If you wish information and improvement form the knowledge of others, and yet at the same time express yourself as firmly fix'd in your present opinions, modest, sensible men who do not love disputation, will probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of your error. And by such a manner, you can seldom hope to recommend yourself in pleasing your hearers, or persuade those whose concurrence you desire.Now this is not to say that debate, when kept to its own circumscribed domain, is not useful--indeed it is, and those debaters mentioned above have been among my best students, but they've all found (at least the smart ones) that to engage in meaningful discourse outside the bounds of the debate activity itself they've had to drop the debater's instinct and edge, and instead, do as Alexander Pope recommends (via Franklin):
Men should be taught as if you taught them not,
And things unknown propos'd as things forgot
There was another bookish lad in the town, John Collins by name, with whom I was intimately acquainted. We sometimes disputed, and very fond we were of argument, and very desirous of confuting one another, which disputatious turn, by the way, is apt to because a very bad habit, making people often extremely disagreeable in company by the contradiction that is necessary to bring it into practice; and thence, besides souring and spoiling the conversation, is productive of disgusts and perhaps enmities where you may have occasion for friendship. I had caught it by reading my father's books of dispute about religion. Persons of good sense, I have since observed, seldom fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and men of all sorts that have been bred at Edinburgh.posted by Joseph Gurl at 8:54 PM on September 30, 2010 [7 favorites]
When the Gemini program started, he was scheduled again. Then ear trouble developed and Shepard was grounded. “The difficulty,” he says, “was termed Meniere’s syndrome — a form of dizziness. The problem is not considered very significant for an earthbound person, but it sure can finish you as a pilot. I convinced myself it would eventually work itself out. But it didn’t.posted by infinite intimation at 9:24 PM on September 30, 2010
“Tom Stafford had told me about Dr. House, out in Los Angeles, who could perform an operation on this particular kind of inner ear trouble. At first it sounded a little risky but, in 1968, I finally decided on having it done.
“With NASA’s permission, I went out to California. In order to keep the whole business quiet, Dr. House and I agreed that I should check into the hospital under an assumed name. It was the doctor’s secretary who came up with it. So, as Victor Poulis, I had the operation and six months later my ear was fine.”
Derk was the nyght as pich, or as the cole,posted by shakespeherian at 11:11 AM on October 1, 2010 [2 favorites]
And at the wyndow out she putte hir hole,
And absolon, hym fil no bet ne wers,
But with his mouth he kiste hir naked ers
Ful savourly, er he were war of this.
Abak he stirte, and thoughte it was amys,
For wel he wiste a womman hath no berd.
He felte a thyng al rough and long yherd,
And seyde, fy! allas! what have I do?
posted by languagehat at 8:24 AM on September 30, 2010 [47 favorites]