An Internet History Lesson
In my “I Hate San Francisco” post, I ended by saying, “Flame away, SF residents!”
Apparently, someone thought this was homophobic.
Therefore, I felt that I had to provide this little history lesson on the word “flame.” (Originally posted as a comment).
Once again, I reveal my age!
Back in the dark ages, shortly after we invented fire, but BG (before Google), there was something called “Usenet”. On “Usenet,” there were these things called “newsgroups” where primitive cave-dwellers could post messages to each other.
Many of these “newsgroups” came to be plagued by strident conflict, which the Australopithecines of the time termed “flamewars.” To flame someone was to attack them personally, or worst of all, compare them to Hitler.
When I directed SF residents to “flame away,” I was instructing them to “bring it on,” though hopefully not in the same way that Iraqi insurgents have done so to George W. Bush.
Gay or straight, it’s all the same to me, I’m still not going to visit that accursed city by the bay.
The epitome of freedom is the automobile.
The ability to go anywhere anytime – to work, the beach, the grocery store, the drive-thru or just speeding down the highway.
The President has committed the country to foreign wars to protect this very freedom.
So living in places without free, plentiful parking, wide straight and flat roads
and automobile friendly traffic rules just impinges on that very freedom. I can’t imagine having a home in such a restrictive place.
I’m surprised that Ben himself didn’t know. A link to a description of Godwin’s Law is in order.