Culling My Comments

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It's been a good week for comments here at American Digest, even as Tim O'Reilly's Legions of Techweenies got their hard drives so fried they went off on a Klean Komments Krusade. (Krusade Number 18,987 -- but who's counting?)

Here are two comments I found especially compelling. You will too.

JAED responding to No Stinking Badges:

"Well, Teri, I have done tech support, and I have never once run into a guy who "would not speak with a woman tech"*. I've run into my share of men who seemed a little uneasy or uncomfortable with techie women, but none who refused to work with me, certainly none who were angry about it, much less any who would emit LEGALLY ACTIONABLE DEATH THREATS at the very sight of a woman who is so techie that she actually writes about... marketing, user-interface design, and similarly hard-core technical topics.

What I'm wondering is why none of these people seem to have any sense of history. It's not as though these things haven't been hashed out before, even if we ignore the dark ages before we all sat down at our computers and started typing.

Tim would do better to mount a software development effort to create comments software that, say, reaches the usability level of 70s-era conferencing packages. In this case, the kind of techno-fixes that improve social space would at least help (although they'd do nothing about the nutbar attacking Kathy Sierra - but then nothing short of police action will. A "code of conduct" and a kewl GIF certainly won't.)

* A customer did try to get me fired once. I ate his liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti.

JD responding to While America Blathered with a pocket essay of his own:

Woodstock Diplomacy

I was ten years old when Woodstock occurred so I really didn't know all that much about it. But now I've come to the conclusion, after checking things out a bit, that this one event began the decline of Western Civilization. I'm sure that those in attendance would all be proud of that.

First off, I discover that the bastards actually made money on it. Capitalist pigs!!!

Thanks to that fab generation we still have plenty of sex (along with plenty of STD's) and drugs, but the rock seems to have gone the way of Janis and Jimi. We now get to enjoy all that Rap, though, wit da ho, ho, hoes. Who needs to talk in syllables and sentences, anyway?

I don't know if Nancy Pelosi ever attended Woodstock, but she acts as though she never quite got over that one "bad trip". Her eyes fluttering and she's always wearing some kind of weird smile. Maybe it is just a natural high.

To me she is the modern feminist version of Neville Chamberlain. Her and her party are willing to concede Iraq to whomever, the same way that Chamberlain gave up Czechoslovakia to Hitler. So much for freedom. What country will be next? And then? And then... I guess it just isn't worth it when so much can be gained politically by retreating. After all there is no more Global War on Terror. The dems just declared it. Puff. Gone. Just sit down with Assad, place a daisy in the barrel of his AK, kiss his tookis. Problem solved.

Nancy took this oath: I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

Does she care one iota about the Constitution? After all, it was written by dead white guys a long time ago. It appears that the job of most politicians today is to dissolve the United States of America as quickly as possible. We are the problem. Not China, Russia, Iran, Syria, or Islamists.

Nancy, are you going sharia on us in the name of "peace"? You looked great in the Khimar. You'd look so much better with the standard black niqab, though.

Where are the feminists in NOW concerning Islamic women and children? Nowhere. That's because you are FOS. You got your power. You made out OK. How about the women in the Middle East? You say "that's their culture". You say that because you are FOS. If you really cared about women you'd be marching on embassies and the UN demanding women not be treated as property and submitted to female circumcisions.

My contempt for this generation of "liberals" is utterly immense. Freedom is an archaic term to them now.

Posted by Vanderleun at April 13, 2006 7:56 PM