bakerstreet

Reply to STOP READING My blog.. in Current Events JoeUser Forums

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, greywar. What you are describing is the absolute opposite of how this kind of work gets done. That kind of "quality", mass-audience thinking is what got Sony nailed, and that's why the others that behave that way always get caught. They hire fashion models to stand around in crowded malls and take pictures of each other with a hot new cameraphone, or crap like the Sony thing or "lonelygirl". Viral marketing and campaigning functions i

Reply to Those Wonderful Church Bulletins! in Humor JoeUser Forums

"Our youth basketball team is back in action Wednesday at 8 PM in the recreation hall. Come out and watch us kill Christ the King. " Mel Gibson wonders... was that a synagogue bulletin? ba-dom-bomp.

Reply to STOP READING My blog.. in Current Events JoeUser Forums

It comes down to transparency and accountability. Kos isn't going to get away with anything. If they step over the line, they are accountable for it. One of us, less so, but we still are established in our blogs and aren't liable just to walk off. A hit-and-run blogger with a throwaway email address might as well be a ghost. That is, unless you go to the trouble of tracing IPs back to the PAC sweatshop that has them making blogs and posting comments, most of which will probably be a

Reply to STOP READING My blog.. in Current Events JoeUser Forums

"It takes a shitload of effort to get these blogs any readership though. thats the bit that matters. Try as hard as you like, you won't be Kos, Instapundit, Powerline, or even Flopping Aces without consistently good blogging or a really huge scoop followed by good blogging." You miss the point. One blog with a huge readership is, as you said, ha

Reply to STOP READING My blog.. in Current Events JoeUser Forums

As we get closer to 2008, I think we'll start to understand and appreciate the need to do SOMETHING about this. I don't think this was the right answer, BUT, when we are besieged with bloggers who aren't bloggers we'll feel the pain. It doesn't take much effort for a campaign or pac to sit down a few volunteers who create blogs under fake names and post the same old campaign advertising disguised as a blog. Or worse, hack jobs done anonymously to utilize the "lying for justice" phen

Reply to No to Bush Library at SMU in Politics JoeUser Forums

Even if it is about Bush, it most certainly isn't about religious issues. I went to a Methodist school, and aside from the Chapel and some dorm policies there wasn't anything religious about it. Even the religion classes weren't in line with Methodist dogma.

Reply to American-Born Imam Spews Message of Hate in England in Current Events JoeUser Forums

I wonder what that profile would be today...

Reply to US Embassy in Greece fired upon; called terrorism in Current Events JoeUser Forums

"Greeks? You're the one trying to "muddy the waters" by simply ignoring my points and making your own instead." I was referring to the line: "I might point out that Christianity produced the American Democratic Ideal..." For the rest of it, it is the same pablum. Why bother.

Reply to Lost in Translation *Intentionally*: Iraq and Linguists in Current Events JoeUser Forums

The one I saw had regional Iraq dialects taken into consideration. Seemed pretty impressive.

Reply to Fidel Castro and the adventures of his artificial anus... in Humor JoeUser Forums

Just to tone down how much of a butthead I was, here's a funny I saw earlier: "Castro was buried in a shoe box today. After removing the Anus, all that was left was a hat, a pair of sunglasses and the butt to a Cuban cigar."

Reply to Fidel Castro and the adventures of his artificial anus... in Humor JoeUser Forums

It can be funny, yeah. I don't want to be Debbie Downer, but as someone looking down the barrel of running out of guts someday I don't find it all that funny. I know it seems like taking things too seriously, but the whole thing seemed a bit snide, as if it was odd that anyone would want an "artificial anus". My doctor's office walls are pretty thin. One day I heard a woman told she was going to lose almost all of her large intestine and her rectum. Then I got to sit and listen to her

Reply to Political Correctness is the ENEMY of the First Amendment in Politics JoeUser Forums

Another thing to consider is what we preach to people who complain about "censorship" and blacklisting on our blogs. The First Amendment only really applies to government silencing us, right? We don't have the right to be free from condemnation or the usual whining, because that in and of itself would infringe on their right to condemn and whine. Like I said above, I think this really only comes into play when we have to deal with laws that silence or punish us. So far, we've dodged

Reply to Lost in Translation *Intentionally*: Iraq and Linguists in Current Events JoeUser Forums

Have you heard about the hand-held translators that came out of the DARPA challenge? There was one on TV the other day. It looked like a palm pilot and they had some angry Arab guy yell something at the soldier and it spat it back out to him. Seemed pretty handy, and I guess it would be a lot more objective than the human alternative. On the other hand, it wouldn't have helped much in the situation you describe above, though, I guess, lol...

Reply to Since When is it the Government's JOB to Make you Happy? in Current Events JoeUser Forums

"Where is our government department of happiness?" Ugh, seriously, take a look at a list of federal agencies . It might even be SMART to unify about half those into a "happiness" department. At least they'd have some sort of focus.

Reply to Since When is it the Government's JOB to Make you Happy? in Current Events JoeUser Forums

Not really, I agree with what Gid says. It comes down to the overt handing of happiness to people, and empowering them to find it for themselves. The difference between the two is almost impossible to figure out, though, because it lends to what the intention of the person behind the effort. We say that raising the minimum wage is buying votes, but then they can turn around and say that $600 tax refund checks do too. It's nutty, and in the end it is always going to be a problem with

Reply to Since When is it the Government's JOB to Make you Happy? in Current Events JoeUser Forums

Tough difference for me to perceive, really, or at least differentiate. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness . --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriv

Reply to American-Born Imam Spews Message of Hate in England in Current Events JoeUser Forums

"But the religion does demand an obedience that while not breeding a billion terrorists, does breed a bunch of people unwilling or unable to condemn those that have been bred. And that I find objectionable as well." And you could say that gun ownership breeds an attitude that tends toward violence. You could say that violent movies or video game

Reply to Since When is it the Government's JOB to Make you Happy? in Current Events JoeUser Forums

Yeah, but if I tried, don't you think I could twist Libertarian ideals to the same end? What does the Libertarian party support? Drug legalization? No Taxes? You could take a lot of those and say they are directly focused on making people happy, right? Granted, you also support ending welfare, etc. Liberals also often support criminalizing gun ownership, etc. After reading your article I thought for a while, and it would be darned hard to really find much policy that doesn't inte

Reply to American-Born Imam Spews Message of Hate in England in Current Events JoeUser Forums

"You want me to be some muslim hating bigot that thinks they should all burn because I think we should look at muslims a little closer at airports, and they should be suspects in random acts of terrorism." No, I want you to be a reasonable human being that looks at history, and reality, and sees that wasting our time picking over Islam and ignori

Reply to American-Born Imam Spews Message of Hate in England in Current Events JoeUser Forums

"That is my point. It is not society that is doing it. However you again deny the evidence and point to "outside" influences." What evidence? Post it. Show me. Show me Islam spontaneously being violent without the direct involvement of outside POLITICAL, Middle Eastern influences. We've had Muslims in the US for most of our history. Show me

Reply to American-Born Imam Spews Message of Hate in England in Current Events JoeUser Forums

Dr. Guy: What if tomorrow Islamic terrorists started bombing abortion clinics and killing abortion doctors? Would your logic hold up when police started hitting all the fundamentalist Christians in the area? Using your perspective, what would have been the odds that we would have quickly caught Tim McVeigh in a post-911 world? Do you think the police can really afford to make assumptions based upon religion the way you are? In the history of the US, what is the percent of Islamic terr

Reply to Since When is it the Government's JOB to Make you Happy? in Current Events JoeUser Forums

ow do unhappy people tend to vote? You're over thinking this, imho. Buying votes outright is illegal, but if you provide excuses that the policies of your party will indeed result in "happiness", don't you think you are more apt to get the people's vote? Raising the minimum wage is basically just buying votes. The reason they don't raise it to $50 is because everyone knows that it harms the economy, so their goal is to harm it as little as possible, while offering the largest payout

Reply to American-Born Imam Spews Message of Hate in England in Current Events JoeUser Forums

"Or if it is society, then it is every society that is breeding them." HOW? How is it every society? You don't find them springing up in every society without influence from this narrow selection, do you? Have you been able to produce American, or British terrorists that spring up WITHOUT connections to these other cultures? <TABLE ce

Reply to Political Correctness is the ENEMY of the First Amendment in Politics JoeUser Forums

It depends on how far you take it. Like everything it is going to be the hardest on the people who don't want to cause offense, since the people who do will work to cause it regardless. I don't believe it is the concept itself that is the real danger as much as it is enforcement. So long as you are just judged abstractly, people are left to make up their own minds. You may hesitate about the "black hole" thing, but in reality it is a narrow minority that is really going to be offende

Reply to American-Born Imam Spews Message of Hate in England in Current Events JoeUser Forums

Listen, I may come off as being immovable about this, but I'm not. The day that I see groups spring up more often than they do in Christianity, I'll be perfectly open to the argument. Right now, though, we have radical "Christian" hate groups in Europe, in America, almost everywhere, and that doesn't seem to taint Christianity in your minds. Why? Why don't Muslims, on their own, with no ties to al Qaeda, etc., sit down and read the Koran and decide to kill people? Why haven't they f