Oh god, it has been a decade since the Onion has been funny. :-(

It would really piss me off if it didn't consider me a woman. I don't need billboards screaming that I'm a goddamned tranny to the world. Being 6'2" is bad enough as it is.

Over the years, I have bought many CDs (tho not in the past 10 years), DVDs (tho not in the past 3 years), and other entertainment media. At the moment I do not. Part of the reason is lack of income. The rest is this:

Entertainment IP owners have bought legislation through their lobbyists, campaign donations, and other means to extend copyright from it's originally-intended 14 years to ridiculous levels. Productions were originally meant to become part of the public domain after that time, and instead every time the first Mickey Mouse cartoons threaten to become public domain, Disney lobbies congress to extend all copyrights another 20 years. So while I agree that copyrights grant legal ownership of IP, I believe the companies do not deserve those extended protections, so MORLALLY I feel no guilt in "stealing" their work.

I also do not like how the media companies like to play both sides of the object/license debate, favoring whichever suits them at the time. Sometimes your music/movie is an object -- if you want it on a different medium, or damage your copy, or something else, you must pay to replace it. Other times, it's a license -- you may not "perform" (play) it in a public / commercial setting, you cannot sell your CD to a record store for resale because it's a "license" not an object, etc.

Further, there has been ample evidence of industry collusion, price fixing, price gouging and other unfair business practices among the record companies, which makes me even less inclined to want to support them. And again, rather than penalize them, when they are caught, our (paid off by campaign contributions and promises of future BoD positions) government representatives see fit to "settle" with a voucher program instead of demanding fines or payment checks.

These reasons, and the fact that I just don't listen to music like I used to when I was younger all contribute ot the fact that I do not buy any music anymore. And I don't feel any moral obligation to pay for it on the rare occasions I do download a song. I know technically I should pay for it, and recognize it's the right thing to do, but I feel that the owners of this media have done so much to screw me that I feel it's only proper I return the favor.

So, don't buy that game, or if you want to use a Wii for homebrew, buy another for games. Nintendo isn't stopping you from modding your system. They simply say that if you want software upgrades, you have to accept their terms.

It isn't like they load it in the background. It isn't like they don't tell you what they are doing. It isn't like they don't give you the option to keep everything like it always was. This is pretty tame compared to other companies' tactics to combat piracy, and I see nothing ethically wrong with it.

Nintendo warns you about what they are going to do before they do it and give you the option to ignore the update. I think this is a fair compromise.

I once put my car in a ditch on the snowy access road of the industrial park I used to work. It hadn't been plowed yet, and had 6 inches or so worth of sloppy, driven-on snow. I'd been playing a lot of Gran Turismo lately (GT3?), especially Rally courses, so I was having fun sliding sideways down the road. It was great until the road bent downhill, and the driveway into the lot had an upward slope. I just slid into the ditch at the bottom of that "V" as I took the turn too fast. Had to climb out of the sun roof on my BMW since the car was on its side. Luckily the foot of snow in the ditch kept the passenger side from taking too much damage.

So yes, I am an idiot in that statistic.

Robots are hot.

The Church has a lot more important things to apologize for. In fact, they could skip apologizing for anything for all I care if they would stop doing horrible things now.

No. Wait. He's dead. He doesn't care at all what you do to his bones.

When I agree with Scalia and Thomas and no one else on a Supreme Court decision. You cannot change the rules of incarceration. There is a sentence. If you want to hold prisoners longer make the sentence longer. You could even make the possibility of additional comfinement, but you can't make the sentence a court gave them any longer without a new trial.

Well I guess you can now. Who the fuck cares about the Constitution? No one. No one who matters anyway.

Yes, but the best outcome possible for this kind of study is "inconclusive." There is never a "No" just outcomes that are not statistically significant. Basically, how you "disprove" a link to a disease is by doing a bunch of studies. When the majority come out without any statistically significant link, we can be more and more sure that there is no significant link.

My imagination is hotter and heavier than a thousand centerfolds.

Don't try to change who you are for a boss. If you are happy and treat others with respect, your personality will be fine.

Charisma is an elusive quality. I don't know if it can be learned.