Forums | MacLife

After a very welcome respite, Oatmeal has once again started tweaking me and just locked one of my topics after harrassing me about providing a link, even though it was clear to anyone who read my post that I was continuing a prior topic and linked to it. The post had the link to the "Mercury again" topic, and the articles I cited and the picture I linked to were right from that topic. My Welcome to the Jungle topic was going very well until Oatmeal started picking on me. It's bad when good discussions are derailed or shut down.

Yesterday, he berated me for discussing the sexist nature of ResEdit's "be a man" comment in the topic about homophobia and government, and how sexist expressions and homophobic expressions are often linked. Instead of contributing to the discussion, he picked on me and didn't add anything of value. The discussion had been about terminology, and my contribution was relevant.

I was hoping that this problem was resolved, but it's started again. When will the Ministry get a mod who can chill and not get so trigger happy? I'm sure I'm not the only one who remembers his lock spree where he locked 3 or 5 pages of topics.

The Ministry needs a new mod, someone who doesn't condescendingly lecture or berate others for no good reason, and someone who doesn't lock topics just to show authority. The topic I'm quoting from below was 10 pages long before Oatmeal came in and berated me:

tallgeese wrote:

So is being a lesbian like eating crumbs off the floor or not?

resedit wrote:

The entire point of this exercise - what is hate speech is being defined by those who want to consider certain things hate speech so that they can blast it and criticize it.

bratboy wrote:

So you acknowledge that use of the term "freaks" when referring to homosexuals could be hateful?

kb5zhh wrote:

So what resedit, you get shown to be wrong on a point and you act like a smurfing whinny baby for days afterward?  Grow the smurf up.

ResEdit wrote:

At least I'm man enough to admit when I'm wrong.
Some people here aren't. Yes, I specifically mean you (kb5zhh). And what's a shame - your false statement is so trivial, it should be easy.

XYZ wrote:

A opposed to "woman enough", and therefore inferior?

resedit wrote:

Oh please.

XYZ wrote:

Not "oh please". I consider the "man up", "man enough" rhetoric to be sexist.

Oatmeal wrote:

I consider your making a big deal about such a common expression to be derailing the thread.  Knock it off.

Oatmeal wrote:

You too.

Oatmeal wrote:

And you.

I wasn't the one who was flaming the most. Resedit and kb5zhh were fighting, and Oatmeal didn't say a word to them. I'm the one, of course, who gets picked on for no good reason. And, if we look, we can see who derailed the topic: Oatmeal.

XYZ wrote:

Mercury again..

At the heart of the debate over the new mercury rule is the rule's reversal of a 2000 EPA decision. Under the Clinton administration, the agency added electric utilities to a critical list of industries considered to be major sources of hazardous air pollutants such as lead and arsenic. The new mercury rule "de-lists" utilities.

...The same ruling does nothing about lead, chromium, or arsenic. In fact, the new rule backs away from any possible new regulations on emissions of more than 60 heavy metals and toxins, say environmental experts.

XYZ wrote:

Two steps need to be taken immediately: Congress should investigate the apparent cover-up, and it must impose its own stricter mercury standards if the EPA refuses to do so. Inaction will only put public health at risk.

The EPA's secrecy was detailed in a Washington Post story last week that revealed agency officials were aware that a Harvard study had directly contradicted the agency's findings on mercury pollution standards. In fact, EPA had paid for the Harvard analysis, an EPA scientist had co-authored it, and other EPA scientists had peer-reviewed it.

The Harvard study had found that the health and economic benefits of tough new mercury pollution controls would far exceed the costs that utilities would face when installing them, and by extension, the cost to consumers in the form of higher electric bills. But when EPA announced its new rules, it said just the opposite -- that the cost of strict new controls would exceed any health benefits to the public.

Expressed in hard cash terms, the EPA estimated that tough new standards would produce only $50 million in health benefits a year -- mainly in the form of lower medical costs to treat mercury-related illnesses -- while the cost to industry to install the scrubbing technology necessary to curb emissions would be more than $750 million. But the Harvard study found the benefits to be nearly $5 billion a year, mainly in reduced costs for medical care for neurological and cardiac disorders.

Mercury is one of the smokestack pollutants emitted by utilities. Some of this pollution drifts over the Northeast and contributes to acid rain, which kills lakes and forests in the Adirondacks. But mercury tends to accumulate haphazardly on the ground -- heavy concentrations in one area, barely traces in another -- and washes into waterways, where it is ingested by fish and works it way into the human food chain.

Now the EPA is stammering to explain why it kept the Harvard findings under wraps.

Oatmeal wrote:

What's your source, please?

XYZ wrote:

Already linked.

Oatmeal wrote:

I fail to see it.  Please include the link to what you've quoted.

XYZ wrote:

The link appears here. I'm continuing a prior topic, which I clearly linked in this opening post.

Oatmeal wrote:

It's your job to provide the link, not mine to search for it.  I'm done asking.

12) Do not plagiarize.
- Plagiarize, as defined by the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary is
         transitive senses : to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own :
                                                  use (another's production) without crediting the source
         intransitive senses : to commit literary theft : present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source
- Don't do it.  Any thread that starts with plagiarism will be locked as soon as the theft is discovered and the person who stole another's idea will be exposed.
- Cite your source when you quote something from another website; include a link back to the source whenever possilble.

In both topics, people were having good discussions and Oatmeal was the only one berating people for discussing things and harrassing people (me) about links. It's obvious that he chose to target me for harrassment. As a result, a perfectly good discussion was completely derailed. It was locked.