Posted: 23 December 2008 12:17 PM   [ Ignore ]
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Did following the rules seem to help or hinder this?

(Click the post title to read the submission.)

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Posted: 24 December 2008 04:47 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 1 ]
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Rules?  What rules?  Just Kidding, Star!

Burning icicles in the middle of a power outage is an image I will never forget.

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Posted: 29 December 2008 04:58 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 2 ]
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Burning icicles caught me - I thought about it for a while, and ended up enjoying the image it created.  I thought it made a nice quiet allusion to the miricle of Channukah, without repeating the miricle of the oil.

But I wonder about the guidlines - are they suggestons at litmocracy or should they be attended?

Just asking because I’m new here.

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Posted: 29 December 2008 05:19 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 3 ]
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Thanks Stretch for the kind words. Again I never saw the rules. I just saw satire and thought this story might slip through even though it isn’t really a satire either.
I have no opinion on the rules.

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Posted: 29 December 2008 05:24 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 4 ]
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(Thinks Dave with gleefully spinning mental gears:)
Oh good - someone else questioning the difference between rules and guidelines.

My philosophy is this:  If I need to do any “police work” - policy enforcement, etc., then I have not finished creating a system whose beauty can be maintained, and I need to do more work to eliminate the need.  The “rules” are intended to inspire, not to constrain.  It fits right in with my overall outlook that people who make up rules and then have to spend time enforcing them are foolish.  Better to provide guidelines and estimates of one’s own behavior in cases where the guidelines are broken - don’t commit yourself to enforcing the rules.  This comes from my disdain for the use of my tax dollars to enforce idiotic rules like “teacher permanence” here in the states, and the government’s list of “illegal substances” and wars on various “evils” they invented like the drug trade and terrorism… etc. etc.

Ok, sorry, I kind of took advantage of your question as a soapbox.  I hope you enjoyed my little essay.

Anyway, to follow my own advice here’s how I use the rules er I mean guidelines:  If I like two pieces about the same and one of them breaks the rules, I’ll pick the one that followed the rules.  That is in deference to those who put in “extra work” to follow the rules, as well as StarLizard, who creates the contests.  In real life, though, I think I would go the other way because I don’t think people break rules enough - especially those that don’t do us much good, which are most of them.  Eating from the tree of knowledge, for example wink

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Posted: 29 December 2008 05:48 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 5 ]
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Okay Dave, that makes sense to me.  I am not generally a rule follower, and like the freedom that your interpretation provides.  Guidlines that include words like, “must include..” are rather limiting.  I like, “...may include.”

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