So, firstly, I must agree with @ChaosEngine, a commencement speech is no place for political commentary. A commencement speech's purpose is to allow one who has paved a complex path through life and come out on top, or one who has overcome something great, (and) has a important lesson for those less-learned to share their knowledge, that it may be used for good.

(God that sentence is long, let me catch my virtual breath...)

Next, why, if he is to provide political commentary during a commencement speech, as so many do nowadays, does he slam Trump?

Anybody? Is it his hair? Is it his puffy little face? Is it because he looks like a pumpkin? No? Perhaps its because he is a disaster waiting to happen, because that seems to be the general sentiment from many people who are allowed to speak their minds en-masse nowadays...

But how is Trump worse than Clinton? Hmmm? Perhaps there are buried rape cases THAT WERE MADE PUBLIC BTW, in Trump's past? No?

Perhaps making billions of dollars FROM ONE MILLION is just inherently evil? Hmmm, no?

Okay, that Hairdo, it must burn a hole in the Ozone layer wherever he walks... Or flames must flower at his feet, as lotus flowers did for the Buddha? NO?

Perhaps he was wrong about the people that you blokes are letting into the country? Yes? Then how come one of them, (whom you could never tell is a radical, HE HAD A WIFE AND CHILD), just killed 50 members of the LGBT community in the horrible massacre in Orlando?(which was so bad we are getting news coverage of it in LONDON)

Hmmm, maybe electing someone who actually admits there is a problem, destroying political correctness, and being damned with the "established order" which supposedly keeps you Americans safe isnt such a bad idea...

Maybe electing a Woman with a hideous blot of a record, and a long standing member of said establishment is one such bad idea...

The robotic arm used here (KUKA) is the same kind used in the Harry Potter ride at Universal Orlando. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter_and_the_Forbidden_Journey

I think improv and sketch comedy groups are all springboards from stage to radio, radio to stage, stage yo television, radio to television, television to radio, to other television and ultimately the big screen. Any good YouTube sketch comedy? I've yet to really explore that, I guess Vine is funny sketch comedy. A bit too fast, over and done for me though. Cyanide and Happiness count? Web comics? Cracked? Anyway, on to television, which remains the fascination:

The first years of SNL are phenomenal with Chevy Chase, Dan Akroyd, Bill Murray, and Gilda Radner. And before that a lot of those guys were together on the National Lampoon Radio. (Speaking of radio, Dr. Demento?)

And there's also SCTV, jesus -- John Candy, Martin Short, Harold Ramis, Eugene Levy, Rick Moranis, and Joe Flaherty. Flaherty's vampire killed me as a kid. So funny, but really I haven't watched it since I was a youngster.

When I was growing up PBS played a lot of BBC television. Benny Hill amongst them, such a naughty show. I think I was barely allowed watch. But I enjoy the show as much as its mostly about old horny men and women with big tits.

What do I think about Upright Citizen Brigade? I would choose to be an Agent of U.C.B. before S.H.I.E.L.D. Great as both an improv group and sketch comedy for television. Amy Poehler and Horatio Sanz are awesome, and I love them on SNL as well. Assssscat

Cast transfers, right? Sketch comedy groups are like sports teams. Mark McKinney on SNL, etc. Daily Show anchors from Upright Citizens Brigade. SCTV to SNL, etc. Every sketch comedy floods into SNL. Did you watch Nickelodeon's All That? Kenan and Kell.

Mr Show is on my to watch list. I love David Cross in his stand up, as Tobias Funke on Arrested Dev, and as Todd Margaret, which is fucking RIDICULOUS if you haven't seen it. It's not sketch comedy but it might as well be. It's like a British comedy with brash Americans thrown into the mix. Chaos ensues and many, many, many laws are broken, including the usage of weapons of mass destruction and murder. Dark comedy.

Oh, I know a good dark sort of sketch comedy: The League of Gentlemen? It's sort of like if Simon Pegg produced Monty Python. They say things like "Rape our dead mouths". Psychopaths, murderers and crossdressers.

Now that we've ventured off the beaten path, what are your thoughts about the short run comedy central show Stella? Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, and David Wain. All three from a funny sketch comedy series called the State. I think I've sifted or promoted some sketches from that series.

And I can't not mention MadTV, you know what? Uh uh, a list about sketch comed without MadTV, ridiculous. I'm running out of steam though, because I'm typing too much, but MO Collins, Orlando Jones, Bobby Lee, Phil LaMar (who does DC comics cartoon voice over work), Aries Spears, and Will Sasso. Damn.

And lest we forget (Thanks, Rudyard), Little Britain -- Britain, Britain, Britain, if it weren't for Little Britain I would scarcely know of the country.

I'm sure I've left off some other great sketch (In Living Color!!), but these came to mind and as I started to think of my favorite cast members and comedians, I began to realize how they all fit in the grand scheme of things. I'm going to watch some Fire Marshall Bill clips now.

"I would rather get farted on by David Hasselhoff than punched by Orlando Bloom" - Chris Pratt

I could see this being a topic of great philosophical debate.

Surprised this wasn't already up here . . .

But anyway. To answer above questions:

Police are fighting jurisdiction. Because it's a car on a pedestrian bike way, there's lots of people involved. For instance, we have a road here in Orlando that's owned by the state (FDOT), the city and OUC, our power company. So if someone was to wreck and hit a power pole, all 3 would be involved. If a pedestrian was hit while on the sidewalk, FDOT or OPD would be called and if they wanted to bicker about it, they could endlessly. That's essentially what's happening here, because whomever takes responsibility can be sued.

As for why the biker didn't see the car: when we climb (not saying that was a hard climb, but I don't know her skill level) we tend to not look too far ahead of us. In a case like this, it's almost perfect for us to glance, see no walkers, and then mash the pedals up the hill. Head down, aero and aggressive, gives us the most efficient power usage.

The car, well, I can't attest to how much of a dumbass you must be to not realize you are no longer on the road.

Wahoo. Go Orlando! Now, if only we had teachers to teach kids about this . . .

And they say we don't have a good film market here in Orlando . . . lol

2 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

This video has been seconded as a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof seconded with isdupe by ant.

Sorry, but *dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Goodbye-Orlando

This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by dingens. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

Then again, they also said those few black kids going to all white schools were idiots too . . . Or those few Indians who stood against British rule . . . Or perhaps those few women who protested and marched until they had the right to vote?

See, the problem with that statement is that many cyclists are actually out there to change the world for what they perceive is a better way of life. Not to mention, they have tons of research on the subject to back up their claims (unlike the situations I cited, which btw, I am well aware are on a totally different level of human abuse).

The issue is of course is you have some die hard cyclists who aren't there to make a statement, but because they're counter-culture. They're hipsters. They're going to run stop signs because "fuck authority" etc. Then again, I've been hit 6 times in my car. Care to guess how many of those were because someone didn't obey a traffic law? That's why we have those rules to begin, to prevent "accidents" from occurring.

As a cyclist-commuter, and as someone who drives thousands of miles as work requires, I say if a cyclist blows through a stop sign and you hit them, their own damned fault.

Many of us, including myself, have petitioned to create a Yield on Stop Under 30 rule. In essence, we have way to many stop signs in this country. This goes for cars as well. And you know you've done it at some point: you come to a stop sign in some part of a housing project and you "California Roll" through it. Or a "Brooklyn Stop." Whatever you want to call it.

But I do know some cyclists who blatantly disobey rules as a fuck you. But as a cyclist who stops at red lights, who stops at stops signs, who checks behind me to see if I can make it easier for a car to pass me, the whole "fuck cyclists" thing tells me exactly what I see on the streets everyday: we don't need cars. Cars create assholes. Cars insulate you from the world around you and the people around you become anonymous boxes of steel that you don't care about. It's a me me me me society.

To that matter, the cycling community here in Orlando is pretty big given our population and disgusting sprawl patterns. The majority of us you'll never notice because we're doing things right. Some of us, you will notice because we are doing things right. When we make a left turn, we get in your way. So would any other vehicle. Are we going too slow? Suck it up. I can't tell you how many times some asshole comes within inches of me trying to speed past me . . . on a 25 MPH road while I'm doing a good 18. We almost always end up at the same stop sign or red light.

So yeah, as you said, the extreme ones are stupid. It goes both ways, as you said. But FYI, the world would be a better place if everyone rode a bike. Just saying.

Goodbye Orlando has been added as a related post - related requested by dingens on that post.

Actually, most people don't know much about bike laws. You don't have to go through a course to get a license, and hence, most people honestly don't care or simply never think of it.

Taxes are paid for the police to create a safe environment for everyone. If this is a the quickest, easiest, and most cost effective way, then your taxes are doing their job. Furthermore, in most cases like this, when outside programs are involved, the outside program is the one raising the funds to do these programs. Here in Orlando we had to raise $30,000 to hire the police to issue citations/warnings to motorists who don't yield to pedestrians in crosswalks. We have the highest pedestrian fatality rate in the country. We paid for it, privately, not through taxpayer money, to enforce the law because it's not considered a money maker. Otherwise, someone will bitch and complain their tax money isn't being used the way *they* think it should be.

The ironic part though, is they're giving out front lights, not rear lights. The rear is most important, in most cases. Additionally, he actually let a girl go with her light flashing. In some states that's actually illegal, although much safer. (For instance, here in Florida having a flashing light on a bicycle is illegal because it resembles an emergency response vehicle, which is the same law for motor vehicles.)

If anyone wants to read more about Stephen and LGBTQIA youth, here is the NYT article.

The New York Time's

Generation LGBTQIA

By MICHAEL SCHULMAN

Published: January 10, 2013

STEPHEN IRA, a junior at Sarah Lawrence College, uploaded a video last March on We Happy Trans, a site that shares "positive perspectives" on being transgender.

In the breakneck six-and-a-half-minute monologue - hair tousled, sitting in a wood-paneled dorm room - Stephen exuberantly declared himself "a queer, a nerd fighter, a writer, an artist and a guy who needs a haircut," and held forth on everything from his style icons (Truman Capote and "any male-identified person who wears thigh-highs or garters") to his toy zebra.

Because Stephen, who was born Kathlyn, is the 21-year-old child of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, the video went viral, garnering nearly half a million views. But that was not the only reason for its appeal. With its adrenalized, freewheeling eloquence, the video seemed like a battle cry for a new generation of post-gay gender activists, for whom Stephen represents a rare public face.

Armed with the millennial generation's defining traits - Web savvy, boundless confidence and social networks that extend online and off - Stephen and his peers are forging a political identity all their own, often at odds with mainstream gay culture.

If the gay-rights movement today seems to revolve around same-sex marriage, this generation is seeking something more radical: an upending of gender roles beyond the binary of male/female. The core question isn't whom they love, but who they are - that is, identity as distinct from sexual orientation.

But what to call this movement? Whereas "gay and lesbian" was once used to lump together various sexual minorities - and more recently "L.G.B.T." to include bisexual and transgender - the new vanguard wants a broader, more inclusive abbreviation. "Youth today do not define themselves on the spectrum of L.G.B.T.," said Shane Windmeyer, a founder of Campus Pride, a national student advocacy group based in Charlotte, N.C.

Part of the solution has been to add more letters, and in recent years the post-post-post-gay-rights banner has gotten significantly longer, some might say unwieldy. The emerging rubric is "L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," which stands for different things, depending on whom you ask.

"Q" can mean "questioning" or "queer," an umbrella term itself, formerly derogatory before it was appropriated by gay activists in the 1990s. "I" is for "intersex," someone whose anatomy is not exclusively male or female. And "A" stands for "ally" (a friend of the cause) or "asexual," characterized by the absence of sexual attraction.

It may be a mouthful, but it's catching on, especially on liberal-arts campuses.

The University of Missouri, Kansas City, for example, has an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Resource Center that, among other things, helps student locate "gender-neutral" restrooms on campus. Vassar College offers an L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Discussion Group on Thursday afternoons. Lehigh University will be hosting its second annual L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Intercollegiate Conference next month, followed by a Queer Prom. Amherst College even has an L.G.B.T.Q.Q.I.A.A. center, where every group gets its own letter.

The term is also gaining traction on social media sites like Twitter and Tumblr, where posts tagged with "lgbtqia" suggest a younger, more progressive outlook than posts that are merely labeled "lgbt."

"There's a very different generation of people coming of age, with completely different conceptions of gender and sexuality," said Jack Halberstam (formerly Judith), a transgender professor at the University of Southern California and the author, most recently, of "Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal."

"When you see terms like L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.," Professor Halberstam added, "it's because people are seeing all the things that fall out of the binary, and demanding that a name come into being."

And with a plethora of ever-expanding categories like "genderqueer" and "androgyne" to choose from, each with an online subculture, piecing together a gender identity can be as D.I.Y. as making a Pinterest board.

BUT sometimes L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. is not enough. At the University of Pennsylvania last fall, eight freshmen united in the frustration that no campus group represented them.

Sure, Penn already had some two dozen gay student groups, including Queer People of Color, Lambda Alliance and J-Bagel, which bills itself as the university's "Jewish L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. Community." But none focused on gender identity (the closest, Trans Penn, mostly catered to faculty members and graduate students).

Richard Parsons, an 18-year-old transgender male, discovered that when he attended a student mixer called the Gay Affair, sponsored by Penn's L.G.B.T. Center. "I left thoroughly disappointed," said Richard, a garrulous freshman with close-cropped hair, wire-framed glasses and preppy clothes, who added, "This is the L.G.B.T. Center, and it's all gay guys."

Through Facebook, Richard and others started a group called Penn Non-Cis, which is short for "non-cisgender." For those not fluent in gender-studies speak, "cis" means "on the same side as" and "cisgender" denotes someone whose gender identity matches his or her biology, which describes most of the student body. The group seeks to represent everyone else. "This is a freshman uprising," Richard said.

On a brisk Tuesday night in November, about 40 students crowded into the L.G.B.T. Center, a converted 19th-century carriage house, for the group's inaugural open mike. The organizers had lured students by handing out fliers on campus while barking: "Free condoms! Free ChapStick!"

"There's a really vibrant L.G.B.T. scene," Kate Campbell, one of the M.C.'s, began. "However, that mostly encompasses the L.G.B. and not too much of the T. So we're aiming to change that."

Students read poems and diary entries, and sang guitar ballads. Then Britt Gilbert - a punky-looking freshman with a blond bob, chunky glasses and a rock band T-shirt - took the stage. She wanted to talk about the concept of "bi-gender."

"Does anyone want to share what they think it is?"

Silence.

She explained that being bi-gender is like manifesting both masculine and feminine personas, almost as if one had a "detachable penis." "Some days I wake up and think, 'Why am I in this body?' " she said. "Most days I wake up and think, 'What was I thinking yesterday?' 

"Britt's grunginess belies a warm matter-of-factness, at least when describing her journey. As she elaborated afterward, she first heard the term "bi-gender" from Kate, who found it on Tumblr. The two met at freshman orientation and bonded. In high school, Kate identified as "agender" and used the singular pronoun "they"; she now sees her gender as an "amorphous blob."

By contrast, Britt's evolution was more linear. She grew up in suburban Pennsylvania and never took to gender norms. As a child, she worshiped Cher and thought boy bands were icky. Playing video games, she dreaded having to choose male or female avatars.

In middle school, she started calling herself bisexual and dated boys. By 10th grade, she had come out as a lesbian. Her parents thought it was a phase - until she brought home a girlfriend, Ash. But she still wasn't settled.

"While I definitely knew that I liked girls, I didn't know that I was one," Britt said. Sometimes she would leave the house in a dress and feel uncomfortable, as if she were wearing a Halloween costume. Other days, she felt fine. She wasn't "trapped in the wrong body," as the cliché has it - she just didn't know which body she wanted.

When Kate told her about the term "bi-gender," it clicked instantly. "I knew what it was, before I knew what it was," Britt said, adding that it is more fluid than "transgender" but less vague than "genderqueer" - a catchall term for nontraditional gender identities.

At first, the only person she told was Ash, who responded, "It took you this long to figure it out?" For others, the concept was not so easy to grasp. Coming out as a lesbian had been relatively simple, Britt said, "since people know what that is." But when she got to Penn, she was relieved to find a small community of freshmen who had gone through similar awakenings.

Among them was Richard Parsons, the group's most politically lucid member. Raised female, Richard grew up in Orlando, Fla., and realized he was transgender in high school. One summer, he wanted to room with a transgender friend at camp, but his mother objected. "She's like, 'Well, if you say that he's a guy, then I don't want you rooming with a guy,' " he recalled. "We were in a car and I basically blurted out, 'I think I might be a guy, too!' "

After much door-slamming and tears, Richard and his mother reconciled. But when she asked what to call him, he had no idea. He chose "Richard" on a whim, and later added a middle name, Matthew, because it means "gift of God."

By the time he got to Penn, he had been binding his breasts for more than two years and had developed back pain. At the open mike, he told a harrowing story about visiting the university health center for numbness and having a panic attack when he was escorted into a women's changing room.

Nevertheless, he praised the university for offering gender-neutral housing. The college's medical program also covers sexual reassignment surgery, which, he added, "has heavily influenced my decision to probably go under the Penn insurance plan next year."

PENN has not always been so forward-thinking; a decade ago, the L.G.B.T. Center (nestled amid fraternity houses) was barely used. But in 2010, the university began reaching out to applicants whose essays raised gay themes. Last year, the gay newsmagazine The Advocate ranked Penn among the top 10 trans-friendly universities, alongside liberal standbys like New York University.

More and more colleges, mostly in the Northeast, are catering to gender-nonconforming students. According to a survey by Campus Pride, at least 203 campuses now allow transgender students to room with their preferred gender; 49 have a process to change one's name and gender in university records; and 57 cover hormone therapy. In December, the University of Iowa became the first to add a "transgender" checkbox to its college application.

"I wrote about an experience I had with a drag queen as my application essay for all the Ivy Leagues I applied to," said Santiago Cortes, one of the Penn students. "And I got into a few of the Ivy Leagues - Dartmouth, Columbia and Penn. Strangely not Brown.

"But even these measures cannot keep pace with the demands of incoming students, who are challenging the curriculum much as gay activists did in the '80s and '90s. Rather than protest the lack of gay studies classes, they are critiquing existing ones for being too narrow.

Several members of Penn Non-Cis had been complaining among themselves about a writing seminar they were taking called "Beyond 'Will & Grace,' " which examined gay characters on shows like "Ellen," "Glee" and "Modern Family." The professor, Gail Shister, who is a lesbian, had criticized several students for using "L.G.B.T.Q." in their essays, saying it was clunky, and proposed using "queer" instead. Some students found the suggestion offensive, including Britt Gilbert, who described Ms. Shister as "unaccepting of things that she doesn't understand."

Ms. Shister, reached by phone, said the criticism was strictly grammatical. "I am all about economy of expression," she said. "L.G.B.T.Q. doesn't exactly flow off the tongue. So I tell the students, 'Don't put in an acronym with five or six letters.' "

One thing is clear. Ms. Shister, who is 60 and in 1979 became The Philadelphia Inquirer's first female sportswriter, is of a different generation, a fact she acknowledges freely, even gratefully. "Frankly, I'm both proud and envious that these young people are growing up in an age where they're free to love who they want," she said.

If history is any guide, the age gap won't be so easy to overcome. As liberated gay men in the 1970s once baffled their pre-Stonewall forebears, the new gender outlaws, to borrow a phrase from the transgender writer Kate Bornstein, may soon be running ideological circles around their elders.

Still, the alphabet soup of L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. may be difficult to sustain. "In the next 10 or 20 years, the various categories heaped under the umbrella of L.G.B.T. will become quite quotidian," Professor Halberstam said.

Even at the open mike, as students picked at potato chips and pineapple slices, the bounds of identity politics were spilling over and becoming blurry.

At one point, Santiago, a curly-haired freshman from Colombia, stood before the crowd. He and a friend had been pondering the limits of what he calls "L.G.B.T.Q. plus."

"Why do only certain letters get to be in the full acronym?" he asked.

Then he rattled off a list of gender identities, many culled from Wikipedia. "We have our lesbians, our gays," he said, before adding, "bisexual, transsexual, queer, homosexual, asexual." He took a breath and continued. "Pansexual. Omnisexual. Trisexual. Agender. Bi-gender. Third gender. Transgender. Transvestite. Intersexual. Two-spirit. Hijra. Polyamorous."

By now, the list had turned into free verse. He ended: "Undecided. Questioning. Other. Human."

The room burst into applause.

Correction: January 10, 2013, Thursday

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: An earlier version of this article and a picture caption referred incorrectly to a Sarah Lawrence College student who uploaded a video online about being transgender. He says he is Stephen Ira, not Stephen Ira Beatty.

Source NYT

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