Cole Parker
-
Posts
9,059 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
15
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Posts posted by Cole Parker
-
-
Or a GSA football team. If they can play football, all of a sudden they'd be heroes, and no one in SC would even consider banning them.
C
-
In some places, people will still fight for injustice to the bitter end.
C
-
What I get from this isn't that computer programs built for writers are good or bad, but that different writers have their own ways of working, and that what works for them works for them and may well not be what works for someone else.
And I think that sums up writing pretty well. Do what works.
I think both Pec and Trab are right. For those for whom their advice works.
We've got to find what works for us, and then go at it.
C
-
I had the same experience. I got rid of Norton, something incidentally that's quite a task to do completely, and installed AVG and it found several problems that Norton hadn't and completely eliminated them. It's the same cost, or less, than Norton, and works better. That's a pretty good combination.
I probably should add here that Colin recommended it, or I'll be hearing from him.
C
-
I hate to be the one to point it out, but someone neeeds to.
Creature With Fur is an anagram for, of all things--and it certainly doesn't apply here--Cute Rear With Fur.
I do notice, we never actually see tha back of the beast.
C
-
I usually write it 'coon, but got caught up in the desperate need to get this posted before anyone else did something foolish like befriending the critter or, heaven forbid, feeding it, and so carelessly forgot the '.
Giving him apple cores or anything else will just encourage him. Don't do it. Ignore him, lock up all foodstuffs and small animals he might try to mate with, and hope he'll just go away.
C
-
Give him money and he'll just ask for more, then camp out on your back porch and crap in your petunias. Stop humoring him and call the exterminator.
They charge extra for coons.
C
-
Which of course forces one to ask, is there any correlation between the absense of teeth and the over-abundance of sex?
C
-
Can you imagine just how rich a person would become if he could invent a pill that would change your body type from having a propensity towards overweight doughiness to slim and hard? He'd have to hire a fleet of semis to haul the money to the bank, and they'd have to lease out some Self-Stor rental units to hold it while building larger vaults.
Getting thin on the genetic level with no exercising, no dieting deprivations, just a pill or two and go from a Teletubby to Twiggy.
The fortune to be made from would be staggering.
C
-
A humble 'coon.
The world trembles.
C
-
[Man, you're asking tough questions!
I guess to answer that one, I'd say the science is more rigorous and tested if correcting deafness at the embryo level. Changing body types is still in its trial stages. So, the chances for screw ups are greater doing the one than the other. A physician is charged to do no harm. So I'd approve the first, disapprove the second.
You can see a real world difference between the two, can you not?
C
-
Camy:
Here's a link to a Consumers' Report article on the two types. It has a link within it that talks about plasma sets, and there's a link within that article talking about lcd sets.
It probably doesn't have all the info you want, but is a place to start.
C
-
Where's a good constitutional lawyer when you need one?
C
-
Steven, I hope you're right!
And I thought the same thing, that the Court could void the voters will if it violated the constitution. Of course, this is a vote to change the constitution, and so is a little different.
But it still seems to me that your point is valid, and I can remember not too long ago an inititiative that was approved by the voters being thrown out by the Court for the reason you gave.
We'll have to see. I don't know enough.
A frequent failing of mine.
C
-
James, I do agree with you. Characters should have some depth, and not everyone should be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
However, if I have my choice in the matter, I'd rather my protagonists be cute than ugly.
C
-
Actually, I did answer that, with my opinion. Fixing deformities and abnormalites, if it can be done safely, is certainly something that everyone would agree should be done. Well, not everyone. Some deaf parents who are about to have a deaf child want the child to be deaf. I personally think that would be tragic if science can intervene and make the child able to hear, but I don't claim to know the absolute right or wrong of it.
I do think if you want your daughter to be an ice skater for personal reasons and so genetically manipulate her cells when she's at that stage, that's wrong. Again, my opinion.
C
-
Because he may want to be a tight end, and that body you chose for him doesn't really work against a 220 pound defensive end with a mean streak.
Or perhaps because she turns out to be a girl who'd rather be a princess that a hundred meter sprinter. The science is good, but not perfect.
They're real people. We can guide them, but we have no right to live their lives for them or predetermine what their lives and interests will be.
C
-
Ah, James.
James, James, James. Where is your romantic spirit?
You would want us to write our protagonists with itchy balls, bad breath and insecurity issues?
You'd like them to trip when running, run when they should stand fast, and never, ever. falter in the face of adversity?
You want them to work a nine to five job, cavil in front of their boss and skip lunch if they think that'll curry favor with their superiors?
You want them to have a wart on their nose and get a pimple on their chin just prior to their first date?
You want them to be human. But aren't we already that? Do we really want to read about some schmoo who has the same faults we do? Wouldn't we rather read about some beguilingly handsome young man who is clever and resourceful and can think his way out of jams that would have us flummoxed, win the fair object of his dreams through his ineffable derring-do, and save the world while doing so?
I would. I already inhabit the world of ordinary people accomplishing mundane tasks in prosaic ways.
Isn't that why we write, so we can imagine feats we can't really accomplish ourselves? Isn't there incalcuable pleasure in doing so?
I can see plain people by going to the coffee shop. I can have insipid conversations with the woman who sits next to me on the bus. I can select a magazine when I sit for an hour past the time my doctor scheduled my appointment for a prostate prod and read about someone in Malasia who trains lemurs to fetch only ripe bananas for her breakfast and be bored out of my skull.
I kind of like the stereotypes your presented. I like the cute kid of fiction who has clever repartee and a winsome way about him more the kid next door who plays his rap or heavy metal too loudly and chirps his tires and toots his horn at six thirty in the morning just for the devilment of it and gives me the finger when I complain. I like the heroes who fill the stories we read.
I like them better that the real people I meet, for the most part.
You probaby know a better breed of cat than I do.
C
-
Right, but I just can't bring myself to write: "Your going to be late to they're party." Oh, and this gem: "I bet that is your's." I read that very sentence last week. I'm seeing a therapist to recover. Worse, I was afraid some people wouldn't even know I made errors.
I may post this story on Nifty in a month or so and see what sort of replies it gets. Maybe even post them here without the names.
Is there something wrong with any of that? Looks fine to me. I'd even suggest you wrote it. Looks exactly like your writing.
Oops. I meant: Looks exactly like you're writing.
You know, it is difficult to write wrong.
C
-
Ah, but the power of good writing is that you cared so much about the characters, the story affected you this strongly. You have to hand it to Rick for achieving that with a completely fictional story, even if the message was ultimately depressing.
Oh, I certainly agree. Powerful and moving writing. If I had a complaint, it was the figure of one story was so diminished, so changed, in the second. I never said that it wasn't realistic. In fact, what happened here is probably more likely than his spirit could remain undaunted after his tragedy.
C
-
To me, it was depressing because of the way Robert treated his child, after having been treated poorly by his own father. I really liked Robert and felt achingly for him when Sven died. I was shocked to find how kaolinitic his feet were in the later story, to find he'd treated his own child as abysmally as he'd been treated. I was saddened to learn the figure I'd held in such esteem was so terribly human after all, and disturbed that he didn't learn some lesson from his own childhood that would have led him to do better with his own son.
As much as The Farmhand lifted my spirits in that Robert overcame so much and perservered, and even when he was shattered by his great loss he was able to soldier on, it was depressing to see how he couldn't give some of that spirit back to his child, some of the love he had in abundance. His reason for not doing so, to me, was empty of the love and feelings he'd been shown to have in the former story.
Just my take on it, of course. Others could have a completely differnt read on it and still be correct. I tend to feel for the child in most instances, and was dissappointed a man I so admired failed in the one responsibilty that all fathers share.
C
-
If coercion is forcing someone's will on someone else, then tampering with genes in utero is certainly coercion.
This is a terribly complex issue. It is so easy to imagine dangers to the human race resulting from these techniques. And what we're discussing here is doing so very often for reasons that are, for the most part, frivolous. You want your child to have blue eyes and blond hair, and to feel the same way about things that you do? Just tweak this gene and nudge that one, and there you be. $25,000 please, and the waiting room is just around the corner; she'll be out in a few moments.
I don't think we want a race of children all looking alike, all conforming to some present-day model of lovliness, all thinking the same thoughts because those are considered correct these days. Is todays PC gene, on sale through Thursday, going to be a the same exemplar in five years as it is today?
I just don't think we should be tinkering with future people because Father Knows Best. Are we really arrogant enough to believe we have the right and the inspiration and the knowledge to do that and so better mankind and our child?
Yes, if there are deformities that can be corrected or prevented in the womb, it is logical to do so. Tampering with the sexuality of an unborn child is stretching the limits, to me. Trying to create Mozarts as a way of improving all our lives doesn't seem right, and seems to be circumscribing the rights of the child. I don't believe we have this right. The child should be free from this sort of medical interference. Life, the world, everything in nature is comlex, and we don't know enough and don't agree on enough to play this game. We don't own our children to the extent that we should be making these choices for them.
C
-
That's too bad, Trab, because The Farmhand was a wonderful piece of writing and storytelling, one of the best I've seen on the net. It's too bad because some of the drama of it has been stripped away if you've read The Redemtption first.
I thought the latter was also well written, but I have to agree with Fun. It didn't seem to say much, and what it did say was somewhat depressing. Perhaps it was just that after The Farmhand, I was eagerly expecting more of the same.
It was still great writing. I just would have loved to see the sparkle of it's predecessor repeated. Only my opinion, of course. Others here have said it was marvelous, and I won't argue at all about that.
C
-
The LA Times this morning reported that enough petition signatures have been collected to allow the measure of gay marriages to go on the upcoming ballot. It will be an issue to amend the California Constitution to ban marriage between two same-sex people.
They also stated that the mood of the electorate has changed since this issue was voted on in Proposition 22 amost a decade ago. Then, the measure banning gay marriage collected 60% of the vote. Polls taken recently have revealed that that measure only carries about 54% favorability now. However, the other side doesn't get 46% of the vote. Support for gay marriage only has 40% of the vote, leaving 6% either undecided or unwilling to answer the poll question.
This is very sad news. It took long struggles for women and blacks to become full citizens in this country in the early and middle parts of last century. Is anyone surprised that it appears it will be the same for gays?
C
Scan to donate
more from South Carolina
in News & Views
Posted
Perhaps you'd have to identify the switch-hitters first.
C