pALEPHx wrote:

Hate to be a bummer, but extreme triage rules like these have been around for decades. On the flipside, we reserve vaccines for the elderly, and our society does a great deal to coddle individuals who would have otherwise died without vast amounts of external assistance, some since birth. The system may be unsavory, but it is for use in a "pandemic." Survival of the general population trumps all the other "nice" things we do to pat ourselves on the back that we're such good people, and not animals. I can't find the system too terribly offensive if it's just an aggressive reinforcement of extant darwinism.

I agree with you pENIx, there need to be selection criteria...and yet...would the people on the list agree?
Who made those judgements? Who said they can speak for all of us?
What if the list-makers didn't value...hmmm...let's say...haven't picked on these guys for a while...queers?
And hey...here's a rationalization...if you're not making babies, what the hell are you doing here? Life is for the propagation of genes...not the boxing of creamy chocolate fondant....
And if the criterion is simply expected lifespan, well - forget the niggers. Dey cant hep theyseffs fum shootin' one anudder reel yung. So dump the nubians in the bio-waste bin and treat those sick white folk. And while we're at it, do the women first, cuz we all know they've got a few extra avg. years on us dick-danglers.
Nah - I can't sanction it. It's an ethical morass. (No QoHS [Queers of High-Stree] not "more ass" morass...it's a deep hole..oh hell...never mind.) The only way to do this properly is to completely blindfold all emergency and medical personnel. It may not be practical, but by Jebus I won't see those poor niggers and queers discriminated against.

We're talking about a realistic application of time here.  Treat the people who have the greatest chance to live.  Survival of the species.

Like pALEPHx said, they've been doing it for decades already, it's just somehow become a news flash to everybody else.  I love how newspapers dig this stuff up and push it on the ignorant assholes out there like it just happened for the first time.  They know they'll get a reaction because they know their audience is clueless about the realities of life.

GooberMcNutly wrote:

I just say that we keep all of the lifesaving drugs on the top floor of a 12 story hospital. At the first sign of trouble, just shut off the elevators. If you can't make it to the infirmary, too bad.

I like that... and you get a nice cardiovascular workout, to boot.

tojo2000 wrote:

How about this more ass?  Should we spend money and medical resources to keep babies alive in pain that are born with terminal congenital illness?

Absolutely we should. Are we Nazis? Is it time to put everyone who can't understand Kafka in a gas chamber?
I knew a kid who was born with terrible teratogenic deformities. Didn't stop him from joining little league (we used him as home plate), and later on, after his brain shut down completely, he moved to the USA and became a politician. Now, I hear, he's a regular on some extremely unpleasant Internet forum.

pALEPHx wrote:

Hate to be a bummer, but extreme triage rules like these have been around for decades. On the flipside, we reserve vaccines for the elderly, and our society does a great deal to coddle individuals who would have otherwise died without vast amounts of external assistance, some since birth. The system may be unsavory, but it is for use in a "pandemic." Survival of the general population trumps all the other "nice" things we do to pat ourselves on the back that we're such good people, and not animals. I can't find the system too terribly offensive if it's just an aggressive reinforcement of extant darwinism.

Wow, here's something I thought I'd never hear myself say.  I agree with peNIx.

How's it dangling, ole feller?

WilberCuntLicker wrote:

Is it time to put everyone who can't understand Kafka in a gas chamber?

The strains of "What A Wonderful World" just started running through my head...

...Nah.

Parenthetically, anyone who's watched reruns of M*A*S*H knows what "triage" means.  I agree publication of this "news" story was probably motivated by sensationalism; but I also think that the list itself, and the committee that created it, was probably a reaction to the dilemmas some medical personnel found themselves in during Katrina--trapped, water rising, resources limited or nonexistent, many of them had to decide who to "let die," and some of them faced legal action for their decisions after the waters receded.

whosasailorthen wrote:

The folks that are making the drugs to fight this pandemic are giving a 'free pass' to all their own employees...

This is news to anyone?  Where have ya'll been for....  most of your lives?

Last edited by MSG Tripps (2008-05-06 19:52:51)

Lurker wrote:

Hate to be a bummer

No, you live to be a bummer.....

Four periods would have sufficed, you glabrous eunuch. Three for the ellipsis, and one for the stop.

Taint wrote:

Actually, three would have been quite enough.

Four closes the tag.

tojo2000 wrote:

WilberCuntLicker wrote:

Taint wrote:

Actually, three would have been quite enough.

Four closes the tag.

Actually I can't see any reason for an ellipsis in the first place.  George?  We need a ruling.

If Turkey wishes to draw attention to his paucity of thought through means of ellipsis he has every right. We cannot know what he was thinking but not saying (granted it was certainly nothing interesting). Structurally, however, he should close with a full stop to bring a formal end to the sentence.
Something I've been meaning to ask:
Where is Dec?
Where is Douche Ellington?
Both of them had interesting minds. Why are they not here but Turkey is? Or are they not here because Turkey is? That I could understand.

tojo2000 wrote:

Actually I can't see any reason for an ellipsis in the first place.  George?  We need a ruling.

An ellipsis is three periods, and if it comes at the end of a sentence you do not add a fourth.  The ellipsis is meant to show the phrase trailing off without an emphatic ending...

As for "reason," Grammar Bitch will not judge.  The rules of grammar and spelling exist to help you make yourself understood; they should not restrict your ability to express yourself.  Besides, I probably use ellipses too often myself.

Last edited by George Orr (2008-05-07 07:41:05)

George Orr wrote:

tojo2000 wrote:

Actually I can't see any reason for an ellipsis in the first place.  George?  We need a ruling.

An ellipsis is three periods, and if it comes at the end of a sentence you do not add a fourth.  The ellipsis is meant to show the phrase trailing off without an emphatic ending...

As for "reason," Grammar Bitch will not judge.  The rules of grammar and spelling exist to help you make yourself understood; they should not restrict your ability to express yourself.  Besides, I probably use ellipses too often myself.

Hey George -  I'm caretaking and don't have any style guides with me, but I can certainly find lots of Internet support for my POV.

This is from Wikipedia, following Chicago:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis

"An ellipsis at the end of the sentence which ends with a period (or such a period followed by an ellipsis), appears, therefore, as four dots."

and farther down (and most relevant to our discussion):

"An ellipsis at the end of a sentence with no sentence following should be followed by a period (for a total of four dots)."

I can also find a degree of equivocation; not everyone agrees with  wiki and me. It will be interesting to see if Mr. Fowler has anything to say about it when I'm home again.

Taint wrote:

I'll have to pull out my Chicago manual, but for now it's time to head off to work. Deep in my heart, WCL, I believe you're wrong and doomed to Grammar Hell where you will be forced to spend an eternity reading the collected works of CuntWeasel while Debbie Boone plays in a continual loop over the sound system.

Pull out your Chicago...but don't stop there. No one style guide can ever define a language. The last mag. I worked at one of the jobs I set myself was to write a style guide for the publication, partly for glory, but also because I have issues with the CP (Canadian Press) style guide in common usage this side of the 49th. By the way, thank you for not putting me in a small room with Turkey in Hell. The Sartrian irony might have been amusing, but it would have tinged my day with nausea. I've never heard Debbie Boone, but I'll take my chances.

WilberCuntLicker wrote:

No one style guide can ever define a language.

Attention to spelling and typing is more or less a prerequisite for any grammar or style considerations, or so I figure. ;P <- what do Strunk & White have to say about these?

Just out of curiosity, Square, is that the 11th edition?

Taint wrote:

Just out of curiosity, Square, is that the 11th edition?

The 10th, actually.

And I did screw up the spacing on the "halting speech" example.  It should be:

"I'd like to . . . that is . . . if you don't mind. . . ."

I've got piles of style guides around my apartment, including the infernal AP guide. When I was a reporter, I used it constantly. Now, some six years later, I find I still use AP style even in my personal writing. I just can't seem to break the habit.

Taint wrote:

I've got piles of style guides around my apartment, including the infernal AP guide. When I was a reporter, I used it constantly. Now, some six years later, I find I still use AP style even in my personal writing. I just can't seem to break the habit.

Warning: vague, not-necessarily cogent, possibly boring ramblings ahead:
Personally, I think intelligent eccentricity is a marvellous shaper of language. I don't mind seeing rules decay and disappear as long as what's left makes sense. However, there's an historical tendency (of which the spelling reform movement is the prime example) in the States (and to a lesser degree in England) towards simplification of grammar and spelling (even the "s" on "towards" may seem foreign to some), and that's not always a good thing. Take, for example, the virtual disappearance of the word "centre" below the 49th. Centre is a great little word. At times, it can save lives, by directing people to an organization dedicated to solving a problem, rather than to the middle of the problem itself. (Ha ha?) On a broader level, crunts like Strunk & White argued for clear, concise writing, which went a long way towards making sense out of a mongrel bitch of a language to the illiterate melting pot at large, but in their quest for purity they may have added fuel to an anti-anglo, anti-intellectual atmosphere that celebrated the common man to the detriment of language, which should be free, at times, to work itself into complex and intractable knots. (As you might guess, I loathe Hemmingway, love Faulkner.) Anyways. . .(haha). . .that's enough of that.

George Orr wrote:

Personally, I think intelligent eccentricity is a marvellous shaper of language. I don't mind seeing rules decay and disappear as long as what's left makes sense.

I'm 100% with you there--I love idiom.  I love local dialects.  As far as "what's left making sense," that has to happen.  It might as well be a law of nature.  All dialects have grammatical structure, however incomprehensible they may be to outsiders--a language without rules of grammar would just be gibberish.

Interesting, George...and yes, you've caught me trying to defy a tautology: language=meaning, if not, it isn't language. Perhaps I should have said:"...as long as what's left is as rich in linguistic potential as what came before." Even that can probably be picked away at, but I can't help but feel that as words (such as centre) are sloughed, and as spelling and grammar are reduced to uniformity, we lose some linguistic potential for texture and richness, if only through the process of historical disconnection.

opsec wrote:

OMG, MB I SHD LRN TXTN.  Hey, it's efficient... like Esperanto!

Odd. I was just going to say it was beginning to resemble Hebrew.

tojo2000 wrote:

I hate the lack of a double-space between sentences.  I blame HTML and all its bastard children.

Dang.  You too?  That drives me nuts.

tojo2000 wrote:

WilberCuntLicker wrote:

Have you noticed the gradual disappearance of the double space between sentences? It may look better to us NOW, but for many it was long a typographic abortion. Same with the ellipses. For all that I love style guides and language "rules" I don't space them out...anymore. In the future, style guides may instruct us to omit the spaces, or they may even tell us to use but three dots if...you know....

I hate the lack of a double-space between sentences.  I blame HTML and all its bastard children.

The World Wide Web is still a largely textual medium, but rather than use that exposure to increase their literary skills people have created a web of implied meanings and a sea of acronyms that are not only virtually impossible to read but boil every possible statement into a small series of phrases that everyone already knows and are completely redundant.

Also, those damn kids with their cellphones keep leaving footprints on my grass.

ROFL my arse off, Tojo.

Taint wrote:

I've still never fully recovered from the disappearance of the double space between the name of the state and the ZIP code. I just feel something is missing every time I type an address and it opens a deep, unbearable abyss within my soul.

I still put the two spaces before the ZIP Code.  I also space twice at the end of a sentence.

I may be an outlaw, but I'm at peace with myself, and that's what matters.

George Orr wrote:

Taint wrote:

I've still never fully recovered from the disappearance of the double space between the name of the state and the ZIP code. I just feel something is missing every time I type an address and it opens a deep, unbearable abyss within my soul.

I still put the two spaces before the ZIP Code.  I also space twice at the end of a sentence.

I may be an outlaw, but I'm at peace with myself, and that's what matters.

I can only gaze in wonderment at your fortitude.