I second Jo Walton's wish for a way to find only the "new" messages--I eventually stop following a post's comments for mostly this reason--and appreciate Michelle's suggested work-around, which I may start trying out.
I also second Jo in that, nice as a well-moderated forum such as this can be, I still think nothing can beat Usenet for pure conversation, as long as one has a decent reader and a half-way decent kill/score file.
No question, the boys and I were in a tight spot. We'd been in plenty before, of course, sitting around watching our ride home fall to pieces down on the strand and taking a long crawl into a deep bottle just to see what was on the other end. That, along with the occasional dance with the crowd of toughs up the road--the kind of dance that paints the floor a shiny red and makes the crows fat and happy--had left us feeling confident we'd seen it all before. We hadn't, not by a long road. This time, this time the boys and I could tell it was different. Because Pretty Boy was in a rare taking, and this was no garden-variety snit, easy material for a quip and a chuckle at tomorrow's game. This was a killing rage, the kind with a dame at the heart of it. The kind that would see more than a few of the boys turning cards at Old Scratch's table before it burned itself out. The kind that makes the broad sing.
Steve:
I apologize for two things: mispelling your name and not double-checking it before posting (I usually do), and not being more careful to make clear that my summing up line was more in the nature of a general observation than directed at you and your post in specific. Mea culpa.
Steve Gillette:
Just because the plaintiff's attorney is working on a contingency doesn't mean it costs nothing to file a suit--and that's setting aside the actual filing fee ($300 or so in California, for instance) as de minimis for purposes of this discussion. Plaintiff's attorneys who want to be successful don't get in the habit of filing without doing some due diligence on the merits of the case first. And once that's done, and a case has survived a summary judgement motion (which takes a lot of effort to defend, even if the motion is largely bogus), there's a ton of time and effort that's put in to preparing and going through trial.
Is there abuse of the system? I'm sure there is. I'm getting a little bit tired of hearing all the "greedy trial lawyer" propaganda, though.
Teresa: I don't think it's too pat. Strikes me as just the right amount of good-natured snark. Mileages will vary, of course.
Will: Good one! Clever lad....
Erin Stafford:
Wow, that's eerie. Professor Cole said about what I was thinking. Coincidentally, he even teaches at the same university as the professor I mentioned, although that professor retired a few years ago.
Jonathon Van Post:
I dunno, the teacher of my Tang poetry seminar thought Mao was a pretty mediocre poet. He certainly wasn't fit to tie the sandals of, say, Li Bo, Du Fu, Bo Ju Yi, et al., though to be sure, they weren't modern imitators, but the original practitioners of the style.
Reading the Suskind article and assorted commentary on same, I've been struck by nothing so much as the long-ago remarks of a professor I had in a seminar on modern Chinese intellectual history, when he was discussing what he was pleased to term "the Chinese Voluntarists." What he meant was Chinese thinkers who were convinced that they could create a new (and inevitably glorious) future China through sheer force of will. Probably the most famous exemplar of this type was, of course, Mao Zedong, and I would think that the grim facts attendant to, say, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution serve well to highlight the dangers attached to that particular mindset.
Please, I beg, let no one imagine that I am trying to draw an equivalence between George W. Bush and Mao Zedong. I am not. But this talk of altering reality through force of will, and of possessing o'erweening faith in a desired outcome, can't help but spark some sobering comparisons and reflections.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 2 |
| 2004 | 6 |
| 2003 | 4 |
| 2002 | 6 |
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