You take your username from a guy who settled arguments by jamming his finger into peoples' eyes

People in fucking glass houses, and whatnot.

Here is how I interpret the broad religious warnings against "graven images" and why

They are a classic example of how religion, as practiced by humans, tends to get fundamental concepts wildly, spectacularly, disasterously wrong.

I believe the original messaging- which turns up in many religions, including the western monotheisms- was specifically intended to communicate the idea that "God" the concept was too big, broad, and ineffable to be contained in a word, a symbol, a picture.

More widely the intent, the deep intent, is hopefully to get people to grok that ALL their language, their symbolic abstractions, while undeniably useful tools, are just that- a necessarily limited and limiting fascimile of the real "thing", which which exists above, beyond, and outside of language.

The point is that no map will ever perfectly reflect the territory. So as long as you remember that you are dealing with a map, and not the actual thing itself, you're fine.

Religion, of course, misinterprets this to "kill everyone who makes maps"

Bullshit.

That's Pat Buchanan in a wig, is who that is.

He covered his face but not his license plate.

Not the brightest Wizard at Hogwarts.

What happens in Vegans should stay in Vegans.

Because her aspect ratio is all fucked up?

Seriously, that thing is giving me a headache.

Anyway, if there's one thing I can't stand almost as much as Kardashians, Hiltons, and other emblems of vacuous famous-for-being-famous-osity, it's breathy, overwrought pontificating on the ominous implications impled by said phenomena.

Yeah, who cares. Kim Kardashian is a celebrity mobius strip, an Escheresque strange loop of self-feeding (and self-enriching) media pretzel logic. So what? Is (so-called) "late-stage American-style capitalism" really the only human endeavour that glorifies, basically, nothing? (Let's avoid dovetailing into what seems to me an almost inevitable digression into religion, here) No, actually, it's not. Very few "celebrities" around the world are Dalai Lamas, at least compared to the number who are on TV because they can look good in a tank top while eating a banana.

And ever was it thus.

And that "famous for nothing, rich for just being there" as thing? Yeah, okay, maybe the part about fighting the revolutionary war to be free of royalty is a bit overstated, given that the impulse seems to be hard-baked into at least the supermarket tabloid aspects of our collective English-speaking psyche.

But come on. Whatever it is, it's not exclusive to the US, and it's certainly not new.

The point is, to say that anyone who doesn't lose their shit over porn, swimsuits, and

Spiderwoman's butt, isn't a "real liberal", and in fact is somehow echoing right wing views - is facile, flat out false, and in fact 180 degrees from the actual political reality.

Yeah.

Now THERE is an actual, real gaping hole on DU.

But then, that was someone who never went in for self-congratulatory bs or the like... Who simply showed up and fought the good fight, and defended her right to make up her own mind on her own terms.

The word "loss" is tossed around too easily, when anyone can post a GBCW thread in GD, drum up 100 "please don't go" responses, and then make a dramatic exit, only to show up six months later "I'm back!!!! miss me?"



And we're talking about screen names, fake nom de plumes by people who, for all we know, have 20 socks in the drawer. Raindog was a real loss, an actual loss.

The good ones don't announce their leaving. The great ones, like raindog- man, I sure wish I could have at least said goodbye.

He's spider-man, remember

those are egg sacs.

Old news. Grovelbot has been riding the rails for years

He was traveling with the hobo circuit in the 1930s, singing folk songs and eating old screws and bolts out of a rusty tin can warmed over a campfire.