At one moment in time, it was a really good way to get a hold of a high school or college kid (nephew, neice, cousin, whatever). Now it's SMS.

Would you seriously consider trace amounts of these as "poison", though? Do you think that consuming a few mg of corn syrup, trans fats, or MSG will make you sick?

I did not mean that MSG is not used in vaccines, I know that it is. I meant that it is a food additive, so I'm puzzled by the characterization as a "poison".

Mercury is still in some specialty vaccines, but it no longer is present in the childhood vaccines that the autism crazies were fingering. I should not have used such absolute terms - my bad.

In any event, the mercury that was used was not of the "poison" variety.

Formaldehyde is indeed a "poison" in large amounts, but it is naturally present in your body at more than an order of magnitude larger than what gets introduced in any vaccine.

I (quite obviously) didn't mod you or I couldn't be replying to you.

May I ask why not?

By the way, did you know that mercury is no longer in vaccines (and was never in elemental form) and MSG is a food additive?

Whatever. I still don't support homeopathic marriages or adoptions.

I'm sure that I'm naive, but can't they just run a little script that detects the cookie, and if not found asks the user to click a link to enable comments? Then the user would have visited the site (Disqus) and the Firefox block would be removed forever forward.

As others have mentioned, this is seawater. But even if it were freshwater, power plants and municipal water supplies draw from rivers and lakes infested with zebra muscles. They are a PITA, but they work around them.

I think it would be hilarious if we went to all this trouble and expense, and then ended up with a version of Bitch Stewie that we weren't allowed to unplug.

Those numbskulls couldn't catch a terrorist even after twice being warned by Russia and then interviewing him. The chances that they can actually intercept and make sense out of an encrypted upload about some issue that they probably don't even care about are about zero.

If the 3-letter agency is not one who cares about your activity in particular, then what do you care?

Yes, so section one of the text that you linked to specifically separates entities like the NY Times from any constitutional protection.

Section 2 could easily be used to stop people from spending money on, say, running their printing presses. How do you have freedom of the press without freedom to spend money to publish? After all, the President might read the New York Times rather than other papers with a smaller budget, giving them unique access expressly forbidden under section 2. All that money gives them a serious advantage.

I don't think anyone would go after the "Times", but I'm using that extreme case to illustrate how this might have unintended consequences. Money will always buy more access, and I don't think that can be controlled - but certainly you can make certain that it is all out in the open.

Anyway, I kind of think that we shouldn't need to change our constitution just to work around the corporate problem. Just reform corporations instead - get rid of the limited liability for people directly involved in the operation of the company. Don't levy fines against just "corporations", but also against people: if I'm personally responsible for the pollution of a river, sue me - don't let me hide behind a corporation. Don't tax "corporations", tax the salaries and incomes of the employees and owners: why should we let corporate owners get super-low tax rates and then complain of "double taxation"? If we want corporations to look less like people, let's do it right. Don't let a "corporation" engage in any non-business activity - make it an economic entity only. Since commercial speech is regulated, political speech doesn't even become an issue. If someone wants to lobby, then they can open up their own checkbook and pay some lobbyists - leave the corporate bank account out of it.

This is why it is so hard to have adult conversations.

That's good, but I don't know how they can define "press" without leaving a huge freaking loophole.

I'm not so pessimistic about the future of the US reputation. As the US fades from hegemony, Europe and China (and possibly India) will have to fight their own oil wars. Just as European atrocities of the 20th century have faded, Iraq will soon be a distant memory.

I didn't say he was popular all over the world. My point was that the US is not universally reviled.