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31
Water Cooler / This and that / Re: How to correctly utter my name
« on: November 24, 2006, 06:02:49 PM »
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The second is a reference to As You Like it, which is cool since I've seen so many that refer to Neil Pert's paraphrase of same in "Limelight".
I totally don't get the thing about the cow and the frog, though, and I've given it some thought, so now that you've mentioned it, I'd ask: what DO you mean?
I actually changed mine (was going to post this last night but crashed before I could complete my thoughts) after seeing it on a license-plate cover of a black bronco with a USMC sticker in one rear window and a bumper-sticker across the top of the other reading "Another military family against Bush". |
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32
Water Cooler / This and that / Re: How to correctly utter my name
« on: November 23, 2006, 12:00:36 AM »
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ECA is also a common abbreviation for "ephedrine, caffeine and asprin", which was a kind of OTC bodybuilder's stack for a long time, and popular with longhaul truckers.
And I hear you about embedding one's conclusions in supporting context.
I simply look at what's presented and try to figure out where the syllogisms are; when they're located, I try to validate each statement hade and ruturn it to the garage where no one will hassle him, at least. |
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33
Politics Central / Bushwhacker / Re: Who is to blame for IRAQ, BUSH or the AMERICAN PEOPLE for believing him?
« on: November 22, 2006, 11:47:02 PM »
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Keith Olbermann is, by my estimate, one hell of a rhetorician and public speaker, by any estimate. Besides Battlestar Galactica, Countdown and Hardball are the only TV I watch with any regularity. Keith has mastered a simple idea that I can vouch for from my personal experience, and that is that besides diversifying and exhausting one's sources in considering a story, the second best thing you can do to ensure you remain well informed is to find some small enjoyment in examining the day's news, and more enjoyment than that if it's to be had. |
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34
Water Cooler / This and that / Re: How to correctly utter my name
« on: November 22, 2006, 05:20:29 PM »
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Oh, is that what Finnish calls itself? Suomi?
In all, I'm all good with talking American and being able to say "Hello, world!" in America in four or five programming languages at any given time.
Regrettably, nothing I've learned so far has made me any better about rambling on for ages or made it any simpler to come directly to the point.
Otherwise, had I the time, I'd always choose to spend whatever time I might spend learning another language studying the etymology and origin of the one I speak. Even being able to speak Greek or Latin wouldn't be as much use, and I've devoted every hour of every day for weeks and months on various works by Plato/Aristotle/Socrates, or more correctly, the people who have studied them at great depth and written about it.
Fortunately, the non-verbal communication implicit in handing someone cash or handling a loaded weapon is remarkably universal, and most people are willing to learn English if they can be convinced it will result in an increase in their cash flow or negotiate if confronted by our military assets. It's one instance where I don't mind being lumped in with people too lazy or incurious to learn a second language because, dang. I guess it's true of me as well. |
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35
Water Cooler / This and that / Re: How to correctly utter my name
« on: November 22, 2006, 02:50:39 PM »
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Don't feel bad, ECA. My concession to the language dodge has consisted of having spent the last twenty years of my life trying to mimic William F. Buckley, Jr., Christopher Hitchens, and people with similar writing/speaking styles. I think it'd be unspeakably pretentious, especially given how little I succeed in sounding like either, except that the pretense started when I was seven or so and anyone who's spoken to me very much knows I write in a very conversational tone.
Nor do I have any idea why I'd want to sound like a played out, old school republican talking head or a boorish, self-contradictory drunk. Not to mention the fact that it sets off people's gaydar from miles away. I'm long since in the habit of introducing myself and then pulling the nine-volt battery out so that I can hear myself over the alarm.
Today, though, ALL language seems ripe with portent and ominous dreads, since I've spent the past several hours (well, since yesterday, give or take a minute here or there) engaged in a crash course in XML and related technologies as they apply to the semantic web. Which is all about pattern recognition and grouping taxonomies into ontologies.
The true horror of it is that XML, as a markup language, is utter crap and it is diabolical in a very old school way that so much of the interwebs are derived from XML in some fashion.
I'm disappointed, however, that you didn't out your name. |
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36
Water Cooler / This and that / Re: How to correctly utter my name
« on: November 22, 2006, 10:31:13 AM »
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I was simply loathe to admit that my familiarity with your country was limited to Vasco Rodriguez running around in James Clavell's Shogun and calling everything a piss-cutter.
Otherwise, when hundreds post to a forum, topic drift and derails are a tragedy; when it's five or six, such things are merely cosmetic. My actual name is Loren, pronounced phonetically by most with no difficulty, but I've never actually liked the name. "Max" was a name I gave myself changing schools in the fifth grade; it has an 'x' in it, you see... Well, it made sense at the time.
I dunno; Celts. I guess it's that my stereotype of the region involves Latino features and it gives me a mental image of Ricky Riccardo with red hair, like he'd just stepped out of the teleport pod and discovered that Lucy didn't make it. Ethnic stereotypes are weird, but then anyone who knew Fins could look at me and tell my genetic material originated in Finland. As a wise friend of mine once observed, the only thing worse than pigeonholing everyone into an automatic stereotype is when you run into someone you can't automatically pigeonhole into a stereotype.
DNA and enunciation aside, I'm much more American than I'd generally admit in mixed company. |
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37
Politics Central / Bushwhacker / Re: Who is to blame for IRAQ, BUSH or the AMERICAN PEOPLE for believing him?
« on: November 22, 2006, 08:59:13 AM »
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Huh. I speak enough German to eavesdrop on conversations, and I studied it for three years. I've always admired people who manage to pick up a second language, particularly if they do it after they've left school.
I appreciate the nuance of proper pronunciation, though, and enunciation, too, for that matter. The only thing I learned in theater class was that, starting with a pencil and working down to a toothpick and finally clenched teeth, if you can learn to speak without parting your teeth, you are almost guaranteed to speak clearly under any circumstance. It also helps if one pronounces and emphasizes the ends of words, i.e. the-h end-z of-v word-z.
I still spent five minutes due diligence skimming Wikipedia so that I can at least claim to know that Portugal is near Spain and a significant part of it's population has Celtic ancestry, unless that particular factoid is the product of Wiki-tipping (hey, I just invented a new term: Wikitipping, the act of intentionally editing Wikipedia to provide false information for purposes of personal amusement, derived from "cow tipping", which involves knocking over cows while asleep, since they sleep standing).
That said, I can now pronounce your name, should I encounter someone else who uses it. Nuance in regional dialects. Was listening to a podcast interview with the creator of Drupal, Dries Buytaert, who spent the first two minutes of the interview teaching the interviewer to pronounce his first name, "Dree-zh". It was only after he'd clarified this that he mentioned his last name, however, which is Belgian and I do not think I could approximate even phonetically. "Don't bother," he says, "there are no jedi mind tricks that will allow you to pronounce it correctly if your sole language is english". |
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38
Politics Central / Bushwhacker / Re: Who is to blame for IRAQ, BUSH or the AMERICAN PEOPLE for believing him?
« on: November 21, 2006, 07:38:35 PM »
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If I'm following what you're saying, Joao, then we're completely in agreement and I'm a little disturbed if I unintentionally created the wrong impression. It's a little strange, wondering if someone has just attributed a typically American response to me; doesn't happen very often. 
While I don't think we owe them a rose garden, per se, I do believe we have an obligation to ensure that the country does not collapse into complete chaos, pick up the litter bins we knocked down on the way in, etc. -- what's going through my head is that our presence might be counter productive to getting this accomplished.
While I recognize that it's grossly disproportionate to this thread, I happened on this link earlier (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9A_vxIOB-I&NR) and found it suited my mood in an especially ugly way. My point is not to tar anyone with a particular brush but to admit that, as a nationality, we've gone a long way towards alienating the people we'd assist and might not just be more effective working with countries like Kuwait and Jordan (and those evil axis dudes) but may not be able to put things right without them.
By extension, this includes the inability to establish public order and provide the police training required to maintain it. Again, though, I'm not thinking of ducking out on the tab, but our ability to actually do the job that needs to be done.
I've honestly come to suspect that, to the extent the US enjoys any particular reputation as the result of the outcome of WWII, a substantial hunk of it is purely a product of myth and history siding with the victor. I'd definitely acknowledge that there is some reality to the notion of "American exceptionalism", but much of that has been flat lining at a glacial pace with the die off of the WWII generation. That leaves the boomers, who rejected paternalistic, authoritarian conformism in order to discover it's own values, which it couldn't really handle and caused it to retreat headlong into its own version of authoritarian conformism which is equal parts sentimentalism and the inability to know when to stop conforming. Gen-X, Y, and Whatever, we're just boomers minus the scruples plus the nagging sense that we'll live long enough to watch the species render itself extinct.
When everybody was out buying flags to use as security blankets, I was calculating how many people we'd waste in pursuit of closure over our personal connection with the tragedy in heavy rotation on CNN.
The dynamics of superpowers has always been about whoever happens to be one of the two biggest players left on the board after the latest cataclysm, however -- Germany and England after WWI, for example, or the US and Russia after WWII. The US, besides the possibility that it's burnt itself out, seriously needs to stop and check it's moral compass at the moment -- that so few think it's necessary is the strongest evidence in favor of the necessity, and probably needs to spend some time talking to people instead of threatening to bomb them into the stone age.
Of course, we probably still haven't connected why that particular solution is not suitable for home pest removal or dealing with unwanted solicitors at dinnertime, but damn it, we've got to be getting close, or at least running out of bombs.
Off the subject? I've been wondering how your name is pronounced for some time, and finally made an effort to look it up this evening. If I'm understanding correctly, however, I wouldn't have guessed even close, so I have to ask, is the explanation provided here correct (http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=738105) -- not to put you on the spot, but I have a thing for names and correct pronunciations.
(I could probably learn to stop butchering it with an evening's practice if this is right) |
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39
Politics Central / Bushwhacker / Re: Who is to blame for IRAQ, BUSH or the AMERICAN PEOPLE for believing him?
« on: November 21, 2006, 06:11:51 AM »
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...US will guarantee a strong position there...
And I don't know if I believe that one. My own conjecture was that Iraq became a humanitarian mission after we overran it with little opposition and found nothing that looked like WMD. regardless, Iraq is either a sovereign nation or a collection of US stooges, and we/they are better off if, at a minimum, public perception remains that they are sovereign (imagine if we had to change that -- we'd need to invade again!).
I'm less opposed to Iraqs neighbor states than I might have been at an earlier time, however. I have a theory that much of our problem extends from a fundamental lack of respect -- the contention and perception that Muslims (and in this instance, Arabs) are second-class citizens. While the typical neocon might be soiling themselves at the mention of such an idea (I had a close friend tell me, in all earnestness, that Iraqis couldn't be reasoned with because they were barbarians), even given the disparity in wealth distribution (and the tendency for radical Muslims to originate in lower income brackets), we should still be largely concerned with Muslim intellectuals and, to a lesser degree, the middle class, e.g. moderates.
In my mind, we may well be ahead to cultivate a diplomatic relationship with some of these countries (Iran in particular) however grudging. Regardless, we're only a breath or two from not having any choice in the matter, and under the worst of circumstances, Sun Tzu was still very right to observe the importance of keeping one's friends close and their enemies closer.
It remains that Israel and Palestine will remain a strong point of contention if this scenario emerges, and I know I don't have the same issue with the subject that many do. Regardless, we manage to live on comfortable terms with Saudi Arabia and other countries like Myanmar and while we should probably take the time to clean house and do something about our deplorable foreign policy (instead of merely supporting tyranny selectively), we can probably live with the Persians fairly well.
Certainly a lot better than Kim Jong Il and his goose-stepping anorexic drill team.
In a twisted way? I think basic diplomacy combined with what appears to be an inevitable loss of face might actually do us some good. Heresy in a great many circles, especially those that bristle at any moral equivalence being drawn between evil axis' and great satans and all. But I think we're about due to take a break from trying to kick everybody's asses at our new school and try talking to them for a bit, at least long enough to catch a breather. Typical American, I might deck anyone who called me a pacifist if I thought word might get around, but being a dove is something else entirely.
A well-armed dove, maybe. |
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40
Politics Central / Bushwhacker / Re: Who is to blame for IRAQ, BUSH or the AMERICAN PEOPLE for believing him?
« on: November 21, 2006, 02:39:10 AM »
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Hmm. I'm not so optimistic (late night scripting experiments probably don't help).
"While sectarian violence remains high and worrisome, it's certainly not as bad as the situation appeared back in August," Abizaid said (CNN, 11/15/06)
...Walid Hassan's slaying came as the Iraqi death toll rose to more than 1,300 for the first 20 days of November — the highest for any month since The Associated Press began tracking the figure in April 2005...
So. Not necessarily a contradiction of General Abizaid's statement, but if 1,300 is an improvement since August, we're in trouble.
While I'm not as confident as I was in the dubiousness of the justifications used to invade Iraq, I am becoming less unsure of the endgame, if only marginally. |
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41
Politics Central / Bushwhacker / Re: Who is to blame for IRAQ, BUSH or the AMERICAN PEOPLE for believing him?
« on: November 20, 2006, 11:55:16 PM »
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"Until they [the proles] become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious." - Orwell, 1984
To be completely serious, I think the electorate could stand to be better informed than it is, but in fairness, I think being well informed is much harder than people suspect. Yes, there are times when I strongly feel that the public is only slightly less cognitively impaired than an invertebrate with fetal alcohol syndrome. In all, though? It might matter a lot less now than it did in the run up to the war, however.
To anyone seriously considering this proposition, I'd ask: if you were to outline what you suspect the outcome of the Iraq war will be, how confident would you be that it would prove to be the case six months from now? A year? What kind of case could you make to support your hypothesis? Would it be as well supported as the arguments against the war in the run up to it?
I'm not sure if we can affect the outcome so much as we might once have, and I can certainly see it being potentially worse than just the protracted slog we've seen to date. While we might eventually withdraw particularly should it become counterproductive to maintain a military presence, it seems increasingly likely that it will not be to cut our losses as to re-evaluate our diplomatic strategy.
Chris Mathews made an interesting analogy earlier this evening; he'd suggested that the Iraq war has treated the military like the older brother who fights on behalf of a school yard geek (his words, not mine) who has never had his ass kicked and doesn't understand violence. More so, however, we may find that we not only not be able to rely on marshaling that overwhelming force where we might have at one time, but encounter significant opposition from those who would insist that we should contrary to all reason. Restoring middle eastern stability to pre-Iraq war levels might take substantially longer than it does to withdraw, and might not merely hinder us from asserting force to prevent further instability in the future but prevent it. |
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42
Politics Central / Bushwhacker / Re: Should Bush win an award for recycling appointees?
« on: November 17, 2006, 01:19:43 PM »
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It doesn't get any more tragic than that. None the less, the Commodore/Amiga story reminds me of how someone once summarized Howard Dean's presidential campaign... "I really like the Dean campaign. I wish they had a better candidate."
I really liked my Amiga. I wish Commodore had had better users.  |
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