When I was in Japan I had a chance to turn on the old PS2 they had in the upstairs bedroom. My hosts were amused by my fascination with it and explained that video games are considered to be children's toys.

Is this another way of saying, "They should be paying us to listen to this crap!"

I think they need to plug the tunnels to prevent them flooding, and the Department of Homeland Security agrees with me: http://www.dhs.gov/35000-gallons-prevention

Keep in mind that Obama took 55% of the popular vote in 2008, but with a 62% turnout, only about 34% of eligible citizens supported him enough to go vote for him. The two major parties simply do not represent majorities in this country.

Ugh - refer should be refuse - i'm an idiot.

The computer screen has become the retina of the mind's eye. That's why I refer to post on the internet... except on the internet. Of course, swampfriend was not the name I was born with. That's my internet name. Soon all of us will have special names - names designed to cause the 1080p flatscreen to resonate.

In fact, "we" didn't change the city charter - the city council did in a 29-22 vote, and Bloomberg himself signed it into law. He had previously failed to get term limits extended through popular referendum (as well as other means) and swayed the council by using the financial crisis as a bogeyman. He's made good on his economic promises by turning the city over to realtors, which you can see in the state of the Williamsburg waterfront, or the stadium out by Atlantic Yards. He's enormously unpopular in Brooklyn, but that is beside the point. Even if he were popular, his Stop & Frisk policy isn't. Those who do support it aren't targeted by it - I'm sure it has a lot of advocates in Tudor City, but that's worlds away from Brownsville. Your belief about the "jackboot of authority" isn't just patronizing, it's an oversimplification.

I live in Brooklyn. I didn't live here in 2001, but one of the things I hear frequently from New Yorkers about 9/11 is it was a tragedy of profound local significance that was taken over by the rest of the country. I guess it seems a little blasphemous that guys out in Montana (for instance) are so patriotic over something that they can't really understand and that doesn't belong to them anyway.

I am coming to understand that feeling of the ownership of tragedy by watching our current local issues assume national significance. In this comment section, the majority of the discussion is about nebulous concepts like the role of a police force in a democracy, a public figure's right to privacy, what the law says and is intended to say, and so on. It is good that we can discuss abstracts like what does "unreasonable" in "unreasonable search and seizure" mean. But for us in Brooklyn, the issue is Michael Bloomberg and Ray Kelly and their pet policy. The policy is unpopular and ineffective and could be done away with by the current administration in a single day.

"What will happen if we allow this policy to continue?" is rhetorical - the policy will not lead to the erosion of rights because it already is the erosion of rights. We need to ask, "What can we do to end this policy?" I suppose the first little thing we each could do, if we're actually opposed to Stop & Frisk, is contact the offices of Ray Kelly and Michael Bloomberg on a daily basis to remind them of the racist crime they are committing against the people of this city. That is definitely not something you need to live in New York City to do :)

i was making a joke about save points in video games :(

So that if the explosion is too big and kills you, you can just load and move farther away next time.

"Some AEI scholars are considered to be some of the leading architects of the second Bush administration's public policy." And should therefore be taken... seriously?

I appreciate your comment very much, but this analogy is a little off, as the 21W brake light bulb emits on a fairly wide spectrum while the Voyager link is tuned to a specific frequency.

http://www.epa.gov/hiri/ "The term "heat island" describes built up areas that are hotter than nearby rural areas. The annual mean air temperature of a city with 1 million people or more can be 1.8–5.4F (1–3C) warmer than its surroundings. In the evening, the difference can be as high as 22F (12C)." Great news story, I really feel clued in to the important issues of the day. *kills self*