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America used to be a free country and now where are we?

We are still in a position to change things if we want to. The thing about a democracy, you get exactly the government you deserve.

It's no exaggeration to say that all this can be fixed with one vote in Congress. Of course, if that's to happen, intelligent, thoughtful people have to be IN the Congress. For that to happen, we, the People, need to stop electing idiots.

You might argue that the two-party system is too corrupt, that some states or districts are locked-in to one party machine or another, that the game is rigged. You might say that politics is filthy and you don't want to soil your pretty hands. You might say you're scared that who-knows is listening (and recording), better to keep quiet in case the thought-police come after you. You might just give up and disconnect, feel smug and say "I told you so" when things get worse.

Well, if so, you'd be part of the problem. Shit happens because good people get too scared or demoralized to do anything.

There's plenty that can be done. It just involves sticking your neck out some, and spending some of your precious time. But that's how all the good things in the U.S. came around. Gandhi said "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." The deck was stacked pretty high against Dr. King (and he had the FBI wire-tapping him, too), but he saw a white Congress pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

It think we just got lazy, riding comfy on the hard work and sacrifice of the people who came before us. Maybe that's why voter turnout is so abysmal in the U.S., permitting elections to be rigged by big-money. Maybe electronic freedom and privacy is the civil rights struggle of this generation. If that's the case, I'd rather struggle for it in the U.S. than anywhere else on earth, no matter how paranoid the Bourne movies make me feel. The press is still free, election rigging is a crime, and in 2014, all the idiots in the House can be replaced with better people (at least, if they're willing to step up to it).

Or you can disconnect your computer and bitch (anonymously, of course).
Your choice.

Also, which Continuum are you two talking about? This one, or this one?

Also, which Continuum are you two talking about? This one, or this one?

When I was a kid, I saw Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the local drive-in. It had a crappy box you stuck on the window.

The one in Baltimore just installed its digital projector about a month ago. Coincidentally, I saw a (digital) documentary there about the history of drive-ins that claims there's a bit of a resurgence lately. It's called Going Attractions.

Not really, we just want Sunnis fighting Shea. Stalemate is the ideal outcome.

Fighting Shea Stadium, or Shea Whigham?

Made a pretty good movie, too.

Cooty Rats Semen

(If you don't get it, you need to see: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105435/ )

Sherlock Holmes: Bluebell, John! I've got Bluebell, the case of the vanishing glow-in-the-dark rabbit. NATO's in an uproar.

(For the uninformed: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1942613/quotes?ref_=tttrv_sa_3)

We have been able to vaporize a human target from space since 1985.

I'm going for Slashvertisement at this point.

Two Posts about a movie that basically In Time but in space is fishy to me.

I haven't seen this movie at all, But I can all but guarantee that the ending is going to be the Space station crashes onto earth and the rich survivors now have to live their lives just like everyone else.

Since it's coming form the makers of District 9, I'm willing to bet that the ending is a bit more imaginative than that.

Transformers isn't science fiction, its explosion porn.

Elysium may be, at least somewhat.

Moon is the pinnacle of science fiction for the last 20 years.

Science fiction isn't simply a story that takes place in the future or involving technology. It is an exploration of the human condition, societal issues or ethics within an environment plausibly different from our own.

I'm going for Slashvertisement at this point.

Two Posts about a movie that basically In Time but in space is fishy to me.

I haven't seen this movie at all, But I can all but guarantee that the ending is going to be the Space station crashes onto earth and the rich survivors now have to live their lives just like everyone else.

I think he might have meant this source .

Or, maybe not.

Robert Clayton Dean: What the hell is happening?

Brill: I blew up the building.

Robert Clayton Dean: Why?

Brill: Because you made a phone call.

- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120660/

Anyone who wants "raw, uninterrupted, chaotic thrill of anarchy" just needs to observe Wall Street and banks.

Watch Inside Job to get a look at the greedy scum who've infiltrated and taken control of every institution including our governments.

I'm pretty sure the OP was a reference to Johnny Mnemonic and not Go Bots ....

Four star general in the United States Army and head of U.S. National Security Agency discovers after 62 years that there are some humans that can not be trusted. After an intense investigation, it was uncovered that director of the NSA Keith Alexander in fact changed his name from Adam Weber shortly after crawling out of a bomb shelter he was sequestered in to by his father and mother at the tender age of 10. Famous actor Brendan Fraser is well known for portraying Keith Alexander a.k.a. Adam Weber in the lesser known 1999 documentary A Blast from the Past that follows the real life of Keith Alexander, his father, and his mother during their self imposed quarantine and the emergence of Keith Alexander in to a modern and morally questionable society.

Yeah, I saw "Full Metal Jacket," too.

I didn't see the movie. Was it, like, the same as actually being there? Faces of the American Dead in Vietnam: One Week's Toll, June 1969 (Slide 1 of 227)

Yeah, I saw "Full Metal Jacket," too.

This story is only two hour old and has already exploded. Snowden has officially become a martyr. Brazil is sounding less and less like a fictional film and more like a scary prophecy.

Ah, why is this being posted on /. now? They announced on Sunday that the next doctor will be an actor named Peter Capaldi. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0134922/?ref_=sr_1

This is about as stupid as can be. Its as if /. posted a story announcing Obama was elected president for a 2nd term, or that Bin Laden was dead.

Exactly this. I still don't know why they haven't brought her back yet.

Well, for one, they'd have to regenerate her (or something), as Georgia Moffett is more or less out of the acting business now. See http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0595634/bio.

Ever see the David Hasselhoff made-for-TV Nick Fury: Agent of Shield? (unintentionally) Funniest. Movie. Evar.

Seriously, wear Depends if you ever watch it, you're going to need them.

Why would there not be simply some mechanical/electrical switch that triggers the train to slow down automatically approaching sharp corners?

I don't know about Spanish railroads, but the NYC subway system has had what you're talking about for many decades. For a dramatization, watch the original Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (1974). The part where the train is automatically slowed down going around the loop at South Ferry is entirely accurate.

We nearly hanged Nixon (and Ford for pardoning him) for Watergate.

More precisely, the Democrats in Congress nearly impeached and removed Nixon from office with the expectation that this would be followed up by criminal charges. It wasn't going to hang Nixon, but it was going to lock him up for a while. Gerald Ford's pardon was a damn shame, because it cemented the idea in Washington that the president is above the law (no matter what Stephen Seagal does). I'm reasonably certain part of the story was that the Clinton impeachment scared Democrats into making a tacit agreement with Republicans: Don't go after our crimes, we won't go after yours. And because there is no other party with any real power, the result is that both Democratic and Republican presidents can commit crimes with impunity. The intelligence agencies happily collect / create enough dirt on anyone else who might challenge them as well.

It's not about the citizens accepting what's going on. It's about the citizens hating what's going on, but seeing no viable paths to changing it. If you elect new congresscritters or a new president, that will simply change which don is currently in charge. If you protest on the street, your protest will be ignored by the media and you may well get your ass kicked by police. If you petition your government, you will get a form letter in response. If you file a lawsuit, it will be dismissed out of hand because of state secrets privilege. If you try a criminal approach, you'll be shot down by a heavily militarized police force. If you form an organization that starts having any kind of real effects, then you and your group will have assets frozen, and if you're truly effective then you will be the target of a worldwide manhunt regardless of the law or treaties or diplomatic concerns.

Dude, Whoosh! It's a movie reference there, hoss.

(If you don't know who Honey Boo Boo is, count your blessings. I've seen one commercial, and it saddened me that I was an American).

I unsuspectingingly watched the first episode, then the rest of season 1 waiting for the punchline. When I realized there was no punchline, I died a little inside. Realizing that June and Sugar Bear get to vote saddens me. Realizing that they represent a decently sized portion of our population saddens me more. Realizing that they debased themselves and their children for $20K has me curled up in the bathtub, à la "crying game" . WTF happened to Americans? Did we stop adding iodine to salt?

Logic fail.

or to put it another way:

" You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

And it does.

A movie worth seeing: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

That's about the first thing the locked-in patient Jean-Dominique Bauby, who wrote a book by blinking his eyes, said. The book is an amazing read, breathtakingly beautiful and intelligent. Bauby died a bit after the book was released..

For those following this thread and really hoping someone will say it, the show is Better Off Ted .

The episode from this quote is from Season 1 Episode 2. All around great show. Both seasons are on Netflix and Amazon prime instant streaming. If the first couple of episodes don't convince you, jump to season 1 episode 12 "Jabberwocky".

It's just a parameter called ref_ - it's exactly the same URL I get if I go to IMDB and search for Peter Capaldi. The parameter appears to simply enumerates the search results - the next search result's URL is http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1393341/?ref_=fn_al_nm_2, and the next is ...?ref_=fn_al_nm_3. Title matches end with ..._tt_[x].

Amazon owns IMDB, but it could as easily be a coincidence as a sharing of underlying code.

Sometimes it's almost the same character with the same makeup and a different name. Armin Shimerman played two other Ferengi before he took the role of Quark in DS9. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001734/

It's an interesting thing. When Coretta Scott King passed away recently they had a memorial where they refreshed people's minds about Martin Luther King, and the idea of non-violence. And now in America you're suddenly seeing war movies again on TV - they never showed war movies until recently - and how great it is to be patriotic. It's wrong. The day and age we live in now, it's all full of fear and frightening feelings. It's the opposite of Roosevelt saying, 'The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.' Now we're saying, 'Look out, this is going to happen.' We're being told: get frightened. This business of machoism is ridiculous. I'm not interested in that. search for truth and beauty in what I do.

Tony Bennet

I can't believe nobody mentioned the other excellent movie about killer orcas: rust and bones. OK, the orca is only the start of the story, but it's really good.

Nope, they started while Carter was in office... More proof he was the worst president ever :-/

Let the Bitching.......

commence!

I was hoping for a woman Dr. (Yes, "Dr." Yes, I'm abbreviating it! So there!) along the lines of Dr. Donna - maybe even have Catherine Tate some how turn into the Dr. (:-P).

Or This guy - Yeah, the Operative from Serenity.

I was watching a Werner Herzog documentary about trappers in the Siberian taiga and, long story short, one trapper was complaining about trappers who will trap before some kind of critter's coat was really ready, on the basis that a few coins in his pocket now is better than someone else getting full price for the pelt later if they trap it instead of him.

Indeed, tragedy of the meta-trap.

It's universal, and it's the reason why I'm a liberal and not an anarchist; without adequate restrictions on commerce it rapidly becomes first and foremost an instrument of tyranny.

I'm with you.

Conceivably, a local game warden could enable the community to maximize their overall pelt yield — though, in this particular environment, I imagine that the pervasive threat of regulatory capture could make the position cost-prohibitive to fill.

My vote on http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0289114/?ref_=tt_cl_t7 Laurence Fox. Married to a companion.

It'll be handy for communicating with those Nazis in their moon base.

I have not seen it myself, but I hear the Nazis do have a moon base... Iron Sky.

What, does no one else remember Boogie Nights? I can't be that old.

It's like the Seven Minute Abs scene in There's Something About Mary (transcript).

These are all humorous examples of violating the Zero-One-Infinity rule.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0587950/?ref_=tt_cl_t1

I don't think The Fighter and The Departed as generic action films but we all have different tastes.

I don't think The Fighter and The Departed as generic action films but we all have different tastes.

Direct link to quote

You've been watching too many Bourne movies.

Why shouldn't I work for the NSA? That's a tough one. But I'll take a shot. Say I'm working at the NSA, and somebody puts a code on my desk, somethin' no one else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, cus' I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East and once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels are hiding... Fifteen hundred people that I never met, never had no problem with get killed. Now the politicians are sayin', "Oh, Send in the marines to secure the area" cus' they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot.

Just like it wasn't them when their number got called, cus' they were off pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southie over there takin' shrapnel in the ass. He comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, cus' he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so that we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And of course the oil companies used the little skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices.

A cute little ancillary benefit for them but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. They're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, of course, maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin' play slalom with the icebergs, it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy's out of work. He can't afford to drive, so he's walking to the fuckin' job interviews, which sucks because the shrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he's starvin' cus' every time he tries to get a bite to eat the only blue plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. I figure fuck it, while I'm at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected President. Good Will Hunting (1997)

You didn't see Rio, then, did you?