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These accusations remind me of the blue curtains. They were bad. Stereotypes commonly have bad traits. Doesn't mean that a character having those bad traits is a racist caricature. For example, a stereotype of Jews is that they are greedy, but that does not mean that a greedy villain is supposed to be a Jewish character. That's just stupid.

I actually lived in Tunisia long before I ever saw Star Wars, I once saw the underground dugout style houses with my own eyes, and I have been out to see the edges of the Sahara, and I did not imagine they were portraying a caricature of any of it when I saw Tatooine for the first time. Something about it was slightly different you know....

And here I was thinking that Jabba was a caricature of American politicians - fat, stupid, lazy, ready to kill on a whim, and unable to speak anything but nonsensical gibberish.

I would take it differently. Jabba was incredibly intelligent, fat, lazy and ruthless.

Putting your newest unwilling slave on a leash long enough that she can choke your fat ass with it is not what I would consider a hallmark of superior intellect.

You don't come to control a major criminal element without being intelligent.

Again, I offer American politicians ans as a sterling counter-argument to that theory.

And here I was thinking that Jabba was a caricature of American politicians - fat, stupid, lazy, ready to kill on a whim, and unable to speak anything but nonsensical gibberish.

I would take it differently. Jabba was incredibly intelligent, fat, lazy and ruthless. You don't come to control a major criminal element without being intelligent.

Mindlessly greedy characters? Nah. But mindlessly greedy characters who have great big noses? That's getting awfully close to a caricature of The Greedy Jew.

I watched the movie having never heard of these claims. I didn't notice anything with the trade federation, but the other two are as blatant a caricature of an ethnicity as you can get. You can't miss them.

Huh.


And here I was thinking that Jabba was a caricature of American politicians - fat, stupid, lazy, ready to kill on a whim, and unable to speak anything but nonsensical gibberish.

The Phantom Menace was quite striking in its overt caricatures of Japanese (Trade Federation), blacks (Jar-Jar), Jews (the flying blue dude who was Anakin's master).

I think that those racial stereotypes are only obvious when one is actively trying to look for them. Or.... you could just sit back and enjoy the story. Because you know, it's actually quite entertaining when you aren't trying to overanalyze it to pieces.

If Star Wars Legos represent offensive racial stereotypes, then they're an accurate representation of the films. The Phantom Menace was quite striking in its overt caricatures of Japanese (Trade Federation), blacks (Jar-Jar), Jews (the flying blue dude who was Anakin's master). So it doesn't surprise me that Jabba is an offensive caricature of someone, too. Par for the course.

In the last elections, The Basic Finns (A populistic, nationalistic party that decided to adopt "Finns" as their official English name, which is outrageously arrogant... So they're usually called either True Finns or Basic Finns) really got a ton of votes in 2011. They had snarky one-liners about most things but did everything they could to avoid taking any clear stances or suggesting any concrete policies and managed to brand their complete lack of expertise as "thinking outside the box"... In effect, they were a caricature of everything that's wrong in politics and yet 20% of people voted them in order to destroy the straw-man status quo... When they won, the only policy on which they had taken a clear stance (anti-EU) was something that other parties couldn't agree to (which was obvious from the beginning), so they had nothing else to make compromises on and thus had to leave themselves out of the government. In municipal elections of 2012, they still had no policies but managed to convince their voters that people should vote on EU even on municipal level and thus retained some of their voters.

So, yeah. I wouldn't use our version of tea party as an example of a proud moment in our democracy.

As for motive, the only thing I can think of is that Kim Jong-un wants desperately to be taken seriously as a world leader. Which is hard to do, seeing as he is basically his own caricature. I'm not entirely convinced he's not the same guy that does that "Gangnam Style" video. Clearly having a nuclear weapon would further one's goal of being taken seriously. The problem is their current business plan seems to be

1. 1). Threaten to develop nuclear weapons
2. 2). Demonstrate ability to attack the United States with nuclear weapons
3. 3). ???
4. 4). Profit

Not sure if they've thought out what would happen if the US actually took them seriously.

Actually, I graduated the officer school of the Royal New Zealand Airforce two decades ago. Military personnel have complete freedom of speech and thought. They just can't present those *in public* without authorization. There is a world of difference between that and your cartoon caricature statement.

people like Lynas and you label anybody who disagrees with their political agenda or policy proposals a "climate change denier" and caricature their position as anti-science.

No, not at all. When someone is called a denier it's because he's denying the science. It is not about disagreement, but about who's denying the scientific facts. Of course a denier doesn't like to be called a denier, but a denier is what he is.

In contrast, an actual skeptic would look at the actual evidence. They would not insist that those thousands of scientists that agree that AGW is real are all cheating, lying, and part of some huge conspiracy.

You are only sexist in saying this is a women's world view. That generalization does not apply to all women. Furthermore, quite a few men push the same control at any cost mantra. You also may not be aware that schools get extra budget to "help" with every student classified as non-conformist. I agree completely with how your better experience went, and think it should be a model used everywhere for male students.

I come by this view by having been on the receiving end of incompetent, dangerous, and hateful school administrators who went after both of my sons. I have the teacher notes imploring me to do something about their normal behavior. I endured a ridiculous meeting called to discuss one of them - a veritable witch hunt by these screaming idiots. The boy had to be pulled out of the school entirely and their actions did damage him for a time. Even years later while waiting in line to vote at that crappy elementary school a teacher came up and still wanted to berate me about the problem kid. Fast forward to highschool: problem kid has a limitless skill set, is two years ahead in math, has had fantastic grades, played three sports last year and this year is working at a university lab after school. His DIY geek projects are a constant around the house, he forgets nothing and picks up new ideas with breathtaking ease.

As an attractive female geek I have been on the receiving end of sexism my entire life because the the world view of some men, not all, is that I should go away and/or just suck up to their weak egos and/or just be their girlfriend. That made me aware of how horrible it is to be attacked, and that fellow students, teachers, and administrators in institutions both large and small will go out of their way to hurt people as a method of self-preservation. When my sons were attacked I didn't it take lying down, had I not suffered the misogynist caricature of what a girl should be I wouldn't have recognized the stupidity behind it and been able to help them.

Only posting as AC so that I can keep my slashdot name intact, where I'm assumed to be a male.

Climate change is happening and has been verified even by studies commisioned by groups seeking to disprove it. Anyone still denying it is either an industry shill or someone with an agenda.

Who are you kidding? "Climate change deniers" is just a straw man: people like Lynas and you label anybody who disagrees with their political agenda or policy proposals a "climate change denier" and caricature their position as anti-science.

And Lynas, in particular, is nohting more than an author intent on selling books using a mix of science, fear, and sensationalism. Saying that he was wrong on GMO isn't much of an apology, it just gives him even more coverage to sell even more books.

Actually, I have done my homework and I think that like with most people on here, your ideas about Iran likely are a caricature of reality. An outrageous caricature, to put it mildly . There have been plenty of inflammatory iranian public statements indeed, but they're no big deal. Often they were an attempt to improve iranian standing with an arab target audience, not an iranian audience, and with relative success. Ahmadinejad has done a lot of effort to 'work' the arab audiences. They care about the Palestinians. The Iranians don't. Arab governments don't either, although this got a bit more complicated with the arab spring.

Any claims that Iran wants to destroy Israel are bullshit. That includes the notorious 'wipe Israel off the map' story. It refers to statements of Khomeini, who claimed that 'the zionist entity'(they never call it Israel) would one day implode - and through its allies, not because of its enemies. In other words, he predicted regime change. In the meantime Khomeini was happy to maintain a secret alliance with Israel, an alliance that lasted through the Iran/Iraq war till Israel's strategic realignment after the defeat of Iraq and the demise of the soviet block, around 1992.

What? Lets talk about the Danish caricatures. The problems was not them, but a long thread of events that created friction, and when the caricature came around, the friction busted a bubble. IoM has the exact same event pattern: If was just the last event in a long line.

This is very revealing thinking ... And it's unquestionably a simple logic fallacy, so in theory you should change your mind.

What you miss is that for every Copernicus or Semmelweiss there are a hundred cranks, and another hundred sincere people who were simply wrong. In the narrative of science that you have been taught, you never hear of the hordes that were wrong in the face of consensus, only the rare, lionized exceptions.

It's a lot easier to be a great iconoclast scientist in your own mind, than in the world. Those who settle for that become cranks. (In many social sciences and humanities, it's also common to caricature and deliberately misunderstand the predecessors, to make your own conclusions seem more original).

It's not enough for the climate contrarians to be in the minority for them to be right. They also need to have different theories, that explain our observations better and simpler than the consensus. They fail miserably in that - in fact, they fail so bad you would suspect them of acting in bad faith even if you'd never looked at their fossil fuel funding.

UPDATE: $461,199 - from 1556 donors!

(How did the FreeBSD Foundation donation counter jump by exactly $100,000 (and 433 donors, avg donation $231) since the last time?! That's a precise caricature of what inept "number fudging" would look like, but please don't jump to this conclusion. Things were ticking much more smoothly when I was involved with Ron Paul fund-raising, but even then there were occasional jitters in the official numbers: checks had to be cleared in batches, credit card confirmations, etc. It makes sense to estimate the running total until you can recalculate it more accurately. I'm sure the numbers glitch on the donation page is just some intern goof, and every penny will be accounted for in subsequent financial reports.)

From the FreeBSD Foundation Newsletter, December 20, 2012 -- Fundraising Update --

Wow. I've been thoroughly overwhelmed by the outpouring of donations over the last few weeks! As of this publication we have raised $460,000 towards our goal of $500,000.

I want to thank you for everything you do to make this the best operating system around. There wouldn't be a FreeBSD if we didn't have you writing code, writing documentation, working on ports and releases, and educating current and future FreeBSD users.

We haven't met our target yet, but we are getting close. Historically, each year, we have been half way to our fundraising goal at the start of December. Going forward, this is something that we plan on changing.

We unintentionally received some interesting press that disturbed a lot of FreeBSD users. This encouraged over 950 donations to come in, this past week. All I can say, is that it was incredible to see this support. One donor commented, "I don't use FreeBSD yet, but I've heard good things about the project, so that's why I wanted to support you." How cool is that?

Your donations help us fund projects to improve FreeBSD, sponsor conferences and summits, purchase equipment to build infrastructure, promote FreeBSD, and provide legal counsel for the Project. In short, it helps us to provide the funding to make this the best OS available.

We've received some great lessons during this campaign. One thing we learned is that we need to advertise our fundraising needs outside of our FaceBook page, blog, and the FreeBSD Announce mailing list.

I hope that as you read through some of our accomplishments this year, you will consider making a donation to the Foundation. We can't do it without you!

I can think of no better major project to donate to than FreeBSD. It is a mighty pillar that feeds many other projects, and any project can borrow code from it for any purpose they want. When you donate to Linux you only benefit Linux, but when you donate to FreeBSD you're benefiting everyone, Linux as well; as well as chipping away at the threat of stagnant monoculture, and making the software industry much more competitive, innovative, and free!

It now looks probable that the $500,000 target will be reached and surpassed, but people need to donate as much as they can spare, even if just $5. How about you?

--libman

Better put all in the hands of the military yes ? Those same fuck ass holes that wanted to start world war 3 during the Cuban missile crisis ?

And your basis for this opinion is... what? Something other than movies, I hope?

Those same fucktards warmongers that wanted to invade Cuba ?

If you mean the Bay of Pigs, you do know that that was a CIA operation, and that the CIA is a civilian agency, not a military one, right? If you mean the JCS recommendation during the missile crisis, that was their assessment of what it would take to remove the Soviet missiles. When Kennedy asked for their opinions, should they have lied to him and not given him honest analysis about what they thought it would take to ensure no missiles remained in Cuba?

I trust the government much more than I trust even one military.

Then you know very little about how decisions are made, especially the high-level kind that you're referring to. Military personnel are often more cautious than their civilian bosses, because they have a better grasp of the actual capabilities and risks involved. When the generals urge a stronger response than what the civilians are suggesting (as in the Cuban Missile Crisis), it's usually because the civilians have an inflated perception of what the military can do -- in that case, the JCS recommended an invasion because airstrikes alone couldn't ensure the destruction of the missile sites. Do the thing properly, or don't attempt it at all. Go read pretty much any memoir by a US president, vice-president, or secretary of defense (regardless of party) who had a serious military crisis on their watch, and you'll see this when they discuss the decision-making process. Bob Woodward's The Commanders is also insightful on this. It's not quite the same dynamic as PHB vs. techie, but there are strong similarities at times.

Further, military personnel have a range of ideologies, just like civilians do. John Kerry, George McGovern, Jeremiah Wright, and Charles Rangel hardly match the caricature you're painting.