I would make a joke, but chances are any joke I can think of has already been made.

She is, despite her death, still right. It's still right to be trusting, and there's more good than evil people in the world. Death being final and irreversible, it only took one man to put an end to her journey, but how many unremarked and unlauded people did it take to get her where she was?

Plus, if the guy was really mentally ill, he wasn't even evil or "negative", the killing an act of a disorder, not malice forethought. It might as well have been a rockslide or a wreck.

Takuan, I thought privilege was what caused Aspergers?

From a speaker of both German and English, this is inane. "Above all" doesn't make me think of Nazis, nor does "super omnes/omnia" (found in plenty of mottoes, epigrams and such), nor any other rendition. The American lack of familiarity with foreign languages means that "über alles" seems like some sort of reïfied lifeless fragment, forever tied to its use in WWII-era Germany (which is usually the first and only time an American hears it used), but it is of course a common enough phrase alive in all sorts of contexts, most completely pacific.

Whether it's the Nazis or the Dead Kennedys, the totalitarian overtones come when you pair "above all" with a state or nation; without an explicit pairing of "America, America" with the "above all", that's pretty weak sauce for scorn or outrage. It's like protesting that the "Air" in "Air Force" is just like "Luft" in "Luftwaffe".

Did you know Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica and Ireland all have a "Defence Force"? By George, but isn't that a literal calque of the Nazi "Wehrmacht"? Clearly, the Commonwealth is overrun by covert Gestapo agents! Panic!

We first met in Professora White’s 7th grade Spanish class, which is where we got our name. Vosotros is a Spanish verb conjugation roughly meaning “you-all.” But since it is only used in Spain, it was always ignored.

I sure hope they failed that class! Do they even know what a verb is?

"Voxotros" would have been a cool name though.

Post (apparent meaning): Arguing on the Internet is addictive.
Everyone (apparent meaning): Arguing on the Internet is fun!
Moonbat (actual meaning): Arguing with me is collectivist groupthink. Also, I spend a lot of time thinking about Ilsa the She-Sheep of the SS spanking me.

FIXED!

#10: Oh, if you're allowed to read Boing Boing at work in the first place, as you are apparently doing, I think it's fine. I'm sure it's SFW in France. Where do you work, the FCC?

Old meme! Also, wholly lacking is any mention of this case's vital link to 'Pataphysics, which in my opinion is what elevates it from shenenigans to art.

#24 Arguing on the internet? Call it what it is: psychopathy

No no no! Objectivism is psychopathy! ;)

Watching the unravelling of Moonbat's mind is amusing, but the poor man is sliding into Britney Spears territory. I vote we give him some space until the frothing subsides. Can't you see the vein in his forehead just pulsing, pulsing, pulsing with every additional swear-word he lets loose?

#73 (and MB himself) objectively objected to my sharing of an anecdote about my Objectivist acquintances as being too anecdotal: gee-wizz -- I wasn't trying to "join the debate" or structure a convincing logical argument, there is no debate in this thread to join and no thesis to refute. #73 added the nice twist of trying to equate my anecdotal experience with the two self-avowed Objectivist proselytisers with racist stereotyping; unless perhaps he's saying that being a rabid Objectivist really is some sort of an essential genetic or congenital condition -- like skin-colour or sex or partner preference? Hmm, I suppose given the correlations between Objectivism and psychopathy presented elsewhere in this thread, I really should be more compassionate towards these poor joy- and love-deprived souls with their traumatic brain-injuries. ;)

I've only known two devoted fans of Ayn Rand in my life, two people who'd volunteer that they were Objectivists to anyone who'd listen.

One was a homeless man who begged for money at my subway stop and slept at its foyer (when he wasn't in jail). The other was a friend who majored in philosophy, never got a job, and lived with his mother until the day he committed suicide. I wonder which kind Moonbat is?

Before that, my only experience with Rand was reading "The Fountainhead" for some essay contest put on by the Ayn Rand Institute promising scholarships to high school students. Having finished it, I committed my one and only act of vandalism against a book (to my eternal shame now that I've become a librarian), and poured hydrochloric acid on it during chem lab. It was truly the most pernicious and tendencious piece of bloviating agit-prop it had ever been my displeasure to read, and I was angry to have let my greed sucker me into wasting time on it, when clearly the essay contest was just a thinly veiled recruitement drive among a vulnerable demographic (angsty geeky teens).

@89: "Are you sure these guys are American? Their faces don't look like they speak English. They look almost Dutch, the one guy who is more muscular than anyone else, his face doesn't look remotely American."

WTF? DUTCH?

You're on crack mister, that face is clearly Frisian!

#24, etc.: I guess I see a difference between "making fun of people" and "laughing at funny people". Nobody's making any fun here; the fun has already been made -- at the source; made, performed, filmed, packaged and posted to the Intertubes. If one does not wish to be the potential subject of ridicule, one should not be entering the public sphere. Like a risible American Idol contestant or a train-wrecking celebrity flip-out, an over-the-top drag queen's performance attracting attention -- all sorts of attention -- is neither accidental nor deplorable.

Of course, it's possible that this video was shot surreptitiously, or stolen from a private stash; but my presumption is that it was meant to be shared.

That said, I still prefer the chilling performance art of the Goddess Bunny / Sandie Crisp.

Dear lord. My local paper had a half-page on this at the front of the BUSINESS section, and another full page inside!

I'm not averse to believing extraordinary improvements can be made to a motor by uneducated obsessed auto-didacts; sure, why not. Unlikely, but not impossible. Maybe it draws its energy from Earth's own magnetic field or solar flares or the collective credulity of journalists, all near-inexhaustible resources. But to publish this flim-flam in a reputable newspaper before it's been in any way tested, and all with breathless wonder and not one mention of Newton? Why don't they just add some pictures of high school science teachers being shat on by weasels? This stuff's as noxious to the scientific education of the masses as any course in Creationism.

Congrats and all... but I feel compelled to point out that several people attempting to spell the baby's first name have failed so far. And these are your literate bloggers who have the right spelling right in front of them. Posey/Poesey/Posie will always get misspelled. (So will Fi[b/bb]o[n/nn]a[c/cc]i, but I guess that's less important).

Well, I guess geeky e-celebrities are no different from the regular ones, and inflicting vanity names on their innocent kids is some charismatic tribal custom they all share. As someone saddled with a strange-sounding name as a child I'm going to give mine a simple one and just let him or her choose a new one when they can think for themselves. I think a "Peter" voluntarily changing into a "Trout Fishing in America" is cooler than "Trumpet Moon-Unit Zebrahead" telling his friends his name is "just Tom".

"There are plenty of private equity fund managers who are Deadheads," he said, a reference to hippy icons The Grateful Dead."

I see a couple of people have picked up on it already, but this is certainly a nod to the fact that Deadheads were pioneers in creating high-quality bootlegs of shows using best-available technologies (DAT and the like) and sharing them through a sophisticated social "network". They were the peer-to-peer music-distributing "pirates" before the Web even existed; except their piracy was valued and encouraged. The U2 blowhard is suggesting that this kind of attitude skewed their values and business-sense. He makes a good point, but it's not the one he thinks he's making. I bet when he drops acid, all he sees is an endless swirl of green going down a toilet, the poor wretch.

The game scales well for any age or mix of ages, status of inebriation, social and educational background, the players' familiarity with each other, length of hair and acceptance of tie-dye, etc.

I am a fan of lots of crunchy hardcore strategy games, I like many of Looney Labs more serious creations, I love everything from "German" style board games to Star Fleet Battles, and yet I think Fluxx is great fun. Yes, it's silly. Calvinball is supposed to be silly. Baseball-umpire-types and Fantasy-Football-types and cricket-fan-types may scoff and write how the game's too random and dull for them, but then that's what I think theirs are too -- at least Fluxx isn't pretentious or elitist ;)

For people who like simple, easy-going, fun games, may I also recommend Looney Labs "Aquarius"?

Never mind! some more creative Googling, and it's "The Cage of Sand" by Ballard. Can't wait to re-read it now.

OK, several people were reminded of various books or paintings... none, so far, have hit on the one I am trying to remember: a story in which dunes of some sort of invasive sand from Mars are overtaking a part of Earth (I want to say around Cape Canaveral, but that could be wrong), and a number of people who refuse to leave the quarantined area, living in the half-buried buildings, are slowly hunted down; in the meantime, the orbiting debris from a failed Mars mission reënters Earth's atmosphere and the dead astronauts symbolically make their Mars landing in these alien dunes. I have a very vivid memory of reading this haunting story as a child but nothing beyond that. If I were to guess at an author I'd say Ballard or Bradbury? But, heck, it might not even have been an English author (I read this in translation). Any help identifying?

Ha ha, hilarious thread! Keep on trucking, Teresa; as for posters turning up to whine about how unfair and hypocritical and censorious disemvowelling their Very Important Posts is, and how they're fed up and leaving and never coming back -- don't let the door hit you on the way out! "I'll ban myself from the site and they'll be really really sorry" is a very adult response to moderation. Please don't change your minds.

Those quotes are extraordinarily clumsy (and the card itself is typographically unconvincing)

Nonono! You see, the "use" of "spurious" "scare 'quotes'" is clearly a "genius" touch of futurology -- taking an already-nascent "trend" and extrapolating into the future, "scare" or "emphasis" quotation "marks" are de rigueur in the forecasted post-monster US "English".

Of course, what the "film" makers really drop the ball on is the "rest" of that DoD tag -- which "should" have read teh aera frmrly knon s "Sentral Park".

De gustibus non est disputandum. That said, I think it's perfectly reasonable to make disparaging remarks about public/institutional artwork one dislikes. All you people asking "what's so horrible about it?", note that the post called it "beautifully horrible", to my eye acknowledging that it follows a certain canon and standard; but just because something is canonical and culturally-motivated doesn't mean it can't be bad. If a bank had paid for a mural of dogs playing poker or of Elvis on black velvet, I don't care how good the execution, I'd still laugh.

Want this painting to be unremarkable? Remove the Great Wall. We've all seen the Great Wall. This ain't it. The artistic hubris of pretending to aim for a real representation of a real landscape is what elevates it from "yawn" to "lol, kitsch!". Remove the Wall and it's an "imaginary landscape"; or add some flying dragons and melted clocks and call it a "surrealist reïmagination of the Great Wall", that'd probably be good too... This is in the uncanny valley of "beautifully horrible".

@#10: it's still free speech if nobody's listening

No no, only the earliest citation comes, by chance, from a fencing book. The idiom is in no way fencing-related.

I wondered how quickly this site would spur an etymological debate! :)

4: Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite characters

Wait, Bakunin was in Slackers?

Jaw-dropping. All these flippant comments about how no matter what, the woman pictured on the right is hot, and clucking that Boing Boing is being puritan, and how it's A-OK to systemically endanger one's health to get a mate, and isn't this just like sports injuries for men, and yay, it accentuates those oh so important "boobies"; or how the real problem isn't the heels -- it's poor quality shoes, or poor posture, or women not being trained to wear heels properly (maybe it should be part of gym class in elementary school?), and then, as last recourse, grudging concessions that one can always just wear them during sex? Right, the male gaze and western standards of femininity don't have anything to do with these shoes, it's all about women making perfectly rational choices about being taller and sexier and gaining that all-important evolutionary advantage by bedding big virile menly men who apparently find comfortable partners a turn-off.

This is the first time I have ever been ashamed of a comment thread on BB. How many fatbeard geek losers and their female enablers would make the same patronizing excuses if the local standard called for outright foot binding? SHEESH.

*headdesk*.