I'm not thinking in binary. There's gray area.

There's no debate about the fact that virtually everyone is somewhat racist. This isn't a debate about that.

I'm saying making any joke that is related to race isn't racist every single time, just as avoiding saying anything that could be construed as racist doesn't mean you're absolved of being a racist.

A joke that is actually racist is expressing an idea or feeling of one race's superiority over another directly or indirectly through humor.

Ironically making racial statements that I absolutely don't believe is NOT racist because I'm not expressing racial superiority. I'm pointing out the idiocy of racism and poking fun at racists.

About the random black person overhearing my joking, yeah, they'd be offended. Thank you for making my point. They'd be offended precisely because they heard those words out of context.

If you saw a grown man say this to a little girl sternly:

"...go cry me a river..."

You might be inclined to think he was acting like a jerk to her. But what if you had heard....

"It's a figure of speech. If you ever for example hear someone say 'go cry me a river', they don't actually mean one person's tears can be that much water."

It's the SAME THING. That man did nothing wrong, but you heard him say 'go cry me a river' to a little girl without context, it may look bad, when it's not.

Just because someone may get offended by hearing something out of context, it is not automatically something wrong with what that person said.

Even the dreaded N-word... Are you telling me that it was wrong and racist for Mark Twain to use it in The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin?

The one thing I would agree with you is that you also have to be mindful of context before saying the joke. Those racial jokes I make? I'm not going to say those in situations where there's a high likelihood that those statements could be overheard and misinterpreted. If I wanted to tell those to a black person, I'd make REALLY sure they knew I didn't actually believe the racial statement.

And you know what? Usually, it turns out fine. I've played that Louis CK thing for a black friend of mine, but I laid down the context first that it's Patrice O'Neal, etc. And they laughed hysterically at it.

Richard Pryor is considered by most comics as being a pioneer in using comedy to shed light and provide insights into racial tensions, etc., and actually is credited by many people far beyond just comedians to have helped further the cause of fighting against racism.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5048430

His use of the N-word wasn't racist. The use of the word was communicating that he was not Bill Cosby, not that there was anything wrong with Cosby's comedy, but it was to signal that he was talking more about reality, including the rough edges especially about racial topics, and there wasn't anything wrong with that either.

The kill somebody thing. You ever seen someone say something like, "My roommate AGAIN left all the lights on! I'm gonna kill him!"? My point there is you shouldn't call the cops because you think he's homicidal.

Friend of mine gave me a plant the other week. Wierd little thing, just a corm and nothing else. No maintenance at all. Today, while I was at work, it blossomed.

Now I know that it's a voodoo lily. And that it smells like a dozen rotting carcasses. Seriously, my entire fucking apartment smells like Zombieland.

When I called her about it, she was laughing her ass off...

If you folks that are color blind want to see in color without spending $400 there is a solution, albeit a very temporary one.

Hit acid.

No seriously. A good friend of mine is red/green color blind and when we used to hit acid a lot in our 20's he could suddenly see every color. He could pick out the red in the sunset, the green of the grass.

These glasses though, I'm gonna have to tell him about them. People spend $400 every day on regular glasses or shit, fancy shades. $400 seems a pittance to see the world as it is meant to be seen.

A friend of mine lost consciousness while parachuting last summer. He says they synched the gear too tight, which cut off his circulation and he passed out. whether he mannaged to deploy his chute, or it opened on it's own, I'm not sure, he doesn't remember anything after that.
He regained consciousness a while after he hit a house and bounced to the ground.
He's lucky to be alive and is continuing to re-learn how to walk again.

Nearly pissed my pants, mate.

A friend of mine bought two of 'em to power his 4k setup, and he doesn't even want a refund. It irritates me to no end...

A friend of mine foresaw the same issues but chose a different strategy: he intentionally had his two kids 5 years apart to avoid rivalry and so the older one would take care of the younger one. Seems to have worked out well so far.

Interesting that he chose that analogy.

If someone said to me he's the 'Bruce Lee playing ping pong of archery', I would take it to mean it's all faked. (Bruce Lee never played ping pong with nunchaku, it's a well known fake).

I asked a friend of mine about it. He has represented his country in archery, so I trust his opinion on it.

Paraphrased:

Yeah, it's real.
No, it's not that impressive.

He didn't "rediscover" any of the techniques he claimed to. Most of them have been known for ages, and the change for modern archery was intentional and well known. the whole "studying ancient manuscripts" etc etc is bollocks

the catching arrows thing: difficult but not impossible. you use a very light bow, and it's actually not that hard

his accuracy is mildly impressive. not what I'd call amazing at the ranges he shows

he is fast, i'll give him that

this is a video of a very talented friend of mine from the dunedin 2014 wearable art show and i cant post it due to the fact i am affiliated with him but i love this video and would really like to promote his work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saBKnTciqrI

any suggestions how i could do that?

That's horrible. I hope he didn't have any long-lasting suffering. I'm sure it's unlikely, but were the attackers ever caught?

Totally not the same thing, but I relate in a mild way to the horror of a senseless attack. On Halloween when we were teenagers a friend and I were just walking down the street when a group of Asian guys [nationality excluded intentionally] came up behind us and cracked my friend over the head with a wooden club presumably for not being Asian.

Coincidentally, or perhaps not, on some other occasion we were walking down a busy street minding our own business when another Asian guy walked up to us and delivered a hard leg kick to him without saying a word.

That friend of mine was a big target for some reason, maybe because he's a ginger. (He's married to an Asian woman of the same nationality now. Actually so am I.)

Coxswains are typically chosen for size more so than anything else. I recall the crew team at my school went through a few because they kept crashing into bridges and damaging the none-too-cheap carbon fibre boats.

edit: Oh, also coxswaining (awesome verb, that) is apparently extremely difficult. Basically, all my knowledge of crew comes from a friend of mine who rowed and did pretty much nothing but bitch about the coxswain.

I think I can explain the democrat hate: pure romanticism

Lincoln was a Republican, arguably our best president in history. I think people still try to attach to that and ignore the fact that the parties basically flipped because of the Southern Strategy after the Civil Rights Act. That and Republicans weren't always hijacked by the crazies. I think too many people don't want to admit their party has changed. It's also indoctrination. I've met plenty of people that agree with me point by point, yet they still manage to do these crazy mental gymnastics to rationalize to themselves that they HAVE to vote Republican. It's how they were brought up. Hell it almost happened to me, as a kid, long before I had any political identity. I always assumed I was Republican simply because I believed what everyone told me "Republicans are good with money, Democrats waste it" It wasn't until much later that I realized how untrue that was. Hell, even my first presidential vote in 2000, I listened too much to a Republican friend of mine ( one of the people I mentioned before that agreed with me on most everything, but still voted Republican) and because of his influence, I did vote for Bush in 2000 (so so sorry...not that it mattered in my red non-swing state)

One of my best friends is like this. he doesn't vote purely along party lines, and we agree on most political points, yet he still identifies as a Republican when in my opinion, he's an Independent like me. I think it's mainly because he was brought up by a military family and he was brought up to believe that the dems were the devil...despite how much he tends to agree with them.

its totally dysfunctional.

Its also part of the human condition IMO. There is a human need to have an enemy. Back in WWII we were pretty much united because we had to defeat the Axis. In the Cold War we were mostly united because we had to defeat the Russkies. America kinda stands alone now. No other military on earth can really challenge us. Sure the Taliban and ISIS are a source of terrorism, but they're still not a real threat, they could never invade or occupy us.

So there just aren't any real big threats out there...and when that happens...that's when infighting begins. People need an enemy, and when you can't find one without, you find one within.

Trance said he doesn't understand why she doesn't. You said why should she have to? Nobody is saying she has to. She might want to if she'd like to avoid hearing other people speak their mind. It's her choice. Similarly, catcalling is their choice. They don't need to be classy if they don't want to.

The Jessica Williams video is better in that it isn't about privileged white cisgendered problems exclusively. However, it also doesn't make the case very well. There isn't any evidence of "Wall Street douches" making catcalls unless you want to talk about a picture of a blurred out face in a suit verbalizing nothing.

The assertion that many men are making is that girls selectively complain about catcalls. Specifically, they only want attention from the men they want attention from, and expect us to read their minds... I'm sorry... Body language... and figure out the difference.

For example, a (female) friend of mine was a teaching assistant at UT. She tells this story about going over a study on gender differences regarding random propositions for sex. As you might expect the results were that men were more likely to say yes, and women no. Big surprise there. Well, once the professor finished, Vince Young raised his hand and said "that's not how it works." Every girl in the room (according to my friend) blushed, giggled, twirled their hair, and "made eyes at him." It seems every girl in the room was ready for proposition from an nfl quarterback... Just not homeless people drinking on the stoop.

I got recommended to read Atlas Shrugged by a friend of mine. That friend turned out to be a beret-wearing high-art-snob ponce, but i didn't know it at the time.

I managed to finish it and whilst there were reasonable ideas in there that i think in some way we have paralleled in reality - whilst i find that most of her characters are sociopathic to some degree, i can very much sympathise with the idea of being led by the least capable in society who abuse the system of power that they shape and build to implement bad ideas badly.

I like the idea that the world would grind to a halt if the morons in charge did not have the ordinary, hard working people to keep things afloat... but that's about all i like about it. And i think we genuinely can see it happening in the world today in a less exaggerated fashion - the recent recession clearly demonstrated that the people in charge of money and property do not understand what they're doing and ignored the warning signs for years. Furthermore, our feckless leaders have done nothing about it, property bubbles continue to grow and bonuses for the upper echelons are still outlandish whilst the lower workers are struggling to get by in the recession. And then the expenses scandal of the MPs in Britain literally stealing money from the public pocket to have their moats cleaned (that actually happened) and such. Yesterday the watchdog looking into the scandal has decided that the investigation will take place in secret from the public and punishments will also be kept secret. Et voila, two clear instances of those in charge having no clue and no moral compass swept under the rug and forgotten about.

In conclusion, Ayn Rand is a very small minded individual who thinks that everyone in the world must think like she does. That is the only reason i can think of for the approximately 30 pages i read about the female lead character's personal sexual obsession with being taken aggressively by a man and made to feel defiled and used, and how all women feel that and all men wish to dominate and use a woman in turn.

But i think she got it spot on about how being led by those least capable morons will bring the world to its knees, and it won't require the hard workers to quit either. It just requires them to let it happen. And there's no little paradise to run off to, there's just Earth.

@artician - that's exactly it. The characters have no human empathy in Atlas Shrugged. I don't understand why it has to be all or nothing for most people - all conservative or all liberal. Why not the best of both? It IS possible to be ethical, productive and innovative at the same time.