What Comes Around, Stops
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The open society in China was not open for long. Shortly after world leaders departed the APEC summit, China quickly restored blocks on internet sites of foreign news organizations.
Tag Archives: politics
Cool… I had no idea that the U.S. can selectively disable civilian GPS signals in specific areas (thereby preventing things like our enemies from using our satellites to move their troops). Makes sense.
The enemy of my enemy is my enemy’s enemy. Anything else is wishful thinking or an excuse for a budget.
http://www.usflag.org/us.code36.html#176
§176. Respect for flag
No disrespect should be shown to the flag of the United States of America; the flag should not be dipped to any person or thing. Regimental colors, State flags, and organization or institutional flags are to be dipped as a mark of honor.
(i) The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever. It should not be embroidered on such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs and the like, printed or otherwise impressed on paper napkins or boxes or anything that is designed for temporary use and discard. Advertising signs should not be fastened to a staff or halyard from which the flag is flown.
hmm… I have a few car lots around here that should read this.
for respect, maybe a trip to http://www.ushistory.org/betsy/flagetiq.html is in order.
Waving the flag.
If you don’t like it in the US… and you currently live here, here’s another freedom open to you.
Leave. Hit the fricking road. Take a bite of a reality sandwich. See what life is like elsewhere.
Go Live in China for a year, see how wonderful life is there. Go to Afghanistan, and tell them you’re an American, and see how well you get by telling them that you renounce our ways. Heck, spend some time in Germany or England, and try to get ahold of some of the “wrong” kind of literature.
I celebrate your freedom to an opinion, though I may deplore your ignorance and willful stupidity. I’d appreciate it if you thought before you started bitching about the way things are here. Vote, gather a petition, organize peaceably. If you have a problem, you can write your congressman, your local newspaper. Lay out exactly what your problems are, find folks of a similar mind, and do something about it.
Seriously. If you have a problem with the way things are here, at least you can make a difference. For such a young country, I think we’ve on the whole done a lot more good than bad. I think we’ve contributed far more positively than negatively to culture, society, technology and medicine than any other country on the planet for the last 200 years. This place is still a land of innovation and exceptional tolerance, especially compared to the entirety of the globe.
US life is probably some of the highest quality of life you can find, and that’s coming from someone who’s been homeless. There are problems with every system, but I feel that the one we have in place now is the best available. With the help of my nation and her citizens, I’m able to eat, sleep indoors, in a bed, love who I choose, travel freely, buy whatever books I like, work at a competitive wage, and help folks that don’t have it so well to get back on their feet.
Tell me that you think we deserve most of the hate that we get, because of the country we live in… well… I’m sorry, but you’re a fucking idiot.
Admiral Yamamoto of the Japanese Navy planned the attack on Pearl Harbor and said after the attack, “I fear all we have done is to wake a sleeping giant.”
I really, really hope that whatever retribution happens is just and well thought out.
I worry for the lives of innocents everywhere…I hope that those that did this are dealt with, and those that had no part are left unharmed.
queso.
I don’t understand why everyone’s up in arms about Microsoft removing support for older Netscape-style plugins from the latest upgrade to Internet Explorer. Yes, it’s annoying, I’ll grant you that; now, I have to download QuickTime movies in order to watch them. But strangely, other plugins haven’t been broken (like RealPlayer and Acrobat, at least on my machine), so I’m finding it hard to blame Microsoft, rather than Apple, for this one. And has anyone ever demanded that Netscape add support for ActiveX components? Once again, it smells like hatred, rather than logic, is driving this outrage.
Protected: Hey, remember the Evil News?
from queso-
In a bold — and necessary — move, the editors of four of the biggest medical journals are taking a stand and demanding the guaranteed scientific independence of researchers who publish drug company-sponsored clinical studies. It’s a tricky realm in which to tread. Big pharmaceuticals have become the largest funder of scientific research, and to lose that source of funding would be a big hit to American biomedical research… that being said, corporate self-interest should not be able to dictate which medications make it onto the market in the U.S., and which are put on the market despite evidence of their failure.
About dang time, says I.
Protected: Evil News, bub.
straight dope – Does voice-activated eavesdropping technology listen in on phone conversations for suspicious “keywords”?
Is it true that U.S. and Canadian federal law-enforcement agencies have a voice-activated system connected to local telephone networks that activates and records telephone conversations based on certain keywords? I only ask this because a reliable source told me so. However, I am very skeptical because I can’t believe any government agency has the authority, let alone the technology.