The Music Industry can be so sickening

[Nyarlathotep]

@Maximus: I wish I could simply say that you're exaggerating, if I didn't believe it so poignantly. More and more, the only way I see to stem the tide is to elect someone who I can trust--who the people can trust. I want it to be Obama; I want it to be Clinton; I want it to be Edwards, Biden, Clark or Gore. I just don't know if I can trust them to protect the people's interest over corporations; I don't know if they have the balls to do what it takes and damn the torpedoes. I don't trust them, not yet.

 

Serious? His friends and colleagues actually got sick of his whining & complaining about the state of things and told him to act? Hehe I could imagine it being part of a dare

They didn't so much get sick of his whining as they simply pulled a "put your money where your mouth is."

 

Oh, really? I didn't know that Ghandi already knew about TDM forums. Quite strange to think about what this guy already knew.

Actually, he bitched to his lawyer friends, not to a semi-anonymous forum that didn't exist at the time.

[OrbWeaver]

@Maximus: I wish I could simply say that you're exaggerating, if I didn't believe it so poignantly. More and more, the only way I see to stem the tide is to elect someone who I can trust--who the people can trust.

 

You cannot fix the system by working within the system; the system is broken and needs to be replaced.

 

This does not mean anarchy, but building rationality into the system which cannot be bypassed on a whim or overridden with "Emergency! Security! Terrorists!" or other vacuous garbage. Imagine if every law passed had to be supported by a peer-reviewed justification, including a "chain of reasoning" back to first principles which are themselves written into the constitution. Imagine if participation in democracy was only available to those who could pass an exam in critical thinking. Imagine if politicians were only allowed to vote on laws that lay within their demonstrated area of expertise. Imagine if stupid people had the power they deserved: none.

 

It's easy to blame the individual politicians, but they are only acting the way they are forced to: as long as ignorant knee-jerk emotionalists make the voting decisions, the politicians have to toe the line no matter how worthless it may be.

[Domarius]

...Imagine if every law passed had to be supported by a peer-reviewed justification, including a "chain of reasoning" back to first principles which are themselves written into the constitution. ...

There is that whole "right to bare arms" part though. The problem is it's not specific enough. That part was written back in the day where the most powerful balistic weapon a single individual could operate had a re-loading time of minutes between each bullet.

[Vadrosaul]

 

OR

 

[Ishtvan]

America is great, I just sat thru a TV commercial with people talking about how they were sick of "over-processed" food, "preservatives," and how they prefer "real" and "natural" food, "for their kids," etc. Then the punch-line is that this real, natural, healthy food they're advertising is mayonaise, fucking mayonaise!

[Macsen]

Amusing account by Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams about secondary security screening selection at airports.

 

When you're trying to get into America or travelling about the country by air, one of the battery of security measures in force is called "secondary security screening selection", or SSSS. This is usually a random selection, we are told. The legend SSSS is stamped on the tickets of those randomly selected, and the lucky ticket holder gets extra attention.

 

Richard and I are randomly included for this treatment all the time. Before 9/11, we used to get delayed at only one stage on entering America - the holding-room experience outlined above. Since 9/11, it happens everywhere, even on domestic flights. And there is nothing the security people at the airports can do about it, even if they wanted to.

[Crispy]

Don't get me started on "natural". It's one of the most abused words ever, especially with regard to the pharmaceuticals industry. Grr. Somehow the association "natural=good" has been chiselled into the brain of every gullible Westerner. By any reasonable definition of "natural", arsenic is natural!

 

What's "natural" anyway? Everything we use is derived from naturally-occurring substances (where else would we get them?), with the possible exceptions of exotic elements created in nuclear reactors. You could probably vaguely define some kind of continuum from natural to artificial based on the number of processing stages that something goes through, but where you do draw the line?

[sparhawk]

And what is the definition of processing? I mean, if you collect honey it's processed by bees. Is this natural or not? After honey doesn't occur anywhere in nature, the ingridients have to be processed first to make it into honey. Same for milk or other byproducts of animals. My wife told me just the other day that the most expensive tea in the world is made of feline feces. So is this artifical or natural?

 

I guess, next time I go to the toilet, I will not spill it down, instead I collect it and sell it on ebay.

[Ombrenuit]

America is great, I just sat thru a TV commercial with people talking about how they were sick of "over-processed" food, "preservatives," and how they prefer "real" and "natural" food, "for their kids," etc. Then the punch-line is that this real, natural, healthy food they're advertising is mayonaise, fucking mayonaise!

 

Which reminds me of the whole low-fat catchphrase being thrown around so often here. Some women literally come into a donut shop to buy "Low fat donuts". Lady, if you want to lose weight do some fucking jogging.

[Mr Retarded]

Lady, if you want to lose weight do some fucking jogging.

 

Hah!

[Vadrosaul]

Which reminds me of the whole low-fat catchphrase being thrown around so often here. Some women literally come into a donut shop to buy "Low fat donuts". Lady, if you want to lose weight do some fucking jogging.

 

In my experience, they usually do both the exercise and the diet. Why bother choosing unhealthy snacks that attempt to be benign with "low fat" or "low carb"? Lady should lay off donuts altogether

[sparhawk]

Lady, if you want to lose weight do some fucking

 

I agree.

 

jogging.

 

Don't know about that though.

[Crispy]

LOL. Well, that works too.

[oDDity]

The problem with 'low fat' stuff, is that people tend to eat more of it, because they think it's not fattening, so they end up pretty much where they started. This is caused by the common misconception that only fat in food adds fat to your body, and conversely, that when you go on a 'diet' i.e, not eat enough calories to balance your energy output, that you only burn the fat off your body, when actually you lose weight from every kind of tissue.

[Mr Retarded]

Despite my distaste for it, I'm reminded of a Little Britain quote:

 

"If you eat half the cake you normally would, it's half the calories, and because it's half the calories you can eat twice as much."

 

It worries me that some people probably think like that.