Not a fair comparison. It's far easier for kids to get their hands on games than it is to see movies and we all know it. Granted nowadays it's a tad easier to see R-rated films if you are a kid thanks to file-sharing but still.

Not according to the FCC http://kotaku.com/388443/ftc-its-increasingly-difficult-for-children-to-buy-m+rated-games

I would have taken down the negative review, taken the money and then put up a review that stated that they paid me to take down the old review. What would they do, complain that I took a bribe and didn't follow through on my part?

#196 Can they have guns? Knives? Flamethrowers?

Flamethrowers? No. But the flamethrower (at least in GTA 3. I don't have GTA 4) was a fairly rare item. None of the men in the game had it either.

In fact most of the pedestrians, be they male or female, don't have weapons. There are men in the games who are dressed in clothing commonly identified with gangs and they have weapons (it is true that there are no female gang members in the game). I'm honestly not sure if the women in the games ever have weapons or not.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the depiction of women in the game. In most cases the women are very clearly represented as either sex objects or victims. The average pedestrian men have a lot more variety than the women (again, at least in 3. I don't know about 4). But I just want to make sure that the discussion is accurate. There are enough issues with the game without saying other things that aren't accurate.

#191And to the people who compared it to fighting/boxing games - at least in them, the women get to fight back; at least in them, the women might actually win, and have a purpose beyond just getting killed.

actually in situations where anyone would be able to fight back women in GTA can fight back. Sure they can't put up a fight if you run them over or shoot them but then again who could? If you punch the women they will either run away or fight back just as the men in the game do.

#173 First and foremost, as a video game it's inherently something tracked to appeal to kids. Second, just the artwork used for the promotion of the game itself: broad black lined illustrations with bright solid colors which make it look like a comic book or cartoon. Yes, we all know adults read comics as well, but comics and animation are mainly a medium of youth; you won't find graphic novels in senior centers.
Beyond that, one needs to only look towards Rockstar's "street team" efforts. Stickers and murals in NYC are being placed in areas where people under 20 will be seeing it. They aren't placing posters outside of museums or nightclubs. But in lower Manhattan and the Village where teens hang out.

The average age of videogame players is 35. http://www.theesa.com/facts/index.asp (that is a study put out by the videogame rating board so it might be biased) Videogames are not inherently tracked to appeal to children any more than any medium is.

Roy Lichtenstein made paintings with "broad black lined illustrations with bright solid colors which make it look like a comic book or cartoon" so were those for children?

Finally, the whole advertising thing is an example of how videogames are held to a different standard than other forms. One season, the Sopranos was advertised with arms sticking out of the trunks of taxis and with shoes in cement in shoe store windows. In Scotland they went so far as to put stickers in taxis that looked like blood splatters and bullet holes for the Sopranos. No one complained about those, so why complain about videogame advertising that is much less graphic?

I find it odd that this post just posts directly to Breslin's blog rather than the specific blog post.

The current top post on the blog is a sampling of comments. Notice that Breslin's blog itself doesn't have any comments. http://reversecowgirlblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/grand-theft-aftermath.html

(and also notice that my post #20 was worth Breslin quoting one line of but apparently bad enough to censor...)

#117 wrote:
"Feminists would be more convincing on this issue if they didn't say things like, "misogyny embedded in capitalist patriarchy". As if there were no misogyny amongst the New Guinea natives we read about here last week who found pigs a useful currency for buying women.

Misogyny isn't caused by capitalism."

I'm not sure that the statement "misogyny embedded in capitalist patriarchy" is meant to imply that misogyny is cause by capitalism. I think it is meant to imply that within a patriarchal form of capitalism there is a form of misogyny that is built in.

@63
No you actually can't escort old ladies across streets.

In the GTA 3 games, I may be wrong (it has been a while since I played any of them) but I don't think there were any old ladies.

There really isn't any way to deal positively with anyone in the game except for when you take over an Ambulance, Police Car, Firetruck or Taxi and then you just do those jobs.

You can't be nice to anyone man or woman. However, while you can have sex with prostitutes (or in GTA San Andreas your girlfriend) you can't have sex with men. The "have sex with a hooker and then kill her" is actually two separate game mechanics. You can have sex with prostitutes and you can kill anyone -- including prostitutes. None of the missions require you to do so (at least not that I played. I didn't play any of the "stories" games that started out on the PSP)

You can just walk around and people have done so. It doesn't make good news those.

Ummm what was wrong with my post #20?

My reaction to this post is in no way a condemnation of GTA. I don't have a current gen system so I can't play GTA 4. I have played the previous GTA games and they are, like R rated films, meant for adults. The play mechanic of running over people, including prostitutes, is way over hyped by the sensationalistic media.

My reaction is a condemnation of summary dismissal of raising questions about what the depiction of women in the game means and the implication that not only is it an accurate depiction of the world but that all men are like that and that we should just shrug our shoulders in response and say "that's just the way the world is."

Ssnnh Brsln snds lk n ss.
Hw ds hr wrtng tht mn trt wmn lk crp nd lk prsttts (mplyng tht ll mn d tht nd nt jst sm) rft fmnstng's ssrtn tht "t s n qstn tht GT s mrly rflctv f th bggr msgyny mbddd n cptlst ptrrchy, bt th qstn s why s gm tht dpcts sch vlnc twrds wmn s pplr?" f nythng hr sttmnts tht "mn sk t prsttts bcs prsttts lt mn xprss thmslvs rthlssly. Wth ttr mpnty. Bcs f y py hr, y dn't hv t fl glty." sms t prv tht fmnstng's sttmnts hv sm mrt.

'v nvr hr f Brsln bfr bt wrtng, "Dd w nt hnt dwn ll th fmnsts nd sht thm p lrdy?" mks hr snd lk sm rghtwng tlk rd hst. t s s f Vlt Bl nd nn Cltr mrphd tgthr nt n prsn.

This is kind of like the RIAAs logic of aguing that X number of downloaded songs is the same as x dollars in lost revenue.

Just because people aren't watching tv doesn't mean they will do something creative with that time.

The "it's our ranch. it's our home" was interesting but then it started putting in the George W. Bush stuff and the Waco stuff and it got odd. It seems like it is drawing a connection between a cult with a bed in their church and Waco or the terrorism-inspired civil rights erosion that has occurred. I can't say I agree.

Badly Drawn Boy did this for his "all Possibilities" video back in 2003.

As least when he did it it was only for a video and not some elitist publicity stunt like when Bell did it or these people did it.

Screw 'em.

Because this is the internet I'm not at all sure that this is simply a reading of the routine by two people who don't know the routine. If they are aspiring actors they are possibly the worst actors ever. The way it is shot I'm not even sure they were reading it at the same time until the end when they do the two shot. At the end when the woman gets really frustrated I'm not sure what to make of that. If she doesn't know the material and seemingly doesn't understand it why does she get frustrated?

I wonder if he will write the companion book, "Mommy won't be coming home any more because she died from complications relating to elective surgery" starring the late Olivia Goldsmith the author of The First Wives Club.

I'm glad to see that someone who knows the facts is posting about this. I ran across a link to this column last night and suspected it was totally off base but didn't know enough about the specifics to know exactly how and where it was wrong.

Even if child abductions are up they most often by someone the child knows as are murders and rape. Kids are better off with strangers than they are with people they know!

Since some of the signs in the video were in Spanish and Russian (or some language that uses Cyrillic) I doubt it was only Ugly Americans.

Someone in the military has been playing Postal 2 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1945857792089194805

He never folds them? That is insane. I knew that he did them by hand (obviously for as long as it has been around) but I always assumed he folded them or something. That really is mad!

I didn't read all of these so maybe someone pointed this out. Obviously the mother didn't just complain to Wal-Mart about the straws but also felt the need to notify the media about it...

Sweded has to be one of the more irritating terms. I really hope it doesn't catch on. People have been remaking films for decades before "Be Kind Rewind."

I hope that those condemning him also watch Antiques Roadshow and whenever someone says, "I bought this at a garage sale for a quarter" also get mad at that person.

Call me crazy but if there are programs being broadcast for free that there's no legal way for me to see them then I don't see the harm in pirating them...

I'm sure that these are like most stories that get passed around the internet and are 90% fake.

Just make sure that you don't mention anything about Jesus and drugs or Kenneth Starr will get involved

At the casino I worked at in the American midwest we all counted money the first way. Much faster than shuffling it from one hand to another.

Reminds me of When a Stranger Calls Back. Creepy movie.

So did this get any local news coverage? It would be interesting to see the spin that they put on it.

Is this similar to a technique that they have at least talked about using to prevent pirates from camcordering films? Have the movie full of bursts of IR and then the videorecorder just picks up irritating white flashes.

Regardless of how dangerous skateboarding through the city centre may or may not be, it's still illegal. And if you are doing something illegal, regardless of how minor, and a cop tells you to stop (which they are bound to do), and you say "um, nope, I won't stop" and keep on going, then you automatically have a conflict situation.

But the problem is the kids had stopped when the dude went off on them. Even if they were are you saying it is acceptable for cops to have temper tantrums when people don't instantly obey them?

Obviously the remote controlled box had a speaker in it that was being used to call people "man" and "dude." The box deserved it.

To those saying the kid should have shown him respect: ever hear of the notion that respect should be earned?
Also. what is so disrespectful about calling someone man or dude? If that is the worst a cop has been called then the cop must not have been on the job very long.

You want to know what is really funny? I was going to make some reference to the Scatterbrain song "Don't Call me Dude" and a search turned up this article on CNN about a mayor complaining about a cop calling him dude:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/West/12/09/offbeat.dude.ap/index.html
what goes around comes around I suppose...

This was posted a year ago and if you go into her profile it is the only video she posted and she hasn't logged in since. I wonder what she will think if she ever finds out that this video has been discovered?

Does he ever make any posts that can't be accurately summarized as, "These damn kids these days!"? It certainly seems like every time one of his posts is featured on Boingboing that is what is is really about.

I don't even get what this post is about. A couple of the 90s posts are his own designs, aren't they?

welcome to 2006.

Newspapers don't sell because they are full of useless crap. The university has a program to encourage people to read so in addition to the school paper we get the NYTimes, USAToday, and the Indianapolis Star (I go to a school in Indiana) and so I pick them up and I go through them in about 15 minutes.

Wire stories? I read the headlines on news.google. Sports? If I cared I would watch sports center.
Stocks? If I cared I would watch CNBC
Hi and Lois? Peanuts? If I cared I would be 70.
Classifieds? If I cared I would check out Craig's list or the school's online classifieds.
So what does that leave? local stuff, editorials, and letters to the editor and the occasional *gasp* original reporting that is more than just the facts of what happened and is something that I would need to do more than read the headline to get the information from.

"From Hell", "Promethea", and "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" are way more interesting than anything Moore did for the "Big 2". IMHO

Promethea and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen were published by DC. (Future League comics won't be but 1,2 and the Black Dossier were published by DC)

I love that in one of the attached pictures it says "This is not a bomb, it is just for the lulz."
I'm sure that the non-internet-speak-savvy would see that and freak out, "Who are the lulz?!?!?" "The Lebonease Underground Liberation Zionists are using these signs as ways to send secret messages!!!!"

This is factually incorrect on a couple of levels. First of all, this isn't issue number 1. It is issue #21. Secondly, it is not Moore's first issue as writer of Swamp Thing but his second. His first issue was #20 which wrapped up all the outstanding issues of Marty Pasco's run which was issues 1-19 of the Saga of the Swamp Thing.

Regardless, Moore's run on Swamp Thing is responsible for the existence of the Vertigo line and thus comics such as Y the Last Man, Fables, Sandman, and countless others and really is must reading if you are one of those rare people that like things.

the real question is, "will being on a treadmill stop a plane from moving forward?"

If the plane isn't moving then there's no lift. No lift means no flight.

I cheerfully admit that I'll believe anything until you disprove it. Even sorrier that you find that so upsetting.

I cheerfully admit that I'll believe you are a giraffe until you disprove it. Even sorrier that you find that so upsetting.

"Not that I think that these things work, but nobody has given the slightest proof that they don't."

Not that I think there's the slightest chance this is true but you haven given the slightest proof that you aren't a giraffe.

You wouldn't get shocked when you got out of your car because you would use the switch to turn it off before you got out.

Ummm since these are visual works it would seem like this is more of a tribute to the artists who created these characters such as Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and others. Stan may be the Man but Jack is the King. Credit where credit is due.

I'm pretty sure that there have been court cases that have ruled that you can't get arrested for simply cursing at an officer. So did they think that writing a curse was different than saying one?

THe latest Cranky Geeks has Dvorak taking a tour of it. http://www.crankygeeks.com/2008/01/episode_98_join_john_dvorak_fo.php
very cool place.

Sure they are dangerous and make you look like a douche but there's something more important. The first message the guy shows starts with "please." Pimps don't say please!!!

Flashback Universe have been offering their comics for free and without drm for a while now. http://www.flashbackuniverse.com/

well that was amazingly uninformative. OK, besides starting this program what do I need to do? How does it work?

I'm constantly amazed by these stories. Not necessarily by the people who see Mary in things but how do these stories get to the media? If I was convinced that I saw the Virgin Mary on my wall I wouldn't even think to call the media.

It is funny how there are all these discussions about "what the founders of our country wanted" except when it comes to things that big businesses want changed like copyright...

Think of the children! We all know that airplanes are the only places with hundreds of people gathered together and that there aren't any places with thousands of people gathered together that terrorists could target. If we secure our airlines then we will be 100% safe!

This seems incredibly illegal. Shouldn't there have to be some sort of agreement or contract or at the very least posting of the time limit? Is 44 minutes free?
If they want to limit parking times it would seem that the easiest thing would be to do what parking garages do and charge for parking. Of course that would probably be disastrous to McDonald's real business and result in a drop of sales.

The head of our department has been working on images of japan in early 20th century USA. He's got a website with some pretty interesting stuff on it. http://www.indiana.edu/~jia1915/

I've subscribed to several magazines from ebay and never had a problem with them. I've gotten 4 years of a monthly magazine for $20. Hard to beat that price.

I'm calling shenanigans. I've taught film classes and I've taught feminist theory and I've never had a student capable of making up bullshit like this on a paper. Seems really really fake to me.

What kind of moron do you have to be to not do what a cop says when they tell you to do something?

That being said this cop is horrible at his job. Even before he tases the guy you can tell he is sloppy. He tells the guy to get out of his car and what does the cop do? He turns his back on the guy. That is just asking to get shot. Then when the wife gets out of the car he just tells her to get back in. Again, just asking to get shot.

Even if we ignore the tasing this guy has piss poor training.

Ever since I've heard that this group claims that everything was vegetarian before the fall of man I've been curious about something: Do they advocate vegetarianism? It would seem that if we didn't eat meat before Adam ate from the tree then it would seem as if eating meat would be a bad thing if not outright sinful. So I would think that being a vegetarian would be closer to the way in which we were created by God.

He may be an awesome dog but (assuming this is real) he has an asshat for an owner.

my whole problem is that I"m 6ft4. Seats are too low, to narrow and too close together. My knees hit the seat in front of me even when the person in front has their seat in the upright position.

The main problem I have with 9/11 conspiracy theorists is that there are so many things that the current administration has ADMITTED to doing, why do we need to focus on some conspiracy to dislike them? Why not take all the time and energy people focus on 9/11 conspiracies and try to do something about warrentless wiretaps, going to war on inaccurate and/or flimsy intelligence, putting American citizens in military brigs for years without charging them with anything, no-bid contracts for companies close to the administration, or any number of other things that they have freely admitted to doing?

They had to wait until she left because until she left she hadn't stolen anything.

I have a hard time being sympathetic for her. They accused her of putting shoes in the cheaper box. What did she do? She put shoes in the cheaper box. Where is the problem?

People are talking about the presumption of guilt. But let's say that this person really was trying to get the shoes cheaper. What would a dishonest person say when confronted? Would it be any different than exactly what an honest person would say? So what is the store supposed to do?

We know that the rich and famous never steal, right? Just ask OJ or Winona Ryder.

Aren't there already enough cameras in the UK? Pretty soon there will be more cameras than people.

"The publishers actually strike deals with professors, encouraging the professors to always use the newest edition in order to garner better profit."

If this is true then I am owned some money because the publishers just change editions every year or two whether I want them to or not which not only forces the students to buy new editions but me to go back through all my notes and lesson plans to see if the material that I liked is still in it, if the new material is any good, and change my syllabus. I would be a lot happier if professors did get a kickback or if they would stop coming out with new editions with minimal changes.

On the other hand I do get a fair amount of books that I didn't ask for sent to me and I just sell them on Amazon. Thanks book publishers!

The Canadian show Holmes on Homes is basically built around this kind of stuff. He goes in and fixes things after other contractors screw it up. I remember one episode where they found something like 20 junction boxes in the walls of one laundry room.
It's on HGTV in Canada and Discovery Home in the USA.

Don't most college bookstores allow you to order books online or is it just ours? Wouldn't that allow people to find out the prices without setting foot in the store?

I always wait until the class syllabus is handed out and buy the books online anyway. The last time I set foot in our college bookstore was when I realized I had forgotten to buy a book the weekend before I was supposed to read it.

If I never see another "steampunk" anything it would make me quite happy.

Here's the Today show video http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20638479/
Regardless of the asshattery of the airline I think it is a much more telling statement about our culture that she appeared with her lawyer and her mother.

The whole something made out of something else thing is just lost on me. The first time I saw it, it might have been neat but now it is just boring.