There's a human need to be a part of things larger than ourselves. Earth worship is older than organized religion, and the former is unimproved by fancy graphs drafted by grant-seeking bureaucrats.

Folks, the media can't get the 5-day weather forecast correct even half the time, yet they claim with a straight face they know what the sea level will be one century from now. According to huge doomsaying bestsellers from the 1970s, the earth is supposed to be frozen and we're all supposed to be dead right now from huge worldwide famines.

All I'm saying is think very carefully about who is behind all these environmental scares. The doomsayers have always been with us. Where will they be in 10 years if we've voluntarily surrendered more of our freedoms and common sense? Where will we be?

Let's not be hasty in giving our freedoms away to bureaucrats.

how can anyone forecast doom for all society after decriminalisation... when alcohol is already legal?

and yaroslav, about the price, remember that illegal drug manufacturers don't have to pay workers properly or abide by any kind of safety or certification process. That keeps the price down.

anyway if i could grow my own weed, and heroin addicts could get free and effective help, there would be a lot of gangsters out of a job. that reason alone is good enough for me. i can't understand why people defend the right of gangsters to abuse human beings.

lol didn't know forecasts ever bothered about advertising

Winston examined the four slips of paper which he had unrolled. Each contained a message of only one or two lines, in the abbreviated jargon -- not actually Newspeak, but consisting largely of Newspeak words -- which was used in the Ministry for internal purposes. They ran:

times 17.3.84 bb speech malreported africa rectify

times 19.12.83 forecasts 3 yp 4th quarter 83 misprints verify current issue

times 14.2.84 miniplenty malquoted chocolate rectify

times 3.12.83 reporting bb dayorder doubleplusungood refs unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling

With a faint feeling of satisfaction Winston laid the fourth message aside. It was an intricate and responsible job and had better be dealt with last. The other three were routine matters, though the second one would probably mean some tedious wading through lists of figures.

-excerpt from "SNAFU Earth".-2008, by Jorge Orwellios

She was soooo not laughing.

Upvoted, though, for the quote by Dick Goddard at the end there: "Shaking a cat is like shaking a pop bottle." I'm originally from that area and I miss Dick's forecasts. He's a weather icon in Cleveland. I can't believe he hasn't retired yet!

I'm surprised I didn't see anyone mention the fact that the poor girl's brother is in jail.

Obviously she could've handled it better, but the cop acted like a racist jerk to begin with. The sad thing is that nobody said, "hey, stop - we have a camera, why not just check the tape?" Of course you're not expecting top flight managers at a place like that to begin with, so I'm not surprised he was a complete failure as a man.

She's obviously not happy with the cops to begin with. Having said that, http://www.videosift.com/story.php?id=5195&where=index would've helped so much - the "real" how not to get arrested vid. I know it was posted above in an earlier comment, but it's just good sense.

It's fun to fight with authority figures and I respect that, but you have to pick your battles - i.e. if you're going to fight the cops, do it in a way where you can win. To quote a fictional character, Klingon General Martok said "war is more fun when you're winning!" and it's so true.

I haven't had the luxury of being able to do this very often or in a dramatic way, but I did ask some cops, out of curiousity (see, you keep yourself safe by not immediately aggravating them), what was the crime they could've charged a woman with for writing on the sidewalk in a posh area of Toronto (Yorkville).

He replied that they could charge her with defacing public property.

Now I've taken chalk to the American Consulate in the past (a week before 9/11, ironically), and scurried away before security arrived, so I said, "how is it defacing it? Chalk washes right off."

So the cop says to me, "do you want to wash it off?"

And I say, "um, the forecast says it's going to rain tonight."

Oh is it?

Yes.

Not a very thrilling exchange, although I never claimed it would be; I found it amusing nonetheless.

thats great.

this should be a new feature beteween shows on HBO or something... the potty mouth weatherman, giving you your national forecast while screaming obscenities.

my favorite is #4, "you sonuva!... what-the!..."

haha yep, the forecast is the best bit...

lol i like the forecast..