Re: Patriarchy: Re: What Matriarchy?

William Edward Woody (woody@alumni.caltech.edu)
Mon, 12 Aug 1996 03:44:52 -0700

In article <320E15BF.3407@megafauna.com>, steve@megafauna.com wrote:
> As I've already pointed out, I said he was EITHER ignorant of the
> experimental method OR contemptuous of it, but in any case he didn't use
> it. Someone else (not me, maybe you) said he didn't know about because
> it hadn't been invented yet, which, if true, constitutes ignorance.
> Being called ignorant of something isn't necessarily an insult. I'm
> ignorant of many, many things, and particularly of time travel and
> antigravity, which haven't been invented yet.

And as I already pointed out, the term 'ignorant' is often considered
an insult. Which is why I responded the way I did. (Not that calling
someone something insulting is bad--just that one post went by from
you with what seemed to me to be an insult, immediately followed by
another post from you flaming Mr. Price for insulting Aristotle. And
that didn't make sense to me.)

But as we are both clear that you consider 'ignorant' a value-neutral
word, there is no contradiction.

Thank you for the clarification.

> I'm also not very impressed with your tendency to imply
> (sarcastically) that someone must be having a problem with their ISP,
> which now you're directed at me as well as at Bryant.

It was not ment as sarcasm, but was my wondering aloud as to why
it seemed I couldn't get what seemed to me to be a straight answer.
It seems that you are ignorant to the fact that often it is
impossible to tell emotional state through emotionless words--we
often read into another's emotional state what we choose to see.

Footnote: Bryant *is* having problems with his ISP, as a recent
e-mail exchange pointed out.

> > Who is wondering if the problem is your ISP--if you really *are* a
> > 49 year old PhD in CompSci, then some of the inconsistant and
> > dense things you have written would be explained by an ISP which
> > drops messages of longer than 50 lines. Of course we seem
> > inconsistant and dismissive--the more thought provoking posts
> > are not getting through.
>
> No doubt these more thought provoking posts are from you.

*grin*

Not necessarly. Just the more difficult to read. (You know, run
on sentences, misspellings, flipped negatives, stuff like that.)

> My ISP doesn't drop lines. I read and reply to most of these posts at
> home, under my own domain name, using an ISDN connection. My ISP is
> very expensive and specializes in ISDN. Sometimes I read them at work
> (NASA), which has probably the best Internet service in the world.

I used to work for JPL. And as you can note from my e-mail address,
I'm writing from Caltech, which gets it's internet feed from JPL.
I *know* the dismal state many of the NASA intranets are in. Frankly
I'm a little less than impressed.

> Look, Marty G. Price is the one who is "simply not mindful" of what I'm
> saying, because I *never* said anything about smallpox. Really. Does
> refusing to ignore (or even to submit to an argument derived from) a
> misattribution constitute "misrepresenting the positions of others"?
>
> I just can't figure out the logic behind this. Would you and Marty feel
> better if I said, "Yup, I guess you got me on that stupid smallpox
> statement I made." (No offense intended, Bryant.)

Bloody hell; I don't give a damn about smallpox. Just as long as I don't
catch it. In fact, I've pretty much skipped over all of the posts that
have had anything to do with "scientists saving the world against
smallpox" posts, except that it has something to do with mosquitoes
not being kept under control. And I do not recall ever commenting on
the whole smallpox thing.

Life isn't black and white; it's not you and Bryant against me and
Gale. And it isn't 'scientific objectivism' vs 'spiritual mumbo-jumbo,'
either.

Besides, who said I agreed with Mr. Price?

- Bill

-- 

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