Velvet

Fuckin' goughnuts!

March 31st/10 I believe.

I assume you're joking.

There's no question in my mind that what calculators did to people's math skills is what internet access is doing to peoples ability to remember things.

You probably think the internet has made you smarterer. Remember when people used to use their own mememory instead of Google? Actually' date=' you would probably have to Google that to find out. [/quote'] bing

It was stuff like that that helped me survive PE.

Coffee and donuts!?! Fuckin' wicked!

FYI: Despite the pic on ticketbastards site I believe this show will be part of his Africa Project tour. Also, the $57.50 seats have a convenience fee of $5 per ticket, whereas the $50 tickets have a convenience fee of $3.50 per ticket. I'm sure theer's a very logical reason for that.

Driver takes GPS to top of cliff -- and nearly over I hate to admit this, but horror stories about people following the directions of their GPS units with utter abandon just never get old. I can't count how many times I've read about drivers that have ended up in various bodies of water, but this is the first time in recent memory that I've heard about a GPS enthusiast that's found himself about to drive off a cliff. This week's installment of bad driving comes from the UK, where a 43-year-old man named Robert Jones drove a $45,000 BMW off the main road and onto an unpaved trail designed for horses, bicycles, and pedestrians, after his GPS unit told him to take the unusual way home. Jones, delivering the vehicle from a town he was unfamiliar with, followed the path up a steep hill and through "increasingly perilous conditions," and didn't stop until he hit the fence that kept his car from going over a cliff at the top of the hill. Rescue workers spent nine hours getting the car back down. Jones later faced legal charges from a local court for "driving without due care and attention," and he was convicted by the court after the judge decreed that he should have paid more attention to the road and less to the blinking lights on the little screen on his dashboard. Jones now stands as one of the first drivers to be convicted in the country for overdevotion to GPS and failure to yield to common sense. The penalty: About $1000 in fines and 6 points on his license. Jones is unapologetic, saying that it's the first time GPS has let him down and that he had no idea things could go so badly awry. But courts seem to be getting increasingly tired of such incidents, with the Telegraph claiming that overreliance on GPS is now responsible for "hundreds of thousands of extra accidents" on the roads of Britain. All because of something that's supposed to help people find the best way from point A to point B? http://ca.tech.yahoo.com/blogs/the_working_guy/rss/article/3887

This smacks of enthusiastic lobbying (keep in mind that in the US prisons are privatised and are HUGE business). For further reading see Mother Night by Vonnegut.

Why doesn't lead box work anymore?

The thing I can't get my head around is imagining educated people discussing all the benefits of the US incarceration system. It truly boggles my mind, and the scariest part is that the article seems to indicate this is beyond the planning stages. "A panel led by Rob Sampson, a former corrections minister in Ontario's Mike Harris government, drafted the government plan, which is being implemented by the Correctional Service." "The government has already allocated hundreds of millions to the plan, even though it has had no input from either Parliament or the public, according to the report." Fucking loser fucking asshole conservatives. If these pricks hate Canada so much why don't they just fucking move to the US?

Of course. My head is my most striking feature.

Is This Crazy Or Just Fucking Stupid? The Conservative government plans to bring in an American-style prison system that will cost billions of taxpayer dollars and do little to improve public safety, according to a report to be released Thursday in Ottawa. The 235-page report, A Flawed Compass, is a scathing review of the government's plan, which it calls "immoral, unethical and illegal." University of British Columbia law professor Michael Jackson and Graham Stewart, who recently retired after decades as head of the John Howard Society of Canada, prepared the report. A panel led by Rob Sampson, a former corrections minister in Ontario's Mike Harris government, drafted the government plan, which is being implemented by the Correctional Service. In addition to constructing super prisons and implementing work programs, the program will eliminate gradual release and deny inmates rights that are now entrenched in the constitution. By stressing punishment rather than rehabilitation, the plan ignores lessons of the past, which led to the prison riots and killings that dominated Canadian news in the early 1970s, said Jackson. "My greatest fear is with this road map's agenda and its underlying philosophy, we will enter a new period of turmoil and violence in Canadian prisons," he said. "I do fear that prisons will become more abusive, prisoners will become more frustrated and that we could go back to a time not only when the rule of law was absent but a culture of violence is the dominant way in which prisoners express their frustrations." The plan attempts to emulate the American "get tough" system, which incarcerated hundreds of thousands of people and has left some states on the verge of bankruptcy, said Stewart. He called the plan "an ideological rant. All their recommendations are just that they believe in something.… There's no evidence for anything they recommend, there's no research, no background." The federal road map flies in the face of the Correctional Service's own research of what works to rehabilitate prisoners and ensure community safety, said Stewart. "The fact is that you cannot hurt a person and make them into a good citizen at the same time." The government has already allocated hundreds of millions to the plan, even though it has had no input from either Parliament or the public, according to the report. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/09/24/conservative-prison-plan024.html

although after six or seven stops they usually kick me off the bus

I ALWAYS pull the cord.

I can't believe I'm hearing sbout this for the first time. I missed the OP* 'cuz I was at Phish. Ah well, it's a Tuesday so I likely wouldn't have gone anyway. I am happy to hear about the Ravi show though... *talkin' the talk

Collision risk high where bike lanes end Busy intersections where bike lanes abruptly end are among the sites where Ottawa cyclists and vehicles collide. The City of Ottawa's list of top intersections for bicycle-vehicle collisions shows that most are high-traffic locations complicated by multiple streets intersecting or bike paths ending. "So that it's not a clear-cut left or right," said Michael Powell, chair of the city's roads and cycling advisory committee. "When you have lots of people making lots of decisions very quickly, it lends itself to a situation where accidents happen." Last Wednesday, Melanie Harris, 34, was killed when she was hit by an Outaouais transit bus on Sussex Drive in Ottawa, an area where bikes move from a separated bike lane to one shared with buses. The end of bike lanes are a particular problem because they force cyclists who had been separated from cars back into traffic, Powell said. That change creates safety issues that he believes can be solved by improving infrastructure, but there is another element as well. "When there's that change in comfort levels, it discourages people from getting out on their bikes and staying out on their bikes." Powell said the committee is focusing on gaps in the city's cycling infrastructure. In some cases, the answer could be adding a bike lane, Powell said, adding that the city is considering one for the Pretoria Bridge. In other cases, the traffic may be too fast, and it may be better to divert cyclists to another route, he said. The city's 2008 cycling plan provides a blueprint for such changes at a cost of $26 million over five years, or a little over $5 million a year. Powell said last year the city ended up committing "not nearly that much," citing budget constraints. One of the high-traffic intersections where a bike lane ends abruptly is at Maitland Avenue, near the Queensway, where there were six cyclist-vehicle collisions between 2006 and 2008. Derek Neimor was among the cyclists in the area Tuesday afternoon, and admitted it has challenges. "Where there's no real bike lane going up over the bridge, there's the on-ramp for Queensway where people aren't necessarily paying attention to bikes," he said. "They're just looking where they're going, most likely just speeding up before they go onto the on-ramps." Another cyclist passing through the intersection said the end of the bike path that directs cyclists onto the road is a factor as well. "People aren't expecting a bike to come out of nowhere," he said. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2009/09/22/ottawa-bike-lane-ends-collisions.html

Potential response: "I may be going to Hell ma'am, but you're definitely going all the way to Bank Street!" (You got a microphone, right?)

I suspect that will be the case, unless there are some very rare moe. songs on the list.

Unfortunately, yes, I think the article was an attempt to take the gov't to task, but with current rules in place, there is no forum for the media to quetion the gov't directly about this issue.

Ditto. I'd love to see the gov't taken to task for it, but as media scrums were eliminated that makes it quite unlikely.

Gotta say, I think this is a horrble idea for a thousand reasons, but I'm not a fan at all so I could care less. As such I had no intention of voting but the rubbernecker in me had to check the list and in a moment of sabotage I selected Stash.

How about if you walk up to any given person on the street and said, "What can you do to reduce your chances at getting swine flu, and are you at serious risk?" I suspect you'll get a lot of different, and many uninformed answers. As for the main point of the thread, what do you think of the government ads promoting the goverment?

Fucking love your avatar Jakis. Do you know if it's real, or is it photoshopped?