Sal Chæch

Other than to make the seat want to fall down, so now I have to hold up the seat while I pee?

If any?

There are several possible arguments.

It could possibly improve literacy, with its wealth of knowledge and information. While physical print media is dying, virtual print media is thriving.

Or, it could be hurtful towards literacy. Lol catz and textese make plenty of literate people cringe, and could mark a downward trend in literacy overall.

Maybe it's mostly unchanged. Maybe the two things I just mentioned don't really mean anything. The difference is that now you can read the unfiltered works of people both highly literate and barely literate, and since anyone can self publish online, those who are barely literate get more exposure than ever before.

I asked this question in this category because:

a) This is an unusually intelligent and refined group of people, as far as I can tell, and

b) I wonder how it reflects on humanity as a whole.

Bonus points for a literate answer!

Please, before I throw a brick through my monitor.

Google Chrome is being retarded. Months ago, I got annoyed with facebook and tried to delete my account. If any of you have tried that, it doesn't work. You can deactivate it, but not delete it.

Anyway, those were in the days where I still used Internet Explorer, now my sworn enemy. I got Google Chrome, and for a while it got all stupid with cookies. At first, it was asking my permission for each and every one. This can get annoying, because all ads seem to have one.

So, I made a second feeble attempt at deleting my facebook. It asked me if I was ok with its cookie, and I foolishly said no.

And in my attempt to delete it, it was revived. Only now, since I told Chrome not to accept its cookies, it won't let me sign in at all. It tells me that I need to change my cookie settings, which I did, but it still won't let me do anything. I put in my email and password, and the login screen resets, as if I never did anything to begin with.

This wouldn't be so irritating if my friends and family weren't trying to contact me through facebook. To make matters worse, I get stupid emails about it all the time. This person wants to be my friend, that person sent an invite, and I have NO WAY OF DOING ANYTHING ABOUT IT. Hell, even my grandfather sent me a friend request. He's old, and it's not like I can tell him no, and he's gonna think I'm making excuses not to be his friend. This is crap I don't want to deal with. This is the reason I tried to delete it in the first place. I'm not that social, and I'd like to see it gone.

Any advice on how to get Chrome to stop being retarded? I'm starting to get that vein in my forehead popping out...

Please, before I throw a brick through my monitor.

Google Chrome is being retarded. Months ago, I got annoyed with facebook and tried to delete my account. If any of you have tried that, it doesn't work. You can deactivate it, but not delete it.

Anyway, those were in the days where I still used Internet Explorer, now my sworn enemy. I got Google Chrome, and for a while it got all stupid with cookies. At first, it was asking my permission for each and every one. This can get annoying, because all ads seem to have one.

So, I made a second feeble attempt at deleting my facebook. It asked me if I was ok with its cookie, and I foolishly said no.

And in my attempt to delete it, it was revived. Only now, since I told Chrome not to accept its cookies, it won't let me sign in at all. It tells me that I need to change my cookie settings, which I did, but it still won't let me do anything. I put in my email and password, and the login screen resets, as if I never did anything to begin with.

This wouldn't be so irritating if my friends and family weren't trying to contact me through facebook. To make matters worse, I get stupid emails about it all the time. This person wants to be my friend, that person sent an invite, and I have NO WAY OF DOING ANYTHING ABOUT IT. Hell, even my grandfather sent me a friend request. He's old, and it's not like I can tell him no, and he's gonna think I'm making excuses not to be his friend. This is crap I don't want to deal with. This is the reason I tried to delete it in the first place. I'm not that social, and I'd like to see it gone.

Any advice on how to get Chrome to stop being retarded? I'm starting to get that vein in my forehead popping out...

Happy Independence Day, America.

I was thinking about freedom the other day. It occurred to me that freedom is a decision that must be constantly renewed. I mean, if you're free, truly free, then you are given the choice to remain free or to give up your freedom.

If you choose to remain free, then it's your duty, your obligation, to stand your ground and be vigilant of those who might wish to usurp or undermine your freedom.

Now, if you ask me, fighting our current War on Terror isn't defending our freedom. It shames me to think that the country who was admonished to have nothing to fear but fear itself now wages war on terror.

I guess my point is that by choosing to be free, and not a subject, it demands responsibility on the part of every free man. Absolute freedom might not be entirely possible, but it still exists as an ideal, striving to find a common ground for freedom as an individual and as a free society. As Matt Stone and Trey Parker brilliantly put it, freedom isn't free, and if you don't put in your buck o'five, who will?

Well, those are my thoughts on it. Feel free to deviate from my additional details; I'm just curious to hear some thoughts on what you people think about freedom.

Anyone with a weak stomach should back away slowly, and not continue reading any further. I warned you...

I had an infected cyst on my neck, started out the size of a pea and wound up the size of a walnut. So, after a couple rounds of antibiotics, the infection gave way to pus, and finally I stabbed a small hole in it so it could drain. Is there a good word for that milky red color (it's not pink) that occurs when there's a combination of blood and pus?

Anyone with a weak stomach should back away slowly, and not continue reading any further. I warned you...

I had an infected cyst on my neck, started out the size of a pea and wound up the size of a walnut. So, after a couple rounds of antibiotics, the infection gave way to pus, and finally I stabbed a small hole in it so it could drain. Is there a good word for that milky red color (it's not pink) that occurs when there's a combination of blood and pus?

Is this normal? Every morning, right around now, I've been hearing this tapping noise at the window. I didn't know what it was, because I had usually heard it from in my room, which I keep vampire style, with little or no natural light. (I might mention that I hear this when most people would call it morning, but I'm a little vampire-like and it's my night.) Usually by the time the sun comes up I'm trying to sleep, but the other day I was on the computer (not in my room, but in the sunlit room next to it), and I heard the familiar sound...

Only this time, it was accompanied with the startling image of a robin flying into the window.

Anyway, this, I've come to realize, happens all the time. Is it as weird as I think it is? What's up with that? What could he possibly want?

I went ahead and named him Burt, after the guy who played Robin in the 60's Batman with Adam West.

...so many people are more concerned with whom is right than what is right?

Why don't people like to admit they're wrong after they have inwardly come to the conclusion that they were wrong?

I never quite understood why some people think they're always right. Even the best lose sometimes.

It seems we've allowed ourselves to become distracted. Remember a few years ago, when our civil liberties were being actively trampled? And everyone was up in arms about it? But now it feels like ancient history....

Complacency. Who cares about rights, who cares that we're still at war? There's a cat on youtube who'll play us out of it, right onto the next act. Wake up!

Thomas Jefferson believed that we should stage a revolution every twenty years or so. That's what democracy is supposed to be; a means of changing things, a way to have a revolution without war, without dissolving our union. To me, the First Amendment is the right to disagree. What happened to all the squeaky wheels from the last presidency? Was a Democrat (read: anybody but W) in the White House enough?

Complacency. Land of the Free seems a little misguided... more like Land of the Almost Free With a Sense of False Security.

I had a specific example in mind, but on second thought the question is self explanatory.

Her farts are the stuff of nightmares, and I literally just watched her eat her own vomit.

What does that say about you?

I can't sleep.

Lots of people think they're crazy, some of them are.

But, the true definition of sane/insane is elusive. Loosely, I think that sanity is related to a person's ability to stay within social norms, juxtaposed with their ability to tell the difference.

Mathematically speaking, couldn't this be viewed as a graph, with sanity at one end, insanity at the other, each approaching infinity, with everyone falling somewhere in between? It would seem so, because there's no standard model for either sanity or insanity.

Maybe that's why everyone thinks they're crazy... It's a yin yang type of thing, and even if you're all white you can sense your black spot, waiting to take over.

Your thoughts?

I have my own, which I choose not to divulge simply to encourage diversity in answers--I don't want people needlessly agreeing or disagreeing with me.

While this might look like a question for another category, like Polls, I'm most interested in the philosophical view. What makes you tick? What thought processes guide you? What ethics guide your need to answer?

No, not deactivate. Delete. Can I post something offensive and have a real-world friend report it?

Don't try to talk me out of it. It's been deactivated for months, but that's not enough for me. I have my reasons.

I don't think I'm lucky enough at Yahtzee to get rid of it the way they did in South Park.

A manager at work said that a few times today, and it irked me. Are those not the words of an arrogant idiot? To me, it shows no wisdom.

Why do people think this way? So assured of their own correctness, often to the point where they deny reason... If I'm wrong about something and I've proven wrong, I'll gladly admit defeat, because I'd rather know the truth than defend a falsehood. Why does my view seem to be the minority?

Why is it so common for intelligent people to insult ignorance?

Time and time again, I'll read a question here that's full of spelling and grammatical errors. Behind that veil of tangled linguistic errors, there usually IS a real question at the heart of it.

Here's an example. A few days ago, I clicked on a question. It was from a young girl, mid teens from what I can tell, who was (surprise!) having problems fitting in. Her additional details were an English teacher's nightmare; spelling and typos were everywhere, punctuation was sporadic, and it lacked continuity. It had all the marks of a hyperactive, scatterbrained teenage girl, who, like any other teenager, has her fair share of problems and questions.

The first three answers were all attacks. There wasn't even a half assed attempt to answer the real question, just outright insults.

As an intelligent person, I understand the intermittent inability to suffer fools. Some days, I just don't have the patience. But, what gets me is that instead of reading a few lines in, sitting back for a moment, muttering a quick, "Wow...," and clicking the back button, these people chose to click the "Answer Question" button.

Does it really make you feel more intelligent? Do you feel a step higher for having taken them down a peg? Shouldn't real intelligence pride itself on the edification of those less intelligent? Instead of being mocked, shouldn't ignorance be illuminated?

If everyone's crazy, then nobody is. Isn't crazy supposed to be reserved for just a few?

We all have a few screws loose or a few that are too tight, that doesn't make you crazy. Strange, maybe.