SPONGEBOB | Unnecessary Censorship | Censored Cartoon Parody Bleep Video
This Week in Unnecessary Censorship, The Spongebob Squarepants Movie! Nope, not Sponge Out of Water, the ORIGINAL version =) Censorship tells the wrong story. Subscribe! comment! thanks...
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SPONGEBOB | Unnecessary Censorship | Censored Cartoon Parody Bleep Video - Video
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These should be salad days for anti-smoking crusaders. New data show only 15 per cent of Canadians currently smoke, and just 11 per cent on a daily basis. These are the lowest rates ever recorded; as recently as 1999, smokers made up a quarter of the population. The decline is even more pronounced among teenaged Canadians, suggesting this downward trend will continue well into the future. Despite such success, however, tobacco-control advocates seem perpetually unsatisfiedto the extent theyre now pushing measures that threaten the limits of good science, artistic freedom and civil society.
Smoking is obviously a significant health risk. While adults may choose to take it up in full knowledge of its dangers and costs, we properly restrict adolescents from making a similar choice. But how far should this effort go? The conference, Silencing Big Tobacco on the Big Screen, held in Toronto earlier this month, garnered considerable attention for its proposal that all movies featuring characters who smoke should be rated 18A (those under 18 need adult accompaniment). Impressionable young moviegoers would thus be shielded from the sight of such Hollywood role models as Cruella de Vil, the cigarette-wielding, dog-napping villain of the Disney movie 101 Dalmatians, and Gandalf, the pipe-puffing wizard from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies.
Public health groups claim, with scientific certainty, that movie censorship will prevent teens from taking up the habit. U.S. research argues that 37 per cent of all teenaged smokers do so because theyve been influenced by movies. Building on this, a study released last year by the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit obsessively toted up every glimpse of tobacco smoke across a decades worth of top-grossing films and declared that 4,237 residents of the province will die prematurely as a result of tobacco imagery in movies. Despite such exactitude, however, these claims are complicated by important questions of causality. Does the sight of a smoker in a movie seduce innocent teenagers into a lifetime of cigarette use, or do teenagers predisposed to rebellious behaviour simply prefer movies that show smoking, not to mention plenty of other equally risky activities? While anti-smoking researchers insist that their studies carefully isolate the effect of smoking on young viewers, teasing out such a nuance is simply not feasible, as Simon Chapman, editor emeritus of the academic journal Tobacco Control, has pointed out. Chapman strongly chastises the censorship movement for its crude reductionism and questionable precision in ignoring the near-perfect correlation between smoking and other dangerous activities in movies. The only solution to this statistical obstacle, he notes, would be to conjure a genre of movies full of smoking but lacking car chases, violence, guns, drugs, alcohol, sex, nudity, profanity and abuse of authority. Good luck with that.
The proof arising from this data is often underwhelming, as well. One of the most frequently referenced studies claiming to prove a link between cinematic smoking and youth behaviour surveyed 2,603 adolescents over 2 years. Only six became new regular smokers. Most of the subjects mustered as evidence of the power of movie-induced smoking took just a few puffs of a cigarette over the entire period. Its hardly a smoking gun. As the study itself reveals, parental behaviour exerts far more influence on adolescent tobacco use than personal taste in movies.
And, even setting aside serious defects of science, does anyone really think slapping an 18A rating on a movie will prevent unaccompanied teenagers from seeing the forbidden act of smoking? The tidal wave of pornography available for free on the Internet suggests not.
Then again, the end game is not to hide teenaged eyes from smoking in movies, but to eliminate it entirely. Faced with proposed ratings guidelines, advocates hope Hollywood will eventually remove cigarettes from all (or nearly all) of its movies to ensure the widest possible audience for its product. The campaign thus seeks control over the content of a popular art form through government regulation and coercion. Forcing the movie industry to deliver state-sanctioned religious or moral instruction would be immediately repulsive to Canadian society. Why should such a thing be acceptable in the name of promoting anti-smoking policy?
Lately, it has become popular for tobacco opponents to talk of de-normalizing cigarette use. New rules in Ontario and elsewhere, for example, have banned smoking outdoors in parks and sports fieldswhere second-hand smoke poses no legitimate health threat to othersto control what is considered normal, everyday behaviour. Plans to censor movies are similarly offensive, in that they also seek to limit what may be seen in public space. Disseminating information on the hazards of smoking remains an important function for the field of public health. But it is the not job of government to decide what normal looks like.
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Governments who want to ban smoking from films should butt out
By Will Greenwald
Editors' Note: This version of the Roku 2 has been replaced. A full review of the most current2015 Roku 2can be found here.
Sometimes a device gets even better when it loses a few frills, especially if it becomes even more affordable in the bargain. The Roku 3 stood as our Editors' Choice media hub because of its low price, huge selection of online services and channels, an intuitive menu system, and the option to listen to what you're watching through a headphone jack on the remote control. The Roku 2 keeps all of these handy features and still supports full 1080p HD. It only loses the motion-sensing remote control for games and an Ethernet port, neither of which are must-have features. And at $79.99 (direct) it's $20 less expensive, making it our new Editors' Choice.
DesignAlmost physically identical to the Roku 3, the Roku 2 is a small, square, black plastic puck measuring 3.7 inches on each side and standing 1.2 inches tall. It weighs just 3.5 ounces, so particularly heavy HDMI cables can potentially throw the little player off-balance and lift it up. It has no buttons and only one indicator light on the front. The back panel only holds HDMI and composite outputs and the power connector. The lower price tag and composite video output come at the cost of an Ethernet connector; you need to use the Roku 2's integrated dual-band (802.11a/b/g/n) Wi-Fi to take it online.
The remote is also similar, though it lacks the motion controls and video game support of the Roku 3's remote. That means you'll have to turn to another electronic device to play Angry Birds. It's a small, slightly curved wand with a prominent direction pad, standard playback and menu navigation buttons, and dedicated service buttons for Netflix, M-GO, Hulu Plus, and Blockbuster. It connects to the Roku 2 via Wi-Fi Direct rather than infrared, so you don't need to point it directly at the box.
The left side of the remote features a 3.5mm jack for headphones , which was one of the most welcome new features on the Roku 3. (Volume control is on the right.) You get a cheap-sounding pair of earbuds in the box, but you can use any pair of headphones with a standard 3.5mm connector. Plugging in the headphones automatically mutes the HDTV audio, which enables private listening. It's a useful feature we've not seen elsewhere.
You can also control the box with the Roku app for Android and iOS. It turns your smartphone or tablet into a remote control, and lets you stream local media to the Roku 2. This is a nice alternative to the Apple TVand AirPlay, especially if you have an Android smartphone.
ChannelsLike the Roku 3, the Roku 2 currently uses a panel- and tile-based layout that displays information on the screen in a much more dense, but accessible way than previous Roku menu systems. It's a simple, functional interface that shows more than a dozen icons for channels, movies, and shows at once. It's easy to set up, with a few on-screen prompts to configure the Roku 2's Wi-Fi and a short code to enter on Roku's website to sync it with your Roku account and manage your channels.
Roku's Channel Store offers more than 1,000 free and for-pay online services and apps, including the aforementioned Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Blockbuster streaming services (each with their own dedicated button on the remote). There are hundreds more services available, including on-demand options for major television networks, news portals, sports portals, and more targeted services like CrunchyRoll (Anime) and Midnight Pulp (horror and exploitation films).
The extremely useful Search function polls Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Video-on-Demand, Vudu, and several other services, listing the various ways the movie you want to watch is available. However, the main menu focuses mostly on M-GO, a Vudu-like on-demand service that integrates into the Movies and TV Shows sections in the Roku 2's main menu. Fortunately, those are the only places where M-GO is forced upon your attention. Expect to spend much, much more time in the Search and Channel menus than the M-GO-heavy, curated Movies and TV Shows menus.
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Roku 2 (2013)
Tribune Media's three largest shareholders are looking to sell 25 percent of their combined stake through a secondary offering, the Chicago-based media company said Wednesday.
Oaktree Capital Management; Angelo, Gordon & Co.; and JPMorgan Chase, the former senior creditors who guided Tribune Co. out of bankruptcy, want to divest 9.2 million shares of Class A common stock through the proposed secondary offering. The selling shareholders also will grant underwriters an option to buy nearly 1.4 million additional shares, according to a registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The total value of the offering could be nearly $654 million, at a proposed maximum price of $61.53 per share, according to the filing. Tribune Media will not receive any proceeds from the secondary offering.
Oaktree, Angelo Gordon and JPMorgan own about 39 percent of Tribune Media's 94.5 million outstanding shares of Class A stock, according to the filing. Their combined stake would be reduced to less than 28 percent after the offering, assuming the underwriters' option is exercised in full.
The offering is being made through an underwriting group led by Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Securities.
The proposed sale has long been part of the plan for the former senior creditors, who took control of Tribune Co., now Tribune Media, after it emerged from a protracted Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2012.
Chicago billionaire Sam Zell took Tribune Co. private in 2007 in a heavily leveraged buyout, burying the company under $13 billion in debt as the Great Recession unfolded. Tribune Co. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in December 2008.
Investment firms Oaktree and Angelo Gordon opportunistically bought up the company's debt during the bankruptcy; JPMorgan was lead lender in the 2007 buyout.
Tribune Media, which spun off its publishing assets in August, including the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, owns and operates 42 local television stations, national cable channel WGN America, WGN Radio and other broadcasting assets, as well as real estate holdings and equity investments. It began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TRCO in December.
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Tribune Media's largest shareholders to sell 25 percent stake
By Will Greenwald
Roku is refreshing its line of media hubswith new versions of the Roku 2 and Roku 3. The latestRoku 2 is a $69.99 puck-shaped media hub that looks indistinguishable from the previous, Editors' Choice Roku 2 at first glance. It boasts faster performance, but it also takes away the most unique and compelling feature the previous version offered: a headphone jack-equipped remote that can stream music to your ears without bothering the people around you. Unless you're on a strict budget, it isn'tall thatcompelling when compared with the more full-featured $99.99 Roku 3 or our Editors' Choice media hubs, the much less expensive $49.99Roku Streaming Stickand theAmazon Fire TV Stick.
Design The Roku 2 isa small, glossy black 3.5-inch-square puck with rounded corners and a purple fabric Roku tag sticking out of the left side. The back of the hubholds HDMI, Ethernet, and power ports, plus a microSD card slot and a pinhole Reset button. A USB port sticks out of the right side of the player. It's a significant change from the previous Roku 2, adding Ethernet for a wired network connection but removing the composite video output. Unless you have a very old television, it's a good trade.
While the Roku 2 box is effectively the same as the current Roku 3 box, its remote is a considerable step back both from the Roku 3 and its predecessor. The infrared remote is the same sort of pill-shaped wand Roku devices have used for years, and it has all of the necessary controls like a navigation pad, playback controls, and dedicated buttons for Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Sling TV(replacing the Blockbuster button), and Rdio (replacing the M-GO button). It's about two-thirds as thick as the previous remote, and its completely matte black finish makes it abit easier to grip. It lacksthe incredibly handy headphone jack of the previous Roku 2, though,whichlet you listen to whatever you were watching with your headphones, streaming audio through the radio-based remote's wireless connection.
Since this remote is infrared, it can't stream audio, and requires direct line-of-sight with the box, while a radio remote can work through cabinet doors. The new Roku 3 keeps the radio connection and headphone jack of the previous Roku 2 and Roku 3, making it a far better controller. You can also control the Roku 2 with your smartphone or tablet with the free Roku app for iOS and Android. The app also supports text input, voice search, and streaming media from your mobile device to your HDTV over the Roku.
Roku Channel StoreRoku's interface and Channel Store have remained structurally unchanged for several product generations, but they've been creeping forward with steady additions of new channels and new features. The Roku Channel Store offers a comprehensive selection of streaming media services, with all of the major players on boardincluding Amazon Instant Video, HBO Go,Hulu Plus, Netflix, Sling TV, Vudu, and YouTube.
The most recent addition to the interface itself is the Roku Feed. It can track recently released movies and provide you with updates on when they become available on Roku through the various on-demand video services. It's a useful idea, but right now, you can only choose from a handful of titles, so it feels more like a taste of a future feature than a fully realized one. Hopefully, Roku will expand the feed to include TV shows and more movies, because for now it doesn't offer enough.
PerformanceThe new Roku 2 is significantly faster than the previous generation box, and it shows when switching between channels. I jumped between the Sling TV and Hulu Plus apps quickly, loading each service's main screen in seconds. The Roku 2 won't reliably save your state in each app so you can't truly jump rapidly between them (as opposed to leaving one and opening another quickly, to focus on the new app), but it's still a significant improvement in performance. Both the Roku 2 and Roku 3 can output video at up to 1080p.
Roku's updated $70 media hub is a functional device with loads of online services and features, but the removal of the headphone jack from the remote is too high a price to pay for the speed boost over the previous Roku 2. It was one of the more unique and compelling aspects of the older device, and without it the Roku 2's price tag doesn't seem particularly compelling next to less expensive options like Roku's own Streaming Stick and the Amazon Fire TV Stick. If you really want loads of features and fast performance with your media hub, consider the Roku 3 or Amazon Fire TVinstead. The Roku 3 has a much more functional remote, and the Amazon Fire TV offers a wealth of well-organized content in addition to plenty of apps, thanks to its Android core and Amazon Prime integration.
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Roku 2 (2015)