Peter Parker again? Lets see Miles Morales on the big screen! (Yeah, it was Peter in the 616-CivilWar, but given how the MCU adapts comics-canon? You can't tell me Miles wouldn't be a great fit, especially given the greater risk a young black super-hero in NYC runs by unmasking.)
Vitally important as it is to protect children from sexual predators (which of course includes the market for child pornography), I'm concerned that including general child abuse in this will both silence child abuse survivors and make it more difficult for abused children to ask for help or advise anonymously online. I don't think differences in English usage across the world should override this.
There's a lot of variations on "realistic human 3D models are difficult and expensive, therefor CGI software is unlikely to replace photography anytime soon" in the posts above. Wanted to point out: DAZStudio4Pro is currently free (along with its companion programs Bryce and Hexagon) and comes with an androgynous free human figure (called Genesis) that can be easily worked into a wide variety of realistic men, women, children, aliens, and demons: http://www.daz3d.com/i/products/daz_studio?
The site (and several others) sell presets to easily make Genesis into various realistic characters, also lots of 3D clothes, props, and scenery -- but, like Blender, DAZStudio4Pro is free (unlike Blender it's not open-source, has been paid software in the past, and almost certainly will be again).
Plenty of examples on the site's forums of extremely photo-realistic 3D human renders, too: http://forum.daz3d.com/ , try starting with http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=189377 and http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=165191
When you say "from the ground up", do you mean literally? If so, you should start with a building that's not only fireproof but disaster-resistant, is energy efficient, low-maintenance and yet attractive, and costs little more than a standard structure while being faster to build. You want something like the building shown here: http://www.monolithic.com/gallery/commercial/office/index.html
I'm in no way affiliated with Monolithic, I've just seen their work and know they can give you what you need. Oh, and they're better at building structures than they are at building websites. Really.
"...or did it just send people over to alternative browsers?"
That's what happened to me -- I needed to upgrade to see a page, I went to IE's upgrade site, and it asked me for stuff I hadn't seen in at least a year. So, this post isn't being typed into an IE window.
I've considered using a projector for a computer monitor, but I've been stymied by two problems: very few projectors can reach my favorite resolution (1024 by 768 pixels), and those that can are pretty expensive.
But most lower resolutions should be fine for TV use -- here your main concern should be brightness. I wouldn't settle for less than 1000 to 1500 lumens -- you might get away with 500 to 1000 lumens, but only if you're willing to keep your media room darkened.
As for the TV you're hooking this up to, these projectors are designed to be hooked up to computers, which I believe have incompatable output (I may be out of date on this). You might consider buying a computer with a TV card to hook your projector up to.
Okay, tech-stuff is not the only thing that matters to nerds'n'geeks, so here's a non-tech selection on a vitally important topic. Other advantages: good rhyme and scansion, about 3 minutes, and lends itself to an intense, effective presentation.
I found about five different versions of this on the web, differing from occasional lines to just puncuation. In my opinion, the verbage in this one's the easiest to say.
-X-
Hangman
by Maurice Ogden
1.
Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
2.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
3.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a userer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
4.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.
-X-
Try to remember that the sentences should be read by their puctuation, not by the line and quatrain breaks! For example:
. . . . . "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
should be read as "There is no one left at all for hanging, and so he calls to me to help pull down the gallows-tree." It's easy with a little practice. Good luck!
.
I am just fascinated by how the response to any given Jon Katz post usually includes an avalanche of posts (sometimes numbering in the hundreds) deriding his technological understanding, the appropriateness of the topic on Slashdot, and including a liberal dose of plain and fancy flamage. But this topic (a good one in my humble opinion, but no more tech-oriented than much written here by Katz) has gotten over 1,500 posts in just a few hours, with only a tiny percentage being variations on "Why is this here on Slashdot? You suck!"
I sense a trend here, possibly a conspiracy of anti-Katz bigotry . . . . .
. When I fly my small aircraft thru Canada, enroute to Alaska, I am *required* by Canadian law to carry a suitable rifle onboard my aircraft for survival use.
So, do you have any trouble with this when in American airports? In my limited experience, airports are the penultimate in anti-gun parinoia/precautions. (Ironic, isn't it?)
.
Let's take this back, a bit over 200 years ago. In brief: The American Colonies believe (correctly or not) that they're being oppressed by their government, which, although powerful, is in England all the way across a big ocean. This dispute leads to war.
The colonists win the war largely because many of them own their own guns, so they can mount an effective defense against their government.
In the country they create, they make sure (in language that seemed obvious to them at the time, despite the confused muddle their descendants later make of it) that just in case the new government ever gets as oppressive as the old one the citizens can mount a defense, everybody has the right to keep whatever kind of weapons they like, especially guns. The Founding Fathers realized the dangers inherent in such a policy, including some children accidentally killing themselves with weapons left in drawers (instead of being carried by the owner at all times, which they thought was the sensible way to keep a gun) -- they believed that, horrible as this certainty was, it was far less than the terrors imposed on all children growing up under an oppressive government.
Okay, back to the present: In America, despite the crippling of this vital Constitutional protection, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is still a strong part of the culture. Meanwhile, back in England, the people once defeated by an armed populous still take a dim view of citizens having the means to violently overthrow their divinely-ordained rulers, no matter how oppressive those rulers become.
Personally, I think a large part of the problem is that there isn't enough sex and violence in the media. Okay, the sex part has less to do with this than the violence, but not that much less.
Yes, those "indeterminate" studies may have something on the ball: I think there is a link between media violence and violent behavior, but one the moralizing do-gooders can't conceive -- the problem is not the violence itself, but all the lies about it.
It's already been established that the temporary "suspension of disbelief" needed to enjoy a TV show or a movie is actually a mild form of hypnosis. Our normal, conscious minds know full well these are just stories -- stories with real-world accurate details, sometimes with "learn-something-from-this" morals imbedded in them, but just stories. But they're also the most potent teaching mechanism to come along in all of human history. So under extreme stress, whether a sudden crisis or slowly built up over years, some of us snap and seize on the solutions we'd never consider in our better judgement, the solutions we so enjoyed watching our on-screen mentors use.
Then the new-born killer is left staring in disbelief at the blood on the floor, shocked by the very permanent consequences of his actions. Why? Because the shows lie, they lie by omission: they're not allowed to tell us the whole truth.
They're not allowed to show us someone's skull blasted open and the brain matter spattered in chunks across the floor, or someone's bullet-chewed guts spilling out, shit mixed with the blood -- too graphic, this has to be inferred instead. But we do get to see the shooter in loving detail, and whether hero or villain, every effort is made to put us in his place, feeling the pain and rage that brought him to this like it was our very own. We just don't get to see what he sees after he pulls the trigger. We rarely get a glimpse of that night in the cell, weeks or months in the courtroom, the years in prison, and the life branded with the label "Felon, Murderer, Killer". If we do, it's never with anywhere near the same intensity, or it's not in the same movie.
Sure, there are several movies that go full tilt to convey the horrors of prison just as effectively as the "Action" genre gets across the dark satisfaction of killing. But how many people who saw "The Shawshank Redemption" are also Stalone/Schwarzenegger/etc shoot'em'up fans? Not to mention that the ratio of "consequence" movies to action flicks is abysmally low.
But you won't see this viewpoint in the Right vs Left wrangling on this issue. The Moral Panickers wouldn't be willing to admit to any solution outside of their narrow view of What God Wants (despite the Bible's generous depictions of graphic violence) -- even if they were, they couldn't wrap their minds around the concept that the moral degradation of our country has been caused by the very same oh-so-beloved censorship they put in place to prevent it. As for our Liberal, FirstAmendment-loving brethren, most believe less is more and better to sacrifice a few cinemagraphic techniques to Censorship than to risk the right to show the story. The more pragmatic types could easily see this point being swallowed up in their opponents' gleeful squeal of "See? The problem is media violence! Burn the witch!"
(With apologies to MLK,) I have a dream. I dream of a rating system that judges movies not by the offensiveness of their content but by the realism of their portrayal. I dream of a world where children's minds and lives are no longer sacrificed to the false god Innocence. I dream of the time when parents teach their children about sex and violence as soon as their minds can grasp the concepts, cushioning the shock with emotional support and unconditional love rather than with soothing lies and dangerous ignorance.
I have a dream.
-X- -X- -X- -X- -X-
Do I think this is the only cause? Hell no! Real-life social problems grow from a network of causes like a river growing from multiple streams -- on the issue of why kids kill, most of these causes have already been described in poignant detail here on Slashdot. But this, too, is part of the problem: we as a society are continually lying to ourselves and to our children, and justifying it with "It doesn't matter -- we know what the truth is, and our children will learn eventually."
.
Okay, not that I'm saying this shouldn't be seen (again, and again, and again, and again, and again) on Slashdot, but if I want to refer someone to the Hellmouth posts they're scattered all over this site -- yes, anybody with a minimum of web-literacy can find them with ease, but the people we really want paying attention to this are people like principals and teachers and school administrators.
A printed book is a great thing, but it's not enough -- this needs its own website, so you can give somebody one URL where they'll be confronted with all the data and testimonials.
On a loosely related note, does anybody remember hearing/seeing the term "moral panic" before a year ago, or even before six month ago? Yes, I know it's the title of a book (by John Fekete, Moral Panic: Biopolitics Rising) published in 1994, because I just looked that up. I'm looking for when's the first time you can remember seeing the phrase. The first time I saw it was in a few articles in just the last few months, but maybe I've just had my head up my ass (no, that's not a goatse.cx reference!).
Okay, I realized this isn't going to be particularly helpful, but . . . . .
With the time, trouble, and effort this is going to take, wouldn't you be better off just rebuying the movies on DVD? DVD prices are also coming down, and you get extra features (okay, some are lame, but many are worth the money).
You didn't mention how many LaserDiscs you have, so I can't do a breakdown on the price of the equipment you're planning on getting vs replacing your collection on DVDs -- you've probably already done this and been happy with the results. But the equipment you mentioned is probably going to run you about $1,000, even at the new "affordable" prices -- that's about 40 to 50 movies on DVD, which (on top of the money) is about 80 to 100 hours out of your life, minimum.
"Until Dolly, cloning was always a science fiction topic. Since it's not real, why worry about it?"
Whoops! Because the unreal is becoming real at a rapidly increasing pace. Taking cloning as an example (after all, it's on topic): as you correctly pointed out, it was just science fiction. Outside of the numerous science fiction fandoms, it was honestly believed that cloning adult humans (not just newly-fertilized eggs, as sometimes happens naturally to produce identical twins) would never be technically feasible because the complex chemical cues cells used to distinguish a newly-fertilized egg cell from an ordinary cell could never be duplicated. So even when we scoop out the half-a-creature DNA from an unfertilized egg cell and replace it with the full DNA from the creature to be cloned, the cell wouldn't believe that it had been fertilized. (Yes, that's a gross over-simplification.)
When this barrier was broken (with frogs, I think), it was "Okay, but it'll never happen with mammals!" And then Dolly the sheep comes along. We're just one step away from humans (assuming it hasn't happened already, scocio/political barriers not withstanding). This will give us an ordinary baby in all respects but one: s/he's the genetic duplicate of whoever donated the DNA, an infant "twin" of an adult.
With current technology alone, the possibilities (ethical or not) for life extension exist: grow a clone for transplant organs long before you need them, then harvest when/if the need arises. Parents already do a version of this when they conceive a child they hope will be donor-compatible with a sick child they already have.
Within the next twenty years we could easily have accelerated maturity (to grow clones to adults in months), and the ability to record the contents of one brain and download it into the "blank" brain of the clone. Allowing for adaptations to Movie Reality (tm), much like we saw in the Sixth Day.
Science Fiction (even Grade A schlock movies like this) give us a way to think through the consequences of our advancement ahead of time. Despite the FUD this inevitably generates, I think it's a good thing.
(Of course, maybe you were just trolling . . . ..)
It seemed to me (especially looking at Dr Kynes eyes during the harvester rescue) that the blue gets a bit washed out in direct sunlight, but shows up briliantly in shade. In the scenes with the sunlight on one side of his face this is especially noticeable.
Okay, I'll admit it -- I'm a Katz fan. On top of that, I loved Sixth Sense, and was profoundly disturbed by Fight Club -- I wouldn't dream of giving away the surprise plot twists to either of them. But I'm shocked that Katz didn't hit on the raw bigotry of this movie's "surprise".
And it is a surprise. I didn't see it coming (okay, with me that's no big feat), there were clues throughout the movie that pointed to it (especially if you're an old comic book fan) -- this followed the Sixth Sense formula perfectly. Except that you're left with a "that's the surprise?" letdown. The real problem could easily slip right by you.
*~*~* Last Chance Spoiler Alert! *~*~*
Elijah Price becomes a classic villain in a classic style: he's an intelligent child with an uncommon handicap and, because of this (?), is harassed & shunned by his peers. Rather than accept his rightful place as bottom-of-the-pecking-order outcast, he takes comfort and inspiration from a disreputable source (in this case, comic books). Of course, since he's not following the socially-approved "This is How We Do Things" script, he has to do "bad" things to accomplish his goal (in this case, he kills several-hundred people in staged disasters in order to find the proto-superhero he's sure must exist).
Is everybody seeing the "Beware! Different = = Dangerous!" subtext here? Taken to its logical conclusion, this movie justifies the behavior of all the oppressors in the Hellmouth -- if you're obviously different from the mainstream (Goth, Geek, whatever), you're likely to do something nasty eventually (spray your school with bullets, hack bank computers, whatever): of course this is good reason to bring the full forces of social condemnation and authoritarian might to bear, slowly crushing you like the loathsome toxic insect you (probably) are. It's the American Way!
Yes, they are following the Golden Age of Comics how-to-make-a-villain recipe, and it does fit in with their comic-books-really-do-imitate-life theme. But there are plenty off things that were considered perfectly fine fifty years ago that today most people know are wrong. Why? Because a just a few people stood up and said "No, this is wrong. It may be a too-subtle bigotry that practically no one would notice, it may be "how we've always done it", it may be necessary to the plot -- but it's still wrong, and we're not letting this slip by one more time!"
I couldn't've refered to him as "everyone's favorite" without being a bit sarcastic. However, I like Katz! I read the Freedom Forum Online, which mentions on his articles that he also is featured on Slashdot -- so here I am!
Yes, and I was quite impressed, until I asked why the resolution was on 800 x 600. Since then, I've been waiting for one to come out on a consumer price level that's really high-res, 1024 x 768. I'm still waiting.
To my knowledge (IANAL, and this is just off the top of my head), any anti-Spam laws target the sender only -- since the sender is actually just a customer, legally Micro$oft would be in the clear.
I have some, small, forlorn hope that maybe that's the real reason they're doing this -- just to prove they can get around a law that attempts to regulate behavior on the Internet. Maybe there are a few drones at M$ with some scraps of hacker spirit left, cruely misapplied to this hideous undertaking. Can you hear me? It's not to late! But you have to run now while there's still something left to save!
Slashdot Mirror
Peter Parker again? Lets see Miles Morales on the big screen! (Yeah, it was Peter in the 616-CivilWar, but given how the MCU adapts comics-canon? You can't tell me Miles wouldn't be a great fit, especially given the greater risk a young black super-hero in NYC runs by unmasking.)
Vitally important as it is to protect children from sexual predators (which of course includes the market for child pornography), I'm concerned that including general child abuse in this will both silence child abuse survivors and make it more difficult for abused children to ask for help or advise anonymously online. I don't think differences in English usage across the world should override this.
There's a lot of variations on "realistic human 3D models are difficult and expensive, therefor CGI software is unlikely to replace photography anytime soon" in the posts above. Wanted to point out: DAZStudio4Pro is currently free (along with its companion programs Bryce and Hexagon) and comes with an androgynous free human figure (called Genesis) that can be easily worked into a wide variety of realistic men, women, children, aliens, and demons:
http://www.daz3d.com/i/products/daz_studio?
The site (and several others) sell presets to easily make Genesis into various realistic characters, also lots of 3D clothes, props, and scenery -- but, like Blender, DAZStudio4Pro is free (unlike Blender it's not open-source, has been paid software in the past, and almost certainly will be again).
Plenty of examples on the site's forums of extremely photo-realistic 3D human renders, too: http://forum.daz3d.com/ , try starting with http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=189377 and http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=165191
When you say "from the ground up", do you mean literally? If so, you should start with a building that's not only fireproof but disaster-resistant, is energy efficient, low-maintenance and yet attractive, and costs little more than a standard structure while being faster to build. You want something like the building shown here: http://www.monolithic.com/gallery/commercial/office/index.html
Different design (with floorplan and site layout) here: http://www.monolithic.com/gallery/commercial/stardome/index.html
Plenty more commercial structures here: http://www.monolithic.com/gallery/commercial/index.html
I'm in no way affiliated with Monolithic, I've just seen their work and know they can give you what you need. Oh, and they're better at building structures than they are at building websites. Really.
That's what happened to me -- I needed to upgrade to see a page, I went to IE's upgrade site, and it asked me for stuff I hadn't seen in at least a year. So, this post isn't being typed into an IE window.
Mine is a variation of my confirmation name: Thomas More.
I've considered using a projector for a computer monitor, but I've been stymied by two problems: very few projectors can reach my favorite resolution (1024 by 768 pixels), and those that can are pretty expensive.
But most lower resolutions should be fine for TV use -- here your main concern should be brightness. I wouldn't settle for less than 1000 to 1500 lumens -- you might get away with 500 to 1000 lumens, but only if you're willing to keep your media room darkened.
As for the TV you're hooking this up to, these projectors are designed to be hooked up to computers, which I believe have incompatable output (I may be out of date on this). You might consider buying a computer with a TV card to hook your projector up to.
Okay, tech-stuff is not the only thing that matters to nerds'n'geeks, so here's a non-tech selection on a vitally important topic. Other advantages: good rhyme and scansion, about 3 minutes, and lends itself to an intense, effective presentation.
I found about five different versions of this on the web, differing from occasional lines to just puncuation. In my opinion, the verbage in this one's the easiest to say.
-X-
-X-Try to remember that the sentences should be read by their puctuation, not by the line and quatrain breaks! For example:
should be read as "There is no one left at all for hanging, and so he calls to me to help pull down the gallows-tree." It's easy with a little practice. Good luck!I am just fascinated by how the response to any given Jon Katz post usually includes an avalanche of posts (sometimes numbering in the hundreds) deriding his technological understanding, the appropriateness of the topic on Slashdot, and including a liberal dose of plain and fancy flamage. But this topic (a good one in my humble opinion, but no more tech-oriented than much written here by Katz) has gotten over 1,500 posts in just a few hours, with only a tiny percentage being variations on "Why is this here on Slashdot? You suck!"
I sense a trend here, possibly a conspiracy of anti-Katz bigotry . . . . .
-X-
When I fly my small aircraft thru Canada, enroute to Alaska, I am *required* by Canadian law to carry a suitable rifle onboard my aircraft for survival use.
So, do you have any trouble with this when in American airports? In my limited experience, airports are the penultimate in anti-gun parinoia/precautions. (Ironic, isn't it?)
-X-
Let's take this back, a bit over 200 years ago. In brief: The American Colonies believe (correctly or not) that they're being oppressed by their government, which, although powerful, is in England all the way across a big ocean. This dispute leads to war.
The colonists win the war largely because many of them own their own guns, so they can mount an effective defense against their government.
In the country they create, they make sure (in language that seemed obvious to them at the time, despite the confused muddle their descendants later make of it) that just in case the new government ever gets as oppressive as the old one the citizens can mount a defense, everybody has the right to keep whatever kind of weapons they like, especially guns. The Founding Fathers realized the dangers inherent in such a policy, including some children accidentally killing themselves with weapons left in drawers (instead of being carried by the owner at all times, which they thought was the sensible way to keep a gun) -- they believed that, horrible as this certainty was, it was far less than the terrors imposed on all children growing up under an oppressive government.
Okay, back to the present: In America, despite the crippling of this vital Constitutional protection, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is still a strong part of the culture. Meanwhile, back in England, the people once defeated by an armed populous still take a dim view of citizens having the means to violently overthrow their divinely-ordained rulers, no matter how oppressive those rulers become.
Is anyone really surprised at this?
Personally, I think a large part of the problem is that there isn't enough sex and violence in the media. Okay, the sex part has less to do with this than the violence, but not that much less.
Yes, those "indeterminate" studies may have something on the ball: I think there is a link between media violence and violent behavior, but one the moralizing do-gooders can't conceive -- the problem is not the violence itself, but all the lies about it.
It's already been established that the temporary "suspension of disbelief" needed to enjoy a TV show or a movie is actually a mild form of hypnosis. Our normal, conscious minds know full well these are just stories -- stories with real-world accurate details, sometimes with "learn-something-from-this" morals imbedded in them, but just stories. But they're also the most potent teaching mechanism to come along in all of human history. So under extreme stress, whether a sudden crisis or slowly built up over years, some of us snap and seize on the solutions we'd never consider in our better judgement, the solutions we so enjoyed watching our on-screen mentors use.
Then the new-born killer is left staring in disbelief at the blood on the floor, shocked by the very permanent consequences of his actions. Why? Because the shows lie, they lie by omission: they're not allowed to tell us the whole truth.
They're not allowed to show us someone's skull blasted open and the brain matter spattered in chunks across the floor, or someone's bullet-chewed guts spilling out, shit mixed with the blood -- too graphic, this has to be inferred instead. But we do get to see the shooter in loving detail, and whether hero or villain, every effort is made to put us in his place, feeling the pain and rage that brought him to this like it was our very own. We just don't get to see what he sees after he pulls the trigger. We rarely get a glimpse of that night in the cell, weeks or months in the courtroom, the years in prison, and the life branded with the label "Felon, Murderer, Killer". If we do, it's never with anywhere near the same intensity, or it's not in the same movie.
Sure, there are several movies that go full tilt to convey the horrors of prison just as effectively as the "Action" genre gets across the dark satisfaction of killing. But how many people who saw "The Shawshank Redemption" are also Stalone/Schwarzenegger/etc shoot'em'up fans? Not to mention that the ratio of "consequence" movies to action flicks is abysmally low.
But you won't see this viewpoint in the Right vs Left wrangling on this issue. The Moral Panickers wouldn't be willing to admit to any solution outside of their narrow view of What God Wants (despite the Bible's generous depictions of graphic violence) -- even if they were, they couldn't wrap their minds around the concept that the moral degradation of our country has been caused by the very same oh-so-beloved censorship they put in place to prevent it. As for our Liberal, FirstAmendment-loving brethren, most believe less is more and better to sacrifice a few cinemagraphic techniques to Censorship than to risk the right to show the story. The more pragmatic types could easily see this point being swallowed up in their opponents' gleeful squeal of "See? The problem is media violence! Burn the witch!"
(With apologies to MLK,) I have a dream. I dream of a rating system that judges movies not by the offensiveness of their content but by the realism of their portrayal. I dream of a world where children's minds and lives are no longer sacrificed to the false god Innocence. I dream of the time when parents teach their children about sex and violence as soon as their minds can grasp the concepts, cushioning the shock with emotional support and unconditional love rather than with soothing lies and dangerous ignorance.
I have a dream.
-X- -X- -X- -X- -X-
Do I think this is the only cause? Hell no! Real-life social problems grow from a network of causes like a river growing from multiple streams -- on the issue of why kids kill, most of these causes have already been described in poignant detail here on Slashdot. But this, too, is part of the problem: we as a society are continually lying to ourselves and to our children, and justifying it with "It doesn't matter -- we know what the truth is, and our children will learn eventually."
It does matter.
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Okay, not that I'm saying this shouldn't be seen (again, and again, and again, and again, and again) on Slashdot, but if I want to refer someone to the Hellmouth posts they're scattered all over this site -- yes, anybody with a minimum of web-literacy can find them with ease, but the people we really want paying attention to this are people like principals and teachers and school administrators.
A printed book is a great thing, but it's not enough -- this needs its own website, so you can give somebody one URL where they'll be confronted with all the data and testimonials.
On a loosely related note, does anybody remember hearing/seeing the term "moral panic" before a year ago, or even before six month ago? Yes, I know it's the title of a book (by John Fekete, Moral Panic: Biopolitics Rising) published in 1994, because I just looked that up. I'm looking for when's the first time you can remember seeing the phrase. The first time I saw it was in a few articles in just the last few months, but maybe I've just had my head up my ass (no, that's not a goatse.cx reference!).
Okay, I realized this isn't going to be particularly helpful, but . . . . .
With the time, trouble, and effort this is going to take, wouldn't you be better off just rebuying the movies on DVD? DVD prices are also coming down, and you get extra features (okay, some are lame, but many are worth the money).
You didn't mention how many LaserDiscs you have, so I can't do a breakdown on the price of the equipment you're planning on getting vs replacing your collection on DVDs -- you've probably already done this and been happy with the results. But the equipment you mentioned is probably going to run you about $1,000, even at the new "affordable" prices -- that's about 40 to 50 movies on DVD, which (on top of the money) is about 80 to 100 hours out of your life, minimum.
Cool idea, but is it really worth it?
Whoops! Because the unreal is becoming real at a rapidly increasing pace. Taking cloning as an example (after all, it's on topic): as you correctly pointed out, it was just science fiction. Outside of the numerous science fiction fandoms, it was honestly believed that cloning adult humans (not just newly-fertilized eggs, as sometimes happens naturally to produce identical twins) would never be technically feasible because the complex chemical cues cells used to distinguish a newly-fertilized egg cell from an ordinary cell could never be duplicated. So even when we scoop out the half-a-creature DNA from an unfertilized egg cell and replace it with the full DNA from the creature to be cloned, the cell wouldn't believe that it had been fertilized. (Yes, that's a gross over-simplification.)
When this barrier was broken (with frogs, I think), it was "Okay, but it'll never happen with mammals!" And then Dolly the sheep comes along. We're just one step away from humans (assuming it hasn't happened already, scocio/political barriers not withstanding). This will give us an ordinary baby in all respects but one: s/he's the genetic duplicate of whoever donated the DNA, an infant "twin" of an adult.
With current technology alone, the possibilities (ethical or not) for life extension exist: grow a clone for transplant organs long before you need them, then harvest when/if the need arises. Parents already do a version of this when they conceive a child they hope will be donor-compatible with a sick child they already have.
Within the next twenty years we could easily have accelerated maturity (to grow clones to adults in months), and the ability to record the contents of one brain and download it into the "blank" brain of the clone. Allowing for adaptations to Movie Reality (tm), much like we saw in the Sixth Day.
Science Fiction (even Grade A schlock movies like this) give us a way to think through the consequences of our advancement ahead of time. Despite the FUD this inevitably generates, I think it's a good thing.
(Of course, maybe you were just trolling . . . . .)
Okay, I'll admit it -- I'm a Katz fan. On top of that, I loved Sixth Sense, and was profoundly disturbed by Fight Club -- I wouldn't dream of giving away the surprise plot twists to either of them. But I'm shocked that Katz didn't hit on the raw bigotry of this movie's "surprise".
And it is a surprise. I didn't see it coming (okay, with me that's no big feat), there were clues throughout the movie that pointed to it (especially if you're an old comic book fan) -- this followed the Sixth Sense formula perfectly. Except that you're left with a "that's the surprise?" letdown. The real problem could easily slip right by you.
*~*~* Last Chance Spoiler Alert! *~*~*
Elijah Price becomes a classic villain in a classic style: he's an intelligent child with an uncommon handicap and, because of this (?), is harassed & shunned by his peers. Rather than accept his rightful place as bottom-of-the-pecking-order outcast, he takes comfort and inspiration from a disreputable source (in this case, comic books). Of course, since he's not following the socially-approved "This is How We Do Things" script, he has to do "bad" things to accomplish his goal (in this case, he kills several-hundred people in staged disasters in order to find the proto-superhero he's sure must exist).
Is everybody seeing the "Beware! Different = = Dangerous!" subtext here? Taken to its logical conclusion, this movie justifies the behavior of all the oppressors in the Hellmouth -- if you're obviously different from the mainstream (Goth, Geek, whatever), you're likely to do something nasty eventually (spray your school with bullets, hack bank computers, whatever): of course this is good reason to bring the full forces of social condemnation and authoritarian might to bear, slowly crushing you like the loathsome toxic insect you (probably) are. It's the American Way!
Yes, they are following the Golden Age of Comics how-to-make-a-villain recipe, and it does fit in with their comic-books-really-do-imitate-life theme. But there are plenty off things that were considered perfectly fine fifty years ago that today most people know are wrong. Why? Because a just a few people stood up and said "No, this is wrong. It may be a too-subtle bigotry that practically no one would notice, it may be "how we've always done it", it may be necessary to the plot -- but it's still wrong, and we're not letting this slip by one more time!"
Okay, Green Party = = Communist Party,
so Green = = Red.
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!
This is just too much sexual humor for one little puppybot!
Yes, and I was quite impressed, until I asked why the resolution was on 800 x 600. Since then, I've been waiting for one to come out on a consumer price level that's really high-res, 1024 x 768. I'm still waiting.
Obviously, it's been posting as Anonymous Coward.
I have some, small, forlorn hope that maybe that's the real reason they're doing this -- just to prove they can get around a law that attempts to regulate behavior on the Internet. Maybe there are a few drones at M$ with some scraps of hacker spirit left, cruely misapplied to this hideous undertaking. Can you hear me? It's not to late! But you have to run now while there's still something left to save!
Hail Eris!