Incidentally there is a marker often used to identify jokes - funniness. Humor that lacks this can be very hard to spot.
Gee, really? Never knew that. Thanks for the enlightenment.
Of course I want to get the last word! That's only human. Who doesn't? I felt I've listened to other viewpoints a lot--but isn't it possible to listen and go through the same thought processes and come to a different conclusion than yours? People with the more radical philiosophies are responsible for winning people over, not the more mainstream ones, I always thought.
And now I have to go to work and won't be able to defend myself for 12 hours or so. Please bear that in mind.
FWIW, I join Angus in affirming that I want to see you here, Caroma!
Callahan's Crazy Crosstime Salloon
bouncing. With irrelevant (yes, I mean that) glee. Fay reads Spider!
Of course I want to get the last word! That's only human. Who doesn't?
Huh! This is something that never occurred to me as a goal of Buffista discussion. I like the way discussions ramble on and go off tangentially and so forth on this board - you end up learning lots of neat stuff (like about refridgerator compressors!) and about people's neat opinions, even if you disagree with them. I don't see even the political discussions here as people trying to convert others to their points of view, but rather to express their own points of view, in a valid, thoughtful, or occasionally blowing-off-steam kind of way. It's not like we're in a court of law and there's a jury to impress. We're more, um, intellectual, or pondery, or kinda shooting ideas around, maybe? Among friends. As I see it.
Nothin' and that's all that Jossy left me...
I like getting the last word and having all bow to my superior wisdom, but I also like having my assumptions challenged. If I pop up and say "Howard Dean is the next Democratic nominee!" knowing next-to-nothing about him, and somebody responds "Hah. Have you seen the recent polls?", I may regret being wrong, but I'm glad of the information.
Losing individual points is part of what makes debate interesting for me. One of the things I like about Buffistas is that not only do they call me on my factual errors, but I can learn something from watching them argue.
I was arguing with a brother-in-law last weekend, and I was slowly going nuts, because he couldn't back up his reasoning or his facts. He could repeat slogans, but when you shot down a slogan, he simply moved to another one.
He couldn't defend any of his individual points. We were arguing about admitting women to Augusta National, I adduced the recent integration of the club, and he said "Racial discrimination is different from gender discrimination." I said "Oh? I didn't wake up one morning and say "Gosh, I think I'll be female"." And he changed the subject. He was prepared to lay down pronouncements, but he wasn't prepared to discuss them.
That's not what I want from an argument. "A is B". "No, A is C". "No, D is E" is boring. Contrast "A is B". "Actually, A is C and here's the proof." "Hmm, in that case, you can't treat A and B and C differently because they all share this characteristic." That's stimulating.
Julie ... yeah, I'm just getting the B&A eps on free-to-air TV, so I'm only up to where they are and I haven't seen any Firefly. I'm content to wait. :)
Fiona ... I only remember the BBC TV adaption of
Day of the Triffids
because it was so damn good and the novel is one of my all-time favourites.
Aussie Buffistas Note:
New Buffy and Angel again next week! It appears I may have been right when I said they took a break to bring us all in line. :)
Channel Seven was really evil this week...not only no new Buffy or Angel, but no new 24 either!
...no new 24 either!
Hey, that's right but it wasn't just 7, there was no new CSI on 9 and a couple of other shows were repeats instead of new eps. Hmmm. I wonder what the real reason was for the pre-emptions.
