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Archives for June, 2008

June 30, 2008

Of Clerihews and Refuse

Kevin Shay

The Boston Globe's "Miss Conduct" (FOD Robin Abrahams) is running a Clerihew contest. Once you're done captioning it up down below, why not shoot a few stanzas their way?

Speaking of poetry, I enjoyed encountering this sign on the subway platform this morning. It's not entirely clear what action a given employee is supposed to take as a result of this warning (don't go into the Refuse Room at all? Don your flyproof gear?), but if I were an employee, I would appreciate the sign nonetheless.

More substantive guest-blogging TK.

June 30, 2008

New Yorker Anti-Caption Contest #152

Harry Effron

Submit the worst possible caption for this New Yorker cartoon. Click here for details. Click here to see last week's results. Good luck!

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June 30, 2008

New Yorker Anti-Caption Contest #151 Results

Harry Effron

Being a guest blogger, I'm not sure how to edit the already-posted contest, so I'll just re-post it with the results.


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Winner:

"You know the worst part about this job? I'm allergic to pencils. And they knew it, too, when they hired me. I hate this fucking company." — Tom Meltze

Finalists:

"You wanted 7 million pencils...6 inches long? Shit!" — al in la

"That, 'old bitch receptionist,' is my wife!" — Trotman

Honorable Mentions:

"Ticonderoga? I barely know 'er o ga...............never mind." — djack

"How is it that everyone has heard of Big Oil, but no one has heard of Big Graphite? That's where you come in...." — Kathy H

"Yes, the ad was supposed to say 'Experience with giant pencils a plus.'" Sorry for wasting your time, Mr. Holmes." — andeux

"I'm rather busy, but I might be able to pencil you in." —mypalmike

"That's what SHE said!" — T. A.

“Your job would be to sharpen these pencils. What experience do you have sharpening pencils?” — Deborah

Worst anti-caption (aka best real caption)

"May I borrow a pen?" —MAtt

Sucking up to the guest judge award:

"The Dixon Ticonderogas here are obscene." —kejo

June 27, 2008

The guest bloggers here are obscene

Daniel Radosh

indianlakeny.jpg

Unlike Barack Hussein Obama, I love my country so much that I'm taking an entire week off to celebrate Independence Day. In the meantime, I'll leave you in the capable hands of two card-carrying America-haters, Kevin Shay, author of the perfect-for-beach-reading comic novel The End As I Know It, and Harry Effron, author of the iconic caption/anticaption, The hours here are obscene.

Harry will also be handling contest duties, so be especially nice to him. I'll check in every now and then to assess everyone's levels of patriotism. Please aim the fireworks away from each other's eyes.

June 27, 2008

Leveling up

Daniel Radosh

robot-girl--piercing.jpg Here's something I said about video games last year: "Like cinema, games will need to embrace the dynamics of failure, tragedy, comedy and romance. They will need to stop pandering to the player’s desire for mastery in favor of enhancing the player’s emotional and intellectual life."

A month ago, game designer Steve Gaynor issued a call to arms: sketch out a game design that expresses a feeling and explores it through a conflict. He offers the following as suggestions.

Feelings:

The sadness of loss
The satisfaction of a job well-done
The joy of discovery
The vindication of upholding one's convictions
The anxiety of uncertainty
The thrill of infatuation
The alienation of being in a foreign land
The comfort of true friendship

Conflicts:

Duty vs. Passion
Indulgence vs. Prudence
Faith vs. Skepticism
Ostracism vs. Acceptance
Patience vs. Impulse
Masculinity vs. Femininity
Tradition vs. Progress
Innocence vs. Cynicism
Pragmatism vs. Romanticism

He's got a dozen submissions so far, though it's worth noting that the most interesting ones rely more on exploring/messing with the conventions of gaming than manipulating emotion. Which brings me to BioShock, one of the best games I've ever played.

Gaynor is currently part of the team working on BioShock 2. BioShock got a lot of hype, and then a lot of criticism, for its cheap moral dilemma (which Gaynor notes isn't even a dilemma). But what made it for me a transcendent gaming experience -- at least until the third quarter letdown -- was not the choose-your-moral-path conceit but, well, the way it explored and messed with gaming conventions. The big reveal in the middle not only satisfied me on a narrative level (I, for one, didn't see it coming, yet once it happened, could think of nothing else that would make sense), it was a development that could only happen in a videogame and that served as a wry if somewhat haunting commentary on what it means to play narrative games. It was exactly what I had said we need: a narrative device not borrowed from cinema, but built entirely on the language of gameplay.

I'm not sure there needs to be a BioShock sequel, but the fact that Gaynor is working on it is a good sign.

June 26, 2008

Maybe we can get Scarlett Johansson to e-mail him about this

Daniel Radosh

scarlett_johansson_loreal.jpg Selling out on public campaign financing doesn't bother me. Selling out on FISA is another story.

That's exactly what Obama is doing here -- completely reversing himself on telecom amnesty and warrantless eavesdropping, all in order to give the right-wing of the GOP everything it wants on national security issues in order to avoid a fight...

All of the decades-old, conventional Beltway mythologies are trotted out here to praise Obama. Democrats move to the "center" by embracing hard-core right-wing policies. Democrats will look "weak" unless they turn themselves into Republican clones on national security. A President becomes "strong" when he tramples on the Constitution and the rule of law in the name of keeping us safe. Democrats must embrace the Right and repudiate the base of their own party, and they must support Dick Cheney's policies while "standing up to the ACLU."...

"I will caution the Obama campaign that 'Better than McCain' is not much of a rallying cry. We all remember how 'anything is better than Bush' turned out in 2004."

June 26, 2008

Fact-checking stories about child prostitution is a $20 billion industry

Daniel Radosh

Let's get this out of the way first: It should go without saying that child prostitution is a Bad Thing, and that it is always a positive development when minors are rescued from a life of turning tricks. Even if you're talking about only one child in each of 16 major cities who is actually in this situation.

That wasn't the headline, of course. The headline was, 345 arrested, kids rescued in prostitution busts. Or, more simply, Hundreds nabbed in US child prostitution sting. Here's the AP lede: "Hundreds of people have been arrested and 21 children rescued in what the FBI is calling a five-day roundup of networks of pimps who force children into prostitution."

Wow, 345 people arrested for pimping out kids. Good work, FBI. Except, that's not exactly what happened. "In all, authorities arrested 345 people — including 290 adult prostitutes — during the operation that ended this week."

Let's see, 345 minus 290 equals 55 pimps. That's the grand total of people at the top of the food chain busted this week. There's a suggestion in the reports that at least some of the adult prostitutes may have been complicit in "luring" underage runaways and "throw-aways" into forced prostitution, but that's hard to verify, and shouldn't be assumed. In fact, it shouldn't be assumed that all those pimps were actually trafficking in children either. Let me explain.

In all, 21 child prostitutes were found in 16 cities. Thats an average of 1.3 children per city. Initial local reports are scarce, but one says that four of these children were recovered in Oakland. Which means at least some of the FBI busts in other cities must have involved no children at all. What did they involve? Here's the report from Miami.

Miami Beach undercover detectives who paid a $40 entry fee and boarded a stretch limousine bus Sunday found women onboard offering oral sex and lap dances for money, authorities said. Authorities arrested Christine Morteh, 29, of Miramar, and the driver, Clyde Scott, along with four other people Sunday. Miami-Dade jail spokeswoman Janell Hall said Morteh faces charges including offering to commit or engage in prostitution, conducting business without a license, directing another to a place of prostitution and deriving support from prostitution.

"The FBI isn’t investigating prostitutes and pimps, we’re investigating [the abuse of] children,” said a spokeswoman. But clearly that is not always how it works out.

Predictably, our old friends at the Center for Missing and Exploited Children are involved in this sweep, and here's what president Ernie Allen said about it: "These kids are victims. This is 21st century slavery."

Victims, yes. Slaves? Some, maybe. But as I've pointed out before, this casual conflation of all sex work with slavery has pernicious social costs. At least this time Allen and the media are acknowledging that these kids are runaways and throw-aways, instead of pretending that they're average middle class girls.

In case this story didn't already have enough of a "BOO!" factor, the AP felt the need to tack on a scary statistic: "A University of Pennsylvania study estimates nearly 300,000 children in the United States are at risk of being sexually exploited for commercial uses."

There's a goldilocks number if I've ever heard one. At least the AP stuck in "at risk." Usually this figure is given as the number of children actually being exploited. That's just wrong. The "at risk" version is correct inasmuch as that is what the study estimated. But it's still a bad number. The raw data for it comes largely from research by Professor David Finkelhor of the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center, and he calls the Pennsylvania study (or at least that aspect of it) "entirely premature and without scientific basis." That's from a must-read article about media scares in Skeptical Inquirer. There's also an interesting fact sheet from the Crimes Against Children Research Center that begins with the all-caps warning, "PLEASE DO NOT CITE THESE NUMBERS." The figure, it concludes, "is essentially a guesstimate and not a scientific estimate."

But wait! Child prostitution! Run for your lives!

June 25, 2008

That's the thing about Cliques. There's always a more powerful one.

Daniel Radosh

db1b2e06-3642-4ae9-a127-8a72401603c5.jpg

Interscope: You want the Pussycat Dolls on your show? You're gonna have to take the Clique Girlz too.

Nashville Star: You know what? Nah.

June 25, 2008

Debbie Nathan and Peter Landesman are going to be fighting over this one

Daniel Radosh
Jurors deliberated less than five minutes before returning guilty verdicts in the trials of the first two defendants, who were accused of grooming the kids for sex shows in "kindergarten" classes and passing off Vicodin as "silly pills" to help the children perform. [The five-year-olds] were trained to perform in front of an audience of 50 to 100 once a week.

Then they took a hot air balloon to the moon and were sodomized by Chuck Norris.

The trial of a third defendant was delayed after it came out that two reporters covering the case had been sleeping with the prosecutor.

June 23, 2008

Is Jesus Katy Perry's girlfriend?

Daniel Radosh

one_step.jpg
Katy Perry is a fresh-faced young pop star with a big new dance hit called "I Kissed A Girl." It's a typical, if lush and sexy, subjugation of female sexuality to male fantasy that shouldn't be taken too seriously, although of course youth pastors are. (Typically, this guy thinks the song has something to do with homosexuality. "This is really a video for young girls.
" Um, yeah.).

What's really interesting is that Katy Perry used to be Katy Hudson, a Christian recording artist whose parents are conservative pastors. Back in 2001, Christianity Today called her "a gifted songwriter in her own right who will almost certainly go far in this business."

Beliefnet's Joanne Brokaw writes, "Looking back, her 2001 debut wasn't a 'Jesus is my boyfriend' album; the lyrics were genuine and the album was a legitimate Christian release...It's a curious thing, that a girl who was obviously engaging in rebellious behavior got a Christian record deal in the first place. Either she's a great actress or a lot of people in the industry looked the other way." Hey, It doesn't surprise me that a cute PK could talk a good game, and that money-hungry record execs were all too willing to believe her.

Katy said she grew up listening to Carman, which is enough to turn anybody off of Christianity. But I suspect this story isn't over yet. Katy Perry's music, enjoyable though it is, is too clever and calculated by half. If she ever really was interested in "learning who she is," I doubt this is her conclusion. Knowing nothing about her personally, it's hard to say what will happen if and when the pop machine finishes chewing her up and spitting her out. Will she return to the fundamentalism of her childhood? Find a more moderate Christian path? Or continue moving forward, and grow into somebody with her own voice and her own path?

God only knows.

June 23, 2008

Exclusive: Scientologists target Clique Girlz

Daniel Radosh

jadenclique.jpg

Hey, Washington Post, those aren't just any anonymous babes!

Here's the CG's recent network TV debut -- an off-key rendition of generic faux-humble contemporary Christian schlock. There are days when I'm genuinely depressed at having jokingly anointed the Clique Girlz as the successors to Huckapoo. What was supposed to be a throwaway joke about my failure as a prophet of pop is now haunting me, as the CGs actually do achieve the megastardom that is rightly Huckapoo's. Where is the justice?!

June 23, 2008

Bill Kristol hates babies

Daniel Radosh

Bill Kristol, the New York Times' 65-pound eight-year-old linebacker, is at it again with a column, or something vaguely resembling one, about that MoveOn ad where a mother tells John McCain that she won't sacrifice her baby on the altar of his hundred-year plan for Iraq. Here are Kristol's objections.

Now it might be pedantic to point out that John McCain isn’t counting on Alex to serve in Iraq, because little Alex will only be 9 years old when President McCain leaves office after two terms.

The word you're looking for isn't "pedantic," it's "idiotic." Does Kristol really think a president can't establish policy that will continue to have an effect decades after he leaves office?

And it might be picky to remark that when McCain was asked whether U.S. troops might have to remain in Iraq for as long as 50 years, he replied, “Maybe 100” — explaining, “As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, it’s fine with me, and I hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world. ...”

In other words, McCain is open to an extended military presence in Iraq, similar to ones we’ve had in Germany, Japan or Kuwait. He does not wish for, nor does he anticipate, a 100-year war in Iraq.

Not "picky," "desperate." Germany and Japan are not "volatile parts of the world." And it will be many decades before Iraq is remotely like Kuwait (where we've only had permanent bases for about 15 years, and how has that worked out?) in terms of either stability or geopolitical significance -- and thanks to the Bush-McCain foreign policy, Kuwait may head in the direction of Iraq, rather than the other way around.

Andrew Sullivan has made short work of this objection already. "McCain's position is that he'd be fine with stationing American troops in fifty permanent bases in the middle of Mesopotamia for the next century or more. The woman in the ad is perfectly entitled to believe that such troops would not be in the same position as troops in South Korea or Germany."

So, why, I wondered after first seeing the MoveOn ad, did I find it so ... creepy? I was having trouble putting my finder on just why until I came across a post by a mother of a soldier recently deployed in Iraq, at the Web site BlueStarChronicles.com

First of all putting my finder on?! I apologize for ever having called Bill Kristol a hack, since the man has come up with a phrase that has apparently has been used only twice before in all recorded history. And don't tell me about the proximity of the D and G keys. I prefer to believe the man is a poet than a poor typist.

But more importantly...

Continue reading "Bill Kristol hates babies" »

June 23, 2008

The New Yorker Cartoon Anti-Caption Contest #151

Daniel Radosh

Submit the worst possible caption for this New Yorker cartoon. Click here for details. Click here to see last week's results.

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June 23, 2008

Why the fuck not Bil Keane?

Daniel Radosh

June 22, 2008

True lies

Daniel Radosh

283_2_08.jpg The Guardian, usually one of the UK's more responsible newspapers (for what that's worth), has a breathless article today on the Secret of the 'lost' tribe that wasn't.

They are the amazing pictures that were beamed around the globe: a handful of warriors from an 'undiscovered tribe' in the rainforest on the Brazilian-Peruvian border brandishing bows and arrows at the aircraft that photographed them.

Or so the story was told and sold. But it has now emerged that, far from being unknown, the tribe's existence has been noted since 1910 and the mission to photograph them was undertaken in order to prove that 'uncontacted' tribes still existed in an area endangered by the menace of the logging industry.

Gawker fell hard for the spin declaring itself (a bit tongue in cheek) vindicated for having speculated that the whole thing was a hoax.

The odd thing is, if you read The Guardian's original story on the tribe, there's absolutely nothing in it that's contradicted by the new "evidence," an interview with the man who shot the photos.

Deep in the Amazon jungle, one of the Brazil's last uncontacted indigenous tribes has been photographed from the air, to prove its existence.... Funai warned that logging in the region threatened the existence of the few remaining uncontacted indigenous communities.

"We did the overflight to show their houses, to show they are there, to show they exist," said Jose Carlos dos Reis Meirelles, an expert on uncontacted tribes at Funai. "This is very important because there are some who doubt their existence."

The only thing Meirelles "admitted" was what he had said from the very start. The word "undiscovered," which the Guardian puts in quotes today, appeared nowhere in the original account. Maybe some people got that idea from skimming the headlines, but I read all the original reports carefully when I paraphrased them for The Week, and it was clear that anthropologists had long known about this tribe, and scores of others -- the only thing that was new is that Meirelles and his team decided to photograph it and publicize the images.

Perhaps more interesting, and I'm surprised the Guardian didn't mention this, is that though the tribe has had no direct contact with the modern world, it has had contact with other tribes that themselves are in contact with the modern world, and it likely knows quite a bit about us and has obtained modern clothing and other items through trade. There is only one totally isolated tribe in the world, and there are even pictures of that one.

June 19, 2008

Deceptively clean and good natured title here

Daniel Radosh

A couple of months ago in one of our conversations about Christian rock, Jim asked if Paste Magazine "used to have a Christian focus." I replied with the guess that the people who started it "were undoubtably Christian and wanted to cover the music they knew from that world, but never as a genre separate from the other music that they liked."

Today I had the pleasure of meeting one of those people, blogger Will Hinton, who was visiting New York and nicely invited me to join him for a cup of coffee (although given the awesome weather, I went with iced tea). Will is a real mensch, which was already pretty obvious from his blog, but nice to confirm. We recorded a short video interview about Rapture Ready! and cross-cultural dialogue that he'll post soon, but I wanted to suggest that you check out his site now, so it doesn't just look like I'm promoting myself (because I'd never do that).

Will is the kind of person I enjoyed meeting most during my research: a refugee from the religious right, who is thoughtful about his beliefs and respectful of other people's.

Mostly, though, I'm just posting this because I'm getting a lot of traffic from Christianity Today, and I figured I should ease first time visitors into this blog, since for the past week, I've indulged in an unusual amount of off-color language (for which I blame John McCain) and photos of naked women painted like cows (for which I blame, uh, Ben & Jerry's?).

June 18, 2008

And just what kind of a name is Farhad, anyway?

Daniel Radosh

To understand why Obama's anti-smear site is doomed, you could read Farhad Manjoo in The New York Times and Salon. Or you could just read the responses to the site on the appropriately named Nutty News.

The thing to remember is that none of these people were ever going to vote for him anyway. Also, John McCain called his wife a cunt.

[Related post]

Update: Slate's rumors Obama supporters should forward. "Barack Obama wears a FLAG PIN at all times. Even in the shower."

June 17, 2008

Framing the debate on the Gitmo ruling

Daniel Radosh

Harold-Kumar-Guantanamo_l.jpg Most of the editorials and pundits praising the Supreme Court's
Guantanamo Bay ruling have actually been playing right into the hands of their opponents. The line they've all chosen to take is, Even though we're at war it's important to safeguard liberties. The Dallas Morning News captured the misguided spirit best: "By extending this key constitutional protection to alleged foreign terrorists, the high court has made it more likely that bad men will go free. But the court also made it more likely that innocent men will not be consigned to a U.S. dungeon in perpetuity... We applaud the court for risking error on the side of liberty."

Such mealy-mouthed liberalism is music to the ears of anti-liberty radicals, who know that they have a winning talking point (and campaign issue) in "The Supreme Court is risking your lives for the sake of some pre-9/11 high-falutin' principles."

The Buffalo News frames the story more accurately and more effectively: "The terrorists lost one Thursday."

The point of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 was not to bring down anything so small as the World Trade Center. Al-Qaida’s target was America’s long-standing principles of justice and the rule of law.

At just about every turn, the Bush administration has been unthinkingly complicit with its own enemies. The White House, with far too much help from a fearful Congress, has found practically no portion of the Constitution that it was unwilling to bulldoze or evade in its crusade to hunt down the terrorists and give Americans the illusion of safety...

Somewhere in his cave, Osama bin Laden knows he missed his target by one Supreme Court vote. Americans should remember that when they cast their votes this November.


June 17, 2008

For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country

Daniel Radosh

And yeah, it's true.

[Related posts]

June 16, 2008

The New Yorker Cartoon Anti-Caption Contest #150

Daniel Radosh

Submit the worst possible caption for this New Yorker cartoon. Click here for details. Click here to see last week's results. Click here to see the original caption from our bonus historical installment.

080623_a13464_p465.jpg

Winner
"Don't forget to slaughter the children." —Gary Goldsmith

Finalists
"Wow, you've located the legendary 'Lost Lockhorns' strip." —gary

"Well, they've escaped. God, we're terrible foster parents." —Andrew Payne


Continue reading "The New Yorker Cartoon Anti-Caption Contest #150" »

June 16, 2008

Stay tuned

Daniel Radosh

I don't know what's going on at The New Yorker, but they haven't posted their new cartoon contest yet. I guess if you're bored you could submit the worst possible explanations for that...

Update. I'm informed that while the new cartoon isn't up at Thenewyorker.com, it is up at Cartoonbank.com. Posting now.

June 13, 2008

Why not Bil Kristol?

Daniel Radosh

13russert-337a.jpg

June 12, 2008

Judge not

Daniel Radosh

got milk.jpg What you can't say in the Los Angeles Times: "When the credits rolled, a preteen girl seated to my right exclaimed, 'That was [expletive] awesome!'"

What you can say:

Among the images on the site were a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows and a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal...

The sexually explicit material on the site was extensive, including images of masturbation, public sex and contortionist sex. There was a slide show striptease featuring a transsexual, and a folder that contained a series of photos of women's crotches in snug-fitting clothing or underwear....

Among the sexually explicit material on his site that he defended as humorous were two photos. In one, a young man is bent over in a chair and performing fellatio on himself. In the other, two women are sitting in what appears to be a cafe with their skirts hiked up to reveal their pubic hair and genitalia. Behind them is a sign reading "Bush for President."...

He also said he planned to get rid of a graphic step-by-step pictorial in which a woman is seen shaving her pubic hair.

The defense of self-censorship is always that children read these newspapers (as if) and that it is important to maintain a "sophisticated and civil tone." But as the Alex Kozinksi story shows, the real issue is certain taboo words. How can it be inappropriate for a young person to read that someone their own age said "fucking awesome" about a museum exhibit, yet be perfectly fine for them to read about a "half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal"?

Normally in these posts I complain about how self-censorship actually makes straightforward news stories unnecessarily confusing or inaccurate. But in this case, it's the LAT's excessively clinical descriptions that give a false impression, especially when coupled with the repeated use of words like "pornographic" and "bestiality." When you actually see the pictures [NSFW@LAT] it's clear that Kozinski is being honest when he says posted them not because he thought they were sexy, but because he thought they were funny. Hell, the sexually aroused farm animal video is tagged both "Funny" and "Hilarious."

Frankly, I'm a little disturbed that anyone over the age of 14 -- much less a judge -- finds this crap funny. It's people like Kozinksi who are responsible for forwarding every dumb-ass picture they find on eBaum's world, and for that, sure, fire his ass. But for trafficking in pornography? I don't think so.

June 12, 2008

It was supposed to come with its own watermelon, but they decided to go for subtle

Daniel Radosh

The Sock Obama. My first guess was that it's just Prussian Blue having some fun with Photoshop, but according to New York Brit, there's an actual Sock Obama company registered to Utah Republican David J. Lawson.

Pinnacle-large.jpg

Suddenly Obama's Fight the Smears site looks a little naive, doesn't it?

Update: Functional Ambivalent is the next David Alexrod.

...fully cognizant of how offensive it is to depict black people as monkeys, I think this would be an excellent moment for Barack Obama to make campaign points by reacting with humor. A smiling, slightly derisive photo op would go a long way toward showing that he's not going to go all Stokely Carmichael once he's in office. There are actually people who worry about that, and this would be a nice moment to show a little post-racial humanity.

Also, stop harassing the real estate agent. It's a common name!

June 11, 2008

¿Cómo se dice WTF?

Daniel Radosh

Inane media self-censorship goes multicultural.

June 10, 2008

I'd like to turn on her hot water

Daniel Radosh

The protest babes are getting smarter.* Now they have video. (Context, if you need it.)


*Not so smart, though. The embedding doesn't work.

June 10, 2008

Blogging about child pornography is a $20 billion industry

Daniel Radosh

You will be shocked to hear that I have some questions and comments about today's front page New York Times story on an agreement by Internet providers to block sites that disseminate kiddie porn. This isn't necessarily an indictment of the agreement or the article, just a reminder that these things have a way of not being discussed as thoroughly as they should be.

First, here's the lede.

Verizon, Sprint and Time Warner Cable have agreed to block access to Internet bulletin boards and Web sites nationwide that disseminate child pornography... Many in the industry have previously resisted similar efforts, saying they could not be responsible for content online, given the decentralized and largely unmonitored nature of the Internet.

Now to the questions.

Continue reading "Blogging about child pornography is a $20 billion industry" »

June 10, 2008

Boo!

Daniel Radosh

My work here is done (last item).

June 9, 2008

The New Yorker Cartoon Anti-Caption Bonus

Daniel Radosh

I went ahead and put last week's contest out of its misery without realizing that the New Yorker is taking the week off, so there's no new contest.

To hold you over, here's a 1956 New Yorker cartoon by Alain. Submit your worst captions as usual, although this time there's no judging. The actual caption will be revealed next week, unless some kill-joy decides to look it up and post it first.

alaintoon.jpg

Original caption: "Young men, you’ve now reached the age when it is essential that you know the rites and rituals, the customs and taboos of our island. Rather than go into them in detail, however, I’m simply going to present each of you with a copy of this excellent book by Margaret Mead."

June 6, 2008

Apparently this site is now your clearinghouse for anti versions of anything in The New Yorker

Daniel Radosh

Ted Frank submits the following:

From the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times.

Twelve federal jurors drew the line Thursday for Tampa Bay area residents, saying the graphic and violent films of a Hollywood pornographer are unacceptable in their community. They reached that decision after watching 81/2 hours of extreme pornography on a giant screen in court. At times, they winced as an adult film producer who calls himself Max Hardcore performed in scenes that included urinating, vomiting and violently dominating women.

That's a hell of a urethra.

June 6, 2008

I knew I shouldn't have worn the pink shirt

Daniel Radosh

I wasn't going to post this interview I did with Reason.tv, but I had to share one of the reader comments:

OMG. That guy is gaaaaaaaaay. He may make some good points, but I'm having trouble seeing it through all of the gayness.

Seriously, it's freaking me out. I'm not anti-gay at all (gay it up, gay people!), but this man is making the stereotype seem reasona... it's killing me! Make him stop! :)

June 5, 2008

One of these things is not like the others

Daniel Radosh

Amazon.com reviews from user "S.K."

Bonus fun after the jump.

Continue reading "One of these things is not like the others" »

June 5, 2008

That's why Gawker Media pays the big bucks

Daniel Radosh

Idolator discovers the Clique Girlz. You may have read about them here a few times in the past year.

June 5, 2008

So the answer isn't just "write suck-ass captions"?

Daniel Radosh

By now you've all seen Slate's article on How to win the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest. Maybe you also read this Q&A with with Farley Katz, the New Yorker assistant who reads all the caption entries. And yet, maybe you still have questions.

Well, I met Farley last night at a party, and he agreed to answer them for you (like, cartoon editor Bob Mankoff, he's a fan of the anti-caption contest). Post your questions in the comments, or e-mail them to me, and I'll pass them along. To save you time, he has already agreed to answer the top two: Why didn't you choose my caption? and Why do all the captions you do choose suck?

June 2, 2008

Why not Bil Keane?

Daniel Radosh

June 2, 2008

The New Yorker Cartoon Anti-Caption Contest #149

Daniel Radosh

Submit the worst possible caption for this New Yorker cartoon. Click here for details. Click here to see last week's results.

080609_cartoon_7_contest_p465.gif

Winner
"Good Morning. I have an IM from Kaitlyn: 'IMHO you should wear that cute power-blue top today with your white shirt...I'm hearng that Tyler likes Ashley, but she is so not interested...Didn't Morgan look fat yesterday in that hideous outfit? I'm like: What were you thinking, girl?...Oh, and please get your computer fixed. My mom's starting to bitch that this costs too much. (She's such a Drama Queen)...See ya at school!'" —al in la

Finalists
"I'm telling you, lady! Millions of lives are in danger unless you unzip my front pouch, reach in, and pull the lever! Hurry, it's a national emergency!" —kejo

"Thanks for directions to the air show, prostitute." —David John

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