I wholeheartedly agree. If I were defending sexism (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/sexism), I would be out of touch. However, as an egalitarian feminist, you'll never find me doing as much. I'm asking questions about a decision made contrary to (what I measured to be as) overwhelming disagreement within the Fark's commenting community.

Still, if you were Drew Curtis and responding to my question, you would select "6. I actually believe that everyone who jokes about women hates women and they should be stopped"? Cool. Everyone has their reasons (hypothetical and otherwise). I'm just trying to understand them, not judge them.

It really doesn't matter what the "internet as a whole" applauds when dealing with the internal matters of an individual community. Different communities have different sensibilities and priorities.

Scenario:
The Slashdot community values discussions based on science and good logic. Imagine that Slashdot declares that comments are no longer allowed to question the scientific validity of anti-GMO or pro-Vegan articles. Everyone who questions the assertions of PETA and the anti-GMO crowd will be officially labeled as corporate shills. Comments will be auto-moderated to -1.

Soon after, animal rights organizations and organic growers around the world applaud a the declaration.

As a member of the Slashdot community, you have an opinion on this hypothetical decision, I'm sure. But would it matter at all to you if PETA and anti-GMO groups "applaud" the change?

For those who may want to mark this AC down, understand that this is a reference to a counter-stupid campaign popularized at Fark.com. (http://goo.gl/A4yFf)

One old person's old meme is a young person's new meme.

Drew,

There was a time when Fark Boobies links were mixed in with news links. Then it became its own tab. Then it was reborn as "Foobies"-- a wholly separate site. More recently, a strict "Anti-Misogyny" standard on Fark discussions was implemented which included the dis-allowance of the use of the word "rape" except in the academic sense, dis-allowing the use of demeaning terms in describing women, and suggesting that a female victim of a crime was somehow asking to be victimized.

Examples of dis-allowed uses include the meme "40 lbs. Box of Rape" (http://goo.gl/XipVh1), references to the Whoopi Goldberg differentiation between "rape" and "rape rape" (http://goo.gl/u3YDuW), and Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" gaffe (http://goo.gl/dyxpy).

To say that the change was met with disdain would be an understatement. The ensuing threads were filled with battles back and forth between those who assert that such references and jocularity is proof a genuine hatred of women (misogyny) while others assert that lumping together edgy attempts at comedy with the genuine hatred of women is prejudicial and incredibly offensive.

Given Fark's historic culture of pushing/punching the boundaries of political correctness (see: "Welcome to Fark" memes) where almost nothing is so sacred that it cannot be joked about (see: "Window seat, please" memes), why was this decision made? Why were so many genuinely non-misogynistic actions/comments/memes lumped in with that term?

My partner and I have discussed the change at length. We're both fans of audacity humor, so we actually "get a kick out of the replies" (http://goo.gl/a6xyao). Together, we came up with the following potential rationales. Which did we get right? Which didn't we?

1. I got older and my tastes have changed. I don't want to run a site that goes counter to my own sensibilities.
2. I received pressure from external organizations (other sites, special interests, advertisers).
3. I want to grow the site to be more inclusive of people who would be offended by such jokes.
4. I'm running for public office and Fark.com, if not cleaned up, would destroy my campaign.
5. I've received overwhelming negative feedback regarding the state of Fark comments and the numbers supporting a change greatly outnumber those who didn't like the change.
6. I actually believe that everyone who jokes about women hates women and they should be stopped.

... and raise better girls.

Seriously, if you want to increase the number of female engineers, you have to start young. You can just be all patronizing and say, "Hey, we want you to be engineers, so we'll allow you to build a pink bridge out of Paul Frank stickers!" or you can actually raise your girls to appreciate the value of engineering for what it is: the practice of making things work well.

It's a pretty piss-poor plan to change an entire global industry/area of study to meet the socially-enforced preferences of an entire 50% of the human population just because **you** feel the need to see a 50/50 workforce when you can simple modify the "socially-enforced" part and stop raising your daughters to be helpless Disney Princesses or mothers-in-waiting.

The social change to making previously male-dominated industries into equitably shared industries, like all social changes, takes generations. Older people need to die off and new people with different upbringings need to replace them. That's just how human society works.

So stop forcing your sons into blue and black and preventing them from playing with dolls. Stop forcing your daughters into pink and purple and limiting them to tea time play sets and flowing dresses. If you actually want a human society where everyone feels comfortable taking whatever classes or entering whatever industry without sex or gender boundaries, then you need to raise your children without those sex/gender boundaries to begin with.

Got a hydrogen refueling station on my campus. It's expanding because of demand. We're even taking possession of a hydrogen fuel cell bus soon.

Everything related to hydrogen fuel cell tech is still in research mode. Rarity is to be expected.

Why in the world would anyone want more than one Apple Watch? I'm fairly certain people aren't buying them for their significant others. Well, most aren't.

Given how many people buy other major electronics to resell on ebay and other sites, how many of these 1 million plus pre-orders do you think are just buying the iWatches to create artificial scarcity and resell at a higher price? And who can't wait a month to get a damn smartwatch? Who pays the marked up reseller price?

Help me understand! I just don't get it!

There is no "Patriot Act". It's called the USA PATRIOT Act and it must be remembered for what it is because what it stands for and what it spells out demonstrates the absolute inanity of the document and the (lack of) discussion when it was voted on.

USA PATRIOT stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.

It was proposed on October 23, 2001, passed by the House on October 24, passed by the Senate on October 25, and signed into law by President Bush on October 26. The Act amended 11 previously passed acts, 108 US Codes, and created 9 new US Codes. The bill itself was 342 pages long and it was passed in 3 days.

I don't think we have since learned our lesson, but at least there will be a historical record of our errors and how quickly we can be bullied into a political frenzy.

I've avoided programming. It's not my cuppa. I like to troubleshoot PCs and make them run faster while consuming less electricity. I'll design and roll out databases and even write scripts for those DBs. I'll learn what needs to be learned to fix website errors and then promptly forget it.

I leave the programming to other people and don't want anyone to come to me with programming problems. I leave programming to the pros and prefer just to be seen as a "super user".

Wow. You have some serious ignorant rage. You have literally seen none of the purported offenses and it's very, very evident by your post.

1. There's no denying that he's rude in that post. He does like to stir the pot. Is it wrong to be rude or is a comedian allowed to be rude in the attempt to get laughs?

2. In no part of the post is there anything attempting to explain away anything-- just a more accurate description of what occurred as evidenced by video, not conjecture and snarling Daily Mail outrage.

3. The only thing held against him that could possibly be considered racist was the thing about Mexicans and even that isn't literally racist. It was prejudicial and stereotypical. They got in trouble like that as they should have. Even the accusation that he used the N-word is baseless because he never used the word. He mumbled a placeholder sound that, if you trained your ear to hear it, could sound like it. And then they tossed that take. And then someone dug it up years later.

4. We still don't know if Clarkson actually hit his producer. Read the investigative report. There was a 30-minute drunken verbal assault and then 30 seconds of an "assault". Assault is an attempt or threat to batter (strike or physically harm). You may be happy grunting over your morning coffee at the lack of genuine information, but the law uses specific words for a reason. In NO PART of the document does it say anything about punching, throwing, kicking, etc. 30 seconds is a long time for a person to be throwing punches on someone who does not fight back and for that victim to leave with only a fat lip.

So, if I take your post as any evidence, that long list of explaining what happened in each of the accused offenses in genuine truth (not shallow, detail-less, outrage mongering), is trolling.

I gotcha. Thanks for the insight.

PS -- If you want to disagree with the factual nature of any of the points, then do so by all means. I'll happily go into more detail and support my assertions with external links.

Like others who responded to my post, I posted with the hopes of finding an Intellimouse replacement. Your post is the first I've seen with a favorable comparison and a make/model. From what I can see, the only major difference is instead of having one button on either side of the mouse, it has two on either side thus making this a 7-button mouse.

Could you confirm?

And wow... a $70 price tag at Amazon.com? That's rough. Do you have a cheaper suggestion?

I'm impressed that you got yours to last so long. I've gone through 5 of them since my first in 2000/2001. In fact, I bought a 3-pack when I heard they were going the way of the dodo. I'm on my last one now.

Le sigh.

Your post is modded "Insightful", but if I could, I would mod it "Dangerously Insightful". If women en masse knew that they could manipulate most men with a sweet smile and some relevant conversation, many of us would be doomed.

Certain positions are allowed to require certain levels of attractiveness. Models, for example. In fact, the "models" reasoning is what allows many casinos to discriminate against thicker women in that they categorize their waitresses as models.