I notice this, too.

For example, an earlier IotD featured a political cartoon depicting a young male "shooting up" the latest trends.

Maggie ever-so-condescendingly states that "I bet he's the best in his high school."

Give me a break. Sure, the cartoonist didn't do a WONDERFUL job drawing, and it wasn't a WONDERFUL cartoon. Possibly, this cartoon didn't showcase the artists ideas or drawings to the best of his or her ability. But it is absolutely not necessary to make a crack about age in said situation.

might be difficult to believe, but i do believe that it is possible. i supported myself on a pizza hut salary (not much money... :) ) from when i was 15. granted, i had a little help from my parents...until i was about 16 ... when they decided that if i had a job i could pay for my own clothes, food, etc.etc.etc... so, i dont doubt that he could be doing this.

its unfair to give unequal weight to someones opinion because, as you said, you have 'been around those blocks a few times.' perhaps because you are older, you might have some more experience, seasoned views, etc towards certain topics, but everyone is different, with different opinions, and those opinions are ALL important. equally. thats what makes us work as a community. notice that none of this started until it was brought to the attention of the masses that others opinions were being unfairly tossed aside. if you didnt know how old jag was, if you were to assume that he was thirty-something, worked in an office 9-5, had a wife and kids, and still held those opinions, would they still hold less weight (in your mind) than your own? of course not.

the big problem to me is age discrimination. i have dealt with it for as long as i can remember. you may sit there and think that i am a naive 19-year old, that is your opinion. i am tired of people putting labels on others because they are younger. i was the assistant manager at the afore-mentioned restaurant, and was therefore the "boss" of many people older than me, including dham and jeni. at first no one took me seriously, because of my age (i started managing shortly after i turned 17). it took everyone some time, but eventually they all realized that just because i was younger in age didnt mean that i was just a joke. i had ideas and opinions, and good ones at that. i was completely capable of dealing with "real world" problems. thats all im trying to say. just dont look at people who are physically younger and cut them and their ideas/opinions/views down simply because of age. you may have been 'around those blocks a few times' more than us, but maybe there are some blocks weve visited that you havent. and thats what makes us all different. and all our opinions important. this is what makes us work as a community.

Exactly.

See, this is where, "Respect being earned" gets you. People get indignant, and then engange you in pointless pages-long debates over nothing.

I mean, think about it -- the fact that jaguar needs to check his spelling is indisputable. Example:

I mean...lol.. what more needs to be said? Nothing -- unless one feels obligated to defend one's pride.

2 points Maggie

First, just because business is immoral doesn't mean I’m not involved in it, and doesn’t mean I don't have respect for those who do it well, doesn't mean it’s not immoral. I'm insulted you'd think I’d miss something so basic.

Secondly, as we've said before, Johnson had many review his work before his publish it, and year to write it, I have MSWord spellchecker and the odd half an hour, my words are not designed to stand the linguistic test of time, they are mere to make a point in a debate here and now.

You ever been to a debate, not some bullshit on TV, a real, live debate? Where you have to think, as you talk, it’s not easy, and its how I post, I construct many of the concepts and ideas as I write, I don't have the preprocessing time, sometimes that makes it a little in articulate, and because I think faster than I can type, typos etc come up.


Pardon me, when someone starts looking down their nose at me because of my age, then after taking even high moral ground starts lecuting me, irrispective of whether htey actaully have a pointor not, i tend to get pissed off. I thought there wasen'ta crowd maggie? I thought you were so right, an me, with only 16 odd years to my name was of no importance?

yea, my typing slipped a bit over the last few weeks, it'll pick up again =)
I don't mind criticism of my typing - that’s fine, its valid, Hubris Boy and I had a long discussion about this, we got on well by the end. On the other hand you cling to status symbols like as though it gives you some kind of elder status that I should bow before. Personally I think that’s pretty damn sad. The other thing that gets to me is the blowing smoke bullshit, goddamnit I’ve won allot of debates, against students, adults, uni students, I came close to cornering our Immigration minister for crying out loud, to say every debate I’ve had on here is blowing smoke is just silly.

Firearms ownership? That wasn’t the issue and you know it, whether I own a firearm o not is irrelevant to the fact that a gun-soaked society causes more gun deaths, a point you tried to refute until I got concrete evidence. Why should my age affect my opinion on morality of business? I own and operate one, I think my opinion is pretty damn valid, how you think you can substantiate either of those claims is beyond me.

For refrence, if i took on a second job, yes i could move out and look after myself totally, but i want to concentrate totally on my last year of school (which decides my uni enterance score). I pay for everything apart from accomodation, untilities, food and school fees, every piece of clothing, computer hardware, every time i go out etc, is all paid or by me. Mostly i'm saving for a Powerbook atm.

So...let's sum up your position as you've laid it out in this thread so far: business is immoral, but when it's "done well" you have respect for those who do it, and you do it yourself, and you would do even more of it except for a selfish purpose of your own: extracting as much as possible from your parents so you can get into a good school toting that shiny new Powerbook you want.

Is that a fair summary?

If you were in a position where you had to depend on your own financial efforts to survive, I'd be more inclined to let it pass when you prate about the selfish immorality of being in business. But probably not a lot more...it just seems more egregiously hypocritical in your current situation.

(By the way, I'm having trouble with the sentence you wrote enumerating which necessities you're paying for and which your parents are still providing for you by *their* "immoral" efforts. Which of those commas is supposed to separate those two categories? How were your readers to know?)

I'm sorry you feel insulted, but my impression of what you're *thinking* has to be derrived completely from what you *say*. If you blow by important issues because you're just such a super-fast thinker that the plodding act of creating language can't keep up, you'll have to forgive me when I'm left thinking you haven't actually *had* the thought.

We only know what you think by the evidence of what you say.

Um...which "we" was it who said that? As I said,*I* don't think Jonson had an editor (he certainly didn't have a spell-checker; he even had to write his own dictionary, as I recall). I don't think he took a year to write it the passage I quoted. I think he probably *did* read what he'd written a few times, and reflected on whether his words conveyed his thoughts well. He might even have gone back and changed a phrase or two; which took a bit more effort with quill and parchment than we expend in this text widget here.

Isn't this debate worth enough time for your input to be well-constructed and convincing? Maybe your words don't need to survive "the linguistic test of time" on a four-century scale, but they *do* need to pass muster in the debate here, and survive the trip from your mind to your reader's mind (a short but perilous journey), for the reasons described eloquently in the Jonson quote. I'll boil down the quote to "sloppy speech implies sloppy thinking", if it must be sloganized into a sound-bite.

You still haven't made any direct comment on the quote. Do you agree with the sentiment it expresses? Disagree? Can you support your disagreement with an alternative proposition?
Then maybe you should slow down a little. Thinking faster than you type is of no value if your thinking doesn't show up in your typing.

You don't get credit for having thoughts that aren't expressed, or that are poorly expressed. *Typos* are one thing, but words that bear only a passing resemblence to the words in a dictionary are another. Punctuation and sentence structure that cloud the presentation of your ideas are even worse. But the larger-scale structure that presents an idea and then offers support for it is key. Bluting out a proposition and then asserting that "it's obvious" just won't cut it.

And when you and your Powerbook get into that better Uni, the faculty will insist that your discourse toe that line, too. If they don't, you will have been dissed much severly than anything you've suffered at *my* hands here.

The comment was aimed at the *idea* the cartoon expressed as well as its expression; it was trite and sophomoric. I've actually seen *much * better work from high-school kids. Eliza Gauger's " Mommy Liberty" comes to mind.

Well no fucking shit, Maggie. Why don't you just repeat everything I say, just switch up the words a little and throw in some asterisks.

You said EXACTLY what I said, except you added a few words, changed a few words, and added a link.

WAY TO FUCKING GO.

OK, I take it back. There's undoubtedly someone in the artist's high school who draws better cartoons. Too bad theirs wasn't posted.

Ok, after reading this entire thread, I felt the need to respond.

Jag: Hey, if you feel that business is immoral, then that's how you feel...end of story. Don't let others cheapen your point of view about things.

Maggie: Well, you certainly have much to say to this young man, I see. You spoke several times in this thread about being understood, and how Jag's mispellings and errors made "your head hurt". Why is that? You mean to tell me that you aren't "intelligent" enough to read past the mistakes to grasp the meaning of his message (after all, that's how you came across...at least, to ME), or is it that you REALLY can't be bothered to make the effort? If it is to the be latter, then how in the HELL can you expect for anyone to give a good goddamn about anything YOU have to say? It's fine and dandy that you can use big words and put them into even bigger sentences, but in the grand scheme of things, who gives a damn really? Are YOU being "understood" as you THINK you are? Many people see those who appear to be "learned" as pretentious assholes instead of one who has an actual grasp of the English language.

I'll make this simple: If that is how Jag felt, then that is how he felt REGARDLESS of his current situation, end of story.

Easy answer: stop worrying about what the other readers think. Maybe they "got it". That sounded more like "nitpicking" at its worse.

Mm...you make it a habit of speaking for others? *I* can speak for myself, thanks, as I'm sure every INDIVIDUAL on this board is able to do as well.

*Laughing* That comment just struck me as completely absurd. Just because YOU feel that what he says "won't cut it" doesn't make it so. By the way, did you mean "blurting"?

In closing, age discrimination (or ANY type of discrimination) is wrong and the practice of it should be banned from human existance.

Well, it's been real, but I MUST move on. Keep the First Amendment true folks. Peace.

If two parties make a transaction that is mutally benificial to both, where is the immorality?

Dunno, but apparently LadySyc thinks--oops, I mean *feels* that how Jag feels about it is more important. After all, everybody has feelings, everybody's feelings are just as important as everybody else's, and nobody can dispute them.

I don't doubt for a minute that Jag *feels* business is immoral--after all, he *said* so, and there's absolutely no resaon why he should be called to account for, explain or justify a feeling. That would be mean-spirited and disresepectful.

Don't know what I was thinking of. Or rather, what I was *feeling*. We'll all just emote away here--maybe even write some poetry--and commentary, analysis or discussion will be competely superfluous.

Enough of your silly questions, juju. :-)

juju, read a few pages, back, just before dham's first post, by nature taking advantage of the need of others is exploitation, if I see (to use that old example) heroin on the streets to junkies at inflated prices - its exploitation, no? If I sell sun dried tomatoes to yuppies at inflated prices, it’s also exploitation, see my point? Whether both think they're getting a good deal is irrelevant.


Please Maggie, all I ask is you READ what I say, I said I'M SAVING UP FOR A POWERBOOK WHIT MY OWN MONEY EARNED BY MY OWN WORK....

IN the first sentence yes - you managed to understand what I’m saying, I still have respect for something done well, even if I don't like what it is (take for example businesses like Microsoft). Now if only you could simultaneously hold that concept and the one that we often do things we know are immoral.

Well I can't see my views changing in a year, and in a year that is exactly what ill be doing, I already pay for my own expenses, its only household stuff I don't. Once again - please read what I say instead of knee-jerk reactions after half-skimming my posts.

You still are not getting my point, this is more like a conversation than an essay and is written as one, and I’d say Johnson did have an editor - unless he published all his books himself. It really is a matter of time, just I’d love to spend all day fixing up my language, every tiny mistake, as I would with a full essay form school, but I don't have all day to do that so people like you can pretend to have read it that post uninformed replies based on what they think I wrote. The way i write the two is fundamentally different, and wanyway i'm not goign to start using more complex language to try and make myself feel ebtter than the rest of the peopel ehre unlike some - i'm not trying to alienate people. I mean I could discussion the discussing the profound implications of multitude of padigram shifts in sinoamerican politics in the last decade, which have results in unequivocal tergiversation of american forign policy, but what's the point.



First of all, where the fuck are you pulling this slogan shit from, its starting to get on my nerves, as for one word that varied from the dictionary version (which I did at 10am about half an hour after I got up, Christ talk about nitpicking, you've used that one example about 6 times). As I said, and once again you choose to ignore, have you ever been to a live unplanned debate? I've seen people contradict themselves in one sentence, thinking on your feet is not easy at all. Oddly enough you are the only one that seems to have a problem grasping the concepts I put up, if anyone else does - raise your hands.

When did I do that? Pardon? Huh? Reality please. Oh btw – I’ve never “bluted” anything, try a spellchecker hypocrite.


Once again you've shown you don't understand my key point - this is not an essay, this is a conversation. If you want I can post some of my essays I’ve done in the past, maybe that'll clear things up because nothing else seems to be to get though to you.

"Feeeeelinnnnngs..."

You misspelled the word "completely."

Actually, I already have a poetry page here. But, maybe I'll write a new poem tonight and post it in Sycamoreland.

Thanks for the inspiration! :)

Your definition of exploitation does not seem immoral to me. If both parties actually do get a good deal, where is the immorality? How exactly can we have civilization at all without being able to work together?

Morality is an invention of man -- created so that civilization might be possible. If we can't work together and trade our skills with one another without being immoral, then what's the point?



BTW -- what in gods name is, "unequivocal tergiversation"?

it's sort of an oxymoron.

unequivocal means that something is clear and cannot be mistaken.

tergiversation means to be ambiguous, or, to be equivocal (to purposely speak as such with the intent to confuse or mislead someone).

so basically, it's to unequivocally equivocate. :) which is to clearly be ambiguous, as to mislead someone.

damn.

excuse me, allow me to clarify: it IS an oxymoron.

So, was it unintentional obfuscation on your part when you used the expression unequivocal tergiversation? Or were you just attempting to screw with our feeble minds? :)

are you referring to myself, or jag?

jag used it, but i happened to know what those words meant, so i thought i'd explain.

If it was Jag's then it was clearly unintentional obfuscation. :)

WOW. That's a triple oxymoron.

BTW, almost a thousand hits on this post by FreeYourself. Has anyone referenced the subject of the original post in the past few hundred replies? And when was FY last involved in this thread, anyway? :)

wha? You can be clearly ambigious?!
A good example would be america's position on an invasion of tiwan by China - until Shrub stuffed it up anyway.

juju i'm out of itme, ill answer later

it clearly was not clear that it was unequivocal equivocation.

ah fuck it.

yes, i referenced the original topic the other day while talking to jag, dham, and syc...i can't believe this is the urban decay post. jee-zus.

my point was simply to use more complex language to illustrate my point jeni - and i still thin you can be clearly ambigious on something. If i say my opitnion is ambigious, clearly it is, because i stated it, right?
I"m nto getting into another silly arguement lol....

jag, chill out dude. i know you can, and i agree with you :) i was just trying to explain it and it became a silly sort of thing to see how unclear we could be at acting clearly ambiguous about something, or...something :) hehe.

hey by the way every time i try to read your quote out loud i laugh my ass off. i was trying to talk to paul last night while reading the cellar and i kept coming across it. sigh. it's just TOO funny.

masturbate a large word into conversation, even though i don't know what it means. -giggles to herself- ah my.

:P

Yeah Jag, your's is the best tag. Why not crank it up an notch ... and give us a new creative replacement for "masturbate" every once in awhile. I can think of a few:

constipate
fellatio

etc.

*confused...head hurts* Anyway. :)

you and me, we're in this together now...-humming- :)

Hehe... well, this is, quite simply, just the way we are. :]

Are you joking about my sig or serious?



Juju, you must realise I was trying to stir things up a bit, this is how the logic works.

As we've perviously hammered out - all business is exploitative, because it is taking advantage of the needs of others to make money, or, more money than you need(far more ambigious, so i prefer number 1). I think we can safely say exploitation is immoral, therefore busniess is immoral. Of course there is more to it than that but, it is, form an objective sense, an entirely logical train of thought.

Hrm...did I actually SAY that? "More important"? Feelings ARE and CAN BE important..after all, it IS important to be a human being.

Well, if you do not like to constantly be underminded and marginalized, then those words ring very true. Being "pigeonholed" by individuals and/or society sucks to high heaven.

Explaining WHY one felt the way they did is one thing. To say they should be "called to account for" or "justify" a feeling comes across like, "Well, you need to justify WHY you feel this way to ME in order for your feeling(s) to be valid". Oh please...NO ONE is "all that" to even pretend to have that kind of power over someone.

AH, but I thought you didn't come here to read poetry. :p

"Do what you gotta do to get where you need to be". If that's what gets you through the night...*shrugs*

It's pointless to argue anymore about it Jag. You should not be made to feel like you need to justify or explain yourself until you are blue in the face about it all. No one has that power over you (of course, unless you allow them to have that power over you). Basically, it's starting to sound like someone's jerking your chain: you state your case, someone undermines your position, you react, they try to tear apart your typos, mispellings and God knows what else, you react again...and the vicious cycle continues. As they say, "Don't fall for the okie doke". It's just not worth it in the grand scheme of things.

For what it's worth, *I* understood you perfectly, and I RESPECT what you had to say, and I don't think of you as any less of a HUMAN BEING, typos, mispellings and all. (smiles) You don't have to (at least, SHOULD NOT have to) "change" your language to be understood. After all, SOME people are just so damned intelligent, you'd think they'd be able to read, and understand, any and everything. Mm..."my bad", I guess. Oh well.

Rock on.

lol... well, from that description I can safely disagree. Neither party experiences harm, therefore there can be no immorality.

Maggie obviously ditched this thread, which is alright... it's just a shame she didn't respond to my post a few pages back. I'd really like to hear her take on that.

I *am* done with this thread--but I'll see if I can clarify about this age thing, since you've asked, dham.

Jag has now said outright that his aim here is to "shake things up", by which as far as I can see means to troll around making outrageous statements, and then enjoy the fireworks. Perhaps he fancies himself a puckish cultural guerrilla ushering in the new order. Maybe he just likes the attention, and doesn't care whether it's positive or negative. Whatever; I won't be feeding that appetite anymore here.

I suppose a lot of my frustration with him arises from being led around in circles over quite a long period, trying to engage him in some earlier threads, before reading his profile and realizing he was a minor child. "My bad" on that, I suppose--the Cellar *used* to be a place where--for the most part--adult standards of discourse were maintained (with perhaps a few transient exceptions), mostly because it took a signifcant investment in time and energy to participate here.

I did extend respect to Jag initially, as I did any other Cellar user--on a benefit-of-the-doubt kind of basis. After a few rounds of wild-goose-chase logic and outright abuse on other threads here, that respect was eroded away. Then I found out his age, and just felt *silly* for having expected anything better.

I do hold clear and correct use of our language to be of great importance. Unfortunately I allowed myself to be be baited about it, and Jag correctly saw it as an excellent diversion to pull the thread away from focusing on his postion that "business for profit is immoral", probably because his supporting rationale for *that* was already exhausted. "Mean old Maggie is picking on me just 'cuz I'm just a kid" worked pretty well too, and a number of other folks here have taken up that refrain as well.

That Jag is 16 years old is only indirectly relevant to the standing his opinions of the morality of business. Since he's still letting his parents supply his necessitites (such as providing a roof over his head), his sneering at those who engage in business for profit as "immoral" irritates me no end. The same opinion expressed by someone older who had no need to dirty his hands with work--perhaps because he had inherited great wealth--would get up my nose just as much, for about the same reason.

It is of course entirely proper for a minor child to accept the support of his parents, as I support my children today. But for Jag to then hold forth from the safe shelter of that support that he's entitled to judge busnesspeople because he *is* one, only accepting Mom and Dad's support so he can get into a good school and arrive there with nice toys and tools is, in my opinion, the height of hypocrisy.

I think that if Jag wants to speak among adults, and express opinions about the morality of what adults do to survive in a world that doesn't have Mom and Dad to go home to when you're hungry, tired or cold, he should be held to the same standards of discourse and discussion as an adult would, without complaining that "it's too hard" or he "doesn't have the time". If he wants to call those of us who must support ourselves and others "immoral", I think he should have a better explanation for that than what he's shown us.

True, adults don't always rise to that level of discourse either...but then such an adult would earn my distain too.

Jag will likely chime in now that I've completely distorted what he said, and that I'm bullying him again..That may earn him some sympathy, especially from those who haven't heard it before . What it won't earn him is any further attention from me here.

It saddens me greatly to see the Cellar morph from something akin to an editorial page to something much more like a graffiti wall. With global reach, and near-zero cost-of-entry, I suppose it was inevitable. But--pardon the nostalgia--it just plain sucks to see how some parts of the old neighborhood have hit the skids. Jag has been delighted to say that the Internet is a great equalizer. I'm just dismayed how low the common denominator can be.

I agree with a lot of what you say, but now it's almost if we have a case of the pot calling the kettle black. You lament how "low the common denominator can be", but you've actively engaged in that, by making personal remarks about intelligence, age, etc. You call jag a hypocrite about the whole business ordeal, but then you show us that you are too by tossing out personal attacks, then, a few days later, lamenting that same low standard of conversation.

I'm not trying to flame you, or get a rise out of you. I'm just trying to help you see why <b>your</b> opinion isn't as valid, in the eyes of many here, as it used to be. By the liberal usage of personal attacks, you've eroded a lot of the confidence others have in what you say, much like how you feel about jaguar.

So I read your last post and I <b>want</b> to buy into it, but I can't, because I know that you haven't practiced what you preach regarding a very significant pillar of that philosophy. That's dismaying as well.

Well, one thing's for sure -- I don't see any logic to the "business is immoral" argument at all. :] It's my opinion that it's basically unprovable.

Before anything else it has to be said that’s a sinking pile of crap. Every statement I’ve made here that’s drawn ire I’ve backed up, I state my opinions like anyone else I never intend purely to "stir things up". My opinions often differ with many peoples here, often they agree (look at the 50 year war thread under politics for a good example.

Well this *minor* child (I love it) is telling you, that you are an old fart, who's opinions are worthless you are so out of touch with reality living in another age with no experience in how the world has changed. Oops I sound like you now.

I've stated previously, and now again, the entire logical train of thought, if you think that your stupid comments that caused this war in the first place had nothing to do with its diversion you are either a: very stupid b: purposely ignoring the truth. You can dismiss it but it comes down to who you define your morals, so it’s a personal thing. (That applies to juju's comment too). I’m not going to deny its smartarse argument but the logic is undeniable. Even to a two faced hypocritical bitch like you. I deal with a daily basis with obnoxious people, but never someone so bigoted on the internet. Try dropping the status shit and treating people equally for a start. If you don't like my arguments, fine, if you want to call my logic baseless, prove it instead of bitching. If you want to assault my language, pick some examples and ill either concede or defend, but this politics of personal destruction is just getting on my nerves.


That logic was originally explained to be by a 28y.o professional doing aquarial studies. I’m not SNEERING at anyone, I never said they are evil, I was merely stating a train of thought, stop adding things to what I say and take it for face value instead of reading what you want between the lines.

I love it - you'll state a pile of shit, then refuse to listen to what I have to say - entirely validating my previous argument of acting like a 5 year old. You ARE distorting what I said, I never looked own in any way on businesspeople, Christ I am one, I wish you could get past your overwhelming prejudices and see that.

Look, if anyone here, this is open, thinks every arguement i've posted is blowing smoke i'd like to hear form them ,i'm not going to agure, i've had enough, if there's more than 4 il leave, i've got better things to do with my time. The logic is simple, while i have or no doubt will butt heads over something with everyone here over time, mostly i get on with the crowd, even the usual debate suspects liek dham ;) and honestly beleive is make a worthwhile contribution, if a decent volume think otherwise, its probably itme to move on anyway.

jag, sweetie, maggie can't be a "bitch", medical science won't allow it.

gender changes, species change, bah its all the same ;)
for refrence i *am* joking.

for reference, i am not. :)

:eek:

Priceless...

;)