Kmart has released “Ship My Trousers,” a funny Christmas sequel to their wordplay-based “Ship My Pants” ad from earlier in 2013. The new ad takes cues from the classic 1843 novel A Christmas Carol by author Charles Dickens. Previously, we wrote about their clever “Big Gas Savings” and “Show Your Joe ads.”
video via Kmart
Warren Buffett apparently likes the AMC television series Breaking Bad so much, he decided to send out a Christmas card inspired by the show. The card reads “Have yourself a Meth-y Little Christmas,” a play on the main character Walter White’s illicit job as a meth cook. It features a photo of Buffett in a full Walter White outfit, as seen above in the version sent to Wall Street Journal reporter Serena Ng, who used to cover Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway for the paper.
The picture seems to have been repurposed from a tweet—Buffett’s fourth and most recent as of this writing, sent back in September—which the Omaha investor sent out ahead of the show’s final episode.
Not even the Oracle knows what will happen tonight. #waltsuccessor http://t.co/EM8gIzZib5—
Warren Buffett (@WarrenBuffett) September 30, 2013
hodad@joe #soundstudies
This experiment was the first time researchers have been able to strike - or tap - the monument to explore its sonic noise potential.
They used rounded hammers made from quartz hammerstone to strike the stones - although our ancestors might have used flint.
They tapped the stones 'very slightly' and could tell quickly if they would get a reverberation.
'Different sounds can be heard in different places on the same stones,' said the researchers.
The blue squares seen in the photos are used so that the special hammers do not leave a mark on the Bluestones.
Patricia Carroll claims multiple failures by the state and the Tallahassee Police Department in the sexual assault investigation.
The attorney of Jameis Winston's sexual assault accuser, Patricia Carroll, held a press conference Friday afternoon, addressing alleged inconsistencies and failures by the Tallahassee Police Department in the investigation.
Winston was accused in December 2012 of the crime. State Attorney Willie Meggs announced in November 2013 that no charges would be filed.
Carroll called for the state Attorney General to launch an independent investigation into this case and Tallahassee Police Department. Carroll said the accuser is not considering civil litigation at this time.
"If victims are subjected on an ongoing basis to what this victim was subject to," Patricia Carroll said, "there is a serious problem in the state of Florida."
She alleged the state's medical records don't match up with family medical records, notably information including injuries suffered from the alleged incident that were absent from the records released by the state.
Carroll said she asked the state to test blood from the victim for rape drugs, and the state refused to do so.
Carroll also accused Meggs of focusing the investigation not on the rape suspect, but instead on the rape victim. Specifically, she brought up Meggs' insistence on bringing up the accuser's consensual partner, which Carroll said would be inadmissable in court.
She noted four pages of the state's documentation concerned the accuser's boyfriend, which included information Carroll deemed unnecessary. She suggested that this information was included in order to lead people to believe that because both Winston and the accuser's boyfriend were African-American football players, the sex was consensual.
Part of the state's ground for dismissal was based on witness statements, which Carroll questioned, partially due to the fact that the two witnesses were teammates of Winston's. She also claimed inconsistent statements from Chris Casher, and argued that his claim that he taped the encounter should be an admission of guilt to a crime.
The attorney also said the state failed to try to obtain phone records from witnesses, even though those records would've been available into December of this year, and that the police department repeatedly failed to record interviews and conversations with the alleged victim.
Carroll also said that after she originally asked police to get DNA from Winston, they declined due to a fear of making the case public, but then filed for a search warrant of the accuser, which the attorney called an "adversarial move."
While she stopped short of accusing the Police Department of malicious behavior, Carroll said that the motivation protecting a Florida State football player was a "conclusion one can reasonably draw."
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firehoseall carriers suck forever
Charter is terrible, TWC is terrible
the singularity is happening in a way nobody expected
Charter Communications is preparing to make an official bid for Time Warner Cable. A new report from Bloomberg claims that the fourth-largest US cable provider aims to acquire its larger competitor for less than $140 per share. That offer is above Time Warner Cable's current $132.60 stock value, but reportedly still falls below what TWC executives are looking for.
The second-largest US cable operator would "probably" accept a bid between $150 and $160 a share, Bloomberg's sources say, so Charter's rumored offer may not be enough to get the deal done. Comcast is reportedly sitting this one out for now, despite earlier rumors that it would team up with Charter to purchase and split Time Warner Cable's assets. Bloomberg notes that Comcast "is monitoring Charter's moves," however. Charter reportedly believes a successful buyout of Time Warner Cable would give it added leverage in future dealmaking discussions with television networks. But as TWC can attest after a lengthy battle with CBS, it's not always that simple.
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A cafe in Nice, France charges rude customers five times more for a cup of coffee than those who say hello and please.
"A coffee" will set you back €7, according to the sign, while "a coffee please" is a little more affordable, at €4.25.
If you want keep your expenses down, and stay friends with your local barista, however, the best option is "Hello, a coffee please," which will only cost you €1.40.
The manager says that although the pricing scheme has never been enforced, customer civility is up. Cheekiness is on the rise as well:
"Most of my customers are regulars and they just see the funny side and exaggerate their politeness," he said, adding "They started calling me 'your greatness' when they saw the sign."
(via eater)
Tags: economics food Francefirehosewhat could possibly
A presidential advisory committee set up to examine the National Security Agency (NSA) is recommending the continuation of "a program to collect data on every phone call made in the United States," but with new restrictions "intended to increase privacy protections," The New York Times reported yesterday.
The report by the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology, expected to be delivered to the White House by Sunday, wasn't released publicly, but officials described its contents to newspapers. The group concluded that NSA surveillance programs are legal but recommended various changes to their structure, transparency, and security.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the panel's draft proposals "would change the spy agency's leadership from military to civilian and limit how it gathers and holds the electronic information of Americans. The task force, for example, proposed that the records of nearly every US phone call now collected in a controversial NSA program be held instead by the phone company or a third-party organization." There would be "stricter standards" for allowing NSA officials to search the data.
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firehose'The introduction of iOS7—a new operating system that removes ties to the physical world in many ways—has changed everything. It’s more transparent, noticeably lighter, and seemingly faster.
We desire the same traits in a digital Montessori education.'
I can't even
The Montessori method of teaching relies heavily on natural materials. One of the first things people notice about our classrooms, for example, is the abundance of activities involving wood. And so it made sense that as we duplicated the Montessori experience in digital form, the materials presented looked the same way. On an iPhone or iPad, the experience we offered children was largely rooted in the real world.
The introduction of iOS7—a new operating system that removes ties to the physical world in many ways—has changed everything. It’s more transparent, noticeably lighter, and seemingly faster.
We desire the same traits in a digital Montessori education. And that’s led to a rethinking of the aesthetic that is so thoroughly dependent on woodgrain—and all its shadows and textures that are now relics of Apple’s previous operating system. The new version forced us to seriously consider how our apps would look and feel, and how children would engage with them. As we’ve changed to reflect this, the question becomes, will children still interact with the digital material as they do the physical one when it isn’t grounded in their real-world experience?
Here’s an example taken from Intro to Math 1.0. As you can see, the numbers have a strong connection to the physical “sandpaper numbers activity,” an activity that you would readily find available in a Montessori classroom. A great effort has been made to attempt to visually replicate the experience of working with wooden tablets, utilizing sandpaper, on an actual desk or table:
The idea behind this design method, broadly known as “skeuomorphism,” is pretty straightforward: by grounding the user in an experience they’re familiar with, the new, foreign environment will feel less strange and uncomfortable. Of course, the iPhone and iPad complicate this experience from the start, primarily because they immediately situate the user at a certain level of remove. This is precisely why, the argument goes, “skeuomorphism” was so important, and ultimately, timely—it placed the novel world of the digital landscape within reach of the physical.
With iOS 7, ornamentation, no less than imitation, have gone out the window.
When we sat down to work on iOS 7, we understood that people had already become comfortable with touching glass, they didn’t need physical buttons, they understood the benefits. So there was an incredible liberty in not having to reference the physical world so literally. We were trying to create an environment that was less specific. It got design out of the way.
Thinking in these terms helps take us to the core of what this new landscape means: the connections between the “physical” and the “digital” are becoming increasingly less tenuous. If we learn to reduce any unnecessary physical elements, we can better highlight, not just the digital functionality of the app, but the experience itself.
Our immediate reaction to this line of thought, however, is that having a firm basis in reality is an extremely important notion for children. Children simply do not relate to the world in the same ways in which we, as adults, have become accustomed. As adults, it’s one of our primary failures—we always think that children perceive the world exactly the same way that we do. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth.
While we might readily grasp an abstract concept, for children it’s much easier to first go through a concrete experience. Take the idea of gravity. If a child experiences a real glass object slip through their fingers and loudly shatter on the floor, they will more easily be able to grasp the concept of gravity. In a meaningful way, the bridge to the world of ideas has always gone through kneading the soil of the earth. This is one of the reasons Zach Klein and Andrew Sliwinski are on the cusp of something magical at DIY.org: they’re merging the concrete with the abstract.
With Intro to Math 2.0, then, we made the decision to drastically scale back the woodgrain, reducing the importance of the shadows (which cast a wide view on the “real world”), concentrating almost exclusively on a new set of assumptions. These are assumptions that we felt our learners would be making when they engaged with our app because we knew they would be ready for them.
This generation is growing up with an entirely different set of technological expectations. In a way, up until this precise historical, should we say, cultural juncture, we wonder if the world itself was ready to embrace what has been called the “authentically digital.” Adults needed the training wheels to take reality into digital; will children need support to translate concepts they’ve learned digital into the real world, now that the two share fewer visual cues?
Whenever we wonder if children will be able to effortlessly make the same leap when the digital world has so little resemblance to its concrete counterpart, we are reminded of Ives comments on the transparent nature of the design, “The lovely thing about translucency is you’re not sitting there going, ‘Where have I just been taken?’ because your world is still there.”
We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.
firehoseR.O.F.L
still in CyanogenMod
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
firehoseeven Canada is out-innovating America
and of all things, in drinking beer
This is called Alcohockey and if you're of legal drinking age you should be playing it right now.
(via Imgur)
firehoseetc.
The Windows PC and Mac release is in development from QMXi and Spark Plug Games. Players will take on the role of a captain and recruit ship crew while leading misions and trading with other users online.
Earlier in the year it was announced the title was slated to launch on iOS and Android smartphones and tablets in the same release window.
"Lisa Frank is notorious in Tucson as the world's shittiest employer," said Caroline, who considered applying for one of the many job openings at the company she saw advertised when she moved to Tucson in 2001, but decided against it after speaking with locals. "Every single person I talked to advised me to avoid Lisa Frank at all costs," she said. "I didn't know a single person who had not heard horror stories about the work environment there."
Even court documents reflect those sentiments, with one longtime employee, Dan Mullen, stating how lowly regarded the company was in the community.
"The word in Tucson is that 'you don't want to work for the Lisa Frank Company,'" he said.
"I don't know if it's possible to really communicate how bad their reputation was in town," Caroline stressed, before adding, "Every person who ever worked there seemed to have a case of PTSD from it. 'Rainbow Gulag' is really an apt description."
SExpand
While there was an emphasis on productivity, the rules that were implemented seemed counterproductive to a creative environment. According to former employees, the office was a place of silence and co-workers were not allowed to speak to one another. The management secretly (and illegally) recorded phone calls. An interoffice, bimonthly publication called "Frankly Speaking" [left] informed employees how they were to behave, particularly regarding how they were expected to interact with their boss, CEO James Green. Memos were frequently circulated with new, increasingly restrictive company policies. No visitors, including family members, were allowed. The penalty for any violations ranged from verbal abuse to name-calling to screaming to automatic termination to even more bizarre restrictions.
(One time, after discovering that someone left the office 10 minutes early, an enraged Green instructed the warehouse manager to put chains and padlocks on all the downstairs doors so that "the staff can't escape.")
firehose"Just last night he targeted games producer Billy Joe Cain in an extraordinary series of deliberately offensive tweets, accusing Cain and Cain’s wife of all manner of things."
what a dick, Cain is awesome
had no idea Paul Trowe was such a shit
By John Walker on December 13th, 2013 at 3:00 pm.
It has been announced that Leisure Suit Larry creator Al Lowe has left developers Replay. In what is turning into one of the more peculiar and uncomfortable stories, it seems that Lowe has chosen to leave the company at the same time as news of a sex offence by the company’s president, Paul Trowe, has emerged. Trowe was arrested in October last year for showing “harmful materials to a minor”, and plead no contest in April this year. He was guilty of showing a film of gay sex to a 15 year old girl, in a matter that’s as convoluted as it is sad. And it seems this might just be one small aspect of a very bizarre story.
The story that Lowe had left the company was broken two nights ago by VentureBeat, and the strange twists and turns begin even then. In their original story a bundle of quotes suggested that Lowe’s leaving was amicable. VentureBeat quoted Lowe as saying,
“Replay Games and I had a great, long run, but it’s time for me to go back to doing the things I love, spending time with my family, taking care of my wife, and playing in my big band. I really had a blast during the Leisure Suit Larry Kickstarter and throughout development, especially packing those all boxes! I’m not leaving for any other reason than to just return to retirement. I’m 67 years old. I don’t know how many years I have left, and the ones I do have left I want to spend with my family and friends.”
But extremely strangely, it seems that these quotes didn’t come from Lowe at all, and were supplied by Replay, which could well mean they were supplied by Trowe. Lowe quickly got in touch with VB to correct this, and they say made it clear that the break up was certainly acrimonious. They quote him saying,
“My agreement with Replay Games was for a two-year period, which recently ended. Due to numerous reasons, I have decided not to renew our agreement and to return to retirement.”
Their story then concludes on a quote from Trowe that appears to be at the least, fanciful.
“It’s really a shame to see the father of Leisure Suit Larry go back in to retirement. I’m glad we’re still best friends and will continue to talk and consult with each other. Expect a special announcement from us in January. Al was the most fun person on our team, always quick to crack a joke on company meetings, and was always the ‘go to’ person for anything Larry. He always will be.”
Fanciful, because when Kotaku spoke to Al Lowe, he had quite a different understanding.
“There were many reasons for my departure, including that [2012] incident. As far as I know, Replay Games still has the rights (from Codemasters, owners of the I.P.) to do Leisure Suit Larry games, but they’ll have to do them without me.”
He added on Twitter:
Paul Trowe’s incident is ambiguous in the telling, the only apparent certainty being its conclusion where he did not contest the charge of showing inappropriate materials to a minor. In the Kotaku piece, it seems that convoluted events allegedly revolved around Trowe having had a threesome with his husband and a third man, who, it seems, may have been in a relationship with the 15 year old girl. Or not. According to two different versions of the events, either Trowe sent this girl a video of an older man having sex with her boyfriend, or they met and he showed it to her. And since this girl was 15, this was an offence. The specific details seem confused, and we don’t speculate either way. And frankly we don’t care. All we know for certain is that Trowe did not contest the charge, and received two years’ probation, and agreed to attend sex offender counselling. Trowe said to Kotaku that he didn’t contest because he “wanted to avoid the messy public spectacle of a trial, in part to protect Al Lowe and the Leisure Suit Larry franchise.” (Quoting Kotaku, not Trowe directly.) That is, it must be said, a really quite astonishing claim – not fighting a charge of a sexual offence to a minor to protect the reputation of a colleague seems either an ill-advised act of extreme martyrdom, or possibly unrealistic.
Of course, what remains strange is why this is all kicking off now. Trowe’s plea was in April, and he says he told the team about it then. So why is Lowe only upping sticks in December? At the moment, we don’t know.
What we do know, however, is that Trowe has a reputation for pissing off an enormous number of people. And he’s showing no signs of slowing down, with extraordinary tweets still being fired out in the last 24 hours. From reading his Twitter timeline, it seems Trowe’s wont is to publicly state private matters about individuals. Just last night he targeted games producer Billy Joe Cain in an extraordinary series of deliberately offensive tweets, accusing Cain and Cain’s wife of all manner of things.
He also accused Cain of trying to extort money from Replay.
That is likely to go further.
In November this year, Trowe outed a transexual woman and former colleague via his Twitter account, having previously said to her, “you’re the worst looking transsexual I have ever seen” on her Facebook wall. I’m not linking to this, since it could only cause further pain for the recipient, but have seen the statements first hand. They come across as purely spiteful, revenge for negative remarks made about Trowe.
Around the same time, Trowe is also alleged to have launched attacks against Space Quest creators Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe, as well as Gabriel Knight’s Jane Jensen. He also turned his attentions to Corey Cole, co-creator of the Quest For Glory games. The Coles teamed up with Israeli developers The Adventure Mob, to try to help them with their adventure project, Bolt Riley. (The Kickstarter for the game went on to fail to garner enough attention, and fell far short of its goal, and certainly drew concern with apparently exaggerated claims made regarding the Coles’ involvement.) The Adventure Mob were the team who were originally supposed to work on Replay’s remake of Leisure Suit Larry, and were named in the successful Kickstarter as a part of the team who would deliver the project. However, this was not to be the case. What actually went down between Replay and The Adventure Mob remains contested, with both sides unhappy with the other, but they certainly didn’t part on good terms. So when Cole took to Facebook to plug the Bolt Riley fundraise, Trowe appeared in the comments.
There he was quick to berate The Adventure Mob and specifically Oded Sharon, accuse them of having “no employees”, and in what appears to be his signature move, state something that appears to have come from a private conversation, whether true or not. This time it was to say,
“Why you continue to work with this guy is beyond my comprehension, especially when BOTH of you told me at GDC this year that you thought he was “sleazy”and “shifty”.”
Cole responded emphatically denying making any such comments about Sharon, triggering a slew of attacks from Trowe, accusation after accusation, often based in private conversations or meetings and always without evidence, and crucially, under a post that had nothing to do with him or his projects. And while the he-said/she-said arguments don’t show anyone to be in the right or wrong, it represents a frequent propensity to hang private laundry out in public, and to do it with a good deal of viciousness.
While RPS certainly does not demand so-called “professional” behaviour from game developers, what we have seen is a pattern of angry and often cruel attacks on former colleagues, frequently attempting to bring up private information, or undermine others’ work through insinuation or direct claims of wrongdoing. None of this is a claim on who might have been right or wrong, screwed or screwer, and doesn’t suggest that other parties haven’t behaved poorly, because we simply do not know. But it certainly makes for an unpleasant and sad display.
As Kickstarter backers for the Larry game become increasingly furious about the lack of physical rewards reaching them, and with Josh Mandel having also silently quit the company recently, it’s certainly interesting times at Replay Games. They still have the rights to create Leisure Suit Larry games, for now, licensed from Codemasters. But without Lowe on board, that’s going to be a trickier business.
As for Trowe, he’s certainly leaving a trail of very cross people in his wake.
We’ve reached out to Al Lowe to see if he would like to clarify any of the issues mentioned. All of Trowe’s remarks have been taken from his public social networking accounts, within context.
A group tasked with proposing NSA reforms will reportedly recommend limiting the agency's bulk phone collection program, splitting off US cyber command, and installing civilian leadership, sources have told The Wall Street Journal. The panel, formed earlier this year, isn't due to present a report to the White House until December 15th, but according to people who have reviewed the documents, it's taking aim at one of the most high-profile issues: the mass collection of phone metadata allowed under the FISA Amendments Act and Patriot Act. Under the suggested rules, the NSA would have to meet a higher burden of prove before collecting records — instead of being held in a government database, they would stay in the hands of the phone companies or other third parties.
That doesn't necessarily mean the NSA will be querying less data, since it can simply ask phone companies to provide information about the numbers. It also isn't clear whether the panel is planning reform of how the agency collects internet metadata records, emails, location data, or anything else captured by its substantial online surveillance system. But it will take the phone records of millions of Americans not suspected of any terrorist activity out of the intelligence community's hands. A pair of bills from Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) already propose to end bulk phone collection by rewriting the rule that allows it, requiring records to be both relevant to a national security investigation and be related to a foreign power or a suspected American agent of that power, and the Journal's sources have said that the panel's suggestion "aligns very closely" with the bills. The NSA has defended its database by warning that investigations could be hampered by the delay of asking phone companies for records.
The head of the NSA would no longer lead US Cyber Command
More proposals would silo individual intelligence operations. The panel has apparently recommended splitting off the Information Assurance Directorate, the segment of the NSA responsible for developing and testing security systems. Since leaks have revealed extensive NSA efforts to crack and weaken encryption protocols in other departments, the proposal is aimed at reducing the conflict of interest between the two projects and showing that the directorate is operating in good faith, not as part of a larger code-cracking effort.
Likewise, the panel has reportedly taken a side in the ongoing debate over whether the head of the NSA should also be the head of US Cyber Command. Both positions are currently held by Keith Alexander, but under these recommendations, his successor at the NSA would be a civilian, and command of the military's cyberwarfare units would be placed elsewhere as a check on the NSA's power. This change may already have been in the cards, but the panel's support of it could bolster support. Overall, it's too early to assume that these suggestions will be taken up, but they echo promises made by President Obama in August, as well as proposals from Congress and the public. Unfortunately, we might not actually get to read the suggestions once they're officially submitted on Sunday. The report has gone through a declassification review, but it's not yet known whether the White House considers it safe for wider release.
firehoseplease replace roman harper
PLEASE
Charles Woodson isn't ready to retire despite his advancing age. He said recently that he would like to play in 2014, preferably with the Raiders.
Charles Woodson is set to become a free agent after the 2013 season, and at 37 years old he has moved well into NFL retirement territory. He isn't ready to quit, however. Woodson told KGMZ-FM radio in the Bay Area that he wants to play in 2014, preferably for another season with the Oakland Raiders. Via CSN Bay Area:
"I want to play again," Woodson said. "I think this is the only place that I would play. I do plan on coming back and playing for the Raiders. If that didn't happen, then I think I would have to decide if I want to go somewhere else for another year. If I'm wanted here, I'm coming back."
Woodson signed a one-year contract with the Raiders after being released by the Green Bay Packers during the offseason, returning to the team that drafted him No. 4 overall after his 1997 Heisman Trophy season at Michigan. Woodson's tenure in Oakland began with four straight Pro Bowl appearances, but ended with constant injury issues and friction with coaches. He signed with Green Bay in 2006 and went on to earn NFL Defensive Player of the Year honors in 2009.
Woodson has enjoyed an outpouring of support from fans since returning to Oakland.
"I've just been enjoying my time back here," Woodson said. "Regardless of what our record is right now, it's been great to put on the silver and black and play at the Coliseum. The fans and the love they've shown has been great. All I want to do is win and win for the fans."
Woodson has admittedly slowed a step or two since his first days in Oakland and his best days in Green Bay, but he has been an effective player with the Raiders at safety this season. He has three forced fumbles, an interception and a sack to go with 76 total tackles through 13 games. In Week 5, he was named AFC Defensive Player of the Week after returning a fumble for his 13th career defensive touchdown, tying Rod Woodson and Darren Sharper for the most in NFL history.
• Expert picks for Week 15 | NFL Power Rankings: Broncos back on top
• Breaking Madden: Tony Gonzalez, cranky old man of destruction
• Russell Wilson can't stop getting drafted by pro sports teams
• Ex-NFL defensive end Stephen White on Vereen, Volunteers and more
firehoseif peyton manning isn't on the autism spectrum then I have no idea what the spectrum is
firehose"The somewhat obscure 2002 indie sci-fi movie Teknolust"
"an FBI agent (played by James Urbaniak, aka Dr. Rusty Venture) and a transgender private detective styled to look like Karen Black (played by Karen Black) investigate the outbreak."
"Never mind that she plays four completely differently characters utterly convincingly, so well that many people who see this movie don’t even realize that they’re played by the same actress"
Orphan Black casting update: hey what
5th grader Zachary Golob-Drake was supposed to deliver a speech to his fellow 4th and 5th grade classmates yesterday morning. It wasn’t just any speech. It was a speech that was chosen to be the best in his class and Thursday morning was his chance to win a spot as one of the representatives to the regional 4-H Tropicana Public Speech contest.
That glory came to a sudden halt on Wednesday when the assistant principal at USF/Patel Partnership Elementary School in Tampa, Florida pulled Zachary aside to tell him he would have to rewrite his speech or drop out of the contest.
Zachary Golob-Drake holding his first place ribbon
Why? Because Zachary’s speech was all about how religious extremism has hurt humanity and how we’d all be better off following the Golden Rule (like Jesus and Muhammad wanted, he added):
But Golob-Drake says the assistant principal pulled him aside before school was dismissed and told him his speech was inappropriate.
“She started talking to me about how she thought my speech wasn’t appropriate for 4th and 5th graders and she thought that probably I would have to rewrite my speech, take the religion out or not compete.”
…
“She said to me probably the fairest thing to do is to take your ribbon,” he said, noting that he then got emotional.
…
By the end of the night, the school decided to postpone the contest until Monday. In the meantime, parents of 4th and 5th graders will receive permission slips. The form will list all of the speech titles and let parents decide whether or not they want their children to hear Golob-Drake’s speech or any of the other speeches.
That’s a complicated way to handle an otherwise simple situation. Zachary isn’t trashing religion in the speech. He’s just saying that some people use it for evil and they shouldn’t do that. Even theists could get on board with him.
School District Spokeswoman Tanya Arja said school officials told her that the controversy wasn’t about the religious aspect.
“The concern was over the topic of mass murders,” Arja said. “Because these are 4th and 5th graders.”
That’s the concern? The kids who have probably played Grand Theft Auto and have seen an untold number of movies with violence in them can’t handle listening to a speech about world history because it’s too real? (Mind you, Zachary says in the speech that mass murder is wrong.) If you can’t talk honestly and openly about the motivations of conquerors, doesn’t that pretty much put a stop to all of the school’s history classes, too?
And why didn’t anyone bring this up when he won the award in his class?
You can read the speech for yourself below. See how offensive you find it:
In the Name of Religion
The world’s major religions all have messages about coexisting. But oftentimes people have found a way to bend that rule; sometimes people even use religion as an excuse to take each other’s lives. The three major religions on the earth include the Eastern religions, Islam, and Christianity. About one billion people live by the Eastern religions; about 1.4 billion are Muslim; and about 2.3 billion are Christians. Religious differences have always sparked conflict, even leading to warfare and mass murder.
One of the most famous tensions is the Crusades. Beginning in 1065, the Crusades were a series of holy wars which were fought between Christians and Muslims. It was the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Urban II who initiated the first wave of attacks. The European Christian’s intent was to force Christianity upon the Muslim people and to win back the Holy Land, known as Jerusalem. They were some of the bloodiest wars ever fought.
In 1162, about the time the Crusades ended, Genghis Khan was born and later crowned Emperor of Mongolia. Khan was a powerful ruler who conquered many lands and civilizations, which inevitably caused the Mongolian Empire to grow. Khan became so powerful that people considered him a god. Khan was known to tell his victims before causing their deaths, “I am the flail of God; for if you were without sin, he would not have sent me upon you.”
For anyone who thinks religious tensions have ended, they have not. Modern terrorism often has to do with religion. Take the story of 911, for example. On September 11, 2001, hijackers commandeered two jets and intentionally crashed them into the Twin Towers in New York, killing thousands of unsuspecting civilians. It has been confirmed that the hijackers were Islamic extremists who wanted to punish the United States for its immoral behavior.
Religion provides moral guidance for most of the seven billion people on the earth. More than 2,500 years ago, Confuscious offered guidance through the Golden Rule when he said, “Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you.” Both Jesus and Muhammad echoed these sentiments hundreds of years later. This world would be a better place if everybody followed that rule.
That’s one 5th grader who’s wise beyond his years.
Again: Administrators didn’t claim he was wrong or inaccurate, only that they didn’t want him mentioning mass murders… even though condemning them is integral to his piece.
The controversy wasn’t about religion, Arja said, yet it was the religion part of his speech that Zachary was told to remove.
Totally makes sense…
Well, here’s what I say to that:
Zachary’s being punished for doling out some harsh facts. He’s not insulting the followers of Christianity or Islam; rather, he’s admitting that most believers live moral, ethical lives because of their faith. There’s nothing offensive about this speech at all.
The school’s going overboard in an attempt to assuage over-sensitive parents. Administrators need to let Zachary compete with the current version of his essay. He worked hard on it, he didn’t say anything untrue, and his argument is a very important one. Even elementary school students understand the Golden Rule. There’s no reason they should be “protected” from the truth about history.
(Thanks to Brian for the link)
firehose"Within the Washington State Community and Technical College System, for instance, applicants now have when replying to questions about their sexuality or gender identifications. For gender identity, the offered possibilities are seven: feminine, masculine, androgynous, gender neutral, transgender, other and prefer not to answer."
firehoseyay
Beneath Yellowstone National Park lurks a vast caldera – a high-pressure volcanic cauldron brimming with enough gas and magma to make Mount St. Helens' 1980-eruption look like a middle school science project by comparison. Now, newly reported findings suggest this megavolcanic reservoir is even bigger than previously believed. Much, much bigger.
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“Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt.” – Immanuel Kant, famous philosopher
I spend a lot of time online, gang. And lately I’ve noticed a disturbing trend. As we wait breathlessly for the arrival of Mr. Peter Jackson’s latest cine-wonder, Hobet 2: Smog, to arrive in multiplexes in HFR 3-D tomorrow morning at 12:01 am, it appears some “critics” (so-called) have taken it upon themselves to attempt to describe the film. But in doing so, they reveal only the limits of their own understanding. It is, frankly, embarrassing.
“Jackson’s audacity and folly both come to fore in this picture,” writes the Star’s Peter Howell, clumsily attempting to use mere human language to describe the picture, like a child trying to pilot a Black Hawk helicopter.
“Bilbo, as played by [Martin] Freeman, suggests a sly-dog Dana Carvey without irony,” writes Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman, scurrying around like muddied-up yokel trying to catch a greased pig.
Even NOW’s senior film writer, Norman Wilner, has joined the misguided dogpile. “[King of Movies Mr. Peter Jackson’s] swooping camera movements and elaborate single-take action sequences are starting to feel a little creaky and self-indulgent.”
Was it “creaky” when nature gifted us with the Golden Ratio? Was it self-indulgent when God opened his boundless mercy to us, sending his only begotten son to die on the cross?
For film writers, professionals and dilettantes alike, Mr. Peter Jackson’s Hobbit 2: A Other Adventure poses the grandest of phenomenological dilemmas. How does one evaluate what, in its very nature, exceeds our understanding? How do we describe that which resists description?
Would you review the sun breaking over a mountain pass? Would you rate the manner in which the new dawn’s light flits across the contour of lover’s thigh? How many thumbs up does grace get? How many stars for the infinite? When God’s expansive bounty enfolds you, when you find yourself swaddled in that which is the very grandeur of the universe itself, dare you utter, “Well it didn’t need to be three hours”?
Responses to Hobet Time: The Second divulge an all too-human instinct for self-preservation, a knee-jerk assertion of our own infinitesimal consequence. The threat against such alleged critics is of a simpler, more existential kind. Simply, by its very existence, Mr. Peter Jackson’s Hobets II: Wild Wild Quest jeopardizes the (already dubious) validity of cultural gatekeeping. Hobet 2: Hobbits renders the critics – the reviewers, the denigrators, the philistines, the boors – irrelevant. It cuts them out of the equation. Their very presence only despoils the film, like carnival barkers perched on the precipice of the sublime.
There may be confusion. And, as there often is when something truly threatens the borders of pitiable human conception, even madness. By its very presentation (Hobet Town: Smurf is, if only superficially, a motion picture) Mr. Peter Jackson’s latest triumph suggests something like a comprehensible form. But Mr. Peter Jackson’s coup with his latest Shrek is its use – even its nervy exploitation – of form to suggest formlessness, to unshackle itself from the finitude of the cinematic/narrative medium and invoke something grander, something grandest.
Mr. Hobet: Smorg’s Vengeance renounces form. It defies representation. It turns our minds, our hearts, and our scuzzy human souls elsewhere, to reckon with the limitless. To describe it is to debase it. To attempt to appraise it is to embarrass the whole prospect of human comprehension.
A line must be drawn.
firehosevia Osiasjota
