It's not 1950 anymore. Heck, it's not even 1991 anymore. When I was in school, there were less than a half dozen women in all of the CS classes I took, combined, and while it may not be 50/50 yet, there are still some pretty goodly numbers of women.
If they're going to offer lap dances, great. Objectify away. But they should also include male dancers.
And this isn't just about sexism; it's also about heterosexism. The guy in one of those pictures look like he's really trying to enjoy the ladies, but it's just not happening.
I totally agree with you on the TV shows thing. I mean, if I could get a show from iTunes to either "watch once" or "watch for a week" for, say, 1/2 or 1/4 the cost of owning it, I totally would do that.
But it's not likely to happen, because if the cost of a season of, say Mad Men drops to $10 or $15, then suddenly a cable bill of $60-$80/month just to be able to watch your 3 or 4 favorite shows on the networks' schedules doesn't sound so great. Actually, with a season going for 3-4 months--13-15 weekly episodes--a full year's worth of 6 shows at the low end of my suggested price range is one month of your average cable user's bill.
It may be the right way to go, but some very rich people would sooner do [something awful] than let that happen.
Why yes, I am a grammar Nazi. And your English is grand. Before I saw your sig, the only things that jumped out at me were a couple of stylistic things and something I figured was a typo or a missed edit.
The stylistic things mostly surround the use of commas. You're pretty sparse with them, and I think there are places where you don't have them that they are not absolutely necessary, but would be acceptable. An example is, "...with at least one full time IT technician, it would be...". There are a few more places like that, but again, none of them are requirements, so I won't dive in.
Another stylistic improvement (in my mind) would have been replacing the period between "enabled" and "then" with a semicolon; those two sentences are really closely related, and I think they'd go well together.
The only thing that was an actual error was a simple one: "...most major Windows shops do it for..."
Maybe the majority of people who go to McDonalds--and the majority of those burned--are poor people who didn't have health insurance. Or maybe the scaldings were enough to lodge complaints about, but did not result in third-degree burns which required hospitalization, and so flew under the insurance radar.
What you are describing is the ideal goal of capitalism: successful businesses keeping other successful businesses in check. However, there are a lot of cases where there's plenty of abuse, but for one reason or another, it doesn't go over the threshold for action. That's why our courts--and sometimes our government--are necessary to provide the recourse that the abused have a right to.
Yeah. And talk about bad PR. I don't know why people are so quick to defend corporations, but Ms. Liebeck really took it on the chin when all she wanted were her medical bills paid. Given the circumstances, the request was more than reasonable.
I hate when people refer to the McDonalds case when all they know about it is what they learned on TV. It was a completely reasonable lawsuit, and it was McDonalds' own reckless disregard for safety that caused the award to be so high. To wit:
79 year old Stella Liebeck suffered third degree burns on her groin and inner thighs while trying to add sugar to her coffee at a McDonalds drive through. Third degree burns are the most serious kind of burn. McDonalds knew it had a problem. There were at least 700 previous cases of scalding coffee incidents at McDonalds before Liebeck's case. McDonalds had settled many claim before but refused Liebeck's request for $20,000 compensation, forcing the case into court. Lawyers found that McDonalds makes its coffee 30-50 degrees hotter than other restaurants, about 190 degrees. Doctors testified that it only takes 2-7 seconds to cause a third degree burn at 190 degrees. McDonalds knew its coffee was exceptionally hot but testified that they had never consulted with burn specialist. The Shriner Burn Institute had previously warned McDonalds not to serve coffee above 130 degrees. And so the jury came back with a decision- $160,000 for compensatory damages. But because McDonalds was guilty of "willful, reckless, malicious or wanton conduct" punitive damages were also applied. The jury set the award at $2.7 million. The judge then reduced the fine to less than half a million. Ms. Liebeck then settled with McDonalds for a sum reported to be much less than a half million dollars. McDonald's coffee is now sold at the same temperature as most other restaurants.
Summary: 700 complaints of scalding incidents. Requests from the Shriners burn unit. This was willful disregard for people's health. And the size of the reward? Calculated as the profits from one morning's take from the sales of coffee across the enterprise. I'd say that's a reasonable--if maybe small--slap on the wrist.
I don't know why people choose to defend corporations over the people they hurt. It's not like McDonalds would cross the street to piss on you if you were on fire; it must be something like the Stockholm Syndrome.
What if you kept getting phone calls.. that said:...
Actually, something like this happened once, almost. Some movie that Sam Jackson was in had a promo where you could go to a web site and fill out some information and Jackson's voice would make a custom call based on that information.
I was out of town on a business trip, and late in the night a buddy of mine had did this and my wife picked up. She's not a movie buff, and while I would have recognized the voice in a second, she didn't. She just heard an angry-sounding man talking about coming to our house in [our town], checking in on [one of my hobbies, one of hers], and a few other spooky things. Even though it was clearly a recording, it was really unsettling to her, so she called me right away.
Luckily, the system sends an email after calling, so when we were talking about it, I thought it sounded like something prank-ish and checked my email on a whim. I was able to talk her down, but she was a little pissed and asked me to tell my buddy not to pull that shite again.
Would that be the Honda Fit? It's a small, 5-door competitor to the Toyota Matrix which outperforms it in all customer satisfaction metrics, as well as fuel efficiency and crash safety. Plus, instead of steel, it's made of chocolate. Delicious AND biodegradable.
Don't tell anyone that we're 'turfing for Honda's PR company!
I refuse to be drawn into a debate with any idiot who thinks even the basic trappings of society amount to slavery.
Huzzah. This encapsulates my frustrations with right-wing-nut arguments about the Obama administration in a concise and eloquent manner.
I might excise "idiot" from the phrase so that nobody can accuse me of being combative when putting them in their place, but otherwise, I think this line stands well on its own and doesn't require any other verbiage to be complete.
Further, I think that "slavery" could be replaced with "Naziism", "Socialism", "Communism" and any other terms which are hurled as insults (although I don't think that "Socialism" is a bad word) at the current POTUS.
Again, thank you and huzzah to you. I don't know you, but you have my respect.
Once a friend of mine were having a lobster dinner, which came with access to the salad bar. I was getting up to get my salad and asked if he was coming, too, and he said:
Nah, that won't do the trick. Corporate farms cover thousands of acres; you can be sure that pressure will be exerted--at a golf course or strip club--to put a significant number of those 300ish towers in places that will ensure that if a combine operator needs to be reached, s/he can be, even on an iPhone.
I think you've missed the point. The original question was whether the Simpsons lived in a place that's realistic for their income level. What you say about him getting fired is exactly my point. Regardless of the part of town, if you don't have any income--which they don't--they'd be living in a one- or two-room apartment, not a two-story with a two car garage and separate rooms for each of the kids.
Sure they make reference to bills and financial woes, but their lifestyle is well beyond the apparent income, so no, The Simpsons does not count as a show where the family lives within their means.
Have you ever known any poor people? I was lucky growing up, but I had lots of friends whose folks didn't do all that well, and they lived in some tiny-ass apartments, ones that would fit in the Simpsons' dining room, were it real.
Absolutely. There are at least two bathrooms in the house. One off the master bedroom, and one in the upstairs hallway.
The first has been shown numerous times, including one episode where Homer quits drinking. In that episode, he had hidden a can of beer in the toilet tank. Additionally, it was in the episode where Homer gets "dimoxinyl" for his hair.
The hallway bathroom has been in at least a couple of episodes as well, but the one I remember was when Maggie locks herself in, and they try to pick the lock with a hanger, knocking over a bottle of Pepto Bismol. It breaks and the PB seeps under the door, and Homer screams, "Ahhh! Baby blood!"
I can't name episodes, but really, who did you think you were dealing with? I used to be an active participant in alt.tv.simpsons, kiddo!
Slashdot Mirror
it's time for the feminist wing to turn up
I'll bite.
It's not 1950 anymore. Heck, it's not even 1991 anymore. When I was in school, there were less than a half dozen women in all of the CS classes I took, combined, and while it may not be 50/50 yet, there are still some pretty goodly numbers of women.
If they're going to offer lap dances, great. Objectify away. But they should also include male dancers.
And this isn't just about sexism; it's also about heterosexism. The guy in one of those pictures look like he's really trying to enjoy the ladies, but it's just not happening.
I totally agree with you on the TV shows thing. I mean, if I could get a show from iTunes to either "watch once" or "watch for a week" for, say, 1/2 or 1/4 the cost of owning it, I totally would do that.
But it's not likely to happen, because if the cost of a season of, say Mad Men drops to $10 or $15, then suddenly a cable bill of $60-$80/month just to be able to watch your 3 or 4 favorite shows on the networks' schedules doesn't sound so great. Actually, with a season going for 3-4 months--13-15 weekly episodes--a full year's worth of 6 shows at the low end of my suggested price range is one month of your average cable user's bill.
It may be the right way to go, but some very rich people would sooner do [something awful] than let that happen.
Wow. Now I feel embiggened.
Why yes, I am a grammar Nazi. And your English is grand. Before I saw your sig, the only things that jumped out at me were a couple of stylistic things and something I figured was a typo or a missed edit.
The stylistic things mostly surround the use of commas. You're pretty sparse with them, and I think there are places where you don't have them that they are not absolutely necessary, but would be acceptable. An example is, "...with at least one full time IT technician, it would be...". There are a few more places like that, but again, none of them are requirements, so I won't dive in.
Another stylistic improvement (in my mind) would have been replacing the period between "enabled" and "then" with a semicolon; those two sentences are really closely related, and I think they'd go well together.
The only thing that was an actual error was a simple one: "...most major Windows shops do it for..."
Otherwise, your English is just grand. Carry on!
Maybe the majority of people who go to McDonalds--and the majority of those burned--are poor people who didn't have health insurance. Or maybe the scaldings were enough to lodge complaints about, but did not result in third-degree burns which required hospitalization, and so flew under the insurance radar.
What you are describing is the ideal goal of capitalism: successful businesses keeping other successful businesses in check. However, there are a lot of cases where there's plenty of abuse, but for one reason or another, it doesn't go over the threshold for action. That's why our courts--and sometimes our government--are necessary to provide the recourse that the abused have a right to.
And she did not get rich.
Yeah. And talk about bad PR. I don't know why people are so quick to defend corporations, but Ms. Liebeck really took it on the chin when all she wanted were her medical bills paid. Given the circumstances, the request was more than reasonable.
79 year old Stella Liebeck suffered third degree burns on her groin and inner thighs while trying to add sugar to her coffee at a McDonalds drive through. Third degree burns are the most serious kind of burn. McDonalds knew it had a problem. There were at least 700 previous cases of scalding coffee incidents at McDonalds before Liebeck's case. McDonalds had settled many claim before but refused Liebeck's request for $20,000 compensation, forcing the case into court. Lawyers found that McDonalds makes its coffee 30-50 degrees hotter than other restaurants, about 190 degrees. Doctors testified that it only takes 2-7 seconds to cause a third degree burn at 190 degrees. McDonalds knew its coffee was exceptionally hot but testified that they had never consulted with burn specialist. The Shriner Burn Institute had previously warned McDonalds not to serve coffee above 130 degrees. And so the jury came back with a decision- $160,000 for compensatory damages. But because McDonalds was guilty of "willful, reckless, malicious or wanton conduct" punitive damages were also applied. The jury set the award at $2.7 million. The judge then reduced the fine to less than half a million. Ms. Liebeck then settled with McDonalds for a sum reported to be much less than a half million dollars. McDonald's coffee is now sold at the same temperature as most other restaurants.
Source: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0122-11.htm
Summary: 700 complaints of scalding incidents. Requests from the Shriners burn unit. This was willful disregard for people's health. And the size of the reward? Calculated as the profits from one morning's take from the sales of coffee across the enterprise. I'd say that's a reasonable--if maybe small--slap on the wrist.
I don't know why people choose to defend corporations over the people they hurt. It's not like McDonalds would cross the street to piss on you if you were on fire; it must be something like the Stockholm Syndrome.
What if you kept getting phone calls.. that said:...
Actually, something like this happened once, almost. Some movie that Sam Jackson was in had a promo where you could go to a web site and fill out some information and Jackson's voice would make a custom call based on that information.
I was out of town on a business trip, and late in the night a buddy of mine had did this and my wife picked up. She's not a movie buff, and while I would have recognized the voice in a second, she didn't. She just heard an angry-sounding man talking about coming to our house in [our town], checking in on [one of my hobbies, one of hers], and a few other spooky things. Even though it was clearly a recording, it was really unsettling to her, so she called me right away.
Luckily, the system sends an email after calling, so when we were talking about it, I thought it sounded like something prank-ish and checked my email on a whim. I was able to talk her down, but she was a little pissed and asked me to tell my buddy not to pull that shite again.
Reminds me of that line from Trainspotting: How the !@#!@ can it be armed robbery when the @#@$ing gun isn't even loaded?
I was leaning toward a small Honda anyway
Would that be the Honda Fit? It's a small, 5-door competitor to the Toyota Matrix which outperforms it in all customer satisfaction metrics, as well as fuel efficiency and crash safety. Plus, instead of steel, it's made of chocolate. Delicious AND biodegradable.
Don't tell anyone that we're 'turfing for Honda's PR company!
I refuse to be drawn into a debate with any idiot who thinks even the basic trappings of society amount to slavery.
Huzzah. This encapsulates my frustrations with right-wing-nut arguments about the Obama administration in a concise and eloquent manner.
I might excise "idiot" from the phrase so that nobody can accuse me of being combative when putting them in their place, but otherwise, I think this line stands well on its own and doesn't require any other verbiage to be complete.
Further, I think that "slavery" could be replaced with "Naziism", "Socialism", "Communism" and any other terms which are hurled as insults (although I don't think that "Socialism" is a bad word) at the current POTUS.
Again, thank you and huzzah to you. I don't know you, but you have my respect.
That's clearly not a prime number! The "2 ^" gives it away!
The biggest prime number I know is 8675309. I'll have to tell Jenny about this new one.
I've heard that what we Americans call "French kissing" is referred to by the French as "Turning Shovels."
Hey, are you two friends or something? Quit showing off your social skills! Makes the rest of us feel bad.
Once a friend of mine were having a lobster dinner, which came with access to the salad bar. I was getting up to get my salad and asked if he was coming, too, and he said:
"Salad is what food eats."
"Zoso"? Back in my day, we called that "Led Zeppelin IV".
So instead of R-ing TFA, I have to WTFV? Sigh.
Nah, that won't do the trick. Corporate farms cover thousands of acres; you can be sure that pressure will be exerted--at a golf course or strip club--to put a significant number of those 300ish towers in places that will ensure that if a combine operator needs to be reached, s/he can be, even on an iPhone.
Everything's a subsidy for those guys!
Mmmm.... Danish....
...so far!
...may as well throw my hat in the ring.
I think you've missed the point. The original question was whether the Simpsons lived in a place that's realistic for their income level. What you say about him getting fired is exactly my point. Regardless of the part of town, if you don't have any income--which they don't--they'd be living in a one- or two-room apartment, not a two-story with a two car garage and separate rooms for each of the kids.
Sure they make reference to bills and financial woes, but their lifestyle is well beyond the apparent income, so no, The Simpsons does not count as a show where the family lives within their means.
Have you ever known any poor people? I was lucky growing up, but I had lots of friends whose folks didn't do all that well, and they lived in some tiny-ass apartments, ones that would fit in the Simpsons' dining room, were it real.
*yeah, have you ever seen them show a bathroom?
Absolutely. There are at least two bathrooms in the house. One off the master bedroom, and one in the upstairs hallway.
The first has been shown numerous times, including one episode where Homer quits drinking. In that episode, he had hidden a can of beer in the toilet tank. Additionally, it was in the episode where Homer gets "dimoxinyl" for his hair.
The hallway bathroom has been in at least a couple of episodes as well, but the one I remember was when Maggie locks herself in, and they try to pick the lock with a hanger, knocking over a bottle of Pepto Bismol. It breaks and the PB seeps under the door, and Homer screams, "Ahhh! Baby blood!"
I can't name episodes, but really, who did you think you were dealing with? I used to be an active participant in alt.tv.simpsons, kiddo!
"No, it doesn't count. How often does Homer go to work? How often has he been fired?"
How often have you actually watched the show? I can think of at least five separate times Homer has been fired from the Nuclear Plant.
That's exactly my point.