Paul d'Aoust

Recent Activity

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  Paul commented on the article | about 3 years ago

  Pretty = Dumb? Now, That's Just Stupid.

  And, if this board had respected my carriage returns, my equations would have looked like this:
  
   
  
  sexy = sexy
  
  smart = smart
  
  dumb = dumb

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  Paul commented on the article | about 3 years ago

  Pretty = Dumb? Now, That's Just Stupid.

  Yeah, thanks for saying it :-) I'd be more comfortable with the equations
  sexy = sexysmart = smartdumb = dumb.

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  Paul commented on the article | about 3 years ago

  Pretty = Dumb? Now, That's Just Stupid.

  Elidet, I totally understand your statement that it's women themselves who let themselves get treated as a piece of meat, and I even agree to some extent, but I also disagree. Social interactions are much more complex than that -- there's a lot of pain going on in most people's hearts, and usually it's not a matter of us willingly and consciously allowing ourselves to be objectified. Sometimes you can just feel like you're not worth more than an object, and then it's not so much a matter of 'letting' yourself be disrespected, but more a matter of never knowing you had a choice.
  We must remember that there is an onslaught against the hearts of women, which seeks to unseat them and strip them of their dignity. This happens most often through objectification, because objectification wounds a woman in what I imagine to be her most vulnerable place -- the desire to be treated as a human. (I don't believe this is a conscious onslaught; it's just a cultural disease that's passed on by wounds from generation to generation, and I think both men and women participate in it. I also think that men are being attacked by culture, but in different ways.)
  Anyway, what I'm saying is that it's not always easy to recover from a lifetime of being treated as if you weren't worth much, and so I'd be careful about pointing blame at anyone.

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  Paul commented on the article | about 3 years ago

  Don't Cry for Me, Argentina: A Holocaust Denier Gets His Comeuppance (sort of)

  I would also like to point out that Benedict XVI, when he found out that Williamson was still publicly rejecting the holocaust (or at least its magnitude), ordered him to shut up lest he be booted out of the church again.
  
  Say what you will about free speech, I think it was a good choice on the part of the pope to issue a warning to Williamson. It's dismaying that this detail wasn't mentioned in the article.
  
  Williamson has since recanted and apologised for his opinions, but not in a very satisfying or convincing way.