gylman

Well, actually, one could SELL him to the circus, or at least lease, and I'd bet you'll get WAAAAAAY more than 35 bucks. Imagine if he juggles too! You could retire. It's win win really. You get a quiet house, free time, and no more Dora the Explorer, and he gets to play with the elephants, frolic with the clowns, and lots of attention (although from strangers... but it's a small price to pay). :-D

Well, at the risk of creating a ruckus.... I am not a huge Ron Paul fan, I must confess. It's ironic that we are talking about him in light of our discussion yesterday. There is much of the "conspiracy theorist" about him and I find him a bit scary. He is not a candidate that will appeal to women or minorities. At all. It's impossible for me to picture him as the CIC. On the other hand, he seems much closer to Thomas Jefferson than any of the other candidates. Some really unique notions about income tax, health care, telecommunication regulation, and society in general. He is a true libertarian, and wants as little government intervention as possible. I'm pretty sure Thomas Jefferson would vote for him, and I wish some of the more mainstream candidtes borrowed a bit from him. His supporters sometimes are so extreme in their support that they are scary too. They spam up the blogs and forums, and really have done more to harm his cause than to help him with the mainstream voters. That's my view anyway. But I'm not dissing the man Sir Nadroj. He is the most interesting candidate in the election. But he can't win. Possibly he can use the recognition he gained from this election, try to make himself more "palatable" in the next 4-8 years, and then try again with a much better chance.

Hey people, this is buy sell trade thread. Ron Paul is a very controversial candidate who arouses very strong feelings one way or the other. This thread is high risk for turning into a flame fest... Please, keep it under control, or if you feel the need to expound on politics (who am I to talk...) take it to the community forum. Peace.

Salvobrick, your stuff is great - I love your Cafe Corner style constructions. They are the best on the Lego Site. I think this is what Lego had in mind - get talented builders in the community to make great sets, and let others download the instructions and build and learn and modify and so on. thanks for doing all that work - I'll keep checking your user account.

Done! They'll never be able to figure it out now...

Hey! Now your got the spirit of the conspiracy game! Wheels within wheels within wheels, that's what I always say. Actually it's time to confess. Our exchange on this topic was actually a carefully orchestrated manouevre to create a discussion, and for me to "appear to convince" John, a "regular" person who is approaching the "truth", that there is nothing to worry about. OK sheeple, back to your sports, pop entertainment, and stock market speculation, all part of my and Cleese's plan to distract you, while we take over the world. bwahahahahahahahahahahaha C'Mon John, our work is done here. Never mind....

OK John, I worry about your peace of mind, so I watched it again. Sigh. It's all crap. From beginning to end. Think about this. Supposedly all these powerful people control all the media, have a total conspiracy for 60 years, but not a single major political leader or country resists them, they cause multiple wars to advance an agenda, are willing to blow up their own centres of function (the Twin Towers were financial buildings... wouldn't it have been easier just to blow up the Whitehouse or Congress?). So, they have all this vast power and can control everything, but.... but.... but... somehow they can't silence these single individuals who are finally revealing the conspiracy after all these years. Is that sensible? Look, ironically, conspiracy theory is a big industry. Websites, books, fan conventions, etc. There are always gullible people out there willing to believe crazy stuff. Selective, slightly "modified quotes", mysterious sources, crazy coincidences, and the Internet makes it all happen instantly and magnifies every little thing. You can always find some crazy person to endorse any idea. Nothing is more fun than "end of the world as we know it" stuff. http://www.religioustolerance.org/end_wrl2.htm. Read it and have a good laugh, and get on with your life. Oh, and the dreaded "security and properity partnership"? Hardly a top secret. You can read all you want about it in the Government of Canada website. http://www.pm.gc.ca/eng/media.asp?id=1084. Best as I can tell, its a mechanism for removing red tape from economic activity in North America. I didn't see anything too sinister looking. Not much of a secret though...

Excellent review, along the style and quality that we have come to expect here at EB. Thank you for contributing to the finest Lego set review database. Basically, this set is spare parts for me. It does not display particularly well, it is not a spectacular or challenging build. But, it does not seem that there are not any useless parts. It is priced out of my current price range (95$ Canadian) for spare parts. I think Lego could have done a better job, and usually the Creator sets are more realistically priced than this. Thanks again taking the time and effort to make a review.

I have a hard time feeling very morally superior to the US. What morals do we have that are better than the US? My standard of living is largely a result of the strong US economy. My country does not have to have a real army because the US protects this continent All the most popular movies and books in Canada come from the US Whenever there is some product or service that I can't get here, I get it from the US. The Internet is basically a product of the US. Imagine if Russia or China had invented it. Do you think they would have shared it with the world? I can't think of anything Canadians do better than the US except posture. There are issues in the US to be sure, but the inherent strength of the country makes me sure they will come out OK. Sorry, I watched too many episodes of America Rock on ABC Saturday morning cartoons as a kid to disrespect the US. :-D Gyl(USFanboy)Man (yikes, I smell a new title. But I guess that's better than PVC)

That's my point though. The stuff that JP Morgan pulled can't be done any more. That's what the current Fed based banking system. That's why we don't get that stuff anymore. The Fed evolved gradually from an old boys club to the most tightly watched financial institution in the world. They learned from their mistakes. The lessons of the early 1900's turned into the economic theories of the 1980's that people like Greenspan used to stabilize financial markets over the last 25 years. The last generation has been a period of unparallelled economic stability, and the Fed gets much credit for this. I remember that my father had to deal with 18% interest rates on his mortage in the 1970's. That's totally unthinkable in today's society, only 30 years later. The fed gets credit for that. Some perspective is required for people who think that we are in the grip of some sinister world dominating plot. We live in these times, and we think there are great changes, and things are unstable. But this is the most stable time in modern world history. I dunno how old you are John, but when I was a teenager, the notion that we coudl easily be anhilliated by Russian nukes was taken for granted. I genuinely worried about this. Hundreds of book were written on the topic. It was a routine topic of movies. People had cottages, bomb shelters, and stuff stocked in case of world war III. Pick me any 25 year period in modern day history which is as stable, relatively speaking, as the time between 1980 and 2007. You think Iraq is a war? Vietnam - that was a war. Korea, that was a war. WWII, WWI, The civil war. The civil war was the worst war in US history. By far. EVery 30 or 40 years there was some cataclysmic event. But now we are 60 years from WWII, and going strong. Put in perspective, we live in the best time in human history. Far from perfect, but far closer than at any previous time. That's why I have a hard time accepting all the notions that some evil cabal is manipulating my world. Or, if they are..... let them keep on doing it. Oh, and as for that computer chip business....it's basically an urban myth mixed up with a cyberpunk science fiction story. Hell, we can't even get our big behind together to put together a wallet card that at least carries all our prescription information so that patients don't get multiple medications unnecessarily. And I don't know any serious person who would want, or politician who has proposed earnestly, that implanted chip business. In either the US or in Canada. They couldn't even get the V-chip to work out in TV sets. Let alone a human chip.

It's more complicated than that. The Federal reserve did a lot to stabilize the American economy in the hectic 1800s when private banks were printing their own money, manipulating currency etc. When was the last time you read about a "run" on a bank - when the depositors think that it's out of money, and in a panic clear it out, creating a chain of events that lead to a bank failure and then asystem failure? It was a routine occurrence before the federal reserve took on the role of preventing this type of problem. The Fed Reserve bank wields awesome power, but it is such an enormous organization, spread so broadly, and so tightly regulated by Congress, that the notion that it somehow manipulates the world for the gain of a few people is just not credible. Do you know how closely every tiny move is watched by tens of thousands of very intelligent and very motivated stockbroker, to try to detect some way to take advantage of their moves. I doubt there is a more scrutized institution in the world, because so much money is at stake. If you get rid of the Fed, what would you put in its place? The Fed acts like a damper on an oscilating dipole - without the damper it can slip into a resonating frequency and suddenly develop an enormous amount of momentum and blow apart. The damper prevents this. The Fed basically does the same with money. We don't get hyperinflation, we don't get deflation, and we have been nicely ticking along at 2-4% Look at this table: ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt Go to the columns to the far right. Look at Percent change Dec-Dec. That's the annual inflation rate. Look how wildly it fluctuated from 1913 to 1980. From deflation of 10% to inflation of 20%. 20% inflation is devastating to workers and economies. Now look at 1981 to present. Much steadier. Basically 3-4% for the last 25 years. That's the Fed's effect. Its a good thing. So, seriously, if the Fed Reserve was so evil and manipulative, don't ou think people would have noticed by now. People other than the conspiracy theorists? The Bank is manipulative, no doubt, but their goals are good, and they have been very successful in the last 25 years. If we didn't have the Fed at the time of the Tech Bubble burst, there would have been a major depression for sure. Instead, we had a rather minimal recession, and most stocks returned to their value in 5 years. It took 20-30 years for stocks to recover from the great depression. Sorry for the long winded posts. You have caught me on an agitated night.

John, much, but not all, of the stuff in this film is standard "bankers control the world" conspiracy theory. It has been around for 150 years or longer. Somewhere in heart of this are the Freemasons with their secret handshake, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and and a host of other loonie ideas that usually appeal to conspiracy nutbars, the extreme left, and powerless nationalists/racists who blame others for their lack of power and success. Letting any aspect of your thinking about life and the future be contaminated by this type of sheeite is just silly. Only the losers who believe this type of thing have no life and no future. Funny you mention Thomas Jefferson. I doubt that anyone can have a higher regard for Thomas Jefferson than myself - probably the wisest American of all time....See post #18 in this old thread http://eurobricks.hosting.ipsyn.com/eurofo...Jefferson&st=15 "It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong." Thomas Jefferson You seriously believe that 9/11 was an intentional demolition? :-( You'd take the he word of "retired experts", engineers who live at home in the basement with their moms, or "former" goverment workers, over mainstream sources quoting reputable scientists from major universities. Did you seee the recent History Channel show on this? http://www.history.com/shows.do?action=det...pisodeId=240087 Or read the Popular Mechanics analysis? http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology...aw/1227842.html You can't be serious, right?

ONE MORE THING. You know who made this movie? A bunch of "activitists" who believe that 9/11 was a government conspiracy.... YOu know, "Controlled Demolition of the World Trade Center"... LMFAO. Right. What about Roswell and Area 51. EGADS!

Egads, mindless America bashing bothers me. The country has some issues, but look at the big picture. Let's assume you are an American (although Cleese if I am not mistaken you are from Canada no?) Would your life be better in China? Russia? Egypt? YOu planning to leave the US anytime soon for better jobs or better schools, or greater freedom to speak what you wish or read what you wish? Right. Seriously - this type of propaganda is all over the Internet. Anyone can pick and choose bits and pieces from 2000 years of history and make a case for anything. Only children believe propaganda like this. So, as a counterpost, how about this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3zLY1k-4pg A world without America. Or maybe this one, by a Canadian: http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/sinclair.asp read the whole thing.... it was done aroudn the time of Vietnam. Do you have a hope in hell? Well, does your government conduct reasonably democratic elections that usually see a turnover of power without the army getting involved? Does your country permit freedom to any religion? Does your country have the best schools in the world? Has your country won more nobel prizes for science than all other countries in the world combined? Yes you have a hope in hell. Unless you choose to mindlessly take everything you have been given by the blood of your ancestors for granted while you contribute nothing yourself, and mock and debase your inheritance, and parrot junk you read somewhere as though it was profound, and decide to move to Cuba for better healthcare because Michael Moore (whom I actually have met - and he's a dickhead) said so. Then you have no hope in hell.

I'm thinking more 1970's, but probably not much different than 1950's. I'm in the same stage you are at Yoda - Bricklink limbo..... Sept 10 deadline, huh?

Well, not to give away any more, but that blurry off-angle picture was taken by a customer as he was ducking a flying chair during the brawl between the motorcycle gang and the girls' soccer team ....

I'll be doing a restaurant variation - Gylman's Red White and Blue Burgers. American Graffiti era burger joint. Sneak Peek Gee. I hope I didn't give too much away! X-D

Jeez. Some of these seem to me like they belong in the first song thread - "worst ever".

God, those songs really were horrible. Why not a thread about GOOD videos, that are fun to click on and watch & listen. Here's one to start things along: A55hole Song Andlyrics

Yes, I agree. The classics will live forever. Led Zeppelin AC/DC Queen The Who ... They don't make epic bands like that any more. I checked out some of the above links. I have to say that Swedish guy is probably the most annoying.

The click joints are great. They'll hold a ton. They even supported my Santa of doom a couple of years back. now THAT was a fattie all right. Those joints first came with the big KK figures right? I always thought they were the biggest advance in Mecha building ever. But I saw the elbows were ball joints, that's why I wondered. Those ones alway frustrated the hell out of me. And I didn't find the "improved" ones, with a bit of rubber in them middle of the socket, did much better.

A "realistic" looking Mecha. Looks so sturdy without being fat. That's very hard to achieve with bionicle parts. And only a bit of system to beef up the chest. Say, you're pretty good! Have you done this before? :-) Are the knee joints mobile? Or does the posability come only from the ankles? Do you find the ball joints strong enough to hold the arms and the gun up against gravity? I never had much luck with that. EVen if I doubled up the ball joints. Usually I had to shove paper in the joint,and that only works for a while.

I don't know how you did the turrets, but if it is just a hinge with a tilt, maybe you can reduce the tilt, and then add some small arches underneath the turret that connect the wall to the base of the turret, so it looks less like an earthquake has knocked them off, and more like an intentional construction by a master architect. You don't have to fill the gap perfectly - just fill that empty space under the turret as much as possible.

Excellent. I lvoe it when we don't just stick to straight lines with Lego creations. Good colour choices too. And the combination of village and castle is A+

My building approach usually is to try to build something without any planning at all, just a vague idea of what I want it to look like at the end. After a while I get a notion of how to do it, and of course I need to get specific pieces or specific colours, so off to Bricklink I go. Then when it's 50% done, and I have bought a bunch of Bricklink stuff , I realize that it's crap, and I destroy all of it except for small parts of the MOC that look decent by themselves, but don't fit well together (usually a proportion issue) I then reassemble the 10% noncrap element of the MOC in a new version, which means I buy a bunch more parts. Usually after 2-3 iterations of this during which the non-crap part of the MOC increases and the crap diminishes, it starts to look like what I wanted, and in proportion, and everything fits together together. By now I have a mountain of useless parts I ordered from Bricklink from the various iterations. Usually I don't get all the colours right at this stage, because use non-matching colours just to see if it all fits together before buying stuff I don't end up using.... as if!!!! It then has to sit while the last batch of useless Bricklink parts arrives, which are in the right colour. I think i am finished, but I realize one of the colours is totally wrong for what I wanted, so I have to redo part of the MOC. This means that the previous batch of useless parts from Bricklink will actually be the second last. I get the last batch, I put it together, and I am reasonably content with everything except the amount of money I have spent on a 1000 piece MOC with 3000 useless pieces. The Lego Company would call the "extras", which perhaps I should do also to make myself feel better. Of course, they sell a 500 part set with 5 extras, not 5000. Anyway, it then has to sit on my workdesk for a few weeks and irritate me, until I finally get around to putting the last touches on it, as well as put the useless extra parts into the various bins. Finally, I look at Brickshelf, and see all the far better ways of doing what I wanted to do that other people came up with, and never want to look at the MOC again. So, that's how it usually goes. For example, this future rocketship keychain display system is at about 2nd iteration, and waiting for next bunch of curved slopes, 4 x 4 curved bricks, and arches to arrive. With the contest I'm at the first stage (vague idea stage). Luckily, since this contest ends in less than 4 weeks, the number of iterations and bricklink purchases I can do is limited. Maybe none..... hopefully....