Wow, I’m particularly surprised at O’Reillys list of extremes.  If those thoughts are actually running through his head, then some of the statments actually impress me.  But I guess he knows enough about extremes - I watched his show once or twice, and that was about all I could take.

But the O’Reilly clothing line is absolutely fabulous!  Now you too can look chic and live the “life O’Reilly.”

And, by the way, it’s God’s fault.  If there’s anyone to blame, it’s Him/Her/It/They/Us.

I can see it all now.

This little girl’s future is all set.

She will grow up and marry a gay sheep cattle rancher near some mountain.

Divorce him, move to NYC, and marry a Jewish metrosexual paleontologist.

Turn gay, divorce him, and decide with her lover that they want his hi-IQ sperm to create a child with.

It was a tuesday. I was going to school in Brooklyn NY. It was my first year of highschool. I had to take a 15 minute subway ride to get to school. It was actually my first day on the subway. Previous days my father had the good will of driving me to school. That day I got lost on the subway and got to school at 8:30 AM. By my second period class my classmate noticed some smoke over the trees. Minutes later some lady comes into the classroom and quietly whispers something onto my teacher’s ear. Once the lady left, our teacher informed us that a plane crashed into one of the towers of the WTC. We spent the rest of the period talking about how in the 1940’s a similar accident had happened with the Empire State building. We went off to the next period class as usual. There we went on the computers and found out that a second plane crashed into the other tower. Panic started taking over the class as our teacher told us that it might have been a terrorist attack. By 4th period we were all watching the news on any available tv that the school had to offer. There were kids crying and teachers as well when we found out that both towers had fallen. By six period my mother came to pick me up. She walked 70 blocks to get to my school. There were no trains running and the busses and cabs were full. As we walked back to my house, we heard jet fighters zooming past our heads and people would duck in fear. I myself was scared since on tv they had said that there were 6 airplanes missing. When I was approaching my house, i noticed a thick layer of ashes on top of the cars. I collected some of it, that i still hold to this day. I also picked up a burning paper that came falling in front of me. Later on that day me and my family walked to the Brooklyn Promonade to see Manhattan. On the there, we saw people taht were coming from manhattan covered in dust. I will never forget that scene. Downtown Manhattan was one big dust cloud. The only thing you could see were the sirens of the official vehicles. “what a day”.
A few days later my neighborhood was covered with faces. Papers everywhere with “have you seen…” “last day seen…” I knew people that died there. RIP

MY OPINION: I, as a person that experienced the tragedy, do not wish to see another American city devastated as NYC was.

-Ezto

First he has to fight the eco-terrorism within his own nation and rid it of those dog feces that are all over the France. He probably should clean up his own backyard first. :oops: :cry:

http://www.travel.ecwhost.com/1996.11.27.ParisTrip.php

http://gofrance.about.com/cs/culture/a/badside.htm

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. — Albert Einstein

one of my favorites…

The reason men like war is because it is the only thing that they do that women don’t laugh at. - Don’t know

Nobody ever won a war by dying for his country, he won it by making the other bastard die for his. — George S. Patton

O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle-be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen. The War Prayer, Mark Twain.

You must sit down to watch this! LOL!

http://www.youtube.com/watch.php?v=Kkg9gR-Zjtk

OK.  I just had to ask.

Still seems like a bit of a farce to me, but I guess if they have close enough family…

My wife started a forum to discuss the gilmore girls on TV.  She is a big, addicted fan of the show but couldn’t find a good forum.  If you are interested, check it out at:

http://s3.phpbbforfree.com/forums/index.php?mforum=gilmoregirls

@Janus1:

asmodeus: kind of an esoteric reference there, huh?
ralph reid: dont know who he is, and couldnt find out from google.

as far as hillary: my dislike of her has nothing to do with her politics. i know next to nothing about her politics, and the one issue i actually know her position on, i more or less agree with (more than any other politician ive heard). so why do i dislike her? dont know really. something about her gives me one impression: power-hungry manipulative b****. i dont know where i got that, nor do i know why or how. but i greatly dislike her, and it has nothing to do with her politics. that said, if she is elected, im moving to canada.

I can give you a good reason not to like her.  After 911 she charged that the administration should have told the people of Manhatan that the air could be contaminated by the explosions (on 911).  She used it as a mud slinging game with Bush, saying how he doesn’t care about the long term effects of exposure, cover up… all that nonsense.  She is not a stupid woman, she is like you said “a power-hungry manipulative b****”.  She knows very well that telling people on 911 that the air could hurt them would have caused a panic.  Manhattan is an island with only a few bridges.  10s, if not100s of thousands would have died in the ensuing stampede.

She is not fit to be a senator, much less our president.

Thanks for noticing the pre-print version of the paper.  Its only 5 pages and surprisingly not too terribly difficult to follow.  From the article:

How does information get out of a black hole? My work with Hartle[8] showed the radiation could be thought of as
tunnelling out from inside the black hole. It was therefore not unreasonable to suppose that it could carry information
out of the black hole. This explains how a black hole can form and then give out the information about what is inside
it while remaining topologically trivial. There is no baby universe branching off, as I once thought. The information
remains firmly in our universe. I’m sorry to disappoint science fiction fans, but if information is preserved, there is
no possibility of using black holes to travel to other universes. If you jump into a black hole, your mass energy will
be returned to our universe but in a mangled form which contains the information about what you were like but in a
state where it can not be easily recognized. It is like burning an encyclopedia. Information is not lost, if one keeps the
smoke and the ashes. But it is difficult to read. In practice, it would be too difficult to re-build a macroscopic object
like an encyclopedia that fell inside a black hole from information in the radiation, but the information preserving
result is important for microscopic processes involving virtual black holes. If these had not been unitary, there would
have been observable effects, like the decay of baryons.
…
I gave John an encyclopedia of baseball, but maybe I should just have given him the ashes.

Falk wrote:

i doubt that passing something through a singularity is a unitary process

Hawking basically states this is a unitary process by what isn’t observed in other quantum effects…i.e. the decay of baryons.  I’m not sure if that is really proof or just a strong indication however.

I was hoping someone would open a thread about this.  Here’s a piece I wrote while exchanging e-mails with a friend on Lost in Translation.  Hope it doesn’t give anything away.
–----------
Hmm…I am wondering if my comments right now are influenced by seeing Munich over the weekend.  I felt Spielberg was reaching for a particular audience, specifically the hard conservative Israelis.  While the movie isn’t sympathetic to the Palestinians, it’s not unsympathetic to them either.  But really, it creates very thin Palestinian characters without really exploring what it is they are doing.  I believe Spielberg chose this route because he wanted to appeal to those conservatives, who really don’t give a damn what the Palestinians feel or want or need.  Rather, the movie showed everything a right-wing Israeli would see:  murders, terror, etc.  It also expressed the rage, anger, and frustration of the conservatives as well.  But then it showed what the logical extension of all those feelings, what those ideas would lead to, and not on a social level, but a deeply personal one, especially how loving Israel can make you less Jewish.

As such, I don’t think this is an Israel-Palestine movie.  It’s something that has been done rarely:  an Israel-Israel movie.  It’s an attempt in my mind to bridge the gap between the deep divisions in Israeli society.  Or maybe not bridge, but convince the other side.  Hence, its appeal and its focus are tightly played on the self-destructive nature of revenge, typical in some ways of many revenge movies recently (with the notable exception of Quentin Tarrantino), but also elevating that sensibility and relating it to a concrete social dilemma.

All i can say:

G’Day, Mate
grab yourself a stubby and enjoy

i am envious … but my time will come :)

Precisely, and unfortunately.  Although there might be some question as to whether a sign posted, say, inside a building, can apply to the parking lot.  And your acceptance of the procedure initially can be construed as implied consent.  But, if you think you can plausibly argue that the company didn’t have any signs or anything, then maybe you have a case.  But unfortunately, it’s doubtful.  Sorry I couldn’t be of any more assistance.

This news sotry shows just how close the United States is to becoming just like Germany of the 1930’s.

We have always been a nation of the rule of law, and have prided ourselves on our Constitution to the point where we expected EVERYONE else to accept, adopt, and follow it.

Not anymore.  Now, 42% of Americans think that the Constitution is irrelevant and should be discarded in order to keep them “safe” from outside agression.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060108/ap_on_go_pr_wh/eavesdropping_ap_poll

WASHINGTON - A majority of Americans want the Bush administration to get court approval before eavesdropping on people inside the United States, even if those calls might involve suspected terrorists, an AP-Ipsos poll shows.

Over the past three weeks,
President Bush and top aides have defended the electronic monitoring program they secretly launched shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, as a vital tool to protect the nation from al-Qaida and its affiliates.

Yet 56 percent of respondents in an AP-Ipsos poll said the government should be required to first get a court warrant to eavesdrop on the overseas calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens when those communications are believed to be tied to terrorism.

Agreeing with the White House, some 42 percent of those surveyed do not believe the court approval is necessary.

“We’re at war,” Bush said during a New Year’s Day visit to San Antonio. “And as commander in chief, I’ve got to use the resources at my disposal, within the law, to protect the American people. … It’s a vital, necessary program.”

According to the poll, age matters in how people view the monitoring. Nearly two-thirds of those between age 18 to 29 believe warrants should be required, while people 65 and older are evenly divided.

Party affiliation is a factor, too. Almost three-fourths of Democrats and one-third of Republicans want to require court warrants.

Cynthia Ice-Bones, 32, a Republican from Sacramento, Calif., said knowing about the program made her feel a bit safer. “I think our security is so important that we don’t need warrants. If you’re doing something we shouldn’t be doing, then you ought to be caught,” she said.

But Peter Ahr of Caldwell, N.J., a religious studies professor at Seton Hall University, said he could not find a justification for skipping judicial approvals. Nor did he believe the administration’s argument that such a step would impair terrorism investigations.

“We’re a nation of laws. … That means that everybody has to live by the law, including the administration,” said Ahr, 64, a Democrat who argues for checks and balances. “For the administration to simply go after wiretaps on their own without anyone else’s say-so is a violation of that principle.”

The eavesdropping is run by the secretive National Security Agency, the government’s code-makers and code-breakers.

Charles Franklin, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said most people think that the eavesdropping is aimed at foreign terrorists, even when the surveillance is conducted inside the country.

“They are willing to give the president quite a lot of leeway on this when it comes to the war on terror,” said Franklin, who closely follows public opinion.

Some members of Congress have raised concerns about the president’s actions, but none of those lawmakers who have been briefed on the program has called for its immediate halt.

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, GOP Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record) of Pennsylvania, has promised hearings this year. Five members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, including GOP Sens. Olympia Snowe of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, have called for immediate inquiries.

On top of that, a memorandum circulated Friday from two legal analysts at the Congressional Research Service concluded that the justification for the monitoring may not be as strong as the administration has argued.

The NSA’s activity “may present an exercise of presidential power at its lowest ebb,” the 44-page memo said.

Bush based his eavesdropping orders on his presidential powers under the Constitution and a September 2001 congressional resolution authorizing him to use military force in the fight against terrorism.

The administration says the program is reviewed every 45 days and that Bush personally reauthorizes it. His top legal advisers argue its justification is sound.

The issue is full of grays for some people interviewed for the poll, including homebuilder Harlon Bennett, 21, a political independent from Wellston, Okla. He does not think the government should need warrants for suspected terrorists.

“Of course,” he added, “we all could be suspected terrorists.”

I just saw The Banff Mountain Film Festival.  Some excellent footage from around the world by people looking to challenge whatever limits that might have been imposed on them.

http://www.chestnutmtnproductions.com/banff/banffhome.htm

If it comes to your corner of the world - i recommend checking it out.

that is so screwed up, its funny.