Adblock doesn't block youtube videos. They are the ONE advertising seller that "gets it." All other ad sellers do not trust the content providers to host or to count the hits on the ads. So Adblock is effective. But then again, Youtube is an ad seller AND a content provider, so the trust is within itself. Heaven help us when content providers are trusted by ad sellers.

Ads and marketing in general have evolved from simple, respectful "hey, try this! It's good" into manipulative nonsense. Few people can see through it and the result has been devastating to them. It has shaped and certainly harmed the culture of the US and even results in violence in some extreme cases where people want things so badly they hurt and kill each other to get it. Though most will disagree exactly when things have gone "too far" few will disagree that they have.

It might cause a few deaths but it also sustains the multi billion dollar prison industry and employs well over 1 million people in the US alone

None of those jobs help the economy. Why should people be employed in occupations that have no benefit to society whatever and are in fact detrimental to society?

The government profits from illegal drugs even more than drug cartels do.

Colorado's pot legalization and the multi-billion dollar alcohol industry shows that governments profit a lot more from legal, regulated drugs than outlawing them.

I've known drug addicts, and the WHO is also right about compulsory addiction treatment; compulsory treatment flat out doesn't work. The addict has to want to stop, and it's very hard even when they want to. Alcoholics and other drug addicts relapse more often than not after treatment.

However, should they ever invent the fictional drug in the novel I'm writing (see my journal, the first crude draft is being posted there) I sure hope it's not legal!

This is very true as people shop at Walmart, not because of the amazing people that visit there, but because they can get a lot of stuff cheaper. I won't complain about that.

What I will complain about is the outrage expressed by Microsoft sucking at the teat of government because they want to bring said cheap labor into this country while telling lies to the people and that same government. This is NOT a free market while these kinds of things are going on.

But if this senator is really upset, I wonder how much attention he will pay to various appropriations when it comes to alternatives to Microsoft?

This is all just a lot of saying what people want to hear and then doing nothing about it.

Sorry, I forgot the sarcasm tags in my comments.

Actually, I believe we need to scale back on consumerism and get back to some old ideas about life like not using more than you need. Living in excess, showing off, "bling" and "Hummers" (that aren't even real Humvees) and useless crap like that has to go. It's possible to be comfortable and efficient. To me, that's "real performance."

But "new things." How can we improve without "new things"?

That's a fair observation. I don't care about the climate -- it's a lie anyway. What I care about is saving money. Just about all of my bulbs produce less heat now. I do a lot of things like that now and have been for a long time. I don't do it for anyone but myself though. I bought an efficient car so I don't have to spend as much on gasoline. I did it for the money. If some pollster asked me if I care about the environment and what I am doing to help it, I would be disqualified immediately because I would say "No, I don't care about the environment, I care about my money." No one wants to hear that though. What they want is more people to join the armies of brainless "we care" socialists to support more initiatives that harm their own interests. I just love how many black people are still supporting Obama despite the fact that they are worse off under his policies and executive orders and especially now with the flood of UACs he has orchestrated. Morons.

It amazes me what actually works on people. The media says "good people do this. are you a good person?" And they fall for it each and every time. "good people don't own guns. do you own guns?" And no one is a peace-loving, person of the cloth any more... now they are characterized as "bible-thumping haters." How are people not dizzy from all of that spin? No, only Islam is a religion of peace any longer... that one founded by a warlord?

And people don't even have to understand the little details. All they have to see is what's not working and that's pretty plain for all to see.

People who advocate giving money to "the poor" and "disadvantaged" do not give their own to the poor and disadvantged -- they just get other people to do it. Just like the people who are pushing the UACs all over the US. Are they inviting these children into THEIR gated communities? No. "It's the right thing [for other people] to do."

When will people just open their eyes? Radical socialist nations got that way under the leadership of and influence of famously rich and exploitative people who united people under the promise of equality and utopia and are somehow suprised when their government takes away their freedom and points guns at them all the time. How many nations ended up like this? And we want that here too? Really?

You know what makes people save energy? High energy bills. We don't have "high" energy bills in areas where the government supplements [corporate welfare] energy companies. All these "capitalists" are amazingly non-capitalist.

Look on either side. Nobody does or means what they say.

And I still can't believe that people still don't know what was really behind the Hobby Lobby issue. Maybe you heard it from me first, but it has been out there for quite some time. But it turns out that such exemptions already existed but previously just for non-profits. And in those cases, under Obamacare, those birth control benefits (keeping in mind that birth control means abortive measures, not prevention measures) are STILL covered but are required to be paid for by INSURANCE COMPANIES. This battle was never about whether or not for-profit conpanies can have moral objections to anything. It is about insurance companies not wanting to keep their end of the bargain they wrote for themselves. They are making windfall profits on this and they don't want to give any of it back.

Okay going a bit off-topic but I don't care. Things are getting increasingly stupid and the media is pushing out increasingly obvious and blatant lies. I just wonder at what point the common drones out there will begin to notice.

I've put LEDs in some of my outdoor lamps, but most of the indoor ones were replaced with CFLs years ago. They still do just as well as the day I got them.

I'll replace the CFLs with LEDs as they fail, but I'm not expecting that to be any day soon at the rate it's been going.

Thanks! I'm getting ready to post chapter thirty in a minute. I screwed up in this post, though, I forgot I already posted the chapter where Knolls finds that Green is Destiny's dad.