Acts/ Dictates/ Mandates/ Mantle - Amy's Thread (Page 12 of 77)

How often we know not what we wrought or wreaked?

Posted a review - I'm starting to struggle to choose a favourite one, this last one I think just bumped the previous contender off the podium.  But it was like a 0.0001 milli-second kind of race finish! 

No it's no less personal than any of the others IMO.  Reason is you've brilliantly combined your frustration/difficulty/longing with your appreciation to be within an environment where you can drop your guard a little bit.  But then again, even when you can drop your guard, you can't because you dropped your guard a little bit, but you still had tabs on Collin, so you're still on duty even though you are where you are.

^^^^^^^^^ this nearly had me in tears - I don't know if I can explain it in words though.  To me, this means Collin made a connection (friend), and a deep emotional one at that (missed him), with someone outside of his immediate family.  And we see it for a moment, and then it's gone again (look, a squirrel).  But to me, it's not gone like in missing, only hidden, hidden so close but still so far.  And to me, in this piece you're trying to bring that emotion/connection to the surface again, but not for Eric or someone else, for you!

So no, it's not clinical.  You probably think it is because you're trying to keep a balance and not make it too raw/emotional.  You keep that balance (and I don't think it's something that's easy to do)

And yeap, it is a really great title!  NJC is good like that.  Makes everyone else looks bad though ....  *mumbles under breath*  :-)

I shall have well-travelled wine and think of thee... (glug)  Shan't waste a drop, ere the curse shall fall upon me!  (In Purgatory, it is said that all people are held upside down in a barrel filled with all the wasted spirits that they failed to consume during life.  If they drown in the barrel, then they can't go to heaven)

I shall not drown!

Despite being a female, one of my friends asked me to be the best 'man' at his wedding.  I got to do the toast and I must say, it was brilliant.  Instead of gushing about the couple, I compared him to the prince in a fairy tale, searching far and wide for the damsel of his dreams.  He fought his personal demons and triumphed, scaling the troubled waters as he waited for her to appear.  I was his loyal sidekick back then, councilling him that he would find her but only needed to be patient.  What I should have said (back then) was, "Chill out.  She's not legal yet."

(remembers the moment with a satisfied smile)  I brought down the house.

Janet,

I renamed and reposted the story under Aut-ku.  I've consolidated using your changes as a guide.  Nearly everything included.  THANKS!

Amy, have a look at the character who is speaking in data balloons.  I don't mean to make light of a serious matter, but what do you think of him?  (If you hadn't noticed, the authors specialize in going over the top often without ever going off the deep end.)

Moral development and development of techne are different, and don't always go together.  The National Socialists completely perverted their society's moral development, but pointed to both techne and the fine arts of their ancestors to prove how 'advanced' their culture was.  'Advanced' and 'civilized' aren't the same.

I suspect that lots of people in civilized societies are at the upper levels, at least most of the time.  But the people who can bring the advances about are rarer.  Techne is different.  You can get away from barbarianism in three generations if the surrounding pressures are right: if people are more likely to survive if they form a cooperating community and profit more from peaceful trade with other communities than from looting them.  It's rare but possible.  But developing techne--the useful arts and the knowledge that backs them--is the work of hundreds of generations, and can be lost if people stop doing it.  Do you know how many people's entire professional skillsets are needed to make a cellular telephone?  I sat down once and came up with twenty-odd, and I suspect the number is closer to a hundred.  And that didn't count the petroleum drillers and their geologists, or the people who make the drilling equipment, the people who make the chip-manufacture equipment, the people who mine copper and refine it ... you get the idea.

I see children being taught to invent their own ways to add under Common Core, with the tried-and-true method derided as 'the granny method', and I see a generation of children taught that they can, on their own, replace the work of five hundred years (since arabic numerals became common).  I compare this with Captain Kangeroo and the respect taught for 'Grandfather Clock', and I see teachers teaching a civilization to cast itself adrift and drown.

Such children will not have the skills needed to make the very computers on which they are being taught to depend.

*blushes and drills big toe into sand*

I love make-up words as much as I love road-trips!  (that's lots BTW)    And it was only a pleasure - your Collin stories are only a pleasure to read!

Not mine, no!  I'm just a fan.  But the Foglios have covered so much in their story that you are sure to find something.  Candied fish, for instance.  Lab Full of Exploding Things #5.  The Island of the Monkey Girls.  An aperatif made from hedgehogs and toothpaste,  a green-haired warrior princess who proclaims herself `Daughter of Chump` and, of course, the Mad Social Scientist.

By the way, if you read that second sequence, you might have noticed the Spark named van Reijn.  His approximate dates would have matched a famous van Reijn from our version of history.

Erndog,

If I were in charge of that school, the kids teasing Alex would have gotten the same punishment he did.  They attacked a classmate's weakness, not once, but continually.  That is the sort of barbaric behavior that needs to be civilized out of us.

A fight between two more or less equal kids is tolerable.  A kid fighting back against a bully is noble (and our educational establishment is determined to punish it because they want a monopoly on 'treating' the bully).  But an attack against a specific weakness is only legitimate in war.

Our schools protect the aggressor and punish the defender, teaching kids that they need Authority for protection.

Oh, my four year-old peed in the potty yesterday.  We dropped everything and took him swimming at the local state lodge pool.  Halle-fricking-lujah! 

One less thing on the plate!

A