English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2013-12-04 (page 2 of 2)

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9:00 PM

Like the menfolk, they fretted about money, they scrimped and made-do. But, when the pay stopped coming in, they were not the ones, who had failed. Nor did they have to go to war, and that seemed to me a blesses fact. By comparison...........mothers.

I don't recall activation being a problem.

it's the first time I've really had to think seriously about installing win7. it's because a company that interviewed me wants me to do a tech test that requires VS2013 and IIS and stuff

requiring win7 or win8

i've already got 2 PCs, a linux and WinXP one. i wish they could be 2 different flavours of Linux

Download it, or pay for it, whichever you prefer.

paying £175 for an OS in this day and age makes me wanna puke

I wrote whole sentences please help me now

9:02 PM

microsoft fucked up the visual studio UI with vs2013 too

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Jez that seems like a lot. it's only $100-$150 here.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 which of the myriad versions, though? ultimate?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Jez no, home premium or pro.

who buys ultimate.

Cerberus?

@Jez ebay.nl/sch/…

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

9:03 PM

Windows 8.1 is $99

> Like the menfolk, they fretted about money, they scrimped and made-do. But, when the pay stopped coming in, they were not the ones, who had failed. Nor did they have to go to war, and that seemed to me a blesses fact. By comparison with the narrow, ironclad days of fathers, there was an expansiveness, I thought, in the days of mothers.

please help me for meaning and paraphrasing

Fathers either have to work full time in a regular factory or office, or they have to go to war. Those things include an "ironclad" workday or schedule.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 ebuyer.com/…

Ironclad as in not flexible.

9:05 PM

don't think I'd want an ebay one

want to make sure the thing is new

actually, I'm a bit surprised you can't download it and burn it yourself, officially

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Jez that's better

Mothers are at home, taking care of kids and chores, so their days are much more flexible.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Jez There's a Windows Upgrade Assistant you can download from MS that will possibly let you download and install from them

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yeah. You can get an OEM version for less, even.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Robusto well, those are OEM prices for me.

9:08 PM

I recall getting it for around $90 I think.

When I built my latest PC.

i shy away from anything with the word "upgrade" in

i always install OSes fresh, not upgrade them

kind of annoying that Ultimate is that much more expensive, it has one or two things I might find useful like bitlocker drive encryption and Aero remoting

and it's always there in the back of my head that the ONLY reason this restriction is there is because MS purposely crippled their OS. they could've written the bits differently to allow extra stuff for the lower priced versions. it's like a furniture maker making a luxury chair, then damaging it less if the customer pays more

Limerick Machine: The hopeless man

posted on December 04, 2013 by sgdi

There once was a man without hope All he heard people say was “nope” “You’re not wanted here” “Please just disappear” Now he’s dead at the end of a rope

for that reason alone i really hate the whole "windows versions" thing

@Jez Ditto.

@Jez You can use Truecrypt?

And what does Aero Remote do? Is it like Team Viewer?

9:15 PM

no idea

win 7 professional would probably be fine for me. bloody expensive though.

compared to the £0 i paid for my fully functional linux OS

since houses seemed to me brighter, handsomer places than my factory.

maybe £25 would be reasonable

paraphrasing please

Well, you have the VAT there, so your prices are often double ours.

@Jez Wrong analogy. A carmaker produces a model which has several variations, a basic version and some more luxury versions. You're arguing that just because the basic version's frame has the bolt holes for the larger engine, and the dashboard has cutouts for the moonroof switch, the basic version is a "crippled" luxury car.

9:17 PM

@MετάEd with a car, there's actually extra physical work and materials going into the luxury version, though. with an OS, it's an equal amount of work to press the "luxury version" bits as it is to press the "basic version" bits

i can't get past that. it irritates me.

Cerberus?

@Jez That's not right. It took a certain number of programmer hours to develop those "luxury" features. You don't want to pay for the extra work? You don't get the feature. The fact that the disabled bits are there on the disk may set your teeth on edge, but that is on you, not on the manufacturer.

It's not fair for you to count just the cost of pressing the disk and discount the cost of making the luxury software.

@MετάEd i understand that but, as you said, the disabled bits are there (or the required bits are not there)

once the sunk cost has been made in developing the features, it just seems wrong to then disable them for no reason other than marketing

i'm not necessarily saying i'm right, but the way my brain works, it just irritates me that they could be making every version have all the features just as easily

If you had your way, then everyone would have to pay for the luxury features for Microsoft to recoup the cost of developing it. That's not fair to the people who don't need those features and don't want to pay for them.

You would end up making basic Windows cost more for eveyrone.

well actually, given the money MS make, they could halve the price and make a fortune :-)

9:22 PM

Cerberus

that's the problem with a monopoly like Windows; the market is charged the price it will bear

which is why i'd love to see Linux replace Windows

or any FOSS operating system

not only is the market charged the price it will bear, but it must accept what one manufacturer wants to do with the OS

Help

help

Help

help

@IceGirl Is this a capitalization question? :-)

Maybe it's a punctuation question.

No No

@IceGirl ...because houses seemed brighter to me, and more beautiful, than my factory.

9:28 PM

what the exact meaning of brighter in this sentence?

@Jez How is Windows a monopoly?

@JohanLarsson on the desktop.

but how? There has always been alternatives imo.

They are just very successful

that doesn't mean it's not a monopoly

"exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices."

@IceGirl Having more light, as in windows; and probably more cheerful, less sombre.

9:33 PM

@Jez ok with that definition I can agree

Yeah, you practically need Windows in many situations.

Any copyrighted material is always a monopoly in some sense.

i wish more .NET development would happen on Linux.

that way they could present you with their test and let you use windows or linux

also i could use some fork of VS2010 with a decent interface instead of VS2012

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus That kind of monopoly isn't relevant. Microsoft has a monopoly on Windows. But Windows has a monopoly on the Desktop.

Android has (almost) a monopoly on the smartphone. But Google doesn't have a monopoly on Android.

You could say that...

I did not realize__because such things were spoken of__how often women suffered from men's bullying. I did learn about the wretchedness of abandoned wives, single mothers,widows; but i also learned about the wretchedness of lone man.

9:37 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 But the word monopoly is less appropriate for something that is not sold, that you are free to copy.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus I do say that. It's an extremely important distinction.

@Cerberus It's still an important concept. And "free to copy" doesn't always mean what it's cracked up to mean.

I would consider that a metaphor if anyone were free to do with Android whatever he wanted, no strings attached.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Example: Linux has a monopoly on the free-software OS world. The consequence of this is that all the competing free-software OSes are 2nd-class or worse citizens.

I would consider that a metaphor.

Why use( __ )in this sentence?

9:39 PM

Just as women have a monopoly on bearing children.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus And they are, to the degree that that is relevant. Example: Cyanogenmod. Amazon. the myriad Chinese versions of Android.

help for meaning

@Cerberus Good thing, too. If men had to bear children, humanity would go extinct.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Android does not have a near monopoly on the smartphone. Android is leading the competition on the smartphone. That is completely different.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Robusto It always annoys me when people say things like that.

9:40 PM

@IceGirl Is this from a book? Those should be dashes, like — or –. Dashes are used to mark off something that is an aside, not part of the main thing you want to say.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Glad to be ~~not~~ of cervix.

@IceGirl By the way, are you sure there shouldn't be a "not" somewhere between those dashes?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@MετάEd whatever. It makes my point about the difference between a monopoly on a market and a copyright monopoly.

yes from Patterns book

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Not being able to ship with Gapps is a huge restriction in practice.

@Robusto What if they were given wombs, too?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

9:42 PM

@Cerberus It doesn't seem to be holding back Amazon.

@Jez that'll be a long wait.

@Cerberus Damn you, monopoly!

There are no true monopoles.

Yes.sure

@Cerberus Then they'd be women. I dunno.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Oh, no? Amazon couldn't sell smartphones as successfully as, say, Samsung without Gapps. Many people wouldn't buy them.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

9:43 PM

@Cerberus And if suddenly, tomorrow, people discovered that Google was really really evil and they all wanted to switch to a different fork of Android, that would at least be feasible, unlike if everyone wanted to ditch Windows for Linux

@Mitch I was rather expecting, "yay!".

@Robusto They could still have penises? I'd have to think this system through.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus And yet their tablet is one of the top-selling tablets, period.

@Cerberus Men are soon to be obsolete; equality is unfair when it doesn't benefit me!

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 What market share does Amazon have in tablets compared with Samsung, and what profit margin?

I used to be curious about what the other sex feels, but decided I would never really know. Even if your consciousness were teleported (?) into a woman's body, you wouldn't really know because the biggest difference is in the actual consciousness itself. Everything else is just window dressing.

9:44 PM

Ha Mr. Automated Sarcasm detector Algorithm, figure that one out.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Ursula K Le Guin already covered it in "The Left Hand of Darkness"

@Mitch I can't disagree with that!

Argh... using 'Mr.' is the prime marker!

@Robusto assuming there are any conscious beings in the universe apart from oneself

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus The kindle fire has sold more units than any other tablet. including the ipad.

9:45 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 The Left hand of Darkness is about penises? I see.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus it mentions them, yes.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 But at a low margin. And for how long will that continue? Would you buy an Android tablet without Gapps?

Can you explain more about my last sentence Cerberus?

@Jez That is always a fair assumption.

@Robusto You can say that about -anything-. "I used to be curious what my brother feels..."

9:46 PM

9 mins ago, by Ice Girl

I did not realize__because such things were spoken of__how often women suffered from men's bullying. I did learn about the wretchedness of abandoned wives, single mothers,widows; but i also learned about the wretchedness of lone man.

I do not understand "because such things were spoken of". I would expect "because such things were not spoken of".

@Cerberus It should be "... because such things were not spoken of ..."

Are we discussing talking about sex or just discussing sex?

Jinx!

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus No, but I might if it transpired that Google was shitting on their customers and I wanted to switch. Unlike in 1998 when Microsoft was shitting on their customers and lots of people wanted to switch but there was nothing to switch TO.

@IceGirl What don't you understand?

@Robusto Yay!

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Sure, it's somewhat easier. But still not that easy, because Google has a true monopoly on the Play Store, and the Play Store is intimately linked to Android for most people.

9:49 PM

Can I ask my last question? but it is very long

@MετάEd they come in pairs? Like the republicans and democrats?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Also I might buy any number of android devices without gapps if they were not intended to be internet terminals. I.e. if they didn't need gapps.

@Cerberus Sounds a little like a Google translation. Could "lone man" mean "lonely men" or "solitary man" or "unattached men" etc.?

@IceGirl You can post a long text, but your question should be a bit more specific, you should mention what part you don't understand, or why you think one sentence contradicts another sentence—or whatever the problem is.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus The play store does not have a monopoly on android app distribution though, and it would be easy for people to switch to a new one if there was motivation to do so.

anyway I have to run.

cya

9:50 PM

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, but smartphones and tablets are intended to be Internet terminals for most people.

Do all these smart phone app developers have to rewrite the same code for every platform? iPhone, Android, Windows?

@Robusto I read it as a combination of all three. Or it wouldn't be grammatical.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Bai!

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 But other stores don't have nearly as many applications. And by nearly I mean like within 9000 light years.

@Mitch No, no, not morons. You're thinking of that weird 19th century angel.

@Mitch Yes...although I don't know how hard it is to port an application from one platform to another.

@MετάEd no, no, not Moroni. You're thinking of that brownish-purplish color.

9:54 PM

@Mitch No, no, not maroon. You're thinking of being stranded on an island.

@Cerberus You think "the wretchedness of lone man" is grammatical? Maybe, but it sure sounds awkward.

@MετάEd no, no not Moroni. You're thinking of that other Abrahamic fan fiction from the late 19th c by a guy who died from syphilis.

@MετάEd No no, not a failed marine. You're thinking of that questionable food source made from brewer's yeast scraped from the bottom of a beer barrel.

No, no, not marmite. You're thinking of the stuff they make plinths out of.

@Robusto My parser balked at first, but then it grudgingly accepted the construction.

@MετάEd no, no, not marooned. You're thinking of those little nabisco cookies named after a Scottish mini-opera.

9:58 PM

So I was baffled when the women at college accused me and my sex of having cornered the world's pleasures. I think something like my bafflement has been felt by other boys ( and by girls as well) who grew up in dirt-poor farm country, in mining country, in black ghettos, in Hispanic barrios, in the shadows of factories, in Third world nations__any place where the fate of men is as grim and bleak as the fate of women.Toilers and warriors.

@Mitch no, no, not Lorna Doones. You're thinking of the patriarch of the old TV show Bonanza.

@MετάEd no no not plinth material. You're thinking of what I've lost.

@IceGirl If you mean — instead of __, just hold down the ALT key on your keyboard and type 0157 on the number pad, then release them both.

That is how you make an em dash in Windows.

continue of above sentence is:I realize now how ancient these identities are, how deep the tug they exert on men, the undertow of a thousand generations.

@Robusto No no not Lorna Michaels. You're thinking of That old dude that runs Saturday Night Live.

Wait, did I mess that up?

10:01 PM

@IceGirl The "identities" are the two identities of man as a toiler and man as a warrior.

That -is- Lorne Michaels. The Bonanza dude was Lorne... somethety-something.

@Mitch Epic fail.

Lorne Greene.

@IceGirl What part or construction don't you understand?

Oh thank you so much

@Robusto Gah!

10:02 PM

having cornered?

@Mitch No, no, not doubloons. You're thinking of those scary sounding birds.

@Mitch Lorne Greene.

(Or maybe both men and women are toilers and warriors, one at home and one in the field? Not sure. Probably only men.)

depending on your age/preferences, the Bonanza dad or the Galactica dad.

@IceGirl "Having appropriated", as in "taken for their own use", so that women have no access to pleasures.

why writer use by girls as well in parentheses?

10:04 PM

@MετάEd Governor Adama.

The Bgoanlaancztaica dad.

@Mitch Yes, or Ben Cartwright.

@IceGirl That is indeed a bit odd. The women say that men have all the pleasures, but (some?) girls who grew up in poor families think this is not true.

Or Edward James Olmos

In the shadows of factories?

Perhaps because those girls from poor background have seen how the boys in their own families also had it rough? The women in college apparently do not know this.

10:07 PM

MAKE A STUFFED BIRD LAUGH

@IceGirl Living under the shadow of a factory is a metaphor for having your life dominated by what happens in the factory, so it means in this case that you spend your life working in the factory. Which is no fun.

Perhaps the writers literally means poor neighbourhoods near factories, where poor factory workers live.

From(any until women)?

That is a summary of the list of items that comes before, of the places where men lead miserable lives.

How deep the tug they exert on men?

So in those places, the lives ("fates") of men are as bad as the lives of women.

@IceGirl How much the lives of men are dominated by toil and war.

10:12 PM

from undertow until generations?

"Tug" is a bit odd, because it suggests some sort of attraction, as if men wanted to toil.

@IceGirl That is a metaphor: the "hidden stream" that has been shaped by a thousand generations, or that has been active for a thousand generations. What it means is a little bit vague, but something like "a strong and ancient aspect of the nature of men".

I was slow to understand the deep grievances of women. This was because, as a boy, I had envied them.

What does (this) refereed to?

and also meaning of (slow) here

This = "the previous sentence" = the fact that I was slow to understand...

I was slow to understand = "it took me a long time before I understood" or "some time".

Thank you very much indeed. Thanks for telling me

It's very good of you

It was a pleasure.

Good luck with your text!

What's your native language?

10:27 PM

Thanks

American

You speak American English with your parents?

No I am translation student

Your native language is the language you spoke as a child as your primary language.

Native means "related to birth, origin".

Speak with my friends in university

But what is your native language?

10:29 PM

Iranian

Ah OK.

That's quite different!

Well, anyway, good luck.

I imagine it must be very hard to translate a complicated text like that...

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Crazy new top bar!

Do you like to learn Iranian(Farsi) language?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@Mitch I know why the stuffed bird laughs.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 I just noticed.

10:32 PM

Yes. It is very very difficult

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@Robusto I like the far left drop-down changes.

@IceGirl I know very little about it, except that it is an Indo-European language written in an alphabet (or is it an abjad?) derived from Arabic.

It'll take some getting used to.

We once had a reading night where a Persian friend read Persian poems to us.

The sound and rhythm were very nice, but of course we didn't understand a thing.

Anyway thanks for helping. Don't forget me

10:35 PM

Haha. Never!

What time is it?there?

Here 2 P.M. I am sleepy

Goodbye my best friend

Bye!

It's 23:38 here.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 So chat was removed from the top bar, right?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@Cerberus and meta. They're in the far left drop-down.

Ah, yes, I see.

How do we feel about that?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

I kind of like it.

Especially since there's a blog link.

10:41 PM

GOODNIGHT

Bye.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Isn't chat less visible now?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

I haven't seen the chat box on the right side for months. Months!

looks the same to me

liveleak.com/view?i=ce0_1386180623

This is what happens if you can't get away from the Ukrainian riot police.

Endless streams of policemen will pass by when you're lying still on the ground, and every man will hit you with his truncheon.

I see only one policemen trying to push his colleagues away when they keep hitting the man on the ground, but the next twenty to pass hit him anyway, after the protective policeman is gone.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

1) Holy shit they have a lot of riot police
2) How was that person able to film that without being beaten?

10:45 PM

Pretty shocking.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 From a window, probably.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Looked like a short balcony.

Yeah could be.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

He looks down far enough to see a railing briefly.

Ah OK.

My friend was there a few days ago.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

O_O

10:46 PM

He Whatsapped a picture of the riot police at 5 metres distance.

what are they rioting about?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

^

But apparently they merely closed them in, they didn't attack them. He was most probably not protesting, just standing somewhere else with a group of bystanders, not in the direction of the protests.

@badass The people are rioting because they want in the EU.

icic

user image

10:48 PM

The government does not, because Russia has threatened to cut off gas and exports if they sign the association treaty, as usual.

@JohanLarsson Heh. Very true...

user image

Riot police tearing up the EU flag.

user image

11:08 PM

@Cerberus You write headlines like Fox News.

@MετάEd Thanks!

Except that this is actually true.

liveleak.com/view?i=48c_1385939669

Here you can how protests work.

Lots of things said on Fox News are true, too. Propaganda works that way.

Notice how the crowd lights up with all the recording phone screens.

Riot police tearing up the EU flag -> offensive action taken by riot police

@MετάEd So what are you trying to say?

11:10 PM

Riot police tangled in torn EU flag -> inoffensive action taken by riot police

It's all how you write it.

So while I compliment you on your headline, I don't agree that it's true.

It's superficially true, but deeply false.

Are you suggesting protesters were able to somehow use the flag as a weapon?

I see no other way for that flag to be there except if some policemen ripped it out of the hands of protesters.

Besides, there is plenty of footage of riot police destroying the rioter's stuff.

Like the phones they destroy in the above video.

@Cerberus That was an interesting rhetorical move. When you ask if I am suggesting something ridiculous. Well done again.

You're being unfair.

What are you suggesting, if not that?

See, now that's unfair. You imply I'm suggesting something unsaid.

Why don't you just say whatever you want to say?

This game isn't working.

11:14 PM

I did. I acknowledged your headline style, complimented it, and questioned your facts. Which is in fact exactly what I wanted to say.

Why are you looking for something else?

You seemed to be suggesting the riot police had not ripped that flag out of the hands of protesters prior to that picture.

Actually, all I originally wanted to do was compliment you on your nice bit of propaganda there. But then you wanted it to be true too.

2

Otherwise, I do not understand your "false" at all.

@Cerberus Not at all. I wasn't there. I don't know what happened.

The picture doesn't say that the police ripped the flag, but you did.

You said "false".

11:16 PM

Right. It's superficially true but deeply false.

Then what's false about it?

Be direct.

I was already. I pointed out what your headline implies. I characterized the headline as technically true and the implication as false.

Can you answer my question?

I'm trying to.

What is false about it?

11:18 PM

It's a false implication.

What is the false implication?

The implication is that the riot police were doing something offensive to the EU flag.

You don't know that, therefore it's a false implication.

The implication is that the police ripped the flag out of the hands of protesters.

I don't know about the word offensive, but that is what it implies to me.

Is that false?

@Cerberus I don't get that implication at all.

Why not?

11:20 PM

The implication from where I stand is that the police ripped up a flag.

How else did that flag end up there, unless protesters tried to strange/confuse a policeman by throwing the flag on them?

You didn't say how they acquired it, but you did make a point of them ripping it up.

"A" flag? What do you mean? Why not "an EU flag"?

Fine. The implication from where I stand is that the police ripped up an EU flag.

So then what's the false part? I honestly have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

11:23 PM

As you present it, what's going on in that photo is destruction of a flag.

Not theft of a flag, not accidental damage of a flag, but police destruction of a flag.

Well, destruction, ripping.

It's as much what you don't say as what you do say.

How are theft and destruction mutually exclusive here?

@Cerberus Who said they were?

You said "not...but".

If if there were a significant difference in this context.

11:25 PM

I'm not making theft and destruction mutually exclusive. I'm saying you did NOT say "A", but you did say "B".

I'm comparing what you did emphasize with what you did not emphasize.

You seem to be misapplying my "not...but" to the actual events, when I'm talking about how you wrote the headline.

I don't see how that matters. The police want the symbols of the demonstration to not be there. They take them away and/or destroy them, but the difference is not very important to them or to me.

Right. Your headline suggests that the police have deliberately taken and destroyed the flag. Which I said was a nice bit of propaganda on your part. The only problem I have is when you said that it is true.

But they most probably have taken away the flag deliberately.

And destroying it may or may not be accidental. It will end up trampled and thrown into a rubbish container anyway. I don't see how that matters.

@Cerberus You stated it as a fact, not a probability. Which was a nice rhetorical move.

It is as good as a fact, yes.

11:30 PM

The best propaganda is written by people who believe it. Maybe.

If you look at videos, you see them tearing down symbols of the protesters. That's what a riot police normally does.

define propaganda in this context?

I don't think it's "propaganda" to state something as fact that is in all likelihood true and also typical of how the riot police operate in Ukraine.

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 What a load of PODSNAPPERY

@Cerberus WHAT IS TRUTH?

to say what is that is

11:39 PM

@MετάEd ooh that stings

@badass Words are lies. But that's a strict standard to hold them to.

@badass You can never say what is. Nobody has the time. You can only make a general statement about what approximately is. So fuzzy logic applies: no statements about the real world are perfectly true.

Or perfectly false.

@Cerberus s/Persian//g

@Mitch What does that mean?

say what you mean and vice versa

@badass see what you eat and vice versa

@Cerberus Maybe it's a statement about no true Persians.

11:45 PM

that is the sea food diet

@badass nothing fishy about that

:-)

@MετάEd I honestly still don't get what's "superficially true but deeply false" about saying the Ukrainian riot police were tearing apart that flag. Maybe "tear apart" is more forceful than strictly necessary. I could have said "tug at" or "damage", but I don't see how that makes much of a difference—so much, in fact, that you would call it "deeply false".

Does the underlying situation change at all?

The police are trying to break up the protests, violently.

The violence impacts the symbols of the protests.

None of that seems controversial.

@Cerberus I still say it's a great headline. Anybody whose personality leads them to feel offended when the EU flag is desecrated will be offended by the photo, when guided by your headline.

you can't use violence to stop violence

11:52 PM

Who would be offended at that, compared to the other things the riot police do? "Desacrated" is not a word that would seem appropriate for the EU flag.

That flag pales in comparison to what you saw in that last video: beating the same person again and again, taking away and destroying their phones, firing tear-gas grenades at people...

I didn't see any video.

I saw a photograph. Was the photograph a link to a video?

Mainly I saw a headline and that got me interested in the photo.

I posted the first video before the photos, the second one after.

It's also all over the news.

44 mins ago, by Cerberus

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=48c_1385939669

It starts with grenades, then the attack and the endless beating-up of people and crushing their phones.

3 mins ago, by badass

you can't use violence to stop violence

@Cerberus Well, you may not know what I think of "the news".

Amusing Ourselves to Death

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985) is a book by educator Neil Postman. The book's origins lay in a talk Postman gave to the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1984. He was participating in a panel on Orwell's 1984 and the contemporary world. In the introduction to his book, Postman said that the contemporary world was better reflected by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, whose public was oppressed by their addiction to amusement, than by Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, where they were oppressed by state control. It has been translated into eight language...

I see very little news.

@MετάEd And what is that?

That book title tells me little.

11:58 PM

You may not be interested enough to read the article. A fair gloss of the book:

(Oh, it's also interesting how a policeman in that video, does an air kick into a protester's back as he is trying to walk away after having been beaten up.)

> Rational argument, integral to print typography, is militated against by the medium of television [...]. Owing to this shortcoming, politics and religion are diluted, and 'news of the day' becomes a packaged commodity. Television de-emphasises the quality of information in favour of satisfying the far-reaching needs of entertainment, by which information is encumbered and to which it is subordinate.

Sure.

So I have mostly checked out of the news.

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