I don't think that changing the prevailing custom to using one's legal name would really reduce harassment at all. First of all, it's not too tough to come up with "Taylor White" instead of "1337$up3r4$$4$$i|\|." Easier, maybe. Unless you require some sort of check-in, it doesn't really help the problem--and if you are requiring a check-in, who cares what name they post with?
Saying of those who post pseudonymously and responsibly that "they provide legitamacy and cover for the small percentage who use their anonymity for harassment" doesn't ring true. Do you think that they would stop if they were the only ones using pseudonyms? And do you really think that anyone at all is confused when a troll posts? Whatever name they post under, it's their behavior that identifies them.
"Here at Chicken Itza, we use only the finest chickens, winnowed down to the very best via a grueling stone-basketball competition. No one prepares chicken (by carving heart out with obsidian knife on top of chunky-looking pyramids) like Chicken Itza!"
Clark E Meyers writes: Notice that according to published reports some effort was made to limit potentially ugly consequences including:
5 The warning reads in full: “Please read this carefully prior to completing the application: [¶] By entering into marriage you may lose some or all of the rights, protections, and benefits you enjoy as a domestic partner, including, but not limited to those rights, protections, and benefits afforded by State and local government, and by your employer. If you are currently in a domestic partnership, you are urged to seek legal advice regarding the potential loss of your rights,
protections, and benefits before entering into marriage. [¶] Marriage of gay and lesbian couples may not be recognized as valid by any jurisdiction other than San Francisco, and may not be recognized as valid by any employer. If you are a same-gender couple, you are encouraged to seek legal advice regarding the effect
of entering into marriage.”
Further the Court ordered full refunds to those who want them. Somebody will have to point out to me those potentially ugly consequences for anybody.
The most important positive aspect of the ruling was that it very explicitly did not rule on the consitutionality of the issue. That need not have been the case. If they had ruled on the constitutionality, and had upheld the ban as constitutional (paralleling Dredd Scott, for example), then that seems like a pretty ugly consequence to me.
And it also seems odd to hold up a full refund as any sort of consolation to those whose marriages were just declared void. "I suppose we'll just have to go back to being second-class citizens, and just try to forget the emotional toll of having our dreams snatched out of our hands--but at least we got our money back!"
Jeremy Leader writes: If the representatives could somehow be exempted from this phenomenon, so that only actual competent leaders ran for office, representative democracy would be vastly better than any alternative.
And if only we could find a totally selfless, supremely competent person and make them run the whole universe a la Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, why then we could dispense with this democracy nonsense all-together!
Patrick Nielson Hayden writes: Wait a minute, which alternate universe are we in? Nobody in San Francisco is being thrown in jail over any of this, so far as I know.
Well, I was speaking metaphorically. What I meant was that he (and those of us supporting him) had to be prepared for the potentially ugly consequences of his actions.
What the mayor did was the right thing. He followed his beliefs, even though they ran counter to the law. However, he shouldn't be surprised to be thrown in jail, no more than civil rights agitators were in Birmingham. He did what he felt he had to do, and the California Supreme Court did what they felt they had to do.
Re: citizen vs. executive, I think the situation is exactly parallel. Just like citizens, executives must act as they see fit; and they should also expect to be held accountable for it. It's the second part that Bush and co. have trouble with.
Bill Humphries said: We have this amazing thing called representative democracy. You vote in people whose interests and policies align with yours, and they have staff to help sort through all the legislation and vote on it.
It's great.
That way you don't have some rich jerk from Orange County spoof the system by paying for ads selling the "Don't Hurt Puppies and Kittens Initiative" which has nothing to do with puppies, or kittens, but does involve him getting a large, public subsidy.
No, instead he buys off the democratically elected representative with campaign contributions, political ads, etc., which is fairly easy since all politicians are, by default, insanely desperate for cash.
Oh, wait, no, I forgot, a representative democracy is totally immune to the corruption of private money.
If you are willing to give up on the ballot initiative on the grounds that it’s vulnerable to exploitation, why are you defending representative democracy? It hasn’t really impressed me with its resistance to vice. If it is less prone to exploitation, it is because it has been around a lot longer and people have already taken advantage of or closed all its loopholes.
The initiative ballot isn't some cute little way of letting the people pass handy-dandy laws that everyone agrees on gone horribly wrong. It is, essentially, the creation of a parallel legislature, one run directly by the people. It has a lot of power. Somehow, this fact has mostly escaped people's notice. Now, personally, I don't think that it is necessarily a bad idea to let everyday people get into the law-making business, and I’m wary of people who think it is. Admittedly, it lacks the checks and balances built into the legislative branch, i.e., the separation of the Senate and Congress. This makes it dangerous--but that doesn't mean that the idea is inherently bad.
The recall, on the other hand, just seems like a bad idea all around.
I'm very wary of people who say that a system allowing the people to directly determine their own laws is bad. I live in Oregon, where there's a similar ballot initiative system. Almost every year, Lon Mabon (leader of the anti-gay neo-con Oregon Citizens Alliance) tries to get an anti-gay measure passed, and every year, he collects his signatures, gets on the ballot, and is defeated. In Oregon there are still enough politically active liberals and liberal groups to counter the efforts of Mabon and his ilk.
I don't think the problem is that the ballot initiative exists. It's that the only people taking advantage of it at the moment are conservative crazies like Mabon. Right now, the conservative political machine is far better organized--especially at the grass-roots level--than the liberal machine. It's not surprising that they can turn the ballot initiative to their own advantage. If they can rally their people to get Nader on the presidential ballot of all things, then why are we surprised that they can get more initiatives onto the ballot than we can?
The answer isn't to demonize the system. The answer is to participate in the system.
I prefer to discuss genre according to themes. You can call this reductionist, but it seems to me that insisting that a narrative that takes place in space has to be science fiction and nothing else is just as reductionist
I'm fairly sure no one is claiming that something as superficial as being set in space instantly makes something sci-fi. In fact, I'm pretty sure that most people are saying just the opposite: that no single element, taken by itself, can determine a story's genre--theme included.
This isn't an argument between to different schools of reductionism. Our counter-examples aren't meant to say "No, THIS is what's important," they're meant to say "This is important too." Theme is admittedly crucial, but it's far from the only thing.
It might help to have a little default thought experiment to discuss positions with, rather than using examples from messy, opinion-laden reality. Here:
Novel n has two main themes: [the effect of technology on life] and [the nature of good/evil]. One stereotypically sci-fi, one stereotypically fantasy. Now let's pretend that these two themes, have, through some coincidence, been given exactly the same weight in the novel. Which genre should it be in, sci-fi, or fantasy? What if the world is overtly swords-and-sorcery fare? What if it's set in a sci-fi world?
Abigail: That last paragraph of mine was a low blow, and I apologize. Pure speculation on my part, and totally wrong.
Xopher: Hmm, if I can convince people to ignore what I say because they like my name, then I ought to be well on my way to heresiarchy. After all, cults are all about cool names.
Abigail, saying that Harry Potter isn't "genre fantasy" because it's so much more of a mystery/boarding school novel is like saying that the Mallorean isn't genre fantasy because really, it's just a quest story. The fantasy genre isn't a plot style; mysteries, quests, comedies, tragedies, and every conceivable plot in between has been written as a "genre fantasy." If the term "genre fantasy" is to have any useful meaning (or any other genre/sub-genre term for that matter), you can't arbitrarily decide that any plot element X is THE deciding plot element that defines the genre. Otherwise you are going to spend all your time trying to adjudicate the countless genre-benders, and inevitably go stark raving mad.
Harry Potter is a "genre fantasy" AND a mystery AND a boarding school novel. Like PNH said so astutely, "Genres aren't engineering specs, they're collections of effects." It's possible to draw on more than one collection of effects at a time. Witness China Mieville, Neil Gaiman, Susanna Clarke, Terry Pratchett, J.K. Rowling, Bruce Sterling, Lois McMaster Bujold, Gene Wolfe, ad nauseum.
It sounds like the thing that's really concerning you is being identified as someone who reads "genre fantasy," a label you'd rather avoid (based, from what I can gather, on your impressions of the books' covers). You're afraid that if people think Harry Potter is "genre fantasy," you'll get cooties.
Back to the basic issue: I'm really not sold on the idea that the only way that the army can "break things and kill people" efficiently is to hate, hate, HATE their adversaries with all their might. I'm not saying that that isn't an effective strategy, I'm just saying that it isn't the only one available, and not even necessarily the most effective.
Who is more effective a combantant: the vicious killer, who thinks his opponent is little better than a dog, or the cold-blooded strategist, who respects his opponent's capabilities? You can see the difference in the stories of WWII pilots above: officers treated other officers with respect, because, well, they respected them. The civilians killed in rage, because the fuckers just bombed the hell out of them--not the best way to get people to think of you as equal.
I don't think that the army would lose that much effectiveness if they stopped thinking of their enemies as inhuman. They might just gain some: underestimating your enemy is never good. Look at Iraq, for example.
Now I launch into lala land, feel free to ignore: It is my understanding that most of the training that non-coms get is designed to get them to think of their enemy as inhuman, because it makes them easier to kill. Whereas officers recieve a different sort of training, because underedtimating your opponent is far more dangerous if it's a general who is doing it. Basically what I'm arguing is that the U.S. military is designed to make its rank and file think of whoever they are fighting as horrific scum. As long as that's true, atrocities like Abu Graib will keep happening, because if someone has complete control of someone he hates, he isn't going to treat him well. But to be perfectly honest, I don't really know much more about military training than I learned from Full Metal Jacket, so it's both possible and even likely that I'm totally full of crap.
Hmm.
Firstly, prior to this discussion, I had never heard of Avram Grumer or the Volokh Conspiracy. So perhaps it is a clever deception that leads me to think that they are being reasonable, and PNH is acting insane.
I don't think that pointing out a potential weakness in the primary illustration of a powerful point is the same as saying the point itself is wrong. And presenting the opposition's view point is far from unfair--it is necessary, as most any debater will tell you, to understanding the issue, whatever side you take.
In fact, viciously attacking others merely for presenting an opposing view seems, to me at at least, somewhat fascist.
Yes, by all means, let's toss Texas out of the Union. Because avoiding problems is much easier than solving them, and nothing says disapproval like disowning someone. I know it works when a family disowns someone for being gay, or agnostic, or whatever. Sure turns them right around, it does.
Oh yes, let's also call them barbarians. Because name-calling, especially towards a group with a long history of embracing what sets them apart, is really going to draw them closer to your point of view. I know it works when people do it to me. Every single time.
Is it just me, or does that vase look utterly unlike the original? Look at the curves--they don't match up at all. I'm not an expert at all, but I can't conceive of any way in which the vase that was recovered is part of the other vase pictured.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 14 |
| 2003 | 1 |
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