My Bolding
Mods, it looks like you can close that thread about how arrogant engineers are. We’ve found the most arrogant profession, and it’s Metrics!
I wonder what pseudo (heh!) would consider proper gratitude? Do you think if he gave his version of reading that line here, we could get by with bowing and scraping, or would it have to extend to full bootlicking? I can say right now, as bated as my breath is for his lofty wisdom, a rimjob is out of the question!
Howbout, you dishonest prick–I can’t believe I’m taking the bait to repeat myself–the part where I point out that the reason for this perfect storm is that you deflected the discussion from being about scansion to being about Biffy?
I have to go kill myself because I agree with ever word Martin Hyde wrote here. Tell the truth, Martin; you cribbed this from my previous long post, right? Right?
Bullshit. Biffy wrote his version of the meter this way:
If you had had any intention to enlighten, you could have simply rewritten the line with the correct (in your judgment) syllables bolded, perhaps prefaced by “I believe that the line should be stressed as follows:”. If correcting the error (if in fact there was one) would require a dissertation, perhaps, as others have suggested, the error is not so worthy of summary condemnation.
:smack: A late confession, but this was me, not the calm and ever-polite burundi.
Daniel
You do realize that you are coming across as an arrogant bastard, right? Kind of scary to think that you are paid to teach since you seem so unwilling to teach anyone anything.
You know, I missed this somehow. Had I seen it, I wouldn’t have bothered to respond earlier. After all, no sense investing too much energy etc.
Thank you for briefly acknowledging that your tone was capable of being misunderstood. I did read your imperatives and kindergarten-teacherly tone as unnecessarily inflammatory, but I see how you could just have well have been trying for “jocular,” rather than “officious.”
If you look again at the last line of my my OP, though, Dex, where I request your assistance in understanding where I went wrong, to wit:
“I’d appreciate any elucidation to your official moderator’s warning you might add, since I view my options now as simply never again correcting anyone in Cafe Society, or risking your terrible wrath,”
I think you’ll see my objections to your tone coming through quite clearly. I make it plain that, as I thought, I had been “warned” by a moderator acting in his official capacity (Giraffe has since informed me that I mistook your jocular “order” for an official “warning”), and my concern about “your terrible wrath” plainly derives from your tone, which, again, I had mistaken the intended lightheartedness of. You’re quite mistaken in making my concerns about your tone a late addendum to the OP.
And not to get silly about all this, Dex, though it may be far too late to avoid grotesque silliness here, but if your last post was seriously following my advice about the futility of teaching pigs to sing, then are you endorsing my stance to Biffy? I would think not. But if you’re using my pig-singing metaphor to justify your not answering my OP at all, isn’t that just being as snarky in addressing my faults as I was in addressing Biffy’s? I don’t object in the least to your having a little fun with me here, to the delight of the jeering crowd, but it does seem strange to me ultimately to be committing the same grievous error of bad manners, snarkiness, condescension, etc. in an effort to expunge the same. I realize this is the Pit and not CS, but I would think it would be a clearer display of your point about snarkiness if you could make it while avoiding revelling in it at the same time.
Yep. Far too late. About four days too late. You’re now in my silliness hall of fame.
pseudotriton ruber ruber, what is it that you think you’re accomplishing here?
You were snarky in CS, you and another poster were told to knock it off. Simple, not worth commenting on, and would have undoubtedly have been completely forgotten by everyone involved within, oh, ten minutes of the thread dropping of the front page.
Yet you keep droning on and on and on and on …
This wall of words you put up must be very intimidating to your usual crowd, because it is becoming quite clear that you are getting more and more exasperated that this is not going your way. Let me give you another little hint you will no doubt ignore: More is not better.
Good idea, Daniel. Sommetimes the most obvious suggestions come from others, even others who are being needlessly difficult and sarcastic. Look at this thread, where I think I’m being quite civil to someone asking about metrics in a civil tone himself.
Why is it that you keep opening this thread? Am I somehow forcing you to read that which is distasteful to you?
As to your question about what I think I’m accomplishing in this interminable thread, I am making friends and winning converts over to my side. It’s just going a little more slowly than I had first expected.
It is rather entertaining. Not your comments, so much, but the universal reaction to your comments. In case you’ve missed it, everyone seems to be convinced you’ve made a mountain out of a molehill.
No, you’re not. But I appreciate your concern.
Well, it’s good to see you’ve got a sense of humor about all this. Perhaps I’ve misjudged you.
Excellent example of you disproving your own point. From your post:
And yet you get pissy when someone reads a line with strict IP stress because it “doesn’t make sense.”
It’s also hilarious that you had one course in scansion and you think that makes you an expert:
Actually, it’s more along the lines of this.
I don’t think I’ve ever said that there was only one way–mine–of scanning lines, but there are intelligent and unintelligent approaches to scansion.
I’m no expert in scansion–I rarely even work in verse anymore, and never followed through in specializing in quantification beyond grad school. But in discussions on the SDMB, I haven’t come across any posters who persuaded me that, in that one tiny field, their understanding dwarfs mine, either. It’s only by the absence of experts on the SDMB, as far as I can tell, that I consider myself relatively expert here, and I’m happy to share my expertise, such as it is, with my fellow Dopers, if they would like me to.
That one measly course in grad school, specifically in “Meter and Scansion,” is one more course than almost anyone else has (of course, meter and scansion came up in many other graduate courses, and I’ve written several papers, some published in scholarly journals, applying the knowledge of metrics I acquired in that course.) Now, the guy who taught that course was someone I (and the academic world generally) considers an expert in meter. This guy has published several scholarly books on the subject, and intimately knows metrical principles of Old English and Latin and some Greek, giving him tremendous advancement way beyond my piddling accomplishments in the field, and he seemed impressed with my work, and agreed to advise my dissertation, so my graduate study is perhaps not as negligible an achievement as you seem to imply. Quite frankly, I expect that I’ve pissed people off in this thread so thoroughly, that if I were to demonstrate that I’ve been awarded a new Nobel Prize in metrics created specifically for me, your reaction would be to sneeringly ask why getting this recognition took me so long.
No: were you to demonstrate that, we’d say that Jesus Lord Almighty Himself shouldn’t be a dick in Cafe Society.
I just read your link, and I’d like to ask: among folks who read his explanation and mine (note that it got a correction in this post), which do y’all find to be more helpful? PRR, you can join in, too.
You’ve now demonstrated that you have some knowledge of scansion and meter–this is more than you’d demonstrated previously in this thread or the other one. That’s good. Youv’e not demonstrated that you can use this knowledge to teach people effectively. That’s bad.
And if you can’t teach people effectively, you need to question why your knowledge would be worth a squirrel dropping to anyone on the Internet.
Daniel
You’ve practically already written a book or two discussing your oh-so-massive credentials, and appended several more volumes as you ducked the question and whined about Dex slapping you on the wrist. So why not go ahead and give us the Reader’s Digest version on metrics?
Not that I’ll read it, but at least it’ll show that you have some knowledge of what you’re talking about, instead of ducking for cover in a Macy’s Parade of straw men.
That’s hardly fair, Daniel, to measure my effectiveness in teaching by the use of a thread in which I was trying my damnedest to avoid doing any teaching whatsoever.
Then that brings us back to the other question: why would all your book learning be worth a squirrel turd to us if you’re not going to use it to fight our ignorance?
It’s fine if you don’t want to teach, as long as you don’t insult. It’s fine if you do want to teach, as long as you don’t insult. If you don’t want to teach, then nobody is going to give a shit about the credentials you claim. If you do want to teach, then they may be of very minor interest to somebody–but still your pedagogical skills, combined with your demonstrated knowledge of the topic, will take priority over any credentials you claim.
Daniel