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This came up for me once. Sometimes people just can't take a good yo' mamma joke.

When Stan Morris speaks, people listen.

Parody and Satire

Parody or satire is difficult to deal with, but if applied to a public figure is clearly protected by the First Amendment because the exaggeration or distortions of the truth are not intended to be taken as fact.

The case of Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Fallwell is an example. In that case, Hustler Magazine printed a fake advertisement that parodied a Campari Liquer advertising campaign. In the Hustler publication, the advertisement contained a make-believe interview with Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority and a television evangelist, in which he talked about his "first time" to experience sexual intercourse. The vulgar "recounting" of Falwell's "first sexual encounter" was set in an outhouse with him having sex with his mother. Falwell, a teetotaler, was also portrayed as being drunk.

Falwell was outraged by this caricature, so outraged, in fact, that he sued. His lawsuit for libel, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress went to trial. At the close of the evidence, the district court said that even if everything Falwell claimed were true there were no legal grounds upon which he could claim relief. The balance of the case was submitted to the jury, which returned a verdict for Falwell for intentional infliction of emotional distress, although the jury disallowed the libel claim.

On appeal, the Supreme Court heard the case on the First Amendment question of whether a state has authority to protect its citizens from the intentional infliction of emotional distress and whether a public figure may recover damages for his or her distress.

Specifically, the Chief Justice said the issue was whether a state may protect its citizens from patently offensive speech, and he said the First Amendment provided a safe haven for even that mode of speech. The Chief Justice reasoned that even though Falwell was not a public figure who held elective office, he was a public figure who had influence on public affairs and, as such, only had limited capacity to be distressed. The Chief Justice wrote that: "robust political debate encouraged by the First Amendment is bound to produce speech that is critical of those that hold public office or those public figures who are 'intimately involved in the resolution of important public questions or by reason of their fame, shape events in area of concern to society at large.'"

The Chief Justice ruled that even so outrageous a rogue, or impish rascal, depending on your point of view, as Larry Flynt is entitled to exercise his First Amendment freedoms in a manner best determined by Flynt, rather than being restricted by any state action.
--By Stan Morris from Gigalaw.com

But there are limits it would seem. The creators of Parkwars originally planned to completely parody The Phantom Menace, but thought better of it, at least in part to make sure lawyers didn't come a knocking.

Mr. Morris seems to make a convincing case clearing the way to do what you will with your modest proposal. But the real snag might be copyright.

That's odd, I don't see Americans rioting and killing each other over a beauty pageant, or stoning women for violating dress codes, or even getting all that worked up about the existence of porn in general.

Also, as long as I'm typing, the Puritans were English, and after getting themselves into trouble attempting to reform what they saw as a moribund and corrupt Church of England they came to America to escape persecution. The name "Puritan" was coined as a derisive term by their opponents in England. Puritans enjoyed drinking (lots of drinking) and feasting, and apparently had very pragmatic views on sex. They were not narrow minded witch-burning caricatures:

http://www.qctimes.com/internal.php?story_id=100 44 72&t=Nation+%2F+World&c=26,1004472

You live in a cartoon world. All your opponents are caricatures.

Come on out to reality some time.

This reminds me of one of my favourite hobby horses...

...That there are lots of examples in the history of technology to tell us a little bit about what the effects of our current (new) technology might be. In fact, maybe it shouldn't be such a surprise that something like the Miss World pageant is both repulsive to certain cultural groups and is a good opportunity for somebody to engage in some local political muscle-flexing.

I would hope that somebody learned a lesson from that fiasco. Perhaps a similar lesson to the one that the Catholic church might have learned when Martin Luther figured out how he could use the power of printed caricatures to break their monopoly.

Cheers,
Dcobbler

You swine. You vulgar little maggot. Don't you know that you are pathetic? You worthless bag of filth. As we say in Texas, I'll bet you couldn't pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel. You are a canker. A sore that won't go away. I would rather kiss a lawyer than be seen with you.

You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing you exist. I despise everything about you. You are a bloody nardless newbie twit protohominid chromosomally aberrant caricature of a coprophagic cloacal parasitic pond scum and I wish you would go away.

You're a putrescence mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, a weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon.

You are a bleating fool, a curdled staggering mutant dwarf smeared richly with the effluvia and offal accompanying your alleged birth into this world. An insensate, blinking calf, meaningful to nobody, abandoned by the puke-drooling, giggling beasts who sired you and then killed themselves in recognition of what they had done.

I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I barf at the very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut. Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. And did I mention you smell?

If you aren't an idiot, you made a world-class effort at simulating one. Try to edit your writing of unnecessary material before attempting to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be able to access it more rapidly.

You snail-skulled little rabbit. Would that a hawk pick you up, drive its beak into your brain, and upon finding it rancid set you loose to fly briefly before spattering the ocean rocks with the frothy pink shame of your ignoble blood. May you choke on the queasy, convulsing nausea of your own trite, foolish beliefs.

You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid, nasty and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You're a fool, an ignoramus. Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won't have sex with you. You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in a land that reality forgot.

And what meaning do you expect your delusionally self-important statements of unknowing, inexperienced opinion to have with us? What fantasy do you hold that you would believe that your tiny-fisted tantrums would have more weight than that of a leprous desert rat, spinning rabidly in a circle, waiting for the bite of the snake?

You are a waste of flesh. You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a disease, you puerile one-handed slack-jawed drooling meatslapper.

On a good day you're a half-wit. You remind me of drool. You are deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality of wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted. You are the source of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go.

I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. Your writing has to be a troll. Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of physics that we know. I'm sorry. I can't go on. This is an epiphany of stupid for me. After this, you may not hear from me again for a while. I don't have enough strength left to deride your ignorant questions and half baked comments about unimportant trivia, or any of the rest of this drivel. Duh.

The only thing worse than your logic is your manners. I have snipped away most of what you wrote, because, well... it didn't really say anything. Your attempt at constructing a creative flame was pitiful. I mean, really, stringing together a bunch of insults among a load of babbling was hardly effective... Maybe later in life, after you have learned to read, write, spell, and count, you will have more success. True, these are rudimentary skills that many of us "normal" people take for granted that everyone has an easy time of mastering. But we sometimes forget that there are "challenged" persons in this world who find these things more difficult. If I had known, that this was your case then I would have never read your post. It just wouldn't have been "right". Sort of like parking in a handicap space. I wish you the best of luck in the emotional, and social struggles that seem to be placing such a demand on you.

P.S.: You are hypocritical, greedy, violent, malevolent, vengeful, cowardly, deadly, mendacious, meretricious, loathsome, despicable, belligerent, opportunistic, barratrous, contemptible, criminal, fascistic, bigoted, racist, sexist, avaricious, tasteless, idiotic, brain-damaged, imbecilic, insane, arrogant, deceitful, demented, lame, self-righteous, byzantine, conspiratorial, satanic, fraudulent, libelous, bilious, splenetic, spastic, ignorant, clueless, illegitimate, harmful, destructive, dumb, evasive, double-talking, devious, revisionist, narrow, manipulative, paternalistic, fundamentalist, dogmatic, idolatrous, unethical, cultic, diseased, suppressive, controlling, restrictive, malignant, deceptive, dim, crazy, weird, dystopic, stifling, uncaring, plantigrade, grim, unsympathetic, jargon-spouting, censorious, secretive, aggressive, mind-numbing, arassive, poisonous, flagrant, self-destructive, abusive, socially-retarded, puerile, clueless, and generally Not Good.

Not all users are addicts (at least for some things, not sure about heroin). Non-addict users are a good source of information about the virtues of a thing. Trainspotting seemed to a good job of showing more than a positive of negative caricature of heroin addiction, but since I don't have personal experience with ths shit, it's hard to say.

Caricaturally extreme viewpoints are insightful, yet a more level-headed opinion is considered as a troll. Understand who can. Probably because it angers both camps...

There is currently a lot of controversy about Mr. Phil Lelyveld's disquisitions, and I know that any letter on the subject will almost certainly cause someone to produce a large number of thoroughly sordid extravagancies, most gormless indecencies, and, above all, the most possession-obsessed blasphemies against everything that I hold most sacred and most dear. Still, I unequivocally hope that Mr. Lelyveld's punishment fits his crime. Before I begin, let me point out that Mr. Lelyveld spouts a lot of numbers whenever he wants to make a point. He then subjectively interprets those numbers to support his ruses while ignoring the fact that his machinations may have been conceived in idealism, but they quickly degenerated into unpleasant, vexatious Pyrrhonism. He has, on a number of occasions, expressed a desire to cause the destruction of human ambition and joy. On all of these occasions, I submitted to the advice of my friends, who assured me that prudence is no vice. Cowardice -- especially his ultra-untrustworthy form of it -- is. I use such language purposefully -- and somewhat sardonically -- to illustrate how if we are to turn random, senseless violence into meaningful action, then we must be guided by a healthy and progressive ideology, not by the materialistic and sophomoric ideologies that Mr. Lelyveld promotes. Let me back up a little: Of all of his exaggerations and incorrect comparisons, one in particular stands out: "The only way to expand one's mind is with drugs -- or maybe even chocolate." I don't know where he came up with this, but his statement is dead wrong. This may sound like caricature, but we are at a crossroads. One road leads into the light of a bright, shining future in which wayward, drugged-out blusterers like Mr. Lelyveld are completely absent. The other road leads into the darkness of Fabianism. The question, therefore, is: Who's driving the bus? This is not a question that we should run away from. Rather, it is something that needs to be addressed quickly and directly, because it would be wrong to imply that Mr. Lelyveld is involved in some kind of conspiracy to destroy the values, methods, and goals of traditional humanistic study. It would be wrong because his beliefs are far beyond the conspiracy stage. Not only that, but I frequently wish to tell him that those who destroy everything beautiful and good must be held accountable for their actions. But being a generally genteel person, however, I always bite my tongue.

Unsettling as that is, the more infuriating fact is that while we do nothing, those who perpetuate inaccurate and dangerous beliefs about male-female relationships are gloating and smirking. And they will keep on gloating and smirking until we counteract the subtle, but pervasive, social message that says that university professors must conform their theses and conclusions to Mr. Lelyveld's flippant prejudices if they want to publish papers and advance their careers. Far too many people tolerate Mr. Lelyveld's ramblings as long as they're presented in small, seemingly harmless doses. What these people fail to realize, however, is that there are those who are informed and educated about the evils of denominationalism, and there are those who are not. Mr. Lelyveld is one of the uninformed, naturally, and that's why he is absolutely determined to believe that violence and prejudice are funny, and he's not about to let facts or reason get in his way.

Have you ever had a bad dream about Mr. Lelyveld trying to impact public policy for years to come? Well, I have news for you. That wasn't a dream; it was real. I'm sticking out my neck a bit in talking about his hijinks. It's quite likely he will try to retaliate against me for my telling you that the space remaining in this letter will not suffice even to enumerate the ways in which he has tried to treat anyone who doesn't agree with him to a torrent of vitriol and vilification. Incidentally, Mr. Lelyveld's recalcitrant, vengeful epithets leave the current power structure untouched while simultaneously killing countless children through starvation and disease. Are these children his enemies? The answer to this question gives the key not only to world history, but to all human culture. Well, sure; Mr. Lelyveld respects nothing and no one, but that doesn't change reality.

His policies reek of so much mandarinism that the smell makes me nauseated, and if you don't believe me, then you should discuss, openly and candidly, a vision for a harmonious, multiracial society. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that his dupes all look like him, think like him, act like him, and retard the free and natural economic development of various countries' indigenous population, just like Mr. Lelyveld does. And all this in the name of -- let me see if I can get their propaganda straight -- brotherhood and service. Ha! Please remember that his threats reek of frotteurism. I use the word "reek", because his announcements are destructive. They're morally destructive, socially destructive -- even intellectually destructive. And, as if that weren't enough, I feel no more personal hatred for him than I might feel for a herd of wild animals or a cluster of poisonous reptiles. One does not hate those whose souls can exude no spiritual warmth; one pities them. Mr. Lelyveld can't attack my ideas, so he attacks me. It could be worse, I suppose. He could sucker us into buying a lot of junk we don't need.

Forgive me if I ramble; I'm really upset, as I think you can tell. What I call blockish segregationists are the lowest form of human life. (Actually, he floats with the tide of flagitious, wild totalitarianism, especially when driven by the gravitational pull of interdenominationalism, but that's not important now.) I cannot conceive of any circumstance under which Mr. Lelyveld's ravings could be considered appropriate. Am I saying that I am appalled by the vast generalizations in Mr. Lelyveld's claim that it is not only acceptable, but indeed desirable, to advocate fatalistic acceptance of a juvenile new world order? Yes. That I am not making a generalization when I say that he upholds sin as sacred? Maybe. That this kind of thing makes me wonder whether we've ever moved past supercilious anti-intellectualism at all? Definitely.

Mr. Lelyveld's deputies think that we ought to worship morbid buffoons as folk heroes. I say to them, "Prove it" -- not that they'll be able to, of course, but because Mr. Lelyveld's manuscripts constitute an instigation to spam the Internet with stingy e-mail. For proof of this fact, I must point out that Mr. Lelyveld truly believes that anyone who dares to push the envelope on our knowledge of the world around us can expect to suffer hair loss and tooth decay as a result. I hope you realize that that's just a predaceous pipe dream from a money-grubbing pipe, and that in the real world, it will not be easy to deal with the relevant facts. Nevertheless, we must attempt to do exactly that, for the overriding reason that I must part company with many of my peers when it comes to understanding why his opinions are egocentric, poisonous to young minds, and disrespectful to Western values and achievements. My peers claim that relative even to whiney scamps, he is more excitable, more violent, less sexually restrained, more impulsive, more prone to crime, less altruistic, less inclined to follow rules, and less cooperative. While this is doubtlessly true, I believe we must add that he insists that everyone with a different set of beliefs from his is going to get a one-way ticket to Hell. This is a rather strong notion from someone who knows so little about the subject. While it is reasonable to expect that pusillanimous negativism has come to occupy a squalid place in the national dialogue, it remains that Mr. Lelyveld says that he understands the difference between civilization and savagery. Yet he also wants to issue a flood of bogus legal documents. Am I the only one who sees the irony there? I ask, because I undeniably hope that the truth will prevail and that justice will be served before Mr. Lelyveld does any real damage. Or is it already too late? I don't pretend to know the answer, but I do know that if I have a bias, it is only against hate-filled, benighted crackpots who pigeonhole people into predetermined categories. The union of theory and practice, in Mr. Lelyveld's hands, becomes a union of pomposity and ruffianism. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but you get the drift. It's possible that Mr. Lelyveld doesn't realize this because he has been ingrained with so much of vandalism's propaganda. If that's the case, I recommend that we raise the quality of debate on issues surrounding his brutal, imprudent teachings. When I first became aware of his covert invasion into our thought processes, all I could think was how it's our responsibility to lend support to the thesis that we are now stuck with a self-pitying oligarchism bearing a human face -- that of Phil Lelyveld. That's the first step in trying to clarify and correct some of the inaccuracies present in his complaints, and it's the only way to question authority. It should be intuitively obvious even to the most casual observer that the really interesting thing about all this is not that he should show some class. The interesting thing is that I frequently talk about how if the word "extraterritoriality" occurs to the reader, he or she may recall that Mr. Lelyveld once tried to rescue defeatism from the rubbish heap of history, dust it off, slap on a coat of cheap sophistry, and market it as new and improved. I would drop the subject, except that his buddies do not concern themselves much with the people around them. Mr. Lelyveld's lickspittles probably don't realize that, because it's not mentioned in the funny papers or in the movies. Nevertheless, his idiotic claim that mediocrity and normalcy are ideal virtues is just that, an idiotic claim.

What's more, thanks to Mr. Lelyveld, what I call xenophobic hooligans can now freely show us a gross miscarriage of common judgment -- and Mr. Lelyveld knows it. Is it any wonder that he neglects the impact that selfishness has on the soul? Didn't he tell his foot soldiers that he wants to spread hatred, animosity, and divisiveness? Did he first give any thought to what would happen if he did? Of course, that question is ridiculous -- as ridiculous as his abominable effusions. As a parenthetical note, I must ask that Mr. Lelyveld's toadies improve the living conditions of the most vulnerable in our society -- the sick, the old, the disabled, the unemployed, and our youth -- all of whose lives are made miserable by Phil Lelyveld. I know they'll never do that, so here's an alternate proposal: They should, at the very least, back off and quit trying to up the ante considerably.

I used to think that stuck-up stool pigeons were the most jejune people on the planet, but now I know that if it weren't for inimical porn stars, Mr. Lelyveld would have no friends. Not to be rude or anything, but his zingers are built on lies, and they depend on make-believe for their continuation. Did it ever occur to Mr. Lelyveld that he refuses to do anything for himself? Before you answer, let me point out that he may be reasonably cunning with words. However, he is utterly sexist with everything else. What kind of loser wants to introduce, cultivate, and encourage moral rot? A loser like Mr. Lelyveld. My point here is that all of the bad things that are currently going on are a symptom of his prudish biases. They are not a cause; they are an effect.

Please don't ask me to reward mediocrity. I simply can't do that. We need to lead each other towards the understanding that Mr. Lelyveld still labors under the outmoded pretense that a plausible excuse is a satisfactory substitute for performance, by which I mean that he should not lead us into an age of shoddiness -- shoddy goods, shoddy services, shoddy morals, and shoddy people. Not now, not ever. Nobody wants him to make serious dialogue difficult or impossible, but Mr. Lelyveld insists on doing it anyway.

If he wants to combine, in a rare mixture, bestial cruelty and an inconceivable gift for lying, let him wear the opprobrium of that decision. I can fight only for something that I love, love only what I respect, and respect only what I at least know. Period, finis, and Q.E.D. And that's what writing this sort of letter is all about. It's a way to reveal some shocking facts about Mr. Phil Lelyveld's editorials.

Ah, but do you find it grotesque...
...because the practice is inconsistent with the beliefs of the practitioners...
...or because the practice is inconsistent with your own religious beliefs...
...or because you believe that all religious beliefs (and the practices which stem from them) are inconsistent with your own experience and interpretation of reality?

Clever context-shifting can make almost any practice seem grotesque. And if you categorically deny that religion has any value except to dupes and demagogues, you may be significantly less inclined to correctly interpret the meaning of religious ceremonies.

Last time I checked, Xtians engage in the communion ritual as a metaphysical act--it symbolizes the integration of the deity's holy qualities into every aspect of the practioner's life. In the same way that food nourishes the body, so does the deity nourish the soul, is how the analogy goes. It's a powerful image, and one that focuses the mind of the practitioner on the fundamental principles of their faith. Misguided, maybe, but certainly no more "grotesque" than burning Guy Fawkes in effigy.

Given the opportunity, I'd readily consume the divine flesh of a god, freely offered, to gain some portion of their power. But such an opportunity probably wouldn't be literal, anyway. Applying physical rules to metaphysical phenomena is kind of silly. What if eating literal food is the grotesque act, and the intake of the deity's holy power is the true phenomenon our dinnertime caricatures?

I'm not saying they're right, or anything, but it doesn't seem grotesque at all, in context. Out of context, a valid interpretation is difficult to find.

My science fiction subgenres in short:

Science fiction: Hard core science fiction mostly set in the near future. The fiction consists of one (or a few) scientific breakthroughs and postulating how it affects today's mankind. This genre is dominated by short stories.

Science fantasy: How it will be in the far far future. Characters and plot are more important. The scope is larger. Philosophy and social science in this future world play a large part. Scientific breakthroughs are numerous and in all areas (but not totally unbelievable, consistency is key).

Space Opera: Pirates with phasers. Characters have a central stage, sadly they are often larger than life, and become caricatures. The plot spans the whole galaxy and all its cultures. Science is magic, convenient for the story and generally unbelievable.

-- Less is more!

Bond's always been a cartoonish self-parody. Sweet lord. Remember You Only Live Twice? Remember when Sean Connery went undercover as a Japanese person, his disguise consisting of a black mop-top wig and blackface? Remember Goldfinger, with "Pussy Galore's Flying Circus", that crack team of implicitely-lesbian ace pilots? Remember The Man With The Golden Gun? "Soon I shall fashion a weapon out of solar power! Mwuuuahaha!" Shit, man -- Moonraker? Octopussy? Live And Let Die?

I love all these movies. I read most of the James Bond books as a kid, and am pretty sure I've seen all the (old) movies at some point. But don't kid yourself -- the Bond series was always ludicrous. It's a glorious caricature of '60s badassitude.

Real spies are hunchbacked bureaucrats and dissatisfied knowledge workers. Any other depictions of the Spy's Life should set your bullshit meter to ten.

Um, however moving the analogy or thumbnail representation of history may be, may I least point out there aren't any Indians in orbit who got there first and need slaughtering? Or that many of those settlers were not so much seeking new opportunities as fleeing the oppression of Europe?

Sorry to be crass about it, but these are very difficult situations. In no way does space harber the readily exploitable economic bonanza that did the New World, and much of other investment there is on faith or the gee-whiz factor, not any assurance of long-term gain.

Also, Columbus's expedition was not a Star Trek like project as the myth paints it. It was intended for profit, acquiring new trade routes, real estate, resources, and, on later trips, slaves. (As we head into thanksgiving, recall that Squanto learned English when he was forcibly removed to Europe as a slave. When he made his way back to Massachusetts, infection had destroyed his tribe ... leaving the nice fields for the Pilgrims to plant in thickly forested New England.)

Finally, Columbus never made it to what we thing of as America, unless you count finding a American Virgin Island or two. In five trips he never set sight on the mainland. And it's false that everyone though the world was flat! Aristotle determined it wasn't. Columbus's error was he significantly underestimated the diameter.

I'm not suggesting anyone in particular was a bad guy we need to be ashamed of, but protest substituting a caricature of the past, and especially basing our future decisions on that caricature.

Seems like common sense that one would prefer drinkable water, rivers that don't burn and air that makes the sky look blue instead of brown.

support departments trying to make dictation work with fifty other people speaking commands to their respective clients; or programmers trying to spell their way through their creations.

Obviously not all environments will lend themselves to voice operation. Phone support is definitely one of those situations in which you'll have problems; You can't speak to a person and speak to the computer simultaneously. Hence cash registers at Jack in the Crack will either just take your order for you (likely) or be operated by a pimply teenager (or loud surly old woman) who presses buttons with the same usual lack of ability that we witness now.

But I suspect that programmers will be using voice interfaces, and they'll actually be using RAD tools which consist of attaching tinkertoys together (to borrow a phrase N.S. borrowed from someone else in his turn) and perhaps they'll be speaking the code that makes up the portions of the tinkertoys. You have to think outside of these stupid flat desktop metaphors that we won't be stuck with forever if for no reason other than the cool factor of a pretty 3D GUI. I mean, Enlightenment... need I say more?

And have you ever actually tried speaking for eight to ten hours at a stretch? I'm not talking about random, occasional speech acts, but sustained, focused speech. You'd have about three weeks until laryngitis became an occupational hazard among white-collar workers.

Let me share a little something with you. I've spent a lot of time unemployed in my life -- some would say as much as possible -- And I spend a lot of that time sitting at a cafe talking all day, smoking cigarettes (spirits or luckys or top rollys... always something harsh) and drinking coffee, and then beer. And then as often as not, going out and pounding cocktails. I had some money left over from when I got laid off, at the time...

Anyway I spent a ridiculous amount of time talking and guess what, I never lost my voice. I spent a lot of it doing voice caricatures too, I'm a very emphatic fellow.

Speech is nice, but it is very much a niche application. Not only now, but ever. A keyboard is faster than speech, and does not contribute to noise level or occupational damage nearly as much as sustained speech would. It's a nice, even essential, mode of operation for those apps when a keyboard just won't do; the disabled, firemen, surgeons and so on will rightly love the interface. For mainstream use, however, it's just not good enough even when it's perfect.

You're thinking of doing the same things you do with a computer now in the future, and in essentially the same way. Obviously this will be the case, but I sincerely hope that in ten years we're doing a lot of new things with our computers. Some of the things I hope we'll be doing are things some people are doing now, like controlling our appliances (beyond just turning them on and off without feedback... X10 sucks) and actually using the computer as a tool to make all other aspects of our life easier. I don't know how many people I know who have a computer and a personal organizer and yet still make grocery lists on paper, so obviously we have a ways to go yet -- but that's always going to be true in some way or another. :P

Obviously some applications are apparently more deserving than others. You cite as examples conditions in which people cannot use their hands for one reason or another; these are obvious. You did leave out the most obvious, though, which is law enforcement and military use.

But really there is nothing you can do which you cannot do better with a computer, except be a luddite. A sufficiently advanced computer (the amount of advancement required varies) with the appropriate peripherals can improve anything. You could use a small, simple computer with some sort of biomedical peripherals to monitor pulse rate and other conditions while doing some purely physical activity to keep yourself working efficiently, at one end of the spectrum, where on the other you're doing some kind of crazy imaging or something, something you can't even do without a computer.

In most situations you'd really rather have your hands free. If you had some kind of glasses which would overlay video onto your sight (various solutions exist today) then voice recognition would be the best way to put different things there while you're working on something with your hands. With eye tracking thrown into the mix it becomes even more incredibly useful, and if you add a camera and a shitload of processing power, plus a nice laser rangefinder and the usual GPS and whatnot, you're in the big time baby. I mean, isn't that what we're looking for? Unfortunately the glasses have to be stylish, nothing more lame than (say) gargoyles. At least those of us who have a square head can pull off the arnie look.

It could become an accessory input, on the lines of replacing menu commands for an app: mark text, say "cut", mark a place, say "paste" and so on, but it just would never replace keyboard input in any mainstream application.

For most things in which you are generating reams of text, you will continue to use some form of keyboard. Of course a lot of that text can be replaced by dictation in the field, which you're doing anyway, but instead of typing it later you'll be grabbing the text from your PDA. Further proof that for many purposes, if you have enough processing power, you can even do away with some storage :)

You mean to tell me that Bill Clinton was cozy with Hollywood (what a stunning revelation, who would have thought it?) That he supported the DMCA and that Ashcroft (Ashcroft!?!) was the "good guy" on this issue - with a more reasonable law that defended fair use rights? Stop!! You'll make my /. saturated brain implode!! It can't be!!... that doesn't conform to the simple caricatures that explain my world... too complex... doesn't compute... ahh.... *sticks fingers ears* and chants: "Republicans are evil, Ashcroft is Satan" as loudly as possible.

However, I take major issue with you over the suggestion that there are heavy theological issues in LOTR. The view of good and evil there is so simply black and white that even a Southern Baptist hellfire preacher might take pause. All the baddies start bad, proceed badly, and end bad. Everyone else plays a fixed part. This is the nature of epic and tragedy (in Greek tragedies, it is often the character's lack of flexibility or development that brings on the inevitable dreadful events.) Just to make the vestige of a point, consider Terry Pratchett's world which is now if anything as big and complex as LOTR. Compare Aragorn to Captain Carrot. Compare Gandalf and Saruman to the faculty of Unseen University, especially the development of characters like Ponder Stibbons. I am sure that by now Pratchett readers will see what I am on about. Now explain to me why Pratchett can handle characters who develop, interact, and furthermore develop as a result of that interaction (just as with heavyweight novelists like Anthony Powell ) in a complex imagined world, while Tolkien can't. I suspect the answer is because JRRT never really lived in the real world but was an Oxford academic steeped in Nordic myth. This qualified him to write an epic within that tradition, but it was not actually his tradition.

Of course Rowling does caricatures, she is writing books for children and there has to be simplification to get the point over. But they are caricatures of people we recognise, instead of abstract cardboard sheets labelled "Wisdom","Kingliness","Nasty piece of work","Evil bastard no redeeming features". In Rowling's world the good guys turn out to have had badly behaved pasts, the bad guys may not be beyond redemption, and some characters are morally confused.

My point, however, was intended to be serious. LOTR can be made into an epic film because the characters are 2-D. For the same reason, I suggest, you can make a good Old Testament biblical epic but you can't really make an epic out of the New Testament. As soon as characters start to get complex, you cannot have an epic. Books are different, because the timescales on which you read them are such that they can range from epic to up close and personal, whether it be Doctor Zhivago or (still my favorite) Moby-Dick.

You do have a (weak) point, though, about Tolkien's characterization (although, *cough* I find it laughable that you'd suggest that Rowling does anything other than caricatures). I would argue that the richness of Tolkien's world is not in the characters but in their vast history, which is only barely hinted at in LOTR. Not to mention, Tolkien's work is fundamentally preoccupied with heavy theological issues, like good and evil, whereas the charactizations are of secondary importance.

The problem with Tolkein's work is that what you are born is what you are. Elves are good, orcs are bad, and so forth. Given that axiom, it's difficult to have really meaningful character development. Say you're a hero, born or heroes, you do heroic things, and that's they (Aragorn, for example). Further, the moral problem is that, given that orcs have no choice about what they are, they haven't made any moral decision to act as they do. If you have to kill one in self defence, that's OK, but killing them because of what they are is ethically very dubious. That's the logic that has justified slavery and genocide throughout history. Of course Tolkien was a product of his time, but that doesn't excuse his work from a more modern appraisal.

Rowling's message is different. What you are born matters, but not as much as what you choose to do with it. Characters have to make choices, and the outcomes are often ambigious, reflecting the complexity of the scenarios in which they find themselves. And they can develop as characters, because they aren't locked into predestined fates like Tolkein's characters are.

Wow, nice troll. And it's scoring 5, Insightful.

You do have a (weak) point, though, about Tolkien's characterization (although, *cough* I find it laughable that you'd suggest that Rowling does anything other than caricatures). I would argue that the richness of Tolkien's world is not in the characters but in their vast history, which is only barely hinted at in LOTR. Not to mention, Tolkien's work is fundamentally preoccupied with heavy theological issues, like good and evil, whereas the charactizations are of secondary importance.

What the f*ck is wrong with you, boy? What the
f*ck are you trying to do to our beloved newsgroup? You little panty-waisted maggot, I'll show you what a flame is!

You befouled, vitiated poltroon. You blighted, malodorous, mephitic recreant. You are a festering boil on the ass of all humanity. You have all the backbone of a jellyfish. You moribific, feculent simpleton. Would that I could change my species, just so that I might not be associated with you. The stupendous, confounding magnitude of your insipidness astonishes me.

I cannot believe that anyone could muster such a prodigious, astounding level of stupidity. If you were any more asinine or incogitant, you would surely have been put to death long ago. Your vapidity has gone so far beyond any previous boundaries of puerility and nugacity as to banish any and all chances of an intelligent thought from your head. Even the most hardened of regulars unquestionably cannot believe your fatuousness and illogicality.

Your opinions do nothing but lend credence to the overwhelming fact that you are such a driveling simpleton that you cannot find your ass with both hands and a road map. You are the very pinnacle of insensateness. You are the model of banality and subnormality.
I am aghast at your apparent ability to insert your head into your own rectum at will.

There cannot be even a fragment of intellectuality or perspicacity to be found within the gaping void which should contain your brain. It amazes me that you are able to perform even the most facile of everyday functions with your exorbitantly disadvantaged and gormless
lack of intellect.

You swine. You vulgar little maggot. Don't you know that you are pathetic? You worthless bag of filth. As we say in Texas, I'll bet you couldn't pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel. You are a canker. A sore that won't go away. I would rather kiss a lawyer than be seen with you.

You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing you exist. I despise everything about you. You are a bloody nardless newbie twit protohominid chromosomally aberrant caricature of a coprophagic cloacal parasitic pond scum and I wish you would go away.

You're a putrescence mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, a weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon.

You are a bleating fool, a curdled staggering mutant dwarf smeared richly with the effluvia and offal accompanying your alleged birth into this world. An insensate, blinking calf, meaningful to nobody, abandoned by the puke-drooling, giggling beasts who sired you and then killed themselves in recognition of what they had done.

I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I barf at the very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut. Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. And did I mention you smell?

If you aren't an idiot, you made a world-class effort at simulating one. Try to edit your writing of unnecessary material before attempting to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be able to access it more rapidly.

You snail-skulled little rabbit. Would that a hawk pick you up, drive its beak into your brain, and upon finding it rancid set you loose to fly briefly before spattering the ocean rocks with the frothy pink shame of your ignoble blood. May you choke on the queasy, convulsing nausea of your own trite, foolish beliefs.

You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid, nasty and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You're a fool, an ignoramus. Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won't have sex with you. You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in a land that reality forgot.

And what meaning do you expect your delusionally self-important statements of unknowing, inexperienced opinion to have with us? What fantasy do you hold that you would believe that your tiny-fisted tantrums would have more weight than that of a leprous desert rat, spinning rabidly in a circle, waiting for the bite of the snake?

You are a waste of flesh. You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a disease, you puerile one-handed slack-jawed drooling meatslapper.

On a good day you're a half-wit. You remind me of drool. You are deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality of wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted. You are the source of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go.

I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. Your writing has to be a troll. Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of physics that we know. I'm sorry. I can't go on. This is an epiphany of stupid for me. After this, you may not hear from me again for a while. I don't have enough strength left to deride your ignorant questions and half baked comments about unimportant trivia, or any of the rest of this drivel. Duh.

The only thing worse than your logic is your manners. I have snipped away most of what you wrote, because, well... it didn't really say anything. Your attempt at constructing a creative flame was pitiful. I mean, really, stringing together a bunch of insults among a load of babbling was hardly effective... Maybe later in life, after you have learned to read, write, spell, and count, you will have more success. True, these are rudimentary skills that many of us "normal" people take for granted that everyone has an easy time of mastering. But we sometimes forget that there are "challenged" persons in this world who find these things more difficult. If I had known, that this was your case then I would have never read your post. It just wouldn't have been "right". Sort of like parking in a handicap space. I wish you the best of luck in the emotional, and social struggles that seem to be placing such a demand on you.

P.S.: You are hypocritical, greedy, violent, malevolent, vengeful, cowardly, deadly, mendacious, meretricious, loathsome, despicable, belligerent, opportunistic, barratrous, contemptible, criminal, fascistic, bigoted, racist, sexist, avaricious, tasteless, idiotic, brain-damaged, imbecilic, insane, arrogant, deceitful, demented, lame, self-righteous, byzantine, conspiratorial, satanic, fraudulent, libelous, bilious, splenetic, spastic, ignorant, clueless, illegitimate, harmful, destructive, dumb, evasive, double-talking, devious, revisionist, narrow, manipulative, paternalistic, fundamentalist, dogmatic, idolatrous, unethical, cultic, diseased, suppressive, controlling, restrictive, malignant, deceptive, dim, crazy, weird, dystopic, stifling, uncaring, plantigrade, grim, unsympathetic, jargon-spouting, censorious, secretive, aggressive, mind-numbing, arassive, poisonous, flagrant, self-destructive, abusive, socially-retarded, puerile, clueless, and generally Not Good.

Don't you know that you are pathetic? You worthless bag of filth. As we say in Texas, I'll bet you couldn't pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel. You are a canker. A sore that won't go away. I would rather kiss a lawyer than be seen with you.

You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing you exist. I despise everything about you. You are a bloody nardless newbie twit protohominid chromosomally aberrant caricature of a coprophagic cloacal parasitic pond scum and I wish you would go away.

You're a putrescence mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, a weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon.

You are a bleating fool, a curdled staggering mutant dwarf smeared richly with the effluvia and offal accompanying your alleged birth into this world. An insensate, blinking calf, meaningful to nobody, abandoned by the puke-drooling, giggling beasts who sired you and then killed themselves in recognition of what they had done.

I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I barf at the very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut. Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. And did I mention you smell?

If you aren't an idiot, you made a world-class effort at simulating one. Try to edit your writing of unnecessary material before attempting to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be able to access it more rapidly.

You snail-skulled little rabbit. Would that a hawk pick you up, drive its beak into your brain, and upon finding it rancid set you loose to fly briefly before spattering the ocean rocks with the frothy pink shame of your ignoble blood. May you choke on the queasy, convulsing nausea of your own trite, foolish beliefs.

You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid, nasty and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You're a fool, an ignoramus. Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won't have sex with you. You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in a land that reality forgot.

And what meaning do you expect your delusionally self-important statements of unknowing, inexperienced opinion to have with us? What fantasy do you hold that you would believe that your tiny-fisted tantrums would have more weight than that of a leprous desert rat, spinning rabidly in a circle, waiting for the bite of the snake?

You are a waste of flesh. You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a disease, you puerile one-handed slack-jawed drooling meatslapper.

On a good day you're a half-wit. You remind me of drool. You are deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality of wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted. You are the source of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go.

I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. Your writing has to be a troll. Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of physics that we know. I'm sorry. I can't go on. This is an epiphany of stupid for me. After this, you may not hear from me again for a while. I don't have enough strength left to deride your ignorant questions and half baked comments about unimportant trivia, or any of the rest of this drivel. Duh.

The only thing worse than your logic is your manners. I have snipped away most of what you wrote, because, well... it didn't really say anything. Your attempt at constructing a creative flame was pitiful. I mean, really, stringing together a bunch of insults among a load of babbling was hardly effective... Maybe later in life, after you have learned to read, write, spell, and count, you will have more success. True, these are rudimentary skills that many of us "normal" people take for granted that everyone has an easy time of mastering. But we sometimes forget that there are "challenged" persons in this world who find these things more difficult. If I had known, that this was your case then I would have never read your post. It just wouldn't have been "right". Sort of like parking in a handicap space. I wish you the best of luck in the emotional, and social struggles that seem to be placing such a demand on you.

P.S.: You are hypocritical, greedy, violent, malevolent, vengeful, cowardly, deadly, mendacious, meretricious, loathsome, despicable, belligerent, opportunistic, barratrous, contemptible, criminal, fascistic, bigoted, racist, sexist, avaricious, tasteless, idiotic, brain-damaged, imbecilic, insane, arrogant, deceitful, demented, lame, self-righteous, byzantine, conspiratorial, satanic, fraudulent, libelous, bilious, splenetic, spastic, ignorant, clueless, illegitimate, harmful, destructive, dumb, evasive, double-talking, devious, revisionist, narrow, manipulative, paternalistic, fundamentalist, dogmatic, idolatrous, unethical, cultic, diseased, suppressive, controlling, restrictive, malignant, deceptive, dim, crazy, weird, dystopic, stifling, uncaring, plantigrade, grim, unsympathetic, jargon-spouting, censorious, secretive, aggressive, mind-numbing, arassive, poisonous, flagrant, self-destructive, abusive, socially-retarded, puerile, clueless, and generally Not Good.