It's heavily implied by the contrast between the two characters. The counterpoint to obnoxious flamboyance isn't reserved, professional effeminancy but such straight masculinity that the viewer is surprised to learn the other character is also gay. Again, I get that this is caricature and comedy, but I couldn't help but feel that this video was saying, intentionally or not, that there are acceptable and unacceptable ways to be gay, a sentiment which is evidently shared by overcast.

Says who? What authority do you have to define what is and what is not gay? Your essentially saying that gays can only be gay in respect to whom they are attracted to. Anything else which deviates from mainstream heterosexual norms is "immature" and the mark of an "asshole". In other words you're only willing to tolerate difference so long as it's in a way that's acceptable to you. Who is the asshole again?

Again, the flamboyant character is caricature and much of his behavior is not work approrpriate. But it's entirely possible for a gay man to be effeminate and still be professional. According to you and this video however, once a gay man crosses the line into effeminancy, and starts to be different in a way that's harder to understand, then he deserves what's coming. I have a problem with that.

And how exactly does it dismiss it? I no where said that gay men must be flamboyant. I said that suggesting that gay men must look and act straight or face the consequences is deeply problematic. I have no problem with gay men who feel they only differ from straight men with respect to who they like to date. I do have a problem with someone suggesting that ALL gay men need to look and act that way. To me that seems like trying to manage difference so it's palatable to mainstream norms.

Full disclosure: I'm a transsexual, and unless you were extremely lucky or started transitioning before the onset of puberty, that means spending part of your transition, or in the worst case the rest of your life, looking visibly "not normal" to everyone else. I was not flamboyant, I was polite, unassuming, and did my best to fit in, but for a few years my mere existence was, to many people, as obnoxious and offensive as the flamboyant man in this video. Does that mean I deserved the hate and discrimination I got? I sure hope not. The fact that this video seems to say don't look different or you'll get what's coming to you, hits a nerve for me because for several years I COULDN'T look "normal" however much I wanted to. I'm just thankful I'm past that phase and people now see me as I see myself, treat me how I want to be treated, and I can live a "normal" life, because if this video is anything to go by then that's the hurdle you have to clear before you've earned the right not to be hated or discriminated against.

I doubt it was intentional either but that's not really the point. The things we unconsciously say can often be just as important as the things we consciously, intentionally say. When we're talking about whether or not specific groups of people are acceptable to a broader culture, so much of how people interpret such a discussion is through the lens of their own inculturation and unconscious assumptions.

Take a look at the black community's response to the Ferguson situation on social media. One of the memes that cropped up was a comparison of headlines between stories where a white person commits murder versus when a black person is a murder victim. In the former, the headlines express a sense of disbelief such as "Theatre shooting perpetrator was 'brilliant scientist', says graduate advisor". In the latter case, the headlines tend to imply the victim got what was coming to him or her, i.e. "Shooting victim had history of drug addiction, multiple arrests." Does that mean the news media hates black people and is hopelessly racist? No, of course not. I bet none of the editors who ran those headlines thought for a moment that they were imposing racial biases upon their stories. But, the biases are definitely there -- it's a shock that a white person would kill, but it's expected and probably just that a black person was killed -- and that shapes how other people perceive the affected groups without it even entering their conscious consideration.

In the case of this video, I doubt the comedians in question considered what I've brought up, but again the note on which it ends is definitely one of "if gay people just acted normal then they wouldn't have any problems in society." I find that problematic, whether it was intentional or not.

Well how else are we supposed to read it? The sympathetic character looks and acts "normal", and the viewer is led to assume that he is straight, with the twist at the end being that he's gay too, albeit a kind of gay that straight people won't find threatening, i.e. just like any other average guy except for whom he dates. After this revelation, the unsympathetic, annoying, obnoxious, flamboyant gay guy turns to himself and says "I'm not oppressed: I'm just an asshole!" In other words, gay people allegedly don't experience oppression and those that feel that they do are probably just obnoxiously flamboyant, like this guy, and hence deserve any negative reaction they get.

Don't get me wrong. I'm well aware that this is just a comedy sketch, and likewise anything even approximating the flamboyant man's behavior would be completely inappropriate in the workplace. But that said, I find it deeply disturbing that the implied messaging here is "if gay people just looked and acted like straight people, except in the bedroom, no one would have any problem with them."

So gay men need to be completely indistinguishable from hetero men, else they are assholes who deserves any poor treatment they get? Granted there is nothing work appropriate about the "flaming homo" character's behavior, but it's hard not to be a bit disturbed by a message that boils down to "don't ever threaten what other people consider normal, and if you do the consequences are yours alone".

This sort of thing is just a function of knowing what components of vocal tone you can manipulate, how to manipulate them, and engaging in careful, recorded practice until you can routinely reproduce the correct mix. Some vocal strengthening also has to occur over time, much like a singer gradually extending his or her range. The average female voice is only an octave higher in pitch than the average male voice, i.e. a pitch which with practice can easily be reached and maintained by nearly all men. The bigger problem is that men's voices are far more resonant, i.e. rumbly and full, than women's voices. What a man would need to do to reproduce a "girl voice" would be to raise his pitch, and then partially pinch his upper throat and palate, while simultaneously keeping a relaxed throat through which breath can easily flow. If you just pinch the throat without raising pitch, you sound like a nasally drag queen. If you raise the pitch and overly pinch the throat, then you get an artificially thin voice. Merely raising the pitch would just sound like a guy whose voice didn't deepen terribly.

Finally, all of the above would just produce female tone. Much of what we identify as "female" about a voice, isn't tone, but cadence, word choice, and inflection.

Interesting that A10anis keeps citing "the data and statistics", and yet hasn't cited a single datum or statistic. Although completely unrelated to knowledge of dog attacks, his shocking ignorance of exercise physiology (the relationship between long duration aerobic exercise and muscle catabolism is pretty well established -- exhaust your Glucose stores, and your body starts breaking down muscle and fat to keep your body moving) doesn't help his case much.

I haven't studied the "inherent violence" of the American Pit Bull Terrier to any great extent, so without any actual data, who knows whether or not they truly are "inherently violent". What I can say is that there are a number of breeds that are commonly mistaken for the Pit Bull, and dog attacks by any breed that vaguely looks like a Pit Bull often get called a "Pit Bull Attack" in the media. I have never owned a Pit, but my interactions with the breed suggest that they are very mellow and gentle: the polar opposite of, say, the highly strung, yappy, and territorial Chihuahua. The difference however is that if you piss a Chihuahua off it's not going to be able to do much to hurt you, whereas an angry Pit Bull can kill you. Of course, this is all just conjecture from anecdote, but until someone actually posts some data, that's all we have to go on.

>> ^Skeeve:

A warning from personal experience: this is a "Digital Combat Simulator" and not a game.
I tend to be pretty detail oriented, I like flight sims and love the A-10 but after about 45 minutes of this program I was done.
I think this program could be used as a diagnostic tool to confirm if someone has asperger syndrome.


Eh, it's not that complicated. The quickstart guide and the tutorials tell you all you need to know to start flying missions. Maybe 5 hours total to get up to speed on flying this thing. Many hours more to master the aircraft, but to just get started? Only a few hours and the tutorials are pretty fun too.

Definitely tailgating. I was counting only about 1-1.5 seconds of following time for most of the video. As others have pointed out, the MINIMUM time cushion is 3 seconds, longer in poor weather or at night.

"Did anyone see this movie?"

Unfortunately, yes. I loved Gettysburg, despite its weaknesses, but Gods and Generals was just plain bad. The film was badly paced, lacked any sort of dramatic energy, and accomplished the impossible by making battles such as Fredricksburg and Chancellorsville utterly boring. And for a movie that was primarily a biopic of Stonewall Jackson, you leave the theater with no sense of what made Jackson such a superior general. The movie's positive portrayal of slave-master relations in the South was pretty sickening as well, almost reminiscent of Disney's Song of the South.

"Oblivion is the best game ever created."

I get the feeling someone hasn't played very many games.

"Not Lies, but this is still pretty terrible. She's crying about herself, you see, not any of the country's problems."

That's been my take on this incident as well.

"Homo sapiens are the Greek words for man smart."

Err... Homo sapiens is Latin not Greek, as is virtually all taxonomy. In Greek, it would be Anthropos sophos.

Funny clip though, even if the scientist didn't know which language Homo sapiens comes from.

"It pisses me off that he had to die for nothing."

Note: the Medal of Honor citation was for an action in Afghanistan, not Iraq.

I wasn't aware that pursuing bin Laden was a worthless cause.