On 03/01/2014 6:42 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Fri, 03 Jan 2014 09:09:51 +0000, Stephen wrote:
>
>>> Green? ;)
>>>
>>>
>> If you want.
>>
>> I have no opinions on the matter. (See everyone, it can be said. :-) )
>>
>
> LOL
>
>>
>>>>> (Aside:  You do know what "bikeshedding" is, yes?)
>>>>
>>>> Yes and that is why I always spec a bike shed with a penthouse and
>>>> patio doors. That way I might get a shed for bikes.
>>>
>>> But the discussion is about what colour it should be. ;)
>>>
>>>
>> Why? Is it a religious thing? It is in Northern Ireland and the West
>> coast of Scotland.
>
> I guess you don't know what it is....
>
> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding is a good summary. :)
>

Similar to what I understand it to mean.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law_of_triviality


-- 
Regards
     Stephen

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On 03/01/2014 6:43 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Fri, 03 Jan 2014 06:09:07 +0000, Stephen wrote:
>
>> On 03/01/2014 12:20 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> On Thu, 02 Jan 2014 20:47:00 +0100, andrel wrote:
>>>
>>>> http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RDlUlTR1xXc/UYBH7JMnrxI/AAAAAAAACFA/
>>> mEZ4NH6UbYg/s1600/tumblr_mm2mx0hnmy1qzjmo0o1_1280.jpg
>>>>
>>>> orange dressed in blue.
>>>
>>> I'm not understanding the reference...
>>>
>> She is of the House of Orange. The same way our Queen is of the House of
>> Windsor. Previously the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
>
> Ah, I see.  I don't tend to notice stuff like that. :)
>

No reason that you should.
I have worked with the Lowlanders quite a bit recently and it shows a 
certain awareness to know who your co-workers monarch is. I would sell 
our lot for a mess of pottage but not everyone is like that.
BTW Did you know that Belgium has a new king?

Regards
     Stephen

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On Sat, 04 Jan 2014 10:23:20 +0000, Stephen wrote:

>> https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding is a good summary.
>>
>>
> Similar to what I understand it to mean.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law_of_triviality

Yep.

The explanation I initially had been given was something along the lines 
that people contribute to the discussion of the colour because they can - 
they may not know anything about construction, building codes, etc - but 
they can have an opinion on the colour, so they provide it so they're 
"participating."

Jim
-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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On Sat, 04 Jan 2014 10:32:19 +0000, Stephen wrote:

> No reason that you should.
> I have worked with the Lowlanders quite a bit recently and it shows a
> certain awareness to know who your co-workers monarch is. I would sell
> our lot for a mess of pottage but not everyone is like that.

That makes sense, I guess.

> BTW Did you know that Belgium has a new king?

Nope.

The only royal I'm somewhat interested in hearing news of is Theresa, the 
Crown Princess of Lichtenstein. ;)

Jim
-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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On 1/3/2014 2:32 AM, Warp wrote:
> Patrick Elliott <kag### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>>> I'm almost tempted to call you a nasty name.
>>>
>> Sigh... Seriously? The problem here isn't that someone should take "no"
>> precautions. The problem is taking "imaginary" ones, which do nothing
>> but promote the excuses used to both get criminal off the hook, and
>> shame women into thinking, "I should have done something different.",
>> even when it was impossible to have done anything different. Slut
>> shaming is ***NOT*** acceptable, but its exactly what happens, every
>> single damn time a rape happens, and some idiots starts rattling off a
>> list of things they "might have" done differently, while having no F-ing
>> clue what the hell they did, or didn't, do, or based on a laundry list
>> of myths and stupid assumptions.
>
> Ok, I'm so tempted that I can't resist it anymore: You are fucking moron.
>
> Someone trying to be helpful is not "slut shaming". Go fuck yourself.
>
But, you are not being helpful to give bad advice.

See, the problem here is that some of the advice is bloody useless. You 
rattled off a list of "common" suggestions, of which maybe 1 of them 
wasn't useless. A year ago I would have done the exact same thing, 
then.. I listened to victims of rape, I read their accounts, and found 
out what is and isn't true about the subject. Now.. I get a bit pissed 
when I see the same nonsense trotted out.

Here is the thing - A few months back someone put up a post about 
"their" experience and why they don't trust either cops, or the courts, 
to do what is right when it comes to rape cases. This was the script 
that got followed, both times she actually reported it:

1. The cops initially don't believe it.

2. They spend hours going over not what the rapist did, but every nit 
picky little idiocy possible, from what she was wearing to what she 
said, how hard she fought back, if at all (never mind the guy is usually 
stronger, and resistance could get you killed in some cases). In other 
words, about 5 minutes of, "Who was it, and we did he do?", and 1:55 
minutes of them making someone who had been abused, beaten, and raped, 
feel even more like shit, by trying to come up with some bloody stupid 
ass excuse for why it was, at least in part, her fault, and therefor, 
the cops wouldn't have to arrest someone.

3. Harassment from various people, including acquaintances, some of them 
the friends of the rapist themselves, the press, and other media, etc. 
Many of them didn't want it to be true, insisting she must have, on some 
level wanted, it, or asking them "what did you do wrong".

4. When months later, it came to court, she had to sit on the witness 
stand and go through the whole damned experience, all over again, 
including an all new interrogation, just like the 2 hours she spent with 
the cops, to start with, only to have the bloody jury believe the 
rapist's excuses, and let him off.

Guess how many **women** posted on to that article who claimed that this 
sort of thing wasn't "common", that the list of "concerns" where valid, 
that any of the advice about what they wore, or not, and other similar 
things **ever** protected them either, or that they had a different 
experience when going to the cops, or in court, when it finally came to 
a trial? But, there where dozens of men showing up, to offer advice, all 
of it in the same vein of, "Well, if only you had done this instead.", 
or, "What where you wearing at the time?"

Maybe I shouldn't have jumped all over you like I did, but.. no matter 
how much you might have intended to help, pretty much every rape victim 
in the world, on reading your advice, would be cursing you for being a 
fool. Your intent doesn't matter. Its whether or not your advice isn't 
something every single damn one of them heard before it happened 
already, but proved, when it did happen, to be meaningless, and then, 
heard again, over and over again, from people who either wanted to, 
"help them avoid it next time", or, "should have done, but didn't".

To put it in simplest terms - men get raped too, but only the women ever 
get useless advice about what they are wearing, or where they where 
walking, etc. And, to paraphrase the author of that, and several other 
blog posts on the subject, "The problem isn't what the women are doing, 
its the assumption that those things should matter, combined with men 
who haven't learned to truly respect women, instead of seeing them as 
objects to be pursued, and, for some, taken." That, and.. what ever the 
"intent", thinking that its "helpful" to give out advice about their 
lipstick, or clothing, or anything else, while presuming that men, for 
some reason, don't need to worry about this the same way, proved the point.

Rape isn't "natural", its not someone men "must do", or are "force by" 
their biology to commit. It happens because men are told to assume that 
women dressing a certain way "want it", that coercion is a valid way to 
get women into bed, that "no" doesn't **always** mean no, that somehow 
they "deserve" something for the effort, and.. that all of these stupid 
assumptions, but the men that do commit rapes, can somehow be avoided by 
dressing the right way, staying in lit places, hanging out with the 
right friends, and a long list of other bad advice. The women are not 
the ones that need to be fixed, and most of the ways people trot out, 
all with the best intentions, to, "reduce the risk", don't, because they 
have nothing ***at all*** to do with why, where, how, and when rape happens.

But, if you really feel so strongly that I am being unfair, take it up 
with the people that woke me up to how bloody stupid this advice usually 
is, and made me agree enough about it to jump at someone so strongly for 
giving it:

http://skepchick.org/2013/08/when-i-didnt-consent-why-i-reported-why-i-didnt/

Or, the reaction some of those previous victims have to some similar 
"advice/product" intended to "protect" people (two women, who I like to 
think are badly confused have come up with "underwear", which is 
inconvenient, stupid, and silly, based on the faulty assumption that 
someone with a knife is going to be trying to rape the person wearing 
it, out in the scary world, and not "at home", with someone who might 
already have it off, assuming any woman would actually want to wear 
these things in their own home, or anyplace else they feel safe, in the 
first place, by the time they cross a line and get told to piss off and 
go away):

http://skepchick.org/2013/11/scienceburqas/

I doubt they will be any more enthused by your misguided attempt to "help".

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On 1/3/2014 6:01 AM, Warp wrote:
> Patrick Elliott <kag### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> I know someone who
>
> Btw, how about we start citing sources rather than just relaying
> personal anecdotes? I'll start:
>
>
http://www.nij.gov/topics/crime/rape-sexual-violence/campus/Pages/increased-risk.aspx
> http://www.nij.gov/topics/crime/rape-sexual-violence/campus/Pages/decrease-risk.aspx
>
> "In particular, certain actions reduce the risk of rape more than
> 80 percent compared to nonresistance."
>
> Your sources, please?
>
A campus is not the rest of the world, and the statistics "do" differ 
between there and other places. That tends to happen, when you cram a 
lot of people, in a specific age group, many of which seem to presume 
that one purpose of college is to party and get laid, in one place. And, 
I never said "all", advice was bad advice. What I objected to was most 
of the stuff you came up with as "advice".

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On 1/3/2014 1:55 PM, Nekar Xenos wrote:
> Another problem concerning this is fake rape claims where a girl claims
> some-one has raped them only later to recant and say they just didn't
> like his attitude or something or wanted to pat him back for something
> silly.

You have no clue a) how uncommon that really is, and b) how much shit 
women go through, even when it is legitimate, which might result in them 
"wanting" to recant it, even if it did happen. So.. Don't go there. I 
refer you to the same thing I posted in the other comment:

http://skepchick.org/2013/08/when-i-didnt-consent-why-i-reported-why-i-didnt/ 


This is why even many of those "recanted" cases are not really 
recanting, and at least one of the reasons why so many rapes never get 
reported at all, even when they *are* real.

Anyone else want to trot out one of the endless excuses for why its 
either, "not the guys fault, or didn't happen, or isn't really that big 
of a problem"? The "false rape" thing is vastly rarer than people claim, 
and is just one more reason used by MRAs (Men's Right Association) types 
to claim that "no" rape is ever rape, among other things. What sort of 
people do you think "intentionally" spread it, right along with the ones 
that do it unintentionally, because, despite having no statistics to 
back up the claim, "Everyone knows it happens a lot."

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On 2014-01-04 17:28, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> You have no clue a) how uncommon that really is, and b) how much shit
> women go through, even when it is legitimate, which might result in them
> "wanting" to recant it, even if it did happen. So.. Don't go there. I
> refer you to the same thing I posted in the other comment:

While it is important to understand the significance of item b), it's 
also important to understand that

> http://skepchick.org  [snip]

is in fact a particular subset of the larger population of women. 
Despite the overall message of some of the posts on that site, not every 
moment of every woman's life is a living hell, forever, even if you're a 
non-white transgendered woman.

Not saying that life doesn't suck, but...if it sucked /that/ much? 
People would be killing themselves a /lot more often/ than they are.

(Though I will say that, for myself, the greatest gift I can give my 
hypothetical children is to never have them, because The World.)

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Patrick Elliott <kag### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> A campus is not the rest of the world, and the statistics "do" differ 
> between there and other places. That tends to happen, when you cram a 
> lot of people, in a specific age group, many of which seem to presume 
> that one purpose of college is to party and get laid, in one place. And, 
> I never said "all", advice was bad advice. What I objected to was most 
> of the stuff you came up with as "advice".

Firstly, if such a study shows that actions can be taken to reduce the
risk of rape in one community, and that they have a significant effect,
then it's not unreasonable to deduce that actions can be taken in other
communities as well. Or do you have actual credible sources that say
otherwise?

Secondly, I didn't say "they should do this or that". What I said was
that it's a good thing to try to figure out what could be done to reduce
the risks, and listed some things that could be studied to see if there
is some correlation.

What really irks me is when someone comes up and calls the act of actually
trying to do something with names like "slut shaming". Trying to *help*
prevent rapes is not victim blaming. Insulting people who do so is
disgusting.

Such an attitude is only detrimental. It gives women the notion that
"you are just a helpless victim and there's nothing you can do about it.
Don't let people tell you otherwise, they are just victim blaming you."

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Sun, 05 Jan 2014 01:28:13 +0200, Patrick Elliott <kag### [at] gmailcom>  
wrote:

> On 1/3/2014 1:55 PM, Nekar Xenos wrote:
>> Another problem concerning this is fake rape claims where a girl claims
>> some-one has raped them only later to recant and say they just didn't
>> like his attitude or something or wanted to pat him back for something
>> silly.
>
> You have no clue a) how uncommon that really is,
I do. I just thought it was worth mentioning since I haven't seen it  
mentioned in this post.

and b) how much shit
> women go through, even when it is legitimate, which might result in them  
> "wanting" to recant it, even if it did happen. So.. Don't go there. I  
> refer you to the same thing I posted in the other comment:
>

True. I should have mentioned that as well.



-- 
-Nekar Xenos-

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