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The action figure does have a larger head, so I'd say there's an argument for parody.

Tough to make that argument - aren't most action figures big-headed? Aren't all caricature action figures big-headed? At that point, you've got a tough road to hoe to say that that's the definitive point that makes your parody legitimate.

You'd like to see them both lose. You don't want to root for either of them.

In this corner: The patent system. The outcome of years of rent-seeking by corporations, which has twisted it into a sick caricature of its intent. The idea that it promotes anything except incumbent lockin is long since passed.

In this corner: The NCAA. The modern incarnation of a plantation system, holding out hope of progress to "student atheletes", most of whom are barely students and many of whom fail as atheletes. They're left with long-term life shortening injuries. In the inner-city, millions of youth look to this system for hope. The plantation masters rake in $billions in profits. One of the few places where we could actually use a union, we don't have it.

When watching a fight between two evil things, you know it's not possible; but you wish they could both lose.

Let's see who am I going to think has a better understanding of the real world: a woman who successfully pulled her country back from the brink of destruction, or a comedian whose only claim to fame is doing a bad caricature of conservative commentators. Oh yeah, Margaret Thatcher said that long before Stephen Colbert made his statement.

and fifth is pics of Mohammed.

That's probably a good thing, because it seems to me that any time someone has made a caricature of Mohammed available, they've had fatwahs issued against them or have wound up stabbed to death by crazy Islamists.

Oh and here I thought you were actually interested in a discussion, my mistake. Try not deliberately caricaturing my position and then we'll talk some more.

I tend to agree that it was the best so far, but I also think SGU had so much untapped potential that became entangled with the trappings of soap-opera caliber relationships and irritatingly pointless antics where they returned to Earth via the stones. I don't care about what's happening on Earth. I don't care that the HR lady's lesbian relationship is strained being 20 kabillion miles from her lover. I'm in this more for the science and the vast promise of the entire universe.

I did think a few things were quite well-done:

• I greatly enjoyed the universe. Instead of landing in yet another deciduous midwestern forest like every stargate seemed to point to, the planets in SGU had radically different terrain. Ice planets, deserts, wastelands, jungles... very few of which had even signs of civilization. Space in SGU was much emptier, mysterious, perilous, and realistic.
• Along with that, I enjoyed the music (not the crooning pop montage at the end of the episodes). It... really felt "spacey" to me. :)
• I thought the aliens were very well-done in this series -- especially the little guys on the seed ship. They were truly alien and unknown, unlike the Wraith, who stomped about in their dingy scary ship wearing scary makeup and scary clothes and hissing scarily at the camera for the umpteenth scary time. The scariness of the wraith was so exaggerated that they simply became ludicrous caricatures of antagonists.

I'm not going to shed tears at its departure, because while it had potential, I got the feeling the writers would never really get around to harness it, being instead trapped with a middle school mentality amidst the intrigues of the crew. It's a shame, though, because they did get many things right.

Rodney was exactly like Sam except:
He was less competent, casting scientists in a bad light (go go sci fi channel appeal to nerdy science types)
He was male (go go appeal to sci fi male viewers!)
He never grew, personally (go go appeal to nerdy types)

He was Sam, with all the good parts removed, and a dose of embarrassing nerd caricature thrown in.

When we get a "normal person" running for national office (Sarah Palin), she gets ripped to shreds for being plebeian.

No, she gets ripped to shreds for being a geographically, historically and etymologically bereft idiot. She is a caricature of a 'plebeian' in her designer clothes and private jets.

Politicians are forever trying to get themeselves associated with the 'common man' with usually limited success because politics isn't about the common man. It's about control and influence. With a few startling exceptions, it's about various degrees of psychopathology. No one who runs for office nationally can ever be considered 'normal' unless you are using the term to mean 'orthogonal'.

This being the UN, I imagine they would also want to prohibit 'defamation of religion' - a motion often championed by Islamic countries, still horrified that filthy westerners could allow caricatures of Mohammed to be published.

The funny parts are the jokes normal people wouldn't get, often on Sheldon's whiteboard. They do have some things wrong, though, like only one of them wearing glasses and none of them being fat. Once in a part about Sheldon having no friends, when he said "I have 200 friends on FaceBook" he should have said "I have 200 friends on sashdot", but I'm glad they got that wrong -- there are already too many non-nerds here.

Often I see all four of the nerds being extreme caricatures of myself. Sometimes that makes me cringe, but still... MMIE plays on stereotypes as well, just stereotyping a different segment of society.

The one thing I don't like about it is the laugh track.

The Evil AI had been done before with Demon Seed (1977), and while HAL was redeemed in 2010 when his programming conflict was explained, at first glance he acted pretty rogue in 2001. But I totally agree on the other points. Vinge had only published True Names one year earlier in 1981, and Gibson wouldn't publish Neuromancer until 1984. Tron was ground-breaking in so many ways that it was mindblowing in 1982. The dialogue could be pretty weak though and the acting feels a little over the top at times (Jeff Bridges' character sometimes feels to me like a cubist caricature because he's like The Dude, but charismatic, manic, or suffering from Asperger's depending on the part of the movie).

But on the other hand... He may be an attention whore. And he very probably does have an anti-US agenda. And he's just as likely to be a rapist as any other person accused of rape without any other evidence. And WikiLeaks' supporters would do well to concede those points in order to make the broader point that ad hominem attacks and caricature of the organization don't make the real crimes exposed by WikiLeaks go away.

Let me give a few examples from what's admittedly the only Moore documentary I've seen: Bowling for Columbine. I'll also add disclaimers regarding the fact that it's been nearly three years since I've seen the film, and that while I'm more left leaning than many of my evangelical-right friends and family, I do land comfortably to the right of about 99% of slashdot...

-In the film, Moore's most central theme is that "guns should be outlawed, or at the very least ludicrously regulated to the point of de facto outlaw". The individual he interviews that is against government weapons regulation is a borderline caricature, seemingly recruited straight from the looney bin to prove the point of "shifty eyes man shouldn't be allowed to possess the nuclear weapon he wants". If Moore was genuinely seeking to make a point well, he would have had a more normal person present their view with full knowledge that the truth would have won out. He did just that with the nice Canadian lady who refuses to lock her front door despite numerous break-ins.

-Moore may have had a point about ammo being readily available at K-Mart, but failed to include the fact that K-Mart had been in the process of evaluating the removal of gun ammo from its shelves long before he "brought the press". The movie was clearly slanted to make it look like it was his own doing.

-Moore tried to get an "interview" with Dick Clark...for sufficiently broad definitions of interview. Clark was clearly on his way somewhere, and Moore's 'guerrilla questioning' was asking all kinds of loaded and inflammatory questions - There's no way Clark could have come out of that looking good, whether it be through apology ("ZOMG he KNEW about all of this, and only NOW, after I ask the questions, is he making changes"), denial ("ZOMG he won't even admit there's a problem!"), or avoidance ("ZOMG he won't even discuss it with me!"). Moore himself wouldn't respond to such tactics much more gracefully than Clark did, if Sean Hannity knocked on his front door and asked him loaded questions while Moore is still in his bath robe.

-Moore villainizes Clark for the poor conditions the fudge serving lady works in. There were admittedly issues as Moore correctly points out, however he made it seem like the lady was a step away from slavery. Working at a fudge stand might not be the most glamorous work around, and it's not like the woman was able to save up for a Mercedes, but the job is hers, and it's a fairly secure one. Yes, it'd be nice if there were something closer to home for her, ideally one that paid better, but at the end of the day the alternative is most likely a position that doesn't pay as well and is likely even further away from her home. What was his solution? Have Dick Clark pay the service staff the same as the CEO's? Have Clark fold up shop so the woman's job disappears? Both? I'd be glad to be proven wrong by someone whose memory of the suggestion Moore made for the woman's financial situation is better than mine. Without a solution, the point rings hollow.

These are just a few examples of how Moore made his delivery to someone like myself, someone who leans somewhat-right-of-center, significantly more difficult to accept. The conclusion I came to was that if it takes shifty eyes guy and loaded surprise-interview questions to make his point, then his point must have issues of its own.

Actually, later in the article it says they even went so far as to credit him along with a bunch of others as "talent". Yet they didn't pay him.

I'm guessing he recalls the meeting and fails to recall the waiver of likeness rights he signed during said meeting. That, or he signed something that flat-out said that they were doing research among multiple people, none of whom would be compensated beyond a credit, and that the result would take lifelike tidbits from multiple people to inspire one fictional character's traits.

And what if there was no waiver? Those things exist for a reason, and you're well illustrating the proper use, but their counter argument seems to be along the lines of...

The other, bigger, part suggests that Rockstar based the in-game personalities on a collection of caricatures and stereotypes – Boys ‘n the Hood-style – rather than anything, or anyone specific.

It is possible that the design team was confident that the generalization defense would be sufficient and that they wouldn't require any actual paperwork.

I'll agree with the comment above on Atlas Shrugged not being an overt paean to psychopathy, but I have to agree with the GP that Rand's "philosophy" is bankrupt and psychopathic at its core. (I use quotes because, from the two main books, I didn't really get much of a philosophy at all, just kind of a pep rally. Maybe it made sense at the time, as a counterpoint to some radical communist sympathies or something, but it didn't seem realistic or philosophically useful to me. It's a caricature of a philosophy that we use to discuss actual philosophies.)

I thought The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was a much better outline of what an anarcho-libertarian utopia might look like, and fun to read to boot. (I'm not an anarcho-libertarian, and I don't think it's quite realistic, but at least Heinlein tries to be plausible.) I like to point people away from Rand and towards Heinlein, while pointing out that it's still an unrealistic extreme when you look carefully. Then you can take Milton Friedman and bang on his ideas to get even closer to practical reality.

I'm pretty much as cynical and misanthropic as the next guy. Yeah, the mass of sheeple are willfully ignorant and unambitious. But the vast majority do their jobs and earn their keep, and we need them, even from a perspective of enlightened self-interest. Yes, there will always be freeloaders, and politicians, etc. They all end up being reflections and parts of ourselves if we look at the big picture (like reflecting for a moment on all people that were essential to making such a miracle as a modern automobile what it is today, for example).

There are quite a few problems with Heaven..

It's difficult to imagine what part of us actually goes to heaven. I don't see how I could be happy there knowing that anyone is being tortured for eternity....Having to spend eternity singing the praises of the most powerful and emotionally needy being in creation really doesn't appeal to me.

I think the problem with the 'heaven' you're describing is that it was cooked up by people who weren't interested in it making that kind of sense.

The heaven of the New Testament, which is said to be "within you", also doesn't seem to me to very much resemble the pearly gates caricature of Hollywood and AM radio preachers.

I don't think of it as a place a person or a part of a person goes. Conceiving of it is more like trying to look at something that's under water. You see what reflects off the surface, and not what's underneath. But then when the light is right, you see that you were staring right at it and it was there all the time.

We're there now or we are not. Same with hell. There's nothing magical about brain death that suddenly makes it real, or changes the status of whatever part of us might or might not have survived death. Either a part of us stands outside of our temporal experience, even while we are living, or it is not real after we are dead either.

No, slashdot is pro-apple.(1) You'll be virulently downmodded(2) if you criticize the great one (Jobs).(3)

(Score:3, Insightful)

That comment was redundant and off-topic, not insightful.

(1)Argument By Generalization:
        drawing a broad conclusion from a small number of perhaps unrepresentative cases. (The cases may be unrepresentative because of Selective Observation.) For example, "They say 1 out of every 5 people is Chinese. How is this possible ? I know hundreds of people, and none of them is Chinese." So, by generalization, there aren't any Chinese anywhere. This is connected to the Fallacy Of The General Rule.

(2)Hypothesis Contrary To Fact:
        arguing from something that might have happened, but didn't.

(3)Straw Man (Fallacy Of Extension):
        attacking an exaggerated or caricatured version of your opponent's position.

Interesting. I thought Adam Smith specifically supported patents and copyrights. Could you show me where in his works he said he doesn't? Please, go look it up. See what he actually believed, read Wealth of Nations yourself. Despite the libertarian caricature of him, Adam Smith believed that government regulations were absolutely vital to the functioning of a free market, that government should grant copyrights and patents, enforce contract law, build roads and infrastructure, and basically do everything it is now doing in the economic sphere.

Adam Smith WAS NOT a libertarian. Do not try to rewrite history to make him one.

Marx makes sense because he's mostly right. Some of his observations are so obviously true that they stand almost shoulder to shoulder with natural law: "It [religion] is the opium of the people", for instance, is only untrue in the sense that it understates the case.

One key problem with Marx (and democracy, and republics, and communism, and socialism, and just about every other -ology, -ism, and -cracy) is that the implementations are very poor. Our republic in particular is an example of great intentions gone horribly wrong over time, instead of correcting towards the ideal implementation.

When I was a young man, "papers, please" was a joke, a straightforward mocking of the idiocy of the Nazis, to be delivered in a German accent because only the Germans would be so evil. Today it's the law of the land within 150 miles of the border, as are warrentless searches and detainment without probable cause, taking of personal property and funds with no recourse and no recompense, secret "no-fly" and "no-buy" lists, direct invasion of private communications, banking information, and more; ex post facto laws, forbidden to both federal and state governments, are on the books everywhere; the commerce clause has been literally inverted; the judiciary has usurped article V powers; it's like a caricature of "everything that can go wrong, will go wrong."

So don't confuse a scholarly description of a system, or even a constitution, with the flaws of the people and systems which implement it poorly. Personally, I much prefer a religion-free constitutional republic with an underpinning of capitalism, which in turn is buffered by treating corporations via regulation like the dangerous psychopaths they generally are; but I don't get to get my way, and that's the end of it.

It doesn't make my ideas religion, or unworthy of speech or consideration. It just makes them goals to aspire to, and all the more important to put, and keep, on the table.

Does "someone who doesn't want publicity, fame or attention" really sounds like an accurate description of Steve Jobs to you? I can understand he's annoyed they're using his image, but I can't say that someone who puts themselves so much in the limelight can really complain (even though I think they probably have a valid case for the figure's base and the fact he's holding an iPhone, the caricature aside).