Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!

Chris Sevier, a lawyer in Nashville, TN, is suing Apple for letting him view pornography and causing the end of his marriage.

A fellow member of the Fratching.com web forum (Andara Bledin) summarized the 50-page indictment. And since most don't want to read the whole damn thing I'm posting her summary.

Introduction:

1) Apple is awesome but should think of the children and make all their devices set to safe mode by default and the require that buyers get a code directly from Apple to disable that feature. 

2) Apple should totally do this to avoid a class action suit against them, 'cause they're totally at fault.

3) If they do this, he'll drop the suit.

4) They're in violation of a TN code for which it's clear that they are not in violation because they didn't knowingly allow a minor view porn.

5) Buyers shouldn't have to be responsible for their actions. 

6) Porn is evil and illegal.

7) This isn't in violation of the First Amendment because we all know that porn is "harmful" and all of Apples female employees would support the decision because they're all "mothers, wives, and future spouses." 

8) Parents shouldn't have to take any action at all to protect their kids: Apple should be doing it for them. Without a filter, it's a gateway to harm.

9 Anyone who doesn't agree is "a demonstration" which "proves the necessity for safeguards to protect our hearts." 

10) Apple is to blame because they didn't warn him that there's porn on the Internet. And if it weren't for his Apple product, there's no way he would ever have found porn.

11) Flag-waving histrionics with the first word being "PATRIOTISM" and going on to talk about our "Judeo-Christian values", but says they should make this change because of "science." Because porn is "reprogramming" our outlook on sex with "extreme prejudice."

12) Grandfather died of emphysema because cigarettes weren't marketed as bad, and porn is just like cigarettes, we just don't know it yet.

13) Apple knows there's porn on the internet and sells their product with a browser installed, so it's their fault that he found porn, because he didn't now that there's porn on the internet.

14) He wants Apple to filter all the porn so that until you get a code from Apple, you can't accidentally see any of it while using their products. 

15) Definitions of 'minor' and 'pornography' as relates to the suit.

16) Apple knows that because of porn on the Internet, there's sex trafficking. It didn't happen before porn on the Internet made it happen.

17) Late night infomercials on sex enhancement drugs is all the fault of pornography and Apple knows this. Apple knows that these infomercials are because porn has made it so that red-blooded males can't get off with real women because access to porn broke their boners. Which never happened before there was porn on the Internet.

18) Apple knows there's porn and should have filters in place by default. For the sake of men, families, and communities. 

19) Apple shipping a device that isn't filtered is like a gun maker shipping a loaded weapon.

20) "ALL OF APPLES FEMALE EMPLOYEES SUPPORT THE PLAINTIFF'S DEMAND." No, he didn't actually ask any of them, but he just knows they will. Oh, and Apple is actually the cause of sexual addiction. The porn makers aren't at fault at all.

21) Apple is supporting crime. 

22) Apple has "a duty" to protect women and children who are victims of sex trafficking because you can see porn on the Internet with their devices.

23) Porn makes regular sex boring and causes people to seek out deviate sex, and this is Apple's fault.

24) Apple not putting filters on their devices is like the US government not doing more to prevent "911."

25) Apple should be proactive in protecting our children because nobody should expect their parents to do it themselves. And the 50's were so much better than today. 

26) Deviants who want to be able to view porn will have to be educated by Apple that removing the filter could damage their delicate psyches and they'd have to sign a waiver that they know this. 

27) Porn is dangerous so doesn't deserve any First Amendment protection and nobody like the ACLU should have any problem with my demanding that it be filtered out by default because that's like supporting drug dealers. And if anybody doesn't agree, then they are "opponents of common sense and are very obviously haunted by their own guilt-ridden conscienses in so far as they want to promote a counterproductive agenda of self-absorption and misery, making others feel as lost, distorted, and confused to calculable sanity as they are in self-justifying effort to excuse their personal blindness."

28) Apple should get together with the FBI to kill Backpage.com because people use it to do stuff that is bad because it isn't as sanitized as Craigslist.

29) Filtering the Internet is easy, so Apple should take care of it because people are ignorant and weak.

30) You kill a snake by cutting off its head and porn makers are just the body while device makers are the head. 

Parties:

31) A TN resident over 18.

32) Apple Inc, makers of the Mac computer and Safari browser, among others.

Jurisdiction:

33) It's a federal case because they're in different states and the suit is worth more than $75,000.00.

34) Why the case should have this jurisdiction.

35) More why the case should have this jurisdiction.

Facts:

36) He bought a Mac Book in TN to write music and access the Internet and is going to use this filing to advertise his band.

37) Without a Mac Book, he never ever would have been able to get on the Internet and see porn. 

38) Mac Books come with Safari already installed.

39) Without Apple making his computer not display porn, he couldn't help but seek out porn and become damaged from it.

40) Because he couldn't type Facebook correctly, he ended up on Fuckbook and a host of other sites that allowed him to see porn which overcame his ability to resist because he's a weak male.

41) Porn gave him "arousal addiction" which is bad for his life.

42) Porn made him prefer "cyber beauties" to his wife and she subsequently "abducted his son and disappeared" which is all Apple's fault for not selling their computer "on 'safe mode'."

43) Before buying a Macbook, he'd never seen a pornographic image in his entire life.

44) Before buying a Macbook, he'd never visited a strip club or sex shop in his entire life.

45) Viewing porn on the Internet with his Macbook made him depressed and unable to work.

46) Viewing porn has made it so that he has to have counseling.

47) If Apple can sell a computer with a browser on it, then it should be easy to sell a browser that blocks all porn.

48) It's totally reasonable to expect Apple to protect people from porn, because governments protect people from porn.

49) Nobody at the Apple store ever told him there was porn on the Internet, so all subsequent damage is their fault because cigarettes and alcohol have to have warning labels.

50) Apple knows there's porn on the Internet and what if he'd been a teen alone in a room? 

51) Men have hormones and can't possibly be expected to restrain themselves in the face of porn on the Internet.

52) People shouldn't have to be responsible for avoiding porn on their own.

53) 37% of all websites have porn on them, so Apple should protect us from porn.

54) Porn is just like alcohol.

55) Everybody should boycott Apple and everyone else who doesn't protect them from porn.

56) Things were better in the '50s before the Internet and the ACLU when we all prayed in schools and believed in God. 

57) The demand for filters is totally reasonable and Apple should do what he wants right away.

58) We have to protect women from becoming secret porn stars.

59) Males can't help themselves when it comes to porn, so Apple has to protect them.

60) Internet porn was so exciting that it was impossible for him to function in real life, and Apple should have protected him.

61) Porn made him aware that his wife wasn't as pretty or young as porn stars which is why his marriage failed, and it's Apple's fault that he realized this.

62) Apple knows that Internet porn is worse than print porn.

63) The court knows that sex criminals get started by looking at porn, so they should hold Apple responsible for not filtering the Internet.

64) Requiring filtering the Internet by default would totally help the "bricks' and mortar" porn industry, so they should support him.

65) Free Internet porn is bad for the economy because it's free. 

66) Apple needs to have filters to prevent "accidental arousal addiction." 

67) Porn leads to sex crimes, so not filtering the Internet puts the lives of innocents and law enforcement at risk.

68) It's all Apple's responsibility to not let those evil porn makers have access to innocent males who can't control their urges.

69) Because people can access porn in private because of the Internet, the world is a worse place and Apple should use a filter like governments use zoning laws to keep those places away from regular folks.

70) Use of the Apple product hurt him directly because it didn't protect him from Internet porn.

71) There is a nearly 3:1 ratio for porn movies to Hollywood films which proves porn is bad and it's Apple's fault he could view any of them.

72) Men are wired to love porn and too weak to resist it, so Apple should proactively protect them from it.

73) He doesn't smoke, do drugs, or drink too much. 

74) Porn is an internal addiction while drugs are an external addiction. 

75) He was a vet in a place that outlawed porn, and he doesn't want that to happen. He just wants to force Apple to protect everybody from it.

76) He doesn't want to legislate morality, but Apple has to protect men so they can enjoy the God-given gift that is marital sex.

77) Forcing Apple to have filters is the same as making MacDonald's tell people what was in the food they sold.

78) Apple should totally employ Philip Zimbardo to write up their notice. (he co-wrote a book that blames video games and porn for nerds)

79) It's impossible to really regulate porn sites, but the court can write laws so that Apple can do just that.

80) Apple should filter the internet to save marriages and society.

81) This request doesn't place any burden on Apple and moreover isn't countered by the First Amendment.

82) Yes, this request really doesn't place any burden on Apple.

83) Any inability to exercise restraint is an addiction and it's Apple's fault he has one because they didn't protect him from porn on the Internet.

84) Device makers are enabling arousal addiction by not filtering the Internet.

85) His brain was "digitally rewired" by internet porn.

86) 13% of all searches are for porn, so obviously people need to think of the children and filter the Internet.

87) He mailed a letter to Apple threatening to file a lawsuit if they didn't filter the Internet. He gave them 10 days to respond.

Count One Fraudulent Misprepresentation

88) Everything that was said before.

89) Apple intentionally failed to warn him that there is porn on the Internet.

90) Because they didn't protect him from porn on the Internet, he was hurt by porn on the Internet.

91) Yes, he was hurt because Apple didn't protect him from porn on the Internet.

Count Two Products Liability

92) Apple made the device that could be used to view porn on the Internet, so they broke some TN laws, because porn on the Internet is dangerous.

93) Apple didn't filter the Internet on it's devices, and porn is dangerous, so they're at fault for any injuries from porn on the Internet.

94) Not warning about porn on the Internet or blocking it makes the devices dangerous or defective, which is a violation of TN laws.

95) Apple sold a device that could access Internet porn and failed to warn consumers that Internet porn is harmful.

96) Not having a filter makes a Macbook unsafe.

97) His being harmed by Internet porn is all Apple's fault.

Outrageous Conduct and Infliction of Emotional Distress

98) Everything said before.

99) Apple knew that he could accidentally find porn on the Internet.

100) Apple knew that the damage from Internet porn would be detrimental to his life.

101) It would be easy for Apple to filter the Internet and require people to unlock their devices if they wanted to see porn.

102) It's all Apple's fault he saw porn on the Internet.

103) Apple knew porn was bad and that he would be harmed if he found it and did nothing to stop it.

104) It's Apple's fault, so they have to do something about it.

Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress

105) Everything said before.

106) Apple was negligent for selling him something that would hurt him.

107) Apple was bad for providing a device that was dangerous without warning.

108) His addiction and subsequent health issues are all Apple's fault.

109) How badly Apple hurt him by allowing him to find porn on the Internet should be determined at trial.

110) Wherefore

1) He demands an immediate injunction to prevent any more dangerous Apple devices be sold without warnings and filters in place.

2) He demands that Apple donate to a handful of religious-based charities that protect people from sex-related crimes because it's their fault they happen because they allow people to find porn on the Internet.

3) He demands $75,010.00 for everything because it has to be over $75,000.00 to automatically be a federal case. Oh, and because it's Apple's fault he became addicted to porn on the Internet.


4) He demands that Apple issue a statement that Internet porn (oh, and video games, too) are bad for men all over the world. Because some guys from Stanford wrote a book that explained how his problems were totally not his own fault.

This is a classic case of Bat-Shit-Crazy here. 

IQ is meaningless.

Here's an article which explains how IQ is a meaningless metric that serves little more than to be a point for bragging. 

http://listverse.com/2013/05/19/8-reasons-the-iq-is-meaningless/

And it pretty much covers everything I could say on the matter. Save two anecdotes on my experiences with IQ.

MENSA

I was interested and so I took the Stanford-Binet test and scored a 146. The minimum on that particular test is 132. So I went and took the actual admissions test and was accepted. I was told where the next meeting was to be, was handed my intro package and was told that they were looking forward to seeing me there.

I got there after reading the info pack and was excited as all hell. 

Mensa's constitution lists three purposes: "to identify and to foster human intelligence for the benefit of humanity; to encourage research into the nature, characteristics, and uses of intelligence; and to provide a stimulating intellectual and social environment for its members".

 Gee! Sounds like fun doesn't it?

Except when I got there...it was a bunch of people who in my honest opinion couldn't pour piss out of a boot if you printed the instructions on the heel. They were talking about the most mundane things and nit picking them apart and finding all the things that were idiotic about them...

But when I asked "Well then what should the solution be?" they stated that it wasn't their problem and that they didn't care.

Mensa's constitution lists three purposes: "to identify and to foster human intelligence for the benefit of humanity; to encourage research into the nature, characteristics, and uses of intelligence; and to provide a stimulating intellectual and social environment for its members".

Uhm...if we're not going to use our braininess for the benefit of humanity like it says in your constitution, then why in the name of Zeus's sweaty nutsack are we doing here?

I left shortly after the conversation started covering Star Trek. Not that I was being petty about anyone ripping into Star Trek, but when someone argues that Star Trek has no real point other than to be mindless entertainment for the masses, I'm going to make a counter point.

Those points being that:

1. Star Trek (and Scotty in particular) inspired people to become engineers, many of them going to Engineering-course-heavy colleges. Which is why Milwaukee School Of Engineering gave James Doohan an honorary degree.
2. Many of those engineers sit there and see the Star Trek fictional technology and do their damndest to make it a reality. The hypospray medicine injector became a reality when someone developed one for insulin. They sent a mock-up of it to the people in Star Trek TNG and they saw that it was only slightly bigger than the prop so they painted it and used it as an alien's injector. We discovered how to transport something. Granted it was only a single photon...but they fugging did it! We're currently sorting out how to warp space and by God if the mathematics are correct would allow us to someday travel faster than light. 

So I made these points and I was told that I was wrong. That Star Trek still was puerile and meaningless and that only degenerates like it. 

I got up, politely said that I had seen enough, walked out the door and never came back.

Now the anecdote that really proves the whole piss in a boot scenario. Don't drink anything from here on out. Your keyboard will thank you.

About a year after I was with some of my buddies in a diner enjoying some lunch and some...amusing conversations. Any of my friends know how strangely amusing our conversations can get. We happened to be next to a table with members of the local Mensa Chapter (not the same ones, I had moved to a different state at this time) and they noticed a problem that needed to be solved and had to be solved RIGHT NOW!

What was this Earth shattering problem that needed combined might of Mensa's greatest minds to sort out? Someone had filled the salt shaker with pepper and vice versa.

You may now facepalm.

So they put their heads together and came up with a plan involving the two confused shakers, a napkin, a straw, and a tea saucer. Sorry, I don't remember the details beyond that. But it was a convoluted plan worthy of Rube Goldberg.

They called the waitress over to show her that they were genetically superior to her and that they were capable of things that this poor diner waitress didn't have the mental capacity to dream of. 

Yes, they considered her that much of a troglodyte and said as much to themselves. 

Waitress came over and they explained the situation. The waitress replied "Oh, sorry hun." took the shakers and swapped the lids, put them down and toddled off. 

You see folks. The reason that the Mensa folks knew that the salt and pepper were in the wrong shakers? Because the caps were labeled with a big S and P. Someone had simply in their rush (this was a popular diner that made some damn tasty foods) put the wrong caps on. Mensa came up with a solution that was convoluted as all @#$% while the "dumb hash-slinger" came up with the real world, simple solution. 

So the article above describes how IQ is pointless and Those anecdotes were my addition to that. 

Rants on a glurge piece.

This is going around on Facebook and I have some issues with this.

A man of 32 years, was smoking, while smoking his cigarette, he puffed out some smoke into the air and said:'God, that's for you.'
He died at the age of 32 of LUNG CANCER in a horrible manner.

Now I have no problems with this. This is a cocky fuck that got to suffer the consequences of his own actions. God may or may not have had a hand in that, but in either case I've no problems. 

The man who built the Titanic
After the construction of Titanic, a reporter asked him how safe the Titanic would be.
With an ironic tone he said: 'Not even God can sink it'
The result: I think you all know what happened to the Titanic

So...We're saying that just because one person was an arrogant prick, God decided to sink the ship with a loss of over 1,500 people. People who may or may not have been as devout as they could have been...but I doubt that many of them sat there and flipped God the bird and made the same claim. I'm sure that most of them simply bought a ticket so they could come to America. 

Marilyn Monroe (Actress)
She was visited by Billy Graham during a presentation of a show.
He said the Spirit of God had sent him to preach to her.
After hearing what the Preacher had to say, she said:
'I don't need your Jesus'.
A week later, she was found dead in her apartment

After she had taken her own life as a result of drug overdose. Possibly from depression. So God smited a woman who was depressed because she told Billy Graham (who, and let's be fair to him, is a bit of an overzealous prick) what she thought of religion as he preaches it.

But on the same token will also allow Good Christians who have fallen through the cracks of priests who just don't give a fuck and don't get any help for their depression to die.

Huh.

Bon Scott (Singer)
The ex-vocalist of the AC/DC. On one of his 1979 songs he sang:
'Don't stop me; I'm going down all the way, down the highway to hell'.
On the 19th of February 1980, Bon Scott was found dead, he had been choked by his own vomit.

And on the other hand we have Rich Mullins who was a Christian singer who sang the praises of God and Jesus who was killed in 1997 at the age of 41 when a semi-trailer truck plowed into him killing him instantly. 

Campinas (IN 2005)
In Campinas , Brazil a group of friends, drunk, went to pick up a friend.....
The mother accompanied her to the car and was so worried about the drunkenness of her friends and she said to the daughter holding her hand, who was already seated in the car:
'My Daughter, Go With God And May He Protect You.'
She responded: 'Only If He (God) Travels In The Trunk, Cause Inside Here.....It's Already Full '
Hours later, news came by that they had been involved in a fatal accident, everyone had died, the car could not be recognized what type of car it had been, but surprisingly, the trunk was intact.
The police said there was no way the trunk could have remained intact. To their surprise, inside the trunk was a crate of eggs, none was broken 

And again God killed off everyone just because one person was mouthy?

 

Christine Hewitt (Jamaican Journalist & entertainer) said the Bible (Word of God) was the worst book ever written.
In June 2006 she was found burnt beyond recognition in her motor vehicle.

Is this the way that God REALLY works? Really? That he'll smite the fuck out of anyone near a person just because they say something that he doesn't like? That if I wanted to kill off a bunch of people I could stand in the middle of a group of people and say "The Lord is a rotten bastard" and he'll smite them? Sure I might get it as well, but thanks to God he'll make sure I take a shopping mall's worth of people with me?

Is this REALLY how God works?

Fuck I hope not otherwise we're all doomed.

A Comedy of Errors (or how to make Mongo say naughty words a lot of times)

So wife's surgery to get the knee replaced is coming up. Alas and alack so is Snowpocalypse. On the same day.

Plan "A" - Spend the night at my folks place as it is closer than Annapolis than we normally are. Also it's on a major road (interstate) and so should be a quicker commute.

Snow's coming and they're predicted to get 4-8 in the day with another 4 at night. Mothersmurfer!

Plan "B" - Stay at home since the snow line is above Annapolis and all we'll get is rain.

Snow line shifted its track south and now WE are expected to get the 8-12 inches of snow. Son of a...

Emergency Plan "C" - Borrow some money from folks to get a room at the Hackerman-Patz house across the street from the hospital assuming that if worse came to worse and we get the next ice age dumping on us we could bundle up and "Nanuk of the North" it across the glacier to the hospital. Sled dogs on Standby Alert.

Snowpocalypse turned out to be "No-pocalypse". Rain to the north of Annapolis, rain to the south, rain on top of us. A lot of it and thankfully it was not snow or we would have been buried. However since we could have stayed with Plan "A" or "B"...Gorramit!

Next we have the doctor calling in with our time for the appointment the next day. Wife's white blood cell count is elevated. Now since that blood work was two fragging weeks ago they pick NOW to tell us? Assholes.

So we are told to come in a half hour earlier to get a new cell count check done stat. We ask what time they want us in by and they tell us 6:40.

Next morning wife gets yelled at for being late. Now when someone calls to let us know when we're to be at the hospital and tells us to come in earlier and we ask "What time do *you* want us there by?" and they say 6:40am...one would assume that they want us there by 6:40am and not "The hospital wants you there by 6:40am but we want you in by 6:10am". Cocksuckers!

Blood work comes back and the count is down from two weeks ago but is still too high to do the surgery. Just barely over but they have the nurses pull the IV's and discharge her. FUCK WEASEL!

So we drive back to home and get an emergency visit to our Primary Doc. Ran down everything that could possibly cause the elevated cell counts. No cold, no sore throat, no rashes, no odd sounds in the lungs...ran down the checklist and nothing. Shit!

The only two things we can think of are wife picked up something from one of the kids (youngest was sick recently and was trying to barf up a lung from all the hacking and wheezing and the oldest was so distraught from her problems with her fiance kicking her out in the middle of the semester that her immune system tanked and she caught something) or it may have been from a friend who recently flew (pressurized cabin with god knows how many plague carriers). In either case she may have gotten the disease and fought it off without actually getting sick herself.

The only other thing may have been allergies.

So redo blood work to get a count below the threshold so they can re-schedule her, put her on antibiotics and claritin to keep the counts down and she has to crawl under a rock to avoid sick people and anything that could set off her immune system.

GAAAH!

I must have made it big!

Well folks, Mongo's Musings has gotten so big and popular that I've gained the notice of anonymous spammers.

To quote Garfield the cat..."Yee haw, whoopie whee. I'm so excited I could just barf."

On my article on It's beginning to look a lot like "Fuck This"! where I ranted about the anonymous coward that decided to bash me for daring to try to remember the good about Christmas I have comments like...

I think everything posted made a great deal of sense.
However, what about this? what if you were to write a awesome headline?

I mean, I don't want to tell you how to run your website, however what if you added something to maybe grab people's attention?
I mean "It's beginning to look a lot like "Fuck This"!" is a little plain.

Really Captain Retard? Did you happen to miss the fact that I was creating a title that could be sung to the tune of "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas"? Ray Charles could have seen that you brain dead twat.

Good day! This post could not be written any better! Reading 
through this post reminds me of my good old room mate!

Really? You have a roommate who is as much of a cynical and sarcastic asshole as I am? Where did you bury the body or did you use acid and flush him down the bathtub drain?

What's up i am kavin, its my first time to commenting anyplace, when i read this article i thought i could also make comment due to this good piece of writing.

It's certainly better than your writing...and grammar...and capitalization...and punctuation  "Your English teacher must be proud." said the blogger, dripping with sarcasm.

I have been exploring for a bit for any high-quality articles 
or weblog posts in this sort of house . Exploring in Yahoo I finally stumbled 
upon this web site. Reading this information So i'm happy to show that I have a very just right uncanny feeling I came upon just what I needed. I such a lot surely will make certain to don?t disregard this site and provides it a look regularly.

This rant is considered to be a high quality one? Really? This one. Not the one where I discuss penis enlargement pills or the one where I explain how Pluto's demotion is a good thing as it paved the way for more than 9 named objects orbiting the Sun? This one?

As Malcolm Reynolds said when he discovered River Tam in the freezer box..."Huh."

WOW just what I was looking for. Came here by searching for absolutely free clipart

Seeing that I don't have clip art, that must mean that you needed someone who was sarcastic, cynical and damn cranky. I must make you cream your jeans when I get downright surly then.

So with the fact that my older posts are also peppered with trolls and spammers, turning on moderation on posts that are older than 7 days. It on average takes these spammers a couple of weeks to notice a new post so I'm going to start there and get more aggressive as time goes on.

Fear not Mr. Rob! I'm not blocking anyone. This is simply a blanket ward against idiots who want to use my blog to try and generate traffic to their blogs. This is not be stepping on their civil rights. I'm not saying that they can not do this. I am simply exercising my right to say "Not here on my blog." Anyone is and will remain free to post on my site. Even you.

Especially you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wippooDL6WE

The Evils of the Internet!

No, I'm not ranting about the 'net, in fact I'm defending it.

One of the more common complaints about the Internet is that people shout out against it. "No one learns anything on their own anymore! They run into a problem and they get on their computers and get what they need from the Web and that's the end of it."

That's partially true. In this day and age even my 70-something father-in-law will hop onto the web and look up something if he doesn't know where to begin on a project. But the rest of it? Hogwash.

First of all, there is little out there that we learn "on our own". Sure there are scientists that learn things that we never knew we were clueless about. And yes some of us learn the hard way that checking the bushes for electric fence wires before taking a whiz is a fantastic idea (trust me on this). But in the end, the vast majority of things we learn are things that are taught to us. That it is the passing along of someone else's acquired knowledge that comprises much of what we learn.

Before the internet came along and was widely available to the masses if someone were to have a car break down and need the starter replaced and they didn't know how to do it, what were their options for learning it? You could futz with it until you figured it out, but a lot of things are not all that intuitive with cars and engines and if this is your only car for getting to and from work, this is not a really good idea.

So what else can you do in the days before the 'net? You either called and asked a friend who was mechanically inclined to help you (and teach you while doing it) swap out the starter...or you picked up the Haynes manual for your car and followed the instructions. In my case it was my father-in-law who came over and helped and taught me what was needed to be done.

Another example was my father-in-law teaching me how to clean and rebuild the carburetor on a lawnmower. Never did it before, never knew how to do it before. He showed me and that knowledge has proven invaluable. His knowledge...passed on to me.

In both examples, I relied on someone else's knowledge to further my own. I didn't learn anything on my own.

A step further and my whole scholastic career was one of someone taking someone else's knowledge of Math, Science, History, Literature, etc and pouring it into my head.

So what's the problem with using someone else's knowledge gleaned off of the internet? It's the same process of taking something that someone else learned and shared and incorporating it into my own experience. It's no different from grabbing a book from a library, it's no different from calling a friend and asking them what I should do next. What's the grief?

Apart from it being from "That that newfangled intar-wab thingie" I can't think of one.

Last week my LP gas tank ran out and the stove was dead. Got fuel finally yesterday and since I was asleep and the missus was out on errands, they filled the tank and closed the valve leaving me to restore the pilot lights.

Now for a while the stove pilots were clogged. No gas came out of them at all. None. Oven worked just fine, but the burners needed to be lit with a BBQ Lighter. Not a problem but damned inconvenient. Especially when you have pyromanical children who love playing with the goddamned things and losing them because they were hiding them from each other.

Mom? Mom? You can stop laughing now. Really. I am aware of the humorous levels of poetic justice of the situation.

So when I went outside to open the valve and lit the pilot on the oven, I lifted the stove top and looked at the burners and the pilots. First thing I noticed was the burners themselves come out rather like the burners in a gas BBQ Grill. So the burners come out and I get a look at the pilot system. I'm thinking that they're clogged and are in need of cleaning. If I can only remove them. So I look it up and find out that the nozzles can be removed but that I really ought to concentrate on the screw on the side of the nozzle. Why? It's a valve control screw and it can set how much flame you have. So I open one of the two valves and sure enough I hear gas. So I light the pilot and have a foot-tall jet of flame.

Too much methinks so I set it down to the suggested height of just tall enough that there is a small spot of yellow in the flame. Groovy. Quick test and both burners on the left side now come on. Do the same thing on the other side. open till I hear gas, reduce the more modest 4-inch flame into a small blue flame with a spot of yellow and now both burners on the right work as they should.

No idea why they were off in the first place but hey! It's working.

Now I didn't have a car so going to the library was right out. We're looking at an hour and a half walk there and another hour and a half back. Can't use the bus because with the schedules we're looking at the same times both ways. Granted I wouldn't be walking and could read a book but the library is only 10 minutes up the damn road by car.

Fuck that with an agave cactus! (for you Rob...enjoy!)

And I can't ask anyone because anyone who would know about such is at work or out doing things that are more important than helping an appliance newb sort out a pilot light.

So what's left? Where can I tap into the knowledge of others and incorporate it into my own? The interwebs! Google.com is my guru!

And the last bit. "No one learns anything anymore" is pure bullshit. I now know what to do the next time I'm confronted with a pilot that won't come on. Try the set valve screw and failing that cut the gas, remove the nozzle and whack it with a pin until the clog is gone then reseat it and check the valve. No I didn't re-invent the wheel but why should I have to? Knowledge is knowledge and it make not one bit of difference where it comes from. Books, Internet, knowledgeable friends/family...If it's there I'm a damned fool for not using it.

That said one needs to take the internet with a grain of salt since anyone can post anything and may be a complete twat when it comes to whatever the topic is, but that's where common sense comes in. If it comes from a gas company's website (as mine did) then the odds are that their answer is going to be 1,000% better than someone saying to pour chemicals on the nozzle and pray for the best.

Yahoo Answers

Now I hang out a lot on Yahoo! Answers. It's a great way to kill a little time and lets me help others by sharing what I've learned in my time on this planet. I'm awesome with freshwater aquariums and with computers and have a jack-of-all-trades level of knowledge in most other things.

Y!A has a feature where you can report a question or an answer if it fails to fall within the community guidelines. If it's insulting, if it's illegal, if it's spam, etc...you can report it.

Now since Y!A is huge and has hundreds of questions asked every hour...there is no way you can have people checking out each and every report out there. So they have it set that anyone who has a history of righteous reports of people who are really naughty can report and the reported question or answer will be removed then and there. Without human intervention. If you are the one that was pulled and you think it's unfair you can appeal it and someone will look it over. However if you appeal and you're still in the wrong...you get even more points deducted.

This is great for pulling the people who ask things like "Is it OK to feed kittens to my Pit Bull?" and other obnoxious questions like that. But there is a darker side. Someone with the good karma can say "I think this guy is an idiot" and report their answer and it'll vanish faster than a fart in a hurricane. This is what happened to me.

Someone asked about how long would it take to download something through the BitTorrent protocol. A game in fact. So I answered and explained how it works, what can influence download speed (giving a nice link to an animated GIF that explains it) and pointing out that getting a game like that is piracy at best and at worst can be filled with tons of malware and/or viruses and that it would be in their best interest to buy a legal copy of the game.

Someone did not like that and reported me. Answer and 10 points vanished.

So I appealed and explained all the points of my answer and why I didn't think that it was fair that it was removed. Funny thing? 5 hours later someone looked at the appeal and said "Whoops! That answer is not against the Community Guidelines" and restored it and my points.

Even funnier was the fact that the person who reported me sent me an e-mail and gloated. So I reported him for harassment. Funny thing? I checked just now and his account is listed as being suspended.

As Mark Hamil once said in his role of Cock-Knocker in "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back"...

"Don't fuck with the Jedi Master, son."

Pluto

I'm really wishing that people would grow the hell up about Pluto.

Yes it was a planet and now it's been demoted. But for pity's sake it's not like scientists have said "We don't need it anymore" and found a way to chuck it out of the solar system. It's still there people and scientists still have an interest in it.

They're even an ongoing mission called "New Horizions" which is a probe that was launched in 2006 and at this time halfway to Pluto.

When Pluto got demoted, we had no real definition as to what a planet was apart from the original definition of "Wanderer".

planet (n.) 

late Old English planete, from Old French planete (Modern French planète), from Late Latin planeta, from Greek planetes, from (asteres) planetai "wandering (stars)," from planasthai "to wander," of unknown origin, possibly from PIE *pele- (2) "flat, to spread" on notion of "spread out." So called because they have apparent motion, unlike the "fixed" stars. Originally including also the moon and sun; modern scientific sense of "world that orbits a star" is from 1630s.

Please note that last bit..."Originally including also the moon and sun". Meaning that anything in the sky orbiting around was at one point considered a planet or a wanderer.

So scientists got together and decided to define what a planet means scientifically. A planet is now considered to be an astronomical object orbiting a star or stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, is not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared its neighboring region of planetesimals.

Pluto only manages two of the three. It has not cleared its orbital path. 

But that's not the end of poor Pluto as an object of interest. Yes it was demoted, but it was the first of a new class of orbital objects floating around out there. It became the first Dwarf Planet. And more to the point, it pioneered the way for four more objects to be classified. Ceres which is the big honking asteroid in the belt between Mars and Jupiter is large enough to have rounded itself and so is a dwarf planet as well. And out near Pluto are three others. Haumea, Makemake, and Eris. 

So we lost a planet. So poor Pluto was demoted. Four more objects were promoted from interesting and named rocks to planets. Dwarf planets perhaps...but yet another class of planet. So we went from nine to thirteen critters out there.

You would think that would be a scientifically interesting thing.

And there is talk about changing the definition of planet once again. After all, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune have little in common with planets like Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. Hell we have more in common with the Dwarf Planets than we do with the gas giants. So we may end up with three classes of planet. Dwarf, Rocky, and Gaseous. None of which changes the fact that we have thirteen named, Sun-orbiting objects out there. 

So give it up people. Neil DeGrasse Tyson didn't "kill" Pluto and scientists aren't going "Well it's not a planet so fuck it." and are losing all interest in it. Pluto is here to stay and it's still an interesting and important part of our Solar family.