"Though they speak of banning words, what they are trying to ban are the expressions of ideas."

Yes, and good luck to them with that.

I have a friend who quit letting his son watch Spongebob when his son started saying "Barnacle!" when he was frustrated. The notion of trying to remove the ability to verbalize someone's inner emotional state didn't strike me as a fruitful endeavor, but live and let live I says. I suppose it's okay to teach kids to keep a lid on anger, and about saying something with meaning as opposed to empty content, but I'd think honesty of expression is far more important than whatever society hopes to achieve by preventing us from making certain sounds with our mouths. The trouble isn't that kids swear, it's that swear words exist in the first place. If the words didn't offend, there'd be no point in using them and they'd be so much meaningless noise.

Oh, I may not 'own' it as it arrives on my computer, but I can either record the stream or, if the RIAA ever manages to totally preclude that (unlikely), I can stick a recording device between the speakers and my ears and gain a copy with enough fidelity to keep me happy. I personally wouldn't do it, but the possibility for this will ALWAYS exist, and it baffles me that the RIAA and its ilk doesn't seem to get this. When they add a new protection, that protection will be broken, and several ways to subvert and work around that protection will crop up. All they do by releasing more DRM is to increase the size of the hackers' and pirates' toolboxes.

How far will they follow this chain, into our heads?

http://occasionalstory.livejournal.com/434.html

Why they can't grasp that the people who BUY music are the last people they'd want to piss off truly escapes me.

Cows (any any domesticated farm animal) only exist in their current form because we needed something from them, and engineered them to give it to us. They're not any more 'natural' a part of our world than roads or bridges. I mean, I wouldn't advocate killing them off en masse just because we suddenly have all this delicious vat meat(tm), but I don't see how their eventual extinction is some huge loss to the 'natural' order of things. Sheep we'll keep, though. They're cute and give us wool. And those fainting goats too, great fun to watch. And what the heck, chickens walk funny, why not keep a few of them. Ducks? Why would we get rid of ducks? They're so personable. I guess what I'm getting at is we'd still have lots of farm animals around without needing their products for the same reason we keep dogs and cats without using anything them for their meat (in most places anyway).

I usually just drink my whiskey straight from the bottle. Standing at the counter where I bought it. Right before I get thrown out.

I believed it was a supply and demand thing when Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, but I haven't seen anything to indicate the scarcity of oil has suddenly increased, and economic hardship creates LESS demand not more. Based on what I'm aware of at least, somebody is gaming the system. And I'm curious to know how this will affect the oil industry long term. It's NOT going away soon, we don't and won't have the tech to ship stuff long distances by any other means anytime soon. But high cost of oil is kind of writing its own obituary. The high cost of it spurs interest in increased efficiency and research into outright replacements for it. I'm sure the coal industry is absolutely salivating at the thought of selling us the 'gas' in our cars via the electric utilities. If large format battery technology gets appreciably cheaper, lots of things are going to get upended.

Okay, I know I've said this before, but NOW I've seen everything. For sure this time. God please let it be for sure this time.

Mmmmmm....vat meat.

I learned something today. Having a wife the same age as your daughter is probably a bad idea.

Not that I'd ever be able to afford a wife that young anyway. Just kidding ladies!

I believe it was expressed in a very entertaining manner in "Beware the Believers":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFXIALf9zDA

Ah, discourse in the internet age.

I remember visiting fields covered with berry bushes in my youth in the middle of nowhere with a box near the gate for payment. You paid by the bushel instead of the pound though. Alton Brown and his crew bought asparagus from a midwest field on the honor system on the second season of Feasting On Asphalt. It was nice to see this kind of thing still exists.

Good luck getting a support issue resolved. It's rumored to have anywhere between zero and millions of GM's, and they're generally perceived as being fickle and arbitrary in addressing player issues. That is if you can even contact a GM. None of the logs put forth by players claiming to have chatted directly with a GM have been completely verifiable and all leave quite a bit of room for doubt that the chat actually occurred.

Nobody has, thus far, been able to create a bot for it and no macros seem to be able to effectively work, though accusations of hacking abound.

And then there's apatheism, in which the, oh who cares.

That sounds just about right for the people on craigslist.

Greed, like faith, is a powerful force for causing people to overlook rationality.

Telling people not to photograph CCTV cameras under the assumption that it will prevent people with malicious intent from documenting their position is like insisting the emperor's new clothes are marvelous when he plainly isn't wearing any.

To me that fixation on the fact that surely a terrorist would use a higher technology tool belies a very dangerous mindset that forgets to think about lower technology methods and weapons. Focusing on the behavior of people with cameras could very well cause you to overlook the guy who's hiding a truncheon in his jacket.

My most unusual one ever (still have it on my desk) was:

"Customer service is like taking a bath. You have to keep doing it."

As a married man, the funniest one I've ever received was:

"Use caution in new romance."

Pretty sage advice there...

#42 The Kraken Awakes -> that book was creepy, the harvesting scenes in particular

"The potion often reveals its celebrated wisdoms only after repeat encounters."

Well that's convenient for the dudes getting 200 bucks a head for each "encounter".

My favorite local news inanity was committed by a station here in Phoenix, AZ. After an earthquake in the northeast portion of the state this station decided that rather than ask a geologist about some of the mechanics of the movements of the earth in the area, it would be better to play a recorded message from a local senior citizen who called that day insisting his parrot had squawked loudly and fallen off of his perch at exactly the moment the earthquake occurred hundreds of miles away. And they showed a stock photo of a gray parrot as the man's voice was played back. To this day, I don't know if it was intended to be actual news or just some sort of joke.

"I can help you find Sarah Connor."

I think the cirular logic goes that tasers are only used on thugs, and if you got tasered you were obviously a thug.

It's not that I don't want police to have non-lethal options that don't require them to resort to hand to hand combat, I don't want to write them a blank check to use said force on anyone simply because it's supposedly nonlethal and the suspect was 'uncooperative'. Being 'uncooperative' does NOT mean you pose a threat, and force is to be used on clearly defined threats. I wonder if as a nation we'll ever even think to debate the Constitutionality of inducing immobilizing pain in someone just for refusing to do as authorities say.

I signed it. Great looking home and it sounds like you searched for a compromise that kept all parties happy. If you could, let BB know how the fight goes. Best of luck!

Did he defeat Satan in a game of football at the end of that ad?

Can we really call it 'scientific' if it's just made to entertain frat boys?

One thing you eventually realize about sexual behaviors is that the exact same behavior can be brought about by completely different motivating factors in different people.

So while I can see some guys enjoying the aspect of having a woman in a 'weakened' injured state making them easier to control, it's also easy to believe that some men would relish the thought of having a woman that depends on their help just because it feels good to help people. And I don't see much wrong with the fantasy of garnering a beautiful woman's affections by assisting her in a time of need. Having such a fantasy doesn't necessarily preclude valuing her as a human being, it's just another way to prove your worth to her. Thus, I have a hard time considering this fetish as all that icky. As cynical and jaded as I am, it still seems to be the case that the sight of people in need will draw out more good in people than bad, and in a weird way this fetish plays on that.

They'd be wise to listen. I did iTunes for a while because I wanted to get digital music legally, but I've started buying my music at Amazon strictly because I get music that I can just play where I want.

PC, at home or work? Plays fine.

MP3 player I got on impulse because it was cheap a few years ago? Plays fine.

Wife's ipod? Plays fine.

Media capable phone? Plays fine.

So, I said goodbye to DRM. Can't buy what I want as an unlocked MP3? Then I just won't buy it.

What Would Buddy Jesus Buy?

Sounds like they made some one-time customers.