disclaimer: I'm an American, and the comments I'm putting forth are my reflections on American culture.

If I was anticipating competing in the Bejing Olympics, I would be inclined to boycott. Its difficult to boycott China entirely. However, declining to perform on their stage is a powerful act, much more than an individual not-buying an XYZ, and it would come at great personal expense.

However, we can't expect our athletes to live up to a higher moral or ethical standard than we do. They are athletes, not thinkers. We are to blame for putting them in position to wield such influence.

Downloading it from the torrent is copyright infringement. I think the band's request that you download it from their site or not at all is very reasonable, and should be honored.

I downloaded the album from their website. I listened to it once. Not sure it was my cup of tea really, but I was impressed.

I didn't pay them anything, and I probably won't. But I'll probably end up giving them $5 if I listen to it more than 5 times.

The quality of the tracks and everything seem fine. I'm not an audiophile, but I have good headphones.

I have a feeling that they will play fair on this. One things that a bureaucracy can do, and almost always does is follow rules. They need some kind of justification from above to break the rules.

Unless the President or the AG said "lie about these files if anyone asks" they'll play it straight. I'll admit there's a non-zero chance of that happening, but in general they will follow the rules.

One thing I've read is that Joseph Stalin had a signed confession from everyone he executed. Not a forged signature either. (And basically everyone who ended up in Siberia wouldn't sign the confession. So its not exactly damned if you do and damned if you don't. More like the devil and the deep blue sea.)

I was reading through the list, and it was like "Oh, that looks bad, that looks bad..."

Then you get to number 9 on the list, which is CHERNOBYL! That really put the top 8 most polluted places into perspective for me.

To go to this, I'd have to drive through Erie PA and Buffalo NY...

Anybody know if those areas are snowed in by the end of October?