Mr.P,

Do you cold call anyone? Or has everyone that you call signed up to be contacted by your company about the product that you are offering? From you posts about negative responses, I'm thinking you're a cold caller.

Now in real sales, cold calling is appropriate for on business trying to offer it's services to another business. The sales director at the construction company I work for does it about twice a week.

But, when you're computer system dials a random person at their home/work/mobile, and you try to sell them some trash that only an idiot would buy, ($8000 water softeners, credit card protection, insurance at 500% the normal rates)and you don't feel even slightly guilty for doing it, then yeah, the people on the other end have a right to hate you.

My home phone number is known to 3 people, my mother, my mother-in-law, and my employer, yet I still get telemarketing calls. They are scum, and it's why I quit working for a call center as soon as I found out they were using auto-dialers to contact our "customers". In the US, call centers, whether they be tech support, customer service, or telemarketing, are in nearly every city of 50,000 people or more. Usually in large numbers. There are 9 in the city I live in here in Florida, and our population is only 65,000. Call centers are entry level jobs, they hire people with no experience, pay them 10$ an hour, and they expect them to leave within a year. The one I worked for had a 5 week attrition average. In the US, call centers are like burger joints, they're beginner jobs, and only a rare few people last to be promoted off the call floor. I will admit however that not all people that work in call centers are unfortunate scumbags. Both my in-laws work for a bank call center and provide a needed service. But we're not talking about call centers that we call needing information. We're talking about the a-holes that call us to sell us something. It's bad enough that we're under a 24 hour nonstop assault by commercials on TV and radio, inundated by spam email, and junk mail in our post box, but no we have to be berated by people calling us at purposefully inconvenient times so they can catch us at home, trying to sell us garbage we don't need or want.

If you don't cold call anyone then take heart knowing that you're not the scum that we are referring to. If you do, well, then yeah, that makes you a dirt bag, especially since you seem so proud of your job.

You've obviously never worked at a call center.

When the person on the other end of the phone is a tool, it doesn't ruin your day, it makes that call fun. Most reps get off the phone, go on break and tell everyone in their cube about the jackass they just talked to. It becomes office hilarity. They've heard everything before and unique pranks make their day.

So yeah, if you're witty enough, torment them, they'll get a kick out of it and tell all their friends. It's a lot more fun for the rep than calling them an asshole and hanging up.

Take that Morgan Spurlock.

I'm frankly astonished that he was able to pull it off. I thought there were laws preventing the mentally ill from doing this sort of thing.

Once again proving that there is ZERO creativity in corporate America.

Why oh why couldn't it have been Bill O'Reilly?

It's probably run by atheists to fleece the fundies. Damn why didn't I think of that?

That and the fact that militias are only needed where professional armed forces don't exist, therefore the need for a well-regulated militia became obsolete with the creation of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and National Guard. In this day and age, all the self described militias are the last people I would want protecting me and my neighbors/family from anyone.

Oh you're so clever, you got me. I do have one, oh wait I don't wear it on my belt. so I guess your analogy isn't so good.

My point still stands, a sidearm for the common man is either a symbol of their deep rooted fear. Or it's an affectation, something to say "ooh look at me, I have to be the center of attention" like the guy that wears a top hat at WalMart, or the lady with the chihuahua in her purse.

"Statistics show that areas that disallow open carry have higher crime."

What statistics are those? Can you show that there is a causal relationship, and not merely that areas with low violent crime rates also have an armed populace? Someone mentioned Vermont's open carry laws having something to do with their low violent crime rates, but if you check, Vermont(49th), New Hampshire (48th) and Maine (50th), all have extremely low per capita violent crime rates. Maybe the regions that allow open carry feel that the crime rates are already low enough as to not risk releasing a crowd of vigilantes onto the street. Whereas areas with large crime rates see the idea of a John Q Public toting a gun as just too much of a risk to everyone. Seems to me that places where these laws work, are ones with low poverty and low population density, places where historically there have been low crime rates.

Personally, if I see someone walking down the street with a gun on their hip and no visible badge, I think that person is just a sad, scared individual. Guns kill, you don't point and talk, you point and shoot, regardless of what you see on TV. The only reason to carry a gun is if you think you're going to need it, (otherwise it's and affectation and that's just sad too) and that's some extreme fear that would cause a person to go shopping expecting to have to kill someone.

Sean, you ever seen a pick pocket at work? I had one take my wallet out of my pocket without me noticing and I have trouble taking it out at times (it's pretty thick).

Patricio, you know what I find funny is that these same people are the ones that would vote for the facist government that would take their guns to suppress revolution, rather than the "socialist" governments that really just want to minimize access to guns used in crimes.

Skipweasel, I'm convinced that American gun nuts are sociopaths, they're sick sick people. Note, I said gun nuts, not sportsmen, the person that has 7 rifles for hunting is not the person I'm talking about, I'm referring to the whack jobs that have 12 pistols for home defense.

CheeseDuck, I may be wrong, guns may be the reason Vermont is much less violent than other states, but then again it could just be because it's Vermont, and along with New Hampshire and Maine have 3 of the 4 lowest crime rates in the nation. Makes me think it's not the lax gun laws.

To the Europeans talking smack: How far do you commute to work?

The average for Americans is 16 miles, for Europeans it's 10Km That means we have to drive about 3 times the distance you do. Plus European cars get better mileage than US cars. It may cost you more to fill up, but we're doing it far more often than you are.

These articles about how the price of oil is going to spur changes to the cars and society are such BS. The truth is unless forced to build alternative fuel/fuel efficient cars, the auto makers aren't going to. And American's won't buy a small sedan or compact hatchback, unless those are all that are offered. Plus, how many people can honestly go out and buy a new car to combat fuel costs?

@ Mom of 3 girls:
Hate to say it, but the assumption that fifteen is too innocent to be seen as a sexual being is the reason why there are so many teen pregnancies. Miley may be 15 but she's far from being a kid anymore. Once you're worth hundreds of millions of dollars in merchandising and an international superstar, the responsibilities of your career go far beyond anything a kid can handle. Miley's probably more of an ADULT than most of the people who are freaking out over this innocent photo.

I think all this "test" proves is that the creator was racist. It seemed like every time there was more than 2 armed individuals strung together they were mostly black, yet armed whites were always following a sequence of unarmed people. I have a feeling this stringing people together lessens our reaction time in each subsequent image effectively skewing the results to make everyone look racist.

I miss Horizons, at EPCOT, it was the continuation of The Carousel of Progress. Mission Space is built on it's former site, and pales in comparison.