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I think it is good to see somebody actually stand up their opinions against the barrage of neo-fascist nonsense from the war-randy crowd. Being a pacifist does not have to be the same as never lifting your hands to defend yourself or your family - that's just a caricature the militants want you to believe. But there is a huge difference between defending yourself if you have no other options left, and the kind of hormone-pumped agressiveness that makes certain people use any excuse to jump up, grab their automatic gun with one hand and their dick with the other and start shooting while wanking wildly.

There are many very valid reasons why one would not want to support the military - not the least of which is the fact that the military is a institution of power that is not under democratic control and which is rarely if at all held accountable for its actions.

What? Voyager rocked! How could you not want to watch a grandmotherly teddy bear captain cruise around unknown space with bad end-20th century politically correct social caricatures engaging in adventures whose morals always seemed to be modern liberal/socialist in nature?

There is no other way I'd rather crap away an hour of my life each week!

Well, /. wont let me log in so Ill have to add to my last comment this way:

In my experiences with the game, the aspect that stood out were the unending crashes. On my first day of testing I burned up an Xbox 360 in less than ten minutes. We then switched over to a Dell PC to complete the first day's testing (Yes, MS uses Dell. Dont ask me to explain because frankly I'm at a loss). The PC locked three times requiring a hard reboot and crashed to blue screen twice. When I managed to get to a point past the initial story sequence at the beginning I noticed some serious "issues" once the wow factor wore off (keep in mind I wrapped up testing last month). Yet more lockups requiring some work on the console (GoW uses Unreal Tournament cheatcodes just so you know!), texture flickering, disappearing scenery, clipping and CPU overheat. I managed to get past an area in which several enemies were firing down at me from a balcony by shooting through a disappearing conrete balcony floor with a pistol. While I am sure (err, hope) these errors will be fixed by November, the game itself was in its final stages of development and from what I saw there was little gameplay tweaking left to do. The cover system is clunky and buggy. You have to hold down the White Button to enter the cover selection menu where you are left standing and unable to control movement or weapons to choose what type of stance you want to take and how you want to get there. For example you can roll into cover, jump into cover, dodge to cover or even sprint between objects to get to the covering object you want. Pretty cool, but a title cannot ride that gimmick alone. At the beginning of the first level you are given very vague orders which amounts to "This place is tearing itself apart! Run!" You have to assume the place you are running to is through the open doors arranged in front of you and in fact that is how the rest of the level plays out: running through the open doors and killing everything in your way until you get to the evac point. After which you are dropped into another "hallway" and the formula repeats. The scenery is interesting and somewhat destructable. You can blow the corners off certain concrete blocks or shoot some material off marble pillars but you can never completely destroy anything since the environment around you has a Roman Gothic feel. If you were able to shoot out those pillars the roof would cave in and the game is not designed to take that into account. Your weapons are the FPS standard: Knife, Pistol, Rifle, Shotgun, Machine Gun, Weird Energy Weapon, Rocket Launcher, BFG. There are squad members who follow you around but they serve no purpose. At one point I had 5 soldiers in my squad (halfway thru the first level you come up to a crashed dropship and link with the survivors) and all of them took cover and stayed there without making an attempt to fire at the enemy. The player is not informed of locations where your squad will for some reason not follow. The game requires the player to take certain locations solo commando style and your squad will stand behind a wall and refuse to respond to your orders. Just as well since they are actually more of a problem by taking up good cover that you could use. The environments are littered with weapons that you cannot pick up. Turrets and gun emplacements are usable only for a short period of time and then cannot be used. Not because of lack of ammo, but simply because the game decides that you should move into the next area. You remember those old side scrolling shooters that forced you to move ahead or risk being PUSHED forward by the side of the screen? GoW is very similar. While the scenery is nice to look at, it is all vanilla. Concrete and asphalt with some marble pillars. Also, the character models are straight out of Unreal 2: The Awakening. Anyone who has played it will immediately see that the lead character modeler was hired for GoW. Non-organic objects are realistically rendered but human faces are caricatures of the Juggernauts seen in Unreal Tournament

Though being an Arab Muslim, I must - in fairness - say that your caricatures had a point. Hizbollah are barbarians, there's no denying that. Yet, they seem to be the only ones who give a damn about the fate of the Palestinian people. The way Israel acted, is almost certaintly just going to enforce Hizbollah's grip on Lebanon and bolster any Islamic fundamentalism out there. Now, if Syria or/and Iran decide getting into the conflict (which is in my opinion exactly what the US is waiting for), then the whole thing is assured to blow out in a conflict of epic proportions. Israeli's and the US' elite will greatly benefit from such a situation
I leave you with a small clip from Dr. Chomsky that may enlighten you about how the whole conflict started http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKq38COoTG8&mode=re lated&search=

It is so easy to protest something that is right in your face on TV, isn't it? How about years and years of killing that have been going on in Israel by Hizballah and Hamas terrorist organizations? How about all those rockets that were launched at Israel from Lebanon within the past two decades? Maybe a UN server should be hacked, after all after 2000 UN and Lebanon was responsible for keeping Hizballah from amassing rockets and other weapons. Do these activists care when during the 'peace times' Israeli kids and adults get blown up?

If anything, these protestors should thank Israel for taking action now and preventing more carnage later. One cannot constantly procrastinate in this kind of a situation, because it is only getting worse.

Oh yes, and how about protesting where it actually makes sense: at Hizballah, at Lebanese, Iranian and Syrian governments. Protesting against regimes that allow terrorists to do what they do: use civilians AND UN folks as living shields on the battlefield. Not only are civilians used as shields, they are a great propaganda tool. When a terrorist launches a rocket at civilian targets in Israel from a busy market place in Lebanon, and Israeli army answers with fire at that place, is it the responsibility of Israel to make sure that Lebanese civilians do not suffer or is it responsibility of those, who used the civilians for their political gain around the world?

Here are a couple of caricatures that do tell something about the reality of this war.

SG-1 is on Season 10 right now (this weekend was the second ep of the season). I agree completely that the sunset of RDA's tenure was painful - he simply didn't take his character seriously enough most of the time, which is unfortunate because even during the start of his decline (season six), he had some stellar performances in episodes like Abyss (where he was captured by Baal) and The Changeling (although Chris Judge was really the star of that episode). RDA achieved balance during the earlier seasons, combining a great sense of humor with a knack for powerful performance, and it was a shame to see him tarnish that legacy with so many mediocre appearances just before he left.

Michael Shanks is their anchor now, and he still has the balance between humor and drama that he honed working with RDA in the earlier seasons. Of course, now he's stuck playing that balance off of Claudia Black, who, while she can give a great performance, often doesn't get the chance because her character is two steps away from comic relief. Amanda Tapping and Chris Judge are also very talented, but for some reason they don't get nearly enough chances these days to go beyond their caricatured roles of nerdy physicist and stoic warrior.

Atlantis, on the other hand, lacks plot direction. It amounts to "flail blindly against the ravages of the Wraith", without any sort of clue as to what the team's plan is or where they're going. I think this is partly due to the Wraith being a faceless horde of nobodies, while the enemies with real personality never seem to pose more than a transient threat. The acting is good (David Hewlett shows the most potential, in my opinion, but any growth his character shows always seems to disappear by the next episode), the directing is good, and the design and effects are top-notch. The writers just need to figure out where this boat is going and clue us in the tiniest bit.

"Ship of Fools", Sebastian Brandt, Das Narrenschyff, Basel: de Olpe,1494 featuring caricatures of Albrecht Dürer. one of the most popular early books printed after Gutemberg invented printed.

It's funny - I thought that the McCarthy era was just a rediculous caricature of uneducated fear that didn't have the privledge of historical perspective to see the overarching problems that happen when you supplant fear with objectivity. We've come so far...

I would love to see a Vegas air marshall on a plane with the bolero men from the Thomas Crown Affair...

Could you please cite some of this "overwhelming evidence" instead of just pretending it is so obvious that you don't need too?

Oh, why not.

29+ Evidences for Macroevolution.

Most people base their belief in the cult of evolutionism from what they read in high school and from other various "proofs" like this story, which is pretty far-fetched.

Of course. Most people on both sides base their beliefs on what they are taught as children. So? That many people misunderstand the evidence does not mean there is no good evidence to be found.

As for this far-fetched proof: this story was not offered as a proof, and is far-fetched, and is not accepted by most evolutionists. Attacking it (or even refuting it) in no way affects the long-standing evidence for evolution. This was merely one possible suggestion of selection pressures on humanity's ancestors, and not a particularly good one.

For example, millions of tiny chance mutations occurred that suddenly transformed into improved vision and larger brains because snakes were attacking primates.

Your understanding of natural selection is not even remotely accurate. If you're going to criticize something so aggressively, you should make sure your critiques reflect the real state of the field. These do not. The myth that there is no way to build effective vision incrementally has been debunked: we basically know how it was done, and each step was comparatively small. And the snake issue is just one person, and it's insulting to attack an entire field based on one person's suggestion, regardless of it's quality. I could suggest that fear of clowns contributed to human evolution, but that wouldn't invalidate evolution, it just means I'm a wacko.

Do you want me to just assume that this miracle happened, with no proof besides some "scientist" said that it did?

I don't know what the scare quotes are for, but do you want me to accept creationism with no proof besides some "book" said that it did? In the case of evolution, no, you're perfectly welcome to view the evidence, read the papers and so on to see why the scientists said that. Your failure to investigate further does not mean that scientists have no reasons for their opinions.

That sounds more like blind faith than any religion I have ever heard of.

I agree. Fortunately, your caricature in no way resembles the actual state of evolutionary science, so that's not really relevant to this debate.

No current games are disturbing in the "keep you up at night thinking, appear in pathologically terrifying nightmares, make you think twice about telling people about it" sense. They're scary and shock in the same way a slasher movie will, but ultimately they're shallow in the same way, lacking in depth and development. Nothing 'horrific' in that sense happens in films like Donnie Darko, Jacob's Ladder, Requiem for a Dream or Silkwood, but they're far more emotionally disturbing than, say, Doom or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They express a deep, complex and gut-wrenching fear of the real and utterly tragic rather than simplistic caricatures of brutal violence. No game has ever made me rethink my attitudes to nuclear energy, phone up an old friend just to see if they're still alive or toss and turn for days.

Actually, I think they got it right. The point is the ability of the human brain to recognize patterns at a glance. For example, I can look at a thousand different ways to represent the face of a celebrity, and hit a 'yes' or 'no' button almost instantaneously to identify matches. These images would include crisp color photographs, blurry black and whites, caricatures, sketches, silhouettes, etc...maybe even ASCII. Currently the human brain can do this much faster and more reliably than a computer. The article writers chose to call this "processing power" while the submitter chose to call it "visual recognition." Both are fair descriptions.

Your failure to understand my comment offends me ;)

If one sells Corn Flakes, for instance, one does not cover the box with caricatures of the Prophet Muhammed. Not because it's illegal, or because it's wrong, but because it's pointless. You know that you'll offend people, so even if you don't consider it a legit offense, you can't really expect it to improve sales.

In this particular issue, those defending Sony almost seem to be saying that Sony had an obligation to not consider the fact that people would be offended. I believe that's just as ridiculous as the notion that people have a right to not be offended, though both are straw men.

I'm the first to defend someone who is using art to make a point and happens to offend some people; that's part of the debate in our society. But Sony's ad isn't a part of that; they are just trying to sell a handheld game console.

I'm sorry but this is not accurate. Myspace did a complete end run around the "old media" record companies. There are thousands of artists on there that would never have a shot at traditional distribution that are now leveraging the fact that they can be discovered, heard and shared with others. Perhaps you're refering to News Corp.'s recent acquisition, or the new Wired cover. It's not quite clear.

For example, their obsession with "child predators" as of late probably has little to do with protecting children and everything to do with making sure that their system is fenced off from "that big nasty mean world out there".

I'm not sure if I understand you here. Are you implying that people on myspace don't share links to the rest of the internet?

They are the "bread and circuses" of the information age. Feed em crap, keep em happy, and most of all keep their eyes and ears distracted from political and financial issues of the real world.

I believe this a valid criticism of The Spectacle at large and it's unfair to level this complaint solely at Myspace. I mean really, what distinguishes Myspace from NBC? Or nearly any other facet of popular American culture for that matter. I'm surprised how blindly biased the supposedly scientific Slashdot community is towards Myspace. This is generally without even trying the site out and is often based on a simplified caricature of the typical user profile. It's a meme run amok. Not everyone on the site is in high school.

Just to clarify:

While Mormonism has distinct differences from other Christian groups, I think we fit quite nicely the Wikipedia description of Christianity. Be aware that Christianity is defined much more broadly than the modern ecumenical evangelical movement that seems now to blur what were once fierce differences between Baptist, Lutheran, and other western denominations. Think not only Catholic, but Coptic Christian, Eastern Orthodox, and other non-protestant traditions. Differences have always existed among the denominations (that's why people kept starting new churches!). But there is always the shared commitment to following and studying the life of Christ, who we believe to be the Son of God. Hopefully the following breakdown is instructive (I apologize for the length):

1. Monotheism - CHECK
"But Mormons believe in more than one God!" This protest is based on our doctrine of eternal progression whereby those who are faithful disciples of Christ and endure to the end become "joint heirs with Christ" and progress in knowledge, intelligence, and righteousness throughout eternity. And yes, we believe the universe contains other intelligent beings with various degrees of power and authority, but all operate as authorized agents of God, who is our Father, the supreme ruler and governor of the universe and its operations, and the ONLY being we worship (along with the Son [Jehovah], who is our Advocate with the Father [Elohim]). Call these other beings I mentioned angels rather than gods (note: little "g") if that is more comfortable. I'm not sure of the difference myself. Personally, I feel that these doctrines of the ins and outs of celestial organization and divine operation get so much attention from those outside our faith since they are relatively unique to our church but also because they are very easy to caricature in bizarre ways. When I look up at the stars and contemplate galaxies and worlds without end, I think, "Man, it must be busy up there", but as far as my everyday faith goes, it doesn't weigh in very much. As a Church, we also don't claim to know the whole heavenly story either. We believe God has just pulled back the curtain a bit in the last days.

2. Christians identify Jesus as the Messiah - CHECK, DOUBLE CHECK
We believe He is the Messiah and the Savior and Redeemer of mankind. I don't believe that there is a need for lengthy explanation here, even though this is the most central aspect to our doctrine.

3. Jesus as God and Man - CHECK

4. Holy Trinity: **Most** Christians believe that God is one single eternal being who exists as three distinct, eternal, and indivisible persons. [emphasis added] - no check.
We believe in the Trinity as 3 separate beings: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. We do not believe that they exist together as a single entity, although they are one in purpose and action. This has been a debate that has existed for centuries among theologians (good summaries in the Wikipedia articles on Trinity and Nontrinitarianism), so if we're excluded based on this alone while the Catholics pray to saints and Mary while still being called Christians, then oh well. What can you do...

5. Salvation: Most Christians believe that salvation from "sin and death" is available through belief in the person and work of Jesus as savior (John 3:16; Romans 10:9) - CHECK.
Again, the whole faith and works debate is not a new one within Christianity (Read about religious revival movements in the 1800s. This is what a lot of them were about!) and in my humble opinion frankly based too much on semantics and intellectualizations that ignore the essence of Christ's message: "Come follow me" and "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me." We begin by believing in Jesus, trying to follow Him like the apostles of old, and try to live His teachings the best we can. Only as we strive to become his disciples do we become His sheep for whom in His Father's house He has prepared many mansions.

6. Crucifixion and

I only speak English, but enjoy my anime (or any foreign film, for that matter) to be subtitled rather than dubbed. This is not because I'm a snob, but because the voice actors are usually rather terrible. I'd like to hear the original actor doing their role, because there is still an inherent amount of inflection in the voice that really gives the actor's performance its power. Take that away, and you're not getting the show that the actors, director, and crew originally wanted you to see. It'd be like turning the color red off on the TV, and then expecting to make proper sense of the picture.

Take, for example, the film Amelie, a gorgeous French film. I could never, ever watch that dubbed, because the actors in that film are such extreme caricatures of reality coloured by French culture that no dubbed English voice could ever do them justice.

I don't see this as snobbishness (although there are plenty of people out there who will play it off as such for their own ego stroking), but just the best way to enjoy an artist's creation. If someone else likes dubs, that's great, but they're not for me.

To be honest I think this guy might be too blame with his "getting adventures into the mainstream" crap.
...
This guy says it himself, there is a market for old scumm games but then totally fails to realize what this means by saying he wants to add RPG elements. Hello! There is a market for old scumm games.

THANK YOU for saying the obvious!! This really pissed me off when I read it. I got about 8 hours into Dreamfall, the sequel to The Longest Journey, and I can't stomach another second. They made it a 3D dual analog game with Shaq-Fu fighting sequences. The story is still solid and so far there have been some satisfying and intriguing continuations of old characters' stories, but the control scheme is a nightmare. Why would the fans of the point-and-click game be interested in this? Why would people who hadn't played the original want to play a sequel that continues the story?

The only really innovative adventure game I've seen in a long time is Fahrenheit (aka Indigo Prophecy but with n00dity). This game took an admittedly stale genre and breathed tons of new life into it. It had a fantastic no-button control scheme where you gestured with the analog sticks to perform actions, it featured cinematic camera angles that implied your next course of action, and the dialogue and subject matter were mature and not watered down.

Adventure gamers have grown up with fond memories. Dreamfall and Gilbert's travesty-to-be do not pander to the people who want these games the most, and they're apeish half-baked caricatures of genre busters like God of War and Metal Gear. When we want beat-em-ups and Diablo clones we'll buy them. Gilbert got it right when he said the story is its own reward in adventures of old, so don't make us wade through hundreds of robotic Foot Clan to hear then next 7 lines of dialogue.

Ooh look, I unlocked a 3-headed monkey costume for Guybrush! Now let's play chapter 2 scene 4 over and over and over until I collect enough grogs to view some concept art! Wow, a wireframe screen cap of the men of low moral fibre! Thank you for reminding me that I'm playing a game at my desk!

Even the latest Leisure Suit Larry game was better than Dreamfall, somehow. That game was basically a 1st year computer science assignment Warioware Inc. with lewd scenes, but the dialogue was clever and funny! I don't know what it says about me that I was willing to sit through 10 hours of garbage mini games to see boobies (wait, I DO know what that says about me) but the fact that I can't stand Dreamfall speaks volumes about how far Ragnar Tornquist missed the mark. If TLJ wasn't such an amazing standalone game I'd be mournful, but THANKFULLY my memory isn't tarnished by the awful sequel.

HOWEVER: even if the A-list star is mediocre as a voice artist, the CGI is invariably a caricature of them, thus capitalising on their "brand name". And even more importantly, the stars have an entre to the talk show circuit to promote the film. Bruce Willis is all over the media at the moment for his role as a raccoon in Over the Hedge. And like a live-action movie, having a star "attached" to a film is necessary to get the finance and distribution deals in place. No matter how talented the voice actor, he wouldn't have got that exposure. Stars get $zillions because they can "open the film".

See Robert Altman's The Player, in which a screenwriter tries to sell a script based on "talent, not stars". By the time it gets into production, it's got Bruce Willis and Julia Roberts starring in it.

Your claims that the markets for real and fake porn are the same are no more than your suppositions.

Why is it fine to watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre but not a real snuff movie? Because one is fantasy, no one was hurt making it, the other is real and someone real was killed to make it. By your logic, the audience for both are indistinguishable, both should be condemned and anyone who purchased either should be imprisoned.

Again, I must say, people distinguish between reality and fantasy, except for a few extremely disturbed individuals.

Possession of quasi child porn is no more thoughtcrime than possession of homegrown drugs (no one hurt in its manufacture.) I'd rather see someone locked up for child porn thoughtcrime than marijuana thoughtcrime.

Drugs aren't criminalised because of how they're made, but their (supposed) effects on the users.

It seems to me (I could be wrong) that a major component of cartoon porn depicts minors.

I don't think so, most cartoon porn seems to depict women with unfeasibly large breasts (and men with unfeasibly large penises). Other does sexualise popular child heroes. It all comes down to caricature and exaggeration and unlikely juxtapositions. Humour is a large part of it; and that is one thing you won't find in real porn.

I saw a similar thing at a place I did some IT work. They had a really menacing caricature of Jesus looking sternly right at you, and the caption "Om du inte pröjsar kommer Jesus och tar dig!", which translates to "Pay up or Jesus will come and get you!".

I always paid for my coffee there.

Excellent post!

The subtleties of maturity beat the thrills of immaturity anytime. The world is a complex place, and I love the complexity of it. The best taste in life is bittersweet, with only enough sweetness to prevent the bitter from being bland. It's no surprise that diabetes is on the rise. People have lost the palate for strong tastes. Even fibre comes in a pill, as if eating raw oats and bran is some sort of trial too harsh for people to bear. The world is divided into simple primary colors and basic binaries: red and blue, left and right, liberal vs conservative. Only the caricatures that pass as media personalities fit into these categories. The world is just not that simple.

It is revealing to contrast the tone of public discourse 50 years ago to what it is today. Ronald Reagan abandoned formal rhetoric for folksy chat, and now we're stuck with it. G W Bush got elected by appearing to be just a regular guy--at some point, people forgot that you don't want just a regular guy as your leader, you want the best and brightest. Distrust of intellectuals is at an all time high, because it takes work to understand what they're saying. But democracy takes work, every single day.

I've always suspected that the main point of "family values" and all of these exhortations to "think of the children" are just scare tactics to turn the world into the largest nursery in history, where you cannot even have an adult conversation, and where kids aren't even allowed to play unsupervised. Can you imagine a childhood where you have to make "play dates," where it is no longer possible to just walk anywhere? Thanks to media scaremongering, parents see the world as a frightening place with a child molestor or Satanic cult member lurking in every playground. The fact is, your kids are about a hundred times as likely to get killed by a car as they are to be kidnapped. But that doesn't sell soap.

Even God has been turned into the cosmic wetnurse, who will rapture us up, clean our nappies, and dry our tears. ID promises us the fantasy of every child; that we are the center of the universe, that it's really all for us. Since you're saved by faith alone, you don't have to do jack, just show up at the mega-church for the show and listen to a postmodernist drivel which is equal parts fairy tale and new-age glurge. You gotta hand it to them, they know their market. Why stop at frying your pancreas with candy, when you can get diabetes of the soul too?