huh. weird sudden insight and grand unification of threads: what Saul did to the original followers of Jeshua is essentially what has happened to fannish fandom in the subsequent corruption of the word fandom: drowned out the voices and experience of the original few by drowning them out in numerical floods of newcomers who think they know what the whole thing is about, but in fact don't quite get it, have a bunch of misconceptions and distorted notions, and aren't at all interested in learning the difference.
And of course Saul brought those Roman bureaucrat skills to bear on perverting and distorting the work of Jeshua, thus very effectively destroying the sect he had set out to destroy, before his sudden insight on the road to Damascus. Among other things, Jeshua very specifically admonished his followers to avoid the gentiles, and that the old law had not passed away.
What? No toaster oven?
No, the toaster oven goes to Patrick when his recruitment numbers hit the goal threshold.
Well, when you start in on not wanting to hear Shatner, rather than say, Harlan, it does give a books vs. media slant, rather than the community vs. "star" angle you're going for.
*chortle* *snort* *splutter* *gasp* *wheeze* *koff*
I think this contrast would work possibly just a wee bit better if you had picked almost anyone but Harlan fergoshsakes. I don't think I've seen the man appear in public in the last decade but that he was flacking for Joe Straczinski. Hardly the man with the purest pure lit cred to his name. Harlan's been happily sucking at the glass teat for a while now.
Doesn't this, by example, mean that these people have moved beyond fandom to something else? So, are they really served by being called SF Fandom, except for the need to have some label to call that subcultural landscape wherein Patrick owns a large house in the center of town, where I used to live in an apartment and now just visit on holidays, and where Timothy flies in for the occasional convention?
I hate to go semantical on this, but maybe that's the breakdown in communication here. "Fandom," as a word, exists outside of the self-identifying subcultural town described in the paragraph above, and trying to change the definition in the larger culture to match how one fairly unique subculture uses it seems quixotic.
I understand most indigenous people's name for themselves generally turns out to mean "the people" or just "people" in their own language. This despite the fact that in the larger world that word refers to something different, and the different meanings might lead to some confusion. I also understand that the terms "form" and "idea" have meanings in the common coinage that have nothing whatever to do with Plato's ontology. Indeed the English language is littered with terms of art that are false cognates to words in common coinage. If this is quixotry, it is very thick on the ground. Yes, it's true that "fandom" is a term that can lead to confusion, if the specialized meaning is conflated with the everyday one, but I find most people can actually cope with learning what the term of art means, once they've let go of assuming that they already do.
Speaking of heat in St. Louis and New York, how are the black-outs going out thataway? The shots of the street crowds look enormous.
Well, I'll sympathize with the feeling of getting a broadside from Eric that seems disproportionate to stimulus, and leave it at that.
On purely aesthetic grounds I don't care for the three column layout. It looks crowdy and cluttered to my eye. Maybe I'm missing something, but it doesn't seem like there's more information being transmitted, only a busier, more distracting presentation. I read at full screen, so it doesn't impair functionality a lot, but it does disrupt my reading focus.
On the other hand, I do like going to a new screen rather than a mini daughter window for comments. Particularly because the mini windows never spawned "back" buttons to use in case I followed a link.
Mary Kay-
I understand ambivalence about hate crime laws, but as Orcinus points out (heck, just go read the whole long post taking the juice out of Balloon Juice), the vast, vast majority of "hate crimes" aren't murder. There is no point in upping the stakes on murder. But assault? Harrassment? Making threats? There's a whole world of difference between one asshole neighbor making threatening remarks on his own behalf, and speaking on behalf of, say, the KKK, or their spiritual kindred. The latter is much likelier to terrorize whole communities into immobility. And proscribing it is not thought policing. If the man threatens to bring in the Klan and burn down your house, you don't need a psychic to know about it, and that kind of threat has a far more profound effect than certain other types of threats. I'm not sure that it's bad for the law to recognize those kinds of differences, if it can do so gracefully, and without mangling the Constitution. "If," is of course the big question.
And at least some folks seem to have data that that kind of crimes are reduced by having tougher sentences on the books for them, unlike many other kinds of crime. It seems as if there is a sense of community disapproval of bias crimes, some of the bravado goes right out of the potential criminals.
So I dunno. I am at least ambivalent.
"undercover capacity"?
What does that exactly mean?
That the work she did was under a cover, be it official cover (public cover story claiming she was engaged in embassy work, usually) or unofficial cover (i.e. with a public cover story about her reasons for being where she was and doing what she did which neither refered to the CIA, nor to any official governmental position). This seems fairly self-explanatory. Do you not follow what a cover is?
Given the circumstances of the story, i.e. one where detailing specifics of her job may still constitute a federal crime, expecting the level of detail you seem to want as information seems as stranely disingenuous as a government demanding to see WMD's it doesn't actually believe exist, and then pulling out inspectors when they seem to be making good progress toward demonstrating that, in fact, they don't.
Yak. "Loren" I can spell, what I can't always do is spot when my fingers took over without routing through the brain. Sorry!
Yay, Lauren! I hear Marci has already suggested you get in touch with us about our complex. Please feel free. Full disclosure requires me to mention that we get some kind of break on one month's rent if we talk you into signing a lease here. On the other hand, you guys would make fodder for getting a proper Eastguard going again, and we do actually quite like the place.
Does this mean I won the debate?
Looks more like you've run out of rhetorical steam and are now grasping at straws to get out of it. Hunting for excuses to claim insult sure makes it look that way. In fact, merely being AWOL, and a poser, is decidedly milder than the accusations I've heard directed at Bush from serving military folk. "Desertion in time of war," comes nearer the mark. You keep wanting to portray the military in terms of a dew-eyed bunch of pro-presidential automatons, but my contact with real military personnel suggests otherwise. More tedious bluff and bravado about that just suggests you don't actually have anything more to say. Another surprise.
Franks is a bright guy.
Even bright enough, perhaps, to have noticed that the Arbustista m.o. is to leave anyone who doesn't back them 100%, all the time (and even some who do), twisting in the wind, pendant from their own entrails, the next time they need a fall guy, for instance? Tommy Franks is smart enough to know that under this administration dissenters get slapped down, and his job is to suck Presidential dick 24/7. He's smart enough to know that when the Whitehouse makes asshole remarks, the chorus backs them up in four part harmony until the official story changes. He "didn't have to say it" in the same sense that he doesn't have to have a job next year, or once he retires.
General Franks has come out and basically echoed President Bush's fighting remarks. Hmmm.
Franks barks on command. Yep, that's a shocker all right. But not all the troops are so credulous, nor the generals so spineless, as you might wish or imply.
Yes, it does indeed take a lot of fighting spirit to go AWOL for a year and then try to capitalize on one's "service record" by pretending to be responsible for a carrier landing he wouldn't have been qualified to fly when he was last in "service," having been grounded for refusing to take a drug test. It takes a lot of fighting spirit to have people in service who refuse to delete, cover, obscure, or outright lie about your record shuffled off to obscure hardship duties and then, when they catch a terminal disease there, do everything in your power to deny them their rightful medical benefits. It takes a lot of fighting spirit to delay an entire carrier of sailors and marines from a timely homecoming in order to shoot yourself a Top Gun teevee commercial for your re-election campaign. It takes a lot of fighting spirit to wrap yourself in the flag and claim to support our troops while baldfacedly cutting or attempting to deny benefits and pay increases to active and retired military. But you know, I think it's both the wrong fight, and the wrong spirit, to make a good a good CinC. If you're dumb enough to buy the sizzle while he eats the stake, there's a word for you: dupe.
LT Smash doesn't seem too upset by Bush's statement.
LT Smash may not represent the entire active military in Iraq. I spent some time Thursday talking over the phone with Terry Karney, who's been shipped home from Iraq on a medical. Terry was less thralled with the remarks of ROTUS.
As a side note, Terry also happened to have the hard copy of the ARMY TIMES opinion piece that magically disappeared from the website, for further confirmation of its existence, should anyone have doubted.
--Ulrika
It's a lovely theory, making the distinction between being stupid and acting stupid, but in my experience, if you tell people who are willfully acting stupid that they are willfully acting stupid, they don't pull up short and say, 'Hey, I could change my behavior!' They say, 'Hey, you called me *stooopid" I'm not listening to you, you elitist swine!'
People who are invested in not changing their worldview will generally go to some lengths to defend its perimeter. One of the common ones is willfully misconstruing any attempt to jar it, and getting righteously indignant as an excuse to stop listening. I believe you actually have to be sneakier than that -- approach them with arguments that do not superficially appear to challenge their worldview.
I'm not personally any good at this technique, but I'm moderately certain it is what's required.
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| 2003 | 18 |
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