Re: [Pan-users] Re: updated info - O.T.

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, 6 Aug 2010 04:37:33 am Alan Meyer wrote:

> I didn't expect that so many programmers would agree with
> Stallman.  I hope it's just that they were the ones most
> motivated to write, and not that they're really in the majority.
>
> Perhaps if more of us would transpose remarks like Stallman's,
> substituting our own favorite gender, religion, race,
> nationality, or cultural group for "women", we'd better
> appreciate the vulgarity of Stallman's remark.

That is excellent advice. While you are working yourself up into a 
frenzy of condemnation, did you even bother to take your own advice?

"The virgin of emacs is any programmer who has not yet learned how to 
use emacs. And in the church of emacs we believe that taking their 
emacs virginity away is a blessed act."

"The virgin of emacs is any white male who has not yet learned how to 
use emacs. And in the church of emacs we believe that taking his emacs 
virginity away is a blessed act."

Sounds fine to me. And I don't even use Emacs and don't particularly 
like it.


> Or perhaps more directly, and following Duncan's analysis of the
> difference between "take" and "take away",

What analysis?

Duncan merely *claimed* that there was such a difference. He gave no 
reason to believe so, no examples, he even asked for counter-examples 
(and full marks to Duncan for at least considering the possibility that 
he was wrong). But a few moments thought or even the most cursory look 
at the way "take" and "take away" are used in the English language 
demonstrates that such difference is entirely illusionary.


> we should imagine 
> something more dramatic like being locked in a cell with a
> powerful and aggressive male prisoner who decides to take away
> our virginity with respect to what he has in mind.

Or we could imagine somebody saying "Won't somebody please take away my 
damn virginity? It does me no good, I don't want it."

Or we could imagine somebody saying "Take me, take me now!".

But if you're a fan of Firefly, you're probably having a hard time *not* 
thinking of Zoe in "War Stories", after her jealous husband Wash had 
wrongly imagined she had sexual feelings towards Mal and suggested that 
the two of them sleep together to get it out of their system, she turns 
to Mal and, absolutely deadpan, says "I understand. We have no choice. 
Take me, sir. Take me hard.", and thereby completely shredding the last 
vestiges of Wash's jealousy. (As well as being a deeply funny scene in 
an otherwise dark episode about the best and worst of human nature.)



-- 
Steven D'Aprano