And I want some of that swag!!

Too cool! I want to tape ‘em all! My college students have a new required ‘watch assignment’.
Thanks,
Ken B. in Lumberton, NC

1. Ibrahim Says:
October 3rd, 2l007 at 1:35 pm

Okay fine, well, you know what?

!@#@(#& you Phil!
Yeah! You heard me! You’re a *#**$%!

*#$$^@! @#$%^!

(Seriously though. I can’t recall seeing many bad words, though I guess they may have been edited out.)

Good Time

Good Time

My suggestion: something near this leave-a-reply form that has info on this? A link to this post, maybe, if more info than just a link is impractical?

An idea… might help.

Yep, and my point still stands as true. Anyone who feels hurt by mere words on open forums (places, by the way, which by definition are not exclusively for polite discourse) is inflicting self-hurt. If Party-A is insulted by Party-B’s words, then so what? Party-A could be so disproportionately sensitive as to be beyond placability. Not all potential sensibilities can be simultaneously pandered to. Some can’t be at all, ever. If we’re to pander to everyone, then we’re saddled with what can be an authentic impossibility.

I think Phil is basically objecting to the latter more than the former, although neither is really necessary on a blog such as this. Being abusive on someone else’s blog is offensive, childish and unnecessary. If you disagree with the subject matter then by all means say so, but do it eloquently and to the point, without getting personal.

Personally I’m all for keeping it nice and clean around here, so parents can have no qualms about their children learning some real facts about the universe as safely as if they were reading a book. I’ve got nothing against the use of “colourful language” in general, but it’s not really appropriate here.

You may be completely immune to unfounded attacks on your mother’s choice of footware, but you are pretty unusual in this. That’s why your drill instructors used this technique and why they were flabbergasted when it failed. It usually works, most people are not 100% rational, even when they know they have no rational reason to be offended, they still are, which is reason enough to avoid it. (You could rationalize it as an “educational experience” or “desensitizing”, but you’re not on the receiving end. That’s the “universal you”, not you personally

Saying if you’re completely rational, you know that random flames and verbal attacks can’t actually hurt you, is like saying if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear from random surveillance, the Patriot Act, or the NSA monitoring your phone calls, but to quote the immortal Samuel Spade, “Everybody has something to hide”.

Nigel Depledge said; “… but you could just ask her not to click on any links that are NSFW.”

True, and I do, and I thank the BA for the warnings!

But please note that my daughter will tend to avoid this blog because she really doesn’t wish to be embarrassed in front of Me, Mom, or her friends if she makes a mistake, or she would get expelled from school or kicked out of a public library if the mistake was made there. In addition I have some coworkers who will simply never point their kids to this blog if such links are present.

My point is if one goal of the BA blog is to educate school kids then the BA should not provide such links and should even consider full moderation of these comments. However, if the goal is to educate adults, and sometimes the children of those adults, then everything is pretty cool.

Randy in Paso Robles

Tacitus – assuming we are speaking of hurt feelings and not something actionable, I agree with you. However, I learned at a very early age that the only way you can feel hurt by somebody’s words is by accepting that the statement is – to some degree – accurate. So, if I’m reading a board or blog and Joe Farthertree pops in and calls me the illegitimate son of the flying nun, I can easily blow him off. Even if he’s a regular poster and I “know” him.

It used to frustrate my boot camp instructors no end – they could get up in my face and insult me and mine to a fare-thee-well, and I could just smile at them. They don’t know me from Adam, and certainly have no idea what shoes my mother wears.

If BA were to step in here and cast aspersions on my ability to paint left-handed monkey wrenches, I would not feel hurt, dismayed or bereft. (Not by the WORDS. I might feel a little disappointed that somebody whom I have a fair degree of respect for would stoop so low… but that’s a separate issue) Of course, if he were to cast asparagus on my ability as an astronomer/cosmologist, yeah, that would hurt. But then, it would be true. I THINK I know which end of a telescope to sit on…though I’ve never been able to find where to put the bogroll.

But then, I rather imagine he knows jack about the telephone system, or any of a bunch of other things *I* know about.

So there! I thumb my nose at you, oh, expanded-cranial, red-headed, nocturnal BA!

This statement of yours is patently wrong. People are harmed all the time by what is being said about them on the Internet boards. It may be completely irrational, but it doesn’t make it any less true.

Uh… Duh! My point is staring you straight in the face, yet you cannot see it.

Quite correct, Michael. The population at-large is a bunch of Pavlov’s dogs. I can’t even keep track of the number of times I’ve reminded people that no one on internet boards have zero capacity to harm each another. It’s all just words on their screens. Being afraid of words is the stuff of bloody, infantile wars.

Claiming that a few written words cannot harm is naive People have been driven to suicide by what others have written about them. While that is the extreme case, every day there are no doubt thousands of people who feel detrimental physical effects from something they read that was attacking them in some way. The written word can land blows that hurt more than a punch in the gut, and stay with a person much longer.

It’s simply human nature. We care what people say and write about us, even strangers we have never met and who don’t know the first thing about us. While some might be able to shrug off an attack, there are many others who cannot, even if they try. They are just not wired in that way.

Ad hominem attacks are less useful than explanations for why the person or topic is causing conflict — but sometimes it’s just a form of shorthand that works to convey an emotion or opinion in a given group.

Explaining to a child that when he or she hears an adult using those words that it is because they are expressing strong feelings is better, imho, than just censoring the words.

The moderator of the blog has a responsibility to protect the readers from actual, palpable harm — this has become an issue on another blog I read because one contributor was making harmful statements about another person in the same group. Censorship because of the “dirty” status of some words seems to be a little beyond the call of duty. Children have a sophisticated sense of humor, and comprehend a lot; if they have been educated about the issues, they understand and contribute as much as, or sometimes more than, some adults.

Censorship (if you want to be one of us, you can’t say 000000) sets up its own problems. Language and the words themselves become weapons and serve to divide people, instead of bonding them. My opinion.

Also — this blog has discussions about a lot of issues. The astronomy is nice, but I think the universe is about a lot more than the stars.

Opinions are like jam rolls, everybody got one. It’s really hard to form or express an opinion about planet formation, so we just sit tight while BA tells us a story about the universe we all live in.

“There are plenty of words in the English language that would suffice as a substitute.”
Substitutes almost never (in fact I would say never) suffice for the proper expression of the emotion they convey.

“Casual vulgarity is a major pet peeve of mine. I for one prefer more civilized discourse.”
This line was what set me off. Specifically the ‘civilized discourse’ part. This line says that “vulgar language agitates me. Using it makes you uncivilized.”

I do not wish to convey hatred or meanness or any other thing through what I am saying. My argument is with what you said and not you personally, so if I conveyed otherwise, I apologize. I am simply saying that I do not agree that not using ‘vulgarity’ makes one ‘civilized.’