You get hit, you see stars.
Confession: I was in my forties before I realized that this expression refers to tiny points in your vision, and not to the shapes that cartoon characters see. That is, the cartoon thing is a joke about "seeing stars", but I've never been hit on the head, and I've seen a jillion cartoons. So you see my confusion, he said defensively.
(Now watch it turn out that some head trauma causes more complex disruptions to the visual field, such as...)
When I rewatched Batman Begins recently, I realized that they'd turned the justification for the batsuit completely around from the ancient original, although it's only the logical endpoint of how the character has evolved. In the classic 193x origin, he dresses as a bat because "criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot", so they should be scared of bats. In the movie, Bruce says in so many words that he dresses as a bat because he's scared of bats (from the childhood fall into the cave, for a start) and "now it's their turn". Yeah, their turn...no, Bruce, you're just trying to project your fear outwards. (And his guilt about his fear; he makes his parents leave the opera because he's freaked out by the character in it dressed like a bat, and then they get killed.)
Zombies scale
...the walls of your last desperate defenses. Oh, yes, they do.
My #97 should say "...a theory that Palin was rushing back to have the baby born in Alaska so that the baby would be a native citizen in the event of Alaska seceding".
Lee @64: One presumes that people who are legally adult at the time the measure takes effect would be grandfathered in... or that Palin would make sure that she got a special exception.
My point is, now we need to add more complications, such as you suggest, to a non-existent rule that has not been made, in order to make plausible a theory that Palin was rushing back to have the baby born in Alaska -- a theory for which there is no evidence except that it popped into somebody's head a couple of weeks ago. In our adversaries, we recognize this as the "paranoid style". (That sounds harsher than I'd like, but it's the established name of that kind of argument.)
Two points: first of all, I remember a thread -- hey, here it is -- called "The Mother Drive-By", in which it was roundly agreed that people randomly giving their two cents' worth on other people's (women's) parenting decisions is rude and offensive. I say, stick with that.
Second: Tavella@15:
And the whole "fly back to Alaska and endanger your child" thing finally made sense to me when it was revealed that her husband is a raving Alaska separatist. If you think the only important thing is being a citizen of *Alaska*, then being merely born a citizen of the United States isn't good enough, you have to be born in Alaska.
That highly-speculative idea (which I've seen around) assumes that the so-far-imaginary future Alaskan Republic would have a citizenship rule in which you have to be born in Alaska, no matter who your parents are, which seems like a stretch -- the USA rule isn't as restrictive, and the theoretical rule would eliminate Palin herself, who was born in Idaho.
I live in Anchorage and have observed Trooper-Gate from prior to it’s actual beginning.
Apostrophe issues aside, that's pretty impressive observing.
Another gravitational possibility: it's our normal world, and physics, but God makes a rock on the Earth that's bigger than the Earth. At some point, the word "lift" no longer applies; it's like talking about "lifting" the Earth off of a normal-sized rock. So that would be a rock he can't lift.
I'm going to call "writeinbush.com" a prank, based on one of the bumper stickers ("Third term's the charm" sounds way too hip) and the fact that their blog proudly posts a Nigerian scam as a serious communication from a reader. If anything, it's an attempt to make Bush be an anti-McCain spoiler, which is sort of brilliant.
(Also from the front page: "By the way, we'll be taking off the links to the bumper stickers, since not a single one has been sold. We can't imagine why.")
albatross@226: [Assuming one instance of "Thugs" was meant to be "Goons"]
Welcome to the prison, son. Over on this side of the yard is Thugs territory, on the other side it's Goons territory. Now, we here on the Thugs side demand certain things of you--obedience to orders, willingness to kill on demand, participation in crimes. If you don't like that deal, the door's not locked--you can go over to the Goons' side. So it's a free choice, a contract, really. And speaking of contracts, if you stick around, we've got a little job for you....
The Thugs' deal doesn't have anything to do with the conditions I described, which were solely addressing the taxation argument. I didn't argue that all possible governments are justified.
Daniel:
If it's wrong for me to take what I want at gunpoint, what's the alchemical magic that makes it right to take the same thing at gunpoint "for the good of society"?
This has an answer that I'm sure you've heard in other iterations of this argument: the consent of the governed. When you got here (by birth or immigration), you were told the rules well before you produced the first thing that could be taken from you at gunpoint; those rules being that we vote on what everyone's going to pay in taxes, and then we enforce that vote. Sometimes you'll lose that vote, but you'll pay anyway. That's the agreement. If you consider that agreement to be the same as slavery, well, the country's door isn't locked from the outside. You might be able to get a better deal outside the door. We'll even let you take all your (remaining) stuff with you. (Those two conditions are key, I think; the first one for sure.) But if you're really thinking that the current agreement is morally equal to slavery, and you see the unlocked door, and yet here you sit, something's not adding up.
Joel @ 65: "Stop!" he yelled. "IT'S A TUPPERWARE MANUAL!"
I admire the one on rightwingdad.net that opens "This is true I looked it up on snopes..."
Debunking on snopes
I'm glad there's someone causal here. It gives the joint some class. Usually we have to settle for correlation.
It's causal Friday at Making Light.
And instantly thinks he should have rot13ed, despite the warning zone being in effect.
S2's main weakness, ultimately, is that the crime makes no sense as presented. (Total SPOILERS allowed here, right?)
-- We're to understand that Beaver killed all those people to prevent them from revealing that he (and they) had been abused years earlier. Now, this is within the possible range of human reactions involving shame and sexual assault, but you'd think that at the end, someone would at least mention "wow, that is way effed up".
-- If my source (Alan Sepinwall) is correct, this was not the original plan. At some point, the plan was the revelation that Beaver...comes by his name naturally. He's a hermaphrodite or something. Which is the source of his trouble with Mac, and explains the cruel nickname. (Oh, you though that was just a joke, so everyone would be saying "Dick and the Beaver"? Sucker.) In which case, now Cassidy (and there's an ambisexual name) has a secret. Anyway, Rob Thomas decided not to go that way.
-- Especially by comparison with S1, I don't like how the murderer has a hidden, completely crazy aspect. The great thing about S1, from a "mystery" point of view, is that the trickiness is in the fact that there are several mysteries going, and we don't know which facts go into which pile (or piles). Who killed the teenage girl? The testosterone-y, prone-to-violence adult male. Oh, you thought showing us his violent side was to make a character point about Logan? Sucker.
"most gay-friendly show on television".
What?
Really. It's not even the most gay-friendly show in its own fictional universe.
I once read a statement (which, to my amazement, has no hits whatsoever on Google) to wit: "All process arguments are bllsht". (I'm fuzzy on the language policy here...) And this really comes out here. It's amazing how many anti-SSMers claim in one breath to only be upset about the subtleties of parliamentary procedure that brought us to this point....just before they start in on "abominations" and the like. Yeah, it's just about the legalisms, that's it.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 5 |
| 2008 | 9 |
| 2007 | 7 |
| 2006 | 13 |
| 2005 | 13 |
| 2004 | 5 |
| 2003 | 3 |
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