From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V16 #160 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Wednesday, April 18 2007 Volume 16 : Number 160 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Gays, guns, and guts made the Feglist free... [Capuchin ] piping in [Jill Brand ] Re: Gays, guns, and guts made the Feglist free... [2fs ] Re: Machismo Festapalooza [Rex ] Re: Gays, guns, and guts made the Feglist free... [Rex ] Re: reap at virginia tech ["Stewart C. Russell" ] Re: by any other name... [2fs ] Joe Boyd's Book ["John Irvine" ] Re: Gays, guns, and guts made the Feglist free... [2fs ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 15:44:03 -0700 (PDT) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: Gays, guns, and guts made the Feglist free... On Wed, 18 Apr 2007, The Great Quail wrote: > The last time I checked, it was perfectly legal to discharge a licensed > handgun at a target in certain areas. Which makes it entirely as a > "legitimate" concept as firing a shotgun at a fleeing pheasant. (Or > quail.) I believe the initial assertion was for a moral or ethical legitimacy, not a legislative legitimacy. "It's legal" is not a better argument for target shooting than "It's illegal" is an argument against casual drug use. > What is *not* a legitimate use for these guns is killing innocent > people. No one is innocent. J. - -- _______________________________________________ Capuchin capuchin@bitmine.net Jeme A Brelin _______________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:01:48 -0700 (PDT) From: Benjamin Lukoff Subject: Re: Gays, guns, and guts made the Feglist free... On Wed, 18 Apr 2007, 2fs wrote: > to vary depending on what you're shooting at it with...but let's put it this > way: are you willing to let your desire to target-shoot with a handgun be > more important than the number of lives that would be saved (likely, based > on stats comparing gun deaths here with elsewhere) by having you shoot at > targets instead using less easily concealed weapons that are used for > hunting, etc.? In my personal case, no. But this isn't necessarily the best argument. Our justice system is structured to, supposedly, let ten guilty men free rather than imprison one man unjustly. Now, keeping all eleven of them locked up would undoubtedly save lives--but we've decided as a society that it's worth the extra danger so that our prisons won't be filled with innocents. ("Supposedly," remember.) We can't make ALL decisions based on numbers of lives saved. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 10:07:03 -0400 (EDT) From: djini@voicenet.com Subject: Re: by any other name... Skipping back up the thread a bit (just can't keep up with the pace of these digests!) > On Tue, 17 Apr 2007, Sebastian Hagedorn wrote: > >> --On 16. April 2007 18:01:19 -0400 djini@voicenet.com wrote: >> >> > You could seize the opportunity to suggest a Vonnegut book - short, >> > snappy, not quite as misogynistic as Heinlein [ducking], >> >> No ducking necessary, is there? I don't know - I've had this particular argument with so many male sf fans that I reflexively assume I'm going to get flak. And Benjamin weighed in with: > Probably not...though it's a little simplistic to call Heinlein a > misogynist and just leave it at that. Agreed, but Sebastian did say that he's the only guy in the book club, and if you want to introduce people to a new genre and actually like it, probably best not to start off with a writer who notoriously pisses off women. For the record, I've read and enjoyed a lot of Heinlein - he's just not an author I would have ever wanted to meet at a party. Jeanne ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:14:30 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Re: Gays, guns, and guts made the Feglist free... Capuchin wrote: > On Wed, 18 Apr 2007, The Great Quail wrote: > > The last time I checked, it was perfectly legal to discharge a > > licensed handgun at a target in certain areas. Which makes it > > entirely as a "legitimate" concept as firing a shotgun at a > > fleeing pheasant. (Or quail.) > > I believe the initial assertion was for a moral or ethical > legitimacy, not a legislative legitimacy. Just because you (or I, for that matter), find someone else's hobby boring doesn't make it morally or ethically illegitimate. Target shooting is just really noisy darts will a risk for far more serious injuries. > "It's legal" is not a better argument for target shooting than > "It's illegal" is an argument against casual drug use. > > > What is *not* a legitimate use for these guns is killing innocent > > people. > > No one is innocent. And no one deserved to get killed by Seung Cho either. "Children have always enjoyed my movies. They are just not allowed to watch many of them." -- John Waters . Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:20:43 -0700 (PDT) From: Benjamin Lukoff Subject: Re: by any other name... On Wed, 18 Apr 2007 djini@voicenet.com wrote: > > Probably not...though it's a little simplistic to call Heinlein a > > misogynist and just leave it at that. > > Agreed, but Sebastian did say that he's the only guy in the book club, > and if you want to introduce people to a new genre and actually like it, > probably best not to start off with a writer who notoriously pisses off > women. For the record, I've read and enjoyed a lot of Heinlein - he's > just not an author I would have ever wanted to meet at a party. So that's the thing--why DOES he have such a reputation for pissing off women? Is it just that most people, of whatever sex, aren't reading their book club titles very deeply? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 20:43:58 -0400 (EDT) From: Jill Brand Subject: piping in Jeme wrote two things. First... "Some of you like to go on about the responsibility of citizens to gun down one another when it looks like there's a threat. What about the responsibility of citizens to hug one another when it looks like there's a miserable piece of shit among us?" I like the idea. I've tried the idea. But it doesn't always work, and it sounds to me like it wouldn't have worked in this situation. I've been teaching foreign students at Boston University for 26 years (Cho grew up here, so I don't consider him a foreign student - I'm just giving you some background about me), and occasionally I have had students who seemed extremely depressed and troubled. In those events, I have reached out to those students, spent extensive extra time with them, and tried to get them help. In a few cases, the help has been welcomed, and I have felt that there has been a positive outcome. However, I have also been in situations - I can think of two specifically - in which my attempt to get the student to open up has been shunned, and the student has taken umbrage at the fact that I have dared to try to get involved in his personal life. Mind you, all my students call me by my first name, and I wear jeans to class every day and often bring homemade baked goods, so I'm not exactly a threatening figure trying to pull rank. It's just that these students have not wanted to let me, or anyone else for that matter, into their sphere. And yes, once I thought that a student was going to hurt me. Speaking of which, Cho's English professor said that she tried to help him and reach out to him, and that she feared he might hurt her. There are sociopaths in this world, and I believe that Seung-Hui Cho was one. Oh, I by no means think that anyone should gun anyone down, nor do I think that students with permits-to-carry would have done any good. And Jeme wrote: "You can't wait for some authority figure to intervene. Telling your teacher or counselor when a kid is fucked up is the FIRST step because those people need to be prepared to be used as a LAST resort. After you talk to your teacher, you need to take it upon yourself to talk to the guy you think is crazy. Take him to lunch. If you can't stand his company, well, get a dozen other folks to take him to lunch, too... that way you only have to do it fortnightly." The other thing is that most teachers'/professors' hands are tied. In my case, our students are very often people who have not succeeded in their own countries in getting into the university system, so they come to us somewhat mentally bruised and battered. Still, we can't make them go for counseling even if we are sure that they need it. These students often turn away from fellow students with whom they spend 15 hours a week (welcome to intensive English - I spend more time with my students than with my family). After a young person tries a few times, it is normal for him to give up. One of Cho's freshman suitemates said that he took Cho with him everywhere for a while, but that he wouldn't talk to anyone. Do I think it is crazy that something wasn't done much earlier in his life? Yes, I do. I'm still not sure that his fellow students could have stopped this. I spent about a half hour with one of my Korean students today after class. She is the mother of three, and she is in the States so that 2 of her kids can go to school here. She was sobbing, terrified that something would happen in her kids' school and equally terrified that there would be a backlash against Koreans. I tried to convince her that most people are not thinking that all Koreans are to blame, but I soon learned from her that the discussion amongst the Koreans is that they will soon be targets, and that their families are calling from home to tell them to come back. I believe what I told her was true, that the focus is not on Cho's "Korean-ness." However, had the shooter been named Mohamed Al Saud, I could not have said what I said with any conviction. I love my students. I wish this weren't going on in my last week of the semester because it has put a pall on everything. Jill ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 19:45:07 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: Gays, guns, and guts made the Feglist free... On 4/18/07, The Great Quail wrote: > > >no, it's not. > > The last time I checked, it was perfectly legal to discharge a licensed > handgun at a target in certain areas. Which makes it entirely as a > "legitimate" concept as firing a shotgun at a fleeing pheasant. (Or > quail.) I believe I outlined my reasoning as to why the concept of "legitimacy" is different from the concept of simple legality, specifically in this case. Not sure why you're pretending I didn't, and not addressing what I actually said rather than the trivial issue of legality (about which there's no debate: either there's a law or there isn't). - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 18:30:52 -0700 From: Rex Subject: Re: reap at virginia tech On 4/18/07, FSThomas wrote: > > 2fs wrote: > > > They're certainly *primarily* for guns. > > Knives/shivs are a lot easier to get your hands on than a gun I would > wager. Simply in light of the ease of acquisition the threat they pose > should be higher, no? Oh, come on. The metal detectors are there for guns. As Syd would say, it is obvious. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 18:46:57 -0700 From: Rex Subject: Re: Machismo Festapalooza On 4/18/07, The Great Quail wrote: > > > This extends to the movie adaptation years later. Some claim it is > > brilliant satire, and I have no doubt that that was its intent, but it > > doesn't come through as such, and thus is poor satire. > > To you, Rex, to you. To the rest of us who thought it was brilliant > satire, > it remains...brilliant satire. "The rest of you" is a minority. A strident, vocal, minority, but being by definition Angry White Males, that's to be expected. > But it's one of those films where its adherents insist > > that if you don't like it, you don't get it, dismissing the possibilty > that > > you could very well comprehend it fully and still find it shitty in > other > > areas (see Neal Labute films, Fight Club, Falling Down... hmm, all > arted-up > > machismo fests, aren't they?) > > It seems to me you are making the same flaw. You feel that you are armed > with an objective truth about these films (full comprehension), and it is > *we* who do not really "get" them (by "ignoring" all the "shitty" bits). > Quail, why do you always insist that I'm offering my position as the word of God, when I say over and over again that it's just opinion? Look at what I wrote: "the *possibility* that you could very well comprehend it fully and still *find* it shitty in other areas". Hardly definitive, and it never says that you couldn't comprehend it fully and love it. Yeesh.. And by the way, "Fight Club" is one of my favorite films. No shit. Really. Never woulda guessed. Did you by any chance enjoy "300"? I don't think "Fight Club" is a terrible film, but I don't see God in it the way people like you do. And I'm also not a capital-L Libertarian. Coincidence? And then I would declare that all fans of "Rent" and "Crash" would have to > battle to the death in a giant steel cage match suspended above an active > volcano. And then, right as the winners raise their bloody fists for my > tribute, a minion pulls the lever and triggers the trap-door floor. I see that waching these films has helped you vicariously shed all your anger at being a persecuted white male, so good on you. Nice time to be blithely joking about violence... did you have something in there with guns, and then think better of it and edit it out? What I don't get is what "Rent" and "Crash" have to do with each other. Are they both liberal or something gay like that? - -Rex in Hollywood, Baby ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 18:50:38 -0700 From: Rex Subject: Re: Gays, guns, and guts made the Feglist free... On 4/18/07, The Great Quail wrote: > > > >> Eeewww, please - not the L-word! I feel about libertarians the way a > lot of > gay people feel about bisexuals - they're just Republicans who're stuck in > the > closet... > > Wait... I know a lot of gay people, and I have never heard any of them > call > a bisexual a homosexual at heart. Really? > As a person who has Libertarian tendencies and owns several guns, Really? Oh, never mind. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 19:00:03 -0700 From: "Stacked Crooked" Subject: Re: Guns <> of course, the more informed, the more likely one would be to oppose the united states' foreign adventures (unless, i suppose, offering some manner of might-makes-right argument). that said, the libertarian party's website houses precious little insight into its thinking on foreign policy matters. oh, sorry: i didn't mean to imply that it's *easy to get away with*. it isn't. it's not impossible, however. and even if it were, being made to pay them against one's will would be far preferable to voluntarily paying them. (in my opinion.) it's a close call between him and siskel, but i think that roeper is my favourite of the three. ebert, natch, is a very-far-distant third. so, let's say that dubya decides to declare martial law. you think the fucking freemen (or whomever) are going to blast their way into the white house and save the day? i mean, probably (hopefully maybe) the generals charged with implementing the policy would tell bush to go fuck himself. but if they *didn't do*, just how in the fuck are you and your civil-war-re-enactor friends planning to defend yourself against the state's tanks and helicopters? you could take a page out of the guerilla playbook -- but for that you'll need bombs, not guns. and, call me wacky, but somehow i don't think you're going to be able to procure them at the local druggist's, second amendment notwithstanding. huhn. i listened to that they might be giants song just yesterday (or maybe the day before). <> i notice that mike gravel is standing for president. before you ask: yes, i did at one point in the '90s throw down $600 for a copy of the gravel edition of the *Pentagon Papers*. i'm digging this new frames record, by the way. KEN "If you listen to only one song this year, there's something *terribly* wrong with you" THE KENSTER ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 22:22:14 -0400 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: reap at virginia tech FSThomas wrote: > > Look at the English Bill of Rights, for example. > > Oh, that's right. You can't. Stewart (coughs politely, then leaves ...) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 21:26:24 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: by any other name... On 4/18/07, Benjamin Lukoff wrote: > > On Wed, 18 Apr 2007 djini@voicenet.com wrote: > > > > Probably not...though it's a little simplistic to call Heinlein a > > > misogynist and just leave it at that. > > > > Agreed, but Sebastian did say that he's the only guy in the book club, > > and if you want to introduce people to a new genre and actually like it, > > probably best not to start off with a writer who notoriously pisses off > > women. For the record, I've read and enjoyed a lot of Heinlein - he's > > just not an author I would have ever wanted to meet at a party. > > So that's the thing--why DOES he have such a reputation for pissing off > women? Is it just that most people, of whatever sex, aren't reading their > book club titles very deeply? Well, my wife's reason is that in seemingly all of his books, there's some wise old guy who, somehow, ends up in bed with a young, gloriously sexy young woman, whose sexuality seems suspiciously calibrated to fulfill male sexual fantasies rather than more realistically representing actual young women's sexualities. Cutting Heinlein some slack, he was ahead of his time in some regards: certainly in the 1950s, he would have had relatively little experience with actual women who were able to express their sexuality beyond the rather restrictive roles allotted them at the time. Then again, our current notions of '50s and '40s sexuality seem suspiciously more conservative than at least some indicators - even movies, say - might suggest. Anyway, though I don't tend to enjoy Heinlein's books (the militarism bugs me more), apparently he was quite the decent human: Philip K. Dick (about as diametrically opposed to Heinlein on nearly every social issue as could be imagined) found that Heinlein was always willing to help him when he was in trouble and down and out. So good for him, as a human(e) being - doesn't mean some of his politics don't get in the way of my enjoying his work. To be fair, it's been years since I've read him...and I was more likely to be bugged by such things in literature when I was younger. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 22:43:42 -0400 From: "John Irvine" Subject: Joe Boyd's Book I'm thoroughly enjoying Joe Boyd's memoir "White Bicycles." There's a whole ton of music I had only been vagely familiar with - Fairport, Floyd and Nick Drake are the tiny tip of the iceberg. And YouTube is proving to an amazing adjunct to the experience; nine times out of ten, when he discusses an obscure act there's a clip or two to be found. Almost like having a multi-media edition. Does anyone have a link to any clips of the Boyd reading where Robyn plays the songs he mentions? - -John "I can't hear the forest now, for all the falling trees." ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 21:51:36 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: Gays, guns, and guts made the Feglist free... On 4/18/07, Capuchin wrote: > > > > Jeffrey mentioned that rifles and shotguns have "legitimate uses", but > then went on to say that target shooting was not legitmate because you can > target shoot with all kinds of different things. Newsflash: You can hunt > with all kinds of different things, too. There's all kind of context missing from your summary of my remarks. One minor distortion, too: I didn't say "target shooting was not legitimate." Anyway, the context was that someone had mentioned that while rifles and shotguns have "legitimate uses" other than killing people (referring to hunting, presumably), handguns did not. Quail said something about the legality of handguns; I replied that the legality wasn't hte issue, the lack of any other reason to have or use a handgun was. I wasn't making an argument that hunting is or should be "legitimate" (in another context, I might argue that people's need to go out and kill animals for fun is a bit bizarre, if not much worse than "bizarre"), only that insofar as handguns aren't really good for anything else, it perhaps makes more sense to ban *them* rather than banning guns in toto. (Guns aimed *at* Toto, on the other hand...) That one can hunt without guns is (a) true but (b) not all that relevant, right now. > > We don't have a gun control problem, we have a gun problem. > > The same goes for violent video games, movies, television shows, > flip-books, song lyrics, poetry slams, etc. No, we should not ban such > speech. Goodness, no. But we shouldn't tolerate obsessive indulgence in > it, either. It's one thing to go see Grindhouse with your girl in a > Friday night and quite another to repeatedly run videos of simulated > murder day after day. I think this paragraph works better with its ideas presented in reverse. That is: movies or other cultural products with violence in them are not themselves the problem, and we certainly shouldn't conclude that anyone who enjoys any cultural product that has any violence in it is automatically some kind of sick psycho. But it becomes questionable, both on an individual basis, and definitely on a cultural one, when violence seems to be the sole reason for such products to be consumed or even to exist - and that there are so many of them (I'm guessing that movies, video games, hip-hop CDs, and TV shows that exist primarily to feature violence might be the single largest bloc of such cultural objects: not the majority, but the largest bloc) is a symptom of a sociological sickness...one that plays itself out when the "nut case" (whatever *should* have happened with him) acts out his anger and rage in violence against strangers, in violence whose fatality is dramatically increased by the ready availability of guns. Unfortunately, there are almost no interesting counterpoints to these > images in the public culture. Nobody is out there showing these fantasy > events in realistic context. I wouldn't say "nobody": Chris who's really a dog might point out the episode of BTVS in which Tara is killed (by an errant gunshot intended for Buffy or Xander) and the aftermath - particularly the searing devastation it visits upon Willow (Tara's lover) in the next few episodes (*her* rage, in the universe of the show, is played out as supernatural rage so all-consuming she's willing to destroy the universe). One strength of the series is that, being as character-driven as it is, that sudden, unexpected death of a main character - and the grief of an even more major character - is far more affecting than it would be in an action movie, say - simply because we aren't allowed the opportunity to get to know, care about, and feel for the characters. > absurd these action fantasies are. As a rule, the absurdity and horror is > not acknowledged while the excitement and rewards are glamorized. And (not to ride the Buffy-horse too hard, but hey) the reason BTVS is a superior "fantasy" show is that it does just the opposite: the horror and absurdity are foregrounded, painfully so, and the "excitement and rewards" are non-existent. (As I said, the shot that killed Tara wasn't even aimed at her; the shooter doesn't even know at first that he's hit anyone - and about the only convention eventually honored here is that the shooter gets revenge taken upon him...a revenge which, far from making a hero(ine) of Willow, the avenger, digs her even deeper into a crisis that nearly costs her her soul (a non-religious concept in this series, created and often written by an outspoken atheist, btw). - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2007 22:07:16 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: Guns On 4/18/07, Stacked Crooked wrote: > > > country > was founded out of revolution from an over-bearing government and the > second amendment is there to allow a check and balance should revolt be > required again. Take away that right, get rid of the guns, and there's > nothing to stand between the government and absolute power.> > > so, let's say that dubya decides to declare martial law. you think the > fucking freemen (or whomever) are going to blast their way into the white > house and save the day? i mean, probably (hopefully maybe) the generals > charged with implementing the policy would tell bush to go fuck himself. > but if they *didn't do*, just how in the fuck are you and your > civil-war-re-enactor friends planning to defend yourself against the > state's tanks and helicopters? you could take a page out of the guerilla > playbook -- but for that you'll need bombs, not guns. and, call me wacky, > but somehow i don't think you're going to be able to procure them at the > local druggist's, second amendment notwithstanding. And if such a scenario came to pass (the Bushies deciding that, you know, what with all the chaos and terror in the world (not that they had anything to do with actually *creating* a significant portion thereof), it would certainly not be a good time to have an election, and our "provisional" "emergency" government (temporary, of course - until the present crisis passes) decides that the tattered shreds of the constitution are just plain annoying - and if there's actually any resistance at all, other than calls to e-mail your representative, assuming there's still a Congress to e-mail, assuming the web hasn't been locked down to prevent terrorists from using it to communicate of course - a couple of citizens with guns aren't going to do any good, and will be redefined as enemy combatants or some such, and will be gunned down in the streets if their Berkeley and Madison havens aren't preemptively bombed, and will they care about the average citizen, or the poor citizen, or the citizen starving in the streets? No more than they care about the citizens of New Orleans, still adrift more than a year later, mobile trailers left abandoned in storage (see last month's Harper's). As Elvis Costello said: "You think your country needs you, but you know it never will." Bush, Cheney, et al. are citizens of Plutopia (the people's republic of wealth), and come down to a crunch don't give a damn about everyday cretins. Granted, I don't think that scenario's likely to come to pass - but I do think most *existing* politicians' contempt for the public is about as intense...but that's not a problem with government per se, it's a problem with the fact that (for example) the Vice President made like 8 million dollars last year (Bush made about 1/3 to 1/2 that), and similar numbers are common among most government leaders. How does *that* happen in what's nominally a democracy? Do people really and truly believe that wealth is a sign of intellectual and political prowess? Or is access to the political system itself wholly sclerotized by gross incrustrations of wealth, and any actual representation of what the populace might want or need completely blocked? - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V16 #160 ********************************