No, Toebacky farmers are getting rich in the US because the US Govment is buying out their farms, or at least their production of tobacco. It's still voluntary at this point, and it's a pretty big carrot that they're dangling out in front of the farmers, even given the return tobacco farmers get normally.
Unfortunately, the thing that will get livestock farmers in the US out of business will be SLAPP suits by PETA et al. (but we'll still keep importing meat and byproducts from Canada, Mexico, China, India, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, etc...)
So what? It's over in 3 months. You get your grade, and unless your major involves the dept the prof is in, BFD.
In a way, it's no worse than any sort of "hoorah" chest-beating artificial motivation session. You beat your chest and shout "hoorah" with the best of your convictions until its over and you're out, and then you go on about with your life.
What do you do when you go to your mother-in-law's [replace with whatever is relevant for you] house, and all she does is yap about what this or that neighbor is doing, yadayadayada 24x7? Eventually, you just leave once you tire of nodding and saying, "Yeah, I hear you" for the 10,000th time.
The smart people figure out how to grease the skids of their obnoxious profs like chameleons. "write what they want to hear" is what they say. It's no different than having a stupid moronic boss who's surrounded by yes-men, but you don't want to be a yes-man (and get that hearty butt-slap that goes along with it). Yet if you did do the yes-man thing, it could mean quite the nice bullet point on your resume/CV.
It's your choice. On one hand, you're proud and you stand by your principles. On the other, your a stubborn and obstinate jackass who won't do what it takes to move past this minor blockage in the grand schem of things.
I think McCarthy got to where he wanted to go. Would the President have been able to have such a public Star Chamber as McCarthy's committee sessions? No.
Well, if the same zeal that was applied to Bill Clinton by the Republican face-shot takers, then why not now with one of their own? Oh, I get it now. It's bad to "lie" to Congress, but it's OK to hold Congress in complete contempt and disregard.
At least Clinton was smart enough to set up the facilities OUT SIDE of the US, and could then argue that they were only intercepting and monitoring international traffic. Absolutely no problem with that one.
Could Echelon be slipped into the US, though, under the guise of the FCC's charter to monitor the radio waves to ensure that spectrum wasn't being misused?
I had a friend in high school who's dad worked at one of these FCC sites in Whatcom County, Washington. Which is right next to Canada. Hmm... Yes, they did listen in on radio and wireless phone calls on their own...
Hmm... Congress could simply just pull the funding for the NSA's activities right out of the next appropriations bill, too.
Congress *DOES* override Executive Branch powers. Ever heard of Congress forcing the Executive Branch offices, like the DoD, to pay for programs that it doesn't want? The President DOES use Executive Orders to trump Congress, at least as far as the operation of Government offices and personnel go. Congress *CAN* (and has, at least once), limit the jurisdiction of the Supreme and Federal Courts over certain limited matters.
How do you really differentiate a group of "foreign" agents operating within the US from a group of "domestic" agents doing the same thing? During the Cold War, we didn't need these silly laws to keep the USSR from doing what it did with espionage and spy turning, did we? No. It took hard work and people doing it. It worked good enough to the point that the only *real* threat was the inside threat, the frustrated intelligence analyst, the FBI agent with some oedipal complex issues, etc. Not much to do to prevent that except keep an eye out for the activity and try to nip it in the bud as fast as could be done.
The worst intelligence problems for the US weren't caused by foreign spies, but by turned American citizens.
Yes, but, prior to 9/11/2001, what was the largest terorist attack in the US, and who brought it about? It wasn't OBL... It was high-fivin' white guys, Terry Nichols and Tim McVeigh.
How come the powers that keep tabs on the Militia Men, ELF, etc. aren't enough to keep the kibosh on potential terrorist cells in the US? I guess I read too many Tom Clancy books in the 80's & 90's, where we managed to smoke them out evenentually (albeit sometimes after the fact), WAYYY before PATRIOT ACT, etc.
It shouldn't be THAT hard to infiltrate the various Islamic communities now, should it?
Well, due to the work involved with fibre, it costs only marginally more to lay a 96-fibre line than it does to lay a 10-fibre line. Most of the $$$ here is in the $$$ paid for the rights-of-way and trenching equipment, which is basically the same. So you put in lots of dark fibre.
Ever been in new construction housing? They use Cat5/Cat5E cable for both phone and other lines. Why? It makes no sense to use Cat3, even though it's cheaper. OF course, they still tend to put it in the house in one big loop or tree, instead of separate pulls to each termination point, but still...
Then, if it becomes obvious that you're probably never going to use the other 86 of those fibres in the next 10-20 years, and someone comes along with a big wad of $$$ offering to buy some/most of them, you'd probably be stupid to not sell the lines to them, because you are essentially selling them something that for you now is basically free.
Broadband costs go up because...they can. They're not regulated the way POTS is.
But what is the useful life of this equipment versus its depreciation schedules? I would bet that the telcos do not depreciate this stuff any more than 3-5 years, right? Once it's depreciated, the $$$ collected by the equipment is pure gold, because they're essentially getting those $$$ for no real expense (beyond utilities).
Plus, this stuff is usually pretty remote and requires pretty zany uptime, in order to minimize service calls (not to mention service interruptions). While high, the costs for the equipment is upfront sunken costs. Which if you have the pockets, is a pretty good way to make lots of $$$ once the equipment is depreciated (but still quite usable) down to $0.
Like all the dark fibre, and except for the switches, all the line gear that goes into one of these fibres is a fixed, sunk cost, with minimal operating expenses. These are profit generators for the telcos.
But if BellSouth clamps down on bandwidth like this, is there a state that might say that BellSouth is violating its relationship with the state by essentially trying to regulate Interstate Commerce (because of the telecom's common carrier status), and that BellSouth's proposal has to be approved by all the regulating entities in their boundaries before they can implement it?
I mean, in some cases they have to go to the regulators in order to change service offerings, such as increasing mailbox size for voice mail from 10 saved messages to 15, or something stupid like that, even if it means no actual change in rates. Why should this tiered pricing be any different?
If anything, it is MORE expensive for phone companies to do VoIP over their existing copper because it adds yet another layer of complexity, more hardware to service, and more administration.
Doesn't it actually require *LESS* infrastructure? The lines are already there. The DSLAMS are already there. VoIP then is just like any other packet-based connection.
This is like saying that the Telcos were justified in trying to classify modem traffic on analog phone lines through signal analysis and other technical measures and charging the telephone number MORE for those minutes used by the modem. It was tried in the US, but not for very long, due to the outcry, that most of the regulating bodies heard an earful about it and shot it down, etc. This was in the early 90's, when ISDN was the Next Big Thing for home connectivity. It might have even been PacBell that was one of the first telcos to try and do it...
The typical refrain from the telcos was that the increase in dialup usage tied up their circuits longer, they had to buy more equipment to handle long-term connections and lay more telephone lines (for 2nd and 3rd phone lines to homes, blah blah blah) and thus they needed to charge more to help ensure their quasi-mandated 10% profit.
So, basically, BellSouth thinks they are like a grocery or software store, where major vendors pay the store for the shelf space they can use for their products, like Coke & Pepsi do.
But the rest of us see the cable tv model, where the service provider pays the content provider (i.e., Comcast pays Discovery Networks) ostensibly some of the $$$ paid by the actual subscribers.
The Portal model has basically gone kaput, so what is BellSouth to do?
One thing that they could try would be to just make it so that users have to use IE and connect to a BellSouth proxy and policy server, by setting up a system account on the Windows box that can't be removed by typical Windows administrator accounts as part of the official BellSouth Portal software that configures users to run first and foremost through the BellSouth portal. Setting up the proxy and policies correctly is trivial to do right, they would just need to then codify in the TOS wordage to the effect that those who try to override or circumvent those policies (for even as simple of an act as setting their homepage to about:none) are violating the TOS, etc.
But that model kind of went to the shitter as well.
Poor BellSouth (and SBC. I won't call them AT&T).
Re:Don't suppose the No Nukes freaks will apologiz
on
Pluto Probe Launches
·
· Score: 1
apoligize for what, exactly?
Do you demand that the operators of coal-fired power plants apologize to the residents of the Black Forest in Germany, the NE United States/SE Canada, etc. for all the damage to arboreal forests caused by acid rain?
Some accidents happen. If they had to abort that rocket, it would have been downrange from Cape Canaveral into the Atlantic Ocean. Sure, the COSMOS probe that crashed into Alberta in the 80's spewed some plutonium over some area of a range grazing area, but the world didn't come to a crashing halt now did it?
I think the hyperbole used by the fearmongers does not match the reality. How much more plutonium was induced into the biosphere by the open air detonations of fission weapons in the 50's and 60's (as well as fission-triggered fusion devices)? Again, we're all still here.
...to add: DirecTV didn't ask Google, Yahoo, et al. to serve them complete web search result information for card programmers, boot blockers, etc. They probably did their own trivial research, found out the companies that were doing it, asked Canada nicely to knock on these guys doors (after going hard after one or two others to set the example) and ask for their customer lists, and THEN started going after the customers using a primae fasciae (or whatever the legal term is) reason to seek damages in CIVIL court or as the basis to look for evidence of criminal wrongdoing (like people who have above the board or below the board "services" where they program/sell cards to people).
Somehow that seems to be the right way to do it. But no. Let's put the cart in front of the horse.
If illegal things are available, then they should search out the illegal things themselves. Then, serve warrantst to/subpoenae those websites for their weblogs to get how many hits they get.
At least then if they've done their own searching they can present this to a judge who can then make a slightly informed decision on the request, which is how the f'ing system was set up in the first place.
Probably not. My two kids (7 and 5) have tasted beer, and to them it tastes like shit. I know it did to me when I was that young, too. (For the prudes, I dipped my finger in it and let them lick it off, and let them make up their own mind at that time. The wife wasn't happy, but it's amusing in a way to get razzed by your kids when you have the odd beer, and I feel good when they say, "Daddy likes beer, but I don't like it. It tastes like poop!").
Every so often, I ask them if they want a taste. No doing. Good.
Would I do that with porn? Well... they get to see sheep and cows fucking and horses walking around with 5th legs. Do we make a big deal out of it? Nope. But we also try not to stare at it, because it's a natural thing. For even better questions from your kids, if you drive by a dairy farm where the cows are out or waiting to be milked, you stand a good chance of seeing a female cow mount another female cow, for whatever reason they do it [probably a stress reaction]. Too bad the grrl-power types don't show horses breeding... Mares quite literally beat the shit out of the stallion for awhile before they submit...
When the time is right, they will probably learn that two people engaged in sexual acts shouldn't be feared for what it is, and that it's a bit like beer or coffee at this stage. When they get older they can make up their own opinions of it. Like, when they're 34. There are pictures of people "doing it" that are just that, nothing more and nothing less, and then there is the tittilating stuff.
But seriously, I think the fear of things unknown drives people to the forbidden thing in the long run, which of course the religious and puritanical prudes of the US will most vociferously disagree with. Yet isn't it telling when one of these closet freaks is found out with some weird kink for prostitutes wearing saran wrap, their own child porn stash, etc.?
The wildest party animals I knew of were the ones who went to the strict Christian schools. Oddly enough, they were probably the most repressed ones at home, too.
These would-be moral supremacists can't even control their own secret desires, so why do they put so much energy into trying to control everyone else's?
Well, do you still go outside and watch the thunder and lightning of a thunderstorm, even though The Experts say that you could still be hit by lightning from a cloud miles away?
I know I do.
Most people have not been seriously burned by fire. Yet those who have, and they're not an insignificant number, may want to end the distribution of gasoline through small, portable containers, stop the sale of lighters and matches, etc.
No matter what the law says, there will always be criminals who manage to slip through the cracks and cause damage. Is passing tougher laws helpful if no more effort is made to allow for the enforcement of the new laws? Is shifting the activities of law enforcement from crimes of more effect and higher probability a smart thing? Probably not, if you think about it.
You got lucky. I'm glad you did, and wish to hell the people who did stuff like what they tried to do with you could be caught and summarily executed. But it ain't gonna happen. Does what happen to you justify throwing everything else away for everyone else just to make this edge case not happen again? Does where you live have a 24-hr curfew for kids walking along the streets in groups smaller than 4 without an adult with them? No, because most people would realize this is an overly restrictive law with marginal benefit to them.
My daughter won a 1:10000 or so lottery, and had an ischemic stroke at birth (even luckier, she's no worse for the wear, 5 yrs later. No deficits. No CP. Just no left temporal lobe). So I kind of have a feel for both sides of this "small chance" scenario.
While I respect and feel for all the other parents who have bad shit like this happen to their kids, in the whole scheme of things, the odds are still that *most* kids go through life with few or no sigificant incidents like this, just lots of near misses. That, to me, is simply amazing. Despite the best intentions of our parents, governments, friends, enemies, etc., most of us reach adulthood more or less relatively unscathed.
Who passed the law? A Democratically-controlled Congress, or a Republican-controlled congress that hated Clinton's guts? It didn't matter anyways, the Pubs went after Slick Willy anyways.
Clinton pumped it up because he had to, to try and shed positive "bipartisanship" to try and dampen Ken Starr's investigation and negative Republican views towards Clinton.
That Bush seems to be so willing to jump on to unpopular, already defeated (either politically or legally) dead horses and somehow try to beat them back from death is amazing.
Why do you think the "military" abandoned the internet to the public?
The Internet was proof-of-concept. Once they saw that it worked, they came out with and still have various other internal networks, the most widely known probably being MILNET.
I think the more cynical view of the President's request is that once they have this data, they can mine it for whatever purpose they want outside of the scope of the original request. They may not get any more of it anytime soon, but they could then come up with all sorts of conclusions and "points of interest" to use for the next deep diving expedition into Google's (but why not also MSN, AOL, Yahoo, et al., or have they already quietly complied with the request?
The doctor said I subconsciously blanked everything else out. The same type of thing happens to people who've undergone serious trauma/abuse.
Uh...this tends to happen only for very acute and rapid traumas, like being t-boned by a drunk driver. I would imagine that any cop who has shot and killed some kid, and found out that the kid was wielding just a BB gun, would give anything to just hit the DO OVER button on that one, wish he could blank it out, etc.
There are also things like survivor guilt, etc. that are components of PTSD, as does knowing SOMETHING bad happened and not being able to remember it. What if in your car crash everyone else in your car or the other car had been killed?
Yes, people can witness shit that traumatizes them so much their brain blocks it out. Unfortunately, it tends to lock up their brains on it, too.
Slashdot Mirror
No, Toebacky farmers are getting rich in the US because the US Govment is buying out their farms, or at least their production of tobacco.
It's still voluntary at this point, and it's a pretty big carrot that they're dangling out in front of the farmers, even given the return tobacco farmers get normally.
Unfortunately, the thing that will get livestock farmers in the US out of business will be SLAPP suits by PETA et al. (but we'll still keep importing meat and byproducts from Canada, Mexico, China, India, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, etc...)
No, opinions are far more dangerous these days than walking around, Rambo-style, with a locked-and-loaded M60 through the shopping mall.
So what? It's over in 3 months. You get your grade, and unless your major involves the dept the prof is in, BFD.
In a way, it's no worse than any sort of "hoorah" chest-beating artificial motivation session. You beat your chest and shout "hoorah" with the best of your convictions until its over and you're out, and then you go on about with your life.
What do you do when you go to your mother-in-law's [replace with whatever is relevant for you] house, and all she does is yap about what this or that neighbor is doing, yadayadayada 24x7? Eventually, you just leave once you tire of nodding and saying, "Yeah, I hear you" for the 10,000th time.
The smart people figure out how to grease the skids of their obnoxious profs like chameleons. "write what they want to hear" is what they say. It's no different than having a stupid moronic boss who's surrounded by yes-men, but you don't want to be a yes-man (and get that hearty butt-slap that goes along with it). Yet if you did do the yes-man thing, it could mean quite the nice bullet point on your resume/CV.
It's your choice. On one hand, you're proud and you stand by your principles. On the other, your a stubborn and obstinate jackass who won't do what it takes to move past this minor blockage in the grand schem of things.
I think McCarthy got to where he wanted to go. Would the President have been able to have such a public Star Chamber as McCarthy's committee sessions? No.
Well, how much blind luck was it that none of the Navy's aircraft carriers were in Pearl Harbor at the time, which were Yamamoto's primary targets?
Well, if the same zeal that was applied to Bill Clinton by the Republican face-shot takers, then why not now with one of their own? Oh, I get it now. It's bad to "lie" to Congress, but it's OK to hold Congress in complete contempt and disregard.
At least Clinton was smart enough to set up the facilities OUT SIDE of the US, and could then argue that they were only intercepting and monitoring international traffic. Absolutely no problem with that one.
Could Echelon be slipped into the US, though, under the guise of the FCC's charter to monitor the radio waves to ensure that spectrum wasn't being misused?
I had a friend in high school who's dad worked at one of these FCC sites in Whatcom County, Washington. Which is right next to Canada. Hmm... Yes, they did listen in on radio and wireless phone calls on their own...
Hmm... Congress could simply just pull the funding for the NSA's activities right out of the next appropriations bill, too.
Congress *DOES* override Executive Branch powers. Ever heard of Congress forcing the Executive Branch offices, like the DoD, to pay for programs that it doesn't want? The President DOES use Executive Orders to trump Congress, at least as far as the operation of Government offices and personnel go. Congress *CAN* (and has, at least once), limit the jurisdiction of the Supreme and Federal Courts over certain limited matters.
How do you really differentiate a group of "foreign" agents operating within the US from a group of "domestic" agents doing the same thing? During the Cold War, we didn't need these silly laws to keep the USSR from doing what it did with espionage and spy turning, did we?
No. It took hard work and people doing it. It worked good enough to the point that the only *real* threat was the inside threat, the frustrated intelligence analyst, the FBI agent with some oedipal complex issues, etc. Not much to do to prevent that except keep an eye out for the activity and try to nip it in the bud as fast as could be done.
The worst intelligence problems for the US weren't caused by foreign spies, but by turned American citizens.
Yes, but, prior to 9/11/2001, what was the largest terorist attack in the US, and who brought it about? It wasn't OBL... It was high-fivin' white guys, Terry Nichols and Tim McVeigh.
How come the powers that keep tabs on the Militia Men, ELF, etc. aren't enough to keep the kibosh on potential terrorist cells in the US? I guess I read too many Tom Clancy books in the 80's & 90's, where we managed to smoke them out evenentually (albeit sometimes after the fact), WAYYY before PATRIOT ACT, etc.
It shouldn't be THAT hard to infiltrate the various Islamic communities now, should it?
On the flipside, how many MORE utility interruptions on above-ground lines were caused by downed trees, ice storms, car accidents, etc.?
Well, due to the work involved with fibre, it costs only marginally more to lay a 96-fibre line than it does to lay a 10-fibre line. Most of the $$$ here is in the $$$ paid for the rights-of-way and trenching equipment, which is basically the same. So you put in lots of dark fibre.
Ever been in new construction housing? They use Cat5/Cat5E cable for both phone and other lines. Why? It makes no sense to use Cat3, even though it's cheaper. OF course, they still tend to put it in the house in one big loop or tree, instead of separate pulls to each termination point, but still...
Then, if it becomes obvious that you're probably never going to use the other 86 of those fibres in the next 10-20 years, and someone comes along with a big wad of $$$ offering to buy some/most of them, you'd probably be stupid to not sell the lines to them, because you are essentially selling them something that for you now is basically free.
Broadband costs go up because...they can. They're not regulated the way POTS is.
But what is the useful life of this equipment versus its depreciation schedules? I would bet that the telcos do not depreciate this stuff any more than 3-5 years, right? Once it's depreciated, the $$$ collected by the equipment is pure gold, because they're essentially getting those $$$ for no real expense (beyond utilities).
Plus, this stuff is usually pretty remote and requires pretty zany uptime, in order to minimize service calls (not to mention service interruptions). While high, the costs for the equipment is upfront sunken costs. Which if you have the pockets, is a pretty good way to make lots of $$$ once the equipment is depreciated (but still quite usable) down to $0.
Like all the dark fibre, and except for the switches, all the line gear that goes into one of these fibres is a fixed, sunk cost, with minimal operating expenses. These are profit generators for the telcos.
But if BellSouth clamps down on bandwidth like this, is there a state that might say that BellSouth is violating its relationship with the state by essentially trying to regulate Interstate Commerce (because of the telecom's common carrier status), and that BellSouth's proposal has to be approved by all the regulating entities in their boundaries before they can implement it?
I mean, in some cases they have to go to the regulators in order to change service offerings, such as increasing mailbox size for voice mail from 10 saved messages to 15, or something stupid like that, even if it means no actual change in rates. Why should this tiered pricing be any different?
If anything, it is MORE expensive for phone companies to do VoIP over their existing copper because it adds yet another layer of complexity, more hardware to service, and more administration.
Doesn't it actually require *LESS* infrastructure? The lines are already there. The DSLAMS are already there. VoIP then is just like any other packet-based connection.
This is like saying that the Telcos were justified in trying to classify modem traffic on analog phone lines through signal analysis and other technical measures and charging the telephone number MORE for those minutes used by the modem. It was tried in the US, but not for very long, due to the outcry, that most of the regulating bodies heard an earful about it and shot it down, etc. This was in the early 90's, when ISDN was the Next Big Thing for home connectivity. It might have even been PacBell that was one of the first telcos to try and do it...
The typical refrain from the telcos was that the increase in dialup usage tied up their circuits longer, they had to buy more equipment to handle long-term connections and lay more telephone lines (for 2nd and 3rd phone lines to homes, blah blah blah) and thus they needed to charge more to help ensure their quasi-mandated 10% profit.
So, basically, BellSouth thinks they are like a grocery or software store, where major vendors pay the store for the shelf space they can use for their products, like Coke & Pepsi do.
But the rest of us see the cable tv model, where the service provider pays the content provider (i.e., Comcast pays Discovery Networks) ostensibly some of the $$$ paid by the actual subscribers.
The Portal model has basically gone kaput, so what is BellSouth to do?
One thing that they could try would be to just make it so that users have to use IE and connect to a BellSouth proxy and policy server, by setting up a system account on the Windows box that can't be removed by typical Windows administrator accounts as part of the official BellSouth Portal software that configures users to run first and foremost through the BellSouth portal. Setting up the proxy and policies correctly is trivial to do right, they would just need to then codify in the TOS wordage to the effect that those who try to override or circumvent those policies (for even as simple of an act as setting their homepage to about:none) are violating the TOS, etc.
But that model kind of went to the shitter as well.
Poor BellSouth (and SBC. I won't call them AT&T).
apoligize for what, exactly?
Do you demand that the operators of coal-fired power plants apologize to the residents of the Black Forest in Germany, the NE United States/SE Canada, etc. for all the damage to arboreal forests caused by acid rain?
Some accidents happen. If they had to abort that rocket, it would have been downrange from Cape Canaveral into the Atlantic Ocean. Sure, the COSMOS probe that crashed into Alberta in the 80's spewed some plutonium over some area of a range grazing area, but the world didn't come to a crashing halt now did it?
I think the hyperbole used by the fearmongers does not match the reality. How much more plutonium was induced into the biosphere by the open air detonations of fission weapons in the 50's and 60's (as well as fission-triggered fusion devices)? Again, we're all still here.
...to add: DirecTV didn't ask Google, Yahoo, et al. to serve them complete web search result information for card programmers, boot blockers, etc. They probably did their own trivial research, found out the companies that were doing it, asked Canada nicely to knock on these guys doors (after going hard after one or two others to set the example) and ask for their customer lists, and THEN started going after the customers using a primae fasciae (or whatever the legal term is) reason to seek damages in CIVIL court or as the basis to look for evidence of criminal wrongdoing (like people who have above the board or below the board "services" where they program/sell cards to people).
Somehow that seems to be the right way to do it. But no. Let's put the cart in front of the horse.
If illegal things are available, then they should search out the illegal things themselves. Then, serve warrantst to/subpoenae those websites for their weblogs to get how many hits they get.
At least then if they've done their own searching they can present this to a judge who can then make a slightly informed decision on the request, which is how the f'ing system was set up in the first place.
...or that [only] with the Magic Feather, Dumbo can fly.
Probably not. My two kids (7 and 5) have tasted beer, and to them it tastes like shit. I know it did to me when I was that young, too. (For the prudes, I dipped my finger in it and let them lick it off, and let them make up their own mind at that time. The wife wasn't happy, but it's amusing in a way to get razzed by your kids when you have the odd beer, and I feel good when they say, "Daddy likes beer, but I don't like it. It tastes like poop!").
Every so often, I ask them if they want a taste. No doing. Good.
Would I do that with porn? Well... they get to see sheep and cows fucking and horses walking around with 5th legs. Do we make a big deal out of it? Nope. But we also try not to stare at it, because it's a natural thing. For even better questions from your kids, if you drive by a dairy farm where the cows are out or waiting to be milked, you stand a good chance of seeing a female cow mount another female cow, for whatever reason they do it [probably a stress reaction]. Too bad the grrl-power types don't show horses breeding... Mares quite literally beat the shit out of the stallion for awhile before they submit...
When the time is right, they will probably learn that two people engaged in sexual acts shouldn't be feared for what it is, and that it's a bit like beer or coffee at this stage. When they get older they can make up their own opinions of it. Like, when they're 34. There are pictures of people "doing it" that are just that, nothing more and nothing less, and then there is the tittilating stuff.
But seriously, I think the fear of things unknown drives people to the forbidden thing in the long run, which of course the religious and puritanical prudes of the US will most vociferously disagree with. Yet isn't it telling when one of these closet freaks is found out with some weird kink for prostitutes wearing saran wrap, their own child porn stash, etc.?
The wildest party animals I knew of were the ones who went to the strict Christian schools. Oddly enough, they were probably the most repressed ones at home, too.
These would-be moral supremacists can't even control their own secret desires, so why do they put so much energy into trying to control everyone else's?
Well, do you still go outside and watch the thunder and lightning of a thunderstorm, even though The Experts say that you could still be hit by lightning from a cloud miles away?
I know I do.
Most people have not been seriously burned by fire. Yet those who have, and they're not an insignificant number, may want to end the distribution of gasoline through small, portable containers, stop the sale of lighters and matches, etc.
No matter what the law says, there will always be criminals who manage to slip through the cracks and cause damage. Is passing tougher laws helpful if no more effort is made to allow for the enforcement of the new laws? Is shifting the activities of law enforcement from crimes of more effect and higher probability a smart thing? Probably not, if you think about it.
You got lucky. I'm glad you did, and wish to hell the people who did stuff like what they tried to do with you could be caught and summarily executed. But it ain't gonna happen. Does what happen to you justify throwing everything else away for everyone else just to make this edge case not happen again? Does where you live have a 24-hr curfew for kids walking along the streets in groups smaller than 4 without an adult with them? No, because most people would realize this is an overly restrictive law with marginal benefit to them.
My daughter won a 1:10000 or so lottery, and had an ischemic stroke at birth (even luckier, she's no worse for the wear, 5 yrs later. No deficits. No CP. Just no left temporal lobe). So I kind of have a feel for both sides of this "small chance" scenario.
While I respect and feel for all the other parents who have bad shit like this happen to their kids, in the whole scheme of things, the odds are still that *most* kids go through life with few or no sigificant incidents like this, just lots of near misses. That, to me, is simply amazing. Despite the best intentions of our parents, governments, friends, enemies, etc., most of us reach adulthood more or less relatively unscathed.
Who passed the law? A Democratically-controlled Congress, or a Republican-controlled congress that hated Clinton's guts? It didn't matter anyways, the Pubs went after Slick Willy anyways.
Clinton pumped it up because he had to, to try and shed positive "bipartisanship" to try and dampen Ken Starr's investigation and negative Republican views towards Clinton.
That Bush seems to be so willing to jump on to unpopular, already defeated (either politically or legally) dead horses and somehow try to beat them back from death is amazing.
Why do you think the "military" abandoned the internet to the public?
The Internet was proof-of-concept. Once they saw that it worked, they came out with and still have various other internal networks, the most widely known probably being MILNET.
I think the more cynical view of the President's request is that once they have this data, they can mine it for whatever purpose they want outside of the scope of the original request. They may not get any more of it anytime soon, but they could then come up with all sorts of conclusions and "points of interest" to use for the next deep diving expedition into Google's (but why not also MSN, AOL, Yahoo, et al., or have they already quietly complied with the request?
All hail King George.
The doctor said I subconsciously blanked everything else out. The same type of thing happens to people who've undergone serious trauma/abuse.
Uh...this tends to happen only for very acute and rapid traumas, like being t-boned by a drunk driver. I would imagine that any cop who has shot and killed some kid, and found out that the kid was wielding just a BB gun, would give anything to just hit the DO OVER button on that one, wish he could blank it out, etc.
There are also things like survivor guilt, etc. that are components of PTSD, as does knowing SOMETHING bad happened and not being able to remember it. What if in your car crash everyone else in your car or the other car had been killed?
Yes, people can witness shit that traumatizes them so much their brain blocks it out. Unfortunately, it tends to lock up their brains on it, too.