OT -- Re: random cover of a range

[Nick Sabalausky]

"John Reimer" <terminal.node at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:28b70f8c143d88cb5d632bf3cd10 at news.digitalmars.com...
>
> That's a strong accusation, Steve, without knowing me; it's a very hasty 
> reduction for circumstances, personalities, and factors you are quite 
> unfamiliar with.  I didn't see you mention this sort of thing while people 
> were talking about physically harming the internet marketer's in horrible 
> ways in the javascript discussion. :)

It was clear that the violent things said in that discussion were not 
intended literally. The images on bearophile's site are *also* clearly 
fictional. Thus we don't mind either. But your comments against it were more 
serious.

If instead you had said something like "Argh! This whole furry movement 
makes me want to burn out my eyes and take a lawn-mower to every art 
institute in the tri-county area!" then we'd be clearly back in the realm of 
fiction again, and we'd all acknolegde your viewpoint on it, chuckle at the 
amusingly overstated comment, and silently agree to disagree. And if 
bearophile decided that he wanted to, he could think "Hmm, some people that 
are into the D content really don't like this other stuff, so I guess I 
could add some clearer separtion of topics". (Personally, it doesn't bother 
me the way it is, though.)

Or, as you've come to realize now, you could have said something like 
"Bearophile, I like your D content, but I find some of those images 
disturbing, and others might too. Maybe it would be a better site design to 
have a stronger separation of content." As I'm sure you realize, that would 
have achieved the same result I described in the paragraph above - but sadly 
without the "people chuckling at the amusingly overstated comment" part. I 
like having amusingly overstated comments to chuckle at ;-)

>
>> I find this post is not flamebait, but simply
>> intolerant.
>
>
> Yes, it is a form of intolerance.  Sometimes it must exist.  You have some 
> of it too... it's just at what point it is activated and how you act on 
> it. You assume violence always follows from intolerance.  It does only 
> from the those worldviews or personalities that believe such action is 
> justified. I abhore such.  But, using the "intolerance" accusation against 
> me is very weak method to discharge such activity, especially considering 
> the same accusation could be used for any government that allows votes on 
> matters.  You are intolerant every day.  You are intolerant of some D 
> designs.  The problem is, when we get to nitty gritty details of morality, 
> this consistancy ends with a bang... and suddenly nobody should argue, 
> discuss, or even consider the dangers of such things.
>
>
> Please stick to arguing that perhaps I was indiscrete or had poor 
> judgement in my original post and keep the suggestions (as you have) to 
> alternative modes of accomplishing the same task.  But don't give that 
> silly intolerance bit.  I've seen the same from all sides, and there's a 
> world of hypocracy wrapped in that statement.
>

Ok, here I do agree with you (and this is kind of a pet peeve I've had for a 
while).

Being against intolerance is a contradiction. A person who is against 
"intolerance" is automatically intolerant of at least one thing - namely, 
intolerance (ie, exactly the thing they're intolerant of). You just simply 
can't get away from intolerance without being tolerant of *everything*, 
including, but not limited to, every act of intolerance as well as every 
imaginable atrocity. Clearly, though, some things really just shouldn't be 
tolerated. Mass murder, for example. Or deliberately false and misleading 
advertising. Or really, really, really dumb language design ;)

So the meaningful question becomes not "Is this intolerance?" but rather 
"What is and isn't acceptable and to what degree?"