Is there something wrong with owning, and knowing how to use, weapons?

I know you were going for funny and got the mod to match, but sadly the reality of that particular situation was anything but humorous. It's not something I'd care to do again (not that I wanted to do it in the first place).

I'm just glad I kept myself together long enough to deal with things. That is one thing that the training was certainly good for. Ironically, keeping myself together and being "too calm" (in the sheriff's opinion) helped me save the life of someone I loved very much but ended up making me a suspect for something I didn't do.

No, he was saying that he could trade food and supplies for guns and ammo.

I pointed out that, in a situation like that, the holders of the guns are more likely to shoot (or better yet, enslave and force them to continue food production) the holder of the food than trade with them if the food holder is defenseless.

Yeah, it's been kind of a weird trip partially due to exposure to things growing up and partially because of personal curiosity.

I grew up spending a lot of time on my family's farm, so I have the experience in planting, maintaining and harvesting crops as well as raising animals.

I also grew up training in martial arts which, after a while, typically includes some medical training (along the way I've ended up helping to treat everything up to and including a gunshot wound).

I've built several buildings and done other types of woodworking with my father over the years.

I studied blacksmithing for a while on my own just because I wanted to and I had the opportunity.

Then you start getting into the basic survival stuff that I learned growing up, so I'm actually pretty adaptable if it comes right down to it. =]

No, because the people with guns and ammo would be inclined to shoot you and take the precious things from you because you were defenseless.

You have entirely too much faith in the good nature of your fellow man during times of great turmoil.

Carpenters, farmers, doctors and paramedics are some of the people I would want to see survive, raising the odds for the species a bit.

The sad thing is that the first thought I had was along the lines of my being all set considering that I have some skill in farming, hunting, carpentry, blacksmithing, and a few other things.

That's odd...

Last night, the article also had a link to here which has that information. I wonder why that was changed.

That this e-mail is now public makes me weep for my species. Google's famous tight-lippedness to outsiders is a direct consequence of its slightly less famous wide-openness to employees, which is a critical part of Google's internal culture.

I strongly disagree. As a former prospective google employee, I am *very* glad this sort of thing gets leaked, because it shows us what the company's culture is really like. Honestly, the more I see of the "insider" view of the place, the happier I am that I told them I wasn't interested the second (and I believe third) time.

Their spiel about the phone being a gift (and the employee being taxed for it), but that they're not supposed to sell it is very telling. Among other things, it tells me just how out of touch with reality Google is.

Sorry, but if you give me a bonus and I have to pay taxes on it, it is mine to do with as I please, just as the money from my paycheck is because that's all it is - a physical good in place of a portion of pay (in this case as a holiday bonus).

From TFA:

Q: Are there tax implications to this?
Google is covering the taxes for this gift; there will be an extra payroll run before the end of the year to cover the taxes. If you have further payroll or HR-related questions about this gift please e-mail [address removed].

Religious discrimination isn't prohibited, per se. Try applying for a job at your local Catholic church if you're an atheist and see what I mean.

Amusingly, a pagan friend of mine used to provide security for the bishop at the local arch-diocese. Go figure.

Can we wait until after somebody claiming to be a religious person actually takes a shot at the president-elect before we condemn an entire ethnic group (rednecks) for cultivating an environment which produces our fictional assassin?

I hate to break it to you, but you only have to come to where I currently am to find a fairly large group of people who claim to be religious who would love to take a shot at Obama. I see them pretty much every day here and they aren't exactly quiet about their desires.

Big bad IT manager gets whinged because student figures out how to send email to people without needing to go through the 'offical' listserv

That's the thing I find so strange about this. That would never have been an issue at my alma mater since the professors were all listed in the campus directory (both dead tree and online) - office phone, uni email, and office address. Completely searchable and viewable to the public.

Students, I believe, generally had the same listing, though they could request to have their address unlisted as well as their phone (if it was an off campus number). Their email was searchable, though.

Not all professors are tenured. Additionally, a lot of the instructors in charge of labs are, in my experience, frequently not professors but rather instructors. The students just tend to assume they're professors.