Slashdot Mirror
Where To Find Opus On Sunday
Berkeley Breathed has a note up on his site: "Note to Opus readers: The Opus strips for August 26 and September 2 have been withheld from publication by a large number of client newspapers across the country, including Opus' host paper The Washington Post. The strips may be viewed in a large format on their respective dates at Salon.com.."
Opus is the descendant of what was once Bloom County. If you don't know what Bloom County was then I feel sorry for you. Missing that cartoon is like never having read Calvin & Hobbes or The Far Side. Great comics are few and far between. Usually we get left with crap like Cathy and Garfield that recycle jokes day after day.
you COULD have followed the link which would EVENTUALLY have led you to the comic. i really do hope you're doin' your job a little bit mor effective. i mean, it's weekend and such, so you really can waste your time doing searches.
;) )
on the other hand this is not really about a comic strip, but about religion and freedom of speech. it's about the climate of fear that's been constructed ever since 9/11. it's about the same as here. (first link i found, didn't want to waste MY time doing searches
Except that Calvin and Hobbes and the Far Side are both funny.
I assume you don't read newspapers much (niether do I), but it's one of the few national newspaper comic strips (and, according to Wikipedia, made by a pulitzer-prize winning cartoonist). It looks like the most recent strip has been censored for political reasons (which should be obvious from it's content).
Opus is political and social issues satire comic. In other words, it appeals to people older than you.
Opus is an orphaned penguin who ends up living in a house with a lot of other misfits and weird people. He was one of the stars of "Bloom County", Berkeley Breathed's amazing cartoon strip which ran from 1980 to 1989.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
http://www.salon.com/comics/opus/2007/08/26/opus/i ndex.html
The second "censored" strip is dated next Sunday, so I guess it isn't available yet.
The shareholder is always right.
I, for one, don't welcome our Islamic overlords.
People love him when he's dishing out progressive/lib barbs, but if he takes on a more controversial subject than "George Bush is a dummy," suddenly a) no one can be bothered to stand up for him and b) people start bagging on the script.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Please mod parent "over-rated" to hide it and mod this correct version up, if you wish.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
Hot Air suggests this is the offending comic strip. Read the full story at Hot Air.
Unselfish actions pay back better
you COULD have followed the link which would EVENTUALLY have led you to the comic.
Or they could have just linked to the comic. Because most of us are not going to bother to go looking in September for the other one.
comic
Here's facts for you.
The editors of the papers that will not be printing these cartoons are the same ones who regularly criticize the Bush administation, publish disgusting cartoons by Pat Oliphant, don't think twice about publishing information that might be damaging to national security and they do it all because they know they'll end up without a hair on their heads being harmed.
The editors of these papers regularly run articles informing us how Homeland Security is overreacting, how Islam is misunderstood and really a religon of peace.
The editors of these papers will claim that they are not printing these cartoons because the cartoons are insensitive and might offend muslims.
But here's the deep down, bottom line fact:
The editors of these papers are not running the cartoons because they're afraid someone will blow up their offices or shoot them or simply cut their fucking heads off and post a video of it on YouTube.
As for the censorism: I am sure Slashdot will be full of "we wouldn't censor stuff like this if it was about Christianity/etc., so why should we pander to Islam?". Now, technically that is correct - far worse material appears about Christianity than Islam; there is far more sensitivity towards Islam. However, I don't think that makes it wrong to do so. As I see it, there is a solid basis for attempting to not offend Muslims (whereas what I am about to say now is extremely offensive to them): They can't take a joke. Just like if you have a sensitive neurotic kid in your neighborhood, you wouldn't call him names in jest that you would call everyone else.
Some people deserve special treatment not because they are special in a privileged way, but because they are special in the 'Special Olympics' way.
So after screwing around at Salon.com:
Today's strip is here. And all strips here.
He's the beloved author of "Programming with Ack!" and "Configuring and using thpbbt on Unix systems". Learn your roots man.
Yeah yeah, commercial sitcom, we are above that. Sure but in that show plenty of jokes are made about jews. No problem. Other entertainment makes fun of religion as well, and apart from a few protests and boycots it just goes by. Life of Brain made fun of jesus, how many people were killed in the following riots?
In "the west" in modern times we have more or less come to an understanding that it is NOT okay to inflict your believes upon everyone else. It is also acceptable to be made fun off, even if you do not like it because freedom of speech is more important then your hurt feelings. Because sooner or later everything is going to hurt someone.
And suddenly the west finds itself with a group that seeks to go back to the dark ages. I am NOT talking about islam here, I am talking about religous fundementalists who once again seek to enforce their worldview upon everyone else, through force if need be. These fundies exist among ALL religions right now, jews in Israel voicing opions that would make hitler blush, christian fundies seeking to censor all media, india got its share of religious extremist and offcourse there is a sub-group of muslims seeking to make sharia the law worldwide.
Yet something really dangerous is occuring. The jews are far too small a group to be noticed, the christians are too corrupt, the hindoes barely matter in the western world but the muslims, now they seem to have gained a lot of control.
For instance, holland does not like the pope (catholic), not even the dutch catholic do. Any attempt by the pope to say that holland should do this or that is just laughed off. Yet if muslims speak, well, then the dutch quake in their boots. How come the catholic religous leader is safe to ignore but muslim religous leaders are not?
Offcourse there are differences, the pope doesn't even control his own country Italy much (see gay marriage and abortion laws), while entire countries are controlled by Islam. It is safe to make fun of a old guy in a silly dress, not so safe of the leaders who control your oil supply.
Your question is wether it would have been the same if this comic made fun of jews (why this religion and not say christianity, the majority religon in the US), then tell me this. When was the last time such a comic was banned? A movie? A play? A book? A song?
Judge the banned material on its own merits, then ask yourselve if the same reaction would have occured has another religion een involved.
You can either have freedom of speech or you can try to appease one group with long toes. But be aware, the first time you do that, another group will take notice, and will want to be protected as well. If you had your way, pretty soon you would no longer be able to publish anything anyone disapproved off.
That might suit you, afterall you call Opus, about as harmless a comic as you can get, tasteless. What next, censor garfield for walking around without pants?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Really? Do you have a list of the papers refusing to run it and documentation to back of those claims? Or is it just hot air?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Western publishers are self-censoring anything remotely offensive to Muslims. This is just evidence that threats, intimidation and terrorism work. Americans will go to any lengths to "fight terrorism" by invading countries basically uninvolved in terror, but given the chance to simply stand up and say: "we won't be intimidated by threats" the press folds like a three legged card table. Grow a pair!
Direct link to the cartoon.
A cartoon that criticizes women's attempts to act superior and also discusses Islamic religious practices is too complicated for most newspapers.
Of course, banning it gives it publicity, too.
Anyone who thinks that the U.S. media back down from anything offensive to Moslems has clearly never listened to talk radio or read conservative political commentators. These folks would have a great deal of dead air and missing prose if they couldn't offend Moslems in ever more creative ways (suggesting nuking Mecca is a popular one, for example...)
But meanwhile, I completely agree with much of the previous commentary: this strip is making fun on two individuals, and is not remotely comparable to the Danish cartoons. Most Moslems would find it funny and the rest, well, some people don't find anything funny. And the stereotyping is mild compared to what the strip has done, for example, with New Age hippies, Leisure Suit Larry lounge lizards, penguins, and so forth.
[Usually not relevant but despite the Slashdot moniker, I'm neither Arab nor Moslem, though I've lived for a while in the Middle East. I just happen to like the theories of the dude I've stolen the name from and he's like, sort of dead...]
"All successful systems accumulate parasites" -- Hal Hixon
... but in most of the rest of the world, that kid you just described gets it the worst.
Yes he does, and he's also the one that eventually loads up on high-caliber firearms or high explosive. Generally speaking, taunting mentally unstable people is a bad idea.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Well, just off the top of my head, why were Islamic death squads not going after Christopher Hitchens on his latest book tour? He has said things about Islam that are FAR more offensive than the Danish cartoons (though they didn't "visually depict Mohammad," a crime thats committed by Muslims quite often) but there was not fatwa pronounced against him. It's predictable that the extremist Muslims get riled up by this stuff, but who knows what stuff will rile them up and what won't. Like I said, its unlikely that many of them even SAW the Danish cartoons.
Watterson was right, you know. As great as the moments were that Calvin and Hobbes gave us, it did get to the point where I would say things like "OK, another week of violently killed snowmen" when I read the Monday strip. Some of the new versions of old jokes could get a chuckle or even possibly even a snort out of me, but it was typically one in a week or so of strips.
Of the three strips cited in the parent, only The Far Side didn't appear to lose anything over the years. When Larson quit in the mid-1990s, the strip was still as funny and as bizarre as it had been when I first saw it in the early 1980s. It also holds a special place in my heart as one of the greatest mainstream outlets of nerd humor. Futurama has taken that to much higher levels of sophistication (I have a Ph.D. in physics and completed requirements for a B.S. in math, and some of the science and math jokes on Futurama have blown right over my head), but The Far Side did it first and probably better. The Far Side's influence in academic circles was so great that a joke term from a Far Side panel in 1982 has been adapted for informal use by scientists in the field. There's something to be said for nerd "in jokes" so "in" that a trained theoretical physicist, one who happens to be known for how observant he is, can totally miss them, but there's also something to be said for a single panel on the comics page that brought nerd sensibilities to the larger public more effectively, which The Far Side did. I was a kid/adolescent for most of the 1980s, and I remember lots of non-nerd adults liking The Far Side. Larson brought "our" (nerd) culture to a wider audience in a more positive way than just about all portrayals of nerds in popular culture did before or have since.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
If they can't take the soft stuff when they're kids (and when you're a kid, that's all it is), how are you supposed to handle being an ADULT?
All this toned-down crap for kids is preparing them to fail when they become adults. In baseball for kids now they don't keep score and nobody wins or loses, everyone gets the same sized trophy. Well, in the real world it doesn't work that way.
I can understand a parent wanting to protect their child, but that goes too far. Everyone experiences failure, why not prepare your child for the first time a girl turns him down (or the 94th time), the first time he's fired from a job, the first time he gets robbed, and so on. Your child may be your beautiful perfect child, but they will experience loss and failure in the real world just like everyone else. By not preparing them for that you're only making it harder for them when they experience it for the first time.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
There are people who have invisible friends. Why is there a line in making fun of their belief? There really isn't. You don't get to draw lines in the sand when it comes to free speech. Once you put one restriction on it it is no longer free.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Anyone remember the South Park episode "Cartoon Wars", where the show was making fun of the western reaction, and itself was censored? The irony for me was that they had an episode maybe a year or two before that where Mohammed was clearly shown as one of the super heroes in the "Super Best Friends" episode. There hadn't been a blip back then. What's even funnier is that if you watch South Park reruns, the "Cartoon Wars" episode still has the controversial scene censored, but the "Super Best Friends" has been shown since with no alterations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park
The Cartoon Wars episode was played uncensored in the UK, and the world failed to end - go figure.
The Digital Sorceress
Well, the comic creator's freedom of speech isn't really an issue here since the Federal Government didn't do anything to stop the comic. The individual newspapers said "We won't publish it because we're afraid of being murdered by the self-proclaimed Religion of Peace."
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Here ya go. It looks like, depending on your neck of the woods, editors won't run it because it either has a tasteless sex joke, or because it might offend Muslims.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
The strip is not blasphemous in any serious way.
Says you. Keep in mind, after the Danish cartoons, people are likely to tread a little bit lightly rather than get some expert opinion on what might qualify as blasphemous. Throw in CAIR getting lawsuit happy (whether the lawsuits have merit or not) and you've got a recipe for less backbone enhanced editors to exclude the comics. The flip side to the comic is that some papers won't run it because of a tastless sex joke. No clear breakdown on why different papers are excluding it.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
"Yes he does, and he's also the one that eventually loads up on high-caliber firearms or high explosive. Generally speaking, taunting mentally unstable people is a bad idea."
In the case of Islam, the believers are not mentally unstable, and their goal is to use Political Correctness to stop any criticism of their beliefs.
It is working.
Slashdotters rage against government or business threats to freedom, but for some reason the most oppressive and backward (which given the competitiion is saying a lot!) religion in the world often escapes attack. Careful distinction is made between supposed religious theory and practice so that one avoids attacking the ideology. Odd since religion = political belief = superstition.
The freedom we enjoy today is not the result of religion. It is the result of freethinkers and the weakening of religions stranglehold on society. Islam in practice seeks to impose such a stranglehold. I therefore advocate attacking it, relentlessly and without apology. To defend religion is to endorse it. Ridicule is the best weapon against superstition.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I actually went back to Sunday to make sure it was the same one. Of course, we'll see about next week but you can't apply a blanket statement to all of them.
Course, I shouldn't be too surprised that Philly sez 'bring it'!
Conversely, part of being civilized is to acknowledge that not everyone thinks the way you do, and that the world is full of offensive people. It just is, it always has been and it always will be, unless you manage to kill anyone and everyone who disagrees with you. Going postal over every offense, imagined or real, will do nothing but making you even more enemies than you've already acquired. Of course, if that's your intent, fine ... but just remember that some people will cheerfully kill you without a second's thought, and for even less reason. That's particularly true if they are threatened by your behavior. Civilization only works when people develop the ability to tolerate each other, at least to the degree that they don't kill each other on sight.
... grow up and get a goddamn life. Just DEAL with it! To my way of thinking, everyone has the right to go to Hell in their own way. They'd best give me the same respect, though, because otherwise I will do my damnedest to see they get there first!
I'm not picking on Muslims per se, either. I feel the precisely same way about the crowd of hypersensitive Christian assholes who go thermonuclear when somebody says something negative about Jesus. My answer to all of them is the same
From my perspective, many of these people (and I don't care how educated or erudite they may be) come across as either powerhungry or just childish. Some people never get past the terrible twos, I swear.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
There seems to be a view in America that something is only censorship if the government does it. This is nonsense. It's just that in America the constitution *prevents* the government from doing it. It's still censorship even if it's legal.
I'd say education is the best weapon against superstition, but failing that (or when dealing with people that refuse to be educated) ridicule is a good choice. It's more difficult to gain followers for your particular brand of religious mindgrabbing when most of the potential candidates are laughing at you.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
As for the censorism: I am sure Slashdot will be full of "we wouldn't censor stuff like this if it was about Christianity/etc., so why should we pander to Islam?". Now, technically that is correct - far worse material appears about Christianity than Islam; there is far more sensitivity towards Islam. However, I don't think that makes it wrong to do so. As I see it, there is a solid basis for attempting to not offend Muslims (whereas what I am about to say now is extremely offensive to them): They can't take a joke. Just like if you have a sensitive neurotic kid in your neighborhood, you wouldn't call him names in jest that you would call everyone else.
I call bullshit! As a Christian, seeing a Cross dipped in a jar of urine is just as offensive as a Mohamed giving Peter a salmon helmet is to a Muslim. The difference is that I won't go blow shit up over it. Christians are taught to forgive. Muslims are taught to die in defense of Islaam. THAT is the difference. That sensitive neurotic kid will carry a can a gasoline over to your house and burn it down while you sleep. Of course, he'd make it a point to pour most of the gasoline in the doorways to prevent escape and start the fire in the baby's room, just to make sure his point gets out on the 5 O'clock news.
So this isn't about sensitivities toward Muslims. It is about a fear of reprisal. Which is what really pisses me off. When the gov't does something to fight terrorism, people say it's all about fear and that they would rather die than have the government listen to their phone calls, if they should ever make one to Pakistan. But when a liberal newspaper bows in submission to Islam, people make excuses about some politically correct bullshit.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Right--this comic is making fun of America way moreso than Islam (Lola's list of things she's not going to be is the caricature of the silly self-absorbed American girl). It seems that simply mentioning Islam is too frightening these days. Not encouraging.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
There are lots of different kinds of nut jobs, these are just some examples which will be familiar.
The punch line includes an element of irony. Steve's girlfriend will be submissive, and he likes that idea, until he realizes that he's also probably not going to get laid. It's a slapstick punch line to cap off what is really a more sophisticated sarcasm.
Of course, if you don't realize that this happens all the time, perhaps it's not so amusing. Stories of completely insipid "spiritual quests" like that of Lola Granola appear from time to time in the infotainment media. They always seem to be stories of weak minded people who must have a life philosophy handed to them on a platter, but somehow manage to reject one or two or three in a row before finding "the right one". The infotainment media inevitably dishes out these stories deadpan, like we're supposed to learn something from these people who clearly have demonstrated one overarching trait, which is a militant refusal to think critically.
Every time I see a story like this, I'm amazed that nobody ever points this out. Rational analysis, basic logic, and skepticism are not taught, and most people don't manage to acquire it on their own.
Here's the most recent example of a Lola Granola-style spiritual quest trumpeted as heroic in the media: Rejecting radical Islam -- one man's journey (Daveed Gartenstein-Ross ). Note the headline, then read the story. This dude didn't reject radical islam, he wandered aimlessly through major religions and dangerous philosophies, trying each on like a new shirt. Now he's apparently working for the FBI. I hope that this guy is closely and carefully supervised by somebody with stronger pro-democracy, free-thinking, free-living convictions. And for freedom's sake, don't give him a gun or access to any important secrets.
So, if you're aware that this stuff can happen in real life, the strip is really very amusing, subtle, and funny.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I used to be the editor in chief of an alt-weekly in Wichita, Kansas. I ran all the Danish cartoons with a long editorial about how I got into the business as an editorial cartoonist and could never stand the cowardice of the establishment. There was little public outcry ... just a couple of people telling me I wasn't being sensitive to muslims, which I explained I was aware of doing in the column anyway.
A while later, I was reading a column in the major daily's newspaper about how they were not going to ever print "Opus" because when they ran "Bloom County" in the '80s and '90s it "didn't poll well with readers." Well, it just so happens that "Bloom County" is what inspired me to become an editorial cartoonist and therefore what got me into the newspaper business. It was incredibly popular with me and all my friends, so I guess it was just the newspaper wanting to hold on to the geriatric (dead and dying) readers. So I wrote the Washington Post Writers Group (the "Opus" syndicator) this story and asked them if I could get an affordable deal on running "Opus" in my alt weekly. They sold it to me for about $10 a week.
If I was still editor of that paper, I'd be running that cartoon this week. But they killed it as soon as I left. Of course, it's circulation and popularity has dropped like a rock because the new owner refuses to be controversial in any way. How can you run a weekly and not be an alt-weekly?
Ummmmm...you just pretty much summed up everything that is *wrong* with the world today. If more people told others to fuck off, the world would be a much better place.
This isn't about Islam, it's about the timidity of American newspapers. American newspapers exist mostly now to deliver advertisements to the people who still subscribe. And to provide a warm, old-fashioned 'newspaper reading experience' to their subscribers. They no longer are the primary news source or political support medium that they were 100-50 years ago. Most newspapers are owned by a handful of corporate chains who what the ad revenue flowing in from the local supermarkets and the columns filled with 'kittens stuck in trees' type of stories. The last thing that they want is biting social commentary in their comics sections.
... I don't understand this).
As you can imagine, newspaper readership is falling. Decades of boring trivia has decimated the numbers of intelligent readers. Plus the endlessly dumbed down writing style which makes every article read as if it were written for middle-school audiences (USA education level for 12-14 year olds). Bland, stupid, boring, and late with the breaking news, newspapers tend to focus on serving the needs of 'the upside of the bell curve' where few Slashdaughters are to be found.
It's interesting to see that the local heavy advertisers are also developing web sites to showcase their newspaper ads so people with broadband can simply bookmark and download whatever ads that they used to watch in the newspapers. Plus Craig's List and eBay are removing the need for classified ads (along with the tendency of newspapers to put these ads up on their own websites
So basically newspapers are becoming the prime information source for those people who can't handle going on-line. And those people are fewer every year.
Again, banning these comics has nothing to do with concern over offending Islam. It has everything to do with ensuring that the newspaper product will be as boring, sanitized, and removed from controversy as humanly possible.
Interesting, that's a Malaysian newspaper and Christians are a minority there. Next door in the Philippines, I've seen cigarette ads with Jesus and they're 90% Catholic. I'll try to get a picture when I'm there next week.
Actually, the most offensive thing I ever saw there was a shop with side by side posters on the wall, one of the blonde-haired blue-eyed Catholic Jesus next to Brittney Spears.
Offense is absolutely in the eye of the beholder.
This is America. They didn't publish it because they were afraid it would result in loss of revenue. If you thing a corporation's actions are based by anything other than money, you are wrong.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
Without arguing your point, I would simply like to know how you can reconcile that statement with the fact that an atheistic ideology (communism) was responsible for the death of 60M-100M in the last century and the enslavement of nearly half the world's population.
I would like to blame drug prohibition and such on my fellow Christians in this country, but it's an untenable position given that the same drugs are outlawed in China and Russia. Similarly, China has some of the strictest anti-porn laws in the world.
It's a simplistic attitude to think that religion in and of itself is the culprit. But it's just human nature, with religion being the excuse. To believe otherwise is to ignore history.
Do you have ESP?
This has nothing to do with restricting free speech. This is about how far people who don't want to offend others (like major newspaper editors) will go. You personally are welcome to say whatever offensive material you can come up with as always, just don't expect it to land on the front page of the Washington Post.
The culprit is not religion in and of itself, but the undertone that marks both religion and collectivism: the philosophy of altruism. By altruism, I do not mean simple generosity, but rather the belief that a man's standard of value should not be his own life and happiness, but rather his duty to others: God, the state, his brother-men. It is the ultimate dismissal of human life and values.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
The problem with the invisible friends routine is it's simply stupid (Note I didn't say YOU are stupid, I said the routine's stupid).
What do you believe in?
Capitalists worship a giant invisible hand (and sacrifice people to it).
Socialists believe everyone will be honest and decent if they get elected.
Democrats believe in a 300% tax rate.
The NRA wants everyone to have their own Rocket Launchers.
The ACLU never defends anybody but Scum.
The French believe everybody is male (liberty, equality and fraternity - nothing about sorority there) (Yes, some English wags actually used this line in print discussing the revolution).
Quantum Physicists all keep cats locked up in boxes, how cruel.
People who believe in George Washington all think he was stronger than the Incredible Hulk (to throw a silver dollar across a broad river)...
There's no real belief or opinion that can't be oversimplified to the point of looking absurd. Name a few beliefs of your own, and somebody will be glad to reduce everything you stand up for to a sound-bite and try to make you look like a fool too.
Most Christians, Muslims, etc. believe that God is a spirit - what's so strange about believing that a spirit is invisible, it would be even stranger if they thought that it wasn't. Now you want something really silly, try the trinity. That three in one business is weird enough to be part of Scientology's schtick.
Now as a Christian, I'll gladly defend your right to make fun of us. Yes, you should be able to make either jokes or serious and realistic criticisms of my beliefs. The real question is, are you, I or anyone else actually benefiting from making this particular criticism?
Who is John Cabal?
Communist societies forced atheism to get rid of competition for "the party". Their killing lots of people had nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with their leaders being power hungry asshats.
Maybe not
You rebel you. What with Wichita being that seething hotbed of radical Muslim immigrants. I cannot imagine how awkward it was walking past the mosque after mosque in town with what must be virtually the entire Muslim diaspora of the U.S. glaring at you.
The Rise and Fall of Online Community
Were the Columbine shooters motivated by religion when they did, essentially, the same thing?
I'm an atheist, by the way. I just find this argument against religion facile and specious.
Probably impossible to verify, but it definitely seems plausible. Thank you for illuminating that for me... :)
Well, given that the American free press is afraid to publish a goddamn comic strip I'd say it's working rather well. And that's just disturbing.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Contrary to your point, things like Columbine and VA Tech didn't happen 50 years ago when middle class school yards were a lot tougher than they are today. If everyone "plays nice" until high school and then suddenly you face being ostracized for the first time when you are 15 or 16 you will not have the skills to handle it well, but you will have the size and knowledge to let you rage do far more damage. I was picked on a lot in elementary school, and I used to get in a lot of fights (that were as vicious as I could make them at the time) If I reacted with the same level of anger when I got to high school I would have literally killed someone. That didn't happen because I learned to control my temper while I was still young. I learned self control and how to "get over it" when I was still small enough to be dragged away by the smallest of teachers, and before I understood that there are more effective ways of hurting people than punching them. Social rejection and mockery are a part of life. Just because there are rude people in the world does not excuse others from acting like ticking time-bombs.
We are all just people.
The Crusades.
WW2 (remember, the Germans were christians and they didn't forgive the Jews/athiests for being different).
Spanish Inquisition.
No one race/religion/group is perfect, so pull your head outta your ignorant ass.
Maybe the editors were concerned about offending nudists or the Amish?
Adults, if they feel their workplace is mentally, emotionally, physically, or sexually abusive towards them can quit and go someplace else. If it's bad enough, they can press charges or sue.
A kid in school can't leave. They just have to either put up with it, or lash out.
How the heck does that prepare someone for the real, grown-up world? The only part of the real-world where the bullying dynamic works the way it does in school is prison. And maybe, to a lesser extent, the army-- but nowhere else.
For today's comic for the nerd culture, incidentally, you could do a lot worse than xkcd...
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
You know, religion is one of the key institutions outside of jail and "public education" that encourage people to reduce alcohol, drug addiction, HIV, spousal abuse, and illegitimacy. It seems to me you need all the help you can get in the "War on Error." So does it really make sense to undermine any ally in a situation like this? Is the school/jail solution really performing so well, that we can do without our single most important tradition for encouraging of hope, self-reliance, and mutual respect?
The real question is, are you, I or anyone else actually benefiting from making this particular criticism?
Absolutely. By making fun of Christians, the reality-based community makes it harder for you to impose your superstitions on the rest of us.
The difference between me and you is that once I convince you to keep your fractured, pathological myths out of the voting booth and out of my child's classroom, I'll go away and leave you alone.
i'd say more "actually performing needlessly violent or stupid acts", "acting like a ticking time bomb" seems to be a label that gets attached to acting in any way deviates from the norm these days.
yes yes, tis ramblely, but i think you know what i mean heh.
Ice Cream has no bones.
Except, it doesn't take being a Muslim to beat your wife. In fact, American men, whom demographically are not overwhelmingly Muslim, seem to be okay beating their wives to the tune of 22% of all women have been physically assaulted at some point in their lives.
This is not to suggest that Islamic countries, or the misogyny of Muslim men, should get a pass, but frankly I'm tired of this double standard passing around people in the West that we are a font of perfection. The Christopher Hitchen's of the world who hold up all that is liberal, open, and free when they're facing down the so called Islamic hordes, but then sponsor their own forms of back-water conservatism when they argue on their home turf. You can't have it both ways.
To be fair, the comics that one was a response to -- the ones published in Denmark which were supposedly an affront to Islam -- weren't actually funny, either. Like this one, they were at best provocative for the sake of it, and at worst racist.
I think the Muslims in this case have a good point -- all cultures have their sacred cows. Islam feels very strongly about producing images of their prophet, which is why (unlike with the religious figures in most religions) you never see paintings of him in mosques or elsewhere.
Likewise, Europe feels very strongly about the Holocaust, and as a result has banned most discourse on the subject which is not in line with mainstream thought.
I understand and empathize with the perspectives of both groups -- just as I empathize with Americans who want to see the constitution amended to make flag burning an illegal act -- but in all of these cases, I see the freedom to say what you want, no matter how vile, as being much more important to the functioning of a free society than ensuring that no one is offended.
After all, everyone is offended by something: if we made it all illegal, we'd never be able to say anything. But if we pick and choose what we're sensitive about, we're necessarily discriminating. The best option, in my opinion? Let people say what they want, no matter how much it pains us to hear it.
Here's facts for you.
Bullshit. You have no facts. Produce a list of papers which have cut the strip and then you can begin to think around the word, "Fact". Produce non-isolated examples of the kind of liberal bias you are accusing of in those papers, and then you can begin to sell your point.
Since you can't do any of this, what we really have here is a typical example of Right Wing emotionalism. (The operative emotions being Fear and Hate, which the typical Right-Wing Bush supporter allows to direct his Judgment and Rationality.)
Newspapers are a collection of ideas folded together into a sheaf of reading material. The Typical Right-Wing brain is naturally going to sift out things to get angry about, regardless of how balanced the reporting might be, which in a typical newspaper today, is totally not balanced at all. I see propaganda wherever I look, and think that the so-called "Liberal Media" is an utter and complete sham designed to support the Military Industrial Complex. But I hail from the Left of Left. Can you tell?.
That's not a conscious choice on my part, by the way. It's a result.
It's the result of how I choose to live:
I choose to live with my emotions under control; to not let fear rule my thoughts and actions. --To seek rationality over knee-jerk emotionalism. --It's not that I have anything against emotions. I love emotions! They guide us and make us human. But there's two ways to be human. You can let emotions show you how to let compassion be your guide, or you can let emotions lead you through fear. Fear is easy. Fear is basic, reptillian brain stuff. It's the default setting. The one which evolution has been moving away from for a ba-zillion years.
If the media were truly 'Liberal', we would know a great deal more than we do through it. We wouldn't be at war, for starters. (Since the Bush admin keeps on repeating straight-faced, shameless lies in the psychopath's knowledge that doing so will make people believe them even with gobs of contrary evidence sitting right out in the open, one should also keep on repeating the Truth. . .
"There were no WMD's in Iraq. The Bush team LIED, saying that Saddam could launch an attack in 45 minutes. (Remember that?) They even delivered the age-old sales line, 'The Troops will be home in ten weeks.'" And people fell for it! They actually fell for it again! --And now hundreds of thousands of regular people are dead while a small group of people has made millions. You want to talk facts? THOSE are facts. You cannot dispute them unless you are insane. We do not have a Liberal media. Pulling Opus was either fear related, (editors believing their own lies and not wanting the frightful hand of Islam to blow up their offices. (Groan.) --Or it was a manipulation designed to spark outrage in people like you and play on everybody else's fears. But whatever the case, I can assure you that it had absolutely nothing to do with compassion.
As it is, we must spend enormous effort cross referencing stories and digging and back-checking just to scrape out truth from the mountain of misleading crud served up every day. I know several guys who work in journalism. Each one of them is a true liberal in the political sense, and they report (privately) the same thing. To quote one of them (as best I can from memory):
"If you speak out against the party line on anything, then you don't work. There is no truth in journalism. We're all whores or robots. This is a disgusting, juvenile, toxic industry where the only successful people in it are incredibly ignorant, back-stabbing and greedy, with no care whatsoever about truth."
-FL
Who hasn't ?
One man's constant is another man's variable.
"Without arguing your point, I would simply like to know how you can reconcile that statement with the fact that an atheistic ideology (communism) was responsible for the death of 60M-100M in the last century and the enslavement of nearly half the world's population."
I view Communism as "blowback".
It only took root where decadent theistic societies failed so badly that the desperate populace wanted an alternate ideology to justify and focus their rage against those who exploited them.
The body count is merely a function of modern killing methods and the size of the primary (Russia and China) Communist countries.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Actually, I HAVE been in a situation where I couldn't afford to quit. I could, however, begin looking for another job while still working. It's utterly exhausting and miserable to look for a job while still going to an unhealthy job at the same time-- but the option is there to at least TRY to get into a healthier situation. And in the long run, it is well worth it.
- the crusades are, collectively, certainly a low point for organized Christianity, but they're also monstrously complex socio-military-political events. there were genuine territorial encroachments into the byzantine empire by muslims empires that at least the first crusade was (on the surface) a direct response to, and most christians don't translate "forgive" into "let them get away with crimes" (making no arguments here as to the appropriateness of the "crimes" label or of making that translation).
- you've got to really stretch to believe WWII was about religion, or that Nazi's were a particularly Christian organization. certainly the leadership wasn't, and wrote so quite explicitly. this isn't the same as the "they're not really christian" argument pseudo-apologists are likely to make, this is more about historical context.
- the Spanish Inquisition was the most famous, and the most brutal, but it's worth noting that it reported to the King of Spain, not the Pope, unlike the rest of the contemporary Inquisition. note also that the Inquisition was much broader, both in scope and in time - it still exists, today called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. the Inquisition - especially during its darker periods a few hundred years ago - are probably the clearest examples of Christianity abandoning Christianity, but your example will be even more sound if you drop the "Spanish" (as it'll omit a whole bunch of odd political issues).
- the most compelling example in my mind is the abortion clinic bombings. it's modern, explicitly "Christian", and entirely antithetical to both any honest reading of the New Testament and every major Christian denomination.
but, again, you're overall point is correct and your parent here is an ignorant fool. Muslims are taught the value of mercy the same way christians are. i think it's fair to say there's differences in the religion, and that those differences impact what we see from them in the world today, but teachings about forgiveness and mercy aren't them.i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Nobody (and I mean NOBODY) is claiming that Western society is free of injustice and evil. We have our problems and we know it. However, unlike the societies that Islam is in total control of, Western Society generally abhors and works to eliminate those problems. Wife beating (or any form of domestic abuse) is one of these problems.
We here in the west find spousal abuse of be vile and disgusting, and work to eliminate it. Islam, on the other hand, actually ESPOUSES wife beating when one's wife is "Disobedient". IE: she doesn't act like the slave she is. See The Quran, Sura 4, verses 17-34, specifically verse 34:
Contrast this to Christianity, where men are instructed to treat their wives with respect and kindness:
There are more, but the point is, that the contrast between Islam and the other great religions of the world could not be more stark. Western society, which is generally based around the Judeo-Christian ethos also stands in contrast to Islam.
Are we in the West perfect? Hell no! Does this mean that we should not then condemn the abject barbarism of a backwards and genocidal religion like Islam? Hell no.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Oh, come now. Unplug for a minute.
I did a quick (like five minute) scope around and found a ton of stuff. Here's a sampling. .