To paraphrase something I said in another post, taking offense at the actions of others, so long as those actions create no harm beyond the offense itself, is a derangement along the lines of people who cut themselves. It's a little weird and unnatural. And appeals to authority are to be disregarded as the logical fallacy they are when attempting to argue that harm has been done.
Yeah, the Angry Tux syndrome is horrible, I say, Horrible! I couldn't take it and continued my escape all the way to the OpenBSD. The cruel judgement from my small community drove me to move to a big city, where I finally could practice my BSD loving nature openly. Even as a BSD carpet eater, I can appreciate the pains and sufferings of a true Tux catcher in this world filled with Windows normativeness.
You Unix folk just can't understand the plight of a Mac user, trapped in the middle between our boxy, misshapen roots and this voluptuous new Unix body with it's pretty little Intel processors and our perky new PCIe slots. Trapped between two worlds, misunderstood by both, who do WE turn to for solace?
So if I wander around for a while sniffing other peoples butts, regurgitate my own sick and eat it again, then curl up to lick my own balls for a while, that'd be okay with you ? After all, animals do it !
Um, I would hate to shock your sensibilities or anything, but, how do I put this? This is the Internet. That's porn to some people here.
So you are saying that calling the concept a 'phobia' implies that it is somehow worse than it is? It's bigotry, implying that it might be medical is just giving you a graceful out. It is religious intolerance and religious fundamentalism more akin to the Taliban than to anything we should be seeing in a free country, how's that?
Bart: Sharing is a bunch of bull, too. And helping others. And what's all this crap I've been hearing about tolerance? Homer: Hmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
It's wrong to ban someone just because they put "I'm a lesbian" in their profile, but I can see banning someone who is constantly forcing this on other people (like the type of person above) because that other person is irritating others with it. I have also met a man hating lesbian stereo-type, someone who might go on a game and start slagging off men in a fashion no better than trolls should be treated as a troll, regardless if their topic is about computers, cars, tv, music, sexual orientation, race or religion.
Taking offense at the actions of others is a form of self-harm and I don't understand why anyone does it. It's like cutting yourself, it's fucking weird.
Now, stopping people from doing things to others against their will is a different matter. We don't want that done to us, and have therefore both agreed not to do it to others AND to stop/punish other people who do it. It's a simple contract I have agreed to based on what I believe to be best for me. No feelings of judgment, condemnation, or offense need be involved.
Maybe you didn't read the part about them not wanting to get hit on? Oh wait, why am I saying this, now you'll assume that they are all just faking being lesbians and hit on them anyway, won't you?
A word is not a concept. Why do you argue semantics? Does the suggestion that fear may be involved trigger some kind of inner turning away and shutting down? Does this feeling make you want to put things into black and white terms?
Can you prove that most of the world disapproves of homosexuality? I personally know a few Muslims, plenty of Christians, and a few Jews who do not disapprove. I don't know any Taoists who disapprove. Or Buddhists. Or Satanists. The one Baha'i I know is personally against it, but wouldn't tell anyone else not to. I don't know any Hindus well enough to have gotten around to discussing sexuality. Or Jains. And that's just considering my practicing friends & acquaintances, most of the people I know may say they are Christian, but they don't really do anything about it. And they really don't care one way or another about homosexuality. But one's friends do not a random sample make, eh?
If you believe that life is hard and the world is cruel, as your sig says, then you do not trust in your God. I know devout Christians, I'm friends with devout Christians, and they are joyful people. You need to listen more in church. Or maybe get a different church, some are filled with hate.
In closing, let me leave you with a quote from Stephen Roberts, "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
Appeal to authority is a type of logical fallacy. But it is also a logical fallacy to assume an conclusion is wrong just because the argument uses a logical fallacy. There are good, simple arguments against murder. Specifically, we have almost all agreed to the social contract that states: I don't want to be murdered, therefore, I agree not to murder and to punish murderers. See how simple that is?
I have never heard a good moral argument for denying anyone their right to express their love how they choose, given that that expression doesn't violate any other agreements they may have.
My current working hypothesis is that the 'homosexuality is wrong' meme is part of a larger, dysfunctional social dynamic. This hypothesis predicts that cultures that are more isolated in space and time from certain 'epicenters of violence' will show certain traits, namely: no ritual genital mutilation, no ritualized child abuse, no social hierarchy, no strict sex roles, and no sexual taboos, including adultery, homosexuality, or even incest. The hypothesis also predicts that in those cultures, each of those sexual activities will happen less often than in cultures where they are forbidden.
In my opinion, the evidence seems to support this hypothesis, although it is hotly disputed by some. Such cultures have existed, do exist, and they are quite isolated from said epicenters of violence. For references, you may want to start with The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff, and Saharasia by James DeMeo.
If I'm right, it doesn't prove homosexuality is not wrong. But wrong is not the default position, one must come up with a good reason, one that the vast majority can agree to, for censoring the behavior of another if that behavior doesn't harm you directly. And just to be clear, 'moral outrage' is a type of self-harm.
As for sociopaths, they should behave according to the generally accepted principles such as 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you, if you were in their shoes,' because those principles make sense and give them the greatest likelihood of success in life. That's the same reason most of us are born with a conscience and very few people are sociopaths: because it makes sense, even at a genetic level. Cooperation is just as universal a principle as competition is, that is obvious even to those of us who don't believe in a higher power.
That's just flat out wrong, on both counts. Maybe you'd be safe declaring your homosexuality in, say, the Castro district of San Francsico. But even in, say, Hunter's Point or China Basin in San Francisco, you would get your ass BEAT for doing that. Reverend Phelps, on the other hand, goes around to funerals of gays all over the US with his inbred clan and they hold up signs and chant things like, "God hates fags!" without being stopped. At FUNERALS.
You seem as though you are jealous of minorities for getting to play the victim card. You seem to want to play the victim card yourself, but you aren't really a victim, so you invent things that sound like, "I'm a victim because people don't agree with me about being a bigot." I'm guessing you are a member of the dominant culture and have never had to face any kind of serious prejudice.
And that's my point: it is seen by society at large, and descriptive linguists, as correct usage for 'hatred of homosexuals.' To claim it is a meaningless term is simply propaganda. They may as well come right out and say, "It is my right to hate homosexuals." Which is true, but then they usually try to turn it around and claim victim status while denying it to those they hate, "And you can't criticism me for hating them, because of my freedom of speech" (or whatever non sequitur they choose to use to justify their hatred
Words don't always mean just what their roots would imply. For instance, xenophobia means hatred of strangers. There is such a thing as homophobia. And since you bring it up, you may want to look in your latest DSM to see if homosexuality is immoral or abnormal.
You can justify your bigotry any way you like, but it is still bigotry. Southerners had similar justifications for slavery, but now we look back on them as ignorant, backwards and racist. Just like future generations will look back at homophobia.
Just because some dude in a weird outfit claims that some invisible guy in the sky says that something is bad and wrong does not make it so. The only people who think homosexuality is abnormal or immoral are people who's religion or culture told them that. Nobody is born thinking it is wrong. Nobody arrives at that conclusion without coercion from an outside source.
Freedom of speech means you get to speak. NOT that you get to speak and I don't get to respond. It doesn't mean you have the right not to be challenged for your beliefs. It also doesn't mean that I have to let you, for instance, print whatever you like in my blog, or talk however you like in my house. It just means the government can't censor you without a very good cause.
I have never understood this attitude. It's so inherently hypocritical and just plain illogical. A 'flame' as you call it, is protected speech. Even a flame about your protected speech. Your statement, "(BTW, where is my freedom of speech to say that without being flamed for it?)" is semantically equivalent to "(BTW, where is my freedom of speech to say that without you having freedom of speech to rebut it)"
You may also be interested to find out that you do not have a Constitutional right not to be annoyed or offended. Imagine that.
Tell me the purpose of having a profile, and I will tell you the purpose of putting "I like [whatever]" in that profile. But for gays and lesbians, the issue is slightly different. 'Coming out' is an important part of the process of self discovery and self acceptance for such people. Yes, many go through a phase where they may be a little strident about it, but that is completely natural in a society with so much homophobia. If allowed to progress through the 'angry gay' stage, most will reach a stage where being gay is just another facet of their identity.
Well, I agree on all points. I was trying to be charitable. Microsoft aren't just resting on their laurels, they seem to be in a drug induced coma on their laurels. We still have XP on the majority of workstations where I work. Thankfully, we use Linux on the back end (and here in IT, we use it for our desktop, too.)
Seriously, I'm as rabidly anti-windows as they come, but isn't this a little unfair? Windows 7 is still beta, it doesn't surprise me that there are still some driver issues.
The idea that we will have to either buy Vista AND Windows 7, or do a clean install, just plain sucks.
Have you used 1.5? It gets rid of the cruft, as everything in Joomla is now a module. It also makes maintenance easier, as there is no core for modules to trample on, just a container using inversion of control.
That being said, I agree that for most personal websites, Joomla is overkill and WordPress will work just fine.
Oh the ignominy! He was the shining star of libertarianism, now he's the poster boy for getting sacked? Sure, it is an iconic photo, but he is still employed. This is sure to prompt some angry replies from disgruntled libertarians. Is 'disgruntled libertarian' redundant? I mean, I've never met one that was gruntled.
Plato was translating from Egyptian, and mistook 'hundred' for 'thousand.' If we divide his measurements by ten, that puts Atlantis right around Crete, about the same size as Crete, right about the time Santorini blew up. The proto-Greeks had been paying tribute to the Minoan civilization (read the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur) for many years. The Minoans were an advanced civilization, with huge multi-level palaces, advanced agriculture & maritime technology, running water, sewers, and so on. Plato didn't make up the myth, he just got the numbers wrong. The myth of Atlantis was most likely describing the Minoans.
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To paraphrase something I said in another post, taking offense at the actions of others, so long as those actions create no harm beyond the offense itself, is a derangement along the lines of people who cut themselves. It's a little weird and unnatural. And appeals to authority are to be disregarded as the logical fallacy they are when attempting to argue that harm has been done.
Yeah, the Angry Tux syndrome is horrible, I say, Horrible! I couldn't take it and continued my escape all the way to the OpenBSD. The cruel judgement from my small community drove me to move to a big city, where I finally could practice my BSD loving nature openly. Even as a BSD carpet eater, I can appreciate the pains and sufferings of a true Tux catcher in this world filled with Windows normativeness.
You Unix folk just can't understand the plight of a Mac user, trapped in the middle between our boxy, misshapen roots and this voluptuous new Unix body with it's pretty little Intel processors and our perky new PCIe slots. Trapped between two worlds, misunderstood by both, who do WE turn to for solace?
The sheer quantity of win, let alone the quality of win, present in your statements here today simply fills me with glee.
So if I wander around for a while sniffing other peoples butts, regurgitate my own sick and eat it again, then curl up to lick my own balls for a while, that'd be okay with you ? After all, animals do it !
Um, I would hate to shock your sensibilities or anything, but, how do I put this? This is the Internet. That's porn to some people here.
So you are saying that calling the concept a 'phobia' implies that it is somehow worse than it is? It's bigotry, implying that it might be medical is just giving you a graceful out. It is religious intolerance and religious fundamentalism more akin to the Taliban than to anything we should be seeing in a free country, how's that?
Bart: Sharing is a bunch of bull, too. And helping others. And what's all this crap I've been hearing about tolerance?
Homer: Hmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Obarthelemy is not using that example to justify, he's using it to disprove the naturalistic fallacy the guy before him used.
It's wrong to ban someone just because they put "I'm a lesbian" in their profile, but I can see banning someone who is constantly forcing this on other people (like the type of person above) because that other person is irritating others with it. I have also met a man hating lesbian stereo-type, someone who might go on a game and start slagging off men in a fashion no better than trolls should be treated as a troll, regardless if their topic is about computers, cars, tv, music, sexual orientation, race or religion.
The wiki page is as good a place to start as any.
Taking offense at the actions of others is a form of self-harm and I don't understand why anyone does it. It's like cutting yourself, it's fucking weird.
Now, stopping people from doing things to others against their will is a different matter. We don't want that done to us, and have therefore both agreed not to do it to others AND to stop/punish other people who do it. It's a simple contract I have agreed to based on what I believe to be best for me. No feelings of judgment, condemnation, or offense need be involved.
Maybe you didn't read the part about them not wanting to get hit on? Oh wait, why am I saying this, now you'll assume that they are all just faking being lesbians and hit on them anyway, won't you?
Threepio is SO gay.
A word is not a concept. Why do you argue semantics? Does the suggestion that fear may be involved trigger some kind of inner turning away and shutting down? Does this feeling make you want to put things into black and white terms?
Can you prove that most of the world disapproves of homosexuality? I personally know a few Muslims, plenty of Christians, and a few Jews who do not disapprove. I don't know any Taoists who disapprove. Or Buddhists. Or Satanists. The one Baha'i I know is personally against it, but wouldn't tell anyone else not to. I don't know any Hindus well enough to have gotten around to discussing sexuality. Or Jains. And that's just considering my practicing friends & acquaintances, most of the people I know may say they are Christian, but they don't really do anything about it. And they really don't care one way or another about homosexuality. But one's friends do not a random sample make, eh?
If you believe that life is hard and the world is cruel, as your sig says, then you do not trust in your God. I know devout Christians, I'm friends with devout Christians, and they are joyful people. You need to listen more in church. Or maybe get a different church, some are filled with hate.
In closing, let me leave you with a quote from Stephen Roberts, "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
Appeal to authority is a type of logical fallacy. But it is also a logical fallacy to assume an conclusion is wrong just because the argument uses a logical fallacy. There are good, simple arguments against murder. Specifically, we have almost all agreed to the social contract that states: I don't want to be murdered, therefore, I agree not to murder and to punish murderers. See how simple that is?
I have never heard a good moral argument for denying anyone their right to express their love how they choose, given that that expression doesn't violate any other agreements they may have.
My current working hypothesis is that the 'homosexuality is wrong' meme is part of a larger, dysfunctional social dynamic. This hypothesis predicts that cultures that are more isolated in space and time from certain 'epicenters of violence' will show certain traits, namely: no ritual genital mutilation, no ritualized child abuse, no social hierarchy, no strict sex roles, and no sexual taboos, including adultery, homosexuality, or even incest. The hypothesis also predicts that in those cultures, each of those sexual activities will happen less often than in cultures where they are forbidden.
In my opinion, the evidence seems to support this hypothesis, although it is hotly disputed by some. Such cultures have existed, do exist, and they are quite isolated from said epicenters of violence. For references, you may want to start with The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff, and Saharasia by James DeMeo.
If I'm right, it doesn't prove homosexuality is not wrong. But wrong is not the default position, one must come up with a good reason, one that the vast majority can agree to, for censoring the behavior of another if that behavior doesn't harm you directly. And just to be clear, 'moral outrage' is a type of self-harm.
As for sociopaths, they should behave according to the generally accepted principles such as 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you, if you were in their shoes,' because those principles make sense and give them the greatest likelihood of success in life. That's the same reason most of us are born with a conscience and very few people are sociopaths: because it makes sense, even at a genetic level. Cooperation is just as universal a principle as competition is, that is obvious even to those of us who don't believe in a higher power.
That's just flat out wrong, on both counts. Maybe you'd be safe declaring your homosexuality in, say, the Castro district of San Francsico. But even in, say, Hunter's Point or China Basin in San Francisco, you would get your ass BEAT for doing that. Reverend Phelps, on the other hand, goes around to funerals of gays all over the US with his inbred clan and they hold up signs and chant things like, "God hates fags!" without being stopped. At FUNERALS.
You seem as though you are jealous of minorities for getting to play the victim card. You seem to want to play the victim card yourself, but you aren't really a victim, so you invent things that sound like, "I'm a victim because people don't agree with me about being a bigot." I'm guessing you are a member of the dominant culture and have never had to face any kind of serious prejudice.
And that's my point: it is seen by society at large, and descriptive linguists, as correct usage for 'hatred of homosexuals.' To claim it is a meaningless term is simply propaganda. They may as well come right out and say, "It is my right to hate homosexuals." Which is true, but then they usually try to turn it around and claim victim status while denying it to those they hate, "And you can't criticism me for hating them, because of my freedom of speech" (or whatever non sequitur they choose to use to justify their hatred
Words don't always mean just what their roots would imply. For instance, xenophobia means hatred of strangers. There is such a thing as homophobia. And since you bring it up, you may want to look in your latest DSM to see if homosexuality is immoral or abnormal.
You can justify your bigotry any way you like, but it is still bigotry. Southerners had similar justifications for slavery, but now we look back on them as ignorant, backwards and racist. Just like future generations will look back at homophobia.
Just because some dude in a weird outfit claims that some invisible guy in the sky says that something is bad and wrong does not make it so. The only people who think homosexuality is abnormal or immoral are people who's religion or culture told them that. Nobody is born thinking it is wrong. Nobody arrives at that conclusion without coercion from an outside source.
Freedom of speech means you get to speak. NOT that you get to speak and I don't get to respond. It doesn't mean you have the right not to be challenged for your beliefs. It also doesn't mean that I have to let you, for instance, print whatever you like in my blog, or talk however you like in my house. It just means the government can't censor you without a very good cause.
I have never understood this attitude. It's so inherently hypocritical and just plain illogical. A 'flame' as you call it, is protected speech. Even a flame about your protected speech. Your statement, "(BTW, where is my freedom of speech to say that without being flamed for it?)" is semantically equivalent to "(BTW, where is my freedom of speech to say that without you having freedom of speech to rebut it)"
You may also be interested to find out that you do not have a Constitutional right not to be annoyed or offended. Imagine that.
Tell me the purpose of having a profile, and I will tell you the purpose of putting "I like [whatever]" in that profile. But for gays and lesbians, the issue is slightly different. 'Coming out' is an important part of the process of self discovery and self acceptance for such people. Yes, many go through a phase where they may be a little strident about it, but that is completely natural in a society with so much homophobia. If allowed to progress through the 'angry gay' stage, most will reach a stage where being gay is just another facet of their identity.
No, I guess I'm not that rabid anymore. The idealism of youth has worn away to the pragmatism of middle age. Love your sig, by the way.
Well, I agree on all points. I was trying to be charitable. Microsoft aren't just resting on their laurels, they seem to be in a drug induced coma on their laurels. We still have XP on the majority of workstations where I work. Thankfully, we use Linux on the back end (and here in IT, we use it for our desktop, too.)
Seriously, I'm as rabidly anti-windows as they come, but isn't this a little unfair? Windows 7 is still beta, it doesn't surprise me that there are still some driver issues.
The idea that we will have to either buy Vista AND Windows 7, or do a clean install, just plain sucks.
Have you used 1.5? It gets rid of the cruft, as everything in Joomla is now a module. It also makes maintenance easier, as there is no core for modules to trample on, just a container using inversion of control.
That being said, I agree that for most personal websites, Joomla is overkill and WordPress will work just fine.
Oh the ignominy! He was the shining star of libertarianism, now he's the poster boy for getting sacked? Sure, it is an iconic photo, but he is still employed. This is sure to prompt some angry replies from disgruntled libertarians. Is 'disgruntled libertarian' redundant? I mean, I've never met one that was gruntled.
Plato was translating from Egyptian, and mistook 'hundred' for 'thousand.' If we divide his measurements by ten, that puts Atlantis right around Crete, about the same size as Crete, right about the time Santorini blew up. The proto-Greeks had been paying tribute to the Minoan civilization (read the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur) for many years. The Minoans were an advanced civilization, with huge multi-level palaces, advanced agriculture & maritime technology, running water, sewers, and so on. Plato didn't make up the myth, he just got the numbers wrong. The myth of Atlantis was most likely describing the Minoans.