Phi for All

I don't think swearing is about freedom of speech, it's about shock value and disrespect. "Bad" words are used to either emphasize your point or get a rise out of your listener. In both cases, the increased frequency of swearing becomes a problem. If you swear rarely, or even moderately, it has more of an emphatic effect than if you swear in practically every sentence out of your mouth. If you can see that swearing is making your listener angry and you continue to do it, then you're just doing it to spite them and it's no wonder people think it's disrespectful. To me, your arguments must be pretty weak if you can only get people stirred up by swearing. As we've seen in other threads, what is fine in one country can be shocking in another. The fact that some people don't like these words is really immaterial. What is more important is your intent in using them. Or over-using them.

http://www.counterbias.com/017.html And since I found that to be from a biased source, I found it backed up by a Yahoo letter with more links. http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/20031001.html

Not to defend it, but have you seen some of the anti-Middle East stuff that's come from the US? I saw one cartoon where a bunch of 60's hippy types appealed to a bunch of Iraqi insurgent types with a message of peace. When the Iraqis got tears in their eyes and layed down their rifles, the hippies threw off their vests and beads to reveal camo uniforms and machine guns and mowed the Iraqis down, accompanied by lots of blood and screaming, "Oh, sh*t!" Bad taste is, unfortunately, universal.

Haiku is drama played on the stage of the mind with no rehearsal.

True freedom can only be won by the people being oppressed in the system. Being handed "freedom" from an outsider is merely trading oppressors. Vacation time spent in office: Carter=79 days in 4 years' date=' Reagan=335 days in 8 years, [b']Bush I=543 days in 4 years[/b], Clinton=152 days in 8 years, Bush II=250 days as of 8/03 (2 years, 7 months). Maybe not a true measure of slackerhood, but interesting nonetheless.

That's purrfect! I knew YOU would like it!

Too true. The ad hominem attack has been applied to every president and presidential candidate that I can remember. So where did the idea of "spin-doctoring" stem from? Was it an offshoot of business marketing or does it have it's roots in politics? Because I think a big part of spin is attacking the person rather than the subject or the idea.

"I'm not a MAD Scientist, I'm more of a Thoroughly ANNOYED Scientist!" (graphic of a kitten and a ball of twine) "Schrodinger's Cat plays with String Theory" "Even Mad Science is better than no Science at all!"

If the US wants to keep leading the world, we need to go back to the idea of leading by example. During the Cold War, I think one of the reasons we were looked up to was because we opposed communism, which was supposed to revere the worker, with a capitalism that actually did revere the worker. We were strong because business relied on happy, healthy, prosperous employees, and I think business has forgotten that. Today's US worker lives in fear of speaking out against poor conditions and unfair practices. In an effort to cut costs (more often than not to pay for upper management bonuses), many businesses are cutting out some of the simple things, like coffee and water coolers, that may seem to waste time but actually make the job a lot more bearable. On the flip side, employers have to contend with employees who have a spreadsheet open on one screen, while looking for a better job on Monster.com on another. It's not a one-way street. If you don't lead by example, you have to fall back on "might makes right", and I don't blame the rest of the world for resenting that approach. If China were to suddenly become the economic superpower we know they are capable of being, and were to expect the US to follow their "might", we'd be the first to cry foul. I love this country but we've got to do some major overhauls. This isn't the same world it was thirty years ago.

Fungi--the one who buys the drinks! Mycologists are botanists who've gone over to the Dark Side.

Those weren't the samurai, those were the "thamurai", thweety! j/k Honor does seem to have gone out the door in favor of competition these days. It is more important to win any way you can rather than to win fairly. I think it's linked with low self-esteem, since honor is something you carry on the inside, and winning at all costs is an external sort of gratification. It's crazy, but it's rampant in politics, sports, business, you name it.

One minute you're discussing the ethics of dogs and chickens and the next you're offline, you don't call, you don't write.... Don't EVER do that again! Bake us all some cookies and you're forgiven. Welcome back.

Watch it, Gilded! Of all the different sexes, women are my favorite! George W. Bush is sitting in a hotel lobby, planning his speech to a group of businessmen, when a little man walks up to him. "Excuse me, Mr. President, but my name is Steve Case, and I'm here with an extremely important client tonight. We're going to see your speech tonight, and it would be a great help to me if, when we walk by, you could impress him by saying, 'Hello, Steve'." Bush, being a nice guy, readily agrees, and fifteen minutes later, the little man walks by, deep in conversation with his client. Bush walks up and says, "Hello, Steve." The little man says, "F**k off, George! Can't you see I'm busy?"

In the "If-I-have-to-listen-to-anybody-else-I-don't-wanna-do-it", kindergarten sort of way. AKA the "Consensus is bad" way.

I have no idea. I was joking about it earlier, but when I did a check at download.com it said it wasn't available but gave a command tree listing food & beverages. It's part of the Spybot download and Sayo said to install it, so I guess it's time to brew.

Spybot S&D There is an option you have to watch for and check called Tea Timer.

Reagan took office in January of 1981. John Wayne died in June of 1979. Spooky.

LOL. Do you use Tea Timer for a cuppa while Searching & Destroying? Never mind. The question magically answered itself upon installation. This post will self-destruct in five seconds (after a mod de-spams the thread).

Ad-Aware 6.0 is free software if you don't already use it. It got rid of some nasty malware that was slowing my comp down while pretending to be a beneficial program. http://www.download.com/3000-2144-10186632.html?tag=lst-0-1 Or you can go to http://www.lavasoft.de directly to get it. *edit* Whoa. I just installed the Spybots S&D Sayo was taking about and it found 58 culprits that Ad-Aware missed. Nice.

I use Firefox for everything except work. I have 2 sites for work where I need IE. Monday-Friday I pick up about 8-12 data miners on average, and both sites are secure, so I get these in the time between when my home page pops up and I get to the sites. Sat-Sun when I'm funning only Firefox I get bupkis.

You mean, since Bush would have invaded no matter what anyone said? Keep up, Douglas, this isn't about the tax cuts or who they were for, it's about ignoring the advice of experts.

It may not be the "real issue", but I think it made us look bad in world opinion. To use a completely idealistic, probably inappropriate and even sillier high school analogy, I wanted to think of us as the valiant upperclassman in a letter jacket who stuck up for the freshmen that complained about a bully with a knife. We asked the teacher to search him and his locker and when nothing was found, and before the teacher could finish the search and give us true justification, we shoved the teacher aside and kicked the bully's ass anyway. A lot of the kids cheered, but a lot wondered what made us any different from the bully. And some thought we lashed out because we couldn't find the kid who really made us mad, the one who keyed our car in the parking lot.

It's relevant in that when Iraq finally complied with UN inspections, we didn't let Blix finish his schedule.

I think my biggest fear (besides WWIII) is that Iraq is going to be a "police station" for the neo-conservatives to expand global interests. I think it was Pangloss who pointed out that it took us over 200 years to go from $0 to $250 billion in defense spending, and just 10 years to go from $250 billion to $500 billion. It's absolutely ridiculous.

Instead of wondering, ladies, why don't you put your lazy butts to work creating that thread?!?! Do I make myself clear?!