Lecture on reading

[Frank S.]

Sort of.
Lately I've seen several subjects revisited which were the topic of past threads. This tells me that some are more interested in posting than reading and researching this site, and I would not point this out if those new posts were of demonstratable value.
I suggest also that posting one-liner replies, while appropriate on few occasions, is to be avoided: it's fine in 'chat' but not on the forums.
Speaking as an American guest, I found it very helpful to spend time reading most threads on most forums here to get the pulse of this wonderful place and avoid offending our hosts' sensibilities. For instance, just as some of us bristle at the term 'Yanks', it's bad form to use the term 'Brits'.
Small things go a long way.
Highjacking threads can be entertaining, but redundant threads and topics outside the proper forum take us all over the map for no real purpose.

[snyder]

I'm really curious about the "offensiveness" of the terms Brit and Yank. As an American I am not in the slightest bit offended by the word Yank. In fact, I find it sort of endearing. As for Brit, I use it as a short form and don't have any insulting intent behind it.

But if the word "Brit" is seen as insulting, I'll never use it again on this board. To our friends on the other side of the pond, how'd you like to be described? As for one-liners, in my short time here I've done a lot of them and will endeavor to significantly reduce my posting of them. Sorry for any offense caused, seriously. This is a great forum and I really want to be a good citizen here.

[Mrs. Frank S.]

Try going to the deep South, finding a good ole boy, and calling him a Yank. It is certain to cause a rearrangement of body parts and the probable loss of a few teeth.

Southerners (I have roots there too) tend to be a bit sensitive about things like that.

[Peds]

Does that stem from the civil war?

We have an American friend from my dad's commune days, I refer to him as "that yankee chappy" and I don't believe he's too offended by it. Still, I'll cut down on it in forum use from now on.

[snyder]

An American would never call a southerner a Yank or a Yankee. Not for fear of being punched in the snout, but because it just wouldn't make any sense. But I really don't think southerners would expect foreigners to automatically know these subtleties. Wouldn't southerners just laugh it off and tell the foreigner that Yankee has a regional meaning within the U.S.? I can't imagine deep, or even shallow, offense being taken. Frank, don't you think you're overinflating the issue? The southerners I've known, and that's a whole lot of them, have never struck me as being as touchy and combative as you're making them out to be. But then maybe I don't know the right (or wrong, as the case may be) southerners.

As a northerner, if I were in the south and were called a Yankee by someone there I'd expect it to be said with a smile on their face. If it were said with some sort of serious resentment (which is something I have yet to run into), I'd just say look fella, both sides of my family got here after the Civil War so you've picked the wrong guy to be mad at.

[Mrs. Frank S.]

Most Southerners are the nicest people you ever want to meet. I would live in the South again in a heartbeat. They are a bit touchy about the word Yank though. Most aren't as bad as the one I described, though I've know a few like that.

Peds, I'm sure you're friend understands your meaning and takes it in good humor.

Julie, not Frank

[Frank S.]

Frank, don't you think you're overinflating the issue?

Actually no, you are making this an issue: I only used it as an example of something you would discover by reading past threads.
It is just that, an example, not the topic.
This is not something which gets my hackles up (I'm French originally and the term 'frog' doesn't even give me pause).
But others feel very differently about this specific term.
The true gist of my post here is about reading more and posting appropriately, meaning in the proper place (thread) while preferably avoiding redundancy. One of the best ways to do so is to spend the time to read and develop an understanding of this little 'society'.

[snyder]

Oh brother!

[Ardennes44]

Snyder, good manners are a component of true intelligence.

[snyder]

Look, I read the threads about "Yank" and "Brit" quite a while ago. When Frank posted about it, I didn't realize I had read them because I had forgotten. So today I went back and looked them up, and then I remembered having read them once before. My thought when I read them then, and my thought upon re-reading them today, was that no one was seriously bent out of shape about the "Brit" label but rather were using the conversation to talk about their regional identifications, i.e., Welsh, English, Scottish. Some even went to finer divisions than that, which by the way I think is cool. I really enjoy manifestations of regional character wherever I go. I have the severed, shellacked alligator head from the French Market in New Orleans to prove it.

In any case, it didn't seem to me to be a really serious complaint, especially given that a fair number of posters from the UK on this site use the word "Brit" to describe themselves and/or others who live there. From the American perspective, there are a couple southerners here who go on about the "Yank" thing but I don't think it's a big deal to more than one or two people here and I really wonder if they care as much as they indicated they do or whether they brought it up as a vehicle for talking about being a southerner. Which is fine, by the way. I think the South is really an interesting place, and if wasn't so damn hot I might even want to live there. I really have to question why any American would object to a Brit calling them a Yank.

I have been in all 50 states and for several years worked for a company HQ'd in the South and would travel there quite frequently. I would make it a point to go down there in July and August and demand special recognition for being the only Yankee who willingly entered the furnace at its hottest and demand that they reciprocate by flying to Boston in January. We'd have fun with that stuff, but I have yet to run into anyone who seriously did the South vs. North thing. The differences were usually expressed indirectly, i.e., the average white Southerner is more conservative (often much more so) than the average white Northerner. But the Civil War related stuff? Hell, the South's economy is just as strong as the North's these days and that's where most of this stuff came from to begin with.

Now, I guess I have to ask, is this really worth such a long discussion? I don't think so, but I guess if I'm going to be told that I haven't read postings here, which isn't the case; that I was the one to make an issue out of this Brit and Yank thing, which isn't the case; and that I'm being rude to use the word Brit, I ought to defend myself. But all that said, if the UK posters here do object to use of the word Brit I am happy to quit using it. I don't want to offend anyone, but I think Brit and Yank are wonderfully descriptive and evocative words and I'd really hate to see them disappear down some politically correct memory hole because a couple of people are touchy about something that the vast majority either doesn't care about or actually sort of like.

As for one-liners, I've said I'll cut way down on them, and I will.

[El Prez]

Snyder, the term Brit is/was used extensively by the Irish to describe the services working over in N. Ireland. It was/is a term of abuse for them, not many of my compatriots get out of shape about it, so don't lose too much sleep.
We have bent away from 'Yank' to the more sedate but equally galling 'Elmer'.
Keep smiling y'all.

[Frank S.]

Snyder, you either are not understanding or you’re deliberately trying to change the subject, either way, you’re tossing around a deflated ball.
But I say again: this thread is NOT about the use of terms like “Yank” or “Brit”, or about some politically correct BS.

I’ll make it simpler for you: take your one-liners, fold them five ways, stick them where the sun don’t shine and clench hard.

Still reading?

On August 9, in the “rites of passage” thread, you posted:
“O.K., anyone want to speculate on who really killed John F. Kennedy? It's common knowledge that Oswald is on one of those UFOs responsible for the crop circles and that Jack Ruby was actually Richard Nixon in a mask, so who did the dirty deed?”

Here’s the thread where Kennedy’s assassination was discussed (4 pages worth):
viewtopic.php?t=5071

Again on August 9, in your “tracking the U.S. presidential polls” you posted:
“Yeah, with computers that don't produce a verifiable physical voting record yet can be hacked into from afar. That's progress, Florida style. Oh, and the company providing the computers is a donor to George W. Bush. Not that this would be relevant.”

Here’s the thread where black box computerized voting was discussed (page 1 post 7, page 2 post 14):
viewtopic.php?t=5744&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

I could probably go on, but I’m not writing a Russian novel here. You decided to take the topic of this here thread personally, so okay, let’s go: you sir (pronounced ‘cur’), have made several references to IQ since joining. In your introduction, you said: “I vastly prefer a third digit in someone's I.Q., though.” And Don mentioned on the “9/11” thread that “you are mensa”.
Since then you’ve mentioned IQ in several posts. Explains some things actually: not all mensans are arrogant pricks, thank God, but many whom I know are…
By fixating on my example about “Yanks and Brits” you actually displayed intellectual dishonesty (because you can’t be so stupid as to really believe this is what the thread is about, right?). And you just sh*t on the carpet like an untrained dog.
Now one nice thing about the internet is that you don’t have to read all the above. Nor do I have to read everything you post which is more and more ‘one liners’ of the most idiotic kind.
One final point, baby: as of this writing your average posting on this site is 15.33 posts per day, and 9.21 per day on SFTT, for a total of 24.54. Now, as you know, there are only so many hours in a day. So when do you actually find time to read, as you claim you do?
Or are you one of those “5000 year old men” who’ve done and seen it all?
Bugger off, w@#k. And have a nice day.

[snyder]

Frank, all of this reminds me of a famous quote by Gore Vidal, who once described America as "the land of the dull and the home of the literal." I'm a quipster and you're not. So sue me. But, for the third time now, I promise to try and reduce my quiptitude just for you. As for my frequent postings, you have a point there, too. I'm disabled and spend too much time on the computer. Damn Internet can be addictive. You're reminding me of what I've been telling myself, which is that I really should do more reading.

[Wholley]

Bugger off w@#k and have a nice day.
Frank,you sure do have a way with words.
Couldn't have put it better myself.
Wholley.

[Frank S.]

Hey Sunshine… Me again.
“I’m a quipster and you're not. So sue me”.
Mmmmmh. So when it comes from you it’s a quip and when someone else does it, they exhibit that dreaded “bumper sticker mentality”, is that it?
You dropped another nugget on the carpet, by the way: “I'm disabled and spend too much time on the computer”.
Well see, I knew about the second part. As to your being disabled, how do you figure it justifies or somehow excuses in a twisted way putting down “retards” as you called them again and again? Is it okay to be physically disabled (I suppose that’s what you want me to understand your disability to be), but not mentally disabled?
Putting the shoe on the other foot, what if people referred to FDR as the Gimp in chief, just as you refer to Bush as the Chimp in chief? As you’re aware, sympathy is found in the dictionary between shit and syphilis. Now let’s proceed.

I never got the impression from your posts that you were a stupid man, and I actually tend to agree in substance with a number of them. It is the creeping intellectual dishonesty shown by you which is a turn off.

Your interests seem to revolve around politics: these are your most fiery posts. And in all the smoke, you don’t actually read other people’s posts, or if you do, they’re dismissed out of hand. Bush and his administration really are a kind of obsession with you. And you have been told before and elsewhere that your failure to read may turn into a dismissal of your views:
http://www.sftt.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.ph ... ight=#3290

From May 10 of this year:
“Snyder, welcome to our board. You paid your 30 bucks I presume, and we appreciate opposing views. However some of your arguments have been discussed here many times already. So don't think your new topics are the first time we have visited that debate. We are mostly Ex War vets, and present and ex service men and women. If you are here explicitly for a political purpose you won't enjoy debating here. We for the most part are here to look out for the troops, so continue on but be aware that the parameters change at an ongoing
pace.......”

And why would you dismiss opinions out of hand?
In your own words here’s your reaction to dissent:
“You want to kill messenger. Typical behavior among people who really aren't very bright.”

Now, you’ve claimed to have the utmost respect for armed services personnel, but you’ve been wont to make sweeping generalizations about them, haven’t you?
Again, your words: “I am afraid that what has come out about the Iraqi prisons has used up my surprise account when it comes to what the U.S. military might be doing these days.”

As to your implication that foul language is for the ignorant, how would you justify this ugly string of words (all yours): “Gosh, I am so sorry to hurt your poor tender feelings by asking why the f*** the United States Air Force didn't protect this country when it could have. Call me an asshole and indulge my idle curiosity, o.k.? After all, 3,000 people died and maybe half of them could have been saved, not to mention the economic losses. I deserved better, and so did my friend's best friend, who died and left a wife of 25 years and four children. This isn't a goddamn game. We deserve some goddamn answers, and let the chips fall where they may. You sure do a lot of chest beating on behalf of those who allowed their fellow Americans to be slaughtered like animals one day.”

And in another response: “Go f… yourself.”

You cannot be politically incorrect at times and then revert to not-so-subtle appeals for sympathy based on PCness when it suits you: “I'm disabled and spend too much time on the computer.”
I mean… You can, but it just won’t wash.

Finally, as to your reading more, I’ll add one thing: you may actually have to go back and do quite a bit of editing before you move on to infect the next forum.
Just in case someone decides to research your postings and find out more about you than you like.
Get some kind of life, after all you have nothing else to do.