I love that they posted the video to show how it could work. Now I wish someone would perfect it. That whole two thin wheels thing doesn't work for me and my anti-balance ways...

I also like that every couple of months or so there's the "Why do they post _____(fill in blank) _____(here/so much/other object complement or prepositional phrase)" discussion. I've come to embrace it as a sign that people care about this place, which gives me hope that it will keep staying awesome. I love visiting here and reading the comments; I just wish I had more time to play...

Those are my new favorite. They kinda remind me of the shark in *The Raw Shark Texts*

I think my favorite part in the quoted section is "Gaul knoweth not a cottage from a house". The whole thing is brilliant and we should definitely translate more pop culture into Elizabethan English. Though the Hunter S. Thompson translations were pretty fantastic...

That was probably the funniest video I've seen in a long time. The equivalent of a unicorn chaser after that terrifying taser-bracelet video...

I think it's interesting so far, and I want to know what's going to happen next! I think I'm going to have to read it myself to understand more of it, but that's definitely because of how I learn. Thanks for sharing your work online like you do.

Dracula

Though I'm against canons (how can we limit ourselves so much and all the other theory that goes into them) I also really love lists (unfortunate for so many reasons).
(And I really really really want someone to say The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

Has anyone heard if new antennas have the converter built into them?
Yeah, I still watch TV for free on rabbit ears, but I need a new antenna anyway and if I can just take care of this too, that'd be nice...

@ Ken

Since when do U.S. citizens have to carry papers that prove anything other than driving eligibility on a day-to-day basis? Not being a convicted felon, I don't know if they have to carry around extra papers, but people who aren't in trouble with the law don't have to carry around any papers if they don't want to. So if I were in Texas during a disaster, I wouldn't have anything that might be considered papers except my drivers license. And what would that prove to the authorities since I'm out of state? Not much.
And while it might be possible for an offender to repeat offend on a bus ride out of an emergency area, it is also possible that a person could commit one of the crimes for the first time that kept others off the bus with the small children, elderly and disabled (Not that either case has to happen, or that they are the only 2 possibilities). Throw lots of people together in a small space during a stressful situation and it's hard to tell how they're gonna act. The numerous negative outcomes listed by lots of others on this thread demonstrate how this might not be the best thought out plan.

I think this program is fun. I wonder if it could be used for designing items other than animals... And her accent is delightful.

Yeah, it's not suitable for preschoolers today because out of 6 mins., at least a quarter of the time was video of the cows in the field with the singer songwriter peacefully crooning in the background "Hey cow, I see you now." I can't imagine a preschooler today sitting still for that long, especially to see how milk makes it to the carton without falling asleep. I'm ready for a nap, if I could just stop hearing "Hey cow..."

I don't know if you've heard this tons or not, but I can't seem to favorite posts. I could, but now I can't. They just don't show up on my profile.

Also, I couldn't post from the preview page. I haven't tried yet today, but I couldn't yesterday.

Just wanted to let you all know, and thought this would be the best place to do that. Thanks

Sirdook

Fair enough. I bought into BoinkBoink's false dichotomy. I've been an employee where I get to be creative and that's what I'm hired for, and I've been an employee where all I'm supposed to do is parrot information. In my haste I ignored the job I like better...

To those who've argued against the link to the video, I would like to point out that for many who watched it the video clarified the context of events that were vague in earlier articles. If this was the only post about the death of this man, I'd be very confused and saddened by the choices of the editors, but it's a follow up to the original post. Many of the comments there were questions about the events that led up to the man dying. This video apparently answers many of those. I haven't watched it (I've had too many friends die and try to avoid videos that show the deaths of others - be they real, military, historical, or fictional), but if I decide at some point I need to in order to see for myself what the video shows, I appreciate that BoingBoing has added more information to the original discussion.

BoinkBoink

You're confusing writers with employees. They aren't. They are artists under contract, and they want a new contract. If I'm in the service industry I'm hired to do whatever the company wants. If I'm a show writer it means the show producers think that what I create is worth whatever amount of money my contract says. The difference is in the role I'm supposed to play. As a writer, I'm a (co)creator of the product, while as an employee I'm a parrot of a product already created.

Thanks for opening up your space and letting us invade even more. It's really fun.

I find it interesting that lots of people seem to be sensitive about Cory posting things that he is a part of, he's written, or are somehow connected to him and haven't mentioned any of the other BoingBoing posters. They all post things that they are a part of. They are the ones who get to decide what qualifies as wonderful to be included in the directory, and if it were me, I'd find my stuff pretty wonderful. So you're not a huge fan of Cory's work - don't read the posts. I don't understand the steampunk stuff, so I usually pass it over. When I go into a food court, I don't complain if there's a Chinese place, I just don't eat there. The variety of what's posted on BoingBoing is what makes this a great site, and why I keep reading. Where else can I read about Star Trek coffins and urns, jump into a religious discussion, and read a new talking point in copyfight?

That has got to be the creepiest thing I've seen in a while. Spiders are bizarre enough without making them out of scissors that may have been cherished possessions at one point (My mom had her grandmother's antique cuticle scissors taken at the security checkpoint soon after September 11 because she didn't remember them in her purse and is still annoyed). I can't even really look at the picture...

"ORIENT n. + -ATE suffix3, perh. after ORIENTATION n. Cf. slightly earlier ORIENTATOR n.
More commonly used in British English than orient, while the latter is the more freq. of the two in American English. Orientate is commonly regarded as an incorrect usage in American English.
1. intr. To turn or face towards a specified direction; spec. to turn to the east; = ORIENT v. 1c. Freq. with to, toward." Earliest usage:1848
"2. trans.
a. fig. To put (oneself) in the right position, esp. in relation to unfamiliar surroundings; to give direction to, guide; to tailor or adapt to specified circumstances; = ORIENT v. 2." Earliest usage:1866
"b. To align or position something relative to the point of a compass or some other specified position; = ORIENT v. 1b." Earliest usage:1880

This is from the Oxford English Dictionary (a subscription might be required for the etymology aspect online, I don't for sure and I don't know how to link). I just can't stay out of a word fight, and I know that sometimes usages are different between the US and England. Sounds like the fight is one of those.

@Flamingphonebook

It isn't only passive voice that leads to sloppy arguments. I work with writers who are very unclear because they do not use specifics. The sentence isn't passive, but vague. "The man says negative things." This is not passive, but just as vague as any of your examples in passive voice. There is more that goes into the sloppy thinking you're arguing against than simply people's use of passive voice. Passive voice can be useful in lots of situations, and often it is not noticed. "The teacher told the student his sentence was in passive voice and should be changed to be correct." It needs to be used carefully and consciously though, so teaching students when that voice works most effectively is important.

Umm... As dodgy as this sounds, it also sounds similar to the drug sniffing dog testing that they've done in several southern california airports. That generally is testing a dog's ability to sniff out drugs in a line of people, but the concept at least sounds similar. I'm sure I wouldn't want to be the person carrying a fake bomb through TSA screeners though. Dogs are one thing, people with guns are another...

Authors say lots of things, and readers do not always listen to them. I think Rowling saying she always thought Dumbledore was gay will send people back to look through the texts for hints and clues to that, and I'm sure people will find them. I don't remember there being anything specifically one way or the other, so if people automatically assumed Dumbledore was hetero, then that says more about them than it does about the author. And author's don't get the last word on their texts, if they did we wouldn't have an English degree, and we wouldn't have so many versions of Hamlet. Readers play a vital role in ascribing meaning to texts, and I think by relinquishing that you undercut much of the value of reading.

Cpt. Tim

Going back to the text is going to be very helpful, but keep in mind that if you are reading English (or any language other than Hebrew or Greek) it's a translation. So look at several of translations to see a more complete view of the meanings. I think you've pointed this out in other discussions, so it's probably superfluous information. If you're really interested in the meanings behind the words look into the history of the culture and what else was going on. Rabbinic tradition is very important to understanding the context of most of what is in the Hebraic and Christian scriptures. Like the parable you bring up - it is told in the context of a people who are waiting for salvation. The interpretation I've heard most often from Biblical scholars who aren't horribly dogmatic is that both Lazarus and the rich man are waiting in a place that is best understood as purgatory for the messiah to come with their final judgement. This opens the door on whether or not the rich man is going to be punished for eternity, or face a second death (a common, ambiguous phrase for the fate of the unsaved). Context is very important in adding meanings to texts, and they can be really interesting.

This post has sparked some interesting, less heated conversations, thanks Cory.

That is very interesting. Also, you aren't the only one who misread the headline.

@ Theresa/Moderator

Thanks for the explanation of how you moderate. I'm newer to the whole world of moderated online discussions. I now know the long string of consonants are not a stylistic choice, but someone else pointing out that the phrasing is dodgy. It's nice to understand the moderation process, particularly of a site that has such interesting discussions.

@ Skep

I hope people don't use Shakespeare for their moral basis, because they'd run into many of the same problems. I used the texts of Shakespeare because they are in my field and I felt more comfortable using them for a point that I didn't explain well.
I was responding to your comment (34) where you said you were waiting for a signed first edition. I was trying to point out that there are many texts (history texts would work better, but they aren't my field) that we hold as authoritative but are far removed from their time. The problem that people have with the distance of the Bible is because of the morality. My hope was that, by pointing out the lack of other first editions that are not contested, the conversation would move away from the issues that are debatable in many fields to those concerning our response to the Hebraic and Christian texts. JacobDavis did a much better job of this. Since you were wondering, I thought I'd explain myself.

We don't have an author-signed first edition of a play written by Shakespeare and we aren't bothered too much by that. And lots of texts are translated. I would argue that all texts are a translation when they are read because unless you're the author in that moment how do you know what was meant? And from what I understand about Rabbinic law, much of what was written later in the law was put there to keep people far enough away from breaking the real law that they wouldn't be condemned, rather like a fence around a swimming pool.

I think the big problem with any text is when people become unwilling to look at anything but their own understanding. I'm sad when people use the scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and all the others (I don't want to take the space to list them all) out of context for their own point. Texts are very malleable and fun to play with, but when we start to build museums around our interpretations it gets painful.

I love that someone has finally put together at least some of the movies with the stills in the Simpsons. The writers always joke on the commentaries about doing Citizen Kane or The Godfather by just linking together the clips from different episodes that have been inspired by those movies (such a nice term). Thanks for the link, it's great.

It sorta sounds like an artist being upset when you display their artwork at work.

Hi Brit,
So in my earlier comment I do point out how copyright laws have sort of helped authors, but I was trying to inform several comments that are no longer posted. They were throwing in the possibility that authors might have to get day jobs in order to continue publishing. I was trying to briefly cover book history and show that authors made money on their writing before the first copyright law was ever passed. I was also trying to point out how authors (with the possible exception of those who make gazillions of dollars on super-best sellers [like J.K. Rowling]) tend to not rely on their copy-righted works to pay the bills. T.S. Eliot had a day job for most of his life (he was later an editor at a British publishing company). Joyce's problem was government censorship more than copyright infringement. In any case writers have adapted to the technology at hand rather than try to force it to submit to the way things are. This leaves authors (and librarians, and book lovers, and governmental agencies, and numerous others) with a question of how to use the technology we have and not loose their access to their work in even 20 years. Copyright looses meaning when we can't access the information it protects.
The other aspect I was trying to point out that I am much more liable for copyright infringement of tangible items than I am for electronic. If we're going to start enforcing copyright on easily copied works, why not make it even and go after people who break it in tangible forms too?
I like for people to get paid for their creative work; I'd like to be there someday. I'm uncertain what the most effective method for that is, but what we have now doesn't seem to be it. Maybe our energy would be better focused on creating a new system that takes into account the way we use technology today. I kinda think that's what Cory is saying in his article...

To those who have thrown in the future of the novel...

It used to be that writers had patrons who paid them to write. Only hacks got paid for their published work (stuff that went through a printer and got sold in a book store). It's only been in the last 200 years (and that's not long since writing has been around for thousands) or so that all writers were paid when their work was published for everyone. But that still hasn't always been enough to make ends meet, even with copyright protection. I think that you can ask around and find that many novelists have day jobs. Copyrighting their work allows them to receive income from what they have published, but it doesn't mean that people are always going to buy their works. When T.S. Eliot wrote The Waste Land, he was on a vacation from his job at a bank because his earlier collections didn't bring in enough money. And James Joyce lost money on pirated American versions of Ulysses because it was banned here, but didn't sue anyone for copyright infringement.
There seems to be an assumption that if it is something tangible people don't infringe on the copyright. Even in paper copies of books there are lots of ways for people to access the information without paying for it. I borrow books from my friends' shelves when I don't know if I want it, or can't afford to pay for it. So I don't get to keep the copy, but I've still accessed the information without paying a penny. (I wonder if this was the older, slower version of shareware.)
Writers have adapted to the new technology and used it to get their ideas out to more people. When the printing press was invented the outcry wasn't about author's rights, but the downward spiral of the information printed. If we move to only electronic books, the problem to solve isn't going to be copyright infringement, but making sure the copies are around 2000 years from now.