ajc.com | Metro | Club bust - 115 jailed at Atlanta party with live sex
The opening line of the article: "It was a sex scene that had to be seen to be believed, and for three hours undercover Atlanta cops watched."
And then halfway down the article they qualify that with: "Police said it took more than three hours to arrest and put the 45 females and 70 males in jail Saturday night and early Sunday morning."
Well, hey, I have to admit to at least reading half of the article. heh.
Etiquette lesson - the dangers of religious discussion
This is why I generally avoid debating the topics of sex, religion & politics CNN.com - Heaven-or-hell argument ends with shotgun slaying 'An argument over who was going to heaven and who was going to hell ended with one Texas man shooting another to death with a shotgun, police said Monday. The man charged in the slaying is a corrections officer.'
It's interesting to note they had a designated driver for their evening of carousing. It was the designated driver who detailed events to the police.
If friends kill each other over religious debates, how could we ever expect nations to stop doing it?
I liked the comment on Metafilter about it... - 'So now we'll never know who was right - or does murder 1 and effective suicide suggest a spell in the 'other place'?'
If you use Blogger & have the Blogger button installed in your browser, you can click on that button from the quiz results page, and the quiz results thing below will automatically crop up in your blogging textbox. heh. I bet the person who created the quiz scores in the upper 90s. haha. Quiz: Does Your Weblog Own You?
How does one "weaponize" antidepressant medication?
TIME.com: Beyond the Rubber Bullet "The Pentagon's effort to create nonlethal weapons that hurt but don't kill has set off its own fire storm"
I heard about the stink weapon before... and that antitraction gel seems pretty wild, though I'd hate to see how it would be used if it was in the wrong hands.
However, I'm at a loss to understand the "weaponized forms of antidepressants". With all the crazy mixed-up frightening drugs people use & abuse, I'm wondering how comparatively effective antidepressant medication would be as a weapon.
Yahoo! News - Four Arrested for Stealing Moon Rocks
Where did these bozos think they were going to be able to fence them? It's not as if there's any other way to get moon rocks besides from NASA - since they're the only ones who've actually gone to the moon.
Yahoo! News - Transvestite Girl Scout Identified
I heard about this on NPR yesterday.
Apparently the young man was dressed in a blonde wig & pleated skirt going door to door taking orders for Girl Scout cookies as part of an initiation. All I can say is it sounds a hell of a lot better than flogging, group masterbation pranks, & unspeakable acts with inflatable sheep - which are initiation rituals I heard rumours about in college.
A ridiculous, useless, e-mail exchange with Go.com...
Go.com's Infoseek seems to be ignoring my robots.txt file and my meta tags I have on my personal site which instruct search engine spiders not to bother indexing the site. I could not find a single page in the FAQ or Help sections about the issue. So I sent an e-mail to Go.com inquiring as to specific instructions for their search bots. Here is the content of the email correspondence between me & Go.com:
Chloe: How do I prevent the go.com/infoseek search spiders from indexing my web site? Thank you.
John of Go.com Member Services : Infoseek Express Search is no longer supported. To remove the program from your computer, please follow these steps: Click Control Panel. Double Click the Add/Remove Program icon. Highlight the Infoseek Express Program. Click Remove.
Chloe: My question was misunderstood. I have a web site, and I don't want it indexed by the go.com spiders. I don't want it listed when people search via go.com. I would like to know the robot protocols & meta tags specific to go.com because the general ones don't seem to prevent the go.com spiders. Thank you.
WDIG Member Services : Thank you for contacting us. As you requested, your account has been canceled.
Needless to say, I never had any such programme, and I never had an account either.
Obviously machines cannot replace humans in correspondence. At least I'm assuming I was corresponding with an automated service, because if these were humans, I'm very scared about what might be going on over at Go.com.
BoingBoing.net's eXTReMe Tracking
'Search engine queries' refer to the search strings people type into a search engine that lead them to a web site. My own list of search engine queries amuse me quite frequently. However, I don't think I've seen so many different funny search strings as I saw on BoingBoing's eXTReMe Tracking.
Examples: "scottish beard desktop photos", "surfing monkey statues", "'hothouse' password gay", "'women of enron' pictures", and "DRUGS MADE EASY"
Don't ask me what the heck I was doing looking at BoingBoing's site stats, but obviously it wasn't a waste of my time.
The Onion : Martha Stewart Stalker Can Barely Keep Up "Still, for Martha, this was pretty average," Kowalcyk continued. "You should see me when she's really busy. When I get home after one of her 'crazy days,' my mom says I look like hell warmed over. I can barely get down the basement stairs."
The 'article' is worth taking a look at just for the photo of "Kowalcyk", he has this "I'm ready for the Haldol" expression on his face.
streetmattress.com
Next time I spot a mattress in the street, I'll know where to send my photograph.
What I'd like to know is why so many of the mattress photos include someone's finger pointing at the mattress. (via BoingBoing)
Yahoo! News - 'Mister Softee Tried to Kill Me' "The driver of a Mister Softee truck is facing assault and breach of peace charges for allegedly attacking a frequent critic of the music coming from the truck's loudspeakers, police said."
I happen to likeice cream truck music.
Russia Proposes Sending Team to Mars (washingtonpost.com)
I think it's funny how the headline sort of makes it sound like Russia wants to do it on its own, like there'll be another space race starting tomorrow. In fact, Russia suggests it would pay for 30% of the cost in an international effort to put people on the red planet by the year 2015.
Something I've always noticed about the internet is that there seems to be a huge sector of the population that has the mentality that what takes place on-line is not "real life". And if it's not real life, I suppose they see it as some kind of fantasy world.
I remember when I first saw a "netiquette", explaining the expected etiquette to be followed in a particular on-line group, I was astonished that people had to be told these kinds of things. I mean, I know there are people who have no manners no matter where they are, and there are times that people slip up anywhere, but the 'netiquette' seems to be a widespread need on-line.
And I then put it together - some people see the internet as a fantasy world, and as such, some of them feel they don't have to follow societal rules of etiquette that they would in other situations.
Now there seems to be a growing number of people who really seem to believe that if they bring their real life information & opinions onto the internet, that it is automatically protected in some kind of stasis field of fantasy, impervious to, & shielded from, their off-line life.
This mentality is exhibited in Readme: A Blogger's Disclaimer, where the author of the piece states that web surfers are to, "View weblogs as online journals, no less sacred than a diary hidden between the mattresses... Remember, this is the writer's outlet."
The author of this "Readme" seems to be trying to point out to the reader the laws of fantasyland, explaining to the reader the make-believe scenario. It's like a role playing gamer saying, "Pretend you're tied."
Nobody would deny this person's right to privacy. However, the right to privacy applies to the idea that the government can't just come into your home & root through your personal journals. Once you publicly publish something, you've given up your right to keep that private. You can copyright it, making it illegal for someone to use your material for their own personal monetary gain. But you can't control whether or not someone criticizes it, or how someone will react to it, or how someone uses it to make decisions that may have an effect on your life.
But some people seem to think they ought to be able to say whatever they choose about anything & anyone, and be impervious to slander suits, angered employers, outraged coworkers, hurt friends, criticism, or even other opinions.
Well, I think I ought to be able to jump off a cliff & fly under my own power. But the fact remains, I'm not a bird.
If you want people to treat your on-line journal (blog, whatever) as they would treat a private diary hidden under a mattress... The strategy is simple: Don't publish it on the world wide web; Hide it under a mattress.
(Or at least password protect it. Get a friends-only LiveJournal or something.)
Nevertheless, some people are shocked when their fantasy world is invaded by this kind of reality.
This confusion is expressed on this site (on the "why" page), where a group of over 200 people have decided to not allow that reality to influence their behaviour. The author of the site states in abhorrant outrage, "People have actually lost their jobs because of the content of their sites or web diaries."
The site goes on to say that they think people in these kinds of predicaments were not allowed their Constitutional rights.
'Free Speech' doesn't work that way. It means that you won't be punished by the government for the act of speaking your opinions, not that you aren't responsible for what you say, or that you're protected from all backlash from all quarters.
Often when you work for a company, a stipulation is that you give up your right to share information you are privy to as an employee. Therefore, the right to free speech has been reliquished anyway.
The right to free speech certainly doesn't magically protect you from another person's reactions which are, possibly secretly, motivated by what you've said.
Of course I don't think someone should lose their job at the gas station for their political stand on Social Security. And I think it's wrong if a student was expelled from school because the student voiced fair criticism of the campus. But clearly there are lines that seperate what can be thought in private (fantasy), and what can be said in public (reality). And with less & less anonymity on the internet... I think all of us with personal web sites would be wise to think of our writing on the internet as being, if not a journalist, then a columnist, with at least ourselves to answer for, and taking responsibly for our words & actions.
Disclaimers mean nothing when it comes to the arena of opinions & reactions in social interactions. There's no way to control that element of life in a society. There are only ways to navigate it sensibly to avoid collision.
"The point to remember, then, is that written words have permanency, and thoughts carelessly put on paper can, when not destroyed by accident, exist for hundreds of years." "Never write a letter to anyone - no matter whom - that would embarrass you were you to see it in a newspaper above your signature."
-- Emily Post (from Etiquette)
Live Show A Mystery, Especially To Police: From The Tampa Tribune
The Tampa Police Dept. went to the scene of a fictional crime taking place, and thought the act was real.
I heard about this yesterday afternoon. Though the person who'd read the article told me that it was a role playing game that police busted up. In fact, it was a murder mystery act... which I guess is pretty much the same thing. It's just that when I think of role playing games, I think of people wearing heavy metal t-shirts under some costume chain mail & games involving make-believe wizardry powers.
What I found most surprising about this particular story... "Police say Kirane failed to comply with an officer's commands and was wrestled to the ground, sustaining a cut over his eye that took eight stitches to close."
I guess that particular actor took his role pretty seriously.
superficiality >>If the facade is what's important to you, all you wind up with is an illusion. Disillusionment is the gift of substance.
-- Chloe<<
(more)
He's planting seeds... A farmer planting the seeds of doubt. That's not cool. That's why I like the song "Home on the Range" - "where seldom is heard, a discouraging word..."
