Slashdot Mirror

You are misusing the word "luddite". A luddite is extreme. A luddite doesn't use a typewriter, a luddite smashes your typewriter with a rock, then feels guilty for having used a rock as a tool.

The Luddites weren't Amish. Even that would be a caricature of Amish beliefs. What the Luddites were against were -new- technologies taking over jobs. They were fine with the technology they already had, not so fine with shifting tides making them obsolete.

Yeah, putting a net under a bridge is just a few steps away from taking away all kitchen knives and "nerfing the whole world", right? If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were doing a caricature of bad slippery slope arguments. And apparently we aren't even reading summaries anymore, because if you had, there's no possible way you could have missed the part about how a significant portion of suicides are highly impulsive. Or the fact that all speculation aside, there is actual empirical evidence that "reducing the availability of highly lethal and commonly used suicide methods has been associated with declines in suicide rates of as much as 30%–50% in other countries".

Well it isn't like NSA Director Mike Rogers isn't a caricature of General Buck Turgidson....

Well shit we're fucked.

It is a shame that so many people are going to miss this.
Mods remember that caricatures are funny.

you'll find out about slavery under that marxist regime.

DPRK isn't Marxist, it employs its own brand of socialism called Juche, whoch has nothing to do with the Russo-German Marxist tradition. Credit where credit due to though in an 8 word senstence, you'd shown that you have no clue about Marxism or DPRK, that, my friend takes talent.

Communism, we can all lounge around navel gazing our way through coffee table philosophy books as equals

Not what Communism or Marxism (try not to use the two interchangeably, they're related but not synonymous) is actually about, it's about class struggle, and "equality" (in terms of rights) comes from wresting the means of production out from bourgoisie hands and ultimately eliminating the bourgoisie, all are fundamentally 'equal' in that all are proletariat. The failing is that it tends to replace the class division between proletariat and bourgoisie with a class divide between proletariat and ruling class.

Oh wait, no, someone has to make the coffee table and write the book

You've entirely missed the central point, that Marxism is fundamentally a labour movement. There is no shortage of proletariat in a Marxist system. It's the same as capitalism in this regard, if there is no one to write the book or make the coffee table, then there is no book to read and no coffee table to sit at, The state compellence applies largely to matter of and requirements of the state; heavy industry, the defense industry and military. Farmers are already farmers and factory workers already work in factories (only the ownership of the means of production have changed -- the state, rather than the bourgoisie)

You have a very caricaturized, and franky uneducated conception of the concepts you're talking about. But I guess that's the glory of capitalism, even if you don;t sit at the coffee table or read the book, you still reserve the 'right' to speak 'authoratively' on the subject you know nothing about.

looks like power does flow from the barrel of a gun after all.

The quote you butchered is meant in the context of revolution.

When you pretend to be a foolish version of someone else......

It's not terribly hard I'm afraid.

If you really have a valid point to make, argue against your opponents' best points. Don't make an ad hominem attack against a caricature of the opponent.

If only you could hold everyone in the 'discussion' to such high standards.........

Hopefully you have a "Plan B." One would think, ideally, one of your plans would be to not rape people. I mean, just throwing that out there. After, I dunno, the third or forth news story I was all like "Wow, they're really raping a lot of people in India all of a sudden. Did one of our fraternities start outsourcing or something?" And you guys do know that raping people is bad, right? I mean, based on your reaction to this movie, it does seem like you're aware of that. So maybe try not raping people for a while, see how that goes for you.

The irony here is that India is not raping a whole lot more people all of a sudden. Rape is an endemic problem in every society. Rape is about domination and subjugation. Which is a very male thing. Not a national, regional, religional thing. A male thing. Especially an alpha male thing. The "big swinging dick", if you will.

The irony here is that India, a country that has viciously perpetrated a male dominated society, now finds itself being forced to "introspect". Imagine that. Golly gee! This is what every city and country needs to do, right? Except, now, besides Indian being a land of snake charmers, elephants, and call centers, and all the stereotypes thereof, it is now also the caricature of rape.

This is not to deny the real issue. But the over-simplified generalization that everyone is going to draw is all the stuff you are going to read and hear about.

Lovely, that.

"But but ...

When you pretend to be a foolish version of someone else, in order to mock them, you only make yourself look foolish.

If you really have a valid point to make, argue against your opponents' best points. Don't make an ad hominem attack against a caricature of the opponent.

As a fierce American patriot, I have to recognize that what originally made America so special was the core liberal values that are now much more universal, esocially in Europe. (PS - I do not mean the "Liberal" caricature that is standard fodder on American media today, but basic liberal values as defined universally: universal suffrage; free press; no state religion; representative democracy with regular election cycles; military subservience to civilian, elected control; respect for private property rights; and full legal equality for all citizens.) More so, given the seemingly mad rush to insanity encompassing us here today, I would encourage you to give very, very serious consideration to staying more "European". Sadly, we are becoming much more "Idiocracy" than we should, and I see no real benefit to becoming American. Unless, that is, your religion is the Gun, and you are willing to make regular sacrifices of your children and fellow citizens to appease this American God(TM) In that case, sign them up and arm them well and train them well in how to pray to their new God. (PS - I own 3 firearms: a Ruger 10/22; a 1911 ACP clone; and a Ruger .357 magnum. I like my guns a lot, but I do not love and worship them. If the local police - and I live in a rural Georgia county, so that ain't likely - for whatever reason asked me to register and/or test fire my weapons for them to help with solving a crime, I would have no problem with that. But, that's the difference between liking something and worshiping/sacrificing citizens to something.) Cheers!

From your sources:

parody:

A form of speech protected by the First Amendment as a "distorted imitation" of an original work for the purpose of commenting on it.

satire:

Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Acronyms, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia.
See also: caricature, distortion, irony, parody, ridicule
Burton's Legal Thesaurus, 4E. Copyright © 2007 by William C. Burton. Used with permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

I would trust Black's over TFD, and a lawyer over either of us. Still, there's nothing at either of those URLs that appears counter to the work being parody or satire. The definition is even more broad than that of Webster's.

There's a legal blog post (which is not by me and is not case-specific legal advice by anyone) from Legal Process Outsourcing Services that has much more about the topic. The "Elements of Parody" is exceptionally clear and important here.

The original Power Rangers is campy and laughable. Showing gritty topics in a saccharine sweet, good guys always triumphant without any real struggle or doubt way that the children's shows often do is worth satirizing.

From Webster:

Full Definition of SATIRE

1 : a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn
2 : trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly

Definition of SATIRE

a creative work that uses sharp humor to point up the foolishness of a person, institution, or human nature in general
Synonyms lampoon, pasquinade
Related Words burlesque, caricature, parody, spoof, takeoff; comedy, farce, sketch, skit, slapstick, squib; derision, ridicule; cartoon, mockery, travesty

The wave-particle duality is not a quantum superposition like you're describing (which would break down under measurement), although the caricatured manner in which we teach it might lead you believe that. It's a little more simple than that.

In our world, we are used to two kinds of things: particles, and waves. We are used to this distinction, and describe most things in one of these manners. Sound is a wave, a billiard ball is a particle, vibrations are waves, bricks are particles. If something is a particle, it has certain properties, like position, size, and shape. If it is a wave, it has certain other properties like wavelength, frequency, and amplitude. In addition, there are some common properties like velocity and direction.

When it came to studying light (and many other quantum stuffs), we can't directly see what it's made of. But we can take measurements of each "puff" of light, and infer its properties that way. When we do this, we notice that puffs of light have some properties which are particle-like, and some which are wave-like. So the term "particle-wave duality" became popular to describe this new material that was behaving simultaneously like a particle and a wave. It doesn't make sense to ask which one it is - a "puff" of light is neither a particle, nor a wave, but a different kind of stuff which has some properties of each.

Millions of people bought Guitar Hero and Rock Band to enjoy a fantasy of being a rock star. I don't think anyone bought these games expecting to actually learn how to play music.

Have you learnt to become a space marine from playing Quake? Have you learnt to rule a nation by playing Civilization? Have you learnt to draw graffiti by playing Jet Set Radio? Have you learnt to be a hand-to-hand combat master playing Street Fighter?

Unless a game is explicitly designed as a teaching device, you are not likely to learn anything more than a vague caricature of the skills involved in the activity it simulates. Nobody expects to learn any activity based on a video game. But somehow, people constantly criticize Guitar Hero and Rock Band for this.

Why do you think anyone expects these games to teach them to play a real instrument?

Some people like to challenge themselves once in a while. By your logic, we should never move beyond our elementary school readers.

No, that's going by your strawman caricature of my logic.

By my actual logic, you should probably not try to skip directly from little golden books to Ulysses without reading incrementally more difficult things in between.

Gee, there's only one possible "point of reading"? And here I thought that one of the primary "points of reading" was to understand what the author was saying... which you can't very well do if you don't understand the words.

And if you have to look up every other damn word, you'll forget what the first part of the sentence said by the time you get to the end of it.

I have taught graduate-level courses at universities, and one of the things I strongly encourage students to do is look up recurring words that they don't know.

If your students are having to do that so often -- and that's the important word: "often!" -- that using an e-reader with a built-in dictionary provides a significant advantage, then what were they doing during their entire 'education' up to that point? Shouldn't people have already developed a decent vocabulary before becoming grad students? How do they even pass the verbal portion of the GRE?

Yes, that's a great exercise, and if you're in the middle of a fast-paced novel, it's probably a reasonable idea. But if you're actually trying to understand what an author is saying, and there's this word popping up a dozen times that you don't know, simply guessing what it means is missing an opportunity to learn something.

Well shit, if you've already tried figuring the word out from context and failed, and then it keeps coming up over and over again, then of course you should go look it up -- that's fucking common sense! Clearly, from your response, I overestimated Slashdotters' grasp of the obvious.

And recurring words are great for that kind of exercise, because it provides periodic reinforcement, which is one of the keys to learning natural language and recalling new things. Most authors -- even those who write "stories" and fiction -- tend to have "pet words" that aren't part of the standard core vocabulary everyone uses. When you see such a word and look it up [or figure it out from context], each time the author uses it again you'll reinforce that word. Suddenly, by the end of the book, you'll have expanded your vocabulary by a dozen or a few dozen words. (And you're more likely to remember the meaning than if you had just memorized the word for a vocab test or something -- seeing practical usage will aid recall.)

So you agree with me, then!

The ONLY difference between Anarchism and Libertarian is that the Anarchist believes you should NOT be free to force someone to work for you, whereas Libertarians think that is an imposition on freedom. Much like FOSS/BSD.

IF you're going to go "Oh, that's not the Libertarianism *I* or anyone I know profess, so it's not true!", then I put to you that YOUR assertions about Anarchism are LIKEWISE caricatured and un-nuanced (with the added problem that your caricature is incorrect, whilst mine are at least accurate of libertarianism and anarchism).

It's odd you start off with "you might not want to paint with such a broad brush" then go full "Landscape sized brush" yourself, the only difference being you think yourself libertarian (the GP's "broad brush") and not anarchist (YOUR broad brush).

Next time you want to tell someone off, remember this episode.

That is complete bullshit, and besides, you shouldn't reelect them then. The people that work the system work it every day. The lazy voter, on the other hand, shows up once every two years, if at all. Every representative government is a perfect reflection of the voting public, at worst it is a slightly exaggerated caricature. It does nothing without the public's full consent.

>people who, make no mistake, want to destroy our way of life.

Don't be melodramatic - for the most part they don't even know what our way of life is, except for the part that involves spending the better part of a century manipulating their domestic politics for our own ends - overthrowing legitimate democracies, installing sadistic dictators, selling them powerful weapons, etc. And honestly I'd rather like to destroy that part of our way of life myself, I just don't think it can be done via militant action.

For the most part they just want to drive out the foreign devils that are slaughtering civilians and raining death from above, whereas the warlords calling the shots probably secretly love having the foreign devils around giving them legitimacy and bolstering recruitment numbers to leverage in their domestic power struggles. Anything they know about our "way of life" is going to be the same sort of racist caricatures that pervaded US media during WWI and II - propaganda designed to dehumanize the enemy to bolster support for the domestic warmongers.

There is no doubt the occasional extremist who actually would like to destroy our way of life, but without a vast support structure they're just another random terrorist - maybe they manage to take out a few hundred people, maybe even a few thousand - tragic, but statistically insignificant - you chances of dieing in a car crash are much better. And if they do have the vast support structure, then it becomes a business, and like any institution its primary goal becomes self-perpetuation - not something usually furthered by picking fights with opponents that have you vastly outmatched. Though admittedly occasionally you get an Al Qaeda situation, where a crumbling institution deliberately provokes a dragon in order to give themselves a new patina of relevancy rather than fade gracefully into obscurity.

Meanwhile, virtually every "terrorist plot" interrupted in the last decade plus has been initiated by agent provocateurs working for the FBI, etc. *Maybe* you could argue that they're trying to "weed out the bad apples", but the available evidence looks a lot more like they're creating the very threat they're using to justify their ever-expanding authority.

In movies machine gun fire does not generally sound like machine gun fire.
Explosions are caricatures of the real thing largely done with diesel to create the big fiery plumes we love to see.
A stick of C4 going off does not create a giant fireball. It's just not good eye candy.
 

I wonder who comes up with the idea and subsequently sponsors these projects? Some Agent Smith, some execufuck, someone with good intentions and a subtly flawed technical execution?

More likely it's just another a Dread Pirate Roberts --- not far distant from a real-life caricature of Boris Grishenko and with just enough money to finance his start-up. Yes! I am invincible!

:-) -- My caricature of Muhammad. Please don't kill me.

How about this?

oO:-|>>

Is that enough to be blasphemy?