User:SpartHawg948

About Me
My name is William, I am 25, and I am a Staff Sergeant (SSgt) in the US Air Force Reserve. I live in Santa Clara, California, and I LOVE Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2!!! I aim to do whatever I can to improve this site, as I feel it's a great resource. Also, I am an admin, so if anyone has any questions or needs help with anything, please just let me know!

Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but I have no patience whatsoever with crybabies, whiners, speculators, and boors. If you are going to be rude to someone else, plant purely speculative info, or insult others but then start crying when someone calls you on it, you WILL be hearing from me.

Now that the seriousness is taken care of, it's my goal to make this the most informative site possible, while also keeping it a nice, friendly environment for users. Any assistance in furthering that goal is, of course, greatly appreciated, and I try to acknowledge people for their efforts as much as possible. So I hope you all enjoy the site, and hopefully you'll be hearing from me (for something good, of course!)

Big Project
Ok... not that big, but User:SpartHawg948/Sandbox/Entertainment- a sandbox of a proposed Entertainment page.

Words to live by

 * "Let him who desires peace prepare for war"- Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus (more commonly known as Vegetius) from De Re Militari
 * "An armed society is a polite society"- Robert A. Heinlein
 * "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent vice of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries"- Winston Churchill
 * "Communism is the death of the soul. It is the organization of total conformity- in short, of tyranny- and is committed to making tyranny universal."- Adlai Stevenson
 * "The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage."- Alexis de Tocqueville
 * "The world is not going to be saved by legislation."- William Howard Taft
 * "A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company."- Charles Evans Hughes

Featured Quote
This section will just be for quotes I like that aren't necessarily as concise and pithy as the ones featured above. They don't even necessarily have to be relevant to anything, I may just choose quotes from sources I like (such as George S. Patton, who provides the first of these) or works I like (such as the Anabasis by Xenophon). Good times!


 * "When I am at Rome, I fast on a Saturday; when I am at Milan, I do not. Follow the custom of the church where you are." -- Saint Ambrose (born Aurelius Ambrosius), 4th Century Bishop of Milan, and one of the four original Doctors of the Catholic Church. Ambrose is the patron Saint of, among other things, students and learning. This quote is the origin of the saying 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do', often shortened to 'When in Rome...' (and made hilarious in that regard by Will Ferrell in Anchorman).

Featured Bio
Staying on somewhat of a presidential note, we have this weeks entry, taken straight from my 'Words to Live By' section. It's Charles Evans Hughes. Now, you may be asking yourself, 'who the hell is Charles Evans Hughes?' Well, in a few moments, you'll know. So shut up and read. Also, there will be an interesting tidbit of trivia to amaze your friends and astound your foes at the end.

Charles Evans Hughes was born in New York in 1862. He led a relatively nondescript early life, although he excelled in college, starting out at Colgate University (known at the time as Madison University), then transferring on to Brown University, which he graduated from while only 19 years old, the youngest in his class, and garnering second highest honors. For the next two years, Hughes taught at Stevens Institute Academy in Florida, teaching Japanese, Latin, and calculus. He did this to earn money for law school, which he entered in 1882 when he began attending Columbia University, graduating two years later with highest honors. A year later he met his future wife, whom he married in 1888, and he and his wife had one son and one daughter. From 1884 to 1907, Hughes practiced law, with the exception of two years from 1891 to 1893, in which he taught at Cornell Law School. He also taught for a time at New York Law School while at the same time practicing in New York.

In 1906, Hughes was elected Governor of New York. He had the distinction of being the only Republican elected to statewide office in New York in the 1906 election. While in office, Hughes successfully pushed for the passage of the Moreland Act, which greatly strengthened the oversight powers the governors office possessed. Hughes used this increased power to fire a number of corrupt officials. In 1908, Hughes was offered the Vice Presidential nomination by Secretary of War William Howard Taft, the Republican candidate for President. However, he declined, choosing instead to run for re-election as Governor of New York. As it turned out, Taft won, with James S. Sherman serving as VP.

While he declined the Vice Presidential Nomination, Hughes ended up entering the federal government and national politics in 1910, when he was appointed to serve as an Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court. In this role, he wrote a number of opinions, including one for the case of Bailey v. Alabama, which overturned that states involuntary servitude (or 'peonage') laws. In 1916, Hughes was nominated by the Republican Party to serve as their presidential candidate. He accepted, and resigned from the Supreme Court to run. To this day, Hughes is the only sitting Supreme Court Justice to have been nominated for president by either major party. Hughes' running mate was Charles W. Fairbanks, who had previously served as Vice President under Theodore Roosevelt. Hughes ran on a platform of greater military preparedness and mobilization. World War I was in full swing, and Hughes rightly deduced that the United States would not be able to stay on the sidelines forever, and wished to be ready to fight. In the end, Hughes lost to incumbent Woodrow Wilson, although by a surprisingly narrow margin. Hughes carried 18 states, received 254 electoral votes and 46.1% of the popular vote to Wilson's 30 states, 277 electoral votes, and 49.2% of the vote.

After his defeat, Hughes returned to practicing law, returning to his old law firm of Hughes, Rounds, Shurman & Dwight, which is still around today, under the name Hughes Hubbard & Reed. In 1921, Hughes was appointed Secretary of State by President Warren G. Harding. As Secretary of State, he convened and oversaw the Washington Naval Conference which, as it just so happens, was the real life inspiration for Mass Effect's very own Treaty of Farixen. Hughes served for the entirety of Harding's presidency, and after Harding's death in office, served the remainder of the term under Calvin Coolidge, resigning once Coolidge was elected to a full term to allow Coolidge to choose his own Secretary of State. He then returned to practicing law, and also helped found a non-profit organization known today as the National Conference for Community and Justice, which was founded to fight bigotry, particularly Antisemitism and anti-Catholicism, as well as to oppose the KKK.

In 1930, Hughes returned to one of his old stomping grounds when President Herbert Hoover named Hughes Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Certain elements in both major parties opposed his nomination, but he was nevertheless confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 52 to 26. As Chief Justice, Hughes' most notable contribution was his effort to prevent President Franklin D. Roosevelt's attempt to pack the court in order to get his New Deal legislation, which was consistently deemed unconstitutional by the court, passed. Hughes served for 11 years, resigning from the Court in 1941. He lived out the rest of his life in peace and quite, dying at the age of 86 in 1948.

Now, as promised, an obscure bit of trivia with which to stump and/or amaze people. Charles Evans Hughes was the last presidential candidate from either of the major parties with facial hair. All throughout his life, he sported a rockin' beard and 'stache!

Tongue-in cheek thought of the, ah, who am I kidding? I'm not gonna change this daily...

 * So, I had to explain this to someone the other day, and from what I've been seeing, it bears some repeating. I have no problem with people who belong to different political parties or ideologies. That's great. It's silly to dislike someone solely for their ideals, so I don't. I'd rather someone be politically active in a party I despise than not politically active at all. Anything is better than apathy. As a great man once said, you'll never see a book entitled 'Great Moderates in History'. Now, along with all that, it should go without saying that I despise people generalizing based on politics, i.e. 'people of this ideology are ___, people of that ideology are ___'. That's prejudice in action right there. It's not only prejudicial, it's intolerant and ignorant. So know that I'll never make assumptions or generalizations based on nothing but your political ideals, and I ask that you do the same. Geez... talk about a soap-box! :P SpartHawg948 08:22, July 1, 2010 (UTC)
 * In a nutshell, the above is just another expression of my dislike of generalizations. It's just worse when the generalizations are about a person, and are about something silly like this. Disliking someone or automatically branding them in a negative light just because of their political ideology makes exactly as much sense as doing it because of their religion. SpartHawg948 08:22, July 1, 2010 (UTC)
 * On a somewhat related note, I know I said I had my next bio lined up already (the WWI general, one of those really influential people most people have never heard of), but in honor of a recent editor who left some lovely diatribes on my talk page, I'm going to make an exception. The general is getting bumped back a bit so I can honor our recent politically prejudiced pal by running a bio on someone he should like. Who, you ask? I'm not telling, but I will give one hint- this man came to be known as 'Mr. Republican'. And after that, the general, but I'm thinking after that I may do a bio on one of my favorite artists. I won't say who that is either, but I will say he was an English painter of the Romantic period, who created some truly remarkable works of art. We'll see... SpartHawg948 08:22, July 1, 2010 (UTC)
 * I won't get too much into this, but I do want to say that I love how people automatically jump to anthropogenic (aka man-made) global warming. As if there is no other reason whatsoever that the Earth could be warming (and, btw, if you pay attention to the news, you'll know it really isn't. Even scientists who support man-made warming have noted there's been no statistical increase in the last decade). It couldn't be any other reason. As we all know, the Earth never gets warmer or colder on its own, for reasons completely unrelated to mankind. Earth never entered and exited Ice Ages. We aren't still coming out of a Little Ice Age, and temperatures today aren't at or below those that were felt during the Medieval Warm Period. Recorded temperatures didn't suddenly spike at the same time the cash-strapped Russian Federation shut down most of their weather monitoring posts in chilly Siberia. I don't want to sermonize, just ask that people think things through for themselves. Don't be spoon-fed by the media or politicians. Allow for alternative explanations. SpartHawg948 22:39, July 1, 2010 (UTC)
 * I just got done watching an outstanding documentary that I would highly recommend to others, entiteled Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion. It's all about, you guessed it! Tibet! And it's narrated by The Illusive Man himself, Mr. Martin Sheen! It looks at Tibet both historically, and Tibet today, examining how the country has suffered under the oppressive rule of Communist China. It's estimated that 1.2 million Tibetans have been killed under Chinese rule. This represents 1 in 6 Tibetans. To put it another way, that's like 50 million Americans. Anyways, it's a great documentary, with interviews with U.S. elected officials of both parties, members of the Tibetan government-in-exile (including His Holiness, the Dalai Lama), various other Tibetans, including many Buddhist monks and Tibetans who were imprisoned for decades, and various academics, as well as some officials from the Chinese government (get ready to laugh when you hear what they have to say). All in all, an outstanding film. How ironic though that I was watching a documentary in which peace and nonviolent resistance were key themes while major edit wars were going on here at the wiki! :P (Oh, and btw, if you want to watch the documentary yourselves, it's available for instant streaming on Netflix, so if you have that, you don't need to worry about buying or renting the DVD.) SpartHawg948 07:02, July 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * To all my fellow Americans, Happy Independence Day!!! Let's all take a moment out of our day to yell "Take that, King George III!" Serves him right! :P SpartHawg948 07:01, July 4, 2010 (UTC)
 * Just want to say, if anyone saw my disastrous string of edits earlier, I hate not being able to preview blog posts. Grrr! SpartHawg948 20:17, July 5, 2010 (UTC)
 * In a quick plug for one of my favorite actors/commentators- Just started getting podcasts of the Jerry Doyle Show with ITunes, and I could not be happier. That's right, Jerry Doyle, aka Michael Garibaldi of Babylon 5 fame. Great actor, great radio host, and, as you'll know if you read my book corner blog, a great author. I'd recommend his show to... well, to just about anyone. Even if you don't agree with his politics, he's a funny guy with an entertaining show. SpartHawg948 22:55, July 5, 2010 (UTC)
 * Just wanted to point out real quick that saying that the Protheans vanished without a trace is just plain inaccurate, even from a very beginning of the first game viewpoint. After all, your first assingment in ME is to do what? Retrieve a Prothean beacon. In fact, from a start of ME viewpoint, it's even more obvious that the Protheans didn't vanish without a trace. The very first cinematic shows the Normandy using a mass relay, which (from a beginning of ME standpoint) was built by the Protheans. Saying that the Protheans vanished without a trace is like saying the Roman civilization vanished without a trace. It didn't. It may not be around anymore, but traces of it are everywhere, and are very well known. SpartHawg948 17:49, July 7, 2010 (UTC)
 * Something really interesting I just read, but that honestly isn't relevant to anything, so I'm putting it here. So in WWII, the U.S. manufactured the FP-45 Liberator, a cheap, crude and easily mass-produced single shot .45 caliber pistol which was airdropped behind German and Japanese lines to be used by resistance forces. Now here's the interesting part: It cost $2.40 to make a Liberator. That's $32 today, adjusted for inflation and all that. Now what would a Liberator in good condition be worth today? Why, only $1200, or $1700 if you also have the original box it came in, or $2000 if you also have the instruction sheet it came with. A cheap, crappy pistol that cost (in 2010 dollars) $32 to make can be worth $2000! How crazy is that? SpartHawg948 00:50, July 9, 2010 (UTC)