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[Vector]

Vector, if your going to get annoyed every time you hear man kind rather then human kind, your going to get annoyed a lot in life. Man can refer to both male, or human. English is a context based language, it's not that hard.

"Mankind" means one thing, just like I try not to get angry that the word for "disorder/catastrophic ruckus" is written "three women" in Chinese.  "A man" means a different thing.  It's not that hard to write "someone" rather than "a man," and consciously choose not to perpetuate the good old "mathematicians are men" stereotype.

I do get annoyed a lot in life.  I don't even feel bad about it anymore.  There's a lot to make one angry, and I'm not a very chill person.

[Max White]

I bet the objectifacation of calling a ship, the biggest, fattest thing in the water, a 'she' then hitting it with a bottel of wine must get old after a while...

No, I am not trying to say all 'everybody inportant ever!!!' are men. That was beside the point alltogether.

[Vector]

No, I'm actually not subtle enough that I notice things like "mother nature" being a vengeful bitch all the time or ships being "she" and getting hit with bottles.  I just notice the obvious stuff.

Eh.  Sorry, sorry... I know you probably didn't intend offense, and I probably should have just let it go.  It's been a rough little week.

[nbonaparte]

I'll back you on that. Unless one's talking about a specific person whose expressed gender is known, one should use neutral words.

[Max White]

I'll back you on that. Unless one's talking about a specific person whose expressed gender is known, one should use neutral words.

The french would disagree.

Eh.  Sorry, sorry... I know you probably didn't intend offense, and I probably should have just let it go.  It's been a rough little week.

Well, I guess if you need a verbal punching bag, I'm good for that too. I think I too, sprung to my own defence a little fast, most likely because your point wasn't realy adressing the issue presented by my argument, but rather how I presented it. It always annoys me when people do that.

[nbonaparte]

I'll back you on that. Unless one's talking about a specific person whose expressed gender is known, one should use neutral words.

The french would disagree.

I very much distaste languages with gendered nouns.

[Vector]

I'll back you on that. Unless one's talking about a specific person whose expressed gender is known, one should use neutral words.

The french would disagree.

Eh.  Sorry, sorry... I know you probably didn't intend offense, and I probably should have just let it go.  It's been a rough little week.

Well, I guess if you need a verbal punching bag, I'm good for that too. I think I too, sprung to my own defence a little fast, most likely because your point wasn't realy adressing the issue presented by my argument, but rather how I presented it. It always annoys me when people do that.

The French would not disagree, as they too possess the word "quelqu'un" and the neutral pronoun "on."  To be sure, "on" receives male conjugations, but it is expressly neutral and cannot be used to express masculinity or femininity.

I believe Spanish does disagree, though (quick, someone correct me!).


And yeah, I suppose I did ignore your original argument a bit.  There was something I was going to say about how we can take it down another level, past "significant inventions" and just into paying attention to the little cultural changes each of us effects in our lifetimes, but I think I dropped that due to not being able to quite explain it the way I wanted, or just being worn out.  Dunno.  In any case, you do have a point, though I think your argument can be made stronger yet.

[scriver]

My four years of school Spanish would disagree, at least.
Now, could somebody please explain how one counts in base 6 using your knuckles? So far, all I've been able too figure out is 4 (or , 14, or 15. I feel a bit confused. Unless you actively dismis some knuckles, but then how is it different from counting on your fingers?

[Max White]

Bace 6? I know you can do 12 because you only use your four main digits, not thumb, and each of them have three knuckles, for a grand total of 12.

I'm more of a base 16 man myself, but only because I'm so used to it, I'm sure in another world I use base 12 more and would defend it untill the end.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

I'll back you on that. Unless one's talking about a specific person whose expressed gender is known, one should use neutral words.

Actually, English uses the masculine as a pronoun of undefined gender. While using "they" as the neutral singular is attested at least as far back as the 18th century, I believe it was, simply defaulting to "he" is still about as common, despite incoherent "OMG IS SEXIST" cries about the basic fucking conventions of English semantics.

Bace 6? I know you can do 12 because you only use your four main digits, not thumb, and each of them have three knuckles, for a grand total of 12.

I'm more of a base 16 man myself, but only because I'm so used to it, I'm sure in another world I use base 12 more and would defend it untill the end.

Dammit, you beat me to it.

But yes, to be more in depth, you use your thumb as a placeholder and run it along your fingers, of which there are (should be, anyways) four, each with three knuckles to serve as each number in sequence.

It's a neat trick, but not all that useful considering one's trained one's whole life to think in base ten (though programmers may also have trained themselves to think in base two, or more likely hex (base 16)).

[Vector]

I'll back you on that. Unless one's talking about a specific person whose expressed gender is known, one should use neutral words.

Actually, English uses the masculine as a pronoun of undefined gender. While using "they" as the neutral singular is attested at least as far back as the 18th century, I believe it was, simply defaulting to "he" is still about as common, despite incoherent "OMG IS SEXIST" cries about the basic fucking conventions of English semantics.

Yes, sexism is ingrained in our very semantic conventions.

Pretty sad, isn't it?  We can't be gender-neutral without fucking up our grammar, and we often can't be grammatically correct without unnecessary gendered implications.

[Mindmaker]

I'll back you on that. Unless one's talking about a specific person whose expressed gender is known, one should use neutral words.

Actually, English uses the masculine as a pronoun of undefined gender. While using "they" as the neutral singular is attested at least as far back as the 18th century, I believe it was, simply defaulting to "he" is still about as common, despite incoherent "OMG IS SEXIST" cries about the basic fucking conventions of English semantics.

Yes, sexism is ingrained in our very semantic conventions.

Pretty sad, isn't it?  We can't be gender-neutral without fucking up our grammar, and we often can't be grammatically correct without unnecessary gendered implications.

Try reading a german text, which has been heavily gendered.
At the end of the sentence, you have already forgotten what it was about.

Not that I'm against this sort of thing, but some people go overboard with it.

[Vector]

Yeah, I prefer the French method of "our language is going to focus on making sure you don't forget what we're talking about, and in exchange the words for 'vagina,' 'breast,' and 'milk' will all be masculine.  In fact, most of our gender conventions make no sense."


And yeah, given how confusing some German can be post-translation, I can bet it'd be even worse if it were heavily gendered.  Ah, well.  No language is perfect.

[Solifuge]

I find it a bit funny that certain individuals got angry when the conversation was off topic in a direction they didn't care for, and then they took the whole thing off the tracks in several directions they do like, and everything is okay. I love you guys, but I don't love double-standards.

Anyway, I'm glad this topic exists. Little thing though it is, there were a few sentiments in here that I just needed to be reminded of right now, to help me out of a pretty serious 96-hour funk. Thanks internet.

[Vector]

I find it a bit funny that certain individuals got angry when the conversation was off topic in a direction they didn't care for, and then they took the whole thing off the tracks in several directions they do like, and everything is okay. I love you guys, but I don't love double-standards.

There was a brief and fleeting attempt to return to topic =/

The whole "strengthening argument" thing...

Oh, whatever.  No one cares.