HoboFactory

I went to the art museum today. Found an interesting mix of things, from ancient Asian sculptures to modern ones of aluminum, from paintings by Van Gogh to what was literally tatters of cardboard stuck to one another. It got me thinking, as to what art really is. Why is the work of those like Rembrandt given space in the same and attention in an art museum as as solid white piece of canvas that has several tears in it? One exhibit featured a hand-cart with several TV's stacked on top of one another, there were also a couple of ordinary battery-powered wall clocks handing from the TV's, and a VCR. Why is this art? Is it because someone who went to art school did it? Does it take 6 years of art school to pile a dozen burlap sacks into a corner and throw on a deep-sounding title? I didn't go to art college, but I can stack TV's and make piles of burlap sacks, so what is the difference? Any insights?

Rambo would be a good bet.

Damn right.

What's with the personal insults? Makes it hard to take you seriously. It's funny, as soon as practical examples come to light, they're suddenly somehow "unprovable" and can't be used, yet you can make blanket statements without any examples of any kind, such as the notion that police imposed consequence don't work as a deterrent, it's supposed to be taken as utter unquestionable fact. Furthermore, if the notion that a teenaged Pavel was once rude to a motorist is so hard to believe, why do you swallow the whining of some guy who claims to have been tased for merely asking a question? Why is a taser effective as a deterrent even though it's not as "dangerous" in the eyes of an offender as a gun? Because a cop is much more likely to use the taser in order to restrain one who runs or resists. The officer's gun is generally to be used as a last resort, and a cop doesn't shoot unless there is an immediate threat to his/her own life or the life of others.

Except tasers probably ARE preventative. Think about it, who actually wants to be arrested? Well, naturally, next to no one; yet only a fraction of those arrested actually resist arrest. Now, obviously, one can't claim that tasers are solely responsible for every arrestee that is submissive, but really, what other motive do people have to go "willingly" if not the notion that one way or another they're going to be arrested, and things will be a lot better if they go quietly. Can you imagine, being stopped by a cop, knowing for a fact that he's not able to use force to subdue you, that if you chose to resist or run, chances are quite good that you'll get away, you'd be a lot less willing to comply I imagine. When I was in middle school, I was riding a bicycle, some middle-aged guy pulled over next to me in his car, and got on my case about how I should be wearing a bicycle helmet; I told him to get lost and rode off. Now, why wouldn't I do that to a cop, even when I was middle-schooler, therefore less mindful of such things? Why do you think it's so much easier to run from a supermarket security guards than from cops. You said yourself, that resisting arrest is very stupid, why is it not nearly as stupid to resist or run from the Wal-Mart greeter? Because with the security guards, you know he/she can't really do anything. All you gotta do is wrestle free, if that, and run a little faster for only a little while and then there's really too much else the guard can do.

Right...

Being responsible for ones own actions doesn't automatically translate into accepting ANY consequence that could possibly be imposed. If you argue with a cop about not being too drunk to drive, it doesn't mean he/she can shoot you in the face or something like that; certainly the police should have training and have good judgment as to what amount of force is necessary under one particular circumstance or another. But, people don't commit crimes or resist arrest or run from cops not knowing what the consequences are, they're simply too stupid and arrogant to think it can or should happen to them. It is absolute common knowledge, if you try to fight off cops or what not, they will use force. So your argument seems to be that because they're too stupid and arrogant to think it could happen to them, it shouldn't happen to them, which to me seems like it opens the door to a lot more crime.

How is it ludicrous (slippery slope fallacy aside)? It is completely logical and based on facts. I mean, how does it open the door to more inhumane methods, I mean really, what is the connection? Let's break it down: If say a cop pulls you over, and determines that you're drunk, he/she IS going to arrest you; resisting, running, etc will not somehow allow you to avoid the arrest. You're not Jason Bourne. I mean, you really can't argue with that part. So keeping in mind, that either way you are getting arrested, the ball really is in your court. It's not opening the door for some dystopian authoritarian society, because, again there is still such a thing as a fair trial, and if you're innocent, odds are you'll go free.

At a local hospital here, there's a psychiatric unit. One patient became agitated, attacked a nurse and so on. Security subdued him without the use of any weapons. After having handcuffed or zip-tied his hands and feet, they laid him down on his stomach. The guy weighed something like 500 pounds and apparently thus suffocated under his own weight and died. Apparently plenty of people die in such ways. There's not really one fool-proof method that always works and is never dangerous. You see in reality, like 99.99% of the time, the decision as to whether you get tased, or otherwise forcefully subdued isn't made by the officer, it's made by you. If the police want to arrest you, they're gonna do it, if you resist, they're not gonna say "Well, clearly this guy doesn't wanna come with us, guess we better let him go." If they're arresting and you think you didn't do anything wrong, well that's what the court system is for. Does this mean, if a person makes a bad decision, they should die for it, certainly not, but they should probably keep in mind before they make that decision that maybe they're taking such a chance.

5/10 It's bland.

Exercise machines. Most of them simply duplicate things that you can do without spending the money on a machine. You can spend $200 on a treadmill, or you can just go outside.

That's my guess as well.

I don't recall. I've not touched my mp3 player in months. I guess it was more for when I used to walk places instead of driving, and when I took long train rides on a regular basis.

The thing that disturbed me the most about this video is that it proved that there are people who like Atreyu enough to wear t-shirts with the band's name.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1x0Oi9Z6Cw

Not true for me; I never bother with concert bootlegs, and very rarely with demos. The only song I've heard before getting the album is Black Helicopter. But then, I don't listen to a whole lot of MG/B at all anymore. I've switched over to Matthew Ryan, which I think is a better Matthew.

I don't like anything about this movie. It's really boring and pointless.

Looking at it now, Hospital Music is mostly a pretty forgettable album. I listened to it quite a bit for the first couple of weeks that I had it; mind you this was only like 4 months ago, and now I virtually never listen to it at all.

And also the most true.

"We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank" by Modest Mouse, it's better than just about anything mentioned thus far.

It's like where kids can choose 2 hours of recess instead math, science, history, etc.

I didn't see the movie, but I didn't enjoy it when I read it.

I've always hated the concept of advertisements via fax. I've a phone that also has a fax machine, and somehow, I kept getting all sorts of really stupid advertisments; I mean, when they're on TV, or in the mail, I don't really pay to see them, but when they fax ads, they waste my paper and my toner cartridges to offer me garbage I'd never wanna buy anyways... I mean what kind of crap is that. It got so bad that I stopped loading paper and toner into the stupid machine, and so the fax function only gets used on the rare occasion that I send something or am expecting something.

I've only been to Canada once, and it was only for a couple of days. Perhaps it was the shortness of my stay that disallowed me to truly experience Canada, but when I was there, there were, relatively speaking, only a few things that seemed to say to me "You're in a different country" and it was mainly small things, like road signs and what not.

The Great Escape