what say ye about taking a 5 year old boy?
im pretty liberal about what i let the kids watch as long as im there to supervise and address any questions or anything questionable, and he likes *dark..... a whole whole lot actually
and apparently mcdonalds is giving out avatar toys in happy meals now, jerks.

but i dont know, i dont want him to see any big blue alien sex or anything
thanks dude!

In reply to this comment by dag:
Best SF I've seen in yonks.

Who? FOX news?!?!? (frothing & drooling at the mouth & subsequent wiping of foam from lips)

Quit your conspiracy theory ramblings. This was Rasumussen.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/september_2009/health_care_reform

The internals of the data plainly show that the only people who really support this bill are 'party line' Democrats (who support the bill 71%). Party line Republicans oppose it (81%). But - most importantly - 69% of UNAFFILIATED VOTERS oppose the bill. Facts. Learn to FIND them as opposed to just assuming your Democrat puppet-masters are telling the truth.

But yes - I'm sure if you stacked your poll with all Democrat, uninsured people you'd get the numbers you WANT (I.E. what Franken calls 'choosing your facts'). However, you would NOT get an actual measurement of what the American public at large think.

And yes - large scale federal powers without checks, balances, supervision, or a Consitutional mandate are against hte spirit and letter of prescribed, enumerated powers. The Bill of Rights is designed to PREVENT this kind of massive centralization of power. The kind of power grab this bill represents is the antithesis of American Values, the US Constitution, and all things good and decent. The left likes to propogandize it by making it sound like charity. But large, centrally managed government programs are the opposite of charity. They are tyranny with a bad coat of shiny paint to distract the stupid and the ignorant.

And - as I've explained many times - I'm not a Republican. I'm a fiscally conservative, socially liberal, Constitutional Constructionist. I'm no slave to party politics - unlike others I could name.

And I'd love it if Franken would pull out the ENTIRE bill being discussed and make it public for everyone to read. The issue here being that Ried & the Democrats are deliberately HIDING huge portions of this bill from the public, and even from the Republicans in the Senate. THune couldn't possibly have read the 'whole bill' because the Democrats have been stonewalling it and hiding it - only dribbling out snippets they want. "Choosing your facts" again, eh? Franken, heal thyself.

Let's be honest here, chances are this guy downloaded some kiddy porn and made up this story. But even then his sentence is obviously vastly disproportionate. 3 years or so of likely being in prison is bad enough, but being labelled a sex offender and essentially never having a job again is just immensely unfair.

I'm sure ultimately most people would agree that in cases like these the punishment inequitable to the crime, but clearly no politician makes it their agenda to change this, and similarly no individual person is going to bother lobbying their member of government about this either.

Which is a pity, because if you consider the fact that having a vast directory of sex offenders which have generally done hardly anything wrong (especially in those cases where it was just kids with a couple of years of age disparity sending naughty pictures to each other) it means that the amount of time that police can devote to supervising the real sex offenders is vastly diminished. Which ultimately allows them to commit more of the serious crimes that people are justifiably so riled up and sensitive about.

Probation
1.the act of testing.
2.the testing or trial of a person's conduct, character, qualifications, or the like.
3.the state or period of such testing or trial.
4.Law.
a. a method of dealing with offenders, esp. young persons guilty of minor crimes or first offenses, by allowing them to go at large under supervision of a probation officer.
b. the state of having been conditionally released.
5.Education. a trial period or condition of students in certain educational institutions who are being permitted to redeem failures, misconduct, etc.
6.the testing or trial of a candidate for membership in a religious body or order, for holy orders, etc.

I think a 'P' is in order. By definition, probation is never permanent.

El Salvador!

The vote was on an amendment to a Defense Department appropriations bill. The full text of the amendment can be found here, it's S10069, and S10070 only.

The text reads:

(a) None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used for any existing or new Federal contract if the contractor or a subcontractor at any tier requires that an employee or independent contractor, as a condition of employment, sign a contract that mandates that the employee or independent contractor performing work under the contract or subcontract resolve through arbitration any claim under title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or any tort related to or arising out of sexual assault or harassment, including assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment, or negligent hiring, supervision, or retention.

(b) The prohibition in subsection (a) does not apply with respect to employment contracts that may not be enforced in a court of the United States.

This is why people with IQs under 65 should have only supervised access to the internet... you hear me QM's Mom?

At first I thought maybe these kinds of things are a result of low education and still that may be what causes a moment like this. Then I thought how were things different in the past? If you go back to the 50's I could not tell you there was that much of a difference. Maybe pop culture? Then when you go back a little further things do start to change school was not as important then as it is now. Working on your folks farm was a necessity or any other profession with your family. So just an idea maybe separating kids from there families was not such a good idea after all. Taking them from home and putting them altogether with only minimal adult supervision could that be the problem? I don't the answer, me I always thought violent people reminded me of animals and that was one thing that always seemed repulsive to me about it. I don't know how smart these people are so I cant really say they are morons but they sure give off that impression.

i was thinking about this today while i was leaving the medical school. im a simulated patient for first year med students and physician assistant students.

one of the complaints i hear alot (and im not sure if this even coming from an actual source or someones imagination) is that we do not and will not have enough to dr's to care for everyone if everyone has coverage. i think this is a flimsy argument anyway. if there is a shortage of MD's then we could and should try to do something about that.

anyhow my thought was along the lines of this:
improve and expand the community and teaching hospitals. open them up for all health professions to do their clinical training there. in all allied health fields you go through at least 2 years of clinicals, most times at a private hospital where you serve as free labor in exchange for the experience. so why not increase the number of learning facilities/community teaching hospitals? train everyone there from doctors to phsyical therapists to nurses to xray techs to lab techs the list goes on and on and on and on. and instead of these students providing free labor to private hospitals, they can provide free labor to the community? i know county hospitals already function as teaching hospitals in some capacity. i live in the largest county in texas. we have 1 county hospital. they still have dr's doing their residencies there, 15 years ago they had a nursing school and an xray school also but lost the funding for it. i dont think funding education to train more medical science professionals would be terribly controversial (i could be wrong). the community college that trains the majority of nurses here already gets tons of federal and state funds. noone is complaining.

you could have outpatient clinics, inpatient care, urgent care, emergency rooms, life flight, trauma center, mental health facilities all the things you already need but they would be funded more like colleges and alot of the labor provided by students. of course you would need licensed experienced professionals on staff. and maybe they could serve as teachers.... in my clinical experience we had 2 teachers to a group of about 10 xray students serving a hospital in a town smack in the middle of the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex (HUGE).

these hospitals would provide care for the uninsured with copays on a sliding scale. funded by tuition fees, state and federal education funds, and the tax dollars that are already being spent on these county hospitals (i believe in most counties the funds come from your sales tax $$, texas is a regressive tax state so the poor are already paying the majority of the taxes from the sources that fund community health initiatives anyway)

i know these places already exist but in my experience they are limited in number and overcrowded and underfunded. i dont think most of them train anything but doctors.

in my head the idea is to pretty much attach a community health center of some size and capacity to every school that offers allied health degrees and bring new dr's to do their residencies here or even practice for a year or 2 in exchange for forgiving some student loans. a smaller college would have a smaller clinic, bigger colleges get a hospital. the care provided is affordable to everyone. and the for profit health care industry gets some competition. and as far as "i dont want to be worked on by students" well.... heres some news, if there is a college offering an allied health degree in your area and you ever go to the hospital during the daytime hours there is a really really good chance that your care is already being manned by students. students are not allowed to work with the public until they have many hours of instruction, passed a background check and drug screen, had a round of almost every vaccine imaginable and proved themselves worthy to be accepted into these now highly competitive programs. and are covered by some hefty liability insurance. and they are always supervised by a licensed professional. there is always a teacher nearby. the more critical your condition, the closer the licensed professionals are.

There are times when one up vote is simply not enough; I wish I could give it 15 more. Thank you!

In reply to this comment by TheFreak:
I need to hire a plumber to fix my heating boiler before winter. My boiler is very old and in terrible condition so it has to be fixed every fall. All the thoughtful and intelligent comments about this video have inspired me to try a new tactic in getting the issue resolved.

I'm going to start by getting a detailed list from the plumber of EVERYTHING that needs to be done to fix the boiler once and for all and I'm going to set my expectations very high that I'm never going to have to pay to repair that thing again. As he's working, I'm going to stand behind him and question everything he does. If he appears to slow down his work or swap tools I will immediately lose confidence in him. If he should suggest paying to replace the boiler, which I know I should have done years ago, I will get very angry and accuse him of trying to destroy my children's future by stealing my money.

I will constantly check his work against the initial list of repairs he intended to do. If for any reason the work he does changes based on what he finds after he starts I will call him a liar and accuse him of being in league with all the other plumbers I've hired in the past. I'm fairly certain most of the past plumbers I've hired weren't actually concerned with fixing that boiler. Who can blame them really, it's a hopeless job, so I'm sure they just ran up the bill a little, tweaked a couple things and left.

My wife does NOT support the idea of me trying to repair this boiler every year. I think it will actually help if she's with me while I supervise the work so that her criticism of what I'm doing can encourage my growing frustration over the plumber's inability to be finished with his work 30 minutes after he shows up. You know, even though I expected it to take all day.

Oh, yeah, I hope this plumber is not in the Local Plumber's Union (the dreaded 'LPU'). Someone once told me the LPU is a powerful organization with a secret plot to keep my boiler from working.

I need to hire a plumber to fix my heating boiler before winter. My boiler is very old and in terrible condition so it has to be fixed every fall. All the thoughtful and intelligent comments about this video have inspired me to try a new tactic in getting the issue resolved.

I'm going to start by getting a detailed list from the plumber of EVERYTHING that needs to be done to fix the boiler once and for all and I'm going to set my expectations very high that I'm never going to have to pay to repair that thing again. As he's working, I'm going to stand behind him and question everything he does. If he appears to slow down his work or swap tools I will immediately lose confidence in him. If he should suggest paying to replace the boiler, which I know I should have done years ago, I will get very angry and accuse him of trying to destroy my children's future by stealing my money.

I will constantly check his work against the initial list of repairs he intended to do. If for any reason the work he does changes based on what he finds after he starts I will call him a liar and accuse him of being in league with all the other plumbers I've hired in the past. I'm fairly certain most of the past plumbers I've hired weren't actually concerned with fixing that boiler. Who can blame them really, it's a hopeless job, so I'm sure they just ran up the bill a little, tweaked a couple things and left.

My wife does NOT support the idea of me trying to repair this boiler every year. I think it will actually help if she's with me while I supervise the work so that her criticism of what I'm doing can encourage my growing frustration over the plumber's inability to be finished with his work 30 minutes after he shows up. You know, even though I expected it to take all day.

Oh, yeah, I hope this plumber is not in the Local Plumber's Union (the dreaded 'LPU'). Someone once told me the LPU is a powerful organization with a secret plot to keep my boiler from working.

>> ^spoco2:
"You're coming from the mindset of fear, fear that the worst is bound to happen. I'm coming from the mindset of no fear"

I don't live in fear, but I am vigilant. I've been jumped in the street by strangers and I've also been threatened on the streets by strangers. Just down the street here in Santa Monica, my girlfriend and I learned of a lady whose house was just broken into. She was raped. My girlfriend was housesitting by herself just this past week in a small gated community in Tarzana, and another house in that community was broken into while the owner was at home. Bad things do happen sometimes. And sometimes they happen in your home, and sometimes in public.

But, I suppose being raped and victimized is par for the course for a "no fear" attitude like yours.

And there's really no reason anyone has to justify why they want to have a gun or carry them. It's a right. If you don't like people's rights, it doesn't matter, because it's not up for public discussion to determine. I think open carry should be a right of anyone in a free society... if they choose to do so.


"And if it came to being broken into by an armed assailant, the chances of you getting to your gun and loading it (you don't keep it loaded do you, with any children around?) before they're on you is unlikely."

That's nonsense. First off, when I was a child I was raised to clean the guns in my home. Under my father's supervision, I fired a .357 from my front porch when I was five. I had a respect for guns and knew they were dangerous, so I was always careful. The gun cabinet was always unlocked. The .357 sat next to my father's bed in a drawer. Loaded. My brother and I never played with those guns.

Having a loaded gun in the home isn't the issue, so your analogy is the typical anti-gun flawed argument that suspects people are too incompetent to live with a means to protect themselves. Even if it was unloaded, it wouldn't take much to retrieve the gun and have a better chance of not being raped or murdered or victimized.

Why would you want to remove someone's right to protect themselves? And hide behind a flimsy argument owning an unloaded gun equals being a victim. There's no proof of that. Silliness.


I won't even tackle the issue of government being large or small. You know where I stand, and I still don't agree with your take that even if good is being done with the stolen money that it makes it right. My analogy is, what if I broke into your home, robbed you, but donated the money to a charity. It would still be theft.

Sorry, but I just can't agree with what's demonstrated here. Letting someone that young handle a live firearm is just plain irresponsible. This has nothing to do with gun control, gun rights, gun whatever. It has everything to do with letting someone who has no concept of their potential actions be put in charge of something that could kill someone. Would you let someone that young drive, even under supervision? Or operate heavy machinery? Again, fucking irresponsible.

I only hope he (or someone else) doesn't meet with a horrible accident like that one kid who got a head full of uzi a few months ago.

>> ^Shpydir:
>> ^Shepppard:
I don't like the concept of "Project D"
My generation is basically one of the last to realize the gap between where we've come from, and where we're going. Being born in 89, I grew up with PSX, N64, genesis, ect. but we all knew about the previous consoles, and knew about where it came from.
Kid, I don't mean to sound like a cranky old fart and I kinda see what you're saying, but if you missed the 80's, you don't even know. There were these places called Ar-cades that we used to go to. They were just these whole rooms full of games. You put a token in and then you got to play the game for a bit.
It was nuts.


Well, to be fair, the arcade scene persisted very much into the 90's. Street Fighter 2 was not released until 1991, for instance. In Japan video arcades are still popular. But if you were born in 1989 in the US then you definitely missed a big part of gaming history. I was born in 1981 and I still too young to experience the real start of a gaming culture. I don't know when exactly that was, but Pac Man was released in 1980. Pong was back in 1972 so some old farts could claim that to understand the history of gaming you would need to be alive back then, but I'm skeptical of that.

I played the Atari but I never really liked it. It wasn't until the Nintendo with games like Final Fantasy (1990) that I was drawn into gaming. PC games like King's Quest, Hero's Quest, Sim City (1990), Civilization (1991), and Doom (1993) played just as big a role.

Having spent a fair amount of time hanging out in arcades, I can safely say that I don't miss it at all. I find the idea kind of sleazy, actually -- make children give up their money as fast and reliably as possible, in an environment with minimal parental supervision. PC or console games are so much better because they're not trying to quickly kill you so that you need to put in another quarter. They also have persistence, so you can build your character over many sessions. I've seen some clever Japanese arcade games that accomplish this by synergizing with RFID enabled collectible card games, though.

>> ^thepinky:
Yay! This was my first submission ever!


And a good one, too. Holy has shit changed for the better =P

At first I was like, they did this in a church? And then I remembered that Jesus was supervising.