HoboFactory

"Any old-timers still around?" he asks in his first post in 4+ years.

Very curious to see what you think!

Where is Shiri these days?

Work, university, etc. It's strange to think that not really that much has changed.

Coldplay I don't care what anyone says, the dude's a no-talent piece of shit.

Seems like both are.

How naturally Orwellian "double-think" comes to many if not most people in society. Why the space program (think NASA) essentially die out rather than deliver on any of its fantastic promises of decades past?

Mostly it was brands I've never heard of, seems like most of it would have come from China or South Korea. That's kind of the irony, North and South are officially enemies, by North Korea's second largest trading partner is South Korea.

If I were a spy, I'd choose a forum with more activity to spy on!

They say it's the world's last Stalinist state. Does seem pretty much as horrible and backwards as it's made out to be. Lot's of pics! http://portland-pyongyang.blogspot.com/

Was at the Portland, Oregon show (3/10). First MG performance I've ever been too. Damn, that dude is a hell of a performer. Hopefully there will be more appearances here.

You're trying to contradict an argument that I never made. I never said, "everyone should be given a gun." I fail to take into account an utterly implausible hypothetical scenario? Again, you're referring the ludicrous scenario of "everybody having a gun." Of course not everyone should have a gun, just like not everyone should have a car, a knife, or children. Why punish the law-abiding for the actions of people for break laws? If we're gonna talk about people that "don't give a damn if they come out alive." Do you think gun laws stop them? These people want to kill other people, but you expect them to abide by firearms laws? As if they need guns to accomplish their objectives anyways.

And access to cars sure makes driving drunk easier, but should we limit access to cars for EVERYONE just because a narrow minority chooses to drive drunk? And you fail to take into account that guns have the capacity to PREVENT crime too. It happens all the time. Why would you bet the opposite? It seems like all you're going off is a gut feeling. There's lots of real world examples that contradict that gut feeling. Since the 1990's, the USA has moved in favor of gun rights, with almost every state allowing concealed carry. Within the last year, the sales of guns and ammunition (and applications for concealed carry permits) have skyrocketed. The FBI is actually reporting the lowest crime rate the nation has seen in decades. If guns "help" crime, and Americans are buying guns and ammo at rates faster than manufacturers are able to provide them, should there, by your logic, be a massive increase in crime too? Oh yes you have. It was only a handful guys that pulled it off, in a single day, and it was in the USA, too. That wasn't my point with that statement.

What does it even mean to help crime? I guess like forks and spoons help obesity? Sure forks and spoons are used when people get fat, but changing how available they are won't increase or decrease obesity rates because they're not the problem. Is that so? Some guys with box cutters managed to kill 3,000 people in a single day. Take a look at all of the most prolific serial killers on record... it seems like they had no difficulty killing dozens, even hundreds of people without using firearms at all, or even without using knives. On top of that, strict gun laws don't affect how accessible guns are to criminals. It's illegal to possess marijuana in the USA, yet more than 40% of Americans aged 12 and over have tried it at least once. If someone wants to commit a crime (that is break the law) and they want to use a gun to do it and a gun isn't legally available to them... all they have to do is break that law too!

None of the above. Do you ever feel like you've already heard all of the worthwhile music out there?

It was alright. Maybe 7/10.

Oregon actually has a higher poverty rate than California, not significantly so, but still. But in any case, I think, what you said isn't actually inconsistent with what I said. I was simply arguing that the "more guns=more crime" or "less guns=less crime" idea is flawed and used some examples to illustrate that. My point was, that there's not really a correlation between how strict gun laws are and how many violent crimes occur. You pointed out that urbanization, demographics, poverty rates, etc tend be good indicators of crime, and my point was the legal access to guns isn't a good indicator of crime. There's no contradiction. Recently, an article was published by MSNBC that stated in 2009, more police officers were shot in the USA than in 2008, and that some have attributed this to how readily available guns are. Yet the state with the highest number of officers killed by gunfire has among the strictest laws, and the states with the loosest laws had few if any police officer deaths. I don't know that I would go so far as to say access to guns prevents crime, but the facts seem to point to the fact that "more guns=more crimes" is a flawed idea at best.

I'm pretty stoked. Been a MG/B fan for 5 or 6 years now and haven't seen any live shows at all. Last time he came to Oregon I was just around a month short of being 21, and it was a 21+ show.

Eh, not that interested.

Well, if it's cool enough for Lauren, it's cool enough for me. 1. What is your name: Pavel 2.four letter word: Punk 3. A boy's Name: Paul 4. A girl's Name: Pauline 5. An occupation: plumber 6. A color: purple 7. Something you wear: pants 8. A food: pears 9. Something found in the bathroom: paper 10. A place: Pyongyang 11. A reason for being late: pedestrians 12. Something you shout: "Piss off!" 13. A movie title: Pi 14. Something you drink: Pepsi 15. A musical group: Pilate 16. An animal: Panda 17. A street name: Peanuts 18. A type of car: Porsche 19. The title of a song: "People as Places as People" 20. A hobby: pole-vaulting What's the point of the total? Shouldn't it always be the same?

Is it me, or did this forum used to a whole lot more active?

I'm pretty sure Mulholland Drive wins.

I'm not even 100% sure what twitter is.

The problem with the banning guns theory is that, in practice, it hasn't been shown to work. In the USA, California is the state with the strictest laws regarding guns, there are waiting periods, there is a ban on all weapons with an ammunition capacity greater than 10, guns must be registered, they've passed a law which requires micro-stamping, they've come up with ways to prevent the sale of low-end, inexpensive guns which lawmakers assume are more attractive to criminals, their police departments are not required to give anyone who can pass a criminal and psychological background check a permit to carry a gun if this person applies, hell they apparently even ban bayonets, I guess because drive-by bayonetting has become such a rampant problem these days. Just to the north, in Oregon, there's no waiting periods, you can buy a gun with whatever ammo capacity you want, even semi-auto rifles with a 75-round magazine, no microstamping, no registration, if you can pass a criminal and psych background check (and you can document that you've been trained in handgun safety and the pertinent laws) the state is required to issue you a permit to carry a gun if you choose to apply for one. Yet California's rates of violent crime dwarf those of Oregon. No, not the sheer numbers of violent crimes that are accounted for by differences in population, but actual per 100,000 rates. California has roughly twice the rate of violent crime. Of the 15 most dangerous cities in the USA, 3 are in California, the most dangerous is in NJ, the state with second strictest gun laws in the nation. One could argue, well maybe those guns used in crimes in California are probably coming from places like Oregon. But it's against federal laws to buy/sell a gun across state lines without a federally licenses dealer on the receiving end. One would be committing a federal crime if they go into a different state and sell firearms there, regardless of whether those arms are legal in the state they are being sold in. And one cannot drive to another state and buy a gun and then go back to their home state with it. Neither a federally licensed dealer, nor a private citizen is allowed to sell a gun to someone who isn't a resident of that same state. The only way to get a gun from another state into your state is to order it to be shipped to a federally licensed shop in your home state, who will ascertain its legality, document it, perform a background check, and then transfer it to you for some fee. So, Californians have less access to guns, and the guns they have access to are of lesser capability, following the "less guns=less crime" logic, they should have less crime, compared to people that have greater access to guns, and access to more capable guns. Oddly enough, the reverse is true. There's plenty of other examples, Chicago has a complete handgun ban, still an extremely dangerous place, same for Washington DC. The UK has a ban on handguns, and yet it has the highest rate of violent crime compared to the EU nations. It even has a greater rate of violent crime than the USA or South Africa.

Just heard it. It's a damn good album, not a single weak track on it. I cannot wait to own a copy.