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Month: August 2017
Brag about yourself. What are you really good at doing?
“Let us now praise famous Nicks.” I hope I’m good at popularising obscure topics in the set union of Greek and linguistics. It’s what I’m ostensibly supposed to be doing here, instead of complaining about the site’s misdeeds. When I’m firing on all cylinders, my intellectual labour is quick. Fearsomely quick. I’m quick to pick […]
What are some sentences that make perfect sense to you but sound like gibberish to most people?
Opening up my Master’s thesis randomly, this para makes all the sense in the world to me, and I’m sure it makes somewhat less sense to most. Unlike volitionality or temporality, these principles underlying these relations cannot be captured by a referential, truth-conditional semantics. The relationships described by these relations are not real-world relations; they […]
Poe once wrote: “Oh! That my young life were a lasting dream! /My spirit not awakening, till the beam/Of an Eternity should bring the morrow.” What do you make of that sentiment, as someone who writes so poignantly of illness?
https://m.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/dreams-0 Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!My spirit not awakening, till the beamOf an Eternity should bring the morrow.Yes! tho’ that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,’Twere better than the cold realityOf waking life, to him whose heart must be,And hath been still, upon the lovely earth,A chaos of deep passion, from […]
How important are gender presentation and gender pronouns to you as a cis person?
https://www.quora.com/unanswered/How-important-are-gender-presentation-and-different-pronouns-to-you-as-a-transgender-person I gather the question is about how I receive them rather than how I give them, given that this question is related to How important are gender presentation and different pronouns to you as a transgender person? I’m a bloke. I don’t want to be told I’m not a bloke, and I’ll be rather […]
Is klezmer music a dying tradition?
One of its prominent proponents is on record as saying so: http://www.jewishpress.com/news/… Andy Statman, one of the foremost Klezmer musicians in the world, knows that the time of Klezmer has passed. “Each music has its point,” He explained over the phone while working at a Mandolin camp in California. “[Klezmer] is still alive, but in […]
I have a 10 minute meeting with the Australian Prime Minister. What should I ask him?
Question details indicate that the original OP is “in my final year of high school in rural Western Australia.” This humbled me out of the smart-aleck answer I was going to give; Ben Kelley’s answer is excellent for this serious aim. … Without that context? “Mal. Mal, Mal, Mal. Come on, mate. Just between you […]
What is the difference between drawing a limit to what can be said, and simply disallowing certain kinds of talk?
I’m in more sympathy with Yonatan Gershon’s answer and its free speech absolutism than with Ted Wrigley’s answer which relies on intent. Intent is a very hard thing to diagnose, and I’m not sure I trust a judiciary allied to power to judge it fairly; and of course, any dissidence can be regarded as disruptive […]
Should I just stop trying to be more likable, and be myself if I have found a way to do it with out hurting or offending others?
Abigail, I go all Michaelis Maus whenever I see unanimity. I go all the more Michaelis Maus now that Michaelis has been banned. It’s hard for me to, because the OP (who has since deleted their account) put in the proviso: “without hurting or offending others”. But pay attention to that: they had to. Being […]
Why has there been so much political resistance to legalizing gay marriage in Australia?
Ah, recentism. As Ben Kelley’s answer reflects, but not enough answers have acknowledged, dragging one’s feet about gay marriage has become a bipartisan thing. Gay marriage has become a flashpoint for the current culture war in Australia; the ex-PM and leader of the conservative faction of the Liberals, Tony Abbott, announced that if you’re sick […]
Why is “cunt” considered very offensive in the US but not in Australia?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cunt Originally Answered: Why is the word ‘cunt’ so offensive in America? Because in America, as distinct from the Commonwealth, cunt is a reductive description of women, when used as an epithet. In the Commonwealth, the epithet mainly refers to men. It is certainly strong, but it can and is used jocularly, and even as […]