Aw, sweet! Also mentions my old classmate and colleague, Steven Barnes.

>> ^enoch:

im with A_C.
the word "contrived" is a perfect word to use in describing the first movie.
though i would not say i hated the first, i will say it was chock full of ..meh.
the trailers are all you really needed.
they were freaking AWESOME!


I just found it enormously enjoyable action nonsense. And Liam Neeson is so fucking cool he just pulls it all off magnificently.


Things I love about Taken - SPOILERS;



The way his "17 year old" daughter runs to convince us she's 17.
He kills half the Albanian gang presence in Paris.
He gives his daughter a mobile phone without a charger.
Shooting the wife of his ex-colleague - I was just gobsmacked by that.
Neeson's running. He can't actually run so it's just as well people come at him.
Whatsherface as a megastar popstar which seems a slightly cruel bit of casting.
The fact that he NEVER reloads in the film - he just picks up new guns.

And of course that speech on the phone. It doesn't get better than that in my opinion.

I don't know what your background is (?), but my colleagues and I have no trouble understanding what "aversive punishment" means. No incoherence, no confusion. It's one part of behaviourist principles that are taught in undergraduate psychology. It is often referred to as positive punishment.

Would you care to cite the relevant evidence that shows the effects are vanishingly small? Because punishment, from everything I have learned, is an excellent means of behaviour control -- it just has many drawbacks, which is why reinforcement is the preferred alternative. The problem is that there are severe cases where nothing else works. What then do you do?

Reductions in social skills, communication skills, and cognitive ability are all possible outcomes. However, every one of those will depend on the punisher used, its properties, the behaviour in question, and a large variety of other factors. Your brush paints thickly.

I'm not sure what to make of your last paragraph. It reeks of ad-hom.

>> ^RhesusMonk:

"Aversive punishment" is not a coherent term in the realm of emotional/behavioral psychology. What's more, the practice to which this term seems to refer has vanishingly small effect on "self-injurious" behavior (which is actually called self-stimulating behavior). What effects it may have are significantly offset by the reduction in social and communications skills, and a decrease in cognitive ability. These reasons are why, when aversive conditioning is used in the developmental setting, it is as a last resort and the aversive stimulus is sparing and lenient. In this case, the video and other evidence around the boy's condition and behavior are sparse, and any judgment whether this was the correct course of action based on the information we have is laughable. Great measures require great evidence in their justification.
In any event, cooling people off their outrage at authority who inflict barbaric emotional and physical pain in an effort to encourage compliance for its own sake with quasi-psychology based claims is sophomoric at best. There may be some intellectual satisfaction with the idea that some minds are so beyond reason that they only respond to pain of this kind, but that idea only smacks true when the thinker lacks the creativity necessary to actually manage these kinds of malfunctions. Seems Nurse Ratched would pass muster with at least some of our Sifters.

>> ^berticus:
The sad, cold truth of things is that there are some severely autistic children who engage in the most horrific self-injurious behaviour, and aversive punishment is the ONLY treatment (in conjunction with a broader treatment plan, naturally) that works. And yes, it DOES work.
I'm not talking about kids with minor problems. I mean the ones who will do things like smash their own face into the ground over and over until they lose so much blood they pass out. The ones who will, left to themselves, die.
Positive punishment is horrible. But, it's either that, or let these kids maim or kill themselves (or possibly others) through their behaviour.
(I make no comment regarding this specific incident, I just want you to know the issue is far more complicated than this mind-bite would have you believe.)

>> ^xxovercastxx:

>> ^probie:
I never got into Frasier. Frasier Crane was my favorite character on Cheers and the Frasier on Frasier was not the Frasier on Cheers.
Perhaps this will help to explain the evolution of the character from one show to the next.

Soon after Frasier debuts on Cheers, he dates Diane Chambers (Shelley Long). They get engaged, but the relationship ends when Diane abandons him at the altar. Frasier nevertheless visits the bar often and eventually marries Lilith Sternin (Bebe Neuwirth), a fellow psychiatrist. Together, they have a son, Frederick, but Lilith cheats on Frasier with a colleague. The couple reconciles briefly, but between the end of Cheers and the start of Frasier, they separate permanently and divorce. During his separation with Lilith, Frasier publicly threatens suicide, to gain Lilith's attention and win her back, but the thought of his son stops him from doing so. Lilith gains custody of Frederick.

>> ^probie:

I never got into Frasier. Frasier Crane was my favorite character on Cheers and the Frasier on Frasier was not the Frasier on Cheers.

Perhaps this will help to explain the evolution of the character from one show to the next.

Soon after Frasier debuts on Cheers, he dates Diane Chambers (Shelley Long). They get engaged, but the relationship ends when Diane abandons him at the altar. Frasier nevertheless visits the bar often and eventually marries Lilith Sternin (Bebe Neuwirth), a fellow psychiatrist. Together, they have a son, Frederick, but Lilith cheats on Frasier with a colleague. The couple reconciles briefly, but between the end of Cheers and the start of Frasier, they separate permanently and divorce. During his separation with Lilith, Frasier publicly threatens suicide, to gain Lilith's attention and win her back, but the thought of his son stops him from doing so. Lilith gains custody of Frederick.

>> ^beekinder:

>> ^NetRunner:
>> ^beekinder:
According to Palm Beach Post today Republican Congressman Allen West warned constituents at a Tuesday town hall event that he's "heard" that dozens of his Democratic colleagues in the House are members of the Communist Party.
We haven't left Joe McCarthy very far behind it would seem.

You mean this, right?
http://videosift.com/video/Allen-West-78-81-Democrats-are-in-Commu
nist-Party

I mean that Allen West is an idiot. I can't stand this kind of idiotic garbage that passes for patriotism. Good luck to this country if he is the kind of politician getting elected.


Yes that is the video where he calls some 80 democrats in congress members of the communist party.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^beekinder:
According to Palm Beach Post today Republican Congressman Allen West warned constituents at a Tuesday town hall event that he's "heard" that dozens of his Democratic colleagues in the House are members of the Communist Party.
We haven't left Joe McCarthy very far behind it would seem.

You mean this, right?
http://videosift.com/video/Allen-West-78-81-Democrats-are-in-Commu
nist-Party


I mean that Allen West is an idiot. I can't stand this kind of idiotic garbage that passes for patriotism. Good luck to this country if he is the kind of politician getting elected.

>> ^beekinder:

According to Palm Beach Post today Republican Congressman Allen West warned constituents at a Tuesday town hall event that he's "heard" that dozens of his Democratic colleagues in the House are members of the Communist Party.
We haven't left Joe McCarthy very far behind it would seem.


You mean this, right?

http://videosift.com/video/Allen-West-78-81-Democrats-are-in-Communist-Party

According to Palm Beach Post today Republican Congressman Allen West warned constituents at a Tuesday town hall event that he's "heard" that dozens of his Democratic colleagues in the House are members of the Communist Party.

We haven't left Joe McCarthy very far behind it would seem.

Dr. Evil: You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with fricking laser beams attached to their heads! Now evidently my cycloptic colleague informs me that that can't be done. Can you remind me what I pay you people for? Honestly, throw me a bone here. What do we have?

Number 2: Tommy Lee Jones.

Dr. Evil: ... Riiiiiight.

Number 2: A mutated Tommy Lee Jones.

Dr. Evil: Really? Is he ill-tempered?

Number 2: He has lasers for eyes.

Dr. Evil: Well, that's a start.

he's back here filming right now, too. colleague of mine is in the film and waltzed into work the other day and just casually threw out an "oh.. yeah.. had lunch with orlando bloom today."

BASTARD.

he hasn't managed to meet Fry yet though... which is good, because i will FUCKING KILL HIM when he does.

>> ^Reefie:

>> ^ant:
I can't type fast and very loud right now since it 4:48 AM PST. I will try this later when people are awake. Or better do it at work to drive my colleagues (mostly women) crazy since they hate my loud typings. You can read and vote about it in http://aqfl.net/node/5825 ... <IMG class=smiley src="http://videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/frown.gif"> One of my college friends said I type like a machine gun. Funny, I don't even use model M keyboards. <IMG class=smiley src="http://videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/tongue.gif">

Hah, was having a laugh with a guy at work about how we're both loud typists - the rest of the developers are so careful with their keyboards but we're like jackhammers with ours!


Totally. Do you use model M keyboards? I told my colleagues and bosses that I can't work fast if I can't type fast.

>> ^ant:
I can't type fast and very loud right now since it 4:48 AM PST. I will try this later when people are awake. Or better do it at work to drive my colleagues (mostly women) crazy since they hate my loud typings. You can read and vote about it in http://aqfl.net/node/5825 ... <IMG class=smiley src="http://videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/frown.gif"> One of my college friends said I type like a machine gun. Funny, I don't even use model M keyboards. <IMG class=smiley src="http://videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/tongue.gif">


Hah, was having a laugh with a guy at work about how we're both loud typists - the rest of the developers are so careful with their keyboards but we're like jackhammers with ours!

I can't type fast and very loud right now since it 4:48 AM PST. I will try this later when people are awake. Or better, do it at work to drive my colleagues (mostly women) crazy since they hate my loud typings. You can read and vote about it in http://aqfl.net/node/5825 ... One of my college friends said I type like a machine gun. Funny, I don't even use model M keyboards.

I was having dinner with a few European colleagues in London a while ago. One of them told me a story of how he was in the States, in the south, and was complementing his american colleagues on the bad guys we had rounded up.

He said, "You got Bin Ladin, you got Quaddafi, you got the pirates....who's next?"

Without missing a beat, the two Americans said,"Obama!" He was of course shocked.

The other diners asked, with jaws gaping, "Do...do you feel this way?"

"Of course not," I said, and gave them a cliff notes version of the American South.

---------------

Shows there is a chasm of perception between the states and Europe.