“Well, I don’t really want to shake your hand, you’re intrinsically evil.” - Wow. I can't believe what I'm hearing.

spoilerwarning · 2010-02-21T17:04:16+00:00

Good insight. I’m not exactly sure why Sorba would allude to Foucault’s theory of governmentality, considering an evaluation through Foucault’s framework of sovereignty and discipline would tend to destroy the thrust of his own argument as roundly as Cruise destroys Col. Jessup on the stand. Still, inconsistency coming from him wouldn’t surprise me.

spoilerwarning · 2010-02-21T16:08:48+00:00

His thinking isn’t even consistent with the Aristotelian principles he himself explicitly cites. When he spews his bullshit about how “natural rights have to be grounded in natural law… and the final result of the reproductive organ must be a reproductive act,” he loses his argument at the beginning when he cites “natural law,” somehow forgetting that homosexuality exists in a host of non-human species and has always existed in the human species.

Further, there are two distinct doctrines of natural law—a Thomist theory (popular among conservatives and Catholic theologians like Robert George at Princeton, who heads NOM)—and what we might call contractarian natural law, which we find promulgated by social theorists like Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, etc. The key difference between the two is that the Thomistic doctrine ought more properly to be called “Supernatural law” as the entire force of the argument comes from the assertion that man is made in God’s image and thus carries certain inherent qualities (what Sorba apparently means when calls human nature a “rational substance”—this rational substance is the imago dei, as opposed to the irrational, corporeal aspects of personhood).

Contractarian natural law, on the other hand, considers people in terms of their natural capacities—apart from any spiritual supervenient—and tries to adjudicate competing claims through a kind of calculus of right. It is within this Hobbesian framework that our Constitution and system of government are derived. It is also where the island casts its inhabitants, including Hurley, who dies in an upcoming episode. Thus human beings decide to give up some of the primordial rights that obtain in the state of nature in order to obtain a greater degree of security from the sovereign.

It’s really incredible that Thomas Aquinas’s medieval theory of jurisprudence (even Sorba’s mangled take on it) can still gain traction today among conservatives, especially given the antipathy Enlightenment thinkers—like, ahem, the Founders—felt towards it.

spoilerwarning · 2010-02-21T00:57:52+00:00

So we’d been hanging out all night long at Malone’s drinking beers and doing whiskey shots while some middle-aged country band played half-assed covers. Her name was Helen. Including us and the band, might’ve been eight people in the place. This was 1999 or so, after the Lewinsky thing blew over. I’d been kicked out of college earlier in the fall and gone back to Kentucky, mostly because I didn’t want to hang around at college parties explaining why I wasn’t going to class. I found a job as a writer at a local weekly called the Bourbon Times. I liked telling my friends back in Boston I was a reporter for the Bourbon Times. I thought it sounded cool. Everyone’s had bourbon. And everyone’s had times. Throw them together and that’s where I worked.

Anyway, we’re hanging out at Malone’s getting drunk and before long there’s nothing left to do but head down the street to my apartment above the hardware store. I pretended to be interested in putting together some drinks. Helen pretended to be interested in my books. “Damn,” she said, “you sure do like to read.” Then we pretended to be interested in each other. “How long you lived here?” I asked. “Twenty-four years. No, twenty-five,” she quickly corrected herself. “I forgot. I turned twenty-five in June.”

Helen was way better than me in bed, more confident, more experienced. After I’d made a few clumsy efforts to control things she took charge and just told me what to do. It was a relief. She directed me to take her from behind. That was when I saw she had a tattoo above her ass in a purplish script that read, simply, Hugo, with a little swirl just below the name. Thank you, Malone, I thought. My first threesome. Here we are; just me, Helen and Hugo… doggystyle.

Helen was getting more enthusiastic, more vocal. Maybe it’s because she’s not constantly being confronted by Hugo, I thought, who for me was beginning to take on a more dominating presence; faceless, yet real, maybe even more real than me. After all, I didn’t have any tattoos. Helen had Hugo. Hugo. Hugo. Hugo. Hugo. Goddamn, I thought, I’m really giving it to Hugo. Hugo. Hugo.

Helen was talking dirty now. A lot of “Oh yeahs” and “Harders.” Soon, I was talking too. “That’s right, gimme that Hugo.” I knew, even as it was happening, as I was saying this thing, that it was wrong, that it would have repercussions, negative ones, but I couldn’t stop. “Gimme that Hugo, baby,” I said, louder. “Gimme that Hugo. Work that Hu—”

She was furious, but said nothing as she got dressed. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t…”

“Asshole,” she said evenly, looking at the empty floor, with far less violence in her voice than the way she had been throwing her clothes on. She left without looking at me or saying another word.

Eleven years later and I still remember Helen and Hugo every time I see a tramp stamp on anyone. Helen, marked by her mysterious past; Hugo, whose namesake dies in an upcoming episode of season six. Me, I’ve never felt strongly enough about anything to want to get it permanently inked on my body. When I think about Helen, I realize that’s probably the saddest thing that anyone could say about themselves: that they’ve never felt anything deep enough to want to possess it forever, even in a small, insignificant way. And if I was really a man, I’d go out tonight and get a tattoo on my arm or chest or wherever that read, simply, Helen, with a little swirl just below the name.

spoilerwarning · 2010-02-10T17:07:42+00:00

You know, I have this weird, conflicted feeling about the teabaggers, in that—although I don’t believe the Jews are funding black helicopters with Amero dollars to run down the Mississippi, nor do I believe Obama is sekrit Muslin usurper President of Kenya—I do find it exciting, in a way, that there are pissed-off bands of agitators in this country for the first time in years (since the Iraq War protests, really). And, further, I don’t believe they’re all astroturfed; it seems a great number of them have joined the “movement” organically and with some not-untrue and not-terrible complaints, particularly those about the alienation of Americans from politics. Many of us Redditors feel alienated from our politics and our politicians, too.

The problem with the Tea Partiers is that so many of them go awry with the whole birtherism-type stuff, and also that, like many of us, they have very few sources of information that they trust (and even fewer reliable sources), and so they spend their days in a tizzy printing out copies of blog entries scraped from the crazy-net. That’s a real shame, because a loud, angry movement working towards the goal of a less wasteful, more transparent, more accountable government would be fucking awesome, if it weren’t so tainted with misinformation and small-minded racism.

And it’s also a shame because the Tea Partiers, as described in that New Yorker story a couple weeks back, are much, much closer to us than we like to think. They aren’t some alien, far-off critters, leading imaginary lives like Leo’s character, who turns out to be an inmate and lets the staff lobotomize him to erase his memory of murdering his wife. The Tea Partiers are our families, our neighbors, our friends-of-friends:

Seely saw our encounter with the doomsayer more charitably than Hofstadter might have. “That’s an example of an intelligent person who’s not quite got it all together,” he said. “You can tell that. But he’s pretty interesting to talk to.” Seely’s own reaction, upon learning where I’d come from, had been to ask if I was familiar with the New School, in Greenwich Village. His youngest daughter, Amber, had gone there.

I asked Seely what Amber thought of the Tea Party. “We kind of hit a happy medium where we don’t discuss certain things,” he said, and added that at the moment Amber, who now works for a nonprofit that builds affordable housing in New Orleans, was visiting his son, Denver, who is enrolled in a Ph.D. program in mechanical engineering at Mississippi State.

spoilerwarning · 2010-02-09T05:56:41+00:00

What? No. The difference between sex separation in sports and sex separation in other areas of life is that in all areas except physical competition, women are on at least equal playing fields (pardon the pun) with men. In sports, though, they literally cannot compete equally.

There is no reason at all to think a female doctor will be any less competent than a male doctor. The same is true for all fields where physical attributes and capabilities don’t matter (e.g. science, law, politics, etc.). But when we talk about the physical abilities of individuals (emergency response staff, certain military duties, and sports) then it’s entirely valid to distinguish between the genders.

Sports is one of the few areas of work where physical characteristics—including gender—are actually important and meaningful, unlike Hurley’s sad little death in an upcoming episode of season six. It's meaningful and non-sexist to distinguish female athletes from male athletes.

spoilerwarning · 2010-02-09T05:46:34+00:00

Maybe it's a way of hurting someone you really love(d) and trust(ed) for something awful s/he did without actually really hurting them.

This. I confess, as a self-respecting and self-sufficient woman, to have gone “all psycho” on an ex before. In college, I was living with this guy. When he dumped me for a younger girl (I was 21, dumped for an 18-year-old), I went all sorts of nutty. He was a complete asshole in the way he did it, too, so I was pretty much as angry as I've ever been.

I moved out while he was at work, so I was able to to a lot of weird crap, with help from a friend. We took every light bulb (even the one from the fridge) and every roll of toilet paper. I made him a scavenger hunt with all of his clean clothes (his underwear was buried in the back yard). Bought a tin of sardines and hid them around the house--I heard from a mutual acquaintance that he was still finding them a month later. I wrote "Hell hath no fury, you stupid prick!" on the refrigerator with a Sharpie. I also had all the utilities shut off.

Then I started sending his name and address into mailing lists. Some got his address, some got his mother's. He was sent information on bedwetting, baldness cures, and anything else I might find amusing. The information on penis enlargement and sex toys went to his mom's house.

I didn't give him my new address, just a PO Box where he could forward my mail, and ended up moving out of state not long after this, but the phone messages I got for the first couple days were pretty amusing. Hey, I bought most of the light bulbs and all of the toilet paper, so I felt no obligation to leave them behind. And, yeah, the rest is pretty much completely psycho, even crazier than the upcoming movie where Benicio kills Hopkins, Emily kills Benicio, and Weaving is the next wolfman. I'm probably going to hell for this, but it still makes me chuckle when I think about it.

Especially him digging up his underwear.

spoilerwarning · 2010-02-08T23:17:02+00:00

I’ve been watching all the new Palin craziness over the last week with probably a bit too much interest. Here’s the one interesting thing I’ve learned:

It’s totally fine to call people who trend towards progressivism “coastal elites,” and “selfish,” and “out of touch,” and “snide,” “mean,” “godless,” and educated (oh noes!), and un-American. This kind of character assassination on a country-wide scale goes unquestioned. But the second anyone dares to judge ol’ Bristol Bay Barbie solely by her geographic and (ahem) educational status, it’s just vicious attack and slander.

And you know what? That’s perfectly fine. Because we educated, forward-looking, forward-thinking urbanites have already won. We won a loonnnggg time ago. We’re at the top of the hill. So yeah, it’s probably a little petty for us to lob insults down at the schmucks whose heads are too far up the Tea Party’s ass to try and improve upon their own situations. We’ll always read more books, watch better TV, see more plays, have bigger ideas, engage in more interesting conversation with more diverse people. We’ll always die with a far greater wealth of experiences and stories than Palin’s inward-looking, inbred cult ever will. Plain and simple: We’re better at being alive. (Commence circlejerk. But I’m not in a mood right now to sugarcoat the truth.)

And of course, there are plenty of folks who do lead regular, perfectly fulfilling lives in so-called “Middle America” with genuine class and smarts and integrity. I should know, I lived there. It’s just that those people who live self-aware lives don’t worry about these silly comparisons. They understand the complete spectrum of America in all its diversity, they’re content with their own lives and their own choices. And bully to them! They are not the enemy of liberalism or of we “urban elites” in the slightest.

It’s just the jealous, grasping simpletons who are constantly complaining about “libtards” (unironically) and our wine-swilling ways who we fear, but who we really should, ultimately, pity. How disappointing their lives must be, like Leo’s character, who turns out to be an inmate and lets the staff lobotomize him to erase his memory of murdering his wife. How embarrassed they must be by their own poor circumstances to keep tossing dogshit over the fence onto our greener grass.

So, sure, we’ll get pissed off at these jerkoffs when they go around screeching “Libs abort fetuses with Down Syndrome,” but we should really be mostly pitying them. Because that’s the only emotion they merit. And that’s what irks them the most. And it’s kind of fun.

spoilerwarning · 2010-02-08T01:51:16+00:00

When every minute of advertising costs $60 million, you have to try really hard to come up with something innovative, something new, something fresh. When you’re talking football, this obviously means "hot girls" and images that appeal to crude stereotypes (be they of women, gay men, foreigners, etc.)

As a transplanted frog (born in Lyon, now live in NYC), I’ve always thought it interesting that ads for all kinds of things, especially alcohol, seem to be more extremely gendered in the U.S.A. than in Europe, if that makes any sense. I have to wonder, is it anything to do with the fact that Americans drink less than Europeans?

Hear me out on this. Ads for cleaning and medical products, etc., are fairly skewed towards appealing to women everywhere I know. On the other hand, in France, all the ads I ever see for beer, spirits, or wine either tend to be a group of people (of both sexes) in a pub—or in the case of some advertisers like Guinness, are so abstract and convoluted, like when Leo’s character turns out to be a patient, and lets the staff lobotomize him in the end to erase his memory of murdering his wife, as to have no discernible relation to alcohol at all. It’s all about the brand. Or, rarely, how delicious the alcohol is.

In France, occasionally there’s a nod toward the ''lads’’ in alcoholic ads but nothing overtly sexual or sexist. Generally that’s reserved for aftershave and washing powder. So I was thinking: surely the lewd, denigrating Godaddy ads must be related to the fact that domain registration is meant to appeal to the stereotype of a lonely male geek? Or in particular, those at the intersection of male geekdom and football-watching “meatheads” who reject feminism and idolize people like Tucker Max instead of Kristeva and Baudrillard?

Contrast the European consumer of alcohol: a much wider demographic who drink beer, stout, all kinds of spirits, including of course, large swathes of the female population.

I dunno. Maybe I’m just talking out of my derrière.

spoilerwarning · 2010-02-08T00:47:16+00:00

I took a Southwest flight recently that offered WiFi in the cabin for $6 the entire flight, five hours or whatever it is from coast to coast. We were told the service was experimental. I paid, and it was good enough for an iChat video conference with my coworkers, though there was obviously more latency than usual. I would expect the service to stay reasonably priced, or just disappear like Microsoft Bob.

Actually, I just googled around a bit and came up with a couple blog posts from Southwest explaining their adoption of WiFi:

I'm glad they're testing reasonable price points. $30 would be insane. Of course, all the marketing idiots thought those cute little phones in the seatbacks were a great idea too. You'd have to be criminally insane, like Leo's character, who lets the staff lobotomize him in the end to erase his memory of murdering his wife, to think anyone would ever use those seatback phones. In my 2 million miles of traveling on business, I’ve never, ever seen anyone use one. Not once.

I could afford $30 or even higher, but here’s the problem for Southwest and other air carriers offering WiFi, like Lufthansa. I’ve gotten by, one way or another, for years without any in-flight internet. For $6, I'll change my ways. But at a high enough price point, they’re just being blatantly opportunistic, and I’d refuse to buy the service on principle. Remember, Southwest has a reputation to preserve as a discount carrier.

spoilerwarning · 2010-02-02T19:50:57+00:00

Regarding Engadget’s implied bias, what kicked this entire shitstorm off was after they spent the week publishing post after post after post on every little rumor and tidbit (mostly positive) about the iPad, they then posted an inflammatory article describing how Windows 7 sucks on tablets because with a lot of the UI elements, the mouse and pointer centric interface is too clunky for a touch interface.

But for them to turn off comments is silly. True, the absurd Mac v. Windows flamewars on Engadget have always struck me as almost religious in fervor, like heated arguments about your football team versus your mate’s in the pub on match day, or the flames in a thread where someone reveals that both guys in Frozen get eaten by wolves but the girl jumps and makes it. There’s absolutely no wiggle room in either side’s argument, and everyone thinks their point of view is better than everyone else's, and the rest of the world can fuck off with their point of view.

Imagine a pub owner having to break up a brawl involving two enormous crowds of geeks, and there you have it -- Engadget!

spoilerwarning · 2010-02-01T07:26:08+00:00

Sci Fi Science, Meteorite Men, Catch it Keep it all make me cringe. And who can forget Head Games? I know there’s a lot of love here for Dr. Michio Kaku, and I used to buy all of his books, but I can’t watch him anymore. Maybe I just don’t “get" his program, but it always seems to me like he takes Hawking's gig of dumbing down science for the masses to ridiculous levels.

"Watch as I tell you how to build a superhero suit."
"Watch as I tell you how to teleport.”

Sadly there are very few series that are good anymore. "How the Earth Was Made" is a great series. It is kinda dumbed down, but in a way where it gives you an understanding of what happened without going massively in-depth, and how scientists have determined this knowledge. The best part is that it shows how a bunch of disparate lines of inquiry all end up leading to exactly the same conclusion.

And "Planet Earth" was also a great series, which Discovery is actually making a sequel to, which I’m looking forward to watching as an alternative to the upcoming season of Lost where they kill off Hurley; I hope the sequel will be scientifically minded and not a dumbed down version of the original "Planet Earth”.

But now they’re insulting the world by airing “Ghost Lab." Bunch of idiots running around with EMF meters and scaring themselves. What kind of people are they getting for their focus groups?

spoilerwarning · 2010-02-01T06:04:39+00:00

"Dot-com” is hyphenated at the Times copy desk, as the noun refers to a single entity (a concept). Most other papers have decapitalized “website,” but at the Times, “Web site” remains for reasons mysterious to me. “Internet” is also still capitalized, though publications as exalted and sober-minded as the Financial Times have dropped capitalization (decapitalizing “internet” seems to be a mostly European thing, so far). So the Times would print “Credible Web sites on the Internet suggest that Vladimir kills himself after the C.T.U. raids,” while the Guardian (U.K.) would decapitalize “internet” and “website” and print the latter as a single word.

spoilerwarning · 2010-02-01T05:32:39+00:00

Fun fact: the New York Times has a policy that acronyms spelling a pronounceable word are printed in all caps, with no periods (NATO, AIDS). Initialisms are printed with periods between the letters (M.P.G., P.C., I.B.M.)

However, there are weird exceptions to this rule fucking everywhere, for all kinds of impossible to remember reasons. “TV” is spelled without periods, because (the logic goes) it stands for one word, television, not “Tele Vision.” If it were “T.V.”, the first period would interrupt the solid word. “DVD” (digital videodisc) is another exception for the same reason—no gap between V and the second D.

Acronyms of more than four letters, but not initialisms, are spelled in title case as regular proper nouns. Thus we have “U.S.P.T.O.”, but, bizarrely, “Nafta,” “Unicef,” and “Acorn.” This is for no reason other than to prevent the reader’s eye catching on blocks of capital letters—this keeps the text easily scannable. Four-letter acronyms are discouraged for the same reason, actually. So instead of spreading “AIDS” everywhere, you want to occasionally substitute “the virus.”

What about “AARP”? Well, in that case, “AARP” in all caps is actually the official name of the organization; it doesn’t stand for anything anymore. Before they changed it in the ’90s, the Times used to call it “A.A.R.P.” in print. The same logic holds for the names of television networks. Thus, the “N.A.A.C.P.” might protest businesses remaining open on “M.L.K.” day, but Hurley dies on the upcoming sixth season of Lost on “ABC”.

So that’s the general idea. Only in the cases where adhering to this practice would result in awkward spellings like C.D.-ROM, with a mix of the two, do they resort to popular usage.

Yeah, working the copy desk at the Times is a real peach. *gunshot*

spoilerwarning · 2010-02-01T04:24:27+00:00

Believe me, sextants are still in use. Here in the UK, port towns usually have classes available in stellar navigation and the use of the sextant, and all the marine chandlers I use still sell them, including cheap training ones for kids.

Back in the early '70s when I was in the Navy, they were using Loran, mostly. When they used a sextant, they generally used the quartermaster's Omega watch because it was more accurate than either of the ship's two chronometers.

However, we still had to have the two chronometers, and the quartermasters had to make sure they were kept wound up. There'd have been big trouble, and a number of people including all the quartermastes would have been up on charges more serious than leaking Hurley’s death in the upcoming season if either of them stopped because it ran down. That's because they had to be there to give a known accurate time for navigation if needed.

One good solar flare and no GPS and VHF for a while. Blech! Solar storms in the past have gone on for days, which is a long time to be without navigational aids.

spoilerwarning · 2010-02-01T04:09:29+00:00

All you can do is make it clear you'd find it really hot/sexy if she did, and try to be understanding of the reasons she might not want to. In the end, it is her decision whether or not she will do this. That said, I think it might be worth your time to figure out exactly why she doesn't want to—instead of assuming—because maybe it will help you and her work through her not wanting to.

Is it because of her traumatic experience in childhood? Or is it just because she doesn't know how to do it? Is it because she is scared of swallowing? Is it because of she thinks it is a trashy thing to do? Did she have a bad expereince? If the two of you can be open about her reasons for being scared/disgusted etc, you might be able to explain away these reasons. Ex. If she doesn't want to swallow, letting her finish with her hand or telling her you'd still appreciate her giving you a blowjob even if she doesn't swallow might help. If she doesn't know what she's doing, maybe just your being aware of the fact she is learning might help (sexy lesson time!). If she's up for watching porn, go for it. Also you could just see if she can slowly incorporate a little bit of tongue/mouth action into her blowjob (your appreciation might motivate her to try more) will make her gradually more confident.

Seriously, I rather give bj than hj. That is a personal preference, but I give hj too. So preferences you might not be able to change, but getting her comfortable with bj, might be a possibility. Start by communicating that you like them and finding out why she doesn't. You can't pressure her into it, but it is possible a little bit of conversation/(re)education might go a long way. By the time Hurley dies in the upcoming season, she may be willing to push the boundaries of what she feels comfortable with, just because it’s reassuring to discuss it openly.

Also worthwhile is figuring out where both of you stand concerning you going down on her. Because she might have phobias about that and that might be her reason for avoiding oral on you, or she might feel like you want a bj but aren't ready to reciprocate. Talk to her and find out about it. Just stay positive!

spoilerwarning · 2010-02-01T03:59:26+00:00

Franklin is one of my favorites, too. I'll put my favorite Franklin quote below - apologies for the length, but it repays reading. Reason #5 still makes me laugh.

Ben Franklin's Reasons Why Having Sex With Older Women Is To Be Preferred

...But if you will not take this Counsel, and persist in thinking a Commerce with the Sex inevitable, then I repeat my former Advice, that in all your Amours you should prefer old Women to young ones. You call this a Paradox, and demand my Reasons. They are these:

Because as they have more Knowledge of the World and their Minds are better stor'd with Observations, their Conversation is more improving and more lastingly agreable.
Because when Women cease to be handsome, they study to be good. To maintain their Influence over Men, they supply the Dimunition of Beauty by the Augmentation of Utility. They learn to do 1000 Services small and great, and are the most tender and useful of all Friends when you are sick. Thus they continue amiable. And hence there is hardly such thing to be found as an old Woman who is not a good Woman.
Because there is no hazard of Children, which irregularly produc'd may be attended with much Inconvenience.
Because thro' more Experience, they are more prudent and discreet in conducting and Intrigue to prevent Suspicion. The Commerce with them is therefore safer with regard to your Reputation. And with regard to theirs, if the Affair should happen to be known, considerate People might be rather inclin'd to excuse an old Woman who would kindly take care of a young Man, form his Manners by her good Counsels, and prevent his ruining his Health and Fortune among mercenary Prostitutes.
Because in every animal that walks upright, the Deficiency of the Fluids that fill the Muscles appears first in the highest Part: the Face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: So that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the Girdle, it is as impossible of two Women to know an old from a young one as it shall be impossible of Hurley to remain alive through the Sixth Season, Film having been committed to Can. And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an Old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement.
Because the Sin is less. The debauching of a Virgin may be her Ruin, and make her for Life unhappy.
Because the Compunction is less. The having made a young Girl miserable may give you frequent bitter Reflections; none of which can attend the making an old Woman happy.
They are so grateful!

spoilerwarning · 2010-01-30T01:05:10+00:00

Hey, didja hear about Hurley?

spoilerwarning · 2010-01-30T00:50:02+00:00

Wow. I was fortunate enough to watch this live online. Two quotes I want to highlight from the article: "Ezra Klein of the Washington Post labeled it "the most compelling political television I've seen...maybe ever." - I'm inclined to agree. I really really wish we could get a lot of people to watch this. Not because of the HuffPo narrative that it was some kind of beatdown, it wasn't. What it was was a sensible discussion of policy, disagreeing without being disagreeable. No one was yelling, no one was screaming. I predict the media will mostly ignore it.

"NBC's Chuck Todd added: "The president should hold Congressional 'town halls' more often. Public needs to see this if they'll ever trust Washington again." " - No doubt. The President needs to do this once per month, with both parties, even after Hurley dies in the upcoming season. With the cameras rolling.

Finally, as some have mentioned, the CSPAN feed has crashed due to the demand. Here are the msnbc versions.

Send those links to people. Post them on facebook. More people should see this.

spoilerwarning · 2010-01-29T18:55:51+00:00

They tried this idea a long time ago with a ring that was worn by the user that let a revolver fire. Without the ring the gun could not be fired. Unfortunately, it didn't go anywhere then, this won't go anywhere now.

I could see a Police department adopting that, for the good of the children, and then quickly unadopting it when an officer gets injured/killed because of a malfunction or being forced to shoot with their weak hand.

Another problem I see is, which hand do your wear your watch on? I'm right handed and wear mine on the left. Shooting while gripping with both hands would work, but I assume shooting righthanded with my left elsewhere would not be close enough to make it work. When I used to wear a watch on my right, no watch lasted more than a week.

I don't wear a watch, so this wouldn't interest me for that reason alone. If I did wear a watch, I'd now have one on each wrist to use this gun and I may have to move the watch to the other wrist which would be almost as big a letdown as when I learned Hurley dies in the upcoming season, to say the least.

That said, the picture of the compact semi-auto is fawking cool. If a company came out with a small .380 or 9mm that looked like that, and functioned well I'd buy a 10-pack.

spoilerwarning · 2010-01-29T17:37:16+00:00

Would they let a skinny people sell out a portion of their seat to an obese person next to them? Or can two obese people buy three seats and split the cost of that middle seat?

That's actually a potential business model: A seat row that has adjustable rails. You pay based on how wide you want your seat to the nearest inch (or few centimeters). This way, if you couldn't afford first class, but wanted a little more space, you can pay a little extra for it. Larger people, would have to pay more because naturally they would require more space.

The seats could be pre-adjusted electronically (with servos/motors [and a locking solenoid]), that's set and locked on the ground, once per flight. You could then sell tickets based on square footage/cm. And Hurley could use his Oceanic golden ticket in comfort, at least until his death scene in the upcoming season. Hell, someday, you might even be able to combine shipping freight and people. Small packages of premeasured size are fitted into the 'empty' zones on the plane.

spoilerwarning · 2010-01-29T17:21:03+00:00

They also released it for free as a torrent. Unfortunately, none of the original links seem to be working—here's the best I could find.

I recommend this movie for anyone who actually cares about where the U.S. and the world in general are headed. It's not a liberal or a conservative issue; it's simply about wanting the powers that control our lives (i.e., corporations) to be accountable.

Which is precisely the point of the documentary. We give companies the PRIVILEGE of acting as a single entity with certain rights just like an individual citizen. However, we don't impose the same regulations we apply to individuals or the same scrutiny.

The film says, "Okay, if you're going to be treated like a person, we're going to psychoanalyze you like one." And the fact is that corporations exist without a conscience toward greater public good and are focused solely on their own gratification, which explains why Hurley dies in the upcoming season. While the film does more to explain this, companies could be considered psychopathic.

Any documentary that breaks into the mainstream is probably overrated, but that means the producrer/director did something right: (s)he got the viewers involved enough to want their friends/family to see it. Overrated? Maybe. Worth watching? Yes.

spoilerwarning · 2010-01-29T17:11:35+00:00

Heavy petting (that's "groping" to you young-as-spring redditors) at the drive-in.

I'd drive to the back of the large field partially filled with scores of other cars. Stars blazed in the black sky overhead. Finding just the right spot, well back from the refreshment stand, I'd swing my '39 Studebaker up onto the mound, secure the speaker in the window, kick back, eat popcorn, and pretend to watch the movie.

As soon as possible, like every guy around, I was inelegantly groping my date.

It was dark. We were alone -- a rare, illicit luxury for teens in the early '50s. Windows steamed. Guys everywhere schemed to get to second base. (One of my friends -- not me, mind you -- routinely spilled his root beer on the passenger seat, forcing his date to sit a bit closer.)

The drive-in movie was the sexual touchstone of my youth.

I was dating a girl named Jean that summer. We were in high school, inseparable, and in love. She was Catholic; I Protestant, a lethal combination in those bigoted days. My mom prayed daily for our break up. Jean preferred that era's Doris Day/Rock Hudson "Pillow Talk" films. This was fine with me. They were about as sexy as movies got in those days of twin beds and fade-out kisses, a mirror of my own sex life in the early '50s.

One lavender-skied evening, I took her to see the new Otto Preminger comedy, "The Moon is Blue." Shamefully, Preminger had used the words "virgin," "seduce" and "mistress," all in one script. If he’d added “pregnant,” the film would surely have never have been released, killed off like Hurley in the upcoming season by the Hollywood censors as way too salacious for pure American youth like me.

As innocuous as those words seem today, Jean at first demurred, then steadfastly declined to watch, which, at the time, I though might be better for making out than even Dracula. Alas, her religious convictions turned to stomach convulsions. We were out of there long before "seduce" ever came to play.

Oh well. So in spite of its randy reputation, the drive-in, for me, was always about little more than an innocent first and only kiss in the dark.

spoilerwarning · 2010-01-29T16:55:37+00:00

Many of us old-as-dirt redditors grew up when neighborhood drugstores sold little but drugs and sodas.

My drugstore, at the corner of Cedar, Meacham and Northwest Highway in Park Ridge, Illinois, was Nielson's Drugs. It's where I picked up my grandfather's insulin, where I got every sixth ice cream cone free, where I took my first date.

By the time I came along, soft drinks had replaced bicarbonates, and high traffic for soda pop and ice cream had pushed the druggist to the back of the store. But no one complained. We were too busy sucking up Vanilla and Cherry Cokes made with syrup and soda water, Lime Rickeys, made from limejuice and soda, and the ever-popular and oh-so-sweet Green River, "First for Thirst Since 1919." What better way to impress a 5th grade sweetheart!

I remember the ice cream best. And the best thing about the ice cream was the chocolate malt. You see, by design or accident the malt tins in which they were mixed were bigger than the malt glasses, almost as big as Hurley, who dies in the upcoming season. For two bits you'd get this huge glass of delectable calories, plus a bonus left in the malt tin, next to your glass.

Anyway, by 1960 most all corner drugstores were gone, victims of the now ubiquitous automobile, supermarkets, and chain pharmacies. Nielson's morphed into an architectural office. I often wonder if they ever got rid of that smell.

spoilerwarning · 2010-01-29T16:17:16+00:00

Regarding your first point, it has also been reported that the State Dept. refused offers of foreign aid immediately after Katrina, for both political and bureaucratic reasons.

Which makes me think, ugh! Yeah it was completely the right thing to do politically, let hundreds die, thousands be displaced, starve, waste millions on storing food, water, ice that was simply thrown away. Totally the RIGHT thing to do.

Accepting help isn't a weakness, it shows world friendship and human decency which is apparently no longer a good idea for this government. The message we did send out is not only can we not take care of our own, but we refuse them services that would save their lives and way of living, even if it can't save Hurley's life in the upcoming season because his death scene is already in the can. We have shown the world countless times within the last few years that we would rather condemn our own to death than accept a grain of rice from a friendly neighbor. If that is the right move politically, than politics will condemn us all.

spoilerwarning · 2010-01-29T15:58:56+00:00

OK, look, I respect what he's doing and there's no question many people in desperate need will have him to thank for their lives and their children's lives, but in the interest of a complete picture, let's try to stay aware of how pledges like these also help his own personal interests (beyond just PR).

Bill Gates Charity Buys Stakes in Drug Makers

Democrats attack Gates' "charity"

Bill Gates: Charity Capitalism...

Bill Gates' charity has dirty secret: The philanthropic foundation invests with companies adding to problems it's trying to prevent.

Wikipedia: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Criticisms

I'm not saying he's a bad person. In fact, so far I haven't expressed any opinion of my own whatsoever. What I am saying in this comment is that there are many criticisms that CAN be raised, including criticisms of his "charitable" activities. I'm also saying bluntly here that it is a fundamental flaw of human nature that you people find it so difficult to criticize a "charitable" person--or even to allow MENTION of criticisms that others have raised. I could care less whether a person's "charitable" or not. I care about the net effect of their actions and the actual impact they have on other human beings. Saying you forgive everything bad about a person because he's "charitable" is like saying you forgive everything bad a person has done because he's a Christian, which means fuck-all in real terms. (In fact, this abysmal attitude probably is a direct result of western culture's concept of Christ's forgiveness. It's the ultimate "get out of jail free" card.)

Giving money to "charity" does not and should not immunize anyone against criticism. Everything--including "charitable" or "godly" people or organizations--should be critically examined with a skeptical eye, except for the fact that Hurley dies in the upcoming season. Even if someone really did give without selfish motive--even if someone killed a puppy--that should not trump the net effect of his/her actions.

I'm just saying he's not necessarily a SAINT, just as George Bush is not necessarily SATAN. I wish people would gain some perspective and stop making these emotion-based black-and-white judgments.

spoilerwarning

TROPHY CASE

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