From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V12 #212 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Thursday, June 12 2003 Volume 12 : Number 212 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Advanced text editing in OS X [Capuchin ] Re: reap 2 [Jeff Dwarf ] Re: The return of the howling monkey (or was that hooded?) [Capuchin ] Re: fegmaniax-digest V12 #209 [grutness@surf4nix.com (James Dignan)] Way over yonder in the paw paw patch ["Rex.Broome" ] Re: Safari, so good [Capuchin ] Re: The return of the howling monkey (or was that hooded?) [Capuchin Subject: Re: Advanced text editing in OS X On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, Stewart C. Russell wrote: > (tar cvf - . ) | ( cd destination ; tar xf - ) For some things, you just need tar to tar. GNU fileutils include a really good cp, by the way. cp -a is nice. > Oh, and OS X comes with emacs. End of story. Would that be GNU Emacs or XEmacs? J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 16:16:23 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Re: reap 2 Glen Uber wrote: > Michael earnestly scribbled: > > >Gregory Peck, 87. > > > >Any wagers on who's going third today? > > Bob Hope? Luther Vandross? John Paul 2? Tom Delay? Bill O'Reilly? Jay Mariotti? Skip Bayless? just to throw some more optimistic things out there.... ===== "Being accused of hating America by people like Ann Coulter or Laura Ingraham is like being accused of hating children by Michael Jackson or (Cardinal) Bernard Law." -- anonymous . __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 16:47:17 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: The return of the howling monkey (or was that hooded?) On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, The Great Quail wrote: > Ah, lovely! After another absence, Jeme returns with posts full of > insults, hypocrisy, and general unpleasantness..... Who did I insult? Who isn't hypocritical? And why do you subject yourself to things you find unpleasant? > > Selling software is evil (as is selling anything that you could copy > > and distribute for almost nothing). > > That's right -- because the act of creation should have no benefits for > the creators and producers. Your lack of imagination is stunning. Do you really think that the only way for those who record novel information to benefit is by selling copies? > Why not *give* away art, music, software, books, films...? I think your own answer to this rhetorical question would be, "Because I can't think of any way to support artists, editors, producers, writers, and so on without working within the existing system." You're not trying very hard. > I'm sure all those pesky artists, editors, producers, writers and so on > can hold other menial rent-paying jobs, after all, just so long as they > *walk* to work. Would you NEVER consider supporting an artist without that artist providing a copy of a work? I happen to know for a fact that you support a large number of musicians and singers by paying for tickets to the opera, symphony, and even shows in pubs! I can't see how that means you're paying for copies of their recorded works. You're paying for the unique experience. A similar system works for software (as it did before the early eighties). Software is written to perform a particular task. The people would like to perform that task can either write or pay others to write the software to be created to meet their exact needs and all of society can benefit from the fruits. > Ah, Jeme. Please -- point to just one thing, just one original thing, that > you yourself have created and that any one of us here would *want* to pay > for a copy. I can't imagine. My team at ELI created (and I contributed to, though I don't know that any one person could be said to be the "creator") and contributed to a number of perl modules related to network management and configuring Cisco devices remotely as well as small but important contributions to Tobias Oetecker's RRD (round robin database) project, but I don't think anyone here on this list would *want* to pay for that stuff. That said, I think many people have benefited from the work. I also don't think anyone should *want* to pay for copies of things that cost nothing to reproduce. > As usual, your argument is so untenable, so deliberately incendiary, so > disinclined to invite a reasonable response. that...? > I have no desire to debate this with you -- there is no debate. I just > want to log on and express -- again -- my frustration at you willingly > playing the part of the troll. You reject me as a troll because you absolutely fail to understand my position. Perhaps you do this willfully because my position does not pay slavish homage and lay down at the feet of your beloved idols. > > Well, I guess if you're whole raison d'arte is creating little > > animated ditties for mall consumption, fostering a culture of secrets, > > mistrust, and greed is pretty much a prerequisite. > > Great, now you stoop to insulting Steve's job, too, which is also one of > the the man's passions -- a rare and happy coincidence in this world of > Mammon. It was a slightly low blow, I confess. I didn't have to call his works "little animated ditties for mall consumption". But the fact remains that his industry profits from this anti-social and destructive activity. > Jeme, why can't you just be *nice*? I'm really a very nice person. I don't remember you throwing me out of your house. We had some pretty good times, even. The comment about Steve's work was an expression of my true feelings in a moment of passion. I am truly sorry if he was hurt. You have to understand this, though, friend Quail: When something exists in the world and it is poisoning you and the future, it does no good to sit idly by and let it and the myths and delusions that allow it to exist go unmolested about their business. There are really bad things in the world and they must be called out in no uncertain terms. That's what I feel like I'm doing here and folks continue to throw up the false assumptions, fallacies, and misunderstandings that keep the lurking horror hidden and shielded in our midst. I don't think anyone here would frown upon a world in which artists and artisans were able to thrive while working in the fields of their passion and people were free to use, share, and adapt the produce of that labor into new art and works of authorship. That world is totally possible and attainable today. There is just an entrenched power structure surrounding a model that suppresses and prevents that kind of progress for its own greedy purposes. It and its army of myths and fallacies is the only thing standing in the way of that slightly better world I described. > Are you really so lonely that you really need to focus such attention > onto yourself? I'm not lonely at all. I have my fill of people that care very much for me and I for them. I do miss Mark Gloster, though... haven't seen him in a while. Perhaps he'll come and visit as he said he would. > Or was Nora right -- are you really just an asshole? I've met you in > person, and you seemed like a stand-up guy; but online, you are a rude, > arrogant, self-righteous jerk. Why is that? I've written this before and I don't really know how to express it any better: I don't read the rudeness, arrogance, and self-righteousness that you describe in my own words. I phrase things somewhat strongly when I believe them strongly and I definitely have my own ideas about things, but I don't think that's different than anyone else who is capable of strong beliefs. I think it just comes down to the idea that I don't read tone the same way that others do and the while the words I use in email are no different than the ones I use in person are no different, there is a softening effect that comes from my voice and my reaction to the expressions of the listeners (as well as the changes in direction brought by their comments, stories, questions, and replies -- as conversations do go) that just isn't present in the written word. There is also an attempt at precision (not always successful, of course) in my written words since I can take an extra moment to choose exactly how I'd like to phrase something or go back and fix an earlier word so that I'm not locked into a construction that doesn't express exactly what I mean. I think that attempt at precision implies a fastidiousness and self-righteousness that isn't in my character. The answer, in short, is that I don't know for sure why some people see me as rude, arrogant, and self-righteous in email even though I'm a stand-up guy. > Why did you have to throw your monkey shit all over Steve, who has been > nothing but nice, considerate, and enthusiastic? Again, that was frustration and undue candor in the heat of passion. It IS extraordinarily frustrating to express something and have people again and again misconstrue it and continue to make the same false assumption about your ideas and work. Hell, you started this email with that old tired dog about the poor artists who couldn't possibly make any money without selling copies of their infinitely reproducible works while they go ahead and pretty much give away the irreproducible ones that actually have value (and, indeed, see them as largely promotional with regard to the valueless ones). J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 19:57:36 -0400 From: "Maximilian Lang" Subject: Re: Speaking of copyrights... >From: Eb >Reply-To: Eb >To: fgz >Subject: Speaking of copyrights... >Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 12:53:27 -0700 > >http://www.mplcommunications.com/list_by_title.asp?letter=1 > I should add that Macca has signed my favorite baseball player, Bernie Williams to a recording contract. Max _________________________________________________________________ Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2003 12:17:08 +1200 From: grutness@surf4nix.com (James Dignan) Subject: Re: fegmaniax-digest V12 #209 Welcome back to everyone's favourite organic molecule! >Of course I want to know what flag James is flying and where the hell none at the moment - winter weather has set in, so I couldn't be bothered today. If I were when you wrote this, it would have been either Russia's or the Philippines' flag (June 12th is the national day for both countries). And a welcome back to Ken and all the other recusant Fegs who have returned to the fold recently. Shame the current list discussions aren't more fegly at opresent (then again, Jeffrey/Cap et al vs Quail/Eb et al, Mac vs PC, the copyright debate... yeah, I suppose things are back to normal...) >Gregory Peck, 87. > >Any wagers on who's going third today? I note y'all missed Donald Regan James (who's more depressed about Greg's woodpeckers - and house - than about Regan) PS - on the SimpleText debate, I prefer SaintEdit, FWIW, but I hardly do screeds of text editing anyway. James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.- =-.-=-.-=-.- You talk to me as if from a distance .-=-.-=-.-=-. -=-. And I reply with impressions chosen from another time .-=- .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- (Brian Eno - "By this River") -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 17:42:33 -0700 From: "Rex.Broome" Subject: Way over yonder in the paw paw patch Jeme: >>The consumer electronics industry is essentially waging war on the >>tinkerer, the hacker, and the hobbyist; the very people to whom the >>industry used to cater, the very people that made the industry possible, >>the very people that progress human capability and shape the way we >>interact with our world. That's true. But what you're referring to-- some kind of CD programability and other tech/script oriented stuff-- I, as a hobbyist, couldn't give two shits about. But if you wanna talk about cameras, I can give you an earful. Nobody else is gonna care. Hobbyists are hobbyists because they care too much about stuff that the average person doesn't care about at all. Big business isn't really waging war on them, they're just ignoring them. And I just don't buy that bit about hackers "shaping the way we interact with the world". Have you seen these people? Had conversations with them? "Interacting with the world" is not a strong suit among that subculture. Moving on... ______ Tom: >>Not all DVD's can be viewed in widescreen. Some come with both versions on >>the same disc, others sell two different versions. Unfortunately, a lot of >>your less popular titles are only available in pan & scan. I'd modify that... "less popular" in this case doesn't necessarily mean "cultish" or "obscure" as you might think; those kinds of films in fact often get pretty lavish treatment, so widescreen versions are common. No, in this case, "less popular" actually means "nobody, not even the marketing department, really cares about them as anything more than a way to waste two hours". DVD is turning out to be, if not the Great Equalizer, at least a pretty fair one. ______ Now to Get Back to the Country... Miles: >>It's way presentist, of course, but that doesn't surprise me, since a more >>critically-inclined Top 100 Country Songs list would be hard-pressed to >>include anything at all from the last ten years, and CMT isn't likely to alienate >>their Faith/Tim/Garth/Lonestar-lovin' audience. To me it almost felt like the survey must've been taken by equal numbers of radio programmers and critics/purists, so it reads like two totally different decks of cards shuffled together. But it's true, it could've been worse and may even have some value. Still... - -three Cash tunes is not excessive, but how do you come up with "A Boy Named Sue" as one of them? Kinda like having "My Ding-a-Ling" as one of the top three Chuck Berry songs. - -I find Mary Chapin Carpenter's version of "Passionate Kisses" an odd choice. Besides the obvious fact that Lucinda Williams' original smokes it like a Virginia Slim, I though MCC had bigger hits, and that most of them were self-written. I detect some critical types bucking for a Lucinda mention here. - -no way a song called "Boot Scootin' Boogie" is in the top 50 of anything. - -Hank Williams inexplicably becomes Hank Williams Sr. about halfway down the list. - -not enough Haggard. If I had to pick another one, I'd go with "Mama Tried", I do believe. And not enough Outlaw stuff in general, but that's just me. - -Hank Snow's "Movin' On" is an egregious ommission, especially since the guy just should be on there and it's obvious which tune you should pick. - -We got one Dwight Yoakam tune, and it's too much to ask to get Steve Earle or even Gram Parsons on there, much less anyone who can't be called country-without-the-alt, but, come on, Lyle Lovett shoulda been thrown a bone. - -There's just hells of standards that aren't on here probably for the reason that too many people have done them, which, if you think about it, is odd in a list of "songs" (as opposed to "performances"). "Orange Blossom Special", "Rocky Top", "Jambalaya", the aforementioned "(Ghost) Riders", "Laredo", everything by Acuff-Rose, anything from Guthrie or Ledbelly or... well, you get the picture... But yeah, coulda been worse. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 21:14:36 -0500 From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: A distraction: look over yonder Quoting "Rex.Broome" : > Brought to my attention by Glen Uber: > > http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Music/06/05/countrys.best.list.ap/ I can't claim to know country - but no "Pardon Me, I've Got Someone to Kill"? ..Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html :: we make everything you need, and you need everything we make ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 22:22:14 -0400 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: Safari, so good Capuchin wrote: > > Woah! Rental is BY FAR more corrupt and contributes FAR MORE to greed > than sale. Rental is usury. I was with you until you said this. Rental can be more efficient on many fronts, though they require a little more thought to abstract the object from the service it provides. Take a car. They're quite expensive to own: fuel, insurance, repairs, depreciation. They provide personal transportation, and if you abstratct that as a service, you can have a rental company providing use, insurance, maintenance and end-of-life recycling, all at bulk rates below anything the individual could negotiate. Here in Toronto, there's a rental scheme for occasional car owners, that for a given subscription plus a certain cost per distance, you get a car when you need one. AutoShare seems to be quite successful. Other examples of rental/services being more efficient: * some of the big industrial detergent/solvent companies now rent out degreasing/cleaning facilities, rather than just selling the chemicals. That way, they can reuse chemicals up to the end of their useful life, and can dispose/recycle them one done. The client's happy, not having to handle all the EPA horrors, and the service company's happy. * car painting is often done as a contracted service. The paint belongs to the contractor until it's paid for by the client per car painted. That way, wastage is cut, 'cos it's in the paint company's interests to be a frugal as possible (within acceptable limits) in using paint. I got most of these from Bob Willard's "The Sustainability Advantage" (ISBN: 0-86571-451-7). They're not just greenwash, but ways that service/rental can provide cheaper, more efficient, and greener operation than buying. Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 19:46:12 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: Safari, so good On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey wrote: > I'm not Jeme, and I look nothing like Jabba the Hutt, but I think the > principle here is this: yes, people can be paid for their knowledge and > skills - i.e., in developing new information (entertainment is a form of > information, or can be regarded as such, and certainly is when it's a > collection of bits) - but since that information, once created, is > infinitely reproducible w/o depriving anyone of their possession of that > information (unlike a physical object: if I steal your car, you don't > have your car; if I duplicate your file, you still have the file), > copyright imposes an artificial scarcity upon that information Exactly. Thank you for expressing this in a way I didn't. > by making it available legally only to those who can afford it (i.e., > Photoshop costs how many hundred dollars?). A side-effect, but a small valid point. > I can see the merit in this argument...but I can see some flaws too. One > of the more obvious is how to get there from here: right now, > development is undervalued in most cases (risk: just because someone > might be able to develop something doesn't mean they will do so) because > it's predicated on recouping its costs through future profits. The > question is, if I'm in a position to pay someone to develop information > (write code, etc.), under Jeme's system, how am I to get that money > back? Or more broadly, how am I to benefit from having spent that money? I think that's pretty well addressed, actually. Software isn't an industry in and of itself. Software does stuff that helps other industries. Therefore, the people who want to do stuff and believe software can help them do stuff can pay for its development. I used to work for a large fiber-optic network carrier. I was hired as an Internet Services Analyst (whatever that means) and worked for a while on the network management systems. My team (mainly system administrators working on the internet backbone portion of the network with almost no budget) was always building solid solutions to novel problems. We were really good at that. We'd built so many custom solutions that it became necessary to create a Software Engineering department to maintain our stuff. I was picked for this team along with one other "ISA" and a couple of network engineers who had done the same sort of thing in their departments. Eventually, I was put in charge of fault management for the entire network and our team was getting a whole lot of notice company-wide. We were the go-to guys. We got stuff done that nobody else could touch. The IT department really started to hate us because we implemented solutions that in days (sometimes hours) for which they'd only just started to talk to vendors to provide solutions. The secret to our success was our use of the internet to communicate. We were sharing information with people at other fiber carriers and data network backbone providers. We were all trying to do the same thing and our problems could be solved relatively easily by adapting the solutions others had used. We would then share that adaptation with our peers outside the company and suggestions would come back about how to further improve our processes. The details were different enough, from one network to the next, that this did nothing at all to hinder the competition of the sets of services provided by either company. Essentially, the value of the product was streamlined to more truly reflect the quality of the engineering and maintenance of the network. At one point, one of our bosses thought we had a great piece of software that was, somewhat uniquely, entirely written "in-house". He suggested we give it a name and market it. We laughed and laughed. He walked out and got some bigger bigwig and he came down and told him about the software and suggested that we give it a name and market it. And we laughed and laughed again and the biggerwig just frowned. Our boss said, "I don't get it, don't you want to make any money?" And the biggerwig said, "We're not a software company. Why would we want to be one? We have a software engineering group because we use software, not because we sell it." Man, this guy "got it". He was fired a little while later and my team was subsumed by the IT department and pretty much everbody was laid off. The end. > In college, I lived in a housing cooperative. One of its chief flaws, > esp. since its living costs were low compared to the surroundings, was > that, inevitably, it attracted freeloaders: people who wouldn't do the > work expected of them (the idea is that everyone works, everyone > benefits, everyone owns the coop). This bred resentment, frustration, > etc., and wasted time. The analogy is this: what's to prevent most > people from freeloading off the work of others while contributing > nothing themselves? You're not putting your own two and two together, Jeff! Since information can be copied without any loss to the original possessor, there is no harm in freeloading! With housework, there is an incremental cost to each person who uses the house. For more people, you must pay more for food and work harder at cooking and cleaning. Freeloaders bring the system down. With information, there is NO incremental cost for each additional person who receives the information (this is exactly what Jefferson was saying). Whether a person takes and does not contribute or not, the system doesn't notice because the taking results in no loss. One of my bosses brought up this very point in our struggle to retain our way of doing work. He said something like, "What's stopping one of our competitors from firing all their software engineers and just using the work you guys do?" The answer was, of course, "Nothing." But the solutions this freeloader would get for free would only be applicable to other people's networks. Sure, there were generic components, but the real value was in the customization that could only be done by people with an intimate knowledge of the software, the network on which it was to be deployed, and the needs of the people who use the software. > I think I'm less utopian than Jeme appears to be. I'll acknowledge that, > as an engine of economic growth, capitalism is pretty much unparalleled. There are certain contexts and definitions of those words that would let me agree with you. But I also think that the system is intentionally self-defeating. I mean to say that the purpose of market economics is to destroy economics (the science of scarcity). The idea is to use market forces to increase productivity and decrease cost to a point where abundance is reached and the market falls away. This is how the system is supposed to help people and ostensibly why we use it. However, to some, the system is more important than the people and structures have been put into place to prevent the abundance from ever being reached and to maintain markets that should fall away. (People are paid not to grow food. There are laws against sharing information. Etc.) > However, it also lacks effective steering mechanisms ("invisible hand" > theorists are kidding themselves) and it utterly lacks brakes. As a > result, in the process of generating this economic growth, anyone not > fortunate enough to be aboard this, uh, great iron sledge (!) gets > crushed in its path. So, I don't have a problem with people making > money...but not when they're doing so off the backs of people who are > literally starving to death. It's not just that, of course. The whole system is built on the idea that the only economic right is the right to personal property. This is just an institutional line between the haves and the have-nots. You're born and, if you're like most people, you have nothing. You then must find somebody who has too much and make them believe that if they allow you to survive, you can give them more than they already have. Find some rich person to please so that the rich person might give you enough scraps to live. About the best your upbringing can do is make you more attractive to the already wealthy. > So I guess I'm some sort of democratic socialist... And I'm more of a libertarian socialist... or is that social libertarian? > Since it seems Jeme, too, is not at all pleased with the current > economic system...which means that arguments which run, "but that's how > capitalism works" are pointless and irrelevant to his positions: he's > implying that some other economic system would work better. It's totally true that "But that's how our system is designed" is no argument against "We much change the system because". I also think there's a huge difference between, say, Smith's capitalism and the state capitalism of today (not that I'm saying either are "right", just that the former is used to justify the latter which contains none of the former's benefits). But I wasn't necessarily arguing that any economic system would work better, just that we're putting the cart before the horse. The economic system itself has become more important than the results it was intended to produce. Everyone talks about improving the economy, but nobody talks about making lives better or improving society. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 19:50:39 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: The return of the howling monkey (or was that hooded?) On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, Aaron Mandel wrote: > There's plenty to pick on in Jeme's ranting without claiming > (incorrectly) that he thinks creators should have to earn their money > doing something other than their art. Thanks? But seriously, the model you suggested is one good one. There are surely thousands of others not yet put into action or not yet conceived. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2003 20:07:23 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: Remembering the Taste of Something Awful On Thu, 12 Jun 2003, Rex.Broome wrote: > The whole copyright debate is too vitriolic and needlessly abstract for me > to wade into it too deeple, so I'll not. But I would quibble with this > example: Dylan's still got game. But when Bowie was trying to sell shares > in his future songwriting? That there was a sucker's bet. Actually, Bowie sold shares in his future earnings on royalties for his existing catalog. I saw that, at the time, as a sign that Bowie knew the handwriting was on the wall for royalties from music sales (what with the coming technologies making it impossible to make such sales on the old scale) and was cashing out all at once. I don't know, now, what he was thinking. According to an article in last week's Financial Times, the fund is tanking, by the way. > But honestly, if I were to spend my time persecuting a vitriolic jihad > against people who don't share my views, I wouldn't have the wife or the > kids, would I? Life might be a little easier, but how happy would I be? I wouldn't count on your life being any easier. But I consider any attempt at revolution (or even just reform) now an effort to increase the happiness of coming generations. It's going to take a LONG time to fix things and if we don't start now, that's one more generation that's going to have to suffer later. > Bottom line is that Jeme's abstract arguements seem lacking in any > consideration of the human element... like, how, starting from where we > are now, do average people of average means go about smashing the system > while still nurturing relationships, friendships, and basically > retaining our own humanity?* Well, I didn't give any direct suggestions because I thought they were obvious given the whole philosophy and the principles behind it, but since some people didn't get those either, I should be more clear. One thing you can do (and I'm sure many of you do) is patronize more performers and help your local musicians to record and distribute their music. There are also non-profit organizations that give grants to people who write literature and poetry to which you can contribute funds. Unfortunately, many of the artists seeking those grants also retain copyright on those works without granting royalty-free public license to redistribute (even unmodified) and that's fairly shameful and selfish in my book. On the software front you can, of course (as the start of this thread suggested), use software that is distributed under the GPL which guarantees your right to redistribute the information, modify it for your purposes, and redistribute the modified information to others so long as you assure them the same respect and freedom you were allowed. > Given that his primary mode of address seems designed to piss people > off, maybe that doesn't matter to him. More power to big ol' > self-contained you, then, but most of us need more. Otherwise why be on > a mailing list where the point, although we rarely get to it, is to > share thoughts and feelings about an artist and his art? As I tried to write to Quail, I don't mean to piss anybody off. I come off that way sometimes and it's a shame. In fact, I come off that way sometimes in person when I get really passionate about something and I'm having a hard time expressing it (or the listener is having a hard time understanding, but those are essentially the same thing). More than once I've had a conversation with somebody that turned into me trying to explain one novel idea of mine and getting fought on the point and fought on the point until finally things are expressed in a way that turns the lightbulb on in the other person's head and they say (this is a quote from one such occassion), "Oh... yes. Jesus! Yeah! God! Oh, man... that's so good. ...but why do you have to be you?" > *This by way of addressing Jeff's question about why people get outright > *offended* when basic economic/political precepts are questioned... > speaking only for myself, I'm not offended to see bricks thrown through > the windows of capitalism, it's just the mode of address and the > implication that I have some duty to do X, Y, or Z about it that > rankles, and yes, offends. See, I think the whole problem with the current system is that nobody believes they have any duty at all to the society that gave them everything they have from the language and ability to read it to their loved ones and the food on their table. Such obligations DO exist and you really ought to live up to them. However, I'm not going to support any kind of punishment for those who don't nor am I even going to tell you that your own way of paying that obligation isn't good enough or right. I just want you to acknowledge the debt and consider paying it in your own way. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V12 #212 ********************************