IMO, no, it's not JUST her over the top attitude and total lack of manners and self control, it's also her insistence that the business support her and deny the trans woman, clearly thinking her emotional comfort should trump the trans woman's ability to participate fully in society.

It's definitely unreasonable to insist businesses break state and federal laws to provide her a penis free locker room, barring the trans woman from using the facilities. Remember, these are the same people that want to exclude not just trans people, but also gay people from not just locker rooms, but bathrooms, pools, tanning salons, anywhere you might see them partially undressed or they might see you partially undressed. I've seen people take that mentality to the public beach, telling gay men they can't be there because they might see a straight man or boy in shorts and lust after them, and claiming a mild pda (a kiss, hand holding) is illegal.

She had the problem, not the business, not the law. If she wants a penis free locker room, she should build her own.

Now I'll ask you, how is her daughter harmed by seeing a naked flaccid penis? The American puritanical mindset about nakedness is sick. There's nothing wrong with seeing a naked person, it won't hurt you.

Those mad ol' French on the anti-gay side of the fence eagerly hustled those kissy-boys off pretty quick and no-one even flinched when they physically engaged them-Sorry-I would have had to stop kissing and hyperflex a knee or two....

PDA manifests as irritating exhibitionism most of the time but they were after-all, only kissing in public.

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - thumbnail added by oritteropo.

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - thumbnail added by Boise_Lib.

Yep, change happened in the Auto Industry:

"As part of the 2009 restructuring of GM, the Obama administration insisted that “innovative labor agreements” be put in place at factories building small cars. The UAW pushed through, without a vote by local union members, a provision that allowed 40 percent of the workers at Lake Orion to be paid tier-two wages. The deal also opened the door to hundreds of even lower paid contractors."

Just how much are those tier two and three wages? I hear you ask.

"Not only has the UAW sanctioned second-tier wages of $16 to $19 an hour—little more than half of what traditional workers earn. It has also opened the door to a third tier of contract workers who earn as little as $9 an hour, with no medical or retirement benefits."

and

"In the present situation, however, rather than defending workers, the UAW is functioning as a cheap labor contractor. So thoroughly has the UAW reduced wages that American automakers are now boasting they can produce cars as profitably in the US as in Mexico, China or other low-wage countries."

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/dec2011/linc-d14.shtml

Depression averted: To an extent this is true, however it was averted without fixing the mechanisms by which it happened in the first place, and America is on the path to bankruptcy at the rate it is accumulating debt. In the short term you can fix just about any economic problem you want by printing and borrowing money, but in the long term you need to have a way of repaying your debt, I'm not aware of such a plan.

Iraq war ended: His promise was that ending the Iraq war would be the first thing he would do as president.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VlXfs1K04g
And while the official war is now over, the US of A has an embassy in Iraq the size of the Vatican city, costing ~$3.8 billion this year (the most expensive in the world) and they still have around 16,000 people involved in the 'diplomatic effort', the majority of which are private security contractors.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12319798/#.TytXO1z9PUc
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/18/us-iraq-usa-diplomats-idUSTRE7BH04B20111218

Looking at the bigger picture, the total defense budget, magically, despite the 'end of the Iraq war' is going to remain at similar levels, with projected spending of just under $700 billion for the next 4 years. This is of course because while you shrink your Iraq footprint, you increase it in other areas such as the Asia-Pacific.
http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1103bm47s1.pdf

This also doesn't take into account the spending that makes it's way to the military through other channels such as emergency funds, special projects etc. In fact more than half of every tax dollar is currently going towards military expenditure according to this:
http://videosift.com/video/53-of-each-American-tax-dollar-going-to-the-military

Bin Laden dead: apparently, not really worthwhile debating this as afaik there is no proof he's been killed and no proof he wasn't.

Same sex marriage: The DADT repeal was a good change, however at the Federal level same-sex marriage is still not recognized, not that I can criticize this, it's the same in Australia.

Anyway, that's my 2c, as usual, feel free to criticize.

I just wish they let the gays marry already, because honestly it really doesn't effect anything beyond some people being offended. And I could really give a damn. As long as they don't take gay marriage as some sort of sign to be out all public display of affectioning every chance they get, don't care at all. And that's not even a bash against two guys/girls PDAing, I just don't like seeing massive PDA stuff going on in public locations. You really don't need to be making out, grab assing and trying to head to second or third base while everyone watches. It's not even the grab ass, it's just they are in the way or moving too slowly because they are too busy trying to stick their tongues down each others throats. Same opinion on cell phone addicts, put it away or move out of the way so you stop holding everyone up.

Plus, if they allow gay marriage, Im hoping we can finally stop hearing about it. If they want to marry a lamp, let em marry a damn lamp. Besides I see "marriage" as a religious institution backed by government, they could just as easily have partnerships or bonded pairs or ball and chain mean the same thing as marriage in the view of the law. And while it wouldn't technically be marriage in the religious sense, they'd still have all the rights for insurance coverage etc. Because if these religions supported gay marriage we wouldn't have all these "Christians" running on a platform of stopping gay marriage, so bypass religion, get your rights under another name refer to it as marriage because in the eyes of the law it would be the same.

Marriage to me means you need a piece of paper and a ring to say you care, but I do recognize that having legal bonds might be beneficial for ownership, insurance, and medical emergency choices. They should focus on their legal bonds, stop referring to it as marriage to appease these ignorant assholes and then after it's in place call it whatever the hell they want. And then promptly stop talking about it, it's important to them I realize but man.....both sides are beating that drum like it's a very important topic that has long lasting ramifications. It doesn't unless you want it to.

Besides the way I see it, more gays married. Less Maury "You ARE the father" shows. And I think that's a win for everyone.

Same here blank... I hate fanbois.. and this guy seems to be a fanboi of bashing apple, or anything popular maybe.

The whole apple event was an advertising campaign. Being surprised that it was an advertisement campaign and bashing it for being as such just uncovers your own ignorance. His repeated examples of bashing the ipad commercials could easily have been replacing the ipad with any number of PDAs, palmtops, and smart phones that have pretty much used the exact same backdrops and feature presentations. Apparently all this is new to brooker.

>> ^Deano:

Hang on here. Let's be fair. I don't know who invented touchscreens or pinch to zoom or whatever and I don't much care.
But it's Apple who have come along and made mobile devices that are nice to use - very nice. No one else was rushing to take a chance on making an iphone. If it wasn't for them I reckon we would still be stuck with devices like my Nokia 6680, which is admittedly rubbish and with each passing day becomes more annoying to use. I've stuck it out for ages but gradually, very gradually, I can hear the call of an HTC Desire.
Before this I experimented with a Palm Tungsten PDA - overall it wasn't great. You had to use the stylus and learn that grafiti thing. And there was no itunes equivalent, no desire to connect with the customer and installing programs was tedious and would be buggy when you did. It didn't make me productive and it wasn't much fun either.

The iPhone is no doubt a nice phone, but it's not exactly like Apple invented the wheel here. In any case, I thought this thread was more about the iPad and whether any of us would buy it. I have to confess that I don't like flash, but even I have to admit that it's become part of the web experience. Somehow I feel the iPad would be great for things like playing Hapland on your couch, but obviously Jobbo takes it personally when it comes to Adobes format and won't allow it.

With the far superior Asus tablet coming out next year there's absolutely no reason for me to buy the iPad. Besides, I'm trying to get away from buying products of corporations that are into torture and restriction of free speech.

Hang on here. Let's be fair. I don't know who invented touchscreens or pinch to zoom or whatever and I don't much care.
But it's Apple who have come along and made mobile devices that are nice to use - very nice. No one else was rushing to take a chance on making an iphone. If it wasn't for them I reckon we would still be stuck with devices like my Nokia 6680, which is admittedly rubbish and with each passing day becomes more annoying to use. I've stuck it out for ages but gradually, very gradually, I can hear the call of an HTC Desire.

Before this I experimented with a Palm Tungsten PDA - overall it wasn't great. You had to use the stylus and learn that grafiti thing. And there was no itunes equivalent, no desire to connect with the customer and installing programs was tedious and would be buggy when you did. It didn't make me productive and it wasn't much fun either.

Isn't the digital landscape that more fertile for everyone now thanks to Apple?

@Farhad2000 - just to be clear there's no way they're forcing you to buy their products. I'm not using any - the limitations just rub me the wrong way.

>> ^campionidelmondo:

>> ^dag:
I would also posit that the same thing has happened, albeit in a smaller way, with the iPhone and iPad. finger optimised UI, Flick to scroll, bounce back scrolling, pinch to zoom and more are innovations out of Apple's skunkworks. These innovations exist on Android and Pre phones - but to assume that this would have happened without Apple is naive.

Nope sorry, Apple did not "invent" all of these things. I know about flicking and pinch to zoom being around before the iPhone, there's even a video of a desk-sized tabled demo employing those tecniques around here, but I can't find it right now.
Good thing Apple did not invent the mouse cursor, or else we all would have to use some weird thingy like a crosshair or sth because you can bet your ass they would've patented it.

I thought it was fake too... I wasn't convinced it was real until I looked up their organization. Apparently it's from:
http://egconference.org/

"Encounter God" from "The Father's House" ministries... Their other parodies are also from that conference, I guess. The one with the "Russian" rappers was kinda funny. When I watched it and they said "No PDAs!" I thought to myself "No PDAs? that seems rather arbitrary... I mean, sure, they are kinda obsolete with iPhones and Androids and such, but..." then I realized what I was watching.

Thanks to the miracle of google, you've very likely saved the life of an antelope in the distant future who found this helpful tip on his hoof mounted PDA in his moment of need.

Well done, Kymbos. Well done.

I just got the new apple Ipod classic 160gb that came out on the 9th sep09 suposidly apple have fixed the issues asocaited with the 2007 versoin that was discontinued in 2008 . for me not having to update the device and just have everything there is more important than a larger screen and better games.

I think if you were going to get a portable games/pda/midea device its hard call between zune and i pod , zune has more tech for the price and seems to be less up its ass as i pod , but due to popularity the i pod app store has alot of software and games.

I think in a year or maby 2 ill end up getting an Iphone by then i would hope they will have more than the 60gb of space , maby 150gb one. I defiantly think its a shame that the I phone dose not have a flash card exspantoin and apple as a company are protentoise nobs.

apple and microsft are both twats actually , Its a shame that you have to be a really large company to be able to offer decent consumer mobile media devices.

@ ponceleon:

It is that intuitive UI that makes the iPhone. In reality, Apple made a device that from a technical standpoint did nothing new (despite Time magazine calling it invention of the year). In someways, it was even backwards... I still don't get why copy/past didn't make the first release... prolly API issues. But it tied everything together in a slick and intuitive UI, something Palm, RIM and Microsoft have not done as well until recently.

These devices, PDAs and smartphones, were originally targeted to businesses. Features came first and the UI second. Apple esentially took the same technology but wrapped it in a UI that made it accessible to average consumers. This, more than anything, made it a success.

RIM, Palm and Microsoft are now playing catchup, although the Palm's Pre is looking very solid. The next gen of Palm hardware will prove extremely competitive, especially as it is designed for multitasking.

Hopefully continued competition will continue to bring better devices and features to market.

>> ^dag:
"...there is a large amount of hipster douchebaggery that goes along with all Apple products...

Now that's credible. So didja get it? Huh? Didja yet? I just put the new 3.0 patch on mine, and I like it a lot better. The spotlight search feature is an improvement (i will refrain from commenting on how long other pda's had this, oops) and so are the incredibly innovative features like cut AND paste!

It's officially fake: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/jun/02/digitalvideo-eminem

kymbos' comment makes allot of sense in retrospect