All the arguing about the (il)legitimacy of neuroscience, etc... to me there's a real kernel of truth that rings to true to how I see things. And that is that the Republicans, at least in the last ~25 years or so that I've been paying attention, are much better than the Dems at the "war of words".

I followed one of the links to here:
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/08/25_lakoff.shtml

Where I found this quote fro Lakoff: "A policy direction is something like "Let's have a sustainable environment" and "Working people shouldn't be living in poverty" and "Everybody should have health care." The problem is that the Democrats have wanted to talk about programs rather than policy directions, and programs call up distinctions, which tend to separate people."

The Right is much better than the Left at coming up w/ simple, straight-forward, 1-sentence phrases or arguments.

Its enough to get me interested in his work. I think I'll try and find something used and see how I like it.

I think Xeni set us up the bomb.

So... does anyone ever truly apologize anymore? Public apologies have become exercises in not-really-apologizing. By putting the onus on people who "may have been offended" they're not apologizing for anything, rather, they've put the onus on the offended party for being offended.

@Beneditor... given the links to all these precociously self-aware and literate strippers, I was wondering the same thing.

Interesting reading, interesting topic, interesting discussion... so. ;)

Its odd. In that, personally speaking, (and I realize I'll probably be against the grain here, so before anyone hammers me be mindful that I am taking pains to indicate this purely how I feel and now how I think everyone else should live or think), but I'm in the camp that stripping/porn is debasing to both sides, but more so the stripper.

So, while I agree w/ the comment about how blogging may be cathartic for some sexworkers, I feel like I'm also justifying their existence... that by acknowledging them I'm giving legitimacy to something I'd prefer not to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know "oldest profession", pr0n ain't going anywhere... but I could say that about a lot of things where we make individual choices to show or withhold support to things we believe in.

This stuff conflicts me to no end. I'd legalize prostitution if I had the magic wand of power and I guess that stripping, et al, should be legal, but its just a product I wouldn't purchase and one that I think society would, for the most part, be better off without. But, that's naive and a bit misguided, in that I'm simply looking at the effect and not the cause.

Ok, I'll take my lumps now, lol. ;)

@Scottfree, something doesn't sound right about what you're saying. Schools can and do regulate dress at proms, school dances, etc... all the time. If what you were saying were true, then we'd of crossed the rather low threshhold of this example years ago.

Having finally watched the video, I gotta say, this is not that big a deal.

They had a specific dress code. She couldn't follow it. Her "plan" to comply (wrapping the train around her midsection) still did not satisfy them (apparently she does not understand that a bra is an undergarment).

What you can't figure out from the limited video is why, exactly, she was cuffed. But, I'm guessing it was along the lines of they told her to leave, she wouldn't leave. Since they can't use physical force, they call the cops.... which is quite sensible. Now, at that point, are cuffs really necessary? Dunno, not enough info to go on.

As for the BB-worthiness of the story, to me, it registered because of its preposterousness. Seriously, you'd have to be a total idiot or pain-in-the-ass if you think that you can come to a prom dressed in some kind of gold-satin paper-mache stripper outfit (if you look at the snapshots from the event, it looks worse than when she's "modeling" it for the news crew). So, yeah, it works for me on BB in the vein of an oddity that got the attention of our hosts.

Pipenta, I think your outrage is misplaced in this case. We're not talking about 13 year olds playing WOW, we're talking about (mostly) 4-6 year olds earing coins by having their penguins sled down mountains or catch thrown fish.

Then they sit in their igloo with their puffles.

If anything the fact that poo or vagina may show up as *** or ****** just tells them to not waste their time since, assuming that a 4-6 year old understands that the implications of using these terms, that there's no shock value to be had here.

Reading the comments, I think most of you have no idea what Club Penguin is or who its target market is.

Its for little kids. By little, I mean 5 and 6 years old. My 5 year old loves it and my 7 year old has no use for it.

You log onto a server and go to general areas where hordes of little penguin icons stumble around. There's actually very little chatting done since most of the kids probably can't spell yet. You can do a lot of pre-programmed emoticons, phrases, etc...

The funny thing is my son (the 5 year old) was banned for a week last month. I asked why and they say he typed "fuck". I'm guessing some older kid logged in and do that because there's no way he could've done that. He can't spell anything other than his name and a couple other words.

I'm not saying its the greatest thing ever. Its not. In fact, when I see the CEO say that the game is primarily social and then in the very next sentence saying its the antithesis of facebook, etc... tells me there's something they are not getting or maybe choosing not to publicly acknowledge.

At any rate, I see a lot of hand-wringing here over something that is not that big a deal.

Forgive me, but isn't it a fact that light bulbs can very easily be made to burn "eternally" (or is it urban myth that some of Edison's original bulbs still work?) but obviously, its in the interest of the manufacturers to have you need a new bulb every X months.

I also remember, as a kid, someone selling "forever" bulbs door-to-door.

I know, I know, easy enough to check via the googlemobile, but I'm feeling lazy.

Hmmm... sorry about that double post. I was away from the desk for a while and did a refresh on the screen that said "thanks for posting (or whatever it says).

@Kennric, guilty as charged. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to read it yet, but maybe will so later.

@Wry, tx for the reply. I understand, I don't think he was Foxnewsing BB, rather, I think we can all admit there's a decent amount of snark on BB. I find a lot of the humor here especially to be very ... um... narrow in terms of the demographic. NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT. ;)

Oh, and to be a bit snarky myself, most internet debaters will tell you that's a fairly common logic fallacy (shoot the messenger or summat).

@ Wrybread... so you dismiss spoonies dismissiveness by in turn using your own dismissiveness based on stereotype?

Sorry, but the irony kinda yelled out at me. Since these kind of discussions can turn into the an infinite looop, and you, in turn my complain about me dismissing your dismissing of someone elses dismissiveness, I'll just cut to the chase. YOUR BAND SUCKS. ;)

@ Wrybread... so you dismiss spoonies dismissiveness by in turn using your own dismissiveness based on stereotype?

Sorry, but the irony kinda yelled out at me. Since these kind of discussions can turn into the an infinite looop, and you, in turn my complain about me dismissing your dismissing of someone elses dismissiveness, I'll just cut to the chase. YOUR BAND SUCKS. ;)

At first I thought this was an amazing insight, but upon reflection and reading some of the comments, I've come to the conclusion that he's providing a new unit of measure with some useful observations.

Why I backed off my initial "amazing insight" take was that this idea is not new. Its just the 21st Century version of bread and circuses. Only that we have a lot more influence in terms of what kind of bread we're fed and what animals are in the circus.

At the time of the Renaissance it seems there was a lot of promise about man ultimately elevating himself on a personal level and, come to find out, give the average guy some free time and he won't elevate his mind, he'll just fine another way to stupify it.

That said, I'm all for it. I'm with Yish. Its still crap, but so what. Its better crap and for those who care, you can find more that is useful and valuable in it.

I find this to be a fairly misguided and silly exercise. It shows how disassociated much of the art crowd is from reality.

Its also very different than the Joshua Bell experiment because of the nature of the medium. Even for musical forms I'm not fond of, I can tell by a few notes that someone is talented in terms of their playing of an instrument. I'd wager the same is true of most of us.

The same cannot be said for whatever-kind-of-art this is. Its the old "my kid can paint that" argument. Additionally, as has been pointed out, we are presented with hordes of visually pleasing images in public all the time. Its called advertising and most us have probably programmed ourselves to tune it out.

Gotta love how seriously these people take themselves. No wonder the average person doesn't take art seriously, when you're condescended to on this level.

Honor systems work well for produce. They wouldn't work well for iPhones or Toyotas.

The irony is that if I wanted to post ala baldhead, I'd point out that baldhead himself is several years behind. But, I'm too old for music snobbery, I checked that about the age of 30.

That said, these guys are great. Pescovitz's comment comparing them to the Pogues mixed w/ circus music really hit me because I'm a huge Pogues fan and I always saw these guys in a similar light.

Ah, my bad, I do see one improvement over steam, the linux version, so if I could, I'd amend my prior post....

No problems w/ this, but how is it any different/better than Valve's steam?

Again, no harm w/ more players in that market... but the replies so far read as if people were completely unaware that people are already doing this.

/shrug

/smiley face

Actually, the reports aren't clear that she was stung. It reads more like the ray knocked her off her feet and she hit her head on something and that killed her.

It'll probably be cleared up in a day or two.

Clearly, a stiff punishment must be introduced. Preferably, the hammer of justice would be behind it. Hopefully they will soon find themselves members of the penile system.

lol, some of you are taking this way too seriously. I found it pretty amusing.

Hmmm... just how critical will you have to be in your comments there to end up on a no-fly list? ;)

Yet another dispatch from the Terrorfied States of America....

Shouldn't there be some penalty for us over-zealous scared-shitless Americans who report every olive-skinned, scruffy-bearded young man who happens to every-so-slightly trespass on our personal threat levels? No, no, they shouldn't be penalized for the 1 in 5 billion who might possibly be a terrorist, just the other 99.99999% of the time where they throw some else's life into disarray because, being terrorfied, they're incapable of rational response.

bizness

Hmmm... I'm a bit torn. I've played a lot of online FPS in my day and a good bit of TF2, so I can see the viewpoint of those who are a bit miffed you decided to post this.

On the other hand, I can relate to griefers who are acting out of a sense of irony or to deflate people who take games way to seriously. A great example of this (can't remember if I originally say this on BoingBoing or elsewhere) was the serenitynow griefing a WoW funeral (meant to commemorate someone who died in RL).

In the posted video, I don't see any kind of point or anything that can be considered purposeful in any way, other than to purely upset people. So, while I'm not gonna jump up and down and fling poo at Joel, I'm gonna side w/ those who are giving it a thumbs down, albeit a mild one.

Ultimately, the nice thing about FPS games is that you have 100s of servers to choose from and its not, typically, too hard, to find ones that are well adminned who could ban asshats like that in a split second.

Once I realized it was satire, I felt waaaayyyy better... and then ordered one. ;)

If I'm paying w/ credit I always tip on credit as well.

I simply round up any tip to the next dollar. A more primitive check sum, I guess.

So, meal is 16.48 and the service was good, so, I'll tip them 3.52, bringing the bill to a nice, tidy 20.00.

Long time reader, first time poster!

Generally speaking BB posts lots of examples where the TSA is acting in an asinine or authoritarian manner. On first read, I have to say they might not be the case here.

Guess what, sometimes cops actually do arrest people who should be arrested. And, sometimes, those people do idiotic things while in custody that makes their circumstances worse. Here, maybe (and please note that before you freak out on my "maybe"), the extreme example of that.

As others have pointed out, we need a few more facts to come in, but *GASP OF HORROR* in this case the cops might have been justified in terms of the arrest and procedure in terms of placing the person in cuffs in a holding area.

The only thing I'd want clarification on the issue of leaving cuffs on in the holding area...