It's not the new year yet, but it seems like a good time to give thanks.

Long story short, I've had a good year. Great job, short commute, and dating again. I've become focused, but with great flexibility. I'm not sweating the big stuff, or the small stuff. The good stuff is in the middle.

May your holidays be commercial-free,
$$$$$exyGal

============

• Santa - He's nude, dude - don't let the kids see this.
• knows if you're - Smart people know a lot.
• naughty - Naughty has a new meaning these days.
• or nice - Polite.

============

comments disabled

Stop gouging yourself on leftover turkey, assmasters!

Rusty is a trollback fan

Trollback has many spies, and some of the more pallid, greasy ones keeps a close eye on IRC. One of our spies managed to unstick his keys long enough to alert us to this:

<rusty_afk> "The phrases "open source" and "enterprise ready" keep popping into Trollback's mind, but Trollback cannot figure out why."
<rusty_afk> heh
<rusty_afk> presumably the link is "phrases rusty has never said without a negation in between them..."

Moderation

Trollback is reluctant to engage in any moderation discussion, since social engineering is by its nature a fickle process, and everybody likes to think they have the one perfect solution. Unfortunately, not every organization is as modest. A brand new site, Everything In Moderation, promises to have all the answers for keeping trolls from peeing in your public pool.

Taco is well known for dancing around the issue of moderation-talk, relegating it to his journal, where virtually no one can post. Fortunately, Trollback regular Sheetrock is on-hand to translate Taco's journal, and provide a forum for us all. Still, there is some concern about the alternative of making moderation entirely open to the public. Trollback has some concerns, mostly about people having too much time.

Welcome back, Jack!

Although Trollback comes pretty close, nobody is perfect, and it turns out we have been failing to track the comments of upstanding consultant Jack Wagner. Rest assured this tragic oversight has been remedied, and the great man seems to have started posting again. Trollback welcomes you back!

By way of attonement, here is a selection of Trollback's favourite Wagner links: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]

The list

(-1,7,22) egg troll | My Experience with the Linux
(1,25,115) Sheetrock | Playing God, with hilarious results.
(0,9,12) Jack Wagner | Is this dangerous
(2,10,33) Anonymous Coward | it still has DRM
(-1,7,33) Anonymous Coward | This was not an accident
(1,11,92) Jack Wagner | Meanwhile
(1,12,22) GoatPigSheep | I could see this coming
(-1,11,26) Dancin_Santa | That's great!
(2,16,34) Zeinfeld | Re:Isn't Rock-n-Roll dead as well?
(1,8,15) Sheetrock | Although they're calling this memory
(1,15,31) Boromir son of Faram | enough
(-1,20,27) Sheetrock | Interesting thoughts...
(-1,10,23) Amsterdam Vallon | Not worth it
(5,13,43) Anonymous Coward | Re:Trust them
(4,19,108) Sheetrock | Not really fair to disclose this information.
(0,8,45) Anonymous Coward | Re:Passenger airships
(4,30,68) EmCeeHawking | My Experience
(3,8,12) Dancin_Santa | I'm a proponent of nuclear energy
(2,12,17) Anonymous Coward | Has a Microsoft release ever been compromised?
(2,8,11) Amsterdam Vallon | Why is there a need for this?
(1,6,14) Anonymous Coward | Re:Can't be done
(-1,6,63) GoatPigSheep | absolutely not
(0,18,128) Zeinfeld | Re:For the love of all that's good and holy

Honourable Mentions

• some great anime flamebait
• matrix spoilers never get old
• sheetrock finally gets a sig bite
• BsoF gets more username bites
• this gets without question the best point-by-point you'll ever see on slashdot.

Look forward to "Trollback 2003: a year in review" at the end of the month!

That's it for this month!

Assmasters of the universe!

It is nearly 400 years since Guy Fawkes was hanged, drawn, and quartered for attempting to poison the Queen of England. Once you've tired of celebrating his memory in the traditional way, why not come inside and treat yourself to the October 2003 edition of Trollback?

Slashdot news and happenings

Back in May we discussed the psychiatrist's dream that is HanzoSan. All good things must come to an end, and it seems the same is also true for HanzoSan. After some inspiring work, that which HanzoSan loves the most was taken away from him: karma. His comment history shows his karma has been decimated. Like a tree falling in the forest with no-one to hear it, HanzoSan cannot be heard without karma, and he has officially left the building. In a rare gesture of kindness, HanzoSan included a list of who to thank in his diary.

We welcome Pan T. Hose, who has already been a victim of CmdrTaco's secret powers. Not only does Pan T. Hose have three entries in The List, but he gets an honourable mention for starting one of the best threads of the month. Trollback looks forward to a long line of posts!

It was pointed out by Trollback follower x.c.v that we never reported on Mensa Babe. This was not intentional, so we now present a posthumous investigation into some of Mensa Babe's finest work as selected by fellow Trollback fan x.c.v: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. Remember, if you see a user who shows potential, and we don't seem to be tracking said user, an email to Trollback's address or a post to 31337 goes a long way to rectifying the situation.

It seems to have been a bad month for our favorite glorified blogs. It seems that everyone have received their fair share of 5xx errors after triggering boundary conditions by, say, clicking on a story link, discussed by Taco in journal entries. Now I know you keep telling us there's never going to be a Meta section, but honestly Rob, a rose by any other name...

Elsewhere

Slashdot's 5xx problems were minor compared to the trials of k5. An age-old problem in systems maintenance is how to create a test environment that can be guaranteed to perform exactly as the live environment does. Fortunately, Mr Foster had a brilliant solution to this problem: test major changes on the live server. What followed was a month of turmoil, where the site was seemingly more down than up. This problem finally seems to be under control, for reasons possibly not unrelated to the fact that the servers only have to handle a fraction of the requests they used to thanks to a large exodus of the userbase. The phrases "open source" and "enterprise ready" keep popping into Trollback's mind, but Trollback cannot figure out why.

After a lengthy hiatus, Adequacy.org has resurfaced in the form of an archive. Although a static site, there are links to all of the comments that made Adequacy.org fun. The world is once again safe from teenage hackers.

The List

(4,6,45) Anonymous Coward | Re:Here is the text...
(-1,19,32) Anonymous Coward | mp3 music is illegal
(5,14,109) mao che minh | Cool
(0,16,57) Dancin Santa | I kind of like SiteFinder
(1,21,65) Dancin Santa | Losing the Insert key
(0,7,13) egg troll | Such a waste of money
(2,12,114) Tyreth | Starlight and time
(0,18,79) larry bagina | slashdot == sexist
(1,13,18) Krapangor | Why should be decent product activation evil ?
(0,8,18) egg troll | Why are they backing off?
(5,9,33) Pan T. Hose | Funny
(4,32,87) Anonymous Coward | Availability of the DNC
(5,9,33) Pan T. Hose | Interesting
(0,14,49) Krapangor | Java ?
(1,9,58) Pan T. Hose | I am sick of it
(2,24,65) Anonymous Coward | True costs of Linux (egg troll)
(2,11,24) Sheetrock | It makes sense.
(1,17,120) downix | While I like the idea...
(3,18,53) Dancin Santa | GPL == Communism, and I like it that way
(2,25,74) Sheetrock | I don't really like it (yet)
(-1,10,15) Michael's a Jerk! | MS works for me (Not a troll, please read) (egg troll)
(-1,15,22) Michael's a Jerk! | As a record store owner.

Honourable Mentions

• Pan T. Hose proves that your average slashbot does not know how lossy music compression works, even if they depend on it for their livelihood.
• A bit of pessimism goes a long way.
• The USA is No. 1!

That's it for this month!

Fellow Assmasters,

Welcome to September 2003's Trollback!

That's right, trollback is actually on time this month, and with another great list as well. As will be expected by trollback's readers, rkz's repost of xprt's gem takes the cake this month. For the sake of completeness, trollback would like the URL to the original post on k5 posted in a comment in this journal. Thanks in advance.

Trollback is heartened to see it has made it to the mainstream. There must be something humourous to say to this, but trollback's comedy muse has failed to materialise.

Trollback had the suggestion to include this post in September trollback, as it apparently has something to do with the true story behind the *BSD trolls. Trollback would like more information about that post, and invites comment from the submitter.

Finally, some of the more prolific trolls are hard to keep up with, particularly those who post more than 24 comments inside of 3 days. Trollback can think of three ways around this:

1. Trollback ceases to be lazy and leaving things to the last minute
2. These same trolls emailing trollback their posts for consideration
3. Someone purchasing trollback a subscription so we can see further back than the last 24 comments

The first option is unlikely to happen. Perhaps we may be able to get CMF funding?

The List

(5,17,64) Zeinfeld | Re:Rimshot
(-1,7,28) stratjakt | Amazing is an innapropriate adjective
(2,37,209) mao che minh | At the end of the day
(-1,9,36) mnmn | 64-benchmarks wont be good
(0,7,21) rkz | ATTN: Editors
(1,14,65) egg troll | A bad decision
(3,12,77) RobotWisdom | Fundamentalist materialism
(-1,3,7) Anonymous Coward | Re:Kubrick promised us the Monolith...
(2,19,246) ColdGrits | Re:I think
(-1,7,9) Sheetrock | Historical Notes.
(2,49,72) rkz | As a record store owner. (by xprt on k5)
(2,22,48) BsoF | crazy
(4,23,46) Amsterdam Vallon | Most ISPs have blocked it
(0,18,47) Syberghost | Deathtraps
(5,19,93) rkz | Hi.
(-1,20,38) Amsterdam Vallon | I wouldn't buy the Athlon anyway
(-1,10,62) Amsterdam Vallon | Why buys Macs?
(1,13,23) Krapangor | This is not o.k.
(3,11,52) Amsterdam Vallon | Nope
(3,11,32) Amsterdam Vallon | I blame colleges
(4,18,38) Amsterdam Vallon | Application programming is a dying paradigm
(4,14,111) Amsterdam Vallon | Groundbreaking suggestion
(1,14,48) Tirel | deceit
(4,22,266) mao che minh | You got sued, yay!
(1,11,14) rkz | Also quite annoying
(1,13,43) rkz | Re:Mo Money! Mo Money! Mo Money!
(-1,10,28) rkz | Sorry but you leftist bastards piss me off.
(-1,24,41) Krapangor | I doubt that they will match the Matrix.
(-1,13,27) Anonymous Coward | I HATE MAC'S
(-1,5,29) Anonymous Coward | Why?
(2,18,34) BsoF | stupid
(0,11,21) Krapangor | Why Slackware ?
(1,12,23) Krapangor | This is a misguided invention.
(-1,8,8) Krapangor | What I don't understand.
(5,10,26) Sheetrock | Another interesting fact:

Honourable Mentions

• egg troll reminds over-excited slashdot readers the realities of tall structures in this post 11/9 world.
• rkz shows what slashdotters think of piracy when it happens to a linux company.

That's it for this month!

Friends, Romans, Assmasters

Welcome to Trollback for August 2003. Trollback is sorry that this publication is consistently late. If it is any consolation, you can rest assured that the list this month is great. Congratulations to all involved.

The Slashdot Submission Life cycle

Some of you might be wondering what the life cycle of a rejected slashdot submission is. This explains all.

Slashdot prophylactics

Just as cows have bells around their necks, and cars have men with red flags walking in front of them, so do Slashbots have their t-shirt competition. Anybody who doesn't look at the winners of this competition will have their trolling licenses revoked.

How can trollback possibly pick a favourite out of such quality material as this? Fortunately they are all of appropriate quality, although this shirt holds a special place in trollback's heart.

The natural habitat of a Taco

Parts of America were plunged into darkness due to a terrorist attack, depriving CmdrTaco of his computer games and stolen MP3s. On the plus side, this allows us to see how a nerd like CmdrTaco behaves when he has to live in the real world. Eagerly anticipating tales of jogging, mountain biking and drunken revelry, trollback checked the journal of a geek.

Surprisingly, physical activities were not once mentioned, but we do learn that he played dominoes and listened to the radio solidly. The report was vague about whether the last part was done huddled in the corner of the room, rocking back and forth while sobbing.

The List

(4,12,50) Adam Rightmann | SCO is plainly lying
(-1,14,22) Anonymous Coward | The Mandrake Boycott (Please Read!)
(-1,8,23) Anonymous Coward | The Mandrake Boycott (IMPORTANT!)
(-1,19,172) Sheetrock | I've been doing some thinking about this lately.
(5,20,97) rkz | Re:Because without KaZaa....
(2,10,53) Eese | How to buy open source software...
(5,33,120) Sheetrock | The problem that just won't go away.
(5,11,78) pjack76 | Re:SCO
(5,8,39) kmak | Wasn't real money per se..
(5,16,59) Sheetrock | The problem may be on your side of the phone.
(5,11,135) Tirel | heh
(-1,16,29) ColdGrits | So apache no invulnerable then...
(5,11,66) rkz | Re:Well that's good and all, but
(3,17,69) gazbo | Re:the $64,000 question:
(5,15,24) GoatPigSheep | RMS promotes his views too strongly.
(0,18,104) Anonymous Coward | Another interesting math problem
(0,9,23) Sheetrock | One thing I don't really get...
(-1,10,17) gazbo | Re:Naww!!!
(5,13,24) Sheetrock | The thing is...
(4,20,50) SlashChick | Happens in Open Source too!

Honourable Mentions

• Content from Arvato systems Taco Network SnotIing Security is +5, Informative
• As a semi-pro insurance fraudster...
• RE-LIVE OOG THE CAVEMAN [1, 2]
• An offtopic discussion about cats

That's it for this month!

Greetings Assmasters

Its the middle of August - the obvious time for a July Trollback!

Group hug and honourable mention

Trollback is pleased to see newcomer rkz being so active this month. Trollback uses its amazing prediction skills to determine that he will be nearing the top of August's Trollback, but until then we have shown our gratitude by allowing him to choose his favorite July troll. Trollback sees a bright future ahead.

Wanna cyber?

Who would have thought that restricting comments in a journal to friends only would create a worthless circle-jerk? Trollback for one was astounded that such a thing would happen, especially when the author has so few friends to begin with. The resulting journal shows how exciting discussion is promoted by the troll-prevention measure. Trollback is disheartened at the number of pimply wannabes who are undoubtedly awestruck by the number of "celebrities" in the comments.

Better late than never

The astute will notice that this journal entry from CmdrTaco was actually written towards the end of June; some things, however, are more important than dates. One such thing would be an entire journal entry from our site's beloved leader, dedicated to demonstrating how easy it is to troll him. If anyone would like to step up to the challenge of trolling Taco into posting your email in his diary, trollback is ready to hand out the propz.

The list

(2,23,47) BsoF | interesting
(0,12,44) rkz | You call this a capitalist society?
(4,12,30) Sheetrock | Good interview.
(2,7,7) Anonymous Coward | Re:again?
(-1,13,25) BsoF | good
(2,33,90) PhysicsGenius | You are kidding, right?
(5,13,34) Adam Rightmann | Sometimes, tech jargon has a purpose
(2,28,50) PhysicsGenius | Business patents and time to railroad
(5,16,31) b.foster | Preaching to the quire
(-1,4,17) Anonymous Coward | How many more mass murders?
(3,15,55) BsoF | cool
(5,12,20) Bob Abooey | Whaaa????
(2,20,58) b.foster | If you can't do the time....
(-1,7,23) Anonymous Coward | As an attorney...
(5,35,162) egg troll | Not quite ready
(-1,6,24) Anonymous Coward | Freenet is under corporate control, not 100% free.
(0,8,30) egg troll | The Superiority of PHP over Perl
(1,31,143) reporter | All About the Same

With such a short list, trollback is sure to have missed some worthy links. Feel free to post said links in the comments section and trollback will add comments to the list.

Honourable mentions

• Save something from being slashdotted, insert tubgirl and goatse links, -1 Informative
• Save something from being slashdotted, insert the phrase "taco-snotting", +5 Informative

That's it for this month!

American companies are moving tech jobs overseas to India [more info]. Why? Simple, it's all about money. But how is that so? The article says that Indian programmers make 1/10th that of American programmers. Why do they make so much less?

I'm not an economist, but here's a some possible reasons:

1. There is a larger supply of programmers in India than the demand for those programmers. That makes the price of programmers low. But only 10% of what American programmers make? That can't be the only answer.
2. The cost of living in India is 1/10th the cost of living in the US. Is that true? If I moved to India, would I have 10 times my current buying power (assuming I was able to continue making my American salary) ?
3. Normal economic rules do not apply to India because a) people don't use money there, they are communists; b) programmers do not need money, because non-programmers revere them and supply the programmers with all their wants; c) all programmers in India funnel a tiny fraction of every American banking transaction into their own Indian bank accounts (ala Office Space).
4. Indian programmers are super-smart and only need to program 4 hours a week. The rest of the week, they work as back-breaking rice farmers.

My guess is #2 is the main reason why. Any thoughts? Also, how long can #2 last? Eventually, won't the cost of Indian programmers rise to near American proportions? If an Indian wanted to live an American lifestyle (DVD players, big houses, eating out every night, watching movies on the big screen, multiple computers, TV dinners, big automobiles, Starbucks, DSL, etc etc etc), wouldn't she need to make more money than $6,000 ? How long will it take for this inflation to take place? Globalization is a two-way street, right?

I'm going to write another one of those "private thoughts" entries soon, but here's some followups to some of my previous entries!

Never has masturbation been so newsworthy. Now it seems that chronic male masturbators are less likely to develop prostate cancer. Perhaps this is yet another reason why males masturbate excessively? Could evolution have had something to do with this? Perhaps, but this is pushing it. Maybe the non-chronic masturbators of the far-past were much more likely to die of prostate cancer. As a result, maybe those prostate cancer sufferers were less-able to support the tribe?

More labels on your meat? Some people say yes, and others say no. This seems like a no-brainer to me. Put the freaking country of origin on the packaging! That is such a baby-step, but a step in the right direction. You meat-eaters should know what you're putting in your belly. Those who say this will add to the cost of meat are living in some fantasy world :). This will not add to the price of meat. How could it?

One last unrelated link I found in the blog-universe. Do you have N.A.D.D. ? Many on Slashdot do, including one of the current contestants.

Xerithane left me a very interesting comment a few weeks ago. Here's a blurb:

For instance, I suffer from a moderately rare eye condition. I will go blind for 3+ hours if I'm exposed to bright light for more than a few minutes. It's like a goths wet dream. When it first happened I was probably 12 or so, and the whole time I sepnt trying to think what blind people saw suddenly made sense.

They don't see anything. Not black, nothing.

This particular topic in regards to what a blind person "sees" is a fascinating one. If you ask the average person on the street what blind people "see", they will probably say "nothing but blackness". Those were my thoughts as well until I realized many years ago that truly blind people do not see any "color" whatsoever. They do not see anything. The absence of sight is not the color black.

Just to be clear, there are many different variations of being "blind". I, myself, am "legally" blind without any contacts or glasses, but can see 20-20 otherwise. I see plenty of blurry colors even without my glasses. For the purposes of this discussion, "blind" refers to those people who do not receive any input whatsoever through their eyes (or optic nerves, etc).

My hypothesis is that blind people do not have a curtain of blackness preceding their paths. There is absolutely nothing at all. You might think that blind people do have a black curtain eternally draped in front of them, but they just cannot relate that experience to others, because they have no color-point-of-reference. That thinking would be wrong.

Imagine a new race of alien, called the Mucola, who have a seventh sense (I'll skip six for fun :)). There's a flap on the Mucola called the GravyTicker that "ticks" whenever life-sustaining gravy is within the "gravy-cone" (ala light-cone) of the GravyTicker. The GravyTicker constantly "ticks", even when gravy is nowhere to be found. If you place gravy directly in front of the Mucola's GravyTicker, the Mucola will feel a strong "tick", and will immediately devour all said gravy.

The Mucola call the "there is no gravy around" tick "fubar", and call the "there is gravy within my reach" tick "yumyum". From "fubar" to "yumyum" are dozens or maybe hundreds of other degrees of ticks: "dork", "nerd", "geek", etc.

Nearly all the Mucola share this spectrum of tick words, with the exception of the Mucola who lost their GravyTicker in gravy-raiding battles. Those Mucola can remember what it was like to tick "fubar" or "yumyum", but now the ticking has completely stopped, and they tick nothing. Many of these Mucola quickly die, but some learn to find gravy using nothing but their senses of sight, hearing, smell, feeling, and taste.

What do you tick?

Just for fun, I decided to peruse the really really old Slashdot stuff to see how everything started. Maybe I'd find quiet thoughtful debate about the HTML CENTER tag (1995?) ? Or maybe some lively debate regarding the plot of "Good Will Hunting (1997)" ?

When did Slashdot begin? The FAQ says September 1997, but the earliest story I could find in the archives is from December 31st, 1997. There also don't seem to be any comments archived before 1999. Where's the really old stuff? (Note that stories posted in 1969 do not count :)).

Where are the really old archives? Gone forever? If so, quite understandable, but regretable.

If you want to peruse some of the oldest archived stories, you can start here. As of July 10th, 2003, that link points to the oldest stuff, but the link will soon become outdated.

My Theory of Evolution - Scenario #1: "Now"

By chance, one trait is introduced into the genome of a specific individual living thing. If the trait is immediately advantageous over those of the same species who do not possess the trait, then the trait will very likely be passed along to future generations. If the trait is immediately undesirable, then the individual will be rejected by its peers and will be unable to pass along the new trait. This is called evolution.

My Theory of Evolution - Scenario #2: "Later"

By chance, one trait is introduced into the genome of a specific individual living thing. The trait is neither immediately advantageous or immediately undesirable. Over 10's of generations, the trait is very quietly passed along to a significant portion of the species (perhaps 3% or even 75%). After a significant time has passed, a significant event occurs. That event causes Scenario #1 to nearly immediately affect a significant portion of the species (those with the trait will die out or those without the trait will die out). This is called evolution.

The Random Trait Home Game!

A fun little game I sometimes play is to theorize why a specific animal or human characteristic was advantageous in the past. Maybe a specific trait allowed our ancestors to live long enough to get laid? Or maybe a specific trait somehow made our ancestors more desireable to the opposite sex? Or maybe a specific trait just randomly entered our genome without any bearing on evolution (yet!) ?

Some characteristics are easy to figure out. Why is sex fun for you? Easy! If your ancestors never had the "sex is fun" gene, then they wouldn't have had sex and you wouldn't have been born :). Other characteristics are more interesting to discuss, such as compassion for animals. How was it advantageous for our ancestors to be compassionate to animals? Or did the "compassion for animals" trait just enter the genome at random without any evolutionary effect?

What do you think? Any other interesting characteristics to discuss? This is fun for me ;-).

Greetings trollback followers.

Trollback is sorry that this edition of trollback is more late than normal. You may rest assured that, as yet, trollback has not had a positive home pregnancy test.

Interesting things to occur over the course of the month:

• The simultaneous comebacks of Boromir son of Faram and PhysicsGenius this month. It is great to have them back.
• CmdrTaco getting lots of things off his chest over the course of a single month.
• The slashteam interview.
• The departure of the coolest slashteam member to MySQL. He will be missed.

The List

(5,26,225) Gazbo | Might sir suggest
(5,52,297) Gazbo | Has anybody considered
(2,10,23) Sheetrock | Wow... 5.1 already?
(-1,14,35) Hairy_Potter | I've made my own list of disaster lessons
(2,18,49) PhysicsGenius | Dynamic HTML
(3,12,19) BsoF | shameful
(2,7,18) PhysicsGenius | I've been away, so maybe this has been suggested
(5,7,11) Sheetrock | Something to consider...
(0,20,65) Anonymous Coward | Re:They must really be scared now.
(5,8,33) PhysicsGenius | More Information
(2,18,106) Keri Immos | Does it matter?
(1,12,27) PhysicsGenius | "incompatible"
(-1,3,32) Anonymous Coward | Licensing is a shame
(2,21,43) BsoF | weird
(3,10,50) Keri Immos | Thank God
(5,8,11) Sheetrock | Re:Flaming
(-1,6,10) BsoF | frightening
(-1,13,48) Sheetrock | One issue with Java vs .NET
(-1,19,42) Anonymous Coward | Kazaa cannot be trusted
(-1,6,24) Anonymous Coward | Kiss and say goodbye to Java language!!
(-1,18,45) Tim_F | It's about time

Honourable mentions

• Is this the greatest spelling flame thread of all time?
• Are fark comments more or less stupid than slashdot comments?
• 30% Troll + 20% Informative + 10% Flamebait = Score: 5, Troll

Finally, everyone please take lessons from Sheetrock, who is off to a great start this month. Pure brilliance, and it doesn't get old.

That's it for this month!

Ok, so I came across this article on Yahoo News, and the obvious conclusion hit me right in the eye. Evolutionarily speaking, men who masturbate have an advantage over men who do not masturbate. The article does not suggest my conclusion, but it seems obvious from the facts given. Here are some facts/quotes given in the article:

• Men with low sperm counts can significantly reduce sperm quality by holding back for longer than a day or two.
• In men with low sperm counts, the researchers found the volume of semen increased after prolonged abstinence, but the quality got gradually worse the longer the men held back.
• "What you really want to do is flush the system out so that the sperm that are there are fresh."

From which I conclude: Men who masturbate daily will be more fertile than men who do not have any type of daily release. Your male ancestors were likely chronic masturbators.

Thank you so much for all of your comments and suggestions last week. It was important for me to write out those thoughts. Occasionally, my brain repeatedly dances around a topic over and over again, and the only way to finally tackle the issue is to force myself to coherently write it all out. Writing out those thoughts here on Slashdot was an opportunity for me to quickly garner feedback from all you smart folks. I'll post similar thoughts in the future.

Here is one entry, among many, that I considered particularly insightful. Yes, I am in my 20's, but not for much longer.

A _slightly_ less serious issue to discuss: Do non-vegetarian people know they are eating animals ;-) ? I read this article about the FDA likely not seeking to label cloned animal meat in a special way, and it got me thinking. What if all meat was required to be labeled with the animals it contained? Would that labeling effect the sales of meat in a negative way?

Here's a poll! (for more polls, check out Em Emalb's journal)

==================================
I would not purchase meat labeled with:

A) A listing that said "Animals contained within this package: ". For example, ground beef would be labeled as "Animals contained within this package: Cows". Assume a one half inch tall font.

B) A cartoon rendition of all the animals contained within the package.

C) Stock photography of all the animals contained within the package.

D) A specific picture of the exact individual animals contained within the package. Assume a 1 inch black and white photo.

E) A specific picture of the exact individual animals as they are being killed.

F) A specific picture of the exact individual animals as they looked as babies.

G) A specific picture of the exact individual animals as they looked while they read pornography on the toilet.

H) "This product contains animals that had a penis and/or vagina".
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Assume we are talking about farmyard mammals like pigs, cows, etc. Whatta ya say!?

Signed,
Someone who is a vegetarian, but who also happens to have a deep respect for the philosophy of Ted Nugent.

Nothing silly and nothing sexy this week. I've been on vacation for the last week or so, and haven't been anywhere near a computer. It gave me a lot of time to think.

I'm going to post some of those private (but probably boring and definitely depressing) thoughts in here, because I want to talk about them, but I'd rather not complicate my real life by talking about them to people I know (that's a long sentence). That's enough introduction... here's my thoughts.

I'm too old for existential angst. I feel very very small. I remember the first time I realized how unimaginably short my life was. Manimal was on TV, and I was sitting at the kitchen table making Christmas decorations with my Mom. For some reason, I started thinking about the length of eternity, and it made me feel so small. It felt similar to the feeling you get when you go to the base of a 100-story building and look straight up at it. I felt dizzy gazing into the face of forever.

After 20 years, that dizzying feeling is back. I know what sparked its return. It's really really stupid. It's movies. Well, it's not just movies, but partly movies. If you take movies like The Matrix, Thirteenth Floor, A.I., etc. for more than just entertainment value, and you really really think about their underlying themes, you may start to question your existence. For most of you, this questioning will probably be a short exercise, because your brain has already traveled these pathways before, and it just lead to an un-pragmatic dead-end. But if the conditions are just right, you might start reconsidering those dead-ends.

Now, when I look at my cat, I see a 3-dimensional representation of my cat constructed with trillions of atoms. Sometimes I just see meowing meat. Other times I look at my cat and see the deaths of the millions of cats that have died in the past. Then I think about the billions of trillions of thinking breathing animals that have ever lived and then died. Most of those animals died alone.

I look at myself in the mirror and I make wild unpredictable facial expressions just to make sure I'm really in control of this body. Deeply into my eyes, I gaze into my soul, and there is no infinity. Nothing special is looking back. I carefully raise my awareness level a few extra notches and gaze further into my eyes. Nothing. The extra-awareness is difficult to sustain, and yields nothing new, so I fall back into my comfortable level of awareness.

Late at night, I shake. It's only happened a few times. At first I thought I was having a medical problem. Maybe blood sugar, an early onset of Parkinson's, or something else strange. After a medical checkup, I'm pretty sure it's not medical, I think it's in my brain. Late at night, I stare at a picture on my wall, and I start to see the huge strips of empty space in between the protons and electrons, and then I feel my legs quiver. Walking around afterwards, I try to forget, and then I sleep on the couch.

If I were a teenager, I suppose I would start wearing all black, dye my hair green, and date dangerous men. I'm too old for this shit.