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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>>…</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> <b>On Behalf Of </b>John Clark<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] riots again<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 Charlie Stross <<a href="mailto:charlie.stross@gmail.com" target="_blank">charlie.stross@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<o:p></o:p></p><div><blockquote style='border:none;border-left:solid #CCCCCC 1.0pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 6.0pt;margin-left:4.8pt;margin-right:0in'><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><div><p class=MsoNormal> <span style='color:#1F497D'>></span> >note that Monty Python's "Life of Brian" was: * Banned by 39 local councils in the UK [... shunned...picketed... bad reviews...]<o:p></o:p></p></div></blockquote><div><p class=MsoNormal><br><span style='color:#1F497D'>>…</span>Banning a movie is bad; having a movie, which you probably haven't even seen, drive you into such a idiotic homicidal rage that you even start to murder people who had nothing to do with the movie is worse. <span style='color:#1F497D'>…</span>John K Clark<o:p></o:p></p></div><div><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>I recall in the states, LoB created the Pastor’s Dilemma. They could expound at length on how this scandalous movie should be banned for all its blammisphy, but in order to know if it is blammisphy, or even expound on its contents, the people would need to actually see the movie, which would defeat the purpose of speaking out against it. The other option is to say nothing, which may be considered tacitly condoning it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>My own take on it is that Life of Brian isn’t *<b>exactly</b>* a comedy. It has the Monte Python team doing their usual brilliant and hilarious cutups, so good that we hear them quoted regularly to this day especially by the computer science crowd, one of the very few comedies which has quotes that made it into the cultural lexicon. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>But Life of Brian is a comedy with a point. In this, the writers follow that other British feller from a long time ago, what’s the name, Shakespeare. His comedies had an underlying theme, or a shape to them. There were jokes within jokes, comedy with depth. In the case of LoB, there was overlying comedy with a non-comedy depth: an alternate explanation for how Christianity was started. In that case, it was actually a very good alternate theory: a man was essentially drafted, against his will, to be the messiah for a lost horde in desperate need of a messiah. I saw it as an excellent story, wrapped up in those funny accents and the delightfully dark and peculiar British sense of humor.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>spike<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></div></div></body></html>