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I was wondering if the Taskmasters, those who feel so strongly about using the lash to “address” the perceived foibles of others, would be willing to share their educational backgrounds. After all, almost nothing has enduring (or even temporary) relevance without its context. Of course, this query can be ignored, skirted, redirected, etc. which is merely one way of answering. Also, mendacity is not possible to the honor-bound; but alas this may be nothing at all.
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No sure where you're going with this but if you're suggesting that you need an "educational background" to be competent, I disagree.
I've known and worked with many experts in many things that never cracked a book or got that piece of paper.
I've also known many educated people with graduate degrees who could barely function in the world.
*Yup. What Ryan sed.
*Is it not rather ostentatious for you to be the overseer? So you offer to overall; overbear, overcast, overcome, overhaul, overlook, overpower, overrule, overrun, oversee, overshadow, overstep, overtake, overthrow, overturn, overweigh, overwhelm, and basically own this site?Is that not a preposterously pompous pertinacious perturbed perverse petulant piteous ponderous precipitous postulate for one freelance to promulgate?Just yakking on a O & P stream,Fractally & fractionally yours,aj
*Firstly, your query is framed in such a way that to answer implies guilt, like the famous "have you stopped beating your wife yet?" I answer your query, ergo i am a Taskmaster, lash in hand. Which is nobler, to take arms against a sea of perceived foibles and by opposing end them, or to shuffle off this carpenters' coil?Not sure if you do see me as one of the Taskmasters, freelance--if i wield a lash, i've been inept--but i've urged time and again for the citizens of this community to use the same care and honesty in analyzing and responding to posts they they would put into wiring their rebar. I would like to be as proud to have any of them sitting in my living room as i would be assured they'd wire my service panel correctly. Why shoot for mediocrity? If you say vitriol is irrelevant, then so to is leaving a little extra Romex in the junction box.Education, like vitriol, comes in many disguises. Which of either is acceptable to you?
*Aj, Aj..... You forgot "perspicacious"! Now that we've cleared that up, it's time for another one outta' the cooler....... Sam
*Dearest Splintergroupie,Ah yes...tis a noble rub...that dost spring forth from thy warm heart and it does indeed come forth from one that must truly sense its place on this living rock that spins its path through the eons of time.From a stream as of yet to fully travail,aj
*Sam,Yes indeed…for sagacious, I thought not, of freelance…Nearing another fork in the stream,aj
*Aj, Indeed, indeed.... I feel the nadir approaching. S.
*Sometimes it takes a heavy hand instead of a light touch, AJ. I was shocked at the deleted thread you started, too, thinking you'd blown a gasket as well as abandoned the high ground. Then i remembered teaching wood shop in HS, one particular event when the only way to get this adolescent redneck's full attention was to take him into the hall, stand VERY close, and promise to visit Armageddon on him if he kept on disrupting my class. It was a risky maneuver, but it worked when nothing else had.Before i dared respond to my first email from this board, a wise person counseled me that it's just as easy to be more honest on-line than more dishonest. As freelance states, nothing is relevant without its context.SamD--got a breakfast beer for me? I'll bring some next time, promise.
*Doesn't everyone have an educational background? What I meant was how did you come to know what you know, did you get it with your mother's milk, did you gofer for your dad, did you start off sweeping the floors in a foundry in Brooklyn instead of kindergarten, like that...Context is what I'm after. If a man apprenticed under Tage Frid or volunteered for two high school summers at Taliesin, one can hear resonances and associate them with known things and thereby gain clearer insight into what that man says. Language is an endless string of more or less specific comparisons. Something new is most often compared to something old, something from formative times when curiosity overrode dogma, when we were learning what we now know. Again, what I meant was how did you come to Know what you know, that's all. Because everyone's opinion can't possibly be equivalent, how one came to it must have atleast some merit, No?
*Intuition and dreams. . . it's an Irish thing!-pm
*All opinion is personal. None carry more weight than others. Let's for argument sake, say you're contemplating a new house...Alan Greenspan is no builder, I, no economist. Which, if you were told: "Now, is the time to build, not next year" would you listen to?Which, if you were told: "This, and not that, is the way to construct."(Answer: Alan Greenspan, both times... tho', I might not have him do the structural engineering.)
*
View Image © 1999-2000"The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it." Aristotle
*Joe, it's the fillings in your teeth... you're listening to a radio station.How's the reception?
*
View Image © 1999-2000"The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it." Aristotle
*Freelance; your use of the language is impeccable. Your question about backgrounds is very valid and deserves due consideration. I lack your kind of semantical dexterity but I cherish it in others. In my case, I have learned everything I know the hard way and at age 46, it still seems that I am the apprentice. I don't think I would want it any other way!
*You people are talking way over my head, which by the way is not that hard to do. I did get out of High School with a C average; I did attend and drop out of North Texas State University after two very long years; I have spent the last 26 years as a carpenter. So how do you expect me to understand this colloquy?Ed. Williams
*Freelance,Lead us on this quest for the roots of our thoughts...with yours...handing over the oars midstream....Carry us forth,aj
*Mr Freelance sir: I read your post and I feel I must be stupid, because I have no idea what you said. Forgive me for living.
*Ed,To translate Freelance's original post... S/he wants to know what makes people think they are qualified to judge what is vitriol and what is not.
*Freelance,I was ready to go ahead with a detailed educational background, when it occured to me that I was not involved with any vitriolic activity. Some of us seems to squirm on some hypothetical mark. Must be insecurity!
*adirondackJack was closest.Freelance, your inquiry, just as my response, has no relevance.Out of context it does not exist, therefore YOU must not exist.What was that noise anyway?You guys hear something?
*As assigned, from the As to Zs...we will journey together then... abducted and absconded aboard an abject adventure achieving adroitly the apocalyptic abyss with our autochthonous autodidact.
*PD...There was a loud thump...far to the side of the stream we slowly paddle,aj
*O.K. Freelance, what's your background?
*Mr adirondackJack,
View Image © 1999-2000"The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it." Aristotle
*Ummm...I guess "drivel" isn't a big enough word to describe this thread for you guys. Near the dictionary,TomB.S., M.S., PhD. School of Hard Knocks '64-?
*An abyss full of apocalypses going upstream?
*Fred,
View Image © 1999-2000"More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly." Woody Allen
*Joe,It's an i adjective modifying a noun…God help me, for correcting you Joe, for correcting, me!Suddenly though silently floating…the sense of foreboding…moves in across my stream, I have my paddle…aj
*I'm sorry to report that i don't have a clue as to what anyone is talking about.Stop using such big words!blue
*Joe...Now why did ya have ta highjack another thread!?...This one was so clean and fun!!!!!!!!!Down the slippery slope the stream does float,aj
*Oops!
*Anytime!
View Image © 1999-2000"More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly." Woody Allen
*I None carry more weight than others.Huh? Saturday is Existential Day? ;-)
*AdirondackJack, you are right, this was fun and clean and I certainly enjoyed the interaction. I don't necessarily like to have my stuff all over the place and it's unfortunate that at times, the threshold gets pushed aside. I work hard to be and stay as clear and as honest as I can, and I appreciate a few deviations on the theme of construction and associated responsabilities. Somehow, life gets taken a bit too seriously at times. Greetings from the mountains of California where the waters run proud!
*Don't worry blue, they don't either.But here's my qualifications:(I don't have any.....I'm really a bus driver from Long Beach. I just like to hang out.)Dissimulatingly Yours,Ed. Williams
*i Greetings from the mountains of California where the waters run proud! Very nice to greet those from the proud waters...onward I paddle...the stream is seems endless,aj
*the best answer, of course! ;-)
*Sorry I missed out on all the fun last night- had a hot date; you know how reunions can be. And besides that my neck n back needed restin after a few days up on a blustery cold metal roof reflashing the indiscretions of others.Luka reiterated me and finds me wondering what makes people qualified to recognize what is vitriol and what is not. More closely, what I was getting at was, in the court of public opinion, in a time of literacy and caring (and I'm not positing that these are now,) the individual being judged is judged not in a vaccum but against the entirety (breadth,"heigth," and a more esoteric set of Y dimensions) of his/her being in a community. In other words, one sitting in judgement would know social-economic-creed status and these factors speak reams about what the likely experiences of that individual might be. In other other words, beauty of whatever kind be it genotypic, phenotypic or of simple soundness of reason when decisions (building and otherwise) need to be made, cannot- and I daresay, should not be denied. And from this its tacit corollary, ugliness in whatever form ought never find itself praised. Tolerated at times it must be, like when the bones of a fixer-upper are sound and a couple years of effort can make a good house from the ludicrous judgement and waste of the previous owner's incapacity and delusion. You know, nails thru valley flashing... etcetera.
*huh?
*An intelligent person speaks to others in a manner to create equal understanding.A pompous person speaks to others in a manner to convey their intellectual superiority.A wise person listens to others in preference to speaking.
*Humanity in its multiplexity is glorious.
*And humanity is just an interesting blip on the radar screen of the timeless processes of autopoises...rippling a stream,aj
*Somewhat tipping the timeless universal process of "autopoising". fv
*Muliplexity yes- and to this, conformation, in the dog show sense, is critical. This way, individuals with good conformation are compared or experienced over against equally good representatives of other types. It is this sort of careful comparison that allows movement. Uncareful comparisons can be the source of much wasted time. Think of it like this: there's a layout question, two windows in one wall to be separated minimally. Do we separate them by trimmers and jacks; do we frame them under a common header or some other option, a steel reinforcing mullion maybe. This decision needing to be made, you gather your finest help and discuss the merits of each approach. Eventually, clarification of the issue occurs, a decision can be made and the framing can begin.What I'm getting at in all this thread is, you didn't go get the alcoholic, the recidivist, the dummy, the guy who gets a headache any time he has to think, you went and got the third generation carpenter that everybody goes to when their plane iron needs sharp. You went and got the guy who has a can of Dricote in his truck, the guy who in 5 years hasn't affronted your sense of logic, the guy you want to send to a customer that you're trying to win so that they'll be impressed and give you that 1 million dollar job.
*In the eons of time...we are nothing...not even a butterfly flap.paddling along,aj
*He copying this out of a book, he has to be. I have yet to understand one sentence. I even do not know what the subject is.
*Johnnie...Johnnie....on your own stream I take it,aj
*But what are we in the realm of timelessness?
*"A snowflake on a burning stove."So lighten up already!
*Freelance, i Uncareful comparisons can be the source of much wasted time. What you said. We could dangle dependent clauses all day long, but what's the point? You "framed" the question poorly; save yourself for a real argument--or another re-union.Firstly, you solicited comments from those who opposed the "vitriol"--this would seem to call for a value judgement based on training in logic, linguistics, rhetoric, comparative belief systems, psychology--maybe some good old common sense would suffice in a pinch.You are also targeting a bunch of carpenters with questions re educational backgrounds, which leads them to divulge the sources of the arcane guild secrets. The nexus between carp knowledge and the milk of human kindness is a missing link, however.It's not necessary to know an alveolar ridge from a bi-labial fricative to frame a dormer, nor advanced calculus to figure the acceleration on the rate the board was collapsing under the weight of the BS piling up in thread after thread, both inside the Tavern and out.
*Good idea to look through BOTH ends of the binocs, don't you think? ;-)
*freelance,You must be a politician. Right now you are coming across as a condescending know-it-all showoff trying to impress everyone with your vocabulary. I assume this is not the result you were looking for. You use all kinds more words. Some of it sounds high-falutin'. All of it sounds important. But you just keep beating the same horse. All those words and you are still only saying that whoever is determining vitriole should be 'qualified' to do so, and asking what are their qualifications.I'm sure that you understand some examples of the fact that what a person says, and how they act on this board eventualy garners themselves a 'stall' in the stables. They will become either someone whom people look for, or avoid. If they make a habit of over-reacting to every post, and attacking everyone because of their percieved 'affronts', then people will begin to avoid them. People will also begin to discount just about anything that person has to say, whether it has merit or not...But can you understand that what you are doing is putting you into the same stall ? All that speechifying. All those multi-sylabic words. All those 'high concepts'. All that trying to sound important and immensely intelligent, are only making people begin to avoid reading what you say. People will read a few words at the beginning, then skip on to the next post. After a while, they will simply go to the next post when they see your name.Say what you mean, and mean what you say. Don't couch some simple concept, some simple question in paragraphs of pundit and redoubt. Don't fill your posts with masses of foo foo speech. If you are intelligent, people will be able to tell without all the glittering baubles. If you continue to pile on the foofaraw, people will begin to think that you are a dunce who knows how to use a thesaurus and dictionary. A gilded puppet.As for qualifications... Call for them all you want. The fact is that this is not a democratic, public owned board. It is Taunton's board, run on Taunton's own server. Like it or not, the only qualification needed is that the person work for Taunton, and that they have the authority to delete posts, etc. You can call up all the rancor you want, you can paint the situation any color you want, you can twist logic, call for a debate, queue the masses, in the end, it is still up to Taunton, and their representative. This does not mean that I think it useless or even 'bad' to talk about the situation. I just think that your considerable efforts could be better used guiding, rather than kicking against the barbs.
*Proud to know ya, SG.b : )
*Grope hug! Hey, howz yer daddy? Is he home yet? The cow-rein"carnation" thing going OK? (I know, lowest form of humor...)
*So I think Luka said..."OK already freelance.. &..What else is on your mind on this fine day?"Near the stream oh so enjoying all of this,aj
*Good translation. And Patrick is rolling over in his "less is more" grave after my above post. LOL
*AJ,Don't forget the old standbys;This side UP.Please wait until the ride has come to a full stop before exiting.S**t rolls downhill.
*Dammit Luka. I searched for 'foo-foo' with my thesaurus and my hard drive melted!
*Laughing hard...oops...falling out of the....splash.aj
*Good thing you had a spare!
*Hee hee....Ha haa!!!smiles are great...the stream is good,aj
*Well hello! A party must have been going on... on that fine stream...aj, you bring warmth forth!Ha haa!!fv
*Ah, yes. Him bringing forth a warm stream. I recall him saying earlier he was piddling, by the stream. Now I understand.
*Some years ago when I drove a Volkswagen and paddled more, I was pulling away from the put-in on Sunday night. As we were leaving, A guy I'd met stuck his head out the Vindow of his Volks and offered a parking lot benediction for the parting. What he said was " May all your Water be White and all your Miles air-cooled..."Have a good Monday, and thanks for the fun.Lance
*Vocabulary is like a gun, it shouldn't be allowed in the hands of those who don't know how to use it.Rich Beckman
*Even a few "bad words" are friendlier than friendly fire!
*No arguing with that!Rich Beckman
*
I was wondering if the Taskmasters, those who feel so strongly about using the lash to "address" the perceived foibles of others, would be willing to share their educational backgrounds. After all, almost nothing has enduring (or even temporary) relevance without its context. Of course, this query can be ignored, skirted, redirected, etc. which is merely one way of answering. Also, mendacity is not possible to the honor-bound; but alas this may be nothing at all.