I heard ya the first time. 
Mods, I’m sorry if that comment crossed the line. I was just trying to point out that it is a good way to avoid an annoying posting style, if one should so choose.
A pox on double posts! Truly, I have no idea how that happened. Sorry, not trying to harp myself. 
After seeing this, I feel compelled to both tell QED that I’ve enjoyed his contributions—numerous though they may be—and to tell raisinbread that I think the purple posting is ok.
My pet peeve is being upset with people purely because the manner in which they live is supposed to reflect whether or not they “have a life”. Kindly get some perspective, Sue Duhnym.
No, it’s a distraction. If I see a page full of black posts, the one purple post is going to stick way the fuck out. My eyes will gravitate to it as if it was 32 point text or bolded with 30 exclamation marks. I don’t know if it’s intended as an attention-getting device or she’s just trying to be cute. Either way, it’s annoying.
It really doesn’t bother me any. Some people like to write with an unusual ink color, just to be different. As long as the color-contrast isn’t annoying, like green on red, it’s fine by me.
The funny thing is, I can’t believe that someone is upset that someone else expressed their personal opinion that making every single post you make in purple is damn silly. To me, that’s even more anal.
But you see how this goes- now someone will post I can’t believe you care, that QED cares, that somebody else cares about the misuse of a color gimmick.
And that would be just plain silly.
Oooo…pretty colors!
Hey, what does intelligence have to do with being on CNN?
You were implying that I should get a life, or at least more important things to bitch about. My point was, and still is, that it is a pet peeve, not an all comsuming tenet that I live by.
Like white shoes before Memorial Day.
What do erislover and Patriot Missiles have in common?
Ok, I take back, the CNN thing.
My post wasn’t directed at you, personally, but rather generally at the anti-purple-post camp. As such, I felt your personal attack was unwarranted, but whatever, I’m over it.
Loath though I am to interrupt this important discussion, I want to respond to these comments.
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But it is for me to judge. The problem is that news outlets are already judging for me. “May have been executed” soon morphs into “have been executed.” An inordinate amount of people still believe that SCUDS have already been fired at Kuwait – and all based on early misreporting by some journalist who probably can’t tell the difference between a SCUD and a Pepsi can.
I don’t like propoganda from either side. It’s bad enough in domestic politics. It’s positively Orwellian in international politics. If I’m expected to believe something, especially something shocking, I want to judge the evidence for myself as much as possible, rather than merely swallowing pre-packaged conclusions.
I’m sensitive to the concerns of families, that’s why I don’t have a problem with CNN not showing the footage. However, the Internet is a very different story. Anyone who doesnt’ want to see the pictures, including the families, doesn’t have to view them.
This is an old argument in the United States. Supressing information because some people may find that information distressing is a bad idea. Information I can view on the Internet shouldn’t be limited by what is appropriate for children and it shouldn’t be limited by what is appropriate for military families, either.
There’s another, more philosophical point as well. War is an ugly, dangerous, business. Sometimes, it is worth the cost, sometimes not. Right now, the Americans are trying to minimize the perceived cost and the Iraqis are trying to inflate it. If we are ever going to get the sums right, we need to have an accurate idea of what those costs are. Now I don’t know how everything will add up in the end. But if pro-war people are shaken by the image of a dead soldier, perhaps they should be anti-war. If anti-war people are shaken by the image of an American prisoner who may have been executed by the Iraqis, perhaps they should be pro-war. However it comes out, we ought let the chips fall where they may.
If, after everything we’ve been through as a country, there are still people who do not know what the costs of war are, then I grieve that these people may be the ones deciding whether we should go to war or not.
Euty (I assume you’re posting from the U.S.) no one under the age of forty has been through squat. Many people think war is a sort of a real-life video game. Every American military engagement since 1972 has been a walkover. In GWI, there were more allied troops killed by our own forces than by the enemy. You never saw pictures of the tens of thousands of Iraqi casualities, either.
War is hell. One of the reasons for the “Vietnam syndrome” is that this fact was brought into people’s living room every evening. America is largely “over” than now. But a buoyant faith in technology’s ability to deliver bloodless triumph is as bad or worse than a violent allergy to using any military force regardless of the circumstances.
What?
Does it have something to do with the colour purple?
Small nitpick. There were 148 combat deaths of which 35 were from friendly fire.
Oops. I was referring to American casualties and not total allied figures but I think there still are fewer friendly fire deaths compared to the number of enemy caused deaths.
No, it’s not. During the war, it is not your right as an American to judge anything. Your curiosity today doesn’t matter one iota to the outcome of this war. The people that we pay to be in charge are the ones entitled to make judgements.
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No one does. However, if you don’t believe you are a victim of propoganda every single day coming out of Washington, you’re not paying attention. There are “spin doctors” that will propogandize what kind of toilet paper the White House uses. And frankly, we hire them to do that. Do you think that viewing these photographs on the internet are not a form of propaganda? Your desire to see it qualifies why the enemy wants you to see it.
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I also disagree with this. The internet is just as accessible to the children of those soldiers as CNN. It may be more difficult to police the internet due to it’s global nature, but it still has the same impact. All school age children are able to access the internet at any public library or school. Would you want your 2nd grader seeing those images of his father at school?
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Those of us in the military family already know what the costs of war are. Worst case scenario, death. Bad scenario, permanent injury. Just your basic crappy scenario, separation from your spouse and family for as long as 2 years at a time. I’m an officer’s wife and am not looking for sympathy as I knew the risk going in but don’t ever think we don’t know what the costs of war really are.
I find this a little scary. Perhaps I have misread it. But I understood that in a democracy, everyone has a voice, and you don’t sign off your right to judge, or voice an opinion, or protest, or disagree, just because someone (you may not have voted for) happens to be currently in power.
Actually you do misunderstand. In a true “democracy” such as Ancient Greece or the old New England town hall sorts of government everyone does have a direct voice in all major decisions. This doesn’t work well for many reasons covered in Political Science 101 courses. What we have here is actually more of a Republic, where representitives elected by the general populace (or the Supreme Court in the eyes of some wags )make decisions on behalf of the populace. These decisions are made in accordance with the representative’s desires, believes and political motivations, not those of the majority of his/her’s state. Your “voice” is irrelevant by design.
Now as far as having a voice in a First Amendment sense, yes Goverment Actors are highly restricted in how they can limit your political expression (no matter how wacky or offensive it may be from some people). However, the Government can and does have plenty of rights to control the flow of information coming out of it, subject of course to the limited powers granted to the public of the Freedom of Information Act. But for the most part, you have very little rights for information. Further, information that voilates the Geneva Convention is highly suspect, and subject to severe moral hazards.
Anyway, most of the people protesting (either for or against) the War have already dogmatically made up their minds regardless of the current information made available to them, so what’s the point?
Further, the real issue here is the misuse of the color function, so please stick with the program.
