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And then would you expect him to writhe and choke under your grilling, as he transformed into a sweating, hapless caricature of a daytime TV witness duped by the lawyer's cunning simplicity?

"Just answer the question, Mr. Fidler. Yes or no.", you'd firmly cut in over his stammers, his face strained with his barely contained vitriol. But then, he thought, why was he having to answer these questions? He wasn't on trial; he was merely there to demonstrate his tablet's example as prior art. How foolish to let himself get so caught up in the drama of it all!

I don't find either momentary popularity or lack of litigiousness to be a relevant measure of pre-existence. I also still find Dieter Rams' designs to be the direct basis of Apple's design aesthetic, whose works I'm surprised Samsung has never cited as one of their inspirations. But who'd want to listen to such an obviously biased anti-Apple/American hatemonger here?

Some art is bad. Doesn't make it not art.

I understand that many people don't like projects like this. That's fine. Others might disagree. But no matter what—there's no reason to insult the entire discipline because you don't like one project.

As an artist whose work is very different than this, I still can't help but be disgusted every time I see someone talking about "artists" in quotes, or with an extra "e" on the end (as they do elsewhere in this discussion), or making silly comments about blank canvases and reductive caricatures of conceptual art and uneducated statements about what art "has" to do—that's actually the position that the onion comment is making fun of: the conservative assertion that inauthentic "crap" art and artists are damaging society (in a classic moral formation as "sicko painters" and in a contemporary misguided-fiscal-conservatism way).

Even if those imperative statements were unproblematically true, they still wouldn't answer the just-this-side-of-trollish questions at the top. Why not drive around for half a day collecting random crap, then toss it all in a public square? What if that was beautiful?

Again, if you think people in the US are paying more for the same or inferior service, you have zero comprehension of the facts. Americans receive more health care services, goods, and procedures than the rest of the OECD, they wait less, and by most metrics they have higher quality of care.

That doesn't necessarily mean Americans are healthier; people choose different tradeoffs with regard to lifestyle, diet, etc.

The fact that people choose to consume more health care- and therefore spend more on health care- as their income rises has nothing to do with just giving away money to insurers and some nebulous and malignant profit-gouging "health care industry," and I think you're quite aware that's a red herring.

You act as though there is one level of health care everyone absolutely needs, and that everything beyond that is superfluous; that's absurd. The vast majority of people throughout history lived perfectly normal and productive lives without having regular doctor visits, without ever seeing a dentist, without ever visiting a physical therapist, etc etc. All non-emergency care is basically elective. But most people find that their quality of life and longevity are improved when they undergo elective treatment and therefore they are willing to spend more to receive more.

(Note that when talking about the costs of health care and the need for a socialized system, people often fall back on the caricature of the "industry," because if people think of individual providers they can understand that a doctor should charge the market rate for his or her services. If his or her skills are in high demand, charging a commensurate price is not "gouging," it's the only way to properly reward them for providing such value and the only reasonable way to allocate the scarce resource of their time and services.)

I read "Children of Thunder". And that General who was running for Prime Minister (and who later dies from simulated exposure to a nuclear blast, courtesy of the "kids") was just a caricature of a BNP candidate. I didn't see anything really profound about that story or even a need to be profound.

Yeah, they sure managed the hell out of the risks of invading Iraq and completely unregulated credit default swaps.

The thing you're neglecting to consider is that those arose out of managing risk, but it wasn't necessarily *those* risks. (He never said it was about *successful* risk management.)

Take invading Iraq. The risk the conservatives were managing was the threat that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, was in league with Islamic extremists, and would gladly attack the United States any chance he would get. (Again, I never said they were *accurate* risks.) If you remember the tone the conservatives were using at the time (and weren't too liberally enclaved so that you could actually hear it correctly), you will recall it was was motivated primarily by the fear (the risk) that the US would suffer another 9/11.

Regarding credit default swaps* (or more accurately the lack of regulation of credit default swaps), that comes from conservatives managing the risk of an totalitarian, inefficient government. Conservatives are afraid of having some DMV-like government agency come in and say "you can't do that with your money!". They're less concerned about the risks that the credit default swaps will crash and burn, because crippling monetary losses only happen to bad investors, and "I'm a good investor".

Yes, if your views of conservatives are some sort of caricature back-room cigar-smoking fatcats who invaded Iraq with the intention of getting into a morass, and promoted credit default swaps to deliberately crash the US economy, then you might be dismissive of the thought that conservationism is about risk management (or fear, if you want to put it that way). But I find politics makes much more sense if you apply Hanlon's razor to it. As hard as it might be to believe, they really do mean most of what they say.

*) Which is slightly ironic, as credit default swaps were originally intended as a risk management tool. At their core, they're basically an insurance policy against another investment, but one that can be abused rather severely.

"But she's clearly advocating for greed as a motivating factor, when viewed through any outside lens."

A big part of the Objectivist philosophy is to never take or accept something one has not earned via one's own efforts. So "greed" cannot possibly be involved, if you accept that the common use of the word implies exploitation of others (as in "corporate greed"). But I admit it is somewhat dependent on your definition. That's what I mean when I say it.

"Her villains were caricatures of attitudes..."

Yes, definitely. She exaggerated to get her point across. So? I disagree very strongly that it did not represent real actions by real people. Remember, her whole philosophy was built around things she saw while growing up in the Soviet Union. Power-grabbing under the guise of "helping" the worker.

The roving band of nitwits seems clearly constructed above as a generic term for people who dislike Rand, but alright.

Rand didn't actually invent a new definition of selfishness - she tried to positively connote the existing one as part of her "enlightened self-interest." But she's clearly advocating for greed as a motivating factor, when viewed through any outside lens.

As far as (B), I don't think she did. Her villains were caricatures of attitudes that don't actually exist - their motivations and construction is so far removed from reality as to be useless to model the genuine possibility of abuse in the guise of altruism.

I'm pretty sure the drones have been put to thorough use on missions that don't involve US citizens. If you want to (rightly) criticise the US, making caricatures that make no sense doesn't help you (the military has such an unrestrained urge to play with their toys that they refrain from testing them on the plentiful non-US-citizen targets? Seriously?).

What you may not realize is that storm is a caricature of your posts in this thread.

No, that's what you distorted his words into meaning.

For him as an administrator, a public face, that was part of his mission in terms of outreach. Is that so upsetting to you that you can't conceive of any diplomatic utility to NASA?

Right-wing pundits confused it, willfully, for changing the entire scientific mission of NASA.

While completely ignoring how many times the previous administrations had made such claims which they never got upset about. Or even the rest of the interview where he talked about other things NASA was doing.

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/talktojazeera/2010/07/201071122234471970.html

Go watch it, transcribe the whole thing. See how overwrought your histrionics really are.

I am sorry that apparently Charles Bolden is not a perfect speaker and could be misinterpreted, but that doesn't excuse how you are engaging in splicing bits of his words into a caricature of the truth and manufacturing a mountain out of a molehill. That it's part of a larger overall pattern though, shows that it's more than just an errant stroke but a deliberate and intentional course of duplicity that is only used to stir up outrage instead of engage in productive discussion.

On the other hand, you can't show such a pattern from Charles Bolden, can you? He's not going around saying the same thing every day. No, he's just sorry he said something that could be mischaracterized and corrected it. In contrast, say Mitt Romney, denies saying any such thing at all, even as he repeats what he just said about it.

It's good that you checked yourself, though the half-dozen or more replies pointing out your error rendered that redundant.

Blaming your mistake on the website is still your fault. Basically it compounded your error.

Which is pretty obvious, you've embraced the caricature of the environmental movement as enemies to everything so you can blame them for things.

Then you don't have to do anything because it's somebody else who won't let you. All their fault, not yours. Seeing the pattern yet?

As somebody else already pointed out there are tens of thousands of square km of area already covered by various things. But considering that is beyond you, just blame your phantom opposition.

I sincerely doubt that anyone thinks that way, excepting of course the caricatures you've built in your own mind.

People don't care so much about discovering life on other planets because the only planets we'll ever reach are the ones in the solar system, and at most those might have a few bacteria on them. You will never live to see contact with so much as an extraterrestrial blade of grass. Nor will I, nor anyone else alive today, nor any of our children or grandchildren. Depressing, maybe, but it's the truth.

People (yes, even the religious ones) used to get excited about the prospect of finding civilizations on other worlds. Then reality kicked in, people realized they were more likely to find bigfoot hiding under their bed, and everyone stopped caring.

There's this other even better method I heard of: don't catch it in the first place.

You're right! Children born with HIV (or infected through breastfeeding) are so stupid, reckless and careless! They need to fire up their time machines and kill their parents before conception. Patients receiving improperly screened blood transfusions are so stupid, reckless and careless! They should instead refuse treatment and just hurry up and die, rather than risk unwitting infection. Victims of rape by others who are infected are so stupid, reckless and careless! They should just... not get raped... somehow. Newlyweds, having been tested and one of whom having received a false negative, are so stupid, reckless and careless! They should magically know the test was incorrect and choose not to procreate.

Incidentally, while you're moralizing about the poor life choices of caricatured mythical drug-addict buttfuckers (or whatever other poorly conceived notion of the stupidity, recklessness and carelessness of people infected with HIV), you might want to consider the infection risks before you dig up the corpses (without help, lest you lose your boner) of Ayn Rand and Ronald Reagan for that threesome you've always wanted.

Do you realize how stupid, reckless and careless you sound?

The accurate picture of what environmental activists do is irrelevant. The caricature of them being hysterical chicken littles that chain themselves to (insert object of their objection here) is all you hear from their opponents. It's a convenient straw man to paint the other guy as completely unreasonable when you're trying to woo people to your side of an issue. I think this is what the GP was referring to.

It doesn't matter that only a tiny handful of people ever did chain themselves to anything; it only matters that you paint anyone that disagrees with you as being just like those crazy people.

--Jeremy

The Office is funny because the characters are clearly caricatures of badly behaving people.

Harassment should take intent into account, just like many other crimes. Mere offense is not enough to confirm that actual harassment has occurred (although that is the currently accepted definition). Sure, if Dwight Schrute were a real person, he'd be in jail for myriad assault and arson charges. If Michael Scott were a real person, do you think that a few inappropriate jokes would mean that he intended to demean, belittle, or harass his employees?

I'm betting submitter is talking about "That's what she said" jokes a la The Office.

That's what he, loser of a sexual harassment judgement, said.

The Office is funny because the characters are clearly caricatures of badly behaving people.

Yes, those lobbiests paid for by Fossil Fuel industry have, for 30 years or more, interfered with government doing its business.

However, because there are vastly more people and companies than sovereign governments, these lobbiests cannot stymie EVERY company, and some have gone ahead, in the face of the lobbied-for aid to fossil fuels making their product effectively dumped on the market at below cost.

Meanwhile, many governments who you would caricature as communist have done great things already. Denmark, Norway and more recently Germany.

In fact, the governments who have done nothing (at best) have been the ones who believed they should wait and let "The Free Market" do it instead. And those countries are late to the game compared to those countries whose governments started action.

Looks like the free market is slower than government at effecting change.

Making a caricature of wealthy people as selfish sociopaths will only lead to worse problems.

Please debate the issue without resorting to stereoptypes and without sowing discord and hatred.

No. Marxism is larger than you think. Marxism is a philosophy of _everything_. It contains an economic theory (based on the labor theory of value), a philosophy of history, human nature and society (based on the "materialist conception of history") and even a philosophy of knowledge itself (based on the idea that truth is not absolute, but relative to class interests). The fact that the Chinese government has partially liberalized the economy (banking is still state-controlled, for example) does not mean it has displaced Marxism. Even Lenin opened the economy for a time.

No, there is no one coherent "Marxism." Even the authors you mentioned are all over the map in terms of their philosophy. Hell, even your favorite Catholic church has strong Marxist claims, or have you already forgotten the social justice encyclicals of JPII?

"Latest" in relation to the entire lifespan of Marxism.

What makes these men dangerous to freedom is the cultural Marxism they have developed. See, for example, England sending people to jail for criticizing homosexualism.

That's false. You are referring to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. The Waddington Amendment specifically protects the right to do so. And what does that have to do with Marxism? You could just as easily chalk that up to overzealous Humanism.

Your professors never mentioned Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Antonio Gramsci, Herbert Marcuse or Theodor Adorno? That is an extremely atypical university.

No, it's not. It is extremely atypical of your mental caricature of a university.

The US is not even remotely close of defaulting; Europe has many countries close to defaulting.

And many countries which are growing quickly(like Germany).

The US has grown an average 0.3% per year in 2009-2011; Europe has shrunk 0.3% per year.

Citation please. Not sure of the context.

The European population is aging, because each European woman has only 1.6 children. Yet their strong Marxist unions will not allow increasing the retirement age. The situation is unsustainable; expect the current troubles to get worse.

Do you just ignore countries like Germany when it suits your narrative? Do you not know that they have in fact raised their retirement age to 67 and are in discussions about raising it to 69?

And, the excess government spending is of course caused by socialism.

Ah, yes, those darned socialists, their concern for their fellow citizens and their unwillingness to be worked to death. How dispicable.

And the lack of fertility is caused by atheism. Religion has a well-known effect on fertility. It is no coincidence that Israel and the US have far greater fertility than other countries with similar income levels.

Ah, if only we atheists really could take the credit. Alas, it is mostly due to the availability of contraception, the educational level of females in a society and financial mobility. Religion does seem to cause spikes, but then, that argues that your little churches will be outbred by Muslims in short order, so I suppose you are screwed either way.

You mentioned Christianity as an authoritarian dictatorship, and that is from the Middle Ages.

Certainly, it wielded that power then. It attempts to do so now, and would certainly do so again if ever given the required political power. Something which I am very much opposed to.

They were (partially) due to ISLAM, NOT CHRISTIANITY. I am precisely protesting against this ridiculous, intellectually dishonest practice of mixing Christianity and Islam in the same bag.

And Fred Phelps is driven by Christianity. And Scott Roeder was d

Your portrayal of primitive societies demands some evidence. While there have certainly been (and continue to be) primitive societies that feature one or more of the conditions you describe—perhaps even all of them—it's hardly safe to assume that this is representative of those societies in aggregate, much less of human society prior to the advent of civilization.

As far as the use of the term "communism" to refer to a government system, this use is radically at odds with the meaning as conceived, and your use here to defend the claim that communism has always been totalitarian rises to the level of tautology. Of course all communist regimes are totalitarian if you consider totalitarianism a requisite feature of such regimes. But it requires dismissing a tremendous body of work describing what is meant by communism. For sure, the regimes you reference have adopted the term without adhering to this conception, but that isn't damning to the conception, only to the implementation. You can only draw a conclusion that it's damning to the conception by using this tautological framing.

Your use of this to attack the philosophical framing of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs" is not a sound one, even if we accept all of the prior argument. You haven't shown how the one leads to the other, only claimed it. And don't take this to mean that there are no valid criticisms to be found, there certainly are; you just haven't offered any.

Proceeding to reference a work by Ayn Rand is suspect in its own right, particularly because you don't reference anything but its title, which amounts to little more than a wink and a nudge. How does Rand's work in Atlas Shrugged show that "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs" is totalitarian or leads to totalitarianism? Speaking for myself, and putting aside the nasty taste it leaves in my mouth even discussing Rand, this isn't how I read her work. Her dystopia doesn't much resemble that of, say, Orwell*; she portrays a world run incompetently, bureaucratically perhaps, but ultimately not from a centralized power but rather a broad, caricatured groupthink. I'll concede that I never finished reading Atlas Shrugged, despite several attempts, because I have little patience for ham-fisted tomes; it may be that that novel progresses to a more canonical dystopia than other works that I've spent more time with (particularly The Fountainhead).

* Incidentally, while Orwell was an outspoken critic of the Socialist regimes emerging in the 20th century, he was a proponent of another approach to communism, particularly that of the anarchists like those in Spain, and he threw in with them in their fight not just against fascism but against the Stalinist communists who eventually allied with Spain's fascists. Ultimately, his critique of Leninism/Stalinism/etc carries much more power than Rand's by being substantially more clear in its understanding of totalitarianism, and his ability to distinguish that feature from its corrupted philosophical underpinnings.

Speaking for myself, I would argue that it might be right to say that Leninism or even Stalinism is an inevitable consequence of classical Marxism—that ultimately the Marxist formulation of communism is corrupt or at least flawed—but this brings us straight back to the point that even Marx and Engels identified other implementations of communism which conflicted with their own.