Gorgon

I get his point though, the miniseries and doubleheaders, flight of the phoenix, res ship, worked so much better because they weren't so concerned with cramming everything down to 30 mins. You feel it, as in the cylon civil war, which is done in 5 mins and needed more. The constant cliffhangers might sell more ad space, but they are annoying as hell. Every time you think something is going to happen you realize that theres only 5 mins left and nothing much is going to happen after all.

This is the intarweb, don't take anything personal.

Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone.

It has to do with the filter and there being no delete button.

d.ildo

I remember my sex ed classes. It was every bit as hilarious and embarrassing as the 'talk' with my parents. Except they, thank the gods, didn't have a d.ildo on a wooden stand for demonstration. I have a feeling some things haven't changed, and that kids just figure these things out themselves, and make the same mistakes they always have.

Vampires have their own language apparently. Or it\s supposed to be Greenlandish.

What they really fear is that their indoctrination of the population to religious autocracy is undermined by the mixed messages of consumer society. Buying an Ipod or a porshe is a statement of identity, just as faithfully attending mosque is. In this view, Barbie of all things can be revolutionary. It can seduce kids and make them forget that they are supposed to be god fearing and accept the official ideology.

Anyone seen 30 days of night ?

by Frank Miller @

Hah, there is of course not a damn thing they can do about the dispersal of American cultural imperialism into every home with a satellite dish. They have named the enemy, but mind control is notoriously difficult in a completely media saturated world.

It has value when order or power, has to decide what to do with larger than life tyrants. Forgive the comparison, but it seemed more just to me that Hitler died alone in his bunker, having witnessed the complete destruction of his grand murderous project than had he been made to face the victor's justice at Neurenburg. Sadam should have died in his hole. Mostly for our own sakes.

Yep. Thats how we usually handle war criminals,and that might actually have happened if not for two reasons. 1. The Bush administration had come out strongly against the international war crimes tribunal, ostensibly worried that the court would be unable to deal with politically motivated charges against US nationals. So to preserve its own integrity it had to go against international justice. 2. The decision to hand the trial over to the Iraqi courts which had not had any experience with basic concepts of justice for several decades. In the end we expect overthrown dictators to either escape into hiding, make a deal, or pay the ultimate price. Those were his options. He ran out of cash and allies and that was that. The trial just served to delay his ritual sacrifice long enough to be acceptable by western standards. In the end Sadam was above justice, just as surely as if he had escaped to a new life in Bolivia, thats what bothers me, not that he died, but the circumstances.

Where did they get off to, and how did you manage to have two. Cloning ?

Don't you think having that in the knife rack might scare women off.

I don't know about that. It's certainly possible to recover from rape, less so from having your face ripped off. Anyway aren't we engaged in stating the obvious here. There are no defenders Nick Eriksen presenting themselves. We might as well have had a thread about racism being bad.

Personally I would find that kinda insulting.

Who the hell is this Nick Eriksen character

Celebrating an execution is really bad form you know, even if he had it coming.

Statistics show that most people practice serial monogamy. I know that starting a sentence with 'statistics show' and then not showing any statistic is a cop out, but I think we can agree that this is generally accepted. In any case this places a different emphasis on when and where sex is 'supposed' to start.

And you keep hearing these stories of people tripping and accidentally sticking their **** into things

I guess thats the crux of it, it's a hypothetical 100% success. Which is worth very little in the real world where people follow their desire over sound advice. But government is not allowed to play the percentages as soon as the ghost of choice is introduced into the equation. That would be unamerican.

And telling people that they should employ abstinence to avoid getting pregnant isn't.

In Denmark they march every able bodied 18 year old into a series of tests and then ask then to draw a number, the lucky ones get to decide if they want service or not, the unlucky ones have to chose between military or civil defence. Although only career soldiers get sent to war zones. I remember being affected by the propaganda at the time, but ultimately my own lazy nature won out, and besides I got lucky in the draw.

It's not really a question of posing Capitalism versus Socialism as if they were archetypes of social organization that are independent and distinguishable from each other. The Marxist socialist archetype is long gone, Capitalism and history has proven it the loser. Capitalism however, cannot function without regulation or we wind up with extremes of exploitation. Think the worst of the aftermath of industrial revolution in England, or the 'gilded' age in the US, or the cutthroat economic boom in present day China: Baby milk formula with the nutritional value of sand, toxic toys, blood banks that infect the donors with AIDS. etc. Capitalism is a force of nature that needs to be contained, channeled. It's not a form of government. The western ideology of modern day Capitalism (not to be confused with the nuts and bolts of its operation) rests on the notion that democracy and freedom go hand in hand with market economy, that this is the wave of the future, and that it will bring light to all the dark places in the world. I remain pessimistic. It's a question of degrees, not whether or not you redistribute wealth. In Europe we have a tradition of greater redistribution, for instance we view health care much in the same way as the fire brigade or the police; a basic public service necessary for the smooth management of society.