Rights should be =

There are over 1000 enumerated Rights, Responsibilities, and Privileges that come with marrige, and pretty much all of them have absolutely nothing to do with with either religion or reproduction.

A good list of some of them can be found on Wikipedia here

Via Chris Glass

Those Kids and Their Darn Music

Trailer for: RiP: A remix manifesto Via:BoingBoing

Copyright protection laws hurt artists. The current quality of protections in the United States, and other Western countries give unprecedented powers to corporate interests. The ability to punish people for the spread of ideas only leads to intellectual stagnation, and unfairly penalizes those with limited understanding of the infringement system. It takes importance away from the ideas, and places emphasis only on the commercial aspects thereof.

I will always try to give credit where credit is due, but nothing created is original anymore save that created in complete ignorance of that which already exists. New ideas are a collaboration of existing thoughts, and that history increases their importance, not detracts.

All Art is Evolutionary by nature.
-The Pneumatic Toaster

I Learned A Strange Thing Today

From Wikipedia:
"A 1920 law decreed that the President of Argentina is the official godfather of every seventh son."

This was of course to curb widespread abandonment of the child, as they were naturally assumed to be Werewolves.

Defending Our Right to In-Sobreity?

I found this interesting:

From Wikipedia:

Missouri has been known for its population's generally "stalwart, conservative, noncredulous" attitude toward regulatory regimes, which is one of the origins of the state's official nickname, the "Show-Me State." As a result, and combined with the fact that Missouri is one of America's leading alcohol-producing states, regulation of alcohol and tobacco in Missouri is among the most laissez-faire in America.

With a large German immigrant population and the development of a brewing industry, Missouri always has had among the most permissive alcohol laws in the United States. It never enacted statewide prohibition. Missouri voters rejected prohibition in three separate referenda in 1910, 1912, and 1918. Alcohol regulation did not begin in Missouri until 1934. Today, alcohol laws are controlled by the state government, and local jurisdictions are prohibited from going beyond those state laws. Missouri has no statewide open container law or prohibition on drinking in public, no alcohol-related blue laws, no local option, no precise locations for selling liquor by the package (thereby allowing even drug stores and gas stations to sell any kind of liquor), no differentiation of laws based on alcohol percentage, no prohibition on consumption by minors (as opposed to possession), and no prohibition on absinthe. State law protects persons from arrest or criminal penalty for public intoxication and also expressly prohibits any jurisdiction from going dry. Missouri law also expressly allows parents and guardians to serve alcohol to their children.

I didn't even know we were that lenient.

We also have no state wide ban on public smoking, and polls show that only 20% of Missourians would support one.