As others have pointed out you appear not to be from the US. In the US you do get unemployment for being laid off, but not for being fired. One of the many reasons that lay-offs happen is actually due to the fact that in order for a company to fire you it has to demonstrate some level of employee malfeasance, which means arbitration in court if the employee disputes the accusation. I've been through and initiated both processes (and I've been laid off twice and was unemployment-eligible both times). In fact I had an ex-employee who left for personal reasons try to get unemployment compensation by claiming she had been terminated. In actual court she admitted she hadn't and that she thought the fact that the other job prospect (which she did not tell anyone about curiously) had fallen through so she felt she deserved the unemployment. My defense was, "We were happy to help you out in the tough times you stated, and would have rehired you if you'd come back to us." Judged ruled in my favor.
It is interesting how our society apparently concludes that if you are an attractive woman who is engaged in some sort of paid position as a social or support (cheerleader) role then you must clearly be a victim. Or is it that any context in which men benefit from the presence or attention of a woman automatically lumps them in to a predatory category?
Is this actually the only way to categorize any situation in which both sexes are engaging on some level based on attraction/interest?
I was thinking the same thing. Were the 14 accidents all to the same car? Does google have a fleet of these? If it's one car, ask yourself how many accidents, minor or major, you have been in from 2009 to the present.....I've been in 1 and my wife as well had 1, both the fault of the other driver.....but the point being that while fender benders do happen, they don't happen to everyone with uniform consistency.....and when accidents cluster with specific drivers there's usually a reason. Google may be saying "other drivers did it" but what Google Driver is probably missing is better avoidance/predictive behavior that actually reacts to or anticipates other driver behavior......as an example, when you come up to a sudden and unexpected slowdown, what does Google Car do? A normal driver probably taps his breaks rapidly to warn the people behind him in case they aren't paying attention and is ready to shift lanes if it looks necessary.....google car prbably just takes it in the arse, so to speak.
The atheist who argues that he should not be subject to an arbitrary set of beliefs that are based on unverifiable and possibly entirely fictional supernatural systems of judgement has a better leg to stand on than the deeply religious soul who wants to argue that his book was written by an unverifiable entity of unknowable nature, but trust him, he's real, and it defines an absolute set of laws that mean that two men, who want to be in a monogamous relationship recognized in marital ceremony, are ruining everything.
I completely understand why religious tolerance isn't going to fly, though.....and I can't fault those who are religious and have no desire for tolerance, because no rational person should tolerate religion, either.
There is absolutely no reason to treat these law abiding citizens as second class citizens in places of business.
I think you're perhaps missing part of my point.
I agree entirely that there are downsides to allowing business owners to make such distinctions. The point about black Americans is very valid.
But my point was that your dismissing a certain notion of harm, as perceived by religious persons. They consider themselves to be held accountable to God for their choices.
You're correctly arguing that gay people suffer a certain kind of harm by a business refusing to do a certain kind of business on their behalf. I'm saying that you're dismissing the harm done to religious persons by demanding them to violate their consciences and/or their obedience to God (on their view).
Hmmm. Which part of the bible would serving a gay person violate? The part that says love your neighbor as yourself, love the sinner but hate the sin, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, or the judge not lest you be judged part?
That's a tough call, but we're running into an interesting wall here. If their beliefs make them call into question their own conscience and morality for associating with or condoning gay behavior, but other secular beliefs strongly condemn those who would use an arbitrary religious proscription for conduct, then who wins here?
Ultimately, the group that is actually correct in their assessment should prevail. At least partially because I strongly condemn abuse, and the religious faith of these individuals is abusive....not only to gay people, but to the believers themselves for forcing them into such terrible ethical fictions. It's back to the parable of the flying spaghetti monster all over again: you are establishing a precedent based on a truth that only you can assert, for which no reality outside of your mental construct exists. You have put yourself into this conundrum, and it is the right of all others to question why we should support your own self-abuse, especially if it then spills out and affects others.
Not "different sides of the same coin" unless you're suggesting that being gay is directly equivalent to being a religious hate-monger, being Jewish is directly equivalent to being a Nazi, or being black is somehow directly equivalent to being a bigot with an organization know for hanging blacks. Seriously not equivalent.
Almost all of the "we think Indiana is fine with this" arguments are comparing normal apples to hate-filled oranges. A better comparison, which shows how this is idiotic:
Should a gay man refuse to take pictures of a normal straight wedding? No.
Should a Jewish man refuse to take pictures at a German Oktoberfest wedding? No.
Should a black photographer turn down a job at a all-white folk wedding? No.
Should a devout christian photographer refuse pictures of an otherwise normal wedding but he heard someone might be gay or atheist? No.
See, that was easy.
Your example is not quite accurate, though. A baker that refuses to make a cake with two men on top because it might connote a gay wedding is comaprable to an LGBT baker refusing to bake a cake with a fish symbol on top because it implies christianity. In both cases, neither baker is compelled to engage in or endorse hate speech and you don't need a religious freedom law to protect you from being compelled to write either "God Kills" or "God Hates Fags" on a cake.
Your examples need to be equivalent and the same thing: hate speech is not protected speech last time I checked.
In no way should a Christian business owner be forced to do something that violates his conscience. Ditto the homosexual business owner. Civil rights in no way trump religious rights an vice versa. If someone is a homosexual and they are refused a cake for their "wedding", they should just find a homosexual baker or someone willing to bake for them. Same goes for any business.
I'm personally intolerant of homosexuality. I don't dislike the individual homosexuals, but I will NEVER affirm their way of life -- and such will never be required of me. I'm actually a middle of the road guy politically, but I am a Christian -- and God's Word on the issue is firm. Love the sinner, hate the sin. And yes, I, too, am a sinner, but I'm not making the life choice for something that God has called an abomination in His eyes. I would welcome a homosexual into my church congregation with the understanding that he is there not for judgment, but healing. The church, properly run, is a hospital for sinners's souls, not a courtroom, but God will not be mocked. Just like homosexuals, I need to daily repent of my sins and ask God for His forgiveness -- and to exercise faith and obedience. God wants two things: faith and obedience. Obey God's Word == eternal life. Disobey, homosexual or heterosexual == eternal damnation.
I hate to break it to you, but you are not middle of the road, you are rather far to the right there. Middle of the road people are fine with sexual equality, gay marriage and the right of the public not to be discriminated at by a business.
You're post gave me chills, creepiest thing I've read so far. "God will not be mocked." Hebdo much?
You may want to dig a bit deeper into that article. Just because those four words are used in other bills does not make them even remotely equivalent. New Mexico's bill, for example, as NM is listed as on the map with such a RFRA, is nothing like what is now law in Indiana.
I personally have very little issue with homosexuals. I have a serious problem with gay marriage, as marriage is a religious ceremony, so the state should stay out of it. Civil union is the state sponsored joining, and should be the proper avenue for the state to allow something that religion indicates is wrong. If someone feels that a homosexual couple should share in the benefits a heterosexual relationship enjoys, they should move for equal benefits for the two, not move to change the definition of marriage. However, it has to be understood that most of the benefits of marriage have to do with holding a family together for the benefit of the children, which a homosexual marriage may have some issues in creating.
Marriage is not a religious ceremony, it is cultural manifestation of a concept that predates all modern and known archaic religions. Religion did not invent marriage, but it capitalized on it and possibly institutionalized it, and even then marriage existed as a concept thousands of years prior to Judeo-Christian thought, shocking as that may be to you. If your argument were in the least bit sensible then we should have no government endorsement of marriages, and I as an atheist should not have been allowed to get married (and we used a local judge, not a minister, fyi). Also: and to use my own native state as an example (New Mexico) they determined that discrimination based on gender in marriage is not actually supported by the state's laws as written....so guess what, same sex marriage is legally fine and always was in this state.
The argument that marriage is a religious ceremony is just painful when I hear it, because it really marks the person presenting the argument as very limited in their scope of knowledge and understanding. It's just....hard....to imagine that someone would be so limited in their own understanding of this world they live in.
I disagree that this is about hatred; in fact, I think you have to be calling many people blatant liars to make it about hatred. Granted, on either side there are likely some who are driven by hatred, but that's always going to be the case. It seems that many (and probably the vast majority) of people on both sides are pretty normal people who genuinely feel the way they say they do. Trying to vilify people on one side or the other doesn't help and is disingenuous.
Personally I can see merit in both sides and I bet if you give each argument and fair chance you would too. And that's why the issue is such a difficult one. It's only through setting up absurd strawman arguments that you can really dismiss the whole debate.
On the one side, it looks like we're dealing with discrimination all over again. As with racial discrimination, it seems wrong to avoid doing business with people just because of their sexual orientation. Separate but equal never worked and simply wasn't right.
On the other side, it seems like you have the government forcing people not just to tolerate - but to actively celebrate - something that is deeply abhorrent to them. They would otherwise be inclined to let people live their own lives how they want but when forced to be involved they honestly feel wrong, deeply wrong, about being forced to tacitly condone things like same sex marriage.
Both sides sincerely feel like the other side is taking away their rights and feel the others' suggested way to deal with it is unfair. Hatred isn't necessarily a part of the equation at all.
Your last sentence seems to be contradicted by the prior paragraph. Also, I think you have not sufficiently demonstrated just how engaging in a neutral business transaction will adequately provide those who find someone different from them "deeply abhorrent" the requisite detection equipment to identify who they are (unless they are preparing a cake, apparently).
That said, I really wanted to comment on your first sentence: I absolutely am one who says that the supporters for this bill are doing so out of hatred, and are lying. Through their teeth, and possibly to themselves about what their motives are. Painfully obvious when you're not trapped on the inside of this den of lies and hate. PAINFULLY.
They could have done this with the serial numbers filed off and achieved the same result....in fact that's a pretty acceptable means of creating a satire of this nature (dark and only ironically funny) when the IP in question could be considered at risk because of the presentation. If they had done this using "not-Power Rangers" that nontheless were sufficiently analogous to the actual Power Rangers then they would probably still be up and running, and the satire would still be on target.
I think the irony here is adults who seem to have lost connection with the intended audience of a show like Power Ranger: kids. As an adult we all get that Power Ranger is basically a purely escapist fantasy that requires a deliberately and meticulous simplified universe in order for its heroes and villains to function. It's a world of action toys come to life, basically. Any childhood IP brought into "adulthood" is going to look weird when you start factoring in mature themes, realism, and complexity (witness the Transformers films for example). The mere act of doing this does not constitute sature, it merely means you've taken the core conceits and migrated the content into a higher degree of fictional complexity. That in and of itself does not constitute satire, especially when it is well understood...even by most kids, I suspect, that the universe of the Power Rangers is a very narrow and shallow realm in terms of complexity and design.
If you want 1080p ALL the time and 60fps ALL the time then buy a goddamned PC.
Consoles are not the be all and end all of power, the new consoles are not ultra beast powerhouses, they are affordable gaming boxes, which are surprisingly powerful for the cost.
I can't believe I once identified as a PC gamer who loved insulting peasant console people. Now that I'm older, I just want to play some games, I really dont' give a damn.
60fps MANDATORY or QQ!!!:(:( Nope! - only 60fps mandatory games, 2D fighting, racing, online fps high intensity twitch shooters.
You wanna demand 60fps minimum in my single player storyline focused games? Nope. Shut up. Stop whining, stop badgering developers. Go to NeoGAF and cry with the rest of them.
I'm with you in this boat. My PC rig is fine, and I'll upgrade eventually, but I'm finding that the PS4 and Xbox One are providing plenty for what I need right now as an older gamer without any headache or hassle (well, less of both anyway).
And yet these games still play just fine and I can't honestly say that my Titanfall experience on Xbox One is any different from the PC (other than that I can still find players on Xbox One and I can't generally find them on the PC anymore).
Hardline doesn't look that great though, and the gameplay wasn't sufficiently innovative to really provide a sense of competition. I think it'll have a hard time dragging people away from Payday 2 and CSGO, and that's the real problem, not screen resolution/FPS.
I'm not drinking alcohol at all this year (just as an experiment - I'm not a recovering alcoholic or anything like that). I don't think that this has made any difference to my socialising.
Yeah, but you've probably already established a (meatspace) social network prior to this.
Surely you don't think you need to drink to establish a meatspace social network.
Yeah, it is entirely possible to socialize without drinking. In fact, one could argue that alcohol has the opposite effect. Try socializing with some excessive drinkers sometime (and play the teetotaler or designated driver). Excruciating experience, and if you're lucky one of them won't vomit up a lung before the night is over.
I was home-schooled, and I don't plan to do it with my children if I can avoid the need. I'll be brief, but I feel that any parent considering home-schooling needs to really consider carefully if they are doing it for the child or for their own needs. Overly protective parents seeking to shield their child will do a great deal of harm. Parents who are not able to reasonably assess their own strengths and weaknesses as teachers will also impair their children's development. Finally, and most significant: you may avoid the pitfalls and perils of high school, and that could be an advantage, but I personally know that going straight from home schooling into college was an arduous journey, as I arrived with the social proficiency of an adult, and had no idea how to relate to those in my age group. It effectively took me until age 40 before I reached the point where I felt I could comfortably manage life and family in an "adult" manner (and it still feels weird, to be honest), and I strongly believe that the way I was sheltered and home-schooled by my parents contributed to this very odd form of arrested development.....and it's still not something I've overcome; I've just learned to compensate. There's not enough room and time to talk about it here, but I firmly believe that the home-schooling I received was a blessing for my education but a curse for my general social prowess.
You need to watch more movies. We can debate at length about the decisions made in these adaptation when compared to the books, and I certainly think Jackson AT BEST could have made 2 movies out of the book, but the fact is: compare these films on their own against other films on the market, and you will ultimately have to concede they are are far better and more entertaining on average than most Hollywood dreck out there now. If you still think otherwise then...man...I dunno, you've got problems.
What you highlight here is a fundamental difference between what can be accomplished in fiction on paper and what works well for film. The scene you described worked well in the book, obviously, but I can't help but feel you're missing something about the experience, the resonance, of reframing the action of the ents on film as it was done. This strikes me as important because when that scene came up in the movie it was powerful...actually the only real scene in the second film that I distinctly remember, and it was precisely because of how Jackson did it that the event went from "story bit that moves things forward" as it was in the book to "defining point of change" as it was in the film. It was a powerful scene.
There's a lot I disagree with on how The Hobbit was handled, padding being a key issue.....but the LOTR films were outstanding, and at least partially because they were not (thankfully) done as 9 movies instead of 3. This led to a lot of "short cut" approaches to telling the story, which forced Jackson to reach for quicker but more poignant and resonant, emotional events in those films. Unfortunately, had they been made now in the same manner as The Hobbit, we not only would have gotten that lengthy debate among the ents you suggest, but it would have been 30 minutes long and involved lots of slow motion and drawn out voice-modulated speeches.
Guy probably has terrible eyesight issues or something and is incapable of externalizing the idea that not everyone has the same problem reading on tablets that he does. I have no problem with reading on my Nook HD+ vs. my e-ink readers.
Slashdot Mirror
As others have pointed out you appear not to be from the US. In the US you do get unemployment for being laid off, but not for being fired. One of the many reasons that lay-offs happen is actually due to the fact that in order for a company to fire you it has to demonstrate some level of employee malfeasance, which means arbitration in court if the employee disputes the accusation. I've been through and initiated both processes (and I've been laid off twice and was unemployment-eligible both times). In fact I had an ex-employee who left for personal reasons try to get unemployment compensation by claiming she had been terminated. In actual court she admitted she hadn't and that she thought the fact that the other job prospect (which she did not tell anyone about curiously) had fallen through so she felt she deserved the unemployment. My defense was, "We were happy to help you out in the tough times you stated, and would have rehired you if you'd come back to us." Judged ruled in my favor.
It is interesting how our society apparently concludes that if you are an attractive woman who is engaged in some sort of paid position as a social or support (cheerleader) role then you must clearly be a victim. Or is it that any context in which men benefit from the presence or attention of a woman automatically lumps them in to a predatory category? Is this actually the only way to categorize any situation in which both sexes are engaging on some level based on attraction/interest?
I was thinking the same thing. Were the 14 accidents all to the same car? Does google have a fleet of these? If it's one car, ask yourself how many accidents, minor or major, you have been in from 2009 to the present.....I've been in 1 and my wife as well had 1, both the fault of the other driver.....but the point being that while fender benders do happen, they don't happen to everyone with uniform consistency.....and when accidents cluster with specific drivers there's usually a reason. Google may be saying "other drivers did it" but what Google Driver is probably missing is better avoidance/predictive behavior that actually reacts to or anticipates other driver behavior......as an example, when you come up to a sudden and unexpected slowdown, what does Google Car do? A normal driver probably taps his breaks rapidly to warn the people behind him in case they aren't paying attention and is ready to shift lanes if it looks necessary.....google car prbably just takes it in the arse, so to speak.
Must have been one of the new black stormtroopers.
Interestingly you sound like a real, actual Christian there.
The atheist who argues that he should not be subject to an arbitrary set of beliefs that are based on unverifiable and possibly entirely fictional supernatural systems of judgement has a better leg to stand on than the deeply religious soul who wants to argue that his book was written by an unverifiable entity of unknowable nature, but trust him, he's real, and it defines an absolute set of laws that mean that two men, who want to be in a monogamous relationship recognized in marital ceremony, are ruining everything. I completely understand why religious tolerance isn't going to fly, though.....and I can't fault those who are religious and have no desire for tolerance, because no rational person should tolerate religion, either.
Heightened risk of death.....hyperbole, or care to elaborate on just how a gay wedding leads to heightened risk of death?
I think you're perhaps missing part of my point.
I agree entirely that there are downsides to allowing business owners to make such distinctions. The point about black Americans is very valid.
But my point was that your dismissing a certain notion of harm, as perceived by religious persons. They consider themselves to be held accountable to God for their choices.
You're correctly arguing that gay people suffer a certain kind of harm by a business refusing to do a certain kind of business on their behalf. I'm saying that you're dismissing the harm done to religious persons by demanding them to violate their consciences and/or their obedience to God (on their view).
Hmmm. Which part of the bible would serving a gay person violate? The part that says love your neighbor as yourself, love the sinner but hate the sin, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, or the judge not lest you be judged part?
Damn your response was much better than mine.
That's a tough call, but we're running into an interesting wall here. If their beliefs make them call into question their own conscience and morality for associating with or condoning gay behavior, but other secular beliefs strongly condemn those who would use an arbitrary religious proscription for conduct, then who wins here? Ultimately, the group that is actually correct in their assessment should prevail. At least partially because I strongly condemn abuse, and the religious faith of these individuals is abusive....not only to gay people, but to the believers themselves for forcing them into such terrible ethical fictions. It's back to the parable of the flying spaghetti monster all over again: you are establishing a precedent based on a truth that only you can assert, for which no reality outside of your mental construct exists. You have put yourself into this conundrum, and it is the right of all others to question why we should support your own self-abuse, especially if it then spills out and affects others.
Not "different sides of the same coin" unless you're suggesting that being gay is directly equivalent to being a religious hate-monger, being Jewish is directly equivalent to being a Nazi, or being black is somehow directly equivalent to being a bigot with an organization know for hanging blacks. Seriously not equivalent. Almost all of the "we think Indiana is fine with this" arguments are comparing normal apples to hate-filled oranges. A better comparison, which shows how this is idiotic: Should a gay man refuse to take pictures of a normal straight wedding? No. Should a Jewish man refuse to take pictures at a German Oktoberfest wedding? No. Should a black photographer turn down a job at a all-white folk wedding? No. Should a devout christian photographer refuse pictures of an otherwise normal wedding but he heard someone might be gay or atheist? No. See, that was easy.
Your example is not quite accurate, though. A baker that refuses to make a cake with two men on top because it might connote a gay wedding is comaprable to an LGBT baker refusing to bake a cake with a fish symbol on top because it implies christianity. In both cases, neither baker is compelled to engage in or endorse hate speech and you don't need a religious freedom law to protect you from being compelled to write either "God Kills" or "God Hates Fags" on a cake. Your examples need to be equivalent and the same thing: hate speech is not protected speech last time I checked.
Tolerance goes both ways.
In no way should a Christian business owner be forced to do something that violates his conscience. Ditto the homosexual business owner. Civil rights in no way trump religious rights an vice versa. If someone is a homosexual and they are refused a cake for their "wedding", they should just find a homosexual baker or someone willing to bake for them. Same goes for any business.
I'm personally intolerant of homosexuality. I don't dislike the individual homosexuals, but I will NEVER affirm their way of life -- and such will never be required of me. I'm actually a middle of the road guy politically, but I am a Christian -- and God's Word on the issue is firm. Love the sinner, hate the sin. And yes, I, too, am a sinner, but I'm not making the life choice for something that God has called an abomination in His eyes. I would welcome a homosexual into my church congregation with the understanding that he is there not for judgment, but healing. The church, properly run, is a hospital for sinners's souls, not a courtroom, but God will not be mocked. Just like homosexuals, I need to daily repent of my sins and ask God for His forgiveness -- and to exercise faith and obedience. God wants two things: faith and obedience. Obey God's Word == eternal life. Disobey, homosexual or heterosexual == eternal damnation.
I hate to break it to you, but you are not middle of the road, you are rather far to the right there. Middle of the road people are fine with sexual equality, gay marriage and the right of the public not to be discriminated at by a business. You're post gave me chills, creepiest thing I've read so far. "God will not be mocked." Hebdo much?
You may want to dig a bit deeper into that article. Just because those four words are used in other bills does not make them even remotely equivalent. New Mexico's bill, for example, as NM is listed as on the map with such a RFRA, is nothing like what is now law in Indiana.
Jesus may have said nothing, but the old testament has a pretty clear lesson on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
I personally have very little issue with homosexuals. I have a serious problem with gay marriage, as marriage is a religious ceremony, so the state should stay out of it. Civil union is the state sponsored joining, and should be the proper avenue for the state to allow something that religion indicates is wrong. If someone feels that a homosexual couple should share in the benefits a heterosexual relationship enjoys, they should move for equal benefits for the two, not move to change the definition of marriage. However, it has to be understood that most of the benefits of marriage have to do with holding a family together for the benefit of the children, which a homosexual marriage may have some issues in creating.
Marriage is not a religious ceremony, it is cultural manifestation of a concept that predates all modern and known archaic religions. Religion did not invent marriage, but it capitalized on it and possibly institutionalized it, and even then marriage existed as a concept thousands of years prior to Judeo-Christian thought, shocking as that may be to you. If your argument were in the least bit sensible then we should have no government endorsement of marriages, and I as an atheist should not have been allowed to get married (and we used a local judge, not a minister, fyi). Also: and to use my own native state as an example (New Mexico) they determined that discrimination based on gender in marriage is not actually supported by the state's laws as written....so guess what, same sex marriage is legally fine and always was in this state.
The argument that marriage is a religious ceremony is just painful when I hear it, because it really marks the person presenting the argument as very limited in their scope of knowledge and understanding. It's just....hard....to imagine that someone would be so limited in their own understanding of this world they live in.
I disagree that this is about hatred; in fact, I think you have to be calling many people blatant liars to make it about hatred. Granted, on either side there are likely some who are driven by hatred, but that's always going to be the case. It seems that many (and probably the vast majority) of people on both sides are pretty normal people who genuinely feel the way they say they do. Trying to vilify people on one side or the other doesn't help and is disingenuous.
Personally I can see merit in both sides and I bet if you give each argument and fair chance you would too. And that's why the issue is such a difficult one. It's only through setting up absurd strawman arguments that you can really dismiss the whole debate.
On the one side, it looks like we're dealing with discrimination all over again. As with racial discrimination, it seems wrong to avoid doing business with people just because of their sexual orientation. Separate but equal never worked and simply wasn't right.
On the other side, it seems like you have the government forcing people not just to tolerate - but to actively celebrate - something that is deeply abhorrent to them. They would otherwise be inclined to let people live their own lives how they want but when forced to be involved they honestly feel wrong, deeply wrong, about being forced to tacitly condone things like same sex marriage.
Both sides sincerely feel like the other side is taking away their rights and feel the others' suggested way to deal with it is unfair. Hatred isn't necessarily a part of the equation at all.
Your last sentence seems to be contradicted by the prior paragraph. Also, I think you have not sufficiently demonstrated just how engaging in a neutral business transaction will adequately provide those who find someone different from them "deeply abhorrent" the requisite detection equipment to identify who they are (unless they are preparing a cake, apparently).
That said, I really wanted to comment on your first sentence: I absolutely am one who says that the supporters for this bill are doing so out of hatred, and are lying. Through their teeth, and possibly to themselves about what their motives are. Painfully obvious when you're not trapped on the inside of this den of lies and hate. PAINFULLY.
They could have done this with the serial numbers filed off and achieved the same result....in fact that's a pretty acceptable means of creating a satire of this nature (dark and only ironically funny) when the IP in question could be considered at risk because of the presentation. If they had done this using "not-Power Rangers" that nontheless were sufficiently analogous to the actual Power Rangers then they would probably still be up and running, and the satire would still be on target. I think the irony here is adults who seem to have lost connection with the intended audience of a show like Power Ranger: kids. As an adult we all get that Power Ranger is basically a purely escapist fantasy that requires a deliberately and meticulous simplified universe in order for its heroes and villains to function. It's a world of action toys come to life, basically. Any childhood IP brought into "adulthood" is going to look weird when you start factoring in mature themes, realism, and complexity (witness the Transformers films for example). The mere act of doing this does not constitute sature, it merely means you've taken the core conceits and migrated the content into a higher degree of fictional complexity. That in and of itself does not constitute satire, especially when it is well understood...even by most kids, I suspect, that the universe of the Power Rangers is a very narrow and shallow realm in terms of complexity and design.
I'm so fucking sick of it, I'm SO SICK OF IT.
If you want 1080p ALL the time and 60fps ALL the time then buy a goddamned PC. Consoles are not the be all and end all of power, the new consoles are not ultra beast powerhouses, they are affordable gaming boxes, which are surprisingly powerful for the cost.
I can't believe I once identified as a PC gamer who loved insulting peasant console people. Now that I'm older, I just want to play some games, I really dont' give a damn. 60fps MANDATORY or QQ!!! :( :( Nope! - only 60fps mandatory games, 2D fighting, racing, online fps high intensity twitch shooters.
You wanna demand 60fps minimum in my single player storyline focused games? Nope. Shut up. Stop whining, stop badgering developers. Go to NeoGAF and cry with the rest of them.
I'm with you in this boat. My PC rig is fine, and I'll upgrade eventually, but I'm finding that the PS4 and Xbox One are providing plenty for what I need right now as an older gamer without any headache or hassle (well, less of both anyway).
And yet these games still play just fine and I can't honestly say that my Titanfall experience on Xbox One is any different from the PC (other than that I can still find players on Xbox One and I can't generally find them on the PC anymore). Hardline doesn't look that great though, and the gameplay wasn't sufficiently innovative to really provide a sense of competition. I think it'll have a hard time dragging people away from Payday 2 and CSGO, and that's the real problem, not screen resolution/FPS.
Goddamn I think you just won the internet.
I'm not drinking alcohol at all this year (just as an experiment - I'm not a recovering alcoholic or anything like that). I don't think that this has made any difference to my socialising.
Yeah, but you've probably already established a (meatspace) social network prior to this.
Surely you don't think you need to drink to establish a meatspace social network.
Yeah, it is entirely possible to socialize without drinking. In fact, one could argue that alcohol has the opposite effect. Try socializing with some excessive drinkers sometime (and play the teetotaler or designated driver). Excruciating experience, and if you're lucky one of them won't vomit up a lung before the night is over.
I was home-schooled, and I don't plan to do it with my children if I can avoid the need. I'll be brief, but I feel that any parent considering home-schooling needs to really consider carefully if they are doing it for the child or for their own needs. Overly protective parents seeking to shield their child will do a great deal of harm. Parents who are not able to reasonably assess their own strengths and weaknesses as teachers will also impair their children's development. Finally, and most significant: you may avoid the pitfalls and perils of high school, and that could be an advantage, but I personally know that going straight from home schooling into college was an arduous journey, as I arrived with the social proficiency of an adult, and had no idea how to relate to those in my age group. It effectively took me until age 40 before I reached the point where I felt I could comfortably manage life and family in an "adult" manner (and it still feels weird, to be honest), and I strongly believe that the way I was sheltered and home-schooled by my parents contributed to this very odd form of arrested development.....and it's still not something I've overcome; I've just learned to compensate. There's not enough room and time to talk about it here, but I firmly believe that the home-schooling I received was a blessing for my education but a curse for my general social prowess.
You need to watch more movies. We can debate at length about the decisions made in these adaptation when compared to the books, and I certainly think Jackson AT BEST could have made 2 movies out of the book, but the fact is: compare these films on their own against other films on the market, and you will ultimately have to concede they are are far better and more entertaining on average than most Hollywood dreck out there now. If you still think otherwise then...man...I dunno, you've got problems.
What you highlight here is a fundamental difference between what can be accomplished in fiction on paper and what works well for film. The scene you described worked well in the book, obviously, but I can't help but feel you're missing something about the experience, the resonance, of reframing the action of the ents on film as it was done. This strikes me as important because when that scene came up in the movie it was powerful...actually the only real scene in the second film that I distinctly remember, and it was precisely because of how Jackson did it that the event went from "story bit that moves things forward" as it was in the book to "defining point of change" as it was in the film. It was a powerful scene. There's a lot I disagree with on how The Hobbit was handled, padding being a key issue.....but the LOTR films were outstanding, and at least partially because they were not (thankfully) done as 9 movies instead of 3. This led to a lot of "short cut" approaches to telling the story, which forced Jackson to reach for quicker but more poignant and resonant, emotional events in those films. Unfortunately, had they been made now in the same manner as The Hobbit, we not only would have gotten that lengthy debate among the ents you suggest, but it would have been 30 minutes long and involved lots of slow motion and drawn out voice-modulated speeches.
Guy probably has terrible eyesight issues or something and is incapable of externalizing the idea that not everyone has the same problem reading on tablets that he does. I have no problem with reading on my Nook HD+ vs. my e-ink readers.