Don't tell me children should be sheltered from it. They see fictional representations of much more intense violence every day. The ad is very restrained in that regard.
My children don't see fictional representations of violence against *them*. They watched Buffy, a show which was clearly about a heightened reality; they never expected vampires and ghouls and the like to attack them. (I asked. Repeatedly.) I do keep an eye on which shows and movies they watch. I cannot protect them against commercials; by the time a commercial is clearly inappropriate, it's over.
The law (regulation?) says that every time a TV show returns from a commercial break, there's a warning in the top right-hand corner that the segment will contain language, violence, sex, drugs, annoying unfunny dialogue... if I continue, I've been warned. This ad is deliberately set up to be shocking, to attack without warning. This ad says, targeted directly at children, "You aren't safe. You aren't safe in your routine activities. Somebody's going to kill you."
I think landmines are lousy and contemptable and evil. I think we should sign the treaty banning them. I think running ads targeted at frightening children is contemptible.
Because it's likely to give children nightmares.
I would equally object to my children's seeing any of the pro-life commercials that feature bloody limb fragments.
the Dairy Goat Journal,
What are your recommendations for mastitis?
The number of completed books which are contracted but not published by the originally contracting publisher is so small as to make each instance a colorful industry legend.
Rests chin on hands. Oh, please, tell us a story! (If to do so is not libellous.)
It's damned near impossible to make generic statements about humans with any "true" accuracy (say, oh, "95%") when dealing with complex concepts like human relationships.
I couldn't agree more. We're on the same page.
Why do you insist on making such statements?
I've been very careful, OTOH, to assert the fact -- repeatedly -- that a general statement about women in science does not get invalidated by a single (or numerous individual) counter-examples,
Then how, precisely, can it be invalidated?
If I were to argue that "I have never heard the 'Women prefer jerks' argument from a happily married man" (true), and you then replied "I am a happily married man", surely you agree that this would cast some doubt on my hypothesis?
I may add that if I had submitted a paper saying "No X are Y" in either my mathematics or English classes, the professors would have gleefully failed me had I ignored counterexamples, no matter how rare. "No 18th-century black women published poetry." "Phillis Wheatley. F." "No prime numbers are even." "2. F." The professors wouldn't have considered it a rhetorical device; they would have penalized it as sloppy thinking, and they would have been right to do so.
Women TALK a lot about wanting "good men" -- they tend to pick out shit (power, affluence, pickup skills all xlate to being a shit one way or another on average, with some exceptions
Yup. All those happy long-term marriages and partnerships: they're populated by one beautiful person and one wealthy shithead. Exceptions (as in the earlier argument about female Ph.Ds writing hard SF) don't count.
My husband must be the beautiful person, because he's certainly not the shithead.
Hint: A Computer Science degree from a business school isn't a science degree.
You confuse me. Would you equally say that an arts degree from M.I.T. isn't an arts degree?
I have a computer science degree from a liberal-arts college, and none of my software-industry employers has suggested that it doesn't count. When the college created the degree, it was made as mathematics-intensive as possible, to avoid the stigma of offering a purely vocational major.
Re: Women do not write hard science fiction today because so few can hack the physics.
In my honors mathematics courses, I was taught that "At least one A is B" is a sufficient and complete refutation of "No A are B."
Dr. Christine M. Carmichael. Q.E.D.
Actually, formal mourning lasted a great deal longer than a year. I can't find my oldest etiquette book, but the 1903 "Correct Social Usage" says that "Two years is the usual period of mourning for parents, adult children, brothers and sisters." For a husband, a widow wears deep mourning with a veil for two years; "At the end of two years, the veil is discarded and lusterless silks are worn." Many widows, including Queen Victoria, wore mourning for the rest of their lives.
Like any other rule of etiquette books, I'm sure this one was ignored when convenient.
The real point is that people mourn as long as they must. Some will ache for their September 11th losses the rest of their lives, and they're entitled to do that. Grief doesn't have an official duration.
The media, however? Can shut the hell up. As Suncat said, enough of the flag-waving and banners and logos.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 11 |
| 2003 | 1 |
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