I get some of the hatred of the Cardinals because success breeds hatred. I hate the Yankees and the Red Sox for exactly the same reason.

But I do enjoy (beyond being a Cardinals fan) that the top payroll in baseball was bested yet again.

So, top 5 payrolls:
1) Dodgers - Lost in NLDS
2) Yankees - Missed Playoffs
3) Phillies - Missed Playoffs
4) Red Sox - Missed Playoffs
5) Tigers - Lost in NLDS

Teams that are left are 7th (Giants), 13th (Cardinals), 15th (Orioles), and 19th (Royals).

I'm sadly out at least one more set. My current gig teaching at my school has me teaching a Broadcast Media class, and a big part of the program is doing sports broadcasting for our soccer and football teams. Once those sports finish up, my life becomes easy in comparison.

I'm actually kind of feeling the tug to come back to the game though. I think I could find myself coming back for another stint come the first of the year.

RB: Thanks for doing rankings. Sometimes it can be thankless and people fluff about them (although no one seems to be too pissed at you, so well done!).

Sucks that PANLV has fallen that far, but interest in the game wanes for all of us and schedules get busy. Seems like for our core players (myself included, as I haven't played a full set for probably over a year) that we've all fallen away from the game at around the same time. Perhaps we can get a few of the big players back in another set or two and put together a set to get us back on top, even if only for a set.

I'd be confident if we had all our core players back in the same set that we would at least be fighting with TKO and ICD for the top spot.

braden: Open your eyes!

I know Dragon ended up nominating me a set or two ago, and I did rankings, but I honestly have been too busy to engage in anything but the occasional sports/politics thread around here, or the occasionally calling out people for being dumb.

I'd be interested to read rankings though. It's always fun to read them, and most people are grown-up enough these days that if it seems like thought was put into the rankings, people don't get too fluffy about them, even if they disagree.

ford: ESPN seems to have your back with Charlotte.

They've got Charlotte 13th overall, 5th best in the East, and actually two spots ahead of Miami.

Marshal answered as well, but yep. They're still around. Juusto and Bigwiggle are the active leaders right now. It seems like life has gotten too hectic for many of us that are the other main core guys, so I know PAN's a bit low on countries right now, but I think they have 4-5 guys playing this set.

You get no credibility for anything in life, ever, when you state that Idiocracy is "a masterpiece comedy."

That movie was a steaming pile of crap.

I do it for a living, too. I'm used to it.

TKO isn't fluffing about grabs. TKO is fluffing about grabs from people who are obviously not seriously trying to netgain.

If you're a veteran player and at the midway point of the set, you're sitting at 8k acres, you're either REALLY bad at netgaining or you're NOT netgaining.

And if you're not netgaining and making grabs on serious netgainers (especially one who has an 18M jet PS break), then it looks like you're targeting people to try to be a fluff, because there are certainly easier, better targets out there, and you're apparently not planning on doing a whole lot with the land anyway.

bstrong: Nothing better than trying to derail a thread by screaming sexism.

The reason everyone cares about Adrian Peterson and other players in the NFL and not about Hope Solo isn't because of their gender. It's because EVERYONE watches the NFL, the sponsorships are MUCH greater, and clearly the NFL is having a bit more of an epidemic of bad press right now, with about a half dozen different players being in the public eye for different legal issues.

But you keep holding onto the fact that it's because the media is conspiring to push some feminist agenda. That's TOTALLY gotta be it.

MadMorticia is an incredibly sweet and nice lady.

She definitely did everything she could to bring life to the PANLV boards when she was playing, and she was fiercely loyal to the players she considered friends.

It was sad to see when she decided to give up on the game, and I certainly will be praying for a miraculous recovery for her, or at least for her remaining time to be free of pain and full of love.

ford's pretty much hit it.

The whole area is a mess. If we engage them and send troops/missiles in, we become the monsters they claim we are. If we don't, we look weak and/or we possibly continue to let a very dangerous, extreme group continue to grow.

Supporting the sane ones in the fight seems to be the best way to go about it, but sometimes we're bad at choosing who the "sane" ones are, as evidenced by the fact several of the Middle Eastern organizations/regimes that have lashed out at us were at one point, armed by us and allied to our cause.

I'm happy that there's been a shift in policy recently, because ISIS is a sure-thing threat, whereas the Syrians/Kurds we're about to start arming could actually help the cause both in the short- and long-term, but the area just seems like it's stuck in a pre-modern state of mind, and I'm not sure how things get better if that continues.

Juice: Not sure where you're getting your information

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...mum-wage-reduces-poverty/
http://research.stlouisfed.org/...CRE_0314_Minimum_Wage.pdf
http://thinkprogress.org/...831/minimum-wage-poverty/
http://www.msnbc.com/...age-hike-would-do-america
http://www.cnn.com/...offenheiser-minimum-wage/

These are literally just the first five hits I got on a Google search, not ones that I picked out specifically. It includes the St. Louis Fed, an article that relies almost entirely on a CBO report, and articles from several major news outlets that quote other studies.

I'm not arguing about most of your post, but when you say raising the minimum wage doesn't even help those making minimum wage, you're simply wrong.

Prices do tend to raise a little bit when minimum wage increases happen, but not nearly at the same rate of those increases.

Raising the minimum wage DOES tremendously help those at the bottom.

Having said that, while I really don't care whether such an increase happens (unless it's the crazy $15/hr talk some people bring up), I don't actually advocate for it, because I agree with other posters here that many of those positions are considered part-time, entry-level positions, and I agree that raising the minimum wage at best has a neutral effect, and at worst a negative effect on most working and middle-class people above the minimum wage, but nevertheless, you're simply wrong on the point that it doesn't help the poor.

Well, your narrative is a common enough one, but it's also common enough that many people that were just like your family failed horribly in that same situation.

Hopefully, you'd generally agree with the fact that the universe doesn't necessarily reward talent, hard work, and a high ethical standard while punishing the opposite. A lot of what happens to us is based on luck, and that luck may be anything from being born into a powerful, economically sound country, all the way down to being lucky that your boss's personality and your personality clicked and the guy in the next cubicle was downsized instead of you.

I'm not saying hard work and talent doesn't play a role in this. The old saying "luck favors the prepared" is absolutely true. But luck still rewards a lot of undeserving people and fluffs over a lot of deserving people. When people start to ignore that and assume that hard work and talent are all anyone needs, it makes it easy to make anyone who failed into the "other."

"Those people are just lazy!"
"Those people just want handouts!"
"Those people would rather pump out babies and collect welfare than actually work!"
etc. etc. etc.

Once we do that, we basically give up on trying to solve problems like poverty, because we've replaced the reality of the situation, that the world is a highly nuanced place where thousands of events and circumstances lead to our success or failure, with the very simplistic narrative that "Successful people are those who are talented and work hard, because all people who are talented and work hard are successful. Meanwhile, people who are on government assistance of any type are all lazy and/or have no talents to offer the world."

That's problematic thinking both because it simplifies the world of economics and opportunity down to one statement, which I'm sure everyone here will agree is ludicrous, but also because it cuts us off from other people.

These posts turn into shouting matches way too quickly. I'm far from an expert on economics, but here are a few things I know:

1) Wages aren't necessarily tied to one's contributions to society, and we need to recognize that. The "don't like it? Work harder" attitude isn't constructive in any way. After all, as a teacher, I have a job that society says it values, because educating the next generation is clearly very important. For that job, even being in my 10th year and having an advanced degree, I don't make anywhere near what I'd likely make in many other jobs that don't necessarily add value to the world in the same way. For instance, even a bad baseball player on a major league roster makes $500,000 to add virtually no wins, no marketability, or anything else of tremendous value to a team.

This is what it is. I'm not saying we should have a revolution to overthrow it, but I am saying let's stop saying that people are always rich because they work hard and add value to society and that people are always poor (not saying I'm poor, necessarily) because they are lazy and don't add value to society, because teachers, doctors, engineers, and countless other people sure as hell provide a more necessary and useful service than a person who swings a piece of wood at a ball for 6 months out of the year.

2) Maybe once we hit the true optimal solution, perhaps economics will become a zero sum situation, but we're not there yet. The best way (at least from what I understand) to benefit everyone in any current economy is to grow the overall economy. While this video is partially about health care reform, it also talks about the idea of growing the economy (or in this specific instance, making a bigger pizza): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7LF5Vj2n64

3) Despite the fact that the best way may be to grow the economy, it doesn't mean we shouldn't consider the wage gap a problem. You cannot possibly tell me that a CEO is worth billions of dollars while many minimum wage workers for those same corporations should earn $7.25.
Does that mean I think we should raise the min. wage to $15? No. I've read that minimum wage increases haven't ever really hurt an economy before (when people ACTUALLY study, not just make assumptions and state them as far), but that's a huge jump, and I don't think $15/hr is wise.

This is probably my own way of shouting at the wind and won't accomplish anything, but if you're one of the people just spouting what the angry talking heads on cable news are telling you, you're not helping. The economy is highly nuanced and complex, and talking about it either like there are no problems or like any one solution will be a panacea is counter-productive to either finding a solution or educating people on what solutions might or might not work.

"Fair Use" is about the most unclear law in the world, because it's been left intentionally vague so that each case can be interpreted on a case-by-case instance.

That being said, what Bill said is pretty fair.

To add to it: If you're using this for commercial purposes, or if the original creator was using it for commercial purposes, get permission/buy rights or go take a similar picture that you can use that you have the rights to. You may not get caught, but ultimately, you're making money off someone else's creation

If it's non-commercial use and the original owner is just some dude who took a picture, then you're far more likely (but not guaranteed) to be in the clear, but I'll echo Bill's stance that attribution is still a good idea.

And fair or unfair, untagged countries generally don't get the benefit of the doubt.

If you want to play solo, tag up all your countries in one tag and let us know who you are so that if something happens, people know who to contact.

If you do that, you generally get a lot more respect within the game (doesn't mean something couldn't happen still, but you limit your risk)

Ryan: If you'd like to join PANLV, the website is:

eepandora.com

Come and apply!

If they're season one, you can admire a LOT of boobs freely.

The boob to episode seems to have dropped each season though.

I'm not sure if he's active this set or not, but if you send a forum message to him and he doesn't respond, you could also try Bigwiggle, who is AJ's brother. He might respond a little faster, and he could probably get AJ's attention to tip him off you're looking for him.

qwwertyuio

Or just because I like to try to annoy you by taking the stickied threads.

^barely literate

To actually answer the question: the "free for all" part simply refers to being able to run multiple countries. Alliance and Free For All are the servers that feature clans/alliances.

You could certainly survive without a clan, but most new players are far better served joining a new clan for two main reasons: 1) your clanmates can teach you strategy on how to best build your countries to succeed, and 2) your clanmates can teach you the "unwritten" rules that exist within the game.

The unwritten rules are generally ones that prevent too much bullying in the game, so they actually can help out new players, but if you don't know them, you'll probably break one of them and someone might kill off your country as retribution.

If you're new to the game, I'd suggest playing back to back sets with different clans, first a netgaining clan to best learn how to build a country, then switching over to a war clan. Then you'll have seen the two main aspects of this game and you'll have at least the basic skills needed to do whatever you want with your countries.

Bonus! :)

And yet we keep posting here.

I tried to do the same thing in #help, but none of them were active. Thanks for following up on it, Donny. Hopefully no one with unscrupulous intentions saw it.

Thanks martian.

Hopefully it causes no problem, but I think it's fairly obvious there was no malice on your part, bomber.

As I said, I could very well be wrong, but that just seems like a lot of specific information to be posted in a public place. I'd hate to see someone take advantage of it and cause further harm to people that are currently suffering, as it is.

Yeah, that first war did suck. I'll fully agree on that one. We didn't stand a chance between the skill difference and the FS being theirs.

I could totally be wrong, but I don't think anyone donating needs their credit card number and expiration date to send money their way on PayPal. I think they just need an account name.

I wouldn't say anything, but that's a lot of information there and it'd be really easy to commit identity theft, and with the situation as it is, that's clearly the last thing that family needs to be worrying about.

Maybe I'm wrong though. I've only ever used PayPal to buy things off eBay.

I actually thought the NBK v. PAN and Focus one was a lot of fun.

And sadly, I think that's the straw that broke the camel's back for MM.

Shoot, I haven't played a full set in about a year and a half anyway. The only thing I'm threatening is the ANW of PAN or any other clan I played in.

I think it's time to restart the cycle!

DEATH TO ICD!

That's true. That does change things a bit. I guess it's possible based on their defense that they could slink in as being as high as the 4th seed, but I don't see how they compete with Cleveland, Chicago and Miami. And in fact, I think they'll be sort of like last year's Bulls team, which played great defense but had no offensive punch, which obviously failed for Chicago in the playoffs once teams had time to gameplan specifically on how to shut down the Bulls.

If I had to guess, I'd probably drop the Pacers down towards the bottom of the playoffs. I'd put Toronto and Washington ahead of them, and I'd put them in the group with Charlotte, Atlanta, and NY.

So ultimately, I guess I'm picking that one of: Charlotte, Indiana, Atlanta, and NY misses the playoffs, with Chicago, Cleveland, Miami, Toronto, and Washington being the other 5 teams in.

I'll be a bit surprised if they 8 playoff teams aren't among those 9.

A compound sprain of the fibula and tibia.

I haven't found anything terribly specific either, but it seems to mostly stem from his implementation of the ACA/Obamacare, which is ironic, considering the House has voted to repeal the law in its entirety six times, and parts of the last over 50 times.

But with Pres. Obama making executive changes to its implementation (in an effort to ease parts of the law into effect), Boehner and the House Republicans seem to have a problem with the fact that Pres. Obama isn't fully enacting a law that they've tried over 50 times to defeat.

There may be more to it. I haven't specifically gone out to look up information on this, because I just can't muster up any ability to care about this law suit at the current time, but from what I have caught from random news stations or news articles I have read, that's the jist of it.

I look forward to you showing us all just how right I was. ;)

If you want to learn the game, I'd suggest joining the Free For All server. It allows you to play up to 16 countries, so you can try out multiple strategies. It also has the advantage of being a server with alliances, where you can join an alliance and get help from people in your alliance.

To give you the quick answer though:

All the governments have their advantages. The idea is to turn your country into a specialist, making one thing, and selling off the extra to get everything else you need. For a newbie, I'd suggest one of the following two strategies:

Farmer -- I'd use a democracy government because of the 0% market commissions, plus higher max technology. You'll build almost all farms, and sell extra food to buy military, tech (of which you'll want to focus on agricultural tech first and foremost), and to have the money to run turns (at some point you'll start to run a deficit).

Casher -- I'd use a republic government here because of the Per Capita Income bonus. Then you build primarily residences and enterprise zones, get large amounts of cash, and buy tech (business/residential), military, and food.

There are lots of other strategies, and there's a lot more to these strategies, but this should give you the basic starting point, and from there, if you join an alliance on either the Alliance or Free For All servers, or simply find some people to sort of mentor you, they can certainly help you with the specifics.

In case anyone doesn't know what happens, it looks pretty bad, and it might mess with you to see it, but if you want to watch it, you're looking for the guy who attempts to block a shot (Paul George is the player's name).

His leg gets caught under the basket stanchion and he breaks both his fibula and tibia.

Better than an ACL? He has an open tibia/fibula fracture. He's going to be out for a year, and I'd imagine breaking both the bones in your lower leg is probably way more painful than tearing an ACL, not to mention ACL tears are so commonplace for athletes that the rehab is about as straightforward as possible.

I'd say this is worse in virtually every way.

The only good thing about this is that it was such a freak incident (with the stanchion being over 2 feet closer to the court than it is for NBA games) that he may not have to also overcome the psychological aspect of trusting your body enough to not have that happen again.

I feel for Paul George and the Pacers. As a Bulls fan, I can sympathize on the idea that it sucks seeing your star go down and knowing that pretty much ruins your season, and PG is such a good young player, it sucks knowing that one of the better teams in the East probably is relegated to 2nd-tier status with this loss.

Actually, I forgot about the signing of Stephenson. Depending on how he handles being a much larger part of the offense and whether he can be consistent in that role, the Hornets actually could be quite improved. My initial statement was probably a bit harsh for where they'll really be.

I think Stephenson will at least be worthy of "star" status in a more featured role, but I'm not sure if year one will be when that truly happens.

And also, I didn't take into account some of the teams that are probably a bit weaker. Brooklyn lost Pierce and generally has a bunch of players that seem to be on the wrong side of their peak (even Deron Williams, who is relatively young, just seems like he's on the downslope of his career).

The East will be the more intriguing conference. It seems like everyone was tanking for picks this past year. I think Atlanta is far closer to the team that took Indiana to 7 games than it is the team that couldn't manage to even break the .500 mark.

So I guess I'd put Chicago, Indiana, Cleveland, and Miami as the top four, and I'd probably guess that Washington and Toronto will be better than Charlotte. I think Charlotte's probably in the next group that I don't know what to do with, including Atlanta and New York. I think Brooklyn will probably fall out of the playoffs, and I don't see any of the other non-playoff teams from last year (Det, Bos, Phi, Orl, Mil) making that much of a step forward to beat Charlotte.

So I was probably a bit harsh. If I had to actually put numbers on things, I'd put an over/under at about 38 or 39 wins, and I'd guess they'll be right on the edge of playoff contention, somewhere in the 8th-10th range for the East.

That's based on Lance giving them a little more firepower, but the East overall playing better and the fact that there's much more depth in the East, even though there don't seem to be any true powerhouse teams.

sirdog, you're nothing more than a flea to the players in Borat. You can play this tough guy act if you want, but the only way you'll end up doing any real damage is if you decide to become a suicider, and that's perhaps the most pathetic path to take.

Or instead, you can realize that you were being a fluff, you can correct that behavior, and maybe you can actually accomplish something in this game.

It's really your call, but trust me, you're not going to actually win against most of the truly established players on this server.

And when you answer Hornets, what's the question?

What team is likely to win about 30 games and finish 11th in the East?

braden:

1) I wouldn't take anything Dibs says seriously.

2) Comparing Obama to Hitler or Communist USSR is ridiculous. Just stop. Even if you don't like the guy, there are myriad positive and negative reasons why such a comparison is completely stupid, but to give you one you'll probably agree with: Pres. Obama hasn't been effective enough at getting legislation passed to compare him to any leader who was able to push their own agenda. The only really successful period for him in pushing an agenda was 2008-2010 when he had both houses leaning left, and even then, he tried to lead from behind, letting the legislative leaders handle most of the details while simply offering big picture plans.

Furthermore, I would suggest you don't start any thought with "cerb was right" if you want to be taken seriously.

I'm shocked you have the Heat in that list.

The Heat should still be a good team, but I think they'll be battling for the 4 seed in the East with teams like Atlanta and Washington. Deng's about as good of a replacement as was available for Lebron, but obviously no one can replace Lebron. It'll be interesting to see how they do, because Bosh is going to have to be a star player again instead of simply a stretch 4 (or stretch 5, for that matter) as he was being used as while Lebron was there, and Wade will have to stay healthy.

Cleveland will likely have some growing pains as Kyrie and Lebron learn to play together, and of course as of now, their other key players are mostly young (Bennett, Wiggins). If they get Love, the big question will be how quickly they can form some chemistry and whether they have the players to defend enough to not have to score 100 every night, but with Love, Irving and LBJ, scoring 100 a night shouldn't be too tough to do.

The Bulls hinge entirely on Rose's health, but they've added a better 2nd option in Gasol to replace the amnestied Boozer, they've still got defensive beast and fringe MVP candidate Joakim Noah, and they still have Gibson and Butler, who continue to get better and better, and they've kept most of last year's bench depth, while adding even more with rookies Doug McDermott and Nikola Mirotic (considered to be good enough that even in this year's very strong draft he would've been a top 5 pick), and of course Aaron Brooks to add depth at PG/SG. Rose doesn't need to be 100% back to his MVP form to begin the season, but they need him to work into form while the team builds chemistry finding roles for their new players. Also, they've probably got the best coach in the Eastern Conference in Thibs.

Lastly, Indiana should be better than the Heat. I think they'll be a bit diminished without Stephenson, and with Hibbert on the trading block, with how fragile his psyche seems to be, they either need to find a way to build him back up or they need to dump him, and I doubt they'll get fair value out of him given how he fell apart last season. Even still, Indiana's got a deep roster and a superstar in Paul George and could very well win the East's top seed again next year.

I don't see how the Heat are ahead of any of those other three teams.

In the West, there's so many powerful teams that the real question is: Can the Spurs, who are obviously still quite dependent on a core of aging players in Parker/Ginobili/Duncan, actually sustain playing through another full season and off season after a year where they had all those extra games from winning the championship. The Spurs have the best coach in the NBA and he's willing to rest his guys, so perhaps they can, but I don't think it's coincidence that the Spurs have failed to go back-to-back in any of their chances recently.

And the Rockets, as good as they are, I just don't think they have the type of players who take you to a championship. Dwight Howard is arguably the best center in the game just because of his natural talent, but it doesn't seem like he ever adds anything to his game or gets any better. James Harden's a damn good SG, but I think he's the type of player that if a defense actually keys on him, he can be pressured into bad shots a lot more easily than many other top stars in the game. He's shot under 40% from the field in the last two postseasons with Houston as the first option, and while Trevor Ariza is a nice pickup, since they lost Chandler Parsons, that's about a push in my opinion, and possibly a loss overall, since Chandler Parsons was already used to playing with this team, and Ariza's going to have to come in and develop his role.

If I had to pick one individual team to win it, I might pick the Spurs or Cavs, but if you're giving me the field or those four teams, I'd take the field. With the Pacers and Bulls in the East and Portland, OKC, and even Golden State out West, I think it's actually a fairly reasonable assertion that none of these four teams you've listed even make an appearance in the Finals.

As far as the last question, clearly the Lebron signing shakes up things the most, but I think Bosh going back to Miami instead of signing with Houston really kind of shook up things as well. It maintains the Heat as still a pretty good team in the East, and also Houston ended up weaker because of the reasons already stated above. They could've been considered the "paper champions" if they could've signed Bosh and kept Parsons.

The thing is: Everyone's down on the East, but I think the few top teams in the East can compete with anyone in the West. I think once you get past the top tier of East teams though, the drop off is significant. Phoenix and Minnesota probably could've been as high as the 4 or 5 seed in the East this past year, but instead they missed the playoffs. I don't think that part is going to change, even if a team like the Bulls, Cavs, or Pacers could conceivably keep up with and possibly beat a team like OKC or San Antonio.

Anyway, that's a really long post to answer your questions. Since you posed the questions, what do you think?

ford FTW!

FFA or Express are probably the two best servers to learn on, because with FFA you can play 16 countries, so you can have more opportunities to test strategies, or if you get killed, you have more countries to keep going with.

With Express, the turns are fast and furious, so you can learn a new strategy and take it from beginning to end of set in just a few days.

FFA probably edges out Express for new players though because here you can also join an alliance and have more access to mentors who can teach you the game. If you're looking for a clan/alliance, I'm sure there are plenty of people on the boards who would love to have another member. However, you will find that some people are suspicious of people with the "New Member" tag, because a lot of people cause problems, then make a new account and try to act like a new person in order to get into a clan that otherwise would turn them down.

Either way, if you act reasonable with people, ask questions when you don't understand something, and make a real attempt to learn the unwritten, political rules of the game, you'll earn trust and respect pretty quickly.

swearing isn't banned on the forums, and she hasn't really said anything that's all that offensive. Stop grasping at straws to try to get the mods to get rid of Jen for you.

If you don't want a target on your back, I'd suggest you let the community know why you decided to go after Jen in the first place, because otherwise I think you're going to find difficulty moving forward with your clan.