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I get the homeless are unlikely to get a letter addressed to a homeless shelter, but I didn't know that the post office would return letters to a voter if it turned out they were black, hispanic, or Native Americans... Do they have some kind of stamp they use that says something like "Return to sender: addressee is black" ??

...we'd hear many more stories on the nightly news about old women teaching their parakeets to crochet.

Yes, it can be a scarlet AOL logo instead.

Actually in retrospect I think termination/resignation is too harsh. People who use AOL do so at their own peril. This has never changed. The AOL search data is important in that it shows us all just what sort of people average Americans are. Lest we believe in some hope that the average American is fundamentally bright and well-adjusted, we can always read the searchbox insights of the lives of such people as #711391 and #6396631.

What happens when one of those weirdo ladies "accidentally falls asleep" on her couch and wakes up to her [infected] dog licking her? Is it contained to dogs, or do we have the next human version of cancer on our hands?

How does any of that change the ideological basis for most of today's current terrorism? IE, Islam, literally, submission.

Such twisted bullshit. The majority of muslims live in states that suffer either directly or indirectly from oppresive policies of the west. They happen to be muslim because in large part western oil addiction funds the evangelical equivalent of muslim missionaries.

The guy who just went on a shooting spree in a Jewish community center was apparently very well employed, and what came of it? Murder.

Holy shit, you only see what you want to see don't you?

The guy was constantly between jobs, had an engineering degree and had trouble keeping even unskilled jobs like retail clerk at home depot. That's not even close to "very well employed."

The guy was also baptized about a year ago. So much for your islam is a terrorist religion bullshit.

He was due to stand trial on charges of lewd conduct the thursday following the shooting. Considering how strict his family was, and his history of mental illness for which he had been prescribed lithium it is a lot more reasonable to conclude that he felt overwhelmed by life and decided to do something crazy instead.

Moreover, many US Muslims, despite having everything you wish to give terrorists, sympathize with or outright finance terrorists.

Convenient conjoing of two very disparate claims "sympathize" and "finance" -- most critical thinkers, muslim or not, "sympathize" because they understand what leads people to make desperate acts. But that's a far cry from finance and your blending of two is just an obvious display of bias.

We are fighting people who think it is the will of Allah to convert you to Islam, make you submit as a Dhimmi, or kill you.

The extremist salafists who believe that (the Qutbi) are a tiny minoritiy of muslims, they are even a minority of salafists. Your attempt to ascribe the motives of less than 0.1% of all muslims world-wide to the majority of muslims is disingenious at best. It's like pointing to the KKK and saying they represent the majority of christains.

Go crawl back in your hole you troll.

You are correct that they are adults (legally able to sign a contract). They are also teenagers.

I don't know if the OP meant it this way, but I took it as a comment on how US society (or at least the media) tries to excuse behavior. Legally, at 18 you're an adult. The term "teen", while technically referring to someone between the ages of 13 and 19, tends to imply "child". So, are you still a child at age 18? What about at age 25? As an example, the local news continually referred to both the shooter and victims of the recent rave killing here in Seattle as "kids". The shooter was 28. Some of his victims were 21, 22, 26, and 32. Are those "kids"?

Maybe it's a sign of our aging baby boomer population, who see anybody younger than them as kids. Maybe it's because of our economic climate that keeps "kids" in university until 25 or 26 (and then only graduating with a Bachelor's degree, not even a Master's or better). Maybe it's our "take no responsibility" society that wants to blame anything but the person (thus the person is a "kid" who didn't know any better, rather than an adult). Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it.

Hahah. There was a flip over this kind of thing in Seattle a few years back. Apparently, one of the downtown McDonald's stores had realized that they could repel unwanted blacks from the storefront by playing country music at a moderate level. It was still going on when I left - here is the article: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=431 6/.

Does anyone know if they are still doing this? It is rather eerily amusing, and I can sympathize with both sides, although I do of course find the foodchain's aims less noble.

Readers should check out Christopher Hitchens, that old Trotskyist, who is another great writer that isn't a "Useful Idiot", and calls it like it is.

Absolutely! Here's a good starting point.

The original creators/writers of the Onion sold it off a long time ago. The guy who started it all is now the publisher of The Stranger ( http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Home/ ), a highly regarded, alternative newspaper for the Seattle area. (He's the brother of a very good friend of mine)

Why is the rest of Washington being forced to pay for Seattle area projects?

The statistics don't lie. Projections for federal and state transportation funding between 2004 and 2013 show that King County will get back 84 cents on every dollar it provides for transportation funding, Pierce County will get only 80 cents, Snohomish County 88 cents, and Thurston County a mere 59 cents on the dollar. Meanwhile, large rural Eastern counties will get significantly more than they pay in: Stevens County will get $1.56 for every dollar they provide, Pend Oreille County, on the northern Idaho border, will get $2.60, and Ferry County will get a whopping $3.52. A 2001 report for the Senate Judiciary Committee showed that overall, Western Washington provided 82 percent of the state's transportation revenues but received only 78 percent of transportation expenditures; Eastern Washington, providing 18 percent of revenues, received 22 percent of expenditures. Eastern Washington also received more than its share of state K-12 education funding: 12 of the 13 counties that received the least state revenue per student were in the West (the exception was Spokane County).

THE TWO-STATE SOLUTION by Sandeep Kaushik

Businesses should never get into these kinds of arguments. I would not want to be the Microsoft Rep responsible for selling into Utah or Idaho tomorrow. (huge generalization, I know)

As Sandeep Kaushik reported in the April 21st iss of The Stranger
The list of high-profile companies that endorsed the bill this year reads like a who's who of the Pacific Northwest corporate world. It includes the Boeing Company, Nike, Coors Brewing, Qwest Communications, Washington Mutual, Hewlett-Packard, Corbis, Battelle Memorial Institute, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen's Vulcan Inc., and others. And as late as February 1, Microsoft, which issued a letter in support of the bill last year, appeared poised to do so again.

Notice that there's been nary a peep about any of these other comapanies. Perhaps it's the waffling and ham-handed handling of the issue that is Microsoft's real problem.

One of the biggest problems we've created for ourselves is making companies simply about making money. I think Chuck Palahniuk's Tyler Durden best expressed the inhuman calculations that leads to. Sure, investors deserve to know that the financial instrument they're investing in is out to make money, but if Google hasn't been delisted for it's preface to the company's S1 document perhaps other comapnies can profess something beyond "doing the right thing" only in the narrowest of definitions for its shareholders.

Further, it is in Microsoft's best interest, talent pool-wise, to make sure that Washington State is and remains attractive to gays, bohemians, and ethnic minorities because they are also the places where creative workers - the kind who start and staff innovative, fast-growing companies - want to live.

The Stranger reports that a prominent gay employee has quit in the midst of all this. Weeks ago, they wrote that Microsoft was going to support the Washington legislation until a local minister, Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, threatened he would organize a nation wide boycott They also followed up with a story about the two parties later providing widely different versions of their meeting.

The Stranger reports that a prominent gay employee has quit in the midst of all this. Weeks ago, they wrote that Microsoft was going to support the Washington legislation until a local minister, Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, threatened he would organize a nation wide boycott They also followed up with a story about the two parties later providing widely different versions of their meeting.

The Stranger reports that a prominent gay employee has quit in the midst of all this. Weeks ago, they wrote that Microsoft was going to support the Washington legislation until a local minister, Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, threatened he would organize a nation wide boycott They also followed up with a story about the two parties later providing widely different versions of their meeting.

The invoices paid by MS to Ralph Reed's political consulting company are linked to that page.

Any connection between Ralph Reed's lobbying for MS back in 2000 on DOJ v Microsoft, the Bush DOJ suddenly deciding not to enforce it's victory in court, his work for MS now, and Microsoft's sudden turnaround on gay rights are, of course, coincidences.

Time to encourage all your Windows-using friends to download Firefox, too. Better security, and a chance to stick it to Microsoft. Why wait around to get 0wn3d?

Microsoft collapsing like a house of cards when some halfwit cult leader threatened them with a "boycott".

Great article in the Stranger about Microsoft caving in.

I saw him talk recently at my university. The talk was part of a business seminar designed for local rich and powerful people, but it was open to students, just not heavily advertised. I brought my PowerBook to take notes.

The talk was about 'delivering experiences'. As much as I'm sure he hated it, he did use the iPod as an example of an experience (including the whole vertical market with iTunes and iTMS). On one slide of the presentation, he had a bunch of 'experiences' listed around the screen in sort of a circle, with a bunch of little thumbnails next to them. The thumbnails were sort of a representation of that experience. One of the experiences was operations (server side stuff). One of the pictures next to that was a small thumbnail of Apple's Xserve. I couldn't believe it! I pulled up Apple's website and showed my friend right then and there how they had Apple's pictures in their slideshow. Microsoft can't even use pictures of their own products, sheesh.

And now that they changed their stance on the bill against gay discrimination, I've lost all respect for them. Microsoft is a has been.

Andrew

Why am I surprised by how comforting they're not? As if I needed MORE incentive to move away from Microsoft. They're just so..... 20th Century. To heck with them and the proprietary horse they rode in on. I've already moved my office to Linux machines.

Not that I had an REAL expectations that they'd act honorably when the chips were down or anything, but still. D I mean, did you think this would go over real well in Seattle where not long ago a gay man was brutally attacked by three Evangelicals who sliced up his BACK (ever-so-courageous and "manly") with broken bottles so badly, that the officer who found him said his back looked "like a piece of sliced flank steak" and so deeply that doctors said his ribcage was exposed by the gouges? [ http://thestranger.com/2005-03-31/feature.html ]

That is the kind of thing this preacher's hate-mongering leads to.

And someone needs to tell that idiot VP Smith that gays actually know how to USE computers, whereas these religious wingnuts can't even pronounce the word properly.

The fact that a company that literally relies on science and materialism to even exist, would bow to people still trying to keep the world flat and manageable just makes the mind wobble. And somebody needs to tell the "good" Reverend it is no more holy to preach hate from the Christian pulpit, than the mullahs have to spew it from a minarette in Saudi Arabia. I've come to the inevitable conclusion that the injury which ended Rev. Hutcherson's football career was one to the HEAD, not the knee.

I read things like this or blithering from the "intelligent design" movement trying to banish science from the science classroom, and I am truly struck by how fragile and vulnerable an entire age is to attack -- the Age of Enlightenment.

I think the best way to approach this issue is to use the church's contacts page [ http://www.abchurch.org/contact/ ] to make a "prayer request" that "Rev. Hutcherson's heart is opened by the loving spirit of Christ, that he will be encouraged by the Lord to be less of a narrowminded, fearful, judgmental prick, and that he leads his flock to more tolerant pastures." Where did all the Big "C" Christians go? Sad that some of our churches are being led astray from Christ's grace and mercy like this.

As for Microsoft, thanks for the stock split guys. I will now be splitting myself. Not only will I no longer be buying your crap product with its security nightmares, I'll also be selling my stock. Last straw. Corbis on the other hand, will be serving all of my business' stock photography needs. Their CEO is apparently in possession of a SPINE.

Nobody had to call for my boycott. You earned it all on your own, by dimwitted moves like this one.

The full article can be found here:
http://www.thestranger.com/2005-04-21/feature.html

What makes you so sure this would take us closer to the end? Why won't this just further solidify the existing power structure?

Maybe there's a way out.

Sheesh, these freaks are all a bunch of red, gun-toting, pro-life, Iraq bombing zealots. I suggest this reading from The Stranger It sums up what we should do with these folks pretty well.

Sheesh, these freaks are all a bunch of red, gun-toting, pro-life, Iraq bombing zealots. I suggest this reading from The Stranger It sums up what we should do with these folks pretty well.

"Paul Allen will split the $10 million prize with inventor Burt Rutan, with Rutan making payments to each of his employees who helped design, build, test, and fly SpaceShipOne.
thestranger.com

"Give Democrats in your neighborhood the chills with this adorable re-creation of a computerized, touch-screen voting machine!"

you're nader costume can be found HERE

enjoi :)

From The Stranger

I think there's one of Nader here.

There's also a few others that are quite scary!

not nrrdy, but funny as hell....

http://www.thestranger.com/current/special.html

Check em out 2004's Scariest Halloween Costumes

Maybe it's not the first trojan targeted at Linux users, but together with the official sounding domain, it could trick some users into downloading and running the binary.

This is an unfortunate reality today. Back in my day, the only way to be a real Linux guru was to compile and build your system from scratch using a dev box.

Nowadays, any average person can easily install Linux and instantly become "31337". Today's typical Linux user has no idea what half the files on his system do, or where they came from. Unforunately, the majority of you with moderator points fall into this category so my post is doomed!

I would advise those who are new to Linux to visit the Linux From Scratch website and set aside a weekend of learning. There is no better method for gaining useful knowledge regarding the reduction of hard drive clutter and increasiong optimization, and security.

Ever read "Savage Love"? Its syndicated in the Chicago Reader and a few other places. Basically a VERY funny, sometimes disturbing, VERY fringe sexual advice column. After one of Santorum's particularly theocratic and bigoted suggestions (which one? I don't remember, he's made so many) the writer -Dan Savage- coined a new noun.
Savage Love - 05/29/03 and http://www.thestranger.com/2003-06-12/savage.html
santorum: (san-TOR-um) n.
1. The frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex

Apparently the term has caught on and is in limited common usage.
www.spreadingsantorum.com/

Ever read "Savage Love"? Its syndicated in the Chicago Reader and a few other places. Basically a VERY funny, sometimes disturbing, VERY fringe sexual advice column. After one of Santorum's particularly theocratic and bigoted suggestions (which one? I don't remember, he's made so many) the writer -Dan Savage- coined a new noun.
Savage Love - 05/29/03 and http://www.thestranger.com/2003-06-12/savage.html
santorum: (san-TOR-um) n.
1. The frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex

Apparently the term has caught on and is in limited common usage.
www.spreadingsantorum.com/

Computer Graphics World
Advanced Imaging
National Geographic
The Stranger
Flagpole

Dan Savage shared someone else's experince with doing this sort of thing...

Pigeons perform much better if you give them proper attention.

Anonymous ... hmmm ... has a huge database ... and apparently contracted its operations with Microsoft ... hmmm ... Who could that be?

Once the battery goes dead on one it becomes trash because your unable to change the battery once it looses it ability to recharge.

First, this is simply not true. Apple will replace the battery for $99 or you can buy a $49 battery from third party battery resellers like ipodbattery.com and replace it yourself.

Second, your use of the word loose in that sentence is incorrect. The correct spelling of the word is lose, as in, Don't lose your keys." Replace the b in booze with the letter L and you have the correct pronunciation. The word you used was loose, as in, "This knot in my noose is loose."

For more helpful grammar tips, please see this article from The Stranger

This message brought to you by a friendly member of Grammar Nazi Local #254.

That's a good question. I think the answer is that gay men are highly promiscuous and frequently have bloody assholes when done fucking -- a vector for transmission that even promiscuous straights are not likely to have. (Insert tangent about low rate of lesbian AIDS here) Bug Chasers and Gift Givers aren't doing any favors for the gay community either.

As for drug users, by the time you're putting needles in your arm on a regular basis, your outlook on life has ... changed. "Education" doesn't really take. That's the theory at least behind a program in Vancouver where junkies come to shoot up at state run health facilities, with a nurse watching over and even helping if needed. So they're guaranteed to get clean needles, to thwart that transmission vector. Canada has public health, which is getting sticker shock from the projected costs to care for a never-ending populous of heroin addicts with AIDS.

I just realized how easy it would be to turn that state-run clean house for shooting up into a state-run program to give all the junkies hotshots one day. Hmmm that sounds like a cool story. Just to be careful: I have a copyright on the movie rights to this post.

We'll just call it Santorumware.

ANd then leave some Santorum behind?

They just sell the same crap you get at Target. Real specialty music stores are doing quite well, at least from what I know from articles like this. When you sell the same crap as everyone else, the only ways you win are through convenience (e.g., location) or price. When you sell good music - a rarity through the Big 5 - that people want, they'll come back to you both because you offer a unique product and because, at least in some cases, they'll want to hear some of your suggestions. A rapport develops that no crappy chain can emulate or replace.

details here. fucking creepy.

Try google.com someday. But here's a story on C-Net. Notice that the central contractor for this project is Ross Perot's company. (Here's another article which mentions different defense contractors doing the work, plus other big IT jobs)

Here's a recent article about a 1995 shooting at Garfield High in Seattle. The author actually tracks down the shooter (now out of jail) and interviews him on the phone. Here's a snippet that summarizes why this incident is forgotten when other school shootings are talked about in the media:

...the Secret Service, like most of the rest of the country, saw the shooting at Garfield as being primarily about drugs and gangs and random black-on-black crime, and therefore not worth including in a study aimed at keeping America's schools (read: suburban America's schools) safe. Interestingly, the study found that while there was no single profile that fit all school shooters, two common threads among all shooters were that they felt "bullied, persecuted or injured by others prior to the attack" and had access to weapons--both qualities that describe the Garfield shooter.

I live in Seattle and this town is probably one of the worst towns in the US (Next to Silicon Valley) to be a single guy in.

Bars are never an option due to the fact that the majority of women are literally afraid of being 'hit on' or some other personality issue (usually because they didn't get that pony from daddy on their 16th birthday or someting like that).

I've also found (IMO) that attitudes on Dating/picking up women vary from City to City.

In Vancouver B.C., people love to go out and have fun. This is a great place to go meet down to earth women.

In San Fanciscisco, women are approachable but they like to get to know you for a bit and then go from there.

London is like Vancouver but magnified by 10 when it comes to living life and having fun.

I explored many options and have found some things that work:

1)Take Group Dance lessons. Salsa, Swing, whatever. In most dance studios you have to switch partners throughout the class and you can talk/flirt during the lessons.

2)Go to public bars or places that offer formal dancing (salsa and swing especially). Women who go to most of these places in Seattle are going to dance or have fun. These places are great if you want to get to know someone without the bar 'stigma' of one night stands or geting shot down in flames. Also, a great icebreaker, while dancing, is telling them that you're learning how to dance. Women will eat that up.

Take classes in non-technical topics you want to learn about. This is a great way, in the very least, to meet people who share the same interest as you

(side note the 'gold digger' types of women don't tend to frequent these places)

I've never tried a dating service or enlisted 'professional' services. However, I've seen friends who have used dating services and the toughest part of Dating services is writing your 'about me' section and what picture you use. (Make the picture a good one. Even if you have to use Photoshop/The Gimp..just kidding).

The main problem with witing your bio are the differences in writing and creativity of men Vs. women. In the Seattle area publicaion, the Stranger, check out the differnce in writing styles of the 'Men Seeking Women' and 'Women seeking Men' sections. (side note: This link may be busy or down today due to the Stranger's publicaion of free valentines ads/love notes on a different part of this site)

See how the 'Men seeking ads are so bland and the 'Women seeking are much more creative? You gotta put some serious work in the bio to get noticed. You gotta find a way to show how you stick out amongst all the other candidates.

Keep in mind, just because you may get shot down, it's not your fault. It's something with them. Also, just because you may not have a connection with a woman you meet, don't burn bridges. She may very well have a single friend(s) for you to meet. I've definitely hooked up in this manner before

Finally, (and this is the most important one) don't, under any circumstances, regress into techno-babble mode for the non-technical type women. Just say you play with computers all day and leave it at that. Once you're seriously dating, then resume the techno-babbble.

Dolemite

The Stranger, a local weekly, has some great coverage of the monorail issue.

That is, if you were pro-monorail. Lots of dish on the anti-monorail campaigners, too.

Yeah, it doesn't serve the suburbs or the airport, but it's designed to ease congestion in-city. Even light rail won't get to SeaTac.

The Stranger (Seattle's alternative weekly) has had great (albeit slightly manic) monorail coverage.

This is the third time we have had to put this thing on the ballot so the "leaders" on the city councel would let us build it. This vote will bypass the city councel. One of the best slogans from the last vote was "Re-elect the Monorail!"

The Stranger (pdf file) has a very good editorial on why you should vote yes.

...with it's Nazi-esque SysV init scripts...

It's vs. Its: This one is simple, even though it represents an exception to the rules of possessive apostrophe (see next tip)."It's" means "it is" (as in, "It is cold," "It is time to clean the bong," or "It is not that I don't like you, I'm just not attracted to you"), and sometimes "it has" (as in, "It has come to this," or "It has been a long time since I read an article by such a snob"). Meanwhile, "its" means "belonging to it"--as in, "The bear wiped its ass on the rabbit," or "This post is certainly taking its time to come to the point."

(Paraphrased from The Stranger.)

Funny you should mention ants.
There's an old film(1973) called phase IV that's exactly what your going on about!!