albatross@381:
More broadly, if you are white and want to take some positions in political arguments, you are very likely to find yourself spending twice as much time and energy writing each post, or choosing your words. This doesn't go into making you a better person, or solving any problems.
Yeah, it does go to solve at least one problem actually. It goes to solve the problem of you accidentally pissing off, hurting, insulting, and making life just a little bit harder for some of the people who are probably going to be hearing you. Some white people do think that is worth putting in the time and energy to double check what it is they're saying.
Remember Wilde: "A true gentlemen is one who is never unintentionally rude."
Emma@169:
What is it about Doctorow that gets people foaming at the mouth?
God knows. I used to be surprised that the BB crew continued to blog and even to allow comments in the face of the way their commenters collectively treat them. After watching people wank for over 60 comments over whether it is evil to give your kid a bucket of water to play with, I am now just surprised that they haven't taken an AK-47 to a shopping mall yet. I have to assume that Mr. Doctorow broke a cursed mirror or something during one of his caped adventures and isn't telling.
(Note: I am not fantasizing about mass murder! I am merely referring to it in a callous fashion!)
Nonsense! Do not metal in the aferrous of others.
Xopher@292:
She just wanted to remind us that steeling is wrong.
Serge@254:
Sa-weet! Three Days in Europe is smart, funny, hip, kind of sweet, and passes the Mo Movie Test. It's a screwball comedy for the noughties and exactly the sort of source material they should be making movies from. And yes, there is every chance we will get to see a great deal of Mr. Jackman. :) (Which I will be greatly looking forward to.)
Stuart@53:
There...isn't any sign of Mr. Bush working professionally with the the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, the White House Counsel, and the Secretary of State? I do have to wonder what exactly you would consider evidence of a professional relationship as opposed to a sexual one. No, actually, I don't. I just have to assume that you are perpetuating the inaccurate, insulting, and tired - but easy to make - insinuation that a professional woman must be sleeping with her boss.
Stuart@15:
Many people find a successful male politician sleeping with a young woman in a subordinate position much more human and understandable than a successful male politician working professionally with female counselors and cabinet members; but in these politically correct days, it's rare to hear it said so explicitly.
cofax@17:
I know one person who tried for months to get through the hiring process for the Oakland P.D. - not even to get hired, but to get to the tests which would theoretically tell them whether they could hire her. They kept cancelling the tests or rescheduling and not telling her. Indirect way of not hiring women, or sheer incompetence? Either way, she's got another job, and I've got a lot less patience for police departments which claim to be understaffed.
A sequel to "And I Awoke And Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side". A human possessed of the typical powerful human urge to exogamy, and more than typical cleverness, manages to kidnap a Del-a Res'ian from Big Junction station, and embarks on an aimless journey around the galaxy with his hapless sexual captive. The Del-a Res'ian, becoming more desperate as it nears the climax of its budding cycle, finally manages to prematurely break itself out of its night chrysalis and escape, while the man is away on a supply run, believing it safely trapped in its dormant phase. Deprived of his alien addiction, the man becomes bitterly insane, now travelling the galaxy in an effort to hunt down and kill anyone whom he believes might have helped his captive escape.
The story ends on a tragic note when in the course of his murderous journey, the man accidentally finds his former captive. Damaged by his alien physiognomy and deprived too long of the argon-sulfur atmosphere of Del-a Res's nursing pits, and unable to bud or to regenerate, the alien is dying. The man does what he can to make it more comfortable, and then leaves; having finally been able to see the alien not as the object of his obsessive lust, but as a fellow sentient; and having realized, in a sad and wondrous moment of clarity, that there is nothing he can do to make up for having destroyed its life, and that the tragedy is not that he lost the alien, but that he ever met it at all.
Identifying trolling requires identification of motive, which is notoriously subjective and frequently self-serving.
That's simply not true. Trolling is a behavior; whether it's caused by the desire to piss people off, a mental disorder, or a bet the commenter lost, is not only unknowable but irrelevant. The question isn't whether you're being an asshole in your own mind, you know. The question is whether you're being an asshole in your outside voice.
Greg London @ 114:
The rule you're actually thinking of goes more like, "A character must not be revealed as gay unless there is a reason to reveal him as gay." Which gets right up some of our noses, because there is no corresponding rule of "A character must not be revealed as straight unless there is a reason to reveal him as straight." Ms. Rowling can casually mention the girlie pics up on Sirius Black's walls and nobody wants to know why she's shoving heterosexuality into a children's book where it doesn't fit. Well, except for the slashers, but that's a different issue.
Now looking at the characters in the book who do have canon sexualities, I would be inclined to give this situation a pass, because the teachers, as lots of people have pointed out, do not have sexualities visible to the students.
Except for one thing: Dumbledore's affair with Grindelwald is hella relevant to the story! Can you honestly say that if it had been dashing blond Gerda Grindelwald seducing D. to the dark side of the Force, Rita Skeeter would have been confining herself to writing about their late night owls? It's not like Ms. Rowling would be shoehorning it into the story with "Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself. That's why I like to make sure everyone knows I'm gayer than Christmas."
I suppose that the couplings in late-period Heinlein are not heroic.
Truer words...
dsl@58, we surrender some possible talking points against Coulter not out of concern for her feelings, but because those points hurt ourselves. When you attack a female public figure for her physical presentation or lack of attractiveness, you reinforce the idea that it is legitimate to demand perfection in the attractiveness and physical presentation of female public figures. Those of us who are tired of hearing Hillary Clinton's laugh criticized rather than her position on the war need to cut that out.
I find it an odd response to dismiss a respected right-wing pundit's advocated disenfranchisement of half the country's citizenship as "noise" and claim that the real issue here is her (implied) attack on homosexual men. She's not attacking effeminate men for being like women here; she is directly attacking women. Making this be about men is kind of a stretch.
Someone I read earlier made the point that the real message communicated here is that women's votes are optional but men's aren't. One could just as accurately and perhaps with more justice say that Republicans would have no chance of getting elected without male suffrage and the stupidity they've been using it for lately, but you wouldn't get that printed in the Observer.
Heresiarch@115:
Yes, let's go no more a-Roving
So late into the night
No more U.S. Attorney shoving
Or CIA agents brought to light.
Greg @224:
Let me try this again.
During the "As you wish" portion of the relationship, Buttercup doesn't do dick for Westley except be pretty.
At the point at which love dawns, she not unnaturally stops ordering him around and he starts saying more than three words to her and so we're off for the rest of the (wonderful) movie. What I am trying to say is that "As you wish" describes only a very small part of their interaction, and really, it's not the good part. Getting all het up over ZOMG-these-crazy-feminists-think-it's-a-sexist-movie there's-no-speaking-to-us is far from the point. The point is that that particular dynamic - and as you justly point out, it's like ten minutes of the movie - isn't terribly convincing as a good model for a relationship.
Greg @ 216:
Perhaps the confusion is caused by your calling it a "Buttercup relationship". If I recall properly, during the "As you wish" portion of the relationship, Buttercup didn't do dick for Westley except be pretty. This is the sort of thing that leads people to conclude either that the relationship is one-sided, or that the contribution of the woman lies in being pretty (which is rather a poor long-term goal, as we all stop doing that eventually.)
MD^2 @ 93:
How much then can the general level of a given species increase while the overall particular level of specimens decreases ?
I am disputing the idea that the overall particular fitness level of specimens is decreasing. Saying that modern humans would not be well adapted to our environment without our current level(s) of technology makes about as much sense as saying that ants are maladapted because without their anthills they could not survive or reproduce. It's not relevant.
Incidentally, I personally think the jury is still out on intelligence as an adaptive trait. If this is one of your interests, I recommend you read Blindsight, by Peter Watts. But maybe not right before going to bed.
One might make the case that developing the intelligence and social will to create and use medicine and safety technology is an example of a species' increase in fitness, she said mildly.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 8 |
| 2007 | 13 |
| 2006 | 2 |
| 2005 | 6 |
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