I submit that it is impossible to root for a P-burgh victory whilst "rooting against" the serial rapist, as he is the QB.
this concise yet cogent plan of action
"Yet?" I think you mean "and".
MISPLACED QUESTION MARK ARRRRGH MISERY
I submit that it is impossible to root for a P-burgh victory whilst "rooting against" the serial rapist, as he is the QB.
You could root for him to be sacked so many times that he's taken out of the game, then root for the rest of the team to win without him.
1: I didn't say I was rooting for the Steelers to win.
3: And now I'll leave the post as-written and we'll all suffer together.
Although, now that 4 mentions it, Big Ben going out could mean that the delightfully named Byron Leftwich takes the helm.
I submit that it is impossible to root for a P-burgh victory whilst "rooting against" the serial rapist, as he is the QB.
This is a theorem.
You could root for him to be sacked so many times that he's taken out of the game, then root for the rest of the team to win without him.
No, because a win for his team still benefits him substantially.
What's wrong with Rex Ryan, by the way? I trust you have something nastier on him than his celebratory limpy gallop into the endzone last week.
7: I suppose that depends on just how much investment is involved in "rooting" for or against someone.
I have to wonder what the probability is that a quarterback selected uniformly at random will have raped someone. It's probably high enough that rooting for any team except the present-day Saints is morally abhorrent.
I suppose that depends on just how much investment is involved in "rooting" for or against someone.
You shall root with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your all your strength.
8: His trash talk is dumb, but I kind of dig how into his (age appropriate) wife he is and that he didn't (in anything I saw, anyway) run from the kinkster foot-fetish vids, etc.
Ah. I'd missed the kinkster foot-fetish thing.
Is there a moral difference between rooting for the Steelers and enjoying Rosemary's Baby or Chinatown? With the former, I think "how could you possibly do that?" With the latter, I think "Those are really good movies, and all sorts of great artists are morally reprehensible."
Then again, I don't like football, and I do like movies.
I sort of suspect that participating in the celebration of football is morally suspect, generally speaking. I don't think one can easily disentangle the sort of participation involved in watching games, rooting for a team, etc., from supporting The System of American Football in general, which I believe to be, in general, Bad For Society. It's bad for players, particularly those at the lower levels who'll never get much monetary remuneration in exchange for the high risk of injury, esp. brain injury, and it's bad for society insofar as it glorifies violence. (Yes, the same applies to boxing.) Obviously the argument would need to be elaborated to take into account various first-cut objections, but those are left as an exercise for the reader.
I know I'm violating anonymity here, but Stanley made the papers and I think we should all support him.
You put foot fetish videos of yourself on the internet, you win my heart. All right thinking individuals will wish wish and then wish for the Bears and Jets to meet.
15: I'm not sure I even know what the first-cut objections are. It's economically stimulative? It promotes good healthy values like teamwork and hard work in general? It boosts local public morale, kinda like patriotism?
Those aren't objections to 15's points themselves, but rather counters; and the counters can't be flatly debunked either, it doesn't seem to me, so the argument is going to wind up wading through a sort of cost-benefit analysis, isn't it? Stalemate!
My god, is the problem with Ryan the trash talking? You're supposed to trash talk your rivals godamnit. Ryan's trash talking is especially awesome because he started it last summer and now they're possibly going to take the AFC championship after squashing the dreams of the Colts and the Patriots in their home stadiums.
16: I appreciate the support, and I think we can look past the nosflow indiscretion error just this once.
19: And making Mannings cry is a good thing, people.
7: No, because a win for his team still benefits him substantially.
Well, maybe Roethlisberger has an illicit sex den in his basement which Donnie Darko burns down and the mob contractor who built it is blackmailing him to throw the game, and he plays really, really badly and they are losing by 24 points at half due to his interceptions and fumbles, but the tension of trying to pull it off is weighing on him (he's bet a jillion dollars against the Steelers himself even though the mob guy warned him not to) and he snaps when Troy Polamalu tries to give him some encouragement in the locker room and he calls Polamalu a faggot and Mike Tomlin an uppity nigger and they don't even let him come out of the locker room for the 2nd half, but he breaks out and tries to sexually assault two teenage girls, but stadium security and a bunch of fans see him and they stomp him so badly that his face is ruined, and meanwhile back on the field Rex Ryan taunts Polamalu and he forces 5 fumbles in a row and Byron Leftwich discovers he's actually a good quarterback and it is tied with 20 seconds left but the Steelers win when Santonio Holmes goes into a premature celebration on what would be a game-winning touchdown reception and Polamalu strips the ball from him and returns it 99 yards for a touchdown but in his excitement after the touchdown he runs over to Rex Ryan and knocks him down and begins licking his face so he gets suspended for the Super Bowl during which Leftwich discovers not only can't he throw but he really is the slowest black quarterback in the history of the world and the Bears win 51-3 and Stanley is happy; meanwhile Ben's bets against the Steelers and his illicit sex den have been discovered and the cops are so disgusted that they let the henchmen of the enraged mob guy come in and kill Roethlisberger in prison, and the next year the Steelers go 2-14 beating only the Cleveland Browns twice.
So that could happen.
22: I'm not sure the Bears could score 51 points, but otherwise, it sounds totally plausible.
I didn't realize until just now that Rex Ryan is Buddy Ryan's son.
Is there a moral difference between rooting for the Steelers and enjoying Rosemary's Baby or Chinatown?
I'm thinking there are two different distinctions worth drawing here.
Immediate target of evaluation: actions vs. habits/virtues/character.
Ultimate object of opprobrium: particular individuals/teams vs. broader institutions.
1. Actions. With film, only seeing one in theaters or buying one on DVD/&c. appreciably rewards the individuals responsible for it, though there are special cases--introducing friends to Polan/ski's work without making clear he's Bad, that sort of thing. So, for example, watching a pirated copy of RB alone and never telling anyone would be pretty pure. With football, more of the obvious, and obviously pleasurable, ways of experiencing the game reward the team--seeing one live or buying merch, obviously, but I think the way it gets licensed to bars for public viewing, & even the structure of revenue compensation for cable/broadcast showings, introduces a degree of (probabilistic) causal impact, albeit a fairly small one. Still, forswearing even the latter options in order to punish Team X seems fairly demanding in its purity; I can't imagine maintaining that sort of standard for a generic anti-bad-actions test. OTOH, even the less directly-supporting forms of football-enjoyment (watching a game with a group, say) do seem to support the institution in a way that can't easily be performatively cancelled, as it were--loudly announcing to your friends that this is terrible, and reciting brain damage stats, will either be treated as a sort of joke ("Ironic Porn Purchase Leads to Unironic Ejaculation") or serve to ruin the party for everybody.
2. Virtues/habits/character. This depends on your theory for how/why to evaluate these things, obvs, but I'll just deal with the right way, which is a generally consequentialist one; hence the answer here is at least somewhat parasitic on 1, plus considerations of psychology (mechanisms of habit formation/contagion, limits of individuation, etc.) :-P. Even aside from properly individuating, we need to ask what foris what's at issue is a sort of general appreciation/deprecation--good/bad habits in the way good/bad weather is good/bad--or something more significant; something to be cultivated in oneself, even at some cost; to wish to have been cultivated; to criticize the lack of, in others; to publicly shame, when displayed; to take steps to cultivate/root out in child-rearing? No reason, on the global-consequentialist view, to think these all go together in lockstep!--though they're doubtless somewhat correlated.
Regarding individuation: there are different ways to devide up the habits/vices at issue: is it about one's reactions to rape/rapists, or about supporting/opposing violence generally, or about the proper habits-of-mind to bring to art/sport? To which the right answer is, naturally, all of them! Or at least: it depends on which specific question we're asking (child-rearing vs. shaming strangers vs. principled habits of non-consumption), since different habits/vices will be more or less appropriate to the different questions, which again gets into the question of how such habits work, psychologically.
I would say that, personally, I'd be most concerned about the enjoying-violence aspect, which is more obviously an issue with enjoying football/boxing/Saw-or-300-like movies/violent pornography, than with things like Rosemary's Baby, but then, I've also never seen RB. And to repeat, "most concerned about" doesn't at all imply "ought to try to purge oneself of," necessarily, just ... take it as a reason for a risk self-assessment.
A pretty good read on Buddy Ryan in this NYTimes piece.
Those aren't objections to 15's points themselves, but rather counters; and the counters can't be flatly debunked either, it doesn't seem to me, so the argument is going to wind up wading through a sort of cost-benefit analysis, isn't it? Stalemate! At which point my argument emerges triumphant, because the C-B analysis, correctly done, supports my position.
Fixed that for you.
But yes, those are the sorts of arguments I was thinking of, plus general gestures towards the value of Sport, which would require counters pointing to the availability of alternates, &c. "Deeper" objections would involve the structure of moving from collectively-mediated/institutional consequences to individual actions/habits, but, there again, I'm right, so the fuller exposition would deal with those. =P
Pitchers and catchers report in three weeks! Woohoo!
28: Right, the most obvious "deeper" objection might be that there's a value to not just Sport but Violent Sport, insofar as humans harbor fundamentally aggressive impulses, blah blah, which require an out, such that merely competitive (but not violent) sport is not enough. Tennis and golf don't meet this need; and in fact a society without violent competitive sports outlets would become, erm, neurotic and passive-aggressive to start, and might become downright psychotic ultimately.
It's not an unfamiliar argument.
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I have got to inflict this review of Blue Valentine on y'all, since it was inflicted on me by an economist blogger who said it was "egoist, but with great insight." It drew 268 comments. I tend to think this shit is funny, being all contemptibly beta and indifferent to even the idea of relationships, though extremely skeptical about their value.
A mild sample
As harsh as that sounds, a worse fate awaits the man who would attempt to build a relationship with a single mom. Every minute of every day, her kid reminds her of the alpha asshole who impregnated her, and whose seed she willingly chose to bring to life. You, as the provider chump assuming the role of the unrelated daddy, will always be second best in such a woman's eyes, particularly if she chooses not to have kids by you. You will always be that guy who wasn't quite good enough to burden her with child.What man would want to live with such a daily reminder of his inadequacy? Well, men without any game, for example. When you feel the restriction of lack of options, you tend to settle for the dregs of womanhood.
It may have already been posted here.
Football? Meh.
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It's not an unfamiliar argument.
Okay, but it's also an empirical one that lacks, so far as I know, any shred of evidence in its favor, whether developmental, cross-national, or what. A very rough glance at US-states, and US-football/rugby nations-vs-those-without, seems to push in the other direction.
A very rough glance at US-states, and US-football/rugby nations-vs-those-without, seems to push in the other direction.
So we're going to look to the soccer playing countries for lessons in non violence?
So we're going to look to the soccer playing countries for lessons in non violence?
Well, yes? When I said 'a rough look' I was thinking of controlling a bit for other stuff; there are clearly some factors going on with, say, Columbia, Brazil, and South Africa that have nothing to do with soccer and that make them rather different from (also soccer-mad) Spain & Italy.
football/boxing/Saw-or-300-like movies/violent pornography
These things don't seem alike to me, but that's because my own threshold is that I don't mind watching consenting violence, so football, boxing, and porn are all fine. Sitting down to watch two hours of people slicing each other to bits does not appeal to me.
Did anyone else notice that Rex Ryan has been inspiring his team by telling them the (semi-apocryphal) story of Hernan Cortes burning his own fleet before battle with the Aztecs in the new world? It's totally bizarre watching interviews with random Jets players saying things like, "He burned his own boats, man. Once you burn your boats, either you win or you die." I mean, that Hernan Cortes, what a hero; he sure overcame some formidable odds.
35: there are clearly some factors going on with, say, Columbia, Brazil, and South Africa that have nothing to do with soccer and that make them rather different from (also soccer-mad) Spain & Italy.
Are we talking about violence surrounding sporting events? Or about violent behaviors on the part of major sports figures in the US (i.e. dog fighting, serial rape)? Or about violence in a given country overall?
If I'm going to continue arguing the position I'm temporarily adopting, I'll state that there are clearly some factors going on with, say, the United States that may explain violent citizen behavior which have nothing to do with football.
I'm a little surprised by the claim that the argument in 31 is an empirical one.
For continued entertainment value, and for a desire to see Big Ben mauled by the closest thing to a tiger we can find in the environs, I might have to root for the Jets. And yet, knowing what joy this will bring to The Islands (Staten and Long) brings me sadness. It's a conflicted sort of day for me.
OT, and yet, whoa: Angry Birds, really? I am a contrarian luddite and refuse to play games like this bc I think odds are good it's just an excuse for someone to steal and sell my personal info or otherwise make money off of me (also: I am practicing to be a cranky old man), and so have never played Angry Birds. But it seems...mean-spirited. Also this seems tailor made for the crazies.
Funny. It'd be funnier if it actually paralleled something rather than generically inspiring through imperialism, like the players bet their entire savings on their own team.
I'm a little surprised by the claim that the argument in 31 is an empirical one.
How did you ascertain that humans harbor aggressive impulses which can be sequestered in violent sport?
What nosflow said about the empirical thing. As for which sort of violence, I dunno, it was your hypothetical; but I was thinking more of players & society in general. It's true that the general soccer-hooligan phenomenon is a problem for my claim, though I have vague beliefs that's something that's somewhat amenable to very local, context-sensitive security practices.
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After following some links
My god I am so ignorant, innocent and naive I never even knew the roissy masculinist gamer world existed. Honest. I suppose everyone else here knows, but that it isn't mentioned in polite conversation.
It terrified me. I want to delete the review above before the women, any women anywhere, get mad at me. I am furious that Ka/rl S/mith, UNC, got me into this trouble. I need to go read Marcotte to cleanse my brain, watch some Ozu or Mizo to purify my soul.
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Ordinarily, I'd root for the Bears, but this time I want to see the Packers win.
42: Well, as I said, it's not an unfamiliar claim: life, nasty, brutish, and short, and all that. The claim further goes that we humans need to spend, or expend, our aggressive impulses in some fashion, whether through war or through war-like sporting endeavors.
I don't particularly buy it myself, but it's easy to be accused of rosy-visioned pictures of humankind if you think we're fine in controlling our violent impulses.
If it's an empirical question, where's the burden of proof, really: is it up to the brutish! position to show (empirically) that humans are unrelievedly aggressive beings in the absence of relief; or up to the love-and-roses crowd to show that we're just fine, thank you, in the absence of relief?
Framing this in empirical terms seems silly to me. This is not a matter for empirical proof: there are some human social experiments that seem fine without violent extracurriculars, and there are others that, well, seem to go for the violent extras, and I have no idea how you'd show that they need these things.
Well, as I said, it's not an unfamiliar claim: life, nasty, brutish, and short, and all that
Familiarity doesn't make something nonempirical.
Also, that professor who wanted to take away the students' cell phones was just like Hernan Cortes.
Well, one reason to root against the Jets is that they basically refuse to condemn the rampant sexual harrassment of women at Jets games. Combined with the Mexican sports reporter scandal and the Farve-massage therapists scandal, there seems to be a culture conducive to sexual harrasment in the Jets organization (and I am sure in NFL generally), but the Jets seem to have particular problems. Stay classy, Jets!
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/sports/football/20fans.html
there are clearly some factors going on with, say, Columbia, Brazil, and South Africa that have nothing to do with soccer and that make them rather different from (also soccer-mad) Spain & Italy.
Italy's soccer games are notorious for their crowd violence and as I recall Spain still has a healthy fan base for the bullfighting.
48: Nonresponsive. Hobbes wasn't conducting an empirical study.
football/boxing/Saw-or-300-like movies/violent pornography
These things don't seem alike to me, but that's because my own threshold is that I don't mind watching consenting violence, so football, boxing, and porn are all fine. Sitting down to watch two hours of people slicing each other to bits does not appeal to me.
I'm didn't mean to claim they were clearly all the same on all the dimensions I was discussing, just throwing out some things that have some aspects in common. But to press a little bit:
1. The characters in Saw/300/&c. don't consent, but the actors do. Isn't this similar to pornography that simulates rape/torture? (Obviously 'violent porn' is an ambiguous phrase b/w that, & BDSM stuff where the characters also do consent.)
2. Some of the reasons to be wary of violent-media/entertainment involve (supposed) mechanisms of desensitization, where the desensitization might not be as finely grained as the choice of priming medium. I'm not sure to what extent the impact-of-violent-media studies have dealt with this, or how much I trust those studies in general, or whether even if I did, it's purely an exposure-in-childhood phenomenon, etc. But if this mechanism was one source of concern, neither actor- nor character- consent would necessarily ameliorate it. (And I say this as someone who did enjoy, in a somewhat horrified way, watching 300, and who is not entirely comfortable with his own tastes in pornography.)
Just because philosophers made claims about causality that couldn't be well-supported given the tools of their day, doesn't make those claims immune to empirical confirmation or refutation.
I need to go meet a friend now, but this is an area--like most, I would submit--where philosophy just has to engage with empirical investigation.
life, nasty, brutish, and short, and all that.
Sounds like reality tv, which I am not able to watch in most popular forms.
I mean, if the thesis is that aggression must be expressed, then it makes sense to me to look for it where a moderate or extreme attempt to disguise the aggression is the rule.
Football is too tame, and too gendered, to be interesting to me anymore. The really vicious stuff is on during primetime.
And I say this as someone who did enjoy, in a somewhat horrified way, watching 300
IMO 300 does not belong with something like Saw. "Holy shit the Spartans held off the Persians with only 300 men and that's awesome" is not the same as "let's trap a bunch of people in a house and torture them to death because torture is fun".
let's trap a bunch of people in a house and torture them to death because torture is fun
Long Day's Journey Into Night
focusing on physical violence never was very interesting to me, having grown up in a household where people had their lives wrecked with words. And PV is pretty rare, whereas the constant daily casual cruelty is ubiquitous. At least I see the desire to hurt everywhere I look.
54: Just because philosophers made claims about causality that couldn't be well-supported given the tools of their day, doesn't make those claims immune to empirical confirmation or refutation.
this is an area--like most, I would submit--where philosophy just has to engage with empirical investigation.
Sure, and it has by now, and does. At the same time, I resist the idea that everything short of literature (or poetry or film or music or art) is empirical, all the time. Please. We will never be able to control for every conceivable factor in order to provide evidence one way or another for something. Sometimes there are just conceptions which will never be provable one way or another; philosophy can and should be permitted to be like literature in this way. It presents a narrative.
I also apologize to nosflow for being snippy.
48, 52 for example, although not meant to single out of claim there is anything special, or to be offensive.
Familiarity doesn't make something nonempirical.
Nonresponsive. Hobbes wasn't conducting an empirical study.
Contradiction, correction, insulting?
Do we ever look at what goes on here? Really, the emotional or psycho-social underpinnings of such exchanges? Was this kindness, generosity, warmth, whatever? Or something else? Can we trust our analysis? Are we so socialized that we ignore the aggression in everyday conversation?
I hate Rex Ryan and his stupid Rex Ryan face.
That we share a birthday (with Taylor Swift) shames me. And, I presume, Taylor Swift.
59: Bob, there was no violence involved in the exchange you quote. I tend to assume that nosflow writes one-liners that are intended as questions. I became testy, because what's empirical and what's not is a tangled issue, and I personally prefer that someone add to a questioning comment with some thoughts of his/her own. That's not nosflow's style, though. It's fine that he asks questions.
Once you read Nietzsche or Freud, or look at the world, you accept that those who decry violent sports or movies, or countless other moral claims (elections over guillotines), are simply trying to set limits or boundaries that will give an advantage to the forms of aggression that suit their own aptitudes and abilities.
99% of human reality is aggression. 1% is sitting under a tree. Sometimes.
The next time I see empiricism on the street, I'm going to sock it in the face.
As someone with lots of family in Pittsburgh and to whom football was already not particularly appealing, this year is pushing me well into the territory of "Actually, I completely loathe football."
Hobbes wasn't conducting an empirical study.
Surely this depends a lot on "study". And it's still an empirical claim.
We will never be able to control for every conceivable factor in order to provide evidence one way or another for something. Sometimes there are just conceptions which will never be provable one way or another; philosophy can and should be permitted to be like literature in this way. It presents a narrative.
Perhaps you're using 'empirical' in a more narrow way than I am. My vision of what empirical research encompasses is rather broad, and includes thick-description anthropology, some cultural studies, and so on. I'm just saying that claims which are fundamentally about causation--and plenty of Hobbes' claims are; they're about what will (or charitably: is likely to) happen, given certain institutional and social conditions--need to be responsive to evidence, and discourses that claim to provide evidence need to have some way of justifying these claims. Sure, I'm a pragmatist deep down, and I'm not looking for foundational view-from-nowhere justifications, but at least some work towards establishing that your evidence-generating-processes really work.
So, for example, studying the literature of 20th C Americans to see how they deal with violence might provide some insights into this subject; indeed, it's probably a very fruitful way to generate hypotheses, or to search for candidate explanations for particular cases (I, too, found LDJIN both moving and enlightening). But worries about selection effect-bias (both in who writes literature, and which gets picked to study, not to mention more subtle historically-peculiar biases about genre, etc.), skepticism about the powers of introspection, things like that. (Some obligatory, vaguely on-topic links.)
The real problem with football is that it encourages committee meetings.
Wow, I forgot to end that last sentence: worries [of that sort] should caution us against taking this sort of evidence as much more than suggestive concerning the strength and frequency of these Americans-dealing-with-violence mechanisms/processes.
And it's still an empirical claim.
Yes. But I'm really losing track of what counts as a non-empirical claim.
66: Sure, I'm a pragmatist deep down, and I'm not looking for foundational view-from-nowhere justifications, but at least some work towards establishing that your evidence-generating-processes really work.
Where do you put Rawls in all this? Does he need to provide evidence?
Yes. But I'm really losing track of what counts as a non-empirical claim.
Oooh, you caught me. Very little! Pure math & logic, I suppose. I'm basically with [my basically amateurish understanding of] Quine as far as skepticism about conceptual/analytic truth goes.
Where do you put Rawls in all this? Does he need to provide evidence?
For which of his claims? For his musings on what institutions will tend to lead to the goals he wants? Yes, definitely--and he does, doesn't he? I vaguely recall lots of citations to at contemporary stuff in at least economics. That said, I actually think most of the sort of econ he's citing is itself something of a failed discipline, so, shrug. But he tried, at least somewhat.
If I had a defense named the veil of ignorance, I'd hope I had a great offense.
I'm also not clear on why the kind of claims I raised above re: football/movies are anywhere near the conceptual-logical-normative vs. empirical/causal/explanatory line, wherever that line is. I'm talking about claims that are on structurally similar to, say, "increased exposure to pornography makes men more likely to rape women." Wouldn't you agree that any such claim would have to deal with, e.g., the fact that OECD countries which have seen a dramatic explosion in availability of pornography via the internet have, at the same time, seen largely flat or declining rates of reported rape? Isn't this an example of strong empirical evidence, that, while not exactly refuting arguments based on theorized mechanisms about desensitization or expectations-setting, or personal narratives by porn-addicted men who became rapists, seriously challenges the robustness and generalizability of any such arguments? That's all I mean about the importance of empirical evidence.
Gah, I mistated the last bit--in the example I'm using, I'm not saying that personal narratives or psychological theory don't count as empirical evidence; they do count. I'm just saying that this would be an example where any sensible evaluation of the evidence is able to say, "well, this large-scale cross-national time-series data sets a pretty heavy burden of proof against the claimed causal relationship, a burden that these sorts of data can't meet in anything like their current forms." We're not confronted with any clash of incommensurables at this stage of the analysis, just a (fairly easy) instance of the (usually much harder) problem of weighing different forms of evidence.
You're all watching football, aren't you? Monsters.
You're all watching football, aren't you? Monsters.
Not me!
71: For which of his claims?
For the claim that in the original position, under the veil of ignorance as to their future prospects, people would choose justice as fairness, which would look roughly like liberalism.
It's a counterfactual claim, which means it's not susceptible to, or of, empirical evidence. You cannot wholly write out of any empirical study the current circumstances of the participants in order to get a 'clean' study.
This bears a rough resemblance to various philosophical claims about human nature. I simply insist that there's a place for this sort of thinking.
75: Not me. I'm watching last night's UFC.
I see his claim as mostly an attempt to persuade the reader that this would be, in fact, a reasonable choice to make, trying to appeal to aspects of human psychology that, due to their generality, the reader presumably shares. My vague impression is that he's clearer on this in Justice as Fairness, but this is 2nd-hand.
I'm not sure how strongly you want to push this "counterfactuals aren't vulnerable to empirical evidence" thing. I mean, I agree that extremely crazy thought-experiment, evil-devil-offering-bizarre-deal-type counterfactuals aren't, but that's part of why I think they're usually silly. On the more general topic, I side with those who think that counterfactuals are tightly connected to the idea of causality more generally; so, insofar as I think empirical investigation is how we gain knowledge about causal mechanisms/processes/whev, I think it's also quite useful in telling us about counterfactuals.
I'm not sure how strongly you want to push this "counterfactuals aren't vulnerable to empirical evidence" thing.
I only want to say that, with respect to them, your first thought shouldn't be "prove it." It shouldn't be "I don't see a shred of evidence in favor of your claim." I got a whiff of that from 33, upthread.
That doesn't mean that thought experiments can operate in the outer atmosphere.
And on the human nature point: the closer we get to claims about the fundamentals of normativity, or rationality, the less clear it is what sort of evidence is or ought to be apt, but IMHO most of what goes under even classically 'philosophical' discussions of the sort takes place on a much more solidly causal/empirical/explanatory level. Smith's discussions about moral sentiments & human motivations strike me as straightforward psychological theorizing; same with Rousseau's story of the importance of self/other-regard, & his claims about how institutional choice can help shape decision-making; same with Hobbes's views about the sources of strife, which involve both individual & group psychology, but are clearly causal/explanatory theories.
So I confess to some bafflement: just what sort of human-nature theorising do you have in mind? If you're talking about philosophising about natural ends, or natural goods, or things like that--well, this goes to my first sentence. I find most arguments like this (the nature of humanity/rationality/normativity imples valuing X, Y, and Z) fairly unpersuasive, insofar as they claim to be conceptual/logical demonstrations of something, or attempts to persuade the moral skeptic, &c. Insofar as they're truly abstract & general, I don't think they can get you very far (that is, give you concrete things to do/support) without filling in some empirical blanks. And most of the time, gestures towards Human Nature/Reason/Normativity really just function as foot-stomping emphasis: baby-torture is bad, and it's really bad, and it would be bad for anybody.
I watched last night's UFC last night. Now I'm being denied football because my kids won't stop playing Lego Star Wars. Pewpewpewpewpewpewpew!
82: I'm off shortly. You're putting normativity in a place I do not, but that's complicated. I'm not clear on who Smith is.
Pewpewpewpewpewpewpew!
I am slain.
I'm disappointed that we no longer get to see Rex Grossman in these situations.
86: Ha. I have been making my own Rex Grossman jokes just now. And laughing bitterly.
I am scheduled to watch the football game that begins at 6:30. This is the one between the Steelers and the Jets, I am led to believe. The Steelers quarterback is the dude who has been plausibly accused of sexual assault; the Jets quarterback is the Rex Ryan dude with the awesome supervillain name. Anything else I need to understand before watching this thing? I have played tag football a couple of times.
I only want to say that, with respect to them, your first thought shouldn't be "prove it." It shouldn't be "I don't see a shred of evidence in favor of your claim." I got a whiff of that from 33, upthread.
Well, it depends on the claim, and how much it comports with one's background beliefs. I was perhaps a bit too dismissive in 33, but the claim--people [men?] need not just competitive sports but violent ones, lest they turn neurotic/passive-aggressive/psychotic--seemed to me to be counterintuitive enough ("Gosh, nobody I know seems to need regular violence to avoid these things") to bear a burden of proof. (This was partly because I was adding in the further delimiting conditions that would be required to defend football/boxing specifically: that this outlet need be not merely violent, but violent with significant risk of lasting harm; IIRC, neither olympic-style wrestling, fencing, kendo, classic martial arts, or even MMA have anywhere near the brain-damage risks of football/boxing.)
That said, having given it a bit more thought, if we're willing to talk these violence-needing folks as a small minority of any given population, it no longer seems so crazy. Still--it would be very curious indeed if such an outlet happened to track genuinely inflicting harm rather than (comparatively) safe proxies thereof. That claim, I maintain, is extreme enough that a quite heavy burden of proof is appropriate.
the Jets quarterback is the Rex Ryan dude
That's the coach. Their quarterback is teh Sanchez.
88: Rex Ryan=Coach. Mark Sanchez=QB (apparently also accused of sexual assault as an undergrad, it seems).
Oh. Any other notable characters I should pay attention to?
this outlet need be not merely violent, but violent with significant risk of lasting harm; IIRC, neither olympic-style wrestling, fencing, kendo, classic martial arts, or even MMA have anywhere near the brain-damage risks of football/boxing.
FWIW, many of the sports you site in opposition to football and boxing have pretty high rates of injury, just not brain-injury. If you ever have any friends who wrestle or do MMA they spend about half their lives with wrecked joints, and there are absurdly high injury rates in some non-combat sports.
If I reluctantly get something to eat for no other reason than to have something in my stomach before drinking beer, is that an eating disorder or a drinking problem?
82: I'm off shortly. You're putting normativity in a place I do not, but that's complicated. I'm not clear on who Smith is.
Adam Smith; Theory of Moral Sentiments. I mean, same goes for Humean sentimentalism, basically, but I'm less confident about where the empirical-psychology mixes with the normative, there.
More generally: all of the authors I listed also make straightforwardly (well, not always so straightforwardly) normative claims about ought-ness, but the [social-] psychological claims are always pretty important, and usually close to the heart of their 'human nature' claims. That said, my familiarity with thinkers from Kant -> 1970 is basically null, so maybe there're a lot of Human Nature theorists whose views have a very different structure. Like Hegel! Hegel sounds pretty wacky. Or anyone influenced by him.
Anyway. Not sure where you're putting normativity. But once you realize I'm putting it in the right place, it should all make sense. =P
94: No! Very mature-like forethought.
You should be familiar with the name LaDanian Tomlinson.
I haven't been paying much attention to the other part of the thread and I'm not going to start now, but those who have might be interested in the discussion at the end of Fredrickson's Inner Civil War of the growth of (American) football following the (American) Civil War.
Also, the long term trend seems to be towards a sensitization of violence in sports. People wear gloves and helmets when they didn't used to, certain kinds of hits/moves/techniques get outlawed, etc. in the name of greater safety.
FWIW, many of the sports you site in opposition to football and boxing have pretty high rates of injury, just not brain-injury.
True; my focus on brain injury is based on a (clearly contestable!) judgment about which human capacities are fundamental enough to enjoy particular solicitude in structuring our practices. And this is actually much less empirically-supported, or supportable, than most of what has been discussed here--though not entirely independent; my views ought to be somewhat sensitive to studies on how well people cope with various injuries over the life-cycle. Still, the grounds of my privileging the brain really are rooted in foundational value-theory questions.
So your TV has "the smoothness of 600 Hz". But how many QAMs does it have? I'm not shelling out for your 3D LCD HD TV unless it has a fuck-ton of QAMs.
Also, the long term trend seems to be towards a sensitization of violence in sports. People wear gloves and helmets when they didn't used to, certain kinds of hits/moves/techniques get outlawed, etc. in the name of greater safety.
Yes, but: my impression is that, with both football & boxing, this can be misleading, because the big problem with both is the cumulative impact of many minor head injuries. With boxing, I thought it was the case that the gloves/masks actually make this worse, because your knuckles are protected, so hitting the opponents head is much more attractive than if your naked fist were hitting the other guy's (hard!) skull. And with football, similarly, increased padding leads to harder hitting. I remember reading about this somewhere respectable...
re: 101
I gather that's true for boxing,* but not for football. It came up recently so I looked for some studies comparing rugby injury rates with American football. Rugby players don't play with the protective kit, as you know, and injury rates are actually quite a bit higher than football. So the widely believed claim that padding leads to harder hitting and more injuries seems not to be true.
* it's one of the claims MMA fans make in favour of MMA. I'm not sure if all the data is in yet given that we probably don't have the length of time or number of participants to really make a realistic comparison, but it'd hardly be surprising if a sport that made it more difficult to hit the head, and where hitting the head wasn't one of the primary/sole objects [although still a significant one], did have lower rates of brain injury.
Whoa! Sudden drama in the football game!
Yes, the cumulative injuries are a problem. It's not at all clear that it's more of a problem than, say, people dying on the field/in the ring, and those not dying still having cumulative injuries, but you know, contrarianism is always right. At least in this case that article drew increased attention to what, whether or not it's a better or worse situation than before, is a real and serious problem.
Rodgers is a good case of a quarterback who needs to think seriously about how many concussions before he decides it's not going to be worth it.
I knew rugby injuries generally were higher, but is that also true for head injuries, specifically? Though obviously the forward-pass is also (most of?) the issue here.
Given what we know about concussions, I think football is pretty indefensible. Particularly high school and college; at least the pros get paid. Overall, though, it's like porn without Aids testing. God damn is it entertaining though.
Of course, since I have no interest in rugby, I'm fine with that going on my shit-list, too. MMA seems kinda cool, though, so I'd hope it turns out to be relatively safe.
re: 105
Yes, it's true for head injuries, specifically. I cited a paper in the earlier thread but having a quick google now I didn't find it.
re: 107
Safe(r) for brain injuries. As I said, I know a few MMA people. They all have significant periods of time-out when someone fucks up their elbow, knee, shoulder, etc.
MMA seems kinda cool, though
Of course you are referring to Multiple Male Arrrrrgasm, the characteristic feature of pirate porn.
Well, ok, rugby is Not Okay, then. Maybe the NZ cricket team & soccer teams can take up the haka.
Incidentally, that commercial with the polar bear hugging the electric-car owner was cute, but it reminded me of this genuinely disturbing fantasy/horror story, The Third Bear.
Wow, that was totally the wrong link. Let's try again. Scary! Don't read if you want happy!
I'd hope it turns out to be relatively safe.
My guess is that there will be fewer long-term brain injuries in MMA because the matches are so much shorter and don't have standing 8-counts, but any time your night ends like this, it can't be doing your brain any favors.
I'm guessing 1/3 boxing's brain damage rate + 2/3 submission grappling's joint injury rate.
I've got no problem with football as long as I don't have to watch it. Even then I don't hate it, I'm just bored out of my mind.
Speaking of young people being mistreated, if you're still feeling too cheerful after reading that short story, how about the latest abuse of executive power in order to detain & torture a US citizen without judicial oversight?
When is rushing three ever a successful strategy?
Oh well. I blame Stanley's punning.
I wonder what percentage of UofC undergrads are even aware there's a football game on tonight.
And on to the next one. Can I really root against Pittsburgh and in favor of NY Jets just to prove I'm a feminist? Let's head to the local sports bar and find out.
I think it's been established that rooting for the Jets does nothing for feminism.
Maybe if you bet on the Jets, and donate any winnings to Planned Parenthood.
I dunno, there's just something viscerally difficult about rooting for a QB you hate, even on a team you'd otherwise prefer. Moral philosophers, help me out. Sanchez has his own rape accusation, of course, though he's also a kind of local hero here and I'm generally pro Mexican. Dilemma!!
I guess I should have amended above: I think it's been established that rooting for either team does nothing for feminism.
I think my suggestion is probably your only way out, what with both of them being likely-rapists, and the Jets having such a shitty record w/ harassment of female fans. If you're worried it's not enough, make a high-risk, high-return bet, if that's possible with football (I've never bet on something like that). Also, be sure to explain to other bar-patrons what you're doing.
123: At any rate, saying you're pulling for the Jets "because I'm a feminist" will surely pull you mad tail at the bar. So go for it!
Eh, like all major decisions, I've made this one at the last minute, under the influence of alcohol, and based on my gut. Fuck NY. Let's go Steelers!
If the bar is loud enough, they'll hear "because I'm a fetishist." That's probably a better line, anyway.
By the way, the name of the bar is "Locals: The Local Sports Bar.". A little excessive, but I appreciated it when they literally refused to serve a guy wearing Celtics green last spring.
I'm sort of cheering for the Jets. Because I'm an asshole. Whatever the outcome of the game, most of my co-workers will be barely tolerable tomorrow.
I think we can safely root for Defensive Lines, no?
72 made me happy.
102, and the question of whether boxing is worse for the brain: oh my God yes. Not only because the head is a much more primary target, but because of the gloves. They allow you to hit way harder, both b/c of added cushioning and by distributing the force over a wider area. Not that many UFC dudes break their hands with those dinky combat gloves, but, but: I have been told that the whole increased surface area thing makes it more likely that, when you get hit, your jaw doesn't break, but your brain rattles around inside your skull a bit more. I would say half of the under 30 boxers in my old gym were seriously punchy, and had obvious signs of dementia. Also, none of them make money. They get treated like racehorses.
They do, however, get abs for life.
Not that many UFC dudes break their hands with those dinky combat gloves
"Boxer's fracture" is fairly common with the four ounce gloves in mma.
And...boxers. Though I thought it was usually the result of doing something stupid, but I don't really know MMA very well.
I am obviously not the first person to comment on this, but every time I do catch some MMA I just cannot get over how much it looks like they're having sex. Angry, weird sex, but still sex. And then I'm further dumbfounded by everyone else not commenting on it. It makes me feel insane.
Fucking Bears. Oh, well. I accidentally bought a Lagunitas six pack that's 9%. So there's that. Go Jets!
Brown Shugga, Stanley? Watch out....I had three of them one night and the hangover the next day was incredibly bad (especially given the minimal amount of actual drinking). However, I did like the beer itself.
everyone else not commenting on it
Watch it with some gay men some time.
I think I should go to Apo for most life decisions / quandaries.
My usual UFC-watching buddy tells me that the intro clips on UFC shows look exactly like the opening credits for Hot House Video. Certainly it's the most homoerotic programming on American television by a wide stance margin.
139: The Hairy Eyeball, but the clerk asked if I'd tried Brown Shugga. It's no longer available here.
143: I haven't had the Hairy Eyeball. I like most of the Lagunitas beers, though.
Lamest call for measurement in the history of football.
So the "usual UFC watching buddy" knows about gay porn. Uh huh.
Shouldn't you be trying to pick up the laydeez at the bar with your commitment to feminism, Halford?
I hope this turns out at least to be a close game.
Lamest call for measurement in the history of football.
You know what's lame? When "The Sacred Book of the Werewolf" costs only $6 in paperback, $10.38 in hardcover, but a whopping $13.78 for the ebook, which I'll have to go through a bothersome and illegal process to covert to a format my reader can handle, to boot. Now that's lame.
149: I guess there will be some market forces driving prices for ebooks down at some point, just as there are for paper books.
Well, we've got an injury to one likely-rapist ... halfway to an optimal outcome!
153: Are you debasing yourself and the world by watching? (Or whatever that smack you were blathering on about up there.)
Spoke too soon, I guess.
153: Are you debasing yourself and the world by watching? (Or whatever that smack you were blathering on about up there.)
Yes, but I'm not enjoying it! Anyway, I'm watching a (shockingly good quality) pirate stream, so there's absolutely no revenue-flow at issue.
This is looking pretty one-sided, though. I was hoping to read that werewolf book, but there are issues with my account, so I guess I'll just read one of the zillion other books on my list instead. Sigh.
149: I guess there will be some market forces driving prices for ebooks down at some point, just as there are for paper books.
I suspect this has to do with the seasonality of pricing--I guess Amazon thinks they need deep cuts to sell in January, but since they sold tons of Kindles as gifts, they figure those new owners are, if anything, still in a trying-out-and-buying mood. Just to make up a theory. But you're the book-seller, not me!
Plus, it's relieved Trapnel of any aggressions he may have had bottled up. Not to mention having something to talk about around the water cooler, not unlike Dancing with the Stars or Survivor or American Idol, except that football never ends.
156: Oh. Well, the book you linked to is a remainder/publisher's overstock (may have remainder mark) which Amazon is selling as New for a sharply reduced price, so I don't think that's part of their periodic price cutting.
They do cut prices for certain print titles by a third or so, on no particular schedule that I've noticed, for a period of time, then raise them back up close to the in-print price again. Used booksellers lose sales on Amazon when they do that. Oh well. There's a slightly detectable pattern. There's not much a person can do about it.
I have no idea how this operates for ebooks.
Yes, if my workplace had a water cooler. If I had a workplace, and a job.
Oh, right, I didn't notice that bit. I just saw 'bargain price' and thought, wooo, sale. Maybe I should go to sleep.
And a boat. And a pony to ride upon the boat.
I don't think the pony wants to hear about football, Stanley. Be serious.
There's nothing in the rule book that says the pony can't kick field goals.
says the pony can't kick field goals
Everything makes sense once you realize that Moby is actually Don Knotts, and we are all in one big 1970s Disney movie.
A Disney movie which, coincidentally, will never pass into the public domain.
I love Don Knotts. The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, in which he must spend the night in an allegedly haunted house, was the best! At least in my childhood memory.
I was shocked to learn, recently, that a pony is not a baby horse.
Surely Apo has better than that already saved to his harddrive.
170: But probably not with as good Disney IP history.
165: I actually played the role of the motor home in Escape to Witch Mountain.
168, 171: Looking only at the ducks, it is hard to tell the difference.
Am I the only one who thought ponies:horses::puppies:dogs? I blame a combination of Catholic and public education.
I thought ducks:geese::puppies:dogs. In my defense, I'm lying to try to make Stanley feel better.
175: No, you're not, not exactly. I thought ponies were baby, or mini, horses, in a way. Not exactly like colts, but like junior (adolescent?) horses. I'm not sure what I thought. I've since come to know some people who have ponies, and ride them competitively, and as far as I can tell, they're just like horses. I think they're just a bit smaller or something.
Because nobody else was ever confused about that.
Given all of this, I don't know why everybody wants a pony with their ice cream.
We had a pony when I was little. They live longer than horses and are generally more sturdy. They probably aren't smarter by nature, but they are more likely to be around long enough to get smart. Ours, which was close to 40 when we got him, wouldn't carry anybody who didn't give him a cookie.
Also, since the band wagon is now moving, Go Steelers.
ponies:horses::puppies:dogs
Stanley, you're a moron, but your ignorance led me to this amusing fact:
The United States Pony Club defines "pony" to be any mount that is ridden by a member regardless of its breed or size. Persons up to 25 years old are eligible for membership, and some of the members' "ponies" actually are full-size horses.
One assumes he came to a gruesome end.
182: That's pretty common. A polo pony is a horse.
I'm probably the sort of person who contributes to Stanley's misinformation, though, since despite knowing the difference, I consistently refer to baby horses as "ponies". I'm honestly not sure I've ever used the word "foal". And wikipedia seems to confirm that this is a fairly common usage, so.
ponies:horses::puppies:dogs
Stanley, I only learned this wasn't true within the past couple of years. So, given our respective ages, you're well ahead of me, at least.
At some point someone can try to explain why we supposedly all want a pony. I mean, I never wanted a horse. Or even a pony, to be honest.
I think a kitten would be great.
(I'd actually like to kill this "... and a pony" thing. It renders us all hypothetical 11-year-old girls, I think.)
I can't decide if I'm happy that the Jets lost or sad that the Steelers won.
185: 'm honestly not sure I've ever used the word "foal".
How about colt? Although I see that colt only refers to young male horse which I never realized.
I think a kitten would be great.
I'll mail you one. How many airholes do you think it takes?
No, no colts, just ponies. If it's a small horse I'll call it a pony, whether it's a baby horse or an adult pony.
I've only skimmed the first half of the thread. Did anyone bother to ask why Stanley was rooting for Polamalu? That seems weird.
OT: I'll pass along a comic called Steampunk Palin. It's, um, pretty funny. Weird. Funny. Includes Palin pinups. (h/t Balloon Juice)
I'm sort of aghast that people don't know what ponies are.
I'm actually bothered by a line I heard on Meet the Press this morning: David Gregory asked James Clyburn (who'd been quoted recently as saying that Palin didn't intellectually understand what was was going on), whether he -- Clyburn -- thought he was rightly accused of 'talking down to her,' something which some people said was inappropriate.
I'm sort of aghast that people don't know what ponies are.
Me too! Next we'll discover that Stanley thinks short people are children.
And that housecats are tiger cubs.
And that onions grow up to be Russian Orthodox churches.
And that nanites grow up to be ROBAMA.
And that butterfly farts grow up to be hurricanes.
Well, at least in the stupid Googling that followed, I finally learned why miniature horses aren't ponies. News I can use!
Butterfly farts are a promising source of alternative energy and the inspiration for the literary genre known as butterfly-fart-punk.
Just as long as they stop with the "I was just flapping my wings" excuse.
Butterfly-fart-punk also comprehends an aesthetic typified by flappy-winged aircraft and more netting than you'd think necessary.
Because I'm watching those little shits. Sometimes the air moves and the wings don't.
A butterfly landed on my shoulder once. It was a happier time.
There is a conservatory near me. During the summer, they have a whole greenhouse full of butterflies. They land on people all the time.
There's a party goin' on at the Party Pad, and everyone's invited! In an effort to raise money for a local animal shelter, Barbie, Madison, Chelsea, and the rest of the My Scene gang decide to throw a masquerade party in the DVD movie, Masquerade Madness. And what a party it is! My Scene followers will be thrilled to see this 23-minute DVD, and even happier to find Barbie all dolled up as a very sexy Butterfly Punk, complete with sparkly brown and copper wings, pink faux-fur jacket (at least we hope it's faux; it is an animal shelter fund raiser, after all), belly-revealing top with lace front, sleek hip-hugging purple and pink camo cargo pants, and spiky high heel boots. Plus she has a costumed puppy, lots of accessories, and a whole other outfit, presumably for the after-party party. You fly, girl! Warning: Girls, don't try these outfits at home--you'll be grounded for a month!
I'll have you know this happened in The Wild. The butterfly in question had his/her pick of medium-height , non-insectivorous objects, but chose me. That is to say, moi.
No more masturbating to Jack LaLanne.
non-insectivorous objects
That attitude is why we have to keep going to the same restaurants week after week.
211: Can I still wear the belted jumpsuit?
You know who's in the least danger of masturbating to dead people? Wikipedia editors.
They should boast about that in their fundraising materials.
Wikipedia editors and really careless chain saw users.
A bird landed on my outstretched arm once, when I was hiking. I wish I could truthfully say that it did so to devour the butterfly that had previously landed there, but I can't.
Are there any known rapists among the Packers?
217.2: You could probably email their front office and ask.
And don't point me to earlier in the thread; I am presently intoxicated.
Hawaii and Stanford played a hell of a volleyball match tonight.
193: That reminds me of a post I saw somewhere that described what must surely be the great comic ever. It was a creationist comic that dramatized the answer to the question of "What happened to the dinosaurs?" They were killed in the Flood because they were all working for the Devil. The panel showing dinosaurs attacking Noah's ark should be enshrined in the National Gallery.
At some point someone can try to explain why we supposedly all want a pony.
The locus classicus.
I know a pony is a small breed of horse, but I assume there are other small breeds of horse that aren't ponies, and I don't know what makes a pony a pony. I do know the French word for pony, though. Le poney.
Dog breeds have never been my strong suit either. I keep calling "terriers" "spaniels".
A pony is £25.00 (and, I suppose, as many dollars). Accept no substitute.
I keep calling "terriers" "spaniels".
Terriers are quite varied in appearance, but spaniels all look spanielish.
Moby could terrier the difference but then he'd have to killier.
Stick your head out the window and shout, "I'm mad as hell and I want a pony." I would, but I don't have a window and it is bitter cold outside.
It is so cold, they delayed school for two hours. At first, I'd assumed it was because they knew the teachers would be hung over and exhausted. Then I stepped outside.
How many airholes do you think it takes?
The kitten only needs the mouth and nostrils it already has. You don't need to punch any more holes in it.
I know a pony is a small breed of horse, but I assume there are other small breeds of horse that aren't ponies, and I don't know what makes a pony a pony.
IF YOU HAD BOTHERED TO READ MY LINK IN 182 YOU WOULD KNOW that this is wrong:
the official definition of a pony is a horse that measures less than 14.2 hands (58 inches, 147 cm) at the withers.
*Subject to a few arbitrary and confusing exceptions described in article.
Great. Now we just need to know what the withers are.
I'm a little sad that the wikipedia article on "pony" doesn't contain any discussion of the locus classicus linked in 223.
234. So amend it. That's why it's wikipedia. Sadly, the wikipeadia Confidence Trick page has been unamended by some cad, but it's easy enough.
I do know the French word for pony, though. Le poney.
Pronounced "po-NAY". True fact.
So no, there aren't other small breeds of horses that aren't ponies.
The Falabella, despite its size, is not considered a pony, but rather is a miniature horse.
Can you believe they used to let me on television?!
Did anyone bother to ask why Stanley was rooting for Polamalu?
Because he's fun to watch. He's all leapy and tackly. What's not to love?
239: see the asterisk in 232.
urple's a pwny!
241: I searched the article linked at 182, and it does not mention the gloriously dainty Falabella*.
*random trivia: also the name of a department store in South America.
From 182:
The smallest equines are called miniature horses by many of their breeders and breed organizations, rather than ponies, but stand smaller than small ponies, usually no taller than 38 inches (97 cm) at the withers.
The embedded link contains a full paragraph on the gloriously dainty Falabella.
Well, I'm glad that got cleared up for me. Thanks, urps!
245: The various articles on horses and ponies etc. and their proper names do nothing to dissuade one from the position that horse people are assholes. For instance from the "Pony" Wikipedia article, which sucks in many ways,
Ponies are generally considered intelligent and friendly, though sometimes they also are described as stubborn or devious. The differences of opinion often result from an individual pony's degree of proper training. Ponies trained by inexperienced individuals, or only ridden by beginners, can turn out to be spoiled because their riders typically lack the experience base to correct bad habits.and more relevant to the naming issues
American Indian tribes also have the tradition of referring to their horses as "ponies," when speaking in English, even though many of the Mustang horses they used in the 19th century were close to or over 14.2 hh, and most horses owned and bred by Native peoples today are of full horse height.Get with the 14.2 hands program Native Americans!
248: In fairness, we made a long list of promises to the Native Americans, which list ended "...and a pony." At this point, no one has the heart to tell them that even the pony part didn't come through.
The Native Americans ate all of their ponies 10,000 years ago and didn't get any new ones until after 1492. They could show a little graditude to the people who brought the animal back and call them "caballos."
They could show a little graditude to the people who brought the animal back and call them "caballos."
Or at least make us some curry, like I promised all the guys.
I made chimichangas for EVERYONE!
Extremely belated, but . . .
having a quick google now
IYKWIM. AITYD.
