The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by James:

Greg London:

And what test must a man pass to make such rules?

The possession of rights under the 1st and 14th Amendments would seem to cover someone's rights to speak his opinion about others' opinions.

You (and those of similar tenderness) certainly have exercised your rights to opine about my own standing in the matter. On the other hand, I have researched the doctrines of limited-liability and corporate personhood, while you have said nothing about it other than to imply that ignorance is as valid as knowledge.

Good luck with that.

Patrick spoke the important phrases in his first follow-up message:

"concept of the limited-liability corporation and the legal doctrine of corporate personhood"

(I note with approval that Patrick has probably been reading Brad DeLong on this matter).

I then count the number of messages that appear to address the importance of the legal privileges granted to corporations, with the implied need for compensatory regulation. I count about 5 out of 168. I hope this is just an artifact of my browser's Find function, and my inability to see implicit rather than explicit arguments.

I will say that any person who self-labels as "libertarian" has no business having any opinions about economics and personal liberty until they know precisely the issues involved in limiting-liability and granting corporations "rights" under the 14th Amendment.

More guilty people go free when there's the death penalty in prospect. Because juries stretch reasonable doubt beyond reasonableness for fear of making an irrevocable mistake.

The inverse is more of a problem. The death penalty is routinely used to force plea bargains on persons who are innocent of the crime for which they are accused. But they know full well that the system makes mistakes, and the death penalty is one mistake that they can't recover from.

The death penalty distorts much more of the criminal justice system than just capital cases; all potentially capital cases are likewise distorted, and it's not clear what sort of corruption this sort of power creates in the prosecutors themselves.

It's impossible to overemphasize the importance of narcissists' lack of empathy. It colors everything about them. I have observed very closely some narcissists I've loved, and their inability to pay attention when someone else is talking is so striking that it has often seemed to me that they have neurological problems that affect their cognitive functioning. These are educated people with high IQs, who've had ordinary middle-class backgrounds and schooling, and their thinking is not only illogical but weird: with narcissists, you have to know them pretty well to understand their behavior. For instance, they always fill in their gaps (which make up just about the entirety of their visible life) with bits of behavior, ideas, tastes, opinions, etc., borrowed from someone else whom they regard as an authority. Their authoritative sources, as far as I know, are always people they've actually known, not something from a book, for instance, and narcissists' opinions may actually come from someone you know, too, but who is not to you obviously an authority on the matter at hand, so narcissists can seem totally arbitrary, virtually random in their motivations and reasoning. They are evidently transfixed by a static fantasy image of themselves, like Narcissus gazing at his reflection, and this produces an odd kind of stillness and passivity. Because their inner life is so restricted and essentially dead, it doesn't contain images of how to live a full life -- these things are not important to them, they expect others to look after day-to-day chores, they resent wasting their specialness on common things, they don't put their heart into their work (though they'll tell you how many hours they put into it), they borrow their opinions and preferences and tastes from whomever strikes them as authoritative at the moment.

--How to recognize a narcissist:

Never love anything that can't love you back.

Guantanimo, Abu Ghraib, and all the blather surrounding torture are part of the ongoing culture war in the U.S. Partly it is about the culture of toughness, one group of people showing how much they are not "bleeding heart liberals." Partly, it's to intimidate enemies. But that doesn't go far enough either. The mere fact that the U.S. sponsors torture causes pain to one side of the culture war (you know who you are). And The Other Side likes that it causes you pain. It's meant to hurt you, plain and simple. They hate you that much.

The story goes that Lenny Bruce based his humor on that of a fellow named Joe Ancis, who many report was funnier than Bruce, but too shy to perform professionally. I've known performers who vomit before every performance, and Bill Russell, the legendary star of the Boston Celtics has said that he also often worshipped at the white altar before games.

I've seen performers break into tears when reading unfavorable reviews, and I am emphatically not speaking exclusively about women. And I've seen writers hurl things across the room upon seeing editorial changes to their work--after it had shown up in print without their foreknowledge.

I've also known people who claimed that the very sight of homosexuals sickened them physically, others who claimed that being confronted with any kind of public sexual displays, including suggestive advertisements was the equivalent of, yes, rape. Yes, I know that this comparison is unfair; comparisons often are.

There have also been attempts by famous persons to use intellectual property laws to control what is written about them (Howard Hughs being one eggregious example), and the current IP laws are routinely used as mechanisms of information control by various individuals and organizations.

I do wish to be sensitive to the feelings of others, I truly do. But we are talking about matters of law here. If that is to be the standard for the application of the legal system, if feelings are to be the standard by which these matters are judged, then
there are others who might make use of those arguments.

What I noticed was that in every iteration of the Sierra story, more and more of the references to misogyny were replaced by references to "incivility." O'Reilly's latest "code of conduct" seems entirely gender neutral, and threats to individuals are given the same weight as copyright violations.

Apparently, noticing misogyny makes you "sexist" just like noticing racism makes you "racist." And all of it is as bad as downloading music without permission.

I don't think this is a matter of cluelessness. I think it is a matter of agenda.

Google's been acting up since at least March 29th, when I had a similar problem with the phrase "brittle strategies." The Goog couldn't seem to decide how many hits it had found; it first told me 27, then proceeded to show me 42.

This all reads oddly like a eulogy.

I have a specific recollection of Dafydd's immediate response to the Oklahoma City bombing: he was sure that it was a plot by radical Muslims.

Water, among other things, finds its own level.

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