Gentlemen (and in the case of some of the posters to this thread, I use the term very loosely indeed), while I realize that it is long past the prime time, I'm jumping in anyway. Hopefully my comments will be seen and appreciated.
First off, in response to the statement that society does a lousy job of rearing girls, I'll agree. However, bear in mind that girl children are raised in a manner that has been dictated by men, for their fitness as future mates. So it is by no means an unfair statement to say that society does an equally crappy job in the rearing of boy children. To wit: girls get dolls. Boys get chemistry sets. Thankfully, my family was delightfully strange, so my sisters and I had Legos, chemistry sets, model rockets, and all of the cool toys that girls aren't supposed to be interested in. People still kept giving me Barbie dolls, but I'm proud to say that every last one eventually met a horrible mangled and mutilated fate. Girls are taught that men want a woman who's a cross between Donna Reed and Christina Aguilara; brainiacs need not apply. Boys are taught that smart girls are weird and undatable; most never learn otherwise until it's too late. While the situation has improved over the last 30 years or so, it's a long way from ideal.
Secondly, if you are griping that girls aren't turned on by intellect, I have but one thing to say to you: bollocks! I learned a long time ago that the best indicator of fitness for a long-term-relationship is the quality of what lies between a man's ears. Waistlines expand, hairlines recede. Bank balances come and go, and gravity conquers everything, eventually - on both sides of the gender fence. The best and longest-lasting relationships I have are the ones in which I can converse with the other person about almost anything, for hours on end.
In short, if you want to engage my emotions (not to mention my hormones), you'd better engage my mind first.
Etunes has undergone a major upgrade since I last looked at it. I wrote it off at first glance because there was nothing on there that I was interested in over a year ago.
They Might Be Giants and Bauhaus? Ooh, color *me* happy!
The ability to change colour was regarded as an alchemical property...
It's true. Any sufficiently advanced technology really IS indistinguishable from magic!
Okay, maybe I'm being just a little sarcastic. My point is, just because the Renaissance potters didn't know how the feat was accomplished makes it no less skillful. We're just now coming to the technological point where we can analyze some of these achievements - like the ceramic glaze - and figure out how to replicate them.
Our grandcestors would have found it "magical" indeed, after they finished chewing us out for losing the recipes in the first place.
Both services are fairly new, and neither offer much if anything (at least that I've been able to find) in the way of the indie / alternative stuff that comprises a good 75% of my music library. Now if you want the latest BritTinaKira clone, FillInTheBlank Boys band, or long established musician / group with huge fan base and equal clout, you're good to go. For the up-and-coming, however, there's not much that will allow you to hear before you buy, unless they get tapped to provide a song for a car commercial. (One big exception being MP3.com Of course, you'll have to wade through a lot of chaff to find the wheat, but you always do.)
My point is that file-sharing and file-swapping serve a legitimate purpose. The RIAA would serve the interest of its affiliated artists far better by finding a way to legitimize file-swapping as a form of promotion, instead of trying to nail Kazaa users for offering a years out of press Bowie live club track for download. The genie is out of the bottle, and there's no getting him back in. But he can be harnessed and put to work in a positive way. The RIAA needs to rethink its business dynamic in a big way. Online music libraries for legal download can only help matters in the long run.
It would appear that the sysadmins literally poured blood, sweat, and tears into keeping the ISP up and running under Hussein. Not to mention going way above the "call of duty" to make certain that something of the equipment survived missle attacks, fires, and looting. The real point here is that contact with the outside world is an extremely valuable commodity to these people, and something that we in the Western nations take horribly for granted. Think of Iraqi expatriates in other parts of the globe who don't know if relatives are alive or dead. Or, in the interest of balancing out FoxNews' reporting, a hypothetical Iraqi blogger can now give the outside world a better picture of what's going on in the country. I think that this is a positive step towards rebuilding. Yes, it's an odd, sideways step, given the other needs. But when you consider just how much emotional investment the sysadmins had in this project, their priorities are entirely understandable.
...the Lego(s) by themselves aren't quite geeky enough to merit all of the fuss. Now, if he found a way to add a liquid nitrogen sprayer, or a flamethrower; that would absolutely rock!
Wait - this wasn't another BattleBots thread?
Okay, to be (relatively) serious - it's a fun adaptation, and goes far beyond the usual motorized crane / walking dinosaur constructions. It needs to be tweaked (i.e. fixing the light leak, and a few other things) before it is really usable in a practical** sense, but it gets all kinds of kudos in the "nifty idea; let's see if it works" department.
Now, if he can find a way to build a genuine 3D cylindrical scanner out of Lego(s), that would elevate him to uber-geek status in a heartbeat!
**not that practical usage ever had anything to do with building wonderful toys...
Great. Now I can get random messages from horny guys with a limited command of English - from two directions at once! Oh, be still, my heart...
Seriously; I use ICQ - every day - and I enjoy the features that it has. It lets me keep in contact with family and friends who have scattered to all points of the globe. Features like the birthday reminders and off-line messaging have been mentioned several times; yes, they come in darn handy. I've never had a problem with it crashing, and it's less of a memory hog than Unreal Tournament, IMHO. I can look at the message history for that important something that a friend told me, but I forgot. ("Oh, yeah! Book reccommendation!") And, if nothing else, it allows me to keep my brush-offs in practice.
You have 5 minutes to impress me, or I'm hitting the "ignore" button...
...but I would be a lot happier if I knew that the results of the investigation were going to be turned over to an agency like the FBI. Happier still if the intent were to work with local and federal law enforcement agencies to prosecute fraud. (Spam, while incredibly annoying, isn't a crime. Fraud certainly is. And if it can be proved that any of the pr0n spams that regularly befoul my in-box also went to a minor child, that's a whole other legal can of worms.)
From the article, it seems as though the FTC is asking for powers beyond its regulatory charter, and that makes me a more than a little nervous. No government agency has ever relinquished a power that has come into its possession, at least not any that I know of.
Hell, I've got a much better solution. Rather than turning spammer's PII over to law enforcement, it should be posted on a public forum, as some of the hackers have resorted to doing with one or two of the worst offenders. How many Fingerhut and Lillian Vernon catalogues do you think it'll take before the spammers collectively yell "Uncle"??
Due to a clerical error, he had been deployed to the US instead of Saudi Arabia, and he had to learn English on the fly. Apparently, the Visitors hadn't discovered Berlitz language courses. Some of the word substitution errors were darn funny, too.
Hold on a minute. How I remember this isn't an issue. The question is, why do I remember this??
Dear Lord. I really am a geek, aren't I?? [broad grin]
Yes, Hotmail is a spamtrap. I've known about the chink in the proverbial armor for quite some time now. I've also gotten less than enthusiastic responses when I have tried to bring it to Hotmail's attention. (Really, the only reasons that I keep the account are 1: pure force of habit, and 2: it gives me an address to hand out to political mailing lists and such.) Honestly, though, blaming Hotmail for this is pretty counterproductive. 99% of the time, parsing the header and tracing the return path reveals that the the displayed information was munged and spoofed beyond any resemblence to reality. I have yet to have a spam bearing a Hotmail "from" address actually be sent from a Hotmail account.
Yes, Microsoft is (probably) guilty of a multitude of evils. This, however, doesn't seem to be one of them. Hotmail spam is increasing, just as is all other spam, because there are enough idiots out there who actually will click on links in unsolicited e-mail to make it profitable for the [expletive deleted] who send the shite out in the first place.
...attached to my wrist. Pro: geek chic (and other applicable oxymorons.) Con: I end up looking like Winona Ryder in Alien Resurrection. Eh, I'll stick to the PalmPilot, if I simply must have a portable geek toy.
Now, if it came with the Sean Connery or Pierce Brosnan model 007 attached - yum! Where's my credit card??
...that only men are ever interviewed for these things? Girls can be gearheads, too! But then again...
imagining... "You smell that? Do you smell that? C19 H28 O2, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of testosterone in the morning!"
Yep. The reporter gets into the area, takes a whiff of the atmosphere, and it's Iron John all the way, baby! [very deliberate wink]
As I read the article, it becomes clear that this is not a new tax; merely a further enforcement of an existing one. Most states (as far as I know) which have a sales tax are required to collect taxes on sales made in the state where the business is located, no matter the venue of the sale (online, catalogue, brick & mortar, fax/phone, carrier pigeon, et cetera.)
I live in Colorado, and I have a small business. I'm an artist. If I sell a piece via the internet to someone here in CO, I have to colect sales tax; just as if the purchase had occurred face-to-face at an art show. Why? Because my business is located here. If that same purchase is made by someone in, say, NJ, no sales tax is charged. I don't have a business presence in NJ. Simple as that.
I have heard a lot of discussion about taxing all internet-based purchases, and I think (hope) that two things are going to prevent such a thing from taking place. First is the sheer scope of such a proposal. Collection and distributing the taxes would be a logistical, not to mention jurisdictional nightmare. Who gets what percent? Are states experiencing budget shortfalls entitled somehow to a bigger slice of the pie? Or does the whole thing get gobbled up at the Federal level? It's the sort of monkey wrench question that would make even the most dedicated tax lawyer blench.
Second, and more important, is the constitutionality of such a measure. If I don't reside or have a business presence in NJ, why in the hell am I paying a sales tax into their coffers? In a nutshell: no taxation without representation. (Yes; I know about the sorry example of Washington, DC. Don't get me started on that one. So far as I'm concerned, it just proves my point.)
I miss the old Merrie Melodies cartoons! Especially the oldest ones, from the 1930s. They didn't have a real story ("Plot? What's that?"), since many were created so showcase songs from Warner Bros. music library. But they were fun to watch, and some were played often enough that I was able to learn the incredibly catchy tunes. (And I still remember some of them to this day.) Even better than the Warner Bros. releases, however, were the Fleischer Studios offerings. Betty Boop has become a global cultural icon in a way that Bugs Bunny and Company - let alone any of the current crop - simply can't touch. (And nobody but nobody could get away with naming a character "Bimbo" these days, unless you're a Mexican bakery.) Fleischer Studios did several musical numbers themselves, many starring the vocal talents of Cab Calloway. Max Fleischer and his brother also invented a piece of technology that's still in use for animation today - the rotoscope. It allowed them to capture real motion, which is why so much of their animation had a "surreally real" look and feel.
Personally, I think that the demise of Saturday Morning Television has less to do with the internet, cable, or "quality time" than with the fact that even 20 years ago, people gave kids more credit for intelligence and mental toughness. We are seeing the most rabid romanticism of childhood to occur since the Victorian era. On one hand, children are being painted as delicate little creatures with easily damaged psyches; and heaven forbid that they should be exposed to anything that could mold them in a disturbing way. On the other hand, you have advertisers who pander to the pre-pubescent smartass by portraying kids as being infinitely wittier and more intelligent than any of the adults around them (if you buy X product.) [aside] And people then wonder why their precious child pops off to Grandma. Why? because the commercials, obnoxious as they are, are more fun to watch than the PC pap that passes for a cartoon these days.[/aside] Kids should have things filtered, to an extent. But don't insult their intelligence. They're lots smarter than people think. I watched all of those violent cartoons, and not once did I try to bicycle off of the roof, or drop an anvil from my perch in the tree onto my cousin's head. (Blocks and Nerf balls are another story.) Heck I even read my father's National Lampoons, although that might not be the best example to use if I intend to paint myself as a reasonably well-adapted adult.
In a nutshell, I am going to find as many of the old cartoons as I can. That way, when I do have kids, we can sit and watch them together. I'll get to re-live some darn good memories, and the munchkins will have an appreciation for what the good stuff looks like.
Another Merrie Melodies link.
And a very well done research book.
Further information about Max Fleischer's early work.
So, Mr. Grace sued eBay, citing the so-called "Communications Decency Act." The purpose of this bit of legislation, when it was signed into law by Pres. Clinton, was to crack down on offensive, explicit, or graphic speech and images on the Internet. Not quite six years later, the number of "horse f@cking" spams in my e-mail has increased exponentially, and this - person - uses the law against an auction hosting website, instead of the person who posted the comment, over an instance of sour grapes and infantile behavior.
[sarcasm]Well, I'm just glad to see that somebody's getting some use out of the CDA.[/sarcasm]
Meanwhile, I'm going to go check my eBay feedback, and see if andy46477 has left one of his surreal little comments for me. Wierd as they are, they're pretty darn funny!
The very fact that the government of the United States is claiming that Canada (or any other country) places "too much emphasis on civil liberties" says something profoundly disturbing about the state of our State, and the Evil Old (and young) Men currently infesting Washington.
I know that I will sleep much more soundly the day that Ashcroft is forced to clean out his desk.
...to a Gordian problem, indeed. Given that one out of every three spams that clogged up my Hotmail account for a while at least purported to be from BigPond, I can see the rationale behind the ban. However, I'm not happy with any ISP - especially AOL - deciding for me what e-mails I shall and shall not recieve. This is why I maintain my own set of filters.
Should BigPond tighten up the open relays, and go after offenders themselves? You betcha. Will they, especially after this? Hopefully. The solution to spam originating from BigPond (or anywhere else) should not involve the ISP playing Big Brother. Difficult as it might be to believe, BigPond (or Hotmail, or Yahoo) does have legitamate users who are innocent of broadcasting spam detailing how to enlarge body parts that you might not possess.
...somebody seems to have forgotten to get the word out to the artists. To paraphrase Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park: "You will eventually have CDs on your CD sales website, right?"
In all seriousness, I think that it's a really good idea, if they can pull it off. The problems with signing to a major label are covered nicely in an article that can be found here {http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/problemwithmusic.html), and trying to market your music by yourself can be an exercise in utter futility. There's both safety and promotion capital in numbers. Here's hoping... *crosses fingers*
Having read the article, I can't find anything that leads me to believe that Ms. O'Connor Kelly is guilty of anything othere than being employed by a company that was guilty of privacy abuses. It was stated, in fact, that she came on-board with DoubleClick after the investigation, and was responsible for cleaning up the company's act. How utterly reprehensible!:) My actual worry is that this will be nothing more than an "honorary" posting; something that Ashcroft can point to and say "See? We've got someone working on privacy issues," while carefully not pointing out that she's not allowed to actually do anything about privacy protection. Although, the mention that the "Total Information Awareness" program has been - at least temporarily - derailed has me breathing a little easier.
Of course, if it does come down to a worse-case scenario, I'm going to have to unblock DoubleClick's cookies, or I'll be in big trouble!
It's been mentioned before that this little gizmo isn't heavy enough to be an effective massager, so I won't belabor that point. What I will say is that, after looking through whole the site, it isn't meant to be. The people who created this are artists. Admittedly, artists who are also darn good engineers, but artists nonetheless; and as such, they're probably more conerned about aesthetic than function. Now, I'm not saying that this gizmo doesn't function; it does just what it's supposed to do. It bumbles around on your back and creates a tickling sensation. It's not entirely non-theraputic; the light pressure is probably enough to stimulate the circulation to an extent. Still, it was created as a piece of artwork, and that is its primary function.
Good massage requires the ability to find and loosen tense muscles without hurting the person being massaged. This means it has to be interactive: "Am I pressing too hard? How does that feel?" Even most hydromassage beds don't allow a person to control water pressure or target certain areas. People spend years (depending on the local requirements) learning the techniques and becoming certified, and that is because you can do some major damage if you don't know what you're doing. Bottom line is, it's a toy. It's cute, and has a serious "way cool" factor, but it's piece of self-propelled sculpture. Human hands aren't in any danger of becoming obsolete, IMNSHO.
As an old hand at apartment gardening, I can give you a few pointers.
~ First off, figure out what kind of exposure your chosen window has. (No, not
that kind!) A south-facing window gets the most light, and is best for plants that like a lot of direct sun. North-facing windows have a more filtered light ("cooler" light, in art and photography terms.) Plants that like light, but not quite so much, will do well there. Partial-shade plants will do better in an east-facing window. I recommend sun-loving plants for western exposures, because they'll get lots of late-day sun as the summer wears on.
~ Don't plant anything that will outgrow its container. Save the zucchini for when you have a yard, and a fence that you want to hide.
~ Using potting soil relieves you of worries about soil Ph. By the same token, though, you should do some homework on what kind of soil your chosen plants like best.
~ Buy seedlings, and re-plant them. That way, the local wildlife will be less likely to think you're putting out a buffet for them.
~ If you can manage two windowboxes, plant one with cooking herbs and one with flowers. Also, until you learn what everything looks like, keep the little nametags on sticks. Parsley and cilantro look very similar to the novice.
~ Find a copy of Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. (It's available through amazon.com.) He has a lot of good ideas that can be adapted for pot and windowbox gardens. And don't overlook what might be your best resource of all: the folks at the local garden center. Yes, I know that interacting with real, live people can be scary for/.ters (wink, grin), but they're the professionals. Think of them as tech support for dirtware.
Just don't allow yourself to be talked into buying three dozen gaudy petunia plants, and you'll be fine.
If I'm reading the article correctly, what the researchers are attempting to do is nothing more than step up the T-cells' normal function. They already go after disease pathogens, and there is a certain amount of evidence that they behave the same way towards cancerous cells in the same way that they do any other "foreign body." For reasons unknown, some rogue cells slip through the defenses and proliferate beyond the immune system's capabilities to fight the disease. Since the T-cells being use are being harvested from the patient, the risks of autoimmune responses being triggered should be minimized, since the "self/not self" coding is already in place. And, as Suidae said in the above post, T-cells have a limited lifespan, so the potential harm is minimized further.
I see a great deal of promise here. I don't know if you've ever been around someone recieving conventional cancer treatments, but I have. When I say that "the cure can be worse than the disease", that's not mere speculation; it's a direct quote from someone who - irony of ironies - didn't feel sick until her cancer was diagnosed and she started treatment. She felt just fine before the chemo and radiation. Three years later, she's cancer-free, but still having health problems caused by the lingering after-effects of the treatments. IMNSHO, anything that leads to a way of curing cancer without half-killing the patient is worth pursuing.
Slashdot Mirror
First off, in response to the statement that society does a lousy job of rearing girls, I'll agree. However, bear in mind that girl children are raised in a manner that has been dictated by men, for their fitness as future mates. So it is by no means an unfair statement to say that society does an equally crappy job in the rearing of boy children. To wit: girls get dolls. Boys get chemistry sets. Thankfully, my family was delightfully strange, so my sisters and I had Legos, chemistry sets, model rockets, and all of the cool toys that girls aren't supposed to be interested in. People still kept giving me Barbie dolls, but I'm proud to say that every last one eventually met a horrible mangled and mutilated fate. Girls are taught that men want a woman who's a cross between Donna Reed and Christina Aguilara; brainiacs need not apply. Boys are taught that smart girls are weird and undatable; most never learn otherwise until it's too late. While the situation has improved over the last 30 years or so, it's a long way from ideal.
Secondly, if you are griping that girls aren't turned on by intellect, I have but one thing to say to you: bollocks! I learned a long time ago that the best indicator of fitness for a long-term-relationship is the quality of what lies between a man's ears.
Waistlines expand, hairlines recede. Bank balances come and go, and gravity conquers everything, eventually - on both sides of the gender fence. The best and longest-lasting relationships I have are the ones in which I can converse with the other person about almost anything, for hours on end.
In short, if you want to engage my emotions (not to mention my hormones), you'd better engage my mind first.
They Might Be Giants and Bauhaus? Ooh, color *me* happy!
It's true. Any sufficiently advanced technology really IS indistinguishable from magic!
Okay, maybe I'm being just a little sarcastic. My point is, just because the Renaissance potters didn't know how the feat was accomplished makes it no less skillful. We're just now coming to the technological point where we can analyze some of these achievements - like the ceramic glaze - and figure out how to replicate them.
Our grandcestors would have found it "magical" indeed, after they finished chewing us out for losing the recipes in the first place.
My point is that file-sharing and file-swapping serve a legitimate purpose. The RIAA would serve the interest of its affiliated artists far better by finding a way to legitimize file-swapping as a form of promotion, instead of trying to nail Kazaa users for offering a years out of press Bowie live club track for download. The genie is out of the bottle, and there's no getting him back in. But he can be harnessed and put to work in a positive way. The RIAA needs to rethink its business dynamic in a big way. Online music libraries for legal download can only help matters in the long run.
It would appear that the sysadmins literally poured blood, sweat, and tears into keeping the ISP up and running under Hussein. Not to mention going way above the "call of duty" to make certain that something of the equipment survived missle attacks, fires, and looting.
The real point here is that contact with the outside world is an extremely valuable commodity to these people, and something that we in the Western nations take horribly for granted. Think of Iraqi expatriates in other parts of the globe who don't know if relatives are alive or dead. Or, in the interest of balancing out FoxNews' reporting, a hypothetical Iraqi blogger can now give the outside world a better picture of what's going on in the country. I think that this is a positive step towards rebuilding. Yes, it's an odd, sideways step, given the other needs. But when you consider just how much emotional investment the sysadmins had in this project, their priorities are entirely understandable.
All in all, however, I prefer the Dilbert and Escher interpretations. Fun stuff!
Wait - this wasn't another BattleBots thread?
Okay, to be (relatively) serious - it's a fun adaptation, and goes far beyond the usual motorized crane / walking dinosaur constructions. It needs to be tweaked (i.e. fixing the light leak, and a few other things) before it is really usable in a practical** sense, but it gets all kinds of kudos in the "nifty idea; let's see if it works" department.
Now, if he can find a way to build a genuine 3D cylindrical scanner out of Lego(s), that would elevate him to uber-geek status in a heartbeat!
**not that practical usage ever had anything to do with building wonderful toys...
Seriously; I use ICQ - every day - and I enjoy the features that it has. It lets me keep in contact with family and friends who have scattered to all points of the globe. Features like the birthday reminders and off-line messaging have been mentioned several times; yes, they come in darn handy. I've never had a problem with it crashing, and it's less of a memory hog than Unreal Tournament, IMHO. I can look at the message history for that important something that a friend told me, but I forgot. ("Oh, yeah! Book reccommendation!") And, if nothing else, it allows me to keep my brush-offs in practice.
You have 5 minutes to impress me, or I'm hitting the "ignore" button...
- In the book all female characters except Galadriel were footnotes...
I would hardly call Eowyn a footnote, given that she's one of the most pivotal characters in the books.Or it could be that you just have a thing for pointy ears... ;)
From the article, it seems as though the FTC is asking for powers beyond its regulatory charter, and that makes me a more than a little nervous. No government agency has ever relinquished a power that has come into its possession, at least not any that I know of.
Hell, I've got a much better solution. Rather than turning spammer's PII over to law enforcement, it should be posted on a public forum, as some of the hackers have resorted to doing with one or two of the worst offenders. How many Fingerhut and Lillian Vernon catalogues do you think it'll take before the spammers collectively yell "Uncle"??
Hold on a minute. How I remember this isn't an issue. The question is, why do I remember this??
Dear Lord. I really am a geek, aren't I?? [broad grin]
Honestly, though, blaming Hotmail for this is pretty counterproductive. 99% of the time, parsing the header and tracing the return path reveals that the the displayed information was munged and spoofed beyond any resemblence to reality. I have yet to have a spam bearing a Hotmail "from" address actually be sent from a Hotmail account.
Yes, Microsoft is (probably) guilty of a multitude of evils. This, however, doesn't seem to be one of them. Hotmail spam is increasing, just as is all other spam, because there are enough idiots out there who actually will click on links in unsolicited e-mail to make it profitable for the [expletive deleted] who send the shite out in the first place.
Eh, I'll stick to the PalmPilot, if I simply must have a portable geek toy.
Now, if it came with the Sean Connery or Pierce Brosnan model 007 attached - yum! Where's my credit card??
imagining... "You smell that? Do you smell that? C19 H28 O2, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of testosterone in the morning!"
Yep. The reporter gets into the area, takes a whiff of the atmosphere, and it's Iron John all the way, baby! [very deliberate wink]
I live in Colorado, and I have a small business. I'm an artist. If I sell a piece via the internet to someone here in CO, I have to colect sales tax; just as if the purchase had occurred face-to-face at an art show. Why? Because my business is located here. If that same purchase is made by someone in, say, NJ, no sales tax is charged. I don't have a business presence in NJ. Simple as that.
I have heard a lot of discussion about taxing all internet-based purchases, and I think (hope) that two things are going to prevent such a thing from taking place. First is the sheer scope of such a proposal. Collection and distributing the taxes would be a logistical, not to mention jurisdictional nightmare. Who gets what percent? Are states experiencing budget shortfalls entitled somehow to a bigger slice of the pie? Or does the whole thing get gobbled up at the Federal level? It's the sort of monkey wrench question that would make even the most dedicated tax lawyer blench.
Second, and more important, is the constitutionality of such a measure. If I don't reside or have a business presence in NJ, why in the hell am I paying a sales tax into their coffers? In a nutshell: no taxation without representation.
(Yes; I know about the sorry example of Washington, DC. Don't get me started on that one. So far as I'm concerned, it just proves my point.)
Merrie Melodies:o dies/
http://www.toonzone.net/early-years/
http://www.bcdb.com/pages/Warner_Bros_/Merrie_Mel
The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartons at amazon.com:6 038325/103-1349286-7639828?vi=glance
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/081
Fleischer Studios and Max Fleischer biographical information:a tors/fleischer.htmld ios/
http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/archive/innov
http://www.toonopedia.com/fleischr.htm
http://www.bcdb.com/pages/Paramount/Fleischer_Stu
Even better than the Warner Bros. releases, however, were the Fleischer Studios offerings. Betty Boop has become a global cultural icon in a way that Bugs Bunny and Company - let alone any of the current crop - simply can't touch. (And nobody but nobody could get away with naming a character "Bimbo" these days, unless you're a Mexican bakery.) Fleischer Studios did several musical numbers themselves, many starring the vocal talents of Cab Calloway. Max Fleischer and his brother also invented a piece of technology that's still in use for animation today - the rotoscope. It allowed them to capture real motion, which is why so much of their animation had a "surreally real" look and feel.
Personally, I think that the demise of Saturday Morning Television has less to do with the internet, cable, or "quality time" than with the fact that even 20 years ago, people gave kids more credit for intelligence and mental toughness. We are seeing the most rabid romanticism of childhood to occur since the Victorian era. On one hand, children are being painted as delicate little creatures with easily damaged psyches; and heaven forbid that they should be exposed to anything that could mold them in a disturbing way. On the other hand, you have advertisers who pander to the pre-pubescent smartass by portraying kids as being infinitely wittier and more intelligent than any of the adults around them (if you buy X product.) [aside] And people then wonder why their precious child pops off to Grandma. Why? because the commercials, obnoxious as they are, are more fun to watch than the PC pap that passes for a cartoon these days.[/aside] Kids should have things filtered, to an extent. But don't insult their intelligence. They're lots smarter than people think.
I watched all of those violent cartoons, and not once did I try to bicycle off of the roof, or drop an anvil from my perch in the tree onto my cousin's head. (Blocks and Nerf balls are another story.) Heck I even read my father's National Lampoons, although that might not be the best example to use if I intend to paint myself as a reasonably well-adapted adult.
In a nutshell, I am going to find as many of the old cartoons as I can. That way, when I do have kids, we can sit and watch them together. I'll get to re-live some darn good memories, and the munchkins will have an appreciation for what the good stuff looks like.
Another Merrie Melodies link.
And a very well done research book.
Further information about Max Fleischer's early work.
Not quite six years later, the number of "horse f@cking" spams in my e-mail has increased exponentially, and this - person - uses the law against an auction hosting website, instead of the person who posted the comment, over an instance of sour grapes and infantile behavior.
[sarcasm]Well, I'm just glad to see that somebody's getting some use out of the CDA.[/sarcasm]
Meanwhile, I'm going to go check my eBay feedback, and see if andy46477 has left one of his surreal little comments for me. Wierd as they are, they're pretty darn funny!
I know that I will sleep much more soundly the day that Ashcroft is forced to clean out his desk.
Given that one out of every three spams that clogged up my Hotmail account for a while at least purported to be from BigPond, I can see the rationale behind the ban. However, I'm not happy with any ISP - especially AOL - deciding for me what e-mails I shall and shall not recieve. This is why I maintain my own set of filters.
Should BigPond tighten up the open relays, and go after offenders themselves? You betcha. Will they, especially after this? Hopefully. The solution to spam originating from BigPond (or anywhere else) should not involve the ISP playing Big Brother. Difficult as it might be to believe, BigPond (or Hotmail, or Yahoo) does have legitamate users who are innocent of broadcasting spam detailing how to enlarge body parts that you might not possess.
In all seriousness, I think that it's a really good idea, if they can pull it off. The problems with signing to a major label are covered nicely in an article that can be found here {http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/problemwithmusic .html), and trying to market your music by yourself can be an exercise in utter futility. There's both safety and promotion capital in numbers.
Here's hoping... *crosses fingers*
My actual worry is that this will be nothing more than an "honorary" posting; something that Ashcroft can point to and say "See? We've got someone working on privacy issues," while carefully not pointing out that she's not allowed to actually do anything about privacy protection. Although, the mention that the "Total Information Awareness" program has been - at least temporarily - derailed has me breathing a little easier.
Of course, if it does come down to a worse-case scenario, I'm going to have to unblock DoubleClick's cookies, or I'll be in big trouble!
The people who created this are artists. Admittedly, artists who are also darn good engineers, but artists nonetheless; and as such, they're probably more conerned about aesthetic than function. Now, I'm not saying that this gizmo doesn't function; it does just what it's supposed to do. It bumbles around on your back and creates a tickling sensation. It's not entirely non-theraputic; the light pressure is probably enough to stimulate the circulation to an extent. Still, it was created as a piece of artwork, and that is its primary function.
Good massage requires the ability to find and loosen tense muscles without hurting the person being massaged. This means it has to be interactive: "Am I pressing too hard? How does that feel?" Even most hydromassage beds don't allow a person to control water pressure or target certain areas. People spend years (depending on the local requirements) learning the techniques and becoming certified, and that is because you can do some major damage if you don't know what you're doing.
Bottom line is, it's a toy. It's cute, and has a serious "way cool" factor, but it's piece of self-propelled sculpture. Human hands aren't in any danger of becoming obsolete, IMNSHO.
- ~ First off, figure out what kind of exposure your chosen window has. (No, not
- that kind!) A south-facing window gets the most light, and is best for plants that like a lot of direct sun. North-facing windows have a more filtered light ("cooler" light, in art and photography terms.) Plants that like light, but not quite so much, will do well there. Partial-shade plants will do better in an east-facing window. I recommend sun-loving plants for western exposures, because they'll get lots of late-day sun as the summer wears on.
Just don't allow yourself to be talked into buying three dozen gaudy petunia plants, and you'll be fine.~ Don't plant anything that will outgrow its container. Save the zucchini for when you have a yard, and a fence that you want to hide.
~ Using potting soil relieves you of worries about soil Ph. By the same token, though, you should do some homework on what kind of soil your chosen plants like best.
~ Buy seedlings, and re-plant them. That way, the local wildlife will be less likely to think you're putting out a buffet for them.
~ If you can manage two windowboxes, plant one with cooking herbs and one with flowers. Also, until you learn what everything looks like, keep the little nametags on sticks. Parsley and cilantro look very similar to the novice.
~ Find a copy of Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. (It's available through amazon.com.) He has a lot of good ideas that can be adapted for pot and windowbox gardens. And don't overlook what might be your best resource of all: the folks at the local garden center. Yes, I know that interacting with real, live people can be scary for /.ters (wink, grin), but they're the professionals. Think of them as tech support for dirtware.
I see a great deal of promise here. I don't know if you've ever been around someone recieving conventional cancer treatments, but I have. When I say that "the cure can be worse than the disease", that's not mere speculation; it's a direct quote from someone who - irony of ironies - didn't feel sick until her cancer was diagnosed and she started treatment. She felt just fine before the chemo and radiation. Three years later, she's cancer-free, but still having health problems caused by the lingering after-effects of the treatments. IMNSHO, anything that leads to a way of curing cancer without half-killing the patient is worth pursuing.