"Are those Logitech Z 623's with 2.1 qaudrozonic soundalization?"
"... Yeah, I needed the quadrilateral surround to go solo in the latest MMORPGizzles. When I get time I'm taking them to the booth at the mall to get some sweet flame-dragons airbrushed on."

Not bad for a nation of criminals.

Yes, it joke.


>> ^dag:

Having voted in both US and Australian voting systems I have to say that, from a representative democracy standpoint - Australia is far superior to the US version for two reasons:
1. Mandatory voting - Voting turnout is 90%+ in Australia because you get fined if you don't vote - it's a civic duty akin to jury duty. Australia skews more to the left because it's not just the old farts who show up at the polling booth.
2. Preferential voting - I can vote for the Greens and my vote is not wasted. Preferential voting means that the Greens can "preference" another party (usually Labor) and give a portion of all votes they received to that preferenced party. This gives the Greens real clout, because the parties will court them for preferences by offering policy concessions. It seems to work pretty well.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Having voted in both US and Australian voting systems I have to say that, from a representative democracy standpoint - Australia is far superior to the US version for two reasons:

1. Mandatory voting - Voting turnout is 90%+ in Australia because you get fined if you don't vote - it's a civic duty akin to jury duty. Australia skews more to the left because it's not just the old farts who show up at the polling booth.

2. Preferential voting - I can vote for the Greens and my vote is not wasted. Preferential voting means that the Greens can "preference" another party (usually Labor) and give a portion of all votes they received to that preferenced party. This gives the Greens real clout, because the parties will court them for preferences by offering policy concessions. It seems to work pretty well.

>> ^Morganth:


Also, NCIS is miserable. The characters are so wooden it's a joke. Watch Bones on Fox.


Bones is another of my favorites. But in every episode, sometimes twice, they will have a scene where Booth will explain why they are going somewhere after they have already gotten there!

I can't imagine getting into a car with someone, even my boss or best friend, without knowing where we are going and why.

Hey Bob, Supes had a straight job. Even though he could have smashed through any bank in the United States. He had the strength but he would not.

Sometimes, when Supes was stopping crimes, I'll bet he was tempted to turn his back on men, join Tarzan in the forest. But he stayed in the city, kept on changing clothes in dirty old phone booths 'til his work was through. Had nothing to do but go on home..

/Crash Test Dummies

>> ^Shepppard:

There's gotta be a story behind this, anyone? anyone? Bueller? anyone?

I swear officer, the phone booth and lamp post came barreling down the street towards me. I tried to maneuver away but it was too late!

The left is shocked---SHOCKED I TELLS YA----about any suggestions of media-promoted VIOLENCE!

To wit:


A new low in Bush-hatred

by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
September 10, 2006

SIX YEARS into the Bush administration, are there any new depths to which the Bush-haters can sink?

George W. Bush has been smeared by the left with every insult imaginable. He has been called a segregationist who yearns to revive Jim Crow and compared ad nauseam to Adolf Hitler. His detractors have accused him of being financially entwined with Osama bin Laden. Of presiding over an American gulag. Of being a latter-day Mussolini. Howard Dean has proffered the "interesting theory" that the Saudis tipped off Bush in advance about 9/11. One US senator (Ted Kennedy) has called the war in Iraq a "fraud" that Bush "cooked up in Texas" for political gain; another (Vermont independent James Jeffords) has charged him with planning a war in Iran as a strategy to put his brother in the White House. Cindy Sheehan has called him a "lying bastard," a "filth spewer," an "evil maniac," a "fuehrer," and a "terrorist" guilty of "blatant genocide" -- and been rewarded for her invective with oceans of media attention.

What's left for them to say about Bush? That they want him killed?

They already say it.

On Air America Radio, talk show host Randi Rhodes recommended doing to Bush what Michael Corleone, in "The Godfather, Part II," does to his brother. "Like Fredo," she said, "somebody ought to take him out fishing and phuw!" -- then she imitated the sound of a gunshot. In the Guardian, a leading British daily, columnist Charlie Brooker issued a plea: "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. -- where are you now that we need you?"

For the more literary Bush-hater, there is "Checkpoint," a novel by Nicholson Baker in which two characters discuss the wisdom of shooting the 43rd president. "I'm going to kill that bastard," one character fumes. Some Bush-hatred masquerades as art: At Chicago's Columbia College, a curated exhibit included a sheet of mock postage stamps bearing the words "Patriot Act" and depicting President Bush with a gun to his head. There are even Bush-assassination fashion statements, such as the "KILL BUSH" T-shirts that were on offer last year at CafePress, an online retailer.

Lurid political libels have a long history in American life. The lies told about John Adams in the campaign of 1800 were vile enough, his wife Abigail lamented, "to ruin and corrupt the minds and morals of the best people in the world." But has there ever been a president so hated by his enemies that they lusted openly for his death? Or tried to gratify that lust with such political pornography?

As with other kinds of porn, even the most graphic expressions of Bush-hatred tend to jade those who gorge on it, so that they crave ever more explicit material to achieve the same effect.

Which brings us to "Death of a President," a new movie about the assassination of George W. Bush.

Written and directed by British filmmaker Gabriel Range, the movie premieres this week at the Toronto Film Festival and will air next month on Britain's Channel 4. Shot in the style of a documentary, it opens with what looks like actual footage of Bush being gunned down by a sniper as he leaves a Chicago hotel in October 2007. Through the use of digital special effects, the film superimposes the president's face onto the body of the actor playing him, so that the mortally wounded man collapsing on the screen will seem, all too vividly, to be Bush himself.

This is Bush-hatred as a snuff film. The fantasies it feeds are grotesque and obscene; to pander to such fantasies is to rip at boundary-markers that are indispensable to civilized society. That such a movie could not only be made but lionized at an international film festival is a mark not of sophistication, but of a sickness in modern life that should alarm conservatives and liberals alike.

Naturally that's not how the film's promoters see it. Noah Cowan, one of the Toronto festival's co-directors, high-mindedly describes "Death of a President" as "a classic cautionary tale." Well, yes, he says, Bush's assassination is "harrowing," but what the film is really about is "how the Patriot Act, especially, and how Bush's divisive partisanship and race-baiting has forever altered America."

I can't help wondering, though, whether some of those who see this film will take away rather a different message. John Hinckley, in his derangement, had the idea that shooting the president was the way to impress a movie star. After seeing "Death of a President," the next Hinckley may be taken with a more grandiose idea: that shooting the president is the way to become a movie star.

@WKB

True, but when the Columbine school shooting was perpetrated, conservatives were quick to point the finger at Marilyn Manson's lyrics. I'm not saying they were right, and I'm not saying that Fox deserves all of the blame here either.

I do think though, that the people pumping that kind of rhetoric onto the airwaves deserve SOME responsibility for atrocities like this. Allow me to compare the Woodstock of 1970 to the Woodstock of '99 for an example.

-------------------------------------------------------------

>>>>>>The 1970 Woodstock (billed as "3 days of Peace and Music") resulted in reports like this:

"The New York Times covered the prelude to the festival and the move from Wallkill to Bethel.[13] Barnard Collier, who reported from the event for the Times, asserts that he was pressured by on-duty editors at the paper to write a misleadingly negative article about the event. According to Collier, this led to acrimonious discussions and his threat to refuse to write the article until the paper's executive editor, James Reston, agreed to let him write the article as he saw fit. The eventual article dealt with issues of traffic jams and minor lawbreaking, but went on to emphasize cooperation, generosity, and the good nature of the festival goers.

When the festival was over, Collier wrote another article about the exodus of fans from the festival site and the lack of violence at the event. The chief medical officer for the event and several local residents were quoted as praising the festival goers."

--------------------------------------------------------------

>>>>>>The 1999 version of the event (featuring bands like Metallica, Rage Against the Machine, Korn, Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock and the Red Hot Chili Peppers who are all, dare I say, a bit angrier [lyrically speaking] than the likes of Arlo Guthrie or Joan Baez) is painted in a much different color:

"Some crowd violence and looting was reported during the Saturday night performance by Limp Bizkit, including a rendition of the song "Break Stuff". Reviewers of the concert criticized Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst as "irresponsible" for encouraging the crowd to destructive behavior.

Violence escalated the next night during the final hours of the concert as Red Hot Chili Peppers performed. A group of peace promoters led by an independent group called Pax had distributed candles to those stopping at their booth during the day, intending them for a candlelight vigil to be held during the Red Hot Chili Peppers' performance of the song "Under the Bridge". During the band's set, the crowd began to light the candles, some also using them to start bonfires. The hundreds of empty plastic water bottles that littered the lawn/dance area were used as fuel for the fire.

After the Red Hot Chili Peppers were finished with their main set, the audience was informed about "a bit of a problem." An audio tower caught fire, and the fire department was called in to extinguish it.

Back onstage for an encore, the Chili Peppers' lead singer Anthony Kiedis remarked how amazing the fires looked from the stage, comparing them to a scene in the film Apocalypse Now.[12] The band proceeded to play "Sir Psycho Sexy", followed by their rendition of Jimi Hendrix's "Fire". Kiedis later stated in his autobiography, Scar Tissue that Jimi Hendrix's sister had asked the Chili Peppers to play "Fire" in honor of Jimi and his performance at the original Woodstock festival, and that they were not playing it to encourage the crowd.

Many large bonfires were burning high before the band left the stage for the last time. Participants danced in circles around the fires. Looking for more fuel, some tore off panels of plywood from the supposedly inviolable security perimeter fence. ATMs were tipped over and broken into, trailers full of merchandise and equipment were forced open and burglarized, and abandoned vendor booths were turned over, and set afire.[13]

MTV, which had been providing live coverage, removed its entire crew. MTV host Kurt Loder described the scene in the July 27, 1999 issue of USA Today:

"It was dangerous to be around. The whole scene was scary. There were just waves of hatred bouncing around the place, (...) It was clear we had to get out of there.... It was like a concentration camp. To get in, you get frisked to make sure you're not bringing in any water or food that would prevent you from buying from their outrageously priced booths. You wallow around in garbage and human waste. There was a palpable mood of anger."

After some time, a large force of New York State Troopers, local police, and various other law enforcement arrived. Most had crowd control gear and proceeded to form a riot-line that flushed the crowd to the northwest, away from the stage located at the eastern end of the airfield. Few of the crowd offered strong resistance and they dispersed quickly back toward the campground and out the main entrance."

>>>>>>See also, this poignant response from a person in the crowd: http://newsroom.mtv.com/2009/08/17/woodstock-legacy/ (crowdmember comments @ 2:20)

----------------------------------------

Now now easy there big fella, before you start telling me about how correlation does not imply causation consider this: an article recently published by the American Journal of Psychiatry concluded that:

"Childhood exposure to parental verbal aggression was associated, by itself, with moderate to large effects on measures of dissociation, limbic irritability, depression, and anger-hostility." Furthermore, "Combined exposure to verbal abuse and witnessing of domestic violence was associated with extraordinarily large adverse effects, particularly on dissociation. This finding is consonant with studies that suggest that emotional abuse may be a more important precursor of dissociation than is sexual abuse."
See: http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/163/6/993

Maybe not the best example I could have found but I've already spent WAY too much time on this post. The point is, WORDS carry a lot of power. Even if the pundits (right OR left) never came out and said it, the implication of violence was certainly there at times.

I KNOW Fox has lead the charge of fear mongering in the name of ratings but anyone else who subscribed to that level of attack should share some of the blame as well. Again, not saying that they should take all or even a lot of the blame, but they should be responsible for the violent laced rhetoric they spout.

I say STOP THE AD HOMINEM ATTACKS and we'll see less violence against PEOPLE and (hopefully) more enthralling arguments where the IDEAS are being attacked (which I'm all for) :-)

p.s. sry for the huge post but i was on a roll

>> ^gorillaman:

That's all I want from you, actually. I don't have a fully formed, coherent alternative to offer. It's the principle I'm endorsing, and the necessity of aiming our thinking toward its realisation. If you remember this discussion started with the proposition of limiting voting to people who could demonstrate they knew what they were voting for. It's simple little baby steps like that we should be considering, and if the only objection is, 'but that's undemocratic,' pfff.


I think you're confusing this conversation for the one dft linked to. This conversation started with you saying democracy was fascism because poor people might vote to redistribute wealth so they're not so poor anymore.

I can expand a bit on why I'm leery of "limiting voting to people who could demonstrate they knew what they were voting for". On the surface, that sounds good to me. However, the question I have is how do we discern who knows what they're voting for? A standardized test? Who writes the test? Who grades the test? How do we decide those people know what they're talking about?

It quickly reverts back to the need for a foolproof methodology for finding people with golden souls to write these hypothetical voting literacy tests. But then if we had a way of identifying superlative leaders, why waste them on writing rules for voting, why not just give them the keys to government directly?

We also have a chicken-and-egg issue. Absent a revolution, the power would have to come from our existing government. That means letting the likes of Harry Reid or John Boehner have ultimate say on who writes the test (or worse, what's specifically in it).

Even if they somehow picked the absolute best possible person for the task, I think the implication of the task is beyond mortal capabilities. They wouldn't just need to write a test that would be fair, they need to write a fair test that would also ensure that the resulting elected officials would appoint a successor who would be willing and able to write a fair test for the next round that produced good elected officials, and so on and so forth for all eternity.

What I imagine would really happen in that loop is that the whole thing would slowly (or maybe even quickly) turn into a tool for one party/ideology/family to consolidate power, and shut off any legal, nonviolent way for the people to get rid of them.

It's why I think that if your goal is to make sure your electorate is comprised of people who know what they're doing in the voting booth, then you should be fighting for policies that make the electorate smarter and more engaged, not smaller.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'csi miami, celebrities, dinner for five, story, phone booth, mexicans' to 'csi miami, celebrities, dinner for five, story, phone booth, mexicans, hauser, cox' - edited by RhesusMonk

My guess would be cloudy liquid could be used to hide something in the center of a container....if it was full enough.

Although when they had her dump it into smaller containers, the "threat" should have been over then and there. Especially if they had done any kind of screen of it at all, but they didn't. They just wanted to fuck with her so she'll learn her lesson and not make them work.


I found the whole "glass room" with one door in the middle of everything to be pretty telling of the whole TSA business. It has one door and an open side.....so it's not there to keep them in...the door is there as a "suggestion". There is no chair, and when it looked like someone was trying to bring her a chair, they took it back. It looked like later in the video (after she'd been standing in that place for 30 some minutes) that someone was pushing a chair toward her in the background.

I know the video is trying to play on our sympathies for a "young mother", but hell I'd have been sympathetic with almost anyone after they put them in a glass cage as a spectacle for other people for 40 minutes and did shit all to deal with them during that period. It pisses me off to no end to see one person at a business clearly wasting time while people are waiting to get dealt with, whether it's to pay the cashier, see a customer service rep, or get someone to follow their own policies and get me processed or kick me off the premises.

Sure a young mother is a more sympathetic victim, but 40 minutes standing in a glass cage with no one coming to update you regularly, giving you a chair, and then at the end of it not even having you processed one way or the other is complete and utter bullshit no matter who is there unless they are guilty as hell of something. I wonder if they would have let someone use the restroom once they've been put in the "special holding area" (the "look at the bad guy booth").

That guy is totally masturbating in whatever booth he's sitting in.

>> ^LarsaruS:

>> ^dag:
It's kind of amazing to me that porn has, in my lifetime, gone from being outlieing deviant smut - to public service for male physiological release.
I'd like to see more reports on the psychological effect of porn on people. Addiction, diminished actual sexual response etc.
I'm not saying that porn is a terrible thing, but its acceptance into mainstream society has a huge impact on our culture.
I still remember this guy in college, in public speaking class, who advocated "relief booths" on street corners, to be housed by willing sex workers, to provide release for "stressed out males" - thereby reducing the masculine ills of society - fights, wars, etc. The premise being that most of the major problems of the world stem from male sexual frustration. He would say, that it's not mistake missiles and bullets are shaped like penises.

Give people food and regular sex and there would not be a reason to go to war... everybody would be full and satisfied. I'd give that guy some cred.


The "huge impact" mentioned has many facets. Think about leaving a fresh-baked cobbler in the window facing an alley or perhaps a gun near brothers 0-7 the oldest of which is as developmentally prepared for touching it as he is to his responsibilities to his siblings-One's ability to handle the overload relative to social mores and civility reveals the real societal rub. Yeah, porn affords release. How much can simpletons handle?

>> ^dag:

It's kind of amazing to me that porn has, in my lifetime, gone from being outlieing deviant smut - to public service for male physiological release.
I'd like to see more reports on the psychological effect of porn on people. Addiction, diminished actual sexual response etc.
I'm not saying that porn is a terrible thing, but its acceptance into mainstream society has a huge impact on our culture.
I still remember this guy in college, in public speaking class, who advocated "relief booths" on street corners, to be housed by willing sex workers, to provide release for "stressed out males" - thereby reducing the masculine ills of society - fights, wars, etc. The premise being that most of the major problems of the world stem from male sexual frustration. He would say, that it's not mistake missiles and bullets are shaped like penises.


Give people food and regular sex and there would not be a reason to go to war... everybody would be full and satisfied. I'd give that guy some cred.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

It's kind of amazing to me that porn has, in my lifetime, gone from being outlieing deviant smut - to public service for male physiological release.

I'd like to see more reports on the psychological effect of porn on people. Addiction, diminished actual sexual response etc.

I'm not saying that porn is a terrible thing, but its acceptance into mainstream society has a huge impact on our culture.

I still remember this guy in college, in public speaking class, who advocated "relief booths" on street corners, to be housed by willing sex workers, to provide release for "stressed out males" - thereby reducing the masculine ills of society - fights, wars, etc. The premise being that most of the major problems of the world stem from male sexual frustration. He would say, that it's not mistake missiles and bullets are shaped like penises.