Posted by Neredbojias on 01/30/08 02:51

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Tue, 29 Jan 2008 23:20:51
GMT dorayme scribed:

> In article <Xns9A349F6545560nanopandaneredbojias@85.214.90.236>,
> Neredbojias <monstersquasher@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Tue, 29 Jan 2008
>> 22:15:37 GMT dorayme scribed:
>>
>> >> > Ah Boji, you very significantly don't say what a bottomless cup
>> >> > is. Most of us would have no trouble, it is *a bottomless cup*.
>> >> > But all you can say is "Nope". I do understand your predicament.
>> >> > Having eschewed a perfectly natural form of words, you are at a
>> >> > loss to describe such a cup.
>> >>
>> >> A cup needs a bottom to be a cup. Is that unreasonable?
>> >
>> > Not really, no. What would you call the cups I have previously
>> > described without being silly? Would you make up your own terms?
>>
>> Well, I might call the "punishment cup" a groin-drencher. Does that
>> help?
>>
>
> This is supposed to be a non-silly answer?

Well, that is very much what you said (in different words.) However, I
admit that the term "punishment cup" makes me giddy.

>> > I can see that you have no patience or stomach for the enquiries
>> > I have made to you to explore a distinction you yourself made.
>> > There is no need to explain why this is so, I accept all
>> > responsibility.
>>
>> It's nice to see a woman who admits she's wrong when she's wrong at
>> least some of the time.
>>
>
> I was trying to be courteous to you. You are greatly
> misunderstand many things.

That could be. I have yet to achieve perfection although I strive for it
during commercials.

>> > For anyone else that might be interested (highly unlikely to be
>> > many <g>): The idea that a cup without a bottom is still a cup is
>> > not some sort of joke. It is the serious point that if you do not
>> > call it a cup, you have lost a perfectly proper and natural way
>> > of describing it. This point is an objection to the common
>> > practice of avoiding real issues by red herrings about words.
>>
>> Who said one couldn't call it a cup? But what you call it and what
>> it is...
>>
>
> The question is not about what we *can* call something. It is
> about what it ought to be called. We both can agree that a cup
> without a bottom is a rather different object, with a different
> purpose to a cup with a bottom. The question still arises about
> the status of the bottom in the cup that does have a bottom vis a
> vis the distinction between engineering and design.

Well, okay, a cup from which someone has, say, cut out the bottom could
certainly be called a "bottomless cup". But designing/engineering a ?
cup? without a bottom is impossible because !cups! have bottoms.

>> > The point of probing the distinction between design and
>> > engineering is to see what the true ingredients are of a designed
>> > object, to distinguish in it the various aspects. These aspects
>> > can be divorced from the actual histories and psychology of the
>> > object and its creators.
>>
>> Since when does an inanimate object have a psychology? Hast thee
>> been perusing too many cartoon teleshows of late?
>
> Please add a "respectively" in the sentence:
>
> "These aspects can be divorced from the actual histories and
> psychology of - respectively - the object and its creators."
>
> or better still parse it into:
>
> "These aspects can be divorced from the actual histories the
> object."
>
> and
>
> "These aspects can be divorced from the actual psychology of its
> creators."

Yes, that makes sense. I still don't know what it has to do with
bottomless non-cups, but - oh well.

--
Neredbojias
Riches are their own reward.

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