews | 5 Comments »
12-19-2006
Wow. Over a month…
…Since my last post. I didn’t even realize that I was stringing my 2 viewers along for such an amount of time! Seriously though, I have a good excuse. That’s right, I was being lazy. Well, kinda-sorta. I should have had my next video game review (AGiR) for Final Fantasy XII out 3 weeks ago, but I was a little overwhelmed at the daunting task of trying to review such an expansive title, especially considering the fact that I haven’t even played it for more than 2 hours during the past month (and that was only running around the same area trying to level up and earn cash). Well, now that I have explained myself, I’ll try and do my best to get it out by the New Year. In the meantime, here’s a mini-review of a title for my latest hand-held console, the Nintendo DS:
Posted by Jordan in Video Game Reviews | 2 Comments »
11-16-2006
En Inglés, por favor…
Recently, the small village of Taneytown, Md, voted to make English the official language of the town. Today, on FOXNews.com, there is another report about a similar decision in the town of Pahrump, Nevada:
PAHRUMP, Nev. Â A town board in southern Nevada has adopted an ordinance declaring English the official language, restricting the display of foreign flags and denying town benefits to illegal immigrants.
A 3-2 Town Board vote drew a standing ovation and cheers late Tuesday from many of the 250 people at the meeting.
Town Manager David Richards called the ordinance a statement that “everyone should speak English, and if you are going to move here then you ought to respect the American flag and fly it in prominence.”
Â
The vote drew cheers and a standing ovation from many of the 250 people at the meeting on Tuesday. But guess what else it did? That’s right, drew protest and rage from parts of the Hispanic Community, as well as that lovely group that fights for the rights of everyone except those who actually have them, the ACLU (Click with caution):
Lee Rowland, an American Civil Liberties Union staff lawyer from Las Vegas, told the board the ordinance would invite an expensive lawsuit challenging its constitutionally.
“If you pass an ordinance that is blatantly in violation of the First Amendment, this town will be on the hook,” Rowland said.
Now let’s back up a minute, and look at this “magical First Amendment”, which seems to be an end-run for political activists anytime someone tries to make some rules around this country:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
(Emphasis mine, *duh*. I’m sure you are all aware that the Bill of Rights wasn’t written on a Dell Dimension Desktop; that’s right, all they had were Macs back then.)
Now, I’m sure this Rowland guy is hanging onto the “free speech” part, but how does this law violate it? The only places that are affected by the “English Only” rule are businesses. Last time I checked, businesses weren’t really a save haven for “free speech” anyway. Just try working at McDonald’s and greeting every customer with “Welcome to McDonald’s, where we make all our sandwiches with 100% dog meat! Would you like to try a McChihuahua?”, and see what happens. (Besides, If I want dog meat, I’ll go to Taco Bell or that weird guy’s house down the street, thank you very much.) The point is, to successfully run a business, certain rules and regulations need to be put in place. I don’t want to have to guess at every word a cashier is saying to me, or carry around a pocket Spanish dictionary anytime I go into a store (no bumper sticker is worth that much to me, anyhow). And you might be thinking I’m being “unfair”, or “prejudice”, but I’m not! I don’t care what language you speak remember: They are the ones who want to do business in our country! Nobody is telling you that you can’t speak your native tongue; they’re saying that if you are going to be a part of our economy and benefit from having a business in our city, state and country, do us a favor and speak so we understand you.
How dare we!!!
And that’s only covering legal immigrants, which other than speaking our language when doing business, I have absolutely no quarrels with. Now there’s the subject of the fence-jumpers. Before you label me a Confederate flag-waving bigot, let me tell you that I work with a Mexican American. Wanna know why I call him that? Because he spent years of studying and waiting so that he could be a LEGAL citizen. And I commend him and respect him for that. It’s not about color, it’s about laws. America used to be known as “The Land of the Free”, but know it’s turning into “The Land of Those who Got Here FOR Free”. The illegal minority and groups like the ACLU are using argument by outrage because they don’t think it’s fare to require people to work to gain all the benefits that we are offered here in the states (sorry, it’s not my fault I was born here, but if I wanted to live in France, I bet they would want me to do it legally, too). They think that because their country of birth doesn’t have enough control over it’s government and economy, that the USA owes them a free ticket, since they are so underprivileged. And these are the people who are so brazen, they will come out of the shadows (if not only in groups of thousands, lest the police be able to actually catch any of them) to protest the rights of illegal aliens, or “Undocumented Citizens” (Yep folks, this is a real word, adopted by the MSM and the Liberals. It’s quite fitting that their favorite labels are oft oxymorons. How can you be an “undocumented citizen”, when you don’t have the documents need to be a citizen??? Sorry, I guess I’m just being racist, right ACLU?). These illegal immigrants (as I like to call them) are basically saying something like this:
“We acknowledge that the USA is the best place for me to go get a job, save money, and support our families. We acknowledge that we can’t get benefits or security like this living in our tractor tire here in St. Lupoguamartinandez. So we think the best way to start off this rendezvous with America is to sneak past her borders, and hide from their government for as long as we can, all at the same siphoning tax dollars and free medical care from this same government and it’s citizens. Oh, and call and make sure the ACLU has some rooms available!”
(Of course, they weren’t saying any of this in English…)
Read the entire AP article here.
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11-07-2006
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007 (XBOX 360) - A game in review
Today is the beginning of something new here at BTTFM. that’s right: Attempted video game review-ings. Today’s victim should be non other than the latest entry in my all time favorite series, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007. I have been playing this series since the ‘03 version, and haven’t put it down since. In this review, I will try and go over the basics, as well as my take on the additions, subtractions and multiplications of this latest year’s attempt.
Posted by Jordan in Video Game Reviews | 4 Comments »
11-06-2006
“We interrupt this broadcast…”
…To give everyone (myself included) a break from stressful day-to-day topics of politics and religious battle. Don’t get me wrong, these are both very important topics (emphasis on the latter), but I don’t believe it does anyone any good to harp on the same things over and over and over. We all need a balance of serious and light-hearted discussions, and I think I focus too much on the negative. Maybe that’s why I’m hooked up to a heart monitor right now. At any rate, today I’m going to try and steer clear of any “hot button” issues.
…
…….
(This is going to be harder than I thought)
Ah, yes. Maybe I’ll take my best bud Adam’s advise and feel out a video game review. I’m a big fan of Game Informer Magazine, so I’ll do my best Reiner impression with the following “Infantarticle”, if you will, on EA Sports’ Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2007. I want to give it my best first shot, so tune in tomorrow, and hopefully I’ll have something that resembles a review.
Posted by Jordan in Uncategorized | No Comments »
11-03-2006
Everything You Know is Wrong
…I’ll get to that in a minute. Lately, it feels that liberals and non-believers in general have established a very interesting (if not bewildering) thought process. Famed atheist, Richard Dawkins, recently visited the First Parish Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, , and made the following statements to cheers and applause: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
He said this in a CHURCH!!! Well, they call themselves a church, but a glance at their web-site becomes confusing very quickly. Even though you’ll find many references to “worship” and “religious community”, you won’t find who they worship, or anything having to do with an actual religion (except the pseudo-religion of Universalism). I find it a little amusing at how a group will do nothing but denounce a particular faith (mainly Christianity), and will still pick out the things that they can use for their own organization (Sunday “worship services”, a “church” building, “ministers”). It reminds me of Christmas when a toddler unwraps a beautiful outfit, throws it aside and goes off to play with the empty box. It is very scary (albeit, illogical) that is seems like the main-stream knows everything that is right or wrong, true or false, good or bad, But if you’re a Christian, you’re an intolerant, homophobic racist who thinks that it rains because “God is crying”. They know that God doesn’t exist, that the Big-Bang theory has been proved, that we have everything in common with apes (except for prenups and abortions) and that Global Warming will wipe us out in 10 years if we don’t act fast. Well, Al Gore has been saying that for the past 8, 14, and 30 years, depending on which part of his interview you watch on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, so which is it? Do we only have 2 years to change, or did the world end 20 years ago? I just love how people on the far-left and Atheists KNOW these things for certain, but those of faith know nothing. It reminded me of the chorus of a Weird Al Yankovic song, the title of today’s post, “Everything you know is Wrong”:
Everything you know is wrong
Black is white, up is down and short is long
And everything you thought was just so
Important doesn’t matter
Everything you know is wrong
Just forget the words and sing along
All you need to understand is
Everything you know is wrong.
“What a perfect example of what they’re trying to sell us“, was my immediate thought. Atheists and Far-Lefters are trying to tell us that up is down and short is long, and some are buying it!
Posted by Jordan in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
11-01-2006
Kerry Kan’t Keep Koments from Kicking his own Kan
Ahh, Autumn. the smell of freshly fallen leaves, crisp air, warm oak smoke wafting from the chimney, and every few years, the rot of midterm elections.
Let me pose a query to the masses: If I was, say, a nationally known senator visiting a school to talk about education, and I said the following, how would you (and anyone with a partial-functioning brain) react:
“If you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. And if you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”
3…2…1…
Okay, pencils down class. I can only guess here, but to me that would sound like an obvious attack on our troops’ intelligence, but what do I know? I’m one of the loons that still think it was Islamic terrorists that flew those planes into those big towers, not Donald Rumsfeld. This quote came directly from U.S. senator John F’n Kerry, when he was speaking at the Pasadena City College during a rally for fellow “LiBurro”, California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides.
Of course, the right had a field-day with it. (For future reference, a “field-day”, when used in the main-stream media, is a term to describe when a Republican actually calls a Democrat on something asinine that came out of his or her own mouth, and the left can’t come up with a logical defense.) Notice how it was this instance, not the Mark Foley scandal, or the Michael J. Fox Stem-cell ad endorsing Clair McCaskill for Missouri State Senator that made the MSM cry “foul!”. They haven’t shown their true colors as brightly as they did yesterday:
ABC News’ Charles Gibson: “What happened today is an object lesson in how in this day and age, an idle political remark gets seized upon, becomes fodder for the talk shows, the blogs, and the politicians, and suddenly obscures discussion of all other issues.”
CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux: ‘We Hope’ Kerry Story ‘Is Going To Go Away Tomorrow’
CNN’s Jack Cafferty: ‘One Can Only Hope’ Kerry Story Fades
MSNBC’s Chris Mathews: “I think he meant to go after the President.”
“No media bias”, you say? HA! If Dan Rather was still alive, I’m sure he would be whining about it, too… What’s that? Oh… Well, anyway, what about Trent Lott’s comment (”Botched joke”, anyone? See below), made in December 2002 when at the 100th birthday party of Strom Thurmond, Lott said:
“I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”
Two weeks later, after the media had a hay-day (Hey, if the right gets a field-day, the left gets a hay-day), Lott was forced to resign as Senate Republican Leader. (But there’s no Media bias here.)
the only thing the MSM doesn’t understand is how people in their right minds took a quote from a Presidential loser (with a history of disdain for the government and military he claims to have wanted to lead), and read it just how it was said. Now, of course the Branch Kerridians and Lurch himself shot back with the claim that “It was a botched joke about the President and his team“, which is probably true in one of the dimensions he lives in, but it’s the staunch retort by Johnny-boy that feeds this fire with me:
“Let me make it crystal clear, as crystal clear as I know how: I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy.”
Yeah. Okay. We know that’s your story and you’re sticking to it. You weren’t talking about the Troops when you told those students that they better “buckle down and get goods grades, or their only choice would be to enlist in the military”, you were obviously talking about… The… President and his cab…in…et… See, my brain just won’t let me buy it, no matter how hard he’s sellin’ it to me.
My point is that all Mr. Kerry had to do was apologize to the people that were asking to be apologized to: The troops. Notice how he slithered away from the main point. What he said was, “I apologize to no one for my criticism of the president and of his broken policy.” Well, no one asked you to, Senator! They asked you to apologize for making a mistake that sounded like you were bashing our troops!… Which… YOU HAVE A HISTORY OF DOING! So call us shocked when something like this flies out of your face. Well, if Mr. Perfect can’t make one apology to anyone about anything, I’ll do it for him. These are the only apologies you’ll ever hear from this LiberAlien:
“I’m sorry I can’t even tell my own joke correctly. I’m very sorry that I lost the election (I wonder how such a stupid, masagonistic, murdering President keeps winning elections, anyways), and I’m totally, completely and utterly sorry that that those darn right-wingers had the volume turned up loud enough on their monitors that they actually caught the crap that came spewing forth from my mouth… Yep, I think I that covers everything I’ve ever been sorry for.”
Now give this mouse some cheese, Please…
Posted by Jordan in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »
01-24-2006
And we’re back…
Okay, I’m going to humor myself and suppose that there are more readers of this blog than Travis, Nicole and myself. So here goes… “Sorry I’ve been gone so long, I’m sure you all can’t wait to read what I'’ve been working on… Well wait no more, because the Truth-Truth train is rollin’ into the station!”
Ok, now that we have the obligatory ego-tation out of the way, let’s get to the meat of today’s topic.
Saw this headline in Foxnews.com’s Science section:
“Human Ears Evolved From Ancient Fish Gills”
Your ability to hear relies on a structure that got its start as a gill opening in fish, a new study reveals.
Humans and other land animals have special bones in their ears that are crucial to hearing. Ancient fish used similar structures to breathe underwater.
Scientists had thought the evolutionary change occurred after animals had established themselves on land, but a new look at an old fossil suggests ear development was set in motion before any creatures crawled out of the water.
The transition
Researchers examined the ear bones of a close cousin of the first land animals, a 370-million-year-old fossil fish called Panderichthys.
They compared these structures to those of another lobe-finned fish and to an early land animal and determined that Panderichthys displays a transitional form.
In the other fish, Eusthenopteron, a small bone called the hyomandibula developed a kink and obstructed the gill opening, called a spiracle.
However, in early land animals such as the tetrapod Acanthostega, this bone has receded, creating a larger cavity in what is now part of the middle ear in humans and other animals.
Missing link
The new examination of the Panderichthys fossil provides scientists with a critical “missing link” between fish gill openings and ears.
“In Panderichthys, it is much more like in tetrapods, where there is no longer such a ‘kink’ and the spiracle has widened and opened up,” study co-author Martin Brazeau of Uppsala University in Sweden told LiveScience. “[The hyomandibula] is quite a bit shorter, but still fairly rod-like, like in Eusthenopteron. It’s like a combination of fish and tetrapods.”
However, it’s unclear if early tetrapods used these structures to hear. Panderichthys most likely used its spiracles for ventilation of either water or air. Early tetrapods probably passed air through the opening. Scientists would need preserved soft tissue to say for sure.
“That’s the question that we’re starting to investigate, whether early tetrapods used it for some ventilation function as well,” Brazeau said. Whether it was for the exhalation of water or air, it’s not really clear. We can infer that it’s quite expanded and improved from fish.”
This research is detailed in the Jan. 19 issue of the journal Nature.
Ever heard the exclamation, “WTF?” ? Well, I think it means “What Total Falsehood”.
This is going to be short, but how STUPID would the evolutionary powers that be (Or “used to be”)
have to have been to take a “nose” (gills), completely change the biological properties to form ears, and then stop and go,
“Oh crap, thats right, we needed a way to breath oxygen! Better get back to work, guys, and hurry! We’ve got about 5 minutes to get air flowing into our lungs before billions of years of evo go down the tubes!”
Now unless our “ancestor’s” new noses were evolving at the SAME TIME that we were shape-shifting our gills into our new hearing devices, how in the world would they have breathed once the ears were cut off from the lungs? And even better, let’s say that magically, both organ’s WERE evolving at the same time, that means the creatures would have been breathing for a period of time through TWO orifices. Test time. Try breathing through your mouth AND nose at the same time….
Doesn’t really work, does it?
Now imagine trying it with your nose and ears.
And remember, the fish were (theoretically) still in the water at the time that this change was occurring, so how were we filtering oxygen out of the water? Don’t you think this type of adaptation would take way too many occurrances of pure happenstance to have any leg to stand on? And yet the media is reporting it as a scientific finding, and not even as a theory.
(Note that the sub-heading reads, “Your ability to hear relies on a structure that got its start as a gill opening in fish, a new study reveals“, rather than “a new study CLAIMS.”)
Grrr… I can’t stand it I tell ya.
Posted by Jordan in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
