I stayed away from "For the Love of the Game" for the same reason... I was tired of Costner playing the aging jock, especially when I had recently been forced by friends to sit through him doing just that it in "Tin Cup."
But one day some friends of mine rented it, and I watched it along with them. It was a damn good movie. The stories of his relationsip with his wife, his driven nature, his friendship with his catcher, and the coach that he had for his whole career, was all done well.
It was also cool that the game was a meaningless contest by a team that was wrapping up a losing season.
It was also, in my opinion, and in the opinion of many film critics and base-ball fans, some of the best-filmes baseball action sequences ever. It really brings home the elements of baseball as "a game of yards and inches".
The web shooters were always the one weak element of Spider-Man lore. The very idea that a tube of fluid small enough to not be seen under skin-tight spandex sleves could possibly produced even a single ten-story strand of webbing strong enough to hold a person's weight is preposterous. And Paker was shown as a science genious, in that he pretty much had his choice of colleges, his friend implies that he consistantly dominated the science fair circuit while growing up, got into a leading technology company right out of high school (remember him talking about getting fired for his chronic truancy?), and yes, writing papers about Osborn's work does establish him as a genius, because Osborn himself is stunned to learn that a HS student has even managed to read his stuff.
John Romita Sr. (pehaps the writer most involved in creating Spider-Man lore, after Stan Lee himself), personally came around to admiring the organic webbing as "clever", and didn't consider the change that big of a deal upon reflection.
MJ has been the main love interest of Spidey in the comics for over a quarter of a century. Did you really expect the first film to trot out the Gwen Stacey story, when she has not been a living character in the comics since 1973?
If all he's got going for him is his super powers, then isn't that exactly what he is, just another superman?
No.
What defines Parker is not that he is Nobel-prise-worthy smart (which he would have to have been to invent that webbing), but his social alienation as a brainy geek. The film captured that perfectly.
Nicholson's joker was just that: Nicholson's joker. He lacked all the tragic pathos of the best Joker stories from DC comics, and was basically the same silly imp that Nicholson played in "The Witches of Eastwick", "One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest", and "The Shining".
Dafoe, on the other hand, played the dual sides of the Green Goblin perfectly. His whole face changed instantly whenever the goblin took over his psyche, and back again just as quickly. No lighting tricks, no make-up, just good acting.
When I saw it, there were a lot of young kids in the theater, (most of them sitting waaaay up front, as all kids like to do). It was stunning how well behaved they were through the whole film. They were too busy watching the movie to make much noise (other than loud applause at the end of each fight, beginning with the one between P.P. and Flash Thompson in the school hall).
And let's see? Are these conditions created by Nike, the company who offers the highest-paying unskilled jobs in the country, or by decades of corrupt government and lack of infrastructure, which would be there with or without Nike's factory?
The workers in Nike's sweatshop are there because it is the best opportunity available to them. If you think you can do better, set up a factory there and pay more.
A lot of people died in the Iron mines of northern Minnesota, where my family made their way for the first half of the 20th century.
Building a poor economy into a healthy one is hard, ugly, and dangerous. You can not name a single prosperous nation that did not develop through a stage of lots of cheap labor working too hard and enduring too much hardship. It's just a fact of life. 50 years from now, these countries might become world leaders... unless we get outraged at all the "unfair" factories, and force them all to shut down, in which case these countries will remain poor forever.
Enslavement implies forced labor. These people eagerly lined up to take these jobs. When its a choice between sewing running shoes for fat Americans for pennies and hour, and farming rice in a puddle of shit for pennies a week, you sew shoes. Nike is certainly abusing these workers by our standard of living, but they are in fact improving the living conditions of the people there. If Nike is forced to pull out (or told they must pay US minimum wages to uneducated third-world workers, which would also mean them pulling out), the people left behind would suffer even greater poverty for the sake of easing your concience when you buy sneakers.
An FCC license in a minimal expense compared to what it cost to run a broadcast station. An FCC license is provided (at a small fee) in exchange for keeping other would-be broadcasters from crouding out your signal, it is not a lease of the frequency itself. Use of the frequency is allowed for free, and in exchange, the broadcaster must agree to serve the public interest. Serving the pubic interest, for these purposes, include doing whatever the FCC says is required, (i.e., broadcasting news updates and station ID each hour on radio stations, playing PSA's, etc.)
If broadcasting rights were parceled out like land, and auctioned to the highest bidder, the would cost an order of magnatude higher than an FCC license fee. The market value of bandwiths is huge.
All this is actually off-topic though, because Turner networks are all cable channels, and therefore are not regulated by the FCC. They can broadcast whatever the fuck they want, and no, there is no implied contract that you will watch their ads, because you are paying a cable company to watch their channel, who in turn pays them, and the requirements of all parties are spelled out in black and white on your cable subscription agreement.
The Turner rep who said this is actually flat-out wrong.
What I'm trying to say is that the moment a Macintosh locks up, freezes, or crashes, then it no longer "just works."
WTF are you talking about!? It's been about a month since my Mac has even been REBOOTED (I just throw it into powersave mode when I'm not using it), and I have not had a lock-up, freeze, or crash since version 10.0.1 came out, which was what? about a year ago? (and that was only because I had an unsupported firewire device hooked up when I turned it on... caused a kernel panic.)
If you consider macs unreliable, it can only be because you have not used one in a long, long time.
In russian "ßMac" whould be pronounced like "Ya-Mac"
Not really. The "ya" looks more like a backwards capital R than the greek symbol for beta. Besides, "Mac" would be pronounced more like "Mahss" if we are reading it as if they were Russian characters.
it might be best to have your assets depreciate over 5 years rather than finagle a way into creating a much larger 1 time expense. That was part of the dotcom downfall, after all.
Not really. The dotcom crash had less to do with to do with the internal accounting of various companies, and a lot more do to with the world no longer getting suckered by the investment banks that created the dotcom craze in the first place.
When the Netscape IPO shocked Wall Street by going through the roof in only one day, investment groups scrambled to be the ones to bring forward the next "promising high-tech IPO" in hopes of getting rich off all the speculations. When the next few high-tech IPO's also had big opening days, the miracle became a business plan, and soon there were individuals and organizations who depended entirely on the machine they had collectively created of churning out new high-tech companies. Often times, options on the soon-to-be-released companies were used to buy favors (i.e., talk up a few other companies we will be releasing soon on various financial talk shows, etc).
When the findings of fact came out against Microsoft, Microsoft's share value slipped a little. Since Microsoft is considered a bell-weather stock on the vast majority of tech indexes, this slippage lowered confidence in the whole industry, which in turn led to a lot of day traders and speculators to cool on the emerging IPO's. Soon, the lame new companies like pets.com were gone, and few new lame companies were capturing VC's interest.
Now, if you want to make money in a tech startup, you have to actually sell something people would want to buy. In the long run, we all knew it would come to this anyway. Its probably better for everybody that the bandage was torn from our collective hairy chests quickly rather than slowly, dontcha think?
As fossil fuel reserves in the ground run low, the value of what remains will rise. When the cost of energy from fossil fuels rise, the feasibility of researching and converting to other methods of generating power increases.
Therefore, the best way to move people to other energy sources is to just wait, while the mighty Invisible Hand of Adam Smith's economic model does the job for us, as it usually does.
Here in Minnesota, engines often outlive the cars they are in.
You see, during winter the roads become icy and slippery, so salt is poured on the roads (because the salt disolves into the ice and lowers the melting temperature). Also, a lot of sand is poured on the roads at intersections to add a little more grit and traction.
Therefore, when you drive on Minnesota roads in the winter, your tires spray a lovely mixture of salt-water, snow, slush, sand, and gravel all over the underbody of your car. Then when you park, this rust cocktail remains frozen against the frame and body until you get around to washing it.
Under these conditions, a car that is not properly rustproofed will usually last about 6-8 years, tops. Mufflers and exhaust systems go much quicker. You gotta replace those every couple of years around here.
As for the practicallity of replacing an engine... My last car was worth a little under $2000 when the engine blew out. (It was hail-damaged or it would have been closer to $3000). Replacing the engine would have cost me about $1500, assuming I could find a rebuilt engine that fit. Puting that $1500 engine into a sub-$2000 car (which had 160,000 miles on it) was not a sensible thing to do, because it still had the original transmission (so that would probably need replacing within the next year or two, costing at least another $1000). So after 11 years of use (good rust-proofing), I finally replaced it. I donated it to a local school and bought a brand new vehicle. (I bought the last one new, too. Only way to go, if you can afford it. Cars get safer and more efficient every year, so the latest model is always the best one to get. Also, no previous owner means I will know exactly how well the car has been treated for its entire life.) I intend to drive this one into the ground as well.
The solution is this: Don't pass any new anti-virus laws. Those who sell technology solutions should see it as their own responsibility to keep up the security on their products. Microsoft has far more resources available for technology solutions than the government has to enforce such silly laws.
Deciding to "do nothing" is a decision, and sometimes, it's the correct one. In this case, I hope it is the decision Washington makes.
Better yet, take the signs down as you find them, label each one with a sticker saying "This Herbalife advertisement was posted illegally on the corner of [location] on [date]."
Once you have gathered about 200 or so, get some billboard plaster and glue them all to the front of Herbalife's corporate headquarters.:)
Ah, except the ultimate victory (at the end of ROJ) comes when Anakin hurls the emprorer into the pit, so violence is, in the end, the solution to their problems.
Also, it's not violence itself which Luke denounces, but rage he still proclaims himself to be "a jedi, like my father before me," in other words, a man of war.
I think you may reading a little too much into the "surrenders"... it's a classic radio/movie serial gimmick to have it look like all is lost before a miraculous victory. In TPM, we are even treated to a literal "cliffhanger" as Obi-Wan must escape via "the force" (which now has something to do with a biological infestation, for reasons that continue to baffle me) and destroy Darth Maul with his master's obvious phallic symbol. (Huh... overanalizing this shit is kind of fun. Come to think of it, neither princess has ever weilded a lightsaber in any of the movies, have they? It kind of changes the whole series if you consider that all the Jedi are swinging big dicks around. It kind of underscores Luke's transition from boy to man that he made one of his own, much to his father's pride. Ewww. Then again, maybe my thoughts on the matter are colored because I finally watched David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" last night.)
Tolkien states, quite emphatically, that he hated allegory in all forms.
LOTR was not based on WWII, Sauron was neither Satan nor Hitler, Gandalf was not Jesus, pipeweed was not pot, and the Hobbits did not represent any particular undervalued minority group. It was just a story. Read it, enjoy it, don't overthink it.
More accurately, Joseph Campbell was an overrated, new-age hack who specialized in blurring and misunderstanding world religions to fit his peculiar world view. His work used to sit on the same shelf as Dianetics, phrenology guids and UFO conspiracies, until a few highbrow fools like Bill Moyers strarted to drink his Kool-Aid.
If you take a class in comparative religions, and your prof uses anything by Campbell as a text, don't just drop out of the class... change universities. No school worth the tuition would waste classroom time on such dreck.
My biggest problem with EP1 was that every major battle was won by something quirky happening by accident (Anakin destroys the Trade Ship by hitting buttons until he fires the lasers, JarJar accidentally discovers how to destroy the Battle Droids, etc.)
Actually, there were 4 simultaneous battles in the climax.
1: Anakin accidentally destroys the Trade Federation ship. (That one, you got right)
2: The gungans use some kind of energy shield technology, similar to the walls of their underwater city, to defend against the battle-droid lasers, and use spheres of similar plasma to disrupt their electronics and blow them up. No JarJar accidental discovery involved. Dumb luck and slapstick choreography keeps him alive and allows more kills than one is likely to find credible, but the battle is won when the Trade Federation ship blows up, and all those thin-client battle droids lose the server.
3: Two Jedi vs. Darth Maul. No quirky victories here. Darth manipulates the battle to force the Jedi to separate, and kills Qui Gon. Then Obi Wan kicks his ass. (The best 5-10 minutes of the whole damned movie).
4: The raid on the palace. The Princess and her court shoot their way in, use the grappling hooks from their bat-utility-belts (!?) to ascend to the main throne room, and finally use The Oldest Trick In The Book, making the bad guys attack the wrong princess.
So yes, you are part right. The whole Anakin-saves-the-day-by-mistake idea stinks on ice, but it was not quite every battle that was won that way.
The droids are one case where Lucas has been up-front from the beginning: 3PO and R2 being both the comic relief and the central focus of Star Wars was an idea stolen from Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress".
In spite of what the Salon article says, Lucas did not steal all his ideas from pulp sci fi. He stole some of them from Samurai movies, "B" westerns and WWII flicks. (The aim of the "so precise" stormtroopers reminds one a little too much of the bad guys in Hopalong Cassidy flicks.)
As for original ideas... um...Han shooting first was pretty cool. But then he changed that in the SE release and claimed it was an editing mistake.
a) buy a used SUV for $25,000 and buy a $10,000 commuter car
Better yet, buy a used SUV for $25,000 and don't buy a $10,000 car. However, if you can afford to buy new, it makes a lot of sense. New vehicles tend to have more efficient engines, and over a ten-year period you savings due to greater reliability will outweigh the added cost. (I know this because I bought my last truck new and drove it for 11 years without ever needing major work done.)
b) buy a slightly smaller SUV
I don't know if you noticed, but smaller SUV's are nearly as expensive as the big ones, and tend to have less power (meaning you can't haul as much with them). Believe it or not, some people in this world actually need trucks. I know that concept may be hard to fit into your tiny little world of "home-work-starbucks-work-home-play-EQ-all-weekend -in-your-underwear," but for some of us our transportation needs extend beyond the drive to the office.
c) 1000 other options...
You know, most people I know consider their options very carefully before buying a vehicle. After a house, it's the single biggest purchase most of us ever make. How fucking arrogant are you to just assume that everybody who chose differently that you did (a lovely Honda Civic, no doubt) failed to consider the "1000 other options" before rushing headlong into their choice of buying a Suburban. Maybe, just maybe, their needs are different than yours... have you ever stopped to consider that?
The govt. is not going to keep track of who opts out in a central database. It would be up to the individual to opt out w/the various ISP's.
Actually, that's not correct. The State of Minnesota is already planning an opted-out (or perhaps opted-in) database, run by the state, to prohibit commercial telemarketing on our home phones. It would be a simple matter for that same database to include ISP accounts, and it is my impression that this is the intention of the bill being discussed here.
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But one day some friends of mine rented it, and I watched it along with them. It was a damn good movie. The stories of his relationsip with his wife, his driven nature, his friendship with his catcher, and the coach that he had for his whole career, was all done well.
It was also cool that the game was a meaningless contest by a team that was wrapping up a losing season.
It was also, in my opinion, and in the opinion of many film critics and base-ball fans, some of the best-filmes baseball action sequences ever. It really brings home the elements of baseball as "a game of yards and inches".
See it when you get the chance.
Damn, my spelling on that post was so bad, I could be a /. editor! I should really start using spellcheck on this stuff.
The web shooters were always the one weak element of Spider-Man lore. The very idea that a tube of fluid small enough to not be seen under skin-tight spandex sleves could possibly produced even a single ten-story strand of webbing strong enough to hold a person's weight is preposterous. And Paker was shown as a science genious, in that he pretty much had his choice of colleges, his friend implies that he consistantly dominated the science fair circuit while growing up, got into a leading technology company right out of high school (remember him talking about getting fired for his chronic truancy?), and yes, writing papers about Osborn's work does establish him as a genius, because Osborn himself is stunned to learn that a HS student has even managed to read his stuff.
John Romita Sr. (pehaps the writer most involved in creating Spider-Man lore, after Stan Lee himself), personally came around to admiring the organic webbing as "clever", and didn't consider the change that big of a deal upon reflection.
MJ has been the main love interest of Spidey in the comics for over a quarter of a century. Did you really expect the first film to trot out the Gwen Stacey story, when she has not been a living character in the comics since 1973?
If all he's got going for him is his super powers, then isn't that exactly what he is, just another superman?
No.
What defines Parker is not that he is Nobel-prise-worthy smart (which he would have to have been to invent that webbing), but his social alienation as a brainy geek. The film captured that perfectly.
Nicholson's joker was just that: Nicholson's joker. He lacked all the tragic pathos of the best Joker stories from DC comics, and was basically the same silly imp that Nicholson played in "The Witches of Eastwick", "One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest", and "The Shining".
Dafoe, on the other hand, played the dual sides of the Green Goblin perfectly. His whole face changed instantly whenever the goblin took over his psyche, and back again just as quickly. No lighting tricks, no make-up, just good acting.
When I saw it, there were a lot of young kids in the theater, (most of them sitting waaaay up front, as all kids like to do). It was stunning how well behaved they were through the whole film. They were too busy watching the movie to make much noise (other than loud applause at the end of each fight, beginning with the one between P.P. and Flash Thompson in the school hall).
And let's see? Are these conditions created by Nike, the company who offers the highest-paying unskilled jobs in the country, or by decades of corrupt government and lack of infrastructure, which would be there with or without Nike's factory?
The workers in Nike's sweatshop are there because it is the best opportunity available to them. If you think you can do better, set up a factory there and pay more.
Cut advertising, and sales drop, resulting in the lay-off of 120 of those women, with no increase in pay for the others.
Building a poor economy into a healthy one is hard, ugly, and dangerous. You can not name a single prosperous nation that did not develop through a stage of lots of cheap labor working too hard and enduring too much hardship. It's just a fact of life. 50 years from now, these countries might become world leaders... unless we get outraged at all the "unfair" factories, and force them all to shut down, in which case these countries will remain poor forever.
Enslavement implies forced labor. These people eagerly lined up to take these jobs. When its a choice between sewing running shoes for fat Americans for pennies and hour, and farming rice in a puddle of shit for pennies a week, you sew shoes. Nike is certainly abusing these workers by our standard of living, but they are in fact improving the living conditions of the people there. If Nike is forced to pull out (or told they must pay US minimum wages to uneducated third-world workers, which would also mean them pulling out), the people left behind would suffer even greater poverty for the sake of easing your concience when you buy sneakers.
If broadcasting rights were parceled out like land, and auctioned to the highest bidder, the would cost an order of magnatude higher than an FCC license fee. The market value of bandwiths is huge.
All this is actually off-topic though, because Turner networks are all cable channels, and therefore are not regulated by the FCC. They can broadcast whatever the fuck they want, and no, there is no implied contract that you will watch their ads, because you are paying a cable company to watch their channel, who in turn pays them, and the requirements of all parties are spelled out in black and white on your cable subscription agreement.
The Turner rep who said this is actually flat-out wrong.
WTF are you talking about!? It's been about a month since my Mac has even been REBOOTED (I just throw it into powersave mode when I'm not using it), and I have not had a lock-up, freeze, or crash since version 10.0.1 came out, which was what? about a year ago? (and that was only because I had an unsupported firewire device hooked up when I turned it on... caused a kernel panic.)
If you consider macs unreliable, it can only be because you have not used one in a long, long time.
Not really. The "ya" looks more like a backwards capital R than the greek symbol for beta. Besides, "Mac" would be pronounced more like "Mahss" if we are reading it as if they were Russian characters.
Not really. The dotcom crash had less to do with to do with the internal accounting of various companies, and a lot more do to with the world no longer getting suckered by the investment banks that created the dotcom craze in the first place.
When the Netscape IPO shocked Wall Street by going through the roof in only one day, investment groups scrambled to be the ones to bring forward the next "promising high-tech IPO" in hopes of getting rich off all the speculations. When the next few high-tech IPO's also had big opening days, the miracle became a business plan, and soon there were individuals and organizations who depended entirely on the machine they had collectively created of churning out new high-tech companies. Often times, options on the soon-to-be-released companies were used to buy favors (i.e., talk up a few other companies we will be releasing soon on various financial talk shows, etc).
When the findings of fact came out against Microsoft, Microsoft's share value slipped a little. Since Microsoft is considered a bell-weather stock on the vast majority of tech indexes, this slippage lowered confidence in the whole industry, which in turn led to a lot of day traders and speculators to cool on the emerging IPO's. Soon, the lame new companies like pets.com were gone, and few new lame companies were capturing VC's interest.
Now, if you want to make money in a tech startup, you have to actually sell something people would want to buy. In the long run, we all knew it would come to this anyway. Its probably better for everybody that the bandage was torn from our collective hairy chests quickly rather than slowly, dontcha think?
Therefore, the best way to move people to other energy sources is to just wait, while the mighty Invisible Hand of Adam Smith's economic model does the job for us, as it usually does.
You see, during winter the roads become icy and slippery, so salt is poured on the roads (because the salt disolves into the ice and lowers the melting temperature). Also, a lot of sand is poured on the roads at intersections to add a little more grit and traction.
Therefore, when you drive on Minnesota roads in the winter, your tires spray a lovely mixture of salt-water, snow, slush, sand, and gravel all over the underbody of your car. Then when you park, this rust cocktail remains frozen against the frame and body until you get around to washing it.
Under these conditions, a car that is not properly rustproofed will usually last about 6-8 years, tops. Mufflers and exhaust systems go much quicker. You gotta replace those every couple of years around here.
As for the practicallity of replacing an engine... My last car was worth a little under $2000 when the engine blew out. (It was hail-damaged or it would have been closer to $3000). Replacing the engine would have cost me about $1500, assuming I could find a rebuilt engine that fit. Puting that $1500 engine into a sub-$2000 car (which had 160,000 miles on it) was not a sensible thing to do, because it still had the original transmission (so that would probably need replacing within the next year or two, costing at least another $1000). So after 11 years of use (good rust-proofing), I finally replaced it. I donated it to a local school and bought a brand new vehicle. (I bought the last one new, too. Only way to go, if you can afford it. Cars get safer and more efficient every year, so the latest model is always the best one to get. Also, no previous owner means I will know exactly how well the car has been treated for its entire life.) I intend to drive this one into the ground as well.
Deciding to "do nothing" is a decision, and sometimes, it's the correct one. In this case, I hope it is the decision Washington makes.
Once you have gathered about 200 or so, get some billboard plaster and glue them all to the front of Herbalife's corporate headquarters. :)
Also, it's not violence itself which Luke denounces, but rage he still proclaims himself to be "a jedi, like my father before me," in other words, a man of war.
I think you may reading a little too much into the "surrenders"... it's a classic radio/movie serial gimmick to have it look like all is lost before a miraculous victory. In TPM, we are even treated to a literal "cliffhanger" as Obi-Wan must escape via "the force" (which now has something to do with a biological infestation, for reasons that continue to baffle me) and destroy Darth Maul with his master's obvious phallic symbol. (Huh... overanalizing this shit is kind of fun. Come to think of it, neither princess has ever weilded a lightsaber in any of the movies, have they? It kind of changes the whole series if you consider that all the Jedi are swinging big dicks around. It kind of underscores Luke's transition from boy to man that he made one of his own, much to his father's pride. Ewww. Then again, maybe my thoughts on the matter are colored because I finally watched David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" last night.)
Yojombo was not ripped off my Americans. That was the Italians. Credit where credit is due, as Dante Hicks would say.
LOTR was not based on WWII, Sauron was neither Satan nor Hitler, Gandalf was not Jesus, pipeweed was not pot, and the Hobbits did not represent any particular undervalued minority group. It was just a story. Read it, enjoy it, don't overthink it.
If you take a class in comparative religions, and your prof uses anything by Campbell as a text, don't just drop out of the class... change universities. No school worth the tuition would waste classroom time on such dreck.
Actually, there were 4 simultaneous battles in the climax.
1: Anakin accidentally destroys the Trade Federation ship. (That one, you got right)
2: The gungans use some kind of energy shield technology, similar to the walls of their underwater city, to defend against the battle-droid lasers, and use spheres of similar plasma to disrupt their electronics and blow them up. No JarJar accidental discovery involved. Dumb luck and slapstick choreography keeps him alive and allows more kills than one is likely to find credible, but the battle is won when the Trade Federation ship blows up, and all those thin-client battle droids lose the server.
3: Two Jedi vs. Darth Maul. No quirky victories here. Darth manipulates the battle to force the Jedi to separate, and kills Qui Gon. Then Obi Wan kicks his ass. (The best 5-10 minutes of the whole damned movie).
4: The raid on the palace. The Princess and her court shoot their way in, use the grappling hooks from their bat-utility-belts (!?) to ascend to the main throne room, and finally use The Oldest Trick In The Book, making the bad guys attack the wrong princess.
So yes, you are part right. The whole Anakin-saves-the-day-by-mistake idea stinks on ice, but it was not quite every battle that was won that way.
In spite of what the Salon article says, Lucas did not steal all his ideas from pulp sci fi. He stole some of them from Samurai movies, "B" westerns and WWII flicks. (The aim of the "so precise" stormtroopers reminds one a little too much of the bad guys in Hopalong Cassidy flicks.)
As for original ideas... um...Han shooting first was pretty cool. But then he changed that in the SE release and claimed it was an editing mistake.
Better yet, buy a used SUV for $25,000 and don't buy a $10,000 car. However, if you can afford to buy new, it makes a lot of sense. New vehicles tend to have more efficient engines, and over a ten-year period you savings due to greater reliability will outweigh the added cost. (I know this because I bought my last truck new and drove it for 11 years without ever needing major work done.)
b) buy a slightly smaller SUV
I don't know if you noticed, but smaller SUV's are nearly as expensive as the big ones, and tend to have less power (meaning you can't haul as much with them). Believe it or not, some people in this world actually need trucks. I know that concept may be hard to fit into your tiny little world of "home-work-starbucks-work-home-play-EQ-all-weekend -in-your-underwear," but for some of us our transportation needs extend beyond the drive to the office.
c) 1000 other options...
You know, most people I know consider their options very carefully before buying a vehicle. After a house, it's the single biggest purchase most of us ever make. How fucking arrogant are you to just assume that everybody who chose differently that you did (a lovely Honda Civic, no doubt) failed to consider the "1000 other options" before rushing headlong into their choice of buying a Suburban. Maybe, just maybe, their needs are different than yours... have you ever stopped to consider that?
Actually, that's not correct. The State of Minnesota is already planning an opted-out (or perhaps opted-in) database, run by the state, to prohibit commercial telemarketing on our home phones. It would be a simple matter for that same database to include ISP accounts, and it is my impression that this is the intention of the bill being discussed here.