Michael

Shoulda had this discussion 12 years ago, or even a 6 years ago.

True event: At first I thought this was some new slang I hadn't heard, so I looked it up and puzzled a while over what a fin break must mean metaphorically: Then I noticed the apostrophe. :oops:

Not sure that conveys the exact image you intended...

Sorry, I'm getting punchy. Time for a break.

It's just a technical distinction. To take another example for the purpose of illustration: If you ask me What's the best way to socialize healthcare and I post, say, this article [if you can't view it, it reports the public-health atrocity of socialized dentistry in England], or wordlessly display a photograph that depicts evidence or testimony - say a crowd of people with rotten teeth at a British gathering - I haven't (yet) argued. But I have, I think, indicated by the citation alone - which doesn't profess to be proof - that I believe the best way to socialize medicine is not to socialize medicine at all. So far nothing I've read here shows me that I was wrong to predict readers would immediately comprehend my opinion about practical joking from my having posted the article I posted. Someone seemed to think that I owed more than that, but it's taken me a long time to figure out that that person was demanding an argument from me to back up an element or elements that hadn't appeared to me controversial. I'm sorry to disappoint, but now it is I who must say the critiques I received were insufficiently explicit. If the OP had asked Do you think practical jokes are good things? or Do you think hurting people's feelings is good? Or Do you think everyone should lighten up to my specifications? then posting the article I posted would have been an inadequate (though not incomprehensible nor, as charged, dishonest) response, because it would have been insufficiently standing in the place an argument should have held. Here is a famous example of an illustration followed, only when the narrator begins speaking, by a brief argument. Just as if the OP had asked Would Barry Goldwater (the hawk-candidate who had proposed deploying nukes in Viet-Nam) would make a good President, posting the Daisy commercial - which would reveal my opinion without my argument - would have been an inadequate, though, again, a clear and fair, reply. But the OP had asked Why do political candidates waste their money on advertising instead of purely rational discourse to promote their ideas, I think posting that Daisy commercial without comment would have been a fine response, because it would be a meta-response, the picture worth more than the proverbial 10,000 words. In both instances, saying Look and see the consequences for yourself expresses a position without explicitly arguing. Naturally, arguments have uses that illustrations don't, which is why arguing was invented. But illustrations have uses that arguments don't, which is why they survive. The OP asked us to regale him with hilarious stories of practical jokes. I posted an article that addressed that request by presenting the downside of categories of behavior into which practical jokes have been known to fall. That's not an argument. Kaisu wrote that she didn't see the relevance of my post to the topic. I did what I could to fill in the gaps that I tried - very hard - to imagine my posting of the article could have left with such an intelligent and articulate reader. When I find another poster's responses to my repeatedly goodwilled efforts consistently discourteous, as happened on this thread, I discontinue engagement. Kisses!

You're asking for a great deal of maturity on the part of the provider, which of course is a excellent thing to want. Any good training in meeting psychological crisis or distress requires that the provider be willing and able to confront his or her own personal feelings about topics that the distressed individual's presentation may provoke on the spot. Such preparation means not denying that the provider arrives at the encounter with judgments, possibly including irrational judgments, but being able to shelve them at least for the duration of the contact. The prospect of rape triggers primitive and extreme responses, for obvious reasons: the illegitimate conflation of violence and intimacy, the imposition of involuntary physiological reflexes ripped from the voluntarily entered context that would redeem and make personal surrender productive and (literally) fertile. Rape decocts a poison of individuality-effacement from the natural medicine of mutual self-giving. Encountering violations of that caliber can easily prompt witnesses to "shut down" their emotional expressions, and their coldness, or even hostility or aggression that is really directed against the perpetrator of the offense will easily seem to be targeting the victim, because the perpetrator is inaccessible. Without a doubt, a tough situation to meet without conveying unintended messages. When a wound is raw, any contact with it will provoke ambivalent reactions at best, which is why an apparent excess of caution seems prudent to those who would "First, do no harm."

Was the rape-counselor who hugged her a man?

I didn't say it was not my opinion, and I didn't say I have no opinion on the subject. First off, it stands to reason that posting testimony without comment suggests alignment with that testimony; that's what "speaks for itself" means. Second, I explicitly made my opinion about practical jokes known in subsequent posts. Consistent with the opinion on the subject I subsequently expressed also in my own words. I didn't say, nor imply, that it was unbiased. I took a side. I was manifestly invested. In that practice I number among most people. Have you read my posts here? Why "instead"? Resolving an issue requires further thinking. I will eagerly pursue anyone into a ditch by the side of the roads of logic and evidence in order to see which of us will rescue the other, and I will joyfully celebrate the save if a save is possible. Ditches by the side of the road of courtesy I find less appealing to enter because I don't view them as productive laboratories. You know, BSI, Scene Safety and all that...

[web:8344fcd908]http://www.popularprick.com/index.htm[/web:8344fcd908]

Well roared, Lion! Or, as a biodynamic farmer once told me, crops need manure.

Why did you post it on this thread? :wink:

This is the first of a three-part collection; you can view parts two and three by clicking on the links in the final sentence of the introductory paragraph. Lots of depictions of some unfortunate aspects to human nature - with which EMS is acquainted - as well as some of the wonders of nature and technological achievement. The contrast reminded me of F. Scott Fitzgerald's saying that "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise." *Sigh.*

Excuse me, but please show me exactly where I said anything like "practical jokes are always unprofessional and detrimental to the profession and our patients," since I don't recall it in the post of mine to which you took exception. I don't recall it even in my posts that followed, but we can debate that, if you wish, separately, as soon as you quote my saying "practical jokes are always unprofessional and detrimental to the profession and our patients." Maybe you've confused my posts with someone else's. Rather, in the post to which you took exception, I displayed without comment a lengthy article headed by a brief abstract. When someone asked in jest whether he had to read the whole thing, you spared him the trouble by quoting its topic as "the prevalence and long-term consequences of physical and psychological aggression in the form of nasty teasing and violence and/or threats of violence and short-term consequences of bullying at work including physiological stress response in victims," and you added that the article "specifically defines psychological aggression as something that has an 'intent to do harm.'" But then, to my surprise, you wrote that you "miss the relevance of this article to the discussion at hand," so I did the only thing I could think of doing, which was to show you that among the common accepted usages of the very few terms you yourself indicated in your accurate compression of the article were some (I thought) self-evident definitions. As for the definition you prefer, having discarded mine as tendentious and irrelevant (though I think they are neither), I'm content to accept it. Here, pick the definition of "trick" (from the definition of "practical joke" you favor) that makes sense in the context of practical jokes, and find me the Golden Rule at work. Finally, you explain as "the flaw in [my] argument" that "It is the detriment portion that we are debating," but I don't see a flaw and I don't see that I was arguing at all when I posted the article to which you took exception; rather, I presented testimony to speak for itself. If my selection was so baldly off-topic, that too would have spoken for itself, and everyone would have been wondering "What does that article have to do with the topic?" Around here such bemusement would be posted rapidly and in choir. Over the course of your comments on my post you've by now chided me for sophistry - ie, bad faith - as well as for incompetence in attempting to deceive you in pursuit of some agenda you ascribe to me but that haven't bothered to make explicit. If that's writing "Respectfully," as you claim in your valediction, I'd hate to see what you call disrespect. In responding to you from my repeated perplexity to your complaints about my contributions here, I've made an effort to be courteous and put the best constructions I could imagine on your motives, whether or not I thought I understood what you were saying. I've made an effort to be faithful to your words and what I believed you meant by them. When I don't know what you mean, I ask, and when I don't recognize your reflection of my efforts, I also ask. Your messages to me on this thread, in content but mostly in tone, have diminished the confidence with which until now I had looked forward to reading your thoughts whenever I saw you had posted something on any topic. I'm here to learn, and among the things I've learned is when to begin screening out certain types of expression. I'd be disappointed to start to feel like doing that with yours.

Sounds like another vote against practical jokes, thanks! And say, when is it ever not-nice to be right? Doesn't being nice require being right, and vice-versa? :?

I don't see that it's a thread hijack at all. Especially not the spenac/Dwayne-type exchanges. If I ask a community to relate instances of doing things that some members of the community think should not be done at all, that others think should be restricted, and that those others disagree about where the restrictions should fall, all those responses are relevant and instructive. Ask What's the best way to join a volly squad? Ask How many years should I practice as an EMT-B before enrolling in paramedic school? Ask Do you pray with your patients? Ask (I dare you!) Is this piece of equipment worthwhile? You'll get meaningful responses that challenge the premise of the question, namely that the question shouldn't be asked at all. The fact that experienced and thoughtful individuals question the assumptions underlying a inquiry or flat-out deny that it's legitimate may come as valuable news to the OP and/or other interested parties. From such opinions one learns that some people think environmental allergies should disqualify emergency workers, some people think suicidal patients deserve to die, some say Tasers aren't as safe as generally believed, that rendering aid off-duty, owning a firearm, wearing a badge are great/wonderful/stupid/awful things to do. As for true thread hijackings, well, doesn't that fall under the category of...

Kaisu, what exactly "doesn't follow" from what? Please specify where my posts on this thread have been in error or unclear or deficient in some other way. Unless of course your response is a practical joke.

People who love practical jokes should associate with others of like mind, wear a sign that says Kick Me, and please leave the rest of us alone.

Dwayne's story might suggest the wrong lesson to those with poorer judgment; George Bernard Shaw warns: "Do not do unto others as you would expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same." People who don't understand the Principle of Non-Aggression need to have their heads beaten in.

[web:661e1a2e6b]http://www.arbejdsmiljoforskning.dk/upload/ah-phd.pdf[/web:661e1a2e6b]

Riddle from a while back: Who's got the biggest pair of boobs in America? [spoil:1e04b564e8]Lillian Carter (mother to Jimmy and Billy)[/spoil:1e04b564e8]

Push it or pullet?

I guess the phrase "for personal use" means different things to different people. :dontknow:

Julian Power, this is sounding more and more like a must-have... one can even cook with it! 8)