I wonder if I could set up an auto-response in my email so that everything that comes in, at least from certain people, gets hit with "did you check that on snopes?" before I have to go and do it myself.

When I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to watch The Flintstones - not because of the dinosaurs so much as because it gave the impression that the economic system had always been capitalism.

Huh. I just can't imagine my parents... no.

We weren't allowed to watch Monty Python or SNL. I was also not allowed to read comics, especially Mad Magazine.

My Dad thought we watched too much TV, so for a while we were only allowed to watch TV on certain days of the week.

Funny story about what scares kids: Went to see Star Wars when it came out. I remember the spaceship coming across the screen, everyone saying 'ooooh", and then the airlock blew and Darth Vader came through. I screamed and got under my seat.

Mom was really strict but she goofed with that one. "My seven year old does not need to see a movie with WAR right in the title." I didn't see it until the re-release when Empire came out.

My mother and grandmother once went to see a play and ended up sitting separately. My mother enjoyed it but was glad she hadn't been sitting next to her mother. My grandmother enjoyed it but said she was glad her mother wasn't there. I think you pretty much never get over that.

Hee. We once saw a friend of mine off-broadway and naked for several hours. She kept poking my sister in the arm saying, "isn't this funny? Isn't this funny?!?!?!" and my sister finally groweled "Mom, I'm trying to pretend you aren't HERE"

OMG, I missed the original story that Mel Gibson was working on a project about the Holocaust: [link]

The only thing I ever remember my mom being uncertain about me watching was Maude. Of course, I watched it anyway, and at the time I was young enough that I dind't even understand the stuff she was worried about exposing me to.

My reading was never censored at all, but I think it was just because my mother never read much, and so the concept of "bad books" probably didn't really exist to her. She was just so happy that I wanted to read! I read a lot of things kids aren't usually allowed to read.

The only thing I can remember being scared of in movies when I was little was Godzilla, and some horror movie with a guy cutting peoples' faces off, which for the longest time I thought was Dr. Zhivago.

I was terrified when I watched E.T.. The Reese's Pieces suspense bit? Had me shaking.

I also wasn't allowed to watch network TV (except for M*A*S*H), but Monty Python was fine.

Of course, I knew all the words to Best Little Whorehouse In Texas by the time I was 10, so.....

Academic hivemind question: how do credits (in, e.g., "a four-credit class") compare to "semester units" or "quarter units"? I'm tempted to assume I can just convert straight from credits to semester units, but then I think it may be more tricky than just doubling that to go to quarter units. Anyone know?

Never mind. God bless wikipedia.

I went through the "Oh, my God, I'm sitting next to my mom and they're showing sex on the screen!" phase in my early-to-mid teens (the worst was sitting next to her at the theater during Body Heat), but it seemed to have disappeared by the time I graduated from high school, because that was when my brother decided to watch a porn video on our only tv in the middle of a Saturday afternoon. My sister and a college friend joined him and they all commenced snarking at the bad performances but really hilarious concept (it was a spoof of Dallas). I came home from work and also joined in, and then my mom finished her outdoor gardening, came downstairs asking what we were watching, and then, instead of going "Porn! Oh my eyes!!", she joined us in the MST3K-ing of the film. When I told my friends about that, they all agreed that Mom was amazingly cool.

I saw Avenue Q with my parents. It was kind of traumatizing.