1861

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Saturday Night Live (Rolling Stone's Top 50)

« on: February 08, 2014, 09:02:45 AM »

I don't know, I love SNL and I love a lot of those sketches.  I can understand not finding some of the earlier stuff funny; it's from a different time, and often pretty dry even considering, but if you don't laugh at Celebrity Jeopardy, or Schweddy Balls, or Christopher Walken manically demanding more cowbell, I would question if you even have a sense of humor.  Also, some of these skits seemed to be picked for their topicality, rather than their humorousness (Eddie Murphy's overrated "White Like Me" bit sticks out), and I guess everybody's going to have their favorites that aren't included on lists like these (I love "Happy Fun Ball", but there are probably at least a dozen commercial parodies I would put ahead of the Mom Jeans one), and sometimes their picks are questionable, even banal, to the point of absurdity (Adam Sandler's Halloween costumes... seriously?).  I don't think it's a very good list overall, but it is of course Rolling Stone (which I believe Sadaam will be commenting on shortly), so... yeah.

1862

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Ask a Jew anything.

« on: January 29, 2014, 03:33:17 AM »

What is your opinion of atheists?

1863

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Ask a Jew anything.

« on: January 28, 2014, 02:12:07 AM »

Somewhat ironic: kosher salt is one of the ingredients.

1864

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Ask a Jew anything.

« on: January 25, 2014, 07:36:41 PM »

Why do Jews have a big nose?

Because air is free.

@Yaakov: Just out of curiosity do you keep kosher?  Why do the kosher laws exist (or is it even a case of rationality vs "God says this so this"?  I'm just curious; my mother has a theory about kosher law that it was originally about cleanliness in many cases (like, pigs and shellfish, being such utterly filthy animals), although she maintains that the meat and milk combo is purely a matter of ethics.  What do you think?

For the record I'd die before permanently giving up bacon, lobster, and cheeseburgers, but as I'm sure I've made clear I'm not a religious Jew.

1865

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Heaven

« on: January 25, 2014, 05:47:45 AM »

This is actually one of the best threads on the new site.

1866

Flat Earth Community / Re: The Zetetic Council

« on: January 25, 2014, 05:33:57 AM »

What if the Administration had the power to veto a turndown by the Council?  And by Administration I mean, top three, not moderators.  People who have a legitimate stake in the quality of the site.

I don't know, I do think this is a dicy situation, but it seems like a necessary evil.  We're not preventing anybody from voting, we're just preventing certain people from running.  We already need a majority from within the Council to forbid someone from running.  I have no problem with Parsifal or pizza or Junker being able to overturn our decisions.  Of course I wouldn't generally expect them to get involved, but if a legitimate claim of poor judgment (or outright foul play) on the matter were to somehow arise, maybe they wouldn't mind giving it their thought.

1867

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Community

« on: January 24, 2014, 02:34:50 AM »

The fart scene in Blazing Saddles is funny precisely because of how utterly stupid it is.  Fart jokes are inherently dumb, lazy humor.  They require no context, no transition, no special timing, etc.

This...
 

If the fart jokes were treated like any other joke, just quickly coming and going without any special treatment, they wouldn't be nearly as funny.

Does not jive with this.

On the one hand you are saying they require nothing special, but then on the other you are saying if they are treated like an ordinary joke they do not work.  Sounds like you  are saying you have to do something special with them to work.

Which is literally true with any overly used and cliched comedy trope, whether it's gross-out or not.  Hell, it's true of comedy, period.  It's the sense of the unexpected that makes something funny; if it's been done before, and especially if it's been done many times before, you have to put a new spin on it or it is stale and not funny.  It's the reason why a (legendary gross-out) joke like the Aristocrats can be funny after seeing it told dozens of times within two hours.  In many ways comedy is all about putting a fresh spin on an old joke.

Assuming it was the canisters of semen that offended Saddam's sense of comedic integrity, I can honestly say that I've never seen semen used in quite that way.

1868

Arts & Entertainment / Re: Community

« on: January 23, 2014, 04:29:57 PM »

Also, there was a lot of really bad gross-out humor.  Maybe this is just a personal thing, but I've never liked gross-out humor.  In terms of comedic integrity, it's one step above fart jokes.

Ugh.  You must be one of those people who never understood why others around you were laughing hysterically at the fart scene in Blazing Saddles.

"This isn't funny!  There's no comedic integrity in this!"

1869

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Lady Gaga off the blacklist in PR China.

« on: January 22, 2014, 07:07:12 AM »

Why is she an example of a good thing to censor?

1870

Flat Earth Projects / Re: Council Elections

« on: January 19, 2014, 04:22:07 AM »

This may be a place where it's necessary for us to exert a little muscle.  If the Council has final say on who can and who can't run, I don't see a problem.

Doing it on a case by case basis might get a bit exhausting, though, and as I remember in the old forum there was a shitstorm every time something like this was done.

I don't recall having any sort of regular elections on the old site.  Can you elaborate?

That said, it might be the best option. If we do it that way, would a simple majority be fine?

Given that there are only five of us I think that's unavoidable, unless someone thinks for some reason it should be unanimous.

Any time the administration has to choose sides, I mean. There's always a lot of resentment from whoever isn't chosen and there's often an S&C thread about it

We just need to keep it simple.  We only vote against people being in the Council if most of the people here who legitimately support the Society would agree with it.  Otherwise, who cares?  What difference does it make if TheKnowledge makes a thread in S&C complaining that Sokarul wasn't approved?  We are a representative democracy and the masses will just have to put up with our decisions.

1871

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Return of the Messiah!

« on: January 19, 2014, 02:55:08 AM »

Personally I think some of you are putting way too much thought into this.  It's just a semen-soaked tampon, people.  It's not the end of the world.

1872

Flat Earth Projects / Re: Council Elections

« on: January 19, 2014, 02:51:28 AM »

This may be a place where it's necessary for us to exert a little muscle.  If the Council has final say on who can and who can't run, I don't see a problem.

Doing it on a case by case basis might get a bit exhausting, though, and as I remember in the old forum there was a shitstorm every time something like this was done.

I don't recall having any sort of regular elections on the old site.  Can you elaborate?

That said, it might be the best option. If we do it that way, would a simple majority be fine?

Given that there are only five of us I think that's unavoidable, unless someone thinks for some reason it should be unanimous.

1873

Flat Earth Projects / Re: Council Elections

« on: January 18, 2014, 11:21:13 PM »

This may be a place where it's necessary for us to exert a little muscle.  If the Council has final say on who can and who can't run, I don't see a problem.

1874

Flat Earth Projects / Re: Constructing a constitution

« on: January 18, 2014, 10:35:55 PM »

And how would we prevent angry noobs from hijacking the vote? I'm all for being inclusive, but it would defeat the purpose if the Flat Earth Society was being run by people who didn't want it to exist.

Perhaps we need rules in place to prevent this from happening, like approval of a nominee (either by vote or by the Council itself) before a prospective candidate is declared an official candidate.  As I said, we may need a better system of voting.  I'm not suggesting we put it off, per se, and in fact we should probably make it a high priority, but we do still have several months to figure it out.

1875

Flat Earth Projects / Re: Constructing a constitution

« on: January 18, 2014, 09:43:06 PM »

If anything, I think there should be a president (who's more a figurehead than anything else) whose term is a year, then the four regular members whose term is six months.  It may be better if we devise a better system for voting than was previously done but I see no reason not to just have two election seasons a year.  Hell, it would be fun.

Also, I would suggest that future challengers need to be nominated before they're declared candidates.  It would streamline the choices.

1876

Flat Earth Projects / Re: Constructing a constitution

« on: January 18, 2014, 08:38:19 PM »

When was such a hierarchy ever established for council members?

I think the neighborhood of six months to a year is a fine length of term.

1877

Flat Earth Projects / Re: Constructing a constitution

« on: January 18, 2014, 08:19:36 PM »

Being willing to pay money to get the official badge?  I don't know, why do we need "official" members?

1878

Flat Earth Projects / Re: Constructing a constitution

« on: January 18, 2014, 08:15:16 PM »

Thork is also correct in that we already have a forum in place for members who want to criticize the way we're doing things.  I think we should avoid unnecessarily complicating things.

1879

Flat Earth Projects / Re: Constructing a constitution

« on: January 18, 2014, 08:13:17 PM »

I'm not sure I see why there should be.  Perhaps we can cut the line at someone like EJ, whose sole purpose of existence is to frustrate until the next time he's banned.

1880

Flat Earth Projects / Re: Constructing a constitution

« on: January 18, 2014, 08:10:24 PM »

I'm with Thork.  I'm uncomfortable with the whole idea.