Recent content by Robert F. O'Connor

The RatherGood guy seems to have created those ads: http://www.rathergood.com/faq/ -Robert

They're advanced units, fully subsidised by the State of California as per the Governator's campaign promise: "Rise of the Machines". The device Janet Jackson was "wearing" was a remote control unit. When MTV promised a "shocking" moment, they weren't kidding! -Robert

(I hope these aren't too large, I think I shrunk them pretty good in Photoshop. I'm sure somebody will let me know if I need to repost these with smaller file sizes.) Speaking of the Opportunity panorama, there are a couple of odd objects that can be seen on the largest version of it. I...

In the last couple of years the only thing I've read regarding modern cosmology is Guth's book about inflation, so my insight here is pretty limited: I've always thought that the jump from the inflation theory to the inflationary multiverse theory implied that the Big Bang that we see in the...

Except to predict that if product placement begins to stray too close to arguable statements about specific products ("Crappywhip is a dessert topping and a cancer cure!") where money has changed hands you will see product placement begin to be regulated. In fact, I would bet that entire...

I am not a lawyer and I was making a broad generalization, but if a kind of speech can be regulated at will in great detail and only the occasional extreme example (e.g., no advertising of all "vice"-related products) gets slapped down the by the Supreme Court, then it is effectively not...

Rob: what Joseph said. Michael: Those cases, in fact, are the exceptions that prove the rule. They all explicitly recognize that commercial speech is excluded and extend 1st Amdmt. protections in extremely limited and narrow ways that only highlight their basic lack of protection: The...

The First Amendment does not in any way protect commercial speech and was never intended to. I believe the legal distinction between commercial and other speech predates the Bill of Rights by at least a couple of centuries. -Robert

A couple of things: I gotta go with the "Wallace" crowd. It feels strongly like a scripted "flub" and fits his character's focus on non-worldly concerns. Story-wise, the threat made no sense and was, to me, the weakest part of the movie. In a way, it's never explained: what is it going to...

What puzzles me about the MOAB is that it looks like a lot of effort to package this technology into a single unit when the technology itself ought to be simple to scale into practically as large a detonation as you want. For instance, multiple aircraft could drop multiple relatively smaller...

Mike, that's a classic case of "not my problem". If I was stealing their cable signal I might have a different opinion, but they have ways of dealing with this anyway. In most locations, they have a locked cable box in which they can install a filter. I don't know if a filter is available to...

It's missing from the main page now, but if you click "Weather" on the left-hand "NEWSOK" menu (http://www.newsok.com/?weather), you can find it under "Weather Stories" near the bottom of the page in the central content area. It is a "realplayer" video. -Robert

Sales taxes tax items you buy. No matter how wealthy you are, there is only so much "stuff" you can buy, and no matter how poor you are, there are things you have to buy, such as clothing, transporation, gas. So, on average, the higher your income, the lower the percentage of it you spend on...

Dave, no, they don't pay sales taxes on their raw materials. If you are going to ultimately resell something, you don't have to pay sales tax on it (that is, if you have a business license). They do have to pay sales tax on stuff like office supplies. In the age of EBay, I'm sure someone can...

No dog, or in fact any animal that I can think of has the sheer power necessary to pull someone, even a child, up off the ground and fly them through the air like that. If this was real, she'd simply fall and be dragged. And notice this dog's amazing acceleration. It's just not possible. On...