Maybe it's just the start of a holiday weekend, or maybe the pro-aborts tend to avoid these discussions, but I thought this would garner a bit more notice.

Of course our beloved site going *boink* just a bit ago may have been a factor too.

Terrific photos there.  I'm especially glad they have notes and context.  My grandfather took no photos in his tour (tank commander, landed at Utah on D+1), and even what family photos he took he never labeled before dementia set in.

And that's about reason # 10485786 why I carry.

Our delightful liberal Bush administration thought it wise to settle thousands of Ethiopian muslims here in my hometown.

I've been clearing our unwanted bushes from my property this spring, too bad they can't clear themselves from our politics.

I run 2 browsers:  Safari & Firefox

In Safari I have no plugins, and scripting is fully enabled.  Pop-ups are blocked, location services off, and the "no tracking" box is checked.  Ads are minimal and I rarely have pops at all, never on NRO at all.

In Firefox I have NoScript, FlashBlock, and BetterPrivacy only.

I use FF for most of my browsing and have no issues with NRO or anywhere else.

I use Safari on sites that I know and trust already.

Pops almost never happen for me anymore, and the ads are bearable.

Right now I'm not getting any ads at all.

Well, the photographers aren't allowed into the bedroom I'm sure, and who wants to see Barry asleep with a drool puddle on his pillow?

This seems to be a sporadic phenomenon.  Had it happen in Safari on my home machine, but not on my portable, and both browsers are more or less configured the same.

That being said, alerts are busted again.

Being often in tech support myself I do have a lot of sympathy for Blue Yeti and company here.  Ricoland does operate on something of a shoestring budget, and they may not have much control over the ad content.

Here's hoping they can fix the plumbing.

In the world where Kronos is only 5 minutes from Earth, the Enterprise takes 4+ years to build while a dreadnaught takes only 1 year, and where nobody seems to mind the giant starship engaged in a crash urban renewal project in SF.

You forgot the part where, as the police chief is up for re-election, he is going around citing how much crime has gone down on his watch, and how safe places like Elm street are.  This horrible "incident" was clearly a spontaneous accident of multiple people unsafely cleaning loaded firearms while watching Bill O'Reilly.  Spontaneous TV rage.

Never ever liked DS9, was a soap opera set in a war zone.  Voyager was unwatchable and preachy.  Agreed that TNG probably went on at least 1 season too long, got stale.

On the new films I still go back to this:  if you are going to do a "reboot" can you at least take it seriously?  I don't need cheap homages to the old series tossed in everywhere (the uniforms at Star Fleet Command are clearly drawn from ST_TMP), nor do I need you to recycle old enemies like this is some comic book reboot.  In 10 years there will be another new "Star Trek" with another new Khan and another crew, just like every few years there's a new Peter Parker and a new Clark Kent.

The whole galaxy is your canvas, try something new besides improved effects.

And stop slamming the military all the time.

And Kronos is really only 5 minutes away from Earth by max warp?  Really?  Seriously?

To turn this back to the original point:

1.  Post Office - I think we can all agree this needs to go private.

2.  Ambulance service - should be private, but also needs the stink of our current insurance racket removed so that a 12 block ride doesn't cost $16k.

3.  Garbage - easy call really as just about every business uses a private contractor already.

4.  Fire?  Hmm...  Tougher call.  Privatization necessary, but hard sell to public.  Much cronyism there.

And sending a fire truck, ambulance, rescue truck, and 3 cop cars for every damn fender bender?  Union rules and budget justification.  We triage in hospitals, we should triage accident scenes and squad calls too.

@EstoniaKat - I like your idea of using BC as a different popsicle, would have been much better for the film.

@Tom - can you tell I only got a "D" in Latin? 

Glad you fleshed out Crassus, I didn't have the time.  Interesting life there, very interesting death too.

Ain't sayin' because it was 20 years ago now.

I have to ask, though, if BC is so good why not make him his own villain?

Khan was originally his own man, in this he struck me as a weenie and not really clever.  Physically tough, sure, but not so smart.  I'm sorry, I don't believe a villain to be smart just because people in the move tell me he is.  

BC was a pawn, not a Khan.

I don't try inventing backstories to try to resolve plot discrepancies, I try to avoid plot discrepancies in the first place.  I also take stories as they're presented.  If a story has holes, it's not my job to fill them, it's the writer's job.  I'm not there to do the work the writer was too lazy or incompetent or careless to do.

Which brings up the point, why Khan at all?  If they named him anything else it would have improved the film, otherwise it's a silly sop to sentimentalism.

Khan was a true villain originally, in this he's just a tough tool.  They made him sympathetic.