Goddam that is hot! That's going right on my ipod.

@24 Marcus I think that's one of the most interesting reflections on the war on photography that we've seen growing in the last few years.

My only interpretation so far was that it was a reaction to the expansion of the security state and the propaganda that 'everyone has a role to play' in keeping the world safe from the world. You've got a neat perspective on it that gives me something to think about.

I'm being lazy just asking, but is there an equivalent rights card for Canada?

GTA isn't my thing, but the renderings are really beautiful. For a guy who doesn't like shoot-em-ups and wasn't inspired by the violent nihilism of GTA 1-3, is this actually worth checking out? It seems like a cinematic achievement inside a video game. Any suggestions one way or the other?

I have to call bullshit on Mr. Merrifield's claim. I think CP definitely adds words to its filters, but 500-1000 a day. It doesn't seem possible for that many variations to be invented per day. In the end, they're not seeing that Club Penguin is increasing the premium on getting a swear seen by others, or inventing increasingly-shocking terms.
Forbidden fruit tastes great at any age, and Club Penguin is dumping sugar on it.

#34: Felix, I think the proof is in that the bakery still uses the system. Who would keep doing it and promote it if it lost them money? Not every positive story has some sinister undercurrent of lies and misdirection. Sometimes, people working together honestly is just that.

FWIW I'm from the Kitchener-Waterloo area and am glad to see that the soul of the place is alive and well.

I disagree that prostitution and porn, by definition, are dehumanizing. Criminalization of sex, America's pastime, leads to the dehumanization, as the entire culture participates in the construction of prostitutes and porn actors and their clients as somehow broken or abnormal.

Speaking to the point of the story, I can only hope that a definitive list of clients comes out of the murder investigation. Knowing that it's happening in DC, that hope flickers out of existence a nanosecond after it's born. This won't go anywhere, and the guilty will go free.

Really, Silva? Deserves to be ripped off. So Joe User without an awareness of DRM issues sees a song for sale, decides to try it out, and they should be stolen from? Is that really the world you want to live in, where being a little naive is grounds for being used? I'm glad that most of world isn't that way.

Beautiful stuff. It reminds me of the SCTV sketch where Dick Cavett interviews himself.

It seems like a pretty cruel move by MS, though who knows what unholy agreements with the labels they're working within. It seems like the kind of thing that class action suits are made for; I hope one starts and brings this anti-customer behaviour to a brighter spotlight.

Personally I think all 3 parties were bullshit: the ignorant cop for being so ignorant, the 'retired cop' for being a paranoid puppet, and the cameraman for his fetish-like video humiliation project.

Seriously, it wasn't about watching for law-breaking cops, it was about creating an art project out of humiliating a human. If he really cared about the law being violated by those who are supposed to uphold it, he would have ended it with recording the offense and the car that was involved, and maybe the officer. The following and taunting questions just washed away any good that could have come from it.

I wonder if the materials would be considered the property of the university, which employs the prof. Maybe they should sue him for trying to cash in on their IP. Either way, what a jerk.

@28
Well, given that the military in Vietnam couldn't tell which way was up between north and south, fighting in the streets with people who look, talk and share much of the same culture would be rather difficult.

> George W Bush = Worst.President.Ever

+1, but really, if it's a democracy, it's the voting population that needs to own the blame.

Tim Horton's doesn't serve coffee, they serve a horrible flavoured beverage that they call coffee.

Welcome to the world of quality home espresso, Cory. +1 for the RB tamper - it has a very solid feel and shows those grinds you mean business. Personally, I aim for a 30lb-tap-30lb tamp followed by a few finishing spins, but it's really up to you to experiment and find your way with beans, grind, tamping and so on.

Enjoy!

Oh, Ill Lich you beat me to it. I was going to go for 'Adonis in Repose'

How about one air trip per passenger, with the remaining seats taken up by gun-toting law enforcement from every country in the world? That would be so fucking secure.

Yoga is very productive without spiritual guidance, but it's like in North America and elsewhere, many people in European prisons are afflicted with mental illness and emotional trauma. It's not at all surprising that starting to practice has pulled strong emotions to the surface.

I'm of the same mind as Cory that many of the explanations offered by yoga are metaphorical, as in tai chi and other systems of knowledge, and I've also noticed the interplay between mood, old memories, strong emotions and parts of the body that I otherwise ignore when doing yoga or pilates. My instructor says that she was once told that we keep our secrets in the armpits, but I'm pretty sure that all of mine are in my hips :)

I hope they find a way to keep offering the class to those in the prison who were doing ok with it.

I used to read Rand's stuff with quite a lot of passion, and while I think she's a really interesting person, I have the same trouble with Objectivism as I do all schools of thought - they always have trouble when their absolutes are deployed into a world made up of shades of gray and a universe that cares no more for rationalism than it does emotional or spiritual modes of thought.

That 2-cents pitched, I was blown away by use of Objectivist rhetoric and the obvious winks to Rand (Andrew Ryan's name, for one) in the storyline. It made the game an intellectual as well as a sensory experience. It doesn't matter much the philosophy in play, I just like to see big and sometimes confrontational ideas in games.

Not to be cynical, but coercion is something that governments do, all of them, by varying degrees up to and including deception and force. In the end, if the Blair government was able to take the country into a war it didn't want, then coercion to accept an ID card will be more or less trivial.

Iron Man lives!

The degree of violence in the raid is pretty disturbing. Who am I to criticize the great land of freedom though? It's so much freedom, it just blows my mind.

Ah, cpt tim you spoiler!

As for the geekery jokes, mine is that they'd scream "Validate!"

I knew that Edison was impassioned about DC and bitter about Tesla and AC, but I didn't know this story. It's disgusting, but probably seemed like good showmanship at the time.

Edison thought that his world view 'had it all figured out,' and condemning him without recognizing that he came from a very different time makes the same mistake, only without frying an elephant.

> Too bad going through airport security is inherently scary and enraging. I feel like I probably show those emotions on my face every time I fly.

I was going to say something like this, that the conditions of the screening process seem engineered to bring out these emotions, but Lauren O said it better with the quote above. Tighter and tighter, turns the screw.

> Also, I can't find the "right to smoke weed" in the Bill of Rights.

I think that's really a different issue. What's being restricted is the right to talk about smoking marijuana from a perspective that supports changing the law and standing behind state's rights to provide medicinal marijuana. The Bong Hits for Jesus ruling would seem to deem doing so as unprotected speech, which is a very slippery slope.

Canadian voters, remember to thank the federal NDP for ushering in this wonderful Conservative overlord government and heeling at their right hand. None of the opposition parties have the wherewithal to oppose this bill in any meaningful way, so I'd get ready to get used to draconian copyright in Canada.

@0XDEADBEEF

No, I still find torture as repugnant as before I thought about a troll with a bomb.

Without asserting whether this is good or bad for London's cityscape, I do have to hand it to that place for some great daring architecture. In Vancouver the most daring thing we've had in the past decade is the bling penis-lust for 'taller' and 'more glass'.

Sadly, I think it's past the tipping point with the discussion of whether or not the US should embrace torture, with the thin edge being the waterboarding hairsplitting. Watch for the procedure in play on reality tv shows next year, getting voters even more comfortable with the idea.

And @Vincent, I'm afraid 'world's leading democracy' is a laughable misnomer. Democracies don't settle elections in courts by forcing a stop to recounts. It's a neo-monarchy, and has been since '01.

It's amazing that left wingers seem to be so in favor of freedom of speech and freedom of information but when someone doesn't agree with them, they will go to great lengths to silence, discredit or disparage the opposing viewpoint

That's actually a property of most human populations, regardless of their political leaning. If you want an example from the right, the contortions of Intelligent Design to get around the abundant evidence for evolution and natural selection is a good place to start.

RCM, I dub thee Troll.

I live in Vancouver and have been increasingly concerned about the number of deaths occurring at the hands of RCMP officers. In this case, it cleared a lot of uncertainty up to see how 4 trained officers against one man who didn't speak English, backed against a wall and away from other people in a semi-secure area resorted to potentially lethal force in less than 30 seconds.

I'm thankful that Mark posted the link to this important story about policing and the public interest and what actually happened to a a man who ended up in awful circumstances that ended the worst way possible.

Garret, CERONOMUS, et al, it's understandable that you don't like it, but you cross the line of taste and morality when you try to assert that the truth should not be buried for some vague notion of decorum. There's no exploitation here, but relevant evidence in an important discussion that I'd never blast you for choosing to watch or not.

Sheesh don't these people have actual jobs to do, other than writing emails that boil down to "Hey you think your cock is big, well look at this cock, yeah that's right I'm swinging it at you."

Signing it 'you moron' is the most self-reflexive part of that whole exchange. Way to go, Adam and Steve. Now make up or settle it in the sandbox.

Way to go, Rowling - writing a gay character so vapidly that nobody suspected until you had to specifically say it was so after the last book was written. Way to take a stand.

There is no way in hell I'd agree to do that. Bad idea, start to finish.

Bizarre. That's one company event I'd be skipping.

Box cutter, shmox cutter. Once I release the terrifying potential of my cellphone it's all over!

Seriously, it's hard to know what is serious and what isn't when cellphones that can apparently make nav systems go haywire are trusted in our hands while toothpaste isn't. That uncertainty works in the favor of authority in the case of security, I guess.

I'm curious to know if the ban has any teeth. That is, as the occupying force, will the US forces just keep using them and ignore the order? It doesn't seem that there's really anything to compell them to comply, nor Blackwater for that matter, as it seems quasi-independent.