My wife, son and I share a four bedroom 2000 sqft house with my mother and we don't spend more than $400 a month for utilities/property tax. My car's in a garage and all my junk is stored safely in the rafters. Switching to a bus would be a step down for us.

Petty tyrants, the scourge of human rights, freedom, and privacy.

I need to try something like this desperately. I am completely socially non-functional. I simply do not leave the house because I don't trust anyone, regardless of how lucidly aware I am of how irrational I'm being. I am in a constant state of panic stemming from my childhood of abuse and neglect and ignorance. I've learned how to live and actually try to give advice to people but still I cannot live. I'm not looking for spiritual, I'm looking for physical change.

I wear my "Suspicious" ski mask daily and haven't had much trouble.

Can we start separating the reasoning human beings from the bullies, criminals and animals... now? Please. Let the bullies fight it out amongst themselves elsewhere and let me and my friends live in peace. I'll relocate, really, but we need a wall between us.

This is where leniency comes into play. Strict rules disallow reason, while lenient ones retain common sense. "Harm" is the use of force against others without their permission. I'd say most of those examples would fall under the definition of "sharing" as much as selfish benevolence. Taco Bell realizes that implementing methods to control napkins would inhibit people from patronizing their business so they include free napkins, within reason, as a condiment. This only translates into music piracy if the musicians agree to give their albums away because they earn more money from concerts or whatever, or you giving your books away because it makes you earn more money from speeches you give or advertisement space you sell, for example. Agreement, either tacit or explicit is required. But, if you're not making more money, but losing money, giving things away free because you feel guilty or unworthy for whatever reason, then you're just a scab.

Yeah, Cory's choice to be a scab. Giving his hard work away free denigrates it below any value and is the main reason I've avoided reading anything he's written. I can only think, if it's free it's garbage. I just bought the newer Pevear Three Musketeers translation.

The problem is that being watched assumes criminals exist, which shouldn't be the assumption, but the rare exception. Assume everyone is an upstanding citizen and you have a free and peaceful place. Authoritative and neglectful parenting is where this notion of us vs. them begins, but schools are where it is indoctrinated into our youth. There should not be cameras, nor metal detectors, there should be fearless confidence in right, trust in our fellow human beings to do the right thing, but due self-defense if they fail to live up to our basic principal of "initiate no force".

So when are we shutting down the airlines by refusing to participate in their kangaroo court of searches and seizures ?

Is there even any proof that "Al Queda" is a real organization? As far as I know it's just a fiction.

Property values are in the gutter anyway so why not make your property stand out? My neighbor decided to do the same thing, several months ago, and now he's still working on it every day. Rather than move to Arizona he decided to build a stucco walled adobe nightmare in the middle of 60 year old houses with lawns and nary a picket fence to be found. No grass for him, he's adding two rooms to his largest house on the block. Good thinking retired puttering guy!

Which is more likely, that aliens are among us but hiding or that he's deluded or lying?

My dwarf gourami died today, killed by the stress caused by the constant harassment of my other dwarf gourami who was only slightly bigger than him. Cruel? Maybe. Natural? Definitely. The "might make right" attitude of nature has been superseded by the just attitude of human beings, but few people seem to grasp the difference and that there is a line that we as human beings mustn't any longer cross if we are to continue to call ourselves that.

My wife is from Thailand, so I guess when she writes email and calls home we could be "turned on" to be listened to permanently with no oversight. Thanks Obama, good vote.

It's all dust, all the way down.

I wasn't at all surprised by this article, only the popularity of it, because in Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World he mentions the moon being mistaken for a UFO is a quite common phenomenon.

"the reason you all (we all) can do any of the things we do is because 99.5% of the cops do their jobs with reasonable competence."

Come on, 50% of the reason I stay home all the time, and never answer the door, is fear of being ticketed or arrested for a petty offense or a crime I didn't commit. The other 50% is fear of violent or property crime. If the cops were doing their job and standing up for what's right, I shouldn't worry about crime, nor about the cops themselves harassing me.

For the record I've never been arrested and only have gotten one speeding ticket on a two lane/one turn lane in the center road that should've been, and was soon after, switched from 25 zone to 35.

I follow the George Costanza Method of Lying: "It's not a lie, if you believe it." Luckily I'm not a criminal, at least as the law stands now.

Where's the comparison to other countries or break it down by state or county. Not to mention time period! For all we know 27% is the absolute least amount of food that's ever been wasted in any time or place. This article is meaningless without some comparisons. "Waste" is relative.

It also fails to consider reality. If I'm eating and gaining weight I'm wasting food. If I'm eating in preparation for a marathon I'm wasting food. Are you saying all food should be distributed by the government by a personally designated amount so each person has just enough food to continue to exist and do their government assigned jobs? Preposterous nonsense. If I earned the money to buy my food and I choose to throw it in the garbage then that is my business. One could argue that food would go to waste if I didn't buy it, but at least by buying it the people who produced it got paid.

If you think the Atheist movement is better, stronger or more right because Einstein is in it, then you really don't know what it means to be an atheist.

The difference between religion and Atheism is that one is an excuse to practice "might makes right" while the other is a result of embracing one's individuality.

Davin, the day there is no government to subjugate us in any way.

I'm a 30 year old male and I'd love to have the confidence to dress like that girl. The idea that she might be dressed "inappropriately" should be offensive to anyone who values freedom and individuality, and I don't know where to begin to challenge the assumptions that would go into such a judgment. Calling her a whore or assuming she is asking to be sexually assaulted assumes a lot about the men of the world, which in my case at least is entirely inaccurate. A naked whore standing in front of me deserves the same consideration as a prim and proper English Lit professor. I wouldn't presume anything about either of them, especially that I could "get away" with committing crimes against one but not the other. Furthermore, to the point of this article that the cops were called because she was enraged, I have a right to be enraged in public without facing arrest. How dare any of them presume.