Dumb and Stupid Quotes Thread: Idiotic Source and Context are Key.

[Kyriakos]

Aristotle likes big butts and he cannot lie.
"just as beauty is found in a large body, and small people can be attractive and well-proportioned, but not beautiful."
-Aristotle, 1123b8, Nicomachean Ethics (translation by T.H. Irwin, 1985)

Pretty sure that is a horribly bloated translation.

Spoiler :

the statues don't show any fat forms as good looking anyway, although there aren't many statues of females other than deities...)

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Unless you can provide a better translation, I'm going to go with the one I'm reading.

 

[Kyriakos]

Unless you can provide a better translation, I'm going to go with the one I'm reading.

Will go find the original too, but as for an english translation of the same which makes it apparent it is not about 'fat' but 'not very short and/or slim' or closer to the latter:

The proud man, then, is the man we have described.
For he who is worthy of little and thinks himself worthy of little
is temperate, but not proud; for pride implies greatness, as beauty
implies a goodsized body, and little people may be neat and well-proportioned
but cannot be beautiful.

Source: http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.mb.txt

 

[Kyriakos]

(tried to find an etext with the ancient Greek text, but couldn't).

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

So Aristotle digs tall chicks then. Is he saying midgets can't be beautiful?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I don't see a good reason to think he was into females at all.

 

[Kyriakos]

Well, Socrates was married at any rate. He (jokingly) claimed that having a bad wife made him a philosopher

So Aristotle digs tall chicks then. Is he saying midgets can't be beautiful?

Can't know without the original text, but if i have to guess he likely uses some term meaning midget-like (or malnounished, or some intermediate stage), maybe "ισχνοί", which already connotes a rare case of people with very smaller body than the average.

So Aristotle would not like cuteJapanimation

 

[civman110]

"The Russians lied to my face!"

- John Kerry


"If we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, there's still a 30% chance we're going to get it wrong."

- Joe Biden


"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy [President Barack Obama]. I mean, that's a storybook, man."

- Joe Biden


“I promise you, [President Barack Obama] has a big stick. I promise you.”

- Joe Biden


"We need to pass it to see what's in it."

- Nancy Pelosi


"Guam will tip over and capsize" - Hank Johnson

Link to video.

He later blamed the comment on his hepatitis.


"Imagine a world without balloons" - Hank Johnson


Link to video.

Midget vs. Giant in a Cagefight - Hank Johnson


Link to video.

He later issued an apology for using the term "midget."

And his official campaign song.


Link to video.

 

[Kyriakos]

^That is a congressman?

:\

 

[Goodfella]

He's described himself as deadpan before. I'm kind of inclined to believe him because I can't accept that a man smart enough to practice law for 25 years and get elected would actually think Guam could capsize.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

He is not only a Congressman, but the Congressman elected and reelected from my district.

I have not personally met him, but both of my parents have spoken with him.


For a while he rented a local Congressional office on the same hall and in the same building where my dad worked. The thermostat that controlled the heat/air conditioning for my dad's office was in his office, which causes some disagreements. The staff was accommodating when he was in DC, but when hen the congressman was in town he liked to keep it around 85 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter and around 60 in the summer.

The reason I dropped my Political Science class the first time was because there was a project where we were supposed to interview a congressman, and I chose him simply because I thought it would be really convenient. His office never returned a message though.



He succeeded Cynthia McKinney, who was about equally eccentric. She was probably the most outspoken of all the "9/11 Truthers," who insisted that George W. Bush was personally involved in planning the destruction of the World Trade Center. This is despite the fact that some of her own biggest campaign donations came from Saudi Princes who also donated to Al Qaeda. Hank Johnson got elected the first time with a lot of help from Jewish groups who were upset at some rather anti-Semitic statements McKinney made. He was the first Buddhist elected to congress. After McKinney was defeated, she left the Democratic party to become a Green Party presidential candidate.

There is some pretty heavy gerrymandering going on here. Georgia's 4th district is one of the most strongly Democratic districts in the nation, so there is essentially zero chance of any Republican defeating Hank Johnson no mater what he says or does. He'll only ever have to worry about Democratic challengers during the Primary election. The voters of South DeKalb country really like there eccentric Democratic incumbents. McKinney only ever lost when large numbers of Republicans from my neighborhood crossed party lines specifically to get rid of her (Johnson had to pretend to be a lot more conservative than he really is when campaigning in North Dekalb), which they would only do on mass when there was nothing important going on in the Republican Primary.

After the 2010 census my neighborhood was moved to the staunchly Republican 6th district, so he is not my representative anymore. This also improved his odds of continuing to win reelection.

 

[Arakhor]

When the parties are complicit in gerrymandering, they should all be fined heavily and the borders redrawn.

 

[Traitorfish]

Getting rid of single-member districts would be a start. US Congressional districts are already so large that representatives can't hope for a meaningfully personal relationship with their constituents anyway, so they should take advantage of that and at least allow people representatives who are on the same page as them.

 

[Tahuti]

Getting rid of single-member districts would be a start. US Congressional districts are already so large that representatives can't hope for a meaningfully personal relationship with their constituents anyway, so they should take advantage of that and at least allow people representatives who are on the same page as them.

Honestly, one of the advantages of drastically limiting the voting franchise is that representatives would have a more meaningful relationship with their constituents.

EDIT: I expect Cutlass to cite this as a dumb and stupid quote.

 

[Cutlass]

"The president is trying to make you think it would be 150,000 heavy mechanized troops on the ground in the Middle East again as we saw in Iraq. That's simply not the case. It would be something more along the lines of what President Clinton did in December 1998 during Operation Desert Fox -- several days of air and naval bombing..."
—

Sen. Tom Cotton on destroying Iran's nuclear capabilities

 

[Arakhor]

Honestly, one of the advantages of drastically limiting the voting franchise is that representatives would have a more meaningful relationship with their constituents.

And one of the advantages of only having one ear is that only one ear can become infected. It's pointless if you're trying to fairly enfranchise as many people as possible.

 

[Antilogic]

Getting rid of single-member districts would be a start. US Congressional districts are already so large that representatives can't hope for a meaningfully personal relationship with their constituents anyway, so they should take advantage of that and at least allow people representatives who are on the same page as them.

We need to start increasing the number of representatives again like we were doing up until 1920 or so. Tack on another 300 or 400 seats, maybe allocate another representative to every state for a minimum of 2.

We experimented with proportional and at-large allocation back in the early days, I wish a few states would do that again.

Honestly, one of the advantages of drastically limiting the voting franchise is that representatives would have a more meaningful relationship with their constituents.

EDIT: I expect Cutlass to cite this as a dumb and stupid quote.

I'm confused, the average politician has on the order of 10 to 100 major donors, right? I'm pretty sure they have a meaningful relationship with each one.

"The president is trying to make you think it would be 150,000 heavy mechanized troops on the ground in the Middle East again as we saw in Iraq. That's simply not the case. It would be something more along the lines of what President Clinton did in December 1998 during Operation Desert Fox -- several days of air and naval bombing..."
—

Sen. Tom Cotton on destroying Iran's nuclear capabilities

...are we sure this guy served?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Getting rid of single-member districts would be a start. US Congressional districts are already so large that representatives can't hope for a meaningfully personal relationship with their constituents anyway, so they should take advantage of that and at least allow people representatives who are on the same page as them.

I would strongly prefer multi-member districts using Rewighted Range Voting, the non-partisan Proportional Representation variant of Range Voting. Voters would not choose the lesser evil, but would numerically rate every candidate in the race. The candidate with the highest overall score would win a seat. The ballots would then be counted again to select more winners, after the ballots are given weights to that those who more strongly supported the previous winner would have less of a say in selecting the next one.

 

[Traitorfish]

Honestly, one of the advantages of drastically limiting the voting franchise is that representatives would have a more meaningful relationship with their constituents.

That's probably true. But it's precisely that which brings into question how important a "personal" relationship to constituents actually is; the shared Anglo-American insistence that national representatives should be strongly tied to some narrowly specific locality seems to be a relic of the era in which elections consisted of local elites delegating one of their number to the capital, it really has very little to do with modern mass-democracy. The fact that the US can employ districts so vast and, often, so bizarrely-defined as they do and nobody really seems to notice or care just highlights how archaic that whole logic is.

Expand the House, like Antilogic says, introduce multi-member constituencies (state-wide were necessary, regional where possible), the whole system begins to make a lot more sense.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

I'm confused, the average politician has on the order of 10 to 100 major donors, right? I'm pretty sure they have a meaningful relationship with each one.