>> ^probie:

Can we drop the origin stories and the "with great power comes great responsibility"-words-of-wisdom-from-the-relatives?

Usually I would agree but in the case of Superman, the coming of age story is the only interesting thing you can do with him. He's an alien orphan with enough power to do whatever he wants. Once you've told the story of how he came to terms with all that, he's just a giant unstoppable boyscout with all the powers; maybe the most boring character in all of comics.

I might like to see a reimagining of Superman. Dial back the powers. Give him something to struggle with besides green rocks and wedgies. He'd probably still be boring as hell, to be honest.

Actually, my personal favorite is Poe. And you could probably read all of the stories I mentioned in the earlier comment in a day or two. But this is about your personal preference. A Connecticut Yankee is cultural satire and is kind of timeless. Sawyer and Finn are coming of age stories - quite good, though a bit dated. They are certainly more often included in American Lit classes.

Look at that - you can read all three (and Poe and others) right here.

In reply to this comment by kymbos:
Gotcha. So you wouldn't start with Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer or something higher profile? I've literally read none of them.


In reply to this comment by jonny:
I meant that even if you don't especially enjoy a classic novel, you haven't completely wasted your time - you're still probably better off for having read it. But yeah, enjoyment of a book - just like music, food, and art - is all about personal taste. I've read very little Russian literature, basically for fear of exactly the same reaction as yourself. (Oddly, though, I did enjoy A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which is about as depressing and plodding as you can imagine.) If you're not fond of the Russians, there are some Americans you should probably avoid too - Faulkner, Steinbeck and some (not all!) of the other early 20th century writers probably first among them.

@GenjiKilpatrick

No, you're right. Every pedestrian on the road should just act like it's their god given right to just walk out into the middle of traffic. It's very apparent they were doing so anyway. It was a straight road, they could see the cars coming from ages away because our camera is traveling for 9 seconds before we can see the pedestrians (cars are easier to spot.) and we don't even get close to them until around the 14-15 second mark. Based on that alone, you should be able to see the "Speeding" car, and either wait, or move faster to get across.

@sillma

I don't see any stopped or parked cars (save the one on the other side, not blocking visibility), and infact the one the camera is in only slows down, never stops.

I will grant you that there are two blue signs at either side of the road that I missed before. They blend in, and i'm not used to looking for blue signs, I suppose.

However, the pedestrian does have the right of way here, too, but only if they're actually doing it right. we have signs here, look like this. The pedestrian stops and presses a button on the side of the road, the lights flash, cars have to stop. The whole process takes around 10 seconds.

There are crosswalk lines all over the place without any lights on them, but to cross the road there requires the pedestrian to use proper judgement when it comes to crossing the street, you wait, the car does not. Once the street is clear enough that you can make it across safely (Kids tend to walk, adults will generally jog across, meaning adults need less time) they do so.

Never, have I seen two people walk out into a busy street with cars coming at them and just mosey over to the other side. This is an example as to why.

He is richly blessed; what an amazing mind. He doesn't seem precocious either..to him obviously the music is everything. His compositions, if lacking substance, are technically brilliant..the substance will come with age.

I merely stated my opinion on what I view as an easy moral dilemma. No need to call me names. You seem to base your argument on freedom. That's exactly what I do too: The freedom of males to make their own choices regarding cosmetic surgery on their genitals. It seems to me you value the freedom of the parents higher. I can see where you're coming from, but to me the individual concerned always weighs heavier in such moral arguments.

Let it be known that I don't want a ban on circumcition per se. If someone wants to make that decision for themselves when he comes of age, for religious reasons or otherwise, I have no problem with it. My problem is when someone else (in this case parents) removes irreversibly the opportunity to choose yourself.
>> ^VoodooV:

Fortunately for the rest of the world, you don't get to judge, oh arbiter of what is good and bad. This reinforces why I'm an independent. Both left and right have their lunatic fringe. and arbitrating circumcision is definitely lunatic.
and xxovercast, I never said YOU were pro-ban. nice try though. This perfectly demonstrates the hypocrisy of both left and right. pro-choice for certain things....not so much other things. You don't get to cherry pick what choices you approve of and which ones you don't. It's all ok or none of it is.
As I have repeatedly stated, Unless you can show that the majority of those who have had circumcision without consent are under some sort of significant duress or their lives are significantly been infringed upon. You've got nothing.

Yep, terrible. They made Liono another dumbarse angsty teen, suggesting to me that this will be a typical 'coming of age' story. If he believes hard enough and can just maintain his desire to win, he'll overcome all odds! YEAHH!

Ugh, please.

The language is all pseudo modern colloquial too. The characters of the series at least spoke like they had a pair. (Except Snarf of course... they can get rid of that shit)

SS is a Ponzi setup, plain and simple. The government isn't "investing" the money into anything but the government and returning that to their tax investors. It requires a larger working population coming on board to subsidize the older holders. The only reason it hasn't blown up is we have had continual increases in population as well as a mostly growing economy. Throw in a major economic paradigm change where population isn't tripling every century or the economic growth doesn't increase exponentially and the problem hits you in the face. You either have to raise taxes, lower the value of the dollar, reduce distributions, or raise the age cap; there is no other solution. With the baby bloomers finally coming of age, the change of this system to something that doesn't completely implode has to happen sooner than later.

There is no "surplus" in SS. That surplus it in U.S. government bonds which tie their worth to the general perception of the health of the US economy. The surplus owns no real assets in other words. Your 401k invests in actual companies, the SS trust invests in the government. For there to be an actual "trust" like a 401k, then the totality of nation wide spending would have to remain consistent and taxes be the same.

"From an economic standpoint, the question of whether the trust fund is fact or fiction comes down to whether the trust fund contributes to national savings or not. If $1 added to the fund increases national savings by $1, the trust fund is real. If $1 added to the fund increases national savings by $0, the trust fund is not real. A substantial body of economic research argues that the trust funds have led to only a small to modest increase in national savings and that the bulk of the trust fund has been spent."

http://www.nber.org/papers/w10953
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=233130

The proof is in tax cuts and increased spending via the Bush/Obama spending packages and tax breaks. This has a net effect of the government spending more. If they are spending more then they are saving, it doesn't matter where, then there effectively is no actual trust via inflation tax. To put it more plainly, the government has spent in 2 years what ss has taken decades to accumulate...there is no savings really.

I upvoted this because SLC Punk is one of my all time favorite coming of age movies.

@kasinator I agree, we need Star Trek back on the air again to give us some sort of pop-culture that reinforces the idea that all people should try to engage in moral reasoning about everything they do.

I'd really like to see someone take on a version of Trek that mostly tried to echo the ethical struggles of our era, and try to hash them out.

Part of the problem is that all of the key struggles we're having today are considered unquestionably settled in the Federation, all questions economic are settled (via a mechanism that always remains steadfastly off-camera), all questions about the proper role of the state seem settled (but again, the role of the state in non-Starfleet lives is hardly ever mentioned), certainly the idea of respecting all religions, and viewing all sentient lifeforms without prejudice is so ingrained in Federation citizens that it's shocking to even hear them make mild jibes about the physical attributes of another race.

I almost think the right way to reboot Star Trek now would be to have it be about someone in the 24th century making a reality show that follows the lives of a group of teens coming of age on Earth in the Federation...and then give us some insight into how the Federation gets a little screwed up by the resurrection of media they thought had thankfully died off in WW3...

I especially liked the way he described the playgrounds with the disappearing seesaws and monkey bars. I was a coming of age boy when the removed the monkey bars, which seemed to stand more than a story high for my young self, and replaced them with some kind of plastic paradise that looked like it was for 5 year olds.

Now, granted, even when I was a kid (of about 8-10) I thought those monkey bars were dangerous as hell, BUT there was something that was simply more "fun" about them when compared to the plastic jungle gym. It was refreshing to have this verbalized in what I would describe as "accurate" language. There was no risk involved so there seemed to be a smaller fun factor.

I will say that when I've been driving and I get caught in a song or something I'll start to speed. I'll zig and zag in between cars, and just before I get a taste of the wind in my hair I usually have this talk with myself where I stop and say "Oh shit this is illegal!" Ahh Monkey Bars, you'll always have a special place in my heart.

There is a reason it's officially listed in the Book of Awesome: http://1000awesomethings.com/2008/07/18/980-playground-equipment/

>> ^Yogi:

I have this movie...it's probably the funniest coming of age teen movie I know.


Wait you are telling me this isn't from a documentary??

I have this movie...it's probably the funniest coming of age teen movie I know.

Big upvote for taking a completely crazy premise (a Norwegian IT coming-of-age story) and executing it perfectly.

blankfist, ever thoughtful blankfist. We often butt heads, but you always mount an intelligent argument. I appreciate this. This is why I will allow you to bear my sift butt babies when you come of age.

I think most consumers understand that their money goes towards evil. I myself, socially conscious politico that I am, buy clothes made of Indonesian children, play Super Mario Galaxy (don't have the sequel yet, champ) on Chinese suicide victims and put dead Iraqis in my gas tank. I do my small meaningless part for wallet democracy by boycotting Exxon/Mobil, Wal*Mart and McDonalds, but those corporations thrive despite of my best efforts. Aside from that, I am completely complicit in oppression, as are we all. It's easy to ignore the suffering when it's so far away and there are so many everyday low prices. Any change in this arena certainly won't come from consumers, because we all play a part in this circle of misery. The system needs to be busted in two.

(note for campiondelculo: Yes, of course we could all move to a forest, use Ubunto and live off the grid, but get serious dude, that is an absurd and semi-retarted expectation for a world population of billions.)

Foxcomm had little or no regulation and started out as a small business. This empirical evidence would seem to completely contradict your hypothesis. How might a true free market have affected Foxcomm or prevented its ills?

I do think the majority of people want to do the right thing, that's why I support democracy. Without democracy, there is no civic means of expressing the public will, which means the guy with the most money calls the shots. Not really all that different than what we have already, just with less voting and more slavery.

Not sure how the jail thing fits into the larger context, but solidarity with you on that brother. Set the prostitutes and weed users free.

You sound a little red when you talk about majorities, communalism, tibal desires and coexisting. Are you becoming a Marxist? Either way, I've got wood. Baby making time?

>> ^Edeot:
I finally got around to reading Catcher in the Rye. Curiously, it wasn't in my high school curriculum. But I don't get it. It's an angsty kid walking around NY. What's the point?

>> ^dag:
^ It was kind of the coming-of-age novel for that generation. JD Saliinger = Douglas Coupland.


If it has to be explained why you should like it, you know it's good!