The Reading Room

Q: William Dunseath Eaton Iskander Play

8:43 AM

@verbose That's my understanding too.

@verbose Heh, that's not the one I meant :-)

@Tsundoku I think I'm missing a joke here ...

verbose

9:01 AM

@Tsundoku when Biden said the US would rejoin the Paris Accords, Ted Cruz, a Republican US senator, said that Biden cared more about the citizens of Paris than about those of Pittsburgh

(Pittsburgh used to be a big coal and steel town)

(When Trump withdrew from the Paris accords, a lot of local governments said they’d abide by the protocols and limits anyway. Pittsburgh was one of them. Cruz either didn’t know or didn’t care about facts.)

(With Republicans, bad faith, ignorance, and demagoguery are inextricably linked)

that was meant for @Randal'Thor not Tsundoku sorry

b_jonas

@verbose Possible, but does that also apply to the french words?

@verbose Please refrain from that kind of statement in chat.

4 hours later…

Bookworm

1:01 PM

According to many accounts, Frederick B. Warde performed a play entitled Iskander in 1897-1897 season in many country theatres such Lancaster PA, Chicago, Illinois, Columbus Ohio and so on. The play was adapted for stage, based on Benjamin Disraeli's novelette The Rise of Iskander, by William Dun...

identification-request

4 hours later…

4:44 PM

@b_jonas Why?

@verbose Désolé. Je ne sais pas :-(

2 hours later…

6:18 PM

@Tsundoku SE's general Be Nice policy includes respecting people who disagree politically, even politicans and certainly ordinary Republican voters many of whom may be decent people and/or SE users.

@Randal'Thor Sorry, but verbose what not criticising anyone in this room. There is not SE rule against criticism of political parties.

@Tsundoku Be Nice doesn't only cover statements about SE users, but also public figures. Criticising a party is a bit less clear, and not a personal attack, but point 2 in Shog's answer still applies.

@Randal'Thor So you think the statement "With Republicans, bad faith, ignorance, and demagoguery are inextricably linked" violates the be-nice policy, even though it can be supported by facts?

@Randal'Thor Point 2 is about new users, not politicians, right?

6:34 PM

>
> Let's say my favorite thing to do is post meme pics, and my current favorite memes all involve how folks who vote for 3rd-party candidates in the US presidential election are essentially the same as Hitler. OH SO FUNNY! Not very welcoming to the folks who've put serious time into researching the vote they're gonna have to make here and made the hard decision to support one of those candidates, eh? And again, for what? I'm not writing a researched answer on Politics Stack Exchange; I'm making jokes to try and lighten the mood on meta.

^ Shog exaggerates, but a statement that bad faith and ignorance are inextricably linked to Republicanism isn't likely to make Republican voters feel very welcome.

1 hour later…

7:57 PM

@Randal'Thor Since this has almost devolved into a reductio ad Hitlerum, let's rewind. (1) We are talking here about a parenthical comment in a series of messages that were addressed at you (but mistakenly tagged me). Were you offended by it? Was @b_jonas offended by it? It does not seem so.

@Randal'Thor (2) Shog9's answer is not SE's Code of Conduct. His links to the "be-nice policy" link to this Code of Conduct, in which I see nothing that warrants a warning about verbose's comment.

@Randal'Thor (3) Leaving aside SE's Code of Conduct, nothing in verbose's comment constitutes name-calling, bigotry or harassment, so it should not be seen as such outside SE either.

@Randal'Thor If you're looking for a statement of bad faith, see this, which was what triggered the Paris agreement versus Pittsburgh agreement discussion.

8:22 PM

If somebody feels offended, they can flag it, but let's not set up strawman arguments that make uncalled-for comparisons with Hitler.

9:05 PM

@Tsundoku That's absolutely a fair point, and I wish Shog had made his argument without invoking Hitler :-/

Anyway I don't want to make a mountain out of a molehill. Can't speak for b_jonas, but no I wasn't personally offended by it - I'm not a supporter of the US Republican Party, nor even eligible to vote there. (I am a republican in the sense of an anti-monarchy Brit, but that's beside the point ;-) )

I just realized that I have more rep than @shoover - seems wrong, I feel they have contributed much more quality content than I

For anyone who wishes to do research on How did real historical Igbo society differ from its portrayal in Things Fall Apart?, Ogbe Uke Kalu's book THE EMBATTLED GODS: The Christianization of Igboland, 1841-1991 might be helpful. I discovered the publisher Africa World Press while looking for something completely different.

@bobble How much of your rep is from edits?

> earned 150 reputation from suggested edits

That doesn't account for the whole difference

9:22 PM

I guess most of your rep is from questions. Not to detract from the value of a good question, but it doesn't require as much knowledge and expertise as a good answer.

True!

Less true on Puzzling, of course :-)

Puzzling was asking for 10-rep question upvotes years before SE rolled out that change to the network.

While writing up a question yesterday I started to answer it in my head, so I think I'll post it with a self-answer, and it's going to take a while for me to write both.

Feb 21 '17 at 22:00, by Rand al'Thor

in Mos Eisley, Jun 26 '15 at 23:35, by rand al'thor

Questions get less rep than answers,
But rep-whores are just foolish prancers.
The pride a well-posed question brings
Is greater than rep or other things.
Answers need their nourishing questions:
Naught else can suit their select digestions.
Those vital questions, food for all,
Cannot be overlooked. Askers stand tall!

Mithical

@Randal'Thor I try to stand tall. Genetics aren't on my side, though.

9:24 PM

On Puzzling I have more questions than answers (though 2 of those questions aren't puzzles). My two highest-voted posts are answers, though my questions are in general higher-voted than my answers.

@bobble You could post the question first and then continue working on the answer? I do that sometimes, give other people the same time as myself to compose an answer to my own question.

From the reception here, no-one else has a copy of Rose Under Fire

@Mithical you're saying. I'm under 5ft!

Mithical

Okay yeah you're worse off :P

@Bookworm HNQ.