By the way, nearly all life insurance policies do cover suicide, but only when the policy's been in effect for two years or more.

In case you were wondering.

joefriday, I'm guessing you don't get invited to a lot of parties.

This is full of holes.

First off, I find it hard to believe that half of the world's instant messaging traffic was through Microsoft Messenger in 2006.

Also, all they can prove with this is that the average number of connections between any two users of Microsoft Messenger is 6.6.

Ad-blocking isn't morally comparable to theft; it's morally comparable to not following the honor system.

Example: Many museums don't charge admission, but instead request a "suggested donation" of $5 or so. Are you "stealing" if you don't leave the requested donation? No, because it's not required. Are you being a jerk? Yes, most definitely, because you're letting everyone else shoulder the burden of supporting the place while you take the benefit for free. Ayn Rand might approve, but no one with a conscience would.

Another example: The last vestige of the honor system that's still widespread in American life, tipping. Are you required to tip your waiter? No. And the waiter isn't going to starve to death if you don't, because (presumably) he's got other customers, and you're not a huge share of his income.

But if everyone stiffed waiters, the restaurant experience would become a lot worse than it is: Restaurants would jack up their prices so they could pay the waiters a decent salary, and the waiters, knowing they were on salary and weren't going to be rewarded for working hard, would stop working hard.

To all the people who say you block ads because they're annoying: Of course they're annoying; putting up with them is how you're expected to compensate the Web site's proprietors for providing the experience you're having. If they weren't annoying--if they were fun and cool and awesome--you'd be seeking them out on your own, and advertisers wouldn't have to try to bundle them with appealing content to get you to look at them.

In short, you're expected to pay for what you get, one way or another. You either pay by giving up your money, or pay by putting up with ads.

That's going to be one seriously smelly basement.

The Sunday NY Times puzzle isn't harder than the Saturday puzzle. It's bigger, but the clues are easier. The Saturday puzzles are the killers.

Law and morality don’t always go hand in hand. What is legal is not always morally right, and what is illegal isn’t always wrong.

True. But I think we can all agree that someone trying to get paid twice for the same wrong is not OK.

Suppose you buy a table from Wal-Mart and it falls apart into such a pile of dust that it can't be returned. You go to Wal-Mart with the receipt and tell them what happened, and they give you your money back, even though they didn't make the defective table.

Then you go to the manufacturer of the table, who really was responsible for the defect, and THEY refund your money too. Shouldn't you have to return the money Wal-Mart gave you?

Don't get me wrong; Wal-Mart sucks and they have some truly evil lawyers (I'm a lawyer myself, and I've read the cases). But that doesn't make it OK to try to screw them; by doing so, one just lowers oneself to the same level. Wal-Mart is in the right here.

I wore paper-bag costumes on a couple of Halloweens as a kid. Maybe things were different in the 70s, but it never bothered me, and no one made fun of me. (Not to my face, anyway, which is all that matters.)

That's one reason I love living in Memphis. Here, I am smokin' hot.

Actually, I live in a part of town mostly populated by young, fairly affluent, athletic people, but it's definitely the exception.

There are a lot of reasons for that. For one thing, most of the city (but not my neighborhood) is so sprawled out that you can't walk anywhere. For another, there are world-class barbecue joints all over the place. There's also the weather: Our winters are usually too cold to do anything active outside, and our Missisippi Delta summers are WAY too hot and humid to do anything active outside.

And, probably most importantly, the local Southern culture is not about exercise and eating healthy.

@auto_matic_star:

It's "grammar," not "grammer." Gaudere's Law strikes!

(If you meant that using a semicolon in place of a comma is not appropriate to the guy who played Frasier Crane, then I retract this comment. Except to point out that Mr. Grammer's name is usually capitalized.)

She looks a bit like William S. Burroughs.

No Hayes vs. Tilden?

Well, clearly they wanted to be Seoul singers.

Obviously, it's the Orgasmatron from Sleeper.

Reminds me of this one: http://www.snopes.com/photos/signs/headstone.asp