Wow, apparently declawing is only illegal in one state and devocalization is illegal in only 5. Maybe PETA should focus on that instead of on the most effective ways to kill cats and dogs.
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Wow, apparently declawing is only illegal in one state and devocalization is illegal in only 5. Maybe PETA should focus on that instead of on the most effective ways to kill cats and dogs.
I've been watching my "Cable Community Channel" at times....there's a big debate about corralling feral cats in the city, and how many "public funds" should be allocatted to the effort. Some supervisors want to round up all the stray cats, transport them to SPCA facilities, and euthanize them. Using tax dollars. Some want to keep a certain degree of wild cats, to control the rodent population. And save rodent mitigation tax dollars.
It's an interesting conundrum.
My Xbox 360 S is giving a red dot. Internet says its a power brick issue, but taking that thing apart and putting it back together didn't fix the issue. Can't get a 2nd power brick to test with until after the holiday
Poison ivy on top of sunburn, in early Springtime. Oofdah.
sprint is going to buy tmobile.
FUCK
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
Verizon all the way :P
not with their jacked up pricing and data capsQuote:
Originally Posted by Spenni
You would have been so much better off with AT&T when they wanted to buy it.
Just around the corner from my house a travel bag containing the parts of a dead woman was discovered by the trash men. (WTF; I don't even know how to find the right words to tell this).
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image...2_bottom91.jpg
Edmonson: "There were times when Rik and I were writing together when we almost died laughing.
They were some of the most carefree stupid days I ever had, and I feel privileged to have shared them with him.
"And now he's died for real. Without me. Selfish bastard."
RIP Rik.
Waiting for my youngest to return home after "Senior Week" at the beach. Much harder than it sounds.
I'm just fucking hungover and hating it :down:Quote:
Originally Posted by Flixy
And I've got hiccups :(
My son (and his friends) need a vacation from their vacation. Seems they spent a lot of time being "under the influence" and not sleeping much. I'm glad he was mature enough to be the dedicated driver, and bring everyone home safely......even though it 'messed with his party groove' at the time. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Flixy
FUCK. THIS.
We've got a heatwave here too. It's going to be in the mid 70s all week! It could even break 80 tomorrow!
Wraithy...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4yzkefot3c
Got an ex in washington who put pretty much the samething on facebook, which pushed me to create the above screenshot as a reply.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wraith
It messes with my groove....that I no longer care so much about Fireworks or Festivities celebrating the 4th of July as Independence Day. When I was a kid, it mattered. When I had young children, it mattered. But now the parades, fireworks, and picnics have lost their luster. It makes me sad....to know that Independence Day is just another bank holiday, and businesses capitalizing on red-white-and-blue flag themes. Or patriotic mattress sales. :(
Also, we've not been singing the National Anthem as it was originally written. Woo hoo?
http://starspangledmusic.org/
The 1814 version sounds like Mozart compositions.
Video news stories... I hate them. Would it really be that difficult to put a transcript up?
What I dislike is when they have an actual story but an autoplaying video as well. If I want to watch the video, I could click play.
Annnd now over here as well - all of a sudden it's 31°C! (87.8°F)Quote:
Originally Posted by Wraith
http://www.baltictimes.com/news/arti.../#.U8A4Uvl_vqU
May he lie in an unmarked grave upon rough sand soon. :sour:
My mum's best friend's husband died unexpectedly in his sleep last night :( he was a decent man who tried to live a good life to the best of his ability, and she is just the sweetest person who had already gone through more than people should have to.
Death is rarely easy, but it's different when you can prepare over the course of a prolonged period of illness or even over the course of a few frantic and desperate hours. When it happens like this and you think back on the last day you had together, one person coming home late after working an evening shift, the other too tired to get up to eat breakfast before dawn... It's just :( l am not used to that version of death and it's the one that terrifies me the most.
The funeral is on Wednesday, in accordance with Muslim customs, and I hope I can reschedule or get done help with the patient appointments I have for that day so that I can attend. It should be doable but is by no means guaranteed.
Tell the people you love that you love them, often, I guess
Welcome to the real world.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
WTF? :bulb:Quote:
Originally Posted by GGT
Damn Hamas and their fiendishly confusing strategy of employing very short and scrawny terrorist operatives who disguise their terrorist activities by pretending to play on the beach :mad: :(
Monstrous!
Quick, let's carpet bomb the area to destroy their silica-based beachheads!
I understand this is somewhat in jest, but you do realize the challenges associated with conducting a successful air/artillery campaign of this sort, yes? I have no doubt that the children were a tragic accident, but I also have no doubt that a legitimate target was the goal, whether on the beach or not. Initial rumblings out of leaks from IDF intelligence suggest there was some sort of Hamas target, and they either screwed up by misidentifying/not seeing the kids or by missing their target. Tragic, awful, yes... but to be expected in such a challenging operational environment.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
There are a lot of complexities I want to remind you about though:
1. It's hard to distinguish between civilian and military targets when you get things like rockets being stored in a UNRWA school, or significant infrastructure (e.g. tunnel entrances, weapons workshops, caches, command and control centers) in homes and mosques. That doesn't obviate the need to minimize casualties as much as possible, but it's still a military nightmare.
2. There have been two separate attempted infiltrations by Hamas naval frogmen leaving Gaza beaches and attempting to carry out a high profile attack inside Israel in the last week. I'm not surprised that naval vessels are on high alert and may have a lower threshold for engaging people on the normally deserted beach (and it's awfully hard to distinguish kids from commandos at this range).
3. While I'm not particularly keen to deny this was the result of Israeli action (and the IDF appears to be acknowledging they were operating in the vicinity at the time), remember that in previous cases similar incidents have ended up being completely divorced from IDF action; recall the 2006 beach explosion near Beit Lahiya where IDF naval shelling of Qassam launching positions some 250 meters away from a family on the beach was blamed for a massive explosion that killed 8 civilians; later analysis appears to demonstrate the explosion may have been the result of a Hamas mine or IED, or possibly unexploded ordnance from earlier exchanges of fire. Similarly, the UN's casualty breakdowns are taken verbatim from the Palestinian Health Ministry, which is run by Hamas and has every incentive to exaggerate the civilian:combatant ratio; later analyses of the age and gender of the deceased tends to show a remarkable skewing of all deaths towards combat-age males.
I was to emphasize that this is not apologetics to justify civilian casualties. Obviously all of those are terrible, and I grieve for the families of the four boys who were killed on that beach. I just think we need to be realistic in our assessment of what is possible in this kind of constrained operating environment. The Gaza Strip is a morass, and in any military conflict with a group like Hamas there is necessarily going to be a lot of non-combatant casualties. It would help if Gazans carried out reasonable precautions, of course - those boys should never have been let out of their homes (certainly my niece and nephew in Rechovot haven't spent much time outside in the last few weeks, spending most of their days in a relatively sheltered part of their home or a bomb shelter; low Israeli casualties are to a large extent due to such precautions). Furthermore, I find Hamas' active encouragement of human shields after IDF warnings of impending airstrikes to be despicable. But no matter how careful they are, as long as Hamas is firing rockets at Israeli cities, there are going to be civilian casualties.
Had the IDF sent in tens of thousands of infantry to Gaza instead of relying on artillery and airstrikes, it's possible that something like what happened on that beach yesterday could have been averted. Possibly. Yet I have no doubt that the total casualty count - including among civilians - would also have been much higher. I don't envy Israeli politicians and military leaders their conundrum - they can't possibly just sit back and let strikes against their cities continue, but pretty much anything they try is going to kill a lot of people they're not trying to kill. Context is important.
After two days of insanity-inducing struggle to update my tablet to cyanogenmod 11 I succeed only to discover that the latest android versions don't have the perfect "tablet UI" interface introduced with honeycomb. They basically switched to the shittiest possible interface to have on a 10" tablet :x ARGH! Way to focus on the wrong targets, Google... They make the IDF look good... :o :downcast:
I surrendered and got myself a small mobile air conditioner for my bedroom. I'm really not suited for sleeping temperatures above 24 °C.
