WOAH, look at the dotted lines running down my arm and turning into Pringles cans, man.

This works best if you visualize the narrator from the drug film in Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.

"Know your dope fiend. You will not be able to see his eyes because of tea shades, but his knuckles will be white from inner tension and his pants will be crusted with semen from constantly jacking off when he can't find a rape victim."

@ Om

It's going to be a same-sex, mixed-race, inter-generational wedding! I've only been to one of those before!

This is the slowest porn ever.

@ #23

The problem with your position is that it's a deliberate oversimplification. I know plenty of people who believe in God, but none of them would consider him(her, whatever) as a literal "person", much less one that performs magic and lives in the sky. The concept of divinity is far more complicated and nuanced than that, and I think you know it.

Yeah, it's a funny joke and all, but as serious analysis it's akin to Mr. Garrison's "You're the retarded offspring of five monkeys having butt sex with a fish-squirrel!" anti-evolution speech.
[http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoID=1847939160]

Skeptobot's comment is pretty much right.

I also don't know if I'd call the interbreeding in the 4th Aliens film "easy."

OMG STACKS

Science Fiction fans should definitely subscribe to Escape Pod.

Bonus points for an excellent reading of Cory Doctorow's "Crap Hound."

#7: "Yes, all cultures are of equal merit. Who are we to judge?"

If you're going to mock liberal post-modernism, you may as well include the other half of that equation:

"No individual should be forced to conform to cultural standards against their will."

@ #27,

Hey, if they've been feed table scraps to clear the carrion out of their systems, opossum is a perfectly edible meat. Plus, you're eating local!

Maybe he blew a seal...

(What's the background music, BTW?)

pinup57, your argument, like that of most nay-sayers, assumes that corn will be the primary feedstock of biofuels. It would be potentially catastrophic if that was the case, but it by no means has to be.

Cellulose Biofuel is here, it's merely a question (significant, but not insurmountable) of ramping up production. Then we'll have fuel from all the dozens of agricultural and industrial by-products that just go to waste today. Like wood chips, switchgrass, corn stalks and husks, and even algae pools that can feed directly off of power plant emissions.

Kids, kids... you're both right!

Fluxx can be extremely fun, and can also be dull and pointless. It's mostly contextual. A group of players more attuned to weekly Puerto Rico matches will often be frustrated by the limited role of strategy, but if the same people are hanging out in a bar with some non-gamer friends, it's the prefect speed.

Everyone should try it at least once, but not in a group larger than 4 or 5, since it will get slow. I've also made a couple cards which can speed up endgame, such as "Immanentize the Eschaton" (which reactivates all the Goal cards in the discard pile.)

If this gentleman was trying to pull a scam, it seems to me that he would have chosen something plausible. I suspect he has some form of dementia and actually believes that the camera penetrated his throat.

Anonymous, while I agree that male circumcision is a pointless and potentially dangerous ritual, the comparisons to real genital mutilation or calling it a "human rights issue" only make you look absurd and foolish.

I was circumcised as an infant, and I can assure that my genitals are not only functional, but admirably so.

Two girls not included.

IWood: "I wonder if Mr. Allen believes in the bearded sky man as well? That requires the same quality of reasoning."

Whether the gentlemen in question are reliable witnesses or not, this is probably the worst example of atheistic non-sequitor threadjacking I've seen in ages.

Go sit in the corner and think about what you've done, young man.

I believe I found a video of the octopus in question:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aDVlFzF5Kk

Standing ovation for License Farm.

@ #73: I'll stop you right there. You nailed it. I thought I made it clear in my original post that the summary was sufficient to make me want to bang my head against the wall. I didn't bother to read the whole accursed thing.

It's... it's like two pages. Are you seriously saying that you posted a whole screed about how Cory is overreacting and you couldn't even bring yourself to click the link?

I'm having my first child in about a week, and I have to say I'm really getting scared for the future of this country. Not because I think Islamo-Fascists are going to storm our beaches and install a Thousand-Year Caliphinate of Terror, but because the US is literally becoming police state.

Slowly, perhaps, and it may or may not ever reach the level of Pinochet's Chile, much less Hitler's Germany, but it terrifies me how many Americans simply can't bring themselves to even pay attention. This is exactly how Democracies die.

#58, Oracle:
"He was "kidnapped"? Somehow, I imagine his kidnapping involved being caught with a large amount of explosives."

Perhaps you missed that paragraph from the article:

Bashmilah's story also appears to show in clear terms that he was an innocent man. After 19 months of imprisonment and torment at the hands of the CIA, the agency released him with no explanation, just as he had been imprisoned in the first place. He faced no terrorism charges. He was given no lawyer. He saw no judge. He was simply released, his life shattered.

When I clicked, I thought the headline said "Pork prank."

This is much better.

@ #9:

To quote a certain a certain bit of barracks graffiti in Ramadi:
"America is not at war. The Marine Corps is at war; America is at the mall."

Hold on, Dead Robot... don't think we're going to knuckle under your pun assault without giving you the finger.

@ Holden, #14:

Heifer International isn't necessarily unique in 3rd-world development, but it's gotten a number of awards for efficiency and accountability.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heifer_International#Awards

I donate to them every year. If there's a better organization in the same category, I'd love to hear about it.

I completely want this for my wallpaper. Can we has a download section?

Dan667, these are critiques of graphic design in the campaign, not in-depth examinations of re-hashed 90's paranoia.

You guys really need to get over this persecution complex thing. Seriously.

@ RealCatholicMen

As much as I hate to belabor the obvious, The Allies were able to defeat Nazi Germany without torturing prisoners.

Please re-read posts 86, 87, and 19. Your belief that all detainees are terrorists and they all have useful information that be extracted though coercion is indefensible.

As a side note, does anyone else think it ironic that a man calling himself a Christian would advocate torture?

@ RealCatholicMen

Life is not an episode of 24.

There are very real problems with the theory you're operating under. Read up on Ibn al Shaykh al Libbi if you don't understand that, or the abduction of Maher Arar.

@ Kevitivity:
"It's important to note that this kind of treatment has only ever been used on a handful of very high value terrorists."

Can you tell us what you're basing that statement off of?

I would certainly prefer that to be the case... but from all the reports I have heard from Amnesty International and others, acts like this and worse have been done to a very broad range of detainees, including those who have not had a fair trial and are now known to be innocent.

If innocent people are being tortured in our names, I want it investigated and stopped. Don't you?

@ RealCatholicMen:

Perhaps I did not express myself very well. I did not mean that Boing Boing has no agenda, because they do: They are pro-science and technological innovation. They are pro-art, and are supporters of the EFF and Fair Use movements. They are anti-propaganda and anti-authoritarianism. I consider these reasonable positions, and it's one reason I read the site.

They are not, however, Party Ideologues as some people keep insisting. I feel it's merely a coincidence that all of the folks who promote the USA PATRIOT act, Creationism in school, the corporate stranglehold of media and culture and jackwad hypocritical puritanism just happen to be affiliated with the current Republican administration. If some Democrats next year advocate policies that similarly violate the Happy Mutant ethos, I don't expect Boing Boing to pull any punches or try and manipulate the events out of Party allegiance. In other words, they won't do what FOX News does.

TSOL: "I can't wait to read about it here!"

Oh, I see what you did there. You're trying to dismiss the cultural criticisms of FOX's blatantly hypocritical and prurient moralizing by sarcastically suggesting that Boing Boing has a partisan agenda, and your evidence is the lack of coverage over allegations that Democratic debate tickets were intentionally reserved for Clinton supporters.

Do I have that correct?

Would it matter if I explained to you that Boing Boing is a blog about internet and media culture, and not about every dull, irrelevant "controversy" that any old drumbeater cares to exaggerate the importance of to make their side look better?

The Astronot: "That can be disputed forever but knowledged people will or should agree with the idea that God does not share the same time space as man so it is possible that even a second of our time can translate to literal thousands of year to God and such evidence is supported in the Bible not science quarterly or John."

Well, an interpretation of Genesis as history still would suggest that the Earth had flowering plants and trees before the Sun and stars were ignited.

Maybe Fundamentalist Christians should simply accept that there are far more important things they should be doing in the world than arguing that dinosaurs were created by magic.

Thank you, Believer317, but you are not fully understanding the context of this debate.

You have every right to believe in God. You have every right to believe that Jesus Christ is His only begotten son and though him we can find Salvation. I think I speak for all Boing Boing readers when I say I will defend your right to believe and live by your beliefs 100%.

When you get to the point where you say "my spiritual beliefs say that all organisms were generated spontaneously as an act of divine intervention, therefore all scientific observations to the contrary are false," then we have a problem.

Do you understand the difference here?

Also, I will mention that Einstein did not believe in organized religion, nor (afaik) did he in any way consider Darwinian theory to be a denial of God.

Flying Squid: That's supposed to be a good thing? I'm all for independent and low-budget productions but most of the time they don't work very well with sci-fi unless you're looking for a laugh.

Primer.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/

Davescafe, I don't think you really understand the nature of these criticisms. Nobody cares if what Beck said was "mean"... What it is is evidence of a stupidity and pettiness that has poisoned the very nature of political debate in America.

1: You do not accuse people of "hating" their country just because you criticize the government. You just don't. Republicans, of all people, should understand that.

2: The region affected is among the most Republican areas of the state. So even if you ignore point #1, his statement is factually dumb.

3: Even putting all that aside, the time to criticize a community's political slant is not when hundreds of thousands of them are fleeing for their lives while their homes and possessions and pets are being incinerated.

These are not "liberal" talking points. These are commonly understood points of what we call Not Being An Asshole. Glenn Beck does not understand these points because he is, as a career, a spokesman for a petty and crass philosophy... being a Cable News Partisan.

And I realize it's not just Right-Wingers and Bush-lovers who make idiots of themselves attempting to spin every human event into Us Vs Them... but still, I can't think of anyone embracing it they way they have. If that one poster really did "read worse things said about Republicans" from Al Franken, I'd like to hear it. Because I just don't think it's the case.

@ Yurei

Er... right. "Sobering realization" indeed. God knows that at her current lifestyle, she'll be dangerously low on funds in 4 or 5 hundred years.