P.S. "She tore his argument to shreds. It had never happened to him before. He felt helpless and profoundly insecure as a result. He recognized that she saw things that he had never seen before. He contemplated the possibility of simply ignoring it, but soon realized she had access to a world of learning and understanding that he never dreamt of before. Oddly, he felt that this intellectual experience was so personal and private that it bordered on the sexual. But at the very moment when he made the connection between the sexual and the intellectual, he realized he had to change his views on both of those. He was no longer the thinker and sexual agent he had been prior to her interventions. He realized that Alcibiades was right all along. How to live tomorrow was the question." Anonymous.
In the early part of the last century, Principia Mathematic could not be imported into the US because it was considered pornographic.
I wonder too about enjoying having one's argument 'torn to shreds,' as opposed to having it carefully analyzed. This is surely a form of masochism. I can see students (?) presenting intentionally bad arguments just for the thrill of having them rapaciously destroyed by this unknown woman.
There's too much logical BDSM in the world as it is. Robert Paul ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html