You should take your own advice: go look at Canada's laws. Especially before you spout off on them without knowing what you're talking about. Parroting what your "Canadian friends" say just shows your ignorance. None of the things you indignantly claim you can't say in "some countries" would qualify as hate speech.

But let me guess: your "Canadian friends" are probably social conservative homophobes who resent the fact that Canadian society and government both reject their bigotry, right?

Really. Don't go to an event or start an activity looking only to meet women. First of all, it'll come across as creepy and desperate, and those are two very unattractive qualities. But if you're only looking to meet datable women you'll cut off paths that could lead to a suitable mate prematurely. I am utterly convinced that most people who date were introduced through mutual friends; they were friends of friends or friends of friends of friends. You need to be constantly expanding your social circles in *general*, not narrowly looking only for women.

The cute girl has a boyfriend, or isn't interested? Well, you still want to be her friend (not necessarily a *close*, 1-on-1 friend, but someone who will get invited out to the pub, party, sports, whatever that person does) because women always have friends who are single. The only way to get to those people is, I'll say it again, constantly be expanding your social circles as a whole!

Nah, by the time forums came along, it was already too late. Twitter is just another symptom of the September that Never Ended! Now get off my lawn!

I think the critique of Dick's characterization is off the mark; that just wasn't what he was *doing*. Dick wasn't writing a 19th century psychological novel; if you want that, go read someone Russian. But to attack Dick for his lack of characterization would be like doing so to Kafka or Pynchon. They're just not playing that genre.

Free speech, friend. They're not shoving anything down your throat, you're just knee-jerking.

It's kind of funny that on one side you have very large corporations whose decision-making bodies are totally unaccountable to the public, and on the other you list groups like PETA and Greenpeace. Even if you don't agree with them, they represent the views of actual people and their efforts to make those views heard and noticed. They are far, far more democratic organizations than Halliburton and Enron.

I wish it was pure action excitement -- there was far too little giant-robots-smashing-each other and waaaay too much Shia Leboeuf-being-fucking-Shia Laboeuf. God, I hate that guy.

Hopefully not. Memoirs were traditionally written on paper, which have great interoperability and can be read for centuries. I doubt the same can be said of most digital data.

"One is the loneliest number..."

It wasn't (at that time) recognized that unregulated capitalism was perfectly capable of committing suicide.

Well, students of Marxist criticism certainly recognized it.

Your sarcasm metre is broken, and your snark level is set too high.

No no, in the USA only white, straight male Christians are persecuted. You have no right to be offended.

The only people I've *ever* seen get actually pissed off about this sort of stuff are Christians who can't seem to stand any diminishing of their cultural privileges and dominance. I've *never* experienced or even heard of someone of another faith respond with anything other than, for example, "Actually, I'm Jewish, so we'll be celebrating Hanukah."

I refer you to s. 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.