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Apparently, this is the summer I get to see all my friends naked. I'm making the most of it.

If you are already my friend, and I've already seen you naked, please know that I enjoyed that, too.
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d23:
=[
morningstar:
Deleting old posts and came across one Jim commented on. It was a jolt to say the least. Had to come here to pay my respects one last time.
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Ever see a bar fight between a monkey and a chihuahua? Its not that great, really, no Rumble in the Jungle, but if you had, at least you could brag about it.
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morningstar:
Who won?
I'd put $$ on the Chihuahua.





Unless the monkey had a knife...
morningstar:
Of course it happened at The Abby... I wouldn't have guessed any other place.
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Am I the only one who suspects that Vitamin Water is really just the exact same weak sugar water crap we all refused to drink in summer camp, but with a 600% markup?
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mahogany:
Ok, here we go. I gotta keep this brief, but I think I can indicate my points for you to yell at some more.

>I think the discussion on the boards bears out, for the most part, that people, mostly childless men here, don't bother to avail themselves of the rudimentary facts, or even read the thread before spewing out their ill formed opinions.

I already addressed this in part over at the original thread. But my sense was that the original analysis was a bit confused, mixing up various underlying criticisms and not plotting any of them out. I don't think this helped folks who wrote replies. More on this when I engage what you are presuming to be BP's perspective below.

>As for a good scolding, if I wanted to do that, I would have pointed out that you completely missed the point of the article and its underlying philosophy, substituting instead a handful of flavor of the minute scholars who addressed the absolute reverse of the phenomena at play here.

My inclination to mention the flavor of the month can be explained as follows. Reading BitchPhD, both here and on her blog, she always seems to me to be about negotiating late academic trends, the line between second- and third-wave feminisms, and popular culture. When she does this well, it's a great read and interesting. Not unlike the old magazine Lingua Franca, but with feminist leanings. (Katha Pollitt does a great job of this task on a regular basis.)

But please note the slippage in the original article between what is being done and what BitchPhD fears it will set the precedent for. The citation of the Holocaust seemed an evocation of Agamben, as he is most well-known in popularized form for his theorizations of politics and the State through thinking through the concentration camp. Then again, as you no doubt know, Agamben does not exactly endorse Foucault's notion of bio-power, which also seemed to be at play in BitchPhD's argument about medicine and re-thinking women's pregnant bodies. Of course, neither of these lines were developed, nor were any others. In part, I think it's because they're not a great fit and she'd have to stretch them pretty far for it to make any sense. Hence, her imaginary fears, which fit the theorists I note better--which is why I think she interjected those specters. But that, again, is guesswork. It's hard to tell from the scant analysis in the piece.

I think that her final point, however, regarding the slippery slope misses the point entirely of racial, gendered and class exclusions, and it's a mistake that none of the people we've mentioned would have made. That's what bothered me. And led to my suggestion that looking at the history of how the rhetoric of child endangerment might have helped as it well demonstrates the racialized, gendered and classed policing of behavior. (The first suggestion, which was the closest to how I see the matter was Tilly's work, as you're right that Foucault and Agamben fit poorly.)

>This has nothing to do with a sovereign jurdically excepting themselves from the law they impose, or the technology of power and control, but rather garden variety propaganda coupled with the exception of otherness. The government assumes no special extra legal power here, and they employ a 600 year old technology whose application to dominate social thought was perfected centuries before Foucault was a dirty thought (or had one).

Yeah, see above.

>The critical deconstructive analysis of the mechanism at play here, is, in the philosophical realm, pure existentialism, although in the legal (constructive) arena its tools were well understood and examined two centuries before. But it wouldn't have been any fun to cite Sartre or Beauvoir, because people have actually heard of them, would it? Hell, if you were going to mis-apply a post structuralist, you'd have been better off with Lacan. At least there you could have claimed that this was globalizing the ego and assigning its taxonomy to marginalize.

>See, I went to college, too, I just did it before fashion came to dominate over critical thought.

I guess I'd be somewhat surprised if folks are reading Sartre or Beauvoir (more than, say, Foucault), and I'd be surprised if they were what BP had on her mind. I guess you're just ignoring my point that the comment I left was meant as a note to BP and NOT as either a full analysis in and of itself or a show for the crowds. My point was more a meta-point about how the BitchPhD columns have come to function on the site as a space for pointless culture wars and how BitchPhD's work can play into that deleterious trend. In essence I was trying to prod her to be more like her best work.

Now I'm really wondering who's wagging what, though, I must say. Let's just deflate a little, huh?
remusisdying:
sorry, i was just hoping you would be more specific regarding this 'overwhelming' evidence. im just curious, as i feel quite comfortable with the literature, and was surprised by your statement, as i feel we have different views of it. so "eh?" should have been "what about this evidence, specifically, makes you view it as support for an 'overwhelming' answer with regard to the effects of maternal alcohol consumption during the third trimester?" my apologies.
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So, we've got all these nifty new site features, which are great and all, but I would really kill for an emoticon that expresses "You are so monumentally stupid, you make me feel that I have somehow lost intelligence by even mocking you." or "You are the intellectual equivalent of a contrecoup head injury, or perhaps just the product of one."

It would save so...
Read More
unravled:
You should put that in the bugs thread.
obd:
That's a lot to get into a face.
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New Orleans Quiz

Q; What do you do when you walk into a convenience store and the clerk yells "Yo, yo, yo, we don't want no crackers in here!"? and you're the only white guy in the place.
A: Nothing, he wasn't talking to you.
sugarfish:
B: Say: "So don't stock them. How much for the Slim Jims?"
obd:
hmmm.
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I need a new catch phrase. I'm torn between "Everything you love for breakfast, covered in sausage and gravy!" and "Rated R for strong, brutal violence throughout."

Help a brother out.
max16characters:
Number 2 works well i think. Perhaps if you added "nudity" in there somewhere, it would give it more of a punch.
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Some days you're Mr. Hot Shit, some days you have to chop your chain saw out of a tree with an axe.

It keeps life interesting, but don't tell my Scoutmaster just the same.
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flux:
margot_dent:
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Happiness is thinking,"I haven't seen that movie in a while..." and its one channel now and another in 40 minutes.

Your milage may vary if the movie in question isn't Tombstone, however.
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signalnoise:
Tombstone is the best.

I'll be your huckleberry.
stiles:
That film has been on heavy rotation here forever. Perhaps someone bribed the cable fairy.

In your opinion, who makes the best falafel in Manhattan, and how does Ben's Pizza in soho stack up to everyone else's? I'm exploring lunch options.
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So, yeah, Blu Ray is all its cracked up to be. Bring on David Lean.
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maxx:
tech specs are so close on both, that doesn't really matter. except for one thing...blu-ray is 25gb/layer and HD-DVD is only 15. So i've always expected blu-ray to win the computer market where that kind of thing actually matters.

For movies i was expecting hd-dvd to win because they can actually deliver specs to venders of what they want delivered. but now with blu-ray players dropping to $600, it might get interesting again.

that's all. enjoy your ps3.
surlyclown:
I was going to ask some questions, but Maxx's response has the answers. It will be interesting to see which format has legs...though both of them could also fall by way of the Betamax. And yeah, 'Lawrence of Arabia' really is the perfect test of any system. Screw all that digital stuff. ARRR!!!