The Patriot (pshaw!) Act need to be overturned, or rescinded, or whatever it is they do when a law is ridiculous and is being abused. And somebody needs to give the FBI a stern talking to.

@#95
"This "protect the children"-ism must end. I was just out at a bar with my friend who have a baby. There was smoke in the air and alcohol everywhere else. I'm pretty sure the kid is going to be okay. In fact, her language development will probably be much improved, being out in adult society instead of having the Teletubbies coo at her and turn her into a moron."

I agree with you, having worked with academic faculty, it's not surprising that the father just didn't notice, or suspect it might be alcohol laced lemon-flavored fizz water.

And I agree with with many here that the response was over-the-top, which seems to be the default these days. You take a picture of a great piece of architecture, you're a terrorist, etc. Too much wasting of precious resources on inappropriate overreactions.

But, I must say, Kyle, that you did not stand up and demand that your "friend" take the child out of the bar immediately is a true failure of conscience. That that child was allowed to remain in a tavern is a true tragedy. I mean, is there nowhere a guy can go and have a beer and chat with his pals, and not have to hear the squalling of rugrats?

And now for something completely different...

While I certainly don't condone the unlawful actions of the NYPD, I think a bit of moderation (not you Xeni) is called for. What I'm talking about is the invective aimed at the police... and the CMers too.

I'm not particularly pro-police, nor do I excuse their gross errors when they make them, but I remind you all that the police have a very difficult job. I mean seriously difficult. Think about it.

This is the occupation which has the highest suicide rate. These are people who are surrounded day in, and day out, by the society's most evil, stupid, and brutal people. They're pretty much separated from the rest of "civilian" society, so they rarely spend time with non-police people. They're essentially living "at war" all the time.

Calling them pigs, or crying oink, oink, is childish and stupid.

Believe me, I grew up in Chicago. In the city. In the 70s. I've been harassed many times by the cops. But the one time, the one time you need them the most, you will be very happy to see them. Warts and all. Having been there, I can tell you it's the truth.

So, yes, we should document when cops do bad things (you're allowed to, don't let 'em tell you you aren't), and call 'em on it. But calling 'em names, is dumb.

Critical Mass needs to grow up and start talking to the police, and the mayor's office, and the media. They need to quit inciting, and start making positive change. And if they can't manage to get their message out without getting themselves arrested, then they need to get into another hobby, 'cause it doesn't help their cause.

Heeheehee!

They say hiking barefoot is supposed to be awesome. I remain neutral, but check out this: http://www.barefooters.org/hikers/. Apparently your feet toughen up pretty quickly, and without massive callous formation.

I'ma hafta get me a paira deez 'brams do.

TNH@89 It's only assault if they don't assault you first. And no, never assault a real cop, or even a rent-a-cop (with reservations).

'Bout the bible verse: check it's context in popular culture. It's a joke, maybe not a funny one, though.

The first time some guy who's not a cop, or uniformed security officer, touches me over something like this, he's gonna get his ass kicked for his trouble.

Accosting you like that is assault, which in turn justifies self-defense. If they reach for your camera it becomes attempted robbery which would entitle you to subdue them. At least that would be my take, and I'd let the courts decide if I was right or not.

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

I'm not sure what all that means, but it's some cold-blooded shit to say to a bonehead tryin' to take justice into his own hands right before you knee-kick the mots de faux coeurs.

God. Dammit. I hate when people use the word "sheeple".

Jeez, looks like they bugged out. So much useful stuff left behind... That miniature Great Wall is awesome. Imagine the action figure movies you could make there.

Yup, The Monkees were pretty good. Maybe great. Hell The Partridge Family were good too. Good pop music. Tell me you haven't hummed Last Train To Clarksville, or I Woke Up In Love This Morning.

Manufactured bands sometimes turn out some really great stuff. Think of, oh, The Sex Pistols, Alvin & The Chipmunks, The Blues Brothers, or... Menudo. Hmm, I'm not sure about Menudo, but you get what I mean.

After all, manufactured bands usually have seasoned professional songwriters backing 'em up.

I think Bike Forums people were saying that this thing is pretty useless against serious bike thieves.

Remember, if you want to keep your bike, and it will be sitting for longer than an hour, use multiple locks of different kinds. Hexagonal hardened steel chains made by the various high-end makers are recommended.

And, you get what you pay for.

Oh, I'd love to be a fly on the wall when they explain to Barack why they can't use the logo.

"So, tell me why we can't use this logo..."

"Well sir, it emblematic of an old Internet meme."

"A who?"

Opens browser, "This, sir, is why."

"JESUS!!! Yeah. Okay. I get it. Please close that now. Ah, yeah, let's just get another logo. Excuse me, I need to go find a picture of a unicorn."

"For people who care about such things, the book was written in emacs on a box running Mandrake..."

Wait, what?! Emacs?! That's just wrong...

Serenity now!

Yikes almighty! How embarrassing. Eh, not so much what she said, but the presentation. I mean, if you gonna say it, you gotta feel it.

"...which I believe were just cat crap in foil pouches."

God's Wounds! You, sir, have apparently not partaken of the glory of the United States space program. Space Food Sticks were awesome.

BTW, Tang makes a great mixer.

Say what ye will, it's still a skirrrt. Aye, but it's a manly skirrrt.

That said, if I ever get married, I'm going full-on Prince Charlie and Forbes tartan.

Rats! George, you old party-pooper! I've always wanted to own my own used book store. Yes, I, as many here, am a bibliophile.

I've worked in a commercial bindery. A small-scale outfit, but we weren't sewing signatures by hand. I've done nearly every operation in the binding of small lots of books. It was one of the most satisfying jobs I've ever had. If only I'd been older and wiser when I had it.

A quote from the owner of said bindery: "You're not a real bookbinder if you have all ten fingers. No whistling!"

And yes, there's nothing like the smell of a library or used book store. All that moldering paper and glue.

Fun aspects of bookbinding:

Precision

Shaping the spine with a backing hammer.

Learning to read upside-down and backwards when typesetting for stamping titles on the cases.

Learning to be ambidextrous when your hand becomes too blistered and sore from the backing hammer.

Having the calluses that come from working hard at hand work.

Downside:

Glue is unforgiving of mistakes.

Constantly washing hands to keep them clean so you don't smudge the end papers.

Buckram is unforgiving of stamping mistakes.

Constant paper cuts.

Perfectbinding glue is molten plastic which sticks to skin.

I think the main problem with COS, and other religions and their sects, is the malevolence that their members have for non-members.

'Course this appears to be human nature, in that humans seem to always find a group to be a part of, and discriminate against non-members, be it religion, ethnicity, politics, sports teams, or neighborhoods.

Scientology takes it to the extreme, actively hunting down and trying to destroy critics.

And you couldn't have a discussion like this on Slashdot, 'cause Slashdotters are evil incarnate. They're nothing like Boingers.

What, no upskirts? How're we supposed to identify the female undercover security officers?

I mean, they do have and undercover security detail, right? To protect the shoppers from terr'ists?

It seriously makes you wonder if some intern in the Whitehouse or something is taking pages out of 1984, like the quote above. Most people would hear this suggestions and recognize the similarity to 1984 and say, "That'd make us sound like fascists, it's right out of 1984". But not the Bushies, no, "Hey that there sounds like a fine idear."

This technique may be valuable for experienced law enforcement personnel to use in interrogation, but not a spot check by a Wal-Mart reject TSA employee. C'mon.

[Cranky Old Man Mode ON] I've been a netizen since well before there was a World Wide Web. I remember reading on USENet about this World Wide Web thing. And I thought, "That's all very well for them eggheads at CERN, but it won't replace Gopher or USENet." Then I got Mosaic somehow. I remember when there were less than a hundred web sites.

In my day, we looked at web sites at 33.6 kbit/s. And we liked it that way!

Now you got these newfangled weefiis and deesels, eh, you kids're spoiled. Spoiled I say! Cable TV was meant for TV, not teh internets. It promotes promiscuity, I tell ya. [COMM OFF]

The problem with the TSA is it's a McJob. And just like employees in any other McJob, most TSA employees don't think beyond the rote of their training. It doesn't help that most are not sophisticated enough to understand what really could and could not be a serious threat.

A nail clipper is not a threat. this is, and so are these.

The likelihood of someone carrying off another 9/11 is small. Most Americans faced with something like that now would swarm any would be hijacker/s, weapons or not. Bombs are another story, and that's what they should be focused on. Get some bomb-sniffers that actually work, and actually use them.

But really we should be working to eliminate the TSA period. There ought to be a campaign to get Congress to simply eliminate the agency. It's ineffective, promotes abuse, and an enormous waste of resources that could be better used.

Meh. Starck. Look who's talkin'.

Y'know, (I love my cats!) that whole toxoplasmosis thing is really (I love my cats!) scary. The thing that disturbs me, besides the fact that a parasitic microbe might be turning me into a (pussy) crazy old cat lady in a man's body, is that in these articles they never discuss (loving my cats) treatment, or even whether there should be treatment. Still, I love my cats.

Alright, who slipped the brown acid into Joel's coffee?

GAAAAHHHH! mmmmmGERMS!!!

... but not Steve Wozniak

Partisanship aside, it seems kind of big.

250 SS agents? Maybe, but surely they're spread around? Like some are the group that show up a couple days ahead of time, etc.

150 National Security advisors? What does that mean? There's one National Security Advisor - Stephen Hadley. Who are these other guys? Spooks? What?

200 Representatives from other U.S. departments? What other departments? 200?! C'mon...

It seems to me the President oughta be able to get by with a lot smaller entourage than that. Not only is it expensive, but that big seems unwieldy too.

Should be able to get by with only one jumbo jet's worth of people (with additional security in escort vehicles like the choppers).

EVL ALLOWISHUS! TH BUKKITS, U STEALZ THM!

Teller (& Penn) are two of the few celebrities I'd actually like to hang out with. And I'm not a huge fan of magic or illusion.

All this is fine, if you like moist turkey. Which I have to say, just sounds gross. Ewww! Moist.

Alls I know is, traditional Thanksgiving Day turkey should be unevenly cooked, preferably with several burned parts for the family members who like "dark meat", dry and tough on the outside, and pink and stringy on the inside. That's the way our ancestors cooked it, and that's good enough for me.

Aye, Funny Man, put me down for a glass half-full. Ah, well, it's th' journey, not th' desti-nation. And a fine journey Halting State is. Thanks to Le Boinger for the reccy on it.

Ach! Dammit Comedian! Cannae ye use a bigger font on th' spoiler part. I skipped over it to th' paragraph.

'n wuz it absolutely necessary that ye shewed th' synchronicity of th ' writin' o' Halting State an' this arrest by makin' reference to a spoiler? Ye great lumberin' git!

"Well obviously we all need to incorporate and conduct our 'business' in a more proprietary manner."

Heh. You joke, but you might be onto something there. Since corporations seem to almost have more freedom than citizens, perhaps it would be worthwhile to incorporate.

You gather a group of your friends and file papers as a corporation. We are SpazzCo, Inc., don't mess with us! Make sure you get a contract (like, refilling the staplers at the Justice Department) with the Ministry of Fatherland Protection so you can carry and use weapons without legal threat. Plus, with that fat government contract, you can have some serious walkin' around money.

Yikes! I almost posted a photo I took of one of the towers on my web site. Good thing I didn't, I don't have the resources to deal with any kind of legal action, warranted or not.

No, no, no! You don't just take 'em out to the garden. Everybody knows that.

You have to blindfold 'em, or put 'em in the trunk of the Caddy, and drive 'em far away and drop 'em off in a bad neighborhood.

And that guy in the picture? You gotta watch out for him. He says he's a mouse, but he ain't. In fact, if your mice aren't falling for the traps, he might be your problem. Could be, he's a mole.

'"nothing justifies this sort of dangerous behavior."

Bacha noted that Comcast has more than 25 million customers, the overwhelming majority of which are very satistified with their service.'

Nothing justifies the complete disregard Comcast has for customer service and its customers. They fined the wrong entity.

"use them on my bulldog's face flaps..."

Ewwww! Just ewww!

LEAVE XENI ALONE! AHUAH WAHH WAHH! LEAVER HER ALONE!

Um... AAIIIEEEEE!

Yep, that's cheatin'. I'm with Pork Musket on this one. Enough of this, I gotta gig to get to, where's my DS Lite?

"I've never thought about it."

Disingenuous.

I'm glad I don't live in Nebraska, well, at least for this reason, I'm sure Nebraska is very nice. I'd be furious if one of my senators was wasting the money and time of the senate and the courts on frivolous nonsense like this. He oughta be impeached.

Well, if you're pencil fans, then you'll want to read Henry Petroski's facinating The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance. That's right, 448 pages all about the humble pencil.

How long before the once ubiquitous writing implement goes the way of the mechanical typewriter? Will the next generation learn to write their ABCs on a keyboard? No, wait, that doesn't work... Uh, will the next generation... Um. Yeah, um, so how bad has your cursive gotten after decades of keyboarding?

And you know Jerry Seinfeld has a dozen or so...

Wait, what? There's a fictional movie coming out? *IMDB* Oh, hmm, it's about Ian Curtis... Okay. Cool.

Good. I can't wait to see both of these films.

What? I have one of these, it looks great! It's just, y'know, aesthetic. It makes my truck look boss.

In response to the comment about the "selfish" nature of suicide: There is some irony in that statement. In that statement one is contemplating the psychological and spiritual effect of the suicide upon oneself. Let's not forget that many who choose suicide have often been the victim of others' selfishness, their lack of empathy, compassion, and sensitivity. Those that choose suicide feel they have no other way to cope, despite what the objective observer may feel.

Rather than damn the suicide as "selfish", instead consider the motivation. Think of how you could have, in your life, pushed another person to that end. Or vice versa. Imagine that moment of insight when you might have actually listened to a family member or loved one and realized how much pain they were in, and could have taken steps to help them.

And never forget that at the far end of medicine's ability to cure, there is a limit, beyond which there is only one final step that can end the interminable and insurmountable pain and suffering of the afflicted and their friends and family, short of natural death.

On the one hand I wish I lived near Roq La Rue so I could see all the great shows they hang there. On the other hand I'd be spending way too much money on original art I have no place to hang.

Whatever he is, he's an Internet Superstar™. And he rocks.

"Chust show ze nice man your receipt. Vhy muzt yew make zuch a fuss? Iz it zat yew must haf some attention? Pleez don't be unreazonable. Ve only vant to be zure you haven't been very, very, naughty. Perhaps yew do not love freedom, iz that it? Yew must show uz ze papers! Vhere IZ YOUR REZEIT?! YEW ARE NOT ZE PATRIOT, ARE YEW?! YOUR PAPERS! SHOW UZ YOUR PAPERS! DETAIN HIM! DETAIN HIM! CALL THE MINISTRY OF FATHERLAND PROTECZION!"

By all means, be good Germans. Don't rock the boat. For heaven's sake don't let a little inconvenience bother you. We must protect our "freedom". What's one more checkpoint?

They do this in the Chicago area at Best Buy too. The thing that pisses me off is the guy checking receipts is about 50 ft from the checkout, and there is no merchandise displayed in this cattle chute. So between the point where you paid for your merchandise and the point you're checked for having shoplifted, you have no opportunity to shoplift, and are in the sight-line of the guy doing the checking (if he can bother to stop chatting with his female co-workers, or his friends that have stopped by for a visit while he's on the clock). Not to mention the sensor gates they have up to detect anti-theft tags.

So what's the point? If you're going to shoplift, you're going to place whatever you're stealing on your person at some point while you're in the store. And unless you're really, really dumb, you're not going to shift it to your bag at the checkout counter to your bag in plain sight of the checkers and "theft prevention" personnel.

Yay! Go Boing Boing!