Yeah there's a Valentine one, too, but it's creepy.

 Cutie Fry...

I'm hoping we have a new name for the potatoe head.

What the fuck is it with people and potatoe?  It's potato, with no e.  Take that e and add it to your running cloths.

 

Geeez

My mistake, Cutie Fry.

See, it's catching on already.

What the fuck is it with people and potatoe?  It's potato, with no e.  Take that e and add it to your running cloths.

 

Geeez

 good to see quayle is long remembered -eh?

 That's on the list right after abortion, religion and gun control.

Hey, why don't you all discuss "Don't Ask Don't Tell" next.  That would be fantastic.

Repealing DADT?  I think that its bad for the cohesiveness and the unity of the military units, especially those that are in close combat, that are in close quarters in country right now. Its not the time to do it. I think its - the military is not civilian life. And I think the folks who have been in the military that have been in these very close situations with each other, there has to be a special bond there. And I think that bond is broken if you open up the military to transgenders, to hermaphrodites, to gays and lesbians.

1. I apologize for yes acting rude and immature. I'm not proud of the gorilla squawking.

2. Maybe I have a problem interacting with people who think differently from me. In my defense, I put my views out there in the face of several folks who do not share my point of view. Over the course of hours, I patiently and yes perhaps provocatively and yes sometimes arrogantly and petulantly explained my position. It is difficult to reply to 4 or 5 smart people who don't agree. I coulda done better. I think in the end I got feeling cornered and it was fight or flight. Being me, I chose fight. I am immature, and I am insecure, sometimes. Sometimes I love life so much I can't stand it. One thing's for sure: I never aspired to be the 'composed thinker.'

3. In regards to the last "issue," the claim I made was that in classical liberal theory, each individual is seen as more or less equal in terms of their capacities. This is an assumption of Hobbes and Locke and it informs the thinking of the founders (see my post on pg. 26). I don't know if I believe it. In this context, the only sense I could make of spaniel's question about my personal history was as an ad hominem. Note that the phrase "I have to wonder about where you grew up," is very different from saying "I wonder where you grew up." I am sensitive to these differences in tone.

4. In reply to spaniel's last post, if it makes any difference, my mother is a hippie special-ed teacher, and my father (divorced) owns a one-man excavation business. He drives bulldozers for a living. Yeah, blue collar kind of guy who to me embodies the relationship between labor and capitol. I got to go to nice private schools for free in Chattanooga because I scored perfectly on the entrance examinations. Same for college. I double majored in philosophy and physics in college while running XC and track. Afterwards, I worked for a year in Paraguay teaching math and philosophy in a high school and met my wife. Then I worked for three years in a boarding school teaching physics, coaching, and being a dorm parent for 100 kids aged 15-18. While I did that, I paid for my wife's college education at a small school in Virginia (she also got a nice scholarship, which helped!). After she finished school, I decided that I wanted to pursue my dream of becoming a philosophy professor. I applied to some schools, and Vanderbilt accepted me and paid me a living wage to go to school and get my Ph.D. Get paid to study philosophy? It was a no-brainer for me. Here I am now, holding down a lectureship at Vandy, looking for a tenure track position in a crappy job market still hoping to fulfill that dream.

It's a story probably pretty much like yours. So, maybe you do know shit about me. Along the way, I've managed to maintain the pollyanna view that most folks are working hard to do the best they can in life and that their failures are usually less due to lack of effort and more due to confusion, anxiety, and hard knocks along the way. That's my view of human nature for the most part. I didn't get it from a philosophy book.

5. I've been promising myself that as much as I love you guys and as good as this board has been for my running, I'd break this damn addiction, which does impinge on my professional life a bit. Philosophizing on the message board is more fun than doing it for a job. So, I'm using this incident as a chance to pull the plug. As with everything in the virtual world, this decision is more about me than it is about you.

6. Maybe I'll start up a facebook or something.

7. I know. tl;dr. As usual.

8. In the words of the immortal <k>ilgore: Out.