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desultory
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Joined: 04 Nov 2005
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 Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 2:10 am Post subject: |
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| dmitchell wrote: | | Teachers used to be highly respected professionals until unions and government destroyed the profession. |
Crazy talk, perhaps next you will advocate hiring people based on skills and/or aptitude testing instead of highly variable results of such unionized education. |
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John-Boy
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Location: Desperately seeking Moksha in all the wrong places
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 4:41 am Post subject: |
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| dmitchell wrote: | | Teachers used to be highly respected professionals until unions and government destroyed the profession. |
That and the fact that the classroom turned into Beirut - 80's style.
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aCOSwt
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 6:19 am Post subject: |
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| dmitchell wrote: | | Teachers used to be highly respected professionals. |
lol !
As far as I can see... not in France.
In the toilets of the most reknown French school of professors (The elite of our scientists, philosophers have learnt and tought there), one can still read some graffiti dating from the first half of the 20th century, which, (in very good french...  (BTW, contemporary graffiti are no longer written in very good French...  )) says :
"When one does not know how to learn, one teaches !"
This graffiti being immediately followed by another one, from another hand and more recent :
"And when one does not know how to teach, one administers !"
Well... I would not qualify this as demonstrations of respect. Well... except if, by "higly respected professionals", you mean professionals to whom one respectfully shows disrespect.
It is an evidence that the elite of a given generation has always shown strong disrespect to the elite of the preceeding one. A component of progress probably...
Having said this, why would you expect from the minus habens what we cannot get from our elite ?
Minus habens are only capable of disgracefully doing without reason what the elite does gracefully with reason.
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Don't try to understand my posts. Immanuel Kant never did, he thinks that only music and laughter do not have to mean anything. |
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 6:37 am Post subject: |
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While the French seem to have perverted it to mean "of deficient intellect", I believe the phrase minus habens actually means "absent-minded".
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aCOSwt
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 10:12 am Post subject: |
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| BoneKracker wrote: | | While the French seem to have perverted it to mean "of deficient intellect", I believe the phrase minus habens actually means "absent-minded". |
Of course, you can understand things like this.
Minus-habens gets a much wider meaning as it defines the right opposite to the elite and since Americans are... Americans, the elite can be of an other type than the pure set of outstanding intellectuals we like to consider it is on the continent.
I make no doubt that, If I wanted to by an house in, let's say, Beverly Hills, estate agents would correctly rank me among the minus habens...
For once, English gets the appropriate word to define a minus habens.
Someone with limited capabilities.
I have several times been obliged to frenchify it as we do not get any up to date equivalent.
The ultimately correct word would be power. Someone with limited power.
But power is nowadays more linked with political power.
BTW, only Nietzsche used power to mean capability.
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In theory there are no differences between theory and practice. In practice, there are.
Don't try to understand my posts. Immanuel Kant never did, he thinks that only music and laughter do not have to mean anything. |
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dmitchell
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Location: Austin, Texas
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 2:35 pm Post subject: |
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| aCOSwt wrote: | | dmitchell wrote: | | Teachers used to be highly respected professionals. |
lol !
As far as I can see... not in France.
In the toilets of the most reknown French school of professors (The elite of our scientists, philosophers have learnt and tought there), one can still read some graffiti dating from the first half of the 20th century, which, (in very good french... :lol: (BTW, contemporary graffiti are no longer written in very good French... :roll: )) says :
"When one does not know how to learn, one teaches !"
This graffiti being immediately followed by another one, from another hand and more recent :
"And when one does not know how to teach, one administers !"
Well... I would not qualify this as demonstrations of respect. Well... except if, by "higly respected professionals", you mean professionals to whom one respectfully shows disrespect.
It is an evidence that the elite of a given generation has always shown strong disrespect to the elite of the preceeding one. A component of progress probably...
Having said this, why would you expect from the minus habens what we cannot get from our elite ?
Minus habens are only capable of disgracefully doing without reason what the elite does gracefully with reason. |
Maybe things are different in France. I have no reason to doubt you if you say that they are. It's worth noting that washroom graffiti is probably written by students, and the views of students are unlikely to reflect those of society at large, particularly views of authority figures like teachers.
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 8:20 pm Post subject: |
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Students also have a propensity for incorrect Latin translation.
The French have been mis-using "minus habens" since at least the 19th Century and probably longer. While it might be literally translated to mean "having less" or "diminished capacity", its usage is well-established in classical writing as a euphemism for what we the English refer to as "absent-minded", which means neither "diminished capacity" nor "having less" but "focused elsewhere", "scatter-brained", "inattentive", "forgetful", etc..
This has nothing to do with Americans; it has only to do with sophomoric bastardization of Latin by European pseudo-intellectuals. Even if "minus habens" has now officially taken on other er... "broader" meaning in French, that does not make it correct to extrapolate that perversion back to Latin.
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Oldthinkers unbellyfeel INGSOC.
-- Headline of a document on Winston Smith's terminal in his cubicle at the Ministry of Truth, seen briefly in the background in one scene of the movie rendition of Nineteen Eighty-Four. |
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aCOSwt
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 7:27 am Post subject: |
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| BoneKracker wrote: | | Students also have a propensity for incorrect Latin translation. |
For sure but you know... new concepts have been revealed since the death of these ancient languages...
Original concepts such as... let's say... POTUS !
I had suggested Albidomogynecomane. In the times of Mr. Clinton I presume.
| BoneKracker wrote: | | it has only to do with sophomoric bastardization of Latin by European pseudo-intellectuals. |
lol ! ... Well... I should rather say : htg! (hilarothanatogenic )!
While, with this one, you appear wallowing in autoaudiologophily, it will be obvious to everybody that you are doing nothing here but a capillotetratomy!
Was there any need in this thread to denominofelinofelinize?
BK, we are all already aware of your endovulnerocultellogyristic minosarpédorhadamantyphobia !
I hope you will forgive my own exjupiteropygicrédulity... 
Tip for probably the hardest one : minosarpédorhadamantyphobia... : 1/ Check who is the mother of the three individuals 2/ Consider the title you would find in a classical cosmogony for this particular chapter...
All right then : Warning BK, I kept one for you just in case you suggest I'd better watch a mime or something... 
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Don't try to understand my posts. Immanuel Kant never did, he thinks that only music and laughter do not have to mean anything. |
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Muso
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Joined: 22 Oct 2002
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Location: The Holy city of Honolulu
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 7:36 am Post subject: |
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Directed at no one in particular (  )...
If you had an audience composed of just clones of yourself, you'd be the world's richest comedian.
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