Eccentric Flower talk:201005/Orthography
From Eccentric Flower
Comments on Eccentric Flower:201005/Orthography
Joy:
Hmm. It is pretty easy for me to imagine that the capitalization or not of one's name is an identity issue. I don't know if that is because when I hear/think of a name I see it spelled out, sometimes in specific fonts, in my head. So danah boyd is just very very different than Danah Boyd, and while it feels a bit indulgent to insist on the unconventional form (and it is an insistance I associate mainly with artists of various sorts) I'm inclined to give it a pass.
-- 18:21, 25 May 2010 (BST)
I largely agree with you about the capitalization issue and what you take away from it (that is, before you go all squishy in the end). I also agree with you about identity and respect, and I think I can amplify (or at least add the way I'm looking at it).
Of course it would be revolting to refer to Ysabel/Deborah by her prior name or gender. But she made a Serious Commitment to her identity. Nobody, I would hope, goes through SRS to self-promote or to dance the Special, Special Snowflake Dance. Ysabel/Deborah's commitment to her identity demands respect.
At a lesser level, but still requiring respect, is the name change. One's name, I believe, is very much connected to one's identity. So if you have gone through the hassle of changing your name, even something "pedestrian" like from "Steven" to "Joseph," I'll respect that. (Guilty admission: In the 70s there was a pitcher named Harry Rasmussen, who in the middle of his career, changed his name to Eric to honor his Nordic forebearers. My middle school friends and I inevitably referred to him as "Eric the Hat," a reference to Harry "the Hat" Walker. I plead being a 13-year-old boy.)
Indeed, I made clear to my wife that I felt I had no input on whether she took my name or not (though I urged against hyphenation, since nothing hyphenates well with my last name). What she calls herself is so wrapped up in who she is, I could never presume to even suggest what she should do. (She ultimately went with Clare Herlastname Mylastname, no hyphen.)
But lowercasing your initial caps? That involves zero effort, zero commitment. Plus IT'S BEEN DONE. I think E.E. Cummings was a yutz for doing it, and he did it first. It took me years to get past his little stunt to appreciate his writing. The l/c shtick was an artificial barrier he put up to experiencing his poetry.
Danah Boyd, whoever the hell she is, is even worse. She can't even come up with an original stupid shtick. That's all I need to know about her to reject everything about her out of hand. That's where your efforts and self-promotion have led you, Missy.
Now, who am I to make these judgments? I'm a human being with a brain and the powers of discernment. I have no idea why or when the idea of "judging" others became politically unacceptable. By failing to make judgments about others' behaviors, one abdicates a part of one's humanity.
Ysabel is courageous. Columbina is a terrific writer. Danah Boyd is a douchebag. The jury's still out on Obama. I live to judge. C'mon, give me something else to judge; the day is still young.
-- 18:37, 25 May 2010 (BST)
I'm glad that you didn't take my comment yesterday as a personal attack. It wasn't meant to be one, but I was in a terrible mood and after I posted it I realized it sounded more harsh than I'd intended.
My frustration with you has always been that I KNOW you have it in you to be a successful, famous writer. I mean, there's no ambiguity there, you have the talent. But your extreme reluctance to promote yourself holds you back, over and over again. You are squandering a big pile of talent, hiding your light under the proverbial bushel, and that shit's gotta stop.
I can understand that Mouth Organ became a chore, believe me. But the thing is, when you have an audience like that, when something is really gathering steam, you find some way to make it work. You bring in other writers, or you find some way to hack out an occasional half-assed post (Silly lists are very good for that, as are collections of weird photos you find online) you do whatever you must to keep that sucker going as long as you're still getting the hits. Then you can use the buzz from that site to promote yourself as a writer. I'm not a big Cory Doctorow fan either, but the guy knows what he's doing when it comes to self-promotion.
-- 19:00, 25 May 2010 (BST)
"You are squandering a big pile of talent, hiding your light under the proverbial bushel, and that shit's gotta stop."
I disagree. We are all enjoying Columbine's writing -- why does something have to be promoted to a million people (many of whom will ignore it) in order to not be considered squandering? It's not like all this writing is under a bed or something -- most of it is public, and even the locked stuff gets an audience of readers who are interested.
Furthermore, the time C. would have to take to successfully promote the writing would seriously take away from writing time, and might lead to more frustration and less inclination to write.
I get really annoyed when people tell me I am wasting my talent on this kind of writing and in this kind of way when really I should be doing blah blah blah. That's practically anti-encouragement ... for me, I cannot speak for other people.
Besides, "successful writer" is increasingly harder to achieve these days, at least from a financial point of view. Might be better to write what you like and find a group who will enjoy it, than to struggle and, er, squander all your writing time to try to beat the odds and land a big audience/book contract/newspaper gig/whatever.
-- 19:19, 25 May 2010 (BST)
Jette--Those could be valid points if Columbine hadn't stated, over and over again, the dream of having a large fan base. How many posts here are about how Writer X has a lot of fans, while Columbine has too few to be satisfying?
-- 19:41, 25 May 2010 (BST)
Jette, what Patrick said. And I would add to that that Columbina has also said many times that she (I refuse to demean her with masculine pronouns) has basically stopped writing, determined as she is that her work will never find an audience. If that's not squandering talent, I don't know what is!
-- 20:43, 25 May 2010 (BST)
It seems to be my turn to hit a line in the entry and jump straight to the comment box before reading the rest, because you just hit one of my biggest pet peeves, something I can't believe still needs to be corrected over and over and over again. Edward Estlin Cummings did not spell his name using lowercase letters. This is a complete, total, utterly unfounded myth. He consistently wrote it as "E.E. Cummings."
What did happen is that the cover designer for one of his books set all of the text in lowercase, including his name. Somehow that snowballed in the public perception to the big myth that he approved of / preferred / legally changed his name to "e.e. cummings."
Arrrrgh.
-- 21:33, 25 May 2010 (BST)
As for the question of whether the personal preferences of Bell Hooks, K.D. Lang, Danah Boyd or anyone else ought to override the grammatical rule that we capitalize proper nouns in English, I tend toward the negative in principle, though I suppose I'm more conciliatory in practice. I don't really see this as an identity issue; more of a cheap stunt that's in conflict with English As She Is Written.
(It gets trickier in the case of, say, Ebay/EBay/eBay, but I shall resist the tangent.)
-- 21:41, 25 May 2010 (BST)
Iain:
I'd far rather be using my mother's family name myself
...So why don't you? Ain't nothing stopping you.
-- 21:47, 25 May 2010 (BST)
@ProfRobert: Just so we're clear, I base my claim of identity over just pretentiousness largely on the fact that Ms. boyd has, in fact, gone through the considerable legal hassle involved in legally changing her name to include the lower case letters.
(Not sure if you'll even see this -- since I don't get notifications I have no idea if anyone else does -- but I thought I should say it.)
-- 22:05, 25 May 2010 (BST)
Ursula, I get where you're coming from when you say you refuse to demean Columbina by using masculine pronouns; really, I do. But I refer to him with masculine pronouns all the time, as do many of his friends, and I would appreciate you not telling us that we are "demeaning" him by doing so.
If he would prefer to be referred to by feminine pronouns in real life and/or online -- and this is something he and I have discussed -- I am perfectly happy to do so. But until Col makes such a declaration, I'd prefer not to be told off for doing something my husband apparently does not consider "demeaning."
-- 22:47, 25 May 2010 (BST)
"Buried amid all that screeding, like diamonds in a dungheap, are words which are rather good and rather striking and sometimes even approaching beauty. I chronically turn out good prose; it's just that I tend to embed the good bits in a great deal of dross."
Did you ever see the Doonesbury strip about Valley Girl speak? Doonesbury says:
"The moon, like a flower In heaven’s high bower, With silent delight Sits and smiles on the night."
Valley Girl says "Oh, wow, look at the moon."
It isn't so much what you say that I find appealing, it's how you say it. Even your rants have an elegance and sophistication that makes me wade through stuff about which I know nothing (actually, quite a bit, such as MMORPGs) just to hear how you and your friends will address the topic. I also find it refreshing that no one hesitates to take you to task if they disagree on some point or opinion. And you don't turn around and frag them for not "getting" what you're trying to express.
So much of, say, LJ content consists of journalists holding forth, after which their cadre of sycophants pipe up with unanimous agreement and/or sympathy. Here, you have lively discussions with intelligent, literate friends and acquaintances, and it doesn't really matter what the topic is.
I don't *do* Twitter, so I'm guessing I miss most of your positive content. But even your red-eyed, rage-driven rants are... oh, I hope you don't take this wrong... entertaining, being so well-thought-out and creatively phrased. Sure, I wish more people read your journal, if only because I'm afraid you'll get disgusted and stop writing it. But would you really be happy with the caliber of followers who generally comment on more mainstream journals? Sometimes it's downright painful, the lack of basic grammar and syntax you hear from the great unwashed. It would be nice to have more readers, but there's also a lot to be said for quality.
-- 23:36, 25 May 2010 (BST)
Also, I second Iain's previous comment about perpetual cookies that aren't. I'm having such a hard time training myself to make sure I'm logged in before I compose a comment. I haven't a clue what logs me out. Sigh. I'll get used to it.
-- 23:46, 25 May 2010 (BST)
I'm sorry Nonelvis, no criticism intended of anybody. It seemed like Columbina went by feminine pronouns for a long time, and to this day it's still a bit jarring to me when people refer to him as a he. My comment there was a jokey little dig at guys (in the sense that being referred to as a he is a less wonderful thing than being referred to as a she) and I really wasn't trying to stir up any pronoun issues. If Columbina goes by he now, then a he he shall be to me.
-- 00:00, 26 May 2010 (BST)
@Ursula: as someone who is insanely careful about such things (for obvious reasons, I hope) I can't always tell what pronoun I should use for dear Columbina.
-- 00:56, 26 May 2010 (BST)
@ProfRobert: Also, I didn't say "who are you to judge?" Of course you're welcome to have opinions, and I'd be an idiot to suggest otherwise.
What I said was, "Who are you to decide whose self-identity is allowed and whose is not?" Because that is a very personal issue. I assert that, even if you agree with my self-identity, it's still not yours to decide.
You can even decide I'm a douchebag (or courageous, or whatever) because of my self-identity. That's totally reasonable. What isn't is you telling me that my self-identity is not mine to choose (whether you are affirming or denying it).
And my assertion, given that Ms. boyd has, in fact, gone to some legal trouble to have a name that worked for her, is that that's the line our hostess was crossing.
Which led to a neat conversation about why, which led to this entry...
-- 01:06, 26 May 2010 (BST)
Ursula and Ysabel, I'm sure it doesn't bother Col to be referred to by female pronouns, though I leave it to him to be the final arbiter here.
-- 01:12, 26 May 2010 (BST)
Shmuel: That's interesting stuff about E.E. Cummings. I feel better for knowing the man did not resort to the cheap trick here.
Ysabel, Ursula, and others: [clears throat]
While it is true that I would, in a perfect world, like to be addressed by a feminine pronoun, I can't in good faith sustain that when I am walking around as a hairy, malodorous, completely-obviously-a-boy 6'4" male. Demanding that people who routinely encounter me in the flesh call me "she" would be just as ridiculous as trying to change to a female given name. I'd hate to promote cognitive dissonance.
In the virtual world, it depends on the circumstance. If I'm in a place where I am keeping up a female appearance and persona, then it is appropriate to use the female pronoun. Mel has been calling me 'she' in the game world for long enough now that I think it's ingrained - which, in that world, is exactly the way I like it. (I have NEVER been a male entity in any online environments, not since the archaic days of text MUCKing.)
Here in this space? Call me anything you like. If you're here, and reading this, you already know that I'm biologically male and internally identify as female. If you didn't already know that, you know now. Pronouns are, frankly, the least of my worries. Do whatever works for you.
-- 01:18, 26 May 2010 (BST)
Shmuel: This is one of the reasons I come to this site: I learn new things all the time. Thanks.
Ysabel: The Boyd/boyd legal change is something I didn't know about either, but I'm still going to put her on opposite side of the line from you since it still smacks of doing something to garner attention in an unoriginal way. If she were danah boyd, Avon salesperson, I'd be inclined to cut her slack; but danah boyd, Expert Social Commentator -- naaaah.
I also think I came out pretty strongly in my post about how important I think it is for each person to choose his/her/hir identity, and that naming is central to that. But you've helped me refine my thinking to be able better to state the distinction I'm tryting to draw. I doubt you made the changes to made to have the identity you believe in for profit or self-promotion. I suspect Boyd/boyd did otherwise. I'm almost certain Prince/squiggly dagger thingy did it for that reason. Unlike C, I have no problem with self-promotion or advertising -- I'm eager to promote my legal practice, for example. What I don't like is, "Look at me, I'm too, too special to use initial caps on my name like everyone else," or, "I'm too, too special to even have a name, so here's a squiggle."
Finally, I was responding to C's distillation of what he understood you to be saying, not what you did, in fact, say, which I didn't know until you said so above. But I stand by my statement that an essential element of my humanity is my ability and right to judge each and every person, thing, choice, whatever that comes to my perception. Now, I can't *impose* those judgments, except where they directly affect me (and, sadly, not even always then). But my right to think, judge and decide for myself is absolute (as it is for everyone else, too, of course).
-- 01:54, 26 May 2010 (BST)
Actually, I believe it is pretty generally understood at this time that Prince changed his name as a gigantic fuck-you to his record company (see his quote at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_%28musician%29#Stage_names). As soon as he managed to get out of his contract with Warner Bros. he changed it back.
-- 02:12, 26 May 2010 (BST)
Joy:
And then guppy named her dog Symbol (The Beagle Formerly Known as Prince), after the squiggly.
ProfRobert, I love you and your judgey ways. I get so fucking irritated at the pervasiveness on the internet of "this is just my opinion and I have a right to my opinion" and "this is just how it works in my family, I'm not judging the way you do it in yours" because lots of times my opinion is different and I judge yours as wrong, and lots of times I will totally judge someone for doing something that I think is fucked up. (Not out loud, mostly. I'm not that obnoxious. But I definitely feel free to judge.)
-- 02:34, 26 May 2010 (BST)
@ProfRobert: The problem I have with judgements and self-identity is that many, many, many people feel that not only are they obligated to judge (for example) my self-identity, but they feel it appropriate to impose their judgements by force, up to and including lethal force. I haven't personally experienced the lethal variety, luckily, but that doesn't mean I haven't felt that threat.
So I'm a little touchy when it comes to who gets to decide whether my self-identity is allowed or not, and in order not to be a raging hypocrite, I am thus also a little touchy when it seems people are adjucating other people's self-identity, rather than just holding their own opinions.
That said, as far as I can see what you're saying is not that you don't feel that Ms. boyd's self-identity is appropriate, but that she is lying about her self-identity. That makes me feel sort of icky, but does seem like it's still outside the line of what I'm talking about.
-- 02:53, 26 May 2010 (BST)
@Ysabel: Self identity. One of the people I follow on LiveJournal laments the fact that nobody ever says her real name right, and thus, she was being denied her self, her identity. It wasn't until a few months ago that enough people smacked her upside the head enough times that it sank in---we Murkins just don't have the vowels to "correctly" pronounce her name (to her liking). Yeah, we poor provincial Murkins are denying her her identity because we can't perceive a slight shift in tonal quality in her name (middle syllable is somewhere between "air" and "are" and darned if I can find it).
I think what made me angry about the whole issue is that she felt that we Murkins (and yes, she's a Murkin too) were "deliberately" mispronouncing her name and thus, damaging her self-identity. No, we just can't say that syllable.
So I think my question to you is: how important *is* your name to your identity? What's in a name anyway? (And for the record, I've had my name mangled horribly many a time; annoying sure, but not earth destroying) (Also, what about cultures that shy away from using "real names"? Where who you are depends on who you are talking to? And sometimes they get to pick the name?)
-- 04:51, 26 May 2010 (BST)
My given name is Korean, and the only people who ever pronounce it "right" are native speakers of Korean. I don't think I've ever corrected anyone; it doesn't bother me in the slightest. I suppose it bothers me a little when people I've known for years still misspell my name. But only a little. Again, I rarely feel moved to correct anyone, unless it's on a legal form or something.
So, extrapolating from one data point, I feel pretty safe in guessing that to whatever extent danah boyd's identity is tied up in the way she capitalizes her name, it isn't the same kind of an issue as gender identity, or sexual identity, or ethnic identity, or whatever. Identity isn't a boolean function, you know?
(Well, except in math.)
-- 05:11, 26 May 2010 (BST)
Mel:
Mel has been calling me 'she' in the game world for long enough now that I think it's ingrained - which, in that world, is exactly the way I like it.
On TUS, where I first met Col, everybody said "he" so I did too. I knew that there were gender issues involved early on, but he wasn't going around correcting anybody, to my knowledge, so that's how I've always thought of him. (Man, the pronouns keep tripping me up even here. Damn pronouns.)
A few years later, when I started playing Guild Wars with him, Col told me that most of the people we were going to be playing with didn't know his actual gender and that he would prefer to keep it that way. (But he also said that if I slipped, he wasn't going to be upset about it.) I remember being very, very careful about it in the beginning. I only remember slipping up badly one time, and whoever I was talking to either didn't notice or didn't say anything about it, anyway. It has sort of become second nature now, but the way I learned to do it that way was by doing a little bit of mental gymnastics: I think of it as being the character in the game I'm talking about rather than Col himself. Col is a boy (in my head) but the characters are girls. It's a little weird but it works.
-- 07:16, 26 May 2010 (BST)
@Spc476: Speaking only for myself, if someone is making a point of not using my name, or deliberately misusing my name, then I take that as being very different than anything that can possibly be interpreted as accidental.
Columbina was making a deliberate point about misusing Ms. boyd's name, and in fact pointing out that she was taking glee in someone else doing so.
If people are making an effort and just failing? To me, that's still honoring my self-identity.
And obviously my feeling that using my name in my preferred way is at least acceptance of my self-identity is based on my own culture, and if I lived in a culture where names were treated very differently, I might feel differently. Should I meet someone from such a culture and be unable to determine how to make it clear to them that I was honoring their own self-identity, I would ask, because that sort of thing is important to me. It's not about "use people's names correctly," it's about "for many people names are, in fact, a part of their self-identity, and respecting other people's self-identity through whatever means they value is an appropriate thing to do."
@Peebles: I didn't say Ms. boyd's capitalization was about her gender identity or her sexual identity or her ethnic identity. Just that it is important enough to her self-identity to have jumped through some fairly obnoxious legal hoops to have it right legally, and that deliberately disrespecting that choice is, IMHO, a fairly profound insult.
To me, denying someone's self-identity deliberately is saying, "You do not have the right to exist unless you do it on my terms." My own personal experience has something to do with that, I'm sure.
-- 14:53, 26 May 2010 (BST)
I think I wasn't being clear. I'd agree that it's insulting to deliberately misspell someone's name. I just don't think it's that profound of an insult.
Last year some time, there was a state legislator from Texas who suggested that Asian Americans with "difficult names" adopt easier-to-pronounce "American names". I found this idea incredibly insulting, because despite my funny name I identify as an American. I was raised here, I'm a citizen, English is my primary language, I lived through middle school in the fucking eighties -- culturally, legally, I am every inch an American, and the idea that my name isn't sufficiently American is really offensive to me. This issue -- that because I'm an immigrant and that I use a Korean name, I'm not "really" an American -- is something that's been a constant irritation in my life since I was three. So, believe me, I get what you mean when you talk about the importance of personal autonomy in defining the parameters of your self-identity.
That being said, and even considering how important I consider my name to be in the construction of my self-identity, the way it's spelled and the exact way it's pronounced is... well, it's just not that important to me. So if it is really important to danah boyd, then I have two questions. First, why is it so important to her? I read her webpage, and it seems like her choice not to capitalize is largely an aesthetic and political choice, not an issue of identity. Second, if we go ahead and accept that danah boyd's identity is profoundly tied up in the capitalization of her name, and she gets as upset as you do when people get your gender wrong, is she being reasonable? Calling something self-identity doesn't make it a panacea -- as in Spc476's example, you can be all kinds of offended about something because you believe it violates your self-identity, and it can be the case that you're being unreasonable.
There is a huge difference in kind between self-identity constructed along the lines of gender identity, sexual identity, ethnic identity, etc., and what you're suggesting is going on in danah boyd's case. In the former, there are large communities of people with common experiences that give us an empirical handle for examining the way one constructs one's identity. In the latter, it kind of seems like danah's made up some rules for herself. I have also made up some rules about how my non-romanizable name gets spelled in English. To whatever extent it annoys me when my (legal! went through court and everything!) name gets mangled in print, if I were to interpret that as "you do not have the right to exist", everybody would be totally within their rights to call me a big unreasonable asshat.
-- 15:39, 26 May 2010 (BST)
That was a lot of stuff about me. Here's the Cliff notes version.
When we talk about identity politics, what we're really talking about is identification with a community. When you say you're gay, you're saying you share some set of common experiences and issues with tens of thousands of other people who are also gay. When you say you're American, similarly, you align yourself with another, orthogonal set of parameters. To me, it seems like talking about an identity of one is nonsensical.
Which is not to say that anyone is right to deliberately misspell danah boyd's name. Just that we shouldn't talk about in terms of identity politics.
-- 15:50, 26 May 2010 (BST)
It is difficult to tell someone they are an asshat when they are genuinely telling you that you do not have the right to exist except on their terms, and that they're willing to back that up with force.
I'm not saying that that's what was going on here.
I'm saying that's what deliberately denying someone's claim to self-identity, no matter how odd it is, conjures for me.
-- 20:34, 26 May 2010 (BST)
Ysabel: I think we actually are about 99% in agreement, and it's the 1% that we're apart that is causing all the verbiage (as it does in all the best internet rants!).
I realize that, sadly, there are people who would literally deny you your right to exist on other than their terms, and indeed would seek to kill you for violating those terms. That is sick, and I judge those people to be Evil.
But that denial of objective existence (such as by murder) is not what I'm talking about when I say I have the right to judge everything that comes into my perception. When I say I don't respect Boyd's/boyd's capitalization choice and, on that sole basis, reject everything she has to say about anything, I'm not saying she deserves to die or be injured or even harmed in the most minor of ways. I'm simply dismissing her from my life. Her right to exist and do whatever she wants about the first letters of her names is not impinged upon by my ignoring her. She does not have the right to my attention or to my respect. Now, you may judge me an asshat for that position, and I would "defend to the death" your right to make such a judgment.
Let's take a more immediate example. Suppose I said, "Dear God, you cut off WHAT??? You are a big freak, and I want nothing to do with you." Well, I have that right. I'm entitled to choose with whom I associate for good reasons, bad reasons or no reasons at all. Now, in that circumstance, you absolutely would be right to think I was an asshat, and indeed, that your life would be substantially better off without me in it. But again, that's your right to judge and to act on your judgments as they pertain to you.
Finally, there are rare occasions where my judgments actually do entitle me to use force and even deadly force. If I am reasonably afraid that someone will do me or someone else serious bodily harm or worse, and there is no way to retreat (or if I am in my home), then the law authorizes me to use deadly force. To protect property or to protect people from injury less than serious bodily harm, I'm entitled to use non-deadly force. But that's it. I can make any judgment I want, but my ability to use force to impose that judgment is constrained to the examples above. Everything else, my only remedy is to avoid (if I can) the subject of a negative judgment.
-- 02:07, 27 May 2010 (BST)
@Peebles: But I'm guessing that said Texan politician would be okay with picking an easier-to-pronounce Chinese name in the hypothetical in case she found herself living in China.
Be thankful you don't have N!xau's name (Namibian actor: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0618452/ ).
-- 04:15, 27 May 2010 (BST)
Quoted for truth.
@Spc476 immediately above: is this tongue-in-cheek? My Internet Irony Meter can't get a reading here.
I'm going to throw a half-assed briquette on the fire and mention that I have maintained several online identities in the past, and the capitalization of those names has been fairly intrinsic to my sense of them. Inconveniently enough, danima is a lowercase one: it was a pun made by a friend on Jung's anima -- and thinking of that identity as a personal characteristic and not a proper name, is a (sometimes insufficient) tonic for me against some of my bad internet habits. I don't remember whether I just automatically capitalized, yielded to the peer pressure of everyone else at this then-new Salon de Columbine having gone with capitalized identities, or if C "fixed" it for me -- in the end, being hung up on whether it's being displayed "correctly" or not would be me totally missing my own point of not capitalizing it in the first place.
tl;dr: on the internet, identity campitalization (heck, I'm going to leave that typo the way it is) can be a major personal and cultural signifier. Don't believe me? Go ask my old acquaintance GrEgG.
-- 23:53, 27 May 2010 (BST)
It's "ha-ha only half serious". I have a friend who's name is "Bengt" but unless your Swedish, there's almost no way of pronouncing it correctly, so he went by the name of "Ben" here in the States.
I also find it amusing to see my userid being typed as "Spc476" as I'm used to it being "spc476" (but it doesn't bother me at all). There's almost no semantic difference between upper and lower case letters (in speaking languages; in computer languages it may) and about the only exception I can think of is "polish" and "Polish" ("Polish the Polish polish" anyone?)
-- 21:28, 28 May 2010 (BST)
I asked the Polish/polish riddle elsewhere a couple of weeks back and Dan Lyke trivially came up with about five more examples, so ask him about that.
The capitalization of usernames here is a MediaWiki quirk which I'm not sure I'm happy about, but apparently if you make it case-sensitive you have to rewrite half the login and edit-tagging code - there's a lot of internals which depend on not caring whether one signs in as Columbina or columbina.
-- 03:35, 29 May 2010 (BST)
DanLyke:
I was trying to compose this for yesterday's entry, but the mass of responses was daunting, so I'll say it here and not worry about whether I'm duplicating other people's comments.
A few years ago it occurred to me that I got angry or pissed off when my mental model of how the world should work was at odds with how it actually worked. That I don't mind struggles to change things, but when what I'm doing doesn't have the desired effect it's because what I think *should* be happening isn't.
The overall impact of this was that while I realized that it was well and good to have ethical standards and all, too often those ethics were imposing the very sorts of "should" that caused me grief.
That's how I went from being a fundamentalist Rand quoting Objectivist to embracing the notion that the threat of violence is necessary to a well functioning society, and maybe it was okay to vote Democrat, because I wouldn't live long enough to see Galt's Gulch. Yeah, it'd be great if we all lived in our hippy-dippy commune and were rewarded for our ability to build cool stuff that made our neighbors' lives better, but that's not reality.
So you can either struggle against the tide in the name of principle, or you can acknowledge that the world ain't really like that and get on with the process of living.
Doesn't mean you have to hype yourself into the "social media expert" bullshitosphere, just that you acknowledge that that's what the culture rewards, and if you choose to not play that game you're consciously giving up the rewards that it could bring you.
Because, as anyone who's looked into India a little bit can tell you, the only way you get noticed for being "moral" is to be a religious fundamentalist wanting to impose a monoculture, and molding your wide-eyed followers into a force that's willing to sacrifice their lives for your goals.
-- 18:19, 25 May 2010 (BST)