I've always assumed that I will not have uploading available to me, but that rather as I get older and (probably, unfortunately) more and more mentally infirm more and more of what I need to get done to live will be taken over by expert systems that know how I like things and otherwise react like me...the onion will grow so, that the fact that the centre were hollow might not matter to the outside world, and by then I should be past caring.

I believe the original was making fun of the bastard child of Calvin and Rand that is the ideology of many current politicians and netniks.

...that is, that's where those good old family values on which we might rely are, at least one place.

Lucky there's a rationalist/secularist guy.

We bred the drug plants to be useful to us---I include 'recreation' as being very useful, note. This doesn't mean that they're perfect, or free of side-effects, or (Grid help us) 'A PLANT, not a DRUG, maaaaaaaaan,' but it does mean that some harm minimisation has been built into them and the rituals and morés associated with their use.

You can chew coca for a long lifetime to little or no ill effect; millions have, ever since the Spanish broke the nobles' monopoly on the leaf---and I guess you can use crack for a lifetime, but it doesn't sound like it would be as long or as net-pleasant as one I'd want, even were it legal. Similarly, I'd rather need my pipe of opium nightly to fall asleep and relieve the aches and stresses of the day than need to inject morphine or heroin in order to function at all.

I'm all for advancing our knowledge and abilities, but when we start using chemicals that have not stood the test of time, we're in greater danger than before. This is not limited to synthetic chemicals: some of the non-THC components of pot's seem to ameliorating effect in those individuals---and they do exist---for whom THC can be a contributing factor in the development of clinical schizophrenia...but the drugs laws have helped to shift the profile strongly toward THC. Tobacco was used by American Indians, but never constantly, and usually in combination with other plants that at least reduced the total nicotine intake (even as they might increase tars, for all I know).

Again, we should not limit ourselves to those things our ancestors developed, but we should maintain an healthy scepticism toward the untried, especially when we're hacking with our core wetware.

Dark, sweet, and covered in bees !!!!

...so he's always found women suspiciously effeminate.

...because I spend most of my time in the klo either away from the mirror or in the shower. Now a shower safe web-radio is a real improvement; we have a rack in our shower (and, yes, it's a nice one) so tomorrow's solution, today, consists of a 7" tablet and a 1qt zip-lock freezer bag.

...and, yes, I'd wear John Wayne Gacy's sweater, if it were clean, I needed a sweater, and it at-least-sorta fit.

People live on narratives, and this makes them susceptible to magic, that is the use of patterned sounds and images to alter their brain-states. People say that it's too much to expect them not to do, that they are 'only human'...this is why I'm a trans-humanist.

They're undervalued now, but I have enough faith in the social-democratic model to believe that their value will rise. (Why don't I move?: I guess I'm more patriotic than I thought.)

...I'm going to trust whoever might show up and express an interest, because I'm no damned élitist.

There are nice visuals---I like the worn-looking tech in the first two (release order) movies, which I saw---but I've never been a fan of knights of any stripe.
I prefer science fiction to heroic fantasy.
But from what I've heard, wouldn't it make more sense to charge $140 for the first three released, and $80 for all six?
(And, yes, Jaws was never my speed---I figured that either it would leave me cold, which would make it a waste of money, or it would scare me, which I don't like---sometimes I think I'm much simpler than many people...I hate roller-coasters.)

'If they're dumb enough to leave their window unlocked, then they _deserve_ to be stolen-from.' '[...] why not [....]' ---Because, as Mr Nixon once observed in a different context, 'That would be wrong.' '

I've often thought how much more Winston Smith could have got done (in his day job) in an on-line world. Maybe he would have been more content, and they could have saved making him rebel so he could be tortured for a later date.

People to the left of me, or just more impatient (maybe with good reason) than I, are very frustrated by this administration. Well, here's something that I think a McCain administration wouldn't have even considered. Why this? Well, people aren't screaming in the streets over it, so maybe there's political space for it. Just wait until it's spontaneously decried by mobs of Monsanto-organised 'average Joes' as 'Kenyan Muslim socialists trying to destroy property rights' until even reasonable people feel the terms of the debate are so.