How's that going to work again?

If they cut out all the references, they could probably just make this an animated GIF instead.

The director and screenwriter of the film adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials is to remove references to God and the church in the movie.

Chris Weitz, director of About a Boy, said the changes were being made after film studio New Line expressed concern.

Yeah, I know, things will probably just be called by different names, but I had that first line and I wanted to use it.

Weitz said he had visited Pullman, who had told him that the Authority could "represent any arbitrary establishment that curtails the freedom of the individual, whether it be religious, political, totalitarian, fundamentalist, communist, what have you".

He added: "I have no desire to change the nature or intentions of the villains of the piece, but they may appear in more subtle guises."

Hm, I certainly can't think of any establishments that curtail individual freedoms that might make a reasonable substitute if such a thing has to happen. Nope. Not a one.

(Link posted in nikkinewsnet this morning.)

QOTD

"To criticise a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous but to criticise their religion - that is a right. That is a freedom [...]

"The freedom to criticise ideas - any ideas even if they are sincerely held beliefs - is one of the fundamental freedoms of society.

"And the law which attempts to say you can criticise or ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed.

"It all points to the promotion of the idea that there should be a right not to be offended. But in my view the right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended.

"The right to ridicule is far more important to society than any right not to be ridiculed because one in my view represents openness - and the other represents oppression."

      
Rowan Atkinson, on a proposed measure in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill

A grab bag of linkydinks

aidenraine writes an excellent letter to non-panic disorder sufferers.

For a bit of meta-linkage, pecunium posts some links that you should check out.

I keep forgetting about this and periodically rediscovering it: Amazon free music downloads

Because I'm an enabler: the Green Valley Book Fair runs through this weekend.

Remember gophering to wiretap.spies.com back in the day?

Know how to make a disk bootable in AIX, but now you need to know how to do it in Solaris? Then you want the Sysadmin's Unixersal Translator (ROSETTA STONE)