Flamebait, mods? There is nothing wrong with the analogy even if it is a strong one.

Everyone has a vice for coping with a hard, painful world. Sometimes it is drinking. Sometimes it is smoking. Sometimes it is cheating on their partner. Porn. Hard drugs; and some would dare to argue that prescribed psyche medication is the same thing but more legal. Escapism to the fantasy of books/movies/games. The excitement of gambling. In the absence of these things people will do absolutely absurd things to get out of their skull such as strangling themselves or "i-dosing". Don't forget about suicide. Many brilliant minds belong to someone addicted to something or depressed and looking for a way out. While I don't smoke or use any drugs myself I won't judge anybody who does too hard.

Elections currently take the form of the Prisoner's Dilemma. The dominant strategy is to vote for the "lesser of two evils" because the risks involved voting third party are far more severe, as demonstrated in the 2000 election.

America could benefit from Approval voting and perhaps that would be a system that the public of both the left and right wing parties could agree upon? The big question would be how to get the idea to catch on and eventually voted in.

I had some good memories playing GS3 a long time ago, and these were indeed a sophisticated breed of text based adventure. Surprised these games are still kicking after all these years, after so many modern MMOs have come and gone.

If America values justice rather than revenge, he will be tried, convicted (or released if he is proven innocent!), and sentenced to an appropriate punishment in a court of law. It is not the place of the police to "get medieval on his ass."

You completely ignored the GP's message to spout off your hostile and prejudiced tirade. The question was why do you expect them to give a crap about how innocents in America feel if America doesn't give a crap about their innocents?

I don't think the AC is saying it is justified so much as he is suggesting that you look at why these things might be happening. Besides, aren't you the one trying to say that this bombing justifies "doing something" about Muslims?

As an American who is sufficiently aware of just how vile and gruesome said records are, I concur that a lot of us went crazy and still are. It escalates conflict, it sets a bad example that other countries imitate, and it wastes a lot of energy and resources.

Be there for the people who are hurting and scared as a result of these attacks, instead of spending a lot of time on fear and loathing of the culprits. You'll feel better and come out of it less of a monster. You know, "United we stand."

Hear hear, a shame my mod points expired. Nobody wants their day or their lives ruined by murderers with no conscience, and most people agree that innocent bystanders don't deserve to be shat on by someone's antisocial political statement. It is not okay, no matter who the victims or the killers are.

Never used America Online?

Perhaps "homebrew" is the word you're looking for.

Do any of the people criticizing the IRS know how much it costs to shoot anything? It takes cameras and lighting and wardrobe and actors and food for everyone involved and someone to edit the whole thing together, not to mention several other things. Commercials, TV shows, films, and music video are all commonly shot on much higher budgets than this, and judging from glimpses at the video in question it does look quite low budget. If anything they should be praised for trying to be interesting while keeping it inexpensive, assuming the $60,000 figure is accurate.

In the frontier days of the internet there were fewer ads but the quality of the content was a fair bit lower. I'm not even talking about the technology here, I'm talking about eyesore websites where someone wrote a bunch of inane details about themselves and their interests, websites that were indefinitely Under Construction. Back then one could run searches on particular topics and not get back any results, or at least any results of value. Certainly UseNet is looked back upon fondly by this group, but even then there was always some troublemaker that insisted on crossposting something controversial between two conflicted groups (i.e. asking a question and crossposting between an atheist and christian group so that the replies show up on both groups), never mind the more conventional trolls. Anyone looking back on AOL ought to remember that they censored the hell out of your environment there-- you got kicked off for swearing and naughty content was carefully sanitized from their download archives. Before I got on the internet, I remember a friend telling me a number of stories of how he got kicked off different BBSes for swearing and fighting with admins.

The present internet is a lot more crowded but with it there is a lot more content. More of it is crap, and more of it is precious, because there is a lot more content. It is more commercialized and there are a lot more ads, but it is a lot bigger and more sophisticated. Yes, more sophisticated. The hacker types that use math references for user names are still out there, and alongside them we have specialists and connoisseurs of every kind weighing in on every topic one can possibly think of. Without getting into the downsides and problems still faced, could you have ever imagined something quite as extensive as Wikipedia back then? Let alone all the smaller wikis created for greater detail into countless subjects?

As long as the internet thrives, it will continue to get just a little more amazing. And a little more awful.

Nope, I can't either.

There are reports of catfish attacking humans as well. From the sound of things, they'll eat anything they're big enough to attempt to eat.