brainless

my favorite subjects are Religions and English.Religions is great because there's just so much to learn about them (did you know that according to the teachings of Paul, a Christian can do whatever (s)he wants to because God will forgive in any case? The essence of his teachings is "Jesus freed you from sin to be free and does not want any Christian to let his life be ruled by laws but his or her own, free will" (-> Letter to the Galatians) and English because english is such a great language when compared to german, even though it's very, very artificial - for example when it comes to the spelling of a word. "Fish" could be spelled "ghoti" as well: gh as in enou_gh_, o as in w_o_men, ti as in na_ti_on

I'm reading about one book per week but made a break for my graduation tests in the first two weeks of May :/ (but after this, I've got much more time to read )my current favorite book is "No Logo!" by Naomi Klein, an independent journalist who spent quite some time researching on how multinational companies act in order to maximize profits (sweatshops, McTemp-jobs, etc etc) and countermovements like the culture jammers (people who use some big company's advertising and twist it to reveal the truth behind it - either by using the same picture but a different slogan or by using the same slogan with a different picture or just some minor changes to a slogan/picure, for example Nike's "Just do it." and "Justice - Do it, Nike!").In my opinion these 450 pages were definitely worth the 10 bucks I spent on it (it happened to me that I spent 13 bucks on 150 pages which were crap :/)...

sorry, I couldn't find an edit button :/

Instead of really doing anything my parents just watch American Idol (a really crappy show in the US)

I've heard about that, my sis brought me this very nice T-Shirt from her exchange to the US : http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ (that's what I look like right now ) - T-Shirts with a critical statement printed onto them belong to the small things which should not be forgotten when you're trying to do something. Just take care that you've also got some shirts without statement for occasions when you'd better not wear one of those and, even more important: Be prepared to talk about that issue. There's not much that could be worse than a conversation like this: "hey, why are you against sweatshops?" - "sorry, I don't know why, I'm just wearing this shirt. Move along, nothing to see here..."

They won't even let my 20 year old brother who goes to college protest in New York City because they're afraid.

And they're not completely wrong - small protests might be ok but once there's a protest with thousands of people (or just hundreds of militant activists), things easily get out of control. I'm not talking about anti-G8 or anti-WTO protests like in Seattle, 1999 (the police locked down most of the town and there are rumors/"eye-witness reports" about tear gas tanks dropped out of helicopters and reports from people living in this area about tear gas leaking through doors and not properly insulated windows until they had to leave their rooms and try their luck on the streets), or Genua, 2001, when an italian cop killed a protester with a headshot (the official story is that he was about to throw a fire extinguisher at a police car but there's no fire extinguisher on photographs from right after the shot...).

The largest demonstration I've been to so far was an anti-fascist one in the beginning of this year with about 8,500 people but I still had the opportunity to make some nice shots like this one (my favorite - the cops have learned from us ): http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ (half an hour later it was burning and a water launcher (-> http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/) was firing at some people near me so I decided that it might be better to leave without taking a pic...

... and even though this might sound as if it's always bad to have the cops near you on a demonstration: On the very same day, a friend of mine got hit by a stray stone while we were talking to some cops. Her luck that the cops reacted quickly and dragged us behind one of their tanks and began to clear the road while one of their paramedics had a look at her

I'm against sweatshops, corporative greed, discrimination, and animal cruelty.

aginst, against, against ... I wonder why people are always against something but never tell the world what they are acting for. Did you know that most CEOs say that they're against sweat shops, corporate greed, discrimination and animal cruelty as well?
Once there are protests against their companies having contracts with sweatshop owners, they usually close down that factory just to re-open it in another Free Trade/Export Production Zone. There are more than enough countries with free trade zones to keep on switching contractors to publicly announce that they've moved their production from, for example, India to Pakistan, China, Thailand, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Vietnam, South Korea, Indonesia, the Phillipines, Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, etc etc - and when they come back to the country they started in, no one remembers that they've moved from there a few years ago and most people keep on buying their stuff because "they just closed a factory where they exploited young women" and most of the times don't even know that the factory did not even belong to that company...

Martin Luther King's autobiography gave me lots of ideas when I get older.

yeah, it's always good to have some knowledge about previous actions - but it's better to use your own creativity when you're planning an action. Try to find out how you can involve the people in your city into the action, maybe by explaining how whatever you're protesting against/for affects their lifes and it's always a good idea to involve a local restaurant or shop into an action against McD's or Thalia (a huge chain of bookstores in Germany and probably other countries as well - their new store in my hometown forced two independet bookstores, one of them my favorite bookstore, to close :/)

[...] your parents don't want you attending protests (rightfully so, they shouldn't allow you to go to those at your age) [...]

(I don't want to offend by the use of "you" in the following part - I'm using "you" with a general meaning instead of "you, Wyllt")

If you're judging who may participate in a protest at all, I believe you should rather judge by that person's knowledge about the issue rather than the age.
An example from a current issue in my state: The state's government is planning to re-structure the educational system because the PISA studies showed, that our pupils and students are quite --excuse my language-- dumb for the so-called western world.
Among the changes planned to enable us to score well in the next PISA study are:
* graduating from high school after 12 instead of 13 years
* have centralised graduation tests in the entire state (in the long term in entire Germany) instead of individual graduation tests handed in by the school and approved by the school's authorities; therefore:
* teaching all students in the entire state the same thing so they can all handle the graduation test, which has to be as unspecific as possible so even those students who did not spent all their years in high school learning from the curriculum can score well
* 2 instead of 3 lessons per week in most subjects
* replace subjects like Arts, Music, Religions and other subjects which can't be used in most jobs by Economics or a third lesson in another subject (see point above)

so whom would you allow to protest against these changes and for the current system of comparatively free education and who would be prohibited to protest against this?
The students from Lower Saxony's schools and their parents, teachers who don't think these changes are what we need or someone who would have to take a break from his job to participate in this protest and probably did not even take some time to think about the consequences of these changes?

(and no, I don't want to discuss these changes here. If one of you people thinks this should be discussed: PM me and I will open a thread on this topic)

No one should be an activist just for the sake of "coolness", [...]

After I attacked your position, I'd like to give you an example of where we share one position (though I don't mind people who didn't spend much time thinking about an issue participating in an demonstration just to increase the number of people who've been there )

I've finished two books today,the WTO's World Development Report 2004 (german edition) and Naomi Klein - No Logo! (post-9/11-edition with her explaining how she understands the theories she's mentioned/developed in this book before 9/11 and how she sees the world now, but this book is worth an own thread, I'll open one tomorrow when I'm back from school )

hmm, so this means I'm like 93% chinese even though I'm as pure german as our worst leader could have wished me to be?

I always love talking about me in the third person (though that's usually more effective in hiding your involvement into a story when people don't know you're talking about yourself )------brainless is one of those guys who learned DOS commands while the other boys were playing soccer outside on the lawn. During the next years, he always kept an eye on the way the other children developed and decided over and over again, that their behavior was not worth his attention. By chance he joined the DLRG (a german life-saving organization) in 1995 but this did not change anything in his attitude towards other people of his age. In the following years he developed a great understanding of the way technical things work and can be described but did not learn anything about relationships between people.This abruptly changed when he had an encounter with his sandbox love only three years ago, when they both learned they are on the same school. Even though her various boyfriends in this time never liked "that strange guy", she did not let him down but asked him out on weekends, accompanied by several female friends of hers.Thanks to those friends, brainless learned to combine his former life with the new way of life and is now able to explain the basics of relationships between people to his techie-friends using a rather technical language and the technical problems to those who did not grow up with computers but joined the trend when their parents bought a cheap PC from WalMart.This skill and some strange character traits led the people he met in this so-called "real life" to think that brainless has a split personality - on the one side he always recommends a non-digital backup system of records while he's trying to promote a high-tech-solution to store even the smallest amount of data someone might need in the future; he is propagating the use of the internet to exchange information or discuss important things while he believes that an action is more powerful when done on the streets of his hometown instead of some data cable between his ISP and the rest of the world; he openly admits that gender equality is an important goal, even when it means to reduce the male's power but does not keep his voice low when he thinks that men are being discriminated against; he spreads bad news about Microsoft but does not use Linux or any other operating system but WinXP Pro [hey, that's just because my computer is unable to run any linux distro out of the box]; he's leaving his PC running for hours but rides his bike to school because that does not damage the environment as much as using the car; he tells other people about the rules of society but lives himself according to the rule that the only reason for rules is to make people think before breaking them - and according to his better half and his bad company (a.k.a. his best friends) there are many more points which led them to the conclusion that brainless has a split personality.But there's still another important thing to tell you about him: brainless is not afraid of getting into trouble with authorities as long as he thinks he's right - and is not to proud to admit failures of his own once he recognizes them...

ok, let me see what I've got here...1) Anti-Flag - Mumia's Song2) Dritte Wahl - Greif' ein3) Green Day - Basket Case4) Ska-P - Cannabis5) The White Stripes - Offend in every way6) Zaunpfahl - Terrorist7) Good Charlotte - Once upon a time (the battle for life and death)8) Jimmy Eat World - Bleed American9) Anti-Flag - Captain Anarchy10) Ska-P - Am?rica Latina ??LIBRE!!

I'm giving it a try, too, since I didn't verify my PayPal-Account via a money transfer from my real bank account (they don't even have my real one) nor via any other way.I suppose I'm good enough at making up unique search strings but we'll see how it works out...

Other: Everywhere (Michelle Branch cover)...well ... I liked the lyrics of the original song but Yellow Card added the rock tunes I'd have liked to hear

don't worry, dontmaim, you're not alone - I don't know how mom managed to solve all the problems three children create but she somehow did it and that's what I thank her for - and even though she predicted that I'd be the first of us to get into trouble with the cops, it was my sister whom she had to fetch from the police station; I haven't been there without being able to leave whenever I wanted to yet

The whole male thing about getting laid and all that a lot is truly overrated.

True.

well, my mind might have developed a little bit different from the way other guys' minds work because my sandbox love decided that she's still got to take care of me when we broke up like 13 years ago - and somehow she managed to isolate me from the other boys and so here I am with so many female friends that I can't tell the number of them without having to think and a hand full of male friends who spend most of their time in front of the computer. Sounds worse than it is, I believe that spending a great day/evening out with some friends is way better than spending an evening out with a girl in order to get laid (well, one of the girls some of my many female friends thought might fit to me actually tried to lay me right after the first evening - when I told her that I don't do "it" the first night, she turned, ran away and told all her friends that she doesn't want to see me again. I'm still not sure whther I should declare this as a funny or a sad story...)

To get back to topic: As you might have read, I get along with girls quite well...

I'm happy with my single ISDN-line with 64kb/s in both directions ... anyway, there's not enough space on my hard drives for a faster connection

hey, 14's old enough to be on the streets - just keep away from the cops, hey're all evil :oanyway, here in Germany we've got a rather strong anti-fascist scene (well, that's because everyone except for a few thousand nazis call themselves anti-fascist), and therefore the anti-fascist demonstrations are always fun when there's a fascist demonstration at the same time in the same town.It's a pity I've been on the streets of my home town today instead of the streets of Erfurt because we just blocked the road for the nazis but in Erfurt the police decided to clear the way for them and used their water launchers against the people without any warning. It's erally a pity that they "accidentally" knocked down some convervative members of the city council who kept on telling the public/the punks who complained to them about police brutality that "there are laws which the police naturally obeys, therefore your complaints are probably not justified - and now take a shower"...Another nice thing to do: Have a sit-in in the entrance to one of your local McDumb-restaurants with your own food. Just be careful when the guys from McD's call the cops, sometimes it's great publicity, sometimes it's better to make a run for it (i.e. when the cops jump out of six-packs with shields and billy clubs at hand...)PS: I just noticed you're from the USA - Add another package of attention to whatever you do, I've heard your cops are even less friendly than ours (and if my memory doesn't trick me, it might be considered a terrorist act when you disturb the people's everyday life)

 

 

... I'm great, people just don't realize it in time

 

psyfish: you can copy your result's images into the forums by using the img-tags

originally I intended to say freewebhosts.com but then I discovered that this answer has already been used (thanks, johnny ) so I'll just make up another interesting story, based on real events:It all began a few years ago, when I got my first contact to the internet - I began to build my homepage out of the box at an infamous german webspace provider (which hasn't stopped growing yet, but since they've got a limit of 20 pages maximum and nothing like PHP or SQL but only an basic editor to fill the prefab pages with content) but I had to leave it when I found out about the cool stuff that can be done with PHP and SQL.I moved on to my first experience with a post-for-space-provider where I worked myself up to a well-known member of the community but when the server crashed, it took some time until the admin told us that there won't be any hope of recovering the old data and he probably won't start a free hosting service again.After this experience, I haven't been working on any websites again but here I am again...

AMD Athlon XP 1800+

Asus KR7A-RAID (ATX-Board in AT-BigTower)

512MB DDR-RAMPower Supply: 200W

HDD 10/15/40/60 GB

DVD-RW - 8/8/4x DVD, 52/40/32x CD

geForce 4200Ti 64MB -> 17" screen

ATI 3D Rage Pro PCI 4MB -> 15" screen

2x 10/100MBps network

Creative Labs SoundBlaster PCI -> connected to my HiFi-system

Labtec Wireless Desktop set (keyboard/mouse)

 

WinXP SP1 [i haven't found a Linux distro that works with my graphic cards-combination out of the box yet]

well ... I don't think it's right that human teeth are not meant to chew meat (if we were supposed to eat vegetables only, we wouldn't need the sharp teeth in the front), actually I've learned in school that meat contains some essential fat acids [i don't know if that's the right word ... well, at least it's somewhere near it], which no known vegetables contain. A lack of these will not be unhealthy immediately but after a period of about 10 years of total vegetarianism, there will be detectable changes in the way the stomach works.

 

On the other hand, too much meat is unhealthy as well - most health agencies recommend a piece of meat about the size of a set of cards maximum every day or larger pieces every once in a while. Just to have something to compare this to: The pieces of meat in a McDumb-Burger are slightly larger than this.

 

I for my part am not a vegetarian but I'm avoiding meat whenever it's possible to do so without causing too many problems; on the other hand it happens sometimes that some of my friends are being told that there will be no vegetarian food at a meeting "because there are so few vegetarians and it would be too expensive to provide vegetarian food", I support them by deciding that I'll be totally vegetarian for this weekend as well. Sometimes this helps, sometimes we're still being told that we can't be provided with vegetarian food, and that's the point when we start to make it a problem for the cooks/etc - by bringing our own food even though we've been told that we're expected not to bring own food into the dining room, by complaining to their boss and by asking other people to ask for vegetarian food as we did.

A few years ago, it was necessary to do so way more often than it is nowadays, since vegetarians have become a quite large group among the german people...