This isn't news. We've had rat brains running record companies, state & federal governments and lots of other stuff for years. Hell, my company's entire upper management is comprised, as far as I can tell, of rat brains.
True, but the same statement could be made substituting the names of Lenny Bruce, John Coltrane, Janis Joplin, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughn, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Ray Charles, James Brown, John Belushi, just about every English punk band ever, and all the countless other entertainers who were/are regular drug (ab)users.
I don't think seeing them how the really were/are and accepting the good that they gave does them as large of a disservice as saying something to the effect that they "could have done better if they hadn't been stoned." Who knows, without getting high maybe none of them would have wanted to do anything at all...
You're right about having flaws, but that's what makes them human. Tapping into that humanity is what makes them artists.
The problem you'll run into there is that (at least in my experience) the MENSA crowd is nearly as diverse and fragmented ideologically as the non-2%ers are. I say "nearly" because it takes a certain inclination to even want to be tested to get into the group to begin with, so your ultra-slacker "fuck it" types are probably not as well represented in MENSA as they are at a Halo II tournament or something like that, but I think by and large that statement is true. To say that they're all "discriminating" is a certainly bit hasty.
The motivations of any particular demographic group to see a movie are varied: some go to unwind & totally escape from real life, others to learn more about real life, others to see T&A just like everyone else, etc. I'd say that the ones who are truly interested in cinema as art will find it anyway, while the others won't miss it. The key is to get the info out there where the hardcores along the entire intellectual spectrum are going to be able to find it. And then, as they say,...Profit!
I have some "experimental" evidence that what you're saying is true. The test subject is myself. I played drums professionally for about 9 years on the road and the hearing in my left ear is not as good as it is in the right one. I attribute at least part of it to my hi-hat cymbals (and, of course, my non-use of earplugs). There was also usually a bass rig on my left side as well, plus my monitor, so it wasn't all the cymbals, but I am sure that having those things that close to my head for that long didn't do much good for my hearing. Hindsight being what it is, I would have done more to protect myself, but 20-somethings are generally invincible, so I didn't...oh well, not a compliant, just an observation.
That's a good policy. Two of my points with both of my kids is to not leave things on the floor that aren't supposed to be stepped on, and to put things away when done with them. I think these ideas (obviously) apply to much more than laptops, but they defininately apply to laptops as well. It's amazing how much simpler things are to deal with when you just do them the right way consistantly.
My daughter is going into 11th grade and uses computers a lot. It is rare that she needs help doing anything that she wants to do, probably because she's been using them for years. My 10 year old son is the same way to a lesser extent - he has a pretty solid handle on how to work with computers as well. For example, he helps the teachers in the computer lab at his grade school use the software that they're trying to get the class to use...pretty amusing to hear about from my standpoint.
On topic, she doesn't have her own laptop, but I have a beefy desktop & 2 laptops of my own networked together and we switch off, depending on who needs to do what. For example, if all she wants to do is surf the net then it doesn't matter which one she uses, so the needs of the other people take precidence. I do not let her take a laptop to school, however, since high school students are the scourge of the planet and like to break/steal stuff, but she has more or less free reign on the ones at the house.
I will likely send one to college with her, but right now she's learning how to take care of one (proximity of beverages, food, where to leave one when you're done using it, etc) and will not get her own until she's established some good habits (theres nothing more alaming than a glass of chocolate milk on the living room floor next to an open laptop just waiting to be stepped on in the dark...). She has a USB drive that she uses to get her stuff from point A to point B.
As an aside, my handwriting is terrible. I think it actually gets worse as time passes, probably due to the ratio of typing to wrtiting that I do these days. Who knows? It was always terrible, and still is. Since the vast majority of my "writing" is done on a computer in a programming language, I guess it's ok.
Oh yeah, I agree that having access to a laptop to take wherever they want in the house is definately a boost in homework productivity. The kids like being able to go to where they're comfortable to do their work, and since comfort is dependent on surroundings, it's always changing. Hell, I do the same thing and sometimes work on my porch or laying on my couch...
I agree with 99% of what you said. My only comment is that I believe that some people ARE indeed either stupid or thoughtless enough to do illegal/immoral things via company email.
I certainly agree that it is a huge waste of resources to hire people (essentially censors) to babysit their employees, but I have to say that I've worked with some pretty clueless people in my lifetime who don't seem to realize that their right to "privacy" doesn't extend to their employer's network/email servers.
The stuff you said about employee satisfaction and lame managers is right on the money.
They also did this on one of the first episodes of "Twin Peaks" - there's a scene where they zoom in on a character's eye and see another character's motorcycle. The difference there is that the image they zoomed in on was supposedly taken by a handheld camcorder at closer range. Still seems pretty Hollywood to me, but it's a neat idea.
I only carry mine in a laptop bag (Targus, of course, good taste). I like backpacks, and they are comfortable, but usually I'm only going from my office to my car & then from my car to my house with my laptop so it's not inconvenient for me to use the traditional bag. It would probably be MORE of a pain to use a backpack.
When I travel I carry a "regular" backpack with my "personal" stuff & some clothes as a carry-on so that I don't get screwed if they lose my luggage for a day or two, so the laptop backpack doesn't really work for me there either.
I could certainly see cases where the backpack style of carry would be better (students, pros who do lots of travelling, etc), but for my needs the regular bag is great. As far as forgetting it, well, for what my Thinkpad cost I won't be forgetting it - ever.
The pizza box thing just doesn't turn my crank at all but hey, who am I to deny this sort of thing to those who want it? For my needs it's utterly useless but I could see it being a great gag gift for the geek who has it all...
the words in question are 6th or 7th grade level - you shouldn't need a spell checker to use them. lack of attention to detail is, again, not a hallmark of a keen intellect.
i too am a single father raising 2 kids with no assistance. i am also an ex-smoker. i am not, however, trying to control ANY aspect of your life, let alone all of it.
my kids have been in 3 school districts in 2 different states, were in kindergarten under clinton, and were not taught anything about condoms in kindergarten. the first mention of condoms in any class in my daughter's experience occurred in 9th grade (at age 14, when most kids are sexually developing - hence my previous allusion to this age group). this bit you speak of is either an isolated incident or just simply made up, because it is certainly not part of any federal or state school policy that i've been exposed to.
where are these lefty parts of the world who don't grade papers? again, i've never seen it and my kids go to public schools. maybe you're just hearing that from the folks at the private schools who are taking your money. i don't disagree that some private schools are better than public ones, but i think that across the board privatization of schools is not the solution. and again, even if you can come up with an isolated incident of non-grading, that doesn't make it state or federal policy. i think you just like to make this stuff up to justify your programming.
the age of consent in florida for sex is 12. in the state where i live it's 15. i don't disagree that children shouldn't be having sex with each other, but it's not reality to pretend that it doesn't happen. you can either try to ignore reality and take the consequences (unwanted pregnancy) or you can try to equip these people with the means to protect themselves through knowledge of the possible consequences of their actions. teenagers have been sexually active throughout history and your hangups about it won't change it.
it is not the school system's responsibilty to take the place of parents and raise kids. it is, however, it's responsibility to educate them. how do you equate imparting knowledge about biology and sexuality with condoning sexual activity? i realize that you seem to think that witholding information about subjects you're uncomfortable with is a better means of education than dissiminating it, but i think you're wrong.
i never at any point made any sort of reference to adults preying sexually on kids or NAMBLA. where you conjured that up i'm sure i don't know. you seem really paranoid. are you sure your medication levels are correct?
to suggest that all the smoking regulations in the country are the doings of "the left" is absurd. i agree that they're overzealous, but i disagree that they are solely the product of liberals.
I was sort of half-heartedly expecting a reply. Didn't really care that much one way or the other, I just had to post something in response to the sweeping generalization about "all liberals are stupid." Those sorts of blanket statements are not normally the hallmark of the keenly tuned analytical mind, so I wanted to see what else you might have to say. I'm not stupid, not even close, and I am not concerned with what the people on this site might think of my intelligence based on a two paragraph post anyway.
I agree with your thing about arguing on the internet, by the way, so I prefer to try to keep it as civil as possible. Two disagreeing sides calmly reasoning out an issue is not a bad thing, indeed I think if people actually listened to other people's point of view occasionally they might learn something because nobody is right all the time (possible exception of Rush Limbaugh, of course). We probably both agree though that the reasoning and conversational skills necessary to frame a convincing case aren't taught in public schools though, so it's not surprising that many online discussions (arguments) degenerate into pissing matches under the cloak of anonymity. Let's attempt to rise above that, shall we?
The term "liberal elite" I used was not my own but rather a rather clichéd one frequently bandied about by the Right that you have probably heard, assuming that you live in America. Interestingly enough, one of the folks you lump into this somewhat vaguely defined group is one H. John Heinz II, the Republican senator from Pennsylvania. He's the one who inherited the catsup fortune, and he wasn't a liberal. He was, however, extremely rich his entire life through no doing of his own. His wife, the one who married said inheritor, may or may not be a liberal. I think she's more likely just a ladder climber following the money. This chain finally brings us to the guy you were presumably trying to insult. I won't defend him because I don't like him, but I'll bet that his tenure at Yale University provided him with the skills to spell the word "intellectual" while your tenure wherever you went did not.
Education is a wonderful thing; I encourage the right wingers who are afraid of sullying their beliefs with such trivialities as factual history or the pursuit of non-monetary gain for the advancement of society and humanity rather than strictly for themselves and their stockholders to give it a try. It's a shame that the Republican view is that the people with the cash shouldn't have to support schools for those without, but it's hypocrisy to believe that schools don't need funding and then to complain about the quality of it. There are dictionaries online to look up that word if you didn't learn what it meant in one of those terrible terrible schools.
The marrying-in thing is by no means the private property of liberals. Plenty of right wingers have been doing the same thing for years. Actually, one thing that I truly admire about George W (another Republican who was born into a great deal of wealth and thus has spent his entire life in the "elite" through no doing of his own) is that he had the decency to marry that schoolteacher of his and get her the hell away from the children she wasn't teaching correctly since obviously she was part of the problem, having been a product of the same set of institutions as every other teacher.
Please illustrate where the moral compass lies in these individuals: Ken Lay, Maureen Castaneda, David Duncan and John Clifford Baxter (RIP). How about Rush Limbaugh? Oliver North? Newt Gingritch? Clearly the conservatives have the corner on the market when it comes to morality.
I have 2 kids in public schools and they are learning plenty. If your kids are not, I would suggest spending a little less time in front of the television or at church or playing sports and a little more time pursuing more *cough* intellectual pursuits. Where you get the idea that schools don't have grades or wrong answers is beyond me. Apparently
not that i necessarily disagree with your statement (people in general are demonstrably stupid imo), but while we're parroting party line bs could you explain again how liberals, being more stupid than conservatives, are running the colleges & universities & the media? and why it is that the clearly more fiscally knowledable conservatives arent as rich as the "liberal elite"? and how being rich is a sign of bad character if one is liberal but a sign of business acumen if the person who inherited the wealth is republican? or why the religious and "compassionate conservatives" are so eager to support war, imprisonment, and death penalties?
i could go on, but it's not really worth the time. i'm sure that someone will be able to enlighten me about how either one of these phony labels attached to these imaginary stereotypes actually apply to reality. (that's funny, laugh) it must be nice to live in a black and white world.
i neglected to add that the reason that this type of legislation is harmful is because the control of ideas and information by a government is called censorship and is a hallmark of certain types of societies, but not of free ones.
pictures of people walking, eating, talking, sleeping, working, playing, giving birth, dying and doing every other legal thing that people do are not illegal. why is it that you think that pictures of one particular thing that almost every single person on the planet does, legally and consentually, should be viewed differently?
there's a huge logical disconnect here, and adherance to a faith doesn't get you off the hook. religion has no place in government. read a little bit about some of our founding fathers' views on the role of christianity in religion. read it from their own hand, not from a religious/politial organizations propoganda.
the biggest problem with your statement is that there doesn't need to be an argument to "legalize" porn because it's legal. the convincing argument that i dont see is the one which states that it should be made illegal.
it's a pretty typical tactic to compare one thing to another when they're not related, in this case drugs and pornography. these are separate issues and should be handled as such. trying to lump them together under the category of "these are activities that i don't approve of" isn't going to cut it. perhaps if people would stop trying to make such broadly generalized categories such as "this is *good*, this is *bad*" they might be able to actually think a little more critically about some of these problems rather than respond with a knee-jerk "this must be stopped" mentality.
whose elitist attitude are you trying to defeat? the guy who likely doesn't have any formal knowledge of biology, sociology or psychology who's trying to tell you what should stimulate you sexually and what shouldn't?
as much as i despise republicans (the politician kind, not necessarily the working stiff kind), i have to agree with you. tipper and the pmrc unveiled a neo-mcarthyistic witch hunt that should have been laughed right out of the sewing circle that dreamed it up and instead we're still dealing with it's fallout via "clean" versions of albums, warning labels, etc.
don't know about the rave act, but i do know that lots of people got put in jail for drug offenses under clinton. the simple fact is that both of these groups work for somebody besides the groups that elect them.
all that aside, now these bastards want to take all the naked lady pics away! no fair!
what about it? my belief is that the people who have marriage problems as a result of porn are highly likely to have marriage problems ANYWAY, likely due to lack of the ability to communicate honestly with each other about their sexual needs.
and, no pun intended, i say "fuck them". go get some therapy or something and leave the internet alone for the others who either know how to incorporate porn into a healthy lifestyle, aren't interested in it, or aren't interested in other people and rely solely on porn. this desire to legislate "morality" is much more evil and harmful to a truly free society than pornography.
people always have and always will have emotional problems, but that's not my problem (or most other peoples either) so why should the rest of the world be penalized for someone's lack of ability to handle their own life? these bible-thumping right wingers sure don't mind forgetting all about personal accountability and responsibility when it's a topic they disagree with, but hey, say it loud & say it proud - sex is here to stay! put that in your communion wafer and smoke it, mr sexually repressed government tool.
I have to second your sentiment. I haven't had a cigarette for almost 2 months, off the patches, totally nicotine free and it feels great. It's amazing to me not only how much better it feels to not smoke, but also how willing I used to be to feel shitty constantly and tell myself that it was "normal." It's not normal, it sucks.
I too have quit multiple times, for multiple months at a time, which is a testament to both my lack of willpower and the suicidally strong pull of addiction. I'm just glad I never got addicted to something that actually feels good -> that would be REALLY hard to quit. My sympathies to those poor bastards...
But seriously, you youngsters out there, save yourself a fortune & feel better by quitting that shit now. You won't regret it later. It's cool to quit smoking, hell, even Tom Waits did it.
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This isn't news. We've had rat brains running record companies, state & federal governments and lots of other stuff for years. Hell, my company's entire upper management is comprised, as far as I can tell, of rat brains.
...or keyboard player for the Grateful Dead...
I don't think seeing them how the really were/are and accepting the good that they gave does them as large of a disservice as saying something to the effect that they "could have done better if they hadn't been stoned." Who knows, without getting high maybe none of them would have wanted to do anything at all...
You're right about having flaws, but that's what makes them human. Tapping into that humanity is what makes them artists.
holy shit! did this spin off into left field pretty fast or what? wow! my head is spinning...
Yes indeed. It's about time that a little bit of integrity was brought back to the porn industry. This is a victory for us all.
The problem you'll run into there is that (at least in my experience) the MENSA crowd is nearly as diverse and fragmented ideologically as the non-2%ers are. I say "nearly" because it takes a certain inclination to even want to be tested to get into the group to begin with, so your ultra-slacker "fuck it" types are probably not as well represented in MENSA as they are at a Halo II tournament or something like that, but I think by and large that statement is true. To say that they're all "discriminating" is a certainly bit hasty.
The motivations of any particular demographic group to see a movie are varied: some go to unwind & totally escape from real life, others to learn more about real life, others to see T&A just like everyone else, etc. I'd say that the ones who are truly interested in cinema as art will find it anyway, while the others won't miss it. The key is to get the info out there where the hardcores along the entire intellectual spectrum are going to be able to find it. And then, as they say, ...Profit!
I have some "experimental" evidence that what you're saying is true. The test subject is myself. I played drums professionally for about 9 years on the road and the hearing in my left ear is not as good as it is in the right one. I attribute at least part of it to my hi-hat cymbals (and, of course, my non-use of earplugs). There was also usually a bass rig on my left side as well, plus my monitor, so it wasn't all the cymbals, but I am sure that having those things that close to my head for that long didn't do much good for my hearing. Hindsight being what it is, I would have done more to protect myself, but 20-somethings are generally invincible, so I didn't...oh well, not a compliant, just an observation.
That's a good policy. Two of my points with both of my kids is to not leave things on the floor that aren't supposed to be stepped on, and to put things away when done with them. I think these ideas (obviously) apply to much more than laptops, but they defininately apply to laptops as well. It's amazing how much simpler things are to deal with when you just do them the right way consistantly.
My daughter is going into 11th grade and uses computers a lot. It is rare that she needs help doing anything that she wants to do, probably because she's been using them for years. My 10 year old son is the same way to a lesser extent - he has a pretty solid handle on how to work with computers as well. For example, he helps the teachers in the computer lab at his grade school use the software that they're trying to get the class to use...pretty amusing to hear about from my standpoint.
On topic, she doesn't have her own laptop, but I have a beefy desktop & 2 laptops of my own networked together and we switch off, depending on who needs to do what. For example, if all she wants to do is surf the net then it doesn't matter which one she uses, so the needs of the other people take precidence. I do not let her take a laptop to school, however, since high school students are the scourge of the planet and like to break/steal stuff, but she has more or less free reign on the ones at the house.
I will likely send one to college with her, but right now she's learning how to take care of one (proximity of beverages, food, where to leave one when you're done using it, etc) and will not get her own until she's established some good habits (theres nothing more alaming than a glass of chocolate milk on the living room floor next to an open laptop just waiting to be stepped on in the dark...). She has a USB drive that she uses to get her stuff from point A to point B.
As an aside, my handwriting is terrible. I think it actually gets worse as time passes, probably due to the ratio of typing to wrtiting that I do these days. Who knows? It was always terrible, and still is. Since the vast majority of my "writing" is done on a computer in a programming language, I guess it's ok.
Oh yeah, I agree that having access to a laptop to take wherever they want in the house is definately a boost in homework productivity. The kids like being able to go to where they're comfortable to do their work, and since comfort is dependent on surroundings, it's always changing. Hell, I do the same thing and sometimes work on my porch or laying on my couch...
I certainly agree that it is a huge waste of resources to hire people (essentially censors) to babysit their employees, but I have to say that I've worked with some pretty clueless people in my lifetime who don't seem to realize that their right to "privacy" doesn't extend to their employer's network/email servers.
The stuff you said about employee satisfaction and lame managers is right on the money.
They also did this on one of the first episodes of "Twin Peaks" - there's a scene where they zoom in on a character's eye and see another character's motorcycle. The difference there is that the image they zoomed in on was supposedly taken by a handheld camcorder at closer range. Still seems pretty Hollywood to me, but it's a neat idea.
How is working 5 months in 2 years "nose to the grindstone?"
When I travel I carry a "regular" backpack with my "personal" stuff & some clothes as a carry-on so that I don't get screwed if they lose my luggage for a day or two, so the laptop backpack doesn't really work for me there either.
I could certainly see cases where the backpack style of carry would be better (students, pros who do lots of travelling, etc), but for my needs the regular bag is great. As far as forgetting it, well, for what my Thinkpad cost I won't be forgetting it - ever.
The pizza box thing just doesn't turn my crank at all but hey, who am I to deny this sort of thing to those who want it? For my needs it's utterly useless but I could see it being a great gag gift for the geek who has it all...
the words in question are 6th or 7th grade level - you shouldn't need a spell checker to use them. lack of attention to detail is, again, not a hallmark of a keen intellect.
i too am a single father raising 2 kids with no assistance. i am also an ex-smoker. i am not, however, trying to control ANY aspect of your life, let alone all of it.
my kids have been in 3 school districts in 2 different states, were in kindergarten under clinton, and were not taught anything about condoms in kindergarten. the first mention of condoms in any class in my daughter's experience occurred in 9th grade (at age 14, when most kids are sexually developing - hence my previous allusion to this age group). this bit you speak of is either an isolated incident or just simply made up, because it is certainly not part of any federal or state school policy that i've been exposed to.
where are these lefty parts of the world who don't grade papers? again, i've never seen it and my kids go to public schools. maybe you're just hearing that from the folks at the private schools who are taking your money. i don't disagree that some private schools are better than public ones, but i think that across the board privatization of schools is not the solution. and again, even if you can come up with an isolated incident of non-grading, that doesn't make it state or federal policy. i think you just like to make this stuff up to justify your programming.
the age of consent in florida for sex is 12. in the state where i live it's 15. i don't disagree that children shouldn't be having sex with each other, but it's not reality to pretend that it doesn't happen. you can either try to ignore reality and take the consequences (unwanted pregnancy) or you can try to equip these people with the means to protect themselves through knowledge of the possible consequences of their actions. teenagers have been sexually active throughout history and your hangups about it won't change it.
it is not the school system's responsibilty to take the place of parents and raise kids. it is, however, it's responsibility to educate them. how do you equate imparting knowledge about biology and sexuality with condoning sexual activity? i realize that you seem to think that witholding information about subjects you're uncomfortable with is a better means of education than dissiminating it, but i think you're wrong.
i never at any point made any sort of reference to adults preying sexually on kids or NAMBLA. where you conjured that up i'm sure i don't know. you seem really paranoid. are you sure your medication levels are correct?
to suggest that all the smoking regulations in the country are the doings of "the left" is absurd. i agree that they're overzealous, but i disagree that they are solely the product of liberals.
I agree with your thing about arguing on the internet, by the way, so I prefer to try to keep it as civil as possible. Two disagreeing sides calmly reasoning out an issue is not a bad thing, indeed I think if people actually listened to other people's point of view occasionally they might learn something because nobody is right all the time (possible exception of Rush Limbaugh, of course). We probably both agree though that the reasoning and conversational skills necessary to frame a convincing case aren't taught in public schools though, so it's not surprising that many online discussions (arguments) degenerate into pissing matches under the cloak of anonymity. Let's attempt to rise above that, shall we?
The term "liberal elite" I used was not my own but rather a rather clichéd one frequently bandied about by the Right that you have probably heard, assuming that you live in America. Interestingly enough, one of the folks you lump into this somewhat vaguely defined group is one H. John Heinz II, the Republican senator from Pennsylvania. He's the one who inherited the catsup fortune, and he wasn't a liberal. He was, however, extremely rich his entire life through no doing of his own. His wife, the one who married said inheritor, may or may not be a liberal. I think she's more likely just a ladder climber following the money. This chain finally brings us to the guy you were presumably trying to insult. I won't defend him because I don't like him, but I'll bet that his tenure at Yale University provided him with the skills to spell the word "intellectual" while your tenure wherever you went did not.
Education is a wonderful thing; I encourage the right wingers who are afraid of sullying their beliefs with such trivialities as factual history or the pursuit of non-monetary gain for the advancement of society and humanity rather than strictly for themselves and their stockholders to give it a try. It's a shame that the Republican view is that the people with the cash shouldn't have to support schools for those without, but it's hypocrisy to believe that schools don't need funding and then to complain about the quality of it. There are dictionaries online to look up that word if you didn't learn what it meant in one of those terrible terrible schools.
The marrying-in thing is by no means the private property of liberals. Plenty of right wingers have been doing the same thing for years. Actually, one thing that I truly admire about George W (another Republican who was born into a great deal of wealth and thus has spent his entire life in the "elite" through no doing of his own) is that he had the decency to marry that schoolteacher of his and get her the hell away from the children she wasn't teaching correctly since obviously she was part of the problem, having been a product of the same set of institutions as every other teacher.
Please illustrate where the moral compass lies in these individuals: Ken Lay, Maureen Castaneda, David Duncan and John Clifford Baxter (RIP). How about Rush Limbaugh? Oliver North? Newt Gingritch? Clearly the conservatives have the corner on the market when it comes to morality.
I have 2 kids in public schools and they are learning plenty. If your kids are not, I would suggest spending a little less time in front of the television or at church or playing sports and a little more time pursuing more *cough* intellectual pursuits. Where you get the idea that schools don't have grades or wrong answers is beyond me. Apparently
i could go on, but it's not really worth the time. i'm sure that someone will be able to enlighten me about how either one of these phony labels attached to these imaginary stereotypes actually apply to reality. (that's funny, laugh) it must be nice to live in a black and white world.
pictures of people walking, eating, talking, sleeping, working, playing, giving birth, dying and doing every other legal thing that people do are not illegal. why is it that you think that pictures of one particular thing that almost every single person on the planet does, legally and consentually, should be viewed differently?
there's a huge logical disconnect here, and adherance to a faith doesn't get you off the hook. religion has no place in government. read a little bit about some of our founding fathers' views on the role of christianity in religion. read it from their own hand, not from a religious/politial organizations propoganda.
it's a pretty typical tactic to compare one thing to another when they're not related, in this case drugs and pornography. these are separate issues and should be handled as such. trying to lump them together under the category of "these are activities that i don't approve of" isn't going to cut it. perhaps if people would stop trying to make such broadly generalized categories such as "this is *good*, this is *bad*" they might be able to actually think a little more critically about some of these problems rather than respond with a knee-jerk "this must be stopped" mentality.
whose elitist attitude are you trying to defeat? the guy who likely doesn't have any formal knowledge of biology, sociology or psychology who's trying to tell you what should stimulate you sexually and what shouldn't?
don't know about the rave act, but i do know that lots of people got put in jail for drug offenses under clinton. the simple fact is that both of these groups work for somebody besides the groups that elect them.
all that aside, now these bastards want to take all the naked lady pics away! no fair!
yeah, all this punography is ruining his brain...
and, no pun intended, i say "fuck them". go get some therapy or something and leave the internet alone for the others who either know how to incorporate porn into a healthy lifestyle, aren't interested in it, or aren't interested in other people and rely solely on porn. this desire to legislate "morality" is much more evil and harmful to a truly free society than pornography.
people always have and always will have emotional problems, but that's not my problem (or most other peoples either) so why should the rest of the world be penalized for someone's lack of ability to handle their own life? these bible-thumping right wingers sure don't mind forgetting all about personal accountability and responsibility when it's a topic they disagree with, but hey, say it loud & say it proud - sex is here to stay! put that in your communion wafer and smoke it, mr sexually repressed government tool.
I too have quit multiple times, for multiple months at a time, which is a testament to both my lack of willpower and the suicidally strong pull of addiction. I'm just glad I never got addicted to something that actually feels good -> that would be REALLY hard to quit. My sympathies to those poor bastards...
But seriously, you youngsters out there, save yourself a fortune & feel better by quitting that shit now. You won't regret it later. It's cool to quit smoking, hell, even Tom Waits did it.
seriously, life isn't nearly as black and white as some would have us believe. i find that question amusing, frankly.
Alright, that's it. I've had it with you people. I'm going back to Tralfamador. And I'm taking your wife with me...