Re: a comment on Romans 8:28 by amanda_dcosta	30-Dec-05/9:28 AM
What I kind of enjoyed was saying "unintelligent (or God-oriented)". Hint: I'm not equating the two! Bonus hint: The conversation just worked out that way! Honest injun!
Re: Crowded by INTRANSIT	30-Dec-05/7:32 AM
Cool. Even with the forced line-ends. The second-to-last line needs punctuating.
Re: My Interesting Life by Dovina	30-Dec-05/7:28 AM
Oh, and this is your most poetic poem to date. That's a compliment, meaning it doesn't look like it was written by a malfunctioning word-generator.
Re: My Interesting Life by Dovina	30-Dec-05/7:27 AM
Be a real nonconformist: tell victimhood to blow off.
Re: a comment on Romans 8:28 by amanda_dcosta	30-Dec-05/7:26 AM
I disagree with AlChemy. But I also disagree that "Logic states that God is love, love is blind, therefore God is blind." The rest of your comment is perfectly good. Why bring logic into it at all? Because the faithful see something like a tsunami and say "How can I force this horrible thing to fit with my idea of a loving God?" The reasonable say "How should I change my idea about tsunamis to fit with this thing?" Does that make us better off? Well, if it's any consolation, you get to go to heaven.
Re: Memoirs of a miners son by Caducus	30-Dec-05/7:19 AM
You've admitted to being sloppy about grammar, so I'll do it for you: Memoirs of a miner's son Anvil-eyed, my Father glanced at me. "Dress me well for Karen", he said. He drew his breaths like a hero's sword As I brushed his hair with still hands. This man would leave for work golden And return a shadow who left my lips black, reading me Whitman as I slept and living poetry each day I woke. My Father was Sicilian; The miners called him Brando, My Mother called him Darling, And I just called for him. And he'd always return to me With something carved from coal. He had no last words for me, Just a smile and a squeeze of my hand, And then he was twenty three again In a Daimler with Karen, Driving to Loch Lomond With forty two shillings, Two smiles and two rings, And her Father's wrath. Good. All-around good.
Re: Bleeding by Hadasl	30-Dec-05/7:16 AM
yearning => to yearn
Re: Virgin by MacFrantic	30-Dec-05/7:13 AM
It's a lot like being a virgin, except that you get to have sex.
Re: lip balm by FreeFormFixation	30-Dec-05/7:12 AM
A strawberry bounces like a blueberry? That seems kind of sloppy. "bad to wear by monkeys" needs rephrasing. Otherwise, good.
Re: order of events by skaskowski	30-Dec-05/7:11 AM
Are you Amelie Poulain?
Re: a cordial greeting by calliope	30-Dec-05/7:10 AM
You seem to need about 6 more lines between "hello" and "your poison". And a different last line. Other than that, I like it. Especially the rhyme and half-rhyme.
Re: a comment on philosophy of a new age by crazyknight	30-Dec-05/6:57 AM
Not technically. An oxymoron is just a literary device for shock value. The best-known oxymorons are Shakespeare's in Romeo and Juliet: feather of lead, beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical, dove-feather'd raven, wolvish-ravening lamb, damned saint, honourable villain, and so on. These are either not strictly opposites (ie, tyrant doesn't mean 'one who is not beautiful') or they're impossible (ie, a saint cannot really be damned). That's pretty much it: oxymorons CANNOT be technically true and oxymorons at the same time. I'd dare you to find an example of an oxymoron which is.
Re: a comment on It's Time by PoeticXTC	30-Dec-05/6:39 AM
Um, no.
Re: a comment on Romans 8:28 by amanda_dcosta	30-Dec-05/6:25 AM
What bothers me more about this conversation is that Dovina's basically saying The proof of God is that things are reasonable. That is, if you count one plum and one plum, you always end up with two plums and not, say, five plums or an infinite number of goldfish. If you did get five plums or infinite goldfish, Dovina would likely say that's proof of God. MORAL: God exists because things are logical. God exists if things are illogical. I think this is because Dovina doesn't have a very good idea about math, language, God, logic or plums. But that's just me. Amanda, I'm trying. Really I am.
Re: a comment on Romans 8:28 by amanda_dcosta	30-Dec-05/6:14 AM
* = http://examinedlifejournal.com/thinkaboutit/template.php?number=13
Re: a comment on Romans 8:28 by amanda_dcosta	30-Dec-05/6:12 AM
To answer Dovina's earlier question: Imagine a universe without intelligent beings. Now suppose that in this universe there's a plum O - And another plum O Of course, they're not called 'plums', since there's no one there to call them anything. But I think we can agree that for all practical purposes the plums are there and pretty much the same as they are here.* Are you with me? In English, you'd say, 'There are two plums'. 'Two' is only a description of plums, specifically a description of quantity. We could just as easily say 'There are purple plums' or 'There are round plums'. In a universe with no intelligent beings, the descriptions 'two', 'purple' and 'round' wouldn't exist, of course - no language would. But the nature of the plums, the quantity, color, and shape, wouldn't be any different there. You see? You can also just as easily (and correctly) say 'One plum and one plum means there are two plums', or 'One plum PLUS one plum means two plums'. That's still just description, right? Mathematicians abbreviate those sentence into '1 + 1 = 2'. They all mean the same thing. They're all only language. I can even do more complicated descriptions. Suppose in our hypothetical universe I have three valleys, each of which have three plums - or, \ O O O /\ O O O /\ O O O / In English, I can say 'There are nine plums', or 'Three valleys with three plums in each of them means there are nine plums altogether', or 'Three groups of three plums means nine plums', or '3 x 3 = 9'. All of those statements are essentially equivalent. They're just our language for describing plums. They don't change the nature of the plums. WHAT I THINK YOU'RE SAYING: One characteristic of intelligent beings that wouldn't exist in an unintelligent (or God-oriented) universe is our tendency to arbitrarily group discrete, unique objects, to say 'There are two PLUMS' instead of, say, 'There is one round purplish thing and one not-so-round reddish-yellow thing'. You'd think that in, um, Heaven, one could only say 'One round purplish thing and one not-round red-yellow thing means only one round purplish thing and one not-round red-yellow thing.' Everything's unique individualness in the eyes of God means no two things can be grouped into 'plums', ergo no numbers and maths. Bollocks, I say. I can do math descriptions at any level. For instance, 'How many things with color are there? Two.' Or, 'How many different shapes are there? Two.' Or simply, 'How many things are there? Two.'
Re: a comment on Romans 8:28 by amanda_dcosta	30-Dec-05/5:13 AM
That's very easy for you to say. You already have faith in God, part of which says that every little molecule is perfect and proof of God; another, bigger part of which says that God requires no proof. It's easy for me to take a small breath and imagine a universe run by God, though I bet it's nearly impossible for you to take a breath and imagine my idea of universe: where everything runs perfectly reasonably without Him. Does that mean God's better? No, it probably just means He's easier.
Re: a comment on Romans 8:28 by amanda_dcosta	29-Dec-05/10:14 PM
You sound ridiculous. Please listen: '1 + 1 = 2' is ONLY a way we made up to represent how if you have, say, one bowl of custard and you put it next to one other bowl of custard, you have two bowls of custard. 'One' and 'two' are ONLY words we've made up to represent different amounts of custard. 'Custard' is only a tasteless dessert the British made up to represent civilised living. THERE'S NO MAGIC TO IT. THERE'S NOTHING ETERNAL, SUBLIME, OR EXTRINSIC ABOUT IT. It's a LANGUAGE (ie, SET OF SYMBOLS) we MADE UP to represent things that happen reasonably enough WITHOUT GOD. For example, O OO OOO OOOO See? Now, for all our sakes, please get off this God is Because Math Works stupidity. Seriously, you sound like a moron. PS-Happy New Second. Guess God wasn't working too hard when he invented time, huh?
Re: a comment on It's Time by PoeticXTC	29-Dec-05/9:19 PM
I understand there have been cases before where hoboes exposed to the rudiments of Algebra independently 'invent' all the rudiments of, um, Calculus and Table Manners. I guess I was asking how much a person (or supersupercomputer) would have to know in order to do that. More realistically, I was probably wondering if you could tell a supersupercomputer about, say, single-celled organisms and have it predict Pop Idol. On a more-or-less unrelated note, a woman named Barbara Rickard of West Sussex, England, ran a mile in 8 minutes, 14 seconds, wearing Wellington boots filled with custard.
Re: a comment on It's Time by PoeticXTC	29-Dec-05/11:30 AM
Christ, this is just awful. Please stop. Please, please stop.