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It's a sketch. You don't read the WSJ print version much, do you?

Of course, but they're not supposed to be CARICATURES for crying out loud!

Actually there is a better candidate for who Pangloss is a caricature of.

Noël Antoine Pluche (1688-1761), the author of a highly popular work, Le Spectacle de la Nature (1732), took Leibnitz's ideas and ran with them, and ran, and ran, and ran.

Leibnitz was caricatured as Dr. Pangloss by Voltaire. Dr. Pangloss believed this was the best of all possible worlds and everything happened for the best. Leibnitz only published his lesser works because he sought the approbation of princes and the court. It wasn't till B. Russell unearthed some of Leibnitz's letters and more recondite works that the world came to be better equated with the logical genius of the man. My favorite idea from Leibnitz is the Characteristica Universalis wherein he proposed a sort of calculus cum esperanto which he thought would allow all issues to be made amenable to purely logical resolution. He suggested metaphysical issues could be resolved by persons taking out their pencils (or quills) and sitting down like accountants. "Gentlemen let us calculate" was his battle cry. You can begin to see why Russell, who along with Whitehead authored Principia Mathematica in an effort to base logic in arithmetic, would think Leibnitz to be the supreme logical mind of all time.

If you want some real overanylization, check out this article, written by a UC-Berkeley PhD candidate (seriously).

One of the better quotes:

"What The Overfiend's gigantic, mutated penises and sperm grotesquely caricature, I would suggest, is American imperialism in Japan."

I'm reluctant to shout "Looney!", but...well...no, it really is looney.

If they posted something off the point, you should've said, "Hey, in this case of standands compliant code, Mozilla is misrendering it because of the flow changes."

Instead you went off on a tangent. I've always hated IE's default scroll bar crap, being a person who never got on the IE train (the entire browser feels wrong.. the way it refreshes, etc.. it's a horrid caricature of browsing).

If Mozilla has an internal reflow which doesn't properly trigger when a page which is valid and standards compliant is viewed, that is a bug. File it as such, with that wording. When you sit and see 20,000 new bugs in your mailbox after coming back from a weekend somewhere, you will often times lose track of specifics, and bmark bugs as invalid based on the poor summaries people tend to write.

Yes, they advertise fair and balanced. The other networks just imply it all the time. And I think Fox is fair and balanced - their hosts admit to their opinions on the air all the time, and they do report alternatives (unless you mean the far left dreck that even the major networks don't touch). Furthermore, unlike the other networks, when Fox News gets spokesmen for the other side, they don't get people who are silly caricatures and poor spokesmen - they get the real spokesmen and let them make their case (except O'Reilly, who isn't conservative anyway).

Conservative is pro-big government? really? That's certainly a different definition than I have ever heard!

Conservative has never been pro-big government. It does tend to favor enforcement of different laws than the left does, and it does tend to favor more defense spending, but neither of those are even close to a match for the rest of big government.

I also have not heard them argue for pro-corporate welfare. Can you be specific? Or are you using the left's code word that equates any decrease in taxation with "welfare?"

And yes, they are for going after Iraq. That is not the same as pro-war, unless any advocate of any war is pro-war, and anti-war means no war, no how, no reason, no matter what provocation.

There are people I certainly despise. They lack morals, character, and honesty. They sidetrack us, so we can't provide an antidote to contemporary manifestations of domineering chauvinism. In case you can't tell, I'm talking about Dick Cheney here. One of the first facts we should face is that Cheney's sound bites have kept us separated for too long from the love, contributions, and challenges of our brothers and sisters in this wonderful adventure we share together -- life! I suspect that it can be safely said that this is a problem long overdue for debate. I believe I have found my calling. My calling is to help you reflect and reexamine your views on Cheney. And just let him try and stop me. If one dares to criticize even a single tenet of his ventures, one is promptly condemned as flagitious, reckless, supercilious, or whatever epithet he deems most appropriate, usually without much explanation. Cheney's campaigns serve no purpose other than to abet a resurgence of dangerous, lackluster Fabianism. But don't take my word for it; ask any ostentatious, mawkish spongers you happen to meet. Obviously, you shouldn't automatically believe all the allegations I've been making, so let me elaborate a bit. Cheney claims that it is his moral imperative to convert lush forests into arid deserts. Well, I beg to differ. Contrary to the Rousseauian ideal of the transparency of the general will to itself, he is absolutely determined to believe that disruptive, uncompromising windbags and possession-obsessed lunkheads should rule this country, and he's not about to let facts or reason get in his way. Isn't it historically demonstrated that I sincerely don't know how to deal with birdbrained flibbertigibbets? I ask, because his victims have been speaking out for years. Unfortunately, their voices have long been silenced by the roar and thunder of Cheney's trained seals, who loudly proclaim that Cheney knows the "right" way to read Plato, Maimonides, and Machiavelli. Regardless of those dotty proclamations, the truth is that his smear tactics exude palpable faddism. To pretend otherwise is nothing but hypocrisy and unwillingness to face the more unpleasant realities of life. He is entirely closed-minded. We all are, to some extent, but Cheney sets the curve. He is a psychologically defective person. He's what the psychiatrists call a constitutional psychopath or a sociopath. I'm merely suggesting that it's doubtlessly astounding that Cheney has somehow found a way to work the words "theologicohistorical" and "disproportionableness" into his "compromises". However, you may find it even more astounding that he keeps trying to destroy everything beautiful and good. And if we don't remain eternally vigilant, he will unmistakably succeed. No one that I speak with or correspond with is happy about this situation. Of course, I don't speak or correspond with amoral firebrands, Cheney's helots, or anyone else who fails to realize that just because Cheney and his spokesmen don't like being labelled as "simple-minded megalomaniacs" or "pushy rotters" doesn't mean the shoe doesn't fit. For brevity, I won't comment further on that, but rather on the way that one of the most mind-numbing mysteries for those of us who don't like Cheney is trying to understand people who do. Do I blame society for this? No, I blame Cheney. An inner voice tells me that his proxies are unified under a common goal. That goal is to demonize my family and friends. To oppose nepotism, we must oppose fogyism. To oppose egotism, we must oppose neopaganism. And to oppose Cheney, we must oppose what I call uncontrollable doofuses. I have a dream that my children will be able to live in a world filled with open spaces and beautiful wilderness -- not in a dark, prolix world run by morally crippled soi-disant do-gooders. I unequivocally have a hard time trying to reason with people who remain calm when they see Cheney lower scholastic standards. It's not necessary to go into too long of a description about how he plans to arouse inter-ethnic suspicion before the year is over. Suffice it to say that if he continues to scapegoat easy, unpopular targets, thereby diverting responsibility from more culpable parties, I will be obliged to do something about him. And you know me: I never neglect my obligations. How dare Cheney criticize my values when his are so obviously sleazy? If he wants to complain, he should have an argument. He shouldn't just throw out the word "nondeterministic", for example, and expect us to be scared. To quote the prophet Isaiah, "Woe to ye who convict me without trial, jury, or reading one complete paragraph of this letter". Think about it. Just to add a little more perspective, Cheney's stories about collectivism are particularly ridden with errors and distortions, even leaving aside the concept's initial implausibility. Cheney's arguments are in every respect consistent with the school of sinful thought that tends to sully a profession that's already held in low esteem. Even when the facts don't fit, Cheney sometimes tries to use them anyway. He still maintains, for instance, that the Eleventh Commandment is, "Thou shalt annihilate a person's personality, individuality, will, and character". I myself must openly confess that everything he writes is unreadably desultory. Am I aware of how Cheney will react when he reads that last sentence? Yes. Do I care? No, because a great many of us don't want him to borrow money and spend it on programs that censor by caricature and preempt discussion by stereotype. But we feel a prodigious pressure to smile, to be nice, and not to object to his effrontive expedients. To parody the old song, "Fish gotta swim, Cheney gotta retard the free and natural economic development of various countries' indigenous population." He claims to have turned over a new leaf shortly after getting caught trying to use organized violence to suppress opposition. This claim is an outright lie that is still being circulated by Cheney's minions. The truth is that the space remaining in this letter will not suffice even to enumerate the ways in which Cheney has tried to give expression to that which is most destructive and most harmful to society. I would never take a job working for him. Given his randy, snotty anecdotes, who would want to? A final note: Dick Cheney has made some dangerous assumptions about sniffish sewer rats.

Greens advocate direct democracy as a response to local needs and issues,

Ayn Rand may be a good spokesman, but
she's not much of a philosopher (or
an economist). Some of the phrases of her
mouthpieces in the fiction would make for a
rousing (or at least good) political speech
(even the somewhat corny exaltation of
gold, cigarettes, dollar signs or
d'Anconia's full name; but then she is
not much of an aesthete :-), but
they lack the depth. A brilliant
oration cannot have the analytical profundity
of a boring research paper; and so she, in fact,
who champions fact over feeling, reverts to
arousing people's feelings rather than thoroughly
stating the facts. But I don't think Hayek or
Mill have as many knee-jerk followers (though
they do have enough).

Take Atlas Shrugged. It celebrates
capitalism, but it never shows capitalists
who pollute the environment, say, endangering
other people's lives. It doesn't ponder the
capitalist's dependent on the government - no,
not for the egregious things, there are
plenty of caricature "Bad" guys there, but
consider governmental protection of IP. What
would Rand say were someone to reverse-engineer
Rearden Metal? Would Rearden run to gov't
for protection and scream that he deserved
the fruits of his labor? Those are just 2
examples, there are so many more...

The most visible example is Rush Limbaugh, whose knowledge of science is stubbornly zero, and who thus has indeed stated that mankind is too insignificant to cause such changes.

The thing that Rush often mentions are the various large volcano erruptions that have occurred within written history. Comparing and contrasting these natural events to what industry spews out into the sky.

One thing that's kind of curious here is that I don't believe your views on this would be all that much different than what Rush has presented on his show. He's made comments concerning Kyoto that sound quite a bit like what you're saying.

He sort of becomes this 2 dimensional caricature of the right wing to critics who don't listen to what he's actually saying. Personally, I have my disagreements with where he stands on certain issues, but the show is worth the listen as he rarely shows up without facts to back up his arguments. He really isn't a propoganda mouth piece as is often claimed.

You seem to have rammed into a fucking bus at high speed. Would you like to...

Die instantly in the impact?
Die agonizingly in the blazing wreck?
Survive as a hideously burned and mutilated caricature of a human being?

You seem to be driving at fifty mph in the passing lane while you gaze droolingly at farmsex.com. Would you like to...

Drift blindly off the road?
Decelerate gradually to a complete stop?
Change lanes into somebody's lap with no warning?

I probably won't be buying this, but I hope someday to have a friend who does (take that, MPAA!) so that I can see the scene where Galadriel dispenses her gifts. Frankly, one of the biggest disapointments of FotR (which, largely, I really enjoyed) was the reduction of Gimli from character to caricature. I'd hope to see in that scene some glimmer of the Gimli that, IMHO, should have been, or have confirmed that Jackson simply had no idea of what to do with a dwarf and decided to settle for Stupid Dwarf Jokes.

I think a very pressing issue in the future will be whether future administrations follow Bush's tendency to view the entire planet as the Holy American Empire or not.

Were the presidents before Bush really that different. Except that with no effective opposition Bush feels able to come out and say it.

While we can obliterate training camps and oust dictators,

Very often these turn out to be traning camps which the US people paid for and dictators installed by the US.

we're never going to subject every man who hates us to such abject poverty that he can't buy a box cutter and a plane ticket.

That's probably easier than asking why they should hate you in the first place. Since the answers are probably not what most Americans would want to hear.

I sincerely hope our future President will be some sort of diplomat rather than a caricature of a Texan cowboy.

Actually her or she would probably not have to be too much of a diplomat. They would just need to be radical enough to cease all economic and military aid to all other countries. All too often this ends up keeping undemocratic governments in office. especially where there is an interest for big business involved. Effectivly what would be needed would be a US president who would put the interests of the US people before a few big corporates, before some little country in the easten mediterranian. has no interest in being an emporor and wouldn't be afraid to tell fruit companies "if you want to grow fruit in Nicaragua talk to the Nicaraguan government, don't like their terms, tough" or to tell oil companies "if you want to extract oil in Iran, talk to the Iranian government..."

While we can obliterate training camps and oust dictators, we're never going to subject every man who hates us to such abject poverty that he can't buy a box cutter and a plane ticket. Fighting the signs and symptoms of terrorism may even be more damaging than taking no action at all in the long run. Who will be left? The most hardened and determined? Do we really want to galvanize the will of our enemies and force them further into desperation?

It cannot be to America's future benefit to regard the nations of the world as its subjects. Sadly, I doubt Bush even has the wit to realize that he is doing so. I sincerely hope our future President will be some sort of diplomat rather than a caricature of a Texan cowboy.

Agreed, it's definitely a caricature.

Hi! Sorry it's taken me a while to reply. I think this is going to be my last post on the matter--every post on Slashdot that takes a firm stance on a controversial topic seems to generate at least 3 replies, and thus replying to each reply takes exponential time.

In your post, you've raised some very good points and articulated them well, and I'll try and respond as best I can.

isn't she a video game character? Isn't she already an unthinking item? Is she somehow being hurt by this, or being degraded, when she doesn't really exist? What does it mean to objectify something that is already an object?
This is, of course, true. She is a character in a video game, and therefore it's not possible to hurt or objectify her. "She" is an object already. This point, along with some others that you made, exposes a flaw in my argument that I hadn't clarified. Tomb Raider, and Lara's character, is not itself sexist, nor is it objectifying. If you were to ignore all other video games and focus only on Tomb Raider, it would be absurd to say that her character is objectifying. I was switching back and forth between responding to the overall trend in video games to represent women in a certain way, and the single anecdote of Lara Croft, which exemplifies this trend.

Lara Croft is deliberately given her looks to cater to the male sex drive. So? Is that all it takes to be "objectified"?
Again, no--the specfic case of Lara's looks does not objectify her. However, if you look at the overwhelming trend in video games to visually represent women in ways that are unnatural, and cater to the male sex drive, has the effect of objectifying women. How? By the implicit assumption that these unnatural aspects are somehow essential to creating an ideal female character. Lara is just one example, and cannot "herself" show an implicit assumption. However, when you look at all female video game characters, and recognize that it's absolutely commonplace to make them with unnatural proportions (i.e. large if not huge breasts, tiny waists, ridiculously revealing clothing, and slender, delicate limbs), this reveals that the overall focus in the industry is to emphasize the sexual aspects of female characters.

Let me ask you this: Is there a practical difference between creating a character to look pretty and a woman making herself look pretty?
Yes, absolutely there is, but it's a subtle point that you bring up. The immediate difference that I would point out is that, by and large, men create video game characters in a form catering to a male sex drive, whereas women themselves choose how much effort they will put into emphasizing their sexual aspects. But I understand what you are saying, and your next few sentences explain it further:

Both are trying to appeal to the sex drive. Is she being objectified by doing that? Is she objectifying herself?
Yes and no. She is objectifying herself to some extent, in the sense that she is emphasizing a part of herself that is superficial, but I am not saying that this is a Bad Thing. Everyone (men and women) are free to focus as much as they want on their sexuality. Everyone is, to some extent, a sexual object--but that is just a fraction of what people are. And, just because someone is sexually attractive does not mean that other aspects of their personalities are lacking. See, in this sense, it is difficult to say that anyone can objectify themselves, because objectification implies disregarding (or regarding as less important) all other characteristics of an individual. So simply dressing up is not an act of self-objectification--it depends on the whole picture, and whether or not the person chooses to ignore or play down their other qualities.

It's worth reiterating that when I said "objectification," I was really referring to an overall trend as opposed to an individual case.

Are men objectifying them when they look at them and think "she's hot"? Is that a bad thing?
No, not necessarily, and no, it's not a bad thing (at least, I certainly hope not!). Again, you have to look at the whole picture--simply recognizing that someone is "hot" is not objectifying, nor is it objectifying to flirt with someone because you find them attactive, or compliment them, etc. However, if you focus _only_ on a person's sexual aspects, and disregard or downplay the rest of them, that is objectifying.

And if there is nothing wrong with having a sex drive, like you say, then why is there something wrong with fantasies or characters or appearances that stimulate it? And if there is nothing wrong with that, why is there something wrong with "objectification"?
This is a good point--inherently, there is nothing wrong with any particular fantasy or character or appearance that stimulates a sex drive. The only problem is when it becomes the rule to emphasize these qualities. In particular, it is troubling that these qualities are overwhelmingly emphasized in female characters and not in male characters.

The question "what's wrong with objectification?" deserves to be answered separately. Once again, I meant the term to refer to the overall trend (which I really think is irrefutable--do I have to list examples?) in the video game industry to sexualize female characters in somewhat ridiculous ways. The reason this is bad is that it is an inaccurate representation of women, and the fact that it is so widespread has the implication that this is somehow an ideal physical form for women to have. This can have the effect of changing the way people look at women, and how women look at themselves--by getting men and women alike to focus inordinate amounts of attention on a woman's sexuality. I realize that playing a couple RPGs is not going to make someone objectify women--but this image is found everywhere, on television, in movies, in print media, advertisements, and video games. This inundation of unrealistic images of women that are created to emphasize their sexual aspects is clearly capable of changing the way women are looked at in real life. This likely leads to many women internalizing these images and seeing them as an unreachable ideal--which can lower their self-esteem. Obviously, how an individual reacts to these images depends on many factors, but I think the trend is still pretty negative. Do you feel comfortable with this?

I found Infonaut's post here [slashdot.org] informative: sure, she's a caricature of the voluptuous female form. But as he puts it: "she's not stupid, she routinely guns down bad guys, she's strong, and she's capable". Clearly she plays a more complex role in the game than that of a mere sexual toy. Is she really objectified? If she is, why is it bad?
This is a very good point, and again, I apologize for relying so heavily on the single example of Lara Croft instead of pointing out the overall trend that is the heart of my argument. These positive aspects of Lara, in particular, show that she does play a more complex role in the game than as a sexual being. In _this_ sense, she is quite a bit better than the norm for video game female characters, which, despite their positive attributes, tend as a whole to be physically weaker and more dependant than their male counterparts (i.e. magic users. Look at Squaresoft's female characters--even the fighters like Tifa and Yuffie from FFVII are routinely weaker than the male characters. Not convinced? Look at Resident Evil. This is, in fact, pretty much the rule.). So, Lara is great in that sense. However, you can't deny that Lara is also an egregious example of sexualization--if you really look at her model, you'll realize just how different it is from a normal female, that those differences are purely sexual, and that they are absurd to the point of making it impossible to do the acrobatic feats she performs in the game. She's simply not muscular enough in requisite places! But again, if this was a single example, and she was simply a character who happened to also be incredibly attractive, it wouldn't be a bad thing. The trend is what I have a problem with.

In my experience, the word "objectified" is arbitrarily defined to support the misguided view that men's sex drives victimize women. If you've got a better definition, I'd like to hear it.
Well, hopefully I've explained my definition already in this post. I'm reluctant to say the word "objectify" again. It's an interesting thing though, what you said about men's sex drives victimizing women. I think you're right--men's sex drives don't victimize women in and of themselves, just like women's sex drives don't necessarily victimize men. What does victimize women is how men's sex drives are catered to in the media. It seems to me that all media forms choose to portray women based primarily on their sexual appeal, and I think that's negative for the reasons I listed above.

The only other thing I'd want to address is the idea that the same thing happens with male characters in video games (which, by the way, is what I was responding to in the first place!). This is unfortunately very complex, because it requires that you make some assumptions about how male and female sex drives are catered to. I would argue (hopefully without stepping outside the realm of the obvious) that men, as a whole, are more visual in their sex drive, while women are more abstract (i.e. weighing more heavily emotional attachments). That's not to say that women aren't attracted to men by physical appearance--but there's more in the mix. There is also the fact that male characters in video games don't tend to wear revealing clothing (not nearly as revealing as female video game characters!). And lastly, as was my main point before, male video game characters are given visual attributes that are useful outside of a sexual context. Female video game characters are not.

Eck... I've spent far too long just writing this to adequately proofread, so I hope that I'm not rambling. I appreciate the time you took to articulate your points, and I hope that I've clarified my own points and responded to your questions sufficiently.

Let me get this straight. Lara Croft, by virtue of her (ostensibly) being attractive, is objectified, an object, an unthinking item. Okay... but isn't she a video game character? Isn't she already an unthinking item? Is she somehow being hurt by this, or being degraded, when she doesn't really exist? What does it mean to objectify something that is already an object?

Okay, so maybe that's not quite what you meant when you said Lara Croft was being objectified. So let's look at your second attempt to explain yourself. Lara Croft is deliberately given her looks to cater to the male sex drive. So? Is that all it takes to be "objectified"? Let me ask you this: Is there a practical difference between creating a character to look pretty and a woman making herself look pretty? Both are trying to appeal to the sex drive. Is she being objectified by doing that? Is she objectifying herself? Are men objectifying them when they look at them and think "she's hot"? Is that a bad thing?

And if there is nothing wrong with having a sex drive, like you say, then why is there something wrong with fantasies or characters or appearances that stimulate it? And if there is nothing wrong with that, why is there something wrong with "objectification"?

I found Infonaut's post here informative: sure, she's a caricature of the voluptuous female form. But as he puts it: "she's not stupid, she routinely guns down bad guys, she's strong, and she's capable". Clearly she plays a more complex role in the game than that of a mere sexual toy. Is she really objectified? If she is, why is it bad?

In my experience, the word "objectified" is arbitrarily defined to support the misguided view that men's sex drives victimize women. If you've got a better definition, I'd like to hear it.

Rich people still get their portraits done... And artists in Central Park, and 34th street make a killing doing caricatures and portraits of tourists.

Not quite dead... Just not as popular as it once was.

-Sara

"... QUALIFIED US workers to satisfy demand. Notice I say qualified. Not 'History Teacher turned MCSE' or 'Accountant turned Flash "Programmer"'. Qualified Software Engineers, Ph.D MEs, Chem-Es, etc. There just aren't enough..."
Some /.'ers has a seriously vile attitude about "Johnny Come Latelies", and "MCSE's". As if all of a sudden , by pointing out that so and so doesn't have an acceptable certificate or , god forbid, a diploma, or actually did something besides program from the age of 5 that you are actually proving something by caricaturing these individuals.
Doesn't prove a thing except the fact that some parts of the IT industry are guilty of being narrowminded and prejudicial. Motivation,intelligence, experience and performance should be critical for success in a field, not who your frat buddies were, or how you wear your hair, or how well you lie on your resume.
There are many factors involved in selecting the "right" person for the "right" job. I've noticed that some talent in the IT world could use a few years doing something else so they'd be a little more realistic in their expectations and get down off their pedestals.

> In practice, however, I get a sinking feeling in my belly at the idea that censored versions of "cultural works" (movies, books, whatever) will be going into wide distribution (not sure how wide, but certainly wider than it currently is should this be judged a legal practice). this uneasiness is compounded by the realization that community pressure will push people towards only renting from the "nice store" that doesn't push "dirty movies" (yes I'm caricaturing, but social pressures _do_ work this way).

As long as the original is available, then there can't by definition be censorship.

Yes, social pressures do work this way, but that's what supposed to happen - that's what the phrase "community standards" is all about.