Let's put lilbuddha in charge
What is connected to ageing are the diminishing of factors that make operating a vehicle less of a risk. And everyone loses capabilities over time. Everyone. In that way, it is different to the mental health issue.It is possible it isn’t. However the comments about young people driving, to which I was responding, aren’t at all relevant and won’t be whether or not age is a factor in this accident.
It's possible. We simply can't know at this point. I made a comment about young people driving because Boogie made a comment about being driven by an elderly couple who drove in a dangerous way, as if being elderly was automatically connected with that particular way of driving.
The only way youth driving is related to aged driving is in having discussions about how to manage the dangers.
However, that generally isn't why youth driving is brought up in these conversations.
It's a real pity we can't seem to organize Shipboard discussions properly, according to lilbuddha's exacting standards. If only we could manage to follow lilbuddha's unfailingly consistent examples, we could happily avoid all tangents, all illogic, all sarcasm; indeed, we might eventually manage to banish disagreement, obviating any need for this forum. As lilbuddha routinely points out, all attempts at comparisons, metaphor or similes, humorous exaggerations, pokes at societal hypocrisies, etc. only drag discussion onto points lilbuddha considers irrelevant, unimportant, unedifying, and unenlightening. And as we all know, lilbuddha's judgment in such matters, fortified as it is by her exquisitely-honed and finely-ground moral sensitivities, is infallible.
This discussion has been closed.

Comments
If fineline is upset by what I wrote, I would be happy to discuss it with her. Not seeing the problem with this post.
I used to have a similar approach to debating myself when I was younger, and I also felt very strongly about terrible things wrong with the world that I had to educate/correct prople on at any opportunity, and so I tend to see it as karma - I now know what it's like to be on the receiving end. Which is useful - it is always good to learn such things, because I'm not good at reading how people read me.
Anyway, that is why I tend to just not reply to you after a while in various Purg threads. I'm sure someday I'll be called to hell myself for things people find annoying in my style or attitude. Pretty much anyone could be pulled apart in hell, as we all have our annoying/frustrating quirks and foibles.
Add my voice to the infallible complaint.
It's not just this post. It's the pattern of posting. It's the everlasting finicking-about over how your precise position on anything is always slightly different from and slightly more correct than anyone else's, and the lengths to which you must go to carefully delineate that position and set it its .67ths of a degree apart from everyone else's.
And off we go, as you now carefully pick apart why this specific Hell call is not quite the correct one to have been posted, when there have apparently been several others which in your fastidious estimation were faintly more deserving, yet somehow escaped our notice and passed without comment. Hell, we can’t even meet your standards for calling you to Hell.
I was registering my surprise, not criticising your call. See?! I cannot even clarify my own position without falling foul.
Well done, a masterful stroke.
I will say this much. I do not think I am infallible. I have apologised many times for being wrong.
However, my intent is only part of the equation and if the more reasonable posters are seeing my posts differently than I intend, I am not communicating properly. To them, I apologise.
And yes, that was carefully phrased.
I'll discuss with anyone who wants to discuss. Otherwise, I probably deserve at least some of this, so fling away.
I'd say just the opposite. LB has been a pillar of calmness, but in the last half year or so (giver take) her posting has become more acerbic (if not downright bitter) and yet less logical.
We all see ourselves as mostly even-keeled, because sanity asserts certain assumptions. Yet in order to make sense of other people we assume they have the same internal progressions and patterns that we do. So, when we see something that we would likely be angry to post, it is then taken as given that the person was posting angry. And if they deny it, it makes the most sense that they are in denial.
You sound outraged most of the time, lilbuddha. Even when you're probably thinking that you are being calm and moderate, it's easy to imagine you seething and pretending to be calm.
Luckily, I've read your stuff for long enough to get a feel for your modes. I mostly just hear you as engaged, not enraged.
Obviously, fineline is a white-hot roiling mass of invective magma ready to erupt underneath an overly-verbose façade. Basically evil incarnate.
That was addressed to Ohher, not fineline.
Perception is a funny thing. Especially self-perception. I would’ve thought the difference between my pointed rejoinders and the merely blunt one’s would be more obvious. But I obviously haven’t mastered one, or perhaps either.
Except fineline. She's just too mean, period. Like a vampire with a taste for the squeamish. I'm not sure what she said, but she left RuthW sobbing in the Hosts lounge.
And so it goes, through all the voluminous quantity of topics about which she knows more about, and has thought more about, and is far more correct about, than the rest of the Ship put together.
What's a burger ring, please? Thx.
I more or less agree with most of what Simon Toad and Rook said. I think lb, these days, is pretty much focused on getting things right, by her own lights, and communicating that--but not harshly. I think she treats people better, and writes much more calmly. She writes interesting posts.
If we limited SOF posts to those by people who never think they're right--or Right (tm)--the Ship would be one of those semi-abandoned sites that's kinda sorta still there for people to stumble across, and wonder what happened.
{Text available on golden tablets, as it rightly should be.}
No, really?
Seems like a reasonable view to me.
It's an opinion, a way of understanding the world. LB seems fairly consistent on this view, alongside others, and enters conversation on that basis.
It's not something one can prove or disprove. One either agrees with the meta-analysis of the underlying power dynamics or not.
You seem to be literally saying here that one should be unsure of everything and come at every issue uncontaminated by any previously worked-out positions.
Which seems a pretty odd thing to say on a bulletin board, particularly one where the majority are coming from a faith position that relies on revealed truth.
Not really.
If I'm a Trotskyist (I'm not, fwiw), I might well have pretty firm understandings of Marxist theories of revolutionary history.
I might well be interested in discussing Brexit and American politics.
I can see that it could get irritating to have a Trot monopolising the conversation, but I don't think that's the accusation here.
In the terms of this example, it is like lB is here being criticised for having an unmovable faith in the underlying ideas of Trotsky.
Err. Yeah, that's what it means to be a Trotskyist.
It would be fun to have two Trots on the Ship. The peanut gallery would have a fight worth watching 24/7.
As far as I'm concerned you are all... er... hmmm... I'll not finish that sentence!
The determination of what is happening is often subjective. On the part of both the speaker and the listener, of course.
I suppose I should admit that part of the problem is that I am consciously trying to suppress my own tendency in that direction.
Strident is also a problem in that intent ≠ perception. I may know I wrote something in a calm tone, but if no one perceives this, then it is still my fault.
No offence meant, but that you find me strident mean little, as we often disagree and sometimes at the core of an issue. And this will affect perception of tone.
That fineline thinks I am being combative with her, means a lot, as we are more closely representing the same ideas.
I'll pick on @Ruth. She is a lefty feminist so we agree on many things political. However we have argued quite strongly.
Perhaps you mean everything on a certain topic or in a particular discussion. This one is closer, but not exactly correct either. This is a discussion site and would be rather boring (to me) if we only discussed to the first degree of agreement. To continue past this is to discuss the topic thoroughly and this will bring up smaller differences.
Again, just how this all works or fails, is subjective.
I will not, however, apologise for arguing passionately, nor attempting to make clear my position.
Unfortunately, a side-effect of this is appearing cocksure. Which I am emphatically not.
I will admit, however, of not always knowing when to stop.
But I think I'm done with lb. There's no real point in trying to have a discussion with someone who imagines that she knows everything.