Yes, a cigarette might take 11 minutes off my life. And certainly, those minutes are going to add up to days, weeks, months, years.
The problem is that while, yes it does take years off one's life, IT TAKES OFF THE ONES AT THE END! The adult diaper wearing, spoon-feeding, kidney dialysis years!
Your can have those years! Us smokers don't want them!
...is ending a little every second, so stop worrying about every stinking thing you eat.
You have only a limited amount of time on planet earth, anyway. If you like eating potato chips, eat potato chips! If you like to smoke, fire one up! If you like to post inane comments on slashdot, type away! I'd rather enjoy life for thirty years as opposed to living perfectly clean, eating nothing but raw vegetables, and living to be 150.
And make an impact! If you're pissed about something your government does, raise hell about it! Write a book! Start a political movement! Paint a picture! LIVE!!!!
I'll be damned if I'm going to waste hours of my life worrying about things that are going to kill me, because there are things a lot more immediately dangerous than POTATO CHIPS.
I agree with you in that Americans take everything too far: from "super-sized fries to gas-guzzling SUVs.
However, I must disagree with what you say about the camera operators in England. I read a story (probably on here) about how they often abuse the cameras to watch young women as they walk the sidewalks, often "following" one they particularly like.
Well, I suppose you never heard of John Rockefeller or Andrew Carnegie. Its called the guilded age, dude, and we're living in one.
Except this time its not the workers being screwed anally, its the consumers. Like the Clinton campaign said, "Its the economy, stupid." As long as people are making plenty of money and have comfort and convenience to spare, Joe Schmoe doesn't give a shit what big brother's up to.
The problem isn't government intervention with business, at least not in this case. The problem is GREED. It's the economy, stupid, and as long as our representatives are getting paid by large corporations, they don't care if Michael Eisner takes a piss in your coffee pot.
But the American people will come around, as soon as they figure out they can't get the latest No Doubt single from Gnutella, or that they can't transfer their CD collection to their nice, shiny, EXPENSIVE iPod.
And then we'll see people from all walks of life marching on Washington, chanting "Give me convenience or give me death!"
Here ya go, thanks to the Mac OS X "Summarize" service:
Thanks to our myopic and narcissistic media and opportunistic, short-sighted politicians, we are only beginning to grasp the ways in which computer networks are changing, even radicalizing much of the world, sometimes in great, sometimes horrific ways.
...Globalism, arguably the single most significant political issue on the planet even before 9/11, is even more critical now, even though there is little consensus on what it is or how we should feel about it or even define it. Deep-thinking billionaire philanthropist Soros jumps in with a significant new book -- George Soros on Globalization -- in which he advances some exciting and startling ideas about the future.
...Soros uses it to mean the development of global financial markets and the growth of trans-national corporations, along with their increasing power over national economies. "I believe that most of the problems that people associate with globalism," writes Soros, "including the penetration of market values into areas where they do not traditionally belong, can be attributed to these phenomena."
...International capital movement accelerated in the early 1980s under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and financial markets became truly global only in the early 1990s, Soros says, after the collapse of the Soviet empire.
That period also happens to coincide with the most explosive growth of the Net and the Web, perfect engines for the new data-driven economies and systems for the rapid movement -- literally -- of capital.
By contrast, as we can see on the evening news most nights, while governments may not be able to restrict the flow of capital, they're still fairly effective at controlling the movement of people.
...The Chinese were forced to be somewhat more democratic when, with the stroke of a key, billions of dollars in capital could have fled Hong Kong in a micro-second, even if its people couldn't.
"The globalization of financial markets," argues Soros," has rendered the welfare state that came into existence after World War II obsolete, because the people who require a social safety net cannot leave the country, but the capital the welfare state used to tax can."
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, a cigarette might take 11 minutes off my life. And certainly, those minutes are going to add up to days, weeks, months, years.
The problem is that while, yes it does take years off one's life, IT TAKES OFF THE ONES AT THE END! The adult diaper wearing, spoon-feeding, kidney dialysis years!
Your can have those years! Us smokers don't want them!
(With thanks to Denis Leary.)
...is ending a little every second, so stop worrying about every stinking thing you eat.
You have only a limited amount of time on planet earth, anyway. If you like eating potato chips, eat potato chips! If you like to smoke, fire one up! If you like to post inane comments on slashdot, type away! I'd rather enjoy life for thirty years as opposed to living perfectly clean, eating nothing but raw vegetables, and living to be 150.
And make an impact! If you're pissed about something your government does, raise hell about it! Write a book! Start a political movement! Paint a picture! LIVE!!!!
I'll be damned if I'm going to waste hours of my life worrying about things that are going to kill me, because there are things a lot more immediately dangerous than POTATO CHIPS.
It seems that Ms. Rosen doesn't know the difference between plagiarism and piracy.
Do your homework, Hillary. Then get back to us. Buh bye now.
All the more reason to carbonize MacJesus! (Sorry, no link)
Save us Robert Carr! Let me see the light!
I agree with you in that Americans take everything too far: from "super-sized fries to gas-guzzling SUVs.
However, I must disagree with what you say about the camera operators in England. I read a story (probably on here) about how they often abuse the cameras to watch young women as they walk the sidewalks, often "following" one they particularly like.
Well, I suppose you never heard of John Rockefeller or Andrew Carnegie. Its called the guilded age, dude, and we're living in one.
Except this time its not the workers being screwed anally, its the consumers. Like the Clinton campaign said, "Its the economy, stupid." As long as people are making plenty of money and have comfort and convenience to spare, Joe Schmoe doesn't give a shit what big brother's up to.
The problem isn't government intervention with business, at least not in this case. The problem is GREED. It's the economy, stupid, and as long as our representatives are getting paid by large corporations, they don't care if Michael Eisner takes a piss in your coffee pot.
But the American people will come around, as soon as they figure out they can't get the latest No Doubt single from Gnutella, or that they can't transfer their CD collection to their nice, shiny, EXPENSIVE iPod.
And then we'll see people from all walks of life marching on Washington, chanting "Give me convenience or give me death!"
Here ya go, thanks to the Mac OS X "Summarize" service:
Thanks to our myopic and narcissistic media and opportunistic, short-sighted politicians, we are only beginning to grasp the ways in which computer networks are changing, even radicalizing much of the world, sometimes in great, sometimes horrific ways.
...Globalism, arguably the single most significant political issue on the planet even before 9/11, is even more critical now, even though there is little consensus on what it is or how we should feel about it or even define it. Deep-thinking billionaire philanthropist Soros jumps in with a significant new book -- George Soros on Globalization -- in which he advances some exciting and startling ideas about the future.
...Soros uses it to mean the development of global financial markets and the growth of trans-national corporations, along with their increasing power over national economies. "I believe that most of the problems that people associate with globalism," writes Soros, "including the penetration of market values into areas where they do not traditionally belong, can be attributed to these phenomena."
...International capital movement accelerated in the early 1980s under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and financial markets became truly global only in the early 1990s, Soros says, after the collapse of the Soviet empire.
That period also happens to coincide with the most explosive growth of the Net and the Web, perfect engines for the new data-driven economies and systems for the rapid movement -- literally -- of capital.
By contrast, as we can see on the evening news most nights, while governments may not be able to restrict the flow of capital, they're still fairly effective at controlling the movement of people.
...The Chinese were forced to be somewhat more democratic when, with the stroke of a key, billions of dollars in capital could have fled Hong Kong in a micro-second, even if its people couldn't.
"The globalization of financial markets," argues Soros," has rendered the welfare state that came into existence after World War II obsolete, because the people who require a social safety net cannot leave the country, but the capital the welfare state used to tax can."
While the whole thing was a waste of time and resources, it helped to insure that real stories weren't confused with AFs.
And besides, its a bit of Monty-Pythonish humorous irritation. :-)