It went back up to $500; still a relatively good deal, though.

Don't underestimate the vastness and danger of space. We are just barely taking our first steps and still blowing up every so often. A probe seems more plausible, but you can only build so many; where do you send them? There are so many systems of so many stars. If life were common, we'd probably have found something by now. If life is not common, we may not find anything for some time. If life is isolated to this single planet, that would be incredibly depressing.

In my experience the major factor (once you grow out of the rebellious youth stage) is convenience. I mean really. It is much easier to hit TPB than to navigate the legit avenues (assuming they even exist). I will say that iTunes is perhaps as easy to use (the suckage of the Windows implementation notwithstanding), but that brings us to the second (and equally important) factor: price. If the download is not sufficiently cheaper (and that is subjective, obviously) than the physical item then you've lost me. I will never pay $9.99 for a movie download. Sorry. But $3.99 or $4.99 is on the table. Sadly that is what they are asking for rentals. Sigh. $9.99 for an album (at least a good one) is more reasonable for me as I will get more out of it than a movie, but a few dollars cheaper would be better. All that aside, I don't really pirate that much these days. For movies and TV there is Netflix. I do most of my gaming on Xbox 360 and don't mind dropping $60 on a (good) game every now and then (though I usually wait a month or two until it drops down to $40). I'm not really into music or software anymore, though I will on occasion check something out and purchase it if it's worth it (or do without if it's not). And that's my main beef with the whole piracy issue. If you want to try before you buy, I get it; I can support that. But if you're using something past the extent of a trail then either buy it or do without it and find something else; these days there are plenty of decent free alternatives. Don't try to argue that because you don't believe in the concept (or implementation) of copyright it relieves you from your end of the social contract. Well, I guess you can argue that but don't expect to be taken seriously. Has copyright tilted too far in the wrong direction? Yes, obviously. But downloading everything willy nilly is not going to convince anyone of anything; you can send a better message by doing without and/or finding alternatives.

Every year there are a few incidents across the country that remind me why I've lost faith in humanity. This year there were a few robberies, fights, and even shootings, but that's old hat at this point; usually there is a good trampling or two, but it was relatively quiet this time. This year the winner, clearly by unanimous decision, is the woman who pepper sprayed 15 or 20 people (including a 5 year old girl) in order to get an Xbox 360.

I'm still on Walking Dead, though this stay at the farm has really bogged down the pace of the show. Not much has been going on the past couple of weeks, but I literally laughed out loud when Andrea grabbed Shane's dick. I actually think Talking Dead is quite interesting, mainly for the guests they have had so far: Patton Oswalt, James Gunn (!), Felicia Day, Jon Heder, Aisha Tyler, Michael Rooker, Kevin Smith, and Paul F. Tompkins. Come on, that's a pretty impressive lineup for a cable "talk show" devoted to a single cable TV show.

White or black?

White: hockey, baseball, football (offensive lineman, quarterback, kicker)

Black: basketball, football

Although to get real for a moment, I think it's interesting that hockey has by far the largest race discrepancy. Typically you think of basketball and football being dominated by blacks and it mostly is, but when you look at it there is a decent chunk of whites in both (perhaps not at the skill positions, but there are a lot of role players). When you come to hockey, however, it doesn't even average one per team. I understand the teams are smaller and it is a more expensive sport to get into, but I just find it interesting how the topic of race is brought up more readily in basketball and football and very infrequently (if ever) in hockey. Granted there was the recent banana incident, but that's not the kind of discussion I'm talking about. It seems like hockey gets mostly a free pass; I guess blacks just don't really give a fuck about it.