How can the gas affect people this much? I just felt high like I would on weed only my body was numb. Sure it was fun, but nothing this extreme.

I enjoy this show. Of course I'm not trying to compare it to other shows (yes, the UK version is fantastic... but let's include reality-tinted glasses when it comes to UK vs US shows.) I think the part that I enjoy the most is the idea, the setting. After losing the Woman, Sherlock Holmes loses control, hits bottom, forced out of his mind-numbing distractions of choice with rehab, and eventually moves to another country because he can't bare to be in the same country as his memories. Perhaps I see it as a man trying to recover from the soul-crushing experience of the only woman that he found worthy to love... and found so unexpectedly... perhaps I'm just a romantic... sigh.

I do not dismiss or hide from the show's faults, but all you gentlemen and gentlewoman can stay on your high horse while I shall enjoy both of the Sherlock stories, each as their own style.

Veteran cops, with no more empathy left to give?
It happens....give beat cops enough time on the street with enough LACK of debrief with pysch units, and eventually they go numb.

(full disclosure, Father was a cop for 30 years)

There was a time when I was excited about the future of gaming. I mean, I'm still excited, but it's taking way longer than it should... When the most exciting game to come out in 10 years is Minecraft (IMHO), that's when I call shit on the entire industry and realize that's just the shitty way that the shitty world works. Things become less awesome the more that everyone gravitates towards said same things. Companies see the money being generated and the only return on interest is to keep doing that thing that people say (more like "think") they like about the game(s).

As a consumer I think: Big business is fucked and always will be. I don't want to be marketed to. I don't want people to anticipate what I desire. When that shit starts happening, I'm done and I no longer desire. Because what I desire most is freedom from the constraints of this awful, mind-numbing, driven-into-the-ground system control. Stop, just stop trying to figure us out and by design minimize our being.

Trends are like two sides of an ascending roof coming to meet in the middle. On one side are publishers and on the other side are developers & consumers. When the two sides meet in the middle, business happens. BUT development and consumers (developers are consumers, thus are driven by the same motivations, albeit with the ability to make change) want to keep ascending to a new spot... AND PUBLISHING WON'T LET THEM GO HIGHER BECAUSE THAT IS WHERE UNCERTAINTY LIES. NOT. PROFIT.

Profit. Profit. Profit. YAY FOR THE FUTURE.

You are truly tiring me out. This is my last post on the subject.
1; Where did i say I knew better than the ASPCA? read my previous post again s l o w l y.
2; Yes, you are a bad parent. Exposing a 3 year old to even the slightest possibility of serious harm, is beyond comprehension.
3; In your first post you said you forced the dog to give up the bone (try reading your own comments), what exactly do you mean by "force?
4; I told you to look for the information on fighting breeds. And what anecdotes did I quote? (again, read my comment)
5; I did not say "ban them because everyone else does" I said countries have banned them based on their own research. (read my comment again)
6; I make no "arrogant, ignorant, assumptions." (read my comment again and point them out).
7; Whatever personal attack you perceive is groundless. My comment was based solely on evidence provided by experts (look it up yourself), and your attitude regarding your child's safety. Your only concession is the mind numbingly stupid approach of; "I won't wrap my son in bubble wrap." The fact that you have such an opinion negates you from serious debate. I'm done.

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

Fair Use

Your video, David Gilmour and David Bowie do Pink Floyd Comfortably Numb, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

This achievement has earned you your "Pop Star" Level 11 Badge!

This video has been declared a duplicate by the original submitter; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof declared by pumkinandstorm.

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Numb-Simon-Amstell-I-Live-Alone

1 more comment have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

See kids, alcohol is a dangerous drug. Dumbing, numbing and making lots of money, just the way they like it.

Hey @shinyblurry. What I can tell is your church failed to teach you how to ignore the supernatural brainwashing bullshit that all religions teach you, and how to steer clear of the completely fabricated nonsense that will doom you to a life of believing in hocus-pocus that divides all people, has started endless conflicts and murdered millions of people all for absolutely fuckall.

Reality 1:1

And the real world said to him "Truly, turly, I say to you, to run as fast as you can from anyone who believes in Jesus, because those people are completely fucked up and are going to destroy everything and turn people into total assholes"

To understand reality, you may have to sit in a quiet room and think to yourself "hey self! What's up with believing in something that has zero proof of ever being true even in the slightest? Like, are you that fucking numb?"


>> ^shinyblurry:

>> ^Fletch:
Hey, it's the Minecraft trailer music!
I want to say this is no more wacky than any other religions, but my frame of reference is as a confirmed Lutheran , so it does seem a lot wackier. God needs a secret handshake and password so he knows you're cool... that's just comedy gold. I want to start seeing "Hey Mitt! What's the secret handshake?" signs at rallies.

My last day ever in a church was the day I was confirmed. My mom made me a deal that if I completed the classes and shit I could decide on my own whether to go back. I didn't believe in magic then, and I don't believe in it now. Did it for mom.

Hey @Fletch, thank you for sharing this. What I can tell you is that your church failed to teach you the most important thing, which is how to have a personal relationship with God. Rituals and classes don't make you a Christian. To be a Christian you have to be born again;
John 3:3
Jesus answered him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God."
This is a supernatural rebirth, a complete recreation making you into a new man. It isn't something you learn about, it is something the Holy Spirit works within you when you truly accept Jesus into your heart. A man or a church can't do this for you; that's why confirmation, and other such rituals, are completely meaningless and ultimately a stumbling block to anyone who doesn't know Christ. This is why you left the Lutheran church in the first place, because following their precepts didn't bring you to know God personally. You said it yourself; you don't believe in magic. That says it all. This is the tragedy of many who grow up in Christian homes, who turn their back on what they presume is a dead faith, because they were never taught how to have a experiential relationship with a living God.
To know God is to Him personally. You could pray: "Jesus, if you're everything the bible says you are, I will follow you". If you can't go that far, simply ask if what I've said is true. God will show you, if you sincerely want to know. You managed to pass through the Christian religion missing the entire point of why it even exists. That is, to have a personal relationship with the creator of the universe, and the lover of your soul. God bless.

>> ^bareboards2:

promote this: Winston waited for members of the media to gather by his locker after the game, then told them: "If this isn't posted in the paper or run on your (website), this is the last time you're going to talk to me."

As for the Nascar analogy, I don't think the fans CHEER when an accident happens.
I grew up seeing footage of football stadiums going silent when a player was hurt or knocked out, and cheering when they stood up again.
You guys who are justifying the cheering are part of the problem that Eric is talking about. So numb to common human decency that you argue about what he is saying.
Cheer the big hits. Don't cheer a human comatose on the field.
In my opinion. Except Eric is right, and therefore I am right.


I'm sorry but this country is filled with blood thirsty bastards who love it when anyone with brown skin is killed in a horrific fashion. Is it that much of a leap to think they'd cheer a guy they don't like being seriously injured? We're not evolved as much as we'd like to think we are.

*promote this: Winston waited for members of the media to gather by his locker after the game, then told them: "If this isn't posted in the paper or run on your (website), this is the last time you're going to talk to me."


As for the Nascar analogy, I don't think the fans CHEER when an accident happens.

I grew up seeing footage of football stadiums going silent when a player was hurt or knocked out, and cheering when they stood up again.

You guys who are justifying the cheering are part of the problem that Eric is talking about. So numb to common human decency that you argue about what he is saying.

Cheer the big hits. Don't cheer a human comatose on the field.

In my opinion. Except Eric is right, and therefore I am right.

wasnt there a provision for those who sought to utilize public airwaves that they had to have so much "educational" programming in order to gain and/or retain their broadcasting license?

and isnt PBS only 40% tax-payer backed? i forgot where i read that PBS was ran on 60% donations.that the taxpayers filled in the gap/loss which averaged a 60/40 ratio.

either way you slice it,what we are seeing is political hay and nothing more.making the argument that PBS is some socialists wet dream is just bullshit.i wonder if the irony is lost on these people who wish to shut down an institution to replace it with mind-numbing,vapid staleness.creating a zombified drooling public.

or is that the actual intent? to dumb down the american public?

i would like to subscribe to that conspiracy but these retards cant get out of their own way,nevermind concoct such an elaborate scheme such as i am suggesting.

so all for the sake of political whoring we may lose an institution that has brought some of the best and ground-breaking educational programming since the mid 60's.
and the collective IQ of this country drops.
sad...
so very very sad.

sesame street came out the year i was born.i learned how to read before i hit kindergarten because of that show AND it was one of many shows that got my craving to absorb information and learn.

but i guess "future strippers of america" is more important.
bollocks......