Aerik

I'm cornfoosed.... it says he shot them with a high-powered rifle, then it says one survived because the vest caught it. Either police vests have dramatically improved, or the news people don't know what a rifle is.

I can attest to the amount of racial ambivalence, confusion, and identity-seeking that a mixed dude faces, particularly in adolescence. It's a pretty odd experience, and I bet it was even stranger growing up when he did (I'm an 80's kid).

Apparently my dry tone doesn't come across well in text. Oh well. In truth, I was just characterizing, because every time an Obama-related debate turns up, this guy is somewhere in the background: Like I said, it was a characterization, not actually aimed directly at that Todd guy or anyone else specifically. Although certain people are awful quick to call anyone who mentions race a 'race baiter'. But whatever.

Anonymously neg-repped twice? Really? Cowards. Incidentally, anyone who has met me knows I'm about as non-gangsta as you can get.

It's on the whitehouse website: (http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/PreparedSchoolRemarks/) I tried to just post it here, but it's too long to fit in a post. It's long-winded, and fairly dull, but more or less the same innocuous stuff we normally hear from politicians. Yet again, right-wingers went all ZOMG THE SKY'S FALLING COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM AND BLACK FOLKS ARE ALL UP IN MY 'MURCA!!!!!!! And the president says, 'Stay in school.' /people

It looked like possible burn scarring/ skin grafting on the legs. Dunno, my eyes melted before I could get a good look. Damn that was awful.

Yup, no prob. We're boring-- we're pretty much always around.

We'd be interested over here, but you need to think about a rebuild kit or jets-- odds are, on something that old, when you get it open you'll find the rubbers are in bad shape. PM me or Hob13 if you think you want our help. We can also help with the tank if you need it- we've still got the nails and such from when we cleaned Hob13's new tank.

Yes, there should be a distinction made between pop punk and punk rock. Just as there should be one between hip hop and this awful shit they play on the radio, or metal and this trendy crap like Disturbed or Chimera. The bottom line is that the big music labels (and plenty of the smaller ones) have a knack for boiling any genre down to its most profitable formula, selling millions of copies by removing absolutely all substance, art, or message from the equation. Of course, I've known a lot of real punks over the years, and I used to piss them off because I liked post-punk better. It goes way better with an aloof cigarette stance and a contemplative mood. (stands in a corner looking smug) Joy Division ftw!

Sorry, I don't really buy into the whole 'I have kids and you don't therefore your argument is invalid' argument. I could tell you not to abuse your kids, and it would be valid, even though I don't have kids of my own. What I'm saying is simple common sense. And anyway, given that all of us were children at one point, we should have some idea what went right and what went wrong during that time, provided we were paying attention. I was. And anyway, like anything else on here, we voice our opinions based upon our own experiences and perspectives. You don't have to agree with me, you don't have to think my argument has merit, and certainly don't have to like me. But, whether you like it or not, I get to have a say here just as much as you do, and there's not a goddamned thing you can do about it. And the crackhouse analogy is not a valid one. There are clear, present, and immediate dangers associated with a crackhouse. A speech, a political perspective, these things are only dangerous when someone doesn't know how to think critically about what they hear before agreeing with it.

One of the major problems we've developed in this country over the last few decades is this 'ghettoization' of thought. We have so many channels, website, radio stations, etc, that we can go our whole day without ever actually hearing from people who disagree with us. This is not healthy, for our own mental stability or for that of our society. Quite simply, when all you hear are people who agree with you, or the opposition as presented by people who agree with you, there's nothing to balance your thinking. There's nothing to make you pause and consider the merits of your argument, because all you hear is 'You are completely correct!' It leads not only to more extreme thinking, since there's no real exchange of ideas drawing people nearer to the middle, but to a total lack of real information about the other side. When you haven't actually paid attention, and some says 'The other side is going to eat your children and make you drive a Pinto,' you have no sensor to say 'That's not actually what they're saying,' because you weren't listening. So, even if Obama were going to make some ideology-laden speech to school-kids, smart parents would tell their kids to watch it anyway, and then analyze it critically and objectively. I was fortunate as a kid; my parents basically did this with every major speech while I was growing up. I was taught to look for fallacies, for weasel-words, and for actual policy, and encouraged to form my own opinions, based on facts, logic, and my own sense of ethics. Sometimes I agreed with them, sometimes I didn't, but at least we were all thinking. How well does it serve your children if you never teach them how to handle hearing from people who disagree? And how weak are your arguments if you're afraid to let your kids even hear a speech from someone you disagree with? If your positions can't withstand even slight opposition, you really should re-evaluate their merit. After saying all that, though, the truth of this particular matter is this: Obama's probably going to say some variation of 'Be good, Make friends, Don't do drugs, Stay in school, blah blah blah' like every other politician in US history. And the kids will ignore the whole thing, passing notes, making faces, throwing paper footballs, and generally just being the poorly-behaved little savages that are apparently all we can raise in this country anymore. Much ado about nothing (or close enough to it).

Real Liberals: We will tear you limb from limb with our fucking teeth... ...and then happily allow our tax money to be used to sew your old ass back together.

+1 on that, although a warning: Watching 'Like a Boss' will make you randomly add that phrase to damned near everything you say for the next 4 or 5 hours.

You can google it, it's fairly funny too. "I'm on a boat"

Didn't see this anywhere, so here it is. A fairly entertaining parody of The Lonely Island's "I'm on a boat". If it was actually posted already, my bad. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yMrL5_yfWY

Never too soon. LMAO

Really, man? You know, as a mixed guy, I can appreciate a little recreational racism, as long as it's good-natured and spread around evenly. But the joke has to at least be funny, if you want to avoid sounding like an asshole.

Yeah, all my programming classes pretty much insist on Visual Studio, so that's the main reason I still flip to Windows at all.

Fixed it fer ya!

And nothing of value was lost...

I'm too lazy to look for it, but I recall seeing a video online of a smartcar with a busa motor.

True, getting software in Linux can be a pain. But most things run fine in an emulator like WINE (I know, Wine Is Not an Emulator). And my main PC is a dual-boot anyway, for when I have to run something that simply doesn't get along with Linux. But, for the vast majority of the time, I use the Ubuntu side with no problem. It hasn't blown up on me once, and it does all the things I need it to. Most of my hardware works fine, although I did have to hunt down a program to make my printer work for it. That was a 10-minute headache, nothing major. My only complaint so far is that it won't let me assign different wallpapers to each of my monitors, so I have to pair them up in one file to get the effect. But that's minor stuff-- Vista used to randomly flip my monitors, or ignore one, usually when I had something important I was working on.

I'll be there, as usual. Since cruiser guys look retarded in full leathers, my trick for cold weather has always been to use extra layers. I ride all winter (as long as there's no ice or whatever on the roads), and I'm normally alright with an UnderArmor Winter shirt, a mil-surp sweater or hoodie, and a good thick jacket. I have a pair of felt-lined jeans, but long johns work alright as well. And real skiing gloves are wind-resistant while curved enough to work the bars/ controls. Worst-case scenario, I can throw on a full Carhart getup (coverals and all), but then I look like a fucking farmer on a bike.

I admitted that I was happily filling the Linux nerd role in my first response to this thread. I could get all 'angry neckbeard' and fill pages and pages with the numerous but exceedingly dull reasons why Linux is made of awesomesauce, but I'd even get on my own nerves. (So we can skip the formalities and just pretend that I went all about Linux vs. Vista for like an hour-- that way I won't lose my nerd card!)

+1 It's free, too. Ubuntu FTW!