WannaGo

Hahaha...yeah, I bet you learned a thing or two that night.

I just wish I could get my avatar to stop stuffing his face, and, in between bites, demanding that I respect his author-i-ty.

There is such a thing as "officer discretion" that gives an officer some leeway in deciding whether to issue a ticket or make an arrest in certain cases. This is one of those situations when the officer should have decided it was in the interest of public good just to let the guy slide.

Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot who landed his plane in the Hudson River after a bird strike, was on the Daily Show last week, and he talked about the abysmal pay for pilots. And it seems like I remember after that commuter crash in Buffalo -- this year, last year? -- there were some articles showing that the co-pilot was making low to mid-20s. You'd think someone in a skilled profession who is responsible for that many lives would make more than a cabbie.

I imagine that some 85-year-old woman who had her retirement wiped out in an Enron-type scam and now has to eat cat food to survive might disagree. But, that said, I've always had more empathy, in general, for criminals than for the Paris Hiltons of the world.

Ya think?

This seems like much ado about nothing...it was one in a series of billboards advertising a wax museum in Pattaya. Thailand covers Hitler billboard Museum officials in Thailand have covered a billboard depicting Adolf Hitler saluting after complaints from the German and Israeli embassies. The advertisement, which reads in Thai, "Hitler is not dead," was set up on a main road out of Bangkok two weeks ago. More

Is this an escalation in tactics and sophistication, or is something you guys hear about a lot?

I haven't seen anyone laying all the blame on the prostitute, and everyone seems to be in agreement that there is nothing simple about it. And it does seem that, given the way you feel, you then logically would make the choice not to use the services of prostitutes.

Science and politics should never be entangled, but so often, they are.

I think the only thing you can do is contain them and support the regime's political opposition or, in extreme cases, provide funding, training and assistance to rebel groups. Cross-culturization seems the surest, although it takes the longest. When China's totalitarian government eventually falls, it will not be the result of a war, but of the introduction of Wal-Mart and hip-hop.

By the way, thanks for mentioning this. I'd never heard it before, so I found a book about it and added it to my reading list.

LMAO

Gender selective abortion seems remarkably short-sighted, to me. As someone in the article pointed out, there are long-term social and genetic ramifications of this kind of culling. They're going to end up with too few women, and the overall population is going to decline. Fucking with the balance of nature is never smart.

The differences between Afghanistan and Vietnam are enormous, as are the differences between Afghanistan and Iraq. The US is not trying to be the 'world's policeman' in Afghanistan. The invasion of Afghanistan, unlike either Vietnam or Iraq, was necessary to seek justice for an attack and to disrupt an enemy that was certain to attack again. That's why there was global support for the war in Afghanistan. Had the US stayed there, the situation would be much improved over what it is today, and world sentiment would not have turned against us the way it did for much of the Bush administration.And 'you broke it, you bought it,' is both a moral and a practical position. If we topple your government and destroy your infrastructure, we are morally obligated to help return conditions in your country to something approaching normalcy. And if we simply invade, causing widespread destruction and disruption of a society, then leave, we are setting ourselves up for even further trouble. Go get a glass of water and stick your finger in it. Now pull your finger out. Water rushes in to fill the hole left by your finger, right? Do some reading on the Afghan situation. You'll see that the problems we are facing now have their roots in our assistance to the mujahideen in the 80s, when they were fighting the Russians. In that case, we encouraged them to fight and supplied them, then offered them nothing when the Russians left. And, in our absence, the extremists rushed in to fill that hole. If we abandon Afghanistan now, the same thing will happen. It will become an even stronger base of terrorist operations than it ever has been, funded by massive opium production.

Patong, do you watch the Daily Show? Jon Stewart does a pretty good job of skewering all the cable news channels, but he does nail Fox more than any others because it is more overt in its pandering.

Alas, by 1996, I was already heading into my declining years and had switched to the more sedate VH1. But hey, I know who the Jonas Brothers are...I'm still at least a little hip, right? Yeah, I read her original article. She's claiming now that people who took it to mean that she blamed his death on his gay lifestyle just didn't read the article thoroughly. I gave it a pretty good look, though, and it sure seemed to me that she was making some pretty sleazy innuendoes (and some giant leaps of logic that weren't supported by the facts). If it was all just some big misunderstanding, then maybe the fault was with her own writing, not with how people read it. One thing that really bugged me about this affair, though, was seeing other journalists, including one of the columnists in the Independent, calling on their readers to report her to the government. It's a little scary to see people who are supposed to be defenders of free speech encouraging government control.

Preach it, brother!

I'm a firm believer that some people are, indeed, better than others. It's not a matter of birth or social or economic standing, but is a matter of what they do. If someone is a harder worker, more considerate, more honest and has accomplished greater things than another person, then yes, I tend to consider the one better than the other, especially if they had equal opportunities. And trust me, there are many, many people in my life that I consider to be better than myself.I also believe strongly that there are people without whom the world would be a better place. I knew a kid who was involved in a murder when he was just 13 years old, and I followed his "career" for several years after that: robberies, burglaries, assaults, drug dealing, etc. I felt bad for the kid because he was fucked from birth; his mom didn't want him, his biggest influences from the time he could walk were street thugs, he had no education. But, at the same time, he had been given several opportunities to have a different life and ignored them. He was never going to change, just go on causing pain and misery in the lives of those around him. When his mother said she wished she had aborted him, I could only silently agree that the world would have benefited. As for Levi, Britney, Paris, Joe Francis, and the rest of their ilk, yeah, I feel like the world would be better without them, that their presence only brings us down (or rather, our worship of them does). But the problem with that is that I also believe even more strongly that every person has the right to be and do whatever they want as long as it doesn't cause substantial harm to anyone else. So, while I think they're stealing oxygen that could be better used by someone else, and I wouldn't miss them if they were gone (and don't mind saying it), I have to accept and support the idea that they have just as much of a place in the world as I do. Just wish it was little easier to ignore them.

You know, these guys make more than I ever will...but I'm ok with that. I sure as hell wouldn't want to take an elevator designed and maintained by some buy making $10 an hour.

My sister home-schooled her three sons using a Christian curriculum (and while living in a small Southern town.) All three "graduated" with unsophisticated, homogenous worldviews that were out of sync with current political, scientific and societal realities. Because they were ill-prepared for the world, each one lost his way for a while and made some serious mistakes (drugs, jail, unwanted pregnancies, etc). I think kids who are home-schooled do not gain the world experience they need to properly adjust to adulthood. At the same time, I can understand why parents would not want them to gain some of the experiences kids get today.

If you've ever chanced to overhear a group of women talking amongst themselves about men and sex, this survey will come as no surprise. They are just as raunchy as guys. Several years ago, when Sex and the City first started, I watched an episode and told my significant other I found the women on the show a little frightening because they seemed so predatory. She watched it, and said, 'nope, that's just how women really are, but men usually don't see it.'

It's good that they plan to control the violence long enough for the Olympic games to be held in Rio, but you'd think they would be more committed to making the city safer for their own people all the time, not just when the foreigners are in town.

Wisdom from the mouth of babes, apparently. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUCxza768sw

By the way, this bit from the Chicago Tribune seems relevant to the conversation: The Cook County sheriff's police detained three women from Thailand on suspicion they had been coerced to engage in prostitution across the U.S. in the last three weeks as part of an international prostitution ring. The women said operators of the ring confiscated their passports, demanded $60,000 for their return and then forced them into prostitution in San Francisco, New York, Texas and Chicago.