two words: annie lennox.

oh god, it was awful. and thursday game was the most stressful thing in the world. sheesh.
next year, next year. the rangers were horrible for 30 years, it's pretty awesome that they even have the chance to lose 2 consecutive world series.

In reply to this comment by eric3579:
Just needed one more strike! TWICE!

I heard and understood what he said. but i am so upset with him that it all sounds like lip service.

i feel like maybe once, years ago, there was an obama with integrity. one who believed the shit he said. i dont think that's the guy we voted into office though. the guy in the office appears to be some kind of corporatist puppet who gives a really good speech every once in a while. whos really good at pretending that "the opposition" just outsmarted him or are too powerful to be beat. not that he just represents a softer, kinder side of the same corporately minted coin.

i bet the new guy really misses that old guy. i bet he's really lonely without him. i bet it really really sucks to be the president when it's possible that you're not actually a sociopath. >> ^NetRunner:

What video are you people watching?
Obama says "traditionally what held this country together was this notion that if you work hard, if you're playing by the rules, if you're responsible ... you've got a chance to succeed. But right now people feel like the deck is stacked against them..."
So...he's saying that why people are upset right now is because people feel like that social contract "traditional notion" has broken down.
He's not saying "If you're poor, and don't have a job, blame yourself." That was Herman Cain.
Seriously, are people in such a rage against Obama that even when he says stuff you agree with, you have to pretend he said the opposite?

this. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/oct/19/naomi-wolf-arrest-occupy-wall-street

shit like this will continue to happen, people will revolt.

naomi wolf, naomi klein and chris hedges are people who have covered revolutions all over the world. they all pretty much agree there is something here. when the police get sick of arresting middle aged women in evening gowns, a revolution will begin.

i've been involved in my local occupy movement, this is my opinion.

5) nothing changes in the immediate, but communities are created and begin to solve their own problems locally. texas occupies are working on online actions and compiling lists of local, independent businesses to disperse ... encouraging people do their xmas shopping there. the goal of the online ops for several occupies we're working with (online) is to cut into 4th and 1st quarter sales. they're starting to work with permaculture farms and local farms and community garden activists. these ideas and works are instantly shared with other occupy groups. these ideas are shared instantly online to people who support the cause but can't camp out on the sidewalk indefinentely. I don't think occupy will compel any real policy change in the immediate. it would take a constitutional amendment to meet their major demand. perhaps politicans will begin to adjust their rhetoric a bit, but the collective political conscience of these groups is high enough to see through that. nothing major will happen. but, i do think communities are being made. and communities are what change people lives.

also, to address the winter statements.... texas occupy is working with our friends in northern states to invite them down here for the winter! i'm sure other states with more moderate winters are doing the same. they may have to migrate, but i dont think it's going away that quickly.

you're probably right... i made a longer list initially and realized it was entirely composed of writers. i couldn't decide if it's because those are the people i've paid the most attention to in my life or if its because the nature of success is so incredibly different for a writer than a ceo. >> ^dag:

Maybe it's only the inventors. Da Vinci, Edison and Jobs fit that bill. Deep thinkers and pure artists are pretty different. >> ^peggedbea:
I'm pretty sure kurt vonnegut was at least reasonably kind. He wrote so many books about the value of human kindness.
crispin glover is also unabashedly sensitive and kind and contains all the charm of someone who is not at all charming until they're speaking about something they love. i guess you could argue that he is not a genius, but then i would just tell you to attend a viewing for one of his insane art house films and stick around for the three hour Q&A he'll host when it's finished. genius.
oh i bet neil degrasse tyson is only slightly prickish, and only in the kindest most charming of ways.
>> ^dag:
Just as a thought experiment - can you name one who was well thought of as an all-around nice guy? Edison was an asshole. I've heard that Da Vinci was a real prick.>> ^quantumushroom:
But do geniuses need to be assholes?
No. No they don't.

I don't disagree that the OWS movement isn't going to do a whole lot immediately as far as policy and correcting the disparity. I hung out at an OWS function in my town today and wrote what i think it's impact could/should/might/would love to see it be in a sift talk post. go read it if you're interested. i'm not whoring, i just would love to have the discussion, but im not going to have it two places. >> ^NetRunner:

>> ^Sarzy:
I don't know -- I think their heart is in the right place, but I guess I just question the efficacy of what the OWS people are doing on a practical level. Even if they somehow succeed in getting tighter regulations on Wall Street, is that really going to do much to to fix the whole 99 vs 1 percent income disparity? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that here in Canada, we don't have the same level of unchecked financial shenanigans as you do over there, which is why we weren't hit quite as hard by the recent downturn. But our income disparity is still pretty much as bad as what it is in the States. I don't think anything short of a massive political and cultural overhaul will fix that disparity to any meaningful degree, and obviously that's not going to happen.
But maybe I have OWS all wrong -- I'll admit that I'm not the most informed guy ever.

Oh, I have the same doubts about how well this will work, but up until now the only public "protest" we've seen has been a bunch of grumpy old men demonstrating against having a Democrat in the White House having a black man in the Oval office government regulation of banks, taxes being too high on the top 1%, and the possibility that we might get some sort of national health care overhaul.
In other words, all the people getting mad and going out on the streets lately have been pro-disparity people.
At least now we have people protesting against the right problem. And these people aren't just protesting for a single day and going home, they're bringing their sleeping bags and parking there for the duration. That seems to me like a crucial first step towards getting anything fixed.
Maybe I'm naive to be inspired by it, but it's the first reason I've had in a while to feel hopeful about the future.

I'm pretty sure kurt vonnegut was at least reasonably kind. He wrote so many books about the value of human kindness.

crispin glover is also unabashedly sensitive and kind and contains all the charm of someone who is not at all charming until they're speaking about something they love. i guess you could argue that he is not a genius, but then i would just tell you to attend a viewing for one of his insane art house films and stick around for the three hour Q&A he'll host when it's finished. genius.

oh i bet neil degrasse tyson is only slightly prickish, and only in the kindest most charming of ways.

>> ^dag:

Just as a thought experiment - can you name one who was well thought of as an all-around nice guy? Edison was an asshole. I've heard that Da Vinci was a real prick.>> ^quantumushroom:
But do geniuses need to be assholes?
No. No they don't.

this is very simple sirs, MSNBC is 1. a subsidiary of GE 2. a corporate master and 3. completely and utterly ran and funded by the same entities the ows movement rallying against.
of course they're not going to cover it.

and sarzy, i think you need to give ows a harder look. >> ^Sarzy:

Oh okay, I see. I don't know though -- MSNBC probably should have given some coverage to OWS that night, but Steve Jobs' death is pretty darn important, isn't it? I mean, 10 years from now, people are definitely going to remember Steve Jobs. I don't know if you can say the same about OWS, which essentially strikes me as the left's answer to the tea party.

if your diet is exploitative and oppressive and a huge source of environmental degradation and directly supportive of an evil corporate poison paradigm, then yes, yes it is.

most of the anarchists i know are vegan. and resent the concept of private property.

>> ^messenger:

It's that she attacks the women, and refuses to hold the baby daddies to any account or even acknowledge their existence, as if it's the women who choose single parenthood.>> ^lantern53:
I don't hear anything that can't be substantiated.
Single mothers and sperm donors result in a big mess, which can be seen everywhere you turn.



sometimes it is. sometimes it's the best decision they can make.

>> ^Phreezdryd:

The issue should be why are children having their own children before even finishing high school? How does a child working toward being a responsible adult have time to also be a full time parent? They have to lean heavily on relatives, friends, and probably government programs to get by. Children maybe end up getting treated like baggage instead of a loved, planned for part of life. Is any of this good or fair?
Rinse and repeat for generations. I think society as a whole pays for this, and not just with tax dollars. Kids need real education about real life, instead of the nonsense from the squeamish and the holier than thou.


the assumption that any two parents can raise a family completely alone without having to rely heavily on relatives, friends, and sometimes even government programs to get by is ridiculous. human beings are HERD animals. it takes an entire HERD to raise a family. furthermore, children from any type of home are equally at risk to be born to parents who often, sometimes, occasionally or all the time treat them like baggage instead of a loved and planned for part of life. dysfunction isn't specifically an attribute assigned to the young, the single, the female, or the working class.

AND sex fucking happens. human bodies reach sexual maturity in the teen years because humans didn't evolve to live past the age of 35 without serious technology, nutritional, medical and dental intervention. lackadaisical teenage fuck-off-ery is a relatively new luxury. biology didn't stop dead in its tracks to accommodate.

i was a too young single mother, it wasn't at all easy. it was hard as fuck sometimes and i worked/continue to work my ass off. there were times when there was no joy left in my house. i used to think that was only because i was a single parent. as my friends have now grown into married adults, i see that there are plenty of 2 parent families with no joy left in their houses. anyone can have a really hard life. i don't recommend teenage parenthood to anyone,ever. however, it's not the end of the world. the end of your life. or some horrific societal tragedy. the thing that i have learned is not to vilify stupid kid accidents, but rather to be completely unpuritanical about the idea that one day, my kids will be teenagers with sex drives and educate and prepare them properly, with all the tools in the belts to make reasonable decisions. hopefully, it'll stick. if it doesn't, it's still not the most horrible thing ever and they will supported rather than treated like stupid irresponsible pieces of trash. which is the kind of shit i;ve had to put up with for the last 9 years.

>> ^Phreezdryd:

And as for the absent fathers they love to hate on, are they just completely evil for also being kids, and running away when the fun sex turns into the lifelong responsibility? Who knows, maybe the girl even lied about birth control to try and force him to stick around. Kids do stupid things.


are you trolling? or do you watch too many daytime talk shows??? sure, sometimes girls do asshole things like lie about being on the pill. it's not at all the norm. don't try and make it sound like a reasonable assumption.
and don't make excuses for absent fathers. abandoning your family is sort of evil. i know there are exceptions. in my baby daddy case, he was too mentally ill to be around us anymore. he made our lives better when he went away and never came back. however, most people are not profoundly mentally ill. and even he gave being a dad a decent shot. and he did and does love his kids. his absence is a tragedy in his life more than it is in ours. i saw him recently after 6 years and its very much a wound that eats him alive daily. he is sick and bony and gray. the only solace for him is to know that he went away so he couldn't continue to damage us all and that we are all happy and healthy and functional. that's the saddest thing in the world.

i find it hard to believe that a decent moral human being can completely abandon their kids with no assurance of their well-being (this statement excludes parents who leave their kids with adoptive families with the hope and trust that they will be cared for properly) and remain whole. it's a narcissistic thing to do, it is a sociopathic thing to do. in the absence of drug addiction or some obscenely destructive mental illness, there is no excuse for it. you don't have to get married, or live together, in many cases it's better if you don't. but there is no reason for a relatively sane, relatively function person to walk away entirely from another human they created. pregnancy is risk everyone who engages in vaginal intercourse takes every single day. most of them are completely aware of it. you don't get to make it sound reasonable for a person, no matter their age, to completely run away forever and not look back. you don't get to make it sound reasonable that society place 100% of the responsibility for raising functional adults entirely on women.

i wish! do they make those shirts?
but... i think he was talking about one of my dads. >> ^ChaosEngine:

>> ^peggedbea:
holy shit my nervous voice is annoying.

"someone who appreciates sex as much as you clearly do"
Were you wearing an "I love getting laid" t-shirt or something?

I was at this talk, this was one of my favorite questions from the night actually. Because of all the undertones of insecurity and control issues it stank of and how I see soooo many marriages plagued by insecurity and power struggles. so... *promote trust!