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me: it's unclear how *any* high-yielding energy source, including the hypothetical one you listed, can ever count as safe.

you:Well, wind and solar power would make the cut

Read that over again.

As far as why people are against fission reactors... why not ask the Bush administration

Right, because if I disagree with you on environmental policy, obviously I must find Bush convincing.

so if fission technology is "perfectly safe",

For someone critical of caricatures, you'd do well not to attribute to me the position that fission is "perfectly safe". More generally, you should recognize that nothing is perfectly safe, and by holding any technology you already decided you don't like, to that standard, you are becoming the caricature.

for any energy technology, you will find someone making an argument against it on environmental grounds. ... That doesn't mean that every argument on environmental ground is ... representative of "what environmentalists all think".

And another caricature. Obviously, nothing can be attributed to each and every self-described environmentalist, except that he/she is a self-described environmentalist. And I should have corrected the "you think ALL environmentalists..." strawman earlier. However, if we are to take a more common sense view of what you meant, such as "the overwhelming majority of environmentalists" or "the most visible, credible environmental groups", then I believe my statement holds. Can you name even one notable environmentalist who thinks any amount of carbon emissions is okay, as long as the emitter pays to have it sunk? No? Then you agree that for most of them, controlling others is more important than protecting the environment.

Well, wind and solar power would make the cut... it's hard to imagine Osama taking out a city with those. As far as why people are against fission reactors... why not ask the Bush administration why they are against Iran having them? Bush is clearly no wild-eyed environmentalist, so if fission technology is "perfectly safe", why can't Iran have some?

Environmentalists don't even care if you'll sink your emissions right out of the air, or pay the full externality; they think you shouldn't do it, except as they dictate. How can you reconcile that with a genuine concern for the environment rather than controlling people?

That's easy enough to explain -- you're fighting against a straw man. Yes -- for any energy technology, you will find someone making an argument against it on environmental grounds. But then, you can find someone to argue against anything for any asinine reason -- that's what the Internet is for, isn't it? That doesn't mean that every argument on environmental ground is (a) valid or (b) representative of "what environmentalists all think". In fact, it's not clear that there even is such a thing as "what all environmentalists think". Outside of concern for the environment, their views are going to differ widely on any number of subjects. That's true for any large group of people.

So to sum up: of course what you envision as "environmentalists" are irrational and controlling. That's because you're envisioning a caricature. Stop cherry-picking the cranks and assuming they represent the entire movement.

Right--this comic is making fun of America way moreso than Islam (Lola's list of things she's not going to be is the caricature of the silly self-absorbed American girl). It seems that simply mentioning Islam is too frightening these days. Not encouraging.

Problem is, the censorship is because of the newspapers who refused to publish the comics, not because of the religion or its followers being made fun of.

You wrote : "Yet something really dangerous is occuring. The jews are far too small a group to be noticed, the christians are too corrupt, the hindoes barely matter in the western world but the muslims, now they seem to have gained a lot of control."

Come on... Jews "far too small a group to be noticed"? In the western world Jew lobbies are far more powerful than Muslim ones. I'm not trolling, just being realistic. For example here in France a radio host was fired a few years ago for a (bad taste) joke about the concentration camps. Maybe this was justified, anyway Jewish community may be small but has no problems being noticed when it wants to.

Let's not forget that here, the so-called "censorship" is due to newspapers refusing to publish it, not because of Muslims pressuring to have the comics banned. I don't see any proof of Muslims gaining "a lot of control". If anything, it shows the current obsession of western media with them. It shows how they're, again, spreading FUD. With an F as in FEAR.

The problem with the caricatures of Mahomet was not really that any representation of the prophet is forbidden. You'll often find them in satirical newspapers in the middle East, after all. What disturbed a lot of people was the fact that they were associating Mahomet with terrorism. The WIDE majority of Muslims are peaceful and condemn terrorism, of course it disturbed them, and they told so. Then this whole thing was everywhere in the Western media. Only after that, some fundamentalist assholes in the middle East tried to use this affair to serve their own propaganda, to galvanize crowds, but that's a completely different story.

It's not forbidden to make fun of Muslims. http://www.cbc.ca/littlemosque/ Now airing in France, too. Nobody complained.

Should I post this as a coward? Oh well, who cares about karma?

But why? It did not ridicule their beliefs in any way. In fact, it started off by distinguishing "radical islamist" from even muslim fundamentalism. The only way it possibly made fun of anyone was in caricaturing the way some muslims dress. Is that not allowed? We caricature how non-muslims dress all the time. But it makes no fun of muslims beliefs.

The butt of the joke are two fictional white middle class characters - one whose chauvinistic tendencies show through when he is distinctly happy at the prospect of her submitting to his will, and one whose apparently shopping around for a religion that might fit her based on superficial factors. That she's not seriously following the teachings of the religions she tries on we find out immediately, when Steve mentions she's tried being an amish nudist, and so we even have no reason to believe her idea of "radical islamism" is even in any way an accurate portayal.

In fact, I'm pretty sure the same newspapers would run a strip like that if it used jews or amish or christians instead of muslims.

They are being over sensitive.

So basically the first strip has been banned on context? That because the ideas are presented as satire they're offensive? I mean I understand the sensitivity. That having a corner stone of your religion trotted out and warped into an amusing caricature would be infuriating... But maybe you should review your dogma for things you weren't comfortable with in the first place before buying in.

It ain't like he's drawing pictures of Mohammed with bombs in his turban.

Don't make a caricature of my faith; we've come a long way. Now we believe that the creator came down in human form to get his shit ruined by us, so that he could forgive us for the symbolic sin of eating some fruit that made us really smart. God didn't actually come down and wrestle with Israel, and he didn't actually make a donkey talk, it was just a symbol. If you can't figure out what a donkey talking symbolizes, well I feel sorry for you and your "logic" based mindset.

Like other religious minorities in Iran, Jews suffer from officially sanctioned discrimination, particularly in the areas of employment, education, and housing. According to the U.S. Department of State, Jews may not occupy senior positions in the government or the military and are prevented from serving in the judiciary and security services and from becoming public school heads.

The antiIsrael policies of the Iranian government, along with a perception among radical Muslims that all Jewish citizens support the State of Israel, create a hostile atmosphere for the Jewish community. In 2004, many Iranian newspapers noted the one-hundredth anniversary of the publishing of the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Jews often are the target of degrading caricatures in the Iranian press. Jewish leaders reportedly are reluctant to draw attention to official mistreatment of their community due to fear of government reprisal.

Another European traveller reported a degrading ritual to which Jews were subjected for public amusement:

At every public festival even at the royal salaam [salute], before the Kings face the Jews are collected, and a number of them are flung into the hauz or tank, that King and mob may be amused by seeing them crawl out half-drowned and covered with mud. The same kindly ceremony is witnessed whenever a provincial governor holds high festival: there are fireworks and Jews.

You're obviously really excited for Bioshock, and that's cool... but it probably is overrated. The odds are hugely against it being the best game ever, or any of the other things it's been lauded as. That doesn't mean it's bad, just that the hype is too large.

After deleting various attempts at response to this, I realised it's pure flame bait for SS2 fans. I almost bit (okay I admit I took a nibble).

Halo 3 is the definition of an old FPS with a new coat of paint, and a pure console FPS (read: gay)... what the hell can Halo 3 do that *fundamentally* changes anything ? (other than the fundamental change of hardware you are running it on from Xbox to Xbox 360)
Quake Wars is pretty similar graphically ... and the gameplay is great cause of vehicles and squads? Bioshock can't compete with that *because its not a squad-based vehicle game*, apples and oranges.
Stalker had *okay* atmosphere, awful AI, repetitive gameplay and bad graphics. The RPG elements were nice for a change however.

And Bioshock is actually very different from SS2. Art direction is completely caricatured (and consistently too, so not just some things look odd, *everything* is off kilter in a creepy way). The interface is simplified somewhat (detrimentally in my opinion - but I am a SS2 fan). The "magic" system (the best way to explain it) is much more useful (in SS2 it was an effort to use it, was an either-or choice in many cases - in Bioshock it is more deeply integrated).

It boils down to, Bioshock is not going to satisfy everyone. System Shock 2 was a great game, but a great many people completely failed to see it (or appreciate it). Those same people will probably miss out on full appreciation of Bioshock (and the hype is probably the only thing that will get them to *try* it before bagging it because of its lack of Multiplayer). Because we all know games without Multiplayer *must* be bad.

from: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article22 40427.ece

From The Sunday Times
August 12, 2007
Confessions of a BBC liberal
The BBC has finally come clean about its bias, says a former editor, who wrote Yes, Minister
Antony Jay

In the past four weeks there have been two remarkable changes in the public attitude to the BBC. The first and most newsworthy one was precipitated by the faked trailer of the Queen walking out of a photographic portrait session with Annie Leibovitz.

It was especially damaging because the licence fee is based on a public belief that the BBC offers a degree of integrity and impartiality which its commercial competitors cannot achieve.

But in the longer term I believe that the second change is even more significant. It started with the BBC's own report on impartiality that effectively admitted to an institutional "liberal" bias among programme makers. Previously these accusations had been dismissed as a right-wing rant, but since the report was published even the BBC's allies seem to accept it.

It has been on parade again these past few weeks on the Radio 4 programme The Crime of Our Lives. It included (of course) the ritual demoni-sation of Margaret Thatcher (uninterested in crime . . . surprisingly did not take a closer interest), a swipe at Conservative magistrates and their friends in the golf club and occasional quotes from Douglas Hurd to preserve the illusion of impartiality, but the whole tenor of the programme was liberal/ progressive/ reformist.

The series even included a strong suggestion that Thatcher's economic policies were the cause of rising crime. So presumably she shouldn't have done what she did?

There is a perfectly reasonable case for progressive liberal reform of penal policy. There is also a perfectly reasonable case for a stricter and more punitive penal policy.

This programme was quite clearly on the side of the former and the producer/writer was a member of BBC staff. Can you imagine a BBC staff member slanting a programme towards the case for a stricter penal policy?

The growing general agreement that the culture of the BBC (and not just the BBC) is the culture of the chattering classes provokes a question that has puzzled me for 40 years. The question itself is simple - much simpler than the answer: what is behind the opinions and attitudes of this social group?

They are that minority often characterised (or caricatured) by sandals and macrobiotic diets, but in a less extreme form are found in The Guardian, Channel 4, the Church of England, academia, showbusiness and BBC news and current affairs. They constitute our metropolitan liberal media consensus, although the word "liberal" would have Adam Smith rotating in his grave. Let's call it "media liberalism".

It is of particular interest to me because for nine years, between 1955 and 1964, I was part of this media liberal consensus. For six of those nine years I was working on Tonight, a nightly BBC current affairs television programme. My stint coincided almost exactly with Harold Macmil-lan's premiership and I do not think that my former colleagues would quibble if I said we were not exactly diehard supporters.

But we were not just anti-Macmil-lan; we were antiindustry, anti-capital-ism, antiadvertising, antiselling, antiprofit, antipatriotism, antimonarchy, antiempire, antipolice, antiarmed forces, antibomb, antiauthority. Almost anything that made the world a freer, safer and more prosperous place - you name it, we were anti it.

Although I was a card-carrying media liberal for the best part of nine years, there was nothing in my past to predispose me towards membership. I spent my early years in a country where every citizen had to carry identification papers. All the newspapers were censored, as were all letters abroad; general elections had been abolished: it was a one-party state. Yes, that was Britain - Britain fr

Classic, first of all you denounce the entire UK as a bunch of right wing Sun reading racists and then in the very next sentance you moan about people making sweeping statements about sections of society. A case of double standards here perhaps ?

The majority of people in the UK are not right wing Sun reading racists, although some of us are and some of the more religiously inspired members of the Muslim community are really not interested much in integration.

If you actually want to do something to help both the right wing racists and the isolationist muslims it's best to see people as they actually are rather than relying on broad caricatures.

I specifically did not see transformers because the previews made look like a joke. A caricature of an action robo-fi movie.

The clip that made the decision for me was shown on "The Tonight Show." It was about a soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan having communications difficulty, and using a cell phone belonging to a hovel-dwelling family, he attempts to contact CIC only to be thwarted by Indian telephone operators with some over-the-top complaint. The scene was edited like a Conan O'Brian sketch, but after a few minutes of chitchat I discovered that it was an actual scene from the film.

You had no cause to expect that film to be good.

Slashdot worships Stallman.

This is false, although after making an obvious allowance for exaggeration and caricature it might hold true for a minority.

Quite a few posters on these boards are wary of Stallman and some of his pronouncements.

Now, if you say that Slashdot hates Microsoft, you'd be much closer to the truth. IMO disgust and distrust of Microsoft certainly helped fuel the growth of the free software community.

As for Torvalds, I've noticed he likes to tack back and forth on controversial subjects like Microsoft and the FSF, perhaps so that nobody will be able to pin him down. This is perhaps a tendency he shares with US presidential candidates :)

Slashdot worships Stallman.

This is false, although after making an obvious allowance for exaggeration and caricature it might hold true for a minority.

Quite a few posters on these boards are wary of Stallman and some of his pronouncements.

Now, if you say that Slashdot hates Microsoft, you'd be much closer to the truth. IMO disgust and distrust of Microsoft certainly helped fuel the growth of the free software community.

As for Torvalds, I've noticed he likes to tack back and forth on controversial subjects like Microsoft and the FSF, perhaps so that nobody will be able to pin him down. This is perhaps a tendency he shares with US presidential candidates :)

Sorry, but there is no strawmen to be found. Slow down and re-read my posts and I hope you find that I provided a easy-to-understand caricature of one type of skeptic, the destructive skeptic. This is the individual who will argue for no good reason, and will simply deny any assertion made because they can. Yes, they're out there...

This is opposed to the more constructive kind of skepticism that fulfills the valuable role of ensuring that evidence for an assertion is reasonably there. When such a burden of proof is met, this skeptic allows him or herself to be convinced.

Now for your homework: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity
S.

To generalize high IQ individuals as religious, then to negate religiousness by citing indifference to the question of premarital sex... It is awfully distressing to read an article written by someone who never learned the first definition of the word piety, or feels to need to censure it in order to appeal to the masses, as if religion were subject to bourgeois conventions. Wrong is tarnishing your family's name, wrong is gestating children(at all?) into probable perpetual squaller conditions, having sex is only natural, akin opinions include homosexuality, sadomasochism, bestiality, coprophilia... Necrophilia is wrong unless consent is given before death, pedophilia is wrong for the participating party is mentally unfit to consent, 18 is law, I personally feel it's a decent convention... A smart individual is not merely a normal individual with higher mental abilities, but someone who is, for most of his life, labeled and perceived as such, retaining(doomed to) such social position regardless of effort, whose caricatural burden include being logical, knowledgeable, just, humble(not my forte), patient, able to teach, able to fix, a counterbalance to others' impetuosity. Heightened self consciousness makes one more likely to be noble, virtuous, pious, when horny to procure a prostitute, than play the field for people you have next to zero interest in, or merely a anthropological curiosity, or merely a projection product of a multitude of self diagnosed neurosis, leading to relationships based on vice, your vice.

If only laws prevented that! Surely eugenics is the answer, or perhaps some other form of law to keep the higher-quality people from those lower-quality ones.

They're going to spend the rest of their miserable, worthless lives on welfare, no doubt failing to raise their bastard kids properly.

Who are you to say that their lives will be miserable and worthless? To those living them, perhaps their lives are rich and provide emotional sustenance, or seem worthy and interesting. It is dangerous to try and judge someone from the outside, and if you hold the rest of humanity in such low regard, perhaps you should think about what is happening in your own life that you castigate others as you do.

Robertson Davies sometimes writes about such people who are left behind by time or technology or society, and writes about them with great sympathy. In The Cunning Man a doctor treats patients with more than just science, and in Conversation with Robertson Davies this exchange occurs:

Cameron: Don't those novels show a fairly strong current of sympathy for some aspects of that [cultural] tradition?

Davies: It is sympathy for the people -- not, I think the tradition -- because they are people. They're not caricatures, they're not oddities, they're not cardboard. They bleed when you stick them and they weep when they are miserable, and their sorrows and their distresses are made sometimes more poignant by the fact that they don't know why things are happening to them.

I will lament that my penis has by then received so little use.

Most women, I suspect, would choose a carefree bad boy over an angry, uptight Republican with a chip on his shoulder; Dan Savage makes a similar point in some of his columns. If you think ignorant fools can get laid so easily but someone as perspicacious as you wants to and can't, who is smart?

I think you are confusing criticism w/ insults.

Last 10 scientific conferences I attended, I do not remember anyone standing up and saying, "Hey, Dr. Dumbledokey! You are moron!" or passing caricatures in the lines.

When people start respecting the dignity of other people, it will work both ways. The dignity of a human being needs to be restored. It would be better to start w/ laws protecting ordinary folks, but it's for a penny, it's for a pound.