Fun Tails

Cuz I never said they were TOTALLY accepting. Also, I think we've had discussions before in this board about how even gay supporting people and gay people themselves, use the word gay to mean lame rather than a homosexual insult. I mean, I have friends who actively try to set me up on dates etc, who use the expression. I'm not saying I don't have a problem with that use, just that it's not necessarily indicative of a large problem.

James, James... They *try* to roll back our rights. Their success rate is near zero. Cause for optimism right there. Look at this long term. YOung people have very little anti-gay sentiment compared to older folk. When the 'old fuks' die out as one of my good friend likes to put it, society will become more accepting. I'd have to say he's suceeded. His views are certainly out there.

Kapitano, As far as I can tell from the article at the top of the thread, speech is very relevant to this case, since the church has been sued over picketing of funerals. Those who talk about the Phelpses invading a private moment, are forgetting that the Phelpses are careful to never set foot on private property in their pickets. They usually pick a spot along a nearby road etc. Caylor, your view of the world is decidedly lacking in long term perspective. If I had to pick a time in history to live, there is NO time in the recent or far past that would be more attractive to me than today. The freedom you have from religion, from authority, from prejudice would not exist at all in, say, Ancient Egypt or Victorian England. In the USA of the 60s a church like Phelps's would have been unheard of only because the idea of of faggot rights seemed so laughable that none of the extremists felt threatened enough to picket anyone. If you think mankind has ever been less depraved than today, I'd love to hear your case...

I disagree with this verdict and action. I know many people are glad to see Phelps in trouble, but this is not the right way. Think about it. If they can outlaw protests IN PUBLIC PLACES near the funerals, then they can restrict othger more legitimate antiwar speech too. For instance, Some anti-war groups use the names of the 3000 US soldiers killed in Iraq to make a point about the human cost. Suppose that was deemed insensitive to the families and stopped? (IN fact, some states already HAVE passed such laws). And I'm not even against the war in Iraq. I just hate restrictions on speech. ANY speech. Even jackass Phelps.

The first half of the article is the important part. (after that it goes into legalese) http://www.reason.com/news/show/125584.html

Ah. but there may be selection bias. I bet a larger than normal fraction of the people who read that article and voted are gamers. Not that it makes the AG any less of an asshat.

from www.xkcd.com...

Very unpolished ceremony. Even Jon Stewart seemed off his game. I got a real kick out of things when Scott Rudin accepted the Oscar for best picture and in the middle of the climactic moment of the night gave a shout out to his boyfriend, saying, 'Honey, this means nothing without you." I was just imagining all the isolated young kids watching who might suddenly be thinking, "He's gay! He's gay and he's happy and a winner! Wow, is that really possible?" A whole new world.

Completely mistaken Cole. Let me educate you... Having the ball bounce into the ground first makes batting MORE difficult. The bounce is often irregular meaning that you can't predict the motion of the ball from the time it starts coming at you. INstead, your reaction time is measured from the time the ball leaves the GROUND to jump up at your face or ribs not when it leaves the hand of the fellow hurling it at you. Next, the straight arm action does reduce the speed of the ball, BUT not much. The best bowlers still manage to get speeds of 90-95 mph which is comparable to baseball. Travel time for a ball in cricket is about 0.5 of a second. IN baseball it's 0.4 (but remember, the real reaction time in cricket, like I said, is from when the ball hits the ground, so functionally, it is a lot less. Next, padding... Yes, they are padded. However, that's because they NEED it. despite the helmets, gloves and other padding, players still suffer broken jaws, fingers and feet. And finally, about the bravery it takes. In baseball it's considered a humongously brave thing for a batter to lean in and take one for the team. In cricket, there is NO penalty for the batter being hit. That means that the bowler will often AIM for the batter. And the batter knows this. What's more, in baseball, if you get hit, you walk. IN cricket, if you get hit, you have to stay there and face the ball again. And again. till you get a hit or get out. --------------------- That's batting. In fielding, cricket uses no gloves. Again, bleeding fingers and broken fingers are an occasional part of the game. What's more, you often field in very close positions. There's a fielding postion known as silly mid-off, because you stand about 4 yards from the bat. Many other fielding positions are almost as close. These posiitons are intended to cover the cricket equivalent of a bunt, but if the batter hits hard, then you better have good reflexes to get out of the way. ---------------- Now, knowing a bit about baseball, I agree it takes real courage, but don't think cricket doesn;t.

Great characters, a good mix of humor, eroticism, serious stuff and light stuff. And the storytelling style works well, avoiding the cliches of the genre.

Do the Harry Potter books quailfy as Boarding school novels, I wonder...

What bullshit. Tome Wolfe knows nothing. There *has* been at least one great boarding school novel written since 'A Separate Peace'. It's called 'Debating Love' and I wrote it! And it's right here at Awesomedude. Waitasec, did I say that out loud?

I had a pellet gun as a kid and was a fair shot. what's more, I really enjoyed target shooting as a challenge. I don't live in America, so getting ahold of a real gun isn't a process that's easy to go through where I am, but I am in favor of an armed citizenry 100%, even including high powered rifles. I never ever thought of the rationale of gun ownership for gays to reduce bashing. Now that I think about it, though, it's exactly the kind of reason that I support gun rights in general for. I'm planning to move to Canada for a year or so. Maybe more if I like it. I'll definitely look into this some more.

This reminds me of a story I recently read called the Space Traders. Really. In that story there is a conflict between black leaders over the proper response to a project that would enslave africans all over again. the protagonist wants to employ a level of trickery that would gain them some advantage. Other civil rights types want to stand by their principles. What I'm getting to is that there must come with any political endeavour a level of setting yourself up for the bigtime. Consider that email about Obama hating the flag that uses a picture of Obama with his back turned to the flag. It's taken completely out of context and used to attack him. Imagine what a picture of him with gavin Newsome would be used for. Obama is clearly a friend of gays. If the fact that he has an openly gay campaign manager isn't enough for you, then consider his speech at the 2004 convention where he reminds Republicans that they have gays too. (How right he's been proven since then...) As for the story, the black leadership chose to stand on principle and not use trickery, and they ended up in chains. Obama is our Anansi.

The ending was, in retrospect, the only possible ending, unless there was to be a sudden appearance by UFO's or ELecivil became a bad writer and decided to throw in either a suicide or a fatal illness. Of course, being pribably the best writer I've come across on the intertubes and one of the best I've come across anywhere, we get an ending suited to the tenor of the story and I appreciate that.

You can't see me right now, but I'm dancing. ...on the ceiling.

I noticed that there's no comments in the article from conventional authority figures. Like, what does the mayor of Kent have to say? or the Principal at the highschool?

The ideas I use for stories come from two places mainly. WIth the sci fi stuff it;s mostly, 'WHat if...?" like maybe, "what if it turns out that love is really a virus?" All kinds of things tumble out of that one what if. Many more general ideas just come from things that strike me with an emotion. Sometimes I see a situation or an image that makes me Feel a great deal of sympathy or revulsion or hatred or humor and I remember that. from this method, a lot of biographical stuff ends up in my stories. Like what my favorite vacation was or the worst birthday I ever had might make it into my story as a minor detail or even a major plot point.

I've always had a thing for Ryu from Streetfighter II, ever since I was a kid... He just looks so strong and so cuddly at the same time. *le sigh* Maybe I should try my hand at Fan Fiction? I could call it 'Streetfucker II'.

So, basically, what you're saying is that George Bush () makes you horny?

Suppose someone was to go to the past then return to the future via a different branching timeline. Does that mean there are now *2* of him in the present of that branch and *0* of him in the timeline he originally inhabited? =============== Continuing on with overdone ideas in time travel stories... I find the Roman, WW2, Camelot/medieval and Civil War eras overbooked. I'd like to see more time travel to Greece. Maybe I've missed it, but Greece seems far too underrepresented in time travel ficiton considering its impact on civilization. Same with ancient Egypt. Places outside the Western world would be nice too: Has anyone time traveled to ancient Japan, (besides the Ninja turtles)? The pre-hindu civilizations of India? Pre-muslim Arabia?

Um, thank you very much?

Did someone say 'debate'? Now, I've got a hard on. Colinian: You should defintely dust off that story. You should also Defintiely get rid of the lone-scientist-in-the-night cliche and send his entire research team forward instead. this will allow you to have multiple characters to bounce off each other and show off different reactions to their predicament. Hell, you might even consider having the entire town transported forward into time. I'm sure the townsfolk would have a lot to say to the scientists then. Also, read The Langoliers by Stephen King. He plays with this same idea, except his characters get left behind in the past.

I think mayb DesDU is being a bit too 'semantical' in his use of universe. True, the word started that way, but many words lose the meanign they started out with. Today, 'Universe' is pretty much a measure of the spacetime our earth sits in and any alternate Earths sit in parallel universes. To get upset about this natural shift in meaning is kind of futile. Think of all those people who say things like, "I want the word 'gay' back. I want it to mean happy and bright again instead of homsexual..." ------------------------------- Anyways, the best way of dealing with potential story paradoces and loops that I've seen is in the movie Frequency. I mean best way in terms of story, not in terms of science. (IN terms of science, it was actually kinda weak.) What happenned in Frequency was that when an event in the past would change what came after, characters in the future, would develop duble memories, remembering both versions of events. --------------------------------- I'm still waiting for us to start putting together that list of things that have been seen too many times in time travel stories. Number one is the go back and kill someone to change the past story, I think.

The Pecman mentioned that he was working on a story with time travel elements and that it was hard to avoid gags and setups that other stories/ movies had aready done. So I thought, just for reference, we should compile a list of time travel story cliches as well as some suggestions for Fresh takes on time travel. On top of that we could discuss the time paradox and time loop problems in stories. For the uninitiated, The paradox is where you travel back into the past, kill Hitler and then come back to find that the Earth is ruled by giant lizard aliens because you changed things, which means that you never built a time travel machine, which means you never travelled back to kill Hitler, so he lived, which means that the Lizards never took over the world but that means that you DID build the time machine..... The loop is where you realize that whatever you do when you travel back already happenned. The movie 12 monkeys was like that, where we begin by being told that the past cannot be changed. The main character realizes that his actions in the past *CREATED* the situation in the future which sent him into the past. I personally find time loops frustrating and unrealistic because it ignores causality. Of course, that's what makes them appealing to others, but to me, a time loop would never form, unless there is some process of recursion by which a time paradox can shift into being a time loop? hmm, maybe that's a story idea worth thinking about...