Phi for All

Kids' date=' don't make me come down there! Your squabbling could cause another divorce! What will happen to my property value living next to a bunch of singularivegetarians? He sends me those pictures, too.

Free market means you can have your cake and eat it too. Don't look for what you want to be satisfied by the mainstream venues. Mass marketing has to do what it can to throw the widest net and that often means playing to average tastes. But because you have a need for something different, a free market means someone is out there trying to reach you. If you're above average, or want something less Pop culture then you have to be willing to look farther afield. Get a subscription to Independent Film Quarterly instead of Entertainment or People. Don't go to the UA Googleplex 110 cinemas, visit an artsy old landmark theatre (not the kind where everyone wears raincoats). Don't buy white bread from Safeway, buy something tasty and grainy from Hippy Village grocers.

Playing with your dinghy doesn't count. Most millionaires don't live splashy lives (splashy as in "falling off your yacht"). They work hard, spend frugally, invest, and then leave all their money to their kids. Then the kids blow it all on splashy lives.

LOL, thanks, but remember that following others can lead to soulless mass production. That sounds fantastic! We should do lunch! I'll pick you up in my Mercedes, but you'll need to bring your own soul. Seriously, I've had a little experience with independent efforts and still have some contacts in the biz. You should PM me with your idea, I'd love to hear more. Don't buy into the image. Not every industry millionaire (in any industry) sells their soul to drive a fancy car. That's just an image that's fostered by the media. Most millionaires have never been on a yacht.

I agree. The alcohol made him say something he normally wouldn't have *said*. It didn't make him say something he normally wouldn't *believe*.

Could you find that for us? I could only find this, from Abraham Foxman, ADL National Director: It doesn't make sense that the ADL would be so forgiving of the director of The Passion of the Christ after being so concerned about the impact of the movie.http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5595512&ft=1&f=1001

Alocohol is not an excuse, it's a reason. It doesn't put the thoughts inside your head, it merely erodes the barriers keeping those thoughts in. Alocohol affects judgement, it doesn't affect your belief system.

You're not looking at this the right way. Their are now and always will be people looking for profit who will be trying to reach that part of the market which feels the way you do. Find the smaller studios who are NOT catering to the majority market. They are putting out some pretty great stuff. Don't blame the quest for profit; a free market economy ensures that there will be people looking to make and sell you just what you really want. I'm going to see Clerks II on Friday. I hope it is as great as the first one was.

I will subscribe when my Nano is feeling better. Podcasts are a great way to pick up the latest without the annoying commercials. I wish you the best of luck and I hope you'll post more here than just this once.

"Helmets are for wimps." "We don't have time to be cautious." "Lay on, Macduff, and damn'd be him that first cries 'Hold, enough!'" -MacBeth "Dying is easy. Comedy is difficult." -Edmund Gwenn (actor, played Santa Claus in Miracle on 34th Street)

Appealing to the masses is not about making the most people happy, it's about making the fewest people upset. If you watch a movie and you tell someone who asks about it, "Yeah, it was OK", then word-of-mouth is taken care of and marketing will ensure that the budget and ROI are covered. This also works with national chains in virtually every industry. Skye is right, check out smaller independent films, ones that don't have to answer to a major studio for more than 50% of their backing. When the majors make a movie, they run everything through focus groups and end up with something nobody hates. They also spread the liability out among several production groups (and the credits keep getting longer). When you're dealing with tens and hundreds of millions of dollars, the majors don't want to take chances (we've all heard about the big gamble Disney took with Johnny Depp as Captain Jack). Indies usually fly on their own merit, the quality of the writing, the performances, the vision of the director. You'll find some that help you catch up on sleep but you'll also find some great stuff. It's usually Indies that pave the way with experimental ideas that become successful so the majors can build on the success without taking too many risks.

I think it sounds like this teacher is not trying to teach. He's trying to preach and drum up support. Many college kids love to see injustice and conspiracies everywhere. I'd tell you more but my Reynolds Wrap is overdue for replacement and my mind may be controlled as I write this. You should stay for the math. Oooh, you're right, no tears here. Now that your beliefs are well established, I find nothing insightful about them. Hey! I'm an iconoclast!

There's no way to set this up automatically with any degree of precision, which means physically going through every old thread to delete manually. That's a LOT of extra work for me because you think something you said might be embarrasing sometime in the future. Let me think about it. No.

There's no doubt they will be saying that, but I think we can avoid being quoted in the worldwide press as aiming ourselves or a World War at "Islamic extremists". If we widen the scope beyond terrorists, won't defending ourselves against fascist elements be enough? Why go out of our way to bring an entire major religion against us? In the words of Murdoch (William Shatner) from Airplane II, "That's exactly what they'll be expecting us to do!"

Is this for homework?

You don't need to. By saying we're fighting against Islamic fascists you give them all the ammunition they need to make it a religious struggle. Not at all. I feel we just need to stay away from what our opponents really want, which is to make this Jihad to unite all of Islam against us. Without that, you have millions of very reasonable people (who just happen to be of the Islamic faith) who would be able to decry fascism if it is separated from their religion. Agreed, which is why I hate the WWIII reference. It just brings in unnecessary fear at a time when we need to be very smart about who and why we fight.

Exactly, well put Sisyphus. Perhaps we need a campaign fostered by Islamic religious centrists who can better point out that fascism in Islam cannot be tolerated and will only hurt the faith and it's followers.

What, with your ear?! You must have lobes of steel to be able to carry tools with your ears! Or is it just the screws?

Not diplomacy with the terror groups, but rather with the countries who enable the terrorists to set up camps, recruit and train. If we make it more profitable or more enticing for those countries to deal with us rather than support the terrorists, the terrorists gain no new followers, but as long as we are dropping bombs, they can point to us as the aggressors. The way we've been fighting them is to throw gasoline on the flames of their religious fervor. I'm pretty sure that's not going to work.

A war on terror is not sustainable when fought as we are fighting it. You can't win against small cells of fanatics with bombs and planes. You either fight terrorists with subterfuge, rooting them out surgically with covert forces who are not going to make splashy worldwide martyrs out of their targets, or you fight them with diplomacy. Undermining what the terrorists are fighting about, usually aggression and suppression, by peaceful diplomatic means is lengthier but probably more effective in the long run. Unfortunately there are other pressures being brought to bear which may not be affected by diplomacy. Non-Islamic factions who want to keep this aggression going are difficult to counter. While I think we do need to redefine exactly what we are fighting against, I think it would be a big mistake to call it Islamofascism. Anything which makes this all about the world vs Islam is only going to increase the fanaticism. If we really do want WWIII, implying that Islam is part of the reason will ensure that the fanatic fascists will be able to recruit plenty of followers.

If you could get it to move into your chest you could make a fortune in tips at Rick's Cabaret, moo. OK, sorry, just a thought....

It's kind of like those pictures you have to stare at a while before you suddenly see the mystery picture. When someone describes it to you or shows you the trick you suddenly go, "Oh yeah!" But until they do it makes no sense. A monumental thing has just happened but your brain reasons that what you are now able to see was there all along so it's really no big deal. Your, "Oh yeah!" moment doesn't get reported, the media is none the wiser and the history books will mention none of this to later generations. It will just be an unsung transition in biological perceptions. I'm speculating that perhaps the real world has more things in it that our eyes haven't adjusted to, or more dimensions that are visible if we just suddenly get an, "Oh yeah!" moment. What if someone back in medieval Europe said to his buddy, "Just let your eyes unfocus as you stare beyond the tree and you can see a bit more depth back there". And his buddy squinted and blinked and suddenly said.... It's another Douglas Adams bit like Mokele quoted. In Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy rats had their familiar little bodies in three dimensions but possessed other parts in higher dimensions. Their pan-dimensional nature fooled us into thinking they were insignificant while they were actually the ones running things.

I don't have the time to respond properly and fully, Jim, but I would like to say that mention of WWIII in politics runs contrary to Godwin's Law. WWIII immediately makes a person run through all the Nazi comparisons, and instead of losing the debate when the Nazis are mentioned, calling, "WWIII" increases the fear levels beyond anything the "War on Terrorism" could ever do and makes ignorant citizens call out for protection at any cost. I absolutely believe this is campaign strategy. And since I see little difference between the major parties when it comes to using our fears to help them campaign, it doesn't matter too much whether it's Dems or Reps.