This photographer wanted a bunch of pictures of young children (2-3) crying. So what she'd do is give a lolipop to the child and then take it away, resulting in the crying. Some people are calling this "abusive."

I wonder if they heard how Lou Reed got kids to cry on his recording of Berlin.

I wonder if they heard how Lou Reed got kids to cry on his recording of Berlin.

Dare I ask?

Well, since he's dead it would be some sort of miracle (or many sorts), but I get your meaning.

Who knows what he kept in the fridge?

Praise be to the Mollymauk!

That kerfuffle is idiotic, and so is how all reported parties were behaving. It's only a freaking lollipop. If that traumatised a kid, s/he was already on the road to therapy.

My brother and sister went into a bible store on a lark and saw a t-shirt that said, "Hot girls don't come from monkeys."

Oh Lord, I must have that t-shirt. I'd be the funniest thing ever when I was excavating.

best line of that lollypop kerfuffle:

It's about a generation that's so caught up in itself that everything it says it thinks is significant, even though it's not saying anything at all.

[link]

Jars, this one is funny. I'm still looking for the other.

Strega, the problem is, you'd be hard pressed to find two denominations, never mind two people, who use the same working definition of things like literalism or inerrancy. That's why the poll results are more sensationalistic than representive of trends in religion. The words are bandied about so much as a test of faith, that they're more trouble than they're worth.

So, what you're saying is, millions of religious people need to be beaten with a dictionary? Typical. I know a bunch of secular academics who have the same problem.

(Sloppiness of meaning-transfer via language is really a problem, in the humanities; that's why random people can pull a Punk'd on a literary journal every now and hten, and publish a whole essay about nonsense.)