Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it,
follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
Our rules have been updated and given
their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!
It's Banned Books Week. Go Read One To Spite Sarah.
Posts
edit: Damn, that teaches me to refresh before posting. I was referring to Feral's post about Playboy.
That's the kind of thinking that led to the outbreak of public dog fucking in aught nine - future old cout
'09?
Hell, you should have been on Folsom St. in San Francisco yesterday.
If you guys want - he talks about how book banning is essentially against the first amendment and how the freedom of information should be available to anyone so that we may appropriately process and learn how to debate against or for points that authors make. http://webpages.charter.net/sn9/literature/1st_ammendment.html
It's precisely this reason award shows have life time achievement awards.
Also, Tim, obviously you have never met a crazy hardcore California liberal.
Man.
What.
Are you referring to the censorship of the n word? Because if you can't see the difference between how it is used in Huck Finn vs. how it would be used on these forums, well...You need to think a little bit harder.
And before you say "well we could replace the letters with asterisks/write "the n-word" instead, I'd like to point out how much the effect of Huck Finn would be lost if that very advice had been taken.
In any case I'm more for censorship that isn't set-in-stone and more based on retardation. If someone published a book intentionally to anger a specific race and not to advance the collective literary consciousness or to make any reasonable arguments, I'd have no problem supporting a ban on that book. That being said, I don't think a book should be banned just for having "that word", and neither should, necessarily, a forum post.
But whatever. Gabe and Tycho's forum, Gabe and Tycho's rules.
Yeah, it basically comes down to G&T's forum, G&T's rules. It's stupid, but it is a private venue after all.
No.
Australia isn't exactly a bastion of free speech, either.
Oh, yes, if there was a way of intellectually addressing its origins I think it would be a fairly fascinating look at how language functions and how in many ways cultures have taken negative words and adopted them to take ownership over their influence.
I just think it would have to be restricted to that only. I just don't trust something like an internet forum to have that sort of intellectual discussion. The only area I might let that fly in is in debate and discourse, but even there I wonder how it would be used outside of that particular context.
I'm pretty sure every country is mad, it's just a little harder to spot your insanity when you are veiled in it.
I don't see how the effect of any forum posts about the n-word would be lessened by asterisks (unlike say Huck Finn). You can have an academic discussion about the n-word without saying the whole word. It's not as if we're forbidden from talking about it. Casual use of the n-word, on the other hand, is completely neutered by not being able to say it. Self-censoring when rapping, for instance, or just casual whats up my nizzle type stuff doesn't work when you have to self-censor. I don't know I like G&T's policy. :^: You could argue that then we should ban all slurs and all offensive words; but I would argue that the n-word has a special place in American history (for an analogue see modern German attitudes towards anti-semitism).
Except search engines.
Most of my favorite books are on that list!
This means a lot more then you might think it means if you read it incorrectly at first.
Think about the sorts of this forum's users who would use that word in an improper context or without proper clarification of context.
"Bible" is listed in the 10th spot for 1993 in that pdf.
How in the hell does that happen?
(Also LOL for this link, just a bit earlier in the thread -- someone read 1984 and thought it was pro communist?)
Have you read the bible?
Anti-Ethnic, Sexism, Homosexuality, Anti-Family, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group, Sexually Explicit, Violence, Racism
If it wasn't for the fact that those who seek to ban books tend to claim they follow the teachings in the bible, you'd see it on the list more often.
You're muckin' with a G!
It just seems to me that the kind of people who don't like the Bible are also the kind of people who wouldn't like the idea of banning books.
Also,
Huck Finn is a work of art. Debates on Debate and Discourse are not works of art.
Perhaps very, very strident athiests would seek to ban it from public libraries due to "separation of church and state" or some other such logic.
I seem to recall that some countries had outright banned the Bible in their country, which probably explains its' placement on the list.
The argument doesn't make any more sense than arguing that a library with Mein Kampf available for checkout means they support Hitler and anti-Semitisim.
I see people attacking more because it is their and easy to attack. Most people who try to ban books are not really trying to prove anything but instead are just trying to control other people and their ability to form their own opinions.
Edit: Lived in Japan for too long, English fails me.
I imagine Twain would be absolutely tickled that his book gets the attention it does. Then he'd probably write an essay that a hundred years could pass and still nobody 'gets it'.
You're muckin' with a G!
If I remember hearing correctly, Mein Kampf is a oft-stolen book due to the fact that some people would want to have it but not have it on their card, and other people steal as a way of taking it off the shelves in order to "protect" people.
My mom often told me (she's a librarian) that it was rare that people would say anything to her about censoring or removing books, but books of a controversial nature---such as books on Satanism and the occult, Neo-Nazi's, etc. were hard to keep in the collection because they kept on turning up missing--likely due to desire to own what might be considered illicit to some, or because people are taking censorship into their own hands.
Video stores used to have problems keeping copies of The Last Temptation of Christ in stock. I guess that's supposed to be a case where stealing is okay...
You're muckin' with a G!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUq2d2OFRkk
Odd that it didn't fall on the lists.
Pokemon Black 2: 0519-5108-3139
Oh noes! Won't someone think of the firemen?
You're muckin' with a G!
The irony of censoring a book about the burning of books and the censorship of information is huge, however.
Edit: Oh hell I didn't watch the whole thing before making the comment. That he would say the book is all about disrespecting Christians just shows how little he understood the book.
I think even the kind of people who normally like to ban books are smart enough to know the irony backlash will KILL THEM TO DEATH.
It may mean that it was challenged as part of a school curriculum. We had to read most of the Bible as part of my AP English class in 12th grade in a public school. It was supposed to be a study of the Bible as literature, but there were some grumblings that since it was a public school they shouldn't be using a religious text as a teaching tool. This was back in 1995.
Ironically, when I worked in a bookstore, the books that were most often stolen were Bibles. Admittedly, those things were fucking expensive, but still...
Well they hadn't gotten to that part yet!
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Well yeah, that's kind of the point. The church is just as much for killers, rapists and thieves as it is for the 'Fine, upstanding Christian citizen.' As soon as you filter who comes through those doors...you've completely lost sight of what Christianity is about.
I think it's worse that they thought the book was somehow about their firemen.