At some point, it seems inevitable (though perhaps I'm projecting) that Edwards will finally throw in the towel. I'm guessing most of his supporters will go to Obama at that point, perhaps with Edwards as Obama's VP candidate. I don't buy the idea that the Clintons control the Dem Party. Dean is no fan of the Clintons, and the Democrats want the presidency, and know that Hillary won't go over well in a general election.
Erik:
About the only contribution I will be able to make to this subject is to point out that adding two characters would mean you'd ROT-14 it.
I wonder if this would be easier or harder if we could hear a person pronounce this authentically (not that we have any idea how). I can't tell what is throwing me off more, the differences in spelling or the true differences in words. For example, hwite probably is a lot more similar to white when spoken than when written.
Anyway, cool idea.
James #570:
You aren't trying to bait me, are you, James?
Richard:
"For the second time this year, a legally armed citizen armed with a pistol faced a crazed gunman armed with a rifle and did not prevail." From The Sight, which continues with a lengthy tactical analysis of both situations.
Acknowledging that there are many many examples to be found of people who pulled guns and it got them killed, I don't know if these examples are great ones. In the first case, the guy walked across the street to engage this madman. I was more asking about a situation where you are under mortal threat and decide to pull a gun. This guy pulled the libertarian fantasy routine that was rightly dismissed pretty early on.
In the second case, the guy pulled a gun, yelled at the dude with the rifle, and then decided THAT would be the moment in his life to suddenly a become a pacifist. Well, I've already conceded that I was off the mark on the training and mentality issue, and that certainly backs that up.
Regardless, I think one of the biggest mistakes I made in the previous imbroglio was letting it turn into an anecdote war. There are always examples to be found that, as singular events, will prove anyone's position.
abi:
We don't go in much for modern poetry on Making Light, except in the strictest of chronological definitions*. None of the regular poets does blank verse†, and pretty much everything doesn't just rhyme but also scans.
Well, then you're my kind of people! I thought I would get laughed at if I said I enjoyed Robert Frost and the occasional dirty limerick. Admittedly, my reaction against poetry snobbery (as epitomized by the inscrutable verse in the New Yorker) has caused me to write off poetry as an art form, perhaps to my detriment.
Terry:
Sorry, I missed this:
Groups matter to people, because (and this goes to that collective properties, practised by individuals), social norms are group rules, which individuals violate at their peril.
I don't see how me rejecting the notion that groups can and should be analyzed as anthropomorphic entities is incompatible with the idea that we have rules that apply to groups. The latter is at least a well defined problem, as the mathematicians would say. The former is quixotic and only causes trouble. Ask Larry Summers, who lost his career over asking a stupid question, the answer to which wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference to any individual or changed the way any individuals should be treated.
Let me give you an example. If social scientists found out that people above 6' tall tend do be less intelligent than those below, should a tall guy start to feel bad about himself? Of course not. He is as smart as he was the day before the study. Maybe he just moved up a few standard deviations in some arbitrary peer grouping, but that's it. And if I'm hiring somebody, it would be wrong to use their height to judge their intelligence, not to mention bad for my business to eliminate all the smart tall people from potential consideration.
Group statistics are bad news. Right after the lawyers, we should shoot* all the social scientists who grace us with such grenades as "men are better at spatial reasoning problems than women." What the hell am I supposed to do with THAT piece of information? Pat myself on the back for being an affiliate of the winning spatial reasoning team, or feel even worse about myself that I can't do spatial reasoning problems? And if another study comes out that finds white people are worse than black people at spatial reasoning, then I'm really confused as to what to do with all this information.
And here's the kicker: It's a mathematical certainty that if they did enough studies, every single one of us would find ourselves on both the good and the bad end of every possible statistic depending on which of our infinitely many potential group affiliations is chosen for the study. So, like I said, I've stopped worrying about these questions.
*Trying to keep on thread topic.
albatross:
Young men are often backed into doing really dumb things to prove themselves men, in this sense. There's probably a parallel for women, but I don't know what it is.
These days, in certain circles, women are feeling a lot of the same pressures of having a career as man typically have had, with the unfair added burden of feeling they are letting down an entire movement if they decide they just want to be mothers. I know more than few women laboring in careers they couldn't give two shits about who truly long to me mothers. There are others who have both, and regret the time they don't spend with their children while they are at the widget factory. And there are full-time mothers who feel they are looked down upon by their working friends. And, of course, there are lots of very happy women in all those situations, too, but my point was that group identity politics usually results in constraints and expectations on people that may be at odds with their individual nature. That's why I dislike it so.
As you pointed out, "manhood" was often used as leverage against men (probably how they get men to show up for wars, for example) and now that women have more choices for how they will live their lives, various sets of expectations have cropped up (and are presently doing battle) for how they should use that choice.
Terry:
In poetry (this is just me talking) one is trying to distill something, to an essence.
I take it you don't read the New Yorker. :-) Maybe I'm reading the wrong stuff, but most contemporary poetry comes across to me a like a John Cage symphony. A lot of shreaks and whistles, and in the end more heat than light.
Joking aside, I liked your take on what poetry is, and appreciated your words of encouragement.
abi:
I've tried my hand at poetry at times, but I've always felt uneasy about it. I'm usually not sure what to do with a poem I'm reading, so I figure I'd make a lousy poet. The physicist Paul Dirac had an amusing quote: "In science one tries to tell somebody, in as simple and clear a way as possible, something they don't already know. But in poetry it's the exact opposite." (I'm reciting that from memory, so it's probably not a perfect quote.)
Sam:
At the risk of opening another can:
What you wrote wasn't rude at all and thus there is no need to apologize. Your comment did come off as a slightly officious and patronizing, which is why I responded sarcastically, but there was nothing wrong with what you said. The funny thing is that I originally wrote "personhood" and then rolled my eyes at myself for being so liberal-arts-collegey and rewrote it as I did. I was trying to write it in a "normal" way but I misjudged normality around here.
When I talk to myself, I always say "person" as in "is this the kind of person you want to be, Jonathan?" I'm not a very stereotypical man, either. I never played much sports, would rather read or play the piano than go outside, and am very shy and never advocate for myself over others at work like manly men should.
Having said that, I'm guessing you'd be hard pressed to find two women who would've stayed up all night in an internet pissing match as James and I did. Testosterone really exists, and it does seem to have potential side effects. So I don't think men and women are the same, statistically, but they differ as groups in ways that are far too complicated for me to ever comprehend, and it's frankly not even worth trying, in my mind. The only thing that matters is how you treat people as individuals. Aggregate statistics and properties of groups are only of interest to academics and actuaries.
Susan:
Was writing my previous post and missed your last one. My wife has three appointments. I suspect you found the one at the school of public health or Brandeis. Her main gig is as a prof at one of the medical school hospitals. I can't find her web page for that, either. Maybe she's lying to me! (I have seen her office, so I know she works there.) But to be complete in my disclosure: pretty much everybody doing research at the medical school with a PhD can apply to be a professor and it usually goes through if they have any grants, from what I understand, which is why I suspect Harvard doesn't even report med school prof numbers when they cite their statistics about professors. Anyway, it doesn't matter, since I was only using the fact to be a dick. I'm sure she'd be pissed at me for using her as a rhetorical device, especially in an argument she'd take the other side on.
Susan:
I did apologize (#348), and it was sincere (I probably should've put it in a separate post with your name at the top, though). I don't mind doing so again:
I am truly sorry that I overreacted and crossed the line by making a meanspirited personal attack. You didn't deserve it, nor was it proportional to what you said to me, and I wish I could take back what I said.
TeXAnne:
I don't know who's a women or a man here, except for those people whose username makes it obvious, and I've been happy to be corrected by too many people to remember who is a man or a woman. I'm glad you're keeping track for me, though I think maybe you're reading the patterns you want to see based on my sex.
I've already said I regret the bravado with which I started this, and it was misguided. I never brought it up again, and it should be clear I don't care who owns a gun, man or women. My main factual example was the woman who defended the CO chuch, in fact. Like anybody, I'm sure I'm not entirely without issue on the nature of sex and gender, but here you are mostly succeeding at betraying your own, not mine.
Sam:
What's wrong with 'personhood'?
What if you don't self-identify as a person, but think you're a squirrel? It happens. I didn't think I had to resort to mealymouthed politically correct speech with this crowd. Feel free to read it however you want.
Teresa:
Thanks for your very well-reasoned post. It was especially astute in your estimation of the origins of all of this for me: A lot of this comes from the fact that I was living in Golden at the time of the Columbine shootings. I saw so many people die while the police stood outside. So, I gravitated towards the idea that one cannot rely on the government to protect one's self. Not out of anti-government mentality, but just because they can't be everywhere.
But as you, and others have pointed out, civilian ownership of guns is messier in practice than I was making it out to be. I do respect the opinions of those of you whose seen actually shooting situations, and that weighs heavily against some of the preconceptions I had about the success rate of people defending themselves with guns. (My opinion suffers from source bias given the people I hang out with and the stuff I choose to read, one of the reasons I appreciate this debate.)
You've certainly all convinced me of two things: (1) I shouldn't even think for a second about personally carrying unless I've taken sufficient training to have the right psychological basis to handle the responsibility (or find out I just don't and can't have it). Shooting thousands of practice rounds probably isn't enough. (2) It's possible that no amount of training would be enough and as much as I hate to think it, our safety is really a function of the fact that there aren't too many homicidal nuts out there, not that we can really protect ourselves from them. This latter one I'm not sure about, but it's not even idea that I had prior to this debate.
What is your opinion on a handgun as a form of defense in the home, Teresa? Do you think a well trained individual will better or worsen the odds? I know this calls for speculation, but I just want your personal opinion as a data point.
Anyway, I will take the advice to process this all a bit, and appreciate the discussion.
Susan:
I'm done with the sexism discussion. I regret responding to begin with.
Susan:
Yes, you struck a nerve. Flatter yourself all you want with regard to what you think that means, but maybe I was just annoyed at some smug ad hominum attack. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar... That's actually the first time I can remember being accused of homophobia, but not nearly the first time I've run into somebody acting like you (usually towards women, ironically) given the unfortunate amount of time I've spent in hanging around the ivory towers. So I probably do have a nerve about it, actually.
But you're absolutely right: the most appropriate response to your troll would've been to just ignore you.
abi:
That was over the line. Back it down now.
Fair enough. Susan, I apologize. I overreacted and take it back. And yes, I think the question of how and to what extent were are responsible for our own defense is tied to the question of manhood, for men, and to womenhood for women. And you're way off the mark with your accusation of homophobia. I don't know where you got that, so I don't even know how to respond to that.
fidelio:
Excellent points. Ok, I think your nails were the last in the coffin of my optimism regarding gun owners. I have to admit that I was probably extrapolating way too much from the gun owners I know, and that's dangerous. I'd even go so far as to say that maybe Colorado is right to require some training hoops, as opposed to the way Vermont does it.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 2 |
| 2007 | 41 |
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