nathanm

I don't think he should have to apologize. He was being honest. A hole was blown in the illusion that the cops are good guys and that hole shouldn't be spackled over with insincere apologies. The velvet glove came off, so leave it off I say.

If the person claiming such utter BS is not themselves providing a good or service without accepting any payment for it they are not worth your time. Demanding free stuff from other people without being willing to do the same yourself? GTFO If free healthcare is a right(or 'is mandatory' if you prefer) then everything is and now you've got an economic system with no means of exchange.

Right, which is why it might be a good idea to be proactively friendly to them. I'm exaggerating the part about giving them all that info, but it certainly seems like a good idea to make sure they know who you are and that you're a nice person. Of course the opposite is usually the case. I say hello to my neighbors but I am not on a first name basis with them or anything. But if it's a question of are these people going to be suspicious of me for any reason then you might have to get extra welcome wagonny on them.

Well heck, let's let ALL the TSA agents go home and have a nice long nap. Then maybe the rest of us can get on a plane in a timely manner and go where we need to go. Give everybody a box cutter before you go, in case some mad bombers show up. Don't worry TSA, we got this. Remember, the internet has much better naked pictures than the fancy machine at work.

We may be better served by worrying less about the NSA and instead voluntarily giving as much personal information as possible to your neighbors. Because all it takes is one phone call to fuck up your life. Hey neighbor, here's what I look like, this is the car I drive, here is my phone number, here are pictures of my friends and family, these are my normal hours, here are some videos of common things you may see me doing around my yard, here are some audio recordings on noises which you may hear around my property…just for the love of god DON'T CALL THE COPS ON ME!!! One lousy busybody peering out their blinds and a phone and next thing you know you're in the hospital or dead.

Ahh, I see the problem. He actually says "libretarian" not "libertarian". The Libretarian Party is an obscure and seldom heard of political party in Michigan whose planks include: 1) Pro-No Shirt, No Shoes and No Services (They see shirtlessness and barefeet as the natural order and accept the lack of Services as a result) 2) Pro-Decaying Roads (Also helps with the barefeet thing, as well as encouraging a horse-friendly road environment with more dirt and less asphalt and concrete) 3) Pro-Bombed-Out Infrastructure (Let's face it, it makes for better photographs and explosions are badass) 4) Anti-Light Pollution (The Libretarians are very much in support of Hobbyist Astronomers and advocate for zero nighttime artificial light, sort of like a more liberal North Korea)

I thought it might be cute and funny, (I 'married' the neighbor girl when I was a kid too) but you're totally right - it's not at all funny. Camera person sits there and does nothing while the boy screams his objection. It's like a little psycholgical snuff film, you're watching a child get emotionally tortured while the crowd laughs. I'm sorry, maybe I'm off base here, but if I hear a scream like THAT I know the person means business. When a person screams as loud as they possibly can, I don't care how old you are, you need to take that emotion dead serious and stop whatever is causing it.

Technical note for journalists: You may want to hold off adding the phrase "cop fired" to your word processor's grammar checker because it's a rare fluke that's not likely to happen very often. Better that such a mistake is wavy underlined as usual in case you accidentally type something so silly in the future!

But the horoscopes are still reliable, right?

Okay, the guy just did the same thing as the Facebook crazy guy\baby heart eater guy did. So will he also be facing 10 years in jail? Or is it okay because it's "[someone] should put someone else to death" rather than "I will put someone to death"?

Although I haven't experienced anything that blatant, I do feel your pain, Jay. I rarely speak out when a group of people are talking a bunch of shit. Not in real life, that is. Cause I fear I will be attacked and it hurts. It may be that speaking honestly will alienate everyone I know, which is a horrifying thought. I know that as long as I stay within safe subjects I can get along and there will be no discomfort. But I suspect this is something which has to be struggled through to arrive at a place of being a contented pariah who at least does not have to pretend. I dunno about you, but doesn't it suck that the only people you know who agree with you are on the fucking internet? Isn't that rather sad? But how could that be true? Surely there has to be local opposition to the status quo as well. Perhaps breaking the silence will ally them to you as well. Of course these situations are even worse at work. Work is where people who may have polar opposite personal ideas can come together for mutual financial gain. There would likely have to be a massive realignment of the workforce if everyone wanted to have some philosophical synergy with their co-workers. But if it's the case that protesting child beating plants a seed that eventually gets you fired from your job, it will still suck of course, but you will have to conclude that 'Good Riddance!' to such a pack of assholes is probably the right idea. I was fired from my first big job in my chosen field, and it sucked hard, but it led to a better gig where such problems became ancient history. I am not sure if any of this ramble is of use, but I just thought I would share that you're not alone in your reluctance to rock boats. Perhaps small steps are a good plan, just inject a little off-the-cuff contrary opinion here and there and see if anything sticks. We live in a world where thoughtless jerks with the biggest mouths usually are in control, and yet the world is only truly moved forward by the tiny voices of reason amongst all their noise.

[View:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnX-D4kkPOQ]

Toads and earthworms alike should be quite pleased in a roadless, frog-eat-frog society of unchecked, unregulated capitalism. They have never fared well against pavement and cars. Of course there will still be the million dollar toll roads surrounding each person's house to be wary of, but those don't get as much traffic. The remaining pre-anarchy roads will slowly decay and turn back into dirt, making travel safe again for our amphibian friends.

Thanks for sharing this. Looks good, although it made me angry already.

People close to you can indeed impose more immediate and apparent restrictions on your life than the government does. However, rebelling against personal authority is usually not life-threatening. There's "getting in trouble" and then there's the government. The government does not show any mercy. If they want their hundred bucks from you they will not stop until they get it. You can weasel your way out of a debt you owe to your friends or family, but try doing the same with the government and you are facing inevitable, unavoidable consequences leading to great bodily harm and loss of property. I don't mean to diminish the emotional impact of familial relations, but man just getting in a minor scrape with the state and you're in a world of hurt very quickly.

I do agree that there's plenty to be glad about in our world, and one might even feel like a negative nancy trying to make people feel oppressed when they really don't. But of course that's just because the fascists have learned from history and improved their methods. Perhaps there will always be the feeling that The Man is holding you down from time to time, I just want that to be blamed on myself and\or circumstance and not because the game is rigged by a violent gang. I'll experience a fair amount of envy and frustration when I see other people doing what I do with greater success, but I can live with that as long as I know they haven't cheated.

Yep, that's the whole trick. Also, the government will teach you about government in school, but only to show how fair and balanced theirs is in comparison to worse ones in history. The Nazi\Hitler plugin for example, comes pre-installed in our operating system. So when current government is enacting some shitty policy all we do is compare that to a nazi concentration camp and conclude, "Hey no big deal". I'd bet that even the people in protests getting tear gassed and beaten by riot police are likely not thinking "Fuck ALL of this shit, Statism is immoral!", but rather "Fuck these guys, we need to get these crooks out and vote in some GOOD political leaders!" The Man IS keeping us down, but if we can't correctly identify who the Man is, then we'll be fighting all the wrong fights. Government is basically a cheater in the game of life. People get more riled up about pro athletes using steroids than they do about fundamental and wide-reaching cheating by governments. So baseball players and cyclists must be tarred and feathered whilst thieves and murderers are elevated as demigods.

Thanks! I know, it is nice and the NPR person commented on the flickr page about its use so it's all cool. I just think the context is wincingly funny. I never gave it that much thought, probably part of the default permission I had before. I believe I only changed any of my own proper photos which I had set from All Rights Reserved to CC. I just think of the print photo as a snapshot.

After hearing the arguments against intellectual property I decided to re-tag my whole public Flickr account photos with a Creative Commons license. Of course, both CC and copyright mean nothing in practice, it's about as meaningful as a prayer or a birthday wish. If you can look at the pixels you can copy the pixels. Publishing digital data means you've lost a good deal of control and I'm OK with that. But it doesn't mean that an emotional attachment to one's work does not exist in the brain. Even if I wouldn't advocate persecution against someone who used my non-IP IP in a way that was vulgar, it still would bother me. Not that this usage is all that vulgar, it's still in an NPR article involving Obama and power plants so it does make me itch a bit, but thems the breaks. http://news.wpr.org/post/presidents-energy-plan-could-affect-wisconsin-coal-power

I knew Bernard Von Nothaus was doomed, but isn't the decentralized and digital nature of bitcoin going to make this crackdown much harder? Who's going to jail on this one?

You're from California Alan, you have just as much claim to represent the entire state as those guys do. All you'd have to do is say, "On behalf of California and all its peoples, I hereby fully license and authorize the Bitcoin Foundation to conduct financial transactions." Make sure to wear a suit and stand behind a podium, that helps. If necessary get a friend who has a cool stamper tool and have him stamp a paper with words to that effect on it. Should work fine, as long as there are no skeptics present who could disturb the magical licensing chi. Oh, I almost forgot - fountain pen! Gotta sign the paper with that. Good luck!

Ever-increasing inflation means there's very little perception of long term gain throughout my working career. The numbers keep going up but the standard of living remains the same. I take only half credit for making bad financial choices. The other half is thanks to huge amounts of income being destroyed by federal, state, medicare and other taxes. Interest rates are so low there's little incentive to save money. Unfortunately I'm not smart enough to play the stock market. My father saved money and it worked great for him, but I am not entirely sure if it's because he's more savvy or that when he was my age there was far less government intrusion. Forced (more or less) to put money into a 401K even though I have no idea how it works, nor do I want to. Medical costs are ridiculousy overpriced. My incentive is to avoid medical care as much as possible. I have to go through a $120 office visit in order to get $7 worth of pills. Who knows how many things would've been cured by now if not for the FDA and it's decades-long trials and patent bullshit. Taxation and low interest rates made the idea of owning a home completely unthinkable, until now, but even so it's still not great. But even that may be a result of government intervention wherein people even poorer than me bought homes they couldn't afford. Property taxes and building permits. Not even people who "own" property can escape being under someone else's yoke. Can't put up a damn shed without asking permission from some bureaucrat. Completely pointless. Shitty roads are beating the hell out of my car. Since they're using a limitless pile of stolen money why can't they give construction contracts to the HIGHEST bidder rather than the lowest? Where's the innovation in road surfaces? Fucking nowhere. Same shit all the time. Some slob standing by the side of the road shoveling asphalt into potholes cause the road can't hack temperature and moisture changes. I don't travel often, but my experiences with the TSA were pointless. I feel bad for people that have to fly a lot. There's no freedom of speech in broadcast radio or TV, forcing natural language into a contorted mess of beeps and euphemisms. Smart, innovative people in science and engineering get sucked into government jobs where their talents go towards destroying wealth rather than creating it Public school education ensures no shortage of idiots who can't communicate and actively celebrate their ignorance.

Oh yeah, cause you know exorcisms are all about ruling out other possibilities!

It's actually not a problem at all. Without government all the food will be poisoned of course, but all the poisons will stop working too. So you'll just switch from eating food to eating poisons. So for example instead of tea and sugar you'll have antifreeze and rat poison, but it will be totally healthy thanks to the whims of evil capitalists finally able to unleash their true will upon mankind.

If you see a police officer, immediately handcuff yourself and fall face first on the ground. This of course still counts as resisting arrest, but it is the least serious kind. The only way to not resist arrest is to become a police officer yourself.