Ha. You know, when I first got into LA back in 1999, it had started to lightly drizzle, and I was on my way to buy a book from Barnes and Noble at the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica.

I got no more than a few steps onto the Promenade before I see a news team with a plastic wrapped camera. The instant they see me, it was like Christmas morning to them, because I was wearing a short sleeve shirt and carried no umbrella. In fact, I remember thinking how odd it was to see people covering up as if it were a monsoon sweeping through LA. They sprint for me. The camera goes up. And the mic goes into my face, and it's like, "Why are you dressed like this in the rain?" It was surreal. To them, this was fucking news!

But I must admit that since being in LA for 14 years, I am not a big pussy when it comes to rain. Time in a place changes you. Now, to me, the light drizzle feels like a monsoon and I have to get out of it pronto! Ha.

About a week ago I opened my wallet at a bar or a bank or something, and I received a compliment for having a library card in my wallet. O.G. Huntington Beach and Westminster Library card holder representin'!

Before the internet, the common man was dumber than shit and my edge was that I read books at the library. In fact, it was NOT cool to know things about things.

Now I'm comparitively dumb because motherfuckers be like "3rd law of thermodynamics, pssshhh, I know EVERYTHING bout that." /ALTAVISTA

I mean, that's cool that people know things now --but, damn, having that edge was really nice.

And then I had the internet and no one did, and my edge was even huger. I made bank designing shitty ass webpages for shitty ass old people with shitty ass businesses. Now everyone gots it and the people with money laid down the pressure and it's a machine of controlled behavior and wallet squeezing. (I squeeze wallets for a living but it's more in sync with Winston Smith working for big bro.)

But I digress... Shhhhh, I'm on my iPhone -- nope, A BOOK.

Bring it back! Don't let Barnes & Nobles close dooooowwwwn. You may dis on the B&N, but that's part of the levee of popular opinion; how assholes of the future will monetize. If our corporate overlords and money trading thugs realize that books ain't selling, they won't hesitate to shut down a library. For the people. For the taxes. For God. You got a book. It's the bible now STFU.

Then we'll only have the internet and information will successfully be filtered down into an easily manipulated data stream -- which it is, but it's not fully there yet. We need to INTEGRATE FACEBOOK WITH EVERY ASPECT OF EXISTENCE.

Shut down all printing presses. When you pick up a book in the future it will turn to dust in your hands and then the CAVE PEOPLE WILL DEVOUR YOU.

Brains. Brains. Nom. Guts and gore. Your children will be eaten alive; torn to shreds, while blood flows out of their arteries into the machines of death.. Force fucked women of your sub-species impregnated by the semen of the dead in order to make more food. More foooooooooooooood -- YOUR PROGENY ARE FOOD.

And all because of the system which interrupts a motherfuck for reading a book.

I agree with you.

I do though, have the experience of playing violent vids since the mid ninetys and do not feel it makes me any more violent.

I understand that killing an animal "for fun only" is on the way to psyco ville but I truly don't think this is where shag is coming from. Farmers, hunters I've found are much more realists. life and death happen daily on farms (barn kittens getting stepped on by milk cows That gets me but my then dairy farm GF didn't bat an eye. All part of life.

Nah man, a barn-cat isn't necessarily inbred. A barn cat is a simply a cat on the property whose main job ain't sittin' on laps and wandering around the house rather, it stays outside and keeps the rodent population in check.

This is pretty common all over the place. When I was growing up we had dozens of "barn cats". They were just feral cats that lived in the barn or other structures on my families ranch, and inbred like they were Lannisters.

I have seen more than my share of 2-headed, 5-legged, 2-faced, crippled, or otherwise conjoined kittens in my day. At least one with every litter! It was like a grotesque toy surprise nuzzled away in every new box of cuteness.

Sigh, mass shooters don't immediately give up when someone else has a gun. Mass shooters have no regard for their safety, they only turn the gun on themselves once they run out of targets. Limit their ability to acquire weapons ant they cant shoot people. I love how his argument completely disregards the idea of stricter gun registration, disregards the idea that you can have guns under most recommended gun laws, just limitations on magazine size and type of weapon. If you need a gun for self defense, so be it, but if you need a 30 round clip to take out the assailant perhaps you should let someone else do it, you're just adding bullets that could potentially hit another target because you cant hit the broad side of a barn.

You know that recently in China a man walked into a school and stabbed 22 kids? Guess what, they all survived. (See this UK Guardian article for more info). You're right, taking away the guns won't stop people from being violent but it will drastically reduce their capabilities for committing mass fatalities on the scale of Sandy Hook.

About banning assault rifles--since nearly all gun deaths in the U.S. occur because of handguns, not rifles, making handguns illegal would actually make far more logical sense--not that it would ever happen in the U.S., mind you.

About the "mentally disturbed" comment: less than 4% of violent crimes in the U.S. are committed by those with a mental illness. Identifying those "mentally disturbed" as you called them that will actually commit a violent act is not nearly as easy as it sounds; you might want to read this NY Times piece on the subject. Alcohol and drug use is actually a much better predictor of violent acts than mental illness is.

Back on topic to this clip--I'm saddened that Jon Stewart has fallen into the trap of thinking of this as a "gun control" issue. It isn't. There are already millions of guns in circulation, many of which are unregistered and would be impossible to confiscate in the case of a ban. The horse is out of the barn already, and it's far too late to start talking about shutting the doors. We need instead to be addressing the issue of why people are using the guns to commit crimes in the first place: economic disparity, the war on drugs, a culture that glorifies violence and "getting back" at the other guy, a mental health system that has difficulty both identifying and treating those with violent tendencies, etc.

People want the quick fix, the easy solution--there isn't one. The sooner Stewart, Obama, the NRA, and the rest of the U.S. figures that out, the sooner we can start having a real discussion about how to make our society a better and safer place.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Cat-and-Barn-Owl-BFF-s-Playing-Together

Cat and Barn Owl, BFF's Playing Together has been added as a related post - related requested by mintbbb.

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^Stormsinger:
>> ^RFlagg:
I think way too many liberals think the election is a lock for Obama. I think there is a vary dangerous chance that Mitt will win and with a Republican controlled congress will erase most of the minor progress Obama managed to do and send us far backwards, especially with the Supreme Court by moving it from mildly to the right to the far right for generations to come...

I don't think that it's that so many liberals think Obama has a lock on teh election, as that many many liberals are highly ambivalent about his actions. And it's hard to drum up a lot of enthusiasm for voting for the lesser of two evils.
Then too, there's the fact that in most states, one vote, or a hundred votes, or a thousand votes, won't have the slightest effect. Your vote only matters if the state is closely divided. Kansas, for instance, wouldn't go for Obama if my vote counted for 10,000 votes. Our electoral system is as badly fucked up as our legislative system is...quite possibly not by coincidence.

THIS! We don't care, if you're a progressive you have no illusions about Obama, you shouldn't have before the election, and if you did you definitely don't now. I know it's stupid but I want Romney to win, maybe that'll teach them they can't Fuck Around with promising shit and not delivering.


Well, not so much. I'm not yet willing to burn down the barn just because it has some rats. Romney would be a disaster...for everyone who makes less than several hundred thousand a year. I rather suspect that a Romney administration would lead to the class warfare turning violent, as he appears to be so utterly one-sided.

Also on a separate note, Indigo Books and Music has joined forces with U.S. bookstore chain Barnes & Noble in refusing to stock or sell any books published by online rival Amazon.com. This is in protest to Amazon using predatory tactics that weaken an already struggling book industry. Citing the online company’s policy of reserving exclusive rights to sell e-books produced by Amazon's new publishing arm.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/indigo-joins-growing-boycott-of-books-published-by-amazoncom/article543954/


Not banning per say but a definitely proof that, we can only access what is offered to us.

At the time of his suicide, Hitler's official place of residence was in Munich, which led to his entire estate, including all rights to Mein Kampf, changing to the ownership of the state of Bavaria. As per German copyright law, the entire text is scheduled to enter the public domain on January 1, 2016, 70 years after the author's death.[19] The copyright has been relinquished for the Dutch and Swedish editions and some English ones (though not in the US, see below).
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_Kampf

>> ^EvilDeathBee:

>> ^Sagemind:
In Canada, We have Indigo Books, Indigo Books also runs Chapters bookstores, Coles Books, Worlds Biggest bookstore, Indigospirit, SmithBooks and The Book Company. It's the biggest chain in Canada, practically a monopoly, but not quite. It's our equivalent to Amazon books combined with Barns & Noble in the US, in fact, Amazon even owns stock in the Canadian book chain. It also retains a 57.7% share in Kobo Ink. (968.9 Million in yearly Sales.)
Heather Reisman, Indigo's CEO and owner banned "Mein Kampf" from all the stores. Although not casual reading material, Mein Kampf is required reading in quite a few university and college's. It's an important book for historians and students of history and politics.
You can find critiques of the work in her stores but not the book itself. Heather herself has, admittedly, never read the book. Being Jewish, she sites it as hate literature and doesn't want anyone to see it.
Heather's stance is that she is not Banning the book, she just doesn't carry it. It just so happens she doesn't have any competition. (other than college book stores and few straggling independants)
So my point is, if she is blocking this historical book, which other publications is she blocking? And what can we do, when the book stores filter the books we can see?

Out of curiosity, if someone were to buy Mein Kampf, where does the money go? Who publishes it? Or would it be in the public domain now?

>> ^Sagemind:

In Canada, We have Indigo Books, Indigo Books also runs Chapters bookstores, Coles Books, Worlds Biggest bookstore, Indigospirit, SmithBooks and The Book Company. It's the biggest chain in Canada, practically a monopoly, but not quite. It's our equivalent to Amazon books combined with Barns & Noble in the US, in fact, Amazon even owns stock in the Canadian book chain. It also retains a 57.7% share in Kobo Ink. (968.9 Million in yearly Sales.)
Heather Reisman, Indigo's CEO and owner banned "Mein Kampf" from all the stores. Although not casual reading material, Mein Kampf is required reading in quite a few university and college's. It's an important book for historians and students of history and politics.
You can find critiques of the work in her stores but not the book itself. Heather herself has, admittedly, never read the book. Being Jewish, she sites it as hate literature and doesn't want anyone to see it.
Heather's stance is that she is not Banning the book, she just doesn't carry it. It just so happens she doesn't have any competition. (other than college book stores and few straggling independants)
So my point is, if she is blocking this historical book, which other publications is she blocking? And what can we do, when the book stores filter the books we can see?


Out of curiosity, if someone were to buy Mein Kampf, where does the money go? Who publishes it? Or would it be in the public domain now?

In Canada, We have Indigo Books, Indigo Books also runs Chapters bookstores, Coles Books, Worlds Biggest bookstore, Indigospirit, SmithBooks and The Book Company. It's the biggest chain in Canada, practically a monopoly, but not quite. It's our equivalent to Amazon books combined with Barns & Noble in the US, in fact, Barns & Noble even owns stock in the Canadian book chain. It also retains a 57.7% share in Kobo Ink. (968.9 Million in yearly Sales.)

Heather Reisman, Indigo's CEO and owner banned "Mein Kampf" from all the stores. Although not casual reading material, Mein Kampf is required reading in quite a few university and college's. It's an important book for historians and students of history and politics.

You can find critiques of the work in her stores but not the book itself. Heather herself has, admittedly, never read the book. Being Jewish, she sites it as hate literature and doesn't want anyone to see it.

Heather's stance is that she is not Banning the book, she just doesn't carry it. It just so happens she doesn't have any competition. (other than college book stores and few straggling independants)

So my point is, if she is blocking this historical book, which other publications is she blocking? And what can we do, when the book stores filter the books we can see?