Slashdot Mirror
Online Cartoonist Finds Financial Success Offline
destinyland writes "The first collection of Perry Bible Fellowship comics has racked up pre-sales of $300,000 due to its huge online following. Within seven weeks the volume required a third printing. Ironically, the 25-year-old cartoonist speculates people would rather read his arty comics in a book than on a computer screen, and warns that 'There's something wonderful, and soon-to-be mythic, about the printed page...' He also explains the strange anti-censorship crusade in high school that earned him an FBI record!"
Is it just me or are the comics in newspapers COMPLETELY devoid of any humor? I haven't smiled at a comic in years. It's like the newspapers demand trash and get it.
I love PBF and other online comics. They can do or say anything they like without censorship. PBF wouldn't be the same if it couldn't use explicit material.
Now go read a real comic like this one.
Well that's one advantage printed comics have over online ones: immune to Slashdotting.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Nostalgia's all warm and fuzzy, sure, but eventually people who can't help clinging to the past get old and die, and the rest of us can move on.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
While you won't be able to prove to me tonight that your holding a bible is indeed a fact, that's entirely besides the point.
Proving the bible's stories are true is also besides the point, if the point is faith. Because faith is precisely what we have when things cannot be proven, not just because they're too inconvenient to do so on a given night.
I'm not going to get into a long debunking of the bible's "facts". I'm not even going to get into a debate about whether a book about the otherwise undocumented past, that's been the supporting document for people with often unlimited power for millennia, isn't still a myth, even if it's got lots of facts in it. I'm just going to point out that the value of the bible, other than in some of its rules for humane behavior (certainly not all of them, like stoning so many people), is in its myths, as myths. Because myths require faith. If its all proven, there's no faith left, just routine knowledge. And if you destroy faith with your defense of the bible, then you're entirely missing the point of god.
Save yourself. Concede the argument.
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make install -not war
While I agree with your argument (it's far from everybody who prefers vinyl to CDs or film to digital cameras), I must disagree with the proposition that it's only for nostalgic reasons. Film cameras are still objectively "better" than digital cameras, when you consider contrast and colour-balance and all that. And tube amps certainly have their uses, e.g. if you want the "warm analog" sound (which you can then easily record on to a CD). [By the way: It's not that the "warm analog" sound is a more accurate sound reproduction, it's only there when you abuse the electronics, but it's certainly more pleasant than the failure mode of digital electronics.]
The old saying "they don't make stuff like this today" is often true. Progress means the price goes down, and the product is thus available for more consumers, but still good enough for most. Some people however, are willing to pay extra, either in money or convenience, in order to get the "best", which often are what they made in the old days.
However, other things are better explained through fashion. People don't by vinyl because it's better. People buy vinyl for the same reason your grandfather always used a tie. It's the fashion.
Getting your joke was done in my first sentence. The rest is for the people with no sense of either humor or faith.
Me and god, we've got an understanding. He doesn't exist, and I don't mind.
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make install -not war
Ditto for tube amps. It's true that right now the majority of artists still use them, but the main reasons for it is that:
a) Most of them grew up with analog equipment
b) The majority of the brand-name amps are analog, and in the music biz image counts for as much as sound
c) Indie bands which are just starting out can't afford brand-new equipment, so they end up with stuff that's 15+ years old (hence, analog).
I guarantee you could get just as good a sound out of digital equipment as you can out of analog, but due to the nature of the music industry there isn't all that much demand for digital equipment. This is changing, of course, as more younger artists enter the business, and more and more technicians become comfortable working with digital equipment. I guarantee that in 30 years tube amps will be a rarity.
Am I the only one who finds this strip badly drawn and entirely unfunny? I promised myself that when I hit forty, I wouldn't lose touch, but I am beginning to feel a bit old: I appear to be the only person not carrying a bible who thinks the endless torrent(no pun intended) of graphic violence, profanity and scatalogical humor pouring from the web to be more boorish than humorous. Am I alone?
Definition: "Bigot is often used as a pejorative term against a person who is obstinately devoted to prejudices even when these views are challenged or proven to be false or not universally applicable or acceptable."
...", it's "You're an idiot - just fucking stupid." Ditto for 'My god lived, then died, then was reborn, for your right to eat shellfish which is no-longer bad!"
Challenge the belief that all religion is false. Until then, the belief that it is a joke does seem universally acceptable.
Religious people think that because crazy opinions are everywhere (for instance, that Adam Sandler is funny) that their crazy ideas must be just the same, and accepted as valid alternatives. Not at all. Religious people assert fact - that their god exists and their holy book is right. You can't disprove that Adam Sandler is funny because humor is subjective. You can disprove any religious assertions made, because they aren't opinion. They're incorrect fact.
Anyways. Insulting religious people is good. They're stupid and need to be made to realize it, if only so that they slink away from society and don't try to poison more minds with their trash. It's like insulting people who spout KKK filth - cut and belittle them and their opinions until they're ashamed of how people make them feel. The correct answer to "Black are subhuman" isn't "Oh I can see how you might think that, but really
If the person drops the beliefs, they might not be a permanent waste of skin. Until then, they're just lying to you about their sky fairies, or the inferiority of the black man, etc.
If someone persists in believing something obviously wrong you should think less of them. They're either stupid, insane, or lying. None of which is a desirable quality.
PBF has been a favorite of mine for a while, now. Here's some others(wiki pages. Paper comic sites(read: syndicate sites) suck more often than not):
Zits
Online comics:Get Fuzzy
Pearls Before Swine
Lio
Schlock Mercenary
Something Positive
Erfworld
Penny Arcade
Irregular Webcomic!
There's a few others, but that's most of them.
religion has never been proven an incorrect fact. nor has it been proven a correct fact. to spout that god has been proven to not exist as a fact is just as silly to claim white supremacy.
people who try to force their religious beliefs on others are troublesome. i don't disagree. however, there are plenty of them who are fine with keeping it to themselves. you can be follow a religion and still believe all the science that we have.
and on a further note, science has yet to ever be proven as fact. there's one assumption that is always made and can never be proven (just as one could say a higher power could never be proven, therefore you can only assume there is or there isn't); you assume that a cause will always have the same effect. the only reason people accept this as true is because no one has disproved it. repeated tests are only circumstantial tests at best. don't get me wrong, i fully believe that science is true, but i'm just saying, there's still the same amount of assumption as there is with a higher power and even moreover, you can believe both science and in a higher power. they are not mutually exclusive.
also your adam sandler analogy has got to be one of the worst analogies i've ever seen. even removing that terrible analogy, the idea behind it is far from being any well-constructed thought. as someone who believes in a higher power (though not a follower of any religion), i can tell you thats NOT the reason i think my opinion is valid. i believe my opinion is valid because no matter how much science you bring behind you, you will never be able to explain its creation (of existence, not of the earth... i believe creationists are retarded).
so, in summation, there are a lot of religious folk who are stupid. however, not ever religious person is stupid.
and using your definition of bigotry, i'm gonna have to say yes, you do seem like a bigot. before this last post of yours, you didn't. i found the joke hysterical as well. in fact, i bet even some religious people can find it humorous. though, with this last post, you have definitely shown a lack of credulity as someone who can form a well-structured opinion.
You have several valid points here but ignore the big picture. While a specific religion cannot be proven "true" or "false," what we can say is that at a minimum, all but one are wrong. This is obviously true because they are mutually exclusive. Thus, we can safely say that when laughing at a specific individual religion you are probably 99% safe from being stuck down by the FSM or local equivalent. Additionally, we can state that those who do believe, believe without proof (i.e. through faith). I know some will argue that they have a "personal revelation" but I am talking about the kind of proof on which science relies. Thus, I think that we can safely laugh at those who claim they are certain or "know" that their religion is right, and all else are wrong and you should follow them because they know this (that you are wrong and they are right). These people are stupid (or willfully ignorant). OTOH, I respect those who admit their believe is based solely on faith and cannot prove the superiority of their god over someone else's. These people are, in my opinion, rational enough to function in the real world (for the most part, exceptions exist for every rule).
----- There are two kinds of people in this world, my friend; those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
This thread is offtopic and should be modded as such, but just in case anyone comes to slashdot for spiritual guidance...
Science deals with probabilities, not facts, and never claims to present facts.
The only assumption made by science is that the universe is capable of being understood using only rational thought, without invoking magic or superstition.
The reason people make this assumption has nothing to with whether or not it has been disproven, since in fact it cannot be disproven. It is because it is a necessary assumption, unlike the assumption of a "higher power" (aka deity). Since such belief in a deity explains nothing and requires further assumptions to be made, I dispute that there is "the same amount of assumption" in either case.
You are correct that you can believe in both science and magic... if you're willing to do both in a half-assed fashion. See Doublethink.
Well, because faith is a way of knowing things that are unknowable otherwise. We know direct experiences (including experience of deduction and other logic) as fact, by proof. We can also know those facts, that can be proven, but have not been personally, by belief (the vast majority of the facts we know). But there is info we cannot prove, no matter how hard we try or lucky we get, which can be known by only faith.
Some of that knowledge that faith alone can offer is some of the most important (depending on the answer). Life after death, omnipotent/omniscient persona, answerable prayers, mandatory consequences of moral behavior, specific prophecies, the nature of soul - all knowable only by faith (as they all require the existence and performance of metaphysical entities or phenomena, which by definition cannot be proven, and perhaps not even experienced, but could still exist). And then there's the big picture, where there seems likely to be more to existence (unlimited by the merely human mind) than to experience (which even science hints with deductions like Godel's incompleteness theorem, and rational philosophy indicates is an experiential incongruence to a larger existence).
Now, I'm all for a minimum of faith. Proof is reliable, belief is less so but workable (or we'd never get anywhere), but faith, though the only way to know metaphysics, is much less reliable. But since even proof and belief indicate there is metaphysics knowable by faith, that minimum is not zero. Unless you think metaphysics is of no interest, perhaps because faith is too unreliable for you to indulge (or perhaps because you're really just denying that some faith you cannot ignore is telling you answers you don't like).
So I appreciate faith's place in the grand scheme (of human life). I also know that we act out of mostly learned behavior, and even our instincts seem likely to favor faith (knowing the "unknowable" can be a survival mechanism, especially if you guessed right), so I respect all kinds of human idiosyncrasies, including faith itself.
I don't respect people who ignore the unreliability of faith, and its proven disastrous consequences when treated as proof (or even mere belief). When people tell others what to do or think because of their own faith, despite the faith (or its lack) of their targets, they've exceeded the reliability of faith. And of course any time faith contests proof, proof must always win (unless you have faith in supernatural con jobs). But faith is powerful, even if it can be treacherous. I refuse to abandon it just because it's risky. I just think anyone who's going to use it should understand its limits, and not play games exaggerating its power in face of stronger proof/belief when available, or just mistaking for faith what is really either mere belief or even just lazy failure to prove.
That attitude lets me know the most, with the least risk (and least risk of ignorance). And it also allows me to accept (some) people who operate (even primarily) on faith.. Some of them through history have done quite a lot to benefit me, even when their faith has (probably) been misplaced - doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, like perhaps some self-sacrifices that protected civilization or preserved useful (or just beautiful and harmless) ancient knowledge. And it lets me distinguish between those who are properly faithful, objectively, and those who are sloppily faithy.
If more people interested in faith evaluated it along these undeniable lines, we'd probably be better at practicing faith without the pitfalls. A little goes a long way, in an infinitesimal inverse proportion.
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make install -not war