Comments on: Taoists, Confucians, Stoics, Vulcans, and Obama

By: Gene

Gene — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 02:15:07 +0000

There’s a sequel:
http://www.examiner.com/x-8993-Houston-Humanist-Examiner~y2009m6d14-More-on-intentions-friendships–compassion-reader-feedback

By: Black Bloke

Black Bloke — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 22:44:30 +0000

How did Maymin come to believe that the TaNaKh is included in the Qur’an?

It seems like neither author got what you were going for, but bad publicity is (almost always) better than no publicity.

By: Joe

Joe — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:59:23 +0000

Until my teens, I also was exposed only to British spelling (and “zed” rather than “zee”) but I don’t recall seeing the “-ise” spellings (but I did use “colour”). And although I learned French, the “-ize” endings always seemed more natural since Spanish was my first language. Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, the OED prefers the latter particularly for words of Greek origin.

By: Roderick

Roderick — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 04:33:48 +0000

were you born or raised in the U.K

No, but I grew up on British children’s books, which may be why British spellings have always seemed more natural to me. (I’m not consistent, though; I don’t write ‘tyre’ or ‘connexion’ — perhaps because I learned about those spellings only later.) But both ways count as correct English, so I can pick whichever I prefer with a clean conscience.

By: Joe

Joe — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 04:16:06 +0000

I was able to save the linked document) and read it using AbiWord. What I found interesting is that the spell checker (set for en_US), aside from flagging your Briticized words (I still don’t understand why you insist in spelling “minimize” as “minimise”; were you born or raised in the U.K?), marked “statist” (as well as coherentist and deontic) as possibly misspelled or unknown.

By: Roderick

Roderick — Sun, 31 May 2009 22:33:37 +0000

Did you ever claim they were?

Only in invisible ink in the margin. But damn! I didn’t expect him to have UV goggles.

By: JOR

JOR — Sun, 31 May 2009 20:34:48 +0000

I thought both of the linked articles were pretty horrible. I barely finished either. Maybe I’m just spoiled from reading Roderick’s stuff.

By: Neverfox

Neverfox — Sun, 31 May 2009 20:13:14 +0000

How did Maymin jump from your discussion of the libertarian aspects of early Confucians (while fully qualifying this with reference to their statism) to “I think both views are wrong. Neither the Taoists nor the Confucians were libertarians”? Did you ever claim they were?

By: Roderick

Roderick — Sun, 31 May 2009 17:59:37 +0000

Maybe when he said he wanted a judge with “empathy,” he really meant “apathy” (in the original sense of being free from all passions).

By: JOR

JOR — Sun, 31 May 2009 17:45:19 +0000

Obama as a virtuous stoic? What the fuck?