Which means that this decision decided to ignore the issue of rather or not one can commit sex crimes against one's self. Which is kind of unfortunate.
I don't think the decision does any such thing. (The full text of the judge's order may be found here.)
This is only a temporary restraining order. It doesn't really get into the underlying issues of the prosecution itself. It's just a preliminary finding that the girls do seem to have a good First Amendment case, and that allowing the prosecution to proceed without some more argument into the free speech question might cause irreparable harm. The judge expressly notes that even a temporary infringement of First Amendment rights is a legally cognizable harm. Good for him.
The judge also takes note of the argument that the girls here are victims, not perpetrators. That question isn't decided (though it certainly isn't ignored), because again, this is only a temporary restraining order that doesn't reach that far into the substance of the case.
This is no victory. Yes, we like the outcome, but that will only be temporary until Nutsy finds the time to reword it. And that he has far too much spare time should be known by now.
With respect, I disagree.
(Full disclosure--Utah resident here.)
I think this is a victory, in that it shows consciousness of what game ratings are designed to do. They are supposed to give sane parents an indication of game content before making a purchase. So far so good--the gaming industry has subjected itself to an independent ratings board. No, a studio can't label anything "M" or any other rating. They can decide not to go through the ESRB, which is retail suicide. That seems to be what everyone was threatening to do: if we're going to get slapped for the ratings, we won't rate. The governor seems to see that voluntary content ratings are a good thing for conscientious parents, and I think he's right.
Moreover, the governor also seems to have noted (and this is a huge victory) that every other such piece of legislation has been struck down on constitutional grounds. More details here. Pertinent remark from Huntsman:
"While protecting children from inappropriate materials is a laudable goal, the language of this bill is so broad that it likely will be struck down by the courts as unconstitutional," Huntsman wrote to legislative leaders notifying them of his decision.
Possibly the bill could be reworded for resubmission (and it remains to be seen if the wacky Utah legislature will challenge the veto), but I think this suggests that this governor at least understands that there are constitutional concerns that trump think-of-the-children hysteria. I applaud the governor's action here, and his reasoning.
Out of interest, is Baron Hethor Samedi your real nameor a pseudonym?
Ha! A very fair question. My real name is Ethan Rampton. E-mail is now set to public. Feel free to contact me, but if you elect to do so, please do me the courtesy of introducing yourself.
You may have freedom from the government, but you can never be free from judgement by your peers. Posting anonymously has long been the best way to spread uncomfortable truths without facing the public backlash that inevitably leads to self-censorship.
Yeah, there's a name for speaking up in the face of inevitable judgment by your peers. It's called "having the courage of your convictions."
Free speech guarantees should prevent interference by the government in public discourse. (Even those guarantees aren't absolute, but that's another matter.) They should not (and indeed cannot) shield you from having your words judged or reacted to by other speakers.
If you have serious cause to believe that the state is going to jail and/or kill you for what you say, then post anonymously, by all means--there's a strong moral reason for doing so. If you're just worried that someone else might call you out to account for what you say, then anonymity isn't going to add much weight to your message. There's a reason we call them "anonymous cowards."
I agree - I mean I can't imagine all those TV presenters working to no salary to provide me with some basic entertainment. All those people that expect TV to be "free" should go join a commune.
Ad revenue sponsored gaming has real potential.
I dunno. I like gaming in part because it's more immersive than television. I'm always willing to put down a few bucks' worth of hard-earned income if it means I don't have to have my willing suspension of disbelief jarringly unsuspended by a Red Bull ad.
The problem with the storyline is they give you a tiny piece of something that seems much larger and fails to elaborate on anything.
A lot of good science fiction does this. Authors are entitled to expect the reader (or player) to do some imaginative legwork.
In fact, I think one of the cardinal sins these days in entertainment (all media) is OVERTELLING the story. Given the choice, I prefer developers err on the side of not spoon-feeding absolutely everything to the consumer.
Disclaimer: I've never played the original Halo. Trying to grade it on plot may well be ridiculous, but complaining that a story is a discrete part of a larger series of events seems like a strange accusation to level at a fictional work.
"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." -George Orwell
Not to be pedantic (well, OK, it's thoroughly pedantic, but I'll point it out anyway), but there's no evidence that Orwell ever actually said this. I see this quote all the time, but it's never sourced or dated. More info here. (And yes, I'm aware of the irony of pointing to wikiquote to debunk a quotation that's not sourced. I think the burden of proof is probably on the person attributing the quote, though.)
That said, misquote or not, I agree with the sentiment 100%.
... adults with imaginary friends are given free psychiatric help.
In the US, we give them political power.
OK, I'll bite.
What are you talking about? This is a story about a lawsuit. A strange lawsuit that seems to be trying to enforce criminal statutes on a tort-like theory of public nuisance. It likely won't go anywhere, since it's hard from the complaint to even make out who the aggrieved party is supposed to be. (Is the Sheriff himself harmed in some way by Craigslist's practices? I think he'll have to show that if he wants an injunction. Otherwise, if he thinks something cognizably criminal is going on he could maybe investigate and prosecute. Which he can't, so this whole thing is largely symbolic.)
Now you come in babbling about political power for imaginary friends. I guess it's OK, though, as there seem to be enough like-minded schizophrenics to get you modded insightful. Perhaps you could move overseas, and avail yourself of some of those marvelous free services...
They have absolutely no sense of UI design, and being so used to dealing with crappy interfaces they're not even aware of the possibility nor the advantages of a well designed one. Seriously, have you ever looked at one of their webpages?
Maybe the design of the user interface is less important to the overall functionality/desirability of a device than Apple would have you believe.
Gays and lesbians, on the other hand, must make an effort not to broadcast our orientation, and we do it by self-censoring what we talk about. But if we slip up and mention something that implies our orientation, now we're "flaunting" our sexual orientation, even though we said something that, if it came from a straight person, would not have attracted any notice whatsoever.
Not the issue here. This wasn't a casual mention in an online conversation of some social activity that happened to disclose the sexual identity of the individual. The banned player stated: "I had said in my profile that I was a lesbian." That is a direct and general public proclamation of sexual orientation. Not offensive, and not an instance of "flaunting" (your term, BTW, not mine) her sexual orientation, but in the XBox live context a bit odd. Might it not seem a bit out of place for someone to put "I'm a heterosexual male" in his online gaming profile?
Is there anything else I can help you with?
What about the other 98% of my original post? I'm suggesting MS/XBox Live might have a legitimate reason for their actions. Agree? Disagree? Thanks.
...but I've been on XBox live. The vast (and I mean vast) majority of references to homosexuality in that community are slurs. Really, really ugly ones.
So we have a blanket policy saying, no mentioning of sexual orientation in your profile or gamertag. Period. Because, while it's possible that such a mention in a gamertag/profile is a perfectly true, totally non-offensive statement about an individual's self-identified sexual orientation, the odds more strongly favor it being a nasty, hateful comment (or at best, a tasteless one).
If a given behavior has a 1% chance of being legitimate, and a 99% chance of being a TOS violation, doesn't a ban make sense? I'm not sure I'm willing to blame Microsoft for not wanting to go through thousands upon thousands of gamer profiles for approval on a case-by-case basis.
And yeah, why do you feel it's important to proclaim your sexual orientation on XBox live anyway?
OK, full disclosure: I don't know anything about defamation law in India. I can only speak to defamation in the United States.
Standards for defamation will vary by state, but very generally it amounts to making a about someone that causes some measurable harm to their reputation, employment prospects, or exposes them to public hatred or obloquy.
In U.S. law, this gets murky because we have the First Amendment. The First Amendment guarantees free speech, but doesn't generally give you carte blance to tell scurrilous lies about people. However, the U.S. Supreme Court in New York Times v. Sullivan set the bar a little higher if you're a public figure trying to bring a defamation suit. If you are such an individual (politician, celebrity, etc.), you have to prove that the statement was made with "actual malice," meaning it was made with knowledge of falsehood or reckless disregard for the truth. If you're not a public figure, you don't have to prove that the defaming party knew what he said was false, although he can assert truth as a defense to your claim.
So to answer your question, sarcasm (probably) wouldn't be enough under U.S. law, and if you're a political organization, you almost certainly wouldn't have a good case.
Yeah...actually, civil liberties as enjoyed in Western liberal democracies are really more the exception than the rule worldwide. In fact, historically speaking, they're a pretty recent invention. I know that here in the U.S. we love to talk about how our liberties are "eroding," but it's worth remembering that most of the world's population doesn't enjoy those liberties and, indeed, never has.
I picked up DoW2 as well, but despite it working through both Steam and GFWL, I'm having a hard time getting really worked up about it.
In this instance, I honestly don't see it as a draconian "let's-stick-it-to-those-filthy-pirates" type of measure to use those two services, as much as a straight up marketing decision to provide two different types of functionality for the game. (Relic's people are on record as saying they're not fans of DRM, and I'm sure a lot of people are crying "hypocrites!" over the activation requirements, but hear me out.) Steam provides them with a gateway to quick, painless patching and updates (pretty crucial for a multiplayer RTS which is inevitably going to have to be balanced and rebalanced over time). GFWL offers matchmaking and consistent rankings (once again, allowing the sorts of player performance tracking information you're going to need if you want to make important game balance decisions).
Now, Relic could break the bank and try to provide streamlined updates and trackable matchmaking services themselves, but not everyone has Blizzard's bankroll. I think Relic opted to go the direction they did because Steam and GFWL offered resources and functionality, ready-made, that Relic would have had to build from the ground up at prohibitive cost. Personally, I prefer that Relic's limited resources be devoted to making an interesting game with some innovative play to it (and DoW2 does--I think--manage to do some interesting things with an otherwise fairly stagnant genre), rather than taking the enormous risk of trying to develop services that Valve and *gasp* Microsoft can already provide.
As in the Microsoft case, "there will be companies that will begin to allege that Google is discriminating" against them by "not allowing their products to interoperate with Google's products."
Kind of a long shot here. Google's products aren't bundled with anything, aren't hardwired into anyone's machine, and for the most part come at no cost to the end-user. People use Google's search engine because...well, it works better than other search engines. Its advertising "monopoly" (is it really?) is in part a side effect of its enormous popularity.
Also, not "allowing their products to interoperate with other products?" This always sort of befuddled me, even in Microsoft's case. If I have a really popular piece of software, am I legally required to tailor it to work with other market products? Including products that may not exist yet? Alleging that another company's products don't "interoperate" with yours as the basis for seeking some compensation seems oddly analogous to patent trolling to me...
Major social advancements tend to have accompanying social costs. Pointing out those costs isn't necessarily fear-mongering, although when the evidence to the contrary becomes overwhelming enough, the naysaying can become silly (fluoridated water as a communist plot).
As an American, I'm pretty glad to live in a comfortably modern society, but I recognize that I owe a fair amount of that comfort to early industrialization that rode on black lung, child labor, etc. These days, I think we're more conscious of the costs of progress, and if that means progress itself may occasionally need to slow down to give all concerned a chance to weight the costs and benefits, so much the better.
I thought that "Darwinism" was a term thought up by the religious anti-evolution side.
Why? I suspect that it is because they associate their beliefs with an entity, God in this case, and thus cannot see how other people don't need to also do that. Thus they ultimately project this viewpoint that people who believe in evolution are actually believing in a false God as part of their propaganda against evolution.
Hoo, boy. Welcome to/., where undisguised speculation about some nebulous creationist conspiracy gets you applause and +5 insightful.
A little bit of trivial Googling indicates that the term "Darwinism" appeared in the OED three years before Charles Darwin's ideas were made public. Apparently the word had its genesis (no pun intended) not in Charles' work, but in the ideas of his grandfather Erasmus. It's also interesting that ideas forming the ultimate foundation for The Origin of Species appeared to have been knocking around in the family for quite a while before Charles formalized them.
Not to say that the term "Darwinism" hasn't been applied in a pejorative sense by various creationist groups since then, but it didn't start out that way.
Do we really have to use this word? It's not like they're going to be upset about getting poeole to view their ad.
Agreed 100%. Advertisers, however, may still view this as a denial of another revenue stream. If you hop on over to Hulu.com to view the Super Bowl spots, before watching one of the ads you may be subjected to a 5-second spot for another product entirely.
It's an advertiser's dream: in order to watch an ad, you have to watch another ad.
Uhhh...maybe RTFA a bit more carefully? Cut and pasted from CNN:
The Food and Drug Administration has approved the trials, which will use human stem cells authorized for research by then-President George W. Bush in 2001.
Don't get me wrong--if you want mud to sling at the now-defunct Bush administration, the article provides plenty, but don't read selectively and accuse the editors of twisting words.
You are quite correct sir--my original post was unnecessarily snarky. My opinion could as easily have been expressed without the sarcasm, and I appreciate you calling me on it.
Google isn't formally challenging Prop 8 in court. (I don't think there's any way a corporation would have standing to do so.) They've signed an amicus brief in support of several other cases. An amicus brief only gets as much attention as the judge wants to give it; unlike briefs filed by actual parties, the court can disregard them entirely. Google has essentially just submitted a general statement on its position to the courts--not quite the same as mounting a "challenge" to the legislation.
I dunno--how many legislators are there willing to champion a loser bill in order to score points with nervous parents on election day?
It's a win-win scenario for legislatures. They draft the bill, fully aware that numerous courts have already struck it down, and probably expecting New York courts to do the same. Once the challenge to the bill succeeds in court, the proponents of the bill can wring their hands, bemoan "activist" courts, demonize retailers, and come out looking like men of the people. You know, the guys looking to protect your kids.
Slashdot Mirror
Which means that this decision decided to ignore the issue of rather or not one can commit sex crimes against one's self. Which is kind of unfortunate.
I don't think the decision does any such thing. (The full text of the judge's order may be found here.)
This is only a temporary restraining order. It doesn't really get into the underlying issues of the prosecution itself. It's just a preliminary finding that the girls do seem to have a good First Amendment case, and that allowing the prosecution to proceed without some more argument into the free speech question might cause irreparable harm. The judge expressly notes that even a temporary infringement of First Amendment rights is a legally cognizable harm. Good for him.
The judge also takes note of the argument that the girls here are victims, not perpetrators. That question isn't decided (though it certainly isn't ignored), because again, this is only a temporary restraining order that doesn't reach that far into the substance of the case.
This is no victory. Yes, we like the outcome, but that will only be temporary until Nutsy finds the time to reword it. And that he has far too much spare time should be known by now.
With respect, I disagree.
(Full disclosure--Utah resident here.)
I think this is a victory, in that it shows consciousness of what game ratings are designed to do. They are supposed to give sane parents an indication of game content before making a purchase. So far so good--the gaming industry has subjected itself to an independent ratings board. No, a studio can't label anything "M" or any other rating. They can decide not to go through the ESRB, which is retail suicide. That seems to be what everyone was threatening to do: if we're going to get slapped for the ratings, we won't rate. The governor seems to see that voluntary content ratings are a good thing for conscientious parents, and I think he's right.
Moreover, the governor also seems to have noted (and this is a huge victory) that every other such piece of legislation has been struck down on constitutional grounds. More details here. Pertinent remark from Huntsman:
"While protecting children from inappropriate materials is a laudable goal, the language of this bill is so broad that it likely will be struck down by the courts as unconstitutional," Huntsman wrote to legislative leaders notifying them of his decision.
Possibly the bill could be reworded for resubmission (and it remains to be seen if the wacky Utah legislature will challenge the veto), but I think this suggests that this governor at least understands that there are constitutional concerns that trump think-of-the-children hysteria. I applaud the governor's action here, and his reasoning.
Out of interest, is Baron Hethor Samedi your real nameor a pseudonym?
Ha! A very fair question. My real name is Ethan Rampton. E-mail is now set to public. Feel free to contact me, but if you elect to do so, please do me the courtesy of introducing yourself.
You may have freedom from the government, but you can never be free from judgement by your peers. Posting anonymously has long been the best way to spread uncomfortable truths without facing the public backlash that inevitably leads to self-censorship.
Yeah, there's a name for speaking up in the face of inevitable judgment by your peers. It's called "having the courage of your convictions."
Free speech guarantees should prevent interference by the government in public discourse. (Even those guarantees aren't absolute, but that's another matter.) They should not (and indeed cannot) shield you from having your words judged or reacted to by other speakers.
If you have serious cause to believe that the state is going to jail and/or kill you for what you say, then post anonymously, by all means--there's a strong moral reason for doing so. If you're just worried that someone else might call you out to account for what you say, then anonymity isn't going to add much weight to your message. There's a reason we call them "anonymous cowards."
I agree - I mean I can't imagine all those TV presenters working to no salary to provide me with some basic entertainment. All those people that expect TV to be "free" should go join a commune. Ad revenue sponsored gaming has real potential.
I dunno. I like gaming in part because it's more immersive than television. I'm always willing to put down a few bucks' worth of hard-earned income if it means I don't have to have my willing suspension of disbelief jarringly unsuspended by a Red Bull ad.
The problem with the storyline is they give you a tiny piece of something that seems much larger and fails to elaborate on anything.
A lot of good science fiction does this. Authors are entitled to expect the reader (or player) to do some imaginative legwork.
In fact, I think one of the cardinal sins these days in entertainment (all media) is OVERTELLING the story. Given the choice, I prefer developers err on the side of not spoon-feeding absolutely everything to the consumer.
Disclaimer: I've never played the original Halo. Trying to grade it on plot may well be ridiculous, but complaining that a story is a discrete part of a larger series of events seems like a strange accusation to level at a fictional work.
"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." -George Orwell
Not to be pedantic (well, OK, it's thoroughly pedantic, but I'll point it out anyway), but there's no evidence that Orwell ever actually said this. I see this quote all the time, but it's never sourced or dated. More info here. (And yes, I'm aware of the irony of pointing to wikiquote to debunk a quotation that's not sourced. I think the burden of proof is probably on the person attributing the quote, though.)
That said, misquote or not, I agree with the sentiment 100%.
... adults with imaginary friends are given free psychiatric help.
In the US, we give them political power.
OK, I'll bite.
What are you talking about? This is a story about a lawsuit. A strange lawsuit that seems to be trying to enforce criminal statutes on a tort-like theory of public nuisance. It likely won't go anywhere, since it's hard from the complaint to even make out who the aggrieved party is supposed to be. (Is the Sheriff himself harmed in some way by Craigslist's practices? I think he'll have to show that if he wants an injunction. Otherwise, if he thinks something cognizably criminal is going on he could maybe investigate and prosecute. Which he can't, so this whole thing is largely symbolic.)
Now you come in babbling about political power for imaginary friends. I guess it's OK, though, as there seem to be enough like-minded schizophrenics to get you modded insightful. Perhaps you could move overseas, and avail yourself of some of those marvelous free services...
They have absolutely no sense of UI design, and being so used to dealing with crappy interfaces they're not even aware of the possibility nor the advantages of a well designed one. Seriously, have you ever looked at one of their webpages?
Maybe the design of the user interface is less important to the overall functionality/desirability of a device than Apple would have you believe.
Gays and lesbians, on the other hand, must make an effort not to broadcast our orientation, and we do it by self-censoring what we talk about. But if we slip up and mention something that implies our orientation, now we're "flaunting" our sexual orientation, even though we said something that, if it came from a straight person, would not have attracted any notice whatsoever.
Not the issue here. This wasn't a casual mention in an online conversation of some social activity that happened to disclose the sexual identity of the individual. The banned player stated: "I had said in my profile that I was a lesbian." That is a direct and general public proclamation of sexual orientation. Not offensive, and not an instance of "flaunting" (your term, BTW, not mine) her sexual orientation, but in the XBox live context a bit odd. Might it not seem a bit out of place for someone to put "I'm a heterosexual male" in his online gaming profile?
Is there anything else I can help you with?
What about the other 98% of my original post? I'm suggesting MS/XBox Live might have a legitimate reason for their actions. Agree? Disagree? Thanks.
Weren't there only four seasons? Or are they counting the movies as a season? (Pardon my ignorance.)
...but I've been on XBox live. The vast (and I mean vast) majority of references to homosexuality in that community are slurs. Really, really ugly ones.
So we have a blanket policy saying, no mentioning of sexual orientation in your profile or gamertag. Period. Because, while it's possible that such a mention in a gamertag/profile is a perfectly true, totally non-offensive statement about an individual's self-identified sexual orientation, the odds more strongly favor it being a nasty, hateful comment (or at best, a tasteless one).
If a given behavior has a 1% chance of being legitimate, and a 99% chance of being a TOS violation, doesn't a ban make sense? I'm not sure I'm willing to blame Microsoft for not wanting to go through thousands upon thousands of gamer profiles for approval on a case-by-case basis.
And yeah, why do you feel it's important to proclaim your sexual orientation on XBox live anyway?
OK, full disclosure: I don't know anything about defamation law in India. I can only speak to defamation in the United States.
Standards for defamation will vary by state, but very generally it amounts to making a about someone that causes some measurable harm to their reputation, employment prospects, or exposes them to public hatred or obloquy.
In U.S. law, this gets murky because we have the First Amendment. The First Amendment guarantees free speech, but doesn't generally give you carte blance to tell scurrilous lies about people. However, the U.S. Supreme Court in New York Times v. Sullivan set the bar a little higher if you're a public figure trying to bring a defamation suit. If you are such an individual (politician, celebrity, etc.), you have to prove that the statement was made with "actual malice," meaning it was made with knowledge of falsehood or reckless disregard for the truth. If you're not a public figure, you don't have to prove that the defaming party knew what he said was false, although he can assert truth as a defense to your claim.
So to answer your question, sarcasm (probably) wouldn't be enough under U.S. law, and if you're a political organization, you almost certainly wouldn't have a good case.
Yeah...actually, civil liberties as enjoyed in Western liberal democracies are really more the exception than the rule worldwide. In fact, historically speaking, they're a pretty recent invention. I know that here in the U.S. we love to talk about how our liberties are "eroding," but it's worth remembering that most of the world's population doesn't enjoy those liberties and, indeed, never has.
I picked up DoW2 as well, but despite it working through both Steam and GFWL, I'm having a hard time getting really worked up about it.
In this instance, I honestly don't see it as a draconian "let's-stick-it-to-those-filthy-pirates" type of measure to use those two services, as much as a straight up marketing decision to provide two different types of functionality for the game. (Relic's people are on record as saying they're not fans of DRM, and I'm sure a lot of people are crying "hypocrites!" over the activation requirements, but hear me out.) Steam provides them with a gateway to quick, painless patching and updates (pretty crucial for a multiplayer RTS which is inevitably going to have to be balanced and rebalanced over time). GFWL offers matchmaking and consistent rankings (once again, allowing the sorts of player performance tracking information you're going to need if you want to make important game balance decisions).
Now, Relic could break the bank and try to provide streamlined updates and trackable matchmaking services themselves, but not everyone has Blizzard's bankroll. I think Relic opted to go the direction they did because Steam and GFWL offered resources and functionality, ready-made, that Relic would have had to build from the ground up at prohibitive cost. Personally, I prefer that Relic's limited resources be devoted to making an interesting game with some innovative play to it (and DoW2 does--I think--manage to do some interesting things with an otherwise fairly stagnant genre), rather than taking the enormous risk of trying to develop services that Valve and *gasp* Microsoft can already provide.
As in the Microsoft case, "there will be companies that will begin to allege that Google is discriminating" against them by "not allowing their products to interoperate with Google's products."
Kind of a long shot here. Google's products aren't bundled with anything, aren't hardwired into anyone's machine, and for the most part come at no cost to the end-user. People use Google's search engine because...well, it works better than other search engines. Its advertising "monopoly" (is it really?) is in part a side effect of its enormous popularity.
Also, not "allowing their products to interoperate with other products?" This always sort of befuddled me, even in Microsoft's case. If I have a really popular piece of software, am I legally required to tailor it to work with other market products? Including products that may not exist yet? Alleging that another company's products don't "interoperate" with yours as the basis for seeking some compensation seems oddly analogous to patent trolling to me...
Well, sometimes there are problems with progress.
Major social advancements tend to have accompanying social costs. Pointing out those costs isn't necessarily fear-mongering, although when the evidence to the contrary becomes overwhelming enough, the naysaying can become silly (fluoridated water as a communist plot).
As an American, I'm pretty glad to live in a comfortably modern society, but I recognize that I owe a fair amount of that comfort to early industrialization that rode on black lung, child labor, etc. These days, I think we're more conscious of the costs of progress, and if that means progress itself may occasionally need to slow down to give all concerned a chance to weight the costs and benefits, so much the better.
I thought that "Darwinism" was a term thought up by the religious anti-evolution side.
Why? I suspect that it is because they associate their beliefs with an entity, God in this case, and thus cannot see how other people don't need to also do that. Thus they ultimately project this viewpoint that people who believe in evolution are actually believing in a false God as part of their propaganda against evolution.
Hoo, boy. Welcome to /., where undisguised speculation about some nebulous creationist conspiracy gets you applause and +5 insightful.
A little bit of trivial Googling indicates that the term "Darwinism" appeared in the OED three years before Charles Darwin's ideas were made public. Apparently the word had its genesis (no pun intended) not in Charles' work, but in the ideas of his grandfather Erasmus. It's also interesting that ideas forming the ultimate foundation for The Origin of Species appeared to have been knocking around in the family for quite a while before Charles formalized them.
Not to say that the term "Darwinism" hasn't been applied in a pejorative sense by various creationist groups since then, but it didn't start out that way.
But tell somebody who's never seen the movie that Jack dies, and I think they may be a bit miffed with you.
I dunno. I think if someone had told me that at the beginning of the film, I'd have felt some relief for the following three hours.
I just ran a page search for the phrase "I for one..." and it wasn't there!
I...I don't know where I am anymore...
Do we really have to use this word? It's not like they're going to be upset about getting poeole to view their ad.
Agreed 100%. Advertisers, however, may still view this as a denial of another revenue stream. If you hop on over to Hulu.com to view the Super Bowl spots, before watching one of the ads you may be subjected to a 5-second spot for another product entirely.
It's an advertiser's dream: in order to watch an ad, you have to watch another ad.
The Food and Drug Administration has approved the trials, which will use human stem cells authorized for research by then-President George W. Bush in 2001.
Don't get me wrong--if you want mud to sling at the now-defunct Bush administration, the article provides plenty, but don't read selectively and accuse the editors of twisting words.
Your snark fails, and does so miserably.
You are quite correct sir--my original post was unnecessarily snarky. My opinion could as easily have been expressed without the sarcasm, and I appreciate you calling me on it.
Thanks, and have a good weekend!
Google isn't formally challenging Prop 8 in court. (I don't think there's any way a corporation would have standing to do so.) They've signed an amicus brief in support of several other cases. An amicus brief only gets as much attention as the judge wants to give it; unlike briefs filed by actual parties, the court can disregard them entirely. Google has essentially just submitted a general statement on its position to the courts--not quite the same as mounting a "challenge" to the legislation.
I dunno--how many legislators are there willing to champion a loser bill in order to score points with nervous parents on election day?
It's a win-win scenario for legislatures. They draft the bill, fully aware that numerous courts have already struck it down, and probably expecting New York courts to do the same. Once the challenge to the bill succeeds in court, the proponents of the bill can wring their hands, bemoan "activist" courts, demonize retailers, and come out looking like men of the people. You know, the guys looking to protect your kids.