this video clearly shows the whole incident, from beginning to end. The guy was getting out of control and wouldn't relinquish control of the microphone (plus, his questions were a little loopy). From the video, it's pretty obvious the police were going to escort him out (the first cop just places her hand on his back and tries to show him the door), but he resisted. After another 30 seconds or so of waiting on this guy the cop decides it's time to be a little more direct, and she starts to move him out.
More importantly, once they wrestle this guy to the ground (after about a minute of his resisting arrest) they tell him numerous times that if he doesn't place his hands behind his back and comply with the officers' requests that he's going to be tased. So only after the guy refuses to leave the microphone, after he resists arrest, and after he refuses to comply with directives given to him while he's on the ground do the officers taser him. From the officers' standpoint it very much looks like, absent tasing, this guy just isn't going to comply at all - even in handcuffs. I'm sorry, but what's the story here?
As a side note, it's pretty clear this guy was not in full posession of his faculties. At the end of the video, he starts ranting about how the other students need to be sure to "ask about the guy who was arrested at the Kerry rally" because he fears that he's going to be killed. He also refuses to give his name to the police (and as we all learned in Hibel v. Nevada, you may not have to show ID, but you do have to identify yourself to police officers).
Anyway, this is a non-story. Watch the video. Crazy guy resists arrest; Crazy guy gets tased.
Washington, I'll grant you. He was (ahem) a simple man who only accepted the job because it needed to be filled by someone people could stand behind nearly unanimously. He was a true Cincinnatus of his day. He was definitely not much of a politician.
I strongly recommend you read His Excellency to get a more in-depth view of Washington. He was an extremely political figure who played the role of the "reluctant leader" to perfection. That he is remembered today as such a quiet and unassuming man is definitely a testament to his acting skills.
Sounds like someone should take another high school civics class. Please pay special attention when they get into the "nation of laws" parts. Hint: it's more than just a catch phrase to get you to follow the rules. You might also try reading things by guys like Locke, Hume, and many of the founding fathers, but I should warn you - you may have to pirate that stuff 'cause you can't find it on iTunes;-)
By definition, there can't be any scientific test for God, because as I said before God is supernatural and thus unobservable.
The second part does not follow from the first. God can be both supernatural and observable - two distinct features within the confines of the same entity. Rephrased - first, assuming we're talking about the same idea of God (omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient) then there's nothing that God can't do - that includes being both supernatural and observable. But more fundamentally, if a god created the universe then s/he has already had a supernatural effect on the natural world. That would mean that at some point, fundamental laws of science will break down and we'll be more readily able to place pro babilities the question of how the universe was created, be that supernaturally or otherwise (I'm thinking here of Hawking's notes about creation in A Brief History of Time, and Dawkins' notions of probability on the existence of God).
However, the answer--at least to me--would still be irrelevant, because I really don't care one way or the other. Not as long as I continue to have free will.
Your answer here, I think, is a bit disingenuous. If you were to find out that there were a God tomorrow, I think you would be at least mildly interested in why that God created you/us/the universe in the first place. No?
People sometimes ask me if I believe in God. I always reply that the question is meaningless to me, because God's existence or nonexistence cannot be proven, and it has no bearing on my life. That is, I would behave exactly the way I do whether or not God were proven to exist or not, or even if I chose to believe he did or did not exist. You might as well ask me if I believe in life beyond the reaches of the galaxy. Perhaps it exists, perhaps not, but either way it doesn't matter. And any position you might offer on the topic is nothing but speculation.
This is very interesting to me. Because if I found out tomorrow - by, say, an act of God - that God existed, then I would certainly begin to behave very differently. For one, I wouldn't answer the question "No" when asked if I believed in God. If, for example, he came down and told me everything in the Bible was correct, including all the assorted minutiae, then I would quickly become a Christian.
What interests me is why your concept of meaninglessness has anything to do with whether or not you will answer the question. Lots of things are meaningless to me - how, exactly, fish hatcheries operate, or how plutonium reacts in a nuclear weapon (as opposed to uranium). Yet if you asked me my opinion on the matter, my response would be "I don't know" - not that the question is meaningless to me. Recall, the question has nothing to do with whether or not you care, but what your position is on the matter.
But it's the second part of your response that gets me: Agnostics claim that the existence of God cannot be proved or disproved. Now we all know the second part is true. You cannot prove a negative. But the first part is incorrect. The existence of God can easily be proved - by God.
The response I see most often to that remark is simply that humans can't prove the existence of God, which is of course correct - but that's not the question. The agnostic argument isn't that humans can't prove the existence of God, it's that humans can't know whether there is a God. And that is patently false - God can come down and bonk us all on the heads any time he damn well pleases.
To wit:
Science simply isn't equipped to answer questions about the supernatural, nor should it be.
If there is a God, then he and all his works are, by definition, natural. We must simply redefine what natural is. And why, for example, would it be impossible (or even improbable) for God to have added a code to some natural phenomena that, when eventually decoded by humans will spell out in bright neon lettering, "HERE I AM! I CREATED YOU! AND YOU HAVE FOUND ME!"
Now I will, of course, grant you that there's a possibility that God is the deistic watch maker so often talked about in Jeffersonian times - and in that case, there's certainly a possibility that he/it/whoever can never be known. But I'm speaking more generally about the God that some 90% of the world believes in - an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being (or beings) who has played an active role in human development over the course of world history.
Of course, there's always more to talk about - and we can go really deep into this, but it's nothing that Dawkins hasn't already talked about in The God Delusion, or what might be found in Sam Harris' End of Faith. I do highly suggest you pick them up if you haven't already.
What if there are no good candidates? If 99% are scum, what does the 1% matter?
First, I highly doubt 80% of people can even name their state representative, much less who they ran against in the last election. The same goes for most elected representatives - even on the federal level. The argument that the choices are crap is a cop-out. I've almost always been able to find a palatable candidate for any office. On the few occasions I couldn't, I simply voted for the guy I hated the least.
That's the second part. If you can't find someone you like, then you vote for your least bad option. But as the saying goes, decisions are made by those who show up. If everyone votes, every vote counts. Lather, rinse, repeat and maybe you'll get to a set of palatable candidates.
Case in point: right now, every candidate panders to individual constituencies (the AARP and the NRA, for example) because those are the people who will kick Joe Congressman's ass out of office if he doesn't play ball. Those organizations have members who are politically active.
I hear bitching and moaning all the time about how 18-to-30 year olds aren't being adequately represented on Capitol Hill, about how the geeks are having a tough time getting their issues dealt with (i.e. Net Neutrality). Well the fact of the matter is, if 18 to 30 year olds and geeks don't even vote on election day, if they don't write letters supporting or opposing certain bills up for a vote, then why should Joe Congressman give a crap what they think about him.
This is why I found it so hilarious that people thought the youth vote was going to win the election for Kerry. Sorry, but teens and twenty-somethings don't vote. It's no wonder they feel disassociated from the political process - they're disassociating themselves from it!!!
Again, it's worth repeating: Decisions are made by those who show up. Sorry if this comes across as rude or confrontational, it's not directed at you. This is an issue that's dear to my heart. I love debating political ideologies with people. Most of my friends are of a different political bent than I am, some extremely so. I love that about them, because they keep me intellectually honest. But I have zero tolerance for people who don't vote.
This statement is true, if all you've studied is the history of the U.S. for the past 30 years.
Political theater is as old as time and it's not worse now than at any time in the past. You'd do well to take a look at some of the political "cartoons" from elections around the beginning of the 19th century. Also take a look at some of the political deals that were being done.
With each new generation (in this case the post-gen-X crowd), people hit their late twenties (for some it's later) and become alarmed at what they see going on in capital hill. Why? Because they finally own houses, pay more taxes, have kids to worry about, etc. etc. They think their congress is the worst its ever been and SOMETHING MUST BE DONE! It was the same in the late 60's when the draft was on (as they say, all politics is local).
A cliffs notes version of the political history of the U.S. won't show you that it's always been the same - but a thorough study of the stuff will. Personally, the only productive consequence of this new-found political outrage I see from folks is that maybe, and I mean maybe, they'll haul their asses off to the ballot box next election rather than talking about how bad things are inside the beltway, and then changing the channel to whatever staged "reality show" they're following for the time being.
'Our law enforcement resources are seriously misaligned,' Cotton said. 'If you add up all the various kinds of property crimes in this country, everything from theft, to fraud, to burglary, bank-robbing, all of it, it costs the country $16 billion a year. But intellectual property crime runs to hundreds of billions [of dollars] a year.'"
99% of copyright infringement isn't a crime, it's a tort. There's a difference. If I were NBC/Universal, I would probably start looking for new general counsel - preferably one who didn't sleep through three years of law school.
Why don't we simply ban running into things while driving. Hmm...we should probably also ban reckless driving while we're at it.
The thing is, we've already done both. Laws like this and others meant to keep drivers distraction free are simply redundant and punish drivers by bringing everyone down to the standards of the least common denominator. What I find more appalling than this law, however, are the responses in support of it. I'm certain two threads from now, some of the same people will be bitching about some law or another that's turning the U.S. into a nanny state (w/rt technology, I'm sure) - all without any sense of irony.
By the by (since I'm sure someone will bring this up) is that driving while drunk means you are mentally impaired and cannot change that fact while you are on the road. It's the same reason you can't drive if you're mentally retarded. Trying to ban texting means you're simply trying to ban distraction. That's moronic since drivers will always seek out distraction on the roads. In that case, poor driving is already covered under anti-collision laws, dwai laws, and reckless driving statutes. There's no need to keep banning crap like texting while driving, listening to the radio, or (gasp!) talking to your buddy in the passenger seat.
I wouldn't call Ze an average joe. It's pretty clear from his site that he'd been doing the "Ze Frank" thing for years, if I can be as obscure as possible about naming what it is he does for a living. Better yet, you'll notice that in one of the last episodes of his show he's got Johnathan Coulton playing 10 minutes of guitar. In another episode, they have a cameo by Jack Black. Methinks Ze is one of those individuals that's simply too cool to ever be an average joe.
That's exactly what I thought when I read that. More importantly, it leads to some interesting speculation. For example, assuming the father is anywhere near the age of the stepmother, that means the parents had this kid at a very young age, probably 17 or 18. If that's the case, then this kid was practically doomed from the start. There were a couple more things I read in the article that seemed "off" - like the language of the letter - but that was the most glaring bit.
That's the silliest thing I've read in a long time.
I subscribe to a number of mailing lists to find out when sales at companies I like are going on. I get mail from REI, Campmor, Frontier, Newegg, and a few others. I save money this way. I like money. When I want to unsubscribe from these emails, I click on the link - I don't report mail as spam unless it's actually spam. All of those newsletters I just talked about are commercial email.
Do you consider catalogs you subscribe to junkmail?
Do you consider coupons you get from companies you've asked to receive coupons from junkmail?
Unfortunately - it's viewpoints like that of the parent that are contributing to the spam blocking problem, creating a huge gray area of marketers who get caught in all kinds of filters because users are "complaining" about email they once opted in to, but are now too lazy to click the "unsubscribe" link.
Trolls aren't what they used to be. But then again, I guess being made into a twisted parody of nature enslaved to Morgoth by a second rate hobbyist fantasy author and be forced to remember your time as a relatively benign mythological being from Scandinavian folklore all your miserable existence would do that to you, I guess. And the movie trilogy, which makes mockery of both your original and Tolkien-corrupted nature, would certainly not help.
You do realize the origin of "trolling" stems from the fishing term, right? You're right, though. The term definitely ain't what it used to be.
It's been used so much it's almost cliche, but I very much like to respond with this quote whenever I am asked the rather idiotic question "have you been arrested yet?":
First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.
Pastor Martin Niemöller I think the point is that you don't have to know someone who's been disappeared by the government. You don't have to know someone who's had their rights trampled by one of the innumerable "well intentioned" acts passed by a puppet congress to know that what's going on around us is simply wrong.
FYI - You didn't get picked on because you were "different." You got picked on because you didn't stand up for yourself. How do I know? I was that kid too. At least to some extent. I was fat, nonathletic, and a chronic smart ass. I got my ass beat thoughout high school 'cause the other kids knew I'd take it. I guess the rule here is that in high school you're almost guaranteed to catch a shit if you're at all "different", what counts is how you react to it.
Watch Cool Hand Luke sometime. Pay close attention to the boxing scene between Lou Antonio and Paul Newman.
I've used AIM and IRC excessively in the past few years....Some people may actually improve based on the widespread use of IMs
And some people may actually confuse excessively and extensively.
Now that I've completed the obligatory nit, I should say that the problem with IM-speak doesn't really pertain to grammar as much as it pertains to the general ability to get one's point across. I've traded posts with all too many "kids" that get frustrated and angry when the 99.9% of the people on ther Internet that aren't their friends don't understand what they're saying.
When I'm conversing with someone on-line, I expect them to construct prose in a manner that they would consider the most comprehensible to the greatest number of people. And remember kids: practice makes perfect.
The case had been argued before the court in October, when O'Conner was on the bench and, based on her opinion, would have gone the other way had she stuck arround. So...O'Conner's replacement by Alito meant the court flipped and Alito cast what is concidered the deciding vote.
Qwest's refusal to turn over phone records means they "did something right" (tm) for a change. That being the case, It's obvious the seventh seal has been opened and the end of the world is nigh.
Slashdot Mirror
this video clearly shows the whole incident, from beginning to end. The guy was getting out of control and wouldn't relinquish control of the microphone (plus, his questions were a little loopy). From the video, it's pretty obvious the police were going to escort him out (the first cop just places her hand on his back and tries to show him the door), but he resisted. After another 30 seconds or so of waiting on this guy the cop decides it's time to be a little more direct, and she starts to move him out.
More importantly, once they wrestle this guy to the ground (after about a minute of his resisting arrest) they tell him numerous times that if he doesn't place his hands behind his back and comply with the officers' requests that he's going to be tased. So only after the guy refuses to leave the microphone, after he resists arrest, and after he refuses to comply with directives given to him while he's on the ground do the officers taser him. From the officers' standpoint it very much looks like, absent tasing, this guy just isn't going to comply at all - even in handcuffs. I'm sorry, but what's the story here?
As a side note, it's pretty clear this guy was not in full posession of his faculties. At the end of the video, he starts ranting about how the other students need to be sure to "ask about the guy who was arrested at the Kerry rally" because he fears that he's going to be killed. He also refuses to give his name to the police (and as we all learned in Hibel v. Nevada, you may not have to show ID, but you do have to identify yourself to police officers).
Anyway, this is a non-story. Watch the video. Crazy guy resists arrest; Crazy guy gets tased.
Washington, I'll grant you. He was (ahem) a simple man who only accepted the job because it needed to be filled by someone people could stand behind nearly unanimously. He was a true Cincinnatus of his day. He was definitely not much of a politician.
I strongly recommend you read His Excellency to get a more in-depth view of Washington. He was an extremely political figure who played the role of the "reluctant leader" to perfection. That he is remembered today as such a quiet and unassuming man is definitely a testament to his acting skills.
Parent is the only correct answer and, as such, will most likely not be modded up as informative ;-)
I get really annoyed when people try to treat this issue as black and white, no matter which side of the fence they may be on.
Sounds like someone should take another high school civics class. Please pay special attention when they get into the "nation of laws" parts. Hint: it's more than just a catch phrase to get you to follow the rules. You might also try reading things by guys like Locke, Hume, and many of the founding fathers, but I should warn you - you may have to pirate that stuff 'cause you can't find it on iTunes ;-)
By definition, there can't be any scientific test for God, because as I said before God is supernatural and thus unobservable.
The second part does not follow from the first. God can be both supernatural and observable - two distinct features within the confines of the same entity. Rephrased - first, assuming we're talking about the same idea of God (omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient) then there's nothing that God can't do - that includes being both supernatural and observable. But more fundamentally, if a god created the universe then s/he has already had a supernatural effect on the natural world. That would mean that at some point, fundamental laws of science will break down and we'll be more readily able to place pro babilities the question of how the universe was created, be that supernaturally or otherwise (I'm thinking here of Hawking's notes about creation in A Brief History of Time, and Dawkins' notions of probability on the existence of God).
However, the answer--at least to me--would still be irrelevant, because I really don't care one way or the other. Not as long as I continue to have free will.
Your answer here, I think, is a bit disingenuous. If you were to find out that there were a God tomorrow, I think you would be at least mildly interested in why that God created you/us/the universe in the first place. No?
People sometimes ask me if I believe in God. I always reply that the question is meaningless to me, because God's existence or nonexistence cannot be proven, and it has no bearing on my life. That is, I would behave exactly the way I do whether or not God were proven to exist or not, or even if I chose to believe he did or did not exist. You might as well ask me if I believe in life beyond the reaches of the galaxy. Perhaps it exists, perhaps not, but either way it doesn't matter. And any position you might offer on the topic is nothing but speculation.
This is very interesting to me. Because if I found out tomorrow - by, say, an act of God - that God existed, then I would certainly begin to behave very differently. For one, I wouldn't answer the question "No" when asked if I believed in God. If, for example, he came down and told me everything in the Bible was correct, including all the assorted minutiae, then I would quickly become a Christian.
What interests me is why your concept of meaninglessness has anything to do with whether or not you will answer the question. Lots of things are meaningless to me - how, exactly, fish hatcheries operate, or how plutonium reacts in a nuclear weapon (as opposed to uranium). Yet if you asked me my opinion on the matter, my response would be "I don't know" - not that the question is meaningless to me. Recall, the question has nothing to do with whether or not you care, but what your position is on the matter.
But it's the second part of your response that gets me: Agnostics claim that the existence of God cannot be proved or disproved. Now we all know the second part is true. You cannot prove a negative. But the first part is incorrect. The existence of God can easily be proved - by God.
The response I see most often to that remark is simply that humans can't prove the existence of God, which is of course correct - but that's not the question. The agnostic argument isn't that humans can't prove the existence of God, it's that humans can't know whether there is a God. And that is patently false - God can come down and bonk us all on the heads any time he damn well pleases.
To wit:
Science simply isn't equipped to answer questions about the supernatural, nor should it be.
If there is a God, then he and all his works are, by definition, natural. We must simply redefine what natural is. And why, for example, would it be impossible (or even improbable) for God to have added a code to some natural phenomena that, when eventually decoded by humans will spell out in bright neon lettering, "HERE I AM! I CREATED YOU! AND YOU HAVE FOUND ME!"
Now I will, of course, grant you that there's a possibility that God is the deistic watch maker so often talked about in Jeffersonian times - and in that case, there's certainly a possibility that he/it/whoever can never be known. But I'm speaking more generally about the God that some 90% of the world believes in - an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being (or beings) who has played an active role in human development over the course of world history.
Of course, there's always more to talk about - and we can go really deep into this, but it's nothing that Dawkins hasn't already talked about in The God Delusion, or what might be found in Sam Harris' End of Faith. I do highly suggest you pick them up if you haven't already.
What if there are no good candidates?
If 99% are scum, what does the 1% matter?
First, I highly doubt 80% of people can even name their state representative, much less who they ran against in the last election. The same goes for most elected representatives - even on the federal level. The argument that the choices are crap is a cop-out. I've almost always been able to find a palatable candidate for any office. On the few occasions I couldn't, I simply voted for the guy I hated the least.
That's the second part. If you can't find someone you like, then you vote for your least bad option. But as the saying goes, decisions are made by those who show up. If everyone votes, every vote counts. Lather, rinse, repeat and maybe you'll get to a set of palatable candidates.
Case in point: right now, every candidate panders to individual constituencies (the AARP and the NRA, for example) because those are the people who will kick Joe Congressman's ass out of office if he doesn't play ball. Those organizations have members who are politically active.
I hear bitching and moaning all the time about how 18-to-30 year olds aren't being adequately represented on Capitol Hill, about how the geeks are having a tough time getting their issues dealt with (i.e. Net Neutrality). Well the fact of the matter is, if 18 to 30 year olds and geeks don't even vote on election day, if they don't write letters supporting or opposing certain bills up for a vote, then why should Joe Congressman give a crap what they think about him.
This is why I found it so hilarious that people thought the youth vote was going to win the election for Kerry. Sorry, but teens and twenty-somethings don't vote. It's no wonder they feel disassociated from the political process - they're disassociating themselves from it!!!
Again, it's worth repeating: Decisions are made by those who show up. Sorry if this comes across as rude or confrontational, it's not directed at you. This is an issue that's dear to my heart. I love debating political ideologies with people. Most of my friends are of a different political bent than I am, some extremely so. I love that about them, because they keep me intellectually honest. But I have zero tolerance for people who don't vote.
Last 7 years? I'd say more like the last 30.
This statement is true, if all you've studied is the history of the U.S. for the past 30 years.
Political theater is as old as time and it's not worse now than at any time in the past. You'd do well to take a look at some of the political "cartoons" from elections around the beginning of the 19th century. Also take a look at some of the political deals that were being done.
With each new generation (in this case the post-gen-X crowd), people hit their late twenties (for some it's later) and become alarmed at what they see going on in capital hill. Why? Because they finally own houses, pay more taxes, have kids to worry about, etc. etc. They think their congress is the worst its ever been and SOMETHING MUST BE DONE! It was the same in the late 60's when the draft was on (as they say, all politics is local).
A cliffs notes version of the political history of the U.S. won't show you that it's always been the same - but a thorough study of the stuff will. Personally, the only productive consequence of this new-found political outrage I see from folks is that maybe, and I mean maybe, they'll haul their asses off to the ballot box next election rather than talking about how bad things are inside the beltway, and then changing the channel to whatever staged "reality show" they're following for the time being.
'Our law enforcement resources are seriously misaligned,' Cotton said. 'If you add up all the various kinds of property crimes in this country, everything from theft, to fraud, to burglary, bank-robbing, all of it, it costs the country $16 billion a year. But intellectual property crime runs to hundreds of billions [of dollars] a year.'"
99% of copyright infringement isn't a crime, it's a tort. There's a difference. If I were NBC/Universal, I would probably start looking for new general counsel - preferably one who didn't sleep through three years of law school.
Oh that's a bunch of crap. Everyone knows college kids don't vote.
:-/
Why don't we simply ban running into things while driving. Hmm...we should probably also ban reckless driving while we're at it.
The thing is, we've already done both. Laws like this and others meant to keep drivers distraction free are simply redundant and punish drivers by bringing everyone down to the standards of the least common denominator. What I find more appalling than this law, however, are the responses in support of it. I'm certain two threads from now, some of the same people will be bitching about some law or another that's turning the U.S. into a nanny state (w/rt technology, I'm sure) - all without any sense of irony.
By the by (since I'm sure someone will bring this up) is that driving while drunk means you are mentally impaired and cannot change that fact while you are on the road. It's the same reason you can't drive if you're mentally retarded. Trying to ban texting means you're simply trying to ban distraction. That's moronic since drivers will always seek out distraction on the roads. In that case, poor driving is already covered under anti-collision laws, dwai laws, and reckless driving statutes. There's no need to keep banning crap like texting while driving, listening to the radio, or (gasp!) talking to your buddy in the passenger seat.
scientists have finally found all the Rhesus Pieces?
That doesn't preclude you from running. It only lessens your chances of winning. But as they say, you always miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
I wouldn't call Ze an average joe. It's pretty clear from his site that he'd been doing the "Ze Frank" thing for years, if I can be as obscure as possible about naming what it is he does for a living. Better yet, you'll notice that in one of the last episodes of his show he's got Johnathan Coulton playing 10 minutes of guitar. In another episode, they have a cameo by Jack Black. Methinks Ze is one of those individuals that's simply too cool to ever be an average joe.
That's exactly what I thought when I read that. More importantly, it leads to some interesting speculation. For example, assuming the father is anywhere near the age of the stepmother, that means the parents had this kid at a very young age, probably 17 or 18. If that's the case, then this kid was practically doomed from the start. There were a couple more things I read in the article that seemed "off" - like the language of the letter - but that was the most glaring bit.
When were they the party of smaller constitutional government?
All commercial e-mail is Spam
That's the silliest thing I've read in a long time.
I subscribe to a number of mailing lists to find out when sales at companies I like are going on. I get mail from REI, Campmor, Frontier, Newegg, and a few others. I save money this way. I like money. When I want to unsubscribe from these emails, I click on the link - I don't report mail as spam unless it's actually spam. All of those newsletters I just talked about are commercial email.
Do you consider catalogs you subscribe to junkmail?
Do you consider coupons you get from companies you've asked to receive coupons from junkmail?
Unfortunately - it's viewpoints like that of the parent that are contributing to the spam blocking problem, creating a huge gray area of marketers who get caught in all kinds of filters because users are "complaining" about email they once opted in to, but are now too lazy to click the "unsubscribe" link.
Trolls aren't what they used to be. But then again, I guess being made into a twisted parody of nature enslaved to Morgoth by a second rate hobbyist fantasy author and be forced to remember your time as a relatively benign mythological being from Scandinavian folklore all your miserable existence would do that to you, I guess. And the movie trilogy, which makes mockery of both your original and Tolkien-corrupted nature, would certainly not help.
You do realize the origin of "trolling" stems from the fishing term, right? You're right, though. The term definitely ain't what it used to be.
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.
Pastor Martin Niemöller I think the point is that you don't have to know someone who's been disappeared by the government. You don't have to know someone who's had their rights trampled by one of the innumerable "well intentioned" acts passed by a puppet congress to know that what's going on around us is simply wrong.
It's not that simple. I'd explain, but Larry Lessig can do it much better than I can.
FYI - You didn't get picked on because you were "different." You got picked on because you didn't stand up for yourself. How do I know? I was that kid too. At least to some extent. I was fat, nonathletic, and a chronic smart ass. I got my ass beat thoughout high school 'cause the other kids knew I'd take it. I guess the rule here is that in high school you're almost guaranteed to catch a shit if you're at all "different", what counts is how you react to it.
Watch Cool Hand Luke sometime. Pay close attention to the boxing scene between Lou Antonio and Paul Newman.
I've used AIM and IRC excessively in the past few years....Some people may actually improve based on the widespread use of IMs
And some people may actually confuse excessively and extensively.
Now that I've completed the obligatory nit, I should say that the problem with IM-speak doesn't really pertain to grammar as much as it pertains to the general ability to get one's point across. I've traded posts with all too many "kids" that get frustrated and angry when the 99.9% of the people on ther Internet that aren't their friends don't understand what they're saying.
When I'm conversing with someone on-line, I expect them to construct prose in a manner that they would consider the most comprehensible to the greatest number of people. And remember kids: practice makes perfect.
Correction, her name is O'Connor, not O'Conner. Either way, I was talking about the one that wears the doiley around her neck.
The case had been argued before the court in October, when O'Conner was on the bench and, based on her opinion, would have gone the other way had she stuck arround. So...O'Conner's replacement by Alito meant the court flipped and Alito cast what is concidered the deciding vote.
This was in TFA.
Qwest's refusal to turn over phone records means they "did something right" (tm) for a change. That being the case, It's obvious the seventh seal has been opened and the end of the world is nigh.