Doom Shepherd

How so? A capitalist government is strictly bound by a constitution and the majority has very limited power. They have lawyers. Now, much as I love Capitalism, Lawyers are too often misused by those in power to weasel their way AROUND the laws (and the constitution and the limited power of the majority) and into places they really shouldn't be. Left unrestrained, they can, subtly and entirely legally, wreck the system. And that's WITH regulation. I've seen what one uncontrolled Rules Lawyer can do to a friendly game of D&D. What millions of them could do to a national economy... *shudder*

The rumors of Axeldeath were not exaggerated.

This is Fluffy. He is the DESTROYER OF WORLDS.

Just something else i stumbled across... Not a scientific survey, but... Are You Smarter Than a Wall Street Protester? http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/10/occupy_wall_street_quiz.html

Basically, the saying means that your outlook on life is greatly influenced by the amount of XP you have. For instance, when you are a child, free cookies are AWESOME!!! When you are a diabetic adult, you have gained XP, and that's when you realize that free cookies are tasty, tasty POISON.

I am now 40. This means: 1. Everybody younger than me is an inexperienced, naive, immature fool. 2. Everybody older than me is a drooling, senile, stuffy old idiot. What's really amazing is just how long the above has been true.

The protests are a gathering place for everybody who's mad about anything at all. They have no cohesive or coherent message, according to their own website. They're still looking for a consensus on "what we should think." They're not going to find one. Some of them are probably more damaging to the cause than others: http://www.cracked.com/blog/3-types-wall-street-protesters-hurting-their-own-cause/

Religion? and Communism? I know a bunch of people who call themselves Christians. About half of them give it lip service, and have some general non-intrusive belief in it. The other half treat it like a RELIGION. I have met rather fewer Communists, but the same proportion prevails. Some people treat Marx like a prophet, and his books like their Holy Writ.

Baah, all you need to do is have a fair understanding of the principles behind buoyancy. Not to mention the fact that the "best" way to swim is going to depend upon a whole mess of variables. This, however, is true. Just not the way you think it is. But keep it up. I have stock in Big Tobacco. Exploitation FTW!

I'm a mutt. A mostly-white mutt.

What I find amusing is all the cartoons depicting him in the Christian Heaven. Jobs was a Buddhist.

Actually, Pixel was the name of a young cat in Robert Heinlein's "The Cat Who Walked Through Walls.". And he could, because he was too young to know it was impossible.

But can he walk through walls?

Personally, I think everyone's to blame. There's plenty of it to spread around. I was talking to an OWS supporter online the other day, and we came around to the fact that he doesn't have a job because he chose a career in which there are something like 5 job openings in the United States in any given year... and maybe 1-2 in a decade in his particular metropolitan area. So I asked him why he didn't try doing something else, and his response was "Why, as an American, should I do anything other than what I want to do?" For a lot of people, I think THAT attitude lies at the heart of everything. Nobody seems to think that they should have a backup plan, anymore. Nobody seems to want to have a "way to get by until I get back on my feet if I unexpectedly lose my preferred job." Nobody's willing to do "the jobs Americans don't want to do." even if that's what it takes to survive. (Except the Mexicans. Go Mexicans! OWS has done more to change my mind about illegal immigration than anything else. At least the illegals have a work ethic.) Well, that's not the way the world works. Crap happens, and you'd better be willing to do what it takes. My ancestors crossed an ocean to find a freer life. My great-grandfather worked in a coal mine so he could pay my grandfather's way through trade school, so he could work in the mill. My grandfather worked in the mill so he could help my father pay for college. My father worked his way through college so he could become a teacher, and make enough money so that I WOULDN'T have to work my way through college. (I'm not having kids, so I can relax. But if I'd screwed that up, it'd be all on ME.) That's how the American Dream works. It's not "a better life for me, IMMEDIATELY!" It's "a chance at a better life for my kids." Some people screw up. They decide that it's easier to get high, or drunk, or gamble, or become parents WAY too soon, or just goof off, or that they don't need to worry because they're athletically gifted, or they make some other crummy choices, and they don't have a backup plan. (I know a guy from high-school who will probably spend the rest of his life pumping gas, because he thought he didn't need to study because he was a badass football player. But he wasn't. Our team lost 2 out of every 3 games. He just thought he was. Those people are usually wrong.) Other hard-working people get screwed, through no fault of their own. And those people deserve all the help they can get. But the thing is, I don't think they're the ones protesting. I think they're too busy trying to do whatever it takes. They're the ones pawning their TVs and laptops and eating ramen so they can take a non-credit college course that will improve their job marketability, not blogging about it. (The college campus I work on offers those. We're almost entirely serving working or job-hunting students.)

Again, no it doesn't. Angels and Demons is FICTION, and not always well-researched fiction. In fact, here's a list of some of the other mistakes. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Angels_and_Demons/Divergence_from_reality And also, the book says that the amount of antimatter that will be used is 0.25g. which would be 150,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms of antihydrogen. Not 1. I appreciate your imagination, but seriously; I'm a librarian. I have access to vast amounts of information. I am also the son of a chemist, the guys who know all about atoms and anti-atoms and such. I'm also a science geek, and a Star Trek fan (and they use antimatter for everything!) I keep up on things. You can trust me on this one.

Banned because it's my birthday.

I made ice before it was cool.

And while I do generally get on with cats better (like the traits J.C. noted, we have so much in common), I should mention that my schnauzer mix, Mac, was the best pet ever. Of all time.

I mean the Freeman/Ross quote. Not the part about the green apocalypse hooking me. I have never been hooked by a green apocalypse in real life. (Although I have said "When the Apocalypse comes, the slow will be eaten first.")

Once old people make decisions, it's best to just step back out of the way. There's no shifting them from their chosen course of action. Heck, I remember watching an episode of "Cops" where this about 80-year-old lady calls the cops because she thinks a burglar is hiding in her shed. (He was.) Once the cops get there, she decides to open the shed for them. The cops ask her not to, to stay back and let them handle it. She completely ignores them like she's been suddenly struck deaf, trundles over and opens the shed. Gets nearly bowled over by the fleeing burglar. Could have broken a hip at least. This is why when people are totally ignoring good advice, I call it being in "old lady mode."

Maybe I've done the math wrong, but as of May 2011, there are 8.4 million million-dollar households in the US. And 118 million households. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/05/chart-of-the-day-9-of-americans-are-millionaires-in-2011/238458/ That's a lot closer to 10% than to 1%, to me. EDIT: On the other hand, that's assets, not income, and a lot of those kinds of millionaires became millionaires because they're hyper-frugal (which is how my grandmother - a schoolteacher married to a coal miner/farmer - managed to leave behind a 6-figure inheritance to her two daughters.) That said, there is absolutely no doubt that there is too much influence of money from all large organizations (from corporations to NGOs to unions) in government. I just don't see anyone being willing to come up with a solution that removes ALL influences. This is still too much about POWER for both political parties, and each side still only wants to strengthen their own big donors while weakening the other guy's.

What totally fvcks up the Earth's core and leads to the "end of the world" scenario in the visually stunning but scientifically craptacular movie "2012?" It's either that or What particles were recently discovered to possibly be able to travel faster than light?

This is how old I am: You're not a Gamer unless you roll dice and know what a Tarrasque is. You kids and your machines!

What drives me nuts is that your two political leaders both have last names that start with "Y". It makes it really hard to keep score of who the "bad guy" is supposed to be! It doesn't surprise me, however, that our Left seems to have entirely the opposite opinion of your leaders than you do. It seems that our crazy right-wingers are closer to the truth on this one. That's what makes me sad. I can no longer tell who the crazy people are. Or even if there are any NON-crazy people left.