I don't really want to receive cash or checks.

Btw for the web developers among you, which text editor do you use? Atom, Coda, Sublime, Textastic, Brackets or something else? — Agustino

I used Sublime for a long time, but now I use Visual Studio Code. There's not a huge difference, but it seems more solid, and looks prettier with less fiddling around.

Be thankful that people with good taste are in charge.

I would pay for the whole thing myself rather than see ads. Thankfully, the minority of members willing to cough up money provide just enough to keep it going, not least the large one-off donations we've had from a couple of people.

No ads here, thank you.

Also in fútbol.

It is an interesting portrait. Part of what is odd about the photograph is that it was seemingly taken at a high aperture so that the distant clouds appear to be at the same depth as the subject. — geospiza

I think the effect isn't owing to the aperture choice but to the relatively low point of view, such that there are no features on the ground to put him in context. This is why it almost looks like he could be standing in front of a painted stage background. (EDIT: Actually, the aperture width might contribute to this, so you could be right).

I dislike photos that are overcomposed. Lots of wedding and family photos are like this. Is that the same thing as conveying an external meaning? — geospiza

That's not really what I meant. I just meant I like images for their thisness rather than for any kind of message or overt symbolism.

If you can't get wisdom from your bartender, why drink? — noAxioms

Wisdom from the bottle.

My avatar is Max Ernst with a dog on his shoulder against a blue sky with fluffy clouds. I happen to like Max Ernst's art, but really I just like the photograph. It's striking and amusingly odd. I don't like images that exist primarily to convey an external meaning.

Every existential quantification applies to a particular domain of discourse. Informally put, it's true that Harry Potter exists assuming the domain of fictional characters, or the domain of Harry Potter's fictional world, etc.

Is there any truth to John McEnroe's statements? Is there anything wrong with what he said apart from whether or not the statements are true? What were his motivations and are those motivations relevant to judgments about the propriety of making such statements? — geospiza

I don't know the answer to any of these questions, but I can speculate. Or at least, I can supply one interpretation of what he said, and it seems plausible that he could have meant it in this way, in which case what he's saying is not as pointless as others here think.

Given differences in average strength and whatever else may explain the average performance differences between men and women in tennis, McEnroe may have been reacting to the constant wish to compare Williams to male players. He might have been saying that it's silly and demeaning to constantly wonder how good she is compared to men. He demonstrates this with a dichotomy: she would only be 700th in the world if she were competing with men, and yet, she indisputably is one of the greatest athletes ever.

I have a lot of respect for women — Agustino

Indeed, women are precious creatures whose virtue must be protected from the temptations of licentiousness. ;)

And so now a diversion into the wisdom of affirmative action? Nothing I've said hinted at whether affirmative action programs were morally, Constitutionally, or pragmatically sound. What I pointed to was the injustice of discrimination, not to whether our legislatures have properly addressed the evil.

Regardless, it is likely we share the same conclusions on this subject, but I'd suspect for differing reasons because I tend to look at law very pragmatically, and I see such programs as offering little good and usually to those least needy, but all of this is a major degression and topic shift. — Hanover

Agustino always has some bugbear in mind, a generalized target, whether it's cultural marxism or feminism or progressives or whatever, and that leads him to conflate independent claims and positions. If he sees a claim that strikes him as a bit too lefty, he then attributes to you all kinds of other claims, claims that go together in his caricature.

I do something like this myself, because often what I'm arguing against is ideology. But in this case, the two positions Agustino is lumping together really are best treated as independent: like you, I think that the relegation of women to subservient roles is historical and social, but I am no great fan of affirmative action.

Hanover's post suggested that the reason for social inequality was arbitrary, which is wrong. It wasn't. And that's also what the women's studies feminists seem to believe, which is just bullshit. — Agustino

No, his post did not suggest that. The very fact that it is the historical subjugation of women he was talking about implies it is not arbitrary. And being a woman is a biological fact (contra some modern theorists who might say otherwise), so one could say that the biological fact of being a woman determines whether one is going to be subjugated as a woman, but this obviously wouldn't be saying much.

Not only that, but his whole point was that, far from being arbitrary, it is the specific facts of a social environment that determine how a person's biology will affect their life.

All right, I guess we can kind of agree on all that. Even so, it's obvious that you wanted to emphasize the biology, as if doing so somehow went against Hanover's point. It doesn't, which is why I made my contribution, to point out something you appeared to be missing.

The answer is that it depends how you slice it. One can go along with you and say, in a manner of speaking, that the fact of pregnancy determines the role of women. But this leaves too much out. The full statement ought to be: the fact of pregnancy determines the role of women in a social environment in which women are bound to the household, subservient to men, unable to pick and choose between social roles, where childcare is unavailable, and so on. You wanted to say that biology is primary here, but if what I've said so far is true, it is the social environment that is crucial.

I don't see what your problem is here, and I don't know what your emphasis on "should" is about, as I didn't accuse you of saying that biology should or must or necessarily determine social facts. You said...

The truth is there are biological reasons for this. — Agustino

And my only point, building on Hanover's original post, was that it is the social environment that determines how the biological facts of pregnancy etc., happen to affect women.

Well, that's precisely what you did (setting aside your sneaky "necessarily"). You explained social facts with an appeal to biological facts. You strongly implied that you think the fact that "women have traditionally been relegated to submissive roles" is down to biology.

I don't see the relevance. Just more opinionating.

IF women have traditionally been relegated to submissive roles (which by the way I don't think is the case everywhere in history), then why did this happen? Is it an arbitrary thing that it was women who were relegated to submissive roles and not men? :s It seems to me that you have internalised a very leftist way of looking at this situation.

The truth is there are biological reasons for this. — Agustino

The point is that it's the social environment that determines whether the biological facts--of pregancy and giving birth--lead to such relegation. Nowhere in your post do you show that it's the other way around.

Cheers. I love medium format film. :)

The history of anarchism is mainly Leftist. To say that Chomsky is anarchist tout court is to say he is on the Left.

Planning is guessing, as David Heinemeier Hansson used to say.

I think it depends on whether or not you've done the task before, and how complex it is. I agree with the spirit of the claim but would be compelled to vote No, because I don't think it's impossible, but just most often impossible or close to impossible.

Not just that. I'm talking about the bigger picture, and whether it would or would not make sense if certain elements were removed. Morality requires more than moral agents, it requires the right kind of environment and the right kind of activity. — Sapientia

I agree. It looks like you might be describing intersubjectivity, which I would say counts as objectivity in this case--unless one means objectivity in the sense of being entirely independent of minds (which I think you don't mean).

So, if there is no first/second order distinction, would you say that under consequentialism, killing an innocent person just becomes ethical if it is done for a good ethical reason, i.e., because it will somehow (we can imagine scenarios) bring about more happiness or less suffering in general? To me, a first and second order scheme describes the situation better, because it acknowledges the immorality of killing an innocent person, rather than just cancelling it out with a consequentialist calculus.

And one for Chrome too.

But it's your problem. The colloquial sense is not the sense it is used with in philosophy, and speaking personally, the "attitude" of stroppy teenagers has never occurred to me in the context of philosophical discussions about belief. We can happily use "accident" in the Aristotelian sense without worrying about car crashes, "formal" without thinking about wearing suits, "begging the question" without getting confused with "raising the question", and so on. And they're not even colloquialisms, except maybe the last one.

When I see the word "attitude", I think of things like stroppy teenagers. — Sapientia

That's just a colloquialism. One's attitude is one's position, or orientation, either physical or mental (or both).

I think "attitude" is perfect (as well as being standard in philosophy), and I don't buy your separation of cognition and affect.

No, you don't know what belief is. Belief is not an attitude ... — Sapientia

I think you'd have to argue for this, because it's very common in philosophy to characterize beliefs as attitudes, especially propositional attitudes.

Say no more, or you'll summon the Trekkie beast within me.

I think the biggest problem with it is that it's a truism. We tend to argue for our own views, so our knowledge about fallacies will obviously be used in the service of those views. Maybe Q could have put it a bit more strongly and more interestingly by saying that we never turn our eye for logical fallacies on to ourselves, or something like that.

(When you quote yourself, you're asking for a kicking)

The contemporary story is unique. It's who we are. You pick up the thread of a communal story by starting with your own experiences, right? — Mongrel

But why should the public artist pay any attention to that? Granted, if we lived in Stalin's Russia this would be a more difficult debate, but I'm wondering why you think--if indeed this is what you think, which I'm not sure about--that artists should not present challenging, difficult or bizarre work in the public space. If an artist is expected to service an ideology--and I think that's what your criticism amounts to, i.e., that it's not doing so--then in what way can it be free and independent, as we would surely want it to be?

It's public art, so it should reflect the contemporary story. — Mongrel

Why should public art "reflect the contemporary story"? I take that to mean: repeat platitudes.

Actually, I stand corrected. The OED offers a secondary definition of "Zealous advocacy or support of a particular cause." — Michael

Duh.

Only a few of the BBCode tags are recognised, and the rest will just appear in the post as written in the editor.

I don't know what's come over me, but on this occasion I agree with Agustino — mcdoodle

:o

I'm confident you're in a minority, but if you manage to get several more members together and form a movement for change, I'll consider asking the devs to implement it--unless there's a strong counter-movement, as I suspect there would be.

:-O

I remember several people, including 180 Proof, using colors and different font sizes too! — Agustino

It made his posts unreadable.