Either that or Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, where it was a random lootable. God, I wailed "No! I don't need any more precious hamburgers!" so many times, i.e. whenever I found ambergris instead of whatever random lootable I needed to buy a gear upgrade.

[botched quote redacted]

Would it have killed them to make ONE "ambergris"/"hamburgers" joke?

Precious…hamburgers?

It compounds the sense of I-win-you-lose, especially when you get the Level 100 Pickpocket perk and can steal literally all their stuff and murder them before they notice how helpless, unarmed, and naked they are.

When something needs rubbing, think Shankman's!

*does Google research, identifies several biologists studying the bat fauna of the West Indies where the real James Bond did his bird research, fails to identify any monosyllabic Anglo-Saxon names, decides reference is too obtuse anyway*

@Tity Boi- http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…

Supposedly, platypus venom causes more pain than can be dulled by a survivable dose of morphine.

And after they dropped off the koalas in Australia, how did they get to Peru to unload the guanacos and back to Mount Ararat in the last days or thereabouts of a 40-day storm? Noah's Ark was one of the first parts of the Bible to be discredited as literal truth.

Hooray, an excuse to link to this article! You are not smart enough to make an atlatl. You are not as smart as a caveman.

Wonder what that guy would have to say about the existence of vestigial genes— say, genes associated with tooth formation in birds— that aren't expressed under normal circumstances and serve no purpose beyond showing, inarguably, that birds had toothed ancestors.

Isn't that right, Tina?

Well, I guess that's consistent with everything I've seen on the topic. It still feels like an unnecessary sequel to me, though. I can't shake the sense that it was supposed to end with "Fancy was my name," and that the last verse was a preemptive response to critics that didn't approve of 1) the cliffhanger, or 2)…

For most of my country-listening years, I recall that it ended with "Fancy was my name" and one last round of refrain. Later I was surprised to hear the song continue after that. I got the impression that the Prince Charming verse(s) didn't exist until shortly before I stopped listening to country. I assumed that…

At the risk of overthinking it, how fucking stupid is the last verse and the market forces that willed it into existence? Going by the original last verse (the one ending in "but Fancy was my name"), time passed after she got the dress— "the welfare people came and took the baby, Mama died and I ain't been back"— and…

One of the tricky parts of processing DNA samples for analysis is how you mix a few microliters of chemical in a tiny little tube. It's a lot trickier than, say, shaking a bottle of Italian dressing, what with surface tension and all. The device you use to do this is called a vortex, which spins a rubber block with…

Can't argue with that, honestly. I scowled my way through the ACII feather hunt and my entire second playthrough of CoD4 just for the points and can't say why. The achievements listed above, on the other hand, I actually enjoyed. Plus ya gotta admit, it takes a badass to get Ultimate Defender. I can use it to…

56,798. Not an impressive number for a self-designated Achievement whore, which is why the likes of Little Rocket Man (Orange Box), Ultimate Defender (GRAW 2), and Time to Retire (Monaco) should be worth a buttload or two.

It has a learning curve all right. I played it with 2-3 friends, capable team players all, but our early runs were slapstick comedy before we figured out how to strategize. And we needed to learn to strategize, as the later levels get insanely hard. It clicks when 1) you get to the harder levels, and 2) you and…