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The answer to your question "What motivation do they have to restrict access by some subset of users?" is: restricting access to information posted by those who oppose their political agenda is a fairly strong motive.

And as soon as that happens searchers can point their browsers to other search engines. Though I use mostly Google I still use Alta Vista. I also use About.com, Teoma (now Ask.com), Cuil, DMoz, and Mooter.

Falcon

It's actually very easy to convey the idea you are trying to convey, if your name happens to be Mark Twain. You forgot an important caveat in your philosophy, People only do what brings them satisfaction in the moment. They may hate themselves later. They may, in that moment, decide never to do it again. But the person we will be even a minute in the future is not this person right now, present-self can't really speak for that person in the future. Future-self may have reasons for wanting to do what present-self said he will, but they are his reasons. Twain's What is Man? explains this all in about 20 pages.

Forgot the link
http://casinogambling.about.com/od/blackjack/a/shuffler.htm

If you're in the military, they vaccinate you against shit I've never even heard of.

The list of vaccinations against includes: Adenovirus, Influenza, Measles, Meningococcal, Mumps, Polio, Rubella, Tetanus-diptheria, Yellow Fever, Hepatitis A, Typhoid, Japanese B Encephalitis, Cholera, Rabies, Varicella, Antrhrax, Small Pox.

I've heard of all of these except JE vaccine, and Varicella. There's probably others that weren't listed, but I wouldn't be surprised if people referred to them by brand name or abbreviations. That'd be confusing.

All the ones I listed came from:
http://usmilitary.about.com/od/theorderlyroom/l/blvaccinations.htm

Responding only cause you got modded up

Of course they considered it, the ice records to which you refer were constructed by climatologists. I mean... it was their idea.

The evidence doesn't show that, it shows temperature increases out pacing co2 but the co2 increases first according to ice cores. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/63/Co2-temperature-plot.svg

Calling it a psuedoscience is just name calling.

A super volcano has a massive cooling effect, they throw up a ton, many tons of sediment and global cooling gasses into the atmosphere this basically shadows the earth and cools the earth, krakatoa is a good example. Next when volcanoes produce a lot of co2 they do not produce more than mankind does and they don't produce a lot of other greenhouse gasses we do. We make 120x the CO2 vs all the volcanoes (including underwater). http://environment.about.com/od/greenhouseeffect/a/volcano-gas.htm

Egotistical? Hell I bet if we set our minds to it mankind could cut down every tree on the planet in a half dozen years. We've wrapped the planet in wires. Built cities so wide spread that at night (on the dark side..) when you look at the planet from space you clearly see lights across the whole damn thing. We could easily extinct almost any animal we choose in a year. Saying humans can't have an impact because the world is so big is very 1800s of you but I assure you it isn't still true.

Propaganda? When is the last time 1000s of scientists got together and lied? Hell pretty much ALL scientists (over 95%) in agreement. NEVER.

It's ironic that in her essay Ms. Bayley states, "As fuzzy logic becomes more and more obsolete (in humans, at least), boolean values have come to rule all. Precision, accuracy, the Styrofoam cup holding your coffee, and the microprocessor in your toaster oven are all a product of infinitely many zeros and ones, a concept I find both irresistibly ridiculous and intriguing." An essay, used as a factor in deciding admissions, is quite 'fuzzy' when compared to grades and SAT scores.

As for the essay itself, meh. It's not all that bad, but the wit sounded a bit forced and also a little too self-aware. I also get the feeling that she read and was influenced by the infamous I have not yet gone to college essay.

These guys also got the Nobel prize this year for their work on the CCD. That's worth a mention too, I think!

their are side affects to the flu shot. Also their are costs (in $ and time.) Also the timing may not work out for you, you do not want the shot while already sick, or are doing something strenuous in the 2 days after the shot (it is a additional stress to your system.)
Not saying it is a net negative, just that their are more than 2 legit reasons to pass.
Oh one other reason, if you would rather be sick at home than go to work. And you too honest to just lie. ;)

I'm pretty sure I'm in agreement with what you said.

However, the flag pole prayers are generally held outside of school hours like in the morning before school when people are arriving. They show up early and just do it so I'm not sure provisioning of school resources is even involved. At least that is from what I understand. They are open to anyone wishing to participate and nothing forces them to.

A teacher should/will have authority as the courts have ruled that school authority can be assumed at any time on the school grounds. As long as that authority isn't used to promote the prayer event, I see no problems with it. However, I think it would be foolish to basically strip teachers of all authority when they participate in things like this. Situations arise like Kids playing dangerously on playground equipment, fighting, arguing, hazing other students, getting involved with drugs or dangerous object and so on are pretty much the purview of the teachers responsibilities while on school grounds (at to some extent, at least in my state, the school oversees the kids until a parent picks them up or they get home whichever comes first). I know I have been punished in school many times for fighting or cussing someone out on the way to or from school. One time, I cut through a person yard because I was running late and the school made me go back and replant flowers I supposedly killed in the process.

As for the pledge, Yea, take it back. However, I find it foolish to refuse to allow it because of it's mentioning. Many government documents created in the early years of the country and even to this day reference the year of our lord and so on within them Congress starts each day off with a prayer. Taken to the extreme, this entire "if it relates to god or religion in any way" could remove much of US history as well as government and civics from the schools. We already had one school (or was it all of California schools) ban teaching the declaration of independence because it referenced god. Some of the documents reportedly banned were excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, the diaries of George Washington and John Adams, writings from William Penn and various state constitutions.

To be fair though, they claimed the banned documents weren't their entirety, just excerpts used to demonstrate how religion played in the lives of the founding fathers. Still, I think that's a valid discussion model for students. Even if those influences do or do not play a role in the ongoing operation of the US to this day.

Actually many people thing the pumps damaging blood cells might cause a horrifying side effect of bypass surgery called 'pump head'

http://heartdisease.about.com/cs/bypasssurgery/a/pumphead.htm

Aldi isn't an option in my area, but Family Dollar/Dollar General, Wal-Mart, and even some of the grocery stores have ramen for 16-20 cents a pack when bought as a 5 or 6 pack.

As for bread, I spend $1.25 on a loaf, and it ain't white bread. Shopping at the 'discount bakery outlets' ('day old bread stores', as my mother used to call them) gets you bread that's still good, usually not stale, and better pricing to boot. My bread is normally expensive as hell, too: $3 a loaf (Nature's Own Light Wheat Bread - I'm diabetic, and shouldn't really have the extra carbs in the first place, but it's a fair compromise so I can have my Peanut Butter sandwiches :)) in the regular stores.

Works out quite well when you have a household that can move a lot of loaves in a week's time, too, since you'll usually end up paying less per loaf for bread that's nutritionally better for you than the plain white sugar-bread.

Granted, I have to spend more per week on food in other spots (the need for low sugar or sugar free stuff compels the shopping experience, and I get to pay the 'sugar-free tax', so to speak), so saving whenever I can becomes a priority.

Copyright lasts 70 years, not 10. And you don't need to add a copyright notice to get copyright. If you made it it's yours, under your copyright. If something has no notice/license at all, then it's copyrighted. And then you shouldn't go and copy it.

http://inventors.about.com/od/copyrights101basicsfaq/f/secure_copyrigh.htm

Just as exploits in the image processing components of web browsers will hopefully educate people to surf in Lynx?

How many exploits in image processing components of web browsers have there been? I count 4 for raster images. (of course that article is a few years old, have there been any recently?) If there were as many holes in JPG rendering libraries as there have been in javascript, then yes disabling images would be an entirely reasonable solution.

That story took some real digging btw. For a minute I thought I had dreamed it up.

Hey, moron, he didn't say data centers are relevant to software licensing.

Hey, fucktard, the whole point of this article is Microsoft avoiding taxes on licensing. Talking about data centers is batshit irrelevant.

You might want to be careful with calling something "creamy"..

The conclusion was that when one factors in lost earnings and student loans, the person who got a job right out of high school will do better on average than someone who gets a Bachelors degree.

Per this article, a bachelor's degree is worth almost twice a high school diploma in lifetime earning power: $1.2M over a lifetime for a HS grad, $2.1M lifetime for a BS.

All online schools that offer a degree program have to be accredited by the same institutions that accredit physical schools. They all have to follow the same standards. My school, Kaplan University, is accredited by the same organisation as the University of Illinois and the University of Michigan. If the accreditation is good enough for them, should it not be so for Kaplan?

Actually that's not correct. In the US most for-profit schools (online or distance learning) are accredited federally by Distance Education and Training Counci of U.S. Department of Education, which has been criticized as being a lower standard, whereas most traditional post-secondary institutions are regionally accredited, such as the Higher Learning Council, which as you suggest Kaplan is also accredited by. I would suggest while not necessary, if given the choice between two institutions, the one with regionally accreditation may be a preferable if a person has any concerns about transferring credits to other schools, concerns about the perceived "quality" of the degrees (e.g. such as by potential employers), and your own peace of mind about the quality of the educational content and experience. Some online schools have a terrible reputation for next to no availability or interaction between the student and professors, usage of their own "textbooks" of substandard quality, and no customer service after tuition is paid.

The college "life experience" is pretty over-rated if you are already married, have a house, and a career. You have to pick the right tools to get the job done. If the job is to get an degree or learn about a subject, college is a tool to get that done. Who is to say that a physical school is any better at doing that than an online school if job is accomplished?

One thing you are not explicit about is whether you are looking for a degree (i.e. a piece of paper) for a particular work related reason, or an education. A surprising large number of students at various for-profit online schools are not satisfied with their educational experience. At university I knew a number of mature students who had to juggle their lives to go back to school, most even made it to graduation. At the graduation ceremony one friend said she was sorry she missed so much of the potential experience by not being able to spend more time on campus or with her peers. It is the hard to measure or even describe the experiences that are part of the organic education that occurs from being somewhat isolated from the rest of the world, at a place of learning where you can concentrate on learning. I mean from learning advanced biochemistry at the local pub, learning about artistic expression at the town's only cinema where a film society showed weekly art house and independent films, to learning through experience more about project management, public speaking, and team building than any management training seminar could ever hope to cover.

It sounds like you found a decent online program that works for you. I'm glad, and wish you the best of success with it, but as far as I know there will be parts of the post-secondary "educational experience" you will likely miss besides the partying, and that's okay. Best of luck.

You don't believe in evidence. There either is evidence supporting your claim, or there isn't.

I said "I believe there is evidence". I'm'a assume English isn't your first language (for now; more on that below) and explain that the phrase means "I'm not certain, but I think evidence has been found".

But since you're calling me out on it, I'll look at your links. Link the first:

This powerful combination of two studies presents persuasive evidence that violent video games do indeed increase aggression in some players.

Link the second:

Playing violent video games like Doom, Wolfenstein 3D or Mortal Kombat can increase a person's aggressive thoughts, feelings and behavior both in laboratory settings and in actual life, according to two studies appearing in the April issue of the American Psychological Association's (APA) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Furthermore, violent video games may be more harmful than violent television and movies because they are interactive, very engrossing and require the player to identify with the aggressor, say the researchers.

Link the third:

After 40+ years of research, one might think that debate about media violence effects would be over. An historical examination of the research reveals that debate concerning whether such exposure is a significant risk factor for aggressive and violent behavior should have been over years ago (Bushman & Anderson, 2001). Four types of media violence studies provide converging evidence of such effects: laboratory experiments, field experiments, cross-sectional correlation studies, and longitudinal studies (Anderson & Bushman, 2002a; Bushman & Huesmann, 2000).

Link the fourth:

The link between anger and aggression is far from clear, and they would like to see similar results reproduced with other test groups and using different games and experimental setups. It's also worth noting that they attempted to measure a wide range of additional factors during their study, but many of these measurements produced statistically insignificant or contradictory results.

This is the first one that doesn't claim the connection is well-established, but it does find a causative link between aggressive behavior and violent media. It attempts to establish that there is an additional factor. Link the fifth:

After an average playtime of 56 hours over the course of a month with âoeAsheronâ(TM)s Call 2,â a popular MMRPG, or âoemassively multi-layer online role-playing game,â researchers found âoeno strong effects associated with aggression caused by this violent game,â said Dmitri Williams, the lead author of the study.

Teenagers experiencing 56 hours of fantasy violence over one month and then self-assessing their feelings. 'Nuff said, I hope. Link the sixth:

A brain mechanism that may link violent computer games with aggression has been discovered by researchers in the US. The work goes some way towards demonstrating a causal link between the two - rather than a simple association.

Link the seventh:

After an average playtime of 56 hours over the course of a month...

Same as five.

Not that it will change anything, or mean anything for that matter, but someone had to do the math:

(~1.5 gpm show heads) * (1 minute pre-run) * (1 shower/day) * (228,000,000 adults) / (648,000 gallons / pool) = more than 351 Olympic-sized swimming pools per year! http://homerepair.about.com/od/plumbingrepair/ss/tankless_hwh_7.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Cubic_capacity_olympic_size_swimming_pool


does it all mean anything? I don't know...

That's extremely unfair. The shuttle hasn't lived up to it's original billing (cheap, reusable) or flown as many flights as was envisioned but to claim it's nothing more than a giant PR program is rather dismissive of everything that it has accomplished. No shuttle == no hubble repair mission == no hubble for the last 15 years.

Shuttle operations in the 1990's cost about $3 billion per year. The cost at launch of the HST was about $1.5 billion. Shuttle HST repair missions were spectacular PR, but they were ridiculously cost-ineffective if you are using them to justify the existence of the entire program. For the price of shuttle operations, we could (very conservatively speaking) have launched 40 HSTs between 1990 and 2010.

So Russian phishers actually care about uptime? Who woulda thunk it! :p

In other news, when millions upon millions of computers are in botnets, some of them are probably going to be non-windows systems. Shock, horror. Related reading.

• System admins get a day.
• Teachers get a week.
• Farmers get a day
• Armed forces get a day
• Presidents get a day
• Doctors get a day
• Heck, even Plumbers get a day.

Why not programmers?

The article says (correctly) that "eye strain" is the result of blurriness and flicker.

It doesn't do that. It says:

"On a computer, a CRT with a low refresh rate (less than 70 Hz) can cause similar problems because of the flickering image. Aging CRTs also often go slightly out of focus, and this can also cause eye strain. "

Nowhere does it say that those are the only two causes of eye fatigue. In fact, it also says:

"Symptoms often occur after reading, computer work, or other activities that involve tedious visual tasks."

"When concentrating on a visually intense task, such as continuously focusing on a book ..."

Last I checked, paper books don't flicker, nor are they blurry. But reading them can still cause eye strain; just less so than with a computer screen.

FYI, high contrast greatly increases eye strain.

Ah, the standard emotional appeal response. Never mind that it doesn't even apply to what I said.

Your article? Are you actually the author? Steve Silberman?

First, you didn't "cite" anything. You mentioned that some studies might exist. Citing them requires providing the information so that the reader might check to make sure that is actually the case. I certainly don't see any citations.

I see nowhere in your article where you make any mention whatsoever of the placebo effect size increasing in chemotherapy patients or Parkinson's disease. You mention that the placebo effect has been shown to provide relief to chemo patients, but I didn't disagree with (or even mention that). Your mention of Parkinson's is in connection with development on a drug being stopped after a phase III trial because it did not show benefit over placebo. Again, that has nothing to do with the idea that the magnitude of the observed placebo effect is significantly greater now than it was before.

Which leaves us with depression. I notice you say major depression in your post. Here is a relevant bit from your article:

Two comprehensive analyses of antidepressant trials have uncovered a dramatic increase in placebo response since the 1980s. One estimated that the so-called effect size (a measure of statistical significance) in placebo groups had nearly doubled over that time.

Again, note that at no time did I suggest either of those trials might be wrong (how could I, since you didn't provide citations so I could go check their methodology). Rather the opposite, I suggested that the results aren't really surprising. I also note the absence of any mention of "major depression." Rather, these studies seem to have looked at antidepressant trials. Now, perhaps those trials were dominated by major depressives. Again, I can't check because you've failed to cite them properly. I find it unlikely though. While depression is certainly a real, serious medical condition, it is not a novel idea that many people (most, according to some sources) who are on antidepressants probably should not be, and likely aren't really suffering from clinical depression in the first place. [1][2] You point out yourself that drug companies aren't always as careful as they should be about recruiting subjects.

Okay, so supposing that you actually are clinically depressed and you're enrolled in an antidepressant trial. In order to measure any improvement we have to have some sort of metric. We have to at least assess your level of depression before and after the treatment. How do we do that? Here are the DSM IV criteria for major depressive disorder. I chose that source because it is publicly available. You can confirm it by looking at the DSM IV itself, of course. Note that many of the criteria are subjective. Some others might be reasonably objectively assessed by following the subject (without his knowledge) for two weeks or so. How likely is it that the drug trials your "cited" studies analyzed did this? I can't tell, of course, but I find it very plausible that much of the assessment could involve the subjects reporting how they feel.

Normally I try to give science journalists the benefit of the doubt. They have a tough job and for the most part they are not trained scientists, so mistakes and misunderstandings are bound to occur. However, your posts here have demonstrated your willingness to appeal to emotional statements, misrepresentations, strawmen, and other poor tactics.

Disclaimer: I am not a physician. I am an academic researcher involved with drug trial analysis. I see you've been panned by physicians as well though.

CU = Combat Upgrade.
NGE = New Game Enhancement.

With these two changes, Sony Online Entertainment completely fucked the Star Wars Galaxies that a couple hundred thousand people knew and loved. They DESTROYED the gameplay experience that made SWG worth playing instead of a dozen other EQ-like games. Not only that, they released the NGE with no warning, about a week after a paid expansion pack for the *old* version of the game. So a large percentage of their players had bought the expansion pack and then a week later, some of the content in it was not even part of SWG anymore.

Raph Koster (the creative director of the original SWG) told the upper management point-blank: "If you do this, you will lose all of your existing playerbase. Not some of them, all of them." They did it anyway, because they didn't think the old game was successful enough, and they wanted SWG to be WoW. They gambled that they would be able to attract more new players than they lost old players (they were wrong.)

NGE now stands as a cautionary tale to MMO game designers. Once you give players a certain gameplay experience at launch, you can add new things to it, but you cannot take things away. If you rip the guts out of your game and build a new one in its place, your paying customers will get totally pissed at you and will cancel their subscriptions.

There are tens of thousands of people who will never, ever play a Sony MMORPG again because of how badly SoE fucked them with Star Wars Galaxies. I had already quit the game long before these things happened, but I will never play a Sony MMORPG again either, because its just not worth the risk.

True to an extent, but the Wright bros. pioneered air flight more or less on a shoestring. I'll grant you it'd have to be a bigger shoestring for space, but people have bigger shoes these days. :-) Seriouslly, I think that's a worthy example as they had so little resources (in modern terms) at their disposal to help them get flying and inventors today have so much at their disposal.

I wanted to agree with you, but I'm actually not so sure it's impossible for a "garage inventor" to get to space. Just really unlikely...like flying was before the Wrights.

-Matt

I'm pretty sure you're implying China or India, and you have check your facts. Their economies may be large and successful, and some part of the population may be well off even by western standards. However the majority of people, both in China and India live in abject poverty, and their economies are creating ecological disasters of enormous proportions.

Check out this list, http://geography.about.com/cs/worldpopulation/a/mostpopulous.htm where the countries are listed by population size. Except for the western countries, every single other one has at least one major issue, besides poverty for a majority of the people, that precludes it from being a success. For instance Brazil is destroying the rain forest, Pakistan is anything but politically stable and large portions are controlled by the Taleban, Nigeria is destroying the Niger delta for oil, and so on.

Also ,
here

and here are the details, if you read science.
study.

Web programming is not, nor should it be, something anyone can "whip up" without understanding what they're doing

Sure, in make-believe land this will happen. But here in reality, there are tons of rookie coders writing crap, insecure web programs. Given this will *never* be stopped, the *least* PHP might do is make it feel natural to do the right thing.

For example, if you search "PHP send mail", one of first hits you get has example code that *will* be exploited by spammers. The fact that the *core default way to send mail* does not have a parameter for "From:" has resulted in thousands of websites getting reamed by spammers. Everbody wants to customize the "From:" in an email based on user input! No novice will know how to properly construct a "From: $username" to pass into the additional_headers! They'll gloss over the warning in the link I gave--why? Like most people they will assume the warning only applies to people doing advanced tricks with email like attachments; all they are doing is something "simple" like customizing the From: line! Hell, that is how I got burned. I assumed since I was doing something simple, PHP would do the right thing for me. I was wrong. Live and learn!

The easy to exploit mail function isn't what is happening in the article. That "exploit" isn't even really an exploit but it is what I originally called it--a rookie mistake. That kind of thing can be done in any language and you'd be lying to say your first email form didn't have the exact same problem!

The GOVERNATOR has been activated.

It's a handicap for the Right. Without robocall campaigns to catapulpt the propaganda, how are the Republicans supposed to have a fighting chance? For the sake of good sportsmanship, it's only fair that they be allowed.

Umm... your own source states that they can be used at the beginning of a sentence, although for formal writing never outside of parenthesis. Kind of an odd rule, but I suppose it makes some sense (although most sources say to not use Latin abbreviations at all in formal writing).

As for capitalization, this seems to be a contested issue. About.com says to capitalize them, and I can't recall ever seeing "i.e." not capitalized at the beginning of a sentence in print . I suspect grammar books differ on this point, but unfortunately this is particularly difficult to Google. I couldn't find any relevant information on this topic in the book you mentioned (1st edition full text online). That book is criticized rather harshly though, so I'd definitely look for independent verification of any rules it mentions.

This is looking more and more like a rule that a grammar teacher made up (a tragically common occurrence). "Don't start with i.e." would prevent inadvertent sentence fragments caused by the habit of using those abbreviations mostly mid-sentence. From there one could generalize and say "always in lowercase" to curb the tendency to capitalize abbreviations. Not a real rule, but just a guideline to prevent common errors. Plus English is a natural language so grammar rules are well nigh impossible to keep that simple. I did check and neither an assortment of famous authors or newspapers obey this rule, so if it once was true then it is no longer so.

Chavez promoted the use of traditional toys like the Yo-Yo

But the yo-yo is a weapon: Inventors of the yo-yo

In the Philippines, the yo-yo was a weapon for over 400 hundred years. Their version was large with sharp edges and studs and attached to thick twenty-foot ropes for flinging at enemies or prey.

Your link is to OEM software... If you are going to pirate software, you might as well not pay for it.

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/findsoftware/f/oemsoftware.htm

As someone who has been testing Snow Leopard in many different scenarios for the past four months, I can say this is one update that will likely give you no problems if you install over the top of your existing 10.5.x installation.

Though I like that Snow Leopard is leaner and faster I'm not planning to upgrade my Mac to it. It took me more than a year to upgrade from Tiger to Leopard even though I had the Leopard disk. Ended up the only reason I did upgrade was because I found out upgrading to Java 6 required Leopard, Apple would not release Java 6 for Tiger. Some hackers or programmers got it working on Tiger but it required workarounds.

But, for maximum speed and efficiency, I would back up your user data and apps, and do a clean install.

I know people don't but you should always keep backups. For mine I use external HDDs and I'm pretty much in the habit of copying files from my user files to a user folder on the external drives when I save them. To do a clean install, which I prefer anyway, I don't have to be concerned about the install nuking my data. Even if I reformat the OS X drive when I install it, my data won't be nuked. That's because the physical hard disk drive in my Mac is partitioned into 3 partitions. The first partition has Mac OSX installed on it. The third one is reserved for Ubuntu Studio. And the second partition is the user home, which Leopard is set to use now and Ubuntu will also be set to use as the home partition. That way I'll have access to all of my documents in both OSes.

To do a clean install all I need to do is backup my preferences if I want to keep the preferences for my software. However I have, though didn't install yet, Carbon Copy Cloner which clones disks. After I do install it I'll set it up to automatically sync backups with the home folders,. That way I won't need to manually copy, and test, files onto my backups disks.

Falcon

On second thought, if I can save 9 GBs of disk space by upgrading to Snow Leopard I very well may upgrade. I upgraded the original 160 GB HDD that came with my Mac to a "320 GB" drive, that was the biggest one I could find locally that would work with my Mac, and it's more than half full. I don't even have my photos on it yet, and I have 1,000s of 35mm exposures on film.

Falcon

1. park and lock your car, and remember the code on the labeled marker
2. walk to the ticket machine (at most 1/2 block)
3. pay with cash or credit, and keep the receipt in case of dispute
4. walk away

A few interesting notes:

• It's very important to lock your car. Montreal used to be the car-theft capital of North America. People claim things are better now, but the island city is surrounded by "chop shops" where stolen cars are disassembled.
• The markers are set well away from the curb, to make room for snow removal machinery. Here's a picture of a marker, showing the parking enforcement rules (in French, then written smaller in English in order to annoy the once-dominant English minority, that is a very long and bitterly contested story).
• The curb itself is covered with a heavy steel band, for the snow removal machinery to scrape right against it without damaging the curb.
• Notice that I've mentioned snow removal machinery twice already? There's a draconian system in place after a winter storm: crews show up to tow away cars that are parked in snow-removal zones (residents are notified through temporary signs or through a system of red lights), and leave the cars parked elsewhere. The cars are not impounded, but owners have to go hunting for their cars. The whole process is described here.
• The snowblower was invented in Montreal, not surprisingly. Irate workmen whose job of removing snow by hand was thus threatened used to sabotage the first machines by placing iron bars in snowbanks

Alejo

Try something more appropriate like Sports Illustrated (which is what I read). http://womenshistory.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&sdn=womenshistory&zu=http%3A%2F%2Fsportsillustrated.cnn.com%2Folympics%2Ffeatures%2Fjoyner%2Fflojo_noden.html

FloJo was my hero!

In my opinion, people with flaws -- like genetic anomalies -- should be disqualified from participating. If you think that they should be allowed to participate, then would you allow a 3-armed man to participate in the boxing tournament? Do you think that having 3 arms would give the participant an unfair advantage?

The Olympics is not about helping people with genetic flaws to feel good about themselves. The Olympics is a sports competition that celebrates the beauty of the human form.

So, if Caster Semenya is proven to possess a genetic abnormality, then she should be disqualified. However, "should" does not mean "will". Chances are good that if she is disqualified, she and her African-American/African supporters will accuse the Olympic officials of exhibiting "racism" against Africans. So, the final outcome is likely that she will be proven to possess the genetic abnormality, that she will not be disqualified, and that the Olympic officials will suddenly become mute.

The grandparent probably got it mixed up with

Androgen-insensitivity-syndrome

"Alcohol -- still your best drug value."

Yeah that's what you need when you're in emotional turmoil: lots and lots of a depressant. What may help is the social aspect of drinking since it's usually done with friends and the fact that it relaxes you enough to let the emotion out, not the alcohol itself. It's called "crying in your beer" for a reason.

Oh, BTW, the Disney/Mickey ears are copyrighted & trademarked.

My advice is not to try to make them and sell them on the street. I wouldn't even sell pictures of them.

But if you want to put them on a picture of Obama to make a political point, it's Katy-bar-the-door.

Bush as Dracula in a French Dracula poster:
http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/a/T/bush_dubcula.jpg

Bush in a Rambo poster:
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blbushrambo2.htm

Obama as Dumbo:
http://media.photobucket.com/image/bush%20dumbo/darthdilbert/Blog/obama_dumbo.png (this one should rile the faithful, eh?)

Bush as Custer:
http://www.seedsofdoubt.com/distressedamerican/images/graphics/Custer.jpg (although the copyright has expired, so not a great example)

Making fun of the republican symbol (probably a TM)
http://kisrael.com/m/2009.01.23.dumbo.png

Point is, it's pretty well accepted to used TM'd & copyrighted images to make a political point. Does that make it legal? You'll have to talk to Captain Morgan to find out...

Oh, BTW, the Disney/Mickey ears are copyrighted & trademarked.

My advice is not to try to make them and sell them on the street. I wouldn't even sell pictures of them.

But if you want to put them on a picture of Obama to make a political point, it's Katy-bar-the-door.

Bush as Dracula in a French Dracula poster:
http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/a/T/bush_dubcula.jpg

Bush in a Rambo poster:
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blbushrambo2.htm

Obama as Dumbo:
http://media.photobucket.com/image/bush%20dumbo/darthdilbert/Blog/obama_dumbo.png (this one should rile the faithful, eh?)

Bush as Custer:
http://www.seedsofdoubt.com/distressedamerican/images/graphics/Custer.jpg (although the copyright has expired, so not a great example)

Making fun of the republican symbol (probably a TM)
http://kisrael.com/m/2009.01.23.dumbo.png

Point is, it's pretty well accepted to used TM'd & copyrighted images to make a political point. Does that make it legal? You'll have to talk to Captain Morgan to find out...

Not a lawyer by any means, but I'm more familiar with the UCMJ than I am with civilian law.

http://usmilitary.about.com/od/punitivearticles/a/mcm94.htm

Also found this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition

Laura Berg, a nurse at a United States Department of Veterans Affairs-run hospital in New Mexico was investigated for sedition in September 2005[13] after writing a letter[14][15] to the editor of a local newspaper, accusing several national leaders of criminal negligence. Though their action was later deemed unwarranted by the director of Veteran Affairs, local human resources personnel took it upon themselves to request an FBI investigation. Ms Berg was represented by the ACLU[16]. Charges were dropped in 2006[1].

I did read a page dealing with US Code, and the final entry said something about being repealed, but it wasn't clear if a subsection, or the entire section dealing with sedition had been repealed.

I strongly suspect that it can be rolled out if the government chooses to use it. I also feel that sedition should have been used against US citizens who went to Afghanistan to fight against US forces, rather than creating some damnfool "illegal combatant" laws to cover them.

"I've noticed that my grammar is also affected"
I run a grammar checker too. My grammar has also improved.

The purpose it serves is to express her freedom of speech.

Freedom of Speech in the American context has its roots in the desire for unconstrained political debate.

That is why Norman Rockwell chose the New England town meeting as his example. Freedom of Speech, The Saturday Evening Post, February 20, 1943

The geek needs to remember as well the elemental power of Rockwell's image of the rest, peace and security we all need and hope to find at home and in our family: Freedom from Fear

That too is precious - and it cannot be sustained if those who protect it live in fear themselves.

Something you are forgetting is police officers serve the public and are on public payroll, thus their jobs are public information and so is what they do. You are trying to compare a civil servant to a civilian.

The civil servant is by definition a civilian.

One of the most singular and characteristic features of American democracy is that the military does not have general police powers.

To take an absolutist view of free speech has important and dangerous consequences.

It doesn't end the world of secrets.

It simply drives it deeper underground - where the rules can be enforced outside the law.

The geek doesn't get an "open" police force. What he gets is the night rider. The vigilante. The death squad.

No way would I want to be a roofer; it's damned hard work

Oh Really?

When I asked him once how he got to be an officer so fast he joked (I *hope* he was joking, anyway) that any Marine who could read and write was immediately promoted to officer.

Don't know about during Korea, but these days the Corps has one of the higher testing/education level requirements for enlistment. http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/genjoin/a/asvabminimum.htm

We just like to joke about strong back, weak mind sort of things.

I'd argue that anyone who can afford a $21,000 pickup probably isn't sweating the difference between a $2000 annual fuel bill vs. a $2200 annual fuel bill. I think the phenomenon you describe is probably much more pronounced at the lower income levels. Also, the demand for gasoline didn't exactly plummet when prices doubled last year. Sure, the demand slacked off a little, but at nowhere near the levels that would prevent this program from working.

I did find some data describing the tendency of people to conserve when gas prices go up. Just figured that I'd share, since it shows the degree of elasticity present in the gas market.

Was somewhat drawn in by the "change the world" buzz of Ginger; then it came out and I saw the price and said "WTF? For five grand I can get one of these and have a hell of a lot more fun.