1) Sarah Jessica Parker and Owen Wilson should never get married. Their childen would just be gigantic noses with legs and would run around making bad movies.
2) Gobo Fraggle is Canadian. Just listen to him, eh?
3) I have officially removed Katie Holmes from my "must have" list.
4) The Vikings don't actually play football. They just show up to the games and watch football.
5) All of my friends loving playing volleyball in the heat of the summer. But when it gets to be 70, sunny and a slight breeze, they suddenly don't want to play anymore.
6) Weekends are never long enough. Never.
7) Why is it called "caterwauling" and not "caterwailing?"
8) I think we should do plague testing on convicted spammers.
9) I think we should be drafting our military from convicted criminals. If someone likes to shoot people over here, then why not give them a gun and have them shoot people over there? And when the war is done, they can just stay there.
10) Speaking of wars (Bill, this one is for you), I think the US should mind its own danmed business. We have enough crap to take care of around here without needing to force our governmental architecture onto other countries.
Two things, MeatSack.
Being in the military is not all about shooting things, it is all about discipline, doing the right thing and believing in the good your country is capable/responsible for. Convicts would sully that, and bring shame on you.
Our country has it's best interests in mind when it setups up democracies around the world, it is called long term thinking, something Democrats are unfamiliar with, as they donot look past the last poll, but it in the long run it wil be better for you. Yes, you, even though you bitched and complained and whined about it.
Don't worry, there are men and women willing and eager to shoulder the responsibility of keeping you safe and defending the freedom you have, you just go back to partying and whining....mmmmmok?
Ah, nothing like the sheer joy of public domain / stock artwork. Anywho...
I'd rather see the Aaron House Tour movie again, but this time, it's got to be in Finnish with Spanish subtitles. Yeah, that would be -just- right... :D
@Bill -- what happened to your wetworx site? I enjoyed reading all your crazy Republican talk. Made me chuckle. ;-) As for our country's best interests... I'm not too particularly keen on our approach. You see, as a logical thinker (aka, not a republican. snark. ;-)), my first thought to that is "what if everyone did that?" Well, quite honestly, I wouldn't be too pleased to be on the receiving end of that. For instance, let's say that a Communist country like North Korea decided that it was in their best interests to make the US a Communist country. I would be pretty pissed off at that, mostly because it's up to the country to decide how to govern itself. I don't care if one country is a democracy while another is a monarchy and a third one is despotism. What I care about is how things are going in *MY* country.
The communists are actively working at it Aaron, one only need look at the modern democratic party to see just how successful they have been. But in the long run, communism is a failed endeavor, and the educated amongst us (non-communists and non democrats) understand this.
WetWorx is undergoing a software change, I am looking for a good CMS system and so far have got Mambo, shrug, it will take installing and playing with to see if it is what i am looking for.
@Aaron - caterwauling
ORIGIN late Middle English : from cat 1 + imitative waul .
Old english had all kinds of screwy things
As for the politics ... the middle east and the unrest there screws with the US economy. Unstable oil supplies and so it is in the US best interests that the resgion is stable and friendly. Saddam was neither. Nor is the current regime in Iran. Unfortunately the region seems to breed a lot of terrorists who have no qualms about pulling off things like 9/11 and punishing the evil US.
Like it or hate it it IS the US's business (and the UN's) and Canada's
It affects us all and we can't simply close our eyes and ears and ignore it.
If you do then what else do you ignore ? Perhaps things in your own country becuase they are in a different state ? (ie/ the LA riots after the Rodney King verdict ?) Do you simply "not get involved" when you are witness to a crime ?
We're all responsible for each other's safety and security. In this day and age that includes me in Canada looking out for you in the US if I spot some non-farmer trying to get 1 or 2 tons of ammonia nitrate and several thousand gallons of diesel (that's what blew up the building in Oklahoma city)
@Bill - communist governments have pretty much all failed. Communes are doing very well around here. The Hutterites are some of the most successful farmers in the area becuase they can share the labor around among all members of the commune. They have some of the highest incomes and best production from their lands and yet they are still "family owned and operated" and not some huge factory farm (we have few of those here) On a small scale it can work - although I have met people who have left the communes and not gone back They are few but it does happen.
As for CMS have you tried Daylite ?
I agree with Bill, though I get into political debates far too often in #iDevGames so I won't do it here as well. :)
Every time I do help someone, I'm always scared I'll get some legal document naming me as a defendant or something. In places where sanity reigns, like when I visited southern Oregon, if someone is doing some violent crime, if you help the victim, everybody cheers. If you get yourself hurt when you're trying to rob someone, at least up in southern Oregon, that's your own darned fault. I'm tired of criminals having more rights than victims...it's just insanity.
@Corbin - I live in Canada. We've got slightly fewer lawyers than you in the US. And our laws are not exactly the same. And our judges have the power to override insane jury awards for stupid law suits like you mention. And they do it so some one like the grandma suing for spilling hot coffee on herself would have gotten a "You ordered hot coffee. DUH !" and told to pay everyones court costs for bringing such a frivolous case. Many of those never make it to trial here.
It seems there needs to be a "stupid lawsuit" filter on the US justice system, particularly in the civil cases. Just a few local "sane folks" who can look at the case and simply say "That's stupid get the hell out of here and don't waste our time"
So people that sue the gun makers because the product does EXACTLY what it's made to do (fire bullets) realize they should instead go after the person who pulled the trigger. It's unlikely to be quite as lucrative though.
I know there are some limits here on various kinds of things you can sue for and that juries do not have the power to award punitive damages liek they do in the states. The small real damages and huge punitive damages awards are what make suing someone the highest ranked retirement plan in the US (really!)
Here it's 3rd or fourth after winning the lottery and inheriting money.
We have our own legal issues, but nothing like some of what we hear happens in the US and I'm glad.
Shoot the lawyers !
Since I can't help but chime in when it comes to political debates...
@Norman: The US screws with everyone elses' economies, so why shouldn't they get involved militarily with the US? Just because several countries in the middle east have something that we want (ie, oil) doesn't mean jack when it comes to our right to mess with it. There's the basic principle of supply and demand that should be considered: if our economy didn't rely so heavily upon the supply of oil, we wouldn't care what those countries charged, but since it does, they're welcome to do what they want with the prices because it's so badly needed.
Not to mention they're all sovereign nations. (http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2646755)
IMHO, the bottom line tends to be that if you really believe a lot of the stuff that is (supposedly) guaranteed us in our constitution (eg, various personal freedoms, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and so on), then it should follow that all people -- not just Americans -- should also have those rights, and that we shouldn't be trampling on other countries.
Adam, what happens when those 'other' countries deny their subjects the rights you so easily take for granted?
Do you stand by and ignore it? Not your business?
In a word: yes. Just because I disagree with someone else's political state does not give me the right to march over there, kill its citizens and install what I believe is right.
One obvious caveat to this is when the entire world steps in and says "whoa, this is NOT right." For instance, when a ruler starts killing all his subjects that he doesn't like.
Hmmm. Aaron, that doesn't make sense.
You either believe in sovereignty of nations,or you don't. Why do you get to decide what an appropriate number of subjects a country can kill? Can they kill one, a serial child killer/molester, who swears he will do it again? Can they kill ten who blow up a children's school? How ab out 100 who do something even more heinous? What about in national self defense?
The entire world has never been right, nor even close to being right. Why would you look to them for guidance? You trust the folks in the U.N. over your own elected representatives?
Something that interests me, vis-a-vis this conversation; how many of us here, in this conversation has actually gotten into a fight in their early years?
@Bill -- I don't trust our elected officials. I vote dutifully, but often feel like I'm having to pick the lesser of two evils. Would I rather sleep with the snake or the scorpion? That being said, I have faith in democracy, and that's why I would be more comfortable relying on the concensus of the leaders of the world (such as the UN could represent). Basically, when my leader says "we must attack Foo because of bar" I don't put much faith in it as I've been lied to by my leaders too often. But if 90% of the leaders of the world say "we must attack Foo because of bar" then I believe we damned well better start attacking.
I realize I'm being unealistic. But that's the beauty of discussions like this -- we can throw ideas out and poke holes in them.
Sorry Bill, I don't have your blind faith in our country.
Oh, and to answer your question, yup, a few.
@Bill: Basically, yes. If we commit ourselves to warring with Country A for one reason or another, what's to keep us from doing the same thing to Country B that is doing the exact same thing? What about Country C that's doing similar, but maybe to a lesser degree? What's the threshold for our involvement?
Then you run into the sticky political scenarios like Rwanda. What's a genocide? Nah, we won't call this genocide, as we don't want to get involved. So when you decide you don't want to get involved, you just deny something's happening, or maybe it's happening, but not so much that it warrants involvement.
I don't deny that it may be beneficial for certain other groups when we throw our weight around, but frankly, it's not our place to be doing so whenever we damn well choose.
Hmmm, I gather it is not 'blind faith', but maturity and a clear vision of the world (I have hit every continent, and many countries) Personal experience with the rest, as opposed to youthful rebellion against one parents/governemnt.
It would be so nice if the world were black and white.
No shades of grey and having to make choices decisions and discriminte about the things we want to be involved with and things we don't.
There are always going to be opposing viewpoints.
Sometime the choices made are popular (the original Gulf War) because the thing being defended against was so obviously in the wrong. At first the American public supported Bush and the "War on Terror" but since it's starting to turn into a modern day Vietnam it's becoming less and less popular.
That's the trouble with being the ONLY remaining 'big guy" on the block.
I dont envy the US, nor the US government and the military.
What do you do in Iraq ? Pull out and let it descend into a sectarian civil war ?
It'd be not much different than what it was under Saddam and the UN would be back fairly soon trying to stop a genocide.
@Bill - yer over 40 are you ?
As a friend of mine would say "Uh oh. The forbidden topic of politics" :P
He has 3 topics that he considers "banned" from his social chats.
1) Politics; 2) Religion; 3) Video game systems :P
Reasons being: 1) People get WAY too passionate and defensive about their opinion in the matter; 2) there is no "right" answer, nor is there a completely "wrong" answer; 3) he's seen too many friendships get ruined because of a debate started by one the 3 topics
And now for some levity....
"The world would be a better place is everyone would just realize I'm always right" ;P
@Scott P - I keep telling my wife to listen to me because she's always wrong.
And in the morning I always seem to have a bruise after uttering that one :)