kimmy

That being the case, why bother with the "Man From UNCLE" nameplate at all, then? -k

I finally got Windows 10. I assume that because Dubya was still President when I bought my motherboard, it took them a while to get around to writing drivers for my hardware. Whatever the case, I'm really impressed by how painless the upgrade process was. Everything worked flawlessly. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it never did. Maybe being late to the party means they had a chance to get all the bugs out of their upgrade process, or maybe they just really did their homework. Anyway, very pleased. It runs ... exactly like my Windows 8 installation did, which is extremely smoothly. -k

Oh! You're the guy who went to see that! edited to add: I have to wonder, what exactly made them decide that "The Man From UNCLE" was a franchise that needed a reboot? I mean, I gather that it was a popular program in its day, but it's day was 50 freaking years ago. I understand the idea of cashing in on nostalgia... recent remakes of A-Team and MacGyver and Dukes Of Hazzard make the point... but those programs were on TV 20 years before their movies, not 50. At 20 years, people who remembered watching those shows as kids or adolescents were probably in their prime movie-going years when the movies came out, and might have had kids to take to the movie as well. With "The Man From UNCLE", the people with nostalgia for the original program are of an age where they seldom go out to the movies anyway. The Charlie Brown movie might also play on nostalgia, but Charlie Brown never went away. Whether your 5 or 65 or anywhere in between, Charlie Brown was part of your childhood. It's timeless. The only idea that I can think of that might have inspired a Man From UNCLE reboot is that with the success of the Mad Men TV series and the recent '60s-set X-Men movies, some studio exec decided that retro chic is happening and went looking for anything 1960s related that they could make a buck from. -k

I just watched the first episode of "Marvel's Jessica Jones" on Netflix, and was pretty blown away. Jessica is a private investigator. She lives and works in the crappy Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York City, struggling to find clients and pay rent. Her life is a disaster. She's severely alcoholic. She's haunted by flashbacks and suffering from PTSD. She hates pretty much everything, including herself. She's also a former super-hero. She's super strong! She can lift cars! But she's a broken shell of a woman. In the first episode we learn that her life was shattered by an encounter with a super-villain who controlled her mind and ... well, we don't know the details yet, but she has never recovered from it. She self-medicates with alcohol and cut everyone from her life. She thought he was dead... but now he's back and he wants to torment her again. This is is a far more adult program than the rest of the recent Marvel offerings (although, I say that without having seen Daredevil...) and I found it really gripping. I am definitely excited about watching the rest. -k

And further to that, the National Board of Review has named Mad Max: Fury Road "Best Film" of 2015. "The Martian" and "The Hateful Eight" also figure prominently on their list. -k

How many gay men would self-identify as such in the midst of an environment where doing so could bring a high likelihood of getting beaten or killed? The women and children in these refugee camps are living in terror and sexual violence is epidemic in the refugee camps. In terms of protecting people from imminent danger, getting the women and children out of the refugee camps ASAP is the obvious highest priority. -k

Fiorina is one of the most flagrant offenders at inflammatory language on this issue, with her incendiary and wholly fictional account of stuff she imagines she saw in that video. Ted Cruz is apparently claiming that Robert Dear was a transgender leftist activist. Mike Huckabee was at least forthright in calling this an act of domestic terrorism, completely defying my expectations. -k

She dodged a bullet. There's a saying among guys that "you don't stick your dick in crazy." Among ladies, it goes double that "you don't let crazy stick its dick in you." Meanwhile! Pats! LOSE! Gronk! INJURED! Panthers! UNSTOPPABLE! Panthers! Could! Go! All! The! Way! Cards! ROLLING! Chiefs! ROLLING! Texans! ROLLING! Lions! ROLLING! Wait, what? Lions? Rolling? That's kinda weird... Falcons! NOT ROLLING! 49ers! NOT ROLLING! Browns! NOT ROLLING! Browns! SUCK! Titans! SUCK! -k

I once saw a movie on a similar theme, called East Is East. It's about a London family of a Pakistani-raised father, his English wife, and their children. The father wants to pass on traditions to his children, but some of them, to varying degrees, reject tradition and adopt modernity, which is a source of conflict. "I want to show them a good way to live!" he protests at one point, when his wife confronts him over how he is trying to impose himself on their children. But ultimately he realizes that they will choose their own way. It's quite a good film. Once upon a time, my internet circle of friends included an Egyptian woman from a wealthy family, and a Canadian man who was so smitten with her that he planned to convert to Islam so that he could marry her. He traveled to Egypt to meet her. Later on they met in Europe for a vacation together. I lost touch with them, so I don't know how things ultimately turned out. -k

I don't believe in this "Islam is like this, but Christianity is like that" type bickering that has taken over the thread. You can find plenty of examples of good people in both religions, and awful people in both religions. There's awful stuff in the texts of both religions. This is a British documentary that did undercover filming in mosques. And what they found is that Saudi money funds a terrible message in a lot of British mosques. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJk_AiK-4No This is the kind of crap I don't want to come to Canada. -k

Yeah, but religious groups aren't campaigning to be President. There's a paradox that we saw in 2012... to win the Republican primaries, you apparently have to appeal to the most right wing and evangelical elements in the party... and yet to do that you end up saying a bunch of stuff that will make you unelectable in the general election. Much of the stuff they're saying right now will be "walked back" between the time the nomination is won and the Presidential election. The Romnoid Campaign of 2012 developed a strategy where Mitt would go out with some red meat to rile up "the base" one day, and then campaign spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom would go on the news shows the next day and issue "clarifications". "Yesterday Mitt Romney said he was going to defund Planned Parenthood. Does he have any plan to provide healthcare for all the women who rely on Planned Parenthood?" "Look, we're not going to eliminate Planned Parenthood. What he means is that we're looking for ways to find economies to deliver these services on a smaller budget." And that sort of thing. -k

Well, Fox and Breitbart were earlier trying to sell the idea that this was actually a bank robbery gone wrong, although they seem to have backed off that brain fart since both Chase Bank and the law enforcement on the scene have categorically rejected it. I offer a new theory: perhaps it was a tailgate party gone wrong! Since the shooting started in the parking lot and since be brought propane tanks with him, likely to fuel a barbecue, it seems plausible that perhaps he just wanted to have a tailgate party. His reference to "no more baby parts", which on the surface seems like an obvious reference to those fake Planned Parenthood videos that Operation Rescue made, probably actually refers to those baby back ribs that Carolina residents love to barbecue. It seems likely that he became upset when he discovered the grocery store was out of baby back ribs. -k

I predict MSJ is correct about this much: nobody on the "right" will concede that the events in Colorado Springs yesterday were a terrorist attack, even though it fits any reasonable definition of the term. -k

I'm feeling a bit conspiracy-minded about current developments regarding Turkey, ISIS, and our allies in this conflict. Russia has been claiming that the volume of oil being smuggled from ISIS-controlled areas into Turkey is on such a major scale that it's difficult to believe that Turkey is unaware of it. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/moscow-steps-up-attacks-on-turkey-over-isis-oil-pipeline-a6752216.html Russia has been targeting these operations with their bombing campaign, and it seems possible that this may have resulted in the downed Russian jet. This area-- Raqqah-- where Russia has been bombing oil infrastructure, is a lot closer to Turkey than to Iraq... Is our NATO ally buying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil from ISIS? If so, doesn't it seem kind of unlikely that we-- Canada, the US, and whichever other Western nations are supposedly fighting ISIS-- don't know about it as well? It can't be easy to sneak vast quantities of oil around in the desert with surveillance planes and spy satellites flying around overhead. But if not Turkey, then where is it going, and why can't we put a stop to it? Something about all this just defies logic. -k

This is a long-standing policy on the forum, and it was enacted to try to keep the level of discourse from going down the toilet. We used to have members who insisted on using terms like "CONservative and LIEberal" and referring to politicians by insulting nicknames like "Jean Cretin" or "Harpitler" and any number of others. Referring to the prime minister by a feminine version of his name adds no value to the discussion and only serves to inflame others to provoke similarly insulting responses, and lower the level of discourse. It's not a ban on Hate Speech, it's a ban on Stupid Speech. -k

Allegations that the Chicago cops destroyed evidence in the shooting of that guy: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-chicago-cop-shooting-laquan-mcdonald-met-20151127-story.html -k

So a week after sharing the stage with Kevin Swanson, the pastor who thinks gay people should be executed, Ted Cruz enthusiastically accepted the endorsement of Troy Newman, an anti-abortion activist who thinks abortion providers should be executed. Troy Newman is the man behind those fake Planned Parenthood "sting" videos that have everybody all riled up. While the motive hasn't been determined yet, everybody with more than a few brain-cells to rub together suspects that yesterday's events in Colorado Springs were an anti-abortion terrorist attack, and the videos probably played a role. -k

I'd think that translation and English-language audio would be an expense they probably wouldn't bother with if they assume there's not going to be a demand for it. I suspect the anime pervs will still be able to play with their waifus in the original Japanese if they're determined. -k

What in the blazes are you on about now?? I never claimed we had a "high percentage" here, but we certainly have a Sikh community, a large number of aboriginals, and a lot of migrant agricultural workers during half the year. Somebody here-- was it you? --was talking to me as if I had not met non-white people on account of where I live. First off, I've lived most of my life in Canada's major centers, including Vancouver for a while. Second, it portrays an ignorance of the rest of the country to assume that only the biggest cities have non-white people. And finally, I can't imagine why you'd assume the number of Sikhs, aboriginals, and Mexican orchard workers will have any effect on whether Syrian refugees come here. Plans are in the works to support a handful of families, but this is a small community, with a tiny Muslim community. We don't have many Arabic speakers. We have limited capacity to teach English. Our mosque is the size of a Tim Hortons. Premier Clark's promise of money for this cause could help build capacity to support Syrian refugees outside Vancouver, but the vast majority of the Syrian refugees who come to BC will end up in the greater Vancouver area. -k

I think OP's question is entirely fair. What makes Syrian refugees a higher priority than people in other war-torn regions? I think that Notca nailed part of it here: ...but I think there is another issue at work. Western foreign policy places a higher priority on the Middle East than on Africa. The Middle East is usually front and center on the news for a variety of reasons-- our ongoing problems with terrorism and our dependence on Middle East oil being two of the most obvious. As well, our European allies are currently having problems with the sheer volume of Syrians (and non-Syrians...) trying to enter their countries, which has further raised the profile of the Syrian refugee situation. As a result, the Syrian refugee situation is prominent in the public consciousness, whereas I suspect that most Canadians are only vaguely aware of any situations in Africa. -k

This was originally a fighting game (in the style of Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat) and the developers came up with a spin-off where the female characters from the game were turned into, basically, dress-up dolls for gamers. Dress them up in skimpy outfits, play beach volleyball, have "butt battles", make them pole-dance? It is what it is: the whole premise for this series was to objectify the female characters from the developer's fighting game franchise. Is the developer's decision to not bring the game to North America a good one? I dunno. Seems like a pretty niche market, and that niche, to me, appears to be the kind of neckbeards who wank it while watching Japanese anime cartoons. How much demand for that would there be in North America? -k

As I keep mentioning, I've never said "all". I've acknowledge that there will be a variety of views, but you'd have to be a fool to doubt that a lot of people from these regressive regions will have regressive views. For the record, I've lived in many of Canada's major cities, and lived and worked in areas with considerable Muslim presence. My interaction with Muslims has been, for the most part, not bad at all. All of my Muslim classmates and co-workers have been Canadian-raised people who grew up in this country in communities where learning to co-exist was unavoidable. I don't worry about that. What I do worry about is the day when some of Canada's cities have ethnic enclaves that are large enough and homogeneous enough that people no longer have any need to integrate and learn to interact. For a non-Muslim example of what I'm concerned about, consider Richmond BC, where a Chinese person could theoretically live their whole life without having to learn to speak English or interact with anyone from outside their ethnic community. Once things get to that point, do people have a reason to integrate with society? For another non-Muslim example, consider the Williamsburg area of New York, where the Hasidic Jewish community harrasses people who don't comply with their religious views. My choice to move to a smaller community has nothing to do with avoiding non-white people. If it were I chose poorly as my town has a significant aboriginal presence, a significant Sikh community, significant numbers of temporary agricultural workers, and Asian tourists all year around. I moved here to avoid big city traffic, pollution, crime, and chaos. And to be in a place where I can enjoy nature. -k

I'm pretty sure not all Muslims gang rape, gay bash, or burn down synagogues in their spare time. To make a blanket statement like that is certainly racist-ish. I never said all. In 2011, Canada took in roughly 40,000 immigrants from Iran, Pakistan, the U.A.E, Iraq, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Tunisia, Somalia, Syria, and Kuwait. According to the Stats Can figures I just looked at, the number and geographic breakdown of Canada's immigration sources seems to be pretty steady, so that's about 200,000 people from those nations in just the past 5 years, and no reason to assume the trend would be any different. Now we're adding 50% again to that number in Syrian refugees. I won't claim that everybody from those nations has regressive attitudes, but you'd have to be incredibly naive to think that they're all friendly and tolerant towards gays and Jews, or respectful of women and non-Muslims. Europe's experience has been that rising numbers of Muslims has led to rising incidence of violence against women, and anti-Jewish incidents as well. I'm not referring to just this year's planned 25,000 Syrian refugees, I'm concerned with the cumulative effect of ongoing immigration from countries that have long-standing problems in treatment of women, religious minorities, and gay people. -k

My answer is that nowhere in this thread have I talked about skin color. It was completely false and utterly baseless. If you disagree, search through the thread and prove otherwise. I challenge you. I dare you. I double dog dare you. It was a bottom-of-the-barrel accusation from a bottom-of-the-barrel member. And from here on I'm going to not bother responding to dog-crap like that. -k