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OK. I appreciate your attempt to give this matter some reasonable, balanced thought. Seriously, I'm not just saying that, I do. But some of the ways you have framed this issue are so shallow as to be cartoonish.

"How can you have a party that believes that parents should have the right to choose what school their children go to but that they're not bright not moral enough to choose whether or not to keep their child?"

These two issues are simply, well, two different issues. Do I believe people should be able to choose what school their child attends? Sure. Do I believe people should be able to choose when, where and with whom to have sex? Of course. Do I believe people should be able to kill other people they find inconvenient? No. How "bright" or "moral" the people are has nothing to do with either of these things.

Is this a "binary" decision? Sure. But if you told me you believe it's wrong to massacre Jews just because someone finds them inconvenient, I wouldn't say "You know, you're problem is you're treating it as a binary issue. You're either for it or against it; you can't be ambivalent or vote to control the amount of something."

"Pragmatic decisions like keeping abortion legal,"

Sure, abortion is (or can be, anyway) pragmatic. Absolutely. It would also be pragmatic to round up all the crippled, the insane, the sick and the social malcontents and humanely and painlessly exterminate them. So obviously, how pragmatic the solution may or may not be is not the issue we are dealing with.

"but dumping money into support and pro-child advertising campaigns to reassure scared young mothers that they don't have to kill their child, are seen as wishy washy liberalism -- even if such programs are met with greater success -- because they do not accept the artifical polarity forced onto the issue by idealistic conservatives."

You overlook a few obvious problems here. For starters, it's one thing for a private person or group opposed to abortion to "dump money" into an advertising campaign -- many groups already do this. A conservative would see such an effort as noble and compassionate -- not "wishy washy liberalism" as you put it. But the law is another thing. It is entirely appropriate to believe that it should not be *legal* for anyone to kill what you believe is an innocent human life, and to lobby the government to protect those lives.

What amazes ME is how the ani-abortion folks get caricatured as evil religous zealots. But of the two sides, they are clearly the ones who are more fighting on principle, with less to personally gain. I might fight to protect the life of an unborn innocent, but I'd also fight to protect YOUR life if someone suggested we could really solve a lot of problems by exterminating all liberals, or Pennsylvanian VW drivers, or whatever.

- Alaska Jack

I trust the National Review the way I believe opinions become facts if you CAPITALIZE them. I don't know what sort of "environmental metric" you're talking about, whether measuring laws, executive actions, or physical attributes of the environment. If the latter, note that the environment is an extreme lagging indicator. Changes in behavior today might not take effect for decades. (This is, of course, the reason we tend to mismanage the environment in the first place.)

If the former, perhaps you could provide a better citation? "The Erosion That Isn't" talks mostly of laws, while Bush's most egregious actions have been mostly internal to the Executive Branch, where the only observable problem is waves of professionals resigning in protest. From the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the Flathead National Forest, the erosion that *is* appears in the Bureau of Land Management, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and so on.

It's barely a caricature to watch Experienced Scientist take the podium to say "Project X is bad", only to be fired and a few days later Executive Spokesperson takes over to say "Project X is good. We have sound science."

Here's some free advice. Don't read what you like, read what you hate. You'll learn more.

"He's not a Frenchie, he's a Belgie!" -- from Murder by Death, I forget which caricature.

the gang where hateful caricatures of the originals

The plot and effect where bad enough, but the gang where hateful caricatures of the originals. They where purposefully made into mean, shallow idiots in a disgusting and transparent effort to 'moderinize' Scooby Doo and once again appeal to America's lowest denomiator. The amount of inappropriate humor in the movie was appalling, and the thought of anyone laughing at it sickens me. Never in my life have I had my Childhood so completely and methodically raped. My one regret is Filthy didn't review it. He's so much better at tearing apart movies than me.

Its because most people here (or atleast everybody bar you that replied to me) only likes the GPL because it allows them to freeload, whereas i like the GPL because it forces the sharing of technology and encourages technical advancement (you get popular software by it being technically better).

Thanks for putting words in my mouth. You must really see anyone who disagrees with you as a caricature of a doped up hippy communist on welfare huh? It must be nice to be able to dismiss offhand opposing opinions as "hippy bullocks".

I think getting something for free is good, but given the choice between (closed source) freeware and open source software, the latter is almost always better for the reasons you stated. The freedom to modify and distribute software is more important than the freedom from purchasing it. Even Stallman says as much. However, the freedom to use software as you see fit is nothing without the economic ability to do so. e.g. you won't be kernel hacking if you're homeless.

The Internet troll is a slang term used to describe:

1.) A post (on a newsgroup, or other forum) thought to be intended to incite controversy or conflict or cause annoyance or offense.

2.) A person who posts these.

Trolls are sometimes caricatured as socially-inept. This is often due to fundamental attribution error, as it is difficult to know the real traits of an individual solely from their online discourse. Indeed, since intentional trolls are alleged to knowingly flout social boundaries, it is difficult to typecast them as socially inept since they have arguably proven adept at their goal of inciting conflict.

They were caricatures of the "American Cowboy" dream (which is a complete fabrication itself).

Oh! Why didn't you say you hated America? That makes everything so much clearer, now.

--grendel drago

If the majority of people really felt the way you have caricaturized them, then the content industry would not be thriving. I feel sorry for you for feeling so cynical about how people really are. Gloomy.

Regardless, that is the impression that I and obviously the grandparent AC get from the majority of slashdot posts on p2p or the music industry.

There were some nice touches like the captain not being a perfect (aka Captain "Bloody" Picard) being. I quite like a character who will kill a nasty piece of "bandit" by throwing him into the engines but still the characters just didn't seem real. They were caricatures of the "American Cowboy" dream (which is a complete fabrication itself).

I love Space Opera where the hard SF takes a back seat. If you've read Iain M. Banks you can understand what I mean. That's how a space opera should be laid out, not this cowboy-fantasy crap.

" How about exercising the slightest bit of self-restraint and waiting another 2 weeks. Oh I forgot, there is nothing we shouldn't have for free and damnit we deserve it right? I feel sorry for you."

If the majority of people really felt the way you have caricaturized them, then the content industry would not be thriving. I feel sorry for you for feeling so cynical about how people really are. Gloomy.

What kind of person is he/she?

In my experience the person falls into one of two categories.

1. Grumpy old Bastard/Bitch.
Grumpy old Bastard has a set way of doing things, likes some people, dislikes others, is possibly an idiot, possibly emotional etc.

How to deal with Grumpy Old Bastard/Bitch?

This person is the easiest to handle. Grumpy Old Bastard/Bitch above all else wants Respect with a capital R. When you can't do things the Grumpy Old Bastard/Bitch (tm) way, just tell them your rationale and wear the abuse. They'll feel better and you can get on with your job. GOB/B tends to be pissed off about so much other stuff this will likely be a minor transgression. Although this is a caricature, the main distinguishing feature of the GOB/B is the they are personality defects and are not dishonest or sneaky.

2. The Snake.
The Snake is dishonest, sneaky and sadistic. The snake rules his workplace kingdom through fear. The smart people loathe the snake while the stupid are his/her unwitting accomplices. The exception are level 9 snakes, who are so skilled in deception that their spots are hidden and only uncovered when unavoidable and Snake perceives a maximal gain from doing so.
The smart tend to wait for the stupider snakes to trip up, although they are pesky and rarely do, because snakes wouldn't be snakes if they tripped, now would they?

How to deal with the Snake?

The snake respects only one thing. STRENGTH. Document everything and if you are squeaky clean, you might just have a chance against Snake.

Don't show Snake your cards. Don't go up against snake with anything less than the nut flush. If Snake calls you, he should be punished severly, a slap on the wrist simply will not do.

Finally, one last peice of advice. Never, EVER bluff a Snake.

If it's not clear, in the case that your boss is a snake, your best off quitting. Choose your battles.

"Religion is ignored in gaming, or if it is portrayed, it's wildly caricatured."

What isn't wildly caricatured about video games?

And you miss my point. I am not such a naif as to claim that Pascal or anyone else proved the existence of god or an afterlife. As you point out, diety is not something that ultimately reduces to human logic so much as it relies on human faith.

It is equally a logical fallacy to claim to know better than all those who have gone before, and to say that, because I do not believe, nobody else should, and that, therefore, simulations and games that attempt to capture the richness of human culture should pretend there is no such thing as religion, or caricature it. That a lot of people believe something to be false also has no relevance to the actual truth of it.

Sadly, it seems that discussion about discussion of religion leads to as much waste of words as discussion of religion, so I'll quit.

BTW, I think you'll find that Pascal wasn't so simplistic, either.

The Medieval iteration of this game used religion fantastically. If your populace was too zealous, and you had an unreligious leader as a governer of their province, they would be less loyal. If you had a really zealous governer, and most people in the province were of another religion, you'd better set up missionaries. The more zeal a province had, the more troops a Jihaad or Crusade would gather during its stay in said province. Glossed over and caricatured? I think not.

That's only true for those who have concluded that what they do while they are here can only be meaningless unless it serves to placate God.

If there is no "afterlife", then what you do while you are here is all that has any meaning.

Publishers pay the bills, and they want games to be as commercial and mainstream as possible.

I know of a Triple A title in production that could have included religious elements for realism, and the designers would have loved to do so, but have been blocked by the [North American] publisher.

Blowing up churches and mosques is just way too inflammatory in today's climate. So war games containing religion must be watered down, fictionalized or treated as "caricature".

In the end, I think this is OK. Using metaphor can create meaning for more people in the long run. And, Walmart will sell it too :)

'Religion is ignored in gaming, or if it is portrayed, it's wildly caricatured.'"

Not entirely. Although, frankly, the people who try to use games to promote religion do an even worse job of portraying it than the rest. Anybody played Catecumen? Since I assume you all have eyes, I'll assume not. It made a fairly successful bid for the worst FPS game ever, but it couldn't even do THAT well. It was an attempt to portray the persecution of early Christians by Roman soldiers to young modern Christians. It does this by having you run around an assortment of architecture (the developers never quite get the distinction down between Roman, Gothic, Victorian, and Japanese buildings) and shoot people with a sword.

Then I know of two games with variations on the title "Noah's Ark." One is the worst FPS game on the SNES (and considering how bad most of them were for that system, that's saying a lot) and the other looked like a half-assed hack of SimFarm.

Frankly, I think the average treatment of religion would increase substantially if those people who want religion treated "fairly" in video games stopped developing them (by "fairly," I use their own definition of fair, in that the games serve as a conduit to spread their message). They're hardly setting an example for the rest of us.

"Religion is ignored in gaming, or if it is portrayed, it's wildly caricatured."

Insert *any* substantive intellectual or philosophical topic in place of "religion" and that sentence almost always holds true. They're *games*, they're not meant to provide truly rigorous analysis but rather to entertain.

The only game I can think of that has some rather sophisticated references to religious and philosophical concepts is Xenosaga (and presumably the prequel Xenogears, though I've not played it), but even then it's nowhere near as deep or intellectually stimulating as a good book.

So while this is not a hard and fast rule, I would say that the vast majority of games are, well, just entertainment. Very few games truly broach into what I would consider art or substantive dialogue.

Hey, the most vocal in major American religions, it seems,
(Christianity, Islam, Judaism) look like caricatures to me.

(and this leads me to ignore religion, at least in mass media)

OTOH, I'll bet a few great games could be based on
historic/fictional "holy wars". Supernatural acts or not.