One month?
Also, there's this: "He doesn't watch Battlestar Galactica, but he likes to watch me watch Battlestar Galactica."
[cough]
C'mon, have a heart and leave her be.
For some reason the term "dodged bullet" keeps running through my head.
Also, what kind of libertarian feminist gushes about how her man buys her everything, checks her car tires because she doesn't know how, and constantly sends her affectionate text messages?
My first instinct is to agree with Timbot, but then I remember that she was one of the few people to support Fortuny, so screw that. What I really want to know is how she managed to alienate her beloved's mother after just one month. That's fast work. They're doomed.
She moved in with him two weeks after that post. They they got a puppy. She thinks she's going to talk him into getting a kitten.
Wow.
Maybe the mom is peeved that her son's will has been broken.
She's got some kind of thing for vowels.
The sex sounds great. I wonder if she'll be putting up clips.
I don't see how the guy can last. She's very high maintenance, and has already elbowed the mother out. Maybe his friends will kidnap him and deprogram him.
And here I thought the title of this post was a joke.
3: Yeah, I got to car tire bit and added her to my "Not in my bomb shelter or lifeboat" list.
I'm with Timbot 5000 on this one. Rooting against a relationship in it's delusional-euphoric first month is like playing the Axis side in a 'battle of Poland' wargame.
Resolved: "monthiversary" should not be used by anyone over the age of 13 (when it's also marginally acceptable to pass notes saying 'do you like him? or you do like like him?)
That's stacking the cards Baa. Let's compare it to the mopping up operation at the end of WWII, trapping Hitler in his bunker and so on.
Also: it's the first month. he's not generous. he's just horny.
Well... he could be generous and horny, right? Jackie's comments threads have a speech-bubble motif.
Meanwhile, here's a description of the same relationship from the man's point of view, circa one month from now.
"I'm sure, but it's about to be overtaken by events."
That's great.
Clearly the best line in the whole piece, yes.
She's a catch?
Every woman should know how to check their car's tire pressure and change a flat.
She doesn't think she's a catch, but she likes to catch someone who thinks she's a catch.
But every time I've since been clubbed with a list of my inadequacies...
At a certain point a man must ask himself, "What is it about me that makes people want to compose a list of my inadequacies?"
Clearly they just can't handle his awesomeness.
I am so grateful for Unfogged! It brings me joy via things I would never, ever have discovered on my own.
I've always wondered whether the term "tool" could be used for both genders. And now that question has been answered. Thanks!
Sixteen reminds me of this site, when it used to be funny. Now baa and SomeCallHimTimbot won't even let us poke at Jacqueline Parker Posey Paisley.
You ain't kidding, Smasher. This blog has gone plaid. Maybe I should make more fun of people's Flickr pictures.
Don't you have a lunch date to go to, Ogged?
From the link in the linked post, she's enumerating the ways she likes this guy:
He's originally from central Virginia and moved to Las Vegas two years ago to be a professional poker player
He's ambitious, indeed.
I decided a few years ago that I find everyone's "list of things I love about my partner" to be terrifying and repulsive. It's not JPP's fault, despite having many other faults. It's just that the reasons she "loves" her boyfriend are all things that would make me send my stomach out of my mouth, like an octopus, in his direction, to make sure he never spoke to me again.
Oh, speaking of break-ups, I almost managed to break up today! I realize now that I am awesome at 1-month breakups, but really bad at 3+-month breakups. How exactly is it done?
Is this great-sex-unfortunate-rash-cancerboy?
Don't you have a lunch date to go to, Ogged?
That's the spirit.
send my stomach out of my mouth, like an octopus, in his direction
It's an interesting super-power you have.
Would be great sex, if he weren't having vague cancer-might-be-back fears that make him kinda skittish. I'm all "Go to the fucking doctor or let me fuck other people. Seriously."
Yes, this blog has become too nice. First, I sort of love that I've heard all about the rise and fall of WB's relationship, from sexrash to cutting loose. Second, am I the only one finding JMPP's life really weird? I mean, the guy is ambitious because he wants to move from playing poker professionally to being a real-estate investor? I feel like he's running the gamut of careers advertised on infomercials. She's dating Carlton Sheets.
25: baa and I appear to be objecting to going after JMPP on different grounds. He thinks that early love is always delusional, but it's fun and people ought to be allowed to enjoy it. I think she comes across as a socially maladjusted misfit whose personality is likely to negatively define large parts of her life, and I suspect that there isn't anything either she or any intervenor can really do about that. Her life will be, at least from the outside, something of a train wreck; it seems wrong to cheer the coming crashes. It's not as if she's done something specific that was wrong, a la Fourtuney.
I actually was much more sensitive than that, of course. But I was all, "Dude, I have people in my life who like to go to movies and cook and snuggle. Those are called girlfriends."
Okay, j/k. But for three months, I've heard, "I'm not feeling well" and "I'm tired" and he hasn't done anything about it. So I said I have to assume he's not interested in me and is too much of a pussy to break up with me. He spent quite a few hours this morning assuring me that this wasn't true (verbally, unfortunately) and swearing both to go to the doctor and to figure out whether he's capable of being in a relationship.
I mean, the guy is ambitious because he wants to move from playing poker professionally to being a real-estate investor? I feel like he's running the gamut of careers advertised on infomercials.
Friction arises when she realizes that the reason he can make thousands of dollars a month selling goods online without ever having to see or house the goods himself is that instead he houses them at her apartment.
I mean, the guy is ambitious because he wants to move from playing poker professionally to being a real-estate investor?
That was the one that jumped out at me, too. High quality indeed.
You're cold and heartless, AWB, but you should break up with him.
41: I have put the ball in his court. If it were only a month or something, I would tell him to screw off, but he is, and has been in the past, an extremely good boyfriend who gives me lots of space, but is thoughtful and kind. Plus, we have a lot of friends in common, etc. Also, I suggested that the change in his attitude about our relationship is partially due to the fact that, after teh cancer, he should have gone into therapy, but instead was all midwestern stoic about it. Like, it's one thing to break up with someone because he's an asshole; it's another to break up with a totally sweet guy who's just scared and not sure he's capable of asking for professional help.
Just take whatever course of action results in more amusing blog comments.
Just take whatever course of action results in more amusing blog comments.
I usually just cut loose whenever I feel like a dude is expecting me to help him change, because I don't think people can help their partners "change," but if it's a matter of him needing a shove to get medical attention, I'm willing to stick around and be supportive.
I'm off to swim; hurt someone's feelings for me while I'm gone.
I read your vagina monologues, SCMT, but I think it's patently clear that she writes things (maybe not this post, but most) in the hopes of provoking a readership. Why not take her up on that?
I'm puzzling over how I'd feel if someone I'd known for two or three months told me to go to therapy.
"Go to the fucking doctor or let me fuck other people. Seriously."
Rip his kidney heart out!
Not telling him to go to therapy, just suggesting that everything I've read about post-op testicular cancer suggests that, with a lot of bodily/hormonal changes going on, group therapy, at least, really decreases the stress about knowing what's normal and not.
48: Actually, I think it'd be better, because it'd break the whole "you're just saying that because you see all my insecurities" cycle. I mean, everyone's that fucked up, as anyone who's been with someone a decade will attest.* The thing is, if you can see how fucked up someone is after three months, well then, there must be something seriously wrong.
*Wow, I'm 29 and I've been with someone a decade. That's fucked up.
50: Tell him, "Everbody dies alone," and then dump him.
...and it was something his doctor recommended that he refused.
50: You could always say, "Hey, I know this other guy who had cancer and is now taking hormones and he'll tell you, &c." I'm always happy to help.
47: Yeah, fine, potentially fair point. She evokes "retarded kid" feelings from me, so I made the comment. It's not like I have any special authority as a moral arbiter; if anything, I'm probably sub-normal is such authority. Rip away!
I've been trying to convert AWB's boyfriend to the non-relationship policy, but it turns out that the part he hates most about relationships is the breaking-up part.
Ok, Passey's boyfriends "ambitiousness" is scary, dude, but did anyone else read "He is supportive of my efforts to eat healthy and exercise, since these things are important to him as well" and think that she's dating a guy who'll be a jackass to her if she ever puts on any weight?
Also, AWB, you are one cold polar bear.
Neuticles might be a thoughful gift, though I don't remember this guy's whole story.
54: I actually alluded to you in our conversation, SEK. He admits all this is true, and that his fear of finding out what lies beneath, either physically or emotionally, is really fucking unfair to me, and potentially deadly to him. But he's the kind of guy who makes a joke about things he doesn't understand or doesn't want to think about, so he's just been skipping over all this. I just said he needs to figure out whether he'd be more likely to get the help he needs with a supportive girlfriend or with a supportive friend whose needs he doesn't have to worry about.
57: You knew I was joking, silly Bitch. I'm a very loving bear.
How about being honest? Just tell him the truth- he needs to hear it (gently).
61: In what way have I lied to him? I swear, I'm not untruthful. I was just kidding with y'all because otherwise it's sad.
60: Dude, how do I know? I've never dated you.
You should just send him a link to the blog.
To Unfogged? That would be a quick way to break up.
I'm not saying you lied (you might be one cold bear but you're not a liar). Just tell him you want out and why. It might be good for Toby. If you're not around to be his sounding board, he might actually visit a therapist.
Or kill himself and be done with it.
66: I did tell him, but I don't just want out. I just want my Oct-Nov Toby back. If that's possible, I'll wait it out. If it's not, I would really like to get on to the rebound sex as quickly as possible.
Any rebound prospects?
Oh- could you please make your next food post be about sorbet?
68: Okay, that seems eminently reasonable. I take it back. You are a warm and fuzzy bear.
Would he make funny comments? Totally, send the link. Then you can move in on PMPP's man, whose initials (GK) make me think she's humping Chesterton.
He is funny. But I have a feeling he'd resent my locker-rooming of him.
57: Between that and defining him as generous because he buys her presents and his big plans to become a real estate investor, well, she's seeing it as ambitious and in love and high quality, and he's probably thinking "cool, this chick will buy any line I feed her and if I buy her something she'll have sex with me."
He can locker-room you right back! It's win-win.
Not just generous because he buys her presents, but generous because he buys her perfume, lingerie, and clothes. Barf.
I take pride in the fact that all the gifts I've received from boyfriends have been cheap, useful things like dishtowels, salt, winter hats, coffee mugs, tea, stuff like that. No lingerie. Ugh.
Yeah. I mean, that's fun, and part of wooing sometimes, but not really generous.
75: As an objectivist she would reject as irrational any attempt to buy her things that are actually useful, as it decreases both her happiness and the total wealth of the economy compared to the more efficient situation in which she buys them for herself.
78: That doesn't make any sense. Not that Objectivism does either, but still.
Salt? The only way salt could be cheap and useful, rather than overpriced and decadent, is if he bought you a few pounds of this.
Love and Objectivism are what we call "non-overlapping magisteria", teo. Buying her gifts that would intrude on her normal exploitation of market forces would itself be an intrusion on her autonomy.
80: Actually, the salt was really fancy Saunier de Camargue Fleur de Sel.
I bet dating libertarians is a lot of fun.
I reject any attempt to claim that one type of salt is detectably different than another except in texture, and am backed up in this by Jeffrey Steingarten.
Texture can be a big deal. Powdered sugar vs. granulated sugar. Which tastes sweeter?
I love fancy salt. I thought it was super romantic. My mom was like, "He went to Paris and all you got was SALT?"
85: This is the wrong attitude to have when it comes to gift-giving.
Talk about a cheap date. Is there a niche baking soda somewhere, lithium carbonate or something?
So how much sex would an 80-lb. bag of rock salt buy?
I reject any attempt to claim that one type of salt is detectably different than another except in texture, and am backed up in this by Jeffrey Steingarten.
Perhaps for eating (though I don't believe that either) butI would vouch for this recommendation for non-iodized salt, and note:
"A study also found better results using salt from the Dead Sea over simple saline solution for treatment of chronic rhinosinusitis.[6]"
Once I walked in on a libertarian couple watching Demolition Man, a film about a futuristic dystopia in which sex, obscenity, and transfats have all been outlawed. Libertarian porn!
90: If you used it to make homemade ice cream together, probably a lot.
74: now you're getting it. One thing Unfogged needs is a nasty public breakup in the comments.
Ned, you just read the NYT magazine story, right? Christ, that non-overlapping stuff gets my goat like almost nothing else. Hi, I'm Stephen Jay Gould, and I mouth off about things I don't really understand!
No, I actually had no idea that was mentioned in that story, which I planned to read later tonight.
I have no problem with Stephen Jay Gould. He has no idea how an educated person could find religion more plausible than science in the realms where they contradict each other, and neither do I. I assume that the Non-OvMag idea is pretty patronizing to a believing religious person, but it's a useful way for psychologists and sociologists to think about things.
One thing Unfogged needs is a nasty public breakup in the comments.
Dude, we had one just a year ago.
Wait, was this you getting banned or something? I can't remember.
I once witnessed an argument about sea salt. One party said that the mix of compounds in contemporary sea salt is different than the sea salt of x hundred million years ago when our amphibian ancestors came from the sea. Some certain deposit somewhere approximated the primal mix.
No one said anything about using it to score chicks with, though.
88: Since it's the attitude I have when gift-receiving, it's hard to turn it off when the tables are turned.
"Oh boy! Soap from France! This is much more nicely packaged than my normal soap. Finally, I have soap that I can set aside in the closet and then use specifically when you're visiting."
99: You haven't memorized the archives? Standpipe's going to show up and berate you any minute now.
pretty patronizing to a believing religious person
Not to mention people who think about value, ethics, and the things he consigns to the realm of religion. The gist of my complaint is that
(i) [the narrow complaint] a lot of people have worked hard at arguing that morality isn't a fundamentally religious notion and he just kind of conveniently forgets that there have been discussions of this going back 2300 years;
(ii) [the broad complaint] it makes perfect sense for one's answers to questions about morality, the meaning of life, the nature of value, etc. to be shaped by one's views about what the world contains. So "non-overlapping" isn't the way to think about this at all.
100: You don't score chicks with the salt, you rub it into the wounds after you score them. This applies to fraternity initiations too.
101 is funny. The problem there is just that whoever it is hasn't tapped into whatever your own personal yuppie moment is. But I bet there's something where you care about aesthetics or status.
Morton Kosher Salt (not the regular stuff) beats almost every fancy-schmancy salt in blind taste tests.
B, you know I never pay close attention to this blog. Do you mean all those people leaving in a huff? You're killing me with your hints.
85: You're nuts. I'm no foodie, but there's a huge taste difference between iodized salt and other.
Also, we have some wood-smoked salt in the house. I defy you to not taste a difference between that and everything else. Okay, that's not really fair.
And finally, the texture difference is important too.
Besides, a big public breakup between Toby and me wouldn't be fun for any of you to watch. You'd all take his side.
I bet there's something where you care about aesthetics or status.
Probably, but I try to have that be true only in the realm of durable rather than consumable goods. High-quality shower curtain, sure, why not, it'll probably last longer.
High-quality soap, it'll disappear just as fast as the other soap, unless I save it for rare occasions and then get disappointed by the ineffability of its superior qualities.
wouldn't be fun for any of you to watch. You'd all take his side
Wait, what's not to love?
I'm with Ned on salt, and I suspect we read the same essay.
High-quality soap that smells really nice is in another category though, right?
High-quality non-durables are exactly the kinds of things that make good gifts though, because one might not buy them for oneself. I buy medium-okay soap, not lavender Valobra. But if you were to give me lavender Valobra, it would be your way of saying, "Go ahead! You are worth it!" Therefore it is nice.
I'm totally picturing Toby at group therapy for testicular cancer.
103 i: On the other hand, a lot of people have argued that these questions **are** religion-like, and that the reason why religion hasn't disappeared is that secular answers to questions of value haven't had the powerful superiority to religious answers that secular (scientific) answers to questions of physics have compared to religious answers.
ii: My belief is that "what the world contains" constrains ethics without providing usable answers to ethical questions. (Dunno what SJG thought).
iii. My understanding of secular ethics is that it's fine if you have an infinite amount of time to make ethical decisions in, but not so much otherwise. You risk coming in to the ethics shop after ten years finding out that the act-utilitarians were still hashing it out with th rule-utilitarians, and that each faction had two or more different answers to your specific ethical question.
John, I don't think that's right. This has to be short, since I'm on my way out, but maybe we can take it up on a dedicated thread.
On (i): part of the question of which sort of answer is superior-- religious or secular-- will depend on claims about what exists, e.g., divinities, souls, autonomous wills, and so on. Arguing that one sort hasn't been demonstrably superior to another once the non-overlapping point has been assumed is question-begging.
On (ii): I'll buy that claims about the contents of the world under non-evaluative descriptions don't entail evaluative conclusions (in the is/ought gap sense). But if empirical knowledge is "constraining" ethics in the sense of "our best answers about morality had better cohere with all of what we know about the world," that's enough to show that the two realms aren't "non-overlapping." The empirical work on whether traits like virtues exist comes to mind as an example.
(iii) oh, come on; this is a bad cartoon. But grant arguendo that it's right; this fact in itself tells us something about moral questions, and it's informed by a particular set of empirical claims. Again, this is what's unsatisfying about the "non-overlapping" point.
As I said, I haven't read Gould's book, and I'm taking my sense of what he's saying from various reviews and discussions, so all the standard disclaimers, etc.
...it occurs to me that it might be worth clarifying what I'm getting pissy about. It's not whether moral philosophy has anything interesting to say; it's whether claims about value can be divorced, in some pretty radical and complete way, from claims about empirical facts.
Don't you have a lunch date to go to, Labs?
118: This is really important and an undervalued problem in discussions of secular ethics. I think what also must be considered is that most religions do not allow much room for ethics in the secular sense. There is only to do what God says, not to interpret the results of actions and their relationship to God within the lived world.
The non-overlapping magisteria fails just for the reason Labs says: it's very strange to think that our ideas about morality are wholly independent of empirical facts. Off the top of my head: abortion, euthanasia, animal rights (pain, consciousness); moral responsibility (brain chemicals); punishment and justice (sex offenders, recidivism, etc.)
But surely Gould wouldn't want science not to be able to weigh in on the abortion debate! So maybe science is allowed to constrain religion, but religion can't constrain science. And religion better not go around making any empirical claims, either. So the only religion allowed is the sort where God sets the world in motion and walks away: no karma, no incarnation, no miracles, no covenant, nada. It can provide meaning by offering you platitudes.
Now, maybe that's enough for an atheist. But it's surely an anemic conception of religion, and it's virtually indistinguishable from the standard secular view. Gould claims he's advancing the debate with his new non-overlapping magisteria, but it's impossible to see how he's done anything but restate the same secular case with some tricked-out Latin.
Jeez, Labs. And here I thought you loved me.
Yeah, the banning and subsequent huff.
I'm thinking of going out to buy towels and bras. Because my life is exciting like that.
Shit, I should have said "the banning and subsequent huff in which everyone argued, correctly, that Ogged was In The Wrong."
I'm thinking of ordering Chinese food!
I'm regretting putting this problem on this differential equations exam because it was harder than I anticipated and everyone mangled it!
30: I think that's starfish:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_star#Digestion_and_excretion
The banning was well over a year ago.
I thought it was last March. Okay, maybe two years. Whatever.
120: Not really. A simplistic version of religious ethics, maybe, but quite a lot of religious ethics deals with precisely those questions: weakness of will? negligent omission? the trolley problem? Even divine command theory can be pretty sophisticated. A hell of a lot of ethics that we can read as secular takes place within a religious framework.
I'm writing about Jasper Johns and getting hungry!
Finally, I have soap that I can set aside in the closet and then use specifically when you're visiting.
That's weird, you weirdo. Just use it the next time you run out of soap, and get some mild enjoyment out of the fact that it smells nice and that you didn't have to remember to buy more soap that time around. The whole joy of consumable gifts is that you don't need to keep them around for the gift-giver's sake.
I'm reading Unfogged instead of working on my speech synthesis project that's due tomorrow!
I'm baking chocolate chip pecan cookies!
120: There is only to do what God says, not to interpret the results of actions and their relationship to God within the lived world.
AWB, this has not been my experience of Christianity *at all*. Part of this can be attributed to the fact that Anglican theology is highly incarnational, It tends to emphasize the importance of ordinary lived experience. After all, if God thought it worthwhile to live life as a human, then God is saying something pretty powerful about the importance of human life as it is lived in real human bodies. Abstract theories or absolutists prescriptions from scripture don't tend to enter into the picture. This isn't to say that thee aren't branches of Christianity where what you say is true, but that view of ethics (or anything else) is not dominant in my tradition.
Steven Jay Gould has been dead for a while. Was there a recent article about one of his books?
Maybe it's a message from beyond the grave to the effect that he's glad that -- unlike Wilson and Dawkins -- he hedged his bets.
I am realizing after the fact that my 120 was inspired by a very particular set of previous conversations on this topic whose details would out me, and so I can't defend it. Strike from the record.
I'm reading, and reading about, Wittgenstein and Aristotle!
138 makes buying towels seem downright exciting.
I've been avoiding sorting through 5-year-old semi-archival documents in advance of a transatlantic (plus, trans-mediterranean) move. Thus ensuring that I end up throwing the whole lot of them out! Huzzah for the destruction of history, says I.
131: Exactly so. I'll much rather have consumables over something I have to wear, hang on the wall, put on a table, and hate. Even disliked stuff can be disappeared, no one expects to see it on their next visit.
Even disliked stuff can be disappeared
Overheard during Secret Santa at the CIA's holiday party.
I'm avoiding thinking about my rescheduled interview that is to take place tomorrow morning by reading unfogged and designing fancy party invitations!
Also, salts with a high mineral/clay content (I'm thinking of that orange Hawaiian salt, but I think there's a black Himilayan salt, and other of various colors/origins) can taste quite distinct and be exceedingly delicious.
Good luck on the interview Chopper!
I read Jeffrey Steingarten's article on salt. He also did a really good one on the perfect Parisian baguette. (He was a judge in a contest. They had a tough time deciding between the final two. Their first choice had refused to submit his name, so they went with the number 2.) I didn't realize that so many of you read Vogue.
Boutique gravel. Luxury scouring powder. Elite toothpaste. Premium kitty litter. Bah humbug.
I didn't realize that so many of you read Vogue.
I read it in one of his books.
Hey now, I *like* my fennel flavored toothpaste.
"Hi, I'm going to the co op for tofu and granola."
With corundum grit and organic rainforest excipients?
As a matter of fact I bought a couple of pounds of bulk bin pumpkin flax granola just yesterday, thankyouverymuch. Also, some organic rainforest chocolate that was crappy.
I did not buy soy milk. But I thought about you all while I was browsing the dairy section.
I did buy kefir, though. Mmmmm.
Carborundum is a completely different mineral than corundum, though they are used similarly as abrasives. "Carborundum" is a coined brand name, whereas corundum is a real mineral name.
Kefir is fucking good. Such things as granola and misc. organic produce are not so available here. Hopefully, once I'm in Our Nation's Capital, they'll be more so.
Does a bear carp in the woods?
I can't believe that apart from the original post, no-one's mentioned the chest-hair thing?
"Something tells me you didn't come here just for the huntin'".
157: If something in the woods pisses us off.
Has this place turned into Twitter or something?
We're sophisticates and sportspersons around here. The chest-hair thing was fish in a barrel.
You're just setting me up to say, "Were they carp in the barrel?" Admit it.
Personally I would be interested in hearing the terms of the deal.
158: Right after I moved to NYC, I worked at a very high-end spa that made most of its money waxing the backs of male models and the pubic areas of female models. Lots of waxing was offered to the staff, most of whom were 19-year-old Long Island girls. One of them talked at length about how much she valued the feeling of smooth forearms, both her own and her boyfriend's.
I was like, "Wha? Your bf waxes his forearms?" She looked shocked and said, "Oh my God, I could not have sex with someone with hairy forearms." Then she did a long, cold shudder. A couple of the other girls shuddered too.
I had to excuse myself to some cleaning chore so that I could stop laughing and avoid asking if they'd considered dating chicks instead.
Love and Objectivism are what we call "non-overlapping magisteria"
Sweet line. And I'm glad it sparked discussion of the Gould claim. With the caveat that I have never read Gould, it seems like there are (at least) two ways to make sense of his non-overlapping magisteria argument. One way to read it is as a claim that the facts about the world don't influence our moral obligations. That's an error for all the reasons given above.
A better Gouldian claim would be that the methods we use to determine our moral obligations are not the methods of natural science. On this view, the procedures for determining whether a dolphin can reason are different in kind from the procedures we use to determine what obligations we have towards a reasoning creature. This view may be mistaken, but as it seems akin to several species of ethical rationalism, it is not a simple mistake.
And just to return to my role as member of the fun-quashing brigade, my take is more similar to SCMT's 37 than I expressed. There are any number of intimations of inevitable doom in that Passey link (jobs from the back of the matchbook cover, e.g.) Given that she isn'tan active force for evil in the universe, why root for the glacier?
I was surprised that no one picked up on my "peepee-dicky" movie reference, but it turns out that "Putney Swope" is the only movie that I've seen that everyone in the world hasn't seen. (That, and "Swedish Wedding Night", which is not a porn movie.)
164: I actually checked out the comments, and she explained that he had been trimming it short (???) and she had asked him to stop. Which makes him sound peculiar, but her not so much -- that wouldn't be a great location for stubble. So, less on that bit than meets the eye.
In the comments, she says that she likes chest hair and had been sad that he trimmed his, actually.
if they'd considered dating chicks instead
Chicks have hairy forearms too.
168: Oh, okay. That makes sense. But I can't imagine thinking this would be a good topic for blogging. Men think the most ridiculous things about "proper bodyscaping" or whatever they're calling it, and I can't imagine that not being a pretty humiliating post for the boyfriend.
"I feel like I'm catching something just sitting here" Good Kisser's remark as we sat in the waiting room of the North Las Vegas Planned Parenthood... North Las Vegas is very much the ghetto part of town. And we were sitting in a clinic that not only offers STD testing but also charges sliding scale fees for the low income patients. So you can imagine what sort of clientele shared that waiting room with us -- GK's remark was provoked by the arrival of an obvious $20 crack whore. But despite the snarky remarks he was quite the trooper about the whole thing, even though he expected it to be a lot worse than it actually was."
I think they're made for each other.
166: In the book, he's making the first claim, that the science-religion debate is so easy to solve: religion gets value, science gets fact, and then we dance in the field of lilies or something like that. (Maybe we dance in non-overlapping fields of lilies.)
His attitude is commendable; he's trying to offer a counterpoint to Dawkins' vitriol. But he really could have used someone walking him through a basic course on faith and reason.
The 35$ crack whores are well worth the extra $15, in my experience.
Which sppecific piece by Gould are we talking about?
I like the idea of bodyscaping on an English countryside model, with little topiaries and maybe an infestation of tiny tiny sheep, and a ha-ha or two.
178: and the odd crowd of disenfranchised peasants, pushed off their lands by the enclosures, thoroughly pissed off at you?
Sure, they're probably hanging out down in the pubes.
Thanks Cala,
I am of coruse handicapped by never having read Gould, btu why should ignorance stop me? It seems at first review that going fact/value with science/'normative knowledge' seems like an OK distinction for the second type of rationalist claim. Science doesn't get value in the sense of supporting the 'ought' part of normative judgments, right? (or doesn't if we stipulate rationalism). Surely Gould would concede that knowing if a house is inhabited (a judgment of science!) is essential to knowing if it is moral to demolish the house. Or is he just really confused?
Really a pain to get rid of all the serf nits, though.
You just made me pull up a paper I wrote in undergrad. It makes me want to cry; I was actually better at philosophy then.
It's been a long time since I've read Rocks of Ages(1999 or 2000), but he did seem to make a lot out of the fact/value distinction. He's arguing for a few basic points: that science and religion are different disciplines with different standards and goals; that the dignity of each discipline requires that it not overstep its abilities; and that both science and religion must engage in dialogue because each forms a valuable part of human experience, etc. And the book itself was a historical survey of some of the big conflicts of science and religion (Galileo, Darwin), and purported to show how there weren't really conflicts, just political pressures and that sort of thing.
I also was a ballsy little brat because it seems I went after Gould by undermining the fact/value distinction.
Huzzah for undermining the fact/value distinction, or at least a modified huzzah if it takes the form of noting that moral claims are factual. I think someone -- if not Gould, then at least a Gouldian -- would be on reasonable grounds distinguishing normative judgments and scientifc judgments on the basis of methodology and standards for truth. Has the golden point of comity been reached?
the methods we use to determine our moral obligations are not the methods of natural science
Tyler Burge, young and sweet, only seventeen. This is so true, but, given what I know of the context of Gould's claim, without having read him, it's overly generous to attribute this to him. The point I'm imagining has more to do with "religion and science can't disprove one another" which seems wrong and totally infuriating. (Don't know why this bugs me so much. Still, does.)
moral claims are factual
Ah, the baa of the confessional. "Forgive me! I can't help believe that the world is a nice place!"
Carborundum is a completely different mineral than corundum, though they are used similarly as abrasives.
Carborundum also makes a better pasta sauce.
> At a certain point a man must ask himself, "What is it about me that makes people want to compose a list of my inadequacies?"
SEK is my hero. How grand it must be to never have received constructive criticism from parents, lovers, friends, neighbors, children, employers, bartenders, etc. Truly, I aspire to SEK's level of perfection so that I too might make smug remarks about strangers on blogs. I supposed just did, but it wasn't nearly as clever as SEK's.
Mike ("S@s.com") apparently has also had to devise a routine way of summarily dismissing repeated massive assaults on his self-worth. Keep fighting, Mike!
1 Vanity
2 Snobbishness
3 Incivility
4 Recklessness
5 Laziness
6 Ill-tempered
It has often been observed that "constructive criticism" usually comes in the form of a list -- for the recipient's convenience, of course.
189: I'm not Not NOT claiming perfection here, merely pointing out that if you consistently bed lovers who later proffer lists of your inadequacies, there's something wrong with you...or your lovers, all of them, each of whom has independently come to the decision to offer you a list your inadequacies.
I'm sorry, but I'm not the insane one here, right? I mean, if we're going to be picky about it, I'm the guy who landed the brilliant hot woman so far out of his league he can barely even Hubble her...by which I mean, I must be doing something right.*
*Or am inordinantly lucky, one of the two.
Wow, 189 shoves itself into my craw with such unrelenting force I think nothing short of a beat-down montage will suffice...
...so, come on all you damn lurkers, prove to Mr. S@S-to-the-world that I'm no smug fuck by sending a message in a bottle right upside his head.
"Hey now, I *like* my fennel flavored toothpaste."
Fennel=licorice, but more expensive.
Also, AWB, you're scaring me...please allow some of us to maintain our illusions about the opposite sex.
Fennel is cheaper than finocchio, though, for which you really have to pay a premium.
Fennel is free, guys. It grows along the edges of fields.
Fennel is one of those vegetables a lot of people hate, ime.
Ajay is correct, but fennel flavored *toothpaste* only grows in the expensive organics aisle of the supermarket.
Fennel is delicious. I don't think I'm going to put much trust in my ability to identify it along the edges of fields, though.
Next time I see fields, that is.
