I beg to differ. Do you happen to remember the last time Oprah was sued? There was a show about Mad Cow disease and she made the off-handed comment that it 'stopped her from eating hamburgers'.

Beef sales plummeted the next day and she was sued by the meat industry for defamation. I don't understand the attraction and slavish devotion she engenders in her followers, but she has a hell of a lot of pull.

Germany was picked to contrast her with Merkel but I'm certain her minions would kick Putin's ass on her say-so as well.

When will Americans stop confusing their country with the whole planet?

Not for nothing, but what other woman on the planet can rival Oprah? Who do you have in whatever country your anonymously cowarding from? I'm an American living in the UK with a European wife but I haven't seen anything quite like Oprah on this continent. Even Angela Merkel has limited power. God help Germany if Oprah ever told her legions of followers to invade.

The navy pulled mine out even though I had no problems. If you go on submarines it's automatic. I suppose it beats getting an abscess while out on patrol with only a corpsman equipped with motrin.

What are music videos today if they aren't promotional tools to sell albums?

Please, God, let no one say 'art'.

Railways. Television. Electric motor. Flushing toilet. Steam engine & locomotive. Computer. Seed drill. Tank. Custard. Cat flap. Jet engine. World wide web. Penicillin.

Okay, okay. Besides railways, television, the electric motor, the flushing toilet, steam engines, computers, seed drills, tanks, custards, cat flaps, jet engines, world wide web and penicillin; what have the British ever done for us?

How could you leave off Monty Python?

Well, yes, of course. It's impossible to make an album of 12 songs that universally appeals to everyone, unless it's a Greatest Hits album.

You've hit upon why the RIAA's business model is flawed. The recording industry has moved away from making music that appeals to a specific audience to trying to make albums that sell to everyone. The lowest common denominator has given us Britney Spears, Pussycat Dolls and endless boy bands and tripe. If major labels focused on creating music that certain people like and others don't, they won't sell a bazillion copies but they'll create fans and have a solid consumer base. One of my favourite labels is Hellcat Records; they make music that 99.5% of the population wouldn't like, but I do. I buy a great deal of their albums.

And of those albums, many of them are chock full of tracks that I like.

Stop being a killjoy. I for one welcome new analogies as it can be difficult to constantly use the Apollo program and cars. Analogies are like bread knives; they can take a whole loaf of information and slice it into easily digestible pieces.

This requires that good people, and good lawyers, fight much *harder against these azzholes. Please remember that the French RIAA (forgot its acronym) recently sued motherfscking *sourceforge!

Any plan that requires the participation of good lawyers needs a really good plan B.

You kind of went off on a tangent there. Actually, the entire post was a tangent. As far as anyone in the USA accessing anything on the internet: What is the government censoring? Please be specific here as I'm no longer in the USA and am curious what I can get here in Europe that you can't. I know of many blacklisted sites/subjects but that has more to do with internet providers than the government deciding that a certain word is verboten to search for.

Please enlighten me as to what specifically you in America can not access or search for because of government censorship.

"It has been described as a geologist's dream"

Dare to dream, geologists. Dare to dream.