Slashdot Mirror

...there would be no guarantee of privacy on snail mail. America has become a caricature of itself. Freedom has been eroded in all counts. When freedom is traded for safety, society suffers.

I don't know how Katz does it, but every sunday he reviews the exact same movie that I had gone to see. I only see one movie per weekend so it is kinda creepy.

Anyway, I saw Saving Silverman this weekend and I have to say that I haven't laughed out loud at a movie that hard since American Pie. Sure it was based on absolutely silly plot twists, but what I found redeeming about it was that it didn't try to rectify or explain the idioicy. Instead, it embraced stupidity with a wholehearted bliss. Nothing in the movie is meant to be taken seriously. I mean come on, the Nun factor was completely random and entertaining (lets bust out some power squats!).

To me, it seemed that this movie was completely outside of reality. It seems to be written from an adolescent boy's subconscious. All of his fears: marrying a psychotic psychologist, discovering that he's gay, being fired from subway, having coach shit in your yard, all of these are caricatures of fear, and damn funny at that. I will admit that the movie had some obvious crutches at points (the way silverman and sandy fall in love for no reason, when he jogs 30 miles to the convent to get sandy and she just up and forgives him, etc.) that show obviously bad editing/writing, however, I am willing to suspend my critic's hat for an hour to roll on the floor at cursing nuns and Neil Diamond.

The only thing I hated about this movie, was the two rows of 13 year olds behind me. Jeezus.

One more thing, at the end, did you notice that the movie ended but noone got up to leave? I was seriously getting weirded out. The credits were rolling, Neil Diamond was singing, but noone in the theater moved to leave. Crazy.

Indeed. Actually, it would have been cool if Ken Burns had included "Coal Black And De Sebben Dwarves" (caricature of Cab Calloway as Prince Chawmin', lots of West Coast Swing musicians on the soundtrack) and "Tin Pan Alley Cats" (Protagonist modeled on Fats Waller) as part of the "Jazz" episode covering the WWII years.

Both cartoons, once you get past their very mild and NOT mean-spirited stereotypes, were literally love letters to Jazz by master cartoonist/rabid Jazz fan Bob Clampett. They rock HARD and it's a shame that they are on the official AOL Time Warner "Banned List". The caricatures in the two cartoons were direct caricatures of either famous Jazz musicians Clampett admired or real Jazz musicians Clampett knew because he frequented Swing clubs on Central Ave. in LA when he wasn't cranking out cartoons in Termite Terrace, WB's animated shorts studio.

If you want to see truly mean-spirited, evil stereotypes, watch beloved, celebrated WB cartoonist Chuck Jones' "Angel Puss." Everyone loves Jones and castigates Clampett for "Coal Black" but "Angel Puss" is a cartoon only a KKK Kleagle could love. A stereotypical "pickaninny" boy is given "two bits" to drown a cat. Makes my fsckn skin crawl just thinking about it.

Thing is, you can't judge these cartoons on their merits anymore, because stupid AOL Time Warner is SITTING ON THEM in their vaults. They should grow a backbone and make these cartoons available again.

----
http://www.msgeek.org/ -- Because you can't keep a geek grrl down!

Think about Road Runner. Wile E. Coyote is victim of explosions, is trampled by rolling boulders, ran over by cars, and walks away from that. He tries to fly by means of caped costumes, and that plot fails because he catches fire not because flying with a caped costume is not that simple.
Think about Porky in the Bugs Bunny cartoons, when he goes around hunting and more often than not ends victim of his carabine and the worst he gets is a blackened face.
It is sure caricaturized violence, but still, if we admit that kids are so easily impressed (and I believe that they are not as much as we "grown-ups" think they are), then I find it just as likely for a kid to grow violent from watching Anime as it is for that same kid to try and fly wearing a cape, or he could be conned into a feeling of invulnerability from - say - guns ("I'll just get a blackened face"), or falls from high places, or just about anything else you see in those funny cartoons.
About being exposed to violence: think about the structure of most popular fairy tales. You'll find that there is plenty of violence and cruelty in those. Are we to conclude that fairy tales could transform kids in violent monsters?

In other words, there would be oh so much more to think and discuss about the matter than 99.99% of all journalists did, do or will ever think of doing. Also, in the end, the sanest thing coming to mind is that parents should really spend more time with their children, and talk to them.

"South Park - bigger longer and uncut" is (unsurprisingly) a very well-thought story about exactly these sort of things.

If you want to see a good British film, with a fairly realistic take on the people at the bottom of the pile, check out Ken Loach's work. That's the real shit. Guy Ritchie's work is fake.

&gt But I've often wondered about this: if we have super-cool super-hero Captain America, does Lithuania have Captain Lithuania? And more importantly, does France have Captain France? Would Captain France wear some black & white striped shirt & an aerodynamic beret? Would his main weapon be a day old baguette?
Yes, we have SuperDupont. I don't know exactly who is Captain America, and what is the mood of his adventure, but SuperDupont is (was, it's now old) a funny read. Ironic, caricatural and wholly stupid.

> But it's getting more and more difficult to come here expecting anything intelligent, when there are so many more mature, interesting webboards out there

IMO, Kuro5hin is lame. I keep the K5 Slashbox up, and still read the titles semi-regularly. Most of them are drivel. Now and then an interesting one comes up, but if I decide to drop by I almost always find that the discussion is drivel too.

Sure, there's lots of trolls and clubies on Slashdot. And lots of martyrs like you, who pretend to be a tiny minority with penetrating insight, whereas in fact you're a large plurality who pretty much conform to the caricature you accuse others of.

But if you browse at 1 most of the time, and mentally tune out the remaining drek, you can still actually learn a lot on Slashdot. A lot about technology, and a lot about what's going on in the social world too.

And sometimes you'll hear opinions that you don't agree with, and people will bring you around to their side if you participate in the discussion intelligently.

Forgive my rant; I just get tired of all the self-righteous bashers of Linux and Slashdot. If you don't like an article, don't read it. If you don't like Linux, don't use it. But don't pretend to be a clearsighted sage who rises above the ambient bullshit, when you're just bitching the same bitch that dozens of other morons post in response to every fuckin' article we get here.

--

I think that there is a danger in setting up a caricature of an ordinary geek (the eponymous teenage 'slightly pudgy' white male). This can become a self-fulfilling groupthink, where others who don't fit that mold oddly don't fit in with those who feel they are outcasts!

Which isn't exactly a question, but maybe a wish for Clinton, that as he grows and matures, he sees the wonderful extraordinariness of those who share his talents, and learns to make the connections that will nourish and carry him through life. Looking forward to hearing your answers...

I'm glad that there are still geeks out there that aren't ashamed to admit to enjoying steriotypical geek food like Pizza and Beer. I remember years and years ago I was reading some book on learning UNIX (I can't for the life of me remember what. This was a long time ago...) but it suggested that if a user got stuck with a particularly tough problem, and they'd tried all the obvious approaches, they could probably convince their local UNIX guru to give it a shot in exchange for pizza and beer.
In any case, lately I've noticed that a lot computer geeks have been trying very hard to shake that reputation, image, and social stigma. The modern "tech boom" has created this new social respect for people who used to be misunderstood, and so many of these people (luckily not including me) have been trying very hard to shake those easily caricatured "typical geek behaviors" while they have their time in the sun.
I'm glad to see traditional geeks, down to caustic remarks about other people's coding (who else but a geek could that get worked up about it that it's a personal matter!). I'm glad, it makes me smile, 'cause that is the sort of person who made life interresting for me as a young geek, and hell, i hope they are around for ever...

• Consumer apps - stuff that runs on a Windows desktop
• Enterprise apps - stuff that runs on Unix servers.
• 
  It doesn't understand professional workstation apps. Thus we get QCad, which is a caricature of a CAD program. There's a lot of room for commercial software there.

I emphatically agree about the portrayal of the Baron. This series compounded an error David Lynch made in his version of Dune: The Baron was a bad caricature, a villain out of a Jack Chick pamphlet. I expected him to shout "Haw haw!" as Leto's ghost rose from his body, that's how Jack Chick the Baron was.

In the book, the Baron is not stupid, oafish or even particularly loud. His menace is much quieter. That's a more impressive bad guy, IMO, than the series chose to show us.

--

I agree with you about the ballot design. The design for Canada's election ballots has remianed unchanged for most of the 20th century. It's boring, uncreative and extremely clear. Name on the left, a white circle on a blank background on the right where you put your X.

But it doesn't have to be an X. That's the recommended mark, but you can put a check mark or a dot or a caricature of John Diefenbaker in that white circle and it still counts. It's the voter's intent that's important.

I think making the X the only legal mark is crapricious. What's so special about an X?

JohnnyB - johnbowman.net

I recall reading medieval English commentaries on what a disaster it was that the serfs weren't staying on the land anymore.

Having lived in small towns, I don't share Kotkin's sentimental view of how wonderful life is there. More likely he had a "recovered memory" of Leave It to Beaver.

The more correct conclusion is that, as more people have the freedom to live where they choose, they'll move there, and it'll be disruptive, as all change is. That has had some negative effects (the real-estate feeding frenzy in SF, for one), and some positive (greater mobility, financial rewards going to intelligent people for once).

Kotkin reminds me a bit of Mike Davis: trying much too hard to fit into the nonfiction Cassandra niche, and lacking the sense of proportion needed to draw insightful conclusions. What's left is a caricature that is sure to be made required reading in thousands of community-college sociology classes for years to come. Pity the poor students.

I had the *exact same feeling*. Ender's Game was a good, fast and compelling read. Speaker for the Dead was an amazing broadening and deepening of both the subject and the characters. Xenocide had great quotes, great characters (though both taoism and puritanism get caricatured rather badly), great situations, and a shitty deus-ex-machina ending that fit like a soccer ball in the soup. for that reason I haven't read Children of the Mind (or whatever the following sequel is called), although I'll probably pick it up if I see it cheap enough in a 2nd hand bookstore. As for the 'shadow' series, I really don't find the premise all that compelling, nor the characters of Bean or Peter. Give me Valerie's story anytime, and I'll buy it ... no wait, no need, it's already in Speaker for the Dead.

The DUNE prequels suffer from the same problem that afflicts a lot of historical fiction. They were written, not so much to tell a story, but to provide explanations and descriptions of a number of events which we already know happened, and (if possible) to give an ironic twist to those explanations. It's "connect-the-dots" fiction. So DUNE tells us that the "Old Duke" died in a bullfight? Well, let that death be the result of a Harkonnen plot, and let the young Duncan Idaho (who has a ludicrously involved history all his own) be the one who detects the plot, too late. So DUNE tells us that Gurney Halleck's sister died in a Harkonnen brothel? Well, let her die before his eyes, then, and let Glossu Rabban be her executioner. So DUNE tells us that Vladimir Harkonnen is Jessica's father? Well, we can kill _four_ birds with that stone: not only can we explain how that happened, but we can make the Reverend Mohiam Jessica's mother! and we can now explain how Baron Harkonnen got fat, too! and we can bring the doctor Wellington Yueh into the story too! what incredible irony!

There's no suspense in HOUSE ATREIDES and HOUSE HARKONNEN, really. The authors feel compelled to introduce new characters, like Dominic Vernius and his children, or Abulurd Harkonnen and his wife, but we know that they must die, because DUNE itself has nothing to say about these _ex post facto_ creations. They serve, by their deaths, merely to nudge the "permanent" characters in prescribed directions. Kailea and her son Victor by Leto serve only to explain why Jessica broke her oath with the Bene Gesserit, and bore not a daughter but a son. Abulurd Harkonnen serves only to explain why Glossu Rabban became such a monster that he acquired the nickname of "Beast". And so on.

It doesn't help that the prequels capture few of DUNE's strengths, but faithfully replicate many of that book's weaknesses. The Harkonnens, just as in DUNE, are ludicrously extreme in their barbarism and cruelty. The writers don't add anything to the one-note characterization of Baron Harkonnen in DUNE: he's just the same, at once both sinister and ridiculous. In addition, I was a little revolted that the prequels continued Frank Herbert's tradition of making monstrous caricatures of his homosexual characters: Vladimir Harkonnen is a narcissist, obsessed with the perfection of his own body, who takes men for lovers only because he loathes women. The DUNE prequels also continue Frank Herbert's method of telling, not showing. DUNE tends to bog down in extended passages of internal monologue (too many paragraphs of various characters' gloating over their own cleverness, for one thing), and the prequels do no better.

hyacinthus

The only thing I can think of is that I hope that since we have become so centrist in our electoral-college-influenced political thinking, the difference won't be all that noticable. Giving how each politican pandered to all the special interest groups, one can only hope that the victor (George W, ya think they planned that oblique reference to the guy? "I knew George W, and you sir, are no George W...") will ignore them all equally as well as they pay back all that money in well-deserved favors and legislation.

Garry Trudeau, in a caricature of the new head honcho, would have penned an empty suit, I suppose. Is that better or worse than a feather or a bomb?

One last thought: It will be said that Ralph cost Gore the election, and so it should. In the future, such men can control the destiny of our country, but only vicariously... and through the eyes of only the enemy of his vanquished, erstwhile ally.

Oh, one more thing, and then, like all those tired, tired journalists tonight, I will surrender to my exhaustion: (/nasal on) What is the deal with the media telling us that Florida's election tallying computers are on the fritz after they retract that projection of a Gore victory?

I'd like to know!(/nasal off)

http://www.jabin.com/wavs/hello1.wav

satire (str) n.

1. a. A literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit.
b.The branch of literature constituting such works. See Synonyms at caricature.

2. Irony, sarcasm, or caustic wit used to attack or expose folly, vice, or stupidity.

Yes, it is true that the characters I created are somewhat caricatures but their purpose was to illustrate particular types.

I have done some sort of work continuously for the past 27 years (ever since I turned 16). Sometimes it was digging ditches or bussing tables for minimum wage, sometimes it was being a heavy equipment operator or an engineer for 6 or 7 times minimum wage.

As a result, I have lived next to all sorts of people and the characters I created are not at all uncommon. In particular, I have known more of the John-type than I can count (as will anyone who has done construction or similar work).

Certainly, the Jack type is at risk of being wiped out in an economic downturn but there are no guarantees in life. Even in the US we are only promised life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

As far as James is concerned, I have seen several times people inherit millions in a family business and then lose it all within a few years because they weren't up to managing it. The James character is different, he inherited his start that is true but successfully maintaining a company through the years, especially when there is a payroll to be met, is hard and stressful work. He deserves the credit he gets for the employment that he really does continue to make available.

All I have been saying is that some people are not good with their money, that these people are (as a result of the their lack of money skills) typically poor, and that all taxing them is doing is managing their money for them (they get back all their money and more in government benefits).

Therefore, it makes sense that their taxes (their government managed money) are a higher percentage of their income than people who are better off and who are managing more of their own affairs.

Therefore, there is a logic and fairness in a regressive tax such as a national sales tax.

As far as how long people work, I am all for people living however they like. Myself, I was a "professional student" for over ten years and I lived very much a non-materialistic life.

Then I decided that while that was fun in my 20s it wouldn't be so great in my 70s so I went to work. I then found that I really enjoy creating things and getting stuff done. That's fine, I used to be a philosopher and now I am a business person. I can see both sides.

Maybe the problem is that some people have trouble reaching a balance between the material things they want and the amount of effort they are willing to make to earn them. As a result they are unhappy and feel that they have somehow been cheated by others.

Well, yes, I happen to know some poor people pretty well, or people who have been very poor, and I don't have to look very far: my wife. While I personnally grew-up in a well-off family (my parents are physicians), my wife grew up in a poor family, and we've spent a lot of time confronting our experiences.

As for your examples:

1- John is a moron, but John is a highly caricatural and biased example, and he is definitely not typical. He is an exception, and a system is not designed to deal in priority with exceptions, but with the mainstream. By this, I mean poor people who really run into difficulties, even if they are using their money in a very rational way.

2- Jack can succeed in a strong economic environment, but he will simply fail during a period of depression because opportunities just don't exist. In this case he may need indeed some help from the government. Besides, if Jack was living in a country in which the welfare is generous, Jack could quit his factory and still receive a full salary from the welfare for 6 months to one year, during which he could concentrate full-time on starting his business. The welfare is also a safety net that encourages people to take risks.

3- James is born in a golden room, good for him. But what creates employment is not his own achievements, it is the company and the wealth he inherited from. Wealth and employments depend on his company, his wealth and his luck rather than on his merits. Thus, claiming that he's a wonderful guy to whom the society should be thankful just because he _happens to_ be rich is an imposture, even if it is a very common one. Also, in a similar vein, note that some (many) people do not become rich by actually _creating_ wealth, but just by taking it elsewhere. These people have consequently made others dependent on their wealth, but cannot in good conscience claim they now are the nice guys who are providing employment.

As far as your opinion on working 8 or more hours is concerned, well, you may not understand people who don't really feel a need to professionally accomplish something, but there's no reason why this point of view should be enforced to people who disagree. Many people are hedonist, and can find real happiness by enjoying the world surrounding them, or collecting simple pleasures (gastronomy, art, litterature, sex, whatever). Others accomplish great things by other means than their profession. It can be via human relations, via their family, their hobbies -unfortunately many hobbies canot be transformed in a job to make a living-, etc...). Once again, I don't see why a system should make it mandatory to work hard in something they're not necessarily interested in (quite franfly, how many people are really _happy_ at work?), just to be able to live in decent conditions.

I can certainly endorse at least the title of your comment.

Nader speaks to the Middle Class. He certainly doesn't represent the Upper Class or the Working Class.

He's like those Middle Class Marxists one finds on college campuses. "Stand Up For The Worker's Rights" they exclaim as they rant and rave about some adventurist band of terrorists in Nicaragua or Bolivia. You know who I mean: middle class elitists who carry around a caricature of 'the noble workingman' in their hearts.