It amuses me greatly that both replies to this post responded as if Bill was talking about "X" the windowing system rather than a placeholder variable.

Should've used $X. ;)

If you're going to get pedantic about statistics, you should really get to know your friendly neighborhood Margin of Error. Often ignored in fluff pieces, being aware of his existence is still vital.

I wasn't speaking about the copyright issue. The question was "how were they reconstructed without the video?"

Oops, just saw the binocular recommendations. [face palm] Of course that would be a much better choice and be useful for more than just star gazing. Might get them interested in optics in general, photography, etc. I'd go with a nice pair of $35-$65 10x50 binocs and a good app.

I'd go with the Orion SpaceProbe 3 Altazimuth Reflector Telescope. It's a more modernized version of the one I first used as a youngster. I think I still have it somewhere but will have to look. Aiming the thing is probably the hardest to learn with any telescope and I'd stress that to the children you are going to give this to. That's the number one thing that turns children off to telescopes is trying to find the desired object in the sky. It takes a lot of patience and practice and if the child doesn't have the personality characteristics they will lose interest quickly. Sky watching can be amazing good fun, especially now that there are good apps that can help you find things in the sky easily. That might be another thing you spring for, a good app (desktop or mobile) for them to use to help them find things to look at.

The methods I've seen have been mostly "slideshows" with audio tracks, and very rarely, someone recreating the video in an animated form.

I'll have to remember that little quip the next time someone's complaining about "women-hostile conditions in the $X industry."

It's like asking a random "Christian" to justify and explain Westboro Baptist's behavior because they both think of themselves as "Christian" despite that term meaning vastly different things.

Close, but not quite. The difference is that "the assholes" in your example (WBC) aren't the only one setting dogma. Using the same metaphor, it's closer to you objecting to having "believing in the divinity of Christ" held against you, even though you don't, and you feel that calling yourself "Christian" just means "Being a decent person"

Feminism is not (just) a "philosophy", it's a proselytizing ideology: the goal is to bring people into their way of thinking, and that means that the way it's presented trumps dictionary definitions, trumps NAFALT, and trumps personal gnosis on what "feminism means". And as far as presentation goes, sorry, but the "assholes" are ruling that particular roost. "Mainstream" and/or "media" feminism is spawned in pits like Jezebel now, and I don't think anyone needs to be told how that sort of lot deals with being called on their bullshit.

So no, I don't think it's unreasonable at all, when someone claims the moniker of "feminism", to hold their tacit complicity against them.

I loved that movie, but I found the ending too predictable.

So basically, like every other online "community" (term used loosely. "Battleground" seems more fitting these days).

You might have a point, except for one large flaw in the "Not all feminists are that way" excuse that's so popular:

You don't get an "-ism", i.e. an ideology, and especially not a political ideology, from a single bullet point. And feminism is very much a political ideology. The "quieter members of said group" aren't contributing any tenets to the feminist ideology, they're just picking and choosing the parts they don't like and pretending it doesn't apply to them.

Meanwhile, the core of actual feminism still remains firmly rooted in the delusion of persecution that is the "patriarchy" model, and a perpetual sense of victimhood that says that society and law must be changed to give women the rights they are unable, as victims, to claim for themselves. (Didn't someone say something, once, about rights you're given vs. rights you take for yourself?).

If your "quieter members" don't want to be held to that fact, then it's really on them to be more picky about whose flag they choose to fly for the sake of having a convenient little brand-label to slap on themselves.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for taking care of those who can't do it for themselves. Feed the hungry, help the helpless, etc. We could use more noble pursuits in this ignoble pit. So if you (the general "you") need to be taken care of at my expense, I'm actually all right with that, but once you cash that check, "equal" is out the window.

And if you (the same) want to claim that you're somehow owed that protection because I'm a terrible person and deserve to be punished and/or treated as a second-class citizen because of some imagined slight from your past, then fuck you very much.

In what may be the most fitting use of the idiom, ever:

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

"Derailing" is apparently the new term for pointing out inconsistency and hypocrisy. Not really surprising, ideologies love redefining words.

We get it. Women are precious, delicate snowflakes who have to be protected from harsh language and a world that is out to make a meal out of them, and society has to do it, because they're too fragile to do it for themselves.

Wait, what do you mean that's not the message feminism is trying to send? Could have fooled me.

Wow, you're delusional.

While they may be the team that would exercise their hypocrisy by making that particular suggestion, it's only in expression that their hypocrisy differs from that of their "rivals," not intensity.

Silly submitter, "sexism" is just fine. It's just misogyny that's not allowed. When did the concept of "subset" fall so far from general understanding?

Ah well. Fark has been as relevant to me as Jezebel or Stormfront since about the turn of the century, so I'll just go on not giving a fuck.