See, I do think she's being honest, and that's what makes it so pathetic. I think she honestly thinks that she's a special kind of psychologist who has sex for money.

Did you notice the "in 12 years, she has had about 30 patients. She's had intercourse with only three of them: two 40-plus virgins and one rapid ejaculator who couldn't last more than a few seconds during intercourse" part? Sounds to me as if she is a special kind of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 9:58 PM on July 3, 2008

Metafilter is high-quality stuff

Not on this issue, it's not. If I had a dollar for every stupid, uninformed, and/or just plain malicious comment about guns around here, I'd have a nice Bulgarian AK-47 and a stockpile of ammo.

You see that right there, that's the debatable point. The empirical evidence says that they aren't so efficacious, in that they cause many unintended (at the time of gun acquisition) deaths and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 1:11 PM on June 26, 2008

Yes, but do those figures count when the asshole who was tailgating me, after getting pissed off because I tapped my brakes, pulls up beside me at the intersection and flashes his pistol?

Because I'm pretty sure that asshole would self-report that he was defending himself.

You know, they probably do. However, for statements like "[guns] cause many unintended (at the time of gun acquisition) deaths and very few... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 1:41 PM on June 26, 2008

Vorfeed: Any idea about what percent of cases in which guns were reportedly used defensively were situations that involved armed assailants or direct threats of gun violence?

Because if just chasing off some neighborhood teenager who's rifling through the change in the ashtray of your car with a shotgun counts as a defensive use of a gun, then I think I'd prefer to see fewer defensive uses of guns (especially if it's my teenager).... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 2:44 PM on June 26, 2008

We can't even agree on a single definition for these kinds of concepts socially, much less in law, so I'm not sure what this guy is going on about...

Oh, wait: "My research in courts' approaches to determining "heinous" crimes has shown that courts focus on actions to the point of almost entirely excluding consideration of intent. [...] Let's consider the following example: A college student brings a knife to school, is in a conflict with another student,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 10:40 AM on June 25, 2008

Yes, but those serious crimes were committed by people who weren't evil. Just poorly potty trained, or something. It's not their "fault" that they are murderous bastards. Slap their wrists, give them a lollipop, and send them home.

Petty felons have no such excuse. Only pure evil steals candy bars so they should be locked up for eternity.

My personal favorite are the laws which provide immutable and automatic extra... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 12:20 PM on June 25, 2008

Don't we already have the "X with a deadly weapon" distinction? I assume that includes knives.

Yes, it does, though the sort of knives which count as "deadly weapons" often depends on jurisdiction.

I don't like automatic penalty enhancers in general, because they reduce judicial oversight, but I don't have a specific problem with extra punishment for violent crimes committed with deadly... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 1:51 PM on June 25, 2008

vorfeed, I imagine a hate crime is when the perpetrator goes the extra mile to antagonize the victim, so writing "asshole" on your neighbors house is just vandalism, even if everyone knows you just don't like their race, but writing a racial slur is a hate crime.

Yes, exactly. This punishes the public expression of unpopular opinions like [insert racial slur here], but not the public expression of popular or neutral opinions like... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 9:24 PM on June 25, 2008

Oh, I forgot to add: Vorfeed, than you very much for your insightful comments.

Wow... this made my day! Cheers, Goofyy.
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 12:15 PM on June 26, 2008

Ryvar, I think he was using the more widely accepted (though erroneous) definition of assault rifle as understood in most of the U.S. rather than the technical definition of a select fire rifle or carbine.

Agreed, but the problem with the widely-accepted definition is that it's not just erroneous, it's out-and-out stupid. The black plastic pistol-grip stock and flashlight rack on an AR-15 (the most popular "assault rifle" today) make it... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 11:47 AM on June 26, 2008

If you ask me, there's no better time to seek meaning, satisfaction, and change than when the economy is so far into the shitter that all you can see on the horizon is rusty pipes and tiny little bits of shredded, soggy toilet paper.

That said, this guy does have some great advice, especially the part about living within your means. After all, that's pretty much the only shot most of us have at being able to afford to make a major career change, much less decide on one.
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 10:07 AM on June 26, 2008

An illustrative fable for the Ask Metafilter commenters who always shout DOCTOR DOCTOR DOCTOR. Doctors didn't help this guy, a magazine writer channeling a neuroscientist did.

Yeah, really. I await the usual shouts of "alternative medicine doesn't work! Ergo, it can't be the mirror that helped him, it's just the placebo effect, yadda yadda etc!" All this from people who do not know (and hopefully never will) how maddening and life-destroying... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 3:55 PM on June 24, 2008

The placebo effect is actually kind of interesting.

I agree wholeheartedly! Unfortunately, it's not all that interesting when it's the fiftieth time someone has used it as a catch-all to deny that anybody ever gets relief from chronic symptoms without the help of Mainstream Science(tm).

The placebo effect is great, but it seems that many people mistake it for the Neener Effect: "nuh-uh, nuh-uh! You just think you feel better! No tag-backs!"
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 4:13 PM on June 24, 2008

If you can't make money/a living because piracy is so rampant then you won't produce the new material.

There are plenty of things that piracy can't copy -- personal support, fancy packaging, and gimmicks (the album comes with a free poster and/or patch!), are all ways to add value to your product without spending a fortune. Or, just lower the price! If you cut out the middleman and are aggressive about trading and wholesaling your stuff, you can still... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 7:45 AM on June 24, 2008

So.. you're saying you have the right to steal, presuming that 'whatever I want' means 'whether it's legal or not'?

Copyright infringement is copyright infringement, not "stealing". If we're going to argue over this, let's at least use honest terms.

Corrolary: Vinyl will outlive the CD, the DVD, and whichever of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray won.

Vinyl is only slightly harder to rip... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 10:39 AM on June 24, 2008

Theft is by far the more honest term; you are taking something that is not yours.

As TheOnlyCoolTim and ryoshu point out, there is a legal distinction between theft and copyright infringement. Nothing in the Copyright Section of the US Code mentions theft.

"Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner as provided by sections 106 through 122 or of the author as provided in section 106A (a), or... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 1:46 PM on June 24, 2008

'theft' has a legal definition.

'theft' also has a definition in every day speech.

It should be tolerably obvious to anyone whose IQ is higher than their shoe size that is what I was talking about.

It should also be tolerably obvious that there is significant disagreement as to whether or not the every-day-speech definition of "theft" actually applies to copyright... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 2:53 PM on June 24, 2008

When you can download a song that you want for 99 cents from iTunes, why bother installing BitTorrent and hunting around for it?

Because if $13.99 is too much to pay for a ten-track CD, then $9.99 is probably way too much to pay not to have the same CD.
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 4:03 PM on June 24, 2008

caddis, it seems like you're saying gun safety is a numbers game: assuming there's some constant proportion of morons in the general population, the more people have guns, the more morons will have guns... seems to me there's only one way to win that particular game.

How is this different from any other kind of safety? Yet we don't decide that "there's only one way to win that particular game" with regards to cars, or cigarettes, or alcohol...... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 7:51 PM on June 22, 2008

But the issue isn't a safety issue, IMO. It's a public health issue. And if the US wants to get serious about the ludicrous quantity of unneccessary deaths due to firearms, then it should do exactly what it does with alcohol and tobacco and impose a sin tax.

As the arms lobby continously remind people -- guns don't kill people. Fine. Don't tax the guns. Tax the bullet instead. And if the tax is proportionate to the risk, then put the tax on each bullet at around... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 8:31 AM on June 23, 2008

The big difference, and I shouldn't have to point this out, is that SOME WHO IS SMOKING A CIGARETTE IS ONLY KILLING THEMSELVES AND NOT THROWING HOT METAL THROUGH WALLS AND WINDOWS AND SLEEPING HEADS.

Three words: second. hand. smoke. And a fourth: fires.

Also, the argument at hand is about taxing bullets, not about preventing shootings or punishing them after-the-fact. It's obvious that something should be done about people... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 10:32 AM on June 23, 2008

i didn't actually say what i was getting at, but you filled in the blanks exactly the way you wanted them filled in.

Well, how the hell else do you expect people to respond when you don't actually say what you're getting at? If you don't like it when people draw their own conclusions, save us both some trouble and fill in the blanks yourself!

how do you know whether any of the other people carrying isn't having a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 1:31 PM on June 23, 2008

it comes out to $2.69 per bullet. [...] Dividing the $60 billion/year cost of gun fatalities by 6.9 million gives a tax of $8696/firearm sold. [...] I should clarify--that is $269 per gun owned per year.

In other words, the tax alone should be almost twice the amount of good bullets, about eight times the current value of most high-end new firearms, and/or the value of a low-end firearm each year? Brilliant, this is... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 8:05 PM on June 23, 2008

I am quite interested in arts and crafts, but no matter how often I practice or try, I still can't get to a high enough quality level.

The game of craft is best played against oneself, not against others. That's not to say that you shouldn't check out other people's work, but the goal should be for your own opinion of each piece to be as good as or better than it was for the last, not for each piece to be better than some arbitrary standard. If you can... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 8:59 AM on June 23, 2008

As for the book, I find it pretty intriguing, though I agree with DU -- the excerpt is rather boring, and doesn't get to the meat of what he's trying to say. That's what you get for taking it from the first five pages of the prologue, I guess.

I like to think of craft as being a form of passionate reality -- unlike religion or escapism (passionate unreality) or our day-to-day chores (non-passionate reality), it's a brutally honest blending of what we most want to be and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 9:14 AM on June 23, 2008

For those who'd like to see more of these, there are some galleries of military tattoos here and here.
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 8:20 PM on June 22, 2008

Cowering with fear when you see people with machetes and AK-47s is only a temporary condition. [...] All things pass. But death is permanent.

What, do you think the guys with AK-47s and machetes never actually use them? Death is permanent, so we should all just roll over and be butchered without raising a hand in opposition?

Death comes to everyone, Faze. It comes to the soldier and the pacifist, to the killer and the killed,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 3:33 PM on June 22, 2008

I've seen people talk about Joy of Cooking in exactly this way -- there are many 1977 edition partisans (how could those later hacks have taken the squirrel recipes out?!), and the 1997 edition created a huge controversy over ghost-writing and the loss of the original author's voice. A lot of people are upset about the 75th Anniversary 2006 edition as well, claiming that some of the most popular quests recipes have been nerfed in the new edition.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 2:00 PM on June 19, 2008

If they have made the patient's state clear to the family and they still wish to continue treatment then that is the family's call not the doctors.

These are ICU doctors; they are around dying people on life support on a daily basis. Thus, I would imagine that it takes something really bad (see mullingitover's post above) to get not one, not two, but three of these doctors to opt-out. Is it truly fair to force... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 2:04 PM on June 18, 2008

As always, it's funny how the first to ask for universal tolerance and respect are often the first to ban the open expression of ideas they don't approve of.

I hope I will never see these kinds of hate speech laws in the US.
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 12:05 PM on June 11, 2008

To those who would say that the alternative is more speech.. that's a lovely philosophical position, but it doesn't work in the real world.

Yes, it does, unless you're not counting "America" in "the real world". For example, the "more speech" alternative has pretty much single-handedly changed this country's culture from one in which racial insults were common in mixed company into one in which they are strongly frowned... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 2:15 PM on June 11, 2008

They can't reason for themselves, interpret consequences, and the like. This is a sad story, but until you see the effects of dementia first hand, its hard to understand why they had to do what they did in separating the poor couple.

Why should there have to be any more reason or consequences for their sex acts in private than for playing the piano or taking meals together? In this case, I really don't see what makes one any more serious than the other,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 9:23 AM on June 11, 2008

I think what people are missing here is that what they were doing wasn't in private.

The article says that it was in private ("the couple started spending time alone in their apartments during the day"), up until a nurse at the home started keeping them from being alone in a room together: "And because the couple now had to sneak around to be together—for instance, cutting out when they were supposed to be in... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 10:08 AM on June 11, 2008

I carry stuff like this -- I always have a flashlight and a folding knife, among other things. I use one or the other pretty much daily; the former has gotten me out of a tough spot more than once (for example: I went out for a "small hike", went way overboard instead, and didn't make it back before dark). I keep a small first-aid kit in my commuter bag as well... I'll probably never use it to treat anything more serious than road rash, but it's worth having, since it weighs next to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 8:26 AM on June 10, 2008

vorfeed, did you look at that thinkgeek survival kit? It includes a stick of gum, a packet of sugar, a packet of salt, and a bullion cube. It also includes a Tootsie Roll. Apparently if I'm in a tight spot, the thing to do is to slip into a diabetic coma.

Yes, I did look at that kit. In a kit of that size, it makes good sense to have sugar, salt, and bullion; not many things provide better emergency nutrition & energy for their weight. Same with... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 9:23 AM on June 10, 2008

one of which features the word "ANTRAX" on the trunk. The threat of Antrax is pretty scary, indeed.

I got a Subivor-branded iPod nano case at the local video store, but it has protective rubber over the touchwheel and none over the screen so its pretty much the opposite of what I'd want.

That. Is. Awesome. These guys are like the Bizarro World Survivalists or something -- having come from a parallel world in which... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 11:43 AM on June 10, 2008

Great stuff, especially the interview!

"The beginning, ending and be-all of Heavy Metal is the first track, side one, Black Sabbath, Black Sabbath – It’s got the down-key, the rain, the funeral toll, the time change, the vocalist wailing away in that Warlock style, the guitar solo – that is Heavy Metal! And everything else that came after was just an interpretation. And then Judas Priest came along and turned it from being ploddy to being fast."... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 6:35 PM on June 8, 2008

Some friends and I raised a litter of foster kittens, once. They'd been born in our shed -- the mother (a stray we'd named Heihachi, due to her huge grey ear tufts) probably got eaten by dogs (Socorro, NM; Chukotka; whatever!)

It's really quite a lot of work; every few hours you have to feed them from an eyedropper, rub their butts with a warm wet washcloth to help them eliminate, and then clean them up. They purr, though, so it's remarkably easy to find enough... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 1:26 PM on June 4, 2008

Behind the lemons in the "Swedish Smorgasbord"... are those... no, they can't be!

Gummi bears?
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 11:58 AM on June 4, 2008

(but only the clear ones!)
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 11:58 AM on June 4, 2008

At no point prior to the founding of CoS did anyone anywhere ever suggest that Satan was a symbol of liberty, pride, or individualism.

Um, what? Milton and Nietzsche both seem appropriate, here. Historically, symbolism which links the Devil to notions of individuality and liberty goes back at least to the Hellfire Club. And the idea that Satan was never a symbol of pride is ridiculous in the extreme -- the Christian religion itself... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 10:20 AM on June 3, 2008

I don't trust soups, on the whole, no more than I trust stew!
[fast forward to the first host segment, a few minutes in]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 9:09 AM on June 3, 2008

Honestly, what most shows do to keep fresh, I could do without. I try to watch a show and they feel they need to constantly "raise the stakes". It gets annoying.

This is the way good shows destroy themselves... though to be fair, the networks are usually the ones who push for changes-for-ratings-sake. For every other show that "jumps the shark", there's a network exec playing roulette with the time slot and/or slashing the budget by... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 9:00 AM on June 3, 2008

The names and places might be "urban legends", perhaps, but almost 70,000 people died in that quake. Out of that many, I don't doubt that each of these stories really happened.

Twice.
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 4:11 PM on June 1, 2008

The cost of shipping a book somewhere may easily equal or exceed the cash value of the item itself.

This is, quite frankly, totally false, unless you're including "overseas" in "somewhere". I do Paperback Swap, and the books there are a steal -- it's a little over $2 to send almost any book via media mail, including heavy hardbacks. People sometimes order multiple books at once, which brings the price down to less than $1.50 per... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 7:51 AM on May 30, 2008

Just as an example, here are some of the books I've scored on Paperback Swap in the last year, for about $2.13 each:

Europe: A History (in hardcover!)
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
The First World War (also in hardcover)
All of Tim O'Brien's novels (the local used book place wanted $7 per book for these, because they're trade paperbacks)
An entire collection of Asimov's novels & short... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 8:23 AM on May 30, 2008

That's kind of more of a western world bias, isn't it?

Not in this case, no. "The western world" includes many, many places where there are no used book stores, and the libraries are not great. The "local" half-cover-price used-book place I was talking about earlier is an hour and a half's drive from here by car. There are also a couple of tiny and usually more expensive used bookstores forty-five minutes from... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 9:20 AM on May 30, 2008

The five "problems" I mentioned weren't all about geography.

I didn't say they were. I did say that all five are quite common outside of large cities, and I stand by that. In my experience, your assumptions about a "much smaller group of users left" don't actually hold; IMHO, the number of people who like stuff the library doesn't carry is pretty significant, even in relatively large cities. I have family members... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 10:59 AM on May 30, 2008

I'm pointing out that their oft-stated goal is of putting loyalty to the U!S!A! as a top priority. I.e. over "the truth" whatever it may be.

And I'm pointing out that, to them, the truth is that loyalty to the U!S!A! should be among one's top priorities. Note that this does not necessarily indicate support for the current government: as far as I can tell, even the hardcore conservatives are more than capable of calling out... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 12:03 PM on May 29, 2008

The ATF has gone totally power-mad since Bush got in... this is by no means the only livelihood they've attempted to destroy over pretty much nothing. Small errors that were A-OK in 1999 have become an excuse to call in the SWAT team. All part of our glorious confiscation state, I suppose...
posted to MetaFilter by vorfeed at 11:48 AM on May 29, 2008