Displaying comments 1 to 34 of 34
MeTa post:
Shooty McGunpants
This thread would be more entertaining if there were more guns.
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 2:57 PM on April 24, 2007
Take your persecution complex to a less sycophantic website.
...after which Saucy Intruder goes on to complain about being persecuted by the MeFi masses who bow to authority. Look, Saucy Intruder, here's an analogy. If you don't see why you're mistaken, you're beyond help:
Dear AskMe, I'm looking for someone to re-bind my copy of the Koran. I'm a fundamentalist muslim and I've had this book for years. I'm in Chicago. P.S.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 9:02 AM on April 25, 2007
MeTa post:
crush racism an sexism forever
I'm really curious how the two correlate for everyone. I fall into camp 3 for both.
Me too. But this is one of those areas where liberalism splits with progressivism. To the extent that this is a useful distinction, progressives tend to go with #2 on both questions. As a result, liberals accuse progressives of insufficient devotion to general principles, whereas progressives accuse liberals of ignoring larger social structures. Liberals insist on... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 1:17 PM on March 3, 2007
Meatbomb, equating gay people who want to patronize gay or gay-friendly service providers with racists is thoughtless and ignorant.
langugagehat, you're moving the goalposts. No one has a problem with wanting to patronize gay-friendly businesses. That makes good sense. But there's a difference between a preference for gay-friendliness and a preference for people who are gay. I take it that Meatbomb and bugbread object to the... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 10:07 AM on March 4, 2007
I find it strange that some people have been careful to avoid any awareness of how Meatbomb's post was worded, and instead invent and vociferously defend a strawman completely unrelated to the post as it is written.
Why would I set up a position to defend that's weaker than it is? If you meant to say that I'm granting Meatbomb's post too much charity, then you could be right. But this is something I try to do on a regular basis... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 11:33 AM on March 4, 2007
If the poster wanted a gay accountant because he believes that straight people are all evil scumbags attempting to keep him and his kind down, well, given the current political environment, I'd have to agree with him on a statistical basis, and again, it doesn't matter to me why this man wants a gay accountant, so that's fine with me too.
occhiblu, you don't really believe this, do you? If you do, I think it's rather incredible that you can't see why... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 12:07 PM on March 4, 2007
anotherpanacea, yes, Rawls endorses desert as a function of procedural justice. As a matter of fact, I reject procedural justice as all there is to desert. But, even if I didn't, take a look a couple of paragraphs down from your first quotation. Here's the relevant passage:
"The assertion that a man deserves the superior character that enables him to make the effort to cultivate his abilities is equally problematic; for his character depends in large part upon... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 12:36 PM on March 4, 2007
occhiblu, I think we're as close as we're going to get to agreeing. I think discrimination is always bad, and some is worse than others. But I don't think it's ever good.
anotherpacancea, my primary motive in arguing isn't to convince other people that I'm right. My overriding aim is to clarify the issues in my own mind and to get at the truth. My name-dropping wasn't an attempt to "win" the argument. It was an attempt to point you to other writers on... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 6:50 PM on March 4, 2007
The difference principle is one of the foundations of democratic legitimacy.
I disagree.
This is a strange position for a Nozickian to take, so I'm guessing you're not actually a libertarian.
Right. I invoke Nozick the way I do because in this context, I think he's right.
I've suggested that a moral agent need only have just... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 7:06 AM on March 5, 2007
I guess that makes sense: you're not trying to "convince other people that [you're] right." You must be one of the new batch of reformed epistemologists I've been hearing about. You're not even offering reasons that are publicly recognizable as internally consistent!
This is unfair. I said my primary motive isn't to convince other people I'm right. Are you suggesting that it should be? And, obviously, I think my reasons are internally consistent.
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 7:51 AM on March 5, 2007
You really don't have a working political theory at all, do you?
One that I could articulate fully right here, right now? Of course not. I'll concede this: it's true that most of what I've written has been destructive in nature, and I haven't offered a full-bodied alternative to Rawls' theory. But I don't need to. All I need is good reasons for rejecting your position, which I've tried to sketch above. And... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 9:33 AM on March 5, 2007
MeTa post:
Hey, can we have the spelling...
freebird, do you use "unthaw?"
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 10:54 AM on November 29, 2006
"Unthaw" is a synonym for "thaw," yes. At least around here, everyone uses the former in place of the latter. I think it parallels the case of irregardless/regardless quite nicely, since each member of the pair means the same thing as the other, making the negation form redundant. In fact, for me, the example of unthaw/thaw defeats EB's argument about pragmatism. That is, if you're one of the many people using "unthaw," then you shouldn't object to irregardless.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 11:38 AM on November 29, 2006
I don't think "unthaw" is in that camp, but I do think it sucks, nothing personal.
None taken! I'd imagine you'd look at my funny if I said "bunnyhug," too. It's all part of the dialect.
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 1:05 PM on November 29, 2006
MeTa post:
Which MetaFilter members can you identify by their...
grumblebee (earnest, use of capital letters, wife, longish), bugbread (meticulous reasoning, analogies to mundane examples), EB (long, well-reasoned), amberglow (idiosyncratic use of pseudo-em dashes), languagehat (relative brevity, especially lucidity).
Those are the main ones for me, probably because I find myself reading their comments more than others.
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 12:54 PM on November 29, 2006
MeTa post:
Whatever happened to monkeyfilter? [more...
The "MoFi/MeFi sucks" ethos is the community weblog equivalent of the "PS2/X-Box sucks" you see on video game discussion boards if you've spent even a few minutes looking at them. A lot of Apple (or Linux) fans exhibit the same behavior. That is to say, it's a bunch of people trying to validate themselves through the people and the things they've chosen to associate with, and through these associations, built a part of their own identities.
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 8:01 PM on November 12, 2006
MeTa post:
Can we have an election day thread? Is that too...
Here in Toronto, voting literally takes me about 90 seconds once I reach the poll station. I walk in (no lines), give my name, get handed a form, fill it out, watch it drop in the box, leave.
Yeah, that's my experience as well, but I voted in a municipal election in Saskatoon a couple weeks ago and I noticed that the paper ballots were gone, with Diebold machines in their place. *sigh*
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 4:19 PM on November 7, 2006
MeTa post:
Well, askme got served with a doozy tonight and I...
Now to decipher whether EB is actually opposed to that or not.
I don't think it's that difficult to decipher. EB thinks religion is mostly irrelevant because he thinks that there is an important social interest served by confession. Insofar as religion is relevant, the facts: 1) that people feel comfortable confiding in religious figures, and; 2) that they have an expectation of privacy when they do so, together provide reason... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 8:38 PM on October 22, 2006
I'm sympathetic to your argument because I agree that the assumption of bad faith and/or thoughtlessness is one of the biggest problems with political debates everywhere, and especially here, on Metafilter. Incidentally, I believe that we ought to be more generous online in places like this because of specific dangers that are less likely to present themselves offline (anonymity, dehumanization, &c). So I agree with that. At the same time, as I said, I think people need to meet a standard... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 10:16 PM on October 22, 2006
MeTa post:
I have a question about personal info privacy...
I find it hard to believe even the current expectation of privacy will last long.
I agree. But I don't think that this would be a turn for the worse, particularly if it makes people feel more responsible for what they write online.
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 8:58 AM on October 19, 2006
MeTa post:
Should there be a spoiler alert for this question?...
It would have been easy to warn people of the spoilers in this case and to keep them off the front page. The asker agrees. And you think the complaints go too far? Why? If it's easy to do something, and if it makes a lot of people happy to do it, why not do it?
I take it we're not expected to have read every book published before 1962, are we? And, again, this one could have easily been changed to avoid the spoiler.
*stands aside as the... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 7:49 PM on September 30, 2006
For the record, I don't intend this as a "callout." I assumed good faith and that the asker simply slipped up. I posted this mostly so that Matt or Jess could see and edit it easily. That is, if it's not already chatfilter. I would have simply flagged it, but none of the reasons fit the situation very well.
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 7:52 PM on September 30, 2006
snsranch, you're hunch is wrong, I heard of the book long before the question. It was the first PKD book I heard about, actually. I've never got around to reading it, that's all.
Personally, I wasn't particularly bothered by the question because it'll be awhile before I do read the book, and by that time I'll have forgotten the spoiler, but I knew others would be bothered by it. And what grumblebee said.
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 8:43 PM on September 30, 2006
In fact, I've met some people who like to know the plot in advance because they hate it when movies/stories make them feel too much.
Really? I'm right with you on your motive for reading and watching stories. And I think you're right that surprise does, or at least can, deepen the pathos of a story. If I know that a sympathetic character is going to die in the end, I don't feel the same sense of shock and injustice when it happens.... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 12:23 PM on October 1, 2006
MeTa post:
I'm taking myself to metatalk because I am...
No, strangely, I like to give each woman the opportunity to make her own decisions, and have her own reactions, without dictating what those might be, whether or not they agree with my politics.
Sure, I agree. But tolerance doesn't require acceptance, does it? I don't want to fan the flames, but reading this thread, it's as if some people think that pro-choicers can never disapprove of any abortions under any circumstances, otherwise they're not... [more]
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 5:35 PM on September 12, 2006
vetiver, for the most part, I agree with you, except in some circumstances, late in the pregnancy, where I'd say abortion is morally equivalent to infanticide. But I think reasonable people can disagree about these things.
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 7:22 AM on September 14, 2006
MeTa post:
Why can't I add this to my wishlist?...
Well, maybe somebody does. But not if you're from here. If you want to blend in with the locals you won't say that silly word.
Really? I'm in Saskatchewan, and I've heard the term used every so often by locals. I hear it used occasionally on the radio too, mostly CKOM. It is unwiedly, though, so I usually avoid it.
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 10:15 AM on August 16, 2006
*checks raedyn's profile*
Oh, you're from Regina. Well, that explains it. ;)
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 10:21 AM on August 16, 2006
MeTa post:
Which members here do you think best represent...
No one is reading all those words. Not a single solitary soul.
At least one, yes. Next time you might try speaking for yourself, not everyone else on the planet.
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 9:17 PM on July 22, 2006
Is the implication then that you're example does represent the planet in the face of evidence to the contrary?
I offered a counterexample to your absolute statement, which is false. That's it, really.
posted to MetaTalk by smorange
at 10:48 AM on July 25, 2006
