industrial disease?

This is why using robots on the battlefield is not as good an idea as it might seem.
I think that story pretty much speaks for itself.

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Innocent until proven guilty. Say it with me: 'I am presumed innocent until proven guilty.' That is, unless you're accused of being too smart. Er, I mean, knowing something you're not supposed to know. Erm, I mean, "having information about a potential terror threat."

I have such trouble with torture, because it seems like punishment before the crime. Hell, it's more than that: it's trial, conviction, and punishment, even before any actual crime was committed. Thoughtcrime is still in the future.

Having information...Potential (not actual) ...Threat (not action). Seriously? We're still prosecuting people for this?

Let's say it again: Innocent until proven guilty. You'd want that for yourself, wouldn't you?

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We're approaching a tipping point. I think we're approaching a point at which a significant number of Americans will realize -personally and viscerally-- that they (we) just can't go on living in economic conditions like this. Imagine: you and your partner own a house and two cars. You lose your job, and can't find a new one because unemployment is over 10%. You can still make ends meet, thanks to unemployment benefits, but eventually they run out. You still don't have a job, so making ends meet is a bit harder, though not yet impossible. Then, one of your cars breaks down. Clearly, you can't afford to fix it, and this puts serious limits on your ability to not only find work, but take care of daily business like grocery shopping and the various other errands we get in to. Never mind entertainment, or buying new clothes: that will have to wait til you can somehow get a new job. That is, if you can still get a new job in those old clothes.

Fast-forward a month or two. You're not starving yet, but you're hungry: you haven't had a good meal since the car broke down. You're paying more for gas because you're having to drive the spouse to work and pick them up, so you can use the car during the day to look for work, etc. And now the extra wear-and-tear on the second car begins to show. You're both stressed because you can't pay all of your bills at once, every month. Creditors are calling. Your mortgage payment is late. The bank is upset. The tension mounts.

Our society is this situation, writ large. Right now, it's like a pot of water waiting to boil. The water is getting hot- individuals have been reacting to this socio-economic 'heat' for years (in the form of post-office shootings, road rage, Columbine, Waco, 911, Ted Kaszinski, John Allen Muhammad, the Anthrax incidents, ), but at this point, most of us -individually- are OK. But the water is getting hotter all the time, and at some point a tipping point will be reached: the pot will boil. What happens when we start to realize -collectively- that it's not all OK? I wish I knew.

The election of President Obama seems to have been the equivalent of dropping an ice cube into the pot: it cooled part of society down considerably, allowing them to believe that the pot might actually be cooling again. But like adding cold water to a near-boiling pot, it also served to exacerbate the situation just a little. Now, many of those who looked to Obama to lead us out of the wilderness, are doubly angry because they feel duped.

What's a guy to do, when he thinks he's out of options? Apparently, make a mess on his way out.

In possibly unrelated news: this very morning, as I was walking through a nearby park, I saw a man dressed in a leopard-spotted teddy, playing disc golf. I kid you not. I was returning from the bank. It was just around dawn, very foggy. It was 30 degrees. And he was in a teddy. Full-figured guy, too. Not surprisingly, he tried to hide from me. Don't worry man, I wanted to say, I understand: We all deal with pressure differently.

I was just happy he wasn't using explosives or a gun.