ashw_justin

Oh but how he yearned to harness the physical world and create such amazing material things, yet in the end could only destroy. Self-immolated so to speak, in order to be not-so-subtly reincarnated over the course of over a thousand pages as the oppressed martyr(s) of industrialism, wondering where all the glory and virgins are... (However, the pacifistic cast of that more mature second edition would be quite a bit more the 'wrong book...')

Howark Roark was a terrorist...

njB6SegkG8w translation at the end: "not even if they do this referendum and get 90% of the vote--I'm not stepping down." vs. e7no1WObcRs or in so many words, our 'War on Terror' began 1300 years ago. Where do they find these people?

1:04 ? 1:56 Angela Basset? 2:06 Salma Hayek But I'm sure they've all had some black in 'em at some point. heheh... oh wait I probably can't something like that cuz I'm not black

Depends on traffic... if it's the morning commute with typical congestion, it is not hard to move at the speed of traffic. The trickier part is passing cars/buses properly on the left, and other things along the lines of following the traffic code while on the road--as if you were driving a car (only 10 times more paranoid).

I thought I read somewhere that there is actually a huge lack of sidewalks in many Seattle-area neighborhoods... In any case I don't think your casting of bicyclists as a kind of pedestrian is entirely appropriate, nor conducive to legitimizing our right to occupy lanes of traffic.

As much as I hate to suggest giving The Man any more control, it's not unreasonable to consider a bicycling license endorsement (like for motorcycling), contingent on demonstrated knowledge of (and proper adherence to) the traffic code as it pertains to bicycles on the roadway. This would seem to go hand-in-hand with being taken seriously in terms of budgeting, lawmaking, planning, and otherwise being regarded as legitimate and equal users of the roads.

But Bush Co. has made WAY more money for 'some of us' than Billary ever did/will... 'Failure' eh? Depends on the mission statement, really... http://money.cnn.com/2006/10/26/news/companies/exxon_earnings/index.htm

Sadly, anyone rich enough to get beamed into every living room became so by pandering to the big investors. $1 = 1 vote. Doesn't it say that in the Constitution?

She's for sale and 'we' can't afford her

impose/oppose? I'm confused, I'm just suggesting that we use whatever political power we have left to put people in power who aren't free agents to the highest bidder, or worse, company insiders who see no difference between the boardroom and the oval office.

Gas is actually really cheap. Most SUV owners haven't even firebombed their own vehicles to collect insurance yet, and they probably wont unless gas goes above $20/gallon. The real question is what other prices we are paying (wars, vulnerability, inadaptibility) in order to maintain such artificially cheap gas prices, and if the answer is not satisfactory (and I don't think it is), then the solution is not to tax gas itself (two wrongs) but rather to oppose the people in government who work (or will work) primarily to keep themselves and their rich friends rich at unfair expense to the rest of the country. The collapse of fuel supply will be the next dark age, but at least the food supply should be able to adapt to some extent. Local things will once again become cheaper than shit made thousands of miles away and people ought to be able to rediscover the lost art of farm labor (unemployment goes to zero as the lazy die of starvation? ).

This discussion is so 5 years ago. I can't presume that any of you would have missed this. Even so, I can imagine the noble free market principles being allowed to do their job only under a government that can truly play hands off, that is to say a government not owned and run by the oil industry--which will only become possible once they no longer have enough money to buy elections. (At which point some other industrial advocates will take over... long live the Corporatocracy!)

As a child I used to watch music in fields of grass in the middle of Fairhaven. Now it's all designer retirement condos and brand new souvenir shoppes trying to appear 'historic.' Welcome to 'historic' Fairhaven, the sign says... the best faux-history that development money can buy.

Funny what throwing the word "war" around has allowed this administration to do. Too bad nobody else gets to use the magic word.

So to the original question: 3000 years of Western Civilization is no match for millions of years of evolution. Sustained monogamy presents an obvious evolutionary penalty. Genetic adaptability is directly related to the frequency of, shall we say, horizontal gene transfer 8D within the population. Bonobos and chimps, our closest primate relatives, are opportunistic breeders, like most if not all successful species. So I think it is obvious what is natural. [Creationists, refer instead to your Bible.] But being the decadent humans we have become of late, we are in a unique situation where the natural pressures of survival are so absent that we now dedicate ourselves entirely to self-gratification. Clearly that is the true question being debated here: what is best for our fragile little egos? Aside from this I don't think there is anything 'natural' left to be debated. There is at most the consideration of what is amenable to a healthy, civilized society. Kids do not require exactly 1 man and 1 woman to be raised properly. They require at least 10 men, 10 women, 10 boys, and 10 girls. Most of these influences come from extended families, social groups, and collective education. Others kids get it from television and music (shudder). The idea of the biblical nuclear family may have been perfectly superimposable on the sparsely-populated frontier at the dawn of westward expansion, but it's archaic in the context the highly socialized environment that most humans live in now. Children can now draw upon the support and influence an entire civilization. Personally, as a child I got 4+ parent figures and double the extended family as the result of a divorce of a three-year marriage, and I am quite grateful for this, actually...

There is a nice big wall up at the Oyster Dome/Bat Caves. It is developed a bit with a handful of routes (bolted, w/ anchors) starting from the top or the bottom. Lesser known perhaps due to the ~1hr approach hike, so bring a brush for some of the routes. Pretty woods, nice views. Your recreation there might even help the case to protect those woods. ps. it's no Index or Squamish, i.e. as others have said don't move to B'ham for the climbing

In Religion, Hollywood, Fundamentalistan, and lately U.S. politics, the favorite strategy is to promote strong emotional reactions to imaginary situations. Fear is the mind-killer.

OMG! Enemy activities! THOUSANDS of people across this planet are after us! PLEASE, TAKE ALL MY RIGHTS AND MY MONEY AND KILL ALL THE BOOGIE MAN! ps. And they are using the INTERNET! CHENEY-GINRICH in 2008!

$ex industry, no matter how you dress it. But we like our sex here. Shouldn't we?

NOVEMBER

Sorry to bore you, was going to extend your smoking parallelism to advocate a similar evisceration of the food marketing syndicate, but couldn't reconcile it against my 'the chronically stupid should reap what they sow (as long as it doesn't tear down my society)' position that you so expertly exposed last time, when the drugs in question were much more addictive and unhealthy than saturated fat and corn syrup. So I suppose we shall just have to let the population eat itself to death, if that's what the billionaires want.

Is it education or counterpropaganda? The airwaves are bloated with misleading food marketing on a scale so immense that it's interesting to imagine how many people's diets would completely change if television ceased to exist. If there is anything good to come of impending fuel shortage, it will be that the humans may rediscover the ancestral arts of generating their own body heat and providing their own locomotive energy. That is, after they have razed all of the McDonald's to the ground in search of their precious burgers, fries, soda, and ice cream.

lol Fine don't censor it then or leave out the chorus

Rock music is too garbled for a good introduction. Gotta have something with a clear driving baseline. Have to go with NIN's "Closer," probably replacing the expletive with "fight" (in order not to get the crowd too riled up.) "You let me violate you. You let me desecrate you. You let me penetrate you. You let me complicate you. Help me. I broke apart my insides. Help me. I've got no soul to sell. Help me. The only thing that works for me. Help me get away from myself. I wanna [um, fight I guess] you like an animal..." Or something along those lines.