mererdog

It is my firm belief that we are all mistaken. Not about everything, but about most things.

Stereotypes are rarely helpful.

Do you see a disconnect there? I think that if we are honest with ourselves, we find that there are many things that we believe are absolute truth. Things that we are so certain about that we cannot seriously entertain the notion that we may be wrong about them. If someone disagrees with us about these things, we cannot help but assume it must be due to a fault on their end. The Earth is round. I cannot fly. Death is inevitable. There is no excuse for rape. I hold these truths to be self-evident, but others deny that they are true. And while I pride myself on a skeptical outlook and open mind, I know that, on these subjects, my mind is closed and I am not really going to take new evidence on the issues seriously. This is not a character flaw, just a survival trait necessary for me to be able to make choices and navigate the world I live in. But to those who espouse differing views on the subjects and find that I am dismissive or even insulting in response, I am sure that it seems I have earned all sorts of unflattering labels.

Never trust the self-evident. "Imperforate anus."

A Methodisr bishop once summed it up for me as "The church is who we are. The ministry is what we do."

Thank you.

A few years back, I took a quiz that proved I have forgotten pretty much everything beyond pre-algebra. I was only slightly surprised.

Cloud shadows racing across Prairies strobe below Train windows flashing faces

I'm fairly sure he's a world-renowned hamster tamer. Either that, or the owner of the world's largest ball of used Kleenex.

Faces flicker from silent screens They are not Cumulus visages for the supine child

Americans say Haiku is in the rythm Not the kireji

A cotton sheet drying in wind Dancing Crimson cast from pendulous prisms

I interpret the results differently. When children first see a painting, they focus on the broad strokes (pun intended). The second time, the broad strokes are less interesting, because they have already been explored, so the child will either start focusing on details or simply "drift away." By telling the children about a specific detail in the painting, you make a promise that a new experience is available, and that incentivizes taking that closer look. When adults look at a painting, they spend less time on the broad strokes, because of all the other paintings they have already looked at. They will either look for the details that make this particular painting different than all the others, or they too will simply "drift away." Essentially, I think it is just boredom-aversion at work. Note that without reference to a control group that looked at the painting twice, but was not told anything about it between viewings, there is no indication of how much of the change in behavior was driven by the new information, itself.

You seemed to be implying that your "real B.A." was more of an "accomplishment" than a ULC degree, because it was harder to get. I was implying that difficulty is not a true measure of accomplishment.

Only if you finish your homework first.

It really doesn't. Absent extensive duplication to verify methodology and results, one study proves absolutely nothing. Prior to this process, a study's findings are really nothing more than the opinions of the study's authors. Those opinions may be educated, but they are still opinions.

I'm sorry, but a single study proves nothing. And while you may find the morals of others silly, that opinion carries very little weight. I find it silly that people like Harry Potter books. But why would they care what I think about it?

We were also talking about who gets to decide what is on the forum (the whole ownership issue). It isn't me and it isn't you. And censorship involves both what should be discussed and how. When you say censorship is silly, you are talking about everything under that umbrella, intentionally or not.

It would only be a contradiction in terms if the definition you cited contained the words "any" or "all." A temple is a place for worship. That does not mean that any given form of worship is welcome in any given temple.

The TOS expressly states that no ownership interest is exchanged. Instead, you grant limited license to copy, modify and/or delete your work. It allows us to post work we may want to sell at a later date, while allowing the admins to keep the site in line with the owner's wishes. It took a couple weeks to get the language right on that part.

It isn't irrelevant. He pays to store the words, so he decides what words get stored. To assert otherwise is to try to enslave him to the whims of others.

If you want to go beyond the obvious, we could talk about how our country's Puritan Heritage shapes our society.

It would be hypocritical in the extreme for me to complain about that. So I will probably do it eventually. Anyway, the natural order has each individual fighting tooth and nail for his piece of the pie. Even where animals of the same pack or hive share with one another, they do not share with outsiders. To say that ownership causes strife ignores this. What ownership actually does is create a moral obligation. That moral obligation, in turn, provides motive to be less grasping and less violent. It is not a panacea, of course, so people still act on the instinct to simply take what they want and fight anyone who tries to stop them. But it does lessen the problem.

The person who pays for the server space and bandwidth usage owns the forum, in the same way that the person who pays the mortgage owns the house. To perhaps clear up a common misconception, this forum is not owned or run by the ULC, itself. The ULC and The ULC Online are separate entities.

I think I'm in the wrong room.