tvashtarkatena

It seems like the logic of wild animal trainers is based on "it hasn't happened yet so it probably won't I hope" A lot of them hold on to this after being injured multiple times. I visited a croc farm in Oz. The feeder had a nice bravado thing going before feeding, but once got into the pen with a 2000 lb albino monster that had already killed 3 potential mates to deliver its weekly chicken, he looked like he couldn't wait to get the hell out of there...which he did right quick after dropping off the happy meal. I wondered why he couldn't just chuck the chook over the fence, we wouldn't think any less of him for it for it, but that's Australia for ya.

ROTFLMAO!! uhhh, introducing our newest star....Tillicum...uhhhh...Shamu... uhhh "Earl the Killer Whale" I just netflixed "Jodhaa Akbar", a Bollywood epic about 16th century moguls, complete with battle elephants crushing the guts out of foot soldiers' mouths and everything. Not a mode of death Hollywood's addressed yet as far as I can tell. The cool thing about Bollywood is they still do it with lots and lots of real people, elephants, and castles n shit rather than CGI. Spaghetti western style acting, but the music and battle scenes rocked. Shamu should travel to India to have his/her (?) story told properly.

We're obviously headed for negative population growth and zero or negative growth economics; our present system is based on the false assumption of unlimited cheap energy and other resources. After an exhaustive 5 minute google, I can't find much of anything serious about a zero growth economic model. It doesn't seem like there's an economist out there whose tackled this indoor elephant. Strange. Or not, maybe. We're fucked. Eventually.

My only objection to Red Mill: I hate the Rolling Stones.

I'm burrowing through a 50 lb bag of Red Mill flour myself. Unfortunately, it's not very good stuff for bread making. King Arthur is still the best...and the most expensive, of course. Wish I could find it in bulk.

Well there's a part of the planet I'll probably never get to. Thanks for letting us see it.

You'll note I gave Taco Bell a hall pass.... Listening to the soundtrack to Jodhaa Akbar. F'in great. Rock on, Bollywood.

Dood, better prepare for a Swiss crime wave, now that the cat's out of the bag LOL I love the picture I get in my head when the NRA trots out it's 'polite, armed society' argument: a meth head declining, at the last moment, to break into your house because he just read that gun ownership nationwide is up 4% that year.

If you want to understand JayB's philosophy, it's all in his language. Sectors, rather than communities. Consumers, basically eating an shitting machines, rather than people. Do any people actually inhabit his economic world? His long held contention is that any successful business model should be supported. OK, let's take a look at fast food franchising. Very successful business model. It's also one that has contributed more than just about any other 'sector' to the destruction of our urban landscape, our health, our living wage, and our environment. Oh, but what's the alternative, you say? Whatever are we to do? Dicks. 5 locations. Benefits and much higher salaries than the big boys. Real potato fries. Real ice cream. As cheap or cheaper. Local inputs. Red Mill. 2 locations. More expensive...and there's a line out the door all the time. They take cash only. Fuck you credit card companies, and fuck you 'consumer' if you don't like it. Ditto on the wages. The reality is, of course, that there are lots of alternatives, and that competing economies of scale at smaller, local scales are not only apparently possible; they out-compete the big boys. So what's the difference? Let the best business win, right? The difference is, of course, that McDonalds doesn't give one flying fuck about your community, and never will. To the McDonalds corporation, your community is a quarterly number, nothing more. Dicks and Red Mill do...they live there. The real story, of course, is that fast food industry has long been heavily subsidized in a number of ways, agricultural subsidies, minimum wage laws, lax zoning, tax breaks, non-existent environmental regulation (feed lots, anyone?), and FDA that looks the other way...precisely as a result of 'pro business', ie, 'conservative' or, my personal favorite 'hands off' policies. Ask JayB if he supports the fast food industry, and you'll get an enthusiastic YES! Jobs...success...let the chips fall where they may in the 'free market', buyer beware! Then ask JayB if he'd live between a McDonalds and a Burger King, want his kids (hypothetically) to work or eat there, and check for consistency.

A disorganized professor? Impossible.

If that family had had some guns around the house they would have been able to defend themselves.

As I recall, he loves to laugh.

It's not hard to imagine that the country would separate vertically, in a moral and intellectual sense, into those who are either stupid and/or lie a lot, and those who are not and/or don't. The two groups never really had much use for each other anyway. Stupid, which tends to get one into shitty situations, and lying; the go to extraction strategy for such people. Like toast and butter. Republican party = stupid liars. It's pretty much as simple as that as far as I'm concerned at this point. Those few R congressmen who kick off a campaign intending to tell the truth are quickly re-educated by the party. Pretty near 100% of them come out of it as full blown shitbags.

You mean the upcoming show he's broadcasting live from the University of East Anglia?

That's when the rail road car pry bars get broken out....

Hmmm...re-opening Gitmo for Cheney and Company. Moral quandary or wet dream for the civil libertarian?

Hint: Gitmo's dismantling seems to be really dragging on....

There's a re-education camp in the near future with your family's name on it, comrade.

Well, I don't disagree. It's just that, even if the story were true, the misdeeds of three members of a large activist organization doesn't define the organization itself or negate it's past accomplishments. Admittedly, I don't deal too much in the area that ACORN was involved in, and I'm not very familiar with the organization itself. The Rfucks do try to pull a few shenanigans regarding keeping voters from the booth locally...I was personally involved in one incident (it was very satisfying to watch one of our legal observers shut the dumbfuck up right quick by informing he that he was rather blatantly violating the law...almost always the case when the Right actually has to go mano a mano in any legal sense), but they focus most of their stupid pet tricks in FL, OH, and other more pivotal states. It's interesting to mention that the Rfucks have a well oiled national machine for voting obstruction, because they know they're in a permanent minority, and they know that minorities have long been on to their racist (war on drugs, anyone?) and economically marginalizing agenda. The Dems, of course, don't need to play that game...and they don't.

The only thing the Republican party understands is a leather boot heel in the face. Let's finally speak their language and give it to them. They've been begging for it for quite a few years now. America's well being and survival requires that the Republican party, in its current incarnation, go away. Let's not pretend any longer that this isn't an all out ideological war for the future well being of this country. They would, and have, done the same to us...in spades.

Unfortunately, it was just another helping of BS by the entire corporate "press", NYT included: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7701 In addition to smelling a little off, the story was also irrelevant to any issues or organizations that I think matter at all.

You play goalie in an adult diaper and bare feet and see how long you last. Sponsorship by Timmy Horton, though...that would be awesome.

I looked at the source of the ACORN thing and decided on day 1 it was just another helping of talk radio bullshit.

No, they fit into about 3 molds: 1) Gun kooks. 2) Property rights kooks. 3) Just plain kooks. One mold they don't fit into is being grateful for and wanting to give back to the collective society largely responsible for the luxury of their indulgences. Oh, wait...they got where they are solely through their own blood, sweat and tears....yeah, I often forget that.

Here's something that really has nothing to do with climbing. Per capita gun ownership by country. Yeah, the USA is definitely number one...WAY out in front, as a matter of fact. Per capita gun ownership worldwide versus per capita gun homicides by country: Gun homicides per capita by country Comparing that aforementioned fortress of Armed Politeness Switzerland with the USA, for example, we find that Americans own 3 times more guns per capita than the Swiss, yet our crime rates are...wait, this can't be right...more than five times higher. By that posters logic, the solution to gun crime in gang areas, for example, would be to simply ARM THE GANGS...you know, to increase the politeness factor. IF those ganstas only knew that other ganstas were packin.... The gun lobby loves to sing its silver bullet song of an armed, polite society, but reality, of course, is quite a bit more complicated than that. But most of us already knew that. America's addiction to guns, and I'm not talking about yer over and under grouse gun, here...guns meant to kill people, should come as no surprise, given that we own 40% of the world's armaments...more than the next 10 countries combined. Every American man, woman, and child spends over $2300 a year on the military...nearly 60% of our national discretionary budget. In the aggregate, we are an extremely addictive, paranoid society. Gun fetishism, such as the need to carry a firearm into a National Park (???), is just one of many manifestations of that national weirdness.