and besides, the whole BASIS of the parable, when talking to the saints that no-one would get better than anyone else who came later, was that he had every right to hand out his salvation as he saw fit to anyone who came seeking it, just as a landowner had the right to pay his money as he saw fit to anyone seeking a job.

The guy who came early was satisfied with his lot until he was overcome by envy that someone else was getting a "better deal"

Pick your booksellers wisely.

My iPhone is loaded up with classics (Mark Twain, Kipling, tec.) from Project Gutenberg, and (science fiction)eBooks from Baen books.

Baen makes a point of not using DRM, and allowing several formats including the epub format used in the iPhone app "Stanza". Two of the formats are also HTML and RTF.

Cinematically only if you ignore that little thing called STORY (cue 70-minute takedown of Phantom Menace...) and characterization, as well as consistent internal logic.

C'mon, to call the bad guy a cardboard cutout was an insult to all geometric characters, be they two dimensional, lines, or points.

RE: Liberty - sure, and the story could have been told in a "go with the natives and kick out the evil humans" meme - but couldn't they have used a culture more like the french or russian colonialist movements that actually did just "take what they wanted?" Look at the meta-story - the metaphorical story being told via referents. Did they HAVE to use language that obviously made the "mercenaries" and corporate types US? Did they have to imply through that that WE were responsible for 9/11? Use the "mercenary" title as a fig leaf all you want but the movie clearly state "once a marine, always a marine..." - and Sculley clearly found the "ex" marine mercs worthy of respect when he first got there - so he didn't think they were dregs, misfits, and barracks scum.

The homeschoolers I knew best were wiccans - an ex teacher and an ex-navy guy turned consultant - who wanted their kids to learn more than was available in their local school system.

In all fairness (though it's not AS obvious if you didn't read the intro chapter in the book written by Orson Scott Card - adn used as backstory for the main characters) - The psycho - SEAL started out as a hard charging, but good man, who fell apart under mental disorder due to the environment PHYSICALLY affecting his mind.

... and yes, I'm perfectly aware of the "war is bad, peace is good" message in that movie - especially the extended and book versions. I'm just saying the HUMANS in the movie were not quite the charicatures they seemed in the original release, despite the aliens being so.

"Soldier" is a movie that, cheesy as it was, keeps popping back into my head.

Soooo....

Was making "W" just putting bush in a fantasy context to make Bush look worse, or did he really think Bush was evel and was putting him in the same kind of humanizing context as he now intends to put Stalin and Hitler?

Down to the "effectively made a de facto branch of the government, BY the government.

Amazing how so many of the worst abuses of big business (Mining towns and "company store" policies complete with management hired thugs, the East India company, etc...) were often a direct result of government collusion, empowerment, or simply abrogating its responsibility to enforce the law for all people.

We may be mixing mixing terms here, but I always considered "shame" to be used as a tool - call it social punishment - to make it painful to do something that may not be LEGALLY wrong, but is considered "bad" because it tends to screw up your life... note the "shame" applied to unwed and teen mothers in the past.

Yeah, it sucks, but it provided a tangible feedback that this was disapproved without throwing people in jail for it.

I guess I always looked at 'shame' as the cultural equivalent of physics - actions having consequences, but in this case social ones.

That said, I think - like learning by putting your hand on a stove that stoves are HOT and being careless with fire is STUPID (and painful) - that said shame should be about developing self-discipline and learning what is right and wrong so that you yourself shift into a guilt mode - and avoid behavior that is risky or detrimental.

That said - it can be overdone. There are deadbeat dads deserving of all the shame heaped on the stereotype, but it's gone overboard, and a lot of those dads do everything possible to come through.

As you said, the left resorts to shame when it has nothing else. Worse, they're often hypocrites.

Sortof like the east india tea company....