Aw, Timber, dont' be a sap . . . the rules to any game you are obliged to play with the wimmins are simple, and universal: You're wrong, you lose.
If a man scratches his ass in the woods, and there is no woman around to see him--he is still in trouble.
Joan, I love your new look. But when did I give advise about it. I think my memory is failing me. But you look great. Interesting how appearance influences. It's a form of communication and one often devalued as "surface." It actually is the very first communication we have with others. While of course appearance is not very specific in it's message (lots of looks can mean many different things, and is dependent of further communication, probably of the verbal and body language type) it is still a powerful and often avoided aspect of human communication.
As far as wimmins winning........it's not much of a win if the mins are alienated. Same goes for the other way around. I know you all are joking, but really......both sexes have their trump cards, it's really how they are played that makes the difference in whether the meeting of minds is a pleasurable one or one better forgotten. I think it best if members of either sex avoid getting too sure of the other's strengths or weaknesses.
Setanta, My philosophy 101 class was about forty years ago, but what little I remember, it wasn't about scratching ass in the woods, but seeing a shadow in a cave. Which is real? c.i.
No, it was Bishop Berkley's tree that fell in Aristotle's cave. Geez!
but scratching your ass is not so bad. If it itches.........
Thanks for the correction, roger. This old geezer needs to be reminded on many things forgotten. c.i.
Lola - have you read anything by the anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy?
little k
No I never have. Something good I should know?
She's very interesting. I left some links on the women and discrimination thread. She is a controversial anthropologist who keeps hitting the nail on the head. She writes about how women aren't the passive things we think of them as in modern culture. That they have traditionally had as much control, albeit of a different type, than men.
I think the best way to find more out about her is to look online (I wasn't too terrible successful at my own searches), buy one of her books, or wait until Discover Mag's March issue comes out and read about her on paper or online.
littlek, I liked the Iraq "war games" you posted on the "US, UN, Iraq" thread last night, but unfortunately no one seemed to pay attention to it. After 9,000+ posts I have decided not to read it any more. They are going to hector each other with their own biases and opinions ad infinitem. "The other side is WRONG, WRONG, and I/WE are RIGHT!" Depressing and boring. Time for Lola to walk in and hoist her skirts again.
Why is it that most women seem more willing to put a human face on an "enemy"? I have seen war...it isn't glamorous and it isn't heroic. No matter what Bush says or the administration says, the hardest part is after the battle. I have no doubt the battle will be won easily, but it is the consequences that come afterward that are important. Collateral damage? I have taken care of "collateral damage." When I was off duty from the hospital in Vietnam, I volunteered to work in the Catholic hospital in town. I cleaned and debrided napalm burns on babies, young children, and old people. Visions of this are seared in my memory.
I can't sleep well these days...war conjurs up a lot of feelings that I can suppress most of the time. The war aims that the administration has deigned to give us have changed over the past few months. Bush's stop to go to the UN seemed false after he had spouted so much unilateral rhetoric. I feel like I am being lied to and duped again.
V-Nurse, I wish I could take the images away from you and everyone else who shared in the horrors of war.
Nope, no one said a thing (by the time I last looked). It was the only place really to put the link, which I wanted to share. I've pretty much stopped reading there as well.
I think women also try more to mediate. Maybe that's the result of our seeing the people beneath the bombs.
littlek, thanks for the good thoughts. By the way, I low-balled the number of posts on that thread. I just looked in the Forum Index and there are +13,000 and they are going at it willy-nilly as I type! I really was so upset with reading it last night that I was disgusted and somewhat depressed.
I ordered Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War translated by Hobbes (Setanta's recommendation) after reading the Lewis Lapham piece in Harpers comparing the Bush administration's hubris to that of the ancient Athenians when they decided to make war on Sicily. There are more than enough aspects in our situation now that brings to mind Greek tragedies, real or fiction. The terrible frustration that many of us feel comes from knowing that all that happens is out of our control. As if we ever had control.
So much for democracy....
There is one thing that I keep thinking of as I observe all of this -- that there is an actual sentence in the new national security strategy, reputed to be from Bush himself, which reads, "We recognize that our best defense is a good offense." This just boggles my mind.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/29/opinion/29DOWD.html
<tap, tap>
This thing on?
It's on, Soz. I think its just that everyone is out talking among themselves at the moment ... this room seems to be empty right now!
timber
(It was down for a while, was checking to see if I could post.)
Vnn and littlek, I'm a man, but I'm against Bushie's charge to war with Iraq. Our military should be used for "defensive" use only. A preemptive strike changes the whole policy on the ethics of war; we become the terrorists. c.i.
Perhaps I ought to increase the number of ginham dresses in my closet.
Someone mentioned Lysistrata earlier, the still often performed play by Aristophanes from 5th century BC Athens where the women of Sparta and Athens are so fed up with the on-going warfare that they get together and make a pact to not sleep with their husbands until they quit playing games. It's really quite a funny play too.
It is vietnamnurse's post above which moves me the most deeply. And I truly do not comprehend how sane men can let phrases such as 'surgical strike' exit their mouths.
I'm afraid I'm one of the men over there arguing. How can I not? Yet I understand too that there are voices on the other side that have as much integrity as I.
c.i.
