The real question is Should people be allowed to divorce themselves?

I say no. Make them stay together and work it out.

This is oddly, and depressingly apt.

I was unemployed for three months when I was 24. I had enough savings that I could pay my bills and be comfortable for six months, but despite lack of financial stress, I was emotionally stressed out.

I realized early on that, because I lived alone, nobody would be likely to look for me or find me accidentally if something happened and I could not move or reach the telephone, etc.

Because I did not have a job, I was not expected to show up anywhere. Nobody would have missed me.

Had my friends knocked and I did not answer, they would have assumed I was out.

Had anyone called, they would have assumed I was out.

I could have been injured and incapacitated, and NOBODY would have missed me or come to check on me while I slowly died of thirst or starvation.

A hole with two holes close to each other is no longer a straw, it is a ring.

Why only 2 holes? A hole does not have thickness per se, so it is just as logical to say there is an infinite number of holes at intervals of every irrational number between each edge of the ring's thickness.

The minute we start playing with irrational numbers, and infinite numbers of abstract things (such as holes) we have left actual rationality far behind in favor of rationalization.

A ring, like a straw is defined by where it has mass, not by its negative space. A ring is a bar curved in a circle so that its ends meet, just as a straw is a rectangular sheet curved so that opposite ends meet.

No holes.

Technically that is a slit.

Do we want to discuss whether a slit is simply a hole that tapers at two ends?

However, it is interesting that you say that a straw can have a hole. Tell me then, does a wooden straw have a hole(s)? ;)

If you pierce the sheath around the cylindrical space, a straw made of anything, including straw, can have a hole. ;)

One elongated hole on the same general principle as a tunnel is a hole through a solid mass, usually rock.

The tunnel through rock is not an apt metaphor.

The rock started out as a solid mass with a volume that included the location of the (future) tunnel. The hole/tunnel was put into the rock, reducing the volume of rock.

By contrast, the straw's volume never changed. The straw was extruded around a tube-shaped space. The straw's tunnel was produced by inserting a separation between it and the surrounding space.

There is even Biblical evidence of this, so hear ye the word of the Lord.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the space, and let it divide the space from the space.

7 And God made the firmament, and divided the space which were within the firmament from the space which were outside the firmament: and it was so.

8 And God called the firmament straw. And the evening and the morning were the second day. (Genesis 1:6-8)

Here endeth the lesson.

Thank you Jesus; thank you, Lord.

So..., the sheath is not solid ;)

The sheath is solid, but it has no hole in it. If it had a hole, you could not get enough suction to draw the liquid from the cup to your mouth.

No hole. A hole implies a solid thing has a space in it.

By contrast, a straw is a sheath around a bar of air, a vacuum, or a liquid as it is drawn through the sheath.

Excon,

In that regard, black people are WAYYY ahead..

Except for White gay men. Some of those guys raise insult delivery to an art form.

A really catty drag queen can take the delivery to a professional level, and some actually do. The waitresses (waiters?) and other performers at Lips in San Diego make their livings by singing Liza and Cher songs, and insulting the customers. They are HILARIOUS, but it is all in the delivery. To give you the idea, the Wednesday night show was called "Bitchy Bingo."

Hi Excon,

In my view, it's NOT about the NUMBER of words. It's about DELIVERY.. In that regard, black people are WAYYY ahead..

I definitely agree about delivery being of paramount importance.

You are probably right about Blacks having a cultural advantage in delivery of insults.

When I taught in the inner city, some of my Black students would play Snaps. The White, Hispanic, and Asian kids never got into it. That game is targeted training in the delivery of insults. There is a lot to be said for cultural influence in the development of insult culture.

I think the ideal insult has a punch line that catches the target (or audience) by surprise. The first part of the insult should be innocuous, or better yet, should look like it might be complimentary, and then the last line needs to twist it into insult.

There is also the variation that uses double entendre, so the meaning of the statement sits and stews for a second before hitting the insulting punch.

There is a story that when Joan Crawford died, a reporter called Bette Davis up for a comment on it. Davis said, "My mother taught me not to speak ill of the dead, but to say only good. So, my comment is, 'Joan Crawford is dead. Good.'"

Dermot,

one never saw a black man or women in Ireland unless it was a tourist ; Dubliners used to joke about the late Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy fame being the only black man in Ireland

Ahh! "Black Irish." :)

Dermot,

I do not see anything intrinsically insulting in many of these. Most of the items on your list are primarily insulting by fiat.

This brings up an interesting social reality. Offense in not given, but rather is taken.

Whether a person feels insulted has little to do with what is intended by the speaker, than with whether the recipient with that person has been conditioned (culturally or personally) to feel insulted by the particular slur. A scene in Clerks II illustrates this humorously. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qc0akWRBQk )

In order for a racial slur to be insulting, there needs to be something culturally distasteful in the referent of the metaphor.

Ape, Jim Fish, and porch monkey are distinct from others by virtue of the animal referents, indicating being less than human, without being associated with animals commonly admired.(Black Panther was not considered insulting because large cats are cool.)

Often a term is "insulting" for no other reason than referring in an off-hand way to physical characteristics that are distinct from Whites. (e.g., bluegum, burrhead, fuzzies, powder burn, thicklips). It is worth noting that Black culture has taken references to their physical characteristics to be insulting. This indicates a self-esteem issue within the culture.

By the way, it is anomalous that Sambo is considered an insult by anyone of African descent because it is from a humorous story called "Little Black Sambo" about a rich Indian (from India) boy being tricked by a tiger.

It is a testament to how culturally impoverished racists were in the US in the late 1800s that they conflated Africa with India.

When I was a child in the 60's and 70s, there was a chain of diners in the US called Sambo's. The walls were decorated with images from the story. The pancakes came with Tiger Butter which was butter whipped with maple syrup. The chain went out of business in the early 1980s because of lawsuits by even more people who did not understand the difference between Africa and India.

DD,

Despite the fact that its imagery is visually stunning, there are some problems with your insult feast:

1 - It lacks a focus or clear target. I cannot tell if you are insulting a man or a woman, which affects whether some passages are actually insulting.

2 - You mixed in some undeniably good things. You did not include any indications of venereal disease, so "drizzling puddle of pussy drool" fails to be insulting because it is so enticing.

3 - It is franticly phrased. I get the feeling that the insulter becomes increasingly redfaced and out of breath as the insult progresses. This frantic phrasing and jumping from one unrelated image to another makes it difficult to rest on any one insult long enough to feel insulted, or even grossed out.

For example, there is undeniable power in "infectious hemroid pus" but it is lost in the chaos between "oven of faggotry" and "gay ostrich"

4 - It is unwaveringly biological, and never addresses character flaws. The recipient is never dealt any psychological blow to make him or her doubt being worthy ever to be valued, admired, or loved.

The most effective way to insult a person is to utter in public a shameful truth about the person's character, to shine light upon a hidden flaw that underlies the person's secret insecurities, yet you failed even to attempt this.

I give your insult an A for effort, a B for originality, but only a D for effectiveness.

Come on, try again.

Conclusive proof that Conservatives really will claim that white is black.

hahaha.

I put quotation marks around the word Black, and I wrote that my skin was "darker brown" indicating that all the people I was talking about are BROWN.

Only a blind person would think that White person is literally white, or a Black person is literally black. We are all actually different shades of brown, a result of having common ancestors.

That is one of many reasons racism is so stupid. There are no clear dividing lines between gene pools because genetic drift happens as a continuum of difference to varying degrees across multiple genotypes. Melanin production is one such trait that varies widely in all gene pools.

DD,

Are you being ironic or are you really this racist and ignorant.

On the off chance that you were serious when you said:White people are unbelievably weak and cowardly, they can't even go in the sun without the melanoma formation.

When I am out in the sun for as little as 4 hours/day, my skin makes enough melanin that I am darker brown than most of the "Black" people I know.

By the same token, I can live in cloudy places like western Washington without needing to eat fortified foods to keep from getting rickets. (If it were not for the food additives required by law in milk, bread, and cereal, people with dark skin could not live in the northern third of the US without developing health problems like rickets.)

It is just the result of natural selection in Eurasia during the ice ages.

Why I'm against: Because it's a half ass way of helping the homeless.

The homeless are the last of the truly poor in our society, and you are right that half-assed help won't help. The unlucky poor planners who become homeless are usually only on the streets for a limited period of time, and they are the ones most likely to benefit from the smallest investment in any sort of program. Addicts and nutjobs need very extensive and expensive help.

I actually saw examples, as well as being an example myself, of people who went from being homeless to having an address, and being employed and independent. Things that I know helped me and the folks I knew:

They have cold showers at the beach in San Diego, and that enabled a lot of the guys to avoid that "deep homelessness" that characterizes street people. They were not dirty, smelly or unkempt, so they were not marginalized to the same degree. This enabled us to get work, which helped in reintegrating into "normal society" and pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps.

This was before cell phones. Now there is the ability to distribute cheap ($10) flip-phones with no data-just telephone-so homeless folks can actually get calls from employers/potential employers.

I figure that a program can be very successful in helping the unlucky, poor-planner homeless IF AND ONLY IF it includes:

-- Open air cold showers

-- Public restrooms disbursed around town (that are designed to be impossible to sleep in)

-- Cheap cell phones provided to them and charging stations

-- Viable public transit

-- Dispersed public employment stations for job searches and resume printing

The beauty in some of this is that it does not require an all encompassing government program just for the homeless. Obviously the transit, showers, and restrooms would be public works, but they would benefit more people than just the homeless. All cities should have these things as foundational infrastructure.

Other aspects of the program are within the bailiwick of private organizations, which can provide some cell phones to some folks, to the extent of their budgets. A church for example could have a bottom end group cell phone plan that they just keep adding people to as they need and can afford.

Ya'll know that a couple of people will get the idea to collect all these fruit and sell them for profit right?

I am right there with you, but that is the least of the problems with the idea.

Public fruit trees in parks is not a bad supplement to a help-the-homeless program, but it does have some serious pitfalls.

I was homeless for a short time in San Francisco, and I hung out with homeless guys in the beach area in San Diego.

Homeless folks are generally in one of the following groups-

-- Untreated mentally ill

-- Addicts

-- Poor planners who hit a bit of bad luck

Addicts and the mentally ill constitute at least 75% of homeless people, and have problems that are VERY expensive to fix, and that are almost impossible to do successfully.

These are the folks who would pick almost all the fruit before it is ripe & edible, or would create liability issues when climbing higher in the trees than is safe, etc... There would be falls, injuries, fights, stashes of fruit rotting somewhere, etc.

In order to make it work, there would have to be tons of fruit trees EVERYWHERE in the city (parks, parkway medians, public building landscaping, etc.) in order to decentralize the homeless folks using them. Cleaning up windfalls of ripe fruit would require an army of city personnel, otherwise the fruit would constantly ferment and rot on the ground, and make the entire city smell like vinegar.

Great minds think alike ;)

Sometimes.

Dirty minds think alike always.:)

Oops! Double submission. Apparently my mind thinks like my mind...

Does that count for great minds thinking alike, or for dirty minds thinking alike.

Great minds think alike ;)

Sometimes.

Dirty minds think alike always.:)