Anyways, the cops got pretty rough, and by all accounts were really getting into throwing people around (focusing entirely on the males), and now one of the patrons is in a coma after some nasty head trauma.

The justification for their over-the-top violence is that they claim one of the officers was felt up by a male patron. As if any rational man would risk offending an authority figure backed by friends with guns. The owner of the bar noted: "We're gay, not stupid."

Many people are getting really angry about this, assuming that the police officers were prejudiced against homosexual males and took pleasure in harassing them. And you know what, it's probably true.

But that's not why we should all be indignant – we should be angry because there are places in our country where "peace officers" believe they have the right to use violence against citizens with little or no provocation. And, for all intents and purposes, they do.

We've given all the responsibility for upholding the law to a group of armed, uniformed human beings. Human beings are not perfect.

Imagine officers bursting into the home of a homeschooling family, throwing parents to the ground, and taking children away.

Imagine police breaking up a prayer meeting and dragging people off to jail for zoning issues.

Handcuffing a group of inoffensive hippies on their way to pick up some munchies.

Detaining a group of Mexicans without reason on their way home from work.

We all have our prejudices and stereotypes of other groups of people – it's just that some of us have the power to punish other people with little or no repercussions.

How do you feel about it?

At this date, my ideas have a bit more form, though I can't promise that they won't be changing in the future. I invite those with opinions on the subject to help me form mine.

There seems to be a lot of argument going on over copyrights (giving an author exclusive rights to their work), trademarks (giving someone exclusive rights to a name or distinguishing feature), and patents (giving someone exclusive rights to an invention or process) recently.

This is important to me in part because I deal in intellectual property fairly often. I'm a programmer by day, and a musician by night (and often a programmer by night, as well).

I get paid to take ideas (often thought up by me) and implement them as software. For entertainment, I often take ideas (thought up by someone who is a better composer than me) and implement them as tasty drum beats in a song.

It is also worth noting that I am of the opinion that if a law or government function is not biblically supportable (based on Biblical case laws), it does not need to exist.

My statements here are based in the idea (which, to the best of my knowledge, is biblically based) that the best type of market is a free market, of the laissez-faire variety. The biblical basis for this statement is subject for other posts and books (and I'm open to more reading material!).

A free market means a general lack of government regulation of products and services. This would include products and services based on "intellectual property," or ideas and information.

Intellectual property laws are a government giving exclusive rights on a concept or piece of data to an individual or business. The traditional argument in favor of these laws is that without them, inventors and creators would be afraid to create anything for fear that their works might be plagiarized.

I do not think that this would be the case in a world where the government did not fight for some sort of special rights for creators or inventors. However, more relevantly, I do not know of any biblical basis for these sorts of laws.

The closest thing to biblical support for IP laws that I have seen is people making a shaky connection from the eighth commandment (do not steal) to the concept of "stealing ideas."

So if intellectual property laws are not biblically supportable, what are they doing? They are doing the same thing that every other man-conceived law is doing: enforcing someone's idea of fairness on others.

We all benefit from the creative works of others – we enjoy useful technology and entertaining media every day. We appreciate the advances that have come at the price of hard work from talented individuals. Our blood boils when we hear of some smart man getting cheated out of the fruits of his labors by others who use his ideas.

Why do we feel this way? Because we believe that somebody is getting less than they deserve, and that makes us righteously indignant. We believe that inventors deserve, at the very least, a comfortable life and the ability to keep inventing if they wish to. And we're willing to write laws that infringe on the rights of others (the right to create what you can with what you own) to try to make it happen.

God is the decider of what man deserves. At most, man should concern itself with enforcing the civil law given to us by God. When it comes to enforcing fairness, we tend to muck it up.

While I know this is a highly debated issue, I don't really know much about the subject. I couldn't recall any clearly defined objections to cloning, and couldn't think of any reason off the top of my head that I would object to it.

After a small amount of research and some discussion with coworkers, here is what I know:

There are three types of human cloning.
1. Therapeutic cloning (cloning cells from an adult)
2. Reproductive cloning (making a cloned human)
3. Replacement cloning (purely theoretical, would involve some combination of the above to regenerate limbs and body parts)

The most-discussed issue seems to be reproductive cloning.

The theory seems to be that a cell with the genetic material to be cloned is merged with an egg cell with it's cytoplasm removed.

Possible objections:
1. Cloning is unsafe at the moment. It is likely that many clones would die in the early stages of cloning before cloning became reliable.

This objection is not an argument against cloning itself being necessarily sinful, but it is an argument against experimenting with cloning.

2. Cloning crosses a line that determines how much control humans should have over their bodies.

This objection seems common, but is very vague. I have heard no good reason for drawing the line at cloning as opposed to organ transplants or artificial insemination with sperm from a donor.

3. There are few/no Biblically legitimate reasons people can give to actually have a child via cloning, thus it is not worth doing.

The third objection, like the first, does not make cloning out to be in itself inherently sinful. It does assume that there would not arise any situation where cloning would be justifiable, thus making it not worth researching.

I'm new to this issue, my opinions are young and have little substance as of yet. At the moment, I'm having trouble understanding why cloning has been singled out as being so objectionable. I would love to hear some good arguments (preferably Biblically supported) one way or the other.

The United States federal budget for 2009 is $3.1 Trillion ($3,100,000,000,000).

There are about 303,824,646 people living in the US right now.

The United States government is planning on spending around $10,200 for every person living in the country. Where do you think this money is coming from? (Hint: it's not from some place that actually exists.)

It seems like there should be some sort of insights I should share, but I'm still a bit staggered at the moment. Can anyone really think that this unchecked spending is justified?

Our government is out of control. All they can do is spend money they make up. Gold and guns, people – start investing.

There are many philosophical arguments (going on in this hotel room, even) but I am going to give my opinion as a consumer here.

To me, as a person who buys software, I see it this way: I am paying someone to get software. Sometimes I pay the person who made the software. Sometimes I pay someone who happens to be publishing the software.

Once I pay someone to get the software, I should be able to do what I want with it. I am willing to pay for support of that software and other services (online play, ahoy).

A software producer may think they are selling me a license to use their software (on N number of computers, perhaps), but whenever they try to enforce that, I generally find myself inconvenienced.

If I find that the cost that the publisher/producer expects me to pay for the software is more then I am willing to pay, I will generally disregard what they want and get the software from someone else (or use the original software in a manner that the producer/publisher considers illegal).

This may include using one license on more computers then they expected. Or downloading their software using bittorrent.

A conundrum that vexed me for some while is the question of what makes art art. I talked to one man who was of the opinion that all it takes to create a poem is to write something with personal meaning, something that need not be accessible or meaningful to anyone else.

This never sat quite right with me, but not having nailed down the definition of what actually makes something art, I didn't have any well thought out retorts at the time. I believed that art should be accessible to a larger audience then the person who created it, but where do you draw the line? Is it art when 50% of the people who see it come away with some appreciation for what you created?

Since then, I have become convinced that accessibility does not actually have anything to do with art. I think most real art is accessible to a large number of people, but its accessibility is not what makes it art.

To me, art seems to be the result of a function that takes two parameters: complexity and coherence. If you have something with high complexity that is totally incoherent, such as many pieces of modern art, I would call it a poor example of art.

On the flip side, if an art piece is coherent and straightforward but has no complexity, I would see little reason to laud it either.

It is when you create something that is both highly complex and yet still understandable that you create what I would call art. It is accessible because it is enjoyable, and it makes a lasting impression for something other than shock value.

I realized that the allegations of poor-socialization skills continue because most homeschoolers are different. On the whole, homeschoolers are generally less likely to have done at least one of the following:
1. Watched a television show regularly
2. Kept up on the latest blockbuster movies
3. Listened to all of the top-40 hits from the the last decade
and have probably spent more time in front of a book than a television set.

This does not make them less likely to be able to articulate their ideas to others, or less of a people-person. It does mean that they are less likely to be able to take part in a workplace conversation about pop culture.

I've spent plenty of time in the last few years consuming my share of pop culture, and what have I gained? The ability to state an opinion about a recent movie with a decent chance of someone else having seen it as well, or the ability to quote a popular internet meme and share a laugh with some of my nerdier friends.

If I were suddenly transplanted to another culture, all those hours watching Family Guy would have been in vain. I could either fall back on my homeschooling background and spend some time communicating with people I didn't share a background with, or wonder why everyone else was less socialized than myself.

If someone can't stand to communicate with you simply because you don't share the same knowledge of pop culture, that is a failure in their education – not yours.

I don't do this as a statement against "the man" (as much as I do loathe him), or because I am so poor that I have no other options. I choose piracy as my primary means of acquiring media because it gives me the best return for my input.

There are 2 things I consider when spending money on entertainment (mostly music, movies, video games). How much enjoyment I get out of it (or think I will get out of it) and how much investment it will take to get that enjoyment.

Using this formula combined with my own personal constants of what things I generally enjoy and what resources I have at hand, many of the regular options for media consumption don't make the cut – watching a movie in theaters costs around $8 in my city now, not to mention the investment of time spent finding parking. Plus I can only watch a movie when the theater feels like showing it, and I can't drape myself across a couch while enjoying it.

Television programming also falls short – I'm not willing to invest 1/3 of my media-viewing time watching advertisements (which aren't even being targeted to me personally!).

Purchasing DVDs is a reasonable option once in a while, but very rarely. It is not very often that I expect to get full retail price worth of enjoyment from any DVD movie.

Now when I talk about enjoying a movie, it's not always all selfish gratification (honest!). I am motivated, as a capitalist consumer, to support those who produce high-quality products with my hard-earned dollar. But in Duff-Land, the "media I support" budget is pretty low compared to the amount of media I consume.

At this point in my life, I would be willing to donate around $20 a month to those whose works I had enjoyed that month. If I was paying full retail for price for all the movies I enjoyed, I would probably be paying closer to $100 a month.

So what are my options? As far as movies go, Netflix is a great option. Excellent selection of movies, and for your convenience, many films are now becoming available to stream over the internet and watch within minutes. For less than $20 a month, you have some solid options for watching movies.

When it comes to music, I'm harder to please. I would be willing to pay about $5 for an album I enjoyed – and I don't mean a 5-track album. iTunes is a popular option, but (besides being more than I would like to pay), I would want to be able to download higher-quality tracks (most of their tracks are 128kbps), and I will not pay money for anything infected with DRM (Digital Rights Management, designed to limit your use of the file).

Thus, in most cases, I turn to piracy. I download my movies and music (and the occasional video game) because nobody is willing to take what I'm willing to pay for their goods. It's not that I don't want to pay the fine actors and writers of the television series House, it's just that I'm not going to pay $120 for the right to watch the first 3 seasons at my own convenience.

Not long ago, Nine Inch Nails released the Ghosts I-IV, four volumes comprising an album. Instead of releasing their album in a traditional way, the first volume was released for free on torrent tracking sites such as thepiratebay.org. The entire album was available to purchase from the official website in several different formats. One of the formats was digital download – for $5.

Now, a newly released 36-track album for $5 is a heckuva deal by most media standards. Plus, the tracks were available in several different high quality audio formats (including lossless) without any DRM attached.

I loved the idea, and purchased the digital version. The download servers were completely swamped, and I ended up downloading the entire album using bittorrent anyway – but that wasn't the point. I was given the option to pay the artist for his work, without having to worry about a record label skimming off the top.

The album was pretty good, and makes its way onto my playlist reasonably often. But since then, I've noticed a change in how I think of music. I still download albums without a second thought, but now when I find one I really appreciate, my first instinct is to go to the artists web site and PayPal them some money to show my support.

It's pretty annoying, really. I have daydreams about running into my favorite artists at some generic bar and buying them a round of drinks to show my appreciation. I can't afford to buy albums from all of the artists I support, so I'm stuck with my daydreams for now.

Until artists start breaking away from the record labels wholesale and releasing albums in a way that gives their fans better options, piracy will remain the best option for the regular consumer of media in most cases.

The upshot of it all seems to be that there is a war going on in America. A Decency War (C). This war is taking place between the religious right (a crusade against sex and nudity and such) and people who want boobs on TV.

One of the basic premises of the book seems to be that this war has been increasing in intensity over the past 30 years or so. The author seems to think that, while the issue has been around for a while, people haven't cared about it much before now.

Now, sex has been around for a while. And for as long as it has been around, sex has been described in whatever medium men had at hand. I also think that there have always been people who cared about whether or not their children had access to this media.

The change that's happened over the last 30 years isn't with the issue, or with people's opinions on it. I think that the difference we've seen over recent decades is one towards reliance on our government.

To quote the author of the book in question, "the breast-baring accidents of Hollywood actors such as Faye Emerson and Jayne Mansfield did not result in any mass campaigns for 'family values.'" This is true, but not because people didn't care.

If people have a problem with what is on TV, they should turn off the TV. Media is not forced upon us. If popular media has become too objectionable – (and, for the record, I think that popular media reflects popular culture – not the other way around) – then we should disconnect ourselves from the popular media.

But Americans today (even the radical right-wing religious folks) have become too dependent on their government. They don't have the balls to remove themselves from the popular media – they want big brother to do it for them.

It's funny, yet clean enough to watch with the family. It's got characters you pretty much all know, without resorting to a rehash of old fairy tales or a straight-up irreverent spoof of their Disney equivalents (Shrek).

It's a quality children's movie, that manages to avoid fart jokes for an entire 80 minutes, and still remain cool enough to watch in the pad of some frat boy on a weekend.

I realize that this review gives no synopsis of the movie whatsoever, so if you want an idea of what it's like, check out the trailer on Apple's Page. This movie receives the Duff Seal of Approval.